The Baba Yaga Read Online Free PDF Page A

instinctively around his. “Really,” he said. “I’m sorry. You have my unconditional support. Um, what do you want? I’ll do whatever you want. Do you want me to call Kay?”
    Kay Larsen was a colleague of theirs at the Bureau and, more significantly, a qualified doctor.
    “She’ll know what we need to do next, surely,” Kinsella said. “Where we can go to... to sort this all out.” He held her hand even more tightly. “I’ll come with you. You won’t be alone.”
    “I haven’t decided what’s best yet.”
    A flicker of doubt twitched across Kinsella’s face. “You’re not thinking of going through with this?”
    “It’s a possibility.”
    “It’ll finish you. They’ll fire you.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “Delia—don’t delude yourself. If Latimer doesn’t fire you on the spot, you’ll be out within weeks. They have ways and means of doing these things. Altering organisational priorities. Moving your staff away. Internal reshuffling. Particularly right now. This attack—it’s appalling, it’s grim, and it means Grant and her gang will be able to push through whatever they want—up to and including your head on a platter. Don’t give them any more ammunition. Sweetheart, please, listen—”
    “Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me! Don’t you dare ‘sweetheart’ me, you bastard!”
    They didn’t speak again for a while. They sat in silence, side by side, looking out at the lights of the city shimmering on the dark water. The night seemed oddly, incongruously peaceful. The news from Braun’s World wouldn’t break for days yet. In one thing, at least, the whole Bureau was in agreement: bad news needed good management.
    “I don’t want children,” he said, eventually. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. I never have. There’s too much I want to do. I thought we felt the same way...”
    In fairness, that was what she had always thought too. She was not a romantic: she knew the hard work involved in bringing up a child; the trade-off between time at her desk and time with the child; that one or both of these might suffer, even if she wasn’t fired on the spot. She was not sentimental either, not about a collection of cells, and suspected that a few years ago she would have ended this pregnancy immediately, without even telling Kinsella, and moved on. But something was holding her back. Was it her age? The sense that this might be a last chance? Something tightened in her stomach ( not her, not yet, surely ). After a moment she realised it was anger.
    I want what I want , she thought. And that’s not what Mark wants, or what the Bureau wants, or even what I myself thought I wanted, or ought to want. I have changed my mind. And that is permissible.
    Or should be. But there it was: some people’s bodies had never really been their own to dispose of as they wanted. They had always been something to be policed and controlled. Not even she, amongst the most privileged of the most advanced technological society, really had that power over herself. She remained powerful as long as she obeyed the rules. But now she no longer wanted to obey the rules...
    Kinsella, she realised, was still holding her hand; awkwardly, and yet oddly lovingly, as if was trying to reel her back from making a disastrous mistake and plunging into water too deep even for her. Calmly, Walker took her hand away. “It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t owe me anything.”
    “Delia,” he said reproachfully. “That isn’t fair.”
    “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it honestly. I’m trying to be honest with you. This is my decision and I’ll live with it. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.” And I hope you’ll pay me the same courtesy.
    He hesitated, then: “If you’ll let me give you some advice...”
    This should be good , she thought. “By all means.”
    “Please don’t throw away everything you’ve worked for. You’re brilliant, Dee, among the smartest in the room.