SO FAR: Divorcee Merrick Jamieson (35) visiting New York comes into contact with the moll of the mysterious Spiro. The spirited Kirsty Fallon (25) finds she has become attracted to Merrick and follows the photo-journalist to his homeland and begins working with him. Merrick deals with a retriever sent to find Kirsty and travels to New York where he wins her freedom from Spiro. The couple now head to Los Angles for their wedding, with Kirsty eager to become pregnant. Merrick is unaware that his prospective mother-in-law has not accepted him but her husband immediately bonds with the New Zealanders.
* * *
As soon as the film on the aircraft finished, Merrick selected a classical music channel and said with a yawn, "Night-night darling."
Darling leaned over and received the sweetest of kisses. "Sleep safely," Kirsty purred. "I'm reading this fashion mag for a while; it's interesting to read critically what other journalists write."
Kirsty concluded that was a rather significant thought because it reflected her blossoming maturity as a working journalist. On the flight to New Zealand four months earlier she'd red magazines hopefully expecting to be titillated. If the writer had disappointed Kirsty would have bailed out early, mentally giving that journalist the fingers. Now she was interested in dissecting the reasons why the writer had failed to hold and even fire her interest.
The critical task was to find if Kirsty herself the problem or was the writer off-beam? Even better, when the writer gripped Kirsty from the outset she would read to the very last word and sigh, sob or smile as appropriate, her emotions barred. Then, after a few minutes respite she would return to find what techniques, skills and command of language had been engaged to draw Kirsty headfirst into such a superior article.
It was, of course, impossible to determine the contribution of good editing, but then one is reminded of the saying about a silk purse and a sow's ear.
Understandably, Kirsty didn't do this analysis with everything she read; just occasionally and selectively, when she had the time to work her mind leisurely in that manner.
Take this article she was reading, she thought, It was dumped on to pages 59-60. Even the heading to the article was third-rate: 'Despite the Fags and Booze I Conceived'. What a disgusting thought. However, the word 'conceived' had snared her attention. The writer was a subeditor on the magazine and for some weird reason the editor had allowed the woman to wallow in her desire to share her story with readers.
Kirsty had to admit that it was written a notch of two above the work of a hack journalist. But she knew had she been assigned to write the article she would have interviewed the expectant journalist to extract more emotional comments and then would have tried to produce a very much more captivating account
The silly idiot, though Kirsty; fancy filling her body with alcohol and nicotine while shagging away trying to get pregnant. I do hope that baby is all right, she sighed. Perhaps the writer had curbed her excesses as soon as she was declared pregnant. Now that was a serious omission from the story and there were others.
Kirsty had cut back on alcohol drastically and limited herself to two cups of coffee a day. Those were major sacrifices and the mind battles not to yield had mostly ended positively. That's why this article had attracted her – she'd been wracked trying to be good whereas this weak-minded cow of a subeditor probably had a glass in one hand and a fag in the other while being poked the very time she was impregnated and now was telling the world how lucky she was.
Thanks to the one pre-dinner glass of wine – her only alcoholic drink for the day – and diligently including those nice foods designed to boost her intake of folic acid to try to help increase her chances of getting pregnant, Kirsty had not been unduly upset by the appalling behavior and slack attitudes of this woman she was reading about. She closed her eyes, trying to imagine the woman's child as a smiling, gurgling little tot who absolutely radiated good heath.
The aircraft was roughly in line with Fiji when the sleeping bride-to-be began to dream, a dream that she would mostly remember in the morning simply because it was so astonishing.
* * *
Kirsty dreamed herself into a rather large cave. Not a rock cave, because its walls, floor and roof seemed to be heaving membrane, colored white through to red with perhaps touches of purple.
Fluid of varying viscosity was dripping off the roof and walls and surging up and down on the sloping floor like a white-water rafting river where it swirls into a whirl pool, or that's how it seemed.
Suddenly a counter-flow of thick lumpy white fluid gushed through a smallish opening downstream.
By some strange manipulation Kirsty found her vision cycled up enormously in magnification. She'd not managed to focus on the first white wave in time, but a second wave followed and then came four or perhaps five more.
Focusing into the second wave Kirsty could see they were cute little tadpole thingies; Hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions.
Then she realized that she was watching sperm being deposited into a vagina. How remarkable! It astounded her that she was in this privileged position.
Then, absolutely unbelievably, out of those zillions of tadpoles in the second wave one stood out as it washed by. It was the only one with a gold aura around it. It called out - "Hi Kirsty, Tiger's doing his best for you. This one is what surfies call the seventh wave - the really big one in a set."
Then it was gone, diving with the mass into the creamy fluid to enter what Kirsty now realized must be the cervix.
Little Goldie as Kirsty called him, as he'd not given his name, had flashed past so quickly. She was doubly staggered, not only in being able to witness this remarkable happening but also because Little Goldie had referred to Merrick as Tiger. Until now only Kirsty and Merrick had been privy to that most intimate of nicknames, being bestowed by Kirsty the first time Merrick had gone down on her Muzzling around he'd growled and growled until she was so tingling with anticipation that she screamed, "Go Tiger" and she continued using Tiger as an intimate appellation.
A mind-switch instantaneously had Kirsty witnessing the action in the uterus. She'd already been aware of the carnage happening outside with fatalities already apparent within the waves and huge number failing to make the narrow opening into the cervix.
It was bedlam in the uterus so Kirsty though 'egg' and found herself in a fallopian tube.
"Hi mother."
The soft form Kirsty deduced was one of her released eggs didn't look feminine at all, but not male either she noted with relief.
"I'm hoping one of the Ricky's will be the one to penetrate me; there are two hundred and twenty thousand Ricky's out there struggling into exhaustion to try to get to me first. That sounds a lot, but I understand there are five million Johns in this lot."
"Goodness gracious, how many tadpoles in total?"
"Well, thanks to you lying on the floor with your feet raised twenty-eight degrees and a reasonable sperm count because you have been feeding and exercising Merrick very well, according to my information he managed to ejaculate 66.37 million."
"He pumped that many into me? No wonder I felt so full."
"It wasn't that which was making you feel full," she was answered with a giggle.
"Darn it, here comes a Bruce."
"Oh, not a Bruce," Kirsty wailed.
"It's OK, he's been caught in a back-suction so has gone."
"Look, look!" screamed Kirsty. "There's Little Goldie."
"Little Goldie? No, he's a Ricky and there's another Ricky just ahead of him. But they are too far back. Here comes a Marvin."
"A Marvin; oh yuk!"
"You don't want a Marvin, mother? Well, I'm not supposed to do this but you are so cute I will."
