Magic Street by Orson Scott Card Page B

leather and a motorcycle helmet.
    "I'm talking to you, boy," said the motorcycle woman. "I'm saying, you really want that baby dead?"
    "No," said Ceese. "What you talking about anyway? Who are you?"
    She stopped at the landing ten steps below Ceese, her head haloed by the light from the window. "I'm just saying, before you kill somebody, you need to think real careful. Because when you change your mind, they're still dead."
    "I ain't killing nobody."
    "I'm glad to hear it," said the motorcycle woman. "Killing people is a serious responsibility. I hardly ever do it myself, and it's my job."
    Ceese didn't doubt for a minute that she was telling the truth.
    A thought occurred to him. "You this baby's mama?"
    "Baby like that got no mama," said the motorcycle woman. "And a good thing, too. He'll be nothing but trouble, you'll see. Dark trouble for everybody around him. Give him to me, I'll send him home."
    "No," said Ceese.
    "You can tell them that a sexy-looking woman in black leather come and kissed you and you couldn't tell her no."
    Kiss him? She was going to kiss him?
    She laughed. "Or you could say an evil-looking alien with a space helmet came and carried the baby off to heaven in a UFO."
    "Like they'd believe that."
    "I'd make sure the nurses saw me running with the baby. They'd believe you all right. I'm not here to cause you trouble. I'm here to save you from a lot of sadness and woe."
    "You're one of them wacko women that steals other people's babies from the hospital cause they can't have any of their own."
    She was halfway up the steps, and he hadn't even noticed she was climbing. All he had to do was stay there, and she'd come and take the baby out of his arms.
    For a moment, that sounded to him like the most natural thing in the world.
    Then he knew that it was the most terrible thing he'd ever thought of. Because if she ever got control of this baby, she'd stuff his tiny body down the drainpipe in that little park and he'd never be seen again. Maybe she meant to do that all along, and the only reason she couldn't was that he found the baby and carried him away.
    "I saved this baby," said Ceese. "I don't want him dead."
    "You don't?" she asked. "Not even a little curious about what it's like to watch the life go out of something?"
    She was two steps down, and her head was almost even with his, and if she wanted to take the baby from him, she had only to reach out. But she didn't reach.
    "I don't like you," said Ceese.
    "Nobody does," she said. "It's a lonely life, being too cool for this world."
    And at that moment, the baby started making noises. Not crying. Little soft cooing babbling noises. Like he was trying to talk babytalk to them.
    "Except this little baby," she said. "He likes me fine. He knows me."
    "You are his mama," said Ceese.
    "Maybe I'm his girlfriend, you ever think of that? Or maybe he's my papa. You just never know how people are going to fit together in this world. Give him to me, Cecil. Your mother would tell you to do it."
    He wanted to. He could feel it, this longing to hand the baby to her, rising in him like hope. And yet he knew it was wrong, that it would be the death of the baby to hand him over. "I won't do it," he said. "Don't you worry."
    "I wasn't worried," she said. "Just hoping."
    "I was talking to the baby," he said. "I'm not going to let you have him."
    The door behind him opened. It was one of the neonate nurses. "Who you talking to out here?" she asked.
    Ceese was going to say, Her, but when he turned back around the motorcycle woman wasn't on the second step down anymore. For a second he thought she was entirely gone, but then he looked down and she was at the bottom of the next flight of stairs, where if he called to the nurse to come and see, the motorcycle woman would be gone before she could get there to look.
    "It's dangerous by these steps," said the nurse. "What if you dropped him?"
    Below him, the motorcycle woman held out her arms. But despite her promises, Ceese knew