This story is actually by Minnie Mall and is a sequel to The Rival. It was written with Dreamtales' permission.
Nothing stirred within the walls of the mansion. The security systems had been broached and neutralized. Within one of the many dark rooms, a woman -- a domestic -- slept curled up on top of an Persian carpet in the central dining area in the bliss of the tranquilized. A man in a dark suit moved stealthily through the upstairs rooms searching carefully for someone or something in particular.
At the end of a long corridor before a closed door, he stopped and listened intently. He slowly turned the knob and slipped quietly into the room. It looked all the world like a small apartment. The room he had just entered was a small sitting room with a fireplace. He noticed a small bedroom and bath off to the right. But immediately ahead was a partially closed door covered with cute cutout pictures of Winnie the Pooh and Peter Cottontail.
The man noticed a woman sitting in a chair dozing while the television showed this night's episode of Wheel of Fortune. She didn't notice him. He slowly lifted his gun. There was a metallic snapping sound and the woman started awake as a tranquilizer dart entered her neck.
She didn't have a chance to rise or even speak before collapsing back into the chair unconscious. As she gently snored, the dark man pushed his way through the cartoon covered door and into what was now an infant's nursery. The room held two cribs, each containing a sleeping infant approximately nine months old. With baby blue colors dominating one crib, and soft pastel pink on the other, it was easy to distinguish the male from the female child.
The dark man reached around his back and withdrew a small infant's nursing bottle from his pack. Carefully he lifted the sleeping boy and carried him to a rocking chair off to one side. The infant hardly stirred until the man attempted to place the rubber nipple to his lips.
The baby, still more asleep than awake, responded with the cranky thrashings of a sleep disturbed child. The child began to cry fretfully, but the dark man insistently kept up his efforts to feed the baby. Finally, he leaned forward and whispered close to the child's ear.
"Ssssshhh. Ssssssshhh, Thomas-san," he said. "Thomas-san, you must drink."
The child, more or less awake, looked up quizzically into the giant face above him. It didn't look like the nanny mommy. Or the red-haired mommy. The face looked familiar but the baby was confused.
"Thomas-san. It is I Goro Yoshi. You must lie still and drink. This will make you better."
The infant focused his eyes on the dark stranger and a flicker of cognizant thought crossed his small features. Whether or not he understood the adult was not known, but he did begin to suckle on the contents of the bottle.
Eight hours later, in the pre-dawn light. The stranger named Goro was still in the nursery apartment, but he had been joined by a small boy wrapped in a bath towel. The boy appeared to be about eleven. The strange thing was the boy dominated the conversation and the older man kept his comments to a respectful few words and the occasional "Hai."
"How did you find me, Goro-san?" the boy asked in fluent Japanese.
"The woman is not subtle. We had a sample of your DNA stolen from this location within three days of your disappearance. We knew who you were and where you were within the first 10 days. But Ishi and I apologize, Thomas-san, that it took us nearly a fortnight to crack your systems and replicate the antidote to the administer."
"Did you bring any more?" the boy asked.
"No, Thomas-san."
"Then we'll have to take the other baby with us. She's been an infant even longer than me. I'm afraid of the long-term effects if she stays young too much longer. I was beginning to fade myself. It was so hard to concentrate and remember that I was an adult. I don't know how to explain I Goro-san. I knew who I was and what happened to me, but my responses and instincts became more infantile with each passing day. I couldn't remember names or adult concepts. Even that bitch Monique became a mother figure."
"I am sorry for you distress, Thomas-san, my friend. But I am here to help you make it right."
"I am in your debt, my friend," the boy answered. "You didn't have to come after me. Monique had my technology and my company. You could have dealt with her."
"It shames me, Thomas-san, that you would think that we would abandon you. Did not our father Ishi-san tell you that you were as much his son as I was. Have I not always been a brother to you, as you are me?"
"I apologize my brother and thank you and our father for coming for me." Tom answered with a deep bow.
Goro smiled at his brother, who was now nearly twelve years old.
"Where's Monique?" Tom asked grimly.
"She is still in Japan. I think she really thought she could pull this charade off. She just assumed that we would jump at the chance to exploit the YouthGene technology. I do not think it ever dawned on her only you had the ability to replicate and further develop the process," Goro said.
"She is a very greedy woman," he added.
"That she is," Tom agreed.
"Her lust for money and power closed her ears to fact that the YouthGene gun renders anyone exposed to it into an infant. Only the speed of the reduction is variable," Goro said. "Who wants youth if one has to be a babe again to have it?"
"True," Tom said. "Have you arranged us transport to the company labs here in town?"
"Of course. What about the two sleeping women?"
"Bring them, too. They're not guiltless in this matter."
Tom entered the nursery. Little Suzy was awake and gurgled happily when she saw his face. To Tom's sorrow, he saw no reflection of adult intelligence in her eyes. He quickly stripped her out of her sleeper and wet diaper and dressed her for a trip.
*************************
A few hours later, Tom had returned to his labs. Nothing much had changed in the month he had been gone, although he noticed that Monique's picture as President was prominently displayed. A woman built like a female Russian weight lifter guarded the outer offices. Tom, with Goro's help, had four security guards clean out her desk and escort her out of the building in just under 15 minutes.
Tom rescued his former secretary, Annie, from the office pool and in another hour, the offices of YouthGene looked a lot more familiar to the rapidly aging scientist. The only holdover from Monique's brief tenure was a playpen. Evidently, she liked to bring him or Suzy to the office and keep them there as she worked.
Tom could feel his anger rise degree by degree as he wondered about the woman whose perverse pleasures caused her to go out of her way to humiliate her already vanquished foes.
It took Tom another two days to refine another batch of the restorative formula for Suzy, which he promptly fed. To his surprise, the antidote's effect on Suzy was less than spectacular. She was aging, it was true, but a at a much slower rate than he did. What was more troubling was Suzy attitudes and actions remained locked in step to her physical age. She seemed to know who she was and what had happened to her, yet her reactions were those of a young child's. More than 24 hours after ingesting the antidote to the YouthGene gun, Suzy was still little more than a toddler. She was walking and talking, but she resolutely kept her thumb in her mouth if anyone but Tom spoke to her.
Tom spent a few concentrated hours at his terminal trying to figure out what had happened to Suzy. The results of his study didn't make his mood much better. Goro was playing peek-a-boo with Suzy when Tom looked up from his terminal.
"It's just as I feared," he said. "The antidote in her body is reaching is reaching terminal threshold."
Goro cocked his head to one side questioningly.
"Nobody's ever done what we've done before," Tom said. "The YouthGene gun took a normal, healthy adult and forced her body to retrograde itself into its infant form. A price had to be paid for that transformation.
"I thought the effect would reverse itself like a spring being uncoiled, but I was wrong. The longer Suzy stayed an infant, the more her body got used to being that size. The adult patterns locked in her cells were slowly erasing themselves. It was happening to me, too. Physically and biologically, I've stabilized at approximately seven years and four months younger than I was before Monique zapped me."
"How much older do you expect your lady friend to get?" Goro asked.
"I don't know," Tom said. "But if her current progress is any indicator, she'll never make puberty, let alone adulthood."
"What happens then?" Goro asked.
"She'll age as any normal person would."
"What will she remember?"
"I don't know -- not much I suspect. When you first are reduced by the gun, you remember everything. But the longer you stay small, the more your adult memories fade."
Turning to the little straw-haired moppet in diapers and a little red dress, Tom said, "Look . . . Suzy, honey . . . do you know my name, honey?"
Suzy removed her thumb from her mouth, frowned a moment and said "Tom" in her childlike voice.
"And what do you do for a living, Suzy?"
Another frown, then "I a 'porter."
"How old are you Suzy?"
This Tom Suzy frowned even harder. You looked at Tom and Goro staring at her and got nervous and scared. Tears formed in her eyes as she couldn't remember what the big men wanted from her. She felt warmth in her crotch as her little bladder emptied. Then Suzy cried. Tom picked up his former girlfriend and lover, patting and kissing her as adults do to babies. "There, there, honey, don't cry. It's okay. Is my baby wet? Does baby want a change?"
Through her tears, Suzy nodded. Tom pressed his intercom and Annie, his secretary, came in.
"Would you do the honors, Annie?" he asked. Annie smiled and took Suzy in her arms and made blowing sounds into the child's belly. Suzy immediately started laughing. His secretary was a real treasure, Tom thought.
"She's always looked after me, and I never seem to appreciate her."
After 20 minutes, Suzy and Annie returned to them. Suzy was clutching Annie with one hand, walking the in awkward waddle of a child in diapers. She was clutching a rag bear under her free arm while trying desperately to drink out of the baby bottle of apple juice in the same hand.
"I've talked to father," Goro said. "They're putting Monique on a Lear Jet and she should be here at the lab in about 12 hours."
Tom nodded grimly. Little Suzy picked up on the mood of the two men and gave both men a huge baby hug. Tom smiled at his diminished lover and scooped her up in his arms and laughed. He handed her back to Annie and said, "Look after Suzy. We'll be working in the lab for a few hours."
Annie nodded silently and took Suzy away with her.
"Well, we might as well take care of Fredrica and the nanny," Tom concluded.
Goro picked up and access card and followed Tom to a door adjacent to his office. With a swipe of the card, Tom accessed the room. It was a small lab room with a large electronic console sitting before a large plate glass window. Tom turned on the lights in the room beyond the glass. Two women -- one, the nanny, was dark-haired, middle aged and overweight -- the other, Fredrica, was brown-haired, in her mid-30s and thin. The women were confined in two glass cubicle roughly six foot square. Both women were nude.
When they saw the lights come on in the control room, both women began screaming and pounding on the glass. They might as well saved themselves the bother since the booths were sound proof.
On the ceiling above the two glass booths was a larger version of the YouthGene gun. It was mounted on a special track that let the operator move it from one booth to the other. Tom turned some switches and an electric hum filled the air. Slowly the gun moved on its track from a center position to one right above the obese woman. She hadn't seemed to notice the gun's movement, but the other woman had. She stared at the gun in horror as it positioned itself above the dark-haired woman.
The tip of the YouthGene gun glowed briefly then a beam of light stabbed out and splayed over the nanny. The results were almost instantaneous and visible. Within seconds the woman's whole overall appearance began to change. Her skin tightened and the gray that had flecked her hair salt and pepper shifted back to black. The myriad of broken blood vessels that tattooed the skin of her legs faded as she shifted from a woman in her fifties to a 30ish one.
The nanny became conscious of feeling different. She took a deep breath and it didn't seem as labored as before. The fifty pounds that had dropped from her frame made her feel lighter and look slightly better, although she was still covered with huge rolls of fat. She rubbed her hips and rear, trying to feel what was different. Fredrica watched in horror as the nanny slipped within minutes from an obese 30-year-old to a very overweight woman in her 20s. The nanny must have guessed something was wrong as well, she suddenly began to rub her hands across her broad and flabby flanks, but without a mirror she could only guess at what was happening to her.
Because of her weight loss, the nanny had quickly lost most of the lines and wrinkles in her face. The nanny's body appeared more like a deflating balloon than a rejuvenation. Her once puffy body became more defined. The lumpy sags and bags that were her hips, breasts and thighs rendered themselves into a more recognizable woman's shape. Her breasts firmed, no longer laying like fleshy sacks against her pot belly but standing on their own. The beginnings of a waist appeared and then deepened. The nanny had always looked like she had extremely tiny feet, like a circus fat lady. Now that her legs had slimmed to where they barely rubbed against each other her feet looked like they were larger, almost normal.
When the threshold of 20 had been reached, it was easy to watch the nanny digress from woman to teen. Her floppy breasts and broad ass began less distinct, less adult. In the booth stood a teenaged version of the nanny. For a few brief moments she was cute, almost pretty, with the larger breasts and curves that came from having more meat on her bones than most teenaged girls. The nanny's rear and legs were nearly smooth and were tiny compared to the pitted and lumpy rolls they had been mere minutes ago. Fredrica watched the nanny run her hands up the smooth thighs, over the curve of the hips past the waistline that had been lost so many years before. She touched her firm breasts in disbelief.
Then the moment passed and she started to lose height. Her adult curves disappeared once more into fat, but this time it was baby fat. Her breasts became less and less pointed and began to rise higher on her chest as now her height and weight began to diminish. They quickly went from overabundant handfuls, to titties that easily fit into her shrinking hand.
And still the nanny regressed. From 16 to 15, from 14 to 13, from 12 to 11, backward in time she went. The coarse patch of fur the size of a dinner plate between her hammy thighs thinned and then vanished. The nanny must have felt her pubic hair receding because her hands flew to cover her crotch, and she let out a high-pitched, childish sounding cry. The process continued ruthlessly onward. Where moments before, a large brute of a woman stood, now there was no one but a rapidly diminishing chubby girl of six or seven.
By now the nanny was well-aware that she was being shrunk. She kicked and screamed futilely at the glass of the booth. Fredrica watched dumbly as the nanny grew younger and younger. At about three-years-old, she lost all semblance of control and wet herself. And still she grew younger. Finally, she was no longer able to stand upright and fell back heavily in the puddle of pee that had collected around her feet. Finally her regression stopped when she appeared no more than a couple of months old.
The glass booth that enclosed her descended into the floor and a technician completely dressed in white entered and removed the now infant nanny. Fredrica continued to pound on the glass but elicited no response either from the technician or from Tom and Goro in the control booth.
Tom watched Fredrica for a moment and then pressed a few more control buttons. The great arm of the YouthGene gun slowly swung from its position over where the nanny had been until it was directly overtop of Fredrica. The woman screamed in horror as she realized the fate that awaited her. Tom reached over and flipped an intercom switch.
"Fredrica," he said. "I just wanted you to see first hand what this technology can do so there is no doubts in your mind. I know that you were a party to both Suzy and my kidnaping."
"What kidnaping," Fredrica screamed. "I didn't kidnap anyone . . ."
"Really? You were certainly privy to the fact that Suzy had been reduced by the ray and that your mistress withheld the antidote. And you certainly were aware that she had reduced me and stole my company. If that doesn't make you an accessory, than I don't know what would.
"But that's beside the fact," Tom said grimly. "You've already been tried and convicted. You have two choices Fredrica -- plead guilty and accept whatever punishment I decree, or I call the police immediately and turn you over. And believe me, I have enough evidence on tape to see you in jail for the rest of your life. So what will it be, Fredrica -- the police or me."
"You," she whispered.
"Very well, I sentence you to start over again. I guarantee that I will place you in a good family and you will be brought up as their daughter. I can also tell you from experience that your adult memories will fade in a week or so, but for that time, I want you to reflect on what you did. I hope you will be brought up better next time."
Tom wasn't in the torture business, so he did little more than flip a switch. From his vantage point, he could see the tip of the YouthGene gun glow. In a very few moments, Fredrica had joined the nanny in a warm and fuzzy land where the only things she had to worry about in the immediate future was staying warm, staying fed and staying dry.
"Now it's Monique's turn," Tom said grimly.
************************
It had been a heady month for Monique. In a little more than 30 days she had maneuvered herself from a mere player to a coach. So what if a few people go left behind in the way, she thought, that's business.
She had been surprised how easy it was to use the power of her body to manipulate Tom into doing whatever she wanted. The fool even voluntarily showed her the hand-held YouthGene gun and then demonstrated how to use it. It was almost as if he had begged her to use it on him.
She thought back to that evening in Tom's office. He was still feeling the effects of the supposed "antidote" to the YouthGene gun. Monique had happily discovered that it doubled as an incredibly powerful aphrodisiac. In addition to heightening both of their sexual pleasure, it had also caused Monique to lactate. Tom had been greedily suckling at her tits for 20 minutes. They were both stripped naked on the couch in Tom's office. Tom had fallen asleep after a terrific bout of lovemaking.
Monique padded to the desk and ran a long finger across the barrel of the gun. She look at Tom and then at the gun. Slowly and quietly, she lifted the gun and adjusted the exposure to its maximum setting. Then she squeezed the trigger. The pale light of the gun bathed Tom's nude form and after a few moments, she released the trigger.
She recrossed to the couch and gently lifted Tom's head up so she could sit with his head on her lap. The thought of what she was doing stimulated her. She snaked her left fingers between her legs and rubbed at the wet warmth contained within her pussy. Tom was already beginning to show signs of the YouthGene gun's effects.
Monique issued a throaty chuckle as she massaged her breast with her free hand until a few drops of milk appeared. Slowly the drops clung together until one large drop hung off the tip of her milk-swollen nipple. Then it fell to Tom's lips. He moved in his sleep and instinctively licked the milk. Like a sleeping child his lips quested for more nourishment. Monique obliged by leaning forward until the tip of her nipple touched Tom's lips.
Still asleep, Tom's lips thrust out and connected to Monique's breast. She gasped and orgasmed at the same moment. Her free hand reached down and cupped Tom's exposed buttocks. As his age diminished over the next hour, she gently used her hands to pull him up closer to her in order to keep his mouth to her nipple. Tom had blissfully regressed into full infancy without even awakening.
She left the babe asleep on a towel from Tom's private bathroom and without dressing, she crossed to his desk. What Tom hadn't known was Monique had been spying on Tom's company for quite sometime, looking for a way to leverage a buy. Tom himself had handed it to Monique.
"Like candy from a baby," Monique giggled to herself. At Tom's own desk, with one hand still busily masturbating herself, Monique placed a call to the parent company in Japan and talked to old man Yoshi himself. She outlined who she was, what she knew and what Yoshi's options were.
As Monique expected, the old man saw reason and placed Monique in charge of YouthGene Technology. It was soooo easy.
After that, all it took was calling her personal assistant Marge to bully Tom's staff and the takeover was complete. Monique even carried baby Tom home and placed him in the crib with Suzy. She was sure that both babies knew what was going on at first. She purposely brought men home and fucked them in front of her vanquished foes. But after a week or so, the babies didn't seem to recognize her as anything other than a milk machine. Monique got bored with the brats after that and hired a nanny to look after them. She hadn't even seen the brats for the past 10 days.
She was relaxing on the company jet, drinking wine and sketching out her next merger plan on her way back to New York when one of the flight attendants entered, bowed and handed her an blank envelope. Monique frowned and took it and opened it up. There was one sheet of paper folded inside. It contained two words -- MY TURN.
Suddenly Monique was aware that the room was spinning. She tried to stand. She lurched to her feet but fell forward. She rolled groggily on her back and looked up at the ceiling. The attendant was looking down impassively at her. She tried to get her mouth to open and speak, but she could not. Then all was blackness.
. . . . in other business news, Monique Faberri, the so-called the "Wonder Woman" of Wall Street and just-named President of YouthGene Technology, is missing and feared dead after apparently falling overboard from a company yacht while on a business trip to corporate headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Tom Simmons YouthGene former President has resumed company leadership. In other news . . . .
Monique groaned and slowly opened her eyes. What the hell was going on, she mumbled groggily. As her surrounding came into focus she recognized . . . THE LAB!!!
She started to her feet, but fell immediately to her hands and knees. She reached out a hand and touched the smooth side of a wall. She forced herself to focus her eyes. Dimly she made out a form . . . a man's form . . . Tom's form. But wait, she thought, Tim's back at my house. In diapers. And who was the kid next to him.
Monique slowly rose to her feet. She noticed she was naked. Naked didn't bother her. Her body was one of her best assets. She gave herself a quick going over. Good, they hadn't done anything to her yet. She was a little chilled, so she clutched her shoulders.
Ouch! She winced. There was a small lump on her left arm -- like the bite mark of an insect . . . or a needle. She checked her right arm and found another lump there as well. So they pumped her full of some drugs, again, so what.
She looked over at Tom who was watching her through the glass. She looked down at the child -- a little girl, no more than three. The girl had light, wheat colored hair and freckles. She also had her thumb in her mouth. She was holding Tom's hand.
Tim looked different -- younger -- to Monique. So, I'm caught, she thought. Best to brass it out. Suiting actions to words, she placed her hands on her wide and sultry hips and allowed Tom's eyes to feast on her feminine loveliness. She saw him break into a little sweat.
"So Tim," she purred. "I notice that you haven't brought little Suzy back up. What's the matter lover-boy, do you still want a real woman?"
Her cattiness broke whatever spell she still held over Tom. He looked up toward the control room and the intercom link between Monique and he was open.
"Shut up. Monique," he barked. "I curse the day I allowed you to talk me into teaching Suzy her so-called lesson. If I hadn't been such a smart-ass know-it-all, Suzy would be an adult. As it is, thanks to you and me, this is as old as the antidote can make her. From now on, she'll grow as any normal child would."
"So it still works out, Tom," Monique said. "Just let me out of here and we'll do what I proposed last month . . . let's get married and adopt her."
"Do you honestly think I'd let you anywhere near me, let alone Suzy after what you've done to us?" he said incredulously.
"No, I'll let you out shortly, but not until I'm finished with you."
"Tom, Tom . . . people will notice I'm missing. Why don't you just let me out. I'll go my way and you can get back to your science stuff."
"Monique, I regret to inform you that you're dead. The Japanese government launched an all out effort to find you but, alas, you've been lost at sea."
For the first time, Monique showed a little anxiety.
Tom bore in.
"Do you know what joke went around the street the day after your death was announced? It seems a Great White Shark was seen following a pod of Sperm Whales. He was observed eating the whale shit. The theory was he's swallowed you and was trying to get the taste out of his mouth."
"You bastard," she screamed and launched herself at the partition. It was then she noticed for the first time that she was being bathed in the rays of the YouthGene gun. Sweat broke out on her forehead.
She turned to Tom, "Listen can't we make a deal . . ."
"No deals, Monique. Besides, it's already too late. You've regressed about five years already. Here let me show you."
Tom pulled a large mirror in front of Monique's glass prison. He was right, Monique looked like she was in her early 20s. All lines in her face had faded and she once again had the semblance of the innocence of youth. She touched her face and ran her hands down to her breasts. They were still adult sized, but for how long, she wondered.
"You'll notice that you've been given injections. They very special shots, Monique. And you'll be a very special girl when this is done. This company is involved in all sorts of programs and experiments, especially genetics. We hope to someday be able to isolate specific gene matrixes so that if a person with cancer in their genetic background is detected, we can erase that cancer producing gene and replace it with non-cancer producing genes.
"But I'm afraid it will take years before we're able to do that. We have come across an interesting link in that project that has worked very successfully in all our computer models. We think we can literally erase a person's genetic code with one injection and over impose another in it's place. We're about to find out if that's true."
Monique looked at the two lumps on her arms.
"NO!" she screamed.
The little girl clutched Tom's leg tightly. "I'm afraid so. At least, it should work in theory."
Monique looked in the mirror. She had continued to regress. No longer in her 20s, she had the fresh body and face of a junior or senior in high school. Already, she showed signs that her body was no longer an adults. Her large breasts, no longer lactating, were riding higher on her chest. Her nipples were neither brown nor pink but had faded to the soft white of a young virgin.
Monique's shapely ass and thighs were becoming straighter, less rounded, less mature. Her eyes looked wider and more innocent as she slipped back to her mid teens. Monique was crying now, pleading and cursing Tom in alternating breaths. She didn't seem to notice that with each passing moment, her voice got higher and more child-like. Tom was surprised to note that Monique had evidently been a late bloomer, because as she slipped back to around 14, it was obvious that she would have had to stuff her bra to make it an "A" cup. She also had acute acne.
At 13, Monique was a tall gangly girl with two buttons for tits and a light sprinkle of fuzz on her pussy. She also had freckles . . . lots of freckles. She had lost any semblence of adulthood when Tom tapped on the glass to get her attention.
"Before you're too young to really appreciate this, I thought I'd show you the family whose genes I substituted for yours. You'll be moving to French Provence of Normandy. I thought that was fitting with your background. Your parents are poor farmers. Their little baby girl was sent here to the United States for risky and complicated heart surgery. It failed and the little girl died. But you'll be happy to know that your body now carries her genetic blueprint. It's busily erasing every trace of Monique Faberri and substituting it with little Angeline Mercier. Would you care to see a picture of your new family?
Tom held up a picture containing two adults and seven children ranging from a older teen to a child of three. One look at the picture and tiny seven-year-old Monique screamed anew. The parents were both dark-haired peasant stock with broad fleshy noses. The women were all thick boned, wide-hipped and flabbily constructed. There was not a trace of the beauty and refinement that was Monique Faberri.
Monique was four and sitting on the floor with her arms locked around her knees crying.
"I'm actually sorry, Monique, but if it's any comfort, you won't remember much. Little Suzy doesn't remember me as her fiance -- she thinks I'm her daddy. It will be the same for you in a few weeks."
Monique stood up. Her hair was nothing but a small thatch of red curls barely covering her head. Her little jelly-belly and soft baby skin betrayed the adult intelligence within her eyes. She recrossed another threshold and softly fell backwards. She attempted to get to her knees but her regression was inevitable and she sunk to her stomach. She was not much more than a bald newborn when the partition was lowered.
Little Suzy, still holding her thumb in her mouth, walked cautiously over to tiny Monique. Even in this tiny form, adult Monique was trying to communicate out to the world. Suzy pulled her thumb from her mouth and pointed downward.
"Baby." she said finally.
"Yes, baby, honey," Tom answered, bending down to pick up little Monique.
*************************************
Two days later, Tom was in his office trying desperately to assuage the tantrum of a three-year-old who refused to take a nap. Goro-san watched his half-brother in amusement as Tom tried to talk rationally to an irrational child. Finally, to his immense relief, Annie came in, and took charge.
It was amazing to she how well Annie and Suzy got along. Of course Annie and Suzy got along pretty well when Suzy was an adult. Through his own connections and those of his father Ishi, Tom was already well on the way to formally adopting Suzy. He thought back to that night in the restaurant more than three months ago when he and Suzy had talked about marriage and children.
He remembered Suzy's concern about her biological clock ticking. Now Suzy had all the time in the world, and Tom would be the one getting gray hairs when Suzy was old enough to date again. I'm going to need a wife and mother, he thought, but he didn't know where to start.
At that moment Annie reentered the room with Suzy. Suzy was laughing and giggling and Tom was struck how natural his secretary and former girlfriend looked together.
"Annie," Tom said.
"Yes, boss," she answered.
"I was wondering if you were doing anything tonight. For dinner I mean. It's just that you're so good with Suzy and well, I . . . I mean."
"Sure, boss, I'd be glad to."
""I . . . I guess you ought to call me Tom."
"Yes, Tom."
Goro grinned widely.
"What are you looking like that for?" Tom shot.
"Nothing, Thomas-san, nothing," Goro said laughingly. "Did you notice that before we took the child to the airport this morning that her eyes were now dark brown and her hair black."
***********************************
In a poor French cold-water farm house, a baby bawled. The mother lifted the small child from her cradle and rocked her carelessly back and forth. The mother was already pregnant with her next child and felt ill. Her child had been ill-tempered and colicky ever since coming back from America, but now after a couple of weeks she seemed to be calming down again. The mother lifted the flap of her coarse blouse and exposed a thick brown knobby nipple, chewed by seven children already. She forced the nipple between her daughter's protesting lips and eventually the child began to nurse.
It bothered the mother a little that when her daughter first came home she didn't look quite right. But over time, it was easy to see that she was becoming the spitting image of her Uncle Henri -- she even had his nose at this early age.
Underneath the blouse, close to the beating heart of her foster mother, little Angeline suckled noisily. The sights, sounds and smells of her home no longer repelled her as they did a week ago. In her infant's mind she remembered a different place . . . a different world . . . but it was fading away. She nuzzled into her mother's breast and enjoyed the warmth and security it offered. She slowly fell asleep, and dreamed baby dreams.
The End