Throughout my pregnancy I was haunted by an ancient story.

Not so much a story, really, as a scene: the horrific climax to a dark drama of betrayal and revenge. There are only two people in the scene, a man and a woman. They are, or have been, married, and the woman has had two sons by him. Once she loved the man, but now her love has turned to hate. He knows, but is indifferent to her feelings, because he is a powerful and important figure, a force in the land, and she is a mere woman, powerless.

The setting is her house, in her kitchen. Although he has left her, abandoned her for another woman, he has returned to reclaim his sons. They are his heirs, after all; this was in the olden days when children were the property of their father, and women merely conveniences for their begetting.

With typical male vanity, he's not surprised that she is prepared to entertain him, has even cooked a meal for the man who, having ruined her life, has now come to take her children away. Accepting it all as his due, he sits and allows her to serve him. He eats heartily, never wondering why she doesn't join him in the feast.

Finally, replete, he asks for his sons.

She, laughing horribly, tells him he's just had them.

What is this story? Who is she? Who is he? Without names, I couldn't research it, I had no idea where to begin. I looked through books of ancient myths, and Greek tragedies, but could never find it. But I must have read it somewhere, or seen it staged.…

"People don't do such things." That's from a more modern play—Ibsen, is it, or Strindberg? Anyway, that's how I feel. Yet even if it never really happened, someone wrote it, someone thought it up and found it plausible. Women have killed their own children, I know, but … men are the ones who made parenthood all about ownership, inheritance, and staking a claim, giving a name or not, as if love were dependent on genes, or law. It's men, not women, who have always had the option of denying their bastards. It's women who adopt, or even steal babies, just to have someone to love. And it's men who want to believe that they're more important than the children they sire, that a woman spurned would butcher her own children just to spite the man who left her.

Yet what do I know, really, about what people will do in extremis?

And what if the story I think I remember is something I made up myself?

Carmen started out as my guilt counselor but she's become my friend. She was supposed to help me come to terms with my own accountability, to break down the "criminal mind-set" which had put me on the wrong path, and help me with "reintegration" into society. Over the months she's become more of a general advisor, and a good friend. Maybe the only friend I've got, after all that happened.

I should have resisted, I know that. We both knew about the legislation specifically outlawing sexual activity on federal property between federal employees. To make matters worse, we weren't equals: I was his boss.

But it wasn't sexual harrassment! It wasn't like that between us. I didn't force him into anything. Everything he said in court was a ruse designed by his lawyer to get him a lighter sentence. It worked, too. He was so convincing even I wondered: was I really a heartless, predatory she-devil who had intimidated poor young Josh into providing sexual gratification?

I know lawyers will say anything. My own lawyer wanted to accuse Josh of rape, but I kept her reined in. I wasn't prepared to do that to him—and, anyway, she admitted that if we weren't believed, it could backfire really badly. I thought I had less to lose than Josh: no partner, money in the bank.… I'd lost my job, of course—we both had—but I figured I'd move into the private sector once the uproar died down.

I knew I'd done wrong, and I accepted that I would be punished. I thought losing my job was punishment enough. When I admitted my guilt, I didn't realize it would go to court.

Legal bills ate up my savings in no time. I didn't know how I'd manage to pay the fine. I didn't know the judge had worse than a fine up his sleeve.

Judge Arnold Jason. A handsome, vigorous man, undeniably attractive. He was married, but I'd bet there were affairs. Maybe not actually in chambers, and maybe not with anyone who worked for him, but a man like that would find plenty of opportunities, have plenty of offers … I'd be astonished if he turned them all down. And I'd thought it might make him a little more sympathetic to people like me and Josh.

But he lectured us like some Old Testament prophet, like some patriarch bearing the word of God down to the miserable sinners.… Yes, he used the word "sin," without irony. We had sinned against society, and we must make amends.

When he first said the words "community service" I relaxed a little. It wasn't going to be jail or bankruptcy. I imagined myself working with the handicapped or the very old; maybe cleaning out bedpans—well, somebody had to do it. It was honest work, and I swore to myself I would not complain.

With his faintly lecherous smile, Judge Arnold Jason said that the punishment should fit the crime. Back in the good old days, he went on—as if he were old enough to remember!—immoral sex had consequences. Women kept themselves in check from fear of getting pregnant. Society had gone to hell when contraception had become readily available to anyone who wanted it.

The last election had shown that the great American public was sick of immorality. Many laws had recently been passed to define and ban unacceptable activities. Deviant behavior was to be discouraged—so the great Judge Jason decided to make an example of me.

I wasn't the first woman to receive a sentence of pregnancy, but the ones before me had all been prostitutes. As an alternative to time in jail, with the added bonus of a year's free health care, as far as most law-abiding, tax-paying citizens were concerned, such "punishment" was more like a holiday! And it had the longer-lasting effect of helping to reintegrate these "fallen women" into normal society. Although most of them gave the babies up for adoption, a few opted for motherhood, and the new responsibility kept them on the straight and narrow—at least, that's what I read in an article which presented this enlightened new approach to vice in a wholly approving way. It seemed, when I read about it, like a great compromise between punishment and rehabilitation.

Somehow it seemed very different when I was on the receiving end.

Compromise! We're all suckers for it. The ideal of the magical middle way which is good for everyone.

For so long it seemed there could be no compromise between those who promoted "the right to choose" and those who proclaimed an irrefutable "right to life." Then cryogenics and medical technology created a compromise. Legislation followed. Conflict was eradicated. No more abortions; women had the right to choose; and the right to life was upheld. Instead of "termination" we had "removal." Tiny lives were frozen in stasis until a more willing womb, a welcoming home, could be found for them.

It seemed so simple. Everyone knew there were more people eager to adopt than there were healthy, adoptable newborns—but somehow this demand didn't transfer to all the new unborns. Usually people who were willing and able to hire a surrogate mother wanted a child with some of their own genetic material. Otherwise, they'd shop around for premium eggs and sperm—those who could afford them wanted designer babies, not something removed from careless or immoral women.

Yet homes could always be found for newborn babies. It was a psychological thing. People who wouldn't adopt an unknown embryo responded differently to babies. I was assured of this even before the fetus was implanted in my womb.

"Don't worry that you'll have to keep the baby—there's already a loving home just waiting for the little one to be born," said a bright-eyed, curly-haired social worker. "If it would make you feel better, you can sign the adoption-release papers at any time during your pregnancy. Would you like to do that now?"

But I wasn't willing to do or sign anything which might imply that I accepted what was being done to me. Even though I didn't want a baby, and couldn't see how keeping it could possibly benefit me, I resisted, almost instinctively.

I sometimes felt like a rat in a cage, but I was a clever rat. My mind never stopped working furiously to find a way out. And if I couldn't get myself out, then—clever, nasty rat that I was—I would make someone else suffer.

Not just anyone, though. I wanted revenge. Revenge would be my solace. I was going to get the people who had done this to me. Josh? No. He'd been hurt enough. My poor Abelard. He was a coward, that was all, desperate to save his own skin. I'd loved him once, and couldn't forget that.

But I'd like the chance to do something to his lawyer. And the prudish gossip who'd turned us in. And my useless lawyer, who had let this happen. And the judge. Yes, above all, Judge Arnold Jason was the one I really wanted to see suffer. I had lots of cruel and childish fantasies about what I'd do to him if I ever got the chance.…

I knew it was unlikely. I knew my fantasies of revenge would have to stay just that, fantasies. And even they started to fade, as my pregnancy progressed, under the softening effects of hormones and—might as well give her the benefit of the doubt—Carmen's professional counselling skills.

New fantasies crept in and took their place. Daydreams about motherhood. The baby, instead of an unknown "unborn," became, in my dreams, Josh's son or daughter. Although we couldn't be together, I would always have his baby.…

Sometimes I horrified myself.

And yet, on the other hand, why shouldn't I have a child—this child? So what if I hadn't chosen it—the idea of choice was such a modern thing; maternal instinct (if that's what I was feeling) was far more primitive. This baby was inside me, and that made it mine. I began to hate the idea of losing it. The thought of handing my baby over to strangers came to seem more of a punishment than even the pregnancy itself. Like it or not, I was becoming a mother.

If I was going to do this, I knew I had to go in with my eyes open. My new job—entry-level data processing, if you please!—left me with too much time to fantasize. I decided to put that time to better use. I set out to research my baby's background. I promised myself that if the baby inside me had come from someone too obviously horrible and unfit, I would give it up, rather than raise a ticking genetic time-bomb.

I was sure that background details of the heritage of all the unborn must be kept on file somewhere. Their mothers at least would be identified, in case they wanted to return to reclaim their unborn babies when their situations improved (this did sometimes happen).

Of course, I had no right to any of this information. It could only be accessed illegally.

It's just not true that punishment is a deterrent to further crime. All my previous experience of the law did was make me much more careful not to be caught this time.

It didn't take me long to find the name of my baby's genetic mother. She was called Chelsea Mott. No information on the father.

I ran a search on the name Chelsea Mott. I was astonished at the number of links that came up, but even more astonished by the connections they made.

I sat and stared at my computer screen, feeling as if all the breath in my body had gone sighing out.

Chelsea Mott was a law student. Two years ago she had worked as a summer intern for Judge Arnold Jason. She'd worked for him from June through August. In October she'd gone in for a pregnancy removal. Significantly, although she was at law school in another state, she'd come back here—the home State of Judge Arnold Jason—for the removal.

My revenge had just been handed me on a plate.