Sam returned with the Master Healer a few minutes later. While the healer examined Frodo within his room, Gandalf waited outside with Sam, who was pacing the hallway fretfully. Merry and Pippin, who had been on the terrace with Frodo when he collapsed, were also worried and would have liked to stay and wait too, but Gandalf sent them away; he wanted to speak privately with Sam before news of Frodo's remarkable condition became widely known.
"Is he going to be all right?" Sam asked anxiously. "Frodo's never been well since we came out of Mordor. He's been sick in the mornings lately, and now this. It's all that blasted Ring's doing!"
"We can't blame all of Frodo's recent illness on the Ring," Gandalf told him. "I don't see how it can be responsible for this."
"Why not?" asked Sam. "What's wrong with him?"
"Frodo is pregnant."
"Frodo's having a baby?" Sam sounded not so much shocked by this news as puzzled. "Now how'd a thing like that happen?"
"He seems to think that you had something to do with it."
"Me?" Sam's mouth dropped open. "But I can't have! Is that what he told you?"
"Frodo said that you and he had 'slept with' each other." Gandalf repeated the same euphemism that Frodo had used.
"And so we have," Sam responded frankly. "You know we did--you've seen us. Hardly a night passed since we left the Shire, until we came here, that I didn't sleep by his side."
The wizard was taken aback by this innocent answer. "Sam, I don't think that's what Frodo meant."
"What else then? Mr. Gandalf," Sam stepped closer and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur, "I know how babies are made, and I never did anything like that, not with Frodo and not with anybody else! Even if he was a girl, I couldn't've done what he says." He struggled with an uncomfortable fact that even the most stalwart loyalty couldn't deny. "Frodo's not telling you the truth."
Gandalf didn't know quite what to make of this peculiar turn of events in an already perplexing situation. He had barely adjusted to the idea that these young hobbits were more sophisticated than he'd previously realized--and now he had to wonder if they weren't still very childlike after all. Could one of them be deliberately lying? It was a possibility, but he'd never had any reason to doubt either Frodo's or Sam's honesty before. Or could it be that one or the other was so ignorant of the basic facts of life that he truly didn't understand how a child was conceived? Even if that were so, it did not address the more problematic question of how one young male could impregnate another.
"I think," he said, "that we had better have a talk with Frodo."
The door to Frodo's room opened and the Master Healer emerged, shaking his head. "A most unusual case," he murmured. "The oddest I've ever seen."
"You agree with my impressions then?" the wizard asked.
"I don't see how it can be true, but I cannot deny the facts before my eyes. Halflings are quite similar to Men in many respects, and yet the symptoms I've observed in this halfling indicate a physical impossibility among Men! Perhaps it is different for the little people." The healer gave Sam a speculative glance. "I will send a midwife to examine the patient, but I expect she'll find this case as baffling as I do."
Once the healer had departed, still shaking his head, Gandalf went into Frodo's room. Frodo lay on the bed, gazing out the windows at the dark line of mountains to the east, but at the sound of the door opening, he turned his head and gave the wizard a slight, odd smile. "It seems you were right, Gandalf. I didn't think this could ever happen to me, but it has." He caught sight of Sam lingering in the doorway behind Gandalf, and his smile broadened. "Sam! Has Gandalf told you? I know it sounds impossible, but we're going to have a baby."
Sam tried to answer; his mouth moved soundlessly, but he was unable to find the right words. At last, he turned to Gandalf in a silent appeal for help.
"We were just discussing the matter," the wizard said carefully. "And you and I need to discuss this as well. Frodo, you do know how children are conceived, don't you?"
"I thought I did, but I'm not so sure of it now," Frodo responded with a little laugh. "I thought that it happened only when two people got married and bedded together, but I must have missed some crucial part of the proceedings if Sam could have done this to me."
"Sam says otherwise," Gandalf told him.
"Otherwise?" Frodo echoed. "I don't understand." He looked from Sam to Gandalf and back again in confusion. "Sam, what does he mean?"
Sam stepped forward hesitantly. "I couldn't've done it, Frodo. I can't be that baby's father." Then he quickly added, "I'll stand by you, just the same. I'll care for you, and the baby too. You've only to ask for my help. You don't need to tell lies."
"I'm not lying!"
"Nor am I," Sam replied almost apologetically, reluctant to contradict Frodo. "But what you're saying isn't so. I know a bit more'n you do, and I know that we never did- well, what you have to do to get a baby."
Frodo stared at him in bewilderment. "Then what..?" Tears began to pool in his eyes and, as they overflowed to spill down his cheeks, he turned away and curled into a ball.
"Frodo!" Sam climbed up onto the bed. "Oh, please don't! I didn't mean to make you cry!" When he first reached out, Frodo shoved his hand away, but Sam persisted in spite of Frodo's sobbing insistence that he "go away and leave me alone!" until Frodo finally gave in and allowed Sam to touch him.
Gandalf stood quietly while Sam fussed over Frodo, patting his back and murmuring comforting nonsense. He waited out the burst of tears and, when Frodo's sobs had subsided, the wizard stepped closer to the bed. "If Sam has not fathered this child," he asked, "who has?"
"I don't know!" Frodo lifted his tear-streaked face from the crook of his arm. "I tell you--I don't know what's happened to me! Why don't you believe me?"
"It is not a question of belief, Frodo. I don't say you have been deliberately deceitful, merely mistaken." Gandalf sat down at the foot of the bed. "It seems to me that, whatever happened, it must have occurred after you parted from the rest of the Fellowship. We must consider those days and try to determine exactly when this could have come about. Then, we may be able to discover how and why."
Frodo sniffled and wiped his face with back of his hand. "Yes," he agreed. "All right."
"Both you and Sam have told me that you were always together as you went into Mordor. Was there any time when the two of you were separated?"
"Only once." Frodo looked at Sam, who nodded slowly. "At Cirith Ungol," he explained to Gandalf. "The orcs held me captive for two days before Sam rescued me. I was questioned, beaten."
"Were you raped?"
Frodo shook his head. "No. At least, I don't think so. I'd know, wouldn't I, even if I weren't awake when they did it? But-" He stopped suddenly. His face went pale and his eyes grew wide with horror. "More than a day passed between when I was taken and when I awoke in the tower. They might have done something... anything to me in that time." He began to look very sick. "Could they have, Gandalf?" he asked in a faint voice. "Is there some magic they might have used to do this to me?"
Gandalf had not heard of any such spell, but who could guess what unspeakable arts the Dark Powers held at their command? For Sauron and his minions, the corruption of the natural order of things was an old practice. Even something as essentially natural as the creation of a new life might be turned to an evil purpose--perhaps as a form of torture? An orcling planted within a tiny creature like a hobbit could easily tear its "mother" to pieces from the inside once it had grown large and strong enough. Gandalf felt sick himself at the thought.
"If it is so," he suggested gently, "then this must have occurred only a few weeks ago. The... child can't have quickened yet. The apothecary can give you a potion-"
"No!" Frodo cried out. Sam likewise looked shocked and drew protectively closer to him. Both regarded the wizard as if he had just threatened to run Frodo through with a sword. Horrific as the idea that Frodo had been impregnated by an orc was to them, the idea of ending the pregnancy was equally disturbing.
"No," Frodo repeated once he had calmed down. "I know you mean well, Gandalf, but I couldn't do that."
"If it is an orcling you bear, you may be in great danger," said Gandalf. "It may even kill you."
"Yes, but we don't know that's so. It may be harmless. We can't tell yet, and I can't destroy it unless I am sure." Laying a hand on his belly, Frodo announced bravely, "I don't know what this child is, nor how it came to be, but as long as it does not endanger my life, I will carry it."
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