Nicole nodded her head. "You may have missed your calling," she said. "Maybe you should have been an actor instead of a farmer."
"I played Marc Antony in our high school play in Arkansas," Max said, handing Nicole the diving mask for a final adjustment. "The pigs loved my rehearsals… Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."
The three of them laughed. They were standing in a small clearing about five meters from the shore of Lake Shakespeare. The trees and tall underbrush concealed them from the nearby road and bicycle path. Max lifted up the air tank and helped Nicole adjust it on her back.
"Is everything ready, then?" he asked.
Nicole nodded.
'The robots will meet you at the cache," Max said. "They told me to remind you not to descend too rapidly. You have not done any diving in a long time."
Nicole stood in silence for several seconds. "I don't know how to thank you two," she said awkwardly. "Nothing I can think of to say seems adequate."
Eponine walked over to Nicole and gave her a hug. "Be safe, my friend," she said. "We love you very much."
"Me too," Max said a moment later, choking slightly as he embraced her. They both waved to Nicole as she backed into the lake.
Tears were running out of Nicole's eyes and collecting on the bottom of her mask. She waved one last time when the water was up to her waist.
The water was colder than Nicole had expected. She knew that the temperature variations in New Eden had been much greater since the colonists had taken over management of their own weather, but she had not considered that the changes in weather patterns would have altered the temperature of the lake.
Nicole changed the amount of air in her vest to slow her descent. Don't hurry, she counseled herself. And stay relaxed. You have a long swim ahead of you.
Joan and Eleanor had drilled Nicole repeatedly on the procedure she should follow to locate the long tunnel that ran under the habitat wall. She switched on her flashlight and studied the aquaculture farm off to her left. Three hundred meters toward the center of the lake, directly perpendicular to the back wall of the salmon-feeding area, she remembered. Stay at a depth of twenty meters until you see the concrete platform below you.
Nicole swam easily, but she was tiring quickly nevertheless. She found the concrete platform, descended another fifteen meters while carefully watching all her gauges, and eventually located one of the eight large pumping stations that were scattered on the bottom of the lake to keep the water continuously circulating. Now, the tunnel entrance is supposed to be hidden just under one of these big motors. Nicole did not find it easily. She kept swimming past it because of all the new growth around the pumping complex.
The tunnel was a four-meter-diameter circular pipe, completely full of water. It had been included as an emergency escape route in the original habitat design at the insistence of Richard, whose engineering background had taught him always to allow for unforeseen contingencies. From the entrance in Lake Shakespeare to the exit, out in the Central Plain beyond the walls of the habitat, was a swim of slightly over one kilometer. It had taken Nicole ten minutes longer than planned to find the entrance. She was already a very tired woman as she began her final swim.
During her two years in prison, Nicole's only exercise had been the walking, sit-ups, and push-ups that she had done at irregular intervals. Her aging muscles were no longer able to endure extreme fatigue without cramping. Three times during her swim through the tunnel, Nicole's leg muscles cramped. Each time she struggled, treading water, and forced herself to relax until the cramp completely dissipated. Her forward progress was very slow. Toward the end of her swim Nicole became frightened that she would run out of air before she reached the tunnel exit.
In the last hundred meters Nicole's body ached all over. Her arms did not want to push through the water and her legs had no strength left to kick. It was then that the ache began in her chest. The dull, disconcerting pain stayed with her even after her depth gauge indicated that the tunnel had turned slightly upward.
When she finally reached the end of the passage and stood up in a small underground room with only half a meter of water on the floor, Nicole almost collapsed. For several minutes she tried unsuccessfully to regain an equilibrium level in her breathing and pulse rate. Nicole did not even have enough strength left to lift off the metal exit cover above her head. Worried that she had pushed herself beyond safe physical limits, Nicole decided to remain in the tunnel and take a short nap.
She awakened two hours later when she heard a bizarre pitter-patter above her. Nicole stood directly under the cover and listened carefully. She could hear voices, but could not isolate what was being said. What's going on? she asked herself, her heart rate suddenly accelerating. If I've been discovered by the police, why don't they just open the cover?
Nicole moved quietly in the darkness over to her diving gear, which was sitting against the wall on the opposite side of the tunnel. Suddenly there was a sharp knock on the cover. "Are you down there, Nicole?" the robot Joan asked. "If so, identify yourself immediately. We have some warm clothes up here for you, but we are not strong enough to remove the cover."
"Yes, it's me," Nicole cried with relief. "I'll climb out as soon as I can."
In her wet suit Nicole became quickly chilled in the bracing outside air of Rama, where the temperature was only a few degrees above freezing. Her teeth chattered during the eighty-meter walk in the dark to where her food and dry clothing were cached.
When the trio reached the supplies, Joan and Eleanor instructed Nicole to put on the army uniform that Ellie and Eponine had left for her. When Nicole asked why, the robots explained that to reach New York, it was necessary for them to pass through the second habitat. "In case we are discovered," Eleanor said when she was safely sitting in Nicole's shirt pocket, "it will be easier to talk our way out of trouble if you are wearing a soldier's uniform."
Nicole put on the long underwear and the uniform. When she was no longer cold, she realized that she was extremely hungry. While she was eating the food Eponine had packed in the cache, Nicole placed all the other items that had been wrapped in the sheet into the backpack she had been carrying under her diving vest.
There was a problem entering the second habitat. Nicole and the two robots in her pocket had not encountered any humans at all in the Central Plain, but the entrance to what had once been the home of the avians and sessiles was guarded by a sentry. Eleanor had gone forward to scout and had reported the difficulty. The trio stopped three to four hundred meters away from the main traffic route between the two habitats.
"This must be a new security precaution, added since your escape," Joan said to Nicole. "We've never had any difficulties coming and going."
"Are there no other routes that lead to the inside?" Nicole asked.
"No," Eleanor answered. "The original probe site was here. It has since been considerably widened, of course, and a bridge was built across the moat so that the troops can move quickly. But there are no other entrances."
"And must we absolutely go through this habitat to reach Richard and New York?"
"Yes," Joan replied. "That huge gray barrier to the south, the one that forms the wall of the second habitat for many kilometers, prevents movement in and out of the Northern Hemicylinder of Rama. It's possible that we could fly over it, if we had an airplane that could reach an altitude of two kilometers, and a very clever pilot, but we don't. Besides, Richard is expecting us to come through the habitat."
They waited and waited in the dark and cold. Periodically one of the two robots would check the entrance, but there was always a sentry present. Nicole became tired and frustrated. "Look," she said at one point, "we can't stay here forever. There must be some other plan."
"We have no knowledge of any alternate or contingency plans in this situation," Eleanor said, reminding Nicole for once that they were only robots.
During a brief nap the exhausted Nicole dream
ed that she was lying, naked, on the top of a very large and very flat ice cube. Avians were striking at her from the sky, and hundreds of little robots like Joan and Eleanor had surrounded her on the surface of the ice. They were chanting something in unison.
When Nicole awakened, she felt somewhat refreshed. She talked with the two robots and they worked out a new plan. The three of them decided not to move until there was a break in the traffic through the entrance to the second habitat. At that time, the robots would decoy the sentry so that Nicole could proceed inside. Joan and Eleanor instructed Nicole then to walk cautiously to the other side of the bridge and turn right along the shore of the moat. "Wait for us," Eleanor said, "in the small cove about three hundred meters from the bridge."
Twenty minutes later, Joan and Eleanor made a terrible commotion along the far wall, about fifty meters from the entrance. Nicole walked unmolested into the interior of the habitat when the sentry left his post to investigate the noise. On the inside, a long stairway wound back and forth, dropping the several hundred meters from the entrance altitude to the level of the wide moat that circumscribed the entire habitat. There were lights on the stairway at periodic intervals, and Nicole could see more lights on the bridge in front of her, but the overall illumination was quite sparse. Nicole tensed when she saw a pair of construction workers coming up the stairs in her direction. But they climbed right past her with only minimal acknowledgment. Nicole was thankful she was wearing the uniform.
As she waited beside the moat, Nicole stared toward the center of the alien habitat and tried to make out the fascinating features the little robots had described to her: the huge brown cylindrical structure, rising fifteen hundred meters straight up, that had once housed both the avian and sessile colonies; the great hooded ball that hung from the habitat ceiling and provided light; and the ring of mysterious white buildings, alongside a canal, that encircled the cylinder.
The hooded ball had not been illuminated for months, not since the first human incursion into the avian/sessile domain. The only lights that Nicole could see were small and widely scattered, obviously placed in the habitat by the human invaders. Thus all she could discern was a vague silhouette of the great cylinder, a shadow whose edges were very fuzzy. It must have been glorious when Richard first entered, Nicole thought, moved by the thought that she was in a location that had recently been the home of another sentient species. So here also, her mind continued, we extend our hegemony, trampling underfoot all life-forms that are not as powerful as we.
Eleanor and Joan took longer than expected to rejoin Nicole. The threesome then made slow progress along the side of the moat. One of the robots was always out front, scouting, making certain that contacts with other humans were avoided. Twice, in the part of the habitat that was very much like a jungle on Earth, Nicole waited quietly while a group of soldiers or workmen passed by on the road to their left. Both times she studied the new and interesting plants around her with fascination. Nicole even found a creature halfway between a leech and an earthworm trying to enter her right boot. Curious, she picked it up and put it in her pocket so that she could examine it later.
When Nicole and the two robots finally arrived at the specified spot for the rendezvous, it had been almost thirty-two hours since she had backed into Lake Shakespeare. They were on the far side of the second habitat, away from the entrance, where the normal density of human beings was at its lowest. A submarine surfaced within minutes after their arrival. The side of the submarine opened and Richard Wakefield, a gigantic smile upon his bearded face, rushed forward toward his beloved wife. Nicole's body shook with joy when she felt his arms around her.
5
Everything was so familiar. Except for Richard's clutter, accumulated during his months alone, and the conversion of the nursery into the bedroom of the two avian hatchlings, the lair underneath New York was exactly the same as it had been when Richard, Nicole, Michael O'Toole, and their children had departed from Rama years before.
Richard had parked the submarine at a natural harbor on the south side of the island, in a place he had called the Port.
"Where did you get the sub?" Nicole had asked him while they were walking together toward the lair.
"It was a gift," Richard had said. "Or at least I think it was. After the superchief of the avians showed me how to operate it, he or she disappeared, leaving the submarine here."
Walking in New York had been an eerie experience for Nicole. Even in the dark the skyscrapers reminded her vividly of the years that she had lived on this mysterious island in the middle of the Cylindrical Sea.
"How many years has it been since we left New York?" Nicole had asked as they entered their lair.
"I can't give you an accurate answer," Richard had answered with a shrug. "We've taken two long interstellar voyages at relativistic speeds. Unless we know our exact velocity profiles, we can't make the proper time corrections."
"The only changes made in the Rama spacecraft on each visit to the Node," Richard had said sometime later, while Nicole was still musing about the wonders of relativity, "are those necessary to accommodate the next mission. So nothing has changed in here. The black screen is still there in the White Room, as well as our old keyboard. The procedures for making requests from the Ramans, or whatever our hosts should be called, are still intact also."
"And what about the other lairs?" Nicole had asked. "Have you visited them also?"
"The avian lair is a tomb," Richard had replied. "I've been all through it several times. Once, I entered the octospider lair cautiously, but I went only as far as that cathedral room with the four tunnels leading away—"
Nicole had interrupted him, laughing. "The ones we called Eenie, Meenie, Mynie, and Moe."
"Yes," Richard had continued. "Anyway, I wasn't comfortable there. I had the feeling, although I could not identify anything specific, that the lair was still inhabited. And that the octos, or whatever might be living there, were watching my every step." This time it was his turn to laugh. "Believe it or not, I was also worried about what would happen to Tammy and Timmy if I didn't return for any reason."
Nicole's first introduction to Tammy and Timmy, the pair of avian hatchlings that Richard had raised from infancy, was priceless. Richard had built a half-door to the nursery and had closed it securely when he had left to meet Nicole inside the second habitat Since the birdlike creatures couldn't yet fly, they had remained safely inside the nursery during Richard's absence. As soon as they heard his voice in the lair, however, the hatchlings began to shriek and jabber. They did not even stop squawking when Richard opened their door and cradled both of them in his arms.
"They're telling me," Richard shouted to Nicole above the frightful noise, "that I shouldn't have left them alone."
Nicole couldn't stop laughing as she watched the two hatchlings extend their long necks toward Richard's face. They interrupted their jabbers and shrieks only to rub the undersides of their beaks softly against Richard's bearded cheek. The avians were still small, about seventy centimeters tall when standing on their legs, but their necks were so long that they appeared to be much larger.
Nicole watched with admiration as her husband tended to his alien wards. He cleaned up their wastes, made certain that they had fresh food and water, and even checked the softness of their haylike beds in the corner of the nursery. You have come a long, long way, Richard Wakefield, Nicole thought, remembering his reluctance years earlier to deal with any of the more mundane duties associated with parenting. She was deeply touched by his obvious affection for the gangly hatchlings. Is it possible, Nicole asked herself, that each of us has inside this kind of selfless love? And that we must somehow work through all the problems that both heredity and environment have created before we can find it?
Richard had stored the four manna melons and the slice from the sessile in one corner of the White Room. He explained to Nicole that he hadn't noticed any changes in either the melons or the sessile material since he had arrived
in New York. "Maybe the melons can rest dormant for a long time, like seeds," Nicole offered after listening to Richard's explanation of the complex life cycle of the sessile species.
"That's what I was thinking," Richard said. "Of course I have no idea at all under what conditions the melons might germinate. The species is so strange and so complicated, I wouldn't be surprised if the process is controlled somehow by that small piece of the sessile."
On their first evening together, Richard had difficulty getting the hatchlings to go to sleep. "They're afraid I'm going to leave them again," Richard explained when he returned to the White Room after the third time that Tammy's and Timmy's furious squawks had interrupted his dinner with Nicole. At length, Richard programmed Joan and Eleanor to amuse the avians. It was the only way he could keep his alien wards quiet so that he could have some time alone with Nicole.
They made love slowly and tenderly. Richard had admitted while he was undressing that he wasn't certain how well… But Nicole had informed him that his performance, or lack thereof, was of absolutely no consequence. She insisted that it would be a delight just to hold his body next to hers and that any actual sexual stimulation would be a marvelous bonus. They were, of course, compatible, as they had been since the first time they had slept together.
After their easy lovemaking, Richard and Nicole held hands and said nothing. Nicole fell asleep gloriously happy.
For the first time ever, there was no hurry in their lives. Every night they talked easily, sometimes even while they were making love. Richard told Nicole more about his childhood and adolescence than he ever had before. He included his most painful memories of his father's abuse, as well as the harrowing details of his disastrous first marriage to Sarah Tydings.
"I now realize that Sarah and Dad had something fundamental in common," Richard said late one evening. "They were both incapable of granting me the approval I so desperately sought—and somehow they both knew that I would continue to try to obtain that approval, even if it meant abandoning everything else in my life."
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