6
Nicole knocked lightly on the I M door and then stuck her head into the room. “Excuse me,” she said. “Is anybody awake?”
Eponine and Max both stirred, but no eyes opened to greet Nicole. Little Marius was nestled between his parents, sleeping contentedly. At length Max mumbled, “What time is it?”
“Fifteen minutes after the scheduled time for our examination of Marius,” Nicole said. “Dr. Blue wilt be back in a little while.”
Max groaned and nudged Eponine. “Come on in,” he said to Nicole. Max looked terrible. His eyes were red and puffy and both of them had double bags underneath. “Why do babies not sleep for more than two hours at a time?” he asked with a yawn.
Nicole stood in the doorway. “Some do, Max. But every baby is different. Just after they’re born, they usually follow the same routine they were comfortable with in the womb.”
“What are you complaining about anyway?” Eponine said, struggling to sit up. “All you have to do is listen to some cries, change a diaper occasionally, and go back to sleep. I have to stay awake while he nurses. Have you ever tried to fall asleep while a little munchkin is sucking on your nipples?”
“What’s this?” said Nicole, laughing. “Have our new parents lost their neophyte aura in only four days?”
“Not really,” said Eponine, forcing a smile as she put on her clothes. “But Jesus, I am so tired!”
“That’s normal,” Nicole said. “Your body has been through a trauma. You need rest. As I told you and Max the day after Marius was born when you insisted that we have a party, the only way you’ll get enough sleep in the first two weeks is if you adapt your schedule to conform with his.”
“I believe you,” Max said. He stumbled out the door with his clothes and headed for the bathroom.
Eponine glanced at the light blue rectangular pad that Nicole had just taken out of her bag. “Is that one of the new diapers?” she said.
“Yes,” Nicole answered. “The octospider engineers have made some more improvements. By the way, their offer about the special waster is still open. They don’t have anything yet for Marius’s urine, but they calculate that with the waster he would only poop—”
“Max is completely against the idea,” “Eponine interrupted. “He says that his little boy is not going to be an experiment for the octospiders.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it an experiment,” Nicole said. “The special waster species they have designed is only a slight modification from the ones that have been cleaning our toilets for six months now. And think of the trouble you would avoid—”
“No,” Eponine said firmly. “But thank the octospiders anyway.”
When Max returned, he was dressed for the day, although still unshaven. “I wanted to tell you. Max,” Nicole said, “before Dr. Blue comes back, that I did finally have a long conversation with Archie about our leaving New Eden. When I explained to Archie that we all wanted to go, and tried to give him some of the reasons why, he told me it was not in his power to approve our leaving.”
“What does that mean?” Max asked.
“Archie said it was an issue for the Chief Optimizer.”
“Ah-ha! So I must have been right all along,” Max said. “We really are prisoners here, and not guests.”
“No, not if I understood correctly what Archie said. He told me that it ‘can be arranged, if necessary,’ but only the Chief Optimizer understands ‘all the factors’ well enough to make an informed decision.”
“More goddamn octospider gobbledygook,” Max grumbled.
“I don’t think so,” Nicole replied. “I was actually encouraged. But Archie said we will not be able to schedule a meeting with the Chief Optimizer until after the Matriculation is over. That’s the process that has been taking all of Jamie’s time. Apparently it only happens every two years or so and involves the whole colony.”
“How long does this Matriculation thing last?” Max asked.
“Only another week. Richard, Ellie, and I have been invited to participate in some facet of the process tonight. It sounds intriguing.”
“Marius and I won’t be able to leave for several weeks anyway,” Eponine said to Max. “So waiting a week is certainly no problem.”
At that moment Dr. Blue knocked on the door. The octospider entered the bedroom with the specialized equipment that was going to be used in the examination of Marius. Max looked askance at a pair of plastic bags containing writhing creatures that looked like black pasta.
“What are those damn things?” Max asked with a scowl.
Nicole finished laying out her own instruments on the table beside the bed. “Max,” she said with a smile, “why don’t you go next door for the next fifteen minutes or so?”
Max’s brow furrowed. “What are you going to do to my little boy? Boil him in oil?” ^
“No.” Nicole laughed. “But from time to time it may sound as if that’s what we’re doing.”
Ellie picked up Nikki and gave her a hug. The little girl momentarily stopped crying. “Mommy is going out with Nonni and Boobah and Archie and Dr. Blue,” she said. “We’ll be back after your bedtime. You’ll be fine here with Mrs. Watanabe, Benjy, and the twins.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Nikki said in her most unpleasant voice. “I want to go with Mommy.” She kissed Ellie on the cheek. The little girl’s face was expectant.
When Ellie put the child back down on the floor a few seconds later, Nikki’s beautiful face scrunched up and she began to wail. “I don’t want to,” she screamed as her mother walked out the door.
Ellie shook her head as the five of them strolled toward the plaza. “I wish I knew what to do for her,” Ellie said. “Ever since that incident in the stadium, she has been clinging to me.”
“It could be just a normal phase,” Nicole said. “Children change very rapidly at her age. And Nikki’s no longer the center of attention, now that Marius is here.”
“I think the problem’s deeper than that,” Ellie said several seconds later. She turned to Nicole. “I’m sorry, Mother, but I believe Nikki’s insecurity has more to do with Robert than with Marius.”
“But Robert has been gone for over a year,” Richard said.
“I don’t think that matters,” Ellie replied. “At some level Nikki must still remember what it was like to have two parents. To her it probably seems like first I abandoned her, then Robert. No wonder she is insecure.”
Nicole touched her daughter gently. “But Ellie, if you’re right, why is she just now reacting so strongly?”
“I can’t say for certain,” Ellie said. “Maybe the encounter with the iguana thing reminded her how vulnerable she was… and how much she misses the protection of her father.”
They heard Nikki’s loud wail behind them. “Whatever is bothering her,” Ellie said with a sigh, “I hope she outgrows it soon. When she cries like that, I feel as if a hot knife were cutting into my stomach.”
There was no transport at the plaza. Archie and Dr. Blue kept on walking, heading for the pyramid, where the octospiders and the humans usually held their conferences. “This is a very special evening,” Dr. Blue explained, “and there are many things that we must tell you before we leave your zone.”
“Where is Jamie?” Nicole asked as they were entering the building. “I thought originally he was going with us. And while I’m at it, what ever happened to Hercules? We haven’t seen him since Bounty Day.”
While they walked together up the ramp to the second floor of the pyramid, Dr. Blue informed them that Jamie was with his fellow matriculating octospiders that evening and that Hercules had been “reassigned.”
“Goodness,” said Richard jokingly, “Hercules didn’t even say good-bye.”
The octospiders, who still hadn’t learned to recognize human humor very well, apologized for Hercules’ lack of manners. They then mentioned that there would no longer be an octospider among the humans as a daily observer.
“Was Hercules fired f
or some reason?” Richard asked, still in a lighter vein. The two octospiders ignored the question altogether.
They entered the same conference room where Nicole had learned about the digestive process of the octospiders. Several large sheets of the parchment or hide on which the octos made their drawings and diagrams were over in the corner facing the wall. Dr. Blue asked Richard, Nicole, and Ellie to sit down.
“What you are going to see later tonight,” Archie then said, “has never been witnessed by a non-octospider since our colony was formed here in Rama. We are taking you with us in an attempt to increase the quality of communication between our two species. It is imperative that you understand, before we leave this room and head for the Alternate Domain, not only what you are going to see, but also how you are expected to behave.”
“Under no circumstances,” Dr. Blue added, “are you to disturb the proceedings or try to interact with anyone or anything along the way, either coming or going. You are to follow our instructions at all times. If you cannot or do not want to accept these conditions, then you must tell us now and we will not take you with us.”
The three humans looked at each other with alarm. “You know us well,” Nicole said at length. “I trust that we’re not going to be asked to do something that is inconsistent with our values and principles. We could not—”
“That’s not our concern,” Archie interrupted. “We are simply asking you to be passive observers, no matter what you see or experience. If you become confused or frightened and for some reason cannot locate one of us, sit down, wherever you are, with your hands at your sides, and wait for us to come.”
There was a brief pause. “I cannot stress too much,” Archie continued, “how important your behavior is this evening. Most of the other optimizers objected when I requested that you be allowed to attend. Dr. Blue and I have personally vouched for your ability not to do anything untoward.”
“Are our lives in danger?” Richard asked.
“Probably not,” Archie replied. “But they could be. And if tonight were to turn into some kind of a fiasco because of something that one of you did, I’m not certain…” In a very unusual action for an octospider, Archie did not finish his sentence.
“Are you telling us,” Nicole now said, “that our request to return to New Eden is somehow tied up in all this?”
“Our mutual relationship,” Archie said, “has reached a cusp. By sharing a critical portion of our Matriculation process with you, we are attempting to attain a new level of understanding. In that sense, the answer to your question is yes.”
They spent almost half a tert, two human hours, in the conference room. Archie began by explaining what the entire Matriculation activity was all about. Jamie and his compatriots, the octospider told them, had finished their adolescence and were about to make the transition to adulthood. As juveniles, their lives had been mostly controlled, and they had not been allowed to make any decisions of great significance. At the end of the Matriculation, Jamie and the other young octos would make a single monumental decision, one mat would fundamentally alter the rest of their lives. It was the purpose of the Matriculation, and even much of the final year prior to the transition, to provide the adolescent octospiders with information that would help them make that important decision.
“Tonight,” Archie said, “the juveniles will all be taken, as a group, over to the Alternate Domain to see a…”
Neither Ellie nor Nicole could figure out at first how to translate into English what the young octospiders were going to see. Eventually, after some discussion between them and several sentences of clarification from Dr. Blue and Archie, the women decided that the best interpretation for what Archie had said in color was “morality play.”
For the next several minutes the conversation digressed as Dr. Blue and Archie explained, in response to questions from the humans, that the Alternate Domain was a specific section of the octospider realm that was not under the dome. “South of the Emerald City,” Archie said, “there is another settlement with a decidedly different life-style from ours. About two thousand octospiders live in the Alternate Domain at the present time, along with another three thousand or four thousand other creatures representing a dozen different species. Their lives are chaotic and unstructured. The alternate octospiders have no dome over their heads to protect them, no assigned tasks, no planned entertainment, no access to the information in the library, no roads or homes except those they collectively build for themselves, and a life expectancy about one-tenth that of the average octospider in the Emerald City.”
Ellie thought about how the Avalon area had been created by Nakamura to deal with the problems that the colonists in New Eden wanted to forget. She thought that perhaps the Alternate Domain was a similar settlement.
“Why,” she asked, “have so many of your kindred-over ten percent, if my math is accurate-been forced to live outside the dome?”
“No normal octospider has been forced to live in the Alternate Domain,” Dr. Blue said. “They are living there because of a personal choice.”
“But why?” all three humans said, almost in unison.
Dr. Blue went over to the corner and retrieved a few of the charts. The two octospiders used the diagrams extensively during the long discussion that followed. First they explained that hundreds of generations earlier their biologists had correctly identified the connection between sexuality in their species and many other behavioral characteristics, including personal ambition, aggression, territoriality, and aging, to name the most important. This discovery had been made during a period of octospider history when the transition to Optimization was first occurring. But despite the supposedly universal acceptance of a theoretically better structure for octospider society, the transition was severely impeded by regular outbreaks of warfare, tribal dissension, and other mayhem. The octo biologists at the time speculated that only a sexless society, or one in which only a small fraction of the population was sexual, would be able to abide by the principles of Optimization, in which the desires of the individual were subordinated to the welfare of the colony as a whole.
A seemingly endless succession of conflicts convinced all of the forward-looking octospiders of the period that Optimization was only a foolish dream unless some method or technique could be found to combat the individualism that inevitably blocked acceptance of the new order But what could be done? It was several more generations before a brilliant discovery was made. Research found that special chemicals in a sugarcane-like product called barrican actually slowed down sexual maturation in the octospiders. Within several hundred years the octo genetic engineers had succeeded in designing and producing a variation of this barrican which, if ingested regularly, stopped the advent of sexual maturity altogether.
Test cases and test colonies succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of both the biologists and the progressive political scientists. Sexually immature octos were more responsive to the group concepts of Optimization. In addition, aging was also somehow retarded in those octos who ate barrican. Aging, the octospider scientists then learned very quickly, was tied to the same internal clock mechanism as puberty, and in fact the enzymes causing the cells not to replenish properly in older octospiders did not even activate until a specified time period after sexual maturity.
Octospider society underwent rapid changes, Archie and Dr. Blue both asserted, after these colossal discoveries. Optimization took a firm hold everywhere. Octospider social scientists began to envision a society in which the individual octos would be nearly immortal, dying only from accidents or the sudden failure of a major and critical organ. Sexless octospiders populated all the colonies and, as the biologists had predicted, personal ambition and aggression became almost nonexistent.
“All this history took place many generations — ago,” Archie said, “and is primarily background information to help you understand what the Matriculation is all about. Without going into the complex intervening history, Dr. Blue will summarize where we are
today in our particular colony.”
“Every octospider that you have encountered so far,” Dr. Blue said, “except for the midget morphs and the repletes, both of whom are permanently sexless, is a creature whose sexual maturity has been retarded by the barrican. Many years ago, before a rogue biologist showed how a different kind of sexuality could be genetically engineered into our species, only an octospider queen could produce offspring.
“Among the normal adult octospider population there were two sexes, but the only significant differentiation between them was that one of the two had the ability, if mature, to fertilize a queen. Sexual adults copulated for pleasure, but because there was no issue from this contact, the distinctions between the sexes were blurred. In fact, long-term bonding in the colony was more frequent among members of the same sex, because of similar feelings and common points of view.
“Now the situation is vastly more complicated. In our octospider species, thanks to the genetic engineering genius of our predecessors, an adult female octo is capable of producing, as the result of a sexual union with a mature male octospider, a single, infertile juvenile of limited life expectancy and somewhat reduced capability. You have not yet seen one of these morphs because all of them live, by decree, in the Alternate Domain.”
Dr. Blue paused and Archie continued. “Right after Matriculation, each juvenile citizen of our colony decides whether he or she wishes to become sexually mature. If the answer is no, then the octo places his or her sexuality in trust with the optimizers and the colony as a whole. That’s what Dr. Blue, who is a female, and I each did long ago. Under octospider law, it is only immediately after Matriculation that an individual can make his or her own sexual choice without any consequences. The optimizers are not lenient toward those who decide to undergo a sexual metamorphosis, without explicit colony permission, after their careers have been carefully structured and planned.”
Again Dr. Blue spoke. “As we have presented it tonight, it might seem unlikely that a juvenile octospider would ever make the decision for early sexual maturity. However, in the interest of fairness we should point out that there are compelling reasons, at least in the minds of some young octospiders, for choosing to become alternates. First and foremost, a female octo knows that her chances of ever bearing offspring are significantly diminished if she chooses to remain nonsexual after Matriculation. Our history suggests that only in an emergency will a large number of these females ever be called upon to produce juvenile octospiders. In general, the reduced capability and infertility of this kind of offspring makes them less desirable, from the point of view of the colony as a whole, unless of course more octos are needed to support the infrastructure of the society.
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