Rama Revealed(Rama IV)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 7
The dreams came one after another, sometimes without any break, Henry laughed at her for being black, then a supercilious colleague from medical school stopped her from making a bad mistake during a routine tonsillectomy. Later Nicote walked on a sandy beach with dark clouds hovering overhead. A silent caped figure beckoned in the distance. That's death, Nicole said to herself in the dream. But it was a cruel joke. When she reached the figure and touched its outstretched hand, Max Puckett removed his cape and laughed.

She was crawling on her bare knees in a dark underground cement pipe. Her knees had begun to bleed. I'm over here, Katie's voice said. Where are you? Nicole asked, frustrated. I'm behind you, Mama, Benjy said. Water began to fill up the pipe. I cannot find them. I cannot help them.

Nicole was swimming, with difficulty. There was a strong current in the pipe. It swept her away, carried her outside, became a creek in a forest. Nicole's clothes caught on a bush that overhung the creek. She stood up and brushed herself off. She began walking on a path.

It was night. Nicole could hear a few birds and see the moon above her through the occasional breaks in the tall trees. The path wound back and forth. She came to a junction. Which way should I go? Nicole aske'd herself in the dream. Come with me, Genevieve said, emerging from the forest and taking her hand,

What are you doing here? Nicole said. Genevieve laughed. I could ask you the same thing.

A young Katie was coming toward them on the path. Hello, Mother, she said, reaching out for Nicole's other hand. Do you mind if I walk with you? Not at all, answered Nicole.

The forest thickened around them. Nicole heard footsteps behind her and turned around while she was still walking. Patrick and Simone returned her smiles. We're almost there, Simone said. Where are we going? Nicole asked. You must know, Mrs. Wakefield, Maria answered. You told us to come. The girl was now walking beside Patrick and Simone.

Nicole and the five young people entered a small clearing. In the middle was a burning campfire. Omeh walked around from the other side of the fire and greeted them. After they formed a new circle around the fire, the shaman threw his head back and began to chant in Senoufo. As Nicole watched, Omeh's face began to peel away, revealing his frightening skull. Still the chant continued. No, no, said Nicole. No. No.

"Mama," Benjy said. "Wake up, Mama. You're having a bad dream."

Nicole rubbed her eyes. She could see a light on the other side of the room. "What time is it, Benjy?" she said.

"It's late, Mama," he answered with a smile. "Kepler has gone to breakfast with the others. We wanted to let you sleep."

"Thank you, Benjy," Nicole said, moving slightly on her mat. She felt the pain in her hip. She glanced around the room and remembered that Patrick and Nai were gone.

Forever, Nicole thought briefly, fighting the return of her sorrow.

"Would you like to take a shower?" -Benjy asked. "I could help you undress and carry you over to the stall."

Nicole looked up at her balding son. I was wrong to worry about you, she thought. You woulddofine without me. "Why, thank you, Benjy," she said. "That would be very nice."

"I'll try to be gentle," he said, unbuttoning his mother's gown. "But please tell me if I hurt you."

When Nicole was completely naked, Benjy picked her up in his arms and started to walk toward the shower. He stopped after he had taken two steps. "What's wrong, Benjy?" Nicole asked.

Benjy grinned sheepishly. "I didn't think the plan through very well, Mama," he said. "I should have adjusted the water first."

He turned around, set Nicole back down on her mat, and crossed me room to the shower. Nicole heard the water running.

"You like it medium hot, don't you?" he called out.

"That's right," Nicole answered.

Benjy returned and picked her up a few seconds later. "I put two towels down on the floor," he said, "so it wouldn't be too hard or too cold for you."

"Thank you, son," Nicole said.

Benjy talked to her while Nicole sat on the towels on the floor of the shower and let the refreshing water pour over her body. He brought her soap and shampoo when she requested them. When she was finished, Benjy helped his mother dry off and dress. Then he carried her over to her wheelchair.

"Bend down here, please," Nicole said as she settled into her chair. She kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his hand. "Thank you for everything, Benjy," she said, unable to stop the tears that were forming in her eyes. "You have been a marvelous help."

Benjy stood beside his mother, beaming. "I love you, Mama," he said. "It makes me happy to help you."

"And I love you too, son," Nicole said, squeezing his hand again. "Now, are you going to join me for breakfast?" "That was my plan," said Benjy, still smiling.

Before they were finished eating, the Eagle walked up to Nicole and Benjy in the cafeteria. "Dr. Blue and F will be waiting for you in your room," the Eagle said. "We want to give you a thorough physical examination."

Sophisticated medical equipment had already been set up in the apartment when Nicole and Benjy returned. Dr. Blue injected additional microprobes directly into Nicole's chest and later sent another set of probes into her kidney region. The Eagle and Dr. Blue conversed in the octospi-der's native color language throughout the half-hour examination. Benjy assisted his mother when she was asked to stand or move around. He was completely fascinated by the Eagle's ability to speak in color.

"How did you learn to do that?" Benjy asked the Eagle at one point in the examination.

"Technically speaking," the Eagle replied, "I didn't learn anything. My designers added a pair of specialized subsystems to my structure, one that would allow me to interpret the octospider colors and the other to make the color patterns on my forehead."

"Didn't you have to go to school or anything?" Benjy persisted.

"No," the Eagle said simply.

"Could your designers do that for meT Benjy asked several seconds later, when the Eagle and Dr. Blue had resumed their discussion of Nicole's condition.

The Eagle turned around and looked at Benjy. "I'm a very slow learner," Benjy said. "It would be wonderful if someone could just put everything into my brain."

"We don't quite know how to do that yet," the Eagle said.

Whfen the examination was over, the Eagle asked Benjy to pack all of Nicole's things. "Where are we going?" Nicole asked.

"We're going for a ride in the shuttle," the Eagle said. "I want to discuss your physical condition with you in some detail and take you where any emergency could be quickly handled."

"I thought the blue liquid and all those probes inside me were enough - "

"We'll talk about it later," the Eagie said, interrupting her. He took Nicole's bag from Benjy. "Thank you for all your help," the alien said.

"Let me make certain that I have understood this last half hour of discussion," Nicole said into the microphone of her helmet as the shuttle neared the halfway point between the starfish and the Node. "My heart will not last more than ten days at most, despite all your medical magic; my kidneys are currently undergoing terminal failure; and my liver is showing signs of severe degradation. Is that a fair summary?"

"It is indeed," said the Eagle.

Nicole forced a smile. "Is there any good news?"

"Your mind is still functioning admirably, and the bruise on your hip will eventually heal, provided the other ailments don't kill you first."

"And what you are suggesting," Nicole said, "is that I should check into your equivalent of a hospital today over at the Node and have my heart, kidneys, and liver all replaced by advanced machines that can perform the same functions?"

"There may be some other organs that need to be replaced as well," the Eagle said, "as long as we are performing a major operation. Your pancreas has been malfunctioning intermittently, and your entire sexual system is out of spec. A complete hysterectomy should be considered."

Nicole was shaking her head. "At what point does all of this become senseless? No matter what you do now, it's only a matter of time until some other organ fails. What would be next? My lungs? Or maybe my eyes? Would you even give me a brain transplant if I could no longer think?"

"We could," the Eagle replied.

Nicole was quiet for almost a minute. "It may not make much sense to you," she said, "because it certainly isn't what I would call logical... but I am not very comfortable with the idea of becoming a hybrid being."

"What do you mean?" the Eagle asked.

"At what point do I stop being Nicole des Jardins Wakefield?" she said. "If my heart, brain, eyes, and ears are replaced by machines, am I still Nicole? Or am I someone, or something, else?"

"The question has no relevance," the Eagle said. "You're a doctor, Nicole. Consider the case of a schizophrenic who must take drugs regularly to alter the functions of the brain. Is that person still who he or she was? It's the same philosophical question, just a different degree of change."

"I can see your point," Nicole said after another brief silence. "But it doesn't change my feelings. I'm sorry. If I have a choice, and you have led me to believe that I do, then I will decline. At least for today anyway."

The Eagle stared at Nicole for several seconds. Then he entered a different set of parameters into the c.ontrol system of the shuttle. The vehicle changed its heading.

"So are we going back to the starfish?" Nicole asked.

"Not immediately," the Eagle said. "I want to show you something else first." The alien reached into the pouch around his waist and pulled out a small tube containing a blue liquid and an unknown device. "Please give me your arm. I don't want you to die before this afternoon is over."

As they approached the Habitation Module of the Node, Nicole complained to the Eagle about the "less than forthright" way the dividing of the starfish residents into two groups had been handled. "As usual," Nicole said, "you cannot be accused of telling a lie-just of withholding critical information."

"Sometimes," the Eagle said, "there are no good ways for us to complete a task. In those cases we choose the least unsatisfactory course of action. What did you expect us to do? Tell the residents in the beginning that we couldn't take care of everyone forever, generation after generation? There would have been chaos. Besides, I don't think you give us enough credit. We rescued thousands of beings from Rama, most of whom probably would have died in an interspecies conflict without our intervention. Remember that everyone, including those assigned to the Carrier, will be allowed to complete his or her life."

Nicole was silent. She was trying to imagine what life on the Carrier would be like without any reproduction. Her mind carried the scenario into its likely distant future, when there would be only a few individuals left. "I wouldn't want to be the last human left alive in the Carrier," she said.

"There was a species in this part of the galaxy about three million years ago," the Eagle said, "that flourished as a spacefarer for almost a million years. They were brilliant engineers and built some of the most amazing buildings ever seen. Their sphere of influence spread rapidly until they dominated a region covering more than twenty star systems. This species was learned, compassionate, and wise. But they made one fatal error."

"What was that?" Nicole asked on cue.

"Their equivalent to your genome contained an order of magnitude more information than yours. It had been the result of four billion years of natural evolution and was extremely complicated. Their initial experiments with genetic engineering, both on other species and on themselves, were an unqualified success. They thought they understood what they were doing. However, without their knowledge, slowly but surely the robustness of the genes that were being transferred from generation to generation was deteriorating. When they finally understood what they had done to themselves, it was too late. They had preserved no pristine specimens from the early days, before they had begun to modify their own genes. They could not go back. There was nothing they could do.

"Imagine," the Eagle said, "not just being the last member of your group on an isolated spaceship like the Carrier, but being one of the terminal survivors of a species rich in history, art, and knowledge. Our encyclopedia contains many such stories, each containing at least one object lesson."

The shuttle moved through an open port in the side of the spherical module and came to a gentle stop against a wall. Automatic gantries on each side were deployed to keep the vehicle from drifting. There was a ramp from the passenger side of the shuttle to a walkway, which in turn led toward the hub of the transportation complex.

Nicole laughed. "I was so engrossed in our conversation," she said, "that I didn't even look at this module from the outside."

"You wouldn't have seen much that was new," the Eagle said.

The alien then turned to Nicole and did something very unusual. He reached across the shuttle and took both of her gloved hands. "In less than an hour," he said, "you are going to experience something that will astound you and also arouse your emotions. Originally, we had planned that this excursion would be a complete surprise. But with your weakened condition, we can't risk the possibility that your system might be overpowered by emotional input. Therefore, we have decided to tell you first what we're about to do."

Nicote felt her heart rate increase. What is he talking about? she thought. What could be so unusual?

"We will board a small car that will travel several kilometers into this module. At the end of this short journey you will be reunited with your daughter Simone and Michael O'Toole."

"What?" Nicole shouted, tearing her hands away from the Eagle and placing them on the side of her helmet. "Did I hear you correctly? Did you say that I was going to see Simone and Michael?"

"Yes," the Eagle replied. "Nicole, please try to relax."

"My God!" Nicole exclaimed, ignoring his comment. "I cannot believe it. I just cannot believe it... I hope that this is not some kind of cruel trick."

"I assure you that it is not."

"But how can Michael still be alive?" Nicole asked. "He must be at least a hundred and twenty years old."

"We have helped him with our medical magic, as you call it."

"Oh, Simone, Si-mone" Nicole cried. "Can it be? Can it really be?"

Despite the pain in her hip and the unwieldy space helmet, Nicole almost jumped across the seat to give the Eagle a hug. "Thank you, oh, thank you," she said. "I cannot tell you how much this means to me."

The Eagle steadied Nicole's wheelchair on the escalator as they descended into the center of the main transportation complex. She looked around briefly. The station was identical to the one she remembered from the Node near Sirius. It was about twenty meters tall and laid out in a circle. Half a dozen moving sidewalks surrounded the central display, each running into a different arched tunnel leading away from the complex. Above the tunnels, to the right, were a pair of multilevel structures.

"Do the intermodule trains depart from up there?" Nicole asked, remembering a ride with Katie and Simone when the girls were both young.

The Eagle nodded. He pushed her wheelchair onto one of the moving sidewalks and they left the center of the station. They traveled several hundred meters in a tunnel before the moving sidewalk stopped. "Our car should be just to the right, in the first corridor," the Eagle said.

The small car, which opened from the top, had two seats. The Eagle lifted Nicole into the passenger seat and then folded the wheelchair into a compressed configuration no larger than a briefcase, which he stored in a pocket area inside the vehicle. Shortly thereafter, the car moved forward through the maze of light cream windowless passageways. Nicole was extraordinarily quiet. She was trying to convince herself that she was indeed about to see the daughter whom she had left in another star system years and years ago.

The ride through the Habitation Module seemed interminable. At one point they stopped and the Eagle told Nicole she could remove her helmet. "Are we close?" she asked.

"Not yet," he answered, "but we are already in their atmospheric zone."

Twice they encountered fascinating aliens in vehicles moving in the opposite direction, but Nicole was too excited to pay attention to anything except what was going on inside her head. She was barely even listening to the Eagle. Calm down, one of Nicole's inner voices said. Don't be absurd, another voice replied, I'm about to see a daughter I haven't seen for forty years. There's no way I could remain calm.

"In its own way," the Eagle was saying, "their life has been as extraordinary as yours. Different, of course, altogether different. When we took Patrick over to see them very early this morning - "

"What did you say?" Nicole asked abruptly. "Did you say that Patrick saw them this morning? You took Patrick to see his father?"

"Yes," said the Eagle. "We had always planned for this reunion, as long as everything went according to schedule. Ideally neither you nor Patrick would have seen Simone and Michael and their children - "

"Children!" Nicole exclaimed. "I have more grandchildren!"

" - until after you were settled at the Node, but when Patrick requested reconsideration... well, it would have been heartless to let him leave forever without ever seeing his natural father."

Nicole could no longer contain herself. She reached over and kissed the Eagle on his feathered cheek. "And Max said you were nothing but a cold machine. How wrong he was! Thank you... For Patrick's sake, I thank you."

She was trembling from excitement. A moment later Nicole could not breathe. The Eagle quickly stopped the small car.

"Where am I?" Nicole said, emerging from a deep fog.

"We are parked just inside the enclosed area where

Michael, Simone, and their family live," the Eagle said.

"We have been here for about four hours. You have been sleeping."

"Did I have a heart attack?" Nicoie asked.

"Not exactly... Just a significant malfunction. I considered taking you immediately back to the hospital, but I decided to wait until you awakened. Besides, I have most of the same medications here with me."

The Eagle looked at her with his intense blue eyes. "What do you want to do, Nicole?" he said. "Visit with Simone and Michael as planned, or go back to the hospital? It's your choice, but understand - "

"I know," Nicole interrupted him with a sigh, "I must be careful not to become too excited." She glanced at the Eagle. "I want to see Simone, even if it's the last act of my life. Can you give me something that wil! calm me but will not make me goofy or put me to sieep?"

"A mild tranquilizer will only help," the Eagle said, "if you consciously work to contain your excitement."

"All right," Nicole said. "I'll do my best."

The Eagle eased the car onto a paved road lined with tall trees. As they drove, Nicole was reminded of the autumn in New England she spent with her father when she was a teenager. The leaves on the trees were red, gold, and brown.

"It's beautiful," Nicole said.

The car rounded a curve and drove past a white fence enclosing a grassy area. There were four horses in the enclosure. A pair of human teenagers were walking among them. "The children are real," the Eagle said. 'The horses are simulations."

At the top of a gentle hill was a large two-story white house with a sloped black roof. The Eagle pulled into the circular drive and stopped the car. The front door of the house opened an instant later and a tall, beautiful, jet-black woman with graying hair came outside.

"Mother!" Simone yelled as she raced for the car.

Nicole barely had time to open her door before Simone flung herself into her mother's arms. The two women hugged and kissed, weeping profusely. Neither of them could speak.