Rama Revealed(Rama IV)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 9
Nicole woke up refreshed and I with a surprising amount of energy. She started to push the button beside her bed, but decided against it. Instead she struggled into her wheelchair. She rolled over to the windows and pulled the curtains.

It was a beautiful morning outside. There was a little creek off to her left, and three children, probably between eight and ten years of age, were skipping stones across a small pool in the creek. As Nicole gazed out the windows at the perfectly simulated fields and trees and rolling hills, she felt temporarily young and full of life.

Maybe I should let them repair me after all, Nicole thought. Replace all my damaged and worn-out parts. I could live here, with Simone and Michael. Maybe I could even teach my great-grandchildren a thing or two.

The three children left the creek and raced across a green field to where the horses were enclosed. The boy ran the fastest, but he barely beat the smaller of the two girls.

The trio laughed together and called the horses over to the fence.

"The boy is Zachary," Big Michael said from behind her. "The two girls are Colleen and Simone. Zachary and Colleen are Katya's children, Simone is Timothy's oldest."

Nicole had not heard him enter the room. She turned around in her wheelchair. "Good morning, Michael," she said. Nicole glanced back at the window. "The children are all gorgeous."

"Thank you," Michael said, walking over to the window. "I am a very lucky man," he said. "God has granted me a fascinating life with unbelievable riches."

They watched in silence as the children played. Zachary mounted a white horse and began to show off. "I was sorry to hear about Richard's death," Michael said. "Patrick told us the story yesterday. It must have been horrible for you."

"It was," Nicole replied. "Richard and I had developed such a wonderful friendship." They faced each other. "You would have been so proud of him, Michael. He was a different man in his last years."

"I suspected as much," Michael said. "The Richard I knew would never have volunteered to place himself in jeopardy, especially to save the lives of others."

"You should have seen him with his granddaughter Nikki, Ellie's little girl. They were inseparable. He was her 'Boobah.'... He found tenderness so late in life."

Nicole could not continue. A sudden heartache overwhelmed her. She drove over to the bedside table and took a drink from the bottle of blue liquid.

She returned to the window. Outside, the girls were now on horseback also and some kind of game was under way.

"Patrick told us that Benjy had grown into a fine adult," Michael said, "limited in some ways, of course, but quite remarkable considering his basic ability and the long periods of sleep. He said that Benjy was a living tribute to your talents, all of them, and that you had worked with him tirelessly, never letting him use his handicap as an excuse."

It was Michael's turn to choke up. He turned to*Nicole with tears easing out of both of his eyes and placed his hands in hers. "There's no way I can ever thank you enough for raising those two boys with such care. Especially Benjy."

Nicole looked up at him from her wheelchair. "They are our sons, Michael," she said. "I love them very much."

Michael wiped his nose and eyes with a pocket handkerchief. "Simone and I want you to meet our children and grandchildren, of course," he said, "but we both agreed that there was something we should tell you first... We didn't know exactly how you would respond. However, it would not be fair not to tell you, because otherwise you might not understand why the children are reacting - "

"What is it, Michael?" Nicole interrupted. She smiled. "You're certainly having a hard time coming to the point."

"I am indeed," he said, crossing the room and pushing the button beside Nicole's bed twice in rapid succession. "Nicole, what I am about to say is a bit delicate... Remember last night, when we told you that both Simone and I had alien companions?"

"Yes, Michael," Nicole said.

"Look outside," he said after a moment's hesitation. "There's someone I want you to see."

Michael came over beside Nicole and took her hand. She stared out the window. A woman in her late forties, athletic, with dark copper skin, had left the house and was walking quickly toward the horse compound. Both the woman's figure and her gait seemed familiar to Nicole. The children saw the woman, waved, and came toward her on their horses.

Nicole watched Zachary yell the woman's name and suddenly she understood. Nicole was thunderstruck. The woman named around briefly and Nicole saw herself, exactly as she had been when she had left the Node forty years earlier. It was difficult for her to keep her emotions under control.

"It was you that Simone missed the most," Michael said, acknowledging the look of astonished recognition on Nicole's face. "So it was only natural that the aliens fashioned a companion for her from your image. She is a remarkable simulation. Not just her physical appearance, which you can see for yourself, but also her personality. Simone and I were amazed, especially in the beginning, at what a perfect duplication job they had done. The alien talked like you, walked like you, even thought like you. Within a week Simone was calling her 'Mother' and I was calling her 'Nicole.' She has been with us ever since."

Nicole gazed at the simulation of herself without saying a word. The facial expressions and even the gestures are correct, she thought. She continued to stare fixedly as the woman approached the house with the three children.

"Simone thought you might be a little upset, or maybe feel displaced, when you discovered that this simulation of you had been living with the family for all these years. But I assured her that you would be fine, that it would simply take a little while for you to adjust to the idea... After all, as far as I know, no human being has ever been replaced by a robot copy of herself before."

The alien Nicole picked up one of the girls and twirled her around in the air. Then all four of them bounded up the steps and across the threshold of the house.

They call her Granny, Nicole thought. She can run, and ride horses, and toss them in the air. She is not phthisic and confined to a wheelchair. An emotion that Nicole did not like, self-pity, began to grow inside her. Maybe Simone has not even missed me that much, she said to herself. Her 'mother' has been here all these years, at her beck and call, never aging, never asking for anything.

Nicole sensed that she was going to cry. She pulled herself together. "Michael," she said, forcing a smile, "why don't you give me a minute to prepare myself for breakfast?"

"Are you sure you don't need any help?" he asked.

"No, no... I'll be fine. I just want to wash my face and put on a little makeup."

The tears came a few seconds after the door closed. There is no place for me here either, Nicole said to herself. There is already a granny, a better one than I could eter be, even if she is only a machine.

Nicole said almost nothing on the ride back to the transportation center. She was still quiet as die shuttle left the Habitation Module and pulled out into space.

"You don't want to talk about it, do you?" the Eagle said.

"Not really," Nicole said into the microphone in her helmet.

"Are you glad you went?" the Eagle inquired several seconds later.

"Oh, yes... absolutely," she replied. "It was one of the most outstanding experiences of my life. Thank you very much."

The Eagle adjusted the flight of the shuttle so that they were moving slowly backward. The huge illuminated tetrahedron dominated the view out their window.

"The replacement procedure could be performed this afternoon," the Eagle said. "By early next week you would look younger than Big Michael."

"No, thanks," said Nicole.

There was another long period of silence. "You don't seem very happy," the Eagle then said.

Nicole turned to look at her alien companion. "I am," she said. "And I am especially happy for Simone and Michael. It's wonderful that their life has been so fulfilling." Nicole took a deep breath. "Maybe I'm just tired," she said. "So much has occurred in such a short period of time."

"That's probably it," the Eagle said.

Nicole was deep in thought, methodically reviewing everything that had happened to her since she had awakened. The faces of Simone and Michael's six children and fourteen grandchildren swept through her mind. A handsome lot, she said to herself, but without much variation.

It was another face, one she remembered clearly from her own mirror, that returned to her mind's eye most often. She had agreed with Simone and Michael mat the other Nicole was an unbelievable likeness, an absolute triumph of advanced technology. What Nicole had not even been able to discuss with them was how strange it was meeting and carrying on a conversation with herself as a younger person. Or how peculiar she felt knowing that a machine had replaced her in the hearts and minds of her own family.

Nicole had watched silently while the other Nicole and Simone had laughed about an argument that Simone had had with her little sister Katie years before at the Node. As the alien had recalled the details of the story, Nicole's memory too had been refreshed. Even her memory is better than mine. What a perfect solution to the whole problem of aging and dying. Capture a person in the prime of her life, with all her powers intact, and preserve her forever as a legend, at least in the eyes of her loved ones.

"How do I know for certain that the Michael and Simone that I talked with yesterday and this morning are the real humans and not just an even higher-fidelity simulation than the other Nicole?" Nicole asked the Eagle.

"Saint Michael said you asked several pointed questions about Big Michael's early life," the Eagle said. "Weren't you satisfied with the answers?"

"But I realized while we were in the car an hour ago that some of that information may have been in Michael's biographical file from the Newton, and I know that you had access to that data."

"For what purpose would we possibly have gone to such lengths to mislead you?" the Eagle said. "And have we ever behaved in a similar fashion before?"

"How many more of Simone and Michael's children are still alive?" Nicole asked a few minutes later, changing the subject.

"Thirty-two more are here at this Node," the Eagle answered. "And more than a hundred in other places."

Nicole shook her head. She remembered the Senoufo chronicles. And her progeny shall be spread among the stars... Omeh would be pleased, she thought

"Have you perfected, then, your ex-utero development of humans from fertilized eggs?" Nicole said.

"More or less," the Eagle replied.

Again they flew in silence for a long time. "Why didn't you ever tell me about the Prime Monitors?" Nicole asked next.

"It wasn't permitted, at least not until you awakened. And since then the subject hasn't come up."

"And is everything Saint Michael said true? About God and chaos and the many universes?"

"As far as we know," the Eagle said. "At least that's what is programmed in our systems. None of us here has ever actually seen a Prime Monitor."

"And is it possible," Nicole asked, "that the whole story is a myth of some kind, created by an intelligence above you in the hierarchy, as the official explanation to give out to human beings?"

The Eagle hesitated. "That possibility exists. I would have no way of knowing."

"Would you know if something different, some other explanation, had ever been programmed in your systems before?"

"Not necessarily," the Eagle said. "I am solely responsible for what is retained in my memory."

Nicole's behavior remained unusual. She interrupted her protracted periods of silence with bursts of apparently unrelated questions. At one point she asked why some Nodes had four modules and others three. The Eagle explained that the Knowledge Module created a tetrahedron out of the Nodal triangle in about every tenth or twelfth Node. Nicole wanted to know what was so special about the Knowledge Module. The Eagle told her that it was the repository of all the acquired information about this part of the galaxy.

"It's part library and part museum, containing a colossal amount of information in a variety of forms," he said.

"Have you ever been inside this Knowledge Module?" Nicole asked.

"No," the Eagle answered, "but my current systems contain a complete description of it."

"Can I go there?" Nicole said.

"A living being must have special permission to enter the Knowledge Module," the Eagle said.

When Nicole spoke again, she asked about what was going to happen to the humans who would be transferred to the Node in another day or two. The Eagle explained patiently, in response to one short question after another, that the people would live in the Habitation Module in a test environment with several other species, that they would be closely monitored, and that Simone, Michael, and their family might or might not be integrated with the humans who were moving to the Node.

Nicole made her decision several minutes before they reached the starfish. "I want to stay here only for tonight," she said slowly. "So that I can say good-bye to everybody."

The Eagle looked at her with a curious expression. "Then tomorrow," Nicole continued, "if you can obtain permission, I want you to take me to the Knowledge Module... Once I leave the starfish, I want all medication suspended. And I want no heroic efforts if my heart goes into distress."

Nicole looked straight ahead, through the front of her space helmet and out the window of the shuttle. I* is definitely the right time, she said to herself. If only I have the courage not to waver,

"Yes, Mother," Ellie said, wiping her tears again. "I do understand, I really do. But I'm your daughter. I love you. No matter how much logical sense it might make to you, there's just no way I can be happy about never seeing you again,"

"So what am I supposed to do?" Nicole said. "Let them change me into some kind of bionic woman so I can hang around forever? And be the grande dame of the community, sententious and puffed up with self-importance? That is certainly not very appealing to me."

"But everyone admires you, Mother," Ellie said. "Your family here loves you, and you could spend years getting to know all of Simone and Michael's family. You would never be a problem to any of us."

"That's not really the issue," Nicole said. She turned her wheelchair around and faced one of the bare walls. "The universe is in constant renewal," she said, as much to herself as to Ellie. "Everything-individuals, planets, stars, even galaxies-has a life cycle, a death as well as a birth. Nothing lasts forever. Not even me universe itself. Change and renewal are an essential part of the overall process. The octospiders know this well. That's why planned terminations are an integral part of their overall replenishment concept."

"But Mother," Ellie said from behind her, "unless there is a war, the octospiders only put individuals on the termination list who are no longer making enough of a contribution to their society to justify the resources being expended. There is no cost to us for keeping you alive. And your wisdom and experience are still valuable."

Nicole turned around and smiled. "You are a very bright woman, Ellie," she said. "And I will acknowledge that there is truth in what you are saying. But you are conveniently ignoring the two key elements in my decision, both of which I have already explained at great length... For reasons neither you nor anybody else may be able to understand, it is important to me that I be able to choose my own time of death. I want to make that decision before i am either a burden or out of the mainstream of activity, and while I still have the respect of my family and friends. Second, it is my feeling that I do not have any defined niche in the post-transfer world. Therefore I cannot justify, in my own mind, the massive physiological intervention that will be necessary before I can function without being a problem for others. From so many different points of view, now seems to be an excellent time for me to make my exit."

"As I told you at the very beginning," Ellie s^id, "your cold, rational analysis, whether correct or not, should not be the only consideration. What about the feeling of loss that Benjy, Nikki, I, and the others will experience? And our sorrow will be increased by the knowledge that your death at this time could have been avoided."

"Ellie," Nicole said, "one of the reasons I came back to say good-bye to you and the others was to try to assuage any feeling of loss that you might have after my death. Again, look at the octospiders. They do not grieve."

"Mother," Ellie interrupted, fighting the return of the tears, "we are not octospiders, we are human beings. We grieve. We feel desolate when someone we love dies. We know, in our minds, that death is inevitable and that it is all part of the universal scheme, but nevertheless we weep and feel an acute sense of loss."

Ellie paused for a moment. "Have you forgotten how you felt when Richard and Katie died? You were devastated."

Nicole swallowed slowly and looked at her daughter. I knew this would not be easy, she thought. Maybe I shouldn 't have come back. Maybe it really would have been better if I had asked the Eagle to tell everyone I had died of a heart attack.

"I know you were upset," Ellie said softly, "to find out that an alien robot had replaced you in Michael and Simone's family. But you shouldn't overreact. Sooner or later all of their children and grandchildren will learn that there can be no substitute for the real Nicole des Jardins Wakefield."

Nicole sighed. She felt she was losing the battle. "I did acknowledge to you, Ellie, that I felt there was no place for me in Michael and Simone's family. But it is unfair for you to imply that my reaction to the other Nicole is the sole, or even the main reason for my decision."

Nicole was becoming exhausted. She had planned to talk first to Ellie, then to Benjy, and finally to the rest of the group before she went to sleep. Ellie had been much more difficult than she had expected. But were you being realistic? Nicole asked herself. Did you really think Ellie would say, "Great, Mother, it makes sense. I'm sorry to see you go, but I understand completely"?

There was a knock on the door of the apartment. The Eagle looked at the two women after the door was opened. "Am I intruding?" the alien asked.

Nicole smiled. "I think we are ready for a short*break," she said.

Ellie excused herself to go to the bathroom and the Eagle walked over to Nicole. "How's it going?" he said, bending down to the level of the wheelchair.

"Not so well," Nicole answered.

"I thought I'd drop by," the Eagle said, "to tell you mat your request to visit the Knowledge Module has been approved. Assuming the basic situation you described to me in the shuttle is still valid."

Nicole brightened. "Good, " she said. "Now if I can just summon the courage to finish what I have started."

The Eagle patted her on the back. "You can do it," he said. "You are the most extraordinary human we have ever encountered."

Benjy's head was resting on her chest. Nicole was on her back with her arm wrapped around her son. So this may be the last night of my life, she thought as she drifted toward sleep. A small tremor of fear rushed through her and she forced it aside. I am not afraid of death, Nicole said to herself, not after what I have already experienced.

The visit from the Eagle had refortified her. When her conversation with Ellie had resumed, Nicole admitted that there was merit in all of Ellie's points and that she didn't mean to cause distress for her friends and family, but that she was determined to proceed with her decision. Nicole had then pointed out to Ellie that Benjy and she, and to some extent the others, would have an opportunity for additional individual growth in her absence, because there would no longer be an authority figure around to whom they could appeal.

Ellie had told Nicole that she was a "stubborn old woman," but that, because of her love and respect, Ellie would try to be supportive in the few remaining hours. Ellie had also asked Nicole if she intended to do anything specific to hasten her death. Nicole had laughed and told her daughter that no unusual steps would be necessary, for the Eagle had assured her that without supplementary medication her heart would fail in a matter of hours.

The conversation with Benjy had not been that difficult.

Ellie had volunteered to help explain everything and Nicole had accepted her offer. Benjy knew that his mother was suffering and in poor health, and he had no knowledge that the aliens possessed the medical ability to fix her problems. Ellie had assured Benjy that Max, Eponine, Nikki, Kepler, Marius, and Maria would all still be part of his everyday world.

Of the larger group, only Eponine had had tearful eyes when Nicole had informed them of her decision. Max had said that he wasn't completely surprised. Maria had expressed sadness that she hadn't spent more time with the woman who had "saved my life." Kepler, Marius, and even Nikki had all been unsure of themselves and hadn't known what to say.

While she was preparing for bed, Nicole had promised herself that she would locate Dr. Blue first thing in the morning and say a proper good-bye to her octospider friend. Just before she had switched out the lights, Benjy had approached his mother and asked, since this would be their last night together, if he could cuddle with her "like I did when I was a little boy." Nicole had agreed, and after Benjy had snuggled up against her on the mat, tears had run across her cheeks and moistened her ears.