“I don’t know,” Patrick said, starting to pace around the room. “Like everyone else, I noticed as soon as the list was posted that all the active Council members were being transferred to the Carrier, as well as most of the humans who had been removed from the normal living quarters. The people we like and respect, as well as almost all the octo-spiders except some of the alternates, are going to the Node. But I sympathize with Nai. She can’t bear the thought that Galileo will be isolated, permanently cut off from the only support system he has ever known.”
What would you do, a voice inside Nicole’s head asked her, if you were Nai? Didn’t you panic earlier today when you were afraid that you might be separated from Benjy?
“Will you talk to her, Mother,” Patrick entreated, “as
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soon as she has finished meditating? She will listen to you. Nai has always said how much she respects your wisdom.”
“And is there anything particular that you want me to say to her?” Nicole asked.
‘Tell her . . .” Patrick said, wringing his hands, “tell her it’s not her place to decide what would be best for everyone in our group. She should focus on her own decision.”
“That’s good advice,” Nicole said. She gazed at her son. ‘Tell me, Patrick,” she said several seconds later, “have you decided what you are going to do if Nai switches to the Carrier and none of the rest of us do?”
“Yes, I have, Mother,” Patrick said quietly. “I will go with Nai and Galileo.”
Nicole parked her wheelchair in a corner in front of the observation window. She was alone, as she had requested. The afternoon had been so emotional that she felt completely drained. Nicole had thought initially that her meeting with Nai had gone quite well. Nai had listened carefully to Nicole’s advice, without much comment. Nicole had therefore been quite astonished an hour later when Nai, seething with anger, had confronted her along with Max, Eponine, and Ellie.
“Patrick tells me that none of you are going to come with us,” Nai had said. “Now I see what rewards I have earned for my steadfast devotion all these years. I dragged my twin boys away from their own home out of loyalty to you, my friends, i deprived Galileo and Kepler of ever knowing a normal childhood because of my respect and admiration for you, Nicole, my role model. And now, when for once I ask a favor …”
“You’re being unfair, Nai,” Ellie had said softly. “We all love you and are appalled at the thought of being separated permanently from you and Galileo. Believe me, if it weren’t so clear that the Node is preferable for all of us—”
“Ellie, Ellie,” Nai had said, dropping on her knees beside her friend and bursting into tears. “Have you forgotten all the hours I spent with Benjy out in Avalon?
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Yes, I admit that I did it of my own volition, but would I have given so much of myself to Benjy if he was not your brother and you were not my best friend? 1 love you, Ellie. I need your support. Please, please come with us. You and Nikki, at least.”
Ellie had also wept. Before the confrontation was over, there was not a dry eye in the room. In the end Nai had apologized profusely to everyone.
Nicole took a deep breath and stared out the window. She knew that she needed a break from all the emotional turmoil. Twice during the afternoon she had felt twinges of pain in her chest. Even all those magical probes, she thought, cannot protect me if I do not take care of myself.
The huge Carrier was now stationed only several hundred meters away. It was an awesome engineering construction, far larger even than it had seemed when it was over by the Node. The spacecraft was parked sideways, so only a part of it could be seen from the window. The top of the Carrier was a long flat plane broken only by small, scattered equipment complexes and die transparent domes—or bubbles, as they had originally been called—that were located in an orderly pattern throughout the length and breadth of the plane. Some of the domes were quite large. One, directly in front of the window, rose over two hundred meters above the flat plane. Other domes were very small. Parts of eleven of the transparent bubbles were visible from the observation window. During the approach of the Carrier earlier in the afternoon, when the entire spacecraft could be seen, a total of seventy-eight domes had been counted.
The underbelly of die Carrier had an external surface of metallic gray. It extended below the plane about a kilometer, with gently sloping sides and a rounded bottom. From a distance the underbelly looked insignificant compared to the vast flat surface which was at least forty kilometers long and fifteen kilometers wide. However, up close it was clear that an enormous volume was contained inside that drab structure.
As Nicole watched in fascination, a small indentation in the side of the gray exterior, just below the surface,
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expanded and grew into a round tube moving outward from the Carrier. The tube drew near to the starfish and then, after some minor vernier corrections, was affixed to the main air lock.
She felt a touch on her arm and turned to the side. It was Dr. Blue. “How are you feeling?” the octospider said in color.
“Better now,” Nicole replied. “But I had some bad moments earlier this afternoon.”
Dr. Blue scanned Nicole with the monitoring device. “There were at least two major irregularities,” Nicole told her doctor. “I remember both of them quite clearly.”
The octospider doctor studied the colors flashing on the small monitor. “Why didn’t you call me?” she said.
“I thought about it,” Nicole answered. “But so much was going on. And I figured you were busy with your own—”
Dr. Blue handed Nicole a small flask containing a light blue liquid. “Drink this,” the octospider said. “It will limit your cardiac response to emotional stress over the next twelve hours.”
“And will we still be together, you and I,” Nicole asked, “after the Carrier departs? I didn’t study your part of the list very carefully.”
“Yes,” Dr. Blue answered. “Eighty-five percent of our species will be transferred to the Node. More than half the octospiders moving to the Carrier are alternates.”
“So, my friend,” Nicole said after drinking the liquid, “what do you make of all this transfer business?”
“Our best guess,” Dr. Blue said, “is that this entire experiment has reached a significant branch point and that the two groups will be involved in radically different activities.”
Nicole laughed. “That’s not very specific,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” the octospider calmly agreed.
There were eighty-two humans and nine octospiders present in the cafeteria when the Eagle convened the reconsideration meeting five minutes after the last starfish
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resident originally scheduled for transfer to the Carrier had departed through the air lock. Only those who had officially requested reconsideration were permitted to attend the meeting. Many other members of all species were still lingering on the observation deck and in the common areas, talking about the departure procession and/or waiting to learn the outcome of the Eagle’s meeting.
Nicole had returned to her post at the observation window. She was sitting in her wheelchair, staring out at the Carrier and reflecting on the scenes she had witnessed during the last hour. Most of the departing humans had been in a festive mood, openly delighted that they would no longer be living among aliens. There had been some sad farewells at the door to the air lock, but actually surprisingly
few.
Galileo had been allowed to spend ten minutes with his family and friends in the common area. Patrick and Nai had assured the young man, who had demonstrated very little emotion of any kind, that they and his brother, Kepler, who was still packing, would be joining him in the Carrier before the evening was over.
Galileo had been one of the last humans to leave the starfish. He had been followed by the small contingent of avians and myrmicats. The neural net material and, the remaining manna melons had been packed in large crates and had been carried by a contingent of the block robots. /’// probably never see any of your kind again, Nicole had thought as the trailing avian had turned and issued a shriek of good-bye to the onlookers.
“Each of you,” the Eagle said as he began the meeting in the cafeteria, “has requested that your assignment be reconsidered and that you be allowed to switch your future home from the Node to the Carrier. At this time I want to explain two additional differences between the living environments in the Carrier and the Node. If, after weighing this new information, you still wish to have your assignment changed, then we will accommodate you.