Another round of gunfire, much closer, occurred just as the boarding party was crossing into the ship. There was no time for embraces. “Max said to leave as soon as we were all on board,” Ellie said hurriedly to her parents. “He and Patrick are holding off the platoon that was sent to capture us.”
Richard was preparing to close the door when two armed figures, one clutching at his side, burst from the nearby bushes. “Get ready to go,” Patrick yelled, shouldering and firing his rifle twice. “They are right behind us.”
Max stumbled, but Patrick half carried his wounded friend the final fifty meters to the submarine. Three of the colony soldiers fired upon the ship as it submerged in the moat. For a brief moment, none of the people on board the submarine said anything. Then the tiny compart-
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ment exploded in a cacophony of sound. Everyone was shouting and weeping. Both Nicole and Robert bent down over Max, who was sitting with his back against a wall.
“Are you seriously hurt?” Nicole asked.
“Hell, no,” Max replied with passion. “There’s just a solitary bullet in my gut somewhere. It takes much more firepower than that to kill a son of a bitch like me.”
When Nicole stood up and turned around, Benjy was right behind her. “Mama,” he said, his arms outstretched and his big body trembling with joy. Nicole and Benjy exchanged a long and powerful embrace in the center of the compartment. Benjy’s sobs of happiness reflected the sentiment of every person on the ship.
While they were on board the submarine, the newcomers essentially suspended between two alien worlds, most of the conversation was personal. Nicole spent some private moments with each of her children and held her granddaughter for the first time. Little Nicole did not know what to make of this woman with the gray hair who wanted to hug and kiss her. “This is your grandmother,” Ellie said, trying to persuade the child to return Nicole’s affection. “She is my mother, Nikki, and she has die same name that you have.”
Nicole knew enough about children to understand that it would take some time for the girl to accept her. At first there was some confusion about tiieir common name, and every time someone said “Nicole,” both the grandmother and the little girl would turn around. But after Ellie and Robert both started using “Nikki” for the child, the rest of the group quickly followed suit.
Before the submarine even reached New York, Benjy was showing his mother that his reading had significantly improved. Nai had been an excellent teacher. Benjy had brought two books in his backpack, one a collection of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen written three centuries earlier. Benjy’s favorite story was “The Ugly Duckling,” which he read in its entirety as both his delighted^motfaer and his teacher sat beside him. There was a wonderful,
ingenuous excitement in his voice when the spumed duckling turned into a beautiful swan.
“I am very proud of you, darling,” Nicole said when Benjy was finished reading. “And I thank you, Nai,” she said to her friend, “from the bottom of my heart.”
“It’s been a lot of fun working with Benjy,” the Thai woman replied. “I had forgotten what a thrill it was to teach an interested and appreciative pupil.”
Robert Turner cleaned Max Puckett’s wound and removed the bullet. His procedure was closely monitored by the five-year-old Watanabe twins, both of whom were fascinated by the inside of Max’s body. The aggressive Galileo was always pushing for the better view; Nai had to adjudicate two brotherly disputes in favor of Kepler.
Dr. Turner confirmed Max’s statement mat the wound was not serious and prescribed a short period of convalescence.
“I guess I’ll just have to take it easy,” Max said, winking at Eponine. “Which is what I was planning to do anyway. I don’t think there will be too many pigs or chickens in this alien city of skyscrapers. And I don’t know a goddamn thing about bi-ots”
Nicole had a brief conversation with Eponine, just before the submarine arrived at the Port, in which she thanked Ellie’s erstwhile teacher profusely for everything she and Max had done for the family. Eponine accepted the thanks graciously and told Nicole that Patrick had been “absolutely fantastic” in helping them with all aspects of the escape. “He has grown into a superb young man,” Eponine said.
“How is your health, then?” Nicole asked Eponine delicately a few moments later.
The Frenchwoman shrugged. “The good doctor says the RV-41 virus is still there, poised and waiting for an opportunity to overwhelm my immune system. Whenever that happens, I should have between six months and a year more to live.”
Patrick informed Richard that Joan and Eleanor had tried to decoy the Nakamura platoon by making a lot of
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noise, as they had been programmed to do, and had almost certainly been captured and destroyed.
“I’m sorry about Joan and Eleanor,” Nicole said to Richard during a rare private moment on board the submarine. “I know how much your little robots mean to you.”
“They served their purpose,” Richard replied. He forced a smile. “After all, wasn’t it you who told me once they’re not the same as people?”
Nicole reached up and kissed her husband.
None of the new escapees had ever been in New York as an adult. Nicole’s three children had all been born on the island and had lived there in their early childhood, but a child has a much different sense of place than an adult. Even Ellie, Patrick, and Benjy were awestruck when they first stepped on the shore and saw the tall, thin silhouettes reaching toward the Rama sky in the near darkness.
Max Puckett was uncharacteristically speechless. He stood beside Eponine, holding her hand, and gawked at the thin, towering spires rising over two hundred meters above the island. “This is too damn much for an Arkansas farm boy,” he said at length, shaking his head. Max and Eponine walked at the end of the procession that was winding its way toward the lair which Richard and Nicole had converted into a multifamily apartment for all of them to share.
“Who built all this?” Robert Turner asked Richard as the troupe paused briefly in front of a giant polyhedron. Robert was growing increasingly apprehensive. He had been reluctant to come with Ellie and Nikki in the first place, and he was now rapidly becoming convinced that he had indeed made a big mistake.
“Probably the engineers at the Node,” Richard an-swereoV’Although we can’t know for certain. We humans have added new construction in our habitat. It’s possible that whoever, or whatever, lived here long ago might have built a few or even all of these amazing buildings.”
“Where are they now?” Robert asked next, mdre than a little frightened at the prospect of encountering beings with
the technological expertise necessary to create such impressive edifices.
“We have no way of knowing. According to the Eagle, this Rama spacecraft has been making voyages to discover spacefaring species for thousands of years. Somewhere in our part of the galaxy is another spacefarer who would have been comfortable in an environment like this. What that creature was, or is, and why it wanted to live in and among these incredible skyscrapers is a riddle we will probably never answer.”
“What about the avians and the octospiders, Uncle Richard?” Patrick asked. “Are they still living here in New York?”
“I have not seen any avians on the island since I arrived, except of course for the hatchlings that we are raising. But there are still octospiders around. Your mother and I encountered some of them when we were exploring behind the black screen.”
At that moment a centipede biot approached the procession from a side alley. Richard shone his flashlight in its direction. Robert Turner momentarily froze with fear, but he followed Richard’s instructions and moved out of the way as the biot trundled by.
“Skyscrapers built by ghosts, octospiders, centipede biots,” Robert grumbled. “What a lovely place!”
“In my opinion it’s a hell of a lot better than living under that tyrant Nakamura,” Richard said. “At least here we’re free and can make our own decisions.”
“Wakefield,” Max Puckett shouted from the back of the line. “What would happen if we didn’t move out of the way of one of those centipede biots?”
“I don’t know for sure, Max,” Richard replied. “But it would probably go over or around you just as if you were an inanimate object.”
It was Nicole’s turn to be the tour guide when they arrived at the lair. She personally showed each person his or her quarters. There was one room for Max and Eponine, another for Ellie and Robert, and a room divided by a