The farmhouse was dark. Nicole stopped on the porch, catching her breath, and the door opened a few seconds later. “I have been waiting for you,” Max said, his earnest expression underscoring the seriousness of the situation. He gave Nicole a quick hug. “Follow me,” he said, moving quickly off toward the barn.
“There have been no police cars yet on the road,” Max said when they were inside the bam. “They probably have not yet discovered that you’re gone. But it’s only a matter of minutes now.”
The chickens were all kept on the far side of the barn. The hens had a separate enclosure, sealed off from the roosters and the rest of the building. When Max and Nicole entered the henhouse, mere was a huge commotion. Animals scurried in all directions, clucking and squawking and beating their wings. The stench in the henhouse nearly overpowered Nicole.
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Max smiled. “I guess I forget how bad chicken shit smells to everyone else,” he said, “I’ve grown so used to it myself.” He slapped Nicole lightly on the back. “Anyway, it’s another level of protection for you, and I don’t think you’ll be able to smell the shit from your hideout.”
Max walked over to a corner of the henhouse, chased several hens out of the way, and bent down on his knees. “When those weird little robots of Richard’s first appeared,” he said, pushing aside hay and chicken feed, “I couldn’t decide where I should build your hideout. Then I thought about this place.” Max pulled up a couple of boards to expose a rectangular hole in the floor of the barn. “I sure as hell hope I was right.”
He motioned for Nicole to follow him and then crawled into the hole. They were both on their hands and knees in the dirt. The passageway, which ran parallel to the floor for a few meters and then turned downward at a steep angle, was extremely cramped. Nicole kept bumping up against Max in front of her and the dirt walls and ceiling all around her. The only light was the small flashlight that Max was carrying in his right hand. After fifteen meters the small tunnel opened into a dark room. Max stepped carefully down a rope ladder and then turned to help Nicole descend. A few seconds later they both walked into the center of the room, where Max reached up and switched on a solitary electric light.
“It’s not a palace,” he said as Nicole glanced around, “but I suspect it’s a damn sight better than that prison of yours.”
The room contained a bed, a chair, two shelves full of food, another shelf with electronic bookdiscs, a few clothes hanging in an open closet, basic toiletries, a large drum of water that must have barely fit through the passageway, and a deep, square latrine in the far corner.
“Did you do all this yourself?’ Nicole asked.
“Yep,” Max replied. “At night . . . during the last several weeks. I didn’t dare ask anybody to help.”
Nicole was touched. “How can I ever thank you?” she said.
“Don’t get caught.” Max grinned. “I don’t want to die any more than you do. … Oh, by the way,” he added,
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handing Nicole an electronic reader into which she could place the bookdiscs, “I hope the reading material is all right. Manuals on raising pigs and chickens are not the same as your father’s novels, but I didn’t want to attract too much attention by going to the bookstore.”
Nicole crossed the room and kissed him on the cheek. “Max,” she said lightly, “you are such a dear friend. I can’t imagine how you—”
“It’s dawn outside now,” Joan of Arc interrupted from Nicole’s pocket. “According to our timeline, we are behind schedule. Mr. Puckett, we must inspect our egress route before you leave us.”
“Shit,” said Max. “Here I go again, taking orders from a robot no longer than a cigarette.” He lifted Joan and Eleanor out of Nicole’s pockets and placed them on the top shelf behind a can of peas. “Do you see that little door?” he said. “There’s a pipe on the other side. It comes out just beyond the pig trough. . . . Why don’t you check it out?”
During the minute or two that the robots were gone,. Max explained the situation to Nicole. “The police will searching everywhere for you,” he said. “Particularly hei since they know that I am a friend of the family. So going to seal the entrance to your hideout. You should hi everything you need to last for at least several weeks.
“The robots can come and go freely, unless they eaten by the pigs,” Max continued with a laugh. “They be your only contact with the outside world. They’ll let yc know when it’s time to move to the second phase of escape plan.”
“So I won’t see you again?” Nicole asked.
“Not for at least a few weeks,” Max answered. “It’s too dangerous. . . , One more thing: if there are police on the premises, I will cut off your power. That will be your signal to stay especially quiet.”
Eleanor of Aquitaine had returned and was standing on the shelf next to the can of peas. “Our egress route is excellent,” she announced. “Joan has departed for a few days. She intends to leave the habitat and communicate with Richard.”
“Now I must leave also,” Max said to Nicole. He was silent for a few seconds. “But not before I tell you one thing, my lady friend. … As you probably know, I have been a fucking cynic all my life. There are not very many people who impress me. But you have convinced me that maybe some of us are superior to chickens and pigs.” Max smiled. “Not many of us,” he added quickly, “but at least some.”
“Thank you, Max,” Nicole said.
Max walked over to the ladder. He turned around and waved before he began his climb.
Nicole sat down in the chair and took a deep breath. From the sounds in the direction of the tunnel, she surmised correctly that Max was sealing the entrance to her hideout by placing the big bags of chicken feed directly over the hole.
So what happens now? Nicole asked herself. She realized that she had thought about very little except her approaching death during the five days since the conclusion of her trial. Without the fear of her imminent execution to structure her thought patterns, Nicole was able to let her mind drift freely.
She thought first of Richard, her husband and partner, from whom she had been separated now for almost two years. Nicole recalled vividly their last evening together, a horrible Walpurgisnacht of murder and destruction that had begun on a hopeful note with her daughter Ellie’s marriage to Dr. Robert Turner. Richard was certain that we, like Kenji .and Pyotr, were also marked for death, she remembered. And he was probably right. Because he escaped, they made him the enemy and left me alone for a while,
I thought you were dead, Richard, Nicole thought. / should have had more faith. . . . But how in the world did you end up in New York again?
As she sat in the only chair in the underground room, her heart ached for the company of her husband. A montage of memories paraded through her mind. She first saw herself again in the avian lair in Rama II, years and years earlier, temporarily a captive of the strange birdlike creatures whose language was jabbers and shrieks. It had been Richard who
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had found her there. He had risked his own life to return to New York to determine if Nicole was still alive. If Richard had not come, Nicole would have been marooned on the island of New York forever.
Richard and Nicole had become lovers during the time that they were struggling to figure out how to cross the Cylindrical Sea and return to their cosmonaut colleagues from the Newton spacecraft. Nicole was both surprised and amused by die strong stirrings inside her caused by her recollection of their early days of love. We survived the nuclear missile attack together. We even survived my wrongheaded attempt to produce genetic variation in our offspring by steeping with another man.
Nicole winced at the memory of her own naivete” so many years before. You forgave me, Richard, which could not have been easy for you. And then we grew even closer at the Node during our design sessions with the Eagle.
What was the Eagle really? Nicole mused, shifting her train of thought. And who or what created him? In her mind was a vivid picture of the bizarre creature who had been their only contact while they had stayed at the Node during the refurbishing of the Rama spaceship. The alien being, who had had the face of an eagle and a body similar to a man’s, had informed them that he was an advancement in artificial intelligence designed especially as a companion for humans. His eyes were incredible, almost mystical, Nicole remembered. And they were as intense as Omeh ‘s.