Robert turned, waved slightly, and entered the train. In a few seconds it accelerated into the tunnel. Less than a
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minute later the somber mood was broken by cries of joy from the landing above them.
“All right, down there,” Max shouted, “you’d better be ready for a big party.”
Nicole looked up under the dome, and even at that distance, in the dim light, she could see the radiant smiles of the newlyweds. And so it is, she thought, her heart still heavy from her daughter’s loss. Sorrow and joy. Joy and sorrow. Wherever there are humans. On Earth. In new worlds beyond the stars. Now and forever.
THE EMERALD CITY
1
T;
he small driverless transport stopped at a circular plaza from which streets extended in five directions. A daric woman with gray hair and her octospider companion descended together from the car, leaving it empty. As the octospider and the human walked slowly away from the plaza, the transport departed with its interior lights now extinguished.
A solitary giant firefly preceded Nicole and Dr. Blue as they continued their conversation in the near darkness. Nicole was careful to exaggerate each word so that her alien friend would have no difficulty reading her lips. Dr. Blue replied in broad swaths of color, using simple sentences that he knew Nicole understood.
When they reached the first of four cream-white, single-story dwellings at the end of the cul-de-sac, the octospider lifted one of his tentacles from the street and shook hands with Nicole. “Good night,” she replied with a wan smile. “It was quite a day. . . . Thank you for everything.”
After Dr. Blue went inside his house, Nicole walked
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over to the decorative fountain forming an island in the center of the street and drank from one of the four spigots jetting forth a continuous stream of water at waist level. Some of the water that touched Nicole’s face fell back into the basin, causing a flurry of activity in the shallow pool. Even in the dim light Nicole could see the swimming creatures darting to and fro. The cleaners are everywhere, she thought, especially when we’re around. The water that touched my face will be purified 7n seconds.
She turned and approached the largest of the three remaining dwellings in the cul-de-sac. When Nicole crossed the threshold of her house, the outside firefly flew quickly down the street to the plaza. In the atrium, Nicole tapped the wall lightly one time, and in a few seconds a smaller firefly, barely glowing, appeared in the hallway in front of her. She stopped in one of the family’s two bathrooms and then paused at the doorway of Benjy’s room. He was snoring loudly. Nicole watched her son sleep for almost a full minute and then continued down the hallway to the master bedroom she shared with her husband.
Richard was also asleep. He did not respond to Nicole’s soft greeting. She took off her shoes and left the bedroom. When she reached the study, Nicole tapped on the wall twice more and the illumination increased. The study was cluttered with Richard’s electronic components, which he had had the octospiders gather for him over a period of several months. Nicole laughed to herself as she picked her way through the mess to her desk. He always has a project, she thought. At least the translator will be very useful.
Nicole sat in the chair at her desk and opened the middle drawer. She pulled out her portable computer, for which the octospiders had finally provided acceptable new power and storage subsystems. After calling up her journal from the menu, Nicole began typing on the keyboard, intermittently glancing at the small monitor to read what she was writing.
Day 221
I have arrived at home very late and, as I expected, everyone is asleep. I was tempted to take off my
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clothes and snuggle into bed beside Richard, but this day has been so extraordinary that I feel compelled to write while my thoughts and feelings are still fresh in my mind.
I had breakfast, as always, with our entire human clan here about one hour after dawn. Nai talked about what the children were going to do in school before their long nap, Eponine reported that both her heartburn and morning sickness had abated, and Richard complained that the “biological wizards” (our octospi-der hosts, of course) were mediocre electrical engineers. I tried to participate in the conversation, but my growing anticipation and anxiety about this morning’s meetings with the octospider doctors kept occupying my thoughts.
My stomach was full of butterflies when I arrived at the conference room in the pyramid just after breakfast. Dr. Blue and his medical colleagues were prompt, and the octos launched immediately into a lengthy discussion of what they had learned from Benjy’s tests. Medical jargon is hard enough to understand in one’s own native language—it was nearly impossible for me at times to follow what they were saying with their colors. Often I had to ask them to repeat.
It did not take long for their answer to be apparent. Yes, the octospiders could definitely see, by comparison, where Benjy’s genome was different from everyone else’s. Yes, they agreed mat the specific string of genes on chromosome 14 was almost certainly the source of Whittingham’s syndrome. But no, they were sorry, they didn’t see any way—not even using something I interpreted as a gene transplant—that they could cure his problem. It was too complex, the octospiders said, involving too many amino acid chains, they had not had enough experience with human beings, there were too many chances that something might go terribly wrong. . . .
I cried when I understood what they were telling me. Had I expected otherwise? Had I thought that some-
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how the same miraculous medical capability that had freed Eponine from the curse of the RV-41 virus might be successful in curing Benjy’s birth defect? I realized, in my despair, that I had indeed been hoping for a miracle, even though my brain recognized very clearly the significant difference between a congenital ailment and an acquired virus. Dr. Blue tried his best to console me. I let my mother’s tears flow there, in front of the octospiders, knowing that I would need my strength when I returned home to tell the others.
Nai and Eponine both knew the results as soon as they saw my face. Nai adores Benjy and never stops praising his determination to learn in spite of the obstacles. Benjy is amazing. He spends hours and hours in his room, working laboriously through all his lessons, struggling for days to grasp a concept in fractions or decimals that a gifted nine-year-old might learn in half an hour. Only last week Benjy beamed with pride when he showed me he could find the least common denominator to add the fractions 1/4, 1/5, and 1/6.
Nai has been his main teacher. Eponine has been Benjy’s pal. Ep probably felt worse than anybody this morning. She had been certain, because the octospiders had healed her so quickly, that Benjy’s problem as well would succumb to (heir medical magic. It was not to be. Eponine sobbed so hard and so long this morning that I became concerned about the welfare of her baby. She patted her swollen belly and told me not to worry. Ep laughed and said, through her tears, that her reaction was probably mostly due to her overactive hormones.
All three of the men were clearly upset, but they didn’t show much emotion. Patrick left the room quickly without saying anything. Max expressed his disappointment with an unusually colorful set of four-letter words. Richard just grimaced and shook his head.
We had all agreed, before the examination began, not to say anything to Benjy about the actual purpose of all the tests the octospiders were conducting. Could he have known? Might he have surmised what was
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going on? Perhaps. But this morning, when I told him that the octospiders had concluded that he was a healthy young man, I saw nothing in Benjy’s eyes that even hinted he was aware of what had taken place. After I hugged him hard, fighting against another set of tears threatening to destroy my facade, I returned to my room and allowed the sorrow of my son’s handicap to overcome me one more time.
I’m certain that Richard and Dr. Blue conspired together to keep my mind busy the rest of the day. I had not been in my room for more than twenty minutes when there was a soft knock on the door. Richard explained that Dr. Blue was in the atrium and that two other octospider scientists were waiting for me in the conference room. Had I forgotten that a detailed presentation on the octospider digestive system had been scheduled for me today?