“Well, I don’t remember Daddy very clearly. All I said was that maybe—”
It took all of Nai’s self-control to keep her from slapping Galileo. She grabbed the boy by both of his shoulders. “Young man,” she said, “if I ever hear you say one word against your father again . . .”
Nai could not finish her sentence. She did not know what to threaten, or even what to say next. She suddenly felt completely overwhelmed by everyming in her life. %
“Sit down, please,” she said at length to her twin sons, “and listen very carefully.” Nai took a deep breath. “This
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map on the wall,” she said, pointing, “shows all the countries on the planet Earth. In every nation there are all kinds of people, some good, some bad, most a complex mixture of good and bad. No country has only good people, or bad people. Your father grew up in Japan. So did Mr. Nakamura. I agree with Uncle Max that Mr. Nakamura is a very evil man. But the fact that he is bad has nothing to do with his being Japanese. Your father, Mr. Kenji Watanabe, who was also Japanese, was as good a man as ever lived. I’m sorry that you cannot remember him and never really knew what he was like. . . .”
Nai paused for a moment. “I will never forget your father,” she said in a softer voice, almost to herself. “I can still see him returning to our home in New Eden in the late afternoon. The two of you always shouted together, ‘Hi Daddy, Hi Daddy,’ as he entered the house. He would kiss me, lift both of you in his arms, and take you out to the swing set in the backyard. Always, no matter how trying his day had been, he was patient and caring. . . .”
Her voice trailed off. Tears flooded Nai’s eyes and she felt her body beginning to tremble. She turned her back and faced the map. “Class dismissed for today,” she said.
Patrick stood beside Nai as the two of them watched the twins and Nikki playing with a big blue ball in the cul-de-sac. It was half an hour later. “I’m sorry, Patrick,” Nai said. “I didn’t expect to become . . .”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” the young man replied.
“Yes, I do,” Nai said. “Years ago I promised myself that I would never show such feelings in front of Kepler and Galileo. They can’t possibly understand.”
“They’ve forgotten it already,” Patrick said after a brief silence. “Look at them. They’re totally engrossed in their game.”
At that moment the twins were having one of their typical arguments. As usual, Galileo was trying to gain an advantage for himself in a game that did not have rigorous
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rules. Nikki stood beside the boys, following every word of their dispute.
“Boys, boys,” Nai called out. “Stop it. If you can’t play without arguing, then you’ll have to come inside.”
A few seconds later die blue ball was bouncing down the street toward the plaza and all three children were running gleefully after it. “Would you like something to drink?” Nai asked Patrick.
“Yes, I would. . . . Do you have any more of that light green melon juice that Hercules brought last week? It was really tasty.”
“Yes,” answered Nai, bending down to the small cabinet in which they kept cool drinks. “By the way, where is Hercules? I haven’t seen him for several days.”
Patrick laughed. “Uncle Richard has recruited him to work full-time on the translator. Ellie and Archie are even there with them every afternoon.” He thanked Nai for the glass of juice.
Nai took a sip of her own drink and walked back into the living room. “I know you wanted to comfort Benjy this morning,” she said. “I only stopped you because I know your brother so well. He is very proud. He does not want anyone’s pity.”
“I understood,” Patrick said.
“Benjy realized this morning, at some level, that even little Nikki—whom he still thinks of as a baby—will quickly surpass him in school. The discovery shocked him, and reminded him again of his own limitations.”
Nai was standing in front of the map of Earth, which was still affixed to the wall. “Nothing on this map means anything significant to you, does it?” she said.
“Not really,” Patrick replied. “I have seen many photographs and movies, of course, and when I was about the twins’ age my father used to tell me about Boston, and the color of the leaves in New England during the autumn, and the trip he took to Ireland with his father. But my memories are of other places. The lair in New York is quite vivid, as well as the astonishing year we spent at the Node.” He was
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silent for a moment. “And the Eagle! What a creature! I remember him even more clearly than my father.”
“So do you consider yourself to be an Earthling?” Nai asked.
“That’s an interesting question,” Patrick replied. He finished his drink. “You know, I’ve never really thought about it. … Certainly I consider myself to be a human. But an Earthling? I guess not.”
Nai reached out and touched the map. “My hometown of Lamphun, if it were larger, would have appeared here, just south of Chiang Mai. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible to me that I actually lived there as a child.”
Nai’s fingers ran over the outline of Thailand as she stood quietly beside Patrick. “The other night,” she said at length, “Galileo threw a cup of water on my head while I was bathing the boys, and I suddenly had an incredibly vivid memory of the three days I spent in Chiang Mai with my cousins when I was fourteen years old. It was the time of the Songkran Festival in April, and everyone in the city was celebrating the Thai New Year. There were parades and speeches—the usual stuff about how all the Chakri kings since the first Rama had prepared the Thai people for their important role in the world—but what I remember most clearly was riding around the city at night in the back of an electric pickup with my cousin Oni and her friends. Everywhere we went we threw a bucket of water on somebody— and they threw one on us. We laughed and laughed.”
“Why was everyone throwing water?” Patrick asked.
“I’ve forgotten now,” Nai said with a shrug. “It had something to do with the ceremony. But the experience itself, the shared laughter, and even what it felt like to have my clothes absolutely soaked, and suddenly to be hit by another burst of water—all that I can recall in detail.”
They were again silent as Nai reached up to take the map off the wall. “So I guess Kepler and Galileo will not consider themselves to be Earthlings either,” she mused. She rolled up the map very carefully. “Maybe even studying the geography and history of the Earth is a waste of time.”
“I don’t think so,” Patrick said. “What else are the
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children going to study? And besides, all of us need to understand where we came from.”
Three young faces peered into the living room from the atrium. “Is it lunchtime yet?” asked Galileo.
“Almost,” Nai replied. “Go wash up first . . . one at a time,” she said, as the young feet pounded down the hallway.
Nai turned around abruptly and caught Patrick staring at her in an unusual way. She smiled. “I’m glad you spend the mornings with us,” she said.
Nai extended both her arms and took Patrick’s hands in hers. “You have been a big help to me with Benjy and the children these last two months,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “And it would be foolish of me not to acknowledge that I have not felt nearly as lonely since you began coming over here every morning.”
Patrick made an awkward step toward Nai, but she held his hands firmly in place. “Not yet,” she said gently. “It’s still too early.”
4
i.
Less than a minute after the great firefly clusters in the
Emerald City dome announced that another day had begun, little Nikki was in her grandparents’ room. “It’s light, Nonni,” she said. “They’ll be coming for us soon.”
Nicole rolled over and gave her granddaughter a hug. “We still have a couple of hours, Nikki,” she said to the excited girl. “Boobah is still sleeping. . . . Why don’t you go back to your room and play with your toys while we take a shower?”
When the disappointed girl finally left, Richard was sitting up, rubbing his eyes. “Nikki has talked about nothing but this day for the last week,” Nicole said to him. “She is always in Benjy’s room, looking at the painting. Nikki and the twins have even given names to all those bizarre animals.”