Ellie smiled, but her eyes saidjiothing in response to the intense, inquiring gaze from her friend. “The police have also questioned me, Nai,” she said matter-of-factly. “Several different times. According to them, the questions are all designed to clear up what they call the ‘irregularities’ in •• Mother’s case. Even Katie has had a visit from the police. >She dropped by unexpectedly last week and remarked that the postponement of Mother’s execution was certainly f peculiar.”
“My friend’s brother,” Nai said after a short silence, “says that Nakamura suspects a conspiracy.”
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“That’s ridiculous,” Robert scoffed. “There is no active opposition to the government anywhere in the colony.”
Nai drew even closer to Ellie. “So what do you think is really happening?” she whispered. “Do you think your mother has actually escaped? Or did Nakamura change his mind and execute her in private to stop her from becoming a public martyr?”
Ellie looked first at her husband and then at her friend. “I have no idea,” Ellie forced herself to answer. “I have, of course, considered all the possibilities you have mentioned. As well as a few others. But we have no way of knowing. . . . Even though I am certainly not what you would call a religious person, I have been praying in my own way that Mother is all right”
3
N,
Iicole finished her dried apricots and crossed the room to drop the package in the wastebasket. It was nearly full. • She tried to compress the waste with her foot, but the level barely changed.
My time is running out, she thought, her eyes mechanically scanning the food remaining on the shelf. / can last .: maybe five more days. Then I must have some new supplies. Both Joan and Eleanor had been gone for forty-eight hours. During the first two weeks of Nicole’s stay in the room underneath Max Puckett’s barn, one of the two robots had been with her all the time. Talking with them had been almost like talking with her husband, Richard, at least originally, before Nicole had exhausted all the topics the little robots had stored in their memories.
These two robots are his greatest creations, Nicole said to herself, sitting down in the chair. He must have spent months on them. She remembered Richard’s Shakespearean robots from the Newton days. Joan and Eleanor are far
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more sophisticated than Prince Hal and Falstaff. Richard must have learned a lot from the engineering of the human biots in New Eden.
Joan and Eleanor had kept Nicole informed about the major events occurring in the habitat. It was an easy task for them. Part of their programmed instruction was to observe and to report by radio to Richard during their periodic sorties outside of New Eden, so they passed the same information on to Nicole. She knew, for example, that Nakamura’s special police had searched every building in the settlement, ostensibly looking for anyone hoarding critical resources, in the first two weeks after her escape. They had also come to the Puckett farm, of course, and for four hours Nicole had sat perfectly still in total darkness in her hideout. She had heard some noises above her, but whoever had conducted the search had not spent much time in the barn.
More recently, it had often been necessary for both Joan and Eleanor to be outside of the hideout at the same time. They told her that they were busy coordinating the next phase of her escape. Once, Nicole had asked the robots how they managed to pass so easily through the checkpoint at the entrance to New Eden. “It’s really very simple,” Joan had said. “Cargo trucks pass through the gate a dozen times a day, most carrying items to and from the troops and construction personnel over in the other habitat, some going out to Avalon. We’re almost impossible to notice in any large load.”
Joan and Eleanor had also brought Nicole up to date on all the colony history since she had been imprisoned. Nicole now knew that the humans had invaded the avian/sessile habitat and essentially routed its occupants. Richard had not wasted robot memory space or his own time by supplying Joan and Eleanor with too many of the details about the avians and sessiles; however, Nicole did know that Richard had managed to escape to New York with two avian eggs, four manna melons containing embryos of the bizarre sessile species, and a critical slice of an actual adult sessile.
She also knew that the two avian hatchlings had been born a few months earlier and that Richard was being kept extremely busy tending to their needs.
It was difficult for Nicole to imagine her husband, Richard, playing both mother and father to a pair of aliens. She remembered that when their own children had been small, Richard had not shown much interest in their development, and he had often been insensitive to the children’s emotional needs. Of course he had been marvel-ous at teaching them facts, especially abstract concepts from mathematics and science. But Nicole and Michael O’Toole had remarked to each other several times during their long voyage on Rama II that Richard did not seem to be capable of dealing with children on their own level.
His own childhood was so painful, Nicole thought, recalling her conversations with Richard about his abusive father. He must have grown up with no capability to love or trust other people. All his friends were fantasies or robots he had created himself. . . . She paused for a moment in her thinking. But during our years in New Eden he definitely changed. … 7 never had a chance to tell him how proud 1 was of him. That was why I wanted to leave the special letter. . . .
The solitary light in her room suddenly went out and Nicole was surrounded by darkness. She sat quite still in her chair and listened carefully for any sounds. Although Nicole knew that the police were again on the premises, she could hear nothing. As she became more frightened, Nicole realized how important Joan and Eleanor had become to her. During the first visit to the Puckett farm by the special police, both the little robots had been in the room to comfort her.
Time passed very slowly. Nicole could hear the beating of her heart. After what seemed like an eternity, she heard noises above her. It sounded as if there were many people in the barn. Nicole took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Seconds later, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a soft voice beside her reciting a poem.
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Invade me now, my ruthless friend,
And make me cower in the dark.
Remind me that I’m all alone
And draw upon my face your mark.
How is it that you capture me,
When all my thoughts deny your force?
Is it the reptile in my brain
That lets your terror run its course?
Baseless Fear undoes us all Despite our quest for lofty goals. We would-be Galahads don’t die, Fear just freezes all our souls. It keeps us mute when feeling love, Reminding us what we might lose. And if by chance we meet success, Fear tells us which safe route to choose.
Nicole recognized eventually that the voice belonged to the robot Joan, and that she was reciting Benita Garcia’s famous pair of stanzas about fear, written after Benita had been thoroughly politicized by the poverty and destitution of the Great Chaos. The friendly voice of the robot and the familiar lines of the poem temporarily mitigated Nicole’s panic. For a while she listened more calmly despite the fact that the noises above her were growing in amplitude.
When Nicole heard the sound of the movement of the large bags of chicken feed stored above the entrance to her hideout, however, her fright was suddenly renewed. This is it, Nicole said to herself. / am going to be captured.
Nicole wondered briefly if the special police would kill her as soon as they found her. Then she heard loud metallic pounding at the end of the passage to her room and was unable to remain seated. As she rose, Nicole felt two sharp pains in her chest and her breathing became labored. What’s wrong with me? she was thinking when Joan spoke up from beside her. a,
“After the first search,” the robot said, “Max was afraid mat he had not camouflaged your entrance well enough.
One night while you were asleep he inserted into the top of the hole a full drainage system for the henhouse, with the discharge pipes running out above your hideout. That pounding you heard was someone beating on the pipes.”
Nicole held her breath while a muffled conversation took place on the surface above her. After a minute, she again heard the movement of the bags of chicken feed. Good old Max, Nicole thought, relaxing somewhat. The pain in her chest subsided. After several more minutes the noises above her ceased altogether. Nicole heaved a sigh and sat down in the chair. But she did not fall asleep until the lights were on again.