“Some of the young octospiders don’t like the regimentation and predictability of our life in the Emerald City and
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want an existence in which they can make all their own decisions. Others fear that the optimizers will place them in an improper career. All of those choosing early sexuality see the Alternate Domain as a free and exciting place, full of glamor and adventure. They discount what they are giving up … and in their momentary exuberance, the quality of their life is more important than its likely duration. . . .”
Throughout the long conversation, Richard, Nicole, and Ellie asked many questions. As the evening progressed, all three of the humans started feeling overwhelmed. There was just too much information to digest in a single discussion.
“Wait a minute,” Richard said abruptly when Archie indicated it was past time for them to leave. “I’m sorry . . . there’s something fundamental about this that I still don’t understand. Why is this choice permitted at all? Why do the optimizers not simply decree that all the octospiders will always eat the barrican and remain sexless until the colony has a requirement for reproduction?”
“That’s a very good question,” Archie replied, “with a complex answer. Let me oversimplify, in the interests of time, by saying that our species believes in permitting some free choice. Also, as you will see tonight, there are some functions for which the alternates are uniquely suited and from which the whole colony derives benefits.”
7
fter leaving their zone, the transport followed a different route from the one that had taken the humans to the stadium on Bounty Day. This time it stayed on dimly lit streets on the periphery of the city. The party encountered none of the busy, colorful scenes that they had seen in their previous excursion. After several fengs the transport approached a large closed gate very much like the one through which they had initially entered the Emerald City.
Two octospiders came over and peered in the car. Archie said something to them in color, and one of the octospiders returned to what must have been their equivalent of a guardhouse. In the distance Richard could see colors flashing on a flat wall. “She’s checking with the authorities,” Dr. Blue told the humans. “We’re outside our expected arrival interval, so our exit code is no longer valid.”
During a wait of several more nillets, the other octospi-der entered the transport and inspected it thoroughly. None of the humans had ever experienced such stringent security
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precautions in the Emerald City, not even at the stadium. Eliie’s discomfort was heightened when the octospider security officer, without saying anything to her, opened up her purse to see its contents. Eventually the inspector returned Ellie’s purse and disembarked. The gate swung open, the transport moved out from under the green dome, and then it parked in the dark less than a minute later.
The transport was surrounded in the parking lot by thirty or forty other vehicles. “This area,” Dr. Blue explained as they descended from the car and a pair of fireflies joined them, “is called the Arts District. It and the zoo, which is not too far from here, are the only two sections of the Alternate Domain visited with any regularity by the octospiders who live in the Emerald City. The optimizers do not approve many visitation requests to the alternate living areas that are farther south—in fact, for most octospiders, the only comprehensive view of the Alternate Domain that they ever have is the tour during the last week of Matriculation.”
The air was much colder than it had been in the Emerald City. Archie and Dr. Blue both started walking faster than the humans had ever seen an octospider move before. “We must hurry,” Archie turned and said, “or we will be late.” The human trio ran to keep up with the fast pace.
As they neared an illuminated area about three hundred meters from their transport, Archie and Dr. Blue moved to either end of the line of humans so that they were walking five abreast. “We’re entering Artisan’s Square,” Dr. Blue said, “which is where the alternates offer their artistic works for transfer.”
“What do you mean, ‘transfer’?” Nicole asked.
“The artists need credits for food and other essentials. They offer their works of art to an Emerald City resident who has credits to spare,” Dr. Blue replied.
As much as Nicole might have wanted to pursue the conversation, she was immediately sidetracked by the dazzling array of unusual objects, makeshift stalls, octospiders, and other animals that greeted her eyes in Artisan’s Squaje. The square, a large plaza seventy or eighty meters on a side, was directly across a broad avenue from the theater that was
their destination. Archie and Dr. Blue, at the ends of their line, each extended a single tentacle along the collective backs of the humans so that the five of them moved as one across the bustling square.
The group was confronted by several octospiders holding out objects to transfer. Richard, Nicole, and Ellie ; quickly confirmed what Archie had told them during the long meeting, namely that the alternates did not conform to the official language specification used by the octospiders in the Emerald City. There were no neat color bands sweeping around the heads of these octospiders, only sloppy sequences of colored blotches of widely variable heights. One of the hawkers who accosted them was small, obviously a juvenile, and he or she, after being waved away by Archie, gave Ellie a sudden fright by wrapping a tentacle around Eliie’s arm for a few fractions of a second. Archie seized the offender with three of his own tentacles and hurled him roughly out of the way, in the direction of one of the octospiders with a cloth bag over its shoulder. Dr. Blue explained that the bag identified the octo as a policeman.
Nicole was walking so fast, and there was so much around her to see, that she found herself holding her breath. Although she had no idea what to make of many of the objects being offered for transfer in the square, she could recognize and appreciate the occasional painting, or piece of sculpture, or those tiny representations, in wood or some similar medium, of all the different animals who lived in the Emerald City. In one section of the square there were displays of colored patterns pressed upon the parchment material—Dr. Blue explained later, when they were inside the theater, that the particular art form represented by the patterns was a combination, as she understood the human terms, of both poetry and calligraphy.
Just before they crossed the street, Nicole caught sight, •*- on a wall twenty meters away on her left, of a large mural i that was astonishingly beautiful. The colors were bold and 3|; eye-catching, the composition the work of an artist who understood both structure and optical appeal. The technical skill was also extremely impressive, but it was the emotions
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rendered in the bodies and faces of the octospiders and other creatures in the mural that fascinated Nicole.
“The Triumph of Optimization,” Nicole mumbled to herself as she craned her neck to read the title in colors across the upper portion of the mural. The painting had a spacecraft against a star background in one section, an ocean teeming with living things in another, and both a jungle and a desert in opposite corners. The central image, however, was a giant octospider, carrying a stave and standing on a pile of thirty disparate animals, who were squirming in the dust underneath its tentacles. Nicole’s heart nearly jumped out of her body when she saw that one of the trampled beings was a young human woman with brown skin, piercing eyes, and short curly hair.
“Look,” she yelled suddenly to the others, “over there—at that mural.”
At that moment some kind of small animal was making itself a nuisance around their feet. It succeeded in distracting everyone’s attention. The two octospiders dealt with the animal and pulled the line again toward the theater. As she moved into the street, Nicole glanced back at the mural to make certain that she had not imagined the presence of a young woman in the picture. From the added distance the face of the woman and her features were vague, but Nicole was nevertheless convinced that she had definitely seen a human being in the artwork. But how is that possible? Nicole was asking herself as they entered the theater.
Preoccupied with her discovery, Nicole listened with only half an ear to Richard’s discussion with Archie about how he intended to use his translator during the play. She didn’t even look when, after they took their standing positions in the fifth row above a theater-in-the-round, Dr. Blue pointed out with one of her tentacles the sector to the left of them containing Jamie and the other matriculating octospiders. / must have made a mistake, Nicole thought. She was seized by a powerful impulse to run back to the square and verify what she had seen. Then she remembered what Archie had told them about the importance of carefully following instructions on this particular evening. / know I