Hour after hour, Nicole continued to watch in an attempt to comprehend her daughter’s tragic life. As the long day progressed and Nicole scanned through the earlier videos, some as early as the first days of Katie’s drug addiction, Nicole discovered that Katie had even had a sordid affair with Nakamura himself and that the New Eden tyrant had regularly provided Katie with drugs during the time they were sexual partners.
By this time Nicole was numb. She was also so emotionally drained that she did not have the strength to move. When Nicole finally switched off the controls, she put her head down on the desk, cried for a few more minutes, and then fell asleep. Archie woke her four hours later and told her it was time to return home.
It was dark. The transport had been parked at the plaza for ten minutes, but Nicole had still not disembarked. Archie was standing beside her.
“There is no way that I can tell Richard about what I have seen today,” she said, glancing up at the octospider. “He will be absolutely destroyed.”
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“I understand,” Archie said sympathetically. “Now you see why I suggested that you not watch the videos.”
“You were right,” Nicole said, slowly releasing her grasp on the vertical bar and resignedly extending one leg out of the car, “but it’s too late now. I can’t erase the horrible pictures that are in my mind.”
“You told me earlier,” Archie said as soon as they were outside the transport, “that it was obvious from me videos that Patrick had known something about the life Katie was leading before his escape. He elected not to tell you and Richard the worst details. Is it a violation of your personal principles to do something similar?”
‘Thanks, Archie,” Nicole said, patting the octospider on the shoulder and almost smiling, “for reading my mind. You’re beginning to know us too well.”
“We have a difficult time with truth in our society also,” Archie commented. “One of our fundamental guidelines for new optimizers is to tell the truth at all times. It is acceptable to withhold information, the policy says, but not to pass falsehoods. The youngest optimizers are very zealous about tellirig the truth, without regard for the consequences. Sometimes truth and compassion are not compatible.”
“I agree with you, my wise alien friend,” Nicole said with a heavy sigh. “And now, after what I can definitely say was one of the worst days of my life, I face not one, but two very difficult tasks. I must tell Max that he will not be able to leave the Emerald City, and I must inform my husband, Richard, that his favorite daughter is a dope addict and a manager of whores. I hope that somewhere in this old and exhausted human is the strength necessary to handle those two duties properly.”
10
RJ
‘ tchard was asleep when b, Nicole arrived at home. She was thankful that she did not need to explain anything right away. Nicole slipped into her nightgown and climbed gently into bed. But she could not fall asleep. Her mind kept jumping back and forth between the horrible images she had seen during the day and thoughts about what she was going to tell Richard and the others.
In her twilight state Nicole suddenly saw herself sitting in the bleachers in Rouen beside her father, in the square where Joan of Arc had been burned to death eight hundred years earlier. Nicole was a teenager again, as she had been when her father had actually taken her to Rouen to see the conclusion of the Joan of Arc pageant. The oxcart carrying Joan was coming into the square and the people were shouting.
“Daddy,” the teenage Nicole said, yelling to be heard above the din, “what can I do to help Katie?”
Her father had not heard the question. His attention was
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completely focused on the Maid of Orleans, or rather the French girl who was playing Joan. Nicole watched as the girt, who had the same clear and piercing eyes attributed to Joan, was tied to the stake. The girl began to pray softly as one of the bishops read her death sentence.
“What about Katie?” Nicole said again. There was no response. The audience around her in the bleachers gasped as the piles of wood surrounding Joan were set on fire. Nicole stood up with the crowd as the flames spread quickly around the base of the huge wooden stake. She could clearly hear the prayers of St. Joan, invoking the blessing of Jesus.
The flames moved closer to the girl. Nicole looked at the face of the teenager who had changed history and a cold shudder ran down her back. “Katie,” she screamed. “No! No!”
Nicole tried desperately to find some way out of the bleachers, but she was blocked on all sides. There was no way she could save her burning daughter. “Katie! Katie!” Nicole screamed again, flailing wildly at the people around her.
She felt arms around her chest. It took a few seconds for Nicole to realize that she had been dreaming. Richard was staring at her with alarm. Before Nicole could speak, Ellie walked into the bedroom in her robe.
“Are you all right. Mother?” she asked. “I was up checking on Nikki and I heard you scream Katie’s name.”
Nicole glanced first at Robert, then at Ellie. She closed her eyes. She could still see Katie’s anguished face, contorted in pain, just above the flames. Nicole opened her eyes again and looked at her husband and daughter. “Katie is very unhappy,” she said, and then she burst into tears.
Nicole could not be consoled. Each time she would start to tell Richard and Ellie the details about what she had seen, she would start crying again. “I feel so frustrated, so helpless,” Nicole said when she could finally control herself. “Katie is in dire straits and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do to help her.”
Summarizing Katie’s life without omitting anything except some of the more kinky sexual escapades, Nicole
abandoned her tentative plan to soften her report. Both Richard and Ellie were stunned and saddened by the news.
“I don’t know how you managed to sit there and watch for all those hours,” Richard said at one point. “I would have been out of there in a few minutes.”
“Katie’s so lost, so utterly lost,” said Ellie, shaking her head. A few minutes later little Nikki wandered into the bedroom looking for her mother. Ellie embraced Nicole and took Nikki back to their room.
“I’m sorry I was so distraught, Richard,” Nicole said a few minutes later, just before they went back to sleep.
“It’s understandable,” Richard said. “The day must have been absolutely horrible.”
Nicole wiped her eyes for the umpteenth time. “I can only remember one other time in my life when I cried like this,” she said, managing a tiny smile. “Back when I was fifteen. My father told me one day that he was thinking about proposing to thi» Englishwoman he was dating. I didn’t like her—she was a cold and distant woman—but I didn’t think it was proper for me to say anything negative to my father. Anyway, I was devastated. I picked up my pet mallard Dunois and raced down to our pond at Beauvois. I rowed out into the middle of the pond, brought the oars into the boat, and cried for several hours.”
They lay in silence for a few minutes. “Oh, Jesus,” Nicole suddenly said, “I almost forgot. Archie also told me today that none of us would be permitted to return to New Eden. He said it was a security issue. Max will be furious.”
“Don’t worry about it now,” Richard said softly. ‘Try to get some sleep. We’ll talk about’it in the morning.”
Nicole snuggled into Richard’s arms and fell asleep.
“For see-cur-i-tee reasons?” Max yelled. “Now, just what the fuck does that mean?”
Patrick and Nai both rose from the breakfast table. “Just leave your food,” Nai said, motioning for the children to / follow her. “We can have some fruit and cereal in the |: schoolroom.”
Both Kepler and Galileo were reluctant to leave. They
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sensed that something important was going to be discussed. Only when Patrick came around the table toward them did they push back their chairs and rise.
Benjy was allowed to remain after he promised Nicole he would not repeat any of the conversation to the children. Eponine left the table to nurse the waking Marius in one of the comers of the room.
“I don’t know what it means,” Nicole said to Max after the children had departed. “Archie would not elaborate.”
“Well, this is just god-damn wonderful,” Max said. “We can’t leave, but those slimy friends of yours won’t even tell us why. Why didn’t you demand to see the Chief Optimizer right there on the spot? Don’t you think they owe us some kind of explanation?”