“The same thing happens to me,” Nai said. ‘Two nights ago I dreamed I was doing my morning meditation in the hawng pro in my family home in Lamphun. As I was reciting my mantra, Patrick awakened me. He told me that I was talking in my sleep. For a few seconds, however, I didn’t know who he was. It was frightening.”
“All right,” Max said after a protracted silence. He turned to Nicole. “I guess we’re ready for the news of the day. What do you have to tell us?”
“The quadroid videos today were very peculiar,” a smiling Nicole replied. “For the first few minutes, I was certain I had entered the wrong data base. Image after image showed a pig, or a chicken, or a drunken Oklahoma farm boy trying to court a sweet young thing. In the last series of pictures a fanner was trying to drink tequila, eat fried chicken, and make love with his sweetheart all at the same time—which reminds me, that chicken sure looked good. Is anyone else hungry?”
6
I think they were somewhat reassured by what the Chief
Optimizer told me,” Nicole said to Dr. Blue. “Max, of course, had his doubts. He doesn’t believe taking care of us will be a very high priority if the situation really becomes
desperate.”
‘That’s very unlikely,” the octospider replied. “Any further escalation of hostilities will be met by a massive retaliation. Many octospiders have been working on our war plans for almost two months.”
“Have I understood correctly, then,” Nicole asked, “that every individual member of your species who has been involved in the design and prosecution of this war will be terminated when it is over?”
“Yes,” Dr. Blue replied, “although they will not all die immediately. They will be notified that they have been placed on the termination list. The new Chief Optimizer will define the exact schedule for the terminations, depending on the needs of the colony and the pace of replenishment.”
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Nicole and her octospider colleague were sharing lunch at the hospital. They had spent the morning trying unsuccessfully to save the lives of two of the six-armed utility creatures who had been blasted by human troops while they were working in one of the few remaining grain fields on the north side of the forest.
During their lunch, a centipede biot trundled by in the hall beside them. Dr. Blue noticed that Nicole followed the biot with her eyes for several seconds. “When we first came inside Rama,” the octospider said, “before we had developed our full cadre of support animals, we used the available biots for routine tasks, like maintenance. Now we need their help again.”
“But how do you give them instructions?” Nicole asked. “We were never able to communicate with them at all.”
“Their programming is done in firmware, at the time of their manufacture. What we did in the early days, using a kind of keyboard analogous to the one you had in your lair, was ask the Ramans to alter the programming for our specific uses. That’s what all the biots are here for … to be turned into useful servants by the passengers on board.”
Well, Richard, Nicole thought, that’s at least one concept we missed altogether. In fact, I don’t think the idea ever even occurred to us.
“We wanted our settlement here in Rama to be indistinguishable from any of our other colonies,” Dr. Blue continued, “so as soon as we no longer needed the biots, we requested that they be removed from our domain in Rama.”
“And since then you have had no direct contact at all with the Ramans?”
“Not much,” Dr. Blue replied. “But we have maintained the capability to communicate with the high-technology factories underneath the surface, primarily so that we can request the manufacture of certain raw materials that we do not have in our warehouses.”
A door opened from the corridor and an octospider entered. It talked rapidly with Dr. Blue in their language, using very narrow color bands. Nicole recognized the words “permission” and “this afternoon,” but very little else.
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After the visitor had departed, Dr. Blue told Nicole that she had a surprise for her. “Today one of our queens is going to have her egg rush. Her attendants are estimating it will take place in half a tert. The Chief Optimizer has approved my request for you to observe. To my knowledge, you are the only alien—except for the Precursors, of course—who has ever had the privilege of witnessing an egg rush. I think you will find it very interesting.”
During the transport ride to the Queen’s Domain, which was in a part of the Emerald City that Nicole had never visited before, Dr. Blue reminded Nicole of some of the more unusual aspects of octospider reproduction. “In normal times, each of the three queens in our colony is fertilized once every three to five years, and only a small fraction of the fertilized eggs is permitted to grow to maturity. Because of the war preparations, however, the Chief Optimizer recently declared a Replenishment Event. All three of our queens are now producing a full set of eggs. They have been fertilized by the new warrior males, those octospiders selected for the war effort who have recently passed through sexual, transition. This activity is very important, for it ensures, at least symbolically, that each of these octospiders will have continued genetic involvement in the colony. Remember, they know, as soon as they are designated as warriors, that their termination time is not too far away.”
Whenever I think that we have a lot in common with the octospiders, Nicole was thinking, I see something so bizarre that I am reminded how very different we are. But, as Richard would say, how could it be otherwise? They are the product of a process totally alien to us.
“Don’t be alarmed at the size of me queen,” Dr. Blue continued, “and please, under no circumstances should you express anything but delight at what you see. When I first suggested that you attend the egg rush, one of the Chief Optimizer’s staff members objected, saying that there was no way you could fully appreciate what you were seeing. Some of the other staff members were worried th*at you might display discomfort or even disgust and thereby
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detract from the experience for the otiier octospiders in attendance.”
Nicole assured Dr. Blue that she would do nothing untoward during the ceremony. She was indeed flattered that she had been included in the activity, and was feeling considerable excitement when the transport deposited them outside the thick walls of the Queen’s Domain.
The building Nicole entered with Dr. Blue was dome-shaped and built of blocks of white rock. It was about ten meters tall inside and covered a ground area of roughly thirty-five hundred square meters. There was a large map just inside the door in the atrium area, and a written message in color identifying where the egg rush would take place. Nicole followed Dr. Blue and several other octospiders up a pair of ramps and then down a long corridor. At the end of the hallway they turned right and entered a balcony area that overlooked a rectangular floor fifteen meters long and five or six meters wide.
Dr. Blue took Nicole to the front row, where a railing a meter high protected the audience from falling onto the floor four meters below. Behind them the five elevated rows filled up quickly. Across the way, there was another, similar viewing area that would hold about sixty octospiders.
Looking down, Nicole could see a pool of water resembling a canal that ran the length of the floor and then disappeared under an arch on the right. There were narrow walkways on either side of the pool. On the opposite side, however, the walkway expanded into a broad platform three meters or so before it encountered the rock wall that formed the entire left side of the large room. This wall, painted with many different colors and designs, contained a hundred or so protruding silver rods or spikes, each standing out a meter from where it was embedded in the wall. Nicole noticed immediately the similarity between the wall and the vertical corridor, shaped like a barrel, that she and her friends had descended inside the octospider lair beneath New York.
Less than ten minutes after the two balcony areas were filled, the Chief Optimizer shuffled dirough a doorway on
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the lower level, stood on the walkway beside the pool, and made a short speech. Dr. Blue helped Nicole translate as the Chief Optimizer reminded the onlookers that although the exact timing of an egg rush was never known, it was likely the queen would be ready to enter the room in several more fengs. After making a few comments about the critical importance of replenishment in the continuity of the colony, the Chief Optimizer made her exit.