The girl, who was wide awake, would not sit still in Nicole’s arms. Nicole became uncomfortable. She decided to stop for a rest. While the child was playing in the dirt, Nicole stared at the destruction in front of her, both in the Alternate Domain and, in the distance, in the part of the
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Emerald City that she could see. Nicole suddenly felt-very sad. What is it all for? she asked herself. An image of Katie entered her mind, but Nicole pushed it aside, choosing instead to sit down in the dirt and entertain the child. Five minutes later they heard the whistle.
The sound was coming from the sky, from Rama itself. Nicole jumped to her feet, her pulse immediately skyrocketing. She felt a slight pain in her chest, but nothing could diminish her excitement. “Look,” she shouted to the baby girl, “look over there, in the south!”
In the distant southern bowl, streamers of colored light were playing around the tip of the Big Horn, the massive spire that thrust upward along the spin axis of the cylindrical spacecraft. The streamers coalesced and formed a red ring near the tip of the spire. A few moments later this huge red ring sailed slowly north along the axis of Rama. Around the Big Horn, more colors danced until they formed into a second ring, orange in color, which eventually followed the red ring, also in a northerly direction in the sky of Rama.
The whistle continued. It was not a harsh or shrill whistle. To Nicole it almost sounded musical. “Something’s going to happen,” Nicole said exultantly to the girl, “something good!”
The little girl had no idea what was occurring, but she laughed heartily when the woman picked her up and tossed her skyward. And for her the rings were definitely eyecatching. Now a yellow and a green ring were both crossing the black sky of Rama, and the red one in the front of the procession had just reached the Cylindrical Sea.
Again Nicole tossed the child a foot or two in the air. This time the girl’s necklace escaped from under her shirts and nearly flew off her head. Nicole caught the girl and gave her a hug. “I had almost forgotten about your necklace,” Nicole said. “Now that we have some decent light, may I take a look at it?”
The girl giggled as Nicole pulled the rope necklace over her head. At the bottom of the necklace, carved on a round piece of wood about four centimeters in diameter, was the outline of a man with arms upraised, surrounded on all sides
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by what appeared to be a fire. Nicole had seen a similar wood carving many years before, on Michael O’Toole’s desk in his room inside the Newton. Saint Michael of Siena, Nicole said to herself, turning the carving over.
On the back the word MARIA was carefully printed in lowercase letters. “That must be your name,” Nicole said to the girl. “Maria . . . Maria.” There was no indication of recognition. The child started to frown just before Nicole laughed and tossed her into the air one more time.
A few minutes later Nicole put the squirming child down again. Maria immediately crawled into the dirt. Nicole kept one eye on Maria and one eye on the colored rings in the Rama sky. All eight rings could now be seen, the blue, brown, pink, and purple over the Southern Hemicyl-inder and the first four in the line in the sky above the north. As the red ring vanished in the northern bowl, another red ring formed at the tip of the Big Horn.
Just like all those years ago, Nicole thought. But her mind was not really focused on the rings yet. She was searching her memory, trying to remember every missing persons report that had ever been filed in New Eden. There had been a handful of boating accidents on Lake Shakespeare, she recalled, and every now and then one of the patients in the mental hospital at Avalon had disappeared. But how could a couple vanish like that? And where was Maria’s father? There were many questions that Nicole wanted to ask the octospiders.
The dazzling rings continued to float above her head. Nicole remembered that day long ago when Katie, as a girl of ten or eleven, had been so thrilled by the huge rings in the sky that she had screamed with joy. She was always my most uninhibited child, Nicole thought, unable to stop herself. Her laugh was so complete, so genuine. . . . Katie had so much potential.
With great effort Nicole forced herself to concentrate on Maria. The child was sitting down, merrily eating the dirt from the Central Plain. “No, Maria,” Nicole said, gently touching the child’s hands. “That’s dirty.”
The girl screwed up her beautiful face and began to cry.
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Like Katie, Nicole thought immediately. She couldn ‘t stand for me to tell her no. Memories of Katie now flooded into her mind. Nicole saw her daughter first as a baby, thefl as a precocious early adolescent at the Node, and finally as a young woman in New Eden. The deep heartache that accompanied the images of her lost daughter completely overwhelmed Nicole. Tears ran down her cheeks and her body began to shake with sobs. “Oh, Katie,” Nicole yelled out loud. “Why? Why? Why?”
She buried her face in her hands. Maria had stopped crying and was looking at Nicole with a quizzical look.
“It’s all right, Nicole,” a voice behind her said. “It will all be over soon.”
Nicole thought her mind was playing tricks. She turned around slowly. The Eagle was approaching with outstretched arms.
The third red ring had reached the northern bowl and there were no more colored lights around the Big Horn. “So will all the lights come on when the rings are finished?” Nicole asked the Eagle.
“What a good memory,” he said. “You might be right.”
Nicole was again holding Maria in her arms. She kissed the child gently on the cheek and Maria smiled. “Thank you for the girl,” Nicole said. “She is wonderful . . . and I understand what you’re telling me.”
The Eagle faced Nicole. “What are you talking about?” he said. “We didn’t have anything to do with the child.”
Nicole searched the alien’s mystical blue eyes with her own. She had never seen a pair of eyes that had such a wide range of expression. But Nicole had had no recent practice reading what the Eagle was saying with his eyes. Was he teasing her about Maria? Or was he serious? Surely it wasn’t just chance that she discovered the child so soon after Katie killed herself.
You ‘re being too rigid in your thinking, Nicole recalled Richard saying to her at the Node. Just because the eagle is not biological like you and me does not mean that he’s not
alive. He’s a robot, all right, but he’s much smarter than we are. . . . And much more subtle.
“So have you been hiding in Rama all this time?” Nicole asked several seconds later.
“No,” the Eagle replied. He did not elaborate. Nicole smiled. “You’ve already told me that we haven’t reached the Node or an equivalent place, and I’m certain that you didn’t just drop by for a social visit. Are you going to tell me why you are here?”
“This is a Stage Two intercession,” the Eagle said. “We have decided to interrupt the observation process.”
“Okay,” Nicole said, placing Maria back down on the ground, “I understand the concept. But what exactly will happen now?”
“Everyone will go to sleep,” the Eagle said. “And after they awaken . . . ?” Nicole asked. “All I can tell you is that everyone will go to sleep.” Nicole stepped away in the direction of the Emerald . City and raised her arms to the sky. Only three colored rings : remained now, and they were all far away, over above the Northern Hemicylinder. “Just out of curiosity—I’m not complaining, you understand . . .” Nicole said with a trace of sarcasm. She paused and turned around to face the Eagle. “Why didn’t you intercede a long time ago? Before all this ; occurred? Before there were so many deaths?”
The Eagle didn’t answer immediately. “You can’t have it both ways, Nicole,” he said at length. “You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.”
“Excuse me,” Nicole said with a puzzled look on her face. “Did I mistakenly ask a religious question?”
“Not really,” the Eagle replied. “What you must understand is that our objective is to develop a complete catalog . on all the spacefarers in this region of the Galaxy. We are vflot judgmental. We are scientists. We do not care if it is -iyour natural predilection to destroy yourself. We do care, ^however, if the likely future return from our project no iger justifies the significant resources we have assigned.”