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“Huh?” said Nicole. “Are you telling me that you’re not interceding to stop the bloodshed, but for some other reason?”
“Yes,” said the Eagle. “However, I’m going to change the subject because our time is extremely limited. The lights will be coming on in two more minutes. You will be asleep a minute after that. If you have anything you wish to communicate to the girl child—”
“Are we going to die?’ Nicole said, suddenly frightened.
“Not immediately,” said the Eagle. “But I cannot guarantee that everyone will live through the sleeping period.”
Nicole dropped down in the dirt beside the girl. Maria had another clod in her mouth and wet dirt lined her lips. Nicole wiped her face off very gently and offered the child a drink of water from a cup. To Nicole’s surprise, Maria sipped at the water, spilling it down her chin.
Nicole smiled and Maria giggled. Nicole stuck her finger under the girl’s chin and tickled her. Maria’s giggles erupted into laughter, the pure, uninhibited, magical laughter of the small child. The sound was incredibly beautiful. Nicole’s eyes filled with tears.
Suddenly all of Rama was filled with light. It was an awesome spectacle. The Big Horn and its six surrounding acolytes, attached by massive flying buttresses, dominated the sky above them. “Forty-five seconds?” Nicole said to the Eagle.
The alien birdman nodded. Nicole reached over and picked up the girl. “I know that nothing that has happened to you recently makes any sense, Maria,” Nicole said, holding the child in her lap, “but I want you to know that you have already been terribly important in my life and I love you very much.”
There was a look of astonishing wisdom in the little girl’s eyes. She leaned forward and put her head on Nicole’s shoulder. For a few seconds Nicole did not know what to do. Then she began patting Maria on the back. And singing softly. “Lay thee down . . . Now and rest . . . May thy slumber be Blessed …” *>
RETURN TO THE NODE
1
T
IH
!ie dreams came before the ight. They were disconnected dreams, random images sometimes expanding into short, unified sets without apparent purpose or direction. Colors and geometric patterns were the earliest dreams she remembered. Nicole could not recall when they had started. At some point she had thought for the first time, / am Nicole. I must still be alive, but that had been long ago. Since then she had seen, in her mind’s eye, entire scenes, including the faces of other people. Some she had recognized. That’s Omeh, she had said to herself. That’s my father. She had felt sadness as she had awakened more each time. Richard had been in her last several dreams. And Katie. They’re both dead, Nicole had remembered. They died before I went to sleep.
When she opened her eyes, she could still see nothing.
The darkness was complete. Slowly Nicole became more
aware of her surroundings. She dropped her hands beside
her and felt the soft texture of the foam with her fingers. She
|;turned over on her side with very little effort. / must be
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weightless, Nicole thought, her mind beginning to function after years of being dormant. But where am I? she asked herself before falling asleep again. *
The next time she awakened, Nicole could see a solitary light source at the other end of the closed container in which she was lying. She wiggled her feet free of the white foam and held them up in front of the light. They were both covered with clear slippers. She stretched out to see if she could touch the light source with her toes, but it was too far away.
Nicole put her hands in front of her eyes. The light was so dim that she could not see any details, only a dark outline that silhouetted all the fingers. There was not enough room in the container for her to sit up, but she could manage to reach the top with one hand, if she propped herself up with the other. Nicole pressed her fingers against the soft foam. Behind the foam was a hard surface, wood or possibly even metal.
The slight activity wore her out. She was breathing rapidly and her heart rate had increased. Her mind became more alert. Nicole remembered clearly the last moments before she had gone to sleep in Rama. The Eagle came, she thought, just after I found that baby girl in the Alternate Domain. So where am I now? And how long have I slept?
She heard a gentle knocking on the container and lay back down in the foam. Someone has come. My questions will be answered soon. The lid of the container was slowly raised. Nicole shielded her eyes from the light. She saw the Eagle’s face and heard his voice.
The two of them were sitting together in a large room. Everything was white. The walls, the ceiling, the small round table in front of them, even the chairs, the cup, the bowl, and the spoon were white. Nicole took another sip of the warm soup. It tasted like chicken broth. Over to her left the white container in which she had been lying rested against the wall. There were no other objects in Uje room.
“. . . About sixteen years altogether—traveler’s time, of course,” the Eagle was saying. Traveler’s time, Nicole
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thought. That’s the same term that Richard used. “. . . We did not retard your aging nearly as efficiently as before. Our preparations were somewhat hurried.”
Despite the weightlessness, it seemed to Nicole that every physical act was a monumental effort. Her muscles had been inactive for too long. The Eagle had helped her shuffle the few steps between the container and the table. Her hands had trembled some while she had drunk the water and eaten the soup.
“So am I about eighty?” she now asked the Eagle in a halting voice, one that she barely recognized.
“More or less,” the alien replied. “It would be impossible to give you a meaningful age.”
Nicole stared across the table at her companion. The Eagle looked just the same as always. The powder-blue eyes on either side of his protruding gray beak had lost none of their mystical intensity. The feathers on the top of his head were still pure white, contrasting sharply with the dark gray feathers of his face, neck, and back. The four fingers on each hand, creamy white and featherless, were as smooth as a child’s.
Nicole studied her own hands for the first time. They were wrinkled and discolored from age spots. She turned them over and from somewhere in her memory she heard a laugh. Phthisic, Richard was saying. Isn’t that a great word? It means more withered than ‘withered.’ . . . I wonder if I’ll ever have a chance to use it. . . . The memory faded. My hands are phthisic, Nicole thought.
“Don’t you ever age?” she asked the Eagle.
“No,” he replied. “At least not in the sense that you use the word. I am regularly maintained and subsystems that are exhibiting performance degradation are replaced.”
“So you never die either?”
He hesitated for a moment. “That’s not completely accurate,” the Eagle said. “Like all members of my group, I was created for a specific purpose. If there is no longer a need for me to exist and I cannot be readily programmed to ‘accomplish some new, necessary function, then I will be unpowered.”
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Nicole started to laugh but caught herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I know it’s not funny … but your choice of words struck me as peculiar. ‘Unpowered’ is such a—”
“It’s also the correct word,” the Eagle said. “Inside me are several tiny power sources, as well as a sophisticated power distribution system. All the power elements are essentially modular and therefore transferable from one of us to another. If I am no longer needed, the elements can be removed and used in another being.”
“Like an organ transplant,” Nicole said, finishing her water.
“Somewhat,” the Eagle replied. “Which brings me to another issue. . . . During your long sleep, your heart actually stopped beating twice, the second time just after we arrived here in the Tau Ceti system. We have managed to keep you alive with drugs and mechanical stimulation, but your heart is now extremely weak. If you want to have an active life for any appreciable additional period, you will need to consider replacing your heart.”
“Is that why you left me in there”—Nicole pointed at the container—”for so long?” she asked.
“Partially,” said the Eagle. He had already explained to Nicole that most of the others from Rama had awakened much earlier, some as long as a year ago, and that they were living in crowded conditions in another venue not very far away. “But we were also concerned about how comfortable you might be over in the converted starfish. We refurbished that spacecraft in a hurry, so there are not many amenities. We were also concerned because you are by far our oldest human survivor.”