The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 4
Mother, Father, wake up. I want to talk to you."

Nicole had been dreaming. She had been walking in the woods behind her family villa at Beauvois. It had been springtime and the flowers had been magnificent. It took her a few seconds to realize that Simone was sitting on their bed.

Richard reached over and kissed his daughter on the forehead. "What is it, dear?" he asked.

"Uncle Michael and I were saying our matins together and I could tell that he was distressed." Simone's serene eyes moved slowly back and forth from one parent to the other. "He told me everything about your conversation yesterday with the Eagle."

Nicole sat up quickly as Simone continued. "I've had over an hour now to mink carefully about everything. I know I'm only a thirteen-year-old girl, but I believe I have a solution to this, uh, allocation issue that will make everybody in the family happy."

"My dear Simone," Nicole replied, reaching out for her daughter, "it's not your responsibility to solve - "

"No, Mother," Simone gently interrupted. "Please hear me out. My solution involves something that none of you adults would ever even consider. It could only come from me. And it's obviously the best plan for everyone concerned."

Richard's brow was now furrowed. "What are you talking about?" he said.

Simone took a deep breath, "I want to stay at the Node with Uncle Michael. I will become his wife and we will be the Eagle's 'reproductive pair.' Nobody else needs to stay, but Michael and I would be happy to keep Benjy with us as well."

"Whaat?" Richard shouted. He was flabbergasted. "Uncle Michael is seventy-two years old! You're not even fourteen yet. It's preposterous, ridiculous - " He was suddenly silent.

The mature young woman who was his daughter smiled. "More preposterous than the Eagle?" she replied. "More ridiculous than the fact that we have traveled eight light-years from the Earth to rendezvous with a giant intelligent triangle that is now going to send some of us back in the opposite direction?"

Nicole regarded Simone with awe and admiration. She said nothing, but reached out and gave her daughter a strong hug. Tears swam in Nicole's eyes. "It's all right, Mother," Simone said after the embrace was ended. "After you recover from the initial shock, you'll realize that what I'm suggesting is by far the best solution. Ifc you and Father make the return trip together - as I think you should - then either Katie or Elite or I must stay here at the Node and mate with Patrick or Benjy or Uncle Michael. The only combination that is genetically sound is either Katie or I with Uncle Michael. I've thought through all the possibilities. Michael and I are very close. We have the same religion. If we stay and marry, then each of the other children is free to choose. They can either remain here with us or return to the solar system with you and Daddy."

Simone put her hand on her father's forearm. "Daddy, I know that in many ways this will be harder on you than it is on Mother. I have not yet mentioned my idea to Uncle Michael. He certainly did not suggest it. If you and Mother don't give me your support, then it can't work. This marriage will be difficult enough for Michael to accept even if you don't object."

Richard shook his head. "You are amazing, Simone." He embraced her. "Please let us think about it for a while. Promise me you won't say another word about this until your mother and I have had a chance to talk."

"I promise," Simone said. "Thank you both very much. I love you," she added at the door to their bedroom.

She turned and walked down the illuminated hall. Her long black hair reached almost to her waist. You have become a woman, Nicole thought, watching Simone's graceful walk. And not just physically. You are mature way beyond your years. Nicole imagined Michael and Simone as husband and wife and was surprised that she didn't find it at all objectionable. Considering everything, Nicole said to herself, realizing that after his protests Michael O'Toole would be very happy, your idea may be the least unsatisfactory choice in our difficult situation.

Simone did not waver from her intention even when Michael objected strenuously to what he called her "proposed martyrdom." She explained to him, patiently, that her marriage to him was the only one possible since Katie and he were, by everyone's assessment, incompatible personalities, and anyway Katie was still only a girl, a year or eighteen months away from sexual maturity. Would he prefer that she marry one of her half brothers and commit incest? No, no, he responded.

Michael assented when he saw that there were no other viable choices and that neither Richard nor Nicole raised any strong objections to the marriage. Richard, of course, tempered his approval with the phrase "in these unusual circumstances," but Michael could tell that Simone's father had at least partially accepted the idea of his thirteen-year-old daughter marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather.

Within a week it had been decided, with the children's involvement, that Katie, Patrick, and little Ellie would all make the return trip on Rama with Richard and Nicole. Patrick was reluctant to leave his father, but Michael O'Toole graciously agreed that his six-year-old son would probably have a "more interesting and fulfilling" life if he stayed with the rest of the family. That left only Benjy. The adorable boy, chronologically eight but mentally equivalent to an average three-year-old, was told that he would be welcome either in Rama or at the Node. He could barely comprehend what was going to happen to the family, and was certainly not prepared to make such a momentous choice. The decision frightened and confused him; he became quite distraught and lapsed into a deep depression. As a result, the family postponed discussions of Benjy's fate until an undefined time in the future.

"We will be gone a day and a half, maybe two," the Eagle said to Michael and the children. "Rama is being reconditioned at a facility about ten thousand kilometers from here."

"But I want to go too," Katie said petulantly. "I also have some good ideas for the Earth module."

"We'll involve you in later phases of the process," Richard assured Katie. "We'll have a design center right here beside us, in the conference room."

Eventually Richard and Nicole finished their good-byes and joined the Eagle in the hallway. They put on their special suits and crossed over into the common area of the sector. Nicole could tell that Richard was excited. "You do love adventure, don't you, darling?" she said.

He nodded. "I think it was Goethe who said that everything a human being wants can be divided into four components - love, adventure, power, and fame. Our personalities are shaped by how much of each component we seek. For me, adventure has always been numero uno."

Nicole was contemplative as they entered a waiting car along with the Eagle. The lid closed over them and again they could not see anything during their ride to the transportation center. Adventure is very important to me also, Nicole thought. And as a young girl fame was my uppermost goal. She smiled to herself. But now it's definitely love... We would be boring if we never changed.

They traveled in a shuttle identical to the one that had brought them to the Node originally. The Eagle sat in front, Richard and Nicole in the rear. The view behind them of the spherical modules, the transportation corridors, and the entire lighted triangle was absolutely sensational.

The direction they were going was toward Sirius, the dominant feature in the space surrounding the Node. The large, young white star glowed in the distance, appearing roughly the same size as their native Sun would look from the asteroid belt.

"How did you happen to pick this location for the Node?" Richard asked the Eagle after they had been cruising for about an hour.

"What do you mean?" he replied.

"Why here, why in the Sirius system, instead of some other place?"

The Eagle laughed. "This location is only temporary," he said. "We'll be moving again as soon as Rama departs."

Richard was puzzled. "You mean the entire Node moves!" He turned around and glanced back at the triangle glowing faintly in the distance. "Where is the propulsion system?"

"There are small propulsion capabilities in each of the modules, but they are only used in case of an emergency. Transport between temporary holding sites is accomplished by what you would call tugs - they affix themselves to ports on the sides of the spheres and provide virtually all the trajectory change velocity."

Nicole thought about Michael and Simone and became worried. "Where will the Node go?" she asked.

"It's probably not specified exactly yet" the Eagle answered vaguely. "It's always a stochastic function anyway, depending on how the various activities are proceeding." He continued after a short silence. "When our work in a specific place is finished, the entire configuration - Node, Hangar, and Way Station - are moved to another region of interest."

Richard and Nicole stared silently at each other in the backseat. They were having difficulty grasping the magnitude of what the Eagle was telling them. The entire Node moved! It was too much to believe. Richard decided to change the subject.

"What is your definition of a spacefaring species?" he asked the Eagle.

"One that has ventured, either on its own or through its robot surrogates, outside the sensible atmosphere of its home planet. If its own planet has no atmosphere, or if the species has no home planet at all, then the definition is more complicated."

"You mean there are intelligent creatures that have evolved in a vacuum? How can that be possible?"

"You're an atmospheric chauvinist," the Eagle replied. "Like all creatures, you limit the ways that life might express itself to environments similar to your own."

"How many spacefaring species are there in our galaxy?" Richard asked a little later.

"That's one of the objectives of our project - to answer that question exactly. Remember, there are more man a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way. Slightly more than a quarter of them have planetary systems surrounding them. If only one out of every million stars with planets was home to a spacefaring species, then there would still be twenty-five thousand spacefarers in our galaxy alone."

The Eagle turned around and looked at Richard and Nicole. "The estimated number of spacefarers in the galaxy, as well as the spacefarer density in any specified zone, is Level III information. But I can tell you one thing. There are Life Dense Zones in the galaxy where the average number of spacefarers is greater than one per thousand stars."

Richard whistled. "This is staggering stuff," he said to Nicole excitedly. "It means that the local evolutionary miracle that produced us is a common paradigm in the universe. We are unique, to be sure, for nowhere else would the process that produced us have been duplicated exactly. But the characteristic that is truly special about our species - namely our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme - that capability must belong to thousands of creatures! For without that ability they could not have become spacefarers."

Nicole was overwhelmed. She recalled a similar moment, years before when she was with Richard in the photograph room of the octospider lair in Rama, when she had struggled to grasp the immensity of the universe in terms of total information content. Again now she realized that the entire set of knowledge in the human domain, everything that any member of the human species had ever learned or experienced, was no more than a single grain of sand on the great beach representing everything that had ever been known by all the sentient creatures of the universe.