Benjy grinned sheepishly. “I didn’t think the plan through very well, Mama,” he said. “I should have adjusted the water first.”
He turned around, set Nicole back down on her mat, and crossed me room to the shower. Nicole heard the water running.
“You like it medium hot, don’t you?” he called out.
“That’s right,” Nicole answered.
Benjy returned and picked her up a few seconds later. “I put two towels down on the floor,” he said, “so it wouldn’t be too hard or too cold for you.”
“Thank you, son,” Nicole said.
Benjy talked to her while Nicole sat on the towels on the floor of the shower and let the refreshing water pour over her body. He brought her soap and shampoo when she requested them. When she was finished, Benjy helped his mother dry off and dress. Then he carried her over to her wheelchair. -
“Bend down here, please,” Nicole said as she settled into her chair. She kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his hand. “Thank you for everything, Benjy,” she said, unable to stop the tears that were forming in her eyes. “You have been a marvelous help.”
Benjy stood beside his mother, beaming. “I love you, Mama,” he said. “It makes me happy to help you.”
“And I love you too, son,” Nicole said, squeezing his hand again. “Now, are you going to join me for breakfast?” “That was my plan,” said Benjy, still smiling.
Before they were finished eating, the Eagle walked up to Nicole and Benjy in the cafeteria. “Dr. Blue and F will be waiting for you in your room,” the Eagle said. “We want to give you a thorough physical examination.”
Sophisticated medical equipment had already been set up in the apartment when Nicole and Benjy returned. Dr. Blue injected additional microprobes directly into Nicole’s chest and later sent another set of probes into her kidney region. The Eagle and Dr. Blue conversed in the octospider’s native color language throughout the half-hour examination. Benjy assisted his mother when she was asked to stand or move around. He was completely fascinated by the Eagle’s ability to speak in color.
“How did you learn to do that?” Benjy asked the Eagle at one point in the examination.
“Technically speaking,” the Eagle replied, “I didn’t learn anything. My designers added a pair of specialized subsystems to my structure, one that would allow me to interpret the octospider colors and the other to make the color patterns on my forehead.”
“Didn’t you have to go to school or anything?” Benjy persisted.
“No,” the Eagle said simply.
“Could your designers do that for me?” Benjy asked several seconds later, when the Eagle and Dr. Blue had resumed their discussion of Nicole’s condition.
The Eagle turned around and looked at Benjy. “I’m a very slow learner,” Benjy said. “It would be wonderful if someone could just put everything into my brain.”
“We don’t quite know how to do that yet,” the Eagle said.
When the examination was over, the Eagle asked Benjy to pack all of Nicole’s things. “Where are we going?” Nicole asked.
“We’re going for a ride in the shuttle,” the Eagle said. “I want to discuss your physical condition with you in some detail and take you where any emergency could be quickly handled.”
“I thought the blue liquid and all those probes inside me were enough—”
“We’ll talk about it later,” the Eagle said, interrupting her. He took Nicole’s bag from Benjy. “Thank you for all your help,” the alien said.
“Let me make certain that I have understood this last half hour of discussion,” Nicole said into the microphone of her helmet as the shuttle neared the halfway point between the starfish and the Node. “My heart will not last more than ten days at most, despite all your medical magic; my kidneys are currently undergoing terminal failure; and my liver is showing signs of severe degradation. Is that a fair summary?”
“It is indeed,” said the Eagle.
Nicole forced a smile. “Is there any good news?”
“Your mind is still functioning admirably, and the bruise on your hip will eventually heal, provided the other ailments don’t kill you first.”
“And what you are suggesting,” Nicole said, “is that I should check into your equivalent of a hospital today over at the Node and have my heart, kidneys, and liver all replaced by advanced machines that can perform the same functions?”
“There may be some other organs that need to be replaced as well,” the Eagle said, “as long as we are performing a major operation. Your pancreas has been malfunctioning intermittently, and your entire sexual system is out of spec. A complete hysterectomy should be considered.”
Nicole was shaking her head. “At what point does all of this become senseless? No matter what you do now, it’s only a matter of time until some other organ fails. What would be next? My lungs? Or maybe my eyes? Would you even give me a brain transplant if I could no longer think?”
“We could,” the Eagle replied.
Nicole was quiet for almost a minute. “It may not make much sense to you,” she said, “because it certainly isn’t what I would call logical… but I am not very comfortable with the idea of becoming a hybrid being.”
“What do you mean?” the Eagle asked.
“At what point do I stop being Nicole des Jardins Wakefield?” she said. “If my heart, brain, eyes, and ears are replaced by machines, am I still Nicole? Or am I someone, or something, else?”
“The question has no relevance,” the Eagle said. “You’re a doctor, Nicole. Consider the case of a schizophrenic who must take drugs regularly to alter the functions of the brain. Is that person still who he or she was? It’s the same philosophical question, just a different degree of change.”
“I can see your point,” Nicole said after another brief silence. “But it doesn’t change my feelings. I’m sorry. If I have a choice, and you have led me to believe that I do, then I will decline. At least for today anyway.”
The Eagle stared at Nicole for several seconds. Then he entered a different set of parameters into the control system of the shuttle. The vehicle changed its heading.
“So are we going back to the starfish?” Nicole asked.
“Not immediately,” the Eagle said. “I want to show you something else first.” The alien reached into the pouch around his waist and pulled out a small tube containing a blue liquid and an unknown device. “Please give me your arm. I don’t want you to die before this afternoon is over.”
As they approached the Habitation Module of the Node, Nicole complained to the Eagle about the “less than forthright” way the dividing of the starfish residents into two groups had been handled. “As usual,” Nicole said, “you cannot be accused of telling a lie-just of withholding critical information.”
“Sometimes,” the Eagle said, “there are no good ways for us to complete a task. In those cases we choose the least unsatisfactory course of action. What did you expect us to do? Tell the residents in the beginning that we couldn’t take care of everyone forever, generation after generation? There would have been chaos. Besides, I don’t think you give us enough credit. We rescued thousands of beings from Rama, most of whom probably would have died in an interspecies conflict without our intervention. Remember that everyone, including those assigned to the Carrier, will be allowed to complete his or her life.”
Nicole was silent. She was trying to imagine what life on the Carrier would be like without any reproduction. Her mind carried the scenario into its likely distant future, when there would be only a few individuals left. “I wouldn’t want to be the last human left alive in the Carrier,” she said.
“There was a species in this part of the galaxy about three million years ago,” the Eagle said, “that flourished as a spacefarer for almost a million years. They were brilliant engineers and built some of the most amazing buildings ever seen. Their sphere of influence spread rapidly until they dominated a region covering more than twenty star systems. This species was learned, compassionate, and wise. But they made one fatal error.”
“What was that?” Nicole asked on cue.
“Their equivalent to your genome contained an order of magnitude more information than yours. It had been the result of four billion years of natural evolution and was extremely complicated. Their initial experiments with genetic engineering, both on other species and on themselves, were an unqualified success. They thought
