8
“It was a bittersweet visit with Patrick,” Simone said, putting down her coffee cup. “He was here for over two hours, but it seemed like only a few minutes.”
The three of them were sitting at a table that looked out on the rolling farmland that surrounded the house. Nicole was temporarily staring out the window at the bucolic scene. “It’s mostly an illusion, of course,” Michael said. “But a very good one. Unless you knew better, you would think you were in Massachusetts or southern Vermont.”
“This whole dinner has seemed like a dream,” Nicole said. “I have not yet accepted that any of this is really happening.”
“We felt that way last night,” Simone said, “when we were told that we were going to see Patrick this morning. Neither Michael nor I slept a wink.” She laughed. “At one point during the night we had convinced ourselves mat we were going to meet a ‘fake’ Patrick, and we thought of questions we could ask that nobody except the real Patrick could answer.”
“Their technological skills are awesome,” Michael said. “If they wanted to create a robot Patrick and pass him off as the genuine article, it would be very difficult for us to ascertain the truth.”
“But they didn’t,” Simone said. “I knew within minutes that it was really Patrick.”
“How did he seem to you?” Nicole asked. “In all the (confusion of the last day, I didn’t have a chance to talk to him very much.”
“Resigned, mostly,” Simone said, “but certain that he had made the correct decision. He said it would probably be weeks before he had sorted through all the emotions he had experienced in the last twenty-four hours.”
“That must be true for all of us,” Nicole said.
There was a brief silence at the table. “Are you tired, Mother?” Simone asked. “Patrick told us about your health problems, and when we received the message this afternoon that you had been delayed…”
“Yes, I’m a little tired,” Nicole said. “But I certainly couldn’t sleep. At least not immediately.” She backed her wheelchair away from the table and lowered her seat. “I would, however, like to use the powder room.”
“Certainly,” Simone said, jumping up. “I’ll come with you.”
Simone accompanied her mother down a long hall with a simulated wooden floor. “So you have six children living with you here,” Nicole said, “including three that you carried?”
“That’s right,” Simone said. “Michael and I had two boys and two girls by the ‘natural method,’ as you called it. The first of the boys, Darren, died when he was seven. It’s a long story. If we have time, I’ll tell it to you tomorrow. All the rest of the children were developed from embryos in the laboratories.”
They had reached the door to the powder room. “Do you know how many children the Eagle and his colleagues have developed from your eggs?” Nicole asked.
“No,” Simone answered. “But they did tell me that they took more than a thousand healthy eggs from my ovaries.”
On the way back to the dining room, Simone explained that all the children who had been born by the “natural method” had lived their whole lives with Michael and her. Their spouses, who were of course also the product of Michael’s sperm and her eggs, had been selected as the result of a comprehensive genetic matching technique developed by the aliens.
“So these were arranged marriages?” Nicole asked.
“Not exactly,” Simone said. She laughed. “Each natural child was introduced to several possible mates, all of whom had passed the genetic screening.”
“And you’ve had no problems with your grandchildren?”
“Nothing that is ‘statistically significant,’ to use Michael’s term,” Simone replied.
When they reached the dining room, the table was empty. Michael told them that he had moved the coffeepot and cups into the study. Nicole activated her wheelchair controls and followed them into a large, masculine study with dark wood bookshelves, and a fire burning in the fireplace.
“Is the fire real?” Nicole asked.
“Indeed it is,” Michael said. He leaned forward in his soft chair. “You have been asking about the children,” he said, “and we certainly want you to meet them, but we didn’t want to overwhelm you.”
“I understand,” Nicole said, taking a sip from a fresh cup of coffee, “and I agree with you. You certainly could not have had such a leisurely, informative dinner if there had been six more people.”
“And don’t forget the fourteen grandchildren,” Simone said.
Nicole looked at Michael and smiled. “I’m sorry, Michael,” she said, “but you are the part of this evening that is the most unreal. Whenever I look at you, my mind balks. You must be forty years older than I am, but you look not a day over sixty, and definitely younger than when we left you at the Node. How is this possible?”
“Their technology is absolute magic,” he said. “They have reworked virtually every part of me. My heart, lungs, liver, entire digestive and excretory systems, and most of my endocrine glands have all been replaced, some several times, by smaller, more efficient functional equivalents. My bones, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels are all buttressed by millions of microscopic implants that not only ensure the critical functions are accomplished, but also, in many cases, biochemically rejuvenate the aged cells. My skin is a special material they only recently perfected, which has all the good properties of real human skin but never ages or develops warts or moles. Once a year I go over to their hospital. I’m unconscious for two days, and when I emerge I am literally a new man.”
“Would you mind coming over here,” Nicole said, “and letting me touch you?” She laughed. “I don’t need to put my fingers through the holes in your hands, or anything like that, but you can certainly understand that what you are telling me is difficult to believe.”
Michael O’Toole crossed the room and knelt beside the wheelchair. Nicole reached out and touched the skin on his face. It was smooth and supple, like a young man’s. His eyes were fresh and clear. “And your brain, Michael,” Nicole asked softly. “What have they done to your brain?”
He smiled. Nicole noticed that there were no wrinkles in his forehead. “Many things,” he said. “When my memory started to slip, they reconditioned my hippocampus. They even supplemented it with a small structure of their own-to give me more capacity, they said. About twenty years ago they also installed what they described as a ‘better operating system,’ to sharpen my thinking processes.”
Michael was less than a meter away from her. The light from the fire reflected off his face. Nicole was suddenly swept away by a flood of memories. She recalled what close friends they had been in Rama, as well as their moments of intimacy when Richard had been gone and presumed lost. She touched his face again. “And are you still Michael O’Toole?” she asked. “Or have you become something else, part human and part alien?”
He stood up without saying anything and walked back to his chair. He moved like an athlete, not like a man who was more than one hundred and twenty years old. “I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said. “I can remember clearly all the details of my childhood in Boston, and every other important phase of my life. As far as I know, I am still more or less the same.”
“Michael is still extremely interested in religion and creation as well,” Simone added. “But he has changed some-all of us are altered by our experiences in life.”
“I have remained a devout Roman Catholic,” Michael said, “and I still say my daily prayers. But naturally my view of God, and of humanity too, has been drastically changed by what Simone and I have seen. If anything, my faith has strengthened… primarily because of my enlightening conversations with…”
He stopped and glanced across the room at Simone. “In the early years, Mother,” she said, “when Michael and I were alone at the Node, near Sirius, there were many difficulties. We had only each other to talk with. I was still just a girl, and Michael was a mature man. I could not discuss physics or religion or many of his other favorite topics.”
“There were no major problems, you understand,” Michael said. “Still, we were both lonely, in a peculiar sort of way. What we had together was remarkable and enriching… But we both needed something else, something additional.
“The Nodal Intelligence, or whatever we should call the power that was taking care of us, sensed our difficulty. It also recognized that the Eagle could not fulfill our individual needs. So a companion-like the Eagle, in a
