we’re free and can make our own decisions.”
“Wakefield,” Max Puckett shouted from the back of the line. “What would happen if we didn’t move out of the way of one of those centipede biots?”
“I don’t know for sure, Max,” Richard replied. “But it would probably go over or around you just as if you were an inanimate object.”
It was Nicole’s turn to be the tour guide when they arrived at the lair. She personally showed each person his or her quarters. There was one room for Max and Eponine, another for Ellie and Robert, and a room divided by a partition for Patrick and Nai. The large nursery had been subdivided to provide space and privacy for Benjy, the three children, and the two avians. Richard and Nicole had also decided to use the small area adjacent to their bedroom as a common dining room for the entire group.
While the adults unpacked the meager belongings they had loaded into backpacks, the children had their first experience with Tammy and Timmy. The avians did not know what to make of the little humans, especially Galileo, who insisted on pulling or tweaking anything he could touch. After about an hour of such treatment, Timmy scratched Galileo lightly with one of his talons as a warning, and the boy raised an incredible din.
“I just don’t understand it,” Richard said to Nai in apology. “The avians are really very gentle creatures.”
“I do understand,” Nai replied. “Galileo was almost certainly up to some mischief.” She sighed. “It’s amazing, you know. You raise two children exactly the same way, and they turn out so differently. Kepler is so good he’s almost an angel-I can hardly teach him to defend himself. And Galileo pays almost no attention to anything I tell him.”
When everyone had finished unpacking, Nicole completed the tour, including the two bathrooms, the corridors, the suspension tanks where the family had stayed during the period of high acceleration between the Earth and the Node, and finally the White Room, with the black screen and keyboard, which was also Richard and Nicole’s bedroom. Richard demonstrated how the black screen worked by requesting, and receiving about an hour later, some new and simple toys for the children. He also gave Robert and Max each a copy of a short command dictionary that would allow them to use the keyboard.
The children were all asleep soon after dinner. The adults gathered in the White Room. Max asked questions about the octospiders. In the course of describing their adventures behind the black screen, Nicole mentioned her heart irregularities. Robert insisted on examining her right away.
Ellie helped Robert with the examination. Robert had
brought as much practical medical equipment as he could fit in his backpack, including all the miniaturized instruments and monitors necessary to do a full electrocardiogram, or EKG. The results were not good, but not as bad as Nicole had privately feared. Before bedtime Robert informed the rest of the family that the years had definitely taken their toll on Nicole’s heart, but that he didn’t think she would require surgery in the immediate future. Robert advised Nicole to take it easy, even though he knew that his mother-in-law would probably ignore his prescription.
When everyone was asleep, Richard and Nicole moved the furniture to make room for their mats. They lay side by side, holding hands. “Are you happy?” Richard asked.
“Yes,” Nicole answered, “very. It’s really wonderful to have all the children here.” She leaned over and gave Richard a kiss. “I am also exhausted, husband of mine, but Fm not about to go to sleep without first thanking you for arranging all of this.”
“They’re my children too, you know,” he said.
“Yes, darling,” Nicole said, lying down on her back again. “But I know that you would never have done all this if it weren’t for me. You would have been content to stay here with the hatchlings, all your gadgets, and the extraterrestrial mysteries.”
“Maybe,” Richard said. “But I also am delighted to have everyone in our lair… By the way, did you have a chance to talk to Patrick about Katie?”
“Only briefly,” Nicole replied. She sighed. “I could tell from his eyes that he is still very worried about her.”
“Aren’t we all?” Richard said softly. They lay in silence for a couple of minutes before Richard propped himself up on an elbow. “I want you to know,” he said, “that I think our granddaughter is absolutely precious.”
“So do I,” Nicole replied with a laugh, “but there’s not a chance that we could be considered unbiased on the subject.”
“Hey, does having Nikki with us mean that I can no longer call you Nikki, not even at special moments?”
Nicole turned her head to look at Richard. He was grinning. She had seen that particular expression on his face many times before. “Go to sleep,” Nicole said with another short laugh. “I’m too emotionally exhausted for anything else tonight.”
In the beginning time passed very quickly. There was so much to do, so much fascinating territory to explore. Even though it was perpetually dark in the mysterious city above them, the family made regular excursions into New York. Virtually every place on the island had a special story that Richard or Nicole could tell. “It was here,” Nicole said one afternoon, shining her flashlight at the huge lattice that hung suspended between two skyscrapers like a spider web, “that I rescued the trapped avian, who subsequently invited me into its lair.”
“Down there,” she said on another occasion, when they were in the large barn with its peculiar pits and spheres, “I was trapped for many days and thought I was going to die.”
The extended family developed a set of rules to keep the children from getting into trouble. The rules were not needed for little Nikki, who hardly ever wandered far from her mother and doting grandfather, but the boys Kepler and Galileo were difficult to constrain. The Watanabe twins seemed to possess infinite energy. Once they were found bouncing on the hammocks in the suspension tanks, as if the hammocks were trampolines. Another time Galileo and Kepler “borrowed” the family flashlights and went topside, without adult supervision, to explore New York. It was ten nervous hours before the boys were located in the maze of alleys and streets on the far side of the island.
The avians practiced flying almost every day. The children delighted in accompanying their birdlike friends to the plazas, where there was more room for Tammy and Timmy to display their developing skills. Richard always took Nikki to watch the avians fly. In fact, he took his granddaughter with him everywhere he went. From time to time Nikki would walk, but mostly Richard carried her in a comfortable papoose like contraption that he affixed to his back. The unlikely pair were inseparable. Richard became
Nikki’s main teacher as well. Very early he announced to everyone that his granddaughter was a mathematical genius.
At night he would regale Nicole with Nikki’s latest exploits. “Do you know what she did today?” he would say, usually when he and Nicole were alone in bed.
“No, dear,” was Nicole’s standard reply; she knew very well that neither she nor Richard would sleep until he told her.
“I asked her how many black balls she would have if she already had three and I gave her two more.” Here there was a dramatic pause. “And do you know what she answered?” Another dramatic pause. “Five! She said five. And this little girl just had her second birthday last week.”
Nicole was thrilled by Richard’s interest in Nikki. For both the little girl and the aging man, it was a perfect match. As a parent, Richard had never been able to overcome both his own repressed emotional problems and his acute sense of responsibility, so this was the first time in his life that he had experienced the joy of truly innocent love. Nikki’s father, Robert, on the other hand, was a great doctor, but he was not a very warm person and he did not fully appreciate the purposeless time periods that parents must spend with their children.
Patrick and Nicole had several long talks about Katie, all of which left Nicole feeling extremely depressed. Patrick did not hide from his mother the fact that Katie was deeply involved in all of Nakamura’s machinations, that she drank often and too much, and that she had been sexually promiscuous. He did not tell Nicole that Katie was managing Nakamura’s prostitution business, or that he suspected his sister had become a drug addict.
10
