There was a strange silence for several seconds. “Have you and Ellie been prisoners here?” Richard then asked in a low voice. “And have you figured out why they kidnapped you?”
“No, not exactly,” Eponine replied. She stood up in the small room. “Ellie,” she shouted, “are you out there? Your father is asking questions…”
“Just a minute,” they all heard Ellie yell. A few moments later she returned to the room with the octospider Archie behind her. Ellie read the look on her father’s face. “Archie is all right,” Ellie said. “And we agreed that when we told you everything, he could be here… to explain and clarify and maybe answer questions that we can’t.”
The octospider sat down among the humans and there was another temporary silence. “Why do I have the feeling that this entire scene has been rehearsed?” Richard asked at length.
A worried Nicole leaned forward and took her daughter’s hand. ‘There’s not any bad news, is there, Ellie? You did tell us that you would be coming back with us.”
“No, Mother,” Ellie said. “There are just a few things that Eponine and I want to tell you… Ep, why don’t you go first?”
Bands of color were streaming around Archie’s head as the octospider, who had obviously been following the conversation closely, changed his position to be more directly opposite Eponine. Ellie watched the bands carefully.
“What is he-or it-saying?” Nicole asked. She was still stunned by her daughter’s proficiency with the alien language.
“‘It’ would be strictly proper, I guess,” Ellie said with a short laugh. “At least that’s what Archie told me when I explained pronouns. But Ep and I have been using ‘he’ and ‘him’ when we refer to both Archie and Dr. Blue… Anyway, Archie wants us to inform you that both Eponine and I have been cared for very well, that we have not suffered in any way, and that we were only kidnapped by the octospiders because they had not been able to figure out how to establish a non-hostile and communicative interaction with us—”
“Kidnapping is not exactly the proper way to begin,” Richard interrupted.
“I have explained all that to Archie and the others, Daddy,” Ellie continued, “which is why he wants me to set the record straight now. They have treated us magnificently, and I have seen no indication that their species is even capable of hostile acts.”
“All right,” Richard said, “your mother and I understand the gist of this preamble.”
They were delayed momentarily by some comments in color from Archie. After Ellie explained to the octospider the meanings of “gist” and “preamble,” she looked across at her parents. “Their intelligence is really staggering,” Ellie said. “Archie has never asked me the meaning of any word more than once.”
“When I arrived here,” Eponine began, “Ellie was just beginning to understand the octospider language. At first everything was terribly confusing. But after a few days Ellie and I understood why the octospiders had kidnapped me.”
“We talked about it an entire evening,” Ellie interjected. “We were both flabbergasted. We couldn’t figure out how they could possibly have known.”
“Known what?” Richard said. “I’m sorry, ladies, but I’m having trouble following.”
“They knew that I had RV-41,” Eponine said. “And both Archie and Dr. Blue-he’s another octospider, a physician-we call him Dr. Blue because when he’s talking his cobalt blue band spills way outside the normal boundaries—”
“Wait a minute,” Nicole said now, shaking her head vigorously. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling us the octospiders knew that Eponine had the RV-41 virus. How can mat be possible?”
Archie went through a long color sequence that Ellie asked him to repeat. “He says that they have been monitoring all our activities very closely ever since we left New Eden. The octos deduced from our actions, he says, that Eponine had an incurable disease of some kind.”
Richard began to pace. “That is one of the most amazing statements that I have ever heard,” he said with passion. He turned toward the wall, temporarily lost in his thoughts. Archie reminded Ellie that he could not understand anything unless Richard was facing him. At length Richard spun around. “How could they possibly… Look, Ellie, aren’t the octospiders deaf?”
When Ellie nodded affirmatively, Richard and Nicole learned their first little bit of the octospider language. Archie flashed a broad crimson band-indicating the following sentence would be declarative-followed by a magnificent aquamarine.
“Well, if they’re deaf,” Richard exclaimed, “how in the world could they have figured out that you had RV-41, unless they are masters of mind reading, or have a record of every… No, even then it’s not possible.”
He sat back down. There was another period of silence.
“Should I continue?” Eponine asked eventually. Richard nodded.
“As I was saying, Dr. Blue and Archie explained to Ellie and me that they were really very advanced in biology and medicine… and if we would try to cooperate with them, they would see if perhaps they had techniques that could cure me-assuming, of course, that I would be willing to submit to all the procedures.”
“When we asked them why they wanted to cure Eponine,” Ellie said, “Dr. Blue told us that the octospiders were trying to make a grand gesture of friendship, something that would pave the way for harmonious interactions between our two species.”
Richard and Nicole were both absolutely astounded by what they were hearing. They looked at each other in disbelief as Ellie continued.
“Because I was still a beginner at the language,” Ellie said, “it was very difficult to communicate what we knew about RV-41. Eventually, after many long, intense language sessions, we were able to tell the octospiders what we knew.”
“Both Ellie and I tried to remember everything Robert had ever said about the disease. All along, Dr. Blue, Archie, and a couple of the other octospiders were around us. They never took a single note that we could see. But we never, ever told them the same information twice.”
“In fact,” Ellie added, “whenever we inadvertently repeated ourselves, they reminded us that we had told them that before.”
“About three weeks ago,” Eponine continued, “the octospiders informed us that their information-gathering process was over and that they were now ready to subject me to some tests. They explained that the tests might be painful at times and were extraordinary by human standards.”
“Most of the tests,” Ellie said, “involved inserting living creatures, some microscopic and some that Eponine could actually see, into her body-either by injection—”
“Or by allowing the creatures to enter through my, uh, I guess the best word would be orifices.”
Archie interrupted here and asked for the meanings of “inadvertently” and “orifices.” While Ellie was explaining, Nicole leaned over to Richard. “Sound familiar?” she asked.
Richard nodded. “But I never had any kind of interaction, at least not that I can remember… I was isolated.”
“I have experienced some weird feelings in my life,” Eponine was saying, “but nothing quite like I felt the day five or six tiny worms, no bigger than a pin, crawled into the lower part of my body.” She shivered. “I told myself that if I survived the days of having my insides invaded, I would never again complain about any physical discomfort.”
“Did you believe that the octospiders were going to be able to cure you?” Nicole asked.
“Not at first,” Eponine replied. “But as the days passed, I began to think that it was possible. I certainly could see that they possessed medical capabilities altogether different from ours. And I had the feeling they were making progress.
“Then one day, after the testing was over, Ellie showed up in my room-throughout this time I was kept somewhere else in the city, probably in their equivalent of a hospital-and told me that the octospiders had isolated the RV-41 virus and understood how it operated on its host, namely, me. They had Ellie tell me then that they were going to insert a ‘biological agent’ into my system which would seek out the RV-41 virus and destroy it completely. The agent would not be able to reduce the damage already done by the virus, which they assured me through Ellie was not that severe, but it would absolutely cleanse my system of RV-41.”
“I was told to explain to Eponine also,” Ellie said, “that there could be some side effects from the agent. They didn’t know exactly what to expect, for of course they had never used the agent in humans before, but their
