“Everyone else is going to accept the invitation,” Ellie had replied, not even attempting to hide her tears. “Please come with us, Robert. They are a very gentle, very moral species.”
“They have brainwashed all of you,” Robert had said. “Somehow they have seduced you into believing that they are even better than your own kind.” Robert had then looked at Ellie with disgust. “Your own kind,” he had repeated. “What a joke. Why, I guess you’re as much an octospider as you are a human.”
“That’s not true, darling,” Ellie had said. “I’ve told you several times that only very small changes were made. I’m as human as you are.”
“Why, why, why?” Robert had suddenly shouted. “Why did I let you talk me into coming to New York in the first place? I should have stayed behind, where I was surrounded by things I understood.”
Despite her pleas, Robert had been adamant He was not going to the Emerald City. He had even seemed strangely pleased that his short-term memory would be blocked by the octospiders. “Perhaps,” he had said, laughing harshly, “I will have no memory at all of your return. I will not recall that my wife and daughter are both hybrids and that my closest friends have no respect for my professional abilities. Yes,” he had continued, “I will be able to forget this nightmare of the last few weeks and remember only that you were stolen away from me, as my first wife was, while I still loved you desperately.”
Robert had stalked around the room in anger. Ellie had tried to soothe and comfort him. “No, no,” he had shouted, recoiling from her touch. “It’s too late. There is too much pain. I can’t stand any more.”
In the early hours of the evening Ellie had sought counsel from her mother. Nicole had not been able to provide Ellie with any relief. Nicole had agreed that Ellie should not give up, but had cautioned her daughter that nothing in Robert’s behavior suggested that he might change his mind.
At Nicole’s suggestion, Ellie approached Archie and asked a favor of the octospider. If Robert insisted on not going with them, Ellie entreated, would it be possible for Archie, or one of the other octospiders, to take Robert back to the lair, where he would be found quickly by the other humans? Archie had reluctantly agreed.
I love you, Robert, Ellie said to herself as she finally stood up. And Nikki does too. We want you to come with us, for you are my husband and her father. Ellie took a deep breath and entered her bedroom.
Even Richard had tears in his eyes as a mumbling Robert Turner, after exchanging a final hug with his wife and daughter, walked off haltingly behind Archie toward the subway only twenty meters away. Nikki was crying softly, but the girl couldn’t have realized fully what was occurring. She was still too young.
Robert turned, waved slightly, and entered the train. In a few seconds it accelerated into the tunnel. Less than a minute later the somber mood was broken by cries of joy from the landing above them.
“All right, down there,” Max shouted, “you’d better be ready for a big party.”
Nicole looked up under the dome, and even at that distance, in the dim light, she could see the radiant smiles of the newlyweds. And so it is, she thought, her heart still heavy from her daughter’s loss. Sorrow and joy. Joy and sorrow. Wherever there are humans. On Earth. In new worlds beyond the stars. Now and forever.
THE EMERALD CITY
1
The small driverless transport stopped at a circular plaza from which streets extended in five directions. A dark woman with gray hair and her octospider companion descended together from the car, leaving it empty. As the octospider and the human walked slowly away from the plaza, the transport departed with its interior lights now extinguished.
A solitary giant firefly preceded Nicole and Dr. Blue as they continued their conversation in the near darkness. Nicole was careful to exaggerate each word so that her alien friend would have no difficulty reading her lips. Dr. Blue replied in broad swaths of color, using simple sentences that he knew Nicole understood.
When they reached the first of four cream-white, single-story dwellings at the end of the cul-de-sac, the octospider lifted one of his tentacles from the street and shook hands with Nicole. “Good night,” she replied with a wan smile. “It was quite a day… Thank you for everything.”
After Dr. Blue went inside his house, Nicole walked over to the decorative fountain forming an island in the center of the street and drank from one of the four spigots jetting forth a continuous stream of water at waist level. Some of the water that touched Nicole’s face fell back into the basin, causing a flurry of activity in the shallow pool. Even in the dim light Nicole could see the swimming creatures darting to and fro. The cleaners are everywhere, she thought, especially when we’re around. The water that touched my face will be purified 7n seconds.
She turned and approached the largest of the three remaining dwellings in the cul-de-sac. When Nicole crossed the threshold of her house, the outside firefly flew quickly down the street to the plaza. In the atrium, Nicole tapped the wall lightly one time, and in a few seconds a smaller firefly, barely glowing, appeared in the hallway in front of her. She stopped in one of the family’s two bathrooms and then paused at the doorway of Benjy’s room. He was snoring loudly. Nicole watched her son sleep for almost a full minute and then continued down the hallway to the master bedroom she shared with her husband.
Richard was also asleep. He did not respond to Nicole’s soft greeting. She took off her shoes and left the bedroom. When she reached the study, Nicole tapped on the wall twice more and the illumination increased. The study was cluttered with Richard’s electronic components, which he had had the octospiders gather for him over a period of several months. Nicole laughed to herself as she picked her way through the mess to her desk. He always has a project, she thought. At least the translator will be very useful.
Nicole sat in the chair at her desk and opened the middle drawer. She pulled out her portable computer, for which the octospiders had finally provided acceptable new power and storage subsystems. After calling up her journal from the menu, Nicole began typing on the keyboard, intermittently glancing at the small monitor to read what she was writing.
I have arrived at home very late and, as I expected, everyone is asleep. I was tempted to take off my clothes and snuggle into bed beside Richard, but this day has been so extraordinary that I feel compelled to write while my thoughts and feelings are still fresh in my mind.
I had breakfast, as always, with our entire human clan here about one hour after dawn. Nai talked about what the children were going to do in school before their long nap, Eponine reported that both her heartburn and morning sickness had abated, and Richard complained that the “biological wizards” (our octospider hosts, of course) were mediocre electrical engineers. I tried to participate in the conversation, but my growing anticipation and anxiety about this morning’s meetings with the octospider doctors kept occupying my thoughts.
My stomach was full of butterflies when I arrived at the conference room in the pyramid just after breakfast. Dr. Blue and his medical colleagues were prompt, and the octos launched immediately into a lengthy discussion of what they had learned from Benjy’s tests. Medical jargon is hard enough to understand in one’s own native language-it was nearly impossible for me at times to follow what they were saying with their colors. Often I had to ask them to repeat.
It did not take long for their answer to be apparent. Yes, the octospiders could definitely see, by comparison, where Benjy’s genome was different from everyone else’s. Yes, they agreed mat the specific string of genes on chromosome 14 was almost certainly the source of Whittingham’s syndrome. But no, they were sorry, they didn’t see any way-not even using something I interpreted as a gene transplant-that they could cure his problem. It was too complex, the octospiders said, involving too many amino acid chains, they had not had enough experience with human beings, there were too many chances that something might go terribly wrong…
I cried when I understood what they were telling me. Had I expected otherwise? Had I thought that somehow the same miraculous medical capability that had freed Eponine from the curse of the RV-41 virus might
