observational skills. No detail from one of his projects, no matter how small, goes unnoticed. Yet he misses obvious changes in people’s behavior. I remember once in New Eden when Katie started wearing low-cut dresses—”
Nicole stopped herself. It was still difficult for her to talk about Katie without becoming emotional.
“Kepler and Galileo have both noticed that Patrick is around every day,” Eponine said. “Nai says that Galileo has become quite jealous.”
“And what does Nai say about Patrick’s attention?” Nicole asked. “Is she happy with it?”
“You know Nai,” Eponine replied. “Always gracious, always thinking of others. I think she’s concerned about how any possible relationship between Patrick and her might affect the twins.”
All eyes turned toward the visitor who appeared in the doorway. “Well, well. Good morning, Hercules,” Max said, standing up from his chair. “What a pleasant surprise! What can we do for you this morning?”
The octospider stepped into the dining room as the colors streamed around his head. “He says that he has come to help Richard with his automatic translator,” Ellie said. “Especially the parts outside our visible spectrum.”
2
Nicole was dreaming. She was also dancing to an African rhythm around a campfire in an Ivory Coast grove. Omeh was leading the dance. He was dressed in the green robe he had been wearing when he had come to visit her in Rome a few days before the launch of the Newton. All of her human friends in the Emerald City, plus their four closest octospider acquaintances, were also dancing in the circle around the campfire. Kepler and Galileo were fighting. Ellie and Nikki were holding hands. Hercules the octospider was dressed in a bright purple African costume. Eponine was very pregnant and heavy on her feet. Nicole heard her name being called from outside the circle. Was it Katie? Her heart raced as she strained to recognize the voice.
“Nicole,” Eponine said beside her bed. “I’m having contractions.”
Nicole sat up and shook the dream from her head. “How often?” she asked automatically.
“They’re irregular,” Eponine replied. “I’ll have a couple about five minutes apart, and then nothing for half an hour.”
“Most likely they’re Braxton Hicks contractions,” Nicole said to her friend after she put on her robe. “You’re still five weeks short of full term.”
“What’s a Braxton Hicks contraction?” Eponine asked.
“Fake labor, essentially. It’s as if your body is practicing. Come lie down on the couch, and I’ll take a look.”
Max was waiting in the living room with Eponine after Nicole finished washing her hands. “Is she going to have the baby?” he asked.
“Someday,” Nicole said, smiling at the nervous father. “But probably not now.” She began putting slight pressure on Eponine’s midsection, trying to locate the baby. ‘Tell me when the next contraction begins,” she said.
Meanwhile, Max paced fitfully around the room. “I would absolutely kill for a cigarette right now,” he mumbled.
When Eponine had another contraction, Nicole noticed that there was some slight pressure on the undilated cervix. She was worried because she wasn’t absolutely certain where the baby was. “I’m sorry, Ep,” Nicole said after another contraction six minutes later. “I think this is all Braxton Hicks, but I could be wrong. I’ve never dealt with a pregnancy at this stage before without some kind of monitoring equipment to help me.”
“Some women do have babies this early, don’t they?” Eponine asked.
“Yes. But it’s rare. Only about one percent of first-time mothers deliver more than four weeks before their due date. And it’s almost always due to some kind of complication. Or heredity. Do you know by any chance if you or any of your siblings were premature?”
Eponine shook her head. “I never knew anything at all about my natural family,” she said.
Nicole told Eponine to dress and return to her home. “Keep a record of your contractions. What is especially important is the interval between them. If they start occurring regularly, every four minutes or so without significant gaps, then come and get me again.”
“Might there be a problem?” Max whispered to Nicole while Eponine was dressing.
“Unlikely, Max, but there is always that possibility.”
“What do you think about asking our friends the biological wizards for some help?” Max asked. “Please forgive me if I am offending you, it’s just—”
“I’m ahead of you, Max,” Nicole said. “I had already decided to consult with Dr. Blue in the morning.”
Max was nervous long before Dr. Blue started to open what Max called the “bug jar.” “Hold on, Doc,” Max said, gently putting his hands on the tentacle holding the jar. “Would you mind explaining to me just what you’re doing before you let those creatures out?”
Eponine was lying down on the sofa in the Puckett living room. She was naked, but mostly covered by a pair of sheets provided by the octospiders. Nicole had been holding Eponine’s hand during most of the several minutes that the three octospiders had been setting up the portable laboratory. Now Nicole walked over beside Max so that she could translate what Dr. Blue was saying.
“Dr. Blue is not an expert in this field,” Nicole interpreted. “He says that one of the other two octospiders will have to explain the details of the process.”
After a short conversation among the three octospiders, Dr. Blue moved aside and another alien stood directly in front of Nicole and Max. Dr. Blue then informed Nicole that this particular octo, whom he called the “image engineer,” had only recently started learning the simpler octospider dialect used to communicate with humans. “He might be a little difficult to understand,” Dr. Blue told her.
“The tiny beings in the jar,” Nicole said several seconds later as the colors began streaming around the engineer’s head, “are called… image quadroids, I guess would be a satisfactory translation. Anyway, they are living miniature cameras that will crawl inside Eponine and take pictures of the baby. Each quadroid has the capability of… several million photographic picture elements that can be allocated to as many as five hundred and twelve images per octospider nillet. They can even create a moving picture if you choose.”
She hesitated and turned to Max. “I’m simplifying all this, if that’s all right. It’s highly technical, and all in their octal mathematics. The engineer was explaining there at the end all the different ways in which the user can specify pictures-Richard would have absolutely loved it.”
“Remind me again how long a nillet is?” Max said.
“About twenty-eight seconds,” Nicole replied. “Richard named all the time terms. The nillet is the shortest unit in octospider time: Eight nillets in a feng, eight fengs in a woden, eight wodens in a tert, and eight terts in an octospider day. Richard calculates their day at thirty-two hours, fourteen minutes, and a little more than six seconds.”
“I’m glad somebody understands all this,” Max said quietly.
Nicole faced the image engineer again and the conversation continued. “Each image quadroid,” she translated slowly, “enters the specified target area, takes its pictures, and then returns to me image processor- that’s the gray box over against the wall-where it ‘dumps’ its images, receives its reward, and returns to the queue.”
“What?” said Max. “What kind of reward?”
“Later, Max,” Nicole said. She was struggling to understand a sentence that she had already asked the octospider to repeat. Nicole was silent for a few seconds before she shook her head and turned to Dr. Blue. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I still don’t understand that last sentence.”
The two octospiders had a rapid exchange in their natural dialect and then the image engineer faced Nicole again. “Okay,” she said at length, “I think I’ve got it now… Max, the gray box is some kind of a programmable data manager, both storing the data in living cells and preparing the outputs from the quadroids for projection on the wall, or wherever we want to see the image, according to the protocol selected—”
“I have an idea,” Max interrupted. “This is all way beyond me. If you’re satisfied that this contraption is not
