While they walked together up the ramp to the second floor of the pyramid, Dr. Blue informed them that Jamie was with his fellow matriculating octospiders that evening and that Hercules had been “reassigned.”
“Goodness,” said Richard jokingly, “Hercules didn’t even say good-bye.”
The octospiders, who still hadn’t learned to recognize human humor very well, apologized for Hercules’ lack of manners. They then mentioned that there would no longer be an octospider among the humans as a daily observer.
“Was Hercules fired for some reason?” Richard asked, still in a lighter vein. The two octospiders ignored the question altogether.
They entered the same conference room where Nicole had learned about the digestive process of the octospiders. Several large sheets of the parchment or hide on which the octos made their drawings and diagrams were over in the corner facing the wall. Dr. Blue asked Richard, Nicole, and Ellie to sit down.
“What you are going to see later tonight,” Archie then said, “has never been witnessed by a non-octospider since our colony was formed here in Rama. We are taking you with us in an attempt to increase the quality of communication between our two species. It is imperative that you understand, before we leave this room and head for the Alternate Domain, not only what you are going to see, but also how you are expected to behave.”
“Under no circumstances,” Dr. Blue added, “are you to disturb the proceedings or try to interact with anyone or anything along the way, either coming or going. You are to follow our instructions at all times. If you cannot or do not want to accept these conditions, then you must tell us now and we will not take you with us.”
The three humans looked at each other with alarm. “You know us well,” Nicole said at length. “I trust that we’re not going to be asked to do something that is inconsistent with our values and principles. We could not —”
“That’s not our concern,” Archie interrupted. “We are simply asking you to be passive observers, no matter what you see or experience. If you become confused or frightened and for some reason cannot locate one of us, sit down, wherever you are, with your hands at your sides, and wait for us to come.”
There was a brief pause. “I cannot stress too much,” Archie continued, “how important your behavior is this evening. Most of the other optimizers objected when I requested that you be allowed to attend. Dr. Blue and I have personally vouched for your ability not to do anything untoward.”
“Are our lives in danger?” Richard asked.
“Probably not,” Archie replied. “But they could be. And if tonight were to turn into some kind of a fiasco because of something that one of you did, I’m not certain…” In a very unusual action for an octospider, Archie did not finish his sentence.
“Are you telling us,” Nicole now said, “that our request to return to New Eden is somehow tied up in all this?”
“Our mutual relationship,” Archie said, “has reached a cusp. By sharing a critical portion of our Matriculation process with you, we are attempting to attain a new level of understanding. In that sense, the answer to your question is yes.”
They spent almost half a tert, two human hours, in the conference room. Archie began by explaining what the entire Matriculation activity was all about. Jamie and his compatriots, the octospider told them, had finished their adolescence and were about to make the transition to adulthood. As juveniles, their lives had been mostly controlled, and they had not been allowed to make any decisions of great significance. At the end of the Matriculation, Jamie and the other young octos would make a single monumental decision, one mat would fundamentally alter the rest of their lives. It was the purpose of the Matriculation, and even much of the final year prior to the transition, to provide the adolescent octospiders with information that would help them make that important decision.
“Tonight,” Archie said, “the juveniles will all be taken, as a group, over to the Alternate Domain to see a…”
Neither Ellie nor Nicole could figure out at first how to translate into English what the young octospiders were going to see. Eventually, after some discussion between them and several sentences of clarification from Dr. Blue and Archie, the women decided that the best interpretation for what Archie had said in color was “morality play.”
For the next several minutes the conversation digressed as Dr. Blue and Archie explained, in response to questions from the humans, that the Alternate Domain was a specific section of the octospider realm that was not under the dome. “South of the Emerald City,” Archie said, “there is another settlement with a decidedly different life-style from ours. About two thousand octospiders live in the Alternate Domain at the present time, along with another three thousand or four thousand other creatures representing a dozen different species. Their lives are chaotic and unstructured. The alternate octospiders have no dome over their heads to protect them, no assigned tasks, no planned entertainment, no access to the information in the library, no roads or homes except those they collectively build for themselves, and a life expectancy about one-tenth that of the average octospider in the Emerald City.”
Ellie thought about how the Avalon area had been created by Nakamura to deal with the problems that the colonists in New Eden wanted to forget. She thought that perhaps the Alternate Domain was a similar settlement.
“Why,” she asked, “have so many of your kindred-over ten percent, if my math is accurate-been forced to live outside the dome?”
“No normal octospider has been forced to live in the Alternate Domain,” Dr. Blue said. “They are living there because of a personal choice.”
“But why?” all three humans said, almost in unison.
Dr. Blue went over to the corner and retrieved a few of the charts. The two octospiders used the diagrams extensively during the long discussion that followed. First they explained that hundreds of generations earlier their biologists had correctly identified the connection between sexuality in their species and many other behavioral characteristics, including personal ambition, aggression, territoriality, and aging, to name the most important. This discovery had been made during a period of octospider history when the transition to Optimization was first occurring. But despite the supposedly universal acceptance of a theoretically better structure for octospider society, the transition was severely impeded by regular outbreaks of warfare, tribal dissension, and other mayhem. The octo biologists at the time speculated that only a sexless society, or one in which only a small fraction of the population was sexual, would be able to abide by the principles of Optimization, in which the desires of the individual were subordinated to the welfare of the colony as a whole.
A seemingly endless succession of conflicts convinced all of the forward-looking octospiders of the period that Optimization was only a foolish dream unless some method or technique could be found to combat the individualism that inevitably blocked acceptance of the new order But what could be done? It was several more generations before a brilliant discovery was made. Research found that special chemicals in a sugarcane-like product called barrican actually slowed down sexual maturation in the octospiders. Within several hundred years the octo genetic engineers had succeeded in designing and producing a variation of this barrican which, if ingested regularly, stopped the advent of sexual maturity altogether.
Test cases and test colonies succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of both the biologists and the progressive political scientists. Sexually immature octos were more responsive to the group concepts of Optimization. In addition, aging was also somehow retarded in those octos who ate barrican. Aging, the octospider scientists then learned very quickly, was tied to the same internal clock mechanism as puberty, and in fact the enzymes causing the cells not to replenish properly in older octospiders did not even activate until a specified time period after sexual maturity.
Octospider society underwent rapid changes, Archie and Dr. Blue both asserted, after these colossal discoveries. Optimization took a firm hold everywhere. Octospider social scientists began to envision a society in which the individual octos would be nearly immortal, dying only from accidents or the sudden failure of a major and critical organ. Sexless octospiders populated all the colonies and, as the biologists had predicted, personal ambition and aggression became almost nonexistent.
“All this history took place many generations — ago,” Archie said, “and is primarily background information to help you understand what the Matriculation is all about. Without going into the complex intervening history, Dr. Blue will summarize where we are today in our particular colony.”
