when they were inside the theater, that the particular art form represented by the patterns was a combination, as she understood the human terms, of both poetry and calligraphy.
Just before they crossed the street, Nicole caught sight, on a wall twenty meters away on her left, of a large mural that was astonishingly beautiful. The colors were bold and eye-catching, the composition the work of an artist who understood both structure and optical appeal. The technical skill was also extremely impressive, but it was the emotions rendered in the bodies and faces of the octospiders and other creatures in the mural that fascinated Nicole.
“The Triumph of Optimization,” Nicole mumbled to herself as she craned her neck to read the title in colors across the upper portion of the mural. The painting had a spacecraft against a star background in one section, an ocean teeming with living things in another, and both a jungle and a desert in opposite corners. The central image, however, was a giant octospider, carrying a stave and standing on a pile of thirty disparate animals, who were squirming in the dust underneath its tentacles. Nicole’s heart nearly jumped out of her body when she saw that one of the trampled beings was a young human woman with brown skin, piercing eyes, and short curly hair.
“Look,” she yelled suddenly to the others, “over there-at that mural.”
At that moment some kind of small animal was making itself a nuisance around their feet. It succeeded in distracting everyone’s attention. The two octospiders dealt with the animal and pulled the line again toward the theater. As she moved into the street, Nicole glanced back at the mural to make certain that she had not imagined the presence of a young woman in the picture. From the added distance the face of the woman and her features were vague, but Nicole was nevertheless convinced that she had definitely seen a human being in the artwork. But how is that possible? Nicole was asking herself as they entered the theater.
Preoccupied with her discovery, Nicole listened with only half an ear to Richard’s discussion with Archie about how he intended to use his translator during the play. She didn’t even look when, after they took their standing positions in the fifth row above a theater-in-the-round, Dr. Blue pointed out with one of her tentacles the sector to the left of them containing Jamie and the other matriculating octospiders. I must have made a mistake, Nicole thought. She was seized by a powerful impulse to run back to the square and verify what she had seen. Then she remembered what Archie had told them about the importance of carefully following instructions on this particular evening. I know I saw a woman in that painting, Nicole told herself as three large fireflies flew down and hovered over the stage in the center of the theater. But if I did, what does it mean?
There were no intermissions in the play, which lasted slightly more than an hour. The action was continuous, with one or more of the octospider actors occupying the lit stage at all times. No props were used and no costumes. At the beginning of the play the seven main “characters” came forward and briefly introduced themselves-two matriculating octos, one of either sex, a pair of adoptive parents for each, and one alternate male whose bright and beautiful colors spread all the way to the end of his tentacles when he spoke.
The first several minutes of the actual play established that the two matriculating juveniles had been best friends for years and that, despite the good and sound advice of their assigned parents, they had selected early sexual maturity together. “My desire,” the young female octospider said in her first monologue, “is to produce a baby from a union with my cherished companion.” Or at least that’s how Richard translated what she said. He was gleeful at the performance of his much-improved translator and, after remembering that the octospiders were deaf, he talked intermittently throughout the performance.
The four octo parents came together in the center of the stage and expressed anxiety about what would happen when the “powerful new emotions” that accompanied the sexual transformation were first encountered by their adopted children. They did, however, try to be fair, and all four of the adults admitted that their own choices not to become sexually mature after Matriculation meant that they could not give advice based on any actual experience.
In the middle of the play the two young octospiders were isolated at opposite corners of the stage, and the audience concluded from the pyrotechnics of the fireflies, plus a few brief statements from the octospider actors, that each of them had stopped eating the barrican and was alone in some kind of Transition Domain.
When later the two transformed octospiders walked across the stage and met in the center, the color patterns in their conversation had already altered. It was a powerful effect, however it was achieved by the actors, because not only were the individual colors brighter than they had been before the transition, but also the rigid, nearly perfect strips that had characterized the early conversations between the two juveniles were already marked with some different and interesting individual designs. Around them on the stage at this point were half a dozen other octospiders-all alternates, judging from their language-and a couple of Polish sausage animals chasing anything they could find. The pair were now clearly in the Alternate Domain.
Enter from the darkness off the stage the alternate male introduced at the beginning of the play. The octospider actor first made a brilliant display of horizontal and vertical patterns moving in both directions and then created advanced wave action, geometric structures, and even fireworks like explosions of color starting at random locations around his head. The newcomer’s Technicolor display mesmerized the young female octo and won her away from the best friend of her childhood. Soon after, the interloper with the amazing colors, who had obviously parented the baby octo being carried in the frontal pouch of the female, left her sitting forlorn and alone in the comer of the stage, sending out pulse after unstructured pulse of meaningless colors.
At this point in the play the male octospider who had matriculated in the earlier scenes stormed into the light, saw his true love in despair with her baby, and jumped off into the darkness surrounding the stage. Moments later he returned with the alternate who had corrupted his girlfriend, and the two male octos engaged in a horrible but fascinating fight in the middle of the stage. Their heads a riot of expletive color, they beat, twisted, choked, and battled each other for an entire feng. The younger male octo eventually won the fight, for the alternate lay motionless on the stage when the action was over. The sadness expressed in the closing remarks of the hero and the heroine made certain that the moral of the play was very clear. When the play was finished, Richard glanced at Nicole and Ellie and commented, with an irreverent grin, “This is one of those downer plays, like Othello, where everyone dies in the end.”
Under the supervision of the octospider ushers, all with bags, the matriculating youngsters left the theater first, followed next by Archie, Dr. Blue, and their human companions. The orderly procession stopped just outside a few minutes later and formed a crowded ring around three other octospiders who were in the middle of the avenue. Richard, Nicole, and Ellie felt the presence of their friends’ powerful tentacles across their backs as they moved into position to see what was taking place. Two of the octospiders in the center of the street were holding staves and wearing bags, while the third octo, who was crouching between them, was transmitting the color message, in broad and unstructured bands, “Please, help me.”
“This octospider,” one of the policemen said in crisp, measured strips, “has consistently failed to earn her credits since coming to the Alternate Domain after her Matriculation four cycles ago. Last cycle she was warned that she had become an unacceptable drain upon our common resources, and recently, two days before Bounty Day, she was told to report for termination. Since that time she has been hiding among friends in the Alternate Domain.”
The crouching octospider suddenly bolted and leaped into the audience near where the humans were standing. The crowd sagged back from the impact and Ellie, who was nearest the point where the escape attempt occurred, was knocked to the ground in the melee that ensued. In less than a nillet the police, with help from Archie and several of the matriculating juveniles, again had the fugitive under control.
“Failure to report for a scheduled termination is one of the worst crimes an octospider can commit,” the policeman then said. “It is punishable by immediate termination upon apprehension.” One of the policemen pulled several wriggling, wormlike creatures from its shoulder bag. The outlaw octo struggled hard the first time the two policemen tried to force the wormlike creatures into her mouth. However, after each of the policemen hit the renegade twice with a stave, the doomed octospider collapsed between her captors. Ellie, who had regained her footing by this time, was unable to suppress a scream of terror as the creatures entered the octo’s mouth, and she began to regurgitate. Death came quickly.
None of the humans said a word as they walked arm in arm with Archie and Dr. Blue across the square and into the parking area where their transport was wailing. Nicole was so stunned by what she had witnessed that she did not even remember to look for the painting that she thought had included a human face.
In the middle of the night Nicole, who had not been able to sleep, heard a noise in the living room. She rose from her bed quietly and slipped into a robe. Ellie was sitting on the couch in the dark. Nicole sat down beside her daughter and took her hand.
