Nicole managed a smile. “But I don’t know any farm jokes,” she protested.
Eponine was relieved to see that Nicole was not offended by Max’s behavior. ‘That’s all right, Nicole,” Eponine said, “none of us do. Max knows enough farm jokes for all of us.”
“Once upon a time,” Max began a few moments later, “there was a farmer from Oklahoma who had a fat wife named Whistle. She was called Whistle because, at the climax of her lovemaking, she would close her eyes, screw up her mouth, and make a long whistling sound.”
Max belched. The twins giggled. Nicole worried that maybe it was not appropriate for the children to hear Max’s story, but Nai was sitting behind her boys, laughing with them. Relax, Nicole told herself. You really have become the Queen of Frowns.
“Now, one night,” Max continued, “this farmer and Whistle had a big brouhaha-that’s a fight, to you, boys- and she went to bed early and fuming. The fanner sat by himself at the table, drinking some fine tequila. As the evening progressed, he became sorry that he had been such an ornery son of a bitch and began to apologize in a loud voice.
“Meanwhile, ole Whistle, who was now angry all over again because the farmer had awakened her, knew that when he finished drinking, her husband was going to enter the bedroom and try to seal his apology with some wild lovemaking. While the farmer emptied the bottle of tequila, Whistle slipped out of the house, went over to the pigpen, and carried the youngest and smallest of the sows back into their bedroom.
“When the drunken farmer staggered into the dark bedroom later that night, singing one of his favorite hymns, Whistle was watching from the corner and the sow was in the bed. The farmer took all his clothes off and jumped under the sheets. He grabbed the sow by the ears and kissed her on me lips. The sow squealed and the fanner pulled back. ‘Whistle, my love,’ he said, ‘did you forget to brush your teeth tonight?’
“His wife bolted from the corner and began beating the farmer on the head with a broom.”
Everyone was laughing. Max was so amused by his own joke that he could not sit upright. When he ^finished laughing, he took another drink of the octospider alcohol.
“My brother Clyde,” Max said, “knew more farm jokes than anyone I ever met. He courted Winona with them, or so he claimed. Clyde used to tell me that a ‘laughing woman already has one hand on her panties.’ When we would go duck hunting with the guys, we’d never shoot a single goddamn duck. Clyde would start telling stories, and we’d be laughing and drinking. After a while we’d forget why we got up at five a.m. to go and sit in the cold.”
Max stopped talking and there was a momentary quiet in the room. “Damn,” he said after the brief silence. “For a while there I was imagining I was back in Arkansas.” He stood up. “I don’t even know now which way Arkansas is from here, or how many billions of kilometers away it is.” Max shook his head. “Sometimes, when I’m dreaming and it’s real lifelike, I think the dream is reality. I believe I’m back in Arkansas. Then when I wake up I am lost, and I think for a few seconds that this life we’re living here in the Emerald City is the dream.”
“The same thing happens to me,” Nai said. “Two nights ago I dreamed I was doing my morning meditation in the hawng pro in my family home in Lamphun. As I was reciting my mantra, Patrick awakened me. He told me that I was talking in my sleep. For a few seconds, however, I didn’t know who he was. It was frightening.”
“All right,” Max said after a protracted silence. He turned to Nicole. “I guess we’re ready for the news of the day. What do you have to tell us?”
“The quadroid videos today were very peculiar,” a smiling Nicole replied. “For the first few minutes, I was certain I had entered the wrong data base. Image after image showed a pig, or a chicken, or a drunken Oklahoma farm boy trying to court a sweet young thing. In the last series of pictures a fanner was trying to drink tequila, eat fried chicken, and make love with his sweetheart all at the same time-which reminds me, that chicken sure looked good. Is anyone else hungry?”
6
“I think they were somewhat reassured by what the Chief Optimizer told me,” Nicole said to Dr. Blue. “Max, of course, had his doubts. He doesn’t believe taking care of us will be a very high priority if the situation really becomes desperate.”
“That’s very unlikely,” the octospider replied. “Any further escalation of hostilities will be met by a massive retaliation. Many octospiders have been working on our war plans for almost two months.”
“Have I understood correctly, then,” Nicole asked, “that every individual member of your species who has been involved in the design and prosecution of this war will be terminated when it is over?”
“Yes,” Dr. Blue replied, “although they will not all die immediately. They will be notified that they have been placed on the termination list. The new Chief Optimizer will define the exact schedule for the terminations, depending on the needs of the colony and the pace of replenishment.”
Nicole and her octospider colleague were sharing lunch at the hospital. They had spent the morning trying unsuccessfully to save the lives of two of the six-armed utility creatures who had been blasted by human troops while they were working in one of the few remaining grain fields on the north side of the forest.
During their lunch, a centipede biot trundled by in the hall beside them. Dr. Blue noticed that Nicole followed the biot with her eyes for several seconds. “When we first came inside Rama,” the octospider said, “before we had developed our full cadre of support animals, we used the available biots for routine tasks, like maintenance. Now we need their help again.”
“But how do you give them instructions?” Nicole asked. “We were never able to communicate with them at all.”
“Their programming is done in firmware, at the time of their manufacture. What we did in the early days, using a kind of keyboard analogous to the one you had in your lair, was ask the Ramans to alter the programming for our specific uses. That’s what all the biots are here for… to be turned into useful servants by the passengers on board.”
Well, Richard, Nicole thought, that’s at least one concept we missed altogether. In fact, I don’t think the idea ever even occurred to us.
“We wanted our settlement here in Rama to be indistinguishable from any of our other colonies,” Dr. Blue continued, “so as soon as we no longer needed the biots, we requested that they be removed from our domain in Rama.”
“And since then you have had no direct contact at all with the Ramans?”
“Not much,” Dr. Blue replied. “But we have maintained the capability to communicate with the high- technology factories underneath the surface, primarily so that we can request the manufacture of certain raw materials that we do not have in our warehouses.”
A door opened from the corridor and an octospider entered. It talked rapidly with Dr. Blue in their language, using very narrow color bands. Nicole recognized the words “permission” and “this afternoon,” but very little else.
After the visitor had departed, Dr. Blue told Nicole that she had a surprise for her. “Today one of our queens is going to have her egg rush. Her attendants are estimating it will take place in half a tert. The Chief Optimizer has approved my request for you to observe. To my knowledge, you are the only alien-except for the Precursors, of course-who has ever had the privilege of witnessing an egg rush. I think you will find it very interesting.”
During the transport ride to the Queen’s Domain, which was in a part of the Emerald City that Nicole had never visited before, Dr. Blue reminded Nicole of some of the more unusual aspects of octospider reproduction. “In normal times, each of the three queens in our colony is fertilized once every three to five years, and only a small fraction of the fertilized eggs is permitted to grow to maturity. Because of the war preparations, however, the Chief Optimizer recently declared a Replenishment Event. All three of our queens are now producing a full set of eggs. They have been fertilized by the new warrior males, those octospiders selected for the war effort who have recently passed through sexual, transition. This activity is very important, for it ensures, at least symbolically, that each of these octospiders will have continued genetic involvement in the colony. Remember, they know, as soon as they are designated as warriors, that their termination time is not too far away.”
Whenever I think that we have a lot in common with the octospiders, Nicole was thinking, I see something so bizarre that I am reminded how very different we are. But, as Richard would say, how could it be otherwise?
