Rama II Part 15

The lights in Rama began flas.h.i.+ng on and off. Inside the bam, the optical effect was startling. And disorienting. Nicole glanced up to see what was happening and lost her balance. Most of her body slid into the pit. "Francesca," she yelled, pressing her hands against the opposite wall of the pit for support. "Francesca, I need some help," Nicole shouted again.

Nicole waited almost a minute before she concluded that Cosmonaut Sabatini must have already left the barn area. Her arms were tiring rapidly. Only her feet and the very bottoms of her legs were safely resting on the barn floor. Her head was next to one of the pit walls about eighty centimeters below floor level. The remainder of her body was suspended in midair, prevented from falling only by her intense arm pressure against the wall.

The lights continued to flash off and on at short intervals. Nicole lifted her head to see if she could possibly reach the top of the pit with one of her arms, while holding her position secure with the other, It was hopeless. Her head was too deep in the hole. She waited several more seconds, her desperation growing as the fatigue in her arms increased. Finally Nicole made an attempt both to throw her body upward and to grab onto the lip of the pit in one connected motion. She was almost successful. Her arms could not stop her downward momentum when she fell. Her feet followed her body into the hole and she smacked her head against the wall. She tumbled unconscious to the bottom of the pit.

36 IMPACT COURSE.

Francesca had also been startled when the lights of Rama had suddenly begun to flash. Her initial impulse had been to run inside, just under the roof of the barn. Once there, she felt slightly more protected. What's going on now? she thought as the reflected lights from the adjacent buildings forced her to close her eyes to keep from becoming dizzy. When she heard Nicole's cry for help, Francesca started to rush over to help her fellow cosmonaut. However, she tripped on one of the spheres and banged her knee as she fell. When she rose, Francesca could see in the strobing light that Nicole's position was very precarious. Only the backs of Nicole's shoes were visible. Francesca stood quite still and waited. Her mind had already raced ahead. She had a nearly perfect image of the pits in her memory, including a fairly accurate a.s.sessment of the depth. If she falls she'll be injured, she thought, maybe even killed. Francesca remembered the smooth walk. She won't be able to climb out.

The flas.h.i.+ng lights gave an eerie overtone to the scene. As Francesca watched, she saw Nicole's body rise barely out of the pit and her hands scramble for a hold on the lip. In the next flashes of light the shoes changed angle with respect to the pit and then abruptly disappeared. Francesca heard no scream.

If she had not controlled herself, Francesca would have hurried over to the pit and looked into it. TVb, she said to herself, still standing amid the small spheres, / must not look. If by chance she is still conscious, she might see me. Then I will have no options.

Already Francesca was thinking about the possibilities offered by Nicole's fall. She was certain, based on their earlier exchange, that Nicole intended to do her utmost to prove that Borzov had ingested a pain-inducing drug on the last day of his life. It might be possible for Nicole even to identify the particular compound and then eventually, since it was not common, to trace its purchase back to Francesca. The scenario was unlikely, even implausible. But it could happen.

Francesca remembered using her special permits to buy the dimethyldexfl, along with a batch of other items, at a hospital pharmacy in Copenhagen two years earlier. At the time there had been a suggestion that the drug, in very small doses, could produce mild reelings of euphoria in highly stressed individuals. A single journal article in an obscure Swedish mental health publication the following year had contained the information that sizable doses of dimethyldexil would produce acute pain that simulated an appendicitis.

As Francesca walked rapidly away from the barn in a northerly direction, her agile mind worked through all the possibilities. She was performing her usual risk/reward trade-off. The primary issue she was facing, now that she had left Nicole in the pit, was whether or not to tell the truth about Nicole's fall. But why did you leave her there?

somebody would ask. Why didn't you radio us that she had fallen and stand by until help could arrive?

Because I was confused and frightened and the lights were flas.h.i.+ng. And Richard had sounded so very concerned about our leaving. I thought it would be easier for us to all talk together at the helicopter. Was that believable? Barely. But it was easy to keep straight. So I still have the partial truth option, Francesca thought as she pa.s.sed the octahedron near the central plaza. She realized she had walked too far to the east, checked her personal navigator, and then changed her direction. The lights of Rama continued to flash.

And what are my other choices:' Wakefield talked with us just outside the barn. He knows where we were. A search party would definitely find her.

Unless . . . Francesca thought again about the possibility that Nicole might eventually implicate her in the drugging of General Borzov. The resulting scandal would certainly result in a messy investigation and probably a criminal indictment. In any case, Francesca's reputation would be sullied and her future career as a journalist would be seriously compromised.

With Nicole out of the picture, on the other hand, there was virtually zero probability that anyone would ever learn that Francesca had drugged Borzov. The only person who knew the facts was David Brown, and he had been a co-conspirator. Besides, he had even more to lose than she did. So the issue, Francesca thought, is whether or not I can make up a believable story that both reduces the chance Nicole will be found and does not implicate me if she is. That's a very difficult task.

She was nearing the Cylindrical Sea. Her personal navigator told her that she was only six hundred meters away. Dammit, Francesca answered herself after thinking very carefully about her situation, / don't really have a completely safe option. I mil have to choose one or the other. Either way there's a significant risk.

Francesca stopped moving north and paced back and forth between two skysc.r.a.pers. As she was walking, the ground underneath her feet began to tremble. Everything was shaking. She dropped to her knees to steady herself. She heard Janos Tabori's voice very faintly on the radio. "It's all right, everybody, don't be alarmed. It looks as if our vehicle is undergoing a maneuver. That must have been what the warnings were all about. ... By the way, Nicole, where are you and Francesca? Hiro and Richard are about to take off in the helicopter."

"I'm close to the sea, maybe two minutes away," Francesca answered. "Nicole went back to check on something."

"Roger," Janos replied. "Are you there, Nicole? Do you copy, cosmonaut des Jardins?"

There was silence on the radio.

"As you know, Janos," Francesca interjected, "communications are very spotty from here. Nicole knows where to meet the helicopter. She'll be along quickly, I'm certain." She paused a moment. "Say, where are the others? Is everyone all right?"

"Brown and Heilmann are on the radio with Earth. ISA management will be completely freaked out now. They were already demanding that we leave Rama before this maneuver began."

"We're just boarding the helicopter," Richard Wakefield said.

"We'll be there in a few minutes."

It's done. I've made my choice, Francesca said to herself when Richard was finished. She was surprisingly elated. Immediately she began to rehea.r.s.e her story. "We were near the large octahedron in the central plaza when Nicole spotted an alley off to our right that we had not noticed before. The street leading to the alley was extremely narrow and she remarked that it was probably a region where communications could not penetrate. I was already tired-we had been walking so fast. She told me to go ahead to the helicopter. . . ."

"And you never saw her again?" Richard Wakefield interrupted. Francesca shook her head. Richard was standing on the ice next to her. Beneath them the ice was vibrating as the long maneuver continued. The lights were now on. They had stopped their flas.h.i.+ng when the maneuver began.

Pilot Yamanaka was sitting in the c.o.c.kpit of his helicopter. Richard checked his watch. "It's almost five minutes since we landed here. Something must have happened to her." He glanced around. "Maybe she's coming out somewhere else." Richard and Francesca climbed into the helicopter and Yamanaka took off. They cruised up and down the island coast, twice circling over the solitary icemobile. "Edge into New York," Wakefield commanded. "Maybe we'll be able to spot her."

From the helicopter it was virtually impossible to see the ground in the city. The 'copter had to fly above the tallest buildings. The streets were very narrow and the shadows played games with the eyes. Once Richard thought he saw something moving between the buildings, but it turned out to be an optical illusion.

"All right, Nicole, all right. Where in the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Wakefield," Dr. David Brown's sonorous voice sounded in the helicopter, "I want you three to come back to Beta immediately. We need to have a meeting." Richard was surprised to hear that it was Dr. Brown. Janos had been the one monitoring their communication link since they had left Beta.

"What's the hurry, boss?" Wakefield replied. "We still haven't made our scheduled rendezvous with Nicole des Jardins. She should be coming out of New York any minute."

"I'll give you the details when you get here. We have some difficult decisions to make. I'm certain that des Jardins will radio when she reaches the sh.o.r.e."

It did not take them long to cross the frozen sea. Near the Beta campsite, Yamanaka landed the helicopter on the shaking ground and the three cosmonauts descended. The remaining four members of the crew were waiting for them.

"This is one incredibly long maneuver," Richard said with a smile as he approached the others. "I hope the Ramans know what they're doing."

"They probably do," Dr. Brown said somberly. "At least the Earth thinks that they do." He looked carefully at his watch.

"According to the navigation section in mission control, we should expect this maneuver to last another nineteen minutes, give or take a few seconds."

"How do they know?" inquired Wakefield. "Have the Ramans landed on Earth and handed out a flight plan while we've been up here exploring?"

n.o.body laughed. "If the vehicle stays at this att.i.tude and acceleration rate," Janos said with uncharacteristic seriousness, "then in nineteen more minutes it will be on an impact course."

"Impact with what?" Francesca asked.

Richard Wakefield did some quick mental computations.

"With the Earth?" he guessed. Janos nodded.

"Jesus!" Francesca exclaimed.

"Exactly," David Brown said. "This mission has become an Earth security concern. The COG Executive Council is meeting at this very moment to consider all contingencies. We have been told in the strongest possible language that we must leave Rama as soon as the maneuver is completed. We are to take nothing except the crab biot and our personal belongings. We are-"

"What about Takagis.h.i.+? And des Jardins?" Wakefield asked.

"We will leave the icemobile where it is, along with a rover here at Beta. They are both easy to operate. We will still be in radio contact from the Newton." Dr. Brown stared directly at Richard. "If this s.p.a.cecraft is really on an Earth impact course," he said dramatically, "our individual lives are no longer very important. The entire course of history is about to be changed."

"But what if the navigation engineers are wrong? What if Rama has just happened to make a maneuver that momentarily intersects an Earth impact trajectory? It could be-"

"Extremely unlikely. You remember that group of shortburst maneuvers at the time of Borzov's death? They changed the orientation of Rama's...o...b..t so that an Earth impact could be achieved with one long maneuver at exactly the right time. The engineers on Earth figured it out thirtysix hours ago. They radioed O'Toole before dawn this morning to expect the maneuver. I didn't want to say anything while everyone was out looking for Takagis.h.i.+."

"That explains why everyone is so anxious for us to clear out of here/' Janos noted.

"Only partially," Dr. Brown continued. "There is clearly a different feeling about Rama and the Ramans down on Earth. ISA management and the world leaders on the COG Executive Council are apparently convinced that Rama is implacably hostile."

He stopped for several seconds, as if he were rea.s.sessing his own att.i.tude.

"I think they are reacting emotionally myself, but I cannot persuade them differently. I personally see no evidence of hostility, only a disinterest in and disregard for a wildly inferior being. But the televised account of Wilson's death has done its damage. The world's populace cannot be here beside us, cannot grasp the majesty of this place. They can only react viscerally to the horror-"

"If you don't think the Ramans have hostile intentions," Francesca interrupted, "then how do you explain this maneuver? It can't be coincidence. They or it has decided for some reason to head for the Earth. No wonder the people down there are traumatized. Remember, the first Rama never acknowledged its visitors in any way. This is a dramatically different response. The Ramans are telling us they know-"

"Hold it. Hold it," Richard said. "I think we're jumping to conclusions a little too fast. We have twelve more minutes before we should start pus.h.i.+ng the panic b.u.t.tons."

"All right, Cosmonaut Wakefield," Francesca said, now remembering that she was a reporter and activating her video camera, "for the record, what do you think it will mean if this maneuver does culminate in a trajectory that impacts the Earth?"

When Richard finally spoke he was very serious. "People of the Earth," he said dramatically, "if Rama has indeed changed its course to visit our planet, it is not necessarily a hostile act. There is nothing, I repeat nothing, that any of us have seen or heard that indicates the species that created this s.p.a.ce vehicle wishes us any harm. Certainly Cosmonaut Wilson's death was disturbing, but it was probably an isolated response from a specific set of robots rather than a part of a sinister plan.

"1 see this magnificent s.p.a.cecraft as a single machine, almost organic in its complexity. It is extraordinarily intelligent and programmed for long-term survival. It is neither hostile nor friendly. It could easily have been designed to track any incoming satellites and compute where the visiting s.p.a.cecraft must have originated. Rama's...o...b..t change to fly in the vicinity of the Earth might therefore be nothing more than its standard response to an encounter initiated by another s.p.a.cefaring species. It may simply be coming to find out more about us."

"Very good," Janos Tabori said with a grin. "That was borderline philosophical."

Wakefield laughed nervously.

"Cosmonaut Turgenyev," Francesca said as she changed the direction of the camera, "do you agree with your colleague?

Right after General Borzov died, you openly expressed some concern that perhaps some 'higher force,' meaning the Ramans, might have had a hand in his death. What are your feelings now?"

The normally taciturn Soviet pilot stared directly into the camera with her sad eyes. "Da," she said, "I think Cosmonaut Wakefield is a very brilliant engineer. But he has not answered the difficult questions. Why did Rama maneuver during General Borzov's operation? Why did the biots cut Wilson to pieces? Where is Professor Takagis.h.i.+?" Irina Turgenyev paused a moment to control her emotions.

"We will not find Nicole des Jardins. Rama may be only a machine, but we cosmonauts have already seen how dangerous it can be. If it is heading for the Earth, I fear for my family, my friends, for all humanity. There is no way to predict what it might do. And we would be powerless to stop it."

Several minutes later Francesca Sabatini carried her automatic video equipment out beside the frozen sea for one final sequence. She carefully checked the time before switching on the camera at precisely fifteen seconds before the maneuver was expected to end. "The picture you are seeing is jumping up and down," she said in her best journalistic voice, "because the ground underneath us here on Rama has been shaking continuously since this maneuver started forty-seven minutes ago. According to the navigation engineers, the maneuver will stop in the next few seconds if Rama has changed course to impact the Earth. Their calculations are, of course, based on a.s.sumptions about Rama's intentions-"

Francesca stopped in midsentence and took a deep breath.

"The ground is no longer shaking. The maneuver is over. Rama is now on an Earth impact trajectory."

37 MAROONED.

When Nicole awakened the first time she was groggy and had great difficulty holding any idea fixed in her mind. Her head hurt and she could feel sharp pains in her back and legs. She did not know what had happened to her. She was barely able to find her water flask and take a drink. I must have a concussion, she thought as she fell back asleep. It was dark when Nicole woke up again. But her mind was no longer in a fog. She knew where she was. She remembered looking for Takagis.h.i.+ and sliding into the pit. Nicole also remembered calling for Francesca and the painful, terrible fall. She immediately took her communicator from the belt of her flight suit.

"h.e.l.lo there, Newton team," she said as she stood up slowly. "This is cosmonaut des Jardins checking in. I've been, well, indisposed might be a good word. I fell down into a hole and knocked myself out. Sabatini knows where I am. . . ."

Nicole broke off her monologue and waited. There was no response from her receiver. She turned up the gain but only succeeded in picking up some strange static. It's dark already, she thought, and it had only been light for two hours at most . . . Nicole knew that the periods of light inside Rama had been lasting about thirty hours. Had she been unconscious that long? Or had Rama thrown them another curveball? She looked at her wrist.w.a.tch, which showed time elapsed since the start of the second sortie, and did a quick calculation. / have been down here for thirty-two hours. Why has n.o.body come?

Nicole thought back to the last minutes before she fell. They had talked to Wakefield, and then she had dashed in to check the pits. Richard always did a navigation fix when they were in two-way lock and Francesca knew exactly . . . Could something have happened to the entire crew? But if not, why had n.o.body discovered her? Nicole smiled to herself as she fought the onset of panic. Of course, she reasoned, they found me, but I was unconscious, so they decided . . . Another voice in her head told her that her thought pattern didn't make sense. Under any circ.u.mstances, she would have been retrieved from the pit if they had found her.

She shuddered involuntarily as she feared, for a brief moment, that perhaps she would never be found. Nicole forced her mind to change subjects and began an a.s.sessment of the physical damage she had suffered during the fall. She ran her fingers carefully across all portions of her skull. There were several b.u.mps, including a large one on the very back of her head. That must have been responsible for the concussion, she surmised. But there were no skull fractures and what little bleeding there had been had stopped hours ago.

She checked her arms and legs, then her back. There were bruises everywhere, but miraculously no bones were broken. The occasional sharp pain just below her neck suggested that she had either crushed part of a vertebra or pinched some nerves. Other than that, she would heal. The discovery that her body had survived more or less intact temporarily buoyed her spirits.

Nicole next surveyed her new domain. She had fallen in the middle of a deep but narrow rectangular pit. It was six paces from end to end and one and a half paces across. Using her flashlight and outstretched arm, she estimated the depth of the hole at eight and a half meters.

The pit was empty except for a jumbled collection of small metallic pieces, ranging in length from five to fifteen centimeters, that were stacked over at one end of the hole. Nicole examined them carefully under the beam from her flashlight. There were over a hundred altogether and maybe a dozen different individual types-Some were long and straight, others curved, a few jointed-they reminded Nicole of industrial trash from a modern steel mill.

The walls of the pit were absolutely straight. The wall material felt like a metal/rock hybrid to Nicole. It was cold, very cold. There were no anomalies, no wrinkles that might have been used as footholds, nothing that would encourage her to believe she could climb out. She tried to chip or sc.r.a.pe the wall surface using her portable medical tools. She was unable to make any mark.

Discouraged by the perfect construction of the pit walls, Nicole walked back to the metal pile to see if there was any way she could put together a ladder or scaffold, some kind of support that would elevate her to the point where she could climb out using her own strength. It was not encouraging. The metal pieces were small and thin. A quick mental calculation told her there was not enough ma.s.s to support her weight.

Nicole became even more discouraged when she ate a small snack. She remembered that she had brought very little food and water with her because she had wanted to carry extra medical supplies for Takagis.h.i.+. Even if she rationed it carefully, her water would only last a day and her food no more than thirty-six hours.

She shone her flashlight directly upward. The beam bounced off the roof of the bam. Thinking about the barn reminded her again of the events preceding her fall. Nicole remembered the increased amplitude of the emergency signal once she exited the building. Great, she thought despondently. The interior of this fantastic barn is probably a radio blackout zone. No wonder n.o.body heard me.

She slept because there was nothing else to do. Eight hours later Nicole woke up with a start from a frightening dream. She had been sitting with her father and daughter in a lovely provincial restaurant in France. It was a magnificent spring day; Nicole could see flowers in the garden adjoining the restaurant. When the waiter had come, he had placed a plate of escargots smothered in herbs and b.u.t.ter in front of Genevieve. Pierre received a mountainous serving of chicken cooked in a mushroom and wine sauce. The waiter had smiled and left. Slowly it had dawned on Nicole that there was nothing for her. , . , She had never dealt with real hunger before. Even during the Poro, after the lion cubs took her food, Nicole had not been seriously hungry. She had told herself before she slept that she would carefully ration her remaining food, but that was before the hunger pangs had become overpowering. Now Nicole tore into her food packets with trembling hands and just barely stopped herself from eating all the food that was left. She wrapped the paltry remainder, put it back into one of her pockets, and buried her face in her hands. Nicole allowed herself to cry for the first time since she had fallen. She also allowed herself to acknowledge that starving to death would be a terrible way to die. Nicole tried to imagine what it would feel like to weaken from hunger and then ultimately to perish. Would it be a gradual process, each successive stage more horrible than the one before? "Then let it come soon," Nicole said out loud, momentarily abandoning all hope. Her digital watch was glowing in the dark, counting off the last precious seconds of her life. How much longer will it be before I die? she wondered. Several hours pa.s.sed. Nicole grew weaker and more despondent. She sat with her head bowed in the cold corner of the pit. Just as she was about to give up completely and accept her death, however, from inside her there came a different voice, an a.s.sertive, optimistic voice that refused to let her quit. It told her that any time of being alive was precious and wonderful, that simply being conscious at all, ever, was an overwhelming miracle of nature. Nicole took a slow, deep breath and opened her eyes. // I'm to die here, she said to herself, then at least let me do it with elan. She resolved that she would spend whatever time remained concentrating on the outstanding moments of her thirty-six years.

Nicole still retained a tiny hope of being rescued. But she had always been a practical woman, and logic told her that what was left of her life was probably measured in hours. During her unhurried trip into her treasured memories, Nicole wept several times, without inhibition, tears of joy at the past recaptured, bittersweet tears because she knew, as she relived each episode, that it was probably her last visit to that particular portion of her memory.

There was no pattern to her wanderings through the life that she had lived. She did not categorize, measure, or compare her experiences. Nicole simply lived them again as they came to her, each old event transformed and enriched by her heightened awareness.

Her mother occupied a special place in her memory. Because she had died when Nicole was only ten, her mother had retained all the attributes of a queen or G.o.ddess. Anawi Tia.s.so had indeed been beautiful and regal, a jet-black African woman of uncommon stature. All Nicole's images of her were bathed in soft, glowing light.

She remembered her mother in the living room of their home in Chilly-Mazarin, gesturing to Nicole to come sit upon her lap. Anawi read a book to her daughter every night before bedtime. Most of the stories were fairy tales about princes and castles and beautiful, happy people who overcame every obstacle. Her mother's voice was soft and mellow. She would sing lullabies to Nicole as the little girl's eyes grew heavier and heavier.

The Sundays of her childhood were special days. In the spring they would go to the park and play on the wide fields of gra.s.s. Her mother would teach Nicole how to run. The little girl had never seen anything as beautiful as her mother, who had been an international cla.s.s sprinter as a young woman, racing gracefully across the meadow.

Of course Nicole remembered vividly all the details of her trip with Anawi to the Ivory Coast for the Poro. It was her mother who had held her during the nights in Nidougou before the ceremony. During those long, frightening nights, the little girl Nicole had struggled with all her fears. And each day, calmly and patiently, her mother had answered all her questions and had reminded her that many many other girls had pa.s.sed through the transitional rite without undue difficulty.

Nicole's fondest memory from that trip was set in the hotel room in Abidjan, the night before she and Anawi returned to Paris. She and her mother had discussed the Poro only slightly during the thirty hours since Nicole and the other girls had finished the ceremonies. Anawi had not yet offered any praise. Omeh and the village elders had told Nicole that she had been exceptional, but to a seven-year-old girl no appraisal is as important as the one from her mother. Nicole had summoned her courage just before dinner.

"Did I do all right, Mama?" the little girl had said tentatively.

"At the Poro, I mean."

Anawi had burst into tears. "Did you do all right? Did you do all right?" She had wrapped her long sinuous arms around her daughter and picked her up off the floor. "Oh, Darling," her mother had said as she had held Nicole high above her head. "I'm so proud of you that I could split." Nicole had jumped into her mother's arms and they had hugged and laughed and cried for fifteen minutes.

Nicole lay on her back in the bottom of the pit, the tears from her memories rolling sideways across her face and down into her ears. For almost an hour she had been thinking about her daughter, starting with her birth and then going through each of the major events of Genevieve's life. Nicole was recalling the vacation trip to America that they had taken together, three years earlier when Genevieve had been eleven. How very close they had been on that trip, especially on the day they had hiked down the South Kaibab trail into the Grand Canyon.

Nicole and Genevieve had stopped at each of the markers along the trail, studying the imprint of two billion years of time on the surface of the planet Earth. They had lunched on a promontory overlooking the desert desiccation of the Tonto plateau. That night, mother and daughter had spread their sleeping mats, side by side, right next to the mighty Colorado River. They had talked and shared dreams and held hands throughout the night.

/ would not have taken that trip, Nicole mused, beginning to think about her father, if it hadn't been for you. You were the one who knew it was the right time to go. Nicole's father was the cornerstone of her life. Pierre des Jardins was her friend, confessor, intellectual companion, and most ardent supporter. He had been there when she was born and at every significant moment of her life. It was he whom she missed the most as she lay in the bottom of the pit inside Rama. It was he with whom she would have chosen to have had her final conversation.

There was no single memory of her father that jumped out at her, that demanded renewal above all the rest. Nicole's mental montage of Pierre framed all the events of her own life. Not all of them were happy. She remembered clearly, for example, the two of them in the savanna not far from Nidougou, silently holding hands as they both wept quietly while the funeral pyre for Anawi burned into the African night. She could also still feel his arms around her as she sobbed without cease following her failure, at the age of fifteen, to win the nationwide Joan of Arc compet.i.tion. They had lived together at Beauvois, an unlikely pair, from a year after the death of her mother until Nicole had finished her third year of studies at the University of Tours. It had been an idyllic existence. Nicole roamed through the woods around their villa after she bicycled home from school. Pierre wrote his novels in the study. In the evening Marguerite rang the bell and called them both to dinner before the lady climbed on her own bicycle, her day's work complete, and returned to her husband and children in Luynes.

During the summers Nicole traveled with her father throughout Europe, visiting the medieval towns and castles that were the primary venues of his historical novels. Nicole knew more about Eleanor of Aquitaine and her husband Henry Plantagenet than she knew about the active political leaders of France and Western Europe. When Pierre won the Mary Renault Prize for historical fiction in 2181, she went with him to Paris to receive the award. Nicole sat on the first row in the large auditorium, dressed in the tailored white skirt and blouse that Pierre had helped her choose, and listened to the speaker extol her father's virtues. Nicole could still recite parts of her father's acceptance speech from memory. "I have often been asked," her father had said near the end of his delivery, "if I have acc.u.mulated any wisdom that I would like to share with future generations." He had then looked directly at her in the audience. "To my precious daughter Nicole, and all the young people of the world, I offer one simple insight. In my life I have found two things of priceless worth-learning and loving. Nothing else-not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake-can possibly have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned'

and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.' "

/ have been happy, Nicole said as another group of tears ran down the side of her face, and mostly because of you. You never disappointed me. Not even in my most difficult moment. Her memory turned, as she knew it would, to the summer of 2184, when her life had accelerated at such a fantastic pace that she had lost control of its direction. In one six-week period Nicole won an Olympic gold medal, conducted a short but torrid affair with the Prince of Wales, and returned to France to tell her father that she was pregnant.

Nicole could remember the key events from that period as if they had happened only yesterday. No emotion in her life had ever quite matched the joy and exhilaration that she had felt when she was standing on the victory stand in Los Angeles, the gold medal around her neck and the cheers of a hundred thousand people echoing in her ears. It was her moment. For almost a week she was the darling of the world media. She was on the front page of every newspaper, highlighted in every major broadcast on sports.

After her final interview in the television studio adjoining the Olympic stadium, a young Englishman with an engaging smile had introduced himself as Darren Higgins and handed her a card. Inside was a handwritten invitation to dinner from none other than the Prince of Wales, the man who would become Henry XI of Great Britain.

The dinner was magical, Nicole recalled, her desperate situation in Rama temporarily forgotten. He was charming. The next two days were absolutely wonderful. But thirtynine hours later, when she awakened in Henry's bedroom suite in Westwood, her fairy tale was suddenly over. Her prince who had been so attentive and affectionate was now frowning and fretful. As the inexperienced Nicole tried unsuccessfully to understand what had gone wrong, it slowly dawned on her that her flight of fantasy was over. / was just a conquest, she remembered, the celebrity of the moment. I was unsuitable for any permanent relations.h.i.+p.

Nicole would never forget the last words the prince had said to her in Los Angeles. He had been circling her while she was hurriedly packing. He could not understand why she was so distraught. Nicole had not replied to any of his questions and had resisted his attempts to embrace her.