Rama II Part 3

The forty-minute drive from the hotel to the party at Hadrian's Villa, which was located on the outskirts of the Roman suburbs not far from the resort town of Tivoli, was pa.s.sed in total silence. The other pa.s.senger in Nicole's car was Hiro Yamanaka, the most taciturn of all the cosmonauts. In her television interview two months earlier with Yamanaka, a frustrated Francesca Sabatini, after ten minutes of two-and three-word, monosyllabic responses to all her questions, had asked Hiro if the rumor about his being an android were true.

"What?" Hiro Yamanaka had asked.

"Are you an android?" Francesca had repeated with a mischievous smile. "No," the j.a.panese pilot had responded, his features remaining absolutely expressionless while the camera zoomed in on his face.

When the car turned off the main road between Rome and Tivoli to drive the final mile to the Villa Adriana, the traffic became congested. Progress was very slow, not only because of the many cars carrying people to the gala, but also because of the hundreds of curious onlookers and paparazzi who were lining the small two-lane road. Nicole took a deep breath as the automobile finally pulled into a circular drive and stopped. Outside her tinted window she could see a bevy of photographers and reporters, poised to pounce on whoever climbed out of the car. Her door opened automatically and she stepped out slowly, pulling her black suede coat around her and trying to be careful not to catch her heels. "Who's that?" she heard a voice say.

"Franco, over here, quick-it's cosmonaut des Jardins." There was a smattering of applause and the flash of many cameras. A kindly looking Italian gentleman came forward and took Nicole by the hand. People moiled around her, several microphones were stuck in her face, and it seemed as if she were being given a hundred simultaneous questions and requests in four or five different languages, "Why have you refused all personal interviews?" "Please open your coat so we can see your dress." "Do the other cosmonauts respect you as a doctor?" "Stop a moment. Please smile." "What is your opinion of Francesca Sabatini?" Nicole said nothing as the security men held back the crowd and led her to a covered electric cart. The four-pa.s.senger cart moved slowly up a long hill, leaving the crowd behind, as a pleasant Italian woman in her mid-twenties explained in English to Nicole and Hiro Yamanaka what they were seeing around them. Hadrian, who had ruled the Roman empire between A.D. 117 and 138, had built this immense villa, she told them, for his own enjoyment. The architectural masterpiece represented a blending of all the building styles Hadrian had seen on his many journeys to the distant provinces and was designed by the emperor himself on three hundred acres of plain at the foot of the Tiburtini Hills.

The initial cart ride past the ancient a.s.sortment of buildings was apparently an integral part of the evening's festivities. The lighted ruins themselves were only vaguely suggestive of their previous glory, for roofs were mostly missing, the decorative statuary had all been removed, and the rough stone walls were bare of adornment. But by the time the cart wound past the ruins of the Canopus, a monument built around a rectangular pool in the Egyptian style (it was the fifteenth or sixteenth building in the complex-Nicole had lost count), a general sense of the huge extent of the villa had definitely emerged.

This man died over two thousand yean ago, Nicole thought to herself, remembering her history. One of the smartest humans who ever lived. Soldier, administrator, linguist She smiled as she recalled the story of Antinous. Lonely most of his life. Except for one brief, all consuming pa.s.sion that ended in tragedy, The cart came to a stop at the end of a short walkway. The woman guide finished her monologue. "To honor the great Pax Romana, an extended time of world peace two millennia ago, the Italian government, helped by generous donations from the corporations listed underneath the statue over there on your right, decided in 2189 to construct a perfect replica of Hadrian's Maritime Theater. You may recall that we pa.s.sed the ruins of the original at the beginning of the ride. The goal of the reconstruction project was to show what it would have been like to have visited a part of this villa during the emperor's lifetime. The building was finished in 2193 and has been used for state events ever since." The guests were met by formally clad young Italian men, uniformly tall and handsome, who escorted them along the walkway, up to and through Philosopher's Hall, and finally into the Maritime Theater. There was a brief security check at the actual entrance and then the guests were free to roam as they pleased.

Nicole was enchanted by the building. It was basically round in shape, about forty meters in diameter. An annulus of water separated an inner island-on which was located a large house with five rooms and a big yard-from the wide portico with its fiuted columns. There was no roof above the water or the inner part of the portico, the open skies giving the entire theater a wonderful feeling of freedom. Around the building the guests mixed and talked and drank; advanced robot waiters rolled around carrying large trays of champagne and wine and other alcoholic spirits. Across the two small bridges that connected the island with its house and yard to the portico and the rest of the building, Nicole could see a dozen people, all dressed in white, working to set up the dinner buffet.

A heavy blond woman and her pint-size, jocular husband, a bald man wearing an old-fas.h.i.+oned pair of spectacles, were rapidly approaching Nicole from about thirty feet away. Nicole prepared for the coming onslaught by taking a small sip of the champagne and ca.s.sis c.o.c.ktail that had been handed to her by a strangely insistent robot a few minutes before.

"Oh, Madame des Jardins," the man said, waving at her and closing in with great speed. "We just have to talk to you. My wife is one of your biggest fans." He walked up beside Nicole and gestured to his wife. "Come on, Cecelia," he shouted, "I've got her."

Nicole took a deep breath and forced a wide smile. It's going to be one of those evenings, she said to herself.

Finally, Nicole was thinking, maybe III have a few minutes of peace and quiet She was sitting by herself, her hack purposely toward the door, at a small table in the comer of the room. The room was at the rear of the island house in the middle of the Maritime Theater. Nicole finished the last few bites of her food and washed them down with some wine.

Whew, she thought, trying without success to remember even half the people she had met in the last hour. She had been like a prized photograph, pa.s.sed from person to person and praised by everyone. She bad been embraced, kissed, hugged, pinched, flirted with (by both men and women), and even propositioned by a rich Swedish s.h.i.+pbuilder who had invited her to his "castle" outside the city of Goteborg. Nicole had hardly said a word to any of them. Her face ached from polite smiling and she was a trifle tipsy from the wine and champagne c.o.c.ktails.

"Well* as I live and breathe," she heard a familiar voice behind her say, "1 believe the lady in the white dress is none other than my fellow cosmonaut, the ice princess herself, Madame Nicole des Jardins." Nicole turned and saw Richard Wakefield staggering toward her. He bounced off a table, reached out to stabilize himself on a chair, and nearly fell in her lap.

"Sorry," he said, grinning and managing to seat himself beside her. "I'm afraid I've had too much gin and tonic." He took a big gulp from the gla.s.s that had miraculously remained unspilled in his right hand. "And now," he said with a wink, "if you don't mind, I'm going to take a nap before the dolphin show."

Nicole laughed as Richard's head hit the wooden table with a splat and he feigned unconsciousness. After a moment she leaned over playfully and forced one of his eyelids open. "If you don't mind, comrade, could you not pa.s.s out until after you explain to me the bit about the dolphin show." With great effort Richard sat up and began rolling his eyes.

"You mean you don't know? You, who always know all the schedules and all the procedures? That's impossible." Nicole finished her wine. "Seriously, Wakefield. What are you talking about?"

Richard opened one of the small windows and stuck his arm through it, pointing at the pool of water that encircled the house. "The great Dr. Luigi Bardolini is here with his intelligent dolphins. Francesca is going to introduce him in about fifteen minutes." He stared at Nicole with wild abandon. "Dr, Bardolini is going to prove, here and tonight," he shouted, "that his dolphins can pa.s.s our university entrance exams."

Nicole pulled back and looked carefully at her colleague. He really is drunk, she thought to herself. Maybe he feels as out of place as I do.

Richard was now gazing intently out the window. "This party is really some zoo, isn't it?" Nicole said after a long silence.

"Where did they find-"

"That's it," Wakefield interrupted her suddenly, giving the table a triumphant pounding. "That's why this place has seemed familiar to me since the moment we walked in." He glanced at Nicole, who was eyeing him as if he had lost his mind. "It's a miniature Rama, don't you see?" He jumped up, unable to contain his happiness at his discovery. "The water surrounding this house is the Cylindrical Sea, the porticoes represent the Central Pkin, and we, lovely lady, are sitting in the city of New York."

Nicole was beginning to comprehend but could not keep up with the racing thoughts of Richard Wakefield. "And what does similarity of design prove?'' he thought out loud. "What does it mean that human architects two thousand years ago constructed a theater with some of the same guiding principles of design as those used in the Raman s.h.i.+p?

Similarity of nature? Similarity of culture? Absolutely not." He stopped, now aware that Nicole was staring fixedly at him. "Mathematics," he said emphatically. A quizzical expression told him that she still didn't understand completely. "Mathematics," he said again, surprisingly lucid all of a sudden. "That's the key. The Ramans almost certainly didn't look like us and clearly evolved on a world far different from the Earth. But they must Have understood the same mathematics as the Romans."

His face brightened. "Hah," he shouted again, causing Nicole to jump. He was pleased with himself. "Ramans and Romans. That's what tonight is all about. And at some level of development in between is modern-day h.o.m.o sapiens." Nicole shook her head as Richard exulted in the joy of his wit. "You don't understand, lovely lady?" he said, extending his hand to help her up from her seat. "Then perhaps you and I should go to watch a dolphin show and I will speak to you of Ramans there and Romans here, of cabbages and kings, of dum-de-dum and sealing wax, and whether pigs have wings."

13 HAPPY NEW YEAR.

After everyone had finished eating land all the plates had been cleared, Francesca Sabatini appeared in the center of the yard with a microphone and spent ten minutes thanking all the gala sponsors. Then she introduced Dr. Luigi Bardolini, suggesting that the techniques he had pioneered to communicate with the dolphins might prove extremely useful when humans try to talk to any extraterrestrials. Richard Wakefield had disappeared just before Francesca had started speaking, ostensibly to find the rest room and obtain another drink. Nicole had caught sight of him briefly five minutes later, just after Francesca had finished with her introduction. He had been surrounded by a pair of buxom Italian actresses, both of whom were laughing heartily at his jokes. He had waved at Nicole and winked, pointing at the two women as if his actions were self-explanatory. Good for you, Richard, Nicole had thought, smiling to herself. At least one of us social misfits is having a good time. She now watched Franceses walk gracefully across the bridge and start to move the crowd back from the water so that Bardolini and his dolphins would have plenty of room. Fran-cesca was wearing a tight black dress, bare on one shoulder, with a starburst of gold sequins in the front. A gold scarf was tied around her waist. Her long blond hair was braided and pinned against her head.

You really belong here, Nicole thought, truthfully admiring Francesca's ease in large crowds. Dr. Bardolini began the first segment of his dolphin show and Nicole turned her attention to the circular pool of water. Luigi Bardolini was one of those controversial scientists whose work is brilliant but never quite as exceptional as he himself wants others to believe. It was true that he had developed a unique way of communicating with the dolphins and had isolated and identified the sounds of thirty to forty action verbs in their portfolio of squeaks. But it was not true, as he so often claimed, that two of his dolphins could pa.s.s a university entrance exam. Unfortunately, the way the twenty-second century international scientific community operated, if your most outrageous or advanced theories could not be substantiated, or were held up to ridicule, then your other discoveries, no matter how solid, were often disparaged as well. This behavior had induced an endemic conservatism in science that was not altogether healthy.

Unlike most scientists, Bardolini was a brilliant showman. In the final segment of his show he had his two most famous dolphins, Emilio and Emilia, take an intelligence test in a real-time compet.i.tion against two of the villa guides, one male and one female, who had been selected at random that evening. The construct of the compet.i.tive test was enticingly simple. On two of the four large electronic screens (one pair of screens was in the water and another pair was in the yard), a three-by-three matrix was shown with a blank in the lower right-hand corner. The other eight elements were filled with different pictures and shapes. The dolphins and humans taking the test were supposed to discern the changing patterns moving from left to right and top to bottom in the matrix, and then correctly pick out, from a set of eight candidates displayed on the companion screen, the element that should be placed in the blank lower right comer. The compet.i.tors had one minute to make their choice on each problem. The dolphins in the water, like the humans on the land above them, had a control panel of eight b.u.t.tons they could push (the dolphins used their snouts) to indicate their selection.

The first few problems were easy, both for the humans and for the dolphins. In the first matrix, a single white ball was in the upper left corner, two white b.a.l.l.s in the second column of the first row, and three white b.a.l.l.s in the matrix element corresponding to row one and column three. Since the first element of the second row was a single ball as well, half white and half black, and since the beginning element of the third row was another single ball, now fully black, it was easy to read the entire matrix quickly and determine that what belonged in the blank lower right corner was three black b.a.l.l.s.

Later problems were not so easy. With each successive puzzle, more complications were added. The humans made their first error on the eighth matrix, the dolphins on the ninth. Altogether Dr. Bardolini exhibited sixteen matrices, the last one so complicated that at least ten separate changing patterns had to be recognized to properly identify what should be entered as the last element. The final score was a tie, Humans 12, Dolphins 12. Both pairs took a bow and the audience applauded.

Nicole had found the exercise fascinating. She wasn't certain if she believed Dr. Bardolini's a.s.sertion that the compet.i.tion was fair and unrehea.r.s.ed, but it didn't matter to her. What she thought was interesting was the nature of the compet.i.tion itself, the idea that intelligence could be defined in terms of an ability to identify patterns and trends. Is there a way that synthesis can be measured? she thought. In children. Or even adults, for that matter.

Nicole had partic.i.p.ated in the test along with the human and dolphin contestants and had correctly answered the first thirteen, missing the fourteenth because of a careless a.s.sumption, and just finis.h.i.+ng the fifteenth accurately before the buzzer sounded the end of the allocated time. She had had no idea where to begin on the sixteenth. And what about you Ramans? she was wondering, as Franceses returned to the microphone to introduce Genevieve's heartthrob, Julien LeClerc, Would you have been able to answer all sixteen correctly in one tenth the time? One hundredth? She gulped, as she realized the full range of possibilities. Or maybe even one millionth?

"I never lived, 'til I met you. ... I never loved, 'til I saw you.

. . ." The soft melody of the old recorded song swam in Nicole's memory and brought back an image from fifteen years before, from another dance with another man when she had still believed that love could conquer everything. Julien LeClerc misread her body signals and pulled her closer to him. Nicole decided not to fight it. She was already very tired and, if the truth were known, it felt good being held tightly by a man for the first time in several years. She had honored her agreement with Genevieve, When Monsieur LeClerc had finished his short set of songs, Nicole had approached the French singer and given him the message from her daughter. As she had antic.i.p.ated, he had interpreted her approach to mean something entirely different. They had continued talking while Francesca had announced to the partygoers that there would be no more formal entertainment until after midnight and that all the guests were free to drink or snack or dance to the recorded music until then, Julien had offered his arm to Nicole and the two of them had walked back over to the portico, where they had been dancing ever since.

Julien was a handsome man, in his early thirties, but he was not really Nicole's type. First of all, he was too conceited for her. He talked about himself all the time and did not pay any attention when the conversation switched to other topics. Although he was a gifted singer, he had no other particularly outstanding characteristics. But, Nicole reasoned as their continued dancing brought stares from the other guests, he's all right as a dancer and it beats standing around twiddling my thumbs.

At a break in the music Francesca came over to talk to them. "Good for you, Nicole," she said, her open smile appearing genuine. "I'm glad to see that you're enjoying yourself." She extended a small tray with half a dozen dark chocolate b.a.l.l.s lightly sprayed with white, possibly a sugar confection. "These are fantastic," Francesca said. "I made them especially for the Newton crew."

Nicole took one of the chocolates and popped it into her mouth. It was delicious. "Now I have a favor to ask," Francesca continued after several seconds. "Since I was never able to schedule a personal interview with you and our mail indicates that there are millions of people out there who would like to find out more about you, do you think that you could come over to our studio here and give me ten or fifteen minutes before midnight?"

Nicole stared intently at Francesca. A voice inside her was sending out a warning, but her mind was somehow garbling the message.

"I agree," Julien LeClerc said while the two women looked at each other. "The press always talks about the 'mysterious lady cosmonaut' or refers to you as 'the ice princess.' Show them what you've shown me tonight, that you're a normal, healthy woman like everybody else."

Why not? Nicole finally decided, suppressing her interior voice. At least by doing it here I don't have to involve Dad and Genevieve.

They had started to walk toward the makes.h.i.+ft studio on the other side of the portico when Nicole saw s.h.i.+geru Takagis.h.i.+ across the room. He was leaning against a column and talking to a trio of j.a.panese businessmen dressed in formal attire. "Just a minute," Nicole said to her companions, 'I'll be right back."

"Tanos.h.i.+ s.h.i.+n-nen, Takagis.h.i.+-san," Nicole greeted him. The j.a.panese scientist turned, startled at first, and smiled as he saw her approach. After he formally introduced Nicole to his a.s.sociates, and they all bowed to acknowledge her presence and accomplishments, Takagis.h.i.+ started a polite conversation.

"O genki desu ka?" he asked.

"Okagesama de," she replied. Nicole leaned across to her j.a.panese colleague and whispered in his ear. "I only have a minute. I wanted to tell you that I have carefully examined all your records and I am in complete agreement with your personal physician. There is no reason to say anything about your heart anomaly to the medical committee." Dr. Takagis.h.i.+ looked as if he had just been told that his wife had given birth to a healthy son. He started to say something personal to Nicole but remembered he was in the midst of a group of his countrymen. "Domo arrigato gozaimas," he said to the retreating Nicole, his warm eyes conveying the depth of his thanks.

Nicole felt great as she waltzed into the studio between Francesca and Julien LeClerc. She posed willingly for the still photographers while Signora Sabatini ensured that all the television equipment was in working order for the interviewShe sipped some more champagne and ca.s.sis, making intermittent small talk with Julien. Finally she took a seat beside Francesca underneath the klieg lights. How wonderful, Nicole kept thinking about the earlier interaction with Takagis.h.i.+, to be able to help that brilliant little man. Francesca's first question was innocent enough. She asked Nicole if she was excited about the coming launch. "Of course," Nicole answered, She then gave a lively summary of the training exercises that the cosmonaut crew had been undergoing while waiting for the opportunity to rendezvous with Rama II. The entire interview was conducted in English. The questions flowed in an orderly pattern. Nicole was asked to describe her role in the mission, what she expected to discover ("I don't really know, but whatever we find will be extremely interesting"), and how she happened to go to the s.p.a.ce Academy in the first place. After about five minutes, Nicole was feeling at ease and very comfortable; it seemed to her that she and Francesca had fallen into a complementary rhythm.

Francesca then asked three personal questions, one about her father, a second about Nicole's mother and the Senoufo tribe in the Ivory Coast, and the third about her life with Genevieve. None of them were difficult. So Nicole was totally unprepared for Francesca's last question.

"It is obvious from your daughter's photographs that her skin is considerably lighter than yours/' Francesca said in the same tone and manner that she had used for all the other questions. "Genevieve's skin color suggests that her father was probably white. Who was the father of your daughter?"

Nicole felt her heart rate surge as she listened to the question. Then time seemed to stand still. A surprising flood of powerful emotions engulfed Nicole and she was afraid she was going to cry. A brilliant hot image of two entwined bodies reflected in a large mirror burst into her mind and made her gasp. She momentarily looked down at her feet, trying to regain her composure.

You stupid woman, she said to herself as she struggled to calm the combination of anger and pain and remembered love that had crashed upon her like a tidal wave. You should have known better. Again the tears threatened and she fought them. She looked up at the lights and Francesca. The gold sequins on the front of the Italian journalist's dress had grouped into a pattern, or so it seemed to Nicole. She saw a head in the sequins, the head of a large cat, its eyes gleaming and its mouth with sharp teeth just beginning to open.

At last, after what seemed to be forever, Nicole felt that she again had her emotions under control. She stared angrily at Francesca. "A/on voglio parlare di quello," Nicole said quietly in Italian. "Abbiamo terminate questa in-tervista." She stood up, noticed that she was trembling, and sat down again. The cameras were still rolling. She breathed deeply for several seconds. At length Nicole rose from her chair and walked out of the temporary studio.

She wanted to flee, to run away from everything, to go someplace where she could be alone with her private feelings. But it was impossible. Julien grabbed her as she exited from the interview. "What a b.i.t.c.h!" he said, waving an accusing finger in Francesca's direction. There were people all around Nicole. All of them were talking at the same time. She was having trouble focusing her eyes and ears in all the confusion.

In the distance Nicole heard some music that she vaguely recognized but the song was more than half over before she realized it was "Auld Lang Syne." Julien had his arm around her back and was singing l.u.s.tily. He was also leading the group of twenty or so people cl.u.s.tered around them in singing the final words. Nicole mouthed the last bar mechanically and tried to maintain her equilibrium. Suddenly a moist pair of lips was pressed against hers and an active tongue was trying to pry open her mouth and force its way inside. Julien was kissing her feverishly, photographers were snapping pictures all around, there was an incredible amount of noise. Nicole's head began to spin and she felt as if she were going to faint. She struggled hard, finally succeeding in freeing herself from Julien's grasp.

Nicole staggered backward and b.u.mped into an angry Reggie Wilson. He pushed her aside in his haste to grab a couple sharing a deep New Year's kiss in the flas.h.i.+ng lights. Nicole watched him disinterestedly, as if she were in a movie theater, or even in one of her own dreams. Reggie pulled the pair apart and raised his right arm as if he were going to slug the other man.

Francesca Sabatini restrained Reggie as a confused David Brown retreated from her embrace.

"Keep your hands off her, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Reggie shouted, still threatening the American scientist. "And don't think for one minute that I don't know what you're doing." Nicole could not believe what she was seeing. Nothing made any sense. Within seconds the room was full of security guards. Nicole was one of many people ushered summarily away from the fracas while order was being restored. As she left the studio area she happened to pa.s.s Elaine Brown, sitting by herself in the portico with her back against a column. Nicole had met and enjoyed Elaine when she had gone to Dallas to talk to David Brown's family physician about his allergies. At the moment Elaine was obviously drunk and in no mood to talk to anybody. "You s.h.i.+t," Nicole heard her mutter, "I never should have showed you the results until after I had published them myself. Then everything would have been different."

Nicole left the gala as soon as she was able to arrange her transportation back to Rome. Francesca unbelievably tried to escort her out to the limousine as if nothing had happened. Nicole curtly rejected her fellow cosmonaut's offer and walked out alone.

It started to snow during the ride back to the hotel. Nicole concentrated on the falling snowflakes and was eventually able to clear her mind enough to a.s.sess the evening. Of one thing she was absolutely certain. There had been something unusual and very powerful in that chocolate ball she had eaten. Nicole had never before come so close to losing complete control of her emotions. Maybe she gave one to Wilson too, Nicole thought. And that partially explains his eruption. But why? she asked herself again. What is she trying to accomplish?

Back at the hotel she prepared quickly for bed. But just as she was ready to turn out the lights, Nicole thought she heard a light knock on the door. She stopped and listened, but there was no sound for several seconds. She had almost decided that her ears were playing tricks on her when she heard the knock again. Nicole pulled the hotel robe around her and approached the locked door very cautiously. "Who's there?" she said forcefully but not convincingly. "Identify yourself."

She heard a sound of sc.r.a.ping and a piece of folded paper was thrust under the door. Nicole, still wary and frightened, picked up the paper and opened it. On it was written, in the original Senoufo script of her mother's tribe, three simple words: Ronata. Omeh. Here. Ronata was Nicole's name in Senoufo.

A mixture of panic and excitement caused Nicole to open the door without first checking on the monitor to see who was outside. Standing ten feet away from the door, his amazing old eyes already locked on hers, was an ancient, wizened man with his face painted in green and white horizontal streaks. He was wearing a full-length, bright green tribal costume, similar to a robe, on which were gold swashes and a collection of line drawings of no apparent meaning.

"Omeh!" Nicole said, her heart threatening to jump out of her chest. "What are you doing here?" she added in Senoufo.

The old black man said nothing. He was holding out a stone and a small vial of some kind, both in his right hand. After several seconds he stepped deliberately forward into the room. Nicole backpedaled with each of his steps. His gaze never wavered from her. When they were in the center of her hotel room and only three or four feet apart, the old man looked up at the ceiling and began to chant. It was a ritual Senoufo song, a general blessing and spell invocation used by the tribal shaman for hundreds of years to ward off evil spirits.

When he had finished the chant the old man Omeh stared again at his great-granddaughter and began to speak very slowly. "Ronata," he said, "Omeh has sensed strong danger in this life. It is written in the tribal chronicles that the man of three centuries will chase the evil demons away from the woman with no companion. But Omeh cannot protect Ronata after Ronata leaves the kingdom of Minowe. Here," he said, taking her hand and placing the stone and vial in it, "these stay with Ronata always."

Nicole looked down at the stone, a smooth, polished oval about eight inches long and four inches in each of the other two dimensions. The stone was mostly creamy white with a few strange brown lines wriggling across its surface. The small green vial that he had given her was no bigger than a traveling bottle of perfume.

"The water from the Lake of Wisdom can help Ronata," Omeh said. "Ronata will know the time to drink." He tilted his head back and earnestly repeated the earlier chant, this time with his eyes closed. Nicole stood beside him in puzzled silence, the stone and the vial in her right hand. When he was finished singing, Omeh shouted three words that Nicole did not understand. Then he abruptly turned around and walked quickly toward the open door. Startled, Nicole ran out into the hall just in time to see his green gown disappear into the elevator.

14 GOOD-BYE HENRY.

Nicole and Genevieve walked arm in arm up the hill through the light snow. "Did you see the look on that American's face when I told him who you were?" Genevieve said with a laugh. She was very proud of her mother.

Nicole s.h.i.+fted her skis and poles over to the other shoulder as they approached the hotel. "Guten Abend," an old man who would have made a perfect Santa Claus mumbled as he ambled by. "I wish you wouldn't be so quick to tell people," Nicole said, not really chastizing her daughter. "Sometimes it's nice not to be recognized."

There was a small shed for the skis beside the entrance to the hotel. Nicole and Genevieve stopped and placed their equipment in a locker. They exchanged their ski boots for soft snow slippers and walked back out into the fading light Mother and daughter stood together for a moment and looked back down the hill toward the village of Davos. "You know," said Nicole,, "there was a time today, during our race down that back piste toward Klos-ters, when I found it impossible to believe that I will actually be way out there (she gestured at the sky) in less than two weeks, headed for a rendezvous with a mysterious alien s.p.a.cecraft. Sometimes the human mind balks at the truth."

"Maybe it's only a dream," her daughter said lightly. Nicole smiled. She loved Genevieve's sense of play. Whenever the day-today drudgery of the hard work and tedious preparation would begin to overwhelm Nicole, she could always count on her daughter's easy nature to bring her out of her seriousness. They were quite a trio, the three of them that lived at Beauvois. Each of them was sorely dependent on the other two. Nicole did not like to think how the hundred-day separation might affect their harmonious accord.

"Does it bother you that I will be gone so long?" Nicole asked Genevieve as they entered the hotel lobby. A dozen people were sitting around a roaring fire in the middle of the room. An inconspicuous but efficient Swiss waiter was serving hot drinks to the apres-ski crew. There would be no robots in a Morosani hotel, not even for room service.

"I don't think of it that way," her cheerful daughter responded. "After all, I'll be able to talk with you almost every night on the videophone. The delay time will even make it fun. And challenging." They walked past the old-fas.h.i.+oned registration desk. "Besides," Genevieve added, "I'll be the center of attention at school for the whole mission. My cla.s.s project is already set; I'm going to draw a psychological portrait of the Ramans based on my conversations with you."

Nicole smiled again and shook her head. Genevieve's optimism was always infectious. It was a shame"Oh, Madame des Jardins." The voice interrupted her thought. The hotel manager was beckoning to her from the desk. Nicole turned around. "There's a message for you," the manager continued. "I was told to deliver it to you personally."

He handed her a small plain envelope. Nicole opened it and saw just the tiniest portion of a crest on the note card. Her heart raced into overdrive as she closed the envelope again.

"What is it, Mother?" Genevieve inquired. "It must be special to be hand delivered. n.o.body does things like that these days."

Nicole tried to hide her feelings from her daughter. "It's a secret memo about my work," she lied. "The deliveryman made a terrible mistake. He should never have given it even to Herr Graf. He should have put it in my hands only."

"More confidential medical data about the crew?" Genevieve asked. She and her mother had often discussed the delicate role of the life science officer on a major s.p.a.ce mission. Nicole nodded. "Darling," she said to her daughter, "why don't you run upstairs and tell your grandfather that I'll be along in a few minutes. We'll still plan dinner for seventhirty. I'll read this message now and see if any urgent response is required."

Nicole kissed Genevieve and waited until her daughter was on the elevator before walking back outside into the light snow. It was dark now. She stood under the streetlight and opened the envelope with her cold hands. She had difficulty controlling her trembling fingers. You fool, she thought, you careless fool. After all this time. What if the girl had seen. . .

The crest was the same as it had been on that afternoon, fifteen and a half years ago, when Darren Higgins had handed her the dinner invitation outside the Olympic press area. Nicole was surprised by the strength of her emotions, She steeled herself and finally looked at the rest of the note below the crest.

"Sorry for the last-minute notice. Must see you tomorrow. Noon exactly. Warming hut #8 on the Weissfluhjoch. Come alone. Henry."

The next morning Nicole was one of the first in line for the cable car that carried skiers to the top of the Weissfluhjoch. She climbed into the polished gla.s.s car with about twenty others and leaned against the window while the door automatically shut. / have seen him only once in these fifteen years, she thought to herself, and yet . . . As the cable car ascended, Nicole pulled her snow gla.s.ses down over her eyes. It was a dazzling morning, not unlike the January morning seven years earlier when her father had called for her from the villa. They had had a rare snowfall at Beauvois the night before and, after much pleading, she had let Genevieve stay home from school to play in the snow. Nicole was working at the hospital in Tours at the time and was waiting to hear about her application to the s.p.a.ce Academy.

She had been showing her seven-year-old daughter how to make a snow angel when Pierre had called a second time from the house. "Nicole, Genevieve, there's something special in our mail," he had said. "It must have come during the night." Nicole and Genevieve had run to the villa in their snowsuits while Pierre posted the full text of the message on the wall video-screen.

"Most extraordinary," Pierre had said. "It seems we've all been invited to the English coronation, including the private reception afterward. This is extremely unusual."

"Oh, Grandpapa/' Genevieve said excitedly, "I want to go. Can we go? Do I get to meet a real king and queen?"

"There is no queen, darling," her grandfather replied, "unless you mean the queen mother. This king has not yet married."

Nicole read the invitation several times without saying anything. After Genevieve had calmed down and left the room, her father had put his arms around Nicole.

"I want to go," she had said quietly.

"Are you certain?" he had asked, pulling away and regarding her with an inquisitive stare.

"Yes," she had answered 6rmly.

Henry had never seen her until that evening, Nicole was thinking as she checked first her watch and then her equipment in preparation for her ski run down from the summit. Father had been wonderful. He had let me disappear at Beauvois and almost n.o.body knew I had a baby until Genevieve was almost a year old. Henry never even suspected. Not until that night at Buckingham Palace. Nicole could still see herself waiting in the reception line. The king had been late. Genevieve had been fidgety. At last Henry had been standing opposite her. "The honorable Pierre des Jardins of Beauvois, France, with his daughter, Nicole, and granddaughter, Genevieve." Nicole had bowed very properly and Genevieve had curtsied.

"So this is Genevieve," the king had said. He had bent down for only a moment and put a hand under the child's chin. When the girl had lifted up her face he had seen something that he recognized. He had turned to look at Nicole, a trace of questioning in his glance. Nicole had revealed nothing with her smile. The crier was calling out the names of the next guests in the line. The king had moved on.

So you sent Darren to the hotel, Nicole thought as she schussed a short slope, aimed for a small jump, and was airborne for a second or two. And he hemmed and hawed and finally asked me if I would come have tea. Nicole dug her edges into the snow and came to an abrupt stop. "Tell Henry I can't," she remembered saying to Darren in London seven years earlier.

She looked again at her watch. It was only eleven o'clock, too early to ski to the hut. She eased over to one of the lifts and took another ride to the summit.

It was two minutes past noon when Nicole arrived at the small chalet on the edge of the woods. She took off her skis, stuck them in the snow, and walked toward the front door. She ignored the conspicuous signs all around her that said EINTRITT VERBOTEN. From out of nowhere came two burly men, one of whom actually jumped between Nicole and the door to the hut. "It's all right," she heard a familiar voice say, "we're expecting her." The two guards vanished as quickly as they had appeared and Nicole saw Darren, smiling as always, occupying the doorway to the chalet.

"Hi there, Nicole," he said in his normal friendly fas.h.i.+on. Darren had aged. There were a few flecks of gray around his temples and some salt with the pepper in his short beard.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm fine, Darren," she answered, aware that despite all her lectures to herself, she was already starting to feel nervous. She reminded herself that she was now a professional, as accomplished in her own way as this king she was about to see. Nicole then strode forcefully into the chalet. It was warm inside. Henry was standing with his back to a small fireplace. Darren closed the door behind her and left the two of them alone. Nicole self-consciously removed her scarf and opened her parka. She took off her snow gla.s.ses. They stared at each other for twenty, maybe thirty seconds, neither saying a word, neither wanting to interrupt the powerful flow of emotions that was carrying each of them back to two magnificent days fifteen years before.

"h.e.l.lo, Nicole," the king said finally. His voice was soft and tender.