Rama Revealed

4

Katie had not finished with her makeup when she heard the buzzer sound. She took a drag on the cigarette burning in the ashtray beside her and pushed the TALK button. “Who is it?” she said.

“It’s me,” came the reply.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the day?”

“I have some important news,” Captain Franz Bauer said. “Buzz me up.”

Katie inhaled deeply on the cigarette and stubbed it out. She stood up and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She adjusted her hair slightly just before the knock on her door.

“This had better be important, Franz,” Katie said, letting him into the room, “or your ass is mud. You know I have a disciplinary meeting with two of the girls in a few minutes and I hate to be late.”

Franz grinned. “You caught them skimming again? Jesus, Katie, I’d hate for you to be my boss.”

Katie looked at Franz impatiently. “Well?” she said. “What was too important for the telephone?”

Franz had begun to walk around the living room. The room was tastefully decorated, with a black and white sofa and loveseat, two matching chairs, and several interesting objects d’art on both the end tables and the coffee table. “There’s not any chance that your apartment is bugged, is there?”

“You tell me, Mr. Police Captain,” Katie said. “Now, really, Franz,” she added, glancing at her watch, “I don’t have—”

“There is a reliable report,” Franz said, “that your father is in New Eden at this very moment.”

“Whaat?” said Katie. “How is that possible?” She was stunned. She sat down on the couch and reached for another cigarette from the coffee table.

“A lieutenant of mine is close friends with one of your father’s guards. He was told that Richard and one of those octospider creatures are being held in the basement of a private residence not far from here.”

Katie crossed the room and picked up the telephone. “Darla,” she said, “tell Lauren and Atsuko that the meeting today is off. Something has come up. Reschedule for two o’clock tomorrow afternoon… Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Dammit… All right, make it eleven in the morning. No, eleven-thirty. I don’t want to wake up too early.”

Katie returned to the couch and picked up her cigarette. She took a huge drag and blew smoke rings into the air over her head. “I want to know everything that you have heard about my father.”

Franz informed Katie that, according to his sources, her father, her sister Ellie, her niece, and an octospider had suddenly appeared, carrying a white flag, at the troop encampment on the southern edge of the Cylindrical Sea about two months ago. They had been quite relaxed and had even joked with the soldiers, Franz said. Her father and sister had told the troops that they had come forward with an octospider representative to see if an armed conflict between the two species could be avoided through negotiation.

Nakamura had ordered that the entire affair be kept secret and had taken them.

Katie was pacing around the room. “My father is not only alive,” she said excitedly, “he is here, in New Eden. Have I ever told you, Franz,” she said, “that my father is absolutely the smartest human being who ever lived?”

“About a dozen times,” Franz said. He laughed. “I can’t imagine how anyone could be smarter than you.”

Katie waved her hand. “He makes me look like an absolute idiot. He was always such a dear. I could get away with anything.” She stopped her pacing and inhaled on her cigarette. Her eyes sparkled as she exhaled the smoke. “Franz,” she said. “I must see him. I absolutely must.”

“That’s impossible, Katie,” he said. “Nobody is even supposed to know that he’s here. I could be fired, or worse, if anyone ever found out that I told you.”

“I’m pleading with you, Franz,” Katie said, crossing the room and grabbing him by the shoulders. “You know how I hate asking anyone for favors… but this is very important to me.”

Franz was delighted that for once, Katie was requesting something from him. Nevertheless, he told her the truth. “Katie,” he said, “you still don’t understand. There is an armed guard around the house at all times. The entire basement is bugged with audio and video monitors. There is just no way.”

“There’s always a way,” Katie said emphatically, “if something is important enough.” She reached inside his shirt and began tweaking his right nipple. “You do love me, don’t you, Franz?” She kissed him, a full open-mouthed kiss, with her tongue darting teasingly across his. Katie pulled away slightly, continuing to play with his nipple.

“Of course I love you, Katie,” Franz said, already very much aroused. “But I’m not crazy.”

Katie marched off into her bedroom and returned less than a minute later with two stacks of bills. “I am going to see my father, Franz,” she said, throwing the money on the coffee table. “And you are going to help me. You can bribe anyone you want with this money.”

Franz was impressed. The money was more than adequate. “And what are you going to do for me?” he said almost jokingly,

“What am I going to do for you?” Katie said. “What am I going to do for you?” Katie took him by the hand and led him to the bedroom. “Now, Captain Bauer,” she said in an accented voice, “you just take off all your clothes and lie here on your back. You’ll see what I am going to do for you.”

Katie’s apartment had a dressing room adjacent to her bedroom. She walked into the smaller room and closed the door. With a key she unlocked a large decorated box on the top of the counter and pulled out one of the full syringes she had prepared earlier in the day. Katie lifted her dress and tied a tight tourniquet around her upper thigh with a piece of small black tubing. She waited momentarily until she could clearly identify a blood vessel in the mass of bruises on her thigh, and then she deftly inserted the syringe. After pressing all the fluid into her bloodstream, Katie waited a few seconds for the fantastic rush and then removed the tourniquet.

“What am I supposed to do while I’m waiting?”

“Rilke is in my electronic reader, darling,” she said, “both in German and English. I’ll only be a few more minutes.”

Katie was flying. She started humming a dance tune while she threw the syringe away and returned the tourniquet to the box. She took off all her clothes, stopping twice to admire her body in the mirror, and put them in a pile upon the vanity stool. Then she opened a large drawer in the vanity and pulled out a blindfold.

She paraded into the bedroom. Franz’s eyes feasted admiringly upon her lithe body. “Look carefully,” Katie said, “‘cause this is all you’re going to see this afternoon.”

Katie draped her naked body casually across his and kissed him intermittently while she attached the blindfold. She made certain that the blindfold was snug and (hen jumped down from the bed. “What happens now?” Franz asked.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” Katie said teasingly as she rummaged through a large drawer at the bottom of her dresser. The drawer contained a smorgasbord of sexual paraphernalia, including electronic aids of all kinds, lotions, ropes and other bondage equipment, masks, and assorted models of genitalia. Katie selected a small bottle of lotion, a vial of white powder, and some beads strung along a piece of thin cord.

Still humming and laughing to herself, Katie rejoined Franz on the bed and began to run her fingers over his chest. She kissed him provocatively with her body pressed against his and then sat up. After pouring the lotion on her hands and rubbing them together vigorously, Katie spread his legs, crawled onto his stomach with her back toward Franz’s face, and began to apply the lotion to his most sensitive parts.

“Ummm,” Franz murmured as the warm lotion began to take effect. “That’s wonderful.”

Katie dusted his genitalia with the white powder and then mounted him very slowly. Franz was in ecstasy. Katie rocked back and forth in an easy rhythm for a few minutes. When she could tell that Franz was nearing a climax, she halted her motion temporarily and reached under him to insert the beads. She rocked two or three more times and then halted again.

“Don’t stop now,” Franz shouted.

“Repeat after me,” Katie said with a chuckle, moving slowly back and forth one more time. “I promise—”

“Anything,” Franz yelled, “just don’t stop again.”

“I promise,” she continued, “mat Katie Wakefield will see her father sometime in the next few days.”

Franz repeated the promise and Katie rewarded him. When she pulled the cord just after he started his climax, Franz screamed at the top of his lungs like an animal in the forest.

Ellie did not like her two interrogators. They were both dry, humorless individuals who treated her with complete disdain. “This isn’t going to work, gentlemen,” she said in an exasperated tone at one point during the first day of questioning, “if you insist on asking the same questions over and over. I understood that I was being asked to supply some information about the octospiders. Thus far the questions, which you are now repeating, have all been about my mother and my father.”

“Mrs. Turner,” the first man said, “the government is trying to gather all possible information about this case. Your mother and father have both been fugitives for many—”

“Look,” Ellie interrupted, “I have already told you that I know nothing whatsoever about how, when, or even why either of my parents left New Eden. Nor do I have any knowledge of whether they were helped to escape, in any way, by the octospiders. Now, unless you are prepared to change the line of questioning—”

“It is not you, young lady,” the second man said, his eyes flashing, “who decides what are appropriate questions in this inquiry. Perhaps you do not understand the seriousness of your situation. You will be granted freedom from prosecution-on a very serious charge, I might add-only if you cooperate totally with us.”

“Just what is the charge against me?” Ellie asked. “I’m curious. I have never been a criminal before.”

“You can be charged with first-degree treason,” the first man said. “Deliberately aiding and abetting the enemy during a period of declared hostilities.”

“That’s absurd,” Ellie replied, frightened nevertheless. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Do you deny that during the period of time that you were staying with the aliens you freely gave them information about New Eden that could be useful during a war?”

“Of course I did,” Ellie said, laughing nervously. “I told them as much as I could about our colony. And they reciprocated. The octospiders shared all the same information with us.”

Both men scribbled furiously on their pads. How did they get like this? Ellie wondered. How can a laughing, curious child be transformed into such a grim and Hostile adult?

“Look, gentlemen,” Ellie said when the next question was asked, “this is not going well for me. I would like to declare a recess and organize my thoughts. Maybe I’ll even make a few notes before we reconvene. I had envisioned an altogether different process, something much more relaxed.”

The two men agreed to the break. Ellie walked down the hallway to where a government sitter was staying with Nikki. “You can go now, Mrs. Adams,” Ellie said. “We’re taking time off for lunch.”

Nikki could read the worried look on Ellie’s face. “Are those men being mean to you, Mommy?” she asked.

At length Ellie smiled. “You could say that, Nikki,” she said. “You certainly could say that.”

Richard completed the last of his walking laps around the basement and headed for the washbasin in the corner of the room. He stopped first at the table for a quick drink of water. Archie remained motionless on the floor behind Richard’s mattress. “Good morning,” Richard said as he wiped his sweat with a washcloth. “Are you ready for some breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry,” the octospider replied in color.

“You have to eat something,” Richard said cheerfully. “I agree with you that the food is terrible, but you can’t survive on water alone.”

Archie did not move or say anything. For the last several days, ever since the supply of his stored barrican had been exhausted, the octospider had not been very good company. Richard had been unable to engage Archie in their usual stimulating conversation and had become concerned about the octospider’s health. Richard put some grain in a bowl, sprinkled water on it, and carried it “over to his friend. “Here,” he said gently, “try to eat a little.”

Archie lifted a pair of tentacles and took the bowl. As he began to eat, a bright orange burst came out of his slit and moved halfway down one of his other tentacles before fading away.

“What was that?” Richard asked.

“An emotional expression,” Archie answered, his response accompanied by more irregular color bursts.

Richard smiled. “Okay,” he said, “but what kind of emotion?”

After a long pause, Archie’s colored strips were more regimented. “I guess you would call it depression,” the octospider said.

“Is that what happens when the barrican is gone?” Richard asked.

Archie did not reply. At length Richard returned to the table and prepared himself a big bowl of grain. Then he came back and sat beside Archie on the floor. “You might as well talk about it,” Richard said softly. “We have nothing else to do.”

From the motion in Archie’s lens Richard could tell that the octo was studying him carefully. Richard took several spoonfuls of his breakfast before Archie began to speak.

“In our society,” Archie said, “the young males and females who are undergoing sexual maturation are taken away from their everyday lives and placed in a highly appropriate environment with individuals who have been through the process before. They are encouraged to describe what they are feeling and are reassured that the new and complex emotions they are experiencing are completely normal. Now I understand why such a program of intense attention is necessary.”

Archie paused for a moment and Richard smiled sympathetically. “These last few days,” the octospider continued, “for the first time since I was a very young juvenile, my emotions have not accepted the domination of my mind. During optimizer training we learned how important it was, whenever a decision was to be made, to sift carefully through all the available evidence and remove all prejudice that might be due to personal emotional responses. With the intensity of the feelings I am having presently, it would be quite impossible to relegate them to a low priority.”

Richard laughed. “Please don’t misunderstand me, Archie-I’m not laughing at you-but you just described, in a typical octospider phrase, what most humans feel all the time. Very few of us ever achieve the control of our ‘personal emotional responses’ that we would like. This may be the first time that you have ever been able to really understand us, if you know what I mean.”

“It’s terrible,” Archie said. “I am feeling both an acute sense of loss-I miss Dr. Blue and Jamie-and powerful anger toward Nakamura for holding us prisoner. I fear that my outrage will cause me to take some action that is non-optimal.”

“But the emotions you are describing are not usually connected, at least in humans, with sexuality,” Richard said. “Does the barrican also act as some kind of tranquilizer, subduing all feelings?”

Archie finished his breakfast before responding. “You and I are very different creatures and, as I have mentioned before, it is dangerous to project from one species to another. I remember our initial discussions about humans at the optimizers’ meeting just after you had breached the integrity of your habitat. In the middle of the meeting, the Chief Optimizer stressed that we must not look at your species in our terms. We must observe carefully, she said, obtain data, and correlate it consistently, without coloring the data with our own experience.

“I suppose this ail amounts to a disclaimer, in some sense, of what I am about to tell you. Nevertheless, it is my personal opinion, based on my observations of humans, that sexual desire is the driving force behind all the strong emotions in your species. We octospiders undergo a step discontinuity at sexual maturation. We change from being completely sexless to sexual in a very short period of time. In humans the process is much slower and more subtle. Sexual hormones are present in varying quantities from early in your fetal development. I contend, and have told the Chief Optimizer this, that it is possible that all your uncontrollable emotions can be traced to these sexual hormones. A human without any sexuality might be capable of the same optimized thought as an octospider.”

“What an interesting idea!” Richard said excitedly, standing up and beginning to pace. “So are you suggesting that even such things as a child’s unwillingness to share a toy, for example, might be linked in some way to our sexuality?”

“Perhaps,” Archie replied. “Maybe Galileo is practicing the possessiveness of his adult sexuality when he refuses to share one of his toys with Kepler. Certainly the human child’s devotion to the parent of the opposite sex is a precursor of adult attitudes.”

Archie stopped, for Richard had turned his back and had increased his pacing. “I’m sorry,” he said, returning a few moments later and again sitting on the floor beside the octospider. “Something occurred to me just now, something I thought about briefly earlier this morning when we were talking about controlling our emotions. Do you remember an earlier conversation in which you dismissed the concept of a personal God as an ‘evolutionary aberration’ necessary for all developing species as a temporary bridge during transition from the first awareness phase to the Information Era? Have the recent changes in you altered in any way your attitude about God?”

A broad burst of multicolored strips, which Richard recognized as laughter, spilled over most of the octospider’s upper body. “You humans,” Archie said, “are absolutely preoccupied with this notion of God. Even those like you, Richard, who profess not to believe, still spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about or discussing the subject. As I explained to you months ago, we octospiders value information foremost, as we were taught by the Precursors. There is no verifiable information available about any God, especially not one who is involved in any way with the daily affairs of the universe—”

“You didn’t exactly understand my question,” Richard interrupted, “or maybe I didn’t phrase it precisely enough. What I want to know is, in your new, more emotional state, can you understand why other intelligent beings might create a personal God as a device to give them comfort and also to explain all those things that they cannot comprehend?”

Archie laughed again with bursts of color. “You’re very clever, Richard,” the octospider said. “You want me to confirm what you think, namely that God also is an emotional concept, born out of a yearning not unlike sexual desire. Therefore God too is derived from sexual hormones. I cannot go that far. I do not have enough information. But I can say, based on the turmoil inside me these last few days, that I now understand this word ‘yearning’ which was meaningless to me before.”

Archie seemed like his old self this morning. Richard smiled. He was pleased. Their exchanges had been like this daily before Archie’s buffer had become empty of barrican. “It would be great, wouldn’t it,” Richard said suddenly, “if we could still talk with all our friends back in the Emerald City?”

Archie knew what Richard was suggesting. The two of them had been careful never to mention the quadroids or even to hint that the octospiders had an intelligence-gathering system. They did not want to alert Nakamura and their guards. Now, as Richard watched silently, bands of color streamed around Archie’s head. Although the octospider was no longer using the derivative language that had been developed for communication with the humans, Richard was able to understand the gist of the transmission.

After formally greeting the Chief Optimizer and apologizing for the lack of success of their mission, Archie sent two personal messages, a short one to Jamie and a longer one to Dr. Blue. During the transmission to his life partner Dr. Blue, variegated bursts of color broke out of the measured pattern of Archie’s message. Richard, who had grown to know his basement companion well in their two months together, was both fascinated and touched by this beautiful display of uninhibited emotion.

When Archie was finished, Richard came over and put a hand on the octospider’s back. “Do you feel better now?” he asked.

“In some ways,” Archie replied. “But I also feel worse at the same time. I am more aware now than I was before that I may never see Dr. Blue or Jamie again.”

“Sometimes I imagine what I would say to Nicole,” Richard interrupted, “if I could talk to her on the telephone.” He spoke his words very correctly, exaggerating the movements of his mouth. “I miss you very much, Nicole,” he said, “and I love you with all my heart.”

Richard did not have very vivid dreams. Therefore, external sounds were not likely to be incorporated into an ongoing dream. When he heard what he thought was a shuffling of feet above him in the middle of the night, he awakened quickly.

Archie was sleeping. Richard looked around and realized that the night light in the toilet area was extinguished. Alarmed, he awakened his octospider companion.

“What is it?” Archie asked in color.

“I heard something unusual upstairs,” Richard whispered.

There was a sound of the door to the basement stairs opening slowly. Richard heard a soft footstep, then another, on the top of the stairs. He strained his eyes, but Richard could see nothing in the near darkness.

“It’s a woman and a policeman,” Archie said, his lens picking up the infrared heat of the intruders. “They have stopped for the moment on the third step.”

We ‘re going to be killed, Richard thought. A powerful fear swept through him and he drew closer to Archie. He heard the slow closing of the basement door and then the footsteps descending the stairs.

“Where are they now?” he whispered.

“At the bottom,” Archie said. “They are coming. I think the woman is—”

“Dad.” Richard heard a voice from his past. “Where are you, Dad?”

“Holy shit! It’s Katie,” Richard said. “Over here,” he added, too loud, trying to contain his excitement.

A very small flashlight beam wandered around the wall behind his mattress and eventually landed on his bearded face. A few seconds later Katie tripped over Archie and literally fell into her father’s arms.

She kissed and hugged him, tears running down her cheeks. Richard was so startled by the entire event that he was at first unable to respond to any of Katie’s questions. “Yes… yes, I’m fine,” he said eventually. “I can’t believe it’s you… Katie, oh, Katie… Oh, yes, that gray mass over there, the one you kicked a moment ago, is my friend and fellow prisoner, Archie the octospider.”

Several seconds later Richard exchanged a firm handshake in the dark with a man Katie introduced only as her “friend.” “We don’t have much time,” Katie said hurriedly after several minutes of conversation about the family. “We’ve short-circuited the power systems in this entire residential area, and they should be repaired before too much longer.”

“Are we going to escape, then?” Richard asked.

“No,” Katie said. “They would certainly catch and kill you… I just wanted to see you. When I heard the rumor that you were being held somewhere in New Eden… Oh, Daddy, how I have missed you! I love you so very much.”

Richard put his arms around his daughter and held her as she cried. She felt so thin and fragile in his arms. “I love you too, Katie,” Richard said. “Here,” he added, pulling away slightly, “shine the light on your face… Let me see your beautiful eyes.”

“No, Daddy,” Katie said, burying herself again in his embrace. “I look old and used… I want you to remember me as I was. I have lived a hard—”

“It’s unlikely that they will be keeping you here much longer, Mr. Wakefield,” the male voice in the dark interrupted. “Almost everyone in the colony has heard the story of your appearance at the soldiers’ camp.”

“Are you all right, Daddy?” Katie said after a short silence. “Are they feeding you properly?”

“I’m fine, Katie… but what have you been doing? Are you happy?”

“I’ve had another promotion,” she said rapidly. “And my new apartment is beautiful. You should see it… And I have a friend who cares about me.”

“I’m so glad,” Richard said as Franz reminded Katie that they needed to be going. “You were always the smartest of the children… You deserve some happiness.”

Katie suddenly began sobbing and lowered her head against her father’s chest. “Daddy, oh, Daddy,” she said through her tears, “please hold me.”

Richard put his arms around his daughter. “What is it, Katie?” he said softly.

“I don’t want to lie to you,” Katie said. “I work for Nakamura, managing prostitutes. And I’m a drug addict… a complete and total drug addict.”

Katie cried for a long time. Richard held her tightly and patted her on the back. “But I do love you, Daddy,” Katie said when she finally raised her head. “I always have, and I always will… I’m terribly sorry that I have disappointed you.”

“Katie, we must be leaving now,” Franz said firmly. “If the power is restored while we are still in the house, we’ll be in deep shit.”

Katie kissed her father hurriedly on the lips and stroked his beard affectionately with her fingers one final time. ‘Take care of yourself, Daddy,” she said. “And don’t give up hope.”

The flashlight beam was a thin finger of light preceding the visiting pair as they quickly crossed the room to the bottom of the stairs. “Good-bye, Daddy,” Katie said.

“I love you too, Katie,” Richard said as he heard the sound of his daughter’s feet running up the stairs.