When the meal was over, Francesca excused herself. She and Dr. Takagishi disappeared for several minutes. When they returned Francesca asked the cosmonauts to turn their chairs to face the large screen. Then, with the lights out, she and Takagishi projected a full exterior view of Rama on the monitor. Except that this was not the dull gray cylinder everyone had seen before. No, this Rama had been cleverly colored, using image processing subroutines, and was now a black cylinder with yellow-gold stripes. The end of the cylinder looked almost like a face. There was a momentary quiet in the room before Francesca began to recite.
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
Nicole des Jardins felt a cold chill run up her spine as she listened to Francesca begin the next verse.
“In what distant deeps or skies, Burnt the fire of thine eyes?..”
That is the real question after all, Nicole was thinking. Who made this gargantuan spacecraft? That’s much more important for our ultimate destiny than why.
“What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?..”
Across the table General O’Toole was also mesmerized by Francesca’s recitation. His mind was again struggling with the same fundamental questions that had been bothering him since he originally applied for the mission. Dear God, he was wondering, how do these Ramans fit into your universe? Did You create them first, before us? Are they our cousins in some sense? Why have You sent them here at this time?
“When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see, Did He who made the Lamb make thee?”
When Francesca finished the short poem there was a brief silence and then spontaneous applause. She graciously mentioned that Dr. Takagishi had provided all the image processing intelligence and the likable Japanese cosmonaut took an embarrassed bow. Then Janos Tabori stood at his chair. “I think I speak for all of us, Shig and Francesca, in congratulating you on that original and thought-provoking performance,” he said with a grin. “It almost, but not quite, made me feel serious about what we are doing tomorrow.”
“Speaking of which,” General Borzov said, rising at the head of the table with his recently opened bottle of Ukrainian vodka, from which he had already taken two strong belts, “it is now time for an ancient Russian tradition — the toasts. I brought along only two bottles of this national treasure and I propose to share them both with you, my comrades and colleagues, on this very special evening.”
He placed both bottles in General O’Toole’s hands and the American adroitly used the liquid dispenser to channel the vodka into small covered cups that were passed around the table. “As Irina Turgenyev knows!” the commander continued, “there is always a small worm in the bottom of a bottle of Ukrainian vodka. Legend has it that he who eats the worm will be endowed with special powers for twenty-four hours. Admiral Heilmann has marked two of the cup bottoms with an infrared cross. The two people who drink from the marked cups will each be allowed to eat one of the vodka-saturated worms.”
“Yuch,” said Janos a moment later, as he passed the infrared scanner to Nicole. He had first verified that he had no cross on the bottom of his cup. “This is one contest I am glad to lose.”
Nicole’s cup did have a marking on the bottom. She was one of the two lucky cosmonauts who would be able to eat a Ukrainian worm for dessert. She found herself wondering, Must I do this? and then answering her own question affirmatively as she saw the earnest look on her commanding officer’s face. Oh well, she thought, it probably won’t kill me. Any parasites have probably been rendered harmless by the alcohol.
General Borzov himself had the second cup with a cross on the bottom. The general smiled, placed one of the two tiny worms in his own cup (and the other in Nicole’s), and raised his vodka toward the ceiling of the spacecraft.
“Let us all drink to a successful mission,” he said. “For each of us, these next few days and weeks will be the greatest adventure of our lives. In a real sense, we dozen are human ambassadors to an alien culture. Let us each resolve to do our best to properly represent our species.”
He took the cover off his cup, being careful not to jiggle it, and then drank it all in one gulp. He swallowed the worm whole. Nicole also swallowed the worm quickly, commenting to herself that the only thing she had ever eaten that tasted worse than the worm was that awful tuber during her Poro ceremony in the Ivory Coast.
After several more short toasts the lights in the room began to dim. “And now,” General Borzov announced with a grand gesture, “direct from Stratford, the Newton proudly presents Richard Wakefield and his talented robots.” The room became dark except for a square meter to the left of the table that was spotlit from above. In the middle of the light was a cutaway of an old castle. A female robot, twenty centimeters high and dressed in a robe, was walking around in one of the rooms. She was reading a letter at the beginning of the scene. After a few steps, however, she dropped her hands to her sides and began to speak.
“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great .
“I know that woman,” Janos said with a grin to Nicole. “I have met her somewhere before.”
“Shh,” replied Nicole. She was fascinated by the precision in the movements of Lady Macbeth. That Wakefield really is a genius, she was thinking. How is he able to design such extraordinary detail into those little things? Nicole was astonished by the range of expressions on the robot’s face.
As she concentrated, the tiny stage began to swim in Nicole’s mind. She momentarily forgot she was watching robots in a miniature performance. A messenger came in and told Lady Macbeth both that her husband was drawing near and that King Duncan would be spending the night in their castle. Nicole watched Lady Macbeth’s face explode with ambitious anticipation as soon as the messenger had departed.
“…Come you Spirits That tend on mortal thoughts. Unsex me here And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood…”
My God, Nicole thought, blinking her eyes to make certain they were not playing tricks on her, she’s changing! Indeed she was. As the words “Unsex me here” came from the robot, her (or its) shape began to change. The impression of the breasts against the metal gown, the roundness of the hips, even the softness of the face all disappeared. An androgynous robot played on as Lady Macbeth.
Nicole was spellbound and floating in a fantasy induced both by her wild imagination and the sudden intake of alcohol. The new face on the robot was vaguely reminiscent of someone she knew. She heard a disturbance to her right and turned to see Reggie Wilson talking avidly with Franceses. Nicole glanced back and forth quickly from Francesca to Lady Macbeth. That’s it, she said to herself. This new Lady Macbeth resembles Francesca.