“I can understand her not wanting me to find out that she had tried to maroon you in the pit,” Richard continued after a brief pause. “What I can’t fathom is why she left you there in the first place.”
“You remember the night you explained to me why RoSur’s fault protection had failed?” Nicole said after a moment’s reflection. “That same night I also asked you and Janos if either of you had seen General Borzov…”
As they walked back in the direction of the central plaza and their hut, Nicole spent fifteen minutes explaining to Richard her entire hypothesis about the conspiracy. She told him about the media contract, the drugs Francesca had given to both David Brown and Reggie Wilson, and Nicole’s personal interactions with all the principals. She did not tell him about the data cube. Richard agreed that the evidence was very compelling.
“So you think she left you there in the pit to avoid being unmasked as a conspirator?”
Nicole nodded.
Richard whistled. “Then everything fits. It was apparent to me that Francesca was running the show when we returned to tie Newton. Both Brown and Heilmann were taking orders from her.” He put his arm around Nicole. “I wouldn’t want that woman as my enemy. She clearly has no scruples whatsoever.”
44
ANOTHER LAIR
Richard and Nicole had bigger concerns than Francesca. When they returned to the central plaza, they found their hut had disappeared. Repeated knocks on the avian cover produced no response. The precariousness of their situation became clearer to both of them.
Richard grew moody and uncommunicative. He apologized to Nicole, saying that it was a characteristic of his personality for him to withdraw from people when he felt insecure. He played with his computer for several hours, only stopping occasionally to ask Nicole questions about the geography of New York.
Nicole lay down on her sleeping mat and thought about swimming across the Cylindrical Sea. She was not an exceptionally good swimmer. During training it had taken her about fifteen minutes to swim one kilometer. That had been in a placid swimming pool. To cross the sea she would be forced to swim five kilometers through cold, choppy water. And she might be accompanied by lovely creatures like the shark biots.
A jolly fat man twenty centimeters high interrupted her contemplation. “Would you like a drink, fair lass?” Falstaff asked her. Nicole rolled over and studied the robot from up close. He hoisted a large mug of fluid and drank it, spilling some on his beard. He wiped it off with his sleeve and then he burped. “And if you want nothing to drink,” he said in a heavy British accent, thrusting his hand down into his codpiece, “then perhaps Sir John could teach you a thing or two between the sheets.” The tiny face was definitely leering. It was crude, but very funny.
Nicole laughed. So did Falstaff. “I am not only witty in myself,” the robot said, “but the cause that wit is in other men.”
“You know,’* Nicole said to Richard, who was watching from several meters away, “if you ever became tired of being a cosmonaut, you could make millions in children’s toys.”
Richard came over and picked up Falstaff. He thanked Nicole for her compliment. “As I see it, we have three options,” he then said very seriously. “We can swim the sea, we can explore New York to see if we can forage enough material to construct some kind of boat, or we can wait here until someone comes. I’m not optimistic about our chances in any of the cases.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“I propose a compromise. When it’s light, let’s carefully search the key areas of the city, particularly around the three plazas, and see if we can find anything that could be used to build a boat. We’ll allot one Raman day, maybe two, to the exploration. If nothing turns up, well swim for it. I have no faith we’ll ever see a rescue team.”
“Sounds all right to me. But I would like to do one other thing first. We don’t have a lot of food, to make a rather obvious understatement, I’d feel better if we pulled up the manna melon first, before we did any more exploring. That way we could be protected against any surprises.”
Richard agreed that establishing the food supply would probably be a prudent initial action. But he didn’t like the idea of using the suture thread again. “You were lucky in many ways,” he told Nicole. “Not only did the line not break, it didn’t even slip off that waistband you made. However, it did cut completely through your gloves in two places and almost through the waistband.”
“You have another idea?” Nicole asked.
“The lattice material is the obvious choice,” Richard replied. “It should be perfect, provided that we don’t have any trouble obtaining it. Then I can go down in the pit and spare you the trouble—”
“Wrong,” Nicole interrupted. She smiled. “With all due respect, Richard, now is not the time for any macho derring-do. Using the lattice is a great idea. But you’re too heavy. If something happened, I would never be able to pull you out.” She patted him on the shoulder. “And I hope it doesn’t hurt your feelings, but I’m probably the more athletic of the two of us.”
Richard feigned hurt pride. “But whatever happened to tradition? The man always performs the feats of physical strength and agility. Don’t you remember your childhood cartoons?”
Nicole laughed heartily. “Yes, my dear,” she said lightly. “But you aren’t Popeye. And I’m not Olive Oyl.”
“I’m not certain I can deal with this,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “To discover at the age of thirty-four that I’m not Popeye… What a blow to my self-image.” He cuddled Nicole gently. “What do you say?” he continued. “Should we try to sleep some more before it’s light?”
Neither of them was able to sleep. They lay side by side on their mats in the open plaza, each occupied with his own thoughts. Nicole heard Richard’s body move. “You’re awake too?” she said in a whisper.
“Yeah,” he answered. “I’ve even counted Shakespearean characters with no success. I was up to more than a hundred.”
Nicole propped herself up on an elbow and faced her companion. “Tell me, Richard,” she said, “where did this preoccupation of yours with Shakespeare come from? I know you grew up in Stratford, but it’s hard for me to imagine how an engineer like you, in love with computers and calculations and gadgets, could become so fascinated with a playwright.”
“My therapist told me it was an “escapist compulsion,” Richard replied a few seconds later. “Since I didn’t like the real world or the people in it, he said, I made up another one. Except that I didn’t create it from scratch. I just extended a wonderful universe already fabricated by a genius.
“Shakespeare was my God,” Richard continued after a moment. “When I was nine or ten, I would stop in that park along the Avon — the one beside all the theaters, with the statues of Hamlet, Falstaff, Lady Macbeth, and Prince Hal — and spend the afternoon hours making up additional stories about my favorite characters. That way I put off going home until the last possible moment. I dreaded being around my father… I never knew what he would do —
“But you don’t want to hear this,” Richard interrupted himself suddenly, “everyone has memories of childhood pain. We should talk about something else.”
“We should talk about whatever we’re feeling,” Nicole responded, surprising even herself. “Which is something I hardly ever do,” she added softly.
Richard turned and looked in her direction, He extended his hand slowly. She gently wrapped her 6ngers around his. “My father worked for British Rail,” he said. “He was a very smart man, but socially clumsy, and he had difficulty finding a job that fit him after he finished the university at Sussex. Times were still tough. The economy had just started to recover from The Great Chaos…
“When my mother told him that she was pregnant, he was overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all. He looked for a safe, secure position. He had always scored well on tests and the government had forced all the national transportation monopolies, including the rail system, to staff positions based on objective test results. So my father became the manager of operations at Stratford.