As he ran, Richard noticed that the tunnel was curving slightly to the right. He reminded himself that even though this was not the same tunnel they had used before, it should still lead them to the ramps. After several hundred meters Richard stopped to listen for the sound of his pursuer. He heard nothing. Richard had just taken two deep breaths and started to run again when his ears were assaulted by a terrible wail in front of him. It was Nicole. Oh shit, he thought, as he rushed forward to find her.
47
PROGRESSIVE MATRICES
Never, never in my entire life,” Nicole said to Richard, “have I ever seen anything that terrified me like that.” The two cosmonauts were sitting with their backs against the bottom of one of the skyscrapers surrounding the western plaza. They were both still breathing heavily, exhausted from their frantic escape. Nicole took a long drink of water.
“I had just started to relax!” she continued. “I could hear you behind me — and nothing else. I decided I would stop in the museum and wait for you to catch up. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that we were in the “other” tunnel.
“It should have been obvious, of course, because the opening was on the wrong side. But I wasn’t thinking logically at the moment… Anyway, I stepped inside the room, the lights came on, and there he was, not more than three meters in front of me. I thought my heart had stopped altogether…”
Richard remembered Nicole running into his arms in the tunnel and sobbing for several seconds. “It’s Takagishi… stuffed like a deer or a tiger… in the opening to the right,” she had said in fits and starts. After Nicole had regained her composure, the two of them had walked back down the tunnel together. Inside the opening, standing upright just opposite the entrance, Richard had been shocked to see Newton cosmonaut Shigeru Takagishi. He was dressed in his flight suit and looked exactly as he had the last time they had seen him at the Beta campsite. His face was fixed in a pleasant smile and his arms were at his sides.
“What the hell?” Richard had said, blinking twice, his curiosity only slightly stronger than his terror. Nicole had averted her eyes. Even though she had seen the sight before, the stuffed Takagishi was much too lifelike for her.
They had only stayed in the large room for a minute. Alien taxidermy had also performed wonders on an avian with a broken wing that was hanging from the ceiling next to Takagishi. Against the wall behind the Japanese scientist was Richard and Nicole’s hut that had disappeared the day before. The hexagonal electronics board from the Newton portable science station was on the floor next to Takagishi’s feet, not far from a full-scale model of a bulldozer biot. Other biot replicas were scattered around the room.
Richard had started to study the varied collection of biots in the room when they had faintly heard the familiar dragging noise coming from behind them in the tunnel. They had not wasted any more time. Their flight down the tunnel and up the ramps had been broken only by a brief stop at the cistern to replenish their supply of fresh water.
“Dr. Takagishi was a gentle, sensitive man,” Nicole was saying to Richard, “with passionate feelings about his work. Just before launch I visited him in Japan and he told me that his lifelong ambition had been to explore a second Rama spacecraft.”
“It’s a shame he had to die such an unpleasant death,” Richard grimly replied. “I guess that octospider, or one of its friends, must have dragged him down here for a visit to the taxidermist almost immediately. They certainly wasted no time putting him on display.”
“You know, I don’t think they killed him,” Nicole said. “Maybe I’m hopelessly naive, but I didn’t see any evidence of foul play in his… his statue.”
“You think they just scared him to death?” Richard retorted sarcastically.
“Yes,” said Nicole firmly. “At least it’s possible.” She spent the next five minutes explaining Takagishi’s heart situation to Richard.
“I’m surprised at you, Nicole!” Richard replied after listening carefully to her disclosure. “I had you figured all wrong. I thought you were Miss Prim and Proper, play it by the rules all the way. I never gave you credit for having a mind of your own. Not to mention a strong streak of compassion.”
“In this instance it’s not clear that either was an asset. If I had faithfully enforced the rules, Takagishi would be alive and living with his family in Kyoto.”
“And he would have missed the singular experience of his life… which brings me to an interesting question, my dear doctor. Surely you are aware, as we sit here, that the odds do not favor our escape. We are both likely to die without ever seeing another human face. How do you feel about that? Where does your death — or any death, for that matter — fit into your overall scheme of things?”
Nicole looked at Richard. She was surprised by the tenor of his question. She tried without success to read the expression on his face. “I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean,” she answered carefully. “As a doctor I’ve thought often about death. And of course since my mother died when I was very young, even as a child I was forced to have some perspective on the subject.”
She paused for a moment. “For myself, I know that I would like to stay alive until Genevieve is grown — so that I can be a grandmother to her children. But just being alive is not the most important thing. Life must have quality to be worthwhile. And to have quality we must be willing to take a few risks… I’m not being very focused, am I?”
Richard smiled– “No,” he said, “but I like your general drift. You have mentioned the key word. Quality… Have you ever considered suicide?” he asked suddenly.
“No!” Nicole replied, shaking her head. “Never. There’s always been too much to live for.” There must be some reason for his question, she was thinking. “What about you?” she said after a short silence, “did you think about suicide during any of that pain with your father?”
“No, strangely enough,” he answered. “My father’s beatings never made me lose my zest for life. There was too much to learn. And I knew that I would outgrow him and be on my own eventually.” There was a long pause before he continued. “But there was one period in my life when I did seriously consider suicide,” Richard said. “My pain and anger were so great that I did not think I could endure them.”
He became silent, locked in his thoughts. Nicole waited patiently. Eventually she slipped her arm through his. “Well, my friend,” she said lightly, “you can tell me about it someday. Neither of us is accustomed to sharing our deepest secrets. Maybe in time we can learn. I’m going to start by telling you why I believe we are not going to die and why I think we should go over to search the area around the eastern plaza next.”
Nicole had never told anyone, not even her father, about her “trip” during the Poro. Before she finished telling her story to Richard, not only had Nicole covered what had happened to her as a seven-year-old at the Poro, but also she had recounted the story of Omeh’s visit to Rome, the Senoufo prophecies about the “woman without companion” who scatters her progeny “among the stars,” and the details of her vision after drinking the vial at the bottom of the pit.
Richard was speechless. The entire set of stories was so foreign to his mathematical mind that he did not even know how to react. He stared at Nicole with awe and amazement. At length, embarrassed by his silence, he started to speak. “I don’t know what to say…”
Nicole put her fingers to his lips. “You don’t need to say anything!” she said. “I can read your reaction in your face. We can talk about it tomorrow, after you’ve had some time to think about what I told you.”
Nicole yawned and looked at her watch. She pulled her sleeping mat out of her backpack and unrolled it on the ground. “I’m exhausted,” she said to Richard. “Nothing like a little terror to produce instant fatigue. I’ll see you in four hours.”