“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 bitch!” 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 lustily. He was also leading the group of twenty or so people clustered 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 bumped 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 flashing 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 bastard,” 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 pass 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 shit,” 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 assess 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 scraping 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.