“The water from the Lake of Wisdom can help Ronata,” Omeh said. “Ronata will know the time to drink.” He tilted his head back and earnestly repeated the earlier chant, this time with his eyes closed. Nicole stood beside him in puzzled silence, the stone and the vial in her right hand. When he was finished singing, Omeh shouted three words that Nicole did not understand. Then he abruptly turned around and walked quickly toward the open door. Startled, Nicole ran out into the hall just in time to see his green gown disappear into the elevator.
14
GOOD-BYE HENRY
Nicole and Genevieve walked arm in arm up the hill through the light snow. “Did you see the look on that American’s face when I told him who you were?” Genevieve said with a laugh. She was very proud of her mother.
Nicole shifted her skis and poles over to the other shoulder as they approached the hotel. “Guten Abend,” an old man who would have made a perfect Santa Claus mumbled as he ambled by. “I wish you wouldn’t be so quick to tell people,” Nicole said, not really chastizing her daughter. “Sometimes it’s nice not to be recognized.”
There was a small shed for the skis beside the entrance to the hotel. Nicole and Genevieve stopped and placed their equipment in a locker. They exchanged their ski boots for soft snow slippers and walked back out into the fading light Mother and daughter stood together for a moment and looked back down the hill toward the village of Davos. “You know,” said Nicole,, “there was a time today, during our race down that back piste toward Klos-ters, when I found it impossible to believe that I will actually be way out there (she gestured at the sky) in less than two weeks, headed for a rendezvous with a mysterious alien spacecraft. Sometimes the human mind balks at the truth.”
“Maybe it’s only a dream,” her daughter said lightly. Nicole smiled. She loved Genevieve’s sense of play. Whenever the day-today drudgery of the hard work and tedious preparation would begin to overwhelm Nicole, she could always count on her daughter’s easy nature to bring her out of her seriousness. They were quite a trio, the three of them that lived at Beauvois. Each of them was sorely dependent on the other two. Nicole did not like to think how the hundred-day separation might affect their harmonious accord.
“Does it bother you that I will be gone so long?” Nicole asked Genevieve as they entered the hotel lobby. A dozen people were sitting around a roaring fire in the middle of the room. An inconspicuous but efficient Swiss waiter was serving hot drinks to the apres-ski crew. There would be no robots in a Morosani hotel, not even for room service.
“I don’t think of it that way,” her cheerful daughter responded. “After all, I’ll be able to talk with you almost every night on the videophone. The delay time will even make it fun. And challenging.” They walked past the old-fashioned registration desk. “Besides,” Genevieve added, “I’ll be the center of attention at school for the whole mission. My class project is already set; I’m going to draw a psychological portrait of the Ramans based on my conversations with you.”
Nicole smiled again and shook her head. Genevieve’s optimism was always infectious. It was a shame —
“Oh, Madame des Jardins.” The voice interrupted her thought. The hotel manager was beckoning to her from the desk. Nicole turned around. “There’s a message for you,” the manager continued. “I was told to deliver it to you personally.”
He handed her a small plain envelope. Nicole opened it and saw just the tiniest portion of a crest on the note card. Her heart raced into overdrive as she closed the envelope again. “What is it, Mother?” Genevieve inquired. “It must be special to be hand delivered. Nobody does things like that these days.”
Nicole tried to hide her feelings from her daughter. “It’s a secret memo about my work,” she lied. “The deliveryman made a terrible mistake. He should never have given it even to Herr Graf. He should have put it in my hands only.”
“More confidential medical data about the crew?” Genevieve asked. She and her mother had often discussed the delicate role of the life science officer on a major space mission.
Nicole nodded. “Darling,” she said to her daughter, “why don’t you run upstairs and tell your grandfather that I’ll be along in a few minutes. We’ll still plan dinner for seven-thirty. I’ll read this message now and see if any urgent response is required.”
Nicole kissed Genevieve and waited until her daughter was on the elevator before walking back outside into the light snow. It was dark now. She stood under the streetlight and opened the envelope with her cold hands. She had difficulty controlling her trembling fingers. You fool, she thought, you careless fool. After all this time. What if the girl had seen…
The crest was the same as it had been on that afternoon, fifteen and a half years ago, when Darren Higgins had handed her the dinner invitation outside the Olympic press area. Nicole was surprised by the strength of her emotions, She steeled herself and finally looked at the rest of the note below the crest.
“Sorry for the last-minute notice. Must see you tomorrow. Noon exactly. Warming hut #8 on the Weissfluhjoch. Come alone. Henry.”
The next morning Nicole was one of the first in line for the cable car that carried skiers to the top of the Weissfluhjoch. She climbed into the polished glass car with about twenty others and leaned against the window while the door automatically shut. ! have seen him only once in these fifteen years, she thought to herself, and yet…
As the cable car ascended, Nicole pulled her snow glasses down over her eyes. It was a dazzling morning, not unlike the January morning seven years earlier when her father had called for her from the villa. They had had a rare snowfall at Beauvois the night before and, after much pleading, she had let Genevieve stay home from school to play in the snow. Nicole was working at the hospital in Tours at the time and was waiting to hear about her application to the Space Academy.
She had been showing her seven-year-old daughter how to make a snow angel when Pierre had called a second time from the house. “Nicole, Genevieve, there’s something special in our mail,” he had said. “It must have come during the night.” Nicole and Genevieve had run to the villa in their snowsuits while Pierre posted the full text of the message on the wall video-screen.
“Most extraordinary,” Pierre had said. “It seems we’ve all been invited to the English coronation, including the private reception afterward. This is extremely unusual.”
“Oh, Grandpapa!” Genevieve said excitedly, “I want to go. Can we go? Do I get to meet a real king and queen?”
“There is no queen, darling,” her grandfather replied, “unless you mean the queen mother. This king has not yet married.”
Nicole read the invitation several times without saying anything. After Genevieve had calmed down and left the room, her father had put his arms around Nicole.
“I want to go,” she had said quietly.
“Are you certain?” he had asked, pulling away and regarding her with an inquisitive stare.
“Yes,” she had answered 6rmly.
Henry had never seen her until that evening, Nicole was thinking as she checked first her watch and then her equipment in preparation for her ski run down from the summit. Father had been wonderful. He had let me disappear at Beauvois and almost nobody knew I had a baby until Genevieve was almost a year old. Henry never even suspected. Not until that night at Buckingham Palace.
Nicole could still see herself waiting in the reception line. The king had been late. Genevieve had been fidgety. At last Henry had been standing opposite her. “The honorable Pierre des Jardins of Beauvois, France, with his daughter, Nicole, and granddaughter, Genevieve.” Nicole had bowed very properly and Genevieve had curtsied.