Chapter 31 Chapter Thirty-One

"Good night, Otter," Brown said as the German admiral left his cabin. "See you tomorrow morning." He yawned and stretched.Look at the watch, in more than eight hours, the lights of Rama should be on again. He took off his flight suit, took a sip of water, and lay down. Frances came in and said, "David, we have some questions." She came over and kissed him. "I just spoke to Gallows, and he said that Nicole suspects Posov is a drug reaction." "What...what?" He sat up, "How did she know? There's nothing..." "Obviously, she is very smart. She must have found some evidence from Bosov's physiological records. Tonight, she mentioned this to Garros."

"You didn't say anything when he told you, did you? I mean, we have to absolutely..." "Of course not," replied Frances. "Anyway, it would never occur to Gallos that he's a fool. Especially for such things." "Go to hell with that bitch and that fucking machine." He rubbed his hands over his face. "This is a fucking day. First that stupid Wilson was going to be a hero, and now it's …I told you that we should have destroyed those bloody surgery data. It would have been easy to wipe that data back then. Then, these things would be forever..."

"She still has the data," Frances said thoughtfully. "It's the original evidence. Wipe it all out of the machine without leaving a trace, you're a genius at it." She sat down , holding Brown's head in his arms, "Our biggest mistake was not not destroying those documents, because that might arouse the suspicion of the International Space Agency. Our mistake was to underestimate Nicole de Jardin." Dr. Brown shook off Frances and stood up: "Fuck, Frances, it's your fault. I shouldn't have been tricked into this by your rhetoric, I knew then..."

"Did you know then?" Frances interrupted sharply, "it was you, Dr. Brown, who were not on the list for the first Rama raid. You knew then that if you stayed on the Newton Your future, your dreams as the leader and hero of this expedition are at stake." Brown stopped pacing and turned his face to Frances. "You'll know then," she continued, her voice But it softened a lot, "I am very interested in your entering Rama during the first assault, and I can help you." She took him by the hand, pulled him toward the bed, and said, "Sit down, David. We've done it, and it's over. We didn't kill Posov, we just gave him Just took some medicine and it made him a little appendicitis. We made the decision together. Wouldn't our plan be beautiful if Rama hadn't moved and the surgical robot failed again. Posov would still be on the Newton today, The wound is healed; and you and I are here leading the expedition."

David Brown withdrew his hands from her, rubbing them together. "I think it's... dirty," he said, "I've never done anything like this before. I mean, anyway, we're at least partially responsible for Posov's death, maybe We should be held accountable for Wilson's death, too, and we'll be charged." He shook his head with a look of dismay on his face. "I'm supposed to be a scientist, but what happened to me? How did I get involved in this kind of thing?" Is something wrong?" "Put down your hypocrite pretense," Frances said through gritted teeth, "don't lie to yourself. Aren't you the one who stole the most important astronomical discovery in the world for decades from a female graduate student? Then And you married her to silence her forever? Your innocence and purity are long gone."

"That's not fair," said Dr. Brown angrily. "I've been more honest until—" "Until that thing becomes so important to you, so valuable? What a stinking pile of shit!" Frances began to stand up, walking around the cabin, "you men don't Face! You pretend to be a gentleman, and never reveal your real face and your own greed. Most women are honest. We know our ambitions, our desires, and even our most primitive instinctive needs. We By acknowledging our vulnerability, we face reality and face ourselves instead of putting on a fake face." She went back to the bed and took David's hand again. "Don't you understand, my dear?" she said passionately, "that you and I are of one mind, and that our union is bound by the strongest bond—our own interests; , that is power and status.”

"It sounds scary," he said. "But it's true, even if you don't want to admit it to yourself. Dave, my dear, can't you see that it's your indecision that keeps you from facing your own nature? Look at Me, I know exactly what I want and what I will never do. I know where I should go and what I should do with my eyes closed." The American physicist sat down beside Frances for a long time, and finally he put his head on her shoulder. "First Posov, and now Wilson," he sighed. "I was being whipped so hard that I wished it had never happened."

"You can't give up, David," she said softly, stroking his head. "We've come too far, and the trophy is right here, within reach." She reached over and unbuttoned his shirt. "It's been a long, exhausting day," she comforted. "Forget about it." Under her caress, David Brown closed his eyes. She watched him fall asleep. Just now, his face was full of tension and anxiety, but now it has changed into a carefree smile like a child's. "Men are so easy," thought Frances. "Love's stimulant takes away all pain. Let's hope those things aren't too hard."

She got off the bed gently, put on her clothes, and was careful not to disturb him. "But we're in real trouble and need to figure it out quickly. This time it's going to be much harder because the opponent is a woman," she thought. Frances stepped out of the hut into the darkness of Rama.Except for the lights on the tents where supplies were piled up, the entire Beta camp was pitch black, and everyone else had fallen asleep.She turned on her small light and walked towards the south. Not far away was the Sea of ​​Columns. "What do you need, Ms. Nicole de Jardin?" As she walked, she was thinking hard, "Where is your weakness? It took a long time, she searched for Nicole de Jardin in her memory Cole’s clues, trying to find out some weaknesses and gaps in her personality so that they can be used. "Money is not acceptable, and neither is sex. At least I have nothing to do with her," she smiled secretly, "Of course it is a big deal." Wei was also unattractive to her, and she clearly hated him. "

"How about blackmail?" she thought as she walked to the shore of the Sea of ​​Columns.She recalled Nicole's violent reaction when asked about Genevieve's father, "If I knew something, maybe...but I don't." Frances was momentarily stumped, and for a moment she could think of no way of restraining Nicole.At this time, the lights of Camp Beta in the distance were almost invisible. Frances extinguished her own lamp, and plunged herself into darkness.She sat down carefully, dangling her legs dangling from the cliffs of the coast. At a depth of 50 meters below the feet, there is a frozen cylindrical sea.Frances was suddenly touched, bringing back a series of childhood memories.She was 11 at the time, and despite her frail health, the precocious Frances decided to learn to smoke.Every afternoon, she walked down the mountain along the winding path, came to the plain below the town, and sat on the bank of the stream she liked, smoking a cigarette without saying a word, venting her friendship in solitude. own rebellion.On those idle afternoons, she fantasized about her castle and her prince's tales, about being far away from her mother and stepfather one day.

These childhood memories sparked Frances' addiction to cigarettes.Since participating in the operation, she has been taking nicotine tablets to restrain the desire to smoke, but the tablets can only satisfy her physiological dependence on nicotine.Laughing at herself, she reached into a special pocket in her flight suit.Frances smuggled three cigarettes in a special cooler.Cigarettes would come in 'emergency' in space, she told herself before leaving Earth... Smoking on an alien spaceship is more presumptuous and exciting than sneaking at the age of 11.Frances threw her head back and puffed the smoke into the Rama air, and she wanted to cry out in excitement.This act filled her with a sense of freedom and liberation, and it diluted the insecurities that Nicole had created for her. Under the stimulation of tobacco, memories of those painful experiences in her teenage years also came, biting her lonely heart.She remembered the terrible secrets that had been locked in her heart forever.Frances never told anyone about her stepfather, and certainly not her mother, she couldn't tell anyone.Only when she sat on the cliffs of this columned coast did her inner pain break out like a flood that broke a gate. From her 11th birthday, her nightmare began. He is the principal of her new school.In an intelligence test, she got the highest score in history, and she was considered a girl with superintelligence, a child prodigy, which attracted his attention. He had never looked at her before. He had married Frances' mother eighteen months before, but little Frances was nothing more than a superfluous person, a burden, a mouth to eat, a dowry to her mother. In the months that followed he became unusually affectionate with Frances.Until one day, my mother went to Aunt Carla's house for a few days... The memory hit her like a tide, and she recalled her stepfather's alcohol-smelling breath, his sweaty body and the tears she kept gushing after he left. The nightmare lasted for a whole year, and he didn't even care whether his mother was at home or not.One afternoon, while he was dazed and looking elsewhere, Frances hit him on the head with a softball bat so hard that he fell to the floor, bleeding and unconscious.She dragged him into his bedroom and ignored him. "From then on, he never dared to touch me again." Frances shook the smoke on the ground in Rama. At the age of fourteen, Frances eloped with Carlo, a friend of her cousin's, and went to Rome.This Carlo can also be regarded as Frances's first love. Until now, she still thinks of him from time to time, but he is just playing with Frances. Frances' thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the distance. In the darkness, she stood up vigilantly and cautiously, listening intently.Except for the beating of her heart, there was silence all around. Suddenly, she heard another sound, on the left, on the ice. Her heart was beating wildly with fear, her blood was surging, and a scene of strange creatures crawling across the ice and attacking the camp appeared before her eyes.But when she listened carefully again, there was no sound. Frances turned and walked quickly towards the camp.The memory still haunts her, she muses: "Carol, I still love you. I never loved any other man, even if you were unkind to me." More inner pain came to the surface , Frances tried her best to restrain her turbulent emotions, she said to herself, "Stop thinking about it, or you will lose your mind, and you are really a fool!" Frances forced herself to put the past aside: "Now, where am I thinking? Oh, yes, the question now is Nicole de Jardin: how much does she know? What do we do?"