Arthur Clarke - Rama Revealed

As she waited beside the moat, Nicole stared toward the center of the alien habitat and tried to make out the fascinating features the little robots had described to her: the huge brown cylindrical structure, rising fifteen hundred meters straight up, that had once housed both the avian and sessile colonies; the great hooded ball that hung from the habitat ceiling and provided light; and the ring of mysterious white buildings, alongside a canal, that encircled the cylinder.

The hooded ball had not been illuminated for months, not since the first human incursion into the avian/sessile domain. The only lights that Nicole could see were small and widely scattered, obviously placed in the habitat by the human invaders. Thus all she could discern was a vague silhouette of the great cylinder, a shadow whose edges were very fuzzy. It must have been glorious when Richard first entered, Nicole thought, moved by the thought that she was in a location that had recently been the home of another sentient species. So here also, her mind continued, we extend our hegemony, trampling underfoot all life-forms that are not as powerful as we.

Eleanor and Joan took longer than expected to rejoin Nicole. The threesome then made slow progress along the side of the moat. One of the robots was always out front, scouting, making certain that contacts with other humans were avoided. Twice, in the part of the habitat that was very much like a jungle on Earth, Nicole waited quietly while a group of soldiers or workmen passed by on the road to their left Both times she studied the new and interesting plants around her with fascination. Nicole even found a creature halfway between a leech and an earthworm trying to enter her right boot. Curious, she picked it up and put it in her pocket so that she could examine it later.

When Nicole and the two robots finally arrived at the specified spot for the rendezvous, it had been almost thirty-two hours since she had backed into Lake Shakespeare. They were on the far side of the second habitat, away from the entrance, where the normal density of human beings was at its lowest. A submarine surfaced within minutes after their arrival. The side of the submarine opened and Richard Wakefield, a gigantic smile upon his bearded face, rushed forward toward his beloved wife. Nicole’s body shook with joy when she felt his arms around her.

Everything was so familiar. Except for Richard’s clutter, accumulated during his months alone, and the conversion of the nursery into the bedroom of the two avian hatchlings, the lair underneath New York was exactly the same as it had been when Richard, Nicole, Michael O’Toole, and their children had departed from Rama years before.

Richard had parked the submarine at a natural harbor on the south side of the island, in a place he had called the Port.

“Where did you get the sub?” Nicole had asked him while they were walking together toward the lair.

“It was a gift,” Richard had said. “Or at least I think it was. After the super chief of the avians showed me how to operate it, he or she disappeared, leaving the submarine here.”

Walking in New York had been an eerie experience for Nicole. Even in the dark the skyscrapers reminded her vividly of the years that she had lived on this mysterious island in the middle of the Cylindrical Sea.

“How many years has it been since we left New York?” Nicole had asked as they entered their lair.

“I can’t give you an accurate answer,” Richard had answered with a shrug. “We’ve taken two long interstellar voyages at relativistic speeds. Unless we know our exact velocity profiles, we can’t make the proper time corrections.”

“The only changes made in the Rama spacecraft on each visit to the Node,” Richard had said sometime later, while Nicole was still musing about the wonders of relativity, “are those necessary to accommodate the next mission. So nothing has changed in here. The black screen is still there in the White Room, as well as our old keyboard. The procedures for making requests from the Ramans, or whatever our hosts should be called, are still intact also.”

“And what about the other lairs?” Nicole had asked. “Have you visited them also?”

“The avian lair is a tomb,” Richard had replied. “I’ve been all through it several times. Once, I entered the octospider lair cautiously, but I went only as far as that cathedral room with the four tunnels leading away—”

Nicole had interrupted him, laughing. “The ones we called Benie, Meenie, Mynie, and Moe.”

“Yes,” Richard had continued. “Anyway, I wasn’t comfortable there. I had the feeling, although I could not identify anything specific, mat the lair was still inhabited. And that the octos, or whatever might be living there, were watching my every step.” This time it was his turn to laugh. “Believe it or not, I was also worried about what would happen to Tammy and Timmy if I didn’t return for any reason.”

Nicole’s first introduction to Tammy and Timmy, the pair of avian hatchlings that Richard had raised from infancy, was priceless. Richard had built a half-door to the nursery and had closed it securely when he had left to meet Nicole inside the second habitat. Since the birdlike creatures couldn’t yet fly, they had remained safely inside the nursery during Richard’s absence. As soon as they heard his voice in the lair, however, the hatchlings began to shriek and jabber.

They did not even stop squawking when Richard opened their door and cradled both of them in his arms.

“They’re telling me,” Richard shouted to Nicole above the frightful noise, “that I shouldn’t have left them alone.”

Nicole couldn’t stop laughing as she watched the two hatchlings extend then- long necks toward Richard’s face. They interrupted their jabbers and shrieks only to rub the undersides of their beaks softly against Richard’s bearded cheek. The avians were still small, about seventy centimeters tall when standing on their legs, but their necks were so long that they appeared to be much larger.

Nicole watched with admiration as her husband tended to his alien wards. He cleaned up their wastes, made certain that they had fresh food and water, and even checked the softness of their haylike beds in the corner of the nursery. You have come a long, long way, Richard Wakefield, Nicole thought, remembering his reluctance years earlier to deal with any of the more mundane duties associated with parenting. She was deeply touched by his obvious affection for the gangly hatchlings. Is it possible, Nicole asked herself, that each of us has inside this kind of selfless love? And that we must somehow work through all the problems that both heredity and environment, have created before we can find it?

Richard had stored the four manna melons and the slice from the sessile in one corner of the White Room. He explained to Nicole that he hadn’t noticed any changes in either the melons or the sessile material since he had arrived in New York. “Maybe the melons can rest dormant for a long time, like seeds,” Nicole offered after listening to Richard’s explanation of the complex life cycle of the sessile species.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Richard said. “Of course I have no idea at all under what conditions the melons might germinate. The species is so strange and so complicated, I wouldn’t be surprised if the process is controlled somehow by that small piece of the sessile.”

On their first evening together, Richard had difficulty getting the hatchlings to go to sleep. “They’re afraid I’m going to leave them again,” Richard explained when he returned to the White Room after the third time that Tammy’s and Timmy’s furious squawks had interrupted his dinner with Nicole. At length, Richard programmed Joan and Eleanor to amuse the avians. It was the only way he could keep his alien wards quiet so that he could have some time alone with Nicole.