Arthur Clarke - Rama Revealed

“Richard,” Nicole now said, “if you don’t mind, can we please return to our major task? Or have you forgotten that we do not know the way back to our lair?”

“Just a little while longer,” Richard answered. “I want to see what comes out of the active boiler closest to us. Maybe by seeing the output, after having already seen the input, I can infer the kind of intervening process.”

Nicole shook her head. “I had forgotten what a knowledge junkie you are. You’re the only human I have ever met who would stop to study a new plant or animal while he was completely lost in a forest.”

Nicole found another long passageway on the opposite side of the huge room. An hour later she finally convinced Richard to leave the fascinating alien factory. They had no way of knowing where this new passageway led, but it was their only hope. Again they walked and walked. Each time Nicole started to become tired or despondent, Richard would lift her spirits by extolling the wonder of everything they had seen since they had left their lair.

“This place is absolutely amazing, stupendous,” he said at one point, barely able to contain himself, “I can’t begin to assess what it all means… Not only are humans not alone in this universe, we are not even near the top of the pyramid in terms of capability…”

Richard’s enthusiasm sustained them until finally, when they were both close to exhaustion, they saw ahead of them a branching in the corridor. Because of the angles, Richard felt certain that they had returned to the original no more than two kilometers from their lair. “Yippee,” Richard yelled, picking up his pace. “Look”-he shouted over at Nicole, his flashlight pointed in front of him—”we’re almost home.”

Something Nicole heard at that moment made her stop dead in her tracks. “Richard,” she cried, “turn off the light.”

He spun quickly around, nearly falling, and switched off his flashlight. In the next few seconds there was no doubt. The sound of dragging brushes was growing louder.

“Run for it,” yelled Nicole, bolting past her husband in a full sprint. Richard reached the intersection no more than fifteen seconds before the first of the octospiders. The aliens were coming up from the canal. As he was running away from them, Richard turned around and shone his flashlight behind him. In that brief instant he could see at least four colored patterns moving in the darkness.

They brought all the furniture they could find into the White Room and created a barrier across the bottom of the black screen. For several hours Richard and Nicole watched and waited, expecting that at any moment the screen would lift up and their lair would be invaded by the octospiders. But nothing happened. At length they left Joan and Eleanor in the White Room as sentries and spent the night in the nursery with Tammy and Timmy.

“Why didn’t the octospiders follow us?” Richard said to Nicole early the next morning. “They almost certainly know the screen raises automatically. If they had come to the end of the corridor—”

“Maybe they didn’t want to frighten us again,” Nicole interrupted gently. Richard’s brow furrowed and he gave Nicole a quizzical look. “We still have no hard evidence that the octospiders are hostile,” Nicole continued, “despite your feelings that you were mistreated as their prisoner during your odyssey years ago. They did not harm Katie or me when they easily could have. And they did return you to us eventually.”

“By that time I was in a deep coma,” Richard replied. “And no good to them anymore as a test subject. Besides, how do you explain Takagishi? Or, for that matter, the attacks that were made on Prince Hal and Falstaff?”

“Each of those incidents has a plausible, non-hostile explanation. That’s what is so confusing. Suppose Takagishi died of a heart attack. Suppose also that the octos preserved and stuffed his body to use as some sort of exhibit, for teaching other octospiders. We might do the same thing.”

“I’m puzzled,” Richard said after a moment’s hesitation. “Here you are; defending the octospiders. But you ran away from them yesterday even faster than I did.”

“Yes,” Nicole answered contemplatively. “I admit that I was terrified. My animal instinct was to assume hostility and flee. Today I’m disappointed in myself. We humans are supposed to use our brains to overcome instinctive reactions… Especially you and I. After everything we have seen in Rama and at the Node, we should be completely immune from xenophobia.”

Richard smiled and nodded. “So are you suggesting now that maybe the octospiders were just trying to establish some kind of peaceful contact?”

“Perhaps,” Nicole answered. “I don’t know what they want. But I do know that I have never seen them do anything unambiguously hostile.”

Richard stared distractedly at the walls for a few seconds and then rubbed his forehead. “I wish I could remember more of the details about my time with them. I still have these blinding headaches when I try to concentrate on that period of my life-only while I was inside the sessile were my memories of the octos not accompanied by pain.”

“Your odyssey was long ago,” Nicole said. “Maybe the octospiders also are capable of learning and have adopted a different attitude toward us now.”

Richard stood up. “All right,” he said. “You have convinced me. The next time we see an octospider, we won’t run away.” He laughed. “At least not immediately.”

Another month passed. Richard and Nicole did not go behind the black screen again and they did not have any more encounters with the octospiders. They passed the days tending to the hatchlings (who were learning to fly) and enjoying each other. During much of their conversation they talked about their children and reminisced about the past.

“I guess we are now old,” Nicole said one morning as she and Richard were walking through one of the three central plazas of New York.

“How can you say that?” Richard replied with a mischievous grin. “Just because we spend most of our time talking about what happened long ago, and our everyday bathroom functions occupy more of our attention and energy than sex, does that mean we’re old?”

Nicole laughed. “Is it as bad as that?” she said.

“Not quite,” Richard said in a kidding tone. “I still love you like a schoolboy. But every now and then that love is pushed aside by aches and pains that I never had before… Which reminds me, wasn’t I supposed to help you examine your heart?”

“Yes.” Nicole nodded. “But there’s really nothing you can do. The only instruments I brought with me in my medicine kit when I escaped were the stethoscope and the sphygmomanometer. I have used them both several times to examine myself… I haven’t been able to find anything unusual except an occasional leaky valve, and my shortness of breath has not recurred.” She smiled. “It was probably all the excitement… and age.”

“If our son-in-law the cardiologist were here,” Richard said, “then he could give you a complete examination.”

They walked together in silence for several minutes. “You miss the children a lot, don’t you?” Richard said.

“Yes,” Nicole replied with a sigh. “But I try not to think about them too much. I am happy to be alive and here with you — it’s certainly much better than those last months in prison. And I have many wonderful memories of the children…”

“God grant me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change,” Richard quoted. “It is one of your best qualities, Nicole… I have always been envious of your equanimity.”

A few moments later Richard stopped abruptly and turned to face Nicole. “I love you very much,” he said, embracing her vigorously.