Rama Revealed

10

Their near perfect existence in New York continued until early one morning, when Richard and Nikki were topside together along the northern ramparts of the island. Actually it was the little girl who first saw the silhouettes of the ships in the dim Raman light. She pointed out across the dark water. “Look, Boobah,” she said, “Nikki sees something.”

Richard’s weakened eyes could not detect anything in the darkness, and his flashlight beam did not travel far enough to reach whatever it was that Nikki was seeing. Richard pulled out the powerful binoculars that he always carried with him and confirmed that there were indeed two vessels in the middle of the Cylindrical Sea. Richard placed Nikki in the carrier on his back and hurried home to the lair.

The rest of the family was just waking up and had difficulty initially understanding why Richard was so alarmed. “But who else could it be in a boat?” he said. “Especially on the northern side. It has to be an exploration party sent by Nakamura.”

A family council was held over breakfast. Everyone agreed that they were facing a serious crisis. When Patrick confessed that he had seen Katie on the day of the escape, primarily because he had wanted to tell his sister good-bye, and that he had made a few unusual comments which had caused Katie to start asking questions, Nicole and the others became silent.

“I didn’t say anything specific,” Patrick said apologetically, “but it was still a dumb thing to do. Katie is very smart. After we all disappeared, she must have put all the pieces together.”

“But what do we do now?” Robert Turner voiced everyone’s apprehension. “Katie knows New York very well-she was almost a teenager when she left here-and she can lead Nakamura’s men directly to this lair. We’ll be sitting ducks for them down here.”

“Is there any other place we can go?” Max asked.

“Not really,” Richard replied. “The old avian lair is empty, but I don’t know how we would feed ourselves down there. The octospider lair was also vacant when I visited it several months ago, but I haven’t been inside their domain again since Nicole arrived in New York. We must assume, of course, based on what happened when Nicole and I went exploring, that our friends with the black and gold tentacles are still around. Even if they aren’t living in their old lair anymore, we would still have the same problem of obtaining food if we were to move over there.”

“What about the area behind the screen, Uncle Richard?” Patrick asked. “You said that’s where our food is manufactured. Maybe we could find a couple of rooms there.”

“I’m not very optimistic,” Richard said after a short pause, “but your suggestion is probably our only reasonable option at this point.”

The family decided that Richard, Max, and Patrick would reconnoiter the region behind the black screen, both to find out exactly where the human food was being produced and to determine if another suitable living area existed. Robert, Benjy, the women, and the children would stay in the lair. Their assignment was to start developing the procedures for a rapid evacuation of their living quarters, in case such action ever became necessary.

Before going, Richard finished testing a new radio system that he had designed in his spare time. It was strong enough that the explorers and the rest of the family would be able to remain in radio contact during the entire£ time that they were separated. The existence of the radio link made it easier for Richard and Nicole to convince Max Puckett to leave his rifle in the lair.

The three men had no difficulty following the map in Richard’s computer and reaching the boiler room that Richard and Nicole had visited on their previous exploration. Max and Patrick both stared in wonder at the twelve huge boilers, the vast area of neatly arranged raw materials, and the many varieties of biots scurrying about. The factory was active. In fact, every single one of the boilers was involved in some kind of manufacturing process.

“All right,” Richard said into his radio to Nicole back in the lair. “We’re here and we’re ready. Place the dinner order and we’ll see what happens.”

Less than a minute later one of the boilers closest to the three men terminated whatever it was doing. Meanwhile, not far from the hut behind the boilers, three biots that looked like boxcars with hands moved out into the arrays of raw material, quickly picking up small quantities of many different items. These three biots next converged on the inactive boiler system near Richard, Max, and Patrick, where they emptied their containers onto the conveyor belt entering the boiler. Immediately the men heard the boiler surge into active operation. A long, skinny biot, resembling three crickets tied together in a row, each with a bowl-shaped carapace, crawled up on the conveyor belt system when the short manufacturing process was almost finished. Moments later, the boiler stopped again and the processed material came out on the conveyor belt. The segmented cricket biot deployed a scoop from its rear end, placed all the human food upon its backs, and scampered quickly away.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Max said, watching the cricket biot disappear down the corridor behind the hut. Before any of the men could say anything else, another set of boxcars with hands loaded the conveyor belts with thick, long rods, and in less than a minute the boiler that had made their food was operating for another purpose.

“What a fantastic system,” Richard exclaimed. “It must have a complex interrupt process, with food orders at the top of the priority queue. I can’t believe—”

“Hold on just a damn minute,” Max interrupted, “and repeat what you just said in normal English.”

“We have automatic translation subroutines back at the lair-I designed them originally when we were here years ago,” Richard said excitedly. “When Nicole entered chicken, potatoes, and spinach into her own computer, a listing of keyboard commands which represent the complex chemicals in those particular foods was printed on her output buffer. After I signaled that we were ready, she typed that string of commands on the keyboard. They were immediately received here and what we saw was the response. At the time, all the processing systems were active; however, the Raman equivalent of a computer here in this factory recognized that the incoming request was for food, and made it the highest priority.”

“Are you saying, Uncle Richard,” Patrick said, “that the controlling computer here shut down that operating boiler so that it could make our food?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Richard.

Max had moved some distance away and was staring at the other boilers in the huge factory. Richard and Patrick walked over beside him.

“When I was a little boy, about eight or nine,” Max said, “my father and I went on our first overnight camping trip, up in the Ozarks several hours from our farm. It was a magnificent night and the sky was full of stars. I remember lying on my back on my sleeping bag and staring at all those tiny twinkling lights in the sky. That night I had a big, big thought for an Arkansas farm boy. I wondered how many alien children, out there somewhere in the universe, were looking up at the stars at exactly that moment and realizing, for the first time, how very small their tiny domain was in the overall scheme of the cosmos.”

Max turned around and smiled at his two friends. “That’s one of the reasons I remained a farmer,” he said with a laugh. “With my chickens and pigs, I was always important. I brought them their food. It was a major event when ole Max showed up at their pen…”

He paused for a moment. Neither Richard nor Patrick said anything. “I think that deep down I always wanted to be an astronomer,” Max continued, “to see if I could understand the mysteries of the universe. But every time I thought about billions of years and trillions of kilometers, I became depressed. I couldn’t stand the feeling of complete and total insignificance mat came over me. It was as if a voice inside my head was saying, over and over, ‘Puckett, you aren’t shit. You are absolutely zero.’”

“But knowing that insignificance, especially being able to measure it, makes us humans very special,” Richard said quietly.

“Now we’re talking philosophy,” Max replied, “and I’m completely out of my element. I’m comfortable with farm animals, tequila, and even wild midwestern thunderstorms. All this,” Max said, waving his arms at the boilers and the factory, “scares the shit out of me. If I had known, when I signed up for that Martian colony, that I would meet machines that are smarter than people—”

“Richard, Richard,” they all heard Nicole’s anxious voice on the radio. “We have an emergency. Ellie has just returned from the northern shore. Four large boats are about to land. Ellie says she’s positive she spotted a police uniform on one of the men. Also, she has reported some kind of large rainbow in the south. Can you get back here in a few minutes?”

“No we can’t,” Richard answered. “We’re still down in the room with the boilers. We must be at least three and a half kilometers away. Did Ellie say how many people might be on each boat?”

“I would guess about ten or twelve, Dad,” Ellie replied. “I didn’t stay around to count them. But the boats were not the only unusual thing I saw while I was topside. During my run back to the lair, the southern sky lit up with wild bursts of color that eventually became a giant rainbow. It’s near where you told us the Big Horn should be.”

Ten seconds later Richard shouted into the radio. “Listen to me, Nicole, Ellie, all of you. Evacuate our lair immediately. Take the children, the hatchlings, the melons, the sessile material, the two rifles, all the food, and as many personal belongings as you can comfortably carry. Leave our stuff alone-we have enough on our backs to survive in an emergency. Go directly to the octospider lair and wait for us in that large room that was a photo gallery years ago. Nakamura’s troops will come to our lair first. When they don’t find us, if Katie’s with them, they may go to the octospider lair as well, but I don’t believe they will go into the tunnels there.”

“What about you and Max and Patrick?” Nicole asked.

“We’ll come back as fast as we can. If there is nobody- By the way, Nicole, leave a transmitter, with the volume on high, in the White Room, and another in the nursery. That way we’ll know if anybody is in our lair… Anyway, as I was saying, if our home has not been invaded, we’ II join you right away. If Nakamura’s men are occupying our living quarters, we’ll try to find another entrance to the octospider lair from down here. There must be one.”

“All right,” Nicole interrupted. “We must get started with the packing. I’ll leave the receiver on in case you need us.”

“So you think we’ll be safest in the octospider lair?” Max said after Richard had switched off his transmitter.

“It’s a choice,” Richard said with a wan smile. “There are too many unknowns here behind the screen. And we know for certain we won’t be safe if Nakamura’s police and troops find us. The octospiders may not even be living in their lair anymore. Besides, as Nicole has said many times, we have no unambiguous evidence that the octos are hostile.”

The men moved as quickly as they could. At one point they halted briefly while Patrick transferred some of the weight off Richard’s pack into his own. Both Richard and Max were sweating profusely by the time they reached the Y in the corridor.

“We must stop for a minute,” Max said to Patrick, who was out in front of his two older companions. “Your Uncle Richard needs a rest.”

Patrick pulled a water bottle from his pack and passed it around. Richard drank eagerly from the bottle, wiped his brow with a handkerchief, and after a minute’s rest began jogging again toward the lair.

About five hundred meters away from the small platform behind the black screen, Richard’s receiver began picking up indistinct noises from the inside of the lair. “Maybe someone in the family forgot something important,” Richard said, slowing down to listen, “and came back to retrieve it.”

A short time later the three men heard a voice they could not identify. They stopped and waited. “It looks as if some kind of animal has been living back here,” the voice said. “Why don’t you come take a look?”

“Damn,” said a second voice. “They have definitely been here recently. I wonder how long ago they left.”

“Captain Bauer,” someone shouted. “What do you want me to do with all this electronic gear?”

“Leave it for now,” the second voice answered. ‘The rest of the troops should be down in a few minutes. We’ll decide what to do then.”

Richard, Max, and Patrick sat quietly in the dark tunnel. For about a minute they didn’t hear anything on the receiver. Apparently none of the members of the search party was in the White Room or the nursery during that time. Then the three men heard Franz Bauer’s voice again.

“What’s that, Morgan?” Bauer said. “I can barely hear you… There’s some kind of racket… What? Fireworks? Colors?… What in the world are you talking about? All right. All right. We’ll come up immediately.”

For another fifteen seconds the receiver was quiet. “Ah, here you are, Pfeiffer,” they then heard Captain Bauer say plainly. “Round up the other men and let’s go back upstairs. Morgan says there’s an amazing fireworks demonstration in the southern sky. Most of the troops were already spooked by the skyscrapers and the dark. I’m going up to calm everyone’s nerves.”

“This is our chance,” Richard whispered, rising to his feet. “They will certainly be out of the lair for a few minutes.” He started to run and then stopped himself. “We may need to separate. Do both of you remember how to find the octospider lair?”

Max shook his head. “I’ve never been over—”

“Here,” Richard said, handing Max his portable computer. “Enter an M and a P for an overview of New York. The octospider lair is marked with a red circle. If you touch L, followed by another L, a map of the inside of their lair will be displayed. Now let’s go, while we still have some time.”

Richard, Max, and Patrick encountered no troops inside their lair. A pair of guards were stationed, however, a few meters away from the exit to New York. Fortunately, the guards were so transfixed by the fireworks in the Rama sky above their heads that they didn’t hear the three men slipping up the stairs behind them. For safety, the threesome split up, each taking a different route to the octospider lair.

Richard and Patrick arrived at their destination within a minute of each other, but Max was delayed. As luck would have it, the route he had chosen led through one of the plazas where five or six of the colony troops had gathered for a better view of the fireworks. Max raced down an alley and huddled against one of the buildings. He pulled out the computer and studied the map on the monitor, trying to figure out an alternate path to the octospider lair.

Meanwhile, the spectacular fireworks show continued overhead. Max glanced up and was dazzled as a great blue ball exploded, throwing hundreds of rays of blue light in all directions. For almost a minute, Max watched the hypnotic display. It was grander than anything he had ever seen on Earth.

When Max finally reached the octospider lair, he descended the ramp quickly and entered the cathedral room from which the four tunnels led into the other parts of the lair. Max entered two Ls on the computer and the map of the octospider domain appeared on the tiny monitor. Max was so engrossed in the map that at first he did not hear the sound of dragging mechanical brushes accompanied by a soft, high-pitched whine.

He did not look up until the sound became quite loud. When Max finally raised his head, the large octospider was standing no more than five meters away from him. The sight of the creature sent powerful shivers down Max’s spine. He stood quite still and fought against his desire to flee. The creamy liquid in the octospider’s single lens moved from side to side, but the alien did not advance any closer to Max.

Out of one of the parallel indentations on both sides of the lens came a burst of purple color, which circumnavigated the octospider’s spherical head, followed by bands of other colors, all of which disappeared into the second of the two parallel slits. When the same color pattern repeated, Max, whose heart was pounding so fiercely he could feel it in his jaw, shook his head and said, “I don’t understand.” The octospider hesitated for a moment and then lifted two of its tentacles off the ground, clearly pointing in the direction of one of the four tunnels. As if to underscore its point, the octo shuffled in that general direction and then repeated the gesture.

Max stood up and walked slowly toward the indicated tunnel, being careful not to come too close to the octospider. When he reached the entrance, another series of color splashes raced around the head of the alien. “Thank you very much,” Max said politely as he turned and walked into the passageway.

He didn’t even stop to look at his map until he was three or four hundred meters into the tunnel. As Max walked along, the lights always came on automatically in front of him and were extinguished in the tunnel segments through which he had already passed. When he did finally examine the map carefully, Max discovered that he was not far from the designated, room.

A few minutes later Max entered the chamber where the rest of the family was gathered. He had a big grin on his face. “You’ll never guess who I just met,” Max said only moments before Eponine greeted him with an embrace.

Soon after Max finished entertaining everyone with the story of his encounter with the octospider, Richard and Patrick cautiously backtracked to the cathedral room, stopping every hundred meters or so and listening carefully for the telltale sounds of the aliens. They heard nothing. Nor did they hear or see anything that indicated the forces dispatched from New Eden were in the vicinity. After about an hour, Richard and Patrick returned to the rest of the group and joined in the discussion of what they should do next.

The extended family had enough food for five days, maybe six if each portion was carefully rationed. Water was available at the cistern near the cathedral room. Everyone quickly agreed that the search party from New Eden, at (east this first one, would probably not stay in New York too long. There was a short debate about whether or not Katie might have told Captain Bauer and his men the location of the octospider lair. On one critical point there was no argument: The next day or two was the most likely time period for them to be discovered by the other humans. As a result, except for physical necessities, none of the family left the large room in which they were staying for the next thirty-six hours.

At the end of that time the whole group, especially the hatchlings and the twins, had a bad case of cabin fever. Richard and Nai took Tammy, Timmy, Benjy, and the small children out into the passageway, trying unsuccessfully to keep them quiet, and led them away from the cathedral room, toward the vertical corridor with the protruding spikes that descended deeper into the octospider lair. Richard, who had Nikki on his back most of the time, warned Nai and the twins several times about the dangers of the area they were approaching. Even so, very soon after the tunnel widened and they arrived at the vertical corridor, the impetuous Galileo climbed into the barrel-shaped hole before his mother could stop him. He quickly became frozen with fright. Richard had to rescue the boy from his precarious perch on two spikes just a short distance-be low the level of the walkway that encircled the top of the huge abyss. The young avians, delighted to be able to fly again, soared freely around the area and twice dropped several meters into the dark chasm, but they never went deep enough to trigger the next lower bank of lights.

Before returning to the rest of the family, Richard took Benjy with him for a quick inspection of what Richard and Nicole had always called the octospider museum. This large room, located several hundred meters from the vertical corridor, was still completely empty. Several hours later, following Richard’s suggestion, half of the extended family moved into the museum to give everyone more living space.

On the third day of their stay in the octospider lair, Richard and Max decided that someone should try to discover if the colony troops were still in New York. Patrick was the logical choice to be the family scout. Richard’s and Max’s instructions to Patrick were straightforward-he was to proceed cautiously to the cathedral room and then up the ramp into New York. From there, using his flashlight and portable computer as little as possible, he should cross to the northern shore of the island and see if the boats were still there. Whatever the result of his investigation, he should return directly to the lair and give them a full report.

“There is one other thing to remember,” Richard said, “that is extremely important. If at any time you hear either an octospider or a soldier, you are to turn around immediately and come back to us. But with this one added proviso: Under no circumstances should any human see you descend into this lair. You cannot do anything that will endanger the rest of us.”

Max insisted that Patrick should take one of (he two rifles. Richard and Nicole did not argue. After receiving best wishes from everybody, Patrick set out on his scouting mission. He had only walked five hundred meters down the tunnel, however, when he heard a noise in front of him. He stopped to listen, but could not identify what he was hearing. After another hundred meters some of the sounds began to resolve themselves. Patrick definitely heard the sound of dragging brushes several times. There was some clanging as well, as if metal objects were hitting against each other, or against a wall. He listened for several minutes and then, remembering his instructions, he returned to his family and friends.

After a long discussion Patrick was sent out again. He was told this time to approach as close to the octospiders as he dared and to watch them quietly for as long as he could. Again he heard the dragging brush sound as he drew close to the cathedral room. But when Patrick actually reached the large chamber at the bottom of the ramp, there were no octospiders around. Where had they gone? he wondered. Patrick’s first impulse was to turn around and go back in the direction from which he had come. However, since he had not encountered any actual octospiders yet, he decided that he might as well go up the ramp, out into New York, and carry out the remainder of his earlier assignment.

Patrick was shocked to discover, about a minute later, that the exit from the octospider lair had been sealed tight with a thick combination of metal rods and a cement like material. He could barely see through the cover, and it was certainly sufficiently heavy that all the humans together would not be able to budge it. The octospiders have done this, he thought immediately, but why have they trapped us here?

Before returning to give his report, Patrick inspected the cathedral room and found that one of the four egress tunnels had also been sealed with what appeared to be a thick door or gate. That must have been the tunnel that led to the canal, he thought. Patrick remained in the area for another ten minutes, listening for the sounds of the octospiders, but heard nothing more.