Rama Revealed

7

After leaving their zone, the transport followed a different route from the one that had taken the humans to the stadium on Bounty Day. This time it stayed on dimly lit streets on the periphery of the city. The party encountered none of the busy, colorful scenes that they had seen in their previous excursion. After several fengs the transport approached a large closed gate very much like the one through which they had initially entered the Emerald City.

Two octospiders came over and peered in the car. Archie said something to them in color, and one of the octospiders returned to what must have been their equivalent of a guardhouse. In the distance Richard could see colors flashing on a flat wall. “She’s checking with the authorities,” Dr. Blue told the humans. “We’re outside our expected arrival interval, so our exit code is no longer valid.”

During a wait of several more nillets, the other octospider entered the transport and inspected it thoroughly. None of the humans had ever experienced such stringent security precautions in the Emerald City, not even at the stadium. Ellie’s discomfort was heightened when the octospider security officer, without saying anything to her, opened up her purse to see its contents. Eventually the inspector returned Ellie’s purse and disembarked. The gate swung open, the transport moved out from under the green dome, and then it parked in the dark less than a minute later.

The transport was surrounded in the parking lot by thirty or forty other vehicles. “This area,” Dr. Blue explained as they descended from the car and a pair of fireflies joined them, “is called the Arts District. It and the zoo, which is not too far from here, are the only two sections of the Alternate Domain visited with any regularity by the octospiders who live in the Emerald City. The optimizers do not approve many visitation requests to the alternate living areas that are farther south-in fact, for most octospiders, the only comprehensive view of the Alternate Domain that they ever have is the tour during the last week of Matriculation.”

The air was much colder than it had been in the Emerald City. Archie and Dr. Blue both started walking faster than the humans had ever seen an octospider move before. “We must hurry,” Archie turned and said, “or we will be late.” The human trio ran to keep up with the fast pace.

As they neared an illuminated area about three hundred meters from their transport, Archie and Dr. Blue moved to either end of the line of humans so that they were walking five abreast. “We’re entering Artisan’s Square,” Dr. Blue said, “which is where the alternates offer their artistic works for transfer.”

“What do you mean, ‘transfer’?” Nicole asked.

“The artists need credits for food and other essentials. They offer their works of art to an Emerald City resident who has credits to spare,” Dr. Blue replied.

As much as Nicole might have wanted to pursue the conversation, she was immediately sidetracked by the dazzling array of unusual objects, makeshift stalls, octospiders, and other animals that greeted her eyes in Artisan’s Square. The square, a large plaza seventy or eighty meters on a side, was directly across a broad avenue from the theater that was their destination. Archie and Dr. Blue, at the ends of their line, each extended a single tentacle along the collective backs of the humans so that the five of them moved as one across the bustling square.

The group was confronted by several octospiders holding out objects to transfer. Richard, Nicole, and Ellie quickly confirmed what Archie had told them during the long meeting, namely that the alternates did not conform to the official language specification used by the octospiders in the Emerald City. There were no neat color bands sweeping around the heads of these octospiders, only sloppy sequences of colored blotches of widely variable heights. One of the hawkers who accosted them was small, obviously a juvenile, and he or she, after being waved away by Archie, gave Ellie a sudden fright by wrapping a tentacle around Ellie’s arm for a few fractions of a second. Archie seized the offender with three of his own tentacles and hurled him roughly out of the way, in the direction of one of the octospiders with a cloth bag over its shoulder. Dr. Blue explained that the bag identified the octo as a policeman.

Nicole was walking so fast, and there was so much around her to see, that she found herself holding her breath. Although she had no idea what to make of many of the objects being offered for transfer in the square, she could recognize and appreciate the occasional painting, or piece of sculpture, or those tiny representations, in wood or some similar medium, of all the different animals who lived in the Emerald City. In one section of the square there were displays of colored patterns pressed upon the parchment material-Dr. Blue explained later, when they were inside the theater, that the particular art form represented by the patterns was a combination, as she understood the human terms, of both poetry and calligraphy.

Just before they crossed the street, Nicole caught sight, on a wall twenty meters away on her left, of a large mural that was astonishingly beautiful. The colors were bold and eye-catching, the composition the work of an artist who understood both structure and optical appeal. The technical skill was also extremely impressive, but it was the emotions rendered in the bodies and faces of the octospiders and other creatures in the mural that fascinated Nicole.

“The Triumph of Optimization,” Nicole mumbled to herself as she craned her neck to read the title in colors across the upper portion of the mural. The painting had a spacecraft against a star background in one section, an ocean teeming with living things in another, and both a jungle and a desert in opposite corners. The central image, however, was a giant octospider, carrying a stave and standing on a pile of thirty disparate animals, who were squirming in the dust underneath its tentacles. Nicole’s heart nearly jumped out of her body when she saw that one of the trampled beings was a young human woman with brown skin, piercing eyes, and short curly hair.

“Look,” she yelled suddenly to the others, “over there-at that mural.”

At that moment some kind of small animal was making itself a nuisance around their feet. It succeeded in distracting everyone’s attention. The two octospiders dealt with the animal and pulled the line again toward the theater. As she moved into the street, Nicole glanced back at the mural to make certain that she had not imagined the presence of a young woman in the picture. From the added distance the face of the woman and her features were vague, but Nicole was nevertheless convinced that she had definitely seen a human being in the artwork. But how is that possible? Nicole was asking herself as they entered the theater.

Preoccupied with her discovery, Nicole listened with only half an ear to Richard’s discussion with Archie about how he intended to use his translator during the play. She didn’t even look when, after they took their standing positions in the fifth row above a theater-in-the-round, Dr. Blue pointed out with one of her tentacles the sector to the left of them containing Jamie and the other matriculating octospiders. I must have made a mistake, Nicole thought. She was seized by a powerful impulse to run back to the square and verify what she had seen. Then she remembered what Archie had told them about the importance of carefully following instructions on this particular evening. I know I saw a woman in that painting, Nicole told herself as three large fireflies flew down and hovered over the stage in the center of the theater. But if I did, what does it mean?

There were no intermissions in the play, which lasted slightly more than an hour. The action was continuous, with one or more of the octospider actors occupying the lit stage at all times. No props were used and no costumes. At the beginning of the play the seven main “characters” came forward and briefly introduced themselves-two matriculating octos, one of either sex, a pair of adoptive parents for each, and one alternate male whose bright and beautiful colors spread all the way to the end of his tentacles when he spoke.

The first several minutes of the actual play established that the two matriculating juveniles had been best friends for years and that, despite the good and sound advice of their assigned parents, they had selected early sexual maturity together. “My desire,” the young female octospider said in her first monologue, “is to produce a baby from a union with my cherished companion.” Or at least that’s how Richard translated what she said. He was gleeful at the performance of his much-improved translator and, after remembering that the octospiders were deaf, he talked intermittently throughout the performance.

The four octo parents came together in the center of the stage and expressed anxiety about what would happen when the “powerful new emotions” that accompanied the sexual transformation were first encountered by their adopted children. They did, however, try to be fair, and all four of the adults admitted that their own choices not to become sexually mature after Matriculation meant that they could not give advice based on any actual experience.

In the middle of the play the two young octospiders were isolated at opposite corners of the stage, and the audience concluded from the pyrotechnics of the fireflies, plus a few brief statements from the octospider actors, that each of them had stopped eating the barrican and was alone in some kind of Transition Domain.

When later the two transformed octospiders walked across the stage and met in the center, the color patterns in their conversation had already altered. It was a powerful effect, however it was achieved by the actors, because not only were the individual colors brighter than they had been before the transition, but also the rigid, nearly perfect strips that had characterized the early conversations between the two juveniles were already marked with some different and interesting individual designs. Around them on the stage at this point were half a dozen other octospiders-all alternates, judging from their language-and a couple of Polish sausage animals chasing anything they could find. The pair were now clearly in the Alternate Domain.

Enter from the darkness off the stage the alternate male introduced at the beginning of the play. The octospider actor first made a brilliant display of horizontal and vertical patterns moving in both directions and then created advanced wave action, geometric structures, and even fireworks like explosions of color starting at random locations around his head. The newcomer’s Technicolor display mesmerized the young female octo and won her away from the best friend of her childhood. Soon after, the interloper with the amazing colors, who had obviously parented the baby octo being carried in the frontal pouch of the female, left her sitting forlorn and alone in the comer of the stage, sending out pulse after unstructured pulse of meaningless colors.

At this point in the play the male octospider who had matriculated in the earlier scenes stormed into the light, saw his true love in despair with her baby, and jumped off into the darkness surrounding the stage. Moments later he returned with the alternate who had corrupted his girlfriend, and the two male octos engaged in a horrible but fascinating fight in the middle of the stage. Their heads a riot of expletive color, they beat, twisted, choked, and battled each other for an entire feng. The younger male octo eventually won the fight, for the alternate lay motionless on the stage when the action was over. The sadness expressed in the closing remarks of the hero and the heroine made certain that the moral of the play was very clear. When the play was finished, Richard glanced at Nicole and Ellie and commented, with an irreverent grin, “This is one of those downer plays, like Othello, where everyone dies in the end.”

Under the supervision of the octospider ushers, all with bags, the matriculating youngsters left the theater first, followed next by Archie, Dr. Blue, and their human companions. The orderly procession stopped just outside a few minutes later and formed a crowded ring around three other octospiders who were in the middle of the avenue. Richard, Nicole, and Ellie felt the presence of their friends’ powerful tentacles across their backs as they moved into position to see what was taking place. Two of the octospiders in the center of the street were holding staves and wearing bags, while the third octo, who was crouching between them, was transmitting the color message, in broad and unstructured bands, “Please, help me.”

“This octospider,” one of the policemen said in crisp, measured strips, “has consistently failed to earn her credits since coming to the Alternate Domain after her Matriculation four cycles ago. Last cycle she was warned that she had become an unacceptable drain upon our common resources, and recently, two days before Bounty Day, she was told to report for termination. Since that time she has been hiding among friends in the Alternate Domain.”

The crouching octospider suddenly bolted and leaped into the audience near where the humans were standing. The crowd sagged back from the impact and Ellie, who was nearest the point where the escape attempt occurred, was knocked to the ground in the melee that ensued. In less than a nillet the police, with help from Archie and several of the matriculating juveniles, again had the fugitive under control.

“Failure to report for a scheduled termination is one of the worst crimes an octospider can commit,” the policeman then said. “It is punishable by immediate termination upon apprehension.” One of the policemen pulled several wriggling, wormlike creatures from its shoulder bag. The outlaw octo struggled hard the first time the two policemen tried to force the wormlike creatures into her mouth. However, after each of the policemen hit the renegade twice with a stave, the doomed octospider collapsed between her captors. Ellie, who had regained her footing by this time, was unable to suppress a scream of terror as the creatures entered the octo’s mouth, and she began to regurgitate. Death came quickly.

None of the humans said a word as they walked arm in arm with Archie and Dr. Blue across the square and into the parking area where their transport was wailing. Nicole was so stunned by what she had witnessed that she did not even remember to look for the painting that she thought had included a human face.

In the middle of the night Nicole, who had not been able to sleep, heard a noise in the living room. She rose from her bed quietly and slipped into a robe. Ellie was sitting on the couch in the dark. Nicole sat down beside her daughter and took her hand.

“I couldn’t sleep, Mother,” Ellie said. “I have been going over everything in my mind and it doesn’t make any sense. I feel as if I have been betrayed.”

“I know, Ellie,” Nicole said. “I feel the same way.”

“I thought I knew the octospiders,” Ellie said. “I trusted them. In many ways I thought they were superior to us, but after what I saw tonight…”

“None of us is comfortable with killing,” Nicole said. “Even Richard was horrified at first. But after we were in bed, he told me that he was certain the street scene was carefully staged for the benefit of the matriculators. He also said that we should be careful not to jump to too many conclusions or let ourselves react emotionally to one isolated incident.”

“I have never before watched an intelligent being murdered before my very eyes. And what was her crime? Failure to report for termination?”

“We cannot judge them as we would judge human beings. The octospiders are an entirely different species, with a completely separate social organization, one that may be even more complex than ours. We are only beginning to understand them. Have you already forgotten that they cured Eponine of RV-41? And allowed us to use their technology when we were worried about Marius’s birth?”

“No, I haven’t,” Ellie replied. She was silent for several seconds. “You know, Mother, I’m feeling as frustrated now as I did often in New Eden, when I kept wondering how human beings, who are capable of so much that is good, could possibly tolerate a tyrant like Nakamura. Now it looks as if the octospiders can be just as bad in their own way. There is so much inconsistency everywhere.”

Nicole tried to console her daughter with a hug. In her mind’s eye Nicole again saw a highlight montage of the night’s incredible activities, including the fleeting glimpse in which she believed she had seen an unknown human woman in an octospider mural. And what was that about, old woman? she asked herself. Was it really there, that face, or did your tired and imaginative brain create it to confuse you?