any difficulties coming and going.”
“Are there no other routes that lead to the inside?” Nicole asked.
“No,” Eleanor answered. “The original probe site was here. It has since been considerably widened, of course, and a bridge was built across the moat so that the troops can move quickly. But there are no other entrances.”
“And must we absolutely go through this habitat to reach Richard and New York?”
“Yes,” Joan replied. “That huge gray barrier to the south, the one that forms the wall of the second habitat for many kilometers, prevents movement in and out of the Northern Hemicylinder of Rama. It’s possible that we could fly over it, if we had an airplane that could reach an altitude of two kilometers, and a very clever pilot, but we don’t. Besides, Richard is expecting us to come through the habitat.”
They waited and waited in the dark and cold. Periodically one of the two robots would check the entrance, but there was always a sentry present. Nicole became tired and frustrated. “Look,” she said at one point, “we can’t stay here forever. There must be some other plan.”
“We have no knowledge of any alternate or contingency
plans in this situation,” Eleanor said, reminding Nicole for once that they were only robots.
During a brief nap the exhausted Nicole dreamed that she was lying, naked, on the top of a very large and very flat ice cube. Avians were striking at her from the sky, and hundreds of little robots like Joan and Eleanor had surrounded her on the surface of the ice. They were chanting something in unison.
When Nicole awakened, she felt somewhat refreshed. She talked with the two robots and they worked out a new plan. The three of them decided not to move until there was a break in the traffic through the entrance to the second habitat. At that time, the robots would decoy the sentry so that Nicole could proceed inside. Joan and Eleanor instructed Nicole then to walk cautiously to the other side of the bridge and turn right along the shore of the moat. “Wait for us,” Eleanor said, “in the small cove about three hundred meters from the bridge.”
Twenty minutes later, Joan and Eleanor made a terrible commotion along the far wall, about fifty meters from the entrance. Nicole walked unmolested into the interior of the habitat when the sentry left his post to investigate the noise. On the inside, a long stairway wound back and forth, dropping the several hundred meters from the entrance altitude to the level of the wide moat that circumscribed the entire habitat. There were lights on the stairway at periodic intervals, and Nicole could see more lights on the bridge in front of her, but the overall illumination was quite sparse. Nicole tensed when she saw a pair of construction workers coming up the stairs in her direction. But they climbed right past her with only minimal acknowledgment. Nicole was thankful she was wearing the uniform.
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.
5
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
