If Richard and Nicole had not been so fatigued from their two days of arduous hiking, and if they had not already seen so many fabulous sights in this alien world that existed in the Southern Hemicylinder of Rama, they would have been both captivated and overwhelmed by the complex symbiosis they discovered in the next several hours.
What was all over the goalposts was not ivy at all. What appeared to be individual leaves from a distance were in reality little cone-shaped nests, made of thousands of tiny creatures that resembled aphids. The creatures were glued together to form the nest by the sweet, sticky, honeylike substance the humans had enjoyed eating under the dome. The alien aphids manufactured large quantities of the substance as part of their normal activity.
During the time that Richard and Nicole were watching, convoys of snout-nosed beetles, who lived in mounds several meters high surrounding the entire enclave, burst from their homes every forty minutes or so and crawled all over the posts, harvesting the excess goo from the nests. The beetle creatures, which were about ten centimeters long when empty, swelled to three or four times their normal size before completing their harvest cycle and regurgitating the contents of their swollen bodies in sunken vats at the base of the posts.
Richard and Nicole did not talk much while they were watching the activity. The overall biological system displayed in front of them was both intricate and wonderful- another example of the astonishing advancements in symbiosis that had been made by their hosts. “I bet,” said a weary Richard as he and Nicole prepared to sleep not far from one of the beetle mounds, “that if we wait long enough, some beast of burden will show up to lift the vats of this honey, or whatever it is, out of the ground and then carry them to another site.”
As they were lying side by side on the dirt, they observed the two fireflies landing in the distance. Then it was suddenly dark. “I don’t believe all this just happened,” Nicole said. “Not on another planet. Not anywhere. Natural evolution simply does not result in the kind of interspecies harmony we have witnessed the last two days.”
“What are you suggesting?” Richard asked. ‘That all these creatures were somehow designed, like machines, to perform their functions?”
“It is the only explanation I can accept,” Nicole said, “The octospiders, or somebody, must have reached the level of advancement where they can manipulate the genes to produce a plant or animal that does exactly what they want, Why do those beetle things deposit the honey substance in the vats? What is their biological payoff for that action?”
“They must be compensated in some way that we have not yet discovered,” Richard said.
“Of course,” Nicole said. “And behind that compensation is some incredible biological systems architect or engineer who is tuning all the interrelationships, not only so that each species is happy, however we choose to define that word, but also so that the architects themselves reap some profit-namely, food in the form of excess honey. Now, do you believe that kind of optimization could possibly take place without some sophisticated genetic engineering involved?”
Richard was silent for almost a minute. “Imagine,” he finally said slowly, “a master biological engineer sitting at a keyboard, designing a living organism to meet certain system specifications. It is a mind-boggling concept.”
Once more the beetles swarmed out of their mounds, barely missing the sleeping humans as they rushed for the goalposts and their harvesting task. Nicole watched the beetles until they disappeared in the dark. Then she yawned and curled up on her side. We humans have entered a new era, she thought before she fell asleep. In the future ail history will be noted as BC, before contact, and AC, after contact. For from that first moment when we knew unambiguously that simple chemicals had risen to consciousness and intelligence somewhere else in the vastness of our universe, the past history of our species became only an isolated paradigm, one small and relatively insignificant fragment in the infinite tapestry that depicts the astonishing variety of sentient life.
After breakfast the next morning Richard and Nicole had a brief discussion about their dwindling food supply and then decided to take some of the honey substance from one of the vats. “I guess if we’re not supposed to do this,” Nicole said, glancing around while she was filling a small container, “then some alien policeman will come along and stop us.”
Their guide lights moved directly south at first, leading Richard and Nicole toward a thick forest of very tall trees that extended as far as they could see in the east-west direction. The fireflies turned to the right and moved parallel to the edge of the trees. The forest on their left was dark and foreboding. From time to time Richard and Nicole heard strange, loud sounds coming from its interior.
Once Richard stopped and walked over to where the thick growth began. Between the trees were many smaller plants, with large leaves in green, red, and brown, as well as several different kinds of vine that laced together the middle and upper branches of the trees. Richard jumped back when he heard a sharp howl that sounded as if it were only a few meters away. His eyes searched the forest, but he could not find the source of the howl.
“There’s something weird about this forest,” he said, turning back to Nicole. “It feels out of place, as if it doesn’t belong here.”
For over an hour the fireflies continued in a westerly direction. The bizarre sounds became more frequent as Richard and Nicole trudged slowly along in silence. Nicole agreed with Richard about the forest. Its undisciplined growth, especially when compared to the order of the fields on her right, was both surprising and disquieting.
They took a brief rest in the middle of the morning. Richard calculated that they had already walked more than five kilometers since waking. Nicole asked for some of the fresh honey that was in Richard’s backpack.
“My feet hurt,” she said, after eating and then taking a long drink of water. “And my legs never stopped aching last night. I hope we reach wherever we’re going before too much longer.”
“I’m tired too,” Richard said. “But we’re not doing badly for a couple in their early sixties.”
“I feel older than that right now,” Nicole said. She stood up and stretched. “You know, our hearts must be almost ninety. They may not have done much work all those years we were asleep, but they had to keep pumping nevertheless.”
As they were talking, a strange little spherical animal with a solitary eye, white fuzzy hair, and a dozen spindly legs darted out of the nearby forest and snatched the container of honey. The creature and the food were gone in an instant.
“What was that?” Nicole asked, startled.
“Something with a sweet tooth,” Richard said. He stared off into the forest, where the animal had disappeared. ‘That is definitely another world over there.”
Half an hour later, the pair of fireflies moved off to the left and hovered over a path leading into the forest. The path was five meters wide and was lined on both sides by dense growth. Nicole’s intuition told her not to follow the fireflies, but she said nothing. Her apprehension increased when, after Richard and she had taken a couple of steps into the forest, noises erupted from the trees all around them. They stopped, held hands, and listened.
“It sounds like birds, monkeys, and frogs,” Richard said.
“They must be signaling our presence,” Nicole said. She turned around and looked behind her. “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?”
Richard pointed at the lights in front of them. “We’ve been following those big bugs for two and a half days. It doesn’t make much sense to lose faith in them now.”
They started walking down the path again. The caws, howls, and croaking sounds accompanied them. From time to time the kind of foliage on both sides of them would change a little, but it always remained dense and dark.
“There must be a group of alien gardeners,” Richard said at one point, “who work the area around this path several times a week. Look how perfectly trimmed all the bushes and trees are. They don’t protrude one iota into the air space above our heads.”
“Richard,” Nicole said a little later, “if the sounds we are hearing are coming from alien animals, why don’t we ever see one? Not a single creature has ever come out on the path.” She bent down and examined the dirt at her feet. “And there is no visible evidence here of any life, not now and not ever. Not even an ant.”
“We must be walking on a magical path,” Richard said with a grin. “Perhaps it leads to a gingerbread house and a wicked old witch… Let us sing, Gretel, and perhaps we will feel better.”
The path, which had been absolutely straight for the first kilometer or so, began to meander. Because of its
