had a transparent helmet around her head, through which it was easy to read her colors.
“I was astonished,” Nicole said to Dr. Blue, who was sitting beside her as the open rover moved across the flat.terrain toward the mountain, “when we first came outside… No, that’s not a strong enough word. You and the Eagle had both told me that we were in the factory and that a was being prepared for another voyage, but I never expected all this.”
“The pyramid was built around you,” the Eagle interred from the driver’s seat in front of them, “while you sleeping. If we had not been able to build without disturbing your environment, it would have been necessary to awaken you much earlier.”
“Doesn’t this entire business just amaze you?” Nicole continued to face Dr. Blue. “Don’t you wonder what kind of beings conceived of this grand project in the first place? And also created artificial intelligence like the Eagle? It is almost impossible to imagine.”
“It’s not as difficult for us,” the octospider said. “Remember, we have known about superior beings from the beginning. We only exist as intelligent creatures because the Precursors altered our genes. We have never had a period in our history when we thought we were at the apex of life.”
“Nor will we, ever again,” mused Nicole. “Human history, whatever it turns out to be, has now been profoundly and irrevocably altered.”
“Maybe not,” the Eagle said from the front seat. “Our data base indicates that some species are not significantly impacted by contact with us. Our experiments are designed to allow for that possibility. Our contact occurs during a finite interval, with only a small percentage of the population. There is no continuous interaction unless the species under study takes overt action to create it. I doubt if life on Earth at this very moment is much different than it would have been if no Rama spacecraft had ever visited your solar system.”
Nicole leaned forward in her seat. “Do you know that for a fact?” she said. “Or are you just guessing?”
The Eagle’s answer was vague. “Certainly your history was changed by Rama’s appearance,” he said. “Many major events would not have occurred if there had not been any contact. But a hundred more years from now, or five hundred… How different will Earth be then from what it would have been?”
“But the human point of view must have changed,” Nicole argued. “Surely the knowledge that there exists in the universe, or at least existed in some earlier epoch, an intelligence advanced enough to build an interstellar robotic spacecraft larger than our greatest city cannot be cast aside as insignificant information. It creates a different perspective for the entire human experience. Religion, philosophy, even the fundamentals of biology must be revised in the presence—”
“I am glad to see,” the Eagle interrupted, “that at least some small measure of your optimism and idealism has survived all these years. Recall, however, that in New Eden the humans knew that they were living inside a domain especially constructed for them by extraterrestrials. And they were told, by you and others, that they were being continually observed. Even so, when it became apparent that the aliens, whoever they were, did not intend to interfere in the daily activities of the humans, the existence of those advanced beings became irrelevant.”
The rover arrived at the base of the mountain. “I wanted to come over here,” Dr. Blue said, “out of curiosity. We did not have any mountains, as you know, in our realm on Rama. And not many in my region of our home planet when I was a juvenile. I thought it would be nice to stand on the top.”
“I have commandeered one of the large bulldozers,” the Eagle said. “Our journey to the summit will only take ten minutes. You may be frightened in spots because of the steepness of the climb, but it is perfectly safe, as long as you wear your seat belts.”
Nicole was not too old to enjoy the spectacular climb. The bulldozer, as large as an office building, did not have very comfortable seats for passengers and some of the bumps were quite violent, but the vistas that opened up as the trio ascended were definitely worth the trouble.
The mountain was over a kilometer high and about ten kilometers around its approximately round circumference. Nicole could clearly see the pyramid in which she had been staying when the bulldozer was only a quarter of the way up the mountain. Farther away, in all directions, the horizon was dotted with isolated construction projects of Unknown purpose.
So now it all begins again, Nicole thought. This rebuilt Rama will soon enter another set of star systems. And what will it find? Who are the spacefarers who will next walk across this ground? Or climb this mountain?
The bulldozer halted on a plateau very near the summit and the three passengers disembarked. The view was breathtaking. As Nicole surveyed the scene, she recalled her wonder on that very first trip into Rama, when she had been riding down the chairlift and the vast alien world had stretched out in front of her. Thank you, she thought, addressing the Eagle in her mind, for keeping me alive. You were right. This experience alone and the memories it triggers are more than enough reason to continue.
Nicole turned around to face the rest of the mountain. She saw something small flying in and out of some bushy-looking growths, red in color, that were no more than twenty meters away. She walked over and captured one of the flying objects in her hand. It was the size and shape of a butterfly. Its wings were decorated with a variegated pattern without symmetry or any other design principle that Nicole could discern. She let one go and then captured another. The pattern on the second Raman butterfly was altogether different, but still rich in both color and decoration.
The Eagle and Dr. Blue walked up beside her. Nicole showed them what she was holding in her hand. “Flying biots,” the Eagle said without additional comment.
Nicole marveled again at the tiny creature. Something astonishing happens every day, she remembered Richard saying. And we are then always reminded of what a joy it is to be alive.
2
Nicole had barely finished her bath when the two biots entered the room. One was a crab and the other looked like a small truck. The crab used a combination of its powerful pincers and its formidable array of ancillary gadgetry to cut Nicole’s sleeping container into manageable pieces. The pieces were then stacked in the bed of the truck. On its way out of the room less than a minute later, the crab grabbed the white bathtub and all the remaining chairs and piled them on top of the stacks in the truck bed. It then put the table on its own back and disappeared from the empty room behind the truck biot.
Nicole straightened her dress. “I’ll never forget the first time I saw a crab biot,” she commented to her two companions. “It was on the huge screen in the Newton control center, years and years ago. We were all terrified.”
“So today’s the day,” Dr. Blue said in color several seconds later. “Are you ready to check into the Grand Hotel?”
“Probably not,” Nicole said with a smile. “From what you and the Eagle have said, I guess I have enjoyed my last moment of solitude.”
“Your family and friends are very excited about seeing you,” the Eagle said. “I visited them yesterday and told them you would be coming. You’ll stay with Max, Eponine, Ellie, Marius, and Nikki. Patrick, Nai, Benjy, Kepler, and Maria are next door. As I explained to you last week, Patrick and Nai have been treating Maria as their own daughter since shortly after everyone awakened. They know the whole story of how you rescued Maria during the bombing.”
“I don’t know if ‘rescued’ is exactly the correct word,” Nicole said, remembering clearly her last hours in the old Rama spacecraft. “I picked her up because there was no one to look after her. Anybody would have done the same thing.”
“You saved her life,” the Eagle said. “Not more than an hour after you left the zoo with the girl, three large bombs devastated her compound and the two adjacent sections. Maria certainly would have been killed if you hadn’t found her.”
“She is now a beautiful and intelligent young woman,” Dr. Blue said. “I met her once briefly several weeks ago. Ellie says Maria is incredibly energetic. According to Ellie, the girl is the first one awake in the morning and the last one in bed at night.”
Like Katie, Nicole couldn’t help but think. Who are you, Maria? she wondered. And why were you sent into my life at just that moment?
