by Arthur C.
She paused for a moment. "For myself, I know that I would like to stay alive until Genevieve is grown—so that I can be a grandmother to her children. But just being alive is not the most important thing. Life must have quality to be worthwhile. And to have quality we must be willing to take a few risks… I'm not being very focused, am I?"
Richard smiled. "No," he said, "but I like your general drift. You have mentioned the key word. Quality… Have you ever considered suicide?" he asked suddenly.
"No," Nicole replied, shaking her head. "Never. There's always been too much to live for." There must be some reason for his question, she was thinking. "What about you?" she said after a short silence, "did you think about suicide during any of that pain with your father?"
"No, strangely enough," he answered. "My father's beatings never made me lose my zest for life. There was too much to learn. And I knew that I would outgrow him and be on my own eventually." There was a long pause before he continued. "But there was one period in my life when I did seriously consider suicide," Richard said. "My pain and anger were so great that I did not think I could endure them."
He became silent, locked in his thoughts. Nicole waited patiently. Eventually she slipped her arm through his. "Well, my friend," she said lightly, "you can tell me about it someday. Neither of us is accustomed to sharing our deepest secrets. Maybe in time we can learn. I'm going to start by telling you why I believe we are not going to die and why I think we should go over to search the area around the eastern plaza next."
Nicole had never told anyone, not even her father, about her "trip" during the Poro. Before she finished telling her story to Richard, not only had Nicole covered what had happened to her as a seven-year-old at the Poro, but also she had recounted the story of Omeh's visit to Rome, the Senoufo prophecies about the "woman without companion" who scatters her progeny "among the stars," and the details of her vision after drinking the vial at the bottom of the pit.
Richard was speechless. The entire set of stories was so foreign to his mathematical mind that he did not even know how to react. He stared at Nicole with awe and amazement. At length, embarrassed by his silence, he started to speak. "I don't know what to say…"
Nicole put her fingers to his lips. "You don't need to say anything," she said. "I can read your reaction in your face. We can talk about it tomorrow, after you've had some time to think about what I told you."
Nicole yawned and looked at her watch. She pulled her sleeping mat out of her backpack and unrolled it on the ground. "I'm exhausted," she said to Richard. "Nothing like a little terror to produce instant fatigue. I'll see you in four hours."
"We've been searching now for an hour and a half," Richard said impatiently. "Look at this map. There's no place within five hundred meters of the plaza center that we haven't covered at least twice."
"Then we're doing something wrong," Nicole replied. "There were three heat sources in my vision." Richard frowned. "Or be logical, if you prefer. Why would there be three plazas and only two underground lairs? You said yourself that the Ramans always followed a reasonable plan."
They were standing in front of a dodecahedron that faced the eastern plaza. "And another thing," Richard growled to himself, "what's the purpose of all these damn polyhedrons? There's one in every sector and the three biggest are in the plazas… Wait a minute," he said, as his eyes went from one of the twelve faces of the dodecahedron to an opposite skyscraper. His head then turned quickly around the plaza. "Could it be?" he said. "No," he answered, "that would be impossible."
Richard saw that Nicole was staring at him. "I have an idea," he said excitedly. "It may be completely farfetched… Do you remember Dr. Bardolini and his progressive matrices? With the dolphins?… What if the Ramans also left a pattern here in New York of subtle differences that change from plaza to plaza and section to section?… Look, it's no crazier than your visions."
Already Richard was on his knees on the ground, working with his maps of New York, "Can I use your computer too?" he said to Nicole a few minutes later. "That will speed up the process."
For hours Richard Wakefield sat beside the two computers, mumbling to himself and trying to solve the puzzle of New York. He explained to Nicole, when he took a break for dinner at her insistence, that the location of the third underground hole could only be determined if he thoroughly understood the geometric relationships between the polyhedrons, the three plazas, and all the skyscrapers immediately opposite the principal faces of the polyhedrons in each of the nine sectors. Two hours before dark Richard dashed off hurriedly to an adjacent section to obtain extra data that had not yet been recorded on their computer maps.
Even after dark he did not rest. Nicole slept the first part of the fifteen-hour night. When she awoke after five hours, Richard was still working feverishly on his project. He didn't even hear Nicole clear her throat. She arose quietly and put her hands on his shoulders. "You must get some sleep, Richard," she said quietly,
"I'm almost there," he said. She saw the bags under his eyes when he turned around. "No more than another hour."
Nicole returned to her mat. When Richard awakened her later, he was full of enthusiasm. "Wouldn't you know it?" he said with a grin. "There are three possible solutions, each of which is consistent with all the patterns." He paced for almost a minute. "Could we go look now?" he then said pleadingly. "I don't think I can sleep until I find out."
None of Richard's three solutions for the location of the third lair was close to the plaza. The nearest one was over a kilometer away, at the edge of New York opposite the Northern Hemicylinder. He and Nicole found nothing there. They then marched another fifteen minutes in the dark to the second possible location, a spot very near the southeast comer of the city. Richard and Nicole walked down the indicated street and found the covering in the exact spot that Richard had predicted. "Hallelujah," he shouted, spreading out his sleeping mat beside the cover. "Hooray for mathematics."
Hooray for Omeh, Nicole thought. She was no longer sleepy but she wasn't anxious to explore any new territory in the dark. What comes first, she asked herself after they had returned to camp and she was lying awake on her mat, intuition or mathematics? Do we use models to help us find the truth? Or do we know the truth first, and then develop the mathematics to explain it?
They were both up at daylight. "The days are still growing slightly shorter," Richard mentioned to Nicole. "But the sum of daytime and nighttime is remaining constant at forty-six hours, four minutes, and fourteen seconds."
"How long before we reach the Earth?" Nicole inquired as she was stuffing her sleeping mat into its protective package.
'Twenty Earth days and three hours," he replied after consulting his computer. "Are you ready for another adventure?"
She nodded. "I presume you also know where to find the panel that opens this cover?"
"No, but I bet it's not hard to find," he said confidently. "And after we find this one, the avian lair opening will be duck soup because we'll have the whole pattern."
Ten minutes later Richard pushed on a metal plate and the third covering swung open. The descent into this third hole was down a wide staircase broken by occasional landings. Richard took Nicole's hand as they walked down the stairs. They used their flashlights to find their way, as no lights illuminated their descent.
The water room was in the same place as in the other underground lairs. There were no sounds in the horizontal tunnels that led off from the central stairway at either of the two main levels. "I don't think anyone lives here," Richard said.
"At least not yet," Nicole answered.
48
WELCOME EARTHLINGS
Richard was puzzled. In the first room off one of the top horizontal tunnels he had found an array of strange gadgets that he had decoded in less than an hour. He now knew how to regulate the lights and temperature throughout each particular portion of the underground lair. But if it was that easy, and all the lairs were similarly constructed, why did the avians
not use the lights that had been provided? While they were eating breakfast Richard quizzed Nicole about the details of the avian lair.
"You're overlooking more fundamental issues," Nicole said, as she took a bite of manna melon. "The avians aren't that important by themselves. The real question is, where are the Ramans? And why did they put these holes under New York in the first place?"
"Maybe they're all Ramans," Richard replied. "The biots, the avians, the octospiders—maybe they all came originally from the same planet. At the beginning they were all one happy family. But as the years and generations passed, different species evolved in separate ways. Individual lairs were constructed and the—"
"There are too many problems with that scenario," Nicole interrupted. "First, the biots are definitely machines. The avians may or may not be. The octospiders almost certainly aren't, although a technological level that could create this spaceship in the first place might have progressed further in artificial intelligence than we can possibly imagine. My intuitive sense, however, says that those things are organic."
"We humans would never be able to distinguish between a living creature and a versatile machine created by a truly advanced species."
"I agree with that. But we can't possibly resolve this argument by ourselves. Besides, there is another question that f want to discuss with you."
"What's that?" Richard asked.
"Did the avians and the octospiders and these underground regions exist also on Rama I? If so, how did the Norton crew miss them altogether? If not, why are they on this spacecraft and not the first one?"
Richard was quiet for several seconds. "I see where you're heading," he said finally. "The fundamental premise has always been that the Rama spacecraft were created millions of years ago, by unknown beings from another region of the galaxy, and that they were totally uninvolved with and disinterested in whatever they encountered during their trek. If they were created that long ago, why would two vehicles that were presumably built at virtually the same time have such striking differences?"
"I'm starting to believe that our colleague from Kyoto was right," Nicole answered. "Maybe there is a meaningful pattern to all this. I'm fairly confident that the Norton crew was thorough and accurate in its survey and that all the distinctions between Rama I and Rama II are indeed real. As soon as we acknowledge that the two spacecraft are different, we face a more difficult issue. Why are they different?"
Richard had finished eating and was now pacing in the dimly lit tunnel. "There was a discussion just like this before it was decided to abort the mission. At the teleconference the main question was, why did the Ramans change course to encounter the Earth? Since the first spacecraft had not done so, it was considered hard evidence that Rama II was different. And the people participating in that meeting knew nothing of the avians or octospiders."
"General Borzov would have loved the avians," Nicole commented after a short silence. "He thought that flying was the greatest pleasure in the world." She laughed. "He once told me that his secret hope in life was that reincarnation was on the level and that he would come back as a bird."
"He was a fine man," Richard said, stopping his pacing momentarily. "I don't think we ever properly appreciated all his talents."
As Nicole replaced part of the manna melon in her backpack and prepared to continue the exploration, she smiled at her peripatetic friend. "One more question, Richard?"
He nodded.
"Do you think we've met any Ramans yet? By that I mean the creatures who made this vehicle. Or any of their descendants."
Richard shook his head vigorously. "Absolutely not," he said. "Maybe we've met some of their creations. Or even other species from the same planet. But we haven't seen the main characters yet."
They found the White Room off to the left of a horizontal tunnel at the second level below the surface. Until then the exploration had been almost boring. Richard and Nicole had walked down many tunnels and had peered into one empty room after another. Four times they had found a set of gadgets for regulating the lights and temperature. Until they reached the White Room, they had seen nothing else of interest.
Both Richard and Nicole were astonished when they entered a room whose walls were painted a crisp white. In addition to the paint, the room was fascinating because one corner was cluttered with objects that turned out, on closer inspection, to be quite familiar. There was a comb and a brush, an empty lipstick container, several coins, a collection of keys, and even something that looked like an old walkie-talkie. In another pile there was a ring and a wristwatch, a tube of toothpaste, a nail file, and a small keyboard with Latin letters. Richard and Nicole were stunned. "Okay, genius," she said with a wave of her hand. "Explain all this, if you can."
He picked up the tube of toothpaste, opened the cap, and squeezed. A white material came out. Richard put his finger in it and then placed the finger in his mouth. "Yuck," he said, spitting out the paste. "Bring your mass spectrometer over here."
While Nicole was examining the toothpaste with her sophisticated medical instruments, Richard picked up each of the other objects. The watch in particular fascinated him. It was indeed keeping proper time, second by second, although its reference point was completely unknown. "Did you ever go to the space museum in Florida?" he asked Nicole.
"No," she answered distractedly.
"They had a display of the common objects taken by the crew on the first Rama mission. This watch looks exactly like the one in the display—I remember it well because I bought a similar one in the museum shop."
Nicole walked over with a puzzled look on her face. "This stuff isn't toothpaste, Richard. I don't know what it is. The spectra are astonishing, with an abundance of super-heavy molecules."
For several minutes the two cosmonauts rummaged in the odd collection of items, trying to make some sense out of their latest discovery. "One thing is certain," Richard said as he was trying unsuccessfully to open up the walkie-talkie, "these objects are definitely associated with human beings. There's simply too many of them for some kind of strange interspecies coincidence."
"But how did they get here?" Nicole asked. She was trying to use the brush but its bristles were far too soft for her hair. She examined it in more detail. "This is not really a brush," she announced. "It looks like a brush, and feels like a brush, but it's useless in the hair."
She bent down and picked up the nail file. "And this can't be used to file any human's fingernails." Richard came over to see what she was talking about. He was still struggling with the walkie-talkie. He dropped it in disgust and took the nail file that Nicole had extended toward him.
"So these things look human, but aren't?" he said, pulling the file against the end of his longest fingernail. The nail was unchanged. Richard gave the file back to Nicole. "What's going on here?" he shouted in a frustrated tone.
"I remember reading a science fiction novel while I was at the university," Nicole said a few seconds later, "in which an extraterrestrial species learned about human beings solely from our earliest television programs. When they finally met us, they offered cereal boxes and soaps and other objects the aliens had seen on our television commercials. The packages were all properly designed, but the contents were either nonexistent or absolutely wrong."
Richard had not been listening carefully to Nicole. He had been fiddling with the keys and surveying the collection of objects in the room. "Now what do all these things have in common?" he said, mostly to himself.
They both arrived at the same answer several seconds later. "They were all carried by the Norton crew," Richard and Nicole said in unison.
"So the two Rama space vehicles must have some kind of communication linkup," Richard said.
"And these objects have been planted here on purpose, to show us that the visit to Rama I was observed and recorded."
"The spider biots that inspected the Norton campsites and the equipment must have contained imaging sensors."
"And all of these things w
ere fabricated from pictures transmitted from Rama I to Rama II."
After Nicole's last comment both of them were silent, each following his own thought pattern. "But why do they want us to know all this? What is it we're supposed to do now?" Richard stood up and began to pace around the room. Suddenly he started laughing. "Wouldn't it be amazing," he said, "if David Brown was right after all, if the Ramans really were completely disinterested in anything they found, but programmed their space vehicles to act interested in any visitors? They could flatter whatever species they encountered by making midcourse corrections and by fashioning simple objects. What an incredible irony. Since all immature species are probably hopelessly self-centered, the visitors to the Raman craft would be totally occupied trying to understand an assumed message—"
"I think you're getting carried away," Nicole interrupted. "All we know at this point is that this spacecraft apparently received pictures from Rama I, and that reproductions of small, everyday objects that were carried by the Norton crew have been placed here in this room for us to find."
"I wonder if the keyboard is as useless as everything else," Richard said as he picked it up. He spelled the word "Rama" with the keys. Nothing happened. He tried "Nicole." Still nothing.
"Don't you remember how the old models worked?" Nicole said with a grin. She took the keyboard. "They all had a separate power key." She pressed the unmarked button in the upper right-hand comer of the keyboard. A portion of the opposite wall slid away, revealing a large black square area about one meter on a side.
The small keyboard was based on the ones that had been attached to the portable computers on the first Rama mission. It had four rows of twelve characters, with an extra power button in the upper right-hand corner. The twenty-six Latin letters, ten Arabic numerals, and four mathematical operands were marked on forty of the individual keys. The other eight keys contained either dots or geometrical figures on their surfaces and, in addition, could be set in either an "up" or "down" position. Richard and Nicole quickly learned that these special keys were the true controls of the Raman system. By trial and error they also discovered that the result from striking any individual action key was a function of the positioning of the other seven keys. Thus, pressing any specific command key could produce as many as 128 different results. Altogether, then, the system provided for 1,024 separate actions that could be initiated from the keyboard.
