by Arthur C.
I never heard a sound. I walked for almost a kilometer before I came to a tall doorway on my right. I cautiously peered around the corner. The room was dark, like everywhere in the avian lair except the vertical corridor. I switched on my flashlight. The room was not very deep, maybe fifteen meters at the most, but it was extremely tall. Against the wall opposite the door were rows and rows of oval storage bins. The beam from my light showed that the rows extended all the way to the high ceiling, which must have been just under one of the plazas in New York.
It did not take me long to figure out the purpose of the room. Each of the storage bins was the size and shape of a manna melon. Of course, I thought to myself. This must have been where the food supply was kept. No wonder they didn't want anybody in here.
After verifying that all the bins were indeed empty, I started to walk back toward the vertical corridor. Then, on a hunch, I reversed my direction, passed the storage room, and continued on down the tunnel. It must go somewhere, I reasoned, or it would have ended at the melon room.
After another half a kilometer the tunnel widened gradually until it entered a large circular chamber. In the center of the room, which had a high ceiling, was a broad domed structure. Around the walls were about twenty alcoves, cut into the walls at regular intervals. There was no light except my flashlight beam, so it took several minutes to integrate the room, with the domed building in the middle, into a composite picture.
I walked completely around the perimeter, examining the alcoves one after another. Most were empty. In one of them I found three identical tank sentries neatly arrayed against the back wall. My initial impulse was to be wary of the sentries, but it was not necessary. They were all dormant.
By far the most interesting of the alcoves, however, was the one at the center of the room, exactly one hundred and eighty degrees around the circle from the entrance tunnel. This special alcove was carefully organized and had thick shelves cut into its walls. There were fifteen shelves in all, five each on the two sides and five more on the wall opposite the doorway to the alcove. The shelves on the sides had objects arranged on them (everything was very orderly); the shelves against the far wall each had five round pits hollowed out along their lengths.
The contents of these pits, which were each further subdivided into sections, like portions of a pie, were fascinating. One of the sections in each of the pits contained a very fine material, like ash. A second section contained one, two, or three rings, either cherry red or gold, that I immediately recognized because of their similarity to the rings we had seen around the neck of our gray velvet avian friend. There did not seem to be any particular pattern to the rest of the articles in the pits—in fact, some of the pits were empty except for the ash and the rings.
Eventually I turned around and approached the domed structure. Its front door faced the special alcove. I examined the door with my flashlight. An intricate design was carved on its rectangular surface. There were four separate panels, or quadrants, in the design. An avian was in the top left quadrant, with a manna melon in the adjacent panel, on the right. The lower two quadrants contained unfamiliar pictures. On the left side was a carving of a jointed, striped creature running on six legs. The final panel, on the bottom right, featured a large box filled with very thin mesh or webbing.
After some hesitation I pushed open the door. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a loud alarm, like a Klaxon, pierced the silence. I stood inside the door without moving while the alarm sounded for almost a minute. When it was over, I still did not move. I was trying to hear if anyone (or anything) was responding to the alarm.
No sound disturbed the silence. After a few minutes I began examining the inside of the building. A transparent cube, roughly two and a half meters in each dimension, occupied the center of the single room. The walls of the cube were stained in spots, partially obscuring my vision, but I could still see that the bottom ten centimeters were covered by a fine, dark material. The room around the cube was decorated with geometric patterns on the walls, floors, and ceiling. One of the cube faces had a narrow entryway that permitted access to the cube interior.
I went inside. The fluffy black material appeared to be ash, but it was a slightly different consistency than the similar stuff I had found in the alcove pits. My eyes followed the beam of my flashlight as it moved in an orderly pattern around the cube. Near the center there was an object partially buried in the ash. I walked over, picked up the object, shook it off, and nearly fainted. It was Richard's robot TB.
TB was considerably altered. His exterior was blackened, his tiny control panel had melted off, and he no longer operated. But it was unmistakably him. I put the little robot to my lips and kissed him. In my mind's eye I could see him spouting one of Shakespeare's sonnets as Richard listened with rapt enjoyment.
It was obvious that TB had been in a fire. Had Richard also been trapped in an inferno inside the cube? I sifted through the ash carefully but found no bones. I did wonder, however, what it was that had burned and created all the ash. And what was TB doing inside the cube in the first place?
I was convinced that Richard was somewhere hi the avian lair, so I spent another eight long hours scrambling up and down ledges and exploring tunnels. I visited all the places I had been before, during my short sojourn long ago, and even found some interesting new chambers of unknown purpose. But there were no signs of Richard. There were, in fact, no signs of life of any kind. Mindful that the short Raman day was almost over and that the four children would be waking up soon in our own lair, I finally returned, tired and dejected, to my Raman home.
Both the cover and the grill to our lair were open when I arrived. Although I was fairly certain that I had closed them both before leaving, I could not remember my exact actions at departure. Eventually I told myself that perhaps I had been too excited at the time and had forgotten to close everything. I had just started to descend when I heard Michael call "Nicole" from behind me.
I turned around. Michael was approaching from the lane to the east. He was moving quickly, which was unusual for him, and was carrying baby Patrick in his arms. "There you are," he said, panting as I walked up to him. "I was beginning to worry—"
He stopped abruptly, stared at me for an instant, and then looked around quickly. "But where's Katie?" he said anxiously.
"What do you mean, where's Katie?" I asked, the look on Michael's face causing me alarm.
"Isn't she with you?" he asked.
When I shook my head and said that I hadn't seen her, Michael suddenly erupted in tears. I rushed forward and comforted little Patrick, who was frightened by Michael's sobs and started crying himself.
"Oh, Nicole," Michael said. "I'm so, so sorry. Patrick was having a bad night, so I brought him into my room. Then Benjy had a stomachache and Simone and I had to nurse him for a couple of hours. We all fell asleep while Katie was alone in the nursery. About two hours ago, when we all woke up, she was gone."
I had never seen Michael so distraught before. I tried to comfort him, to tell him that Katie was probably just playing in the neighborhood somewhere (And when we find her, I was thinking, I will give her a scolding she'll never forget), but Michael argued with me.
"No, no," he said, "she's nowhere around. Patrick and I have been looking for over an hour."
Michael, Patrick, and I went. downstairs to check on Simone and Benjy. Simone informed us that Katie had been extremely disappointed when I had decided to look for Richard alone. "She had hoped," Simone said serenely, "that you would take her with you."
"Why didn't you tell me this last night?" I asked my eight-year-old daughter.
"It didn't seem that important," Simone said. "Besides, it never occurred to me that Katie would try to find Daddy by herself."
Michael and I were both exhausted, but one of us had to look for Katie. I was the correct choice. I washed my face, ordered breakfast for everybody from the Ramans, and told a quick version of my descent into the avian lair. Simone and Michael tu
rned the blackened TB over slowly in their hands. I could tell they too were wondering what had happened to Richard.
"Katie said that Daddy went to find the octospiders," Simone commented just before I left. "She said it was more exciting in their world."
I was filled with dread as I trudged over to the plaza near the octospider lair. While I was walking, the lights went out and it was night again in Rama. "Great," I muttered to myself. "Nothing like trying to find a missing child in the darkness."
Both the octospider covering and the pair of protective grills were open. I had never seen the grills open before. My heart skipped a beat. I knew instinctively that Katie had gone down into their lair and that, despite my fear, I was about to follow her. First I bent down on my knees and shouted "Katie" twice into the blackness beneath me. I heard her name echoing through the tunnels. I strained to listen for a response, but there were no sounds at all. At least, I told myself, I also don't hear any dragging brushes accompanied by a high-frequency whine.
I descended the ramp to the large cavern with the four tunnels that Richard and I had once labeled "Eenie, Meenie, Mynie, and Moe." It was difficult, but I forced myself to enter the tunnel that Richard and I had followed before. After a few steps, however, I stopped myself, backed up, and then went into the adjacent tunnel. This second corridor also led to the descending barrel corridor with the protruding spikes, but it passed the room that Richard and I called the octospider museum along the way. I remembered clearly the terror I had felt nine years earlier when I had found Dr. Takagishi, stuffed like a hunting trophy, hanging in that museum.
There was a reason I wanted to visit the octospider museum that was not necessarily related to my search for Katie. If Richard had been killed by the octospiders (as Takagishi apparently was—although I am still not convinced that he did not die from a heart attack), or if they had found his body somewhere else in Rama, then perhaps it too would be in the room. To say mat I wasn't anxious to see an alien taxidermist's version of my husband would be an understatement; however, above all I wanted to know what had happened to Richard. Especially after my dream.
I took a deep breath when I arrived at the entrance to the museum. I turned slowly left through the doorway. The lights came on as soon as I crossed the threshold, but fortunately Dr. Takagishi was not staring directly in my face. He had been moved across the room. In fact, the whole museum had been rearranged in the intervening years. All the biot replicas, which had occupied most of the space in the room when Richard and I had visited it briefly before, had been removed. The two "exhibits," if one could call them that, were now the avians and the human beings.
The avian display was closer to the door. Three individuals were hanging from the ceiling, their wings outspread. One of them was the gray velvet avian with the two cherry red neck rings that Richard and I had seen just before its death. There were other fascinating objects and even photographs in the avian exhibit, but my eyes were drawn across the room, to the display surrounding Dr. Takagishi.
I sighed with relief when I realized that Richard was not in the room. Our sailboat was there, however, the one that Richard, Michael, and I had used to cross the Cylindrical Sea. It was on the floor right next to Dr. Takagishi. There was also an assortment of items that had been salvaged from our picnics and other activities in New York. But the center of the exhibit was a set of framed pictures on the back and side walls.
From across the room I could not tell much about the content of the pictures. I gasped, however, as I approached them. The images were photographs, set in rectangular frames, many of which showed life inside our lair. There were photos of all of us, including the children. They showed us eating, sleeping, even going to the bathroom. I was feeling numb as I scanned the display. "We are being watched," I commented to myself, "even in our own home." I felt a terrible chill.
On the side wall was a special collection of pictures that dismayed and embarrassed me. On Earth they would have been candidates for an erotic museum. The images showed me making love with Richard in several different positions. There was one picture of Michael and me as well, but it wasn't as sharp because it had been dark in our bedroom that night.
The line of pictures below the sex scenes were all photographs of the children's births. Each birth was shown, including Patrick's, confirming that the eavesdropping was still continuing. The juxtaposition of the sex and birth images made it clear that the octospiders (or the Ramans?) had definitely figured out our reproductive process.
I was totally consumed with the photographs for probably fifteen minutes. My concentration was finally broken when I heard a very loud sound of brushes dragging against metal coming from the direction of the museum door. I was absolutely terrified. I stood still, frozen in my spot, and looked around wildly. There was no other escape from the room.
Within seconds Katie came bouncing through the door. "Mom," she shouted when she saw me. She raced across the museum, nearly toppling Dr. Takagishi, and jumped into my arms.
"Oh, Mom," she said, hugging and kissing me fiercely, "I knew you'd come."
I closed my eyes and held my lost child with all my strength. Tears cascaded down my cheeks. I swung Katie from side to side, comforting her by saying, "It's all right, darling, it's all right."
When I wiped my eyes and opened them, an octospider was standing in the museum doorway. It was momentarily not moving, almost as if it were watching the reunion between mother and daughter. I stood transfixed, swept by a wave of emotions ranging from joy to sheer terror.
Katie felt my fear. "Don't worry, Mother," she said, looking over her shoulder at the octospider. "He won't hurt you. He just wants to look. He's been close to me many times."
My adrenaline level was at an all-time high. The octospider continued to stand (or sit, or whatever octos do when they're not moving) in the door. Its large black head was almost spherical and sat on a body that spread, near the floor, into the eight black-and-gold-striped tentacles. In the center of its head were two parallel indentations, symmetric about an invisible axis, that ran from the top to the bottom. Precisely centered in between those two indentations, roughly a meter above the floor, was an amazing square lens structure, ten centimeters on a side, that was a gelatinous combination of grid lines plus flowing black and white material. While the octospider was staring at us, that lens was teeming with activity.
There were other organs embedded in the body between the two indentations, both above and below the lens, but I had no time to study them. The octospider moved toward us in the room and, despite Katie's assurances, my fear returned with full force. The brush sound was made by cilialike attachments to the bottom of the tentacles as they moved across the floor. The high-frequency whine was emanating from a small orifice in the lower right side of the head.
For several seconds fear immobilized my thought processes. As the creature drew closer, my natural flight responses took over. Unfortunately, they were useless in this situation. There was nowhere to run.
The octospider didn't stop until it was a scant five meters away. I had backed Katie against the wall and was standing between her and the octo. I held up my hand. Again there was a flurry of activity in its mysterious lens. Suddenly I had an idea. I reached into my flight suit and pulled out my computer. With my fingers trembling (the octospider had raised a pair of tentacles in front of its lens—in retrospect I wonder if it thought I was going to produce a weapon), I called the image of Richard up on the monitor and thrust it out toward the octospider.
When I made no additional movement the creature slowly returned its two protective tentacles to the floor. It stared at the monitor for almost a full minute and then, much to my astonishment, a wave of bright purple coloring ran completely around its head, starting at the edge of its indentation. This purple was followed a few seconds later by a rainbow pattern of red, blue, and green, each band a different thickness, that also came out of the same indentation and, after circling the head, retreated into the parallel indentat
ion almost three hundred and sixty degrees away.
Katie and I both stared in awe. The octospider picked up one of its tentacles, pointed at the monitor, and repeated the wide purple wave. Moments later, as before, came the identical rainbow pattern.
"It's talking to us, Mommy," Katie said softly.
"I think you're right," I replied. "But I don't have any idea what it's saying."
After waiting for what seemed like forever, the octospider began to move backward toward the doorway, its extended tentacle beckoning us to follow. There were no more bands of color. Katie and I held hands and cautiously followed. She started looking around and noticed the photographs on the wall for the first time. "Look, Mommy," she said, "they have pictures of our family."
I shushed her and told her to please pay attention to the octospider. It backed into the tunnel and headed toward the spiked vertical corridor and the subways. That was the opening we needed. I picked Katie up, told her to hang on tight, and raced down the tunnel at top speed. My feet scarcely touched the floor until I was up on the ramp and back in New York.
Michael was ecstatic to see Katie safe, even though he was very concerned (as I still am) that there were cameras hidden in the walls and ceilings of our living quarters, i never did scold Katie properly for going off on her own—I was too relieved to find her at all. Katie told Simone that she had had a "fabulous adventure" and that the octospider was "nice." Such is the world of the child.
4 February 2209
Oh, joy of joys! We have found Richard! He is still alive! just barely, for he is in a deep coma and has a high fever, but he is nevertheless alive.
