The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

THE TRIAL Chapter 2
His dreams were very strange. Often he was falling, head over heels, down, down, and never hitting a bottom. In the last dream before Richard awakened, To-shio Nakamura and two Oriental toughs were interrogating him in a small room with white walls.

When he woke up Richard did not know where he was for several seconds. His first movement was to pull his right cheek away from the metallic surface of the wall. A few moments later, after Richard recalled that he had gone to sleep in a vertical position on the wall in the interior of the avian habitat, he switched on his flashlight and looked down. His heart skipped a beat when he saw that the fog was no longer there. Instead he could see the wall extending far, far below, and what appeared to be water where the wall finally terminated.

He leaned his head back and gazed above him. Since he knew he was about ninety meters below the porthole (the climbing line was a hundred meters long), he estimated that the distance down to the water was about two hundred and fifty more meters. His knees became weak as his brain began to comprehend fully his predicament. When Richard started to untangle himself from the extra loops he had made in the line before going to sleep, he noticed that his arms and hands were trembling.

He had a tremendous desire to flee, to ascend again to the porthole, and then leave this alien world altogether. No, Richard told himself, fighting his instinctive reaction. Not yet. Only if there are no other viable options.

He decided he would first have something to eat. Very gingerly Richard freed himself from part of the line and pulled some food and water out of his pack. Then he turned partially around and pointed his light into the interior of the habitat. Richard thought he could see shapes and forms off in the distance, but he couldn't be certain. It could be just my imagination, he thought.

When he was finished eating, he checked his food and water supplies and then made a mental list of his options. It's all very simple, Richard said to himself with a nervous laugh. I can return to New Eden and become a convict. Maybe even a corpse. Or I can give up the security of my line and continue on down the wall. He paused a moment, glancing up and down. Or I can stay here and hope for a miracle.

Remembering that an avian had come quickly when Prince Hal had shrieked, Richard began to shout. After two or three minutes, he stopped shouting and started to sing. He sang intermittently for most of an hour. He began with tunes from his days at Cambridge University and then switched to songs that had been popular during his lonely teenage years. Richard was astonished by how well he remembered the lyrics. The memory is an amazing device, he mused to himself. What accounts for its selective reliability? Why can I remember almost all the words of these dumb songs from my adolescence and virtually nothing from my odyssey in Rama?

Richard was reaching into his pack for another drink of water when there was suddenly light in the habitat. He was so startled that his feet slipped off the wall and all his weight was on the climbing line for a few seconds. The light was not blinding, as it had been when dawn had arrived in Rama II while he was riding the chairlift, but it was light nevertheless. As soon as Richard was again secure, he surveyed the world that was now unveiled in front of him.

The source of the illumination was a great, hooded ball hanging from the ceiling of the habitat. Richard estimated that the ball was about four kilometers away from him and roughly one kilometer directly above the top of the most prominent structure in sight, a large brown cylinder in the geometrical center of the habitat. An opaque hood covered the top three fourths of the glowing ball, so most of its light was directed downward.

The basic design principle of the habitat interior was radial symmetry. At its center was the upright brown cylinder, looking as if it was made from soil, that probably measured fifteen hundred meters from top to bottom. Richard of course could only see one side of the structure, but from its curvature he estimated that its diameter was between two and three kilometers.

There were no windows or doors on the outside of the cylinder. No light escaped anywhere from its interior. The only pattern on the side of the structure was a set of widely spaced curved lines, each one of which started at the top and ran entirely around the cylinder before reaching the bottom directly underneath its point of origination. The bottom of the cylinder was sitting on an elevated plateau at approximately the same altitude as the porthole through which Richard had entered.

Circumscribing the cylinder was an array of small white structures that formed a ring about three hundred meters in diameter. The two northern quadrants (Richard had entered the avian habitat through the north porthole) of this ring were identical; each quadrant had fifty or sixty buildings that were laid out in the same pattern. Richard assumed from the symmetry that the other two quadrants would conform to the same design.

A thin circular canal, maybe seventy or eighty meters wide, surrounded the ring of structures. Both the canal and the white buildings were located on the plateau at the same altitude as the bottom of the brown cylinder. Outside the canal, however, a large region of what appeared to be growing things, primarily green in color, occupied most of the rest of the habitat. The ground in this green region sloped monotonically down from the canal to the shores of the four-hundred-meter-wide moat that was just inside the interior wall. The four apparently identical quadrants in the green region were further subdivided into four sectors each, which Richard, basing his designations on Earth analogues, called jungle, forest, grassland, and desert.

For about ten minutes Richard stared quietly at the vast panorama. Because the level of illumination dropped in direct proportion to the distance from the cylinder, he could not see the closer regions any more clearly than those in the distance. Nevertheless, the details were still impressive. The more he looked, the more new things he noticed. There were small lakes and rivers in the green region, an occasional tiny island in the moat, and what looked like roads between the white buildings. Of course, he found himself thinking. Why would I have expected otherwise? We have reproduced a small Earth in New Eden. This must represent, in some way, the home planet of the avians.

His last thought reminded him that both Nicole and he had been convinced from the beginning that the avians were no longer (if they had ever been) a high-technology, spacefaring species. Richard pulled out his binoculars and studied the brown cylinder in the distance. What secrets do you hold? he wondered, thrilled momentarily by the possibilities for adventure and discovery.

Richard next searched the skies for some sign of the avians. He was disappointed. He thought he saw flying creatures once or twice at the top of the brown cylinder, but the flecks flitted in and out of his binocular vision so quickly mat he couldn't be absolutely certain. Everywhere else he looked - in all parts of the green region, in the neighborhood of the white buildings, even in the moat - he saw no evidence of movement. There was no positive indication that anything was alive in the avian habitat.

The light disappeared after four hours and Richard was again left in the dark in the middle of the vertical wall. He checked his thermometer, including its historical data base. The temperature had not varied more than half a degree from twenty-six degrees Celsius since he had entered the habitat. Impressive thermal control, Richard said to himself. But why so stringent? Why use so much of the power resource to keep a fixed temperature?

As the darkness stretched into hours, Richard became impatient. Even though he regularly rested each set of muscles by temporarily supporting himself in different ways with his line, his body was slowly wearing out. It was time for him to consider taking some action. Reluctantly he decided that it would be foolhardy for him to abandon the line and descend to the moat. What would I do when I reached there anyway? he thought. Swim across? And then what? I'd still have to turn around if I didn't find food immediately.

He began to climb slowly toward the porthole. While he was resting about halfway to the exit he thought he heard something very faint off to his right. Richard stopped and quietly reached into his pack for his receiver set. With a minimum'of motion he turned the gain up to its highest level and put on the earphones. At first he heard nothing. But after several minutes he picked up a sound below him, coming from the moat. It was impossible to identify exactly what he was hearing - it could have been several boats moving through the water - but there was no doubt that some kind of activity was occurring down there.

Was that a faint flapping of wings as well, again somewhere off to his right? With no warning Richard suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs, and then truncated the scream abruptly. The flurry of wing sounds died out quickly, but for a second or two they were unmistakable.

Richard was exultant. "I know you're there," he shouted gleefully. "I know you're watching me."

He had a plan. It was certainly a long shot, but it was definitely better than nothing. Richard checked his food and water, assured himself that they were both marginally adequate, and took a deep breath. It's now or never, he thought.

He practiced descending without relying on the line for support. It made progress more difficult, but he could do it. When he reached the end of the line, Richard unharnessed himself and shone his light down the wall. At least as far as the top of the fog, which by now had returned, there were plenty of ledges available. He continued down very carefully, admitting to himself that he was frightened. Several times he thought he could hear his own heart beating in his earphones.

Now, if I'm right, Richard thought when he descended into the fog, I'm going to have company down here. The moisture made the descent doubly difficult. Once he slipped and almost fell, but he managed to recover. Richard stopped at a spot where his hand- and footholds were unusually solid. He estimated that he was about fifty meters above the moat. I'll wait now until I hear something. They'll have to come closer in the fog.

In a short while he heard the wings again. This time it sounded as if it was a pair of avians. Richard stood where he was for over an hour, until the fog began to thin. Several more times he heard the wings of his observers.

He had planned to wait until it was light again to descend all the way to the water. But when the fog lifted and the lights still did not return, Richard began to worry about the time. He started down the wall in the dark. About ten meters above the moat he heard his observers fly away. Two minutes later the interior of the avian habitat was again illuminated.

Richard wasted no time. His plan was simple. Based on the boatlike noises that he had heard in the dark, Richard assumed that there was something happening in the moat that was critical to the avians or whoever it was that lived in the brown cylinder. If not, he reasoned, why had they proceeded with the activity, knowing that he might hear it? If they had postponed it for even a few hours, he would almost certainly have been gone from the habitat.

Richard intended to enter the moat. If the avians feel threatened in any way, he reasoned, they will take some action. If not, I will immediately begin my ascent and take my chances in New Eden.

Just before he eased into the water, Richard took off his shoes and with some difficulty put them into his waterproof pack. At least they wouldn't be wet if he had to climb out. Seconds later, as soon as he was completely in the water, a pair of avians flew at him from where they had been hiding in the green region directly across the moat.

They were frantic. They jabbered and shrieked and acted as if they were going to tear Richard apart with their talons. He was so ecstatic that his plan had worked that he virtually ignored their displays. The avians hovered over him and tried to herd him back to the wall. He treaded water and studied them closely.

These two were slightly different from the ones that he and Nicole had encountered in Rama II. These avians had the velvet body coverings, just like the others, but the velvet was purple. The single ring around each of then-necks was black. They were also smaller (Perhaps they're younger, Richard thought) than the earlier avians, and much more frenetic. One of the creatures actually touched Richard's cheek with its talon when he didn't move swiftly enough to the wall.

At length Richard did climb up onto the wall, barely out of the water, but that did not seem to appease the avians. Almost immediately the two large birds began taking turns flying narrow patterns up the wall, showing Richard that they wanted him to ascend. When he didn't move they became more and more frantic.

"I want to go with you," Richard said, pointing at the brown cylinder in the distance. Each time he repeated his hand signal the huge creatures shrieked and jabbered and flew up in the direction of the porthole.

The avians were becoming frustrated and Richard started to worry that perhaps they might attack him. Suddenly he had a brilliant idea. But can I remember the entry code? he asked himself excitedly. It's been so many years.

When he reached in his pack the avians flew away immediately. "That proves," Richard said out loud as he switched on his beloved portable computer, "that the leg-gies are your electronic observers. How else could you have possibly known that human beings may keep weapons in packs like these?"

He punched five letters on the keyboard and then smiled broadly when the display activated. "Come here," Richard said, waving at the pair of avians who had retreated almost to the other side of the moat. "Come here," he repeated, "I have something to show you."

He held up the monitor and displayed the complex computer graphic that he had used many years before in Rama II to convince the creatures to carry Nicole and him across the Cylindrical Sea. It was an elegant graphic showing three avians carrying two human figures across a body of water in a harness. The two giant birds approached tentatively. That's it, Richard said to himself excitedly. Come over here and take a good look.