The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

THE TRIAL Chapter 6
Again a large void was cremated in the interior of the sessile. Richard watched carefully as thirty small ganglia formed into a sphere with a diameter of about fifty centimeters on the other side of the gap. An unusually thick filament connected each of the ganglia with the center of the sphere. At first, Richard could detect nothing inside the sphere. After the ganglia had moved to another location, however, he saw, where the sphere had been, a tiny green object with hundreds of infinitesimal threads anchoring it to the rest of the web.

It grew very slowly. The ganglia had already finished migrating to three new positions, repeating the same spherical configuration each time, before Richard recognized that what was growing in the sessile was a manna melon. He was thunderstruck. Richard could not imagine how the vanished myrmicat could possibly have left behind eggs that had taken so long to germinate. And they must have been only a few cells then. Tiny, tiny embryos somehow nurtured here...

His own thoughts were interrupted by his realization that these new manna melons were developing in a region of the sessile that was almost twenty meters away from where the myrmicat had been cocooned. So this web creature transported the eggs from one place to another? And then retained them for weeks?

Richard's logical mind began to reject the hypothesis that the vanished myrmicat had laid any eggs at all. Slowly but surely, he developed an alternative explanation for what he had observed that suggested a biology more complex than any he had ever encountered on Earth. What if, he asked himself, the manna melons, myrmicats, and this sessile web are all manifestations of what we would call the same species?

Staggered by the ramifications of this simple thought, Richard spent two long waking periods reviewing everything he had seen inside the second habitat. As he stared at the four manna melons growing across the gap from him, Richard envisioned a cycle of metamorphosis in which the manna melons gave birth to the myrmicats, who in turn came to die and add new matter to the sessile net, which then laid the manna melon eggs that began the process again. There was nothing he had observed that was inconsistent with this explanation. But Richard's brain was exploding with thousands of questions, not only about how this intricate set of metamorphoses took place, but also about why this species had evolved into such a complex being in the first place.

Most of Richard's academic study had been in fields mat he had always proudly called "hard science." Mathematics and physics had been the primary elements of his education. As he struggled to understand the possible life cycle of the creature in which he had been living for many weeks, Richard was bewildered by his ignorance. He wished that he had learned much more about biology. For how can I help them? he asked himself. I have no idea even where to start.

Much later, Richard would wonder if by this time in his stay inside the sessile, the creature had learned not only how to read his memory, but also how to interpret his thoughts. His visitors arrived a few days afterward. Again a lane formed in the sessile between Richard's position and the original entry way. Four identical myrmicats walked down the lane and gestured for Richard to join them. They were carrying his clothes. When Richard made an effort to move, his alien host did not try to restrain him. His legs were wobbly, but after dressing, Richard managed to follow the myrmicats back into the corridor deep within the brown cylinder.

The large chamber had obviously been recently modified. The vast mural on its walls was not yet completed. In fact, at the same time that Richard's myrmicat teacher was pointing to specific items in the painting that had already been finished, myrmicat artists were still at work on the remainder of the mural. During Richard's early lessons in the room, as many as a dozen of the creatures were engaged in sketching or painting the other sections.

Only one visit to the mural chamber was necessary for Richard to ascertain its purpose. The entire room was being created to give him information on how he could help the alien species survive. It was clear these extraterrestrials knew that they were about to be overrun and destroyed by the humans. The paintings in this room were their attempt to provide Richard with the data he might need to save them. But could he learn enough simply from the pictures?

The artwork was brilliant. From time to time Richard would suspend the activity in his left brain that was trying to interpret the messages in the paintings so that his right brain could appreciate the talent of the myrmicat artists. The creatures worked in the upright position, their back two legs on the floor and their four front legs operating together to implement the sketch or painting. They talked among themselves, apparently asking questions, but did not make so much noise that Richard was disturbed across the chamber.

The entire first half of the mural was a textbook in alien biology. It proved that Richard's fundamental understanding of the strange creature was correct. There were over a hundred individual paintings in the main sequence, of which two dozen showed different stages in the development of the myrmicat embryo, expanding considerably the knowledge that Richard had gleaned from the sculptures inside the myrmicat cathedral. The primary panels explaining the embryologicai progression followed a straight line around the walls of the chamber. Above and below these main sequence pictures were supporting or supplementary frames, most of which were beyond Richard's comprehension.

For example, a quartet of supporting paintings had been arranged around a picture of a manna melon that had recently been removed from a sessile web, but had not yet begun any myrmicat development activity in its interior. Richard was certain that these four additional pictures were trying to give him specific information about the ambient conditions required for the germination process to begin. However, the myrmicat artists had used scenes from their home planet, illustrating the desired conditions with landscapes of fogs and lakes and their native flora and fauna, to communicate the data. Richard just shook his head when the myrmicat teacher pointed at these paintings.

A diagram across the top of the main sequence used suns and moons to specify time scales. Richard understood from the arrangement that the lifetime of the myrmicat manifestation of the species was very short when compared with the lifetime of the sessiles. He was unable, however, to figure out anything else the diagram was trying to convey.

Richard was also somewhat confused about the numerical relationships among the different manifestations of the species. It was clear that each manna melon resulted in a single myrmicat (there were no examples of twins shown), and that a sessile could produce many manna melons'. But what was the ratio of sessiles to myrmicats? In one frame a large sessile was presented with a dozen different myrmicats in its interior, each in a different phase of cocooning. What was that supposed to indicate?

Richard slept in a small room not far from the mural chamber. His lessons lasted three to four hours each, after which he would be fed or allowed to sleep. Sometimes, when he entered the chamber, Richard would glance over at the paintings, some still incomplete, in the second half of the mural. If that happened, the lights in the chamber would immediately be extinguished. The myrmicats wanted to be certain that Richard learned his biology first.

After about ten days the second half of the mural was finished. Richard was stunned when he was finally allowed to study it. The renderings of the many human beings and avians were exceptionally accurate. Richard himself appeared half a dozen times in the paintings. With his long hair and beard, both of them more than half white, he almost didn't recognize himself. I could pass for Christ in these pictures, he joked as he wandered around the chamber.

Part of the remaining mural was a historical summary of the invasion of the alien habitat by the humans. There was more detail than Richard had seen in his mental picture show while he was inside the sessile, but he did not learn anything substantively new. He was, however, again disturbed emotionally by the horrible details of the continuing massacre.

The pictures also triggered an interesting question in his mind. Why had the contents of this mural not been transferred directly to him by the sessile, thereby obviating the entire effort by the myrmicat artists? Perhaps, Richard mused, the sessile is a recording device only, and is incapable of imagination. Maybe it can only show me what has already been seen by one of the myrmicats.

What was left of the mural explicitly defined what the myrmicatIsessile creatures were asking Richard to do. In each of his portraits he was wearing a large blue pack over his shoulders. The pack had two large pockets in the front, and two more in the back, each containing a manna melon. There were two additional, smaller pockets on the sides of the pack. One was stuffed with a silver cylindrical tube about fifteen centimeters long and the other contained two small, leathery avian eggs.

The mural showed Richard's suggested activity in an orderly sequence. He would leave the brown cylinder through an exit below the ground level, and come out in the green region on the other side of both the ring of white buildings and the thin canal. There, guided by a pair of avians, he would descend to .the shore of the moat, where he would be picked up by a small submarine. The submarine would dive under the module wall, enter a large body of water, and then surface on the shore of an island with many skyscrapers.

Richard smiled as he studied the mural. So both the Cylindrical Sea and New York are still here, he thought. He remembered what the Eagle had said about not making unnecessary changes to Rama. That means our lair may be there as well.

There were many additional pictures surrounding'Richard's escape sequence, some giving more details about the alien plants and animals in the green region, and others providing explicit instructions on how to operate the submarine. When Richard tried to copy what he thought was the most important of this information into his portable computer from the Newton, the myrmicat teacher suddenly seemed impatient. Richard wondered if the crisis situation had worsened.

The next day, after a long nap, Richard was outfitted with his pack and ushered into the sessile chamber by his hosts. There the four manna melons he had watched growing two weeks previous were removed from the web by the myrmicats and placed in his pack. They were quite heavy. Richard estimated that they weighed twenty kilograms altogether. Another myrmicat then used an instrument similar to a large scissors to remove from the sessile a cylindrical volume containing four ganglia and their associated filaments. This sessile material was placed in a silver tube and inserted in one of Richard's smaller side pockets. The avian eggs were the last elements to be loaded.

Richard took a deep breath. This must be good-tye, he thought as the myrmicats pointed down the corridor. For some reason he remembered Nai Watanabe's insistence that the Thai greeting called the wai, a small bow with hands clasped together in front of the upper chest, was a universal sign of respect. Smiling to himself, Richard performed a wai to the half dozen myrmicats surrounding him. To his astonishment, each of them placed its four forward legs together in pairs in front of its underbelly and made a slight bow in his direction.

The deep basement of the brown cylinder was obviously uninhabited. After leaving the sessile chamber, Richard and his guide had first passed many other myrmicats, especially in the vicinity of the atrium. But once they had entered the ramp that descended to the basement, they had never encountered even a single myrmicat.

Richard's guide dispatched a leggie in front of them. It raced along the final narrow tunnel and through the vault-like emergency exit into the green region. When the leggie returned, it stood on the back of the myrmicat's head for several seconds and then scampered down to the floor. The guide motioned for Richard to proceed into the tunnel.

Outside, in the green region, Richard was met by two large avians who immediately became airborne. One of them had an ugly scar on its wing, as if it had been hit by a spray of bullets. Richard was in a moderately dense forest, with growth around him up to three or four meters off the ground. Even though the light was dim, it was not difficult for Richard to find a pathway or to follow the avians above him. Occasionally he heard sporadic gunfire off in the distance.

The first fifteen minutes passed without incident. The forest thickness lessened. Richard had just estimated that he should be at the moat for the rendezvous with the submarine in another ten minutes when, without any warning, a machine gun began to fire no more than a hundred meters away. One of the guide avians crashed to the ground. The other avian disappeared. Richard hid himself in a dark thicket when he heard the soldiers coming in his direction.

"Two rings for certain," one of them said. "Maybe even three. That would give me twenty rings this week alone."

"Shit, man, that was no contest. It shouldn't even count. The damn bird didn't even know you were there."

"That's his problem, not mine. I still get to count his rings. Ah, here he is... Crap, he only has two."

The men were only about fifteen meters away from Richard. He stood absolutely still, not daring to move, for more than five minutes. The soldiers, meanwhile, stayed in the vicinity of the avian corpse, smoking and talking about the war.

Richard began to feel pain in his right foot. He shifted his weight ever so slightly, thinking he would relieve whatever muscle was being strained, but the pain only increased. At length he glanced down and discovered to his horror that one of the rodentlike creatures he had seen in the mural chamber had eaten through what was left of his shoe and was now chomping on his foot. Richard tried to shake his leg vigorously but noiselessly. He was not completely successful. Although the rodent released his foot, the soldiers heard the sound and started moving toward him.

Richard could not run. Even if there had been an escape route, the extra weight he was carrying would have made him easy prey for the soldiers. Within a minute one of the men yelled, "Over here, Bruce, I think there's something in this thicket."

The man was pointing his gun in Richard's direction. "Don't shoot," Richard said. "I'm a human."

The second soldier had just joined his comrade. "What the f*ck are you doing out here alone?"

"I'm taking a hike," Richard answered.

"Are you crazy?" the first soldier said. "Come on out of there. Let us take a look at you."

Richard slowly walked out of the underbrush. Even in the dim light he must have been an astonishing sight with his long hair and beard plus the bulging blue jacket.

"Jesus Christ. Who the hell are you? Where's your outfit positioned?"

"This ain't no goddamn soldier," the other man said, still staring at Richard. "This here's a loony tune. He must have escaped from the facility in Avalon and wandered over here by mistake... Hey, a*shole, don't you know this is dangerous territory? You could be killed - "

"Look at his pockets," the first soldier interrupted. "He's carrying four huge goddamn melons - "

Suddenly they struck from the sky. There must have been a dozen of the avians altogether, consumed by fury and shrieking as they attacked. The two human soldiers were knocked to the ground. Richard started to run. One of the avians landed on the face of the first soldier and began to tear it apart with its talons. Gunfire erupted as other soldiers in the vicinity, hearing the fracas, hurried into the area to help the patrol.

Richard did not know how he was going to find the submarine. He raced downhill as fast as his feet and his load would allow him. The gunfire behind him increased. He heard the screams of pain of the soldiers and the death shrieks of the avians.

He found the moat but there was no sign of the submarine. Richard could hear human voices coming down the slope behind him. Just when he was about to panic, he heard a short shriek from a large bush on his right. The leader avian with the four cobalt rings flew past his head, not far off the ground, and continued down the shore of the moat to the left.

They located the small submarine in three more minutes. The ship had already submerged before the pursuing humans broke into the clear in the green region. Inside, Richard took off his pack and placed it behind him in the small control compartment. He looked at his avian companion and tried a couple of simple jabber phrases. The avian leader replied, very slowly and very clearly, with the jabber equivalent of "We all thank you very much."

The journey took slightly more than an hour. Richard and the avian said very little to each other. During the early part of the voyage, Richard carefully watched the avian leader operating the submarine. He made notes in his computer and, during the second half of the trip, even took over the controls himself for a short period of time. When he was not too busy, Richard's mind was asking questions about everything he had experienced in the second habitat. Above all, he wanted to know why it was he in the submarine with the melons, the avian eggs, and the sessile slice, and not one of the myrmicats. I must be missing something, he mused to himself.

Soon thereafter the submarine surfaced and Richard was in familiar territory. The skyscrapers of New York loomed above him. "Hallelujah," Richard said out loud, carrying his full pack onto the island.

The avian leader anchored the submarine just offshore and quickly prepared to leave. He turned around in a circle, bowed slightly to Richard, and then took off toward the north. As he was watching the birdlike creature fly away, Richard realized that he was standing in the exact spot where he and Nicole had waited, many many years before in Rama II, for the three avians who would-carry them across the Cylindrical Sea to freedom.