The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 7
1 May 2209

Let it be recorded that on this day Richard Colin Wake-field actually acknowledged his family and spoke his first words. For almost a week he has been working up to this moment, initially by giving signs of recognition with his face and eyes and then by moving his lips as if to make words. He smiled at me this morning and almost said my name, but his first actual word was "Katie," spoken this afternoon after his cherished daughter gave him one of her energetic hugs.

There is a feeling of euphoria in the family, especially among the girls. They are celebrating the return of their father. I have told Simone and Katie repeatedly that Richard's rehabilitation will almost certainly be long and painful, but I guess they are too young to comprehend what that means.

I am a very happy woman. It was impossible for me to restrain the tears when Richard distinctly whispered "Ni-cole" in my ear just before dinner. Even though I realize that my husband is not yet anywhere near normal, I am now certain that he will eventually recover and that fills my heart with joy.

18 August 2209

Slowly but surely Richard continues to improve. He only sleeps twelve hours a day now, can walk almost a mile before becoming fatigued, and is able to concentrate occasionally on a problem if it's especially interesting. He has not yet begun to interact with the Ramans through the keyboard and screen. He has, however, taken Prince Hal apart and tried unsuccessfully to determine what caused the strange voice in the nursery.

Richard is the first to admit that he is not himself. When he can talk about it, he says that he is "in a fog, like a dream but not quite as sharp." It has been over three months since he regained consciousness, but he still can't remember very much about what happened to him after he left us. He believes he was in the coma for the last year or so. His estimate is based more on vague feelings than on any particular fact.

Richard insists that he lived in the avian lair for some months and that he was present at a spectacular cremation. He can't supply any other details. Richard has also twice contended that he explored the Southern Hemicylinder and found the main city of the octospiders near the southern bowl, but since what he can remember changes from day to day, it is difficult to place much credence in any specific recollection.

I have replaced Richard's biometry set twice already and have very lengthy records of all his critical parameters. His charts are normal except in two areas - his mental activity and his temperature. His daily brain waves defy description. There is nothing in my medical encyclopedia that will allow me to interpret any pair of these charts, much less the entire set. Sometimes the level of activity in his brain is astronomically high; sometimes it seems to stop altogether. The electrochemical measurements are equally peculiar. His hippocampus is virtually dormant - that could explain why Richard's having such difficulty with his memory.

His temperature is also weird. It has been stable now, for two months, at 37.8 degrees Celsius, eight tenths of a degree above normal for an average human. I have checked all his preflight records; Richard's "normal" temperature on Earth was a very steady 36.9. I cannot explain why this elevated temperature persists. It's almost as if his body and some pathogen are in stable equilibrium, neither able to subdue the other. But what pathogen could it be that would elude all my attempts to identify it?

All the children have been especially disappointed in Richard's lackadaisical behavior. During his absence we probably mythologized him somewhat, but there's no doubt he was a very energetic man before. This new Richard is only a shadow of his former self. Katie swears she remembers wrestling and playing vigorously with her daddy when she was only two (her memory has undoubtedly been reinforced by the stories that Michael, Simone, and I told her while Richard was gone), and is often quite angry that he spends so little time with her now. I try to explain to her that "Daddy is still sick," but I don't think she is .mollified by my explanation.

Michael moved all my things back to this room within twenty-four hours after Richard's return. He is such a sweet man. He went through another heavy religious phase for several weeks (I expect in his mind he needed forgiveness for some fairly grievous sins) but has since moderated because of the workload on me. He has been marvelous with the children.

Simone acts as a backup mother. Benjy worships her and she has incredible patience with him. Since she had commented several times that Benjy was "a little slow," Michael and I have told Simone about his Whittingham's syndrome. We still have not told Katie. Right now Katie is having a difficult time. Not even Patrick, who follows her around like a pet dog, can cheer her up.

We all know, even the children, that we are being watched. We searched the walls in the nursery very carefully, almost as if it were a game, and found several minute irregularities in the surface finish that we declared to be cameras. We chipped them away with our tools, but we could not positively say that we had indeed found monitoring devices. They may be so small that we couldn't see them without a microscope. At least Richard remembered his favorite saying, about advanced alien technology being indistinguishable from magic.

Katie was the most disturbed about the prying cameras of the octospiders. She spoke openly and resentfully of their intrusion into her "private life." She probably has more secrets than any of us. When Simone told her younger sister that it was really not important, because "after all, God is also watching us all the time," we had our first sibling religious argument. Katie replied with "Bullshit," a rather unpleasant word for a six-year-old girl to use. Her expression reminded me to be more careful with my own language.

One day last month I took Richard over to the avian lair to see if perhaps being there would refresh his memory. He became very frightened as soon as we were in the tunnel off the vertical corridor. "Dark," I heard him mumble. "I cannot see in the dark. But they can see in the dark." He wouldn't walk any more after we passed the water and the cistern, so I brought him back to our lair.

Richard knows that both Benjy and Patrick are Michael's sons and probably suspects that Michael and I lived as husband and wife for part of the time he was gone, but he has never commented about it. Both Michael and I are prepared to ask for Richard's forgiveness and to stress to him that we were not lovers (except for Benjy's conception) until he had been gone for two years. At the moment, however, Richard doesn't seem much interested in the subject.

Richard and I have shared our old conjugal mat since soon after he awakened from his coma. We have touched a lot and been very friendly, but until two weeks ago there had never been any sex. In fact, I was starting to think that sex was another of the things that had been erased from his memory, so unresponsive had he been to my occasional provocative kisses.

Then came a night, however, when the old Richard was suddenly in bed with me. This is a pattern that has been occurring in other areas as well - every now and then his old wit, energy, and intelligence are all present for a short period of time. Anyway, the old Richard was ardent, funny, and imaginative. It was like heaven for me. I remembered levels of pleasure that I had long since buried.

His sexual interest continued for three consecutive nights. Then it departed as abruptly as it had arrived. At first I was disappointed (Isn't that human nature? Most of the time we want it to be better. When it's as good as it can be, we want it to last forever), but now I have accepted that this facet of his personality must also undergo a healing process.

Last night Richard computed our trajectory for the first time since he has been back with us. Both Michael and I were delighted. "We're still holding the same direction," he pronounced proudly. "We're now less than three light-years from Sirius."

6 January 2210

Forty-six years old. My hair is now mostly gray on the sides and in front. Back on Earth I would be debating whether or not to color my hair. Here on Rama it does not matter.

I am too old to be pregnant. I should tell that to the little girl growing inside my womb. I was quite astonished when I realized that I was indeed pregnant again. The onset of menopause had already begun, with its strange hot flashes, moments of daffiness, and totally unpredictable menstruations. But Richard's sperm has made one more baby, another addition to this homeless family adrift in space.

If we never encounter another human being (and Eleanor Joan Wakefield turns out to be a healthy baby,, which seems likely at this point), then there will be a total of six possible combinations of parents for our grandchildren. Almost certainly all of those permutations will not occur, but it's fascinating to imagine. I used to think that Simone would mate with Benjy, and Katie with Patrick, but where will Ellie fit into the equation?

This is my tenth birthday onboard Rama. It seems utterly impossible that I have spent only twenty percent of my life in this giant cylinder. Did I have another life once, back on that oceanic planet trillions of kilometers away? Did I really know adult people other than Richard Wake-field and Michael O'Toole? Was my father actually Pierre des Jardins, the famous writer of historical fiction? Did I have a secret, dream affair with Henry, Prince of Wales, that produced my wonderful first daughter Genevieve?

None of it seems possible. At least not today, not on my forty-sixth birthday. It's funny. Richard and Michael have asked me, one time each, about Genevieve's father. I have still never told anyone. Isn't that ridiculous? What possible difference could it make here on Rama? None at all. But it has been my secret (shared only with my father) since the moment of Genevieve's conception. She was my daughter. I brought her into the world and I raised her. Her biological father, I always told myself, was of no importance.

That is, of course, poppycock. Hah. There's that word again. Dr. David Brown used it often. Goodness. I haven't thought about the other Newton cosmonauts for years. I wonder if Francesca and her friends made their millions off the Newton mission. I hope Janos got his share. Dear Mr. Tabori, an absolutely delightful man. Hmm. I also wonder how Rama's escape from the nuclear phalanx was explained to the citizens of Earth. Ah, yes, Nicole, this is a typical birthday. A long, unstructured voyage down memory lane.

Francesca was so beautiful. I was always jealous of how well she handled herself with people. Did she drug Borzov and Wilson? Probably. I don't think for a minute she meant to kill Valeriy. But she had a truly twisted morality. Most genuinely ambitious people do.

I am amused, now when I look back, at how obsessed I was as a young mother in my twenties. I had to succeed at everything. My ambition was quite different from Fran-cesca's. I wanted to show the world that I could-play by all the rules and still win, just as I had done with the triple jump in the Olympic games. What could be more impossible for an unmarried mother than to be selected as a cosmonaut? I was certainly full of myself during those years. Lucky for me, and for Genevieve, that Father was there.

I knew, of course, every time I looked at Genevieve that Henry's imprint was obvious. From the top of her lips to the bottom of her chin, Genevieve's face is exactly like his. And I did not really want to deny the genetics. It was just so important to me to make it on my own, to show at least myself that I was a superb mother and woman even if I was unsuitable to be the queen.

I was too black to be Queen Nicole of England, or even Joan of Arc in one of those French anniversary pageants. I wonder how many years it will be before skin color is no longer an issue among human beings on Earth. Five hundred years? A thousand? What was it that the American William Faulkner said - something about Sambo will be free only when all of his neighbors wake up in the morning and say, both to themselves and to their friends, that Sambo is free. I think he is right. We have seen that racial prejudice cannot be eradicated by legislation. Or even by education. Each person's journey through life must have an epiphany, a moment of true awareness, when he or she realizes, once and for all, that Sambo and every other individual in the world who is in any way different from him or her must be free if we are to survive.

When I was down at the bottom of that pit ten years ago and certain that I was going to die, I asked myself what particular moments of my life I would live over if I were offered the opportunity. Those hours with Henry leapt into my mind, despite the fact that he later broke my heart. Even today I would gladly soar again with my prince. To have experienced total happiness, even if it's just for a few minutes or hours, is to have been alive. It is not that important, when you are faced with death, that your companion in your great moment subsequently disappointed or betrayed you. What is important is that sense of momentary joy so great you feel you have transcended the Earth.

It embarrassed me a little, in the pit, that my memories of Henry were on a level equal to my memories of my father, mother, and daughter. But I have since realized that I am not unique in cherishing my recollections of those hours with Henry. Each person has very special moments or events that are uniquely hers and are zealously protected by the heart.

My only close friend at the university, Gabrielle Mo-reau, spent a night with Genevieve and me at Beauvois the year before the Newton expedition was launched. We had not seen each other for seven years and spent most of the night talking, primarily about the major emotional events of our lives. Gabrielle was extremely happy. She had a handsome, sensitive, successful husband, three healthy, gorgeous children, and a beautiful manor house near Chinon, But Gabrielle's "most wonderful" moment, she confided to me after midnight with a girlish smile, had occurred before she met her husband. She had had a powerful schoolgirl crush on a famous movie star who one day happened to be on location in Tours. Gabrielle somehow managed to meet him in his hotel room and talk to him privately for almost an hour. She kissed him a single time on the lips before she left. That was her most precious memory.

Oh, my prince, it was ten years ago yesterday that I saw you for the last time. Are you happy? Are you a good king? Do you ever think of the black Olympic champion who gave herself to you, her first love, with such reckless abandon?

You asked me an indirect question, that day on the ski mountain, about the father of my daughter. I denied you the answer, not realizing that my denial meant I had still not forgiven you completely. If you were to ask me today, my prince, I would gladly tell you. Yes, Henry Rex, King of England, you are the father of Genevieve des Jardins. Go to her, know her, love her children. I cannot. I am more than fifty trillion kilometers away.

30 June 2213

Everyone was too excited to sleep last night. Except for Benjy, bless his heart, who simply could not, grasp what we were telling him. Simone has explained to him many times that our home is inside a giant cylindrical spacecraft - she has even shown him on the black screen the different views of Rama from the external sensors - but the concept continues to elude him.

When the whistle sounded yesterday Richard, Michael, and I stared at each other for several seconds. It had been so long since we last heard it. Then we all started talking at once. The children, including little Ellie, were full of questions and could feel our excitement. The eight of us went topside immediately. Richard and Katie ran over to the sea without waiting for the rest of the family. Simone walked with Benjy, Michael with Patrick. I carried Ellie because her little legs just wouldn't move fast enough.

Katie was bursting with enthusiasm when she ran back to greet us. "Come on, come on," she said, grabbing Simone by the hand. "You've got to see it. It's amazing. The colors are fantastic."

Indeed they were. The rainbow arcs of light crackled from horn to horn, filling the Raman night with an awesome display. Benjy stared southward with his mouth open. After many seconds he smiled and turned to Simone. "It's beau-ti-ful," he said slowly, proud of his use of the word.

"Yes, it is, Benjy," Simone replied. "Very beautiful."

"Ve-ry beau-ti-ful," Benjy repeated, turning back to look at the lights.

None of us said very much during the show itself. But after we returned to the lair the conversation was nonstop for hours. Of course, someone had to explain everything to the children. Simone was the only one bom at the time of the last maneuver, and she was just an infant. Richard was the chief explainer. The whistle and light show really energized him - he seemed more like himself last night than he has at any time since he returned - and he was both entertaining and informative as he recounted everything we knew about whistles, light shows, and Raman maneuvers.

"Do you think the octospiders are going to return to New York?" Katie asked expectantly.

"I don't know," Richard said. "But that's definitely a possibility."

Katie spent the next fifteen minutes telling everyone, for the umpteenth time, about our encounter with the oc-tospider four years ago. As usual, she embellished and exaggerated some of the details, especially from the solo part of the story before she saw me in the museum.

Patrick loves the tale. He wants Katie to tell it all the time. "There I was," Katie said last night, "lying on my stomach, my head peering over the edge of a gigantic round cylinder that dropped into the black gloom. Silver spikes were sticking out of the sides of the cylinder, and I could see them flashing in the dim light. 'Hey,' I shouted, 'anybody down there?'"

"I heard a sound like dragging metal brushes together with a whine. Lights came on below me. At the bottom of the cylinder, beginning to climb the spikes, was a black thing with a round head and eight tentacles of black and gold. The tentacles wrapped around the spikes as it climbed swiftly in my direction..."

"Oc-to-spi-der," Benjy said.

When Katie was finished with her story, Richard told the children that in four more days the floor was probably going to start shaking. He stressed that everything should be carefully anchored to the ground and that each of us should be prepared for another set of sessions in the deceleration tank. Michael pointed out that we needed at least one new toy box for the children, and several sturdy boxes for our stuff as well. We have accumulated so much junk over the years that it will be quite a task to secure everything in the next few days.

When Richard and I were lying alone on our mat, we held hands and talked for over an hour. At one point I told him that I hoped this coming maneuver signaled the beginning of the end of our journey in Rama.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Man never is, but always to be blessed," he replied. He sat up for a moment and looked at me, his eyes twinkling in the near darkness. "Alexander Pope," he said. Then he laughed. "I bet he never thought he would be quoted sixty trillion kilometers away from Earth."

"You seem better, darling," I said, stroking his arm.

His brow furrowed. "Right now everything seems clear. But I don't know when the fog will descend again. It could be any minute. And I still cannot remember more than the barest outline of what happened during the three years that I was gone."

He lay back down. "What do you think will happen?" I asked.

"I'm guessing we'll have a maneuver," he replied. "And I hope it's a big one. We are approaching Sinus very quickly and will need to slow down considerably if our target is anywhere in the Sinus system." He reached over and took my hand. "For you," he said, "and especially for the children, I hope this is not a false alarm."

8 July 2213

The maneuver began four days ago, right on schedule, as soon as the third and final light show was finished. We didn't see or hear any avians or octospiders, as we haven't for four years now. Katie was very disappointed. She wanted to see the octospiders all return to New York.

Yesterday a pair of the mantis biots came into our lair and went straight to the deceleration tank. They were carrying a large container, in which were the five new webbed beds (Simone, of course, needs a different size now) and all the helmets. We watched them from a distance while they installed the beds and checked out the tank system. The children were fascinated. The short visit from the mantises confirmed that we will soon be undergoing a major change in velocity.

Richard was apparently correct with his hypothesis about the connection between the main propulsion system and the overall thermal control of Rama. The temperature has already started to drop topside. In anticipation of a long maneuver, we have been busy using the keyboard to order cold-weather clothing for all the children.

The constant shaking is again disrupting our lives. At first it was amusing for the children, but they are already complaining about it. For myself, I am hoping that we are now near our ultimate destination. Although Michael has been praying "God's will be done," my few prayers have definitely been more selfish and specific.

1 September 221 3

Something new is definitely happening. For the last ten days, ever since we finished in the tank and the maneuver ended, we have been approaching a solitary light source situated about thirty astronomical units away from the star Sirius. Richard has ingeniously manipulated the sensor list and the black screen so that this source is dead center on our monitor at all times, regardless of which particular Raman telescope is observing it.

Two nights ago we began to see some definition in the object. We speculated that perhaps it was an inhabited planet and Richard rushed around computing the heat input from Sirius on a planet whose distance was roughly equal to Neptune's distance from our Sun. Even though Sirius is much larger, brighter, and hotter than the Sun, Richard concluded that our paradise, if this was indeed our destination, was still going to be very cold.

Last night we could see our target more clearly. It is an elongated construction (Richard says it therefore cannot be a planet - anything "that size" that is decidedly non-spherical "must be artificial"), shaped like a cigar, with two rows of lights along the top and bottom. Because we don't know exactly how far away it is, we don't know its size for certain. However, Richard has been making some "guesstimates," based on our closing velocity, and he thinks the cigar is roughly a hundred and fifty kilometers long and fifty kilometers tall.

The entire family sits in our main room and stares at the monitor. This morning we had another surprise. Katie showed us that there were two other vehicles in the vicinity of our target. Richard had taught her last week how to change the Raman sensors providing input to the black screen and, while the rest of us were talking, she accessed the distant radar sensor that we had first used thirteen years ago to identify the nuclear missiles coming from Earth. The cigar-shaped object appeared at the edge of the radar field of view. Standing right hi front of the cigar, almost indistinguishable from it in the wide field, were the two other blips. If the giant cigar is indeed our destination, then perhaps we are about to have company.

8 September 2213

There is no way I can adequately describe the astounding events of the last five days. The language does not have adjectives superlative enough to capture what we have seen and experienced. Michael has even commented that heaven may pale by comparison beside the wonders that we have witnessed.

At this moment our family is onboard a driverless small shuttle craft, no larger than a city bus on Earth, that is whizzing us from the way station to an unknown destination. The cigar-shaped way station is still visible, but just barely, out the domed window at the rear of the craft. To our left, our home for thirteen years, the cylindrical spaceship we call Rama, is headed in a slightly different direction than we are. It departed from the way station a few hours after we did, lit like a Christmas tree on the outside, and we are presently separated from it by about two hundred kilometers.

Four days and eleven hours ago our Rama spacecraft came to a stop relative to the way station. We were the third vehicle in an amazing queue. In front of us was a spinning starfish about one tenth the size of Rama and a giant wheel, with a hub and spokes, that entered the way station within hours after we stopped.

The way station itself turned out to be hollow. When the giant wheel moved into the center of the way station, gantries and other deployable elements rolled out to meet the wheel and fix it in place. A suite of special vehicles in three unusual shapes (one looked like a balloon, another like a blimp, and the third resembled a bathysphere on Earth) then entered the wheel from the way station. Although we couldn't see what was going on inside the wheel, we did see the special vehicles emerge, one by one, at odd intervals over the next two days. Each vehicle was met by a shuttle, like the one in which we are now flying but larger in size. These shuttles had all been parked in the dark in the right-hand side of the way station and had been moved into place thirty minutes or so before the rendezvous.

As soon as the shuttles were loaded, they always took off in a direction directly opposite our queue. About an hour after the final vehicle had emerged from the wheel and the last shuttle had departed, the many pieces of mechanical equipment attached to the wheel were retracted and the great circular spacecraft itself eased out of the way station.

The starfish in front of us had already entered the way station and was being handled by another set of gantries and attachments when a loud whistle summoned us topside in Rama. The whistle was followed by a light show in the southern bowl. However, this display was completely different from the ones that we had seen before. The Big Horn was the star of the new show. Circular rings of color formed near its tip and then sailed slowly north, centered along the spin axis of Rama. The rings were huge. Richard estimated they were at least a kilometer in diameter, with a ring thickness of forty meters.

The dark Raman night was illuminated by as many as eight of these rings at a time. The order remained the same - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown, pink, and purple - for three repetitions. As a ring would break up and disappear near the Alpha relay station at the northern bowl of Rama, a new ring of the same color would form back near the tip of the Big Horn.

We stood transfixed, our mouths agape, as this spectacle took place. As soon as the last ring disappeared from the third set, another astonishing event occurred. All the lights came on inside Rama! The Raman night had only begun three hours earlier - for thirteen years the sequence of night and day had been completely regular. Now, all of a sudden, it was changed. And it wasn't just the lights. There was music as well; at least I guess you could call it music. It sounded like millions of tiny bells and it seemed to be coming from everywhere.

None of us moved for many seconds. Then Richard, who had the best pair of binoculars, spied something flying toward us. "It's the avians," he shouted, jumping up and down and pointing at the sky. "I just remembered something. I visited them in their new home in the north while I was on my odyssey."

One at a time we each looked through his binoculars. At first it wasn't certain that Richard was correct in his identification, but as they came closer the fifty or sixty specks resolved themselves into the great birdlike creatures we know as the avians. They headed straight for New York. Half the avians hovered in the sky, maybe three hundred meters above their lair, as the other half dove down to the surface.

"Come on, Daddy," Katie yelled. "Let's go."

Before I could raise any objection, father and daughter were off at a sprint. I watched Katie run. She is already very fast. In my mind's eye I could see my mother's graceful stride across the grass in the park at Chilly-Ma-zarin - Katie has definitely inherited some characteristics from her mother's side of the family, even though she is first and foremost her father's daughter.

Simone and Benjy had already started toward our iair. Patrick was concerned about the avians. "Will they hurt Uncle Richard and Katie?" he asked.

I smiled at my handsome five-year-old son. "No, darling," I answered, "not if they're careful." Michael, Patrick, Ellie, and I returned to the lair to watch the starfish being processed in the way station.

We couldn't see much because all the ports of entry to the starfish were on the opposite side, away from the Raman cameras. But we assumed some kind of unloading activity was occurring, because eventually five shuttles departed for some new location. The starfish was finished with its processing very quickly. It had already left the way station before Richard and Katie returned.

"Start packing," Richard said breathlessly as soon as he arrived. "We're leaving. We're all leaving."

"You should have seen them," Katie said to Simone almost simultaneously. "They were huge. And ugly. They went down in their lair - "

"The avians returned to get some special things from their lair," Richard interrupted her. "Maybe they were mementos of some kind. Anyway, everything fits. We're getting out of here."

As I raced around trying to put our essentials into a few of the sturdy boxes, I criticized myself for not having figured everything out sooner. We had watched both the wheel and the starfish "unload" at the way station. But it had not occurred to us that we might be the cargo to be unloaded by Rama,

It was impossible to decide what to pack. We had been living in those six rooms (including the two we had fixed up for storage) for thirteen years. We had probably requested an average of five items a day using the keyboard.

Granted, most of the objects had long since been thrown away, but still... We didn't know where we were going. How could we know what to take?

"Do you have any idea what's going to happen to us?" I asked Richard.

My husband was beside himself trying to figure out how to take his large computer. "Our history, our science - all that remains of our knowledge is there," he said, pointing at the computer in agitation. "What if it's irretrievably lost?"

It weighed only eighty kilograms altogether. I told him we could all help him carry the computer after we had packed clothing, personal items, and some food and water.

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" I repeated.

Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Not the slightest," he replied. "But wherever it is, I bet it will be amazing."

Katie came into our room. She was holding a small pouch and her eyes were alive with energy. "I'm packed and ready," she said. "Can I go topside and wait?"

Her father's affirmative nod was barely in motion when Katie bolted out the door. I shook my head, giving Richard a disapproving look, and went down the hall to help Simone with the other children. The process of packing for the boys was an ordeal. Benjy was cranky and confused. Even Patrick was irritable, Simone and I had just finished (the job was impossible until we forced the boys to take a nap) when Richard and Katie returned from topside.

"Our vehicle is here," Richard said calmly, suppressing his excitement.

"It's parked on the ice," Katie added, taking off her heavy jacket and gloves.

"How do you know it's ours?" Michael asked. He had entered the room only moments after Richard and Katie. "It has eight seats and room for our bags," my ten-year-old daughter replied. "Who else could it be for?"

"Whom," I said mechanically, trying to integrate this latest new information. I felt as if I had been drinking from a fire hose for four consecutive days.

"Did you see any octospiders?" Patrick asked.

"Oc-to-spi-der," Benjy repeated carefully.

"No," answered Katie, "but we did see four mammoth planes, real flat, with wide wings. They flew over our heads, coming from the south. We think the flat planes were carrying the octos, don't we, Dad?"

Richard nodded.

I took a deep breath. "All right, then," I said. "Bundle up, everybody. Let's go. Carry the bags first. Richard, Michael, and I will make a second trip for the computer."

An hour later we were all in the vehicle. We had climbed the stairs of our lair for the last time. Richard pressed a flashing red button and our Raman helicopter (I call it that because it went straight up, not because it had any rotary blades) lifted off the ground.

Our flight path was slow and vertical for the first five minutes. Once we were close to the spin axis of Rama, where there was no gravity and very little atmosphere, the vehicle hovered in place for two or three minutes while it changed its external configuration.

It was an awesome final view of Rama. Many kilometers below us our island home was but a small patch of grayish brown in the middle of the frozen sea that circled the giant cylinder. I could see the horns in the south clearer than ever before. Those amazing long structures, supported by massive flying buttresses larger than small towns on the Earth, all pointed directly north.

I felt strangely emotional as our craft began to move again. After all, Rama had been my home for thirteen years. I had given birth to five children there. I also have matured, I remember telling myself, and may finally be growing into the person I have always wanted to be.

There was very little time to dwell on what had been. Once the external configuration change was complete, our vehicle zipped along the spin axis to the northern hub in a matter of a few minutes. Less than an hour later we were all safely in this shuttle. We had left Rama. I knew we would never return. I wiped the tears from my eyes as our shuttle pulled out of the way station.