The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 1
Nicole was dancing. Her I partner in the waltz was Henry. They were young and very much in love. The beautiful music filled the huge ballroom as the twenty or so couples moved in rhythm around the floor. Nicole looked stunning in her long white gown. Henry's eyes were fixed on hers. He held her firmly at the waist, but somehow she felt completely free.

Her father was one of the people standing around the edge of the dance floor. He was leaning against a massive column that rose almost twenty feet to the domed ceiling. He waved and smiled as Nicole danced by in the arms of her prince.

The waltz seemed to last forever. When it was finally over, Henry held her hands and told Nicole that he had something very important to ask her. At just that moment her father touched her on the back. "Nicole," he whispered, "we must go. It's very late."

Nicole curtsied to the prince. Henry was reluctant to let go of her hands. "Tomorrow," he said, "We'll talk tomorrow." He blew her a kiss as she left the dance floor.

When Nicole walked outside it was almost sunset. Her father's sedan was waiting. Moments later, as they raced down the highway beside the Loire, she was dressed in blouse and jeans. Nicole was younger now, maybe fourteen, and her father was driving much faster than usual. "We don't want to be late," he said. "The pageant starts at eight o'clock."

The Chateau d'Usse loomed before them. With its many towers and spires, the castle had been the inspiration for the original story of Sleeping Beauty. It was only a few kilometers down the river from Beauvois and had always been one of her father's favorite places.

It was the evening of the annual pageant, when the story of Sleeping Beauty was replayed in front of a live audience. Pierre and Nicole attended every year. Each time Nicole longed desperately for Aurora to avoid the deadly spinning wheel that would throw her into a coma. And each year she wept adolescent tears when the kiss of the handsome prince awakened the beauty from her deathlike sleep.

The pageant was over, the audience gone. Nicole was climbing up the circular steps that led to the tower where the real Sleeping Beauty had supposedly lapsed into her coma. The teenager was racing up the steps, laughing, leaving her father far behind.

Aurora's room was on the other side of the long window. Nicole caught her breath and stared at all the sumptuous furnishings. The bed was canopied, the dressers richly decorated. Everything in the room was trimmed in white. It was magnificent. Nicole glanced back at the sleeping, girl and gasped. It was she, Nicole, lying in the bed in a white gown!

Her heart pounded furiously as she heard the door open and the footsteps coming toward her in the room. Her eyes remained closed as the first aroma of his mint breath reached her nose. This is it, she thought excitedly to herself. He kissed her, gently, on the lips. Nicole felt as if she were flying on the softest of clouds. Music was all around her. She opened her eyes and saw Henry's smiling face only centimeters away. She reached her arms out to him and he kissed her again, this time with passion, as a man kisses a woman.

Nicole kissed him back, reserving nothing, allowing her kiss to tell him that she was his. But he pulled away. Her special prince was wearing a frown. He pointed at her face. Then he backed up slowly and left the room.

She had just started to cry when a distant sound intruded on her dream. A door was opening, light was coming into the room. Nicole blinked, then closed her eyes again to protect them against the light. The complicated set of ul-trathin, plasticlike wires that were attached to her body automatically rewound themselves into their containers on either side of the canvas mat on which she was sleeping.

Nicole awakened very slowly. The dream had been extremely vivid. Her feelings of unhappiness had not vanished as quickly as the dream. She tried to chase her despair by reminding herself that none of what she had. dreamed was real.

"Are you going to just lie there forever?" Her daughter Katie, who had been asleep beside her on the left, was already up and bending over her.

Nicole smiled. "No," she said, "but I admit I am more than a little bit groggy. I was in the middle of a dream... How long did we sleep this time?"

"A day short of five weeks," Simone answered from the other side. Her oider daughter was sitting up, casually arranging her long hair that had become matted during the test.

Nicole glanced at her watch, verified that Simone was correct, and sat up herself. She yawned. "So how do you feel?" she said to the two girls.

"Full of energy," eleven-year-old Katie answered with a grin. "I want to run, jump, wrestle with Patrick... I hope this was our last long sleep."

"The Eagle said it should be," Nicole replied. "They're hoping that they will have enough data now." She smiled. "The Eagle says we women are more difficult to understand - because of the wild monthly variations in our hormones."

Nicole stood up, stretched, and gave Katie a kiss. Then she eased over and hugged Simone. Although not quite fourteen, Simone was almost as tall as Nicole. She was a striking young woman with a dark brown face and soft, sensitive eyes. Simone always seemed calm and serene, in marked contrast to the restlessness and impatience of Katie.

"Why didn't Ellie come with us for this test?" Katie asked a little querulously. "She's a girl too, but it seems like she never has to do anything."

Nicole put her arm around Katie's shoulder as the three of them headed for the door and the light. "She's only four years old, Katie, and according to the Eagle, Ellie's too small to give them any of the critical data they still need."

In the small illuminated foyer, directly outside the room where they had been sleeping for five weeks, they put on their tight body suits, transparent helmets, and the slippers that anchored their feet on the floor. Nicole checked the two girls carefully before activating the outside door of the compartment. She needn't have worried. The door wouldn't have opened if any of them were unprepared for the environmental changes.

If Nicole and her daughters had not seen the large room outside their compartment several times before, they would have stopped in amazement and stared for several minutes. Stretching in front of them was a long chamber, a hundred or more meters in length and fifty meters wide. The ceiling above them, filled with banks of lights, was about five meters high. The room looked like a mixture of a hospital operating room and a semiconductor manufacturing plant on the Earth. There were no walls or cubicles dividing the room into partitions, yet its rectangular dimensions were clearly suballocated into different tasks. The room was busy - the robots were all either analyzing data from one set of tests or preparing for another set. Around the edges of the room were compartments, like the one in which Nicole, Simone, and Katie had slept for five weeks, in which the "experiments" were carried out.

Katie walked over to the closest compartment on the left. It was set back in the corner and was suspended from the wall and ceiling along two perpendicular axes. A display screen built next to the metallic door showed a wide array of what was presumably data in some bizarre cuneiformlike script.

"Weren't we in this one last time?" Katie asked, pointing at the compartment. "Wasn't this the place where we slept on that peculiar white foam and felt all the pressure?"

Her question was transmitted inside the helmets of her mother and sister. Nicole and Simone both nodded and then joined Katie in staring at the unintelligible screen.

"Your father thinks they are trying to find a vt&y that we can sleep through an entire acceleration regime lasting for several months," Nicole said. "The Eagle will neither confirm nor deny this conjecture."

Although the three women had undergone four separate tests together in this laboratory, none of them had ever seen any forms of life or intelligence except for the dozen or so mechanical aliens that apparently were in charge. The humans called these beings "block robots" because, except for their cylindrical "feet" which allowed them to roll around the floor, the creatures were all made of rectangular solid chunks that looked like the blocks that human children played with on Earth.

"Why do you think we've never seen any of the Others?" Katie now asked. "I mean, in here. We see them for a second or two in the tube and that's all. We know they're here - we aren't the only ones being tested."

"This room is scheduled very carefully," her mother replied. "It's obvious that we weren't meant to see the Others, except in passing."

"But why? The Eagle ought - " Katie persisted.

"Excuse me," Simone interrupted. "But I think Big Block is coming over to see us."

The largest of the block robots usually stayed in the square control area in the center of the room and monitored all the experiments that were under way. At that moment he was moving toward them down one of the lanes that formed a grid in the room.

Katie walked over to another compartment about twenty meters away. From the active monitor on its exterior wall, she could tell that an experiment was under way inside.

Suddenly she pounded on the metal quite sharply with her gloved hand.

"Katie," Nicole shouted.

"Stop that, - " a sound came from Big Block almost simultaneously. He was about fifty meters away and approaching them very rapidly. "You must not do that," he said in perfect but clipped English.

"And what are you going to do about it?" Katie said defiantly as Big Block, all five square meters of him, ignored Nicole and Simone and headed for the young girl. Nicote ran over to protect her daughter.

"You must leave now," Big Block said, hovering over Nicole and Katie from only a couple of meters away. "Your test is over. The exit is over there where the lights are flashing."

Nicole tugged firmly on Katie's arm and the girl reluctantly accompanied her mother toward the exit. "But what would they do," Katie said stubbornly, "if we decided to stay here until another experiment was finished? Who knows? Maybe one of our octospiders is in there right now. Why are we never allowed to meet anyone else?"

"The Eagle has explained several times," Nicole replied, a trace of anger in her voice, "mat during 'this phase' we will be permitted 'sightings' of other creatures but no additional contact. Your father has repeatedly asked why and the Eagle has always answered that we will find out in time... And I wish you would try not to be so difficult, young lady."

"It's not much different from being in prison," Katie groused. "We have only limited freedom here. And we're never told the answers to the really important questions."

They had reached the long passageway that connected the transportation center to the laboratory. A small vehicle, sitting at the edge of a moving sidewalk, was waiting for them. When they sat down, the top of the car closed over them and interior lights were illuminated. "Before you ask," Nicole said to Katie, pulling off her helmet as they started to move, "we are not allowed to see out during this part of the transfer because we pass portions of the Engineering Module that are off limits to us. Your father and Uncle Michael asked this set of questions after their first sleep test."

"Do you agree with Daddy," Simone inquired after they had been riding in silence for several minutes, "that we have been having all these sleep tests in preparation for some kind of space voyage?"

"It seems likely," Nicole answered. "But of course we don't know for certain."

"And where are they going to send us?" asked Katie.

"I have no idea," Nicole replied. "The Eagle has been very evasive on all questions about our future."

The car was moving about twenty kilometers per hour. After a fifteen-minute ride it stopped. The "lid" of the vehicle rolled itself back as soon as all the helmets were properly in place again. The women exited into the main transportation center of the Engineering Module. It was laid out in a circle and was twenty meters tall. In addition to half a dozen moving sidewalks leading to locations interior to the module, the center contained two large, multilevel structures from which the sleek tubes departed. These tubes transported equipment, robots, and living creatures back and forth among the Habitation, Engineering, and Administration modules, the three huge spherical complexes that were the primary components of the Node.

As soon as they were inside the station, Nicole and her daughters heard a voice on their helmet receivers. "Your tube will be on the second level. Take the escalator on the right. You will be departing in four minutes."

Katie rolled her head from side to side, surveying the transportation center. She could see racks of equipment, cars waiting to take travelers to destinations inside the Engineering Module, lights, escalators, and station platforms. But there was nothing moving. No robots and no living creatures.

"What would happen," she said to her sister and mother, "if we refused to go up there?" She stopped in the middle of the station. "Then your schedule would be all fouled up," she shouted at the tall ceiling.

"Come on, Katie," Nicole said impatiently, "we just went through this in the laboratory."

Katie started walking again. "But I do want to see something different," she complained. "I know that this place is not always this empty. Why are we kept isolated? It's as if we're unclean or something."

"Your tube will depart in two minutes," the disembodied voice said. "Second level on the right."

"Isn't it amazing that the robots and controllers can communicate with each and every species in its own language?" Simone commented as they reached the escalator.

"I think it's freaky," Katie replied. "Just for once, I'd like to see whoever or whatever controls this place make a mistake. Everything is too slick. I'd like to hear them speak avian to us. Or for that matter, speak avian to the avians."

On the second level they shuffled along a platform for about forty meters until they reached a transparent vehicle, shaped like a bullet, the size of an extremely large automobile on Earth. It was parked, as always, on a track on the left side of the median. There were four parallel tracks on the platform altogether, two on either side of the median. All the others were currently empty.

Nicole turned and looked across the transportation center. Sixty degrees around the circle was an identical tube station. The tubes on that side went to the Administration Module. Simone was watching her mother. "Have you ever been over there?" she asked.

"No," replied Nicole. "But I bet it would be interesting. Your father says it looks wonderfully strange from up close."

Richard just had to explore, Nicole thought, remembering the night almost a year ago when her husband set out to "hitch" a ride to the Administration Module. Nicole shuddered. She had gone out into the atrium of their apartment with Richard and tried to dissuade him while he was putting on his space suit. He had figured out how to fool the door monitor (the next day a new, foolproof system was in place) and could hardly wait to take an "unsuper-vised" look around.

Nicole had barely slept that night. In the wee hours of the morning their light panel had signaled that someone or something was in the atrium. When she had looked on the monitor, there was a strange birdman standing there, holding her unconscious husband in his arms. That had been their first contact with the Eagle...

The thrust of the tube momentarily pinned them against the backs of their seats and returned Nicole to the present. They zoomed away from the Engineering Module. In less than a minute they were hurtling at full speed down the long, extremely narrow cylinder that connected the two modules.

The median and four tube tracks were at the center of the long cylinder. Out to their right, in the far distance, the lights of the spherical Administration Module shone against a blue background of space. Katie had her tiny binoculars out. "I want to be ready," she said. "They always go by so fast."

Several minutes later she announced "It's coming" and the three women pressed against the right side of the vehicle. In the far distance another tube approached on the opposite side of the track. Within instants it was upon them and the humans had no more than a second to stare across at the occupants of the vehicle heading for the Engineering Module.

"Wow!" said Katie as the tube rushed past.

"There were two different types," said Simone.

"Eight or ten creatures altogether."

"One set was pink, the other gold. Both mostly spherical."

"And those long stringy tentacles, like gossamer. How big would you guess they were, Mother?"

"Five, maybe six meters in diameter," Nicole said. "Much bigger than we are."

"Wow!" said Katie again. "That was really something." There was excitement in her eyes. The girl loved the feeling of adrenaline rushing through her system.

I too have never stopped being amazed, Nicole thought. Not once during these thirteen months. But is this all there is? Were we brought all the way here from Earth just to be tested? And titillated by the existence of creatures from other worlds? Or is there some other, deeper purpose?

There was a momentary silence in the speeding vehicle.

Nicole, who was sitting in the middle, drew her daughters closer to her. "You know I love you, don't you?" she said.

"Yes, Mother," Simone replied. "And we love you too."