The Garden of Rama(Rama III)

RETURN TO THE NODE Chapter 5
Their shuttle stopped several hundred kilometers from the Hangar. The facility had a strange shape, completely flat on the bottom but with rounded sides and top. The three factories in the Hangar - one at each end and another in the middle - each looked from the outside like geodesic domes. They rose sixty or seventy kilometers above the bottom of the structure. Between these factories the roof was much lower, only eight or ten kilometers above the flat plane, so the overall appearance of the top of the Hangar was what might have been expected from the back of a three-humped camel, if such a creature had ever existed.

The Eagle, Nicole, and Richard had stopped to watch a starfish craft which, according to the Eagle, had been reconditioned and was now ready for its next voyage. The starfish had come out of the left hump. Although small compared to either the Hangar or Rama, the starfish was still almost ten kilometers from its center to die end of a ray. It had begun to spin as soon as it was free of the Hangar. As the shuttle remained "parked" some fifteen kilometers away, the starfish increased its spin rate to ten revolutions per minute. Once its spin rate was stabilized, the starfish zoomed away to the left.

"That leaves only Rama out of this set," the Eagle said. "The giant wheel, which was first in your queue at the Way Station, left four months ago. It required only minimal refurbishing."

Richard wanted to ask a question, but he restrained himself. He had already learned during the flight from the Node that the Eagle voluntarily gave them virtually all the information he was allowed to share. "Rama has been quite a challenge," the Eagle continued. "And we're still not certain exactly when we will finish."

The shuttle approached the right dome of the Hangar and lights began to shine at the five o'clock position on the dome's face. Upon closer inspection Richard and Nicole could see that some small doors had opened. "You'll need your suits," the Eagle said. "It would have been a major engineering feat to have designed this huge place with a variable environment."

Nicole and Richard dressed while the shuttle docked in a berth very similar to the one at their transportation center. "Can you hear me all right?" the Eagle said, testing the communication system.

"Roger," Richard replied from inside his'helmet. He and Nicole glanced at each other and laughed as they remembered their days as Newton cosmonauts.

The Eagle led them down a long, wide corridor. At the end they turned right through a door and came out on a broad balcony ten kilometers above a factory floor larger than anyone could possibly imagine. Nicole felt her knees weaken as she stared into the giant abyss. Despite the weightlessness, waves of vertigo swept through both Richard and Nicole. They both turned away at the same moment. They focused their eyes on each other while they tried to comprehend what they had just seen.

"It's quite a sight," the Eagle commented.

What a colossal understatement, Nicole thought. She very slowly lowered her eyes again to the awesome spectacle. This time she held on to the rail with both hands to help her equilibrium.

The factory below them contained the entire Northern Hemicylinder of Rama, from the port end where they had docked the Newton andtentered, down to the end of the Central Plain at the banks of die Cylindrical Sea. There was no sea, and no Raman city of New York, but there was almost as much real estate in this one enclosed factory as in the entire American state of Rhode Island.

The crater and bowl of the north end of Rama were still completely intact, including the outer shell. These segments of Rama were positioned to the right of Richard, Nicole, and the Eagle, almost behind them as they stood on the platform. Mounted in front of them on the railings were a dozen telescopes, each with a different resolution, through which the three of them could see the familiar ladders and stairways, resembling three ribs of an umbrella, that took thirty thousand steps to descend (or ascend) to the Central Plain of Rama.

The rest of the Northern Hemicylinder was split open and lying beneath them in parts, not directly connected to the bowl or to each other, but nevertheless lying with adjacent sectors in the proper alignment. Each part was roughly six to eight square kilometers and its edges rose, due to the curvature, substantially off the floor.

"It's easier to do the early work in this configuration," the Eagle explained. "Once we've closed the cylinder it's harder to get in and out with all the equipment."

Through the telescopes Richard and Nicole could see that two different areas of the Central Plain were teeming with activity. They could not begin to count the number of robots going to and fro on the floor of the factory below them. Nor could they determine exactly what was being done in many cases. It was engineering on a scale never dreamed of by humans.

"I brought you up here first to give you an overview," the Eagle said. "Later we will go down on the floor and you can see more of the details."

Richard and Nicole stared at him dumbfounded. The Eagle laughed and continued. "If you look carefully, and put the pieces together in your mind, you will see that two vast regions of the Central Plain, one near the Cylindrical Sea and another covering an area almost up to the end of the stairways, have been completely cleared. That's where all the new construction is going on. Between these two areas Rama looks exactly as it did when you left it. We have a general engineering guideline here - we only change those regions that are going to be used on the next mission."

Richard brightened. "Are you telling us that this spacecraft is used over and over? And that for each mission only required changes are made?"

The Eagle nodded.

"Then that conglomeration of skyscrapers we call New York might have been built for some much earlier mission, and simply left there because no changes were required?"

The Eagle did not say anything in response to Richard's rhetorical question. He was pointing at the northern area of the Central Plain. "That will be your habitat, over there. We have just finished the infrastructure, what you would call the 'utilities,* including water, power, sewer, and top-level environmental control. There is room for design flexibility in the rest of the process. That's why we have brought you over here."

"What is that tiny domed building south of the cleared area?" Richard asked. He was still staggered by the idea that New York might have been a leftover, a remnant from an earlier Raman voyage.

"That's the control center," the Eagle replied. "The equipment that manages your habitat will be stored there. Usually the control center is hidden beneath the living area, in the shell of Rama, but in your case the designers decided to put it on the Plain."

"What's that large region over there?" Nicole said, pointing at the cleared area immediately north of where the Cylindrical Sea would have been located if Rama had been completely reassembled.

"I'm not allowed to tell you what it's for," the Eagle replied. "In fact, I'm surprised that I have even been allowed to show you that it exists. Ordinarily our return voyagers are totally ignorant of the contents of their vehicle outside their own habitat. The nominal plan is, of course, for each species to stay within its own module."

"Look at that mound or tower in the center," Nicole said to Richard, directing his attention to the other region. "It must be almost two kilometers high."

"And it's shaped like a doughnut. I mean, the center is hollowed out."

They could see that the outside walls of what was possibly a second habitat were already quite advanced. None of its interior would be visible from the factory floor.

"Can you give us a hint as to who or what is going to live thereT' Nicole asked.

"Come on," the Eagle said firmly, shaking his head. "It's time for us to descend."

Richard and Nicole disengaged themselves from the telescopes, took a quick look at the general layout of their own habitat (which was not nearly as far along in construction as the other one), and followed the Eagle back into the corridor. After five minutes of walking they reached what the Eagle told them was an elevator.

"You must buckle yourselves into these seats very carefully," their guide said. "This is quite a wild ride."

The acceleration in their bizarre oval capsule was powerful and swift. Less than two minutes later, the deceleration was equally abrupt. They had reached the factory floor. "This thing travels three hundred kilometers an hour?" Richard asked after doing some quick mental calculations.

"Unless it's in a hurry," the Eagle replied.

Richard and Nicole followed him out onto the factory floor. It was immense. In many ways it was more staggering than Rama itself, because almost half of the giant spacecraft was lying on the floor around them. They both remembered the overpowering feelings they had had riding in the chairlifts in Rama and looking out across the Cylindrical Sea at the mysterious horns in the southern bowl. Those feelings of reverence and awe returned, and were even amplified, as Richard and Nicole stared at the activity going on around and above them in the factory.

The elevator had deposited them at the floor level just outside one of the portions of their habitat. The shell of Rama was in front of them. They checked its thickness as they walked across from the elevator exit. "About two hundred meters thick," Richard noted to Nicole, answering a question they had had since their first days in Rama.

"What will be beneath our habitat, in the shell?" Nicole asked.

The Eagfe held up three of his four fingers, indicating that they were asking for Level HI information. Both the humans laughed.

"Will you be going with us?" Nicole asked the Eagle a few moments later.

"Back to your solar system? No, I can't," he answered. "But I will admit that it would be interesting."

The Eagle led them over to an area of intense activity. Several dozen robots were working on a large, cylindrical structure about sixty meters tall. "This is the main fluid recycling plant," the Eagle said. "All the liquids that find their way into the drains or sewers in your habitat are eventually sent here. Purified water is piped back into the colony and the rest of the chemicals are retained for other possible uses. This plant will be sealed and impregnable. It uses technology far beyond your level of development."

The Eagle then led them up a ladder and into the habitat itself. He gave them an exhausting tour. In each sector the Eagle showed Richard and Nicole the main features of that particular area and then, without a break, commandeered a robot to transport them to the next adjacent sector.

"What exactly do you want us to do here?" Nicole inquired after several hours, as the Eagle prepared to take them to still another part of their future home.

"Nothing specific," the Eagle replied. "This will be your only visit to Rama itself. We wanted you to have a feel for the size of your habitat, in case you needed that to be more comfortable with the design process. We have a one-twentieth percent scale model back at the Habitation Module - all the rest of our work will be done there." He looked at Richard and Nicole. "We can leave whenever you want."

Nicole sat down on a gray metal box and gazed around her. The number and variety of the robots were enough to make her dizzy all by themselves. She had been overwhelmed since the moment she walked out on the balcony of the factory, and was now absolutely numb. She reached her hand out to Richard.

"I know I should be studying what I'm seeing, darling, but none of it makes sense anymore. I'm completely saturated."

"I am too," Richard confessed. "I never would have thought it possible that there was something more astonishing and awesome than Rama, but this factory certainly is."

"Have you wondered, since we've been here," Nicole said, "what the factory must look like that made this place? Better still, imagine the assembly line for the Node."

Richard laughed. "We can continue that comment into an infinite regression. If the Node is indeed a machine, as it appears to be, it assuredly is a higher order machine than Rama. Rama was probably designed here. It is controlled, I would guess, by the Node. But what created and controls the Node? Was it a creature like us, the result of biological evolution? And does it even still exist, in any sense that we can understand, or has it become some other kind of entity, content to let its influence be felt by the existence of these amazing machines that it created?"

Richard sat down beside his wife. "It's even too much for me. I guess I've had enough as well... Let's go back to the children."

Nicole leaned over and kissed him. "You're a very smart man, Richard Wakefield," she said. "You know that's one of the reasons I love you."

A large robot resembling a forklift trundled close by them, carrying 'some rolled metal sheets. Richard again shook his head in wonder. "Thank you, darling," he said after a pause. "You know that I love you too."

They stood up together and signaled the Eagle that they were ready to leave.

The next night, back at their apartment in the Habitation Module, both Richard and Nicole were still alert thirty minutes after making love. "What is it, dear?" Nicole asked. "Is something wrong?"

"I had another foggy spell today," Richard said. '"It lasted for almost three hours."

"Goodness," Nicole said. She sat up in bed. "Are you all right now? Should I get the scanner and see if I can tell anything from your biometry?"

"No," Richard answered, shaking his head. "My fogs have never registered on your machine. But this one really disturbed me. I realized how incapacitated I am during them. I can barely function at all, much less help you or the children in any kind of crisis. They scare me."

"Do you remember what started this one?"

"Absolutely. Like always. I was thinking of our trip to the Hangar, especially about that other habitat. I inadvertently started remembering a few disconnected scenes from my odyssey and then suddenly there was the fog. It was total. I'm not certain I would have even recognized you during the first five minutes of its duration."

"I'm sorry, darling," Nicole said.

"It's almost as if something is monitoring my thoughts. And when I reach into a certain portion of my memory, then bam, I'm given some kind of warning."

Richard and Nicole were silent for almost a minute.

"When I close my eyes," Nicole said, "I still see all those robots scurrying around inside Rama."

"Me too."

"And yet, I still have great difficulty believing it was a real scene and not something I dreamed or saw in a movie." Nicole smiled. "We have lived an utterly unbelievable life these last fourteen years, haven't we?"

"Absolutely," Richard said, turning over on his side in his normal sleeping posture. "And who knows? The most interesting part may be still ahead of us."