Rama 3 – The Garden of Rama by Clarke, Arthur C.

I descended the ramp to the large cavern with the four tunnels that Richard and I had once labeled “Eenie, Mee-nie, Mynie, and Moe.” It was difficult, but I forced myself to enter the tunnel that Richard and I had followed before. After a few steps, however, I stopped myself, backed up, and then went into the adjacent tunnel. This second corridor also led to the descending barrel corridor with the protruding spikes, but it passed the room that Richard and I called the octospider museum along the way. I remembered clearly the terror I had felt nine years earlier when I had found Dr. Takagishi, stuffed like a hunting trophy, hanging in that museum.

There was a reason I wanted to visit the octospider museum that was not necessarily related to my search for Katie. If Richard had been killed by the octospiders (as Takagishi apparently was—although I am still not convinced that he did not die from a heart attack), or if they had found his body somewhere else in Rama, men perhaps it too would be in the room. To say mat I wasn’t anxious to see an alien taxidermist’s version of my husband would be an understatement; however, above all I wanted to know what had happened to Richard. Especially after my dream.

I took a deep breath when I arrived at the entrance to the museum. I turned slowly left through the doorway. The lights came on as soon as I crossed the threshold, but

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fortunately Dr. Takagishi was not staring directly in my face. He had been moved across the room. In fact, the whole museum had been rearranged in the intervening years. All the biot replicas, which had occupied most of the space in the room when Richard and I had visited it briefly before, had been removed. The two “exhibits,” if one could call them that, were now the avians and the human beings.

The avian display was closer to the door. Three individuals were hanging from the ceiling, their wings outspread. One of them was the gray velvet avian with the two cherry red neck rings that Richard and I had seen just before its death. There were other fascinating objects and even photographs in the avian exhibit, but my eyes were drawn across the room, to the display surrounding Dr. Takagishi.

I sighed with relief when I realized that Richard was not in the room. Our sailboat was there, however, the one that Richard, Michael, and I had used to cross the Cylindrical Sea. It was on the floor right next to Dr. Takagishi. There was also an assortment of items that had been salvaged from our picnics and other activities in New York. But the center of the exhibit was a set of framed pictures on the back and side wails.

From across the room I could not tell much about the content of the pictures. I gasped, however, as I approached them. The images were photographs, set in rectangular frames, many of which showed life inside our lair. There were photos of all of us, including the children. They showed us eating, sleeping, even going to the bathroom. I was feeling numb as I scanned the display. “We are being watched,” 1 commented to myself, “even in our own home.” I felt a terrible chill.

On the side wall was a special collection of pictures that dismayed and embarrassed me. On Earth they would have been candidates for an erotic museum. The images showed me making love with Richard in several different positions. There was one picture of Michael and me as well, but it wasn’t as sharp because it had been dark in our bedroom that night.

The line of pictures below the sex scenes were all photographs of the children’s births. Each birth was shown,

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including Patrick’s, confirming that the eavesdropping was still continuing. The juxtaposition of the sex and birth images made it clear that the octospiders (or the Ramans?) had definitely figured out our reproductive process.

I was totally consumed with the photographs for probably fifteen minutes. My concentration was finally broken when I heard a very loud sound of brushes dragging against metal coming from the direction of the museum door. I was absolutely terrified. I stood still, frozen in my spot, and looked around wildly. There was no other escape from the room.

Within seconds Katie came bouncing through the door. “Mom,” she shouted when she saw me. She raced across the museum, nearly toppling Dr. Takagishi, and jumped into my arms.

“Oh, Mom,” she said, hugging and kissing me fiercely, “I knew you’d come.”

I closed my eyes and held my lost child with all my strength. Tears cascaded down my cheeks. I swung Katie from side to side, comforting her by saying, “It’s all right, darling, it’s all right.”

When I wiped my eyes and opened them, an octospider was standing in the museum doorway. It was momentarily not moving, almost as if it were watching the reunion between mother and daughter. I stood transfixed, swept by a wave of emotions ranging from joy to sheer terror.

Katie felt my fear. “Don’t worry, Mother,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the octospider. “He won’t hurt you. He just wants to look. He’s been close to me many times.”

My adrenaline level was at an all-time high. The octospider continued to stand {or sit, or whatever octos do when they’re not moving) in the door. Its large black head was almost spherical and sat on a body that spread, near the floor, into the eight black-and-gold-striped tentacles. In the center of its head were two parallel indentations, symmetric about an invisible axis, that ran from the top to the bottom. Precisely centered in between those two indentations, roughly a meter above the floor, was an amazing square lens structure, ten centimeters on a side, that was a gelatinous combination of grid lines plus flowing black

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and white material. While the octospider was staring at us, that lens was teeming with activity.

There were other organs embedded in the body between the two indentations, both above and below the lens, but I had no time to study them. The octospider moved toward us in the room and, despite Katie’s assurances, my fear returned with full force. The brush sound was made by ciliaHke attachments to the bottom of the tentacles as they moved across the floor. The high-frequency whine was emanating from a small orifice in the lower right side of the head.

For several seconds fear immobilized my thought processes. As the creature drew closer, my natural flight responses took over. Unfortunately, they were useless in this situation. There was nowhere to run.

The octospider didn’t stop until it was a scant five meters away. I had backed Katie against the wall and was standing between her and the octo. I held up my hand. Again there was a flurry of activity in its mysterious lens. Suddenly I had an idea. I reached into my flight suit and pulled out my computer. With my fingers trembling (the octospider had raised a pair of tentacles in front of its lens—in retrospect I wonder if it thought I was going to produce a weapon), I called the image of Richard up on the monitor and thrust it out toward the octospider.

When I made no additional movement the creature slowly returned its two protective tentacles to the floor. It stared at the monitor for almost a full minute and then, much to my astonishment, a wave of bright purple coloring ran completely around its head, starting at the edge of its indentation. This purple was followed a few seconds later by a rainbow pattern of red, blue, and green, each band a different thickness, that also came out of the same indentation and, after circling the head, retreated into the parallel indentation almost three hundred and sixty degrees away.

Katie and I both stared in awe. The octospider picked up one of its tentacles, pointed at the monitor, and repeated the wide purple wave. Moments later, as before, came the identical rainbow pattern.

“It’s talking to us, Mommy,” Katie said softly.

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“I think you’re right,” I replied. “But I don’t have any idea what it’s saying.”

After waiting for what seemed like forever, the octo-spider began to move backward toward the doorway, its extended tentacle beckoning us to follow. There were no more bands of color. Katie and I held hands and cautiously followed. She started looking around and noticed the photographs on the wail for the first time. “Look, Mommy,” she said, “they have pictures of our family.”

I shushed her and told her to please pay attention to the octospider. It backed into the tunnel and headed toward the spiked vertical corridor and the subways. That was the opening we needed. I picked Katie up, told her to hang on tight, and raced down the tunnel at top speed. My feet scarcely touched the floor until I was up on the ramp and back in New York.