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

Michael remembered more of his celestial mechanics. “Are you certain?” he said almost immediately.

“The quantitative results have wide error bars,” Richard replied. “But there can be no doubt about the qualitative nature of the trajectory change.”

“Then our rate of escape from the solar system is in-creasingT’ Michael asked.

Richard nodded. “That’s right. Our acceleration is virtually all going into the direction that increases our speed with respect to the Sun. The maneuver has already added many kilometers per second to our Sun-based velocity.”

“Whew,” Michael replied. “That’s staggering.”

I understood the gist of what Richard was saying. If we had retained any hope that we might be on a circuitous voyage that would magically return us to the Earth, those hopes were now being shattered. Rama was going to leave me solar system much faster than any of us had expected. While Richard waxed lyrical about the kind of propulsion system that could impart such a velocity change to this “behemoth of a spacecraft,” I nursed Simone and found myself again thinking about her future. So we are definitely leaving the solar system, I thought, and going some-

26 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE

where else. Will I ever see another world? Will Simone? Is it possible, my daughter, that Rama will be your home world for your entire lifetime?

The floor continues to shake vigorously, but it comforts me. Richard says our escape velocity is still increasing rapidly. Good. As long as we are going someplace new, I want to travel there as fast as possible.

4

5June2201 I awakened in the middle of

I last night after hearing a

persistent knocking sound coming from the direction of the vertical corridor in our lair. Even though the normal noise level from the constant shaking is substantial, Richard and I could both clearly hear the pounding without any difficulty. After checking Simone—she was still comfortably sleeping in her cradle now mounted on Richard’s makeshift shock absorbers—we walked cautiously over to the vertical corridor.

The knocking grew louder as we climbed the stairs

toward the grill mat protects us from unwanted visitors.

At one landing Richard leaned over and whispered to me

that it “must be MacDuff knocking at the gate” and that

our “evil deed” would soon be discovered. I was too

, tense to laugh. When we were still several meters below

“/•the grill, we saw a large moving shadow projected on the

# wall in front of us. We stopped to study it. Both Richard

; and I realized immediately that our outside lair cover was

| open—there was daylight topside in Rama at the time—

28

ARTHUR C. CLARKE AMD-GENTRY LEE

THE GARDEN OF RAMA

29

and that the Raman creature or biot responsible for the knocking was creating the bizarre shadow on the wall.

I instinctively clutched Richard’s hand. “What in the world is it?” I wondered out loud.

“It must be something new,” Richard said very softly.

I told him that the shadow resembled an old-fashioned oil pump going up and down in the middle of a producing field. He grinned nervously and agreed.

After waiting for what must have been five minutes and neither seeing nor hearing any change in the rhythmic knocking pattern of the visitor, Richard told me mat he was going to climb to the grill, where he would be able to see something more definitive than a shadow. Of course that meant that whatever was outside beating on our door would also be able to see him, assuming that it had eyes or an approximate equivalent. For some reason I remembered Dr. Takagishi at that moment, and a wave of fear swept through me. I kissed Richard and told him not to take any chances.

When Richard reached the final landing, just above where I was waiting, his body was partially in the light and blocked the moving shadow. The knocking suddenly stopped abruptly. “It’s a biot, all right,” Richard shouted. “It looks like a praying mantis with an extra hand in the middle of its face. . . . And now it’s opening the grill,” he added a second later.

Richard jumped off the landing and was beside me in an instant. He grabbed my hand and we raced down several flights of stairs together. We didn’t stop until we were back on our living level several landings below.

We could hear the sound of motion above us. “There was another mantis and at least one bulldozer biot behind the first mantis,” Richard said breathlessly. “As soon as they saw me they started removing the grill. . . . Apparently they were just knocking to alert us to their presence.”

“But what do they want?” I asked rhetorically. The noise above us continued to grow. “It sounds like an army,” I remarked.

Within seconds we could hear them moving down the

stairs. “We must be prepared to run for it,” Richard said frantically. “You get Simone and I’ll wake Michael.”

We moved swiftly down the corridor toward our living area. Michael had been awakened already by all the noise, and Simone was stirring as well. We huddled together in our main room, sitting on the shaking floor opposite the black screen, and waited for the alien invaders. Richard had prepared a keyboard request for the Ramans that would, upon the input of two additional commands, cause the black screen to lift up just as it did when our unseen benefactors were about to supply us with some new product. “If we are attacked,” Richard said, “we’ll take our chances in the tunnels behind the screen.”

Half an hour passed. From the hubbub in the direction of the stairs we could tell that the intruders were already on -our level in the lair, but none of them had yet entered the passage toward our living area. After another fifteen minutes curiosity overpowered my husband. “I’ll go check out the situation,” Richard said, leaving Michael with me and Simone.

He returned in less than five minutes. “There are fifteen, maybe twenty of them,” he told us with a puzzled frown. “Three mantises altogether, plus two different types of bulldozer biots. They seem to be building some-tiling on the opposite side of.the lair.”

Simone had fallen asleep again. I put her in the cradle and then followed the two men toward the noise. When we reached the circular area where the stairs climb toward the opening to New York, we encountered a maelstrom of activity. It was impossible to follow all the work being .done on the opposite side of the room. The mantises appeared to be supervising the bulldozer biots as they were widening a horizontal corridor on the other side of the circular room.

“Does anybody have any idea what they are doing?” Michael asked in a whisper.

“Not a clue,” Richard replied at the time.

It is almost twenty-four hours later now and it is still not clear exactly what the biots are building. Richard thinks that the corridor expansion has been made to ac-

30 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE

commodate some kind of a new facility. He has also suggested that all this activity almost certainly has something to do with us, for it is, after all, being done in our lair.

The biots work without stopping for rest, food, or sleep. The floor vibrations do not bother them at all. They seem to be following some master plan or procedure that has been thoroughly communicated, for none of them ever confer about anything. It is an awesome spectacle to watch their relentless activity. For their part, the biots have never once acknowledged that we are mere watching them.

An hour ago Richard, Michael, and I talked briefly about the frustration we are all feeling because we do not know what is happening around us. At one point Richard smiled. “It’s really not dramatically different from the situation on Earth,” he said vaguely. When Michael and I pressed him to explain what he meant, Richard waved his hand in a sweeping gesture. “Even at home,” he replied abstractedly, “our knowledge is severely limited. The search for truth is always a frustrating experience.”

8 lune 2201

It is inconceivable to me that the biots could have finished the facility so quickly. Two hours ago the last of them, the foreman mantis mat had signaled to us (using the “hand” in the middle of its “face”) to inspect the new room early this afternoon, finally trundled up the stairs and disappeared. Richard says that it had remained in our lair until it was satisfied that we understood everything.

The only object in the new room is a narrow rectangular tank that has obviously been designed for us. It has shiny metal sides and is about three meters high. At either end there is a ladder that goes from the floor to the lip of the tank. A sturdy walkway runs around the outside perimeter of the tank just centimeters below the lip.