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

The new outer region, which had no ceiling except for the opposite side of Rama itself, covered most of the Northern Hemicylinder of the spacecraft. A large metal hut, shaped like an igloo, was the only building in the Central Plain between the two habitats. This hut was the control center for New Eden and was located approximately two kilometers south of the colony wall.

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When they exited from New Eden, Richard and the three Einsteins were headed for the control center, where they had been working together for almost two weeks in an attempt to break into the master control logic governing the weather inside New Eden. Despite Kenji Watanabe’s objection, the Senate had earlier appropriated funds for an “all-out effort” by the colony’s “best engineers” to alter the alien weather algorithm. They had promulgated this legislation after hearing testimony from a group of Japanese scientists, who had suggested that stable weather conditions could indeed be maintained inside New Eden, even with the higher levels of carbon dioxide and smoke in the atmosphere.

It was an appealing conclusion for the politicians. If, perhaps, neither barring wood-burning nor deploying a reconstituted GED network were truly required, and it was only necessary to adjust a few parameters in the alien algorithm that had, after all, been initially designed with some assumptions that were no longer valid, well, then . . .

Richard hated that kind of thinking. Avoid the issue as long as possible, he called it. Nevertheless, both because of Nicole’s pleas and the total failure of the other colony engineers to understand any facet of the weather control process, Richard had agreed to tackle the task. He had insisted, however, that he work essentially alone, with only the Einsteins helping him.

On the day that Richard planned to make his last attempt to decode the New Eden weather algorithm, he and his biots stopped first near a site one kilometer away from the colony exit. Under the large lights Richard could see a group of architects and engineers working at a very long table.

“The canal will not be difficult to build—the soil is very soft.”

“But what about sewage? Should we dig cesspools, or haul the waste material back to New Eden for processing?”

“The power requirements for this settlement will be substantial. Not only the lighting, because of the ambient darkness, but also all the appliances. In addition, we’re

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far enough away from New Eden that we must account for nontrivial losses on the lines. . . , Our best superconducting materials are too critical for this usage.”

Richard felt a mixture of disgust and anger as he listened to the conversations. The architects and engineers were conducting a feasibility study for an external village that could house the RV-41 carriers. The project, whose name was Avalon, was the result of a delicate political compromise between Governor Watanabe and his opposition. Kenji had permitted the study to be funded to show that he was “open-minded” on the issue of how to deal with the RV-41 problem.

Richard and the three Einsteins continued down the path in a southerly direction. Just north of the control center they caught up with a group of humans and biots headed toward the second habitat probe site with some impressive equipment.

“Hi, Richard,” said Marilyn Blackstpne, the fellow Brit whom Richard had recommended to head the probe effort. Marilyn was from Taunton, in Somerset. She had received her engineering degree from Cambridge in 2232 and was extremely competent.

“How’s the work coming?” Richard asked.

“If you have a minute, come take a look,” Marilyn suggested.

Richard left the three Einsteins at the control center and accompanied Marilyn and her team across the Central Plain to the second habitat. As he was walking, he remembered his conversation with Kenji Watanabe and Dmitri Ulanov in the governor’s office one afternoon before the probe project was officially approved.

“I want it understood,” Richard had said, “that I am categorically against any and all efforts to intrude upon the sanctity of that other habitat. Nicole and I are virtually positive that it harbors another kind of life. There is no argument for penetration that is compelling.”

“Suppose it’s empty,” Dmitri had replied. “Suppose the habitat has been placed there for us, assuming we are clever enough to figure out how to use it.”

“Dmitri,” Richard had almost shouted, “have you listened to anything that Nicole and I have been telling you

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ail these months? You are still clinging to an absurd homo-centric notion about our place in the universe. Because we are the dominant species on the planet Earth, you assume we are superior beings. We are not. There must be hundreds—”

“Richard,” Kenji had interrupted him in a soft voice, “we know your opinion on this subject. But the colonists of New Eden do not agree with you. They have never seen the Eagle, the octospiders, or any of the other wonderful creatures that you talk about. They want to know if we have room to expand. …”

Kenji was already afraid then, Richard was thinking as he and the exploration team neared the second habitat. He’s still terrified that Macmillan will beat Ulanov in the election and turn the colony over to Nakamura.

Two Einstein biots began working as soon as the team arrived at the probe site. They carefully installed the compact laser drill in the spot where a hole in the wall had already been created. Within five minutes the drill was slowly expanding the hole in the metal.

“How far have you penetrated?” Richard asked. “Only about thirty-five centimeters so far,” Marilyn replied. “We’re taking it very slowly. If the wall has the same thickness as ours, it will be another three or four weeks before we are all the way through. . . . Incidentally, the spectrographic analysis of the wall parts indicates it’s the same material as our wall.”

“And once you’ve penetrated into the interior?” Marilyn laughed. “Don’t worry, Richard. We’re following all the procedures you recommended. We will have a minimum of two weeks of passive observation before we continue to the next phase. We’ll give them a chance to respond—if they are indeed inside.”

The skepticism in her voice was obvious. “Not you too, Marilyn,” Richard said. “What’s the matter with everybody? Do you think Nicole and the children and I just made up all those stories?”

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” she replied.

Richard shook his head. He started to argue with Marilyn, but he realized he had more important things to do.

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After a few minutes of polite engineering conversation, he walked back toward the control center where his Einsteins were waiting.

The great thing about working with the Einstein biots was that Richard could try many ideas at once. Whenever he had a particular approach in mind, he could outline it to one of the biots and have complete confidence that it would be implemented properly. The Einsteins never suggested a new method themselves; however, they were perfect memory devices and often reminded Richard when one of his ideas was similar to an earlier technique that had failed.

All the other colony engineers attempting to modify the weather algorithm had tried first to understand the inner workings of the alien supercomputer that was located in the middle of the control center. That had been their fundamental mistake. Richard, knowing a priori that the supercomputer’s internal operation would be indistinguishable from magic to him, concentrated on isolating and identifying the output signals that emanated from the huge processor. After all, he reasoned, the basic structure of the process must be straightforward. Some set of measurements defines the conditions inside New Eden at any given time. The alien algorithms must use this measurement data to compute commands that are somehow passed to the huge cylindrical structures, where the actual physical activity takes place that leads to modifications in the atmosphere inside the habitat.

It did not take Richard long to draw a functional block diagram of the process. Because there were no direct electrical contacts between the control center and the cylindrical structures, it was obvious that there was some kind of electromagnetic communication between the two entities. But what kind? When Richard scanned the spectrum to see at what wavelengths the communication was taking place, he found many potential signals.

Analyzing and interpreting those signals was a little like looking for a needle in a haystack. With the Einstein biots helping him, Richard eventually determined that the most frequent transmissions were in the microwave bandwidth.

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For a week he and the Einsteins catalogued the microwave exchanges, reviewing the weather conditions in New Eden both before and after, and trying to zero in on the specific parameter set modulating the strength of the response on the cylinder side of the interface. During that week Rich ard also tested and validated a portable microwave transmitter that he and the biots had constructed together. His goal was to create a command signal that would look as if it had come from the control center.