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

Prince Hal hurried through to the other side. The drop from the passage to the inside floor was about a meter. The robot adroitly attached a small cable to a stanchion he glued to the floor of the passage and then let himself

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down. Richard watched Hal’s every move on his screen and communicated instructions by radio.

Richard had expected that there would be an outer annulus protecting the second habitat. He was correct. So the basic design of the two habitats is similar, he thought. Richard had also anticipated that there would be an opening of some kind in the inner wall, some gate or door through which the leggies must come and go, and that Prince Hal would be small enough to enter the inside- of the habitat by the same portal.

It did not take long for Hal to locate the entrance into the main part of the habitat. However, what was obviously a door was also more than twenty meters above the floor of the annulus. Having watched the video recordings of the leggies moving up vertical surfaces on the bulldozer biots at the Avalon survey site, Richard had prepared for this possibility as well.

“Climb,” he ordered Prince Hal after a nervous glance at his watch. It was almost six o’clock. Dawn would be coming soon in New Eden. Soon thereafter the regular scientists and engineers would be returning to this probe site.

The entrance to the inside of the habitat was one hundred times Prince Hal’s height above the floor. The robot’s ascent would be the equivalent of a human going straight up a sixty-story building. At home Richard had had the little robot practice by scaling the house, but he had always been there beside him. Were there grooves for hand-and footholds on the wall Hal was climbing? Richard could not tell from the monitor. Were all the correct equations in Prince Hal’s mechanical engineering subproces-sor? I’ll find out soon enough, Richard thought as his star pupil began his climb.

Prince Hal slipped and dangled by his hands once, but eventually succeeded in making it to the top. However, the ascent took another thirty minutes. Richard knew he was running out of time. As Hal pulled himself onto the windowsill of a circular porthole, Richard saw that the robot’s ingress into the habitat was blocked by a mesh screen. However, a small part of the interior was barely visible in the dim light. Richard carefully positioned

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Hal’s tiny camera so that it could see through the gridwork.

“The watchman insists it must return to its main station,” Garcia #325 announced to Richard on the radio. “It is required to make its daily report at 0630.”

Shit, thought Richard, that’s only six minutes. He moved Hal slowly around on the lip of the porthole to see if he could identify any objects in the habitat interior. Richard could see nothing specific. “Shriek,” Richard then ordered, switching the robot’s audio volume to full. “Shriek until I tell you to stop.”

Richard had not tested the new amplifier he had installed in Prince Hal at its maximum output. He was therefore astonished at the amplitude of Hal’s avian mimicry. It resounded from the passage and Richard jumped back. Pretty damn good, Richard said after collecting himself. At least if my memory is accurate.

The watchman biot was soon upon Richard, following its preprogrammed instructions by demanding his personal papers and an explanation of what he was doing. Super-Al and Garcia #325 tried to confuse the watchman, but when it could not obtain Richard’s cooperation, the biot insisted it must make an emergency report. On the monitor, Richard saw the entire mesh screen swing open and six leggies swarm onto Prince Hal. The robot continued to shriek.

The watchman Garcia began to broadcast its emergency. Richard was aware that he had only a few minutes before he would be forced to leave. “Come, dammit, come,” he said, watching the monitor in between furtive glances behind him in the Central Plain. There were no lights yet approaching from his home colony in the distance.

At first Richard thought he had imagined it. Then it repeated, the sound of large wings flapping. One of the leggies was partially obscuring his view, but moments later Richard definitely saw a familiar talon reaching out for Prince Hal. The avian shriek that followed confirmed the sighting. The image on the monitor became fuzzy.

“If you have a chance,” Richard screamed into the radio, “try to return to the passage. I’ll come back for you later.”

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He turned around, quickly packing his monitor in his bag. “Let’s go,” Richard said to his two biot associates. They began to run toward New Eden.

Richard was triumphant as he hurried toward home. My hunch was right, he said exultantly to himself. This changes everything. . . . Now I have a daughter to give away.

10

T!

•he wedding was scheduled to take place at seven o’clock in the evening in the theater at Central High School. The reception, for a much larger group, was planned for the gymnasium, an adjacent building no more than twenty meters away. All day long Nicole struggled with last-minute items, rescuing the preparations from one potential disaster after another.

She did not have time to contemplate the significance of Richard’s new discovery. He had come home full of excitement, wanting to discuss the avians, and even who might be spying on his research, but Nicole had simply not been able to focus on anything except the wedding. They had both agreed not to tell anyone else about the avians until after they had had a chance for a lengthy discussion.

Nicole had gone for a morning walk in the park with Ellie. They had talked about marriage, love, and sex for over an hour, but Ellie had been so excited about the wedding that she had not been able to concentrate fully on what her mother was saying. Toward the end of their

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walk, Nicole had stopped under a tree to summarize her message,

“Remember at least this one thing, Ellie,” Nicole had said, holding both her daughter’s hands in hers. “Sex is an important component of marriage, but it is not the most important. Because of your lack of experience, it is unlikely that sex will be wonderful for you at the beginning. However, if you and Robert love and trust each other, and both of you genuinely want to give and receive pleasure, you will find that your physical compatibility will increase year after year.”

Two hours before the ceremony Nicole, Nai, and Ellie arrived together at the school. Eponine was already there waiting for them. “Are you nervous?” the teacher said with a smile. Ellie nodded. “I’m scared to death,” Eponine added, “and I’m only one of the bridesmaids.”

Ellie had asked her mother to be matron of honor. Nai Watanabe, Eponine, and her sister Katie were the bridesmaids. Dr. Edward Stafford, a man who shared Robert Turner’s passion for medical history, was the best man. Because he had no other close associates, except for the biots at the hospital, Robert picked the rest of his attendants from the Wakefield family and friends. Kenji Watanabe, Patrick, and Benjy were his three groomsmen.

“Mother, I feel nauseous,” Ellie said soon after they were all gathered in the dressing room. “I’ll be so embarrassed if I throw up on my wedding dress. Should I try to eat something?” Nicole had anticipated this situation. She handed Ellie a banana and some yogurt, assuring her daughter that it was completely normal to feel queasy before such a big event.

Nicole’s uneasiness about the day increased as time passed and Katie did not show up. With everything in order in the bride’s dressing room, she decided to cross the hall to talk to Patrick. The men had finished dressing before Nicole knocked on their door.

“How is the mother of the bride?” Judge Mishkin asked when she entered. The grand old judge was going to perform the wedding ceremony.

“A little spooked,” Nicole answered with a wan

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smile. She found Patrick in the back of the room, adjusting Benjy’s clothes.

“How do I look?” Benjy asked his mother as she approached.

“Very, very handsome,” Nicole replied to her beaming son. “Have you talked to Katie this morning?” she asked Patrick.

“No,” he said. “But I reconfirmed the time with her, as you requested, just last night. … Is she not here yet?”

Nicole shook her head. It was already six-fifteen, only forty-five minutes before the cermony was scheduled to start. She walked out in the hall to use the phone, but the smell of cigarette smoke told her that Katie had finally arrived.

“Just think, little sister,” Katie was saying in a loud voice as Nicole crossed back to the bride’s dressing room, “tonight you get to have your first sex. Oooeee! I bet the thought just drives that gorgeous body of yours absolutely wild.”