Was that a faint flapping of wings as well, again somewhere off to his right? With no warning Richard suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs, and then truncated the scream abruptly. The flurry of wing sounds died out quickly, but for a second or two they were unmistakable.
Richard was exultant. “I know you’re there,” he shouted gleefully. “I know you’re watching me.”
He had a plan. It was certainly a long shot, but it was definitely better than nothing. Richard checked his food and water, assured himself that they were both marginally adequate, and took a deep breath. It’s now or never, he thought.
He practiced descending without relying on the line for support. It made progress more difficult, but he could do it. When he reached the end of the line, Richard unharnessed himself and shone his light down the wall. At least
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as far as the top of the fog, which by now had returned, there were plenty of ledges available. He continued down very carefully, admitting to himself that he was frightened. Several times he thought he could hear his own heart beating in his earphones.
Now, if I’m right, Richard thought when he descended into the fog, I’m going to have company down here. The moisture made the descent doubly difficult. Once he slipped and almost fell, but he managed to recover. Richard stopped at a spot where his hand- and footholds were unusually solid. He estimated that he was about fifty meters above the moat. /’// wait now until I hear something. They’ll have to come closer in the fog.
In a short while he heard the wings again. This time it sounded as if it was a pair of avians. Richard stood where he was for over an hour, until the fog began to thin. Several more times he heard the wings of his observers.
He had planned to wait until it was light again to descend all the way to the water. But when the fog lifted and the lights still did not return, Richard began to worry about the time. He started down the wall in the dark. About ten meters above the moat he heard his observers fly away. Two minutes later the interior of the avian habitat was again illuminated.
Richard wasted no time. His plan was simple. Based on the boatlike noises that he had heard in the dark, Richard assumed that there was something happening in the moat that was critical to the avians or whoever it was that lived in the brown cylinder. If not, he reasoned, why had they proceeded with the activity, knowing that he might hear it? If they had postponed it for even a few hours, he would almost certainly have been gone from the habitat.
Richard intended to enter the moat. If the avians feel threatened in any way, he reasoned, they will take some action. If not, I will immediately begin my ascent and take my chances in New Eden.
Just before he eased into the water, Richard took off his shoes and with some difficulty put them into his waterproof pack. At least they wouldn’t be wet if he had to climb out. Seconds later, as soon as he was completely in the water, a pair of avians flew at him from where they
440 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
had been hiding in the green region directly across the moat.
They were frantic. They jabbered and shrieked and acted as if they were going to tear Richard apart with their talons. He was so ecstatic that his plan had worked that he virtually ignored their displays. The avians hovered over him and tried to herd him back to the wall. He treaded water and studied them closely.
These two were slightly different from the ones that he and Nicole had encountered in Rama II. These avians had the velvet body coverings, just like the others, but the velvet was purple. The single ring around each of then-necks was black. They were also smaller (Perhaps they’re younger, Richard thought) than the earlier avians, and much more frenetic. One of the creatures actually touched Richard’s cheek with its talon when he didn’t move swiftly enough to the wall.
At length Richard did climb up onto the wall, barely out of the water, but that did not seem to appease the avians. Almost immediately the two large birds began taking turns flying narrow patterns up the wall, showing Richard that they wanted him to ascend. When he didn’t move they became more and more frantic.
“I want to go with you,” Richard said, pointing at the brown cylinder in the distance. Each time he repeated his hand signal the huge creatures shrieked and jabbered and flew up in the direction of the porthole.
The avians were becoming frustrated and Richard started to worry that perhaps they might attack him. Suddenly he had a brilliant idea. But can I remember the entry code? he asked himself excitedly. It’s been so many years.
When he reached in his pack the avians flew away immediately. “That proves,” Richard said out loud as he switched on his beloved portable computer, “that the leg-gies are your electronic observers. How else could you have possibly known that human beings may keep weapons in packs like these?”
He punched five letters on the keyboard and then smiled broadly when the display activated. “Come here,” Richard said, waving at the pair of avians who had retreated
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almost to the other side of the moat. “Come here,” he repeated, “I have something to show you.”
He held up the monitor and displayed the complex computer graphic that he had used many years before in Rama II to convince the creatures to carry Nicole and him across the Cylindrical Sea. It was an elegant graphic showing three avians carrying two human figures across a body of water in a harness. The two giant birds approached tentatively. That’s it, Richard said to himself excitedly. Come over here and take a good look.
3
R;
‘ichard did not know exactly how long he had been living in the dim room. He had lost track of time soon after they had taken his pack away from him. His routine had been the same, day after day. He slept in the comer of the room. Whenever he awakened, whether from a nap or a long sleep, two avians would enter his room from the corridor and hand him a manna melon to eat. He knew they came through the locked door at the end of the corridor, but if he tried to sleep near the door they simply denied him his food. It had been an easy lesson for Richard to learn.
Every other day or so a different pair of avians would enter his prison and clean up his wastes. His clothes were rank, and Richard knew that he was unbearably filthy, but he had not been able to communicate to his captors that he wanted a bath.
He had been exultant in the beginning. When the two juvenile avians had finally approached close enough to watch the graphic, and then had made their first attempt to take the computer from him several minutes later, Rich-
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ard had decided to program the display to repeat indefinitely.
In less than an hour the largest avian he had ever seen, one with a gray velvet body and three brilliant cherry red rings around its neck, had returned with the two juveniles, and the three of them had picked Richard up in their talons. They had carried him across the moat, put him down temporarily in a desert area, and then, after a series of jabbers among the three of them that must have been a discussion about the optimal way of carrying him, they had lifted him high into the air.
It had been a breathtaking flight. The view that Richard had had of the landscape in the habitat had reminded him of a ride he had once taken in a hot air balloon in southern France. He had flown in the clutches of the avians all the way to the top of the brown cylinder, directly underneath the bright hooded ball. They had been met by a half dozen additional avians, one holding Richard’s computer, which was still repeating its graphics. Later they had been escorted down a wide vertical corridor into the interior of the cylinder.
That first fifteen hours or so Richard had been taken from one large group of avians to another. He had thought that his hosts were just introducing him to all the citizens of avianland. Assuming that there were not too many avians who attended more than one of the short jabber and shriek sessions, Richard estimated that there were about seven hundred individual birds.
After his parade through the conference halls of the avian realm, Richard had been taken to a small room where the three-ringed avian and two of its associates, each large creatures as well with three red neck rings, watched him day and night for about a week. During that time Richard was allowed access to his computer and all the items in- the pack. At the end of that observation period, however, they had taken away all his belongings and moved him to his prison.
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