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

Richard’s mind jumped from image to image as he tried to ascertain some sensible pattern to his life in avianland. He was extremely frustrated. Yet he would not accept for a minute that there was no plan behind his capture and then subsequent increased freedom. He continued to search for an answer by reviewing all his experiences in their domain.

There was only one major area of the avian living quar-

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ters that was off limits to Richard, and he probably could not have reached it anyway since he was unable to fly. Occasionally he would see one or two avians descend in the great vertical corridor and go below the levels that he normally frequented. Once Richard even saw a pair of hatchlings, no larger than a human hand, being carried up from the dark regions below. On another occasion Richard had pointed down at the darkness and his accompanying avian had shaken its head. Most of the creatures had learned the simple head motions of yes and no in Richard’s language.

But somewhere, Richard thought, there must be additional information. I must be missing some clues. He vowed to conduct an exhaustive survey of the entire avian living area, including not only the dense apartments on the opposite side of the vertical corridor, where he usually felt unwanted, but also the large manna melon storehouses on the bottom level. / will make a thorough map, he said to himself, to make certain that I haven’t neglected something critical.

As soon as Richard had rendered the avian living area in his three-dimensional graphics, he knew what he had been overlooking. The often disorganized passageways in the cylinder, including horizontal and vertical corridors for both walking and flight, had never been synthesized by Richard into one coherent picture. Of course, he said to himself as he projected different views of his complex map onto his computer monitor. How could I have been so stupid? More than seventy percent of the cylinder is still unaccounted for.

Richard resolved to take his computer pictures to one of the avian leaders and request, somehow, to see the rest of the cylinder. It was not an easy task. Some kind of crisis was disturbing the avians that particular day, as the corridors were full of jabbers, shrieks, and avians rushing to and fro. Out hi the great vertical corridor Richard watched thirty or forty of the largest creatures fly up and out of the cylinder in some kind of organized formation.

Finally Richard managed to obtain the attention of one of the three-ringed giants. It was fascinated by the detail

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it saw on the computer monitor and by all the different geometrical representations of its home. But Richard was unable to convey his primary message—that he wanted to see the rest of the cylinder.

The leader called in some colleagues to watch the demonstration and Richard was treated to appreciative avian jabber. He was dismissed, however, when another bird broke into their meeting with what must have been important news about their ongoing crisis.

Richard returned to his cell. He was dejected. He lay on his hay mat and thought of the family that he had left behind in New Eden. Maybe it’s time for me to leave, he thought, wondering what the protocol was in avianland for obtaining permission to depart. While he was lying down a visitor came into his room.

Richard had never seen this particular avian before. It had four cobalt blue rings around its neck and the velvet covering of its body was a deep black with occasional white tufts. Its eyes were astonishingly clear and—or so Richard surmised—very sad. The avian waited for Richard to stand and then started speaking, very slowly. Richard understood some of the words, most importantly the oft-repeated combination “follow me.”

Outside his cell three other avians were respectfully standing. They walked behind Richard and his important visitor. The group left Richard’s cell area, crossed the single bridge that spanned the great vertical corridor, and entered the section of the cylinder where the manna melons were stored.

At the back of one of the manna melon storehouses were indentations in the wall that Richard had not noticed when he had conducted his survey. When Richard and the avians approached within a few meters of the indentations, the wall slid to the side and revealed what appeared to be an enormous elevator. The avian superleader gestured for him to enter.

Once he was inside, the four avians each jabbered goodbye and formed into a circle to formalize their parting with a turn and a bow. Richard tried his best to imitate their jabber for good-bye before he also bowed and backed into the elevator. The wall closed seconds later.

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•he elevator ride was painfully slow. The immense car had a square floor approximately twenty meters on a side, with a ceiling that was another eight to ten meters above Richard’s head. The floor of the car was flat everywhere except for two pairs of parallel grooves, one pair on either side of Richard, that ran from the door to the back of the elevator. They can certainly transport huge loads in this, Richard thought, staring at the ceiling far above him.

He tried to estimate the rate of descent of the elevator, but it was impossible. He had no frame of reference. According to Richard’s map of the cylinder, the manna melon storehouses should have been about eleven hundred meters above the base. So if we’re going all the way to the bottom, at what would be a normal elevator speed on Earth, then this trip may take several minutes.

It was the longest three minutes of his life. Richard had absolutely no idea what he would find when the elevator doors opened. Maybe I’ll be outside, he thought suddenly.

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Maybe I’ll be on the edge of that region with the white structures. . . . Could they be sending me home?

He had just begun to wonder how life might have changed in New Eden when the elevator came to a stop. The large doors opened and for several seconds Richard was certain that his heart had jumped out of his body. Standing directly in front of him, and obviously staring at him with all their eyes, were two creatures far stranger than any he had ever imagined.

Richard could not move. What he was seeing was so unbelievable that he was physically paralyzed while his mind struggled with the bizarre inputs it was receiving from his senses. Each of the beings in front of him had four eyes on its “head.” In addition to the two large, milky ovals on either side of an invisible line of symmetry that bisected the head, each creature had two additional eyes attached to stalks raised ten to twelve centimeters above the top of its forehead. Behind the large head, their bodies had three segments, with a pair of appendages for each segment, giving them six legs altogether. The aliens were standing upright on their two back legs, their front four appendages neatly tucked against their smooth, cream-colored underbellies.

They moved toward him in the elevator and Richard backed away, frightened. The two creatures turned to each other and communicated in a high-frequency noise that originated from a small circular orifice below the oval eyes. Richard blinked, felt dizzy, and dropped down on one knee to steady himself. His heart was still pumping furiously.

The aliens also changed position, putting their middle legs on the floor. In that posture they resembled giant ants with their front two legs off the ground and their heads raised high. The entire time the black spheres at the end of the eye stalks continued to pivot, scanning the full three hundred and sixty degrees, and the milky material in the dark brown ovals moved from side to side.

For several minutes they sat more or less stationary, as if they were encouraging Richard to examine them. Fighting against his fear, he tried to study them in an objective,

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scientific fashion. The creatures were roughly the size of medium-sized dogs, but they certainly weighed much less. Their bodies were thin and quite trim. The front and back segments were larger than the middle one, and all three body divisions displayed a polished carapace on top that was made of some kind of hard material.

Richard would have classified them as very large insects except for their extraordinary appendages, which were thick, perhaps even muscled, and covered with a short, very dense, black-and-white-striped “hair” that made it appear as if the creatures were wearing panty hose. Their hands, if that was the proper appellation, were free of the , hairy covering and had four fingers each, including an opposing thumb on the front pair.

Richard had just summoned enough courage to look again at their incredible heads when there was a high-pitched, sirenlike noise behind the two aliens. They turned around. Richard stood up and saw a third creature approaching at a rapid clip. Its motion was marvelous to watch. It ran like a cat with six legs, stretching out parallel to the ground and pushing off with a different pair of legs at each point in its stride.