“Oh, yeah,” the youth said. “I see what you mean.”
What really overwhelmed the soldiers was Archie’s phenomenal memory. At Richard’s urging, one of the troops listed a sequence of several hundred numbers on a sheet of paper and then read the sequence to Archie, a single number at a time. The octospider repeated them back through Ellie, without any errors. Some of the soldiers thought that there had been a trick involved, that maybe Richard was flashing coded signals to Archie. However, when Archie duplicated his feat under carefully controlled conditions, all the doubters were convinced.
The atmosphere in the camp was relaxed and amiable by the time the orders were received to transport the prisoners to New York. The first part of their plan had succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings. Nevertheless, Richard was
364
ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
nervous as they climbed on board the helicopter to cross a portion of the Cylindrical Sea.
They only stayed in New York for about an hour. Armed guards met the prisoners at the helicopter pad in the western plaza, confiscated their backpacks over Richard’s and Nik-ki’s loud protests, and marched them to the Port. Richard carried Nikki in his arms. He barely had time to admire his favorite skyscrapers looming overhead in the dark.
The yacht that carried them across the northern half of the Cylindrical Sea was similar to the pleasure boats that Nakamura and his cronies used on Lake Shakespeare. At no time during the crossing did any of the guards speak to them. “Boobah,” Nikki whispered to Richard after several of her questions had gone unheeded, “don’t these men know how to talk?” She giggled.
A rover was waiting for them on a dock that had been recently constructed to support the new activities in New York and the Southern Hemicylinder. At considerable effort and expense, the humans had cut an opening through the southern barrier wall in-an area adjacent to the avian/sessile habitat and had built a targe docking facility.
Richard wondered at first why he and his companions had not been flown directly back to New Eden in the helicopter. After a few quick mental calculations, however, he correctly concluded that because of the enormous height of the barrier wall, which extended well up into the region where the artificial gravity caused by the spinning Rama spacecraft began to drop substantially, as well as the probable lack of skilled pilots, there was an upper limit placed on the altitude at which the hastily built helicopters were allowed to fly. That means, Richard was thinking as he boarded the rover, that the humans must move all their equipment and personnel either through this dock or by means of the moat and tunnel underneath the second habitat.
Their rover was driven by a Garcia biot. In frqpt and behind them were two other rovers, both with armed humans. They sped across the darkness to the Central Plain.
RAMA REVEALED
365
Richard sat in the front seat beside the driver, with Archie, Ellie, and Nikki in the back. Richard had turned around in his seat and was reminding Archie of the five kinds of biots in New Eden when the Garcia interrupted him. “The prisoner Wakefield is to face forward and remain silent,” the biot said.
“Isn’t that just a little bit ridiculous?” Richard said lightly.
The Garcia pulled its right arm off the steering wheel and struck Richard hard in the face with the back of its hand. “Face forward and remain silent,” the biot repeated, as Richard recoiled from the force of the slap.
Nikki started crying after the sudden display of violence. Ellie tried both to quiet and to comfort her. “I don’t like the driver, Mommy,” the little girl said. “I really don’t.”
It was night inside New Eden after they were ushered through the checkpoint at the entrance to the habitat. Archie and the three humans were placed into an open electric car driven by another Garcia biot. Richard noticed immediately that it was almost as cold in New Eden as it had been in Rama. The car bounced down the road, which was in an acute state of disrepair, and turned north at what had once been the train station for the village of Positano. Fifteen or twenty people were huddled around campfires on the concrete areas surrounding the old station, and another three or four were stretched out and sleeping underneath cardboard boxes and old clothing.
“What are those people doing, Mommy?” Nikki asked. Ellie did not answer because the Garcia turned around quickly with a hostile stare.
The neon lights of Vegas could already be seen in front of them when the car took a sharp left turn onto a residential lane in a wooded section that had once been part of Sherwood Forest. The car came to an abrupt halt in front of a large, rambling ranch house. Two Oriental men, armed with both pistols and daggers, approached the car. They gestured for the passengers to climb out of the car and then dismissed the biot. “Come with us,” said one of the men.
Archie and his human companions entered the house
366
ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
and were taken down a long flight of stairs into a basement with no windows. “There is food and water on the table,” the second man said. He turned and started to climb the stairs.
“Wait a minute,” Richard said. “Our backpacks . . . we need to have our backpacks.”
“They will be returned,” the man said impatiently, “as soon as all the contents have been carefully checked.”
“And when do we see Nakamura?” Richard inquired.
The man shrugged. His face was expressionless. He walked quickly up the stairs.
3
Ti
he days passed very slowly.
Richard, Ellie, and Nikki were without a time reference at first, but they soon learned that octospiders had a wonderfully precise inner clock that is calibrated and enhanced during their juvenile education. After they converted Archie to using human time measurements (Richard used his oft-quoted “When in Rome . . ,” to convince Archie to abandon, at least temporarily, his tens, wodens, fengs, and nillets), they discovered, by sneaking glances at their guard’s digital watch when he brought food and water, that Archie’s internal timing accuracy was better than ten seconds out of every twenty-four hours.
Nikki amused herself by constantly asking Archie the time. As a result, after repeated observation, Richard and even Nikki learned how to read Archie’s colors for time references and small numbers. In fact, as the days passed, the regular conversation in the basement significantly improved Richard’s overall comprehension of the octospider
368
ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
language. Although his skill in understanding the color strips was still not as advanced as Ellie’s, after a week Richard could comfortably converse with Archie without needing Ellie as an interpreter.
The humans slept on futons on the floor. Archie curled up behind them for the few hours each night that he slept. One or the other of the two Oriental men replenished their supplies once each day. Richard never failed to remind the guards that they were still waiting for their backpacks and for their audience with Nakamura.
After eight days the daily sponge baths in the washbasin adjoining the basement toilet were no longer satisfactory. Richard asked if they could have access to a shower and some soap. Several hours later a large laundry tub was carried down the stairs. Each of the humans bathed, although Nikki was at first surprisingly reluctant to be naked in front of Archie. Richard and Ellie felt enough better after bathing that they managed to share some optimism. “There’s no way he can keep our existence a secret forever,” Richard said. “Too many of the troops saw us . . . and it would not be possible for them not to’say anything, no matter what Nakamura ordered.”
“I’m certain they will come for us soon,” Ellie added brightly.
By the end of their second week of imprisonment, however, their temporary optimism had waned. Richard and Ellie were beginning to lose hope. It didn’t help that Nikki had become a complete brat, announcing regularly that she was bored and complaining about not having anything to do. Archie began to tell Nikki stories to keep her occupied. His octospider “legends” (he had a long discussion with Ellie about the exact meaning of the word before he finally accepted the term) delighted the little girl.
It helped that Ellie’s translations rang with the resonant phrases the girl already associated with bedtime fairy tales. “Once upon a time, back in the days of the Precursors . . .” Archie would begin a story, and Nikki would squeal with anticipation.
RAMA REVEALED
369
“What did the Precursors look like, Archie?” the little girl asked after one such story.
“The legends never say,” Archie replied. “So I guess you can create whatever picture of them you want in your imagination.”