Rama Revealed

10

“Benjy and I are leaving for the hospital,” Nicole announced.

The others were still finishing their breakfast. “Sit down, Nicole, please,” said Eponine. “At least finish your coffee.”

“Thanks anyway,” she replied. “But I promised Dr. Blue we would come in early today. There were a lot of casualties in yesterday’s raid.”

“But you’ve been working very hard, Mother,” Patrick said. “And not sleeping nearly enough.”

“It helps to stay busy,” Nicole said. “That way I don’t have any time to think.”

“Let’s go, Mama,” Benjy said, coming into the room and handing Nicole her coat. While he was standing beside his mother, Benjy smiled and waved at the twins, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. Galileo made a bizarre face and both Benjy and Kepler laughed.

“She hasn’t yet allowed herself to grieve over Katie’s death,” Nai said softly a minute later, as soon as Nicole had left. “That worries me. Sooner or later…”

“She’s afraid, Nai,” Eponine said. “Maybe of another heart attack. Maybe even for her sanity. Nicole is still in denial.”

“There you go, Frenchie, with that damn psychology again,” Max said. “Don’t worry about Nicole. She’s stronger than any of us. She’ll weep for Katie when she’s ready.”

“Mother hasn’t been to the viewing room since her heart attack. When Dr. Blue told her about the assassination and Katie’s suicide, I felt certain Mother would want to see some of the videos… to see Katie one last time… or at least to see how Ellie was doing.”

“Best goddamn thing your sister ever did, Patrick,” Max commented, “killing that bastard. Whatever else anybody could say about her, she had courage.”

“Katie had a lot of outstanding qualities,” Patrick said sadly. “She was brilliant, she could be charming… she just had that other side.”

There was a brief silence around the breakfast table. Eponine was about to say something when there was a glow of light at the front door. “Uh-oh,” she said, standing up. “I’m going to move Marius next door. The raids are starting again.”

Nai turned to Galileo and Kepler. “Finish up quickly, boys. We’re going back into that special house Uncle Max made for us.”

Galileo screwed up his face. “Not again,” he complained.

Nicole and Benjy had barely reached the hospital when the first bombs started falling through the tattered dome. The heavy raids had been occurring daily. More than half of the Emerald City ceiling was now gone. Bombs had fallen on almost every section of the city.

Dr. Blue greeted them and immediately sent Benjy down to the receiving area. “It’s terrible,” the octospider physician said to Nicole. “Over two hundred dead from yesterday alone.”

“What is happening in New Eden?” Nicole asked. “I would have thought that by now—”

“The micro-agents are working somewhat slower than predicted,” Dr. Blue replied. “But they are finally having an impact. The Chief Optimizer says the raids should cease in another day or two, at the most. She and her staff are drawing up plans for the next phase.”

“Surely the colonists will not continue the war,” Nicole said, forcing herself not to think too much about what was occurring in New Eden, “especially not with Nakamura dead.”

“We feel we must be prepared for any contingency,” Dr. Blue said. “But I certainly hope you’re right.”

As they were moving down the corridor together, they were approached by another octospider doctor, the one that Benjy had named Penny because of the round mark, resembling a New Eden coin, just to the right of her slit. Penny described to Dr. Blue the terrible scenes she had witnessed earlier that morning out in the Alternate Domain. Nicole was able to understand most of what Penny said, not only because the octospider repeated herself several times, but also because Penny used very simple sentences in their language of color.

Penny informed Dr. Blue that medical personnel and supplies were desperately needed immediately to help with the wounded in the Alternate Domain. Dr. Blue tried to explain to Penny that there were not even enough staff members available to handle all the patients in the hospital.

“I could go with Penny for a few hours this morning,” Nicole suggested, “if that would be any help.”

Dr. Blue glanced at her human friend. “Are you certain you feel up to it, Nicole?” the octospider asked. “I understand it’s pretty gruesome out there.”

“I have been getting stronger every day,” Nicole replied. “And I want to be where I’m most needed.”

Dr. Blue told Penny that Nicole would be able to assist her in the Alternate Domain for a maximum of a tert, as long as Penny accepted the responsibility for escorting Nicole back to the hospital. Penny agreed and thanked Nicole for volunteering to help.

Soon after they boarded the transport, Penny explained to Nicole what was happening in the Alternate Domain.

“The wounded are taken to any building that is still undamaged, where they are examined, treated with emergency medicines if necessary, and scheduled for transportation to the hospital. The situation has been getting worse each day. Many of the alternates have already given up hope.”

The rest of the transport ride was equally depressing. In the light from the few scattered fireflies, Nicole could see destruction everywhere. To open the south gate, the guards had to push aside two dozen alternates, a few of them wounded, who were clamoring to enter the city. After the transport passed the gate, the devastation around them increased. The theater where Nicole and her friends had attended the morality play was in shambles. More than half of the structures near the Arts District had been flattened. Nicole started feeling sick. Suddenly a bomb exploded on top of the transport.

Nicole was thrown out of the car onto the street. Dazed, she struggled slowly to her feet. The transport had been severed into two twisted pieces. Penny and the other octospider doctor were buried in the debris. Nicole attempted for several minutes to reach Penny, but eventually realized it was hopeless. Another bomb exploded nearby. Nicole grabbed her small medical bag, which had been thrown into the street beside her, and staggered down a side lane in search of a shelter.

A solitary octospider was lying motionless in the middle of the lane. Nicole bent down and pulled her flashlight from her bag. There was no activity in the octospider’s lens. She rolled the octo over on its side and immediately saw the wound in the back of its head. A large mass of white corrugated material had oozed out of the wound onto the street. Nicole shuddered and almost gagged. She glanced around her quickly for something to cover the dead octospider. A bomb hit a building not more than two hundred meters away. Nicole stood up and walked on.

She found a small shed on the right side of the lane, but it was already occupied by five or six of the little Polish sausage animals. They chased her away, one of them snapping at her heels for twenty or twenty-five meters. At length the animal was gone and Nicole stopped to catch her breath. She spent a few minutes examining herself and discovered, much to her amazement, that she had no significant injuries, only a few isolated bruises.

There was a hiatus in the bombing. The Alternate Domain was eerily quiet. In front of Nicole, about a hundred meters down the street, a firefly was hovering over a building that appeared to be undamaged. Nicole saw a pair of octospiders, one of whom was obviously wounded, enter the building. That must be one of the temporary hospitals, she said to herself. She started to walk in that direction.

A few seconds later, Nicole heard a peculiar sound, barely above the threshold of her hearing. At first the sound did not register in her mind, but the second time she heard the cry, Nicole stopped abruptly in the street. A chill ran down her spine. That was a baby’s cry, she thought, standing completely still. She heard nothing for several seconds. Could I have imagined it? Nicole asked herself.

Nicole strained her eyes and looked in the semidarkness to her right, in what she perceived had been the direction of the cry. She could make out a wire fence, lying mostly on its side, about forty meters down a crossing lane. She glanced again at the nearby building, knowing the octospiders needed her inside. The cry resounded in the night, clearer this time, rising and falling in amplitude like the typical wail of a desperate human baby.

She walked hurriedly over to the toppled fence. A broken sign in color was lying on the ground in front of it. Nicole knelt down and picked up a piece of the sign. When she recognized the octospider colors for “zoo,” her heart rate surged. Richard heard the cry when he was at the zoo, she remembered.

There was an explosion about a kilometer away to her left, and then another, much closer. The helicopters had returned for another sortie. The baby’s wail became continuous. Nicole tried to keep moving in the direction of the cry, but her progress was slow. It was difficult to isolate the wail amid the noise from the explosions.

A bomb burst in front of her less than a hundred meters away. In the silence that followed, Nicole heard nothing. Oh, no, her heart cried out, not now. Not when I am this close. There was another explosion in the distance, followed by another period of quiet. It might be some other kind of animal, she remembered telling Richard. Somewhere in the universe there may be a creature that sounds like a human baby.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the return of the piercing wail. Nicole moved as fast as she dared. No, she kept saying to herself, her mother’s heart torn apart by the desperate cry, it’s unmistakable. There cannot be any other sound like that. A battered fence ran along the right side of the narrow lane. She crossed through it. In the shadows ahead of her Nicole saw some movement.

The crying baby was sitting on the ground next to the lifeless form of an adult human, presumably its mother. The woman was lying facedown on the dirt. Blood covered the lower half of the adult’s body. After quickly determining that the woman was indeed dead, Nicole reached down gingerly and picked up the dark-haired child. Astonished by the action, the baby fought against her and split the night with a powerful bawl. Nicole put the child against her shoulder and patted it lightly on the back. ‘There, there,” she said as the baby continued to shriek, “everything is going to be all right.”

In the dim light Nicole could see that the child’s bizarre clothes, which were little more than two layers of heavy sacks with holes cut in appropriate places, were smeared with blood. Despite the baby’s protests and thrashing, Nicole gave the child a quick examination. Except for a flesh wound in the leg and the filth that covered her entire body, the little girl appeared to be all right. Nicole estimated that she was about a year old.

Ever so gently, Nicole laid the girl down on a small fresh cloth taken from the medical bag. While Nicole was cleaning up the child, she felt the girl jerk and recoil each time a bomb exploded in the vicinity. Nicole tried to soothe her by singing Brahms’s Lullaby. Once during the time that Nicole was dressing the leg wound, the girl stopped crying temporarily and stared at Nicole with her huge, surprisingly blue eyes. She offered no protest even when Nicole took a damp cleansing pad and began to wipe the dirt off her skin. A little later, however, when Nicole was cleaning underneath the girl’s shirts of sackcloth and found, to her astonishment, a small rope necklace against the baby’s tiny chest, the child started howling again.

Nicole gathered the crying baby in her arms and stood up. She is undoubtedly hungry, Nicole thought, looking around the area for some kind of hut or shelter. There must be some food nearby. Under a deep overhanging rock about fifteen meters away, which had clearly been an enclosed area before the bombing raids began, Nicole found a large pan of water, some small objects of unknown purpose, a sleeping pad, and several more of the sacks out of which the clothing of both the woman and the child were made. But there was no food. Nicole tried unsuccessfully to get the girl to drink from the pan. Then she had another idea.

Returning to the body of the dead mother, Nicole determined that there was still some good milk left in her breasts. The woman had obviously died recently. Nicole lifted the mother’s torso and slid in behind her on the ground. Supporting the mother’s body against her own, Nicole held the baby girl against her mother’s breasts and watched her suck.

The child ate hungrily. In the middle of the feeding, a bomb blast illuminated the dead woman’s features. It was the same face Nicole had seen in the octospider painting in Artisan’s Square. So I did not imagine it, Nicole thought.

The baby girl fell asleep when she was finished nursing. Nicole wrapped her in one of the extra sacks and placed her softly on the ground. Nicole now examined the dead mother thoroughly for the first time. Based on the gaping wounds in the woman’s lower midsection and right thigh, Nicole surmised that two large pieces of a single bomb had torn through her and that she had subsequently bled to death. While she was inspecting the thigh wound, Nicole felt a strange bulge in the woman’s right buttock. Curious, she lifted the woman’s body slightly off the ground and ran her fingers over and around the bulge. It felt as if some hard object had been implanted underneath the skin.

Nicole retrieved her medical bag and then, with her small scissors, made an incision just to one side of the bulge. She pulled out an object that appeared to be silver in the dim light. It was the size and shape of a small cigar, twelve to fifteen centimeters in length, and about two centimeters in diameter. A puzzled Nicole twirled the object around in her right hand and tried to imagine what it could be. It was incredibly smooth, with no discernible breaks anywhere. Probably this is some kind of identifier for the zoo, she was thinking when a bomb exploded nearby, waking the sleeping girl.

Over in the direction of the Emerald City, bombs were falling with increasing intensity. While Nicole comforted the child, she thought about what she should do next. A large fireball raced toward the sky as one of the falling bombs caused an even larger explosion on the ground. In the temporary light, Nicole could see that she and the child were on the top of a small hill, very close to the edge of the developed part of the Alternate Domain. The Central Plain began no more than a hundred meters to the west.

Nicole stood up with the girl on her shoulder. She was near exhaustion. “We’re going out there, away from the bombs,” she said out loud to the baby, motioning in the direction of the Central Plain. Nicole tossed the cylindrical object in her medical bag and grabbed a pair of the clean sacks. These may be useful in the cold, Nicole thought, throwing the heavy sacks over her shoulders.

It took an hour for her to trudge with the baby and the sacks to a spot in the Central Plain that Nicole thought was far enough away from the bombs. She lay down on her back, the child cradled on her chest, and wrapped the sacks around both of them. Nicole was asleep in seconds.

Nicole was awakened by the movement of the girl. She had been having a conversation with Katie in her dream, but Nicole could not recall what they had been saying to each other. She sat up and changed the baby, using a clean cloth from her medical bag. The child stared at Nicole curiously with her wide blue eyes. “Good morning, little girl, whoever you are,” Nicole said brightly. The child smiled for the first time.

It was no longer completely dark. Firefly clusters illuminated the Emerald City in the distance, and the gaping holes in the dome allowed the light to shine on the surrounding area of Rama. The war must have ended, Nicole thought, seeing the light, or at least the raids have been suspended.

“Well, my newest friend,” Nicole said, standing up and stretching after placing the baby carefully on one of the clean sacks, “let’s see what adventures are in store for us today.”

The girl quickly crawled off the sack into the dirt of the Central Plain. Nicole picked her up and replaced her in the middle of the sack. Again she crawled toward the dirt. “Whoa, there, little one,” Nicole said with a laugh, picking the girl up a second time.

It was difficult for Nicole to gather up their belongings while she was holding the child in her arms. Eventually she succeeded and began walking slowly toward civilization. They were about three hundred meters from the closest buildings of the Alternate Domain. During her walk, Nicole decided that she would go first to the hospital to find Dr. Blue. Assuming that she had correctly concluded that the war was over or at least had been temporarily halted, Nicole planned to spend the morning finding out everything she could about the child. Who were her parents, Nicole formed the questions in her mind, and how long ago were they kidnapped from New Eden? She was angry with the octospiders. Why didn’t you tell me there were other human beings in the Emerald City? Nicole intended to ask the Chief Optimizer. And how can you defend the way you treated this child and her mother?

The girl, who was wide awake, would not sit still in Nicole’s arms. Nicole became uncomfortable. She decided to stop for a rest. While the child was playing in the dirt, Nicole stared at the destruction in front of her, both in the Alternate Domain and, in the distance, in the part of the Emerald City that she could see. Nicole suddenly felt-very sad. What is it all for? she asked herself. An image of Katie entered her mind, but Nicole pushed it aside, choosing instead to sit down in the dirt and entertain the child. Five minutes later they heard the whistle.

The sound was coming from the sky, from Rama itself. Nicole jumped to her feet, her pulse immediately skyrocketing. She felt a slight pain in her chest, but nothing could diminish her excitement. “Look,” she shouted to the baby girl, “look over there, in the south!”

In the distant southern bowl, streamers of colored light were playing around the tip of the Big Horn, the massive spire that thrust upward along the spin axis of the cylindrical spacecraft. The streamers coalesced and formed a red ring near the tip of the spire. A few moments later this huge red ring sailed slowly north along the axis of Rama. Around the Big Horn, more colors danced until they formed into a second ring, orange in color, which eventually followed the red ring, also in a northerly direction in the sky of Rama.

The whistle continued. It was not a harsh or shrill whistle. To Nicole it almost sounded musical. “Something’s going to happen,” Nicole said exultantly to the girl, “something good!”

The little girl had no idea what was occurring, but she laughed heartily when the woman picked her up and tossed her skyward. And for her the rings were definitely eye-catching. Now a yellow and a green ring were both crossing the black sky of Rama, and the red one in the front of the procession had just reached the Cylindrical Sea.

Again Nicole tossed the child a foot or two in the air. This time the girl’s necklace escaped from under her shirts and nearly flew off her head. Nicole caught the girl and gave her a hug. “I had almost forgotten about your necklace,” Nicole said. “Now that we have some decent light, may I take a look at it?”

The girl giggled as Nicole pulled the rope necklace over her head. At the bottom of the necklace, carved on a round piece of wood about four centimeters in diameter, was the outline of a man with arms upraised, surrounded on all sides by what appeared to be a fire. Nicole had seen a similar wood carving many years before, on Michael O’Toole’s desk in his room inside the Newton. Saint Michael of Siena, Nicole said to herself, turning the carving over.

On the back the word MARIA was carefully printed in lowercase letters. “That must be your name,” Nicole said to the girl. “Maria… Maria.” There was no indication of recognition. The child started to frown just before Nicole laughed and tossed her into the air one more time.

A few minutes later Nicole put the squirming child down again. Maria immediately crawled into the dirt. Nicole kept one eye on Maria and one eye on the colored rings in the Rama sky. All eight rings could now be seen, the blue, brown, pink, and purple over the Southern Hemicylinder and the first four in the line in the sky above the north. As the red ring vanished in the northern bowl, another red ring formed at the tip of the Big Horn.

Just like all those years ago, Nicole thought. But her mind was not really focused on the rings yet. She was searching her memory, trying to remember every missing persons report that had ever been filed in New Eden. There had been a handful of boating accidents on Lake Shakespeare, she recalled, and every now and then one of the patients in the mental hospital at Avalon had disappeared. But how could a couple vanish like that? And where was Maria’s father? There were many questions that Nicole wanted to ask the octospiders.

The dazzling rings continued to float above her head. Nicole remembered that day long ago when Katie, as a girl of ten or eleven, had been so thrilled by the huge rings in the sky that she had screamed with joy. She was always my most uninhibited child, Nicole thought, unable to stop herself. Her laugh was so complete, so genuine… Katie had so much potential.

With great effort Nicole forced herself to concentrate on Maria. The child was sitting down, merrily eating the dirt from the Central Plain. “No, Maria,” Nicole said, gently touching the child’s hands. “That’s dirty.”

The girl screwed up her beautiful face and began to cry.

Like Katie, Nicole thought immediately. She couldn’t stand for me to tell her no. Memories of Katie now flooded into her mind. Nicole saw her daughter first as a baby, then as a precocious early adolescent at the Node, and finally as a young woman in New Eden. The deep heartache that accompanied the images of her lost daughter completely overwhelmed Nicole. Tears ran down her cheeks and her body began to shake with sobs. “Oh, Katie,” Nicole yelled out loud. “Why? Why? Why?”

She buried her face in her hands. Maria had stopped crying and was looking at Nicole with a quizzical look.

“It’s all right, Nicole,” a voice behind her said. “It will all be over soon.”

Nicole thought her mind was playing tricks. She turned around slowly. The Eagle was approaching with outstretched arms.

The third red ring had reached the northern bowl and there were no more colored lights around the Big Horn. “So will all the lights come on when the rings are finished?” Nicole asked the Eagle.

“What a good memory,” he said. “You might be right.”

Nicole was again holding Maria in her arms. She kissed the child gently on the cheek and Maria smiled. “Thank you for the girl,” Nicole said. “She is wonderful… and I understand what you’re telling me.”

The Eagle faced Nicole. “What are you talking about?” he said. “We didn’t have anything to do with the child.”

Nicole searched the alien’s mystical blue eyes with her own. She had never seen a pair of eyes that had such a wide range of expression. But Nicole had had no recent practice reading what the Eagle was saying with his eyes. Was he teasing her about Maria? Or was he serious? Surely it wasn’t just chance that she discovered the child so soon after Katie killed herself.

You ‘re being too rigid in your thinking, Nicole recalled Richard saying to her at the Node. Just because the eagle is not biological like you and me does not mean that he’s not alive. He’s a robot, all right, but he’s much smarter than we are… And much more subtle.

“So have you been hiding in Rama all this time?” Nicole asked several seconds later.

“No,” the Eagle replied. He did not elaborate. Nicole smiled. “You’ve already told me that we haven’t reached the Node or an equivalent place, and I’m certain that you didn’t just drop by for a social visit. Are you going to tell me why you are here?”

“This is a Stage Two intercession,” the Eagle said. “We have decided to interrupt the observation process.”

“Okay,” Nicole said, placing Maria back down on the ground, “I understand the concept. But what exactly will happen now?”

“Everyone will go to sleep,” the Eagle said. “And after they awaken…?” Nicole asked. “All I can tell you is that everyone will go to sleep.” Nicole stepped away in the direction of the Emerald. City and raised her arms to the sky. Only three colored rings: remained now, and they were all far away, over above the Northern Hemicylinder. “Just out of curiosity-I’m not complaining, you understand…” Nicole said with a trace of sarcasm. She paused and turned around to face the Eagle. “Why didn’t you intercede a long time ago? Before all thisoccurred? Before there were so many deaths?”

The Eagle didn’t answer immediately. “You can’t have it both ways, Nicole,” he said at length. “You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.”

“Excuse me,” Nicole said with a puzzled look on her face. “Did I mistakenly ask a religious question?”

“Not really,” the Eagle replied. “What you must understand is that our objective is to develop a complete catalog. on all the spacefarers in this region of the Galaxy. We are not judgmental. We are scientists. We do not care if it is — your natural predilection to destroy yourself. We do care, however, if the likely future return from our project no longer justifies the significant resources we have assigned.”

“Huh?” said Nicole. “Are you telling me that you’re not interceding to stop the bloodshed, but for some other reason?”

“Yes,” said the Eagle. “However, I’m going to change the subject because our time is extremely limited. The lights will be coming on in two more minutes. You will be asleep a minute after that. If you have anything you wish to communicate to the girl child—”

“Are we going to die?’ Nicole said, suddenly frightened.

“Not immediately,” said the Eagle. “But I cannot guarantee that everyone will live through the sleeping period.”

Nicole dropped down in the dirt beside the girl. Maria had another clod in her mouth and wet dirt lined her lips. Nicole wiped her face off very gently and offered the child a drink of water from a cup. To Nicole’s surprise, Maria sipped at the water, spilling it down her chin.

Nicole smiled and Maria giggled. Nicole stuck her finger under the girl’s chin and tickled her. Maria’s giggles erupted into laughter, the pure, uninhibited, magical laughter of the small child. The sound was incredibly beautiful. Nicole’s eyes filled with tears.

Suddenly all of Rama was filled with light. It was an awesome spectacle. The Big Horn and its six surrounding acolytes, attached by massive flying buttresses, dominated the sky above them. “Forty-five seconds?” Nicole said to the Eagle.

The alien birdman nodded. Nicole reached over and picked up the girl. “I know that nothing that has happened to you recently makes any sense, Maria,” Nicole said, holding the child in her lap, “but I want you to know that you have already been terribly important in my life and I love you very much.”

There was a look of astonishing wisdom in the little girl’s eyes. She leaned forward and put her head on Nicole’s shoulder. For a few seconds Nicole did not know what to do. Then she began patting Maria on the back. And singing softly.

“Lay thee down…

Now and rest…

May thy slumber be

Blessed…”