Rama II Part 16

"What did you expect?" he had asked finally, his frustration obvious. "That we would ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after? Come on, Nicole, this is the real world. You must know that the English people would never accept a half-black woman as their queen."

Nicole had escaped before Henry saw her tears. And so, my darling Gene-vieve, Nicole said to herself in the bottom of the pit in Rama, I left Los Angeles with two new treasures. I had a gold medal and a wonderful baby girl within my body. Her thoughts quickly skipped across the following weeks of anxiety to the desperate, lonely moment when she finally summoned her courage to talk to her father.

"I ... I don't know what to do," Nicole had said tentatively to Pierre on that September morning in the living room of their villa at Beauvois. "I know that I have disappointed you terribly-I have disappointed myself-but I want to ask you if it's all right. I mean, if I want to, Papa, can I stay here and try-"

"Of course, Nicole/' her father had interrupted her. He was softly crying. It was the only time Nicole had seen him cry since the death of her mother. "We'll do whatever's right/'

he had said as he pulled her into his embrace.

/ was so lucky, Nicole thought. He was so accepting. He never faulted me. He never asked anything. When I told him that Henry was the father and that I never wanted anyone else to know, least of all Henry or the child, he promised he would keep my secret And he has.

The lights came on suddenly and Nicole stood up to survey her prison under the new conditions. Only the center of the pit was fully lighted; both the ends were in shadow. Considering her situation, she was feeling amazingly cheerful and upbeat.

She looked up to the roof of the barn and through it to the nondescript sky of Rama. Nicole thought about her last few hours and had a sudden impulse. She had not said a prayer in over twenty years but she dropped down on her knees in the full light in the middle of the pit. Dear G.o.d, she said, I know it's a little late, but thank you for my father, my mother, and my daughter. And all the wonders of life. Nicole glanced up at the ceiling. She was smiling and had a twinkle in her eye. And right now, dear G.o.d, I could use a little help. 38 VISITORS The tiny robot strode out into the light and unsheathed his sword. The English army had arrived at Harfleur.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger . . ,"

Henry V, new king of England, continued to exhort his imaginary soldiers. Nicole smiled as she listened. She had spent the better part of an hour following Wakefield's Prince Hal from the debauchery of his youth, onto the battlefields fighting against Hotspur and the other rebels, and thence to the throne of England. Nicole had only once read the three Henry plays, and that had been years before, but she was well aware of the historical period because of her lifelong fascination with Joan of Arc.

"Shakespeare made you into something you never were," she said out loud to the little robot as she bent beside it to insert Richard's baton in the OFF slot. "You were a warrior,, to be sure, n.o.body would argue with that. But you were also a cold and heartless conqueror. You made Normandy bleed under your powerful yoke. You almost crashed the life out of France."

Nicole laughed nervously at herself. Here I am, she thought, talking to a senseless ceramic prince twenty centimeters high. She remembered her feelings of hopelessness an hour earlier after she had tried one more time to figure out a way to escape. The fact that her time was running out had been reinforced when she had drunk the next to last swig of water. Oh well, she mused, turning back to Prince Hal, at least this is better than feeling sorry for myself.

"And what else can you do, my little prince?" Nicole said.

"What happens if I insert this pin in the slot marked c?" The robot activated, walked a few steps, and finally approached her left foot. After a long silence Prince Hal spoke, not in the rich actor's voice he had used during his earlier recitals, but instead in Wakefield's British tw.a.n.g. "C stands for converse, my friend, and I have a considerable repertoire. But I don't speak until you say something first." Nicole laughed. "All right, Prince Hal," she said after a moment's thought, "tell me about Joan of Arc," The robot hesitated and then frowned. "She was a witch, dear lady, burned at the stake in Rouen a decade after my death. During my reign the north of France had been subjugated by my armies. The French witch, claiming she was sent by G.o.d-"

Nicole stopped listening and jerked her head up as a shadow crossed over them. She thought she saw something flying above the roof of the bam. Her heart pounded furiously.

"Here. I'm here," she shouted at the top of her voice. Prince Hal droned on in the background about how Joan of Arc's success had sadly resulted in the return of his conquests to the realm of France. "So English. So typically English," Nicole said as she once again inserted the baton in Prince Hal's OFF b.u.t.ton.

Moments later the shadow was large and completely darkened the bottom of the pit. Nicole looked up and her heart caught in her throat. Hovering over the pit, its wings spread and flapping, was a gigantic birdlike creature. Nicole shrunk back and screamed involuntarily. The creature stuck its neck into the pit and uttered a set of noises. The sounds were harsh yet slightly musical. Nicole was paralyzed. The thing repeated almost the same set of noises and then tried, without success because its wings were too large, to lower itself slowly into the narrow pit.

During this brief period Nicole, her traumatic terror giving way to normal fear, studied the great flying alien. Its face, except for two soft eyes that were a deep blue surrounded by a brown ring, reminded her of the pterodactyls that she had seen in the French museum of natural history. The beak was quite long and hooked. The mouth was toothless and the two talons, bilaterally symmetrical about the main body, each had four sharp digits.

Nicole would have guessed the avian's ma.s.s at about a hundred kilograms. Its body, except for the face and beak, the ends of the wings, and the talons, was covered by a thick black material that resembled velvet. When it was clear to the avian that it would not be able to fly down to the bottom of the pit, it sounded two sharp notes, pulled itself up, and disappeared.

Nicole did not move at all during the first minute after the creature departed. Then she sat down and tried to collect her thoughts. The adrenaline from her fright was still coursing through her body. She tried to think rationally about what she had seen. Her first idea was that the thing was a biot, like all the rest of the mobile creatures that had been seen previously in Rama. If that's a biot, she said to herself, then it's extremely advanced. She pictured the other biots she had seen, both the crabs from the Southern Hemicylinder and the wide variety of weird creations filmed by the first Raman expedition. Nicole could not convince herself that the avian was a biot. There was something about the eyes . . .

She heard wings flapping in the distance and her body tensed. Nicole cowered in the shadowy corner just as the light in the pit was again obscured by a huge hovering body. Actually it was two bodies. The first avian had returned with a companion, the second one considerably the larger. The new bird stuck its neck down and stared at Nicole with its blue eyes while it hovered over the pit. It made a sound, louder and less musical than the other, and then craned its neck around to look at its companion. While the two avians jabbered back and forth, Nicole noticed that this one was covered with a polished surface, like linoleum, but in all other respects except size was identical to her first visitor. At length the new bird ascended and the strange pair landed on the side of the pit, still jabbering. They observed Nicole quietly for a minute or two. Then, after a brief conversation, they were gone.

Nicole was exhausted after her bout with fear. Within minutes after her flying visitors departed, she was curled up and asleep in the comer of the pit.

She slept soundly for several hours. She was awakened by a loud noise, a crack that resounded through the barn like the report of a gun. She woke up quickly, but heard no more unexplained sounds. Her body reminded her that she was hungry and thirsty. She pulled out what was left of her food. Should I make two tiny meals out of this? she asked herself wearily, or should I eat it alt now and accept whatever comes?

With a deep sigh, Nicole decided to finish off her food and water with one last meal. She was thinking that the two combined might give her enough sustenance that she could temporarily forget about food. She was wrong. While Nicole was drinking the last sip of water from her water flask, her mind was bombarded with images of the bottled spring water that she and her family always had on the table at Beauvois.

There was another loud crack in the distance after Nicole had finished her meal. She stopped to listen, but again there was silence. Her thoughts were dominated by escape ideas, all of them using the avians in some way to help her out of the pit. She was angry with herself for not having tried to communicate with them while she had the chance. Nicole laughed to herself. Of course, they might have decided to eat me. But who's to say starving to death is to be preferred over being eaten?

Nicole was certain that the avians would come back. Perhaps her certainty was reinforced by the hopelessness of her situation, but nevertheless she started making plans for what she would do when they did return. h.e.l.lo, she imagined herself saying. She would stand up with an outstretched palm and walk forcefully to the center of the pit, right under the hovering creature. Nicole would then use a special set of gestures to communicate her plight: Pointing repeatedly first at herself and then the pit would indicate that she couldn't escape; waving at both the avians and the barn roof would ask them for their help.

Two loud sharp noises brought Nicole back to reality. After a brief pause she heard still another crack. Nicole searched through the "Environments" chapter in her computerized Atlas of Rama and then laughed at herself for not having recognized immediately what was occurring. The loud reports were the sound of the ice breaking up as the Cylindrical Sea melted from the bottom. Rama was still inside the orbit of Venus (although the last midcourse maneuver had placed it onto a trajectory whose distance from the sun was now increasing again), and the solar input had finally brought the temperature inside Rama to above the freezing point of water.

The Atlas warned of fierce windstorms, hurricanes that would be created by the atmospheric thermal instabilities following the melting of the sea. Nicole walked to the center of the pit. "Come on, you birds, or whatever you are," she yelled. "Come get me now and let me have a chance to escape."

But the avians did not come back. Nicole sat awake in the corner for ten hours, slowly growing weaker as the frequency of the loud reports reached a peak and then gradually diminished. The wind began to blow. At first it was just a breeze, but it became a gale by the time the cracks from the ice breaking up had stopped. Nicole was completely discouraged. When she fell asleep again she told herself that she would probably not be awake more than one or two more times.

The winds pummeled New York as the hurricane raged for hours. Nicole huddled lifelessly in a corner. She listened to the howling wind and remembered sitting in a ski chalet during a blizzard in Colorado. She tried to remember the pleasures of skiing but she could not. Her hunger and fatigue had weakened her imagination as well. Nicole sat very still, her mind devoid of thoughts except for wondering occasionally what it would feel like to die.

She couldn't remember falling asleep, but then she couldn't remember waking up either. She was very weak. Her mind was telling her that something had blown into her hole. It was dark again. Nicole crawled from her end of the pit toward the end with the jumbled metal. She did not switch on her flashlight. She b.u.mped into something and started, then she felt it with her hands. The object was big, as large as a basketball. It had a smooth exterior and was oval in shape.

Nicole became more alert. She found her flashlight in her flight suit and illuminated the object. It was off-white and shaped like an egg. She examined it thoroughly. When she pressed on it hard, it gave some under the pressure. Can I eat it? her mind asked, her hunger so severe that she had no worries about what it might do to her.

Nicole pulled out her knife and was able to cut it with difficulty. She feverishly chopped off a chunk and forced it into her mouth. It was tasteless. Nicole spat it out and started to cry. She kicked the object angrily and it rolled over. She thought she heard something. Nicole reached out and pushed it hard, rolling it over again. Yes, she said to herself, yes. That was a slos.h.i.+ng sound.

It was slow cutting through the outside with her knife. After several minutes Nicole retrieved her medical equipment and started working on the object with her power scalpel. Whatever it was, the object was made of three separate and distinct layers. The covering was tough, like the skin of a football, and relatively difficult to manipulate. The second layer was a soft, moist, royal blue compound the consistency of a melon. Inside, in the center, were several quarts of a greenish liquid. Trembling with antic.i.p.ation, Nicole stuck a cupped hand into the incision and pulled the liquid to her lips. It had an odd, medicinal taste, but it was refres.h.i.+ng. She drank two hurried swallows and then her years of medical training interceded.

Fighting against her desire to drink more, Nicole inserted the probe from her ma.s.s spectrometer into the liquid to a.n.a.lyze its chemical const.i.tuents. She was in such a hurry that she made a mistake with the first specimen and had to repeat the process. When the results of the a.n.a.lysis were displayed on the tiny modular monitor that could be affixed to any of her instruments, Nicole began to weep with joy. The liquid would not poison her. On the contrary, it was rich in proteins and minerals in the kinds of chemical combinations that the body could process.

"All right, all right!" Nicole shouted out loud. She stood up quickly and nearly fainted. More cautious now, she sat back down on her knees and began the feast of her life. She drank the liquid and ate the moist meat until she was absolutely stuffed. Then she fell into a deep, satisfied sleep. Nicole's primary concern when she awakened was to determine the quant.i.ty of "manna melon," as she called it, that was available to her. She had been a glutton, and knew it, but that was in the past. What she needed to do now was to husband the manna melon until she could somehow enlist the aid of the avians.

Nicole measured the melon carefully. Its gross weight had originally been almost ten kilograms, but only a little over eight remained. Her approximate a.s.sessment indicated that the inedible outer portion comprised roughly two kilograms, leaving her six kilograms of nourishment split roughly evenly between the liquid and the royal blue meat. Let's see, she was thinking, three liquid kilograms makes . , . Nicole's thought processes were interrupted as the lights came on again. Yessirree, she said to herself, checking her wrist.w.a.tch, right on time, with the same secular drift She looked up from her watch and saw the egg-shaped object for the first time in the full light. Her recognition was immediate. Oh my G.o.d, Nicole thought as she walked over and traced with her fingers the brown lines wriggling on the creamy-white surface. I had almost forgotten. She reached into her flight suit and pulled out the polished stone that Omeh had given her on New Year's Eve in Rome. She stared at it and then glanced over at the oval object in the pit. Oh my G.o.d, Nicole repeated.

She replaced the stone in her pocket and removed the small green vial, "Ronata will know the time to drink," she heard her great-grandfather say again. Nicole sat down in the comer and emptied the vial in one gulp.

39 WATERS OF WISDOM.

Immediately Nicole's vision began to blur. She closed her eyes for a second.

When she opened them again she was blinded by a riot of bright colors, streaming by her in geometrical patterns as if she were moving very fast. In the center of her sight, way off in the distance, a black dot emerged from the background amid a brilliant set of alternating red and yellow forms. Nicole concentrated on the dot as it continued to grow. It rushed toward her and expanded to fill her vision. She saw a man, an old black man, running across the African savanna on a perfect starry night. Nicole clearly saw his face as he turned to climb a mountain of rocks. The man looked like Omeh but also, somewhat strangely, like her mother.

He raced up the rock mountain with amazing agility. At the top he stood in silhouette, his arms outspread, and stared into the sky at the crescent moon on the horizon. Nicole heard the sound of a firing rocket engine and turned to her left. She watched a small s.p.a.cecraft descend to the surface of the moon. Two men in s.p.a.ce suits started down a ladder. She heard Neil Armstrong say "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the lunar surface and they both pointed off to their right. They were staring at an old black man standing on a nearby lunar scarp. He smiled. His teeth were very white.

His face loomed ever larger in Nicole's vision as the lunar landscape behind him began to fade. He started to chant slowly, in Senoufo, but at first Nicole could not comprehend what he was saying. All of a sudden she realized that he was talking to her and that she could understand every word. "I am one of your ancestors from long ago," he said. "As a boy I went out to meditate the night that people landed on the moon. Because I was thirsty, I drank deeply the waters from the Lake of Wisdom. I flew first to the moon, where I talked with the astronauts, and then to other worlds. I met The Great Ones. They told me you would come to bring the story of Minowe to the stars."

As Nicole watched, the old man's head began to grow. His teeth became vicious, long, his eyes yellow. He transformed into a tiger and leapt for her throat. Nicole screamed as she felt the teeth upon her neck. She prepared to die. But the tiger became limp, an arrow was buried deep in its side. Nicole heard a noise and looked up. Her mother, wearing a magnificent flowing red robe and carrying a golden bow, was running gracefully toward a gilded chariot parked in the middle of the air. "Mother wait," Nicole shouted. The figure turned. "You were seduced," her mother said.

"You must be more careful. Only three times can I save you. Beware of what you cannot see but know is there." Anawi climbed into the chariot and took the reins. "You must not die. I love you, Nicole." The winged red horses arched higher and higher until Nicole could no longer see them. The color pattern returned to her vision. Nicole heard music now, first far off in the distance, then much closer. It was synthetic, like the sound of crystal bells. Beautiful, haunting, ethereal. There was loud applause. Nicole was sitting in the front row at a concert with her father. On the stage an Oriental man with hair down to the floor, his eyes fixed in a gaze of rapture, stood next to three odd-shaped instruments. The sound was all around her. It made her want to cry.

"Come on," her father said. "We must go," As Nicole was watching her father turned into a sparrow. He smiled at her. She flapped her own sparrow wings and they were airborne together, leaving the concert behind. The music faded. The air rushed by them. Nicole could see the lovely Loire Valley and a glimpse of their villa at Beauvois. She was content to be going home. But her sparrow father descended instead at Chinon, farther down the Loire. The two sparrows landed in a tree on the castle grounds.

Beneath them, standing in the crisp December air, Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine were arguing about the succession to the throne of England. Eleanor walked over under the tree and noticed the sparrows. "Why h.e.l.lo, Nicole/' she said, "I didn't know you were there/' Queen Eleanor reached up and stroked the sparrow's underbelly. Nicole thrilled to the softness of her touch. "Remember, Nicole," she said, "destiny is more important than love of any kind. You can endure anything if you are certain of your destiny."

Nicole smelled fire and sensed they were needed somewhere else. She and her father ascended, turning north toward Normandy. The fire smell grew stronger. They heard a cry for help and urgently flapped their wings. In Rouen a plain girl with lights in her eyes looked up at them as they approached. The fire below had reached her feet, the first smell of burning flesh was in the air. The girl lowered her eyes in prayer as a makes.h.i.+ft cross was held above her head by a priest. "Blessed Jesus/' she said, tears running down her cheeks.

"We'll save you, Joan," Nicole shouted as she and her father dropped into the crowded square. Joan embraced them as they untied her from the stake. The fire exploded around them and everything went black. In the next instant Nicole was flying again, but this time as a great white heron. She was alone, inside Rama, flying high over the city of New York. She banked to avoid one of the avians, who regarded her with shock.

Nicole could see everything in New York in incredible detail. It was as if she had multispectral eyes with a wide-range of lenses. She could spot movement in four different places. Close to the barn, a centipede biot was trudging slowly toward the south end of the building. From the vicinity of each of the three central plazas, heat was emanating from underground sources, causing colored patterns in her infrared vision. Nicole circled down toward the barn and landed safely in her pit.

40 ALIEN INVITATION.

I must be prepared for rescue, Nicole said to herself. She had finished filling her flask with the greenish liquid from the center of the manna melon. After carefully sectioning the moist melon flesh and putting the pieces in her old food container packets, Nicole sat back down in her usual corner. Whew! she thought, returning to the wild mental excursion she had taken after drinking the contents of the vial. What in the world was that all about? Nicole recalled her vision during the Poro, when she was still a child, and the brief conversation about it that she had had with Orneh three years later when Nicole had returned to Nidougou for the funeral of her mother.

"Where did Ronata go?" Omeh had asked one evening when the old man and the girl had been alone together.

She had known immediately what he was asking. "I became a big white bird," she bad answered. "1 flew beyond the Moon and Sun to the great void."

"Ah," he had said, "Omeh thought so." And why didn't you ask him then what had happened to you? the scientist in the adult Nicole asked her former tenyear-old self. Then maybe some of this would make sense. But somehow Nicole knew that the vision was beyond a.n.a.lysis, that it existed in a realm as yet unfathomed by the deductive processes that made science so powerful. She thought instead about her mother, about how beautiful she had been in her long flowing red robes. Anawi had saved her from the tiger. Thank you, Mother, Nicole thought. She wished that she had talked longer with her.

It was a weird sound, like dozens of unshod baby feet on a linoleum floor, and it was definitely coming in her direction. Nicole didn't have much time to wonder. Seconds later the head and antennae of a centipede biot appeared at the edge of her pit and, without slowing down in any way, proceeded directly down the wall at the opposite end.

Altogether the biot was four meters long. It clambered down the wall without difficulty, placing each of its sixty legs directly against the smooth surface and holding on by some kind of suction. Nicole put on her backpack and watched for her opportunity. She was not that surprised by the appearance of the biot. After what she had seen in her vision, she was certain that she was going to be rescued by some means.

The centipede biot consisted of fifteen attached, jointed segments, each with four legs, and an insectlike head with a bizarre array of sensors, two of which were long and thin and resembled antennae. The jumbled pile of metal at the other end of the pit was apparently its spare parts. While Nicole was watching, the biot replaced three of its legs, the carapace for one of its segments, and two k.n.o.bby protruberances on the side of its head. The entire process took no more than five minutes. When it was finished, the biot started again up the wall.

Nicole jumped on the centipede biot's back when threefourths of its body was heading upward. The sudden extra weight was too much. The biot lost its grasp and fell, along with Nicole, back into the pit. Moments later it tried again to scale the wall. This time Nicole waited until the entire length of the centipede was heading up the wall, hoping that the strength of the extra segments would make the difference. It was to no avail. The biot and Nicole collapsed into a heap. One of its front legs had been severely injured during the second fall, so the biot made the necessary repairs before trying to ascend the wall a third time. Nicole, meanwhile, pulled all her strongest suture material out of her medical pack and tied one end of a long octuple thickness around the three back sections of the biot. In the other end of the suture thread she made a loop. After she first put on gloves to protect her hands and then fas.h.i.+oned a waistband to keep the thread from cutting, Nicole tied the loop around her waist.

This could be a disaster, Nicole realized as she imagined all the possible outcomes of her scheme. // the thread does not hold, I could fall. The second time I might not be so lucky. The centipede inched its way up the wall as before. Several small steps after it was completely elongated, the biot felt Nicole's weight from below. This time, however, it did not fall. The struggling biot managed to continue slowly on its upward path. Nicole kept her body perpendicular to the surface, as if she were rock climbing, and held onto the suture thread with both her hands.

Nicole was about forty centimeters behind the last segment of the biot as they scaled the wall. When the head of the centipede reached the top of the pit, Nicole was almost halfway out. Her slow and steady climb continued as, segment after segment, a portion of the biot left the pit above her. A few minutes later, however, her progress slowed markedly, stopping altogether when the number of centipede segments remaining on the wall dropped to four. Nicole could almost touch the rear segment of the centipede if she stretched her arms above her. Only about ,one meter's length of the biot was still on the wall, but nevertheless it was apparently stuck. Nicole was putting too much strain on the joints attaching the rear segments. Grim scenarios ran through Nicole's mind as she dangled more than six meters above the floor of the pit. This is great, she thought sarcastically, as she pulled tightly on the suture line and placed her feet firmly against the wall. There are three possible outcomes, none of them good. The thread could break. The biot could collapse. Or I might remain suspended here forever.

Nicole considered her alternatives. The only plan she could conceive with even a reasonable probability of success, and it was still very risky, was for her to climb up the suture thread to the last segment and then, somehow using the body or legs of the centipede as handholds, to muscle her way to the top of the pit.

Nicole glanced down and remembered her first fall. I think I'll wait awhile first and see if this machine gets moving again. A minute pa.s.sed. Then another. Nicole took a deep breath. She reached up high on the suture line and pulled herself up the wall. She repeated the process with the other hand. She was now right behind the last segment. Nicole reached out and grabbed one of the legs, but as soon as she tried to put any weight on it, it pulled free from the wall. So much for that plan, she thought after a moment's fright. She had restabilized herself just behind the biot. Nicole studied the centipede again very carefully. The carapace of each segment was made of overlapping pieces. It might be possible to grab one of those flaps, . . . Nicole reconstructed her first two attempts to ride on the back of the biot. It was the suction force of the feet that gave out, she thought. Now most of the biot is on the level ground above. It should be able to hold me.

Nicole realized that once she was on the back of the biot, she no longer had any protection against falling. To test the concept, she pulled herself to the top of the suture line and grabbed the carapace flap. She was able to get a firm grip. The only question was whether the flap could support her weight. Nicole tried to a.s.sess its strength while holding onto the suture with her other hand for safety. So far, so good. Nicole grasped the flap on the rear biot segment and cautiously pulled herself up. She released her grip on the suture thread. Then she wrapped her legs around the side of the centipede's body and scooted along until she could reach the next flap. The legs of the rear segment popped off the wall, but the centipede did not move otherwise.

She repeated the process twice more, moving from segment to segment. Nicole was almost to the top. While she was on her final climb, she had a brief scare when the biot slipped a few centimeters back into the pit. Holding on breathlessly, she waited until the biot was stable and then crawled forward to the first segment that was on level ground. As she was crawling, the biot began walking again, but Nicole just rolled off sideways and landed on her back on the ground. "Hallelujah!" she shouted.

As she stood on the wall around New York and stared out at the moiling waters of the Cylindrical Sea, Nicole wondered why there had been no answer to her call for help. The self-test status flag on her radio indicated that it was working properly, yet she had tried three separate times without success to establish contact with the rest of the crew. Nicole was well aware of the commlinks available to the cosmonauts. Failure to receive a reply meant both that no crew members were within six to eight kilometers of her at present and that the Beta relay station was not operational. If Beta were working, Nicole thought, then they would be able to talk to me from anywhere, even the Newton. Nicole told herself that the crew was doubtless...o...b..ard their own s.p.a.cecraft, preparing for another sortie, and that the Beta communications station had probably been disabled by the hurricane. What bothered her, though, was that it had already been forty-five hours since the onset of the melting and more than ninety hours since she had fallen into the pit. Why was n.o.body looking for her?

Nicole's eyes scanned the sky for some sign of a helicopter. The atmosphere now contained clouds, as predicted. The melting of the Cylindrical Sea had substantially altered the weather patterns on Rama. The temperature had warmed up considerably. Nicole glanced at her thermometer and confirmed her estimate, that it was now four degrees above freezing.

The most likely situation, Nicole reasoned, returning to the question of the whereabouts of her colleagues, is that they will return soon. I need to stay close to this wall so that I can be easily seen. Nicole did not waste much time thinking about other, less likely scenarios. She considered only briefly the possibility that the crew had had a major disaster and n.o.body had yet been available to look for her. But even in that case, she said to herself, I should follow the same approach. They would come sooner or later.

To pa.s.s the time, Nicole took a sample of the sea and tested it. It had very few of the organic poisons found by the first Raman expedition. Maybe they flourished and died while I was still in the pit, she thought. Anyway they're virtually all gone now. Nicole noted to herself that in an emergency a strong swimmer might be able to make it across without a boat. However, she recalled the pictures of the shark biots and other denizens of the sea reported by Norton and his crew and slightly modified her a.s.sessment.

Nicole walked along the ramparts for several hours. While she was sitting down quietly eating her manna melon lunch {and thinking about methods she could employ to retrieve the rest of the melon, in the event that she still wasn't rescued in another seventy-two hours), she heard what she thought was a cry coming from New York. She thought immediately of Dr. Takagi-s.h.i.+.

She tried her radio one more time. Nothing. Again Nicole checked the sky for some sign of a helicopter. She was still debating whether or not to forsake her lookout on the wall when she heard another cry. This time she had a better fix on its location. She located the nearest stairway and walked south into the center of New York.

Nicole had not yet updated the map of New York stored in her computer. After she crossed the annular streets near the central plaza, she stopped near the octahedron and entered all her new discoveries, including the bam with the pits and anything else she could remember. A moment later, while Nicole was admiring the beauty of the bizarre, eight-sided building, she heard a third cry. Only this time it was more like a shriek. If it was Takagi-s.h.i.+, he was certainly making a peculiar noise.

She jogged across the open plaza, trying to close in on the sound while it was still fresh in her mind. As Nicole approached the buildings on the opposite side, the shriek sounded again. This time she also heard an answer. She recognized the voices. They sounded like the avian pair that had visited her while she was in the pit. Nicole became more cautious. She walked in the direction of the sound. It seemed to be coming from the area around the lattice nets that Francesca Sabatini had found so fascinating.

In less than two minutes, Nicole was standing between two tall skysc.r.a.pers that were connected at the ground by a thick mesh lattice that rose 6fty meters into the air. About twenty meters above the ground, the velvet-bodied avian struggled against its trap. The avian's talons and wings were ensnared in the cords of the stringy lattice. It screamed again when it saw Nicole. Its larger companion, presently circling near the top of the buildings, dove down in her direction.

Nicole cowered against the facade of one of the buildings as the avian drew near. It jabbered at Nicole, as if it were scolding her, but it did not touch her. The velvet avian then said something and, after a short exchange, the huge linoleum bird withdrew to a nearby ledge about twenty meters away.

After she had calmed herself (and keeping one eye on the linoleum avian on its perch), Nicole walked over to the lattice and inspected it. She and Francesca had not had any time to spare when they had been searching for Takagis.h.i.+, so this was Nicole's first chance for a detailed examination. The lattice was made of a ropelike material, about four centimeters thick, that had some elasticity. There were thousands of intersections in the lattice, and at each one of them there was a small knot, or node. The nodes were a little sticky, but not enough to make Nicole think that the whole lattice was some kind of spider web for catching flying creatures.

While she was studying the bottom of the lattice, the free avian flew over Nicole's head and landed close to its trapped friend. Being very careful to avoid becoming snared itself, it played with the individual strands with its talons. It also stretched and twisted the cords, with some difficulty. Next the linoleum bird gingerly stepped over to where its companion was trapped and made an awkward attempt either to break or untie the lattice links holding the other avian. When it was finished, the huge bird stepped back and stared at Nicole.

What is it doing? Nicole said to herself. I'm certain that it's trying to tell me something. . . . When Nicole did not move, the avian laboriously repeated the entire demonstration. This time Nicole thought she understood that the alien creature was trying to tell her that it couldn't free its friend. Nicole smiled and waved. Then, still staying at the bottom of the lattice, she tied a few of the adjacent cords together. When she subsequently untied them, the two avians shrieked their approval. She repeated the process twice and then pointed, first at herself and then at the velvet creature trapped above her.

There was a flurry of talk in their loud, sometimes musical tongue and the larger of the pair returned to his ledge. Nicole stared up at the velvet creature. It was caught in three different places; in each case its struggle had resulted in its being wedged more tightly in the elastic cord. Nicole surmised that the avian must have been caught in the violent hurricane winds and had been blown into the lattice during the preceding night. The cords had probably deformed under the momentum of the contact, and when they had snapped back to their normal size, the great bird was trapped in the mesh. It was not a difficult climb. The lattice was carefully anch.o.r.ed to the two buildings and the rope itself was heavy enough that Nicole did not sway very much. But twenty meters off the ground is a considerable height, taller than a normal six-story building, so Nicole was having some second thoughts when she finally reached the alt.i.tude where the avian was trapped.

Nicole was panting from the effort of her climb. She eased gingerly over to the avian to ensure that she had not misunderstood anything in their strange communication. The alien bird followed her fixedly with its huge blue eyes. One of the wings was snared very close to the avian's head. Nicole began trying to free the wing, first wrapping strands of the lattice around her own ankles to make certain that she would not fall. It was slow work. At one point Nicole caught a whiff of the creature's powerful breath. / know that smell, Nicole said to herself. It only took an instant for Nicole to connect the smell with the manna melon that she had been eating earlier. So you eat the same thing? Nicole thought. But where does it come from? Nicole wished that she could talk to these strange and wonderful creatures. She struggled with the first knot. It was very tight. She was afraid she might injure the creature's wing if she pulled with more force. Nicole reached into her pack and retrieved her power scalpel.

Instantly the other avian was upon her, jabbering and shrieking and scaring Nicole half to death. It would not go away and permit her to proceed until Nicole moved away from the trapped bird and showed its companion how the scalpel could cut through the lattice cord.

Using the scalpel the freeing operation was completed quickly. The velvet avian soared into the air, its musical cries of happiness resounding throughout the area. Its companion joined in the celebration with shrieks of its own as the two played, almost like lovebirds, in the air above the lattice. They disappeared a moment later and Nicole climbed slowly down to the ground. Nicole was pleased with herself. She was ready now to return to the wall and wait for the rescue that she was certain was imminent. She walked toward the north, singing a folk song of the Loire that she remembered from her adolescence.

After several minutes Nicole had company again. More accurately, she had a guide. Whenever she would make a wrong turn, the velvet avian, flying overhead, would make an incredible racket. The noise would only cease when Nicole would go in the proper direction. / wonder where we're going? Nicole asked herself.

In the plaza area, not more than forty meters from the octahedron, the avian swooped down on an utterly un.o.btrusive portion of the metallic ground. It tapped its talons several times and then hovered over the spot. A covering of some kind slid away and the creature disappeared under the plaza. Twice it flew out, said something in Nicole's direction, and then descended, Nicole understood the message. I think I'm being invited home to meet the family, she said to herself. Let's just hope that I'm not the dinner.

41 A FRIEND INDEED.

Nicole had no idea what to expect. - She was not fearful as she walked over and gazed at the hole in the ground. Curiosity was her dominant feeling. She worried momentarily that her rescue team might arrive while she was under the ground, but Nicole convinced herself that they would return later.

The rectangular cover was large, about ten meters long and six meters wide. When the avian saw that Nicole was following, it flew into the hole and waited on the third ledge. Nicole squatted beside the opening and stared into the depths. She could see some lights close by and more were flickering in the distance below her. She could not estimate accurately to what depth the corridor descended, but it was obviously more than twenty or thirty meters.

The downward climb was not easy for a nonflying species. The vertical corridor was essentially a large hole with a series of broad ledges along its sides. Each of the ledges was exactly the same size, about five meters long and one meter wide, and they were separated one from another by about two meters in depth. Nicole had to be very careful. What light there was in the vertical corridor came from the opening to the plaza and some lanterns hanging on the walls every four ledges along the descent. The lanterns were enclosed in transparent wrappings that were very flimsy and paperlike. Each lantern contained a small, burning fire, together with some liquid substance that Nicole a.s.sumed was the fuel.

Nicole's velvet-bodied friend watched her patiently throughout the descent, always staying three ledges below her. Nicole had the feeling that if she were to slip, the avian would catch her in midair, but she didn't want to test her hypothesis. Her mind was running at a rapid pace. Nicole had already decided that the creatures were definitely not biots. That meant they were an alien species of some kind. But they couldn't possibly be the Ramans, Nicole reasoned. Their level of technological development is totally inconsistent with this incredible s.p.a.cecraft.

Nicole remembered from her history courses the poor and backward Mayans found in Mexico by the conquistadors. The Spanish had deemed it impossible that the ancestors of those ignorant and impoverished people could possibly have built such impressive ceremonial centers. Could that have happened here? Nicole wondered. Might these strange avians be all that is left of the master species that constructed this vehicle!'

About twenty meters below the surface Nicole heard what sounded like running water. The noise increased as she dropped onto a ledge that was actually an extension of a horizontal tunnel heading off behind her. Across the vertical corridor Nicole could see a similar dark hallway going in the opposite direction, also parallel to the surface.

Her avian guide was, as usual, three ledges below. Nicole pointed down the tunnel at her rear. The creature flew up close to her and systematically hovered over each of the two ledges immediately below Nicole, making it perfectly clear that Nicole was expected to descend.

Nicole was not willing to give up so easily. She took out her flask and made a drinking motion. Then Nicole pointed behind her at the dark tunnel. The avian fluttered about, apparently weighing the decision, and then flew over Nicole's head into the blackness. Forty seconds later Nicole saw a light in the distance that continued to grow as it approached her. The avian returned carrying a large torch in one of its talons.

Nicole followed the avian for about fifteen meters. They came to a room, off to the left of the tunnel, that contained a large cistern full of water. Fresh water fell into the cistern from a pipe embedded in the wall. Nicole pulled out her ma.s.s spectrometer and tested the liquid. It was virtually pure H2O; no other chemicals were present above one part in a million. Careful to remember her manners, Nicole cupped her hands and drank from the waterfall. It was unbelievably delicious.

After she had finished drinking, Nicole continued to walk down the tunnel in the same direction. The avian went into a frenzy, flying up and down and jabbering incessantly, until Nicole reversed her direction and returned to the main vertical corridor. When she renewed her descent, she noticed that the ambient light level had dropped considerably. Nicole glanced above her. The opening to the plaza in New York was now closed. I hope that doesn't mean I'm here for good, she thought.

Twenty meters more below the surface, another pair of dark horizontal tunnels ran perpendicular to the main corridor. At this second level the velvet avian, still carrying the torch, led Nicole down one of the horizontal tunnels for about two hundred meters. She followed the bird into a large, circular room with a high ceiling. The avian used its torch to light several wall lanterns around the room. Then it disappeared. It was gone for almost an hour. Nicole sat as patiently as she could, at first staring around the black room that reminded her of a cave or grotto. There were no decorations. At length Nicole began to concentrate on how she would inform the avians that she was ready to leave. When her velvet friend eventually returned, it brought four a.s.sociates. Nicole heard them flapping their wings in the hallway and jabbering intermittently. Her avian's companion (who Nicole a.s.sumed was a mate of some kind) and two additional linoleum-surfaced creatures flew in first. They landed and then awkwardly walked up very close to Nicole to conduct a visual examination. After they had sat down on the opposite side of the room, another velvet-bodied creature, this one brown instead of black, flew in last. It was carrying a small manna melon in its talons.

The melon was placed in front of Nicole. All of the avians watched expectantly. Nicole neatly cut a one-eighth section out of the melon with her scalpel, picked it up to drink a small draught from the greenish liquid in the middle, and then carried the remaining melon over to her hosts. They shrieked appreciatively, admiring the precision of the cut as they pa.s.sed the melon among themselves.

Nicole watched the avians eat. They shared the melon, one with another, and at no time were any portions meted out. The two velvet avians were surprisingly deft and dainty with their talons, making as little mess as possible and leaving no waste whatsoever. The larger avians were much clumsier; their eating reminded Nicole of animals on Earth. Like Nicole, none of the avians ate the tough outer covering of the manna melon.