Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  There was a protracted silence in the room until Timmy began to jabber at his sister. Nikki wandered over and began to stroke the avian's velvet underside. "I don't pretend that I have all the answers," Richard said. "Nor do I underestimate the seriousness of our situation. But if there is a way out of here—and both Nicole and I believe that there must be—then the sooner we find it, the better."

  "Assuming that all four of you do take the subway," Patrick now asked, "how long do we wait for you here in the museum?"

  "That's a difficult question," Richard replied. "You have enough food for four more days, and the plentiful water at the cistern should keep you alive for some period after that… I don't know, Patrick. I guess you should stay here for at least two or three days. After that, you have to make your own decision. If it is at all possible, one or more of us will return."

  Benjy had been following the conversation with rapt attention. He obviously understood more or less what was happening, for he began to cry softly. Nicole went over to comfort him. "Don't worry, son," she said. "Everything is going to be all right."

  The child-man looked up at his mother. "I hope so, Mom-ma," he said, "but I'm scared."

  Galileo Watanabe suddenly jumped up and ran across the room to where the two rifles were leaning against the wall. "If one of those octospider things comes in here," he said, touching the closest rifle for a few seconds before Max lifted it free of the boy's grasp, "then I'll shoot it. Bang! Bang!"

  His shouts caused the avians to shriek and little Nikki to cry. After Ellie wiped away her daughter's tears, Max and Patrick shouldered the rifles and all five of the explorers said their good-byes. Ellie walked out into the tunnel with them. "I didn't want to say this in front of the children," she said, "but what should we do if we see an octospider while you're gone?"

  "Try not to panic," Richard answered.

  "And don't do anything aggressive," Nicole added.

  "Grab Nikki and run like hell," Max said with a wink.

  Nothing unusual happened while they climbed down the spikes. Just as they had years earlier, the lights at the next lower level always turned on when anyone descending approached an unlit area. All five of the explorers were on the subway platform in less than an hour. "Now we'll find out if those mysterious vehicles are still operating," Richard said.

  In the center of the circular platform there was a smaller hole, also round and with metal spikes protruding from its sides, that descended deeper into the darkness. On opposite ends of the platform, ninety degrees away to the left and right from where the five of them were standing, two dark tunnels were cut into the rock and metal. One of the tunnels was large, five or six meters from top to bottom, while the opposite tunnel was almost exactly an order of magnitude smaller. When Richard approached to within twenty degrees of the large tunnel, it suddenly became illuminated and its interior could be clearly seen. The tunnel looked like a large sewer pipe back on Earth.

  The rest of the exploration party hurried over beside Richard as soon as the first whooshing sound was heard coming from the tunnel. Less than a minute later a subway sped around a distant corner and headed rapidly toward them, stopping with its front end a meter or so shy of where the spiked corridor continued to descend.

  The inside of the subway was also illuminated. There were no seats, but there were vertical rods from the ceiling to the floor, scattered in the car in seemingly random fashion. The door slid open about fifteen seconds after the subway arrived. On the opposite side of the platform an identical vehicle, exactly one-tenth as large, pulled up and stopped no more than five seconds later.

  Even though Max, Patrick, and Eponine had all heard stories about the two ghost subways many times, actually seeing the vehicles left all three of them full of apprehension. "Are you really serious, my friend?" Max said to Richard after the two men quickly examined the outside of the larger subway. "Do you really intend to board that damn thing if we find no other way out?"

  Richard nodded.

  "But it could go anywhere," Max said. "We don't have the foggiest fucking idea what it is, or who built it, or what the hell it's doing here. And once we're on board, we're completely helpless."

  'That's right," Richard said. He smiled wanly. "Max, you have an excellent grasp of our situation."

  Max shook his head. "Well, we'd better find something down in this damn hole, because I don't know if Eponine and I—"

  "All right," Patrick said, approaching the other two men. "I guess it's time for the next phase of this operation. Come on, Max, are you ready for some more spike climbing?"

  Richard did not have any of his clever robots to place in the smaller subway. He did, however, have in his possession a miniature camera with a crude mobility system that he hoped would weigh enough to activate the smaller subway. "Under any circumstances," he told the others, "the small tunnel does not provide a possible exit for us. I just want to determine for myself if anything significant has changed during these years. Besides, there does not seem to be any reason, at least not yet, for more than two of us to descend any farther."

  While Max and Patrick were climbing slowly down the additional spikes and Richard was absorbed with a final checkout of his mobile camera, Nicole and Eponine strolled around the platform. "How's it going, farmer?" Eponine said to Max on the radio.

  "Fine so far," he replied. "But we're only about ten meters below you. These spikes are not as close together as the ones above, so we're being more cautious."

  "Your relationship with Max must have really blossomed while I was in prison," Nicole commented a few moments later.

  "Yes, it did," Eponine replied easily. "Quite frankly, it surprised me. I didn't think a man was capable of having a serious affair with someone who … you know … but I underestimated Max. He is really an unusual person. Underneath that brusque, macho exterior…"

  Eponine stopped. Nicole was smiling broadly. "I don't think Max really fools anybody—at least not those who know him. The tough, foul-mouthed Max is an act, developed for some reason, probably self-protection, back on that farm in Arkansas."

  The two women were silent for several seconds. "But I don't think I have ever given him full credit either," Nicole added. "It is a tribute to him that he adores you so completely even though you two have never been able to really—"

  "Oh, Nicole," Eponine said, suddenly emotional. "Don't think I haven't wanted to, haven't dreamed about it. And Dr. Turner has told us many times that the odds are very small that Max would contract RV-41 if we used protection. But 'very small' is not good enough for me. What if somehow, some way, I passed to Max this horrible scourge that is killing me? How could I ever forgive myself for condemning the man I love to death?"

  Tears filled Eponine's eyes. "We are intimate, of course," she said. "In our own safe way… And Max has never once complained. But I can tell from his eyes that he misses—"

  "All right, now," they heard Max say on the radio. "We can see the bottom. It looks like a normal floor, maybe five more meters below us. There are two tunnels leading away, one the size of the smaller tunnel up at your level, and another that is really tiny. We're going on down for a closer inspection."

  The time had come for the explorers to enter the subway. Richard's mobile camera had not found anything substantively new and there was definitely no exit the humans could use on the only level below them in the lair. Richard and Patrick finished a private conversation in which they reviewed, in detail, what the young man was going to do when he returned to the others. Then they rejoined Max, Nicole, and Eponine, and the five of them walked slowly around the platform to the waiting subway.

  Eponine had butterflies in her stomach. She remembered a similar feeling, when she was fourteen, just before her first one-woman art exhibit opened at her orphanage in Limoges. She took a deep breath.

  "I don't mind saying it," Eponine said. "I'm scared."

  "Shit," said Max, "that's an understatement… Say, Richard, how do we know this thing is not going
to hurtle over that cliff you told us about, with us inside?"

  Richard smiled but didn't reply. They reached the side of the subway. "All right," he said, "since we don't know exactly how this thing is activated, we want to be very careful. We will all enter more or less simultaneously. That will preclude the possibility that the doors will close and the subway will take off when we are not all yet on board."

  Nobody said anything for almost a minute. They lined up four abreast, Max and Eponine on the side closest to the tunnel. "Now I'm going to count," Richard said. "When I say three, we'll all step on together."

  "May I close my eyes?" Max asked with a grin. "That made it easier for me on roller coasters when I was a little boy."

  "If you like," Nicole answered.

  They stepped into the subway and each of them grabbed a vertical rod. Nothing happened. Patrick stood staring at them on the other side of the open door. "Maybe it's waiting for Patrick," Richard said quietly.

  "I don't know," Max mumbled, "but if this fucking train doesn't move in a few seconds, I'm going to jump off."

  The door closed slowly only moments after Max's comment. There was time for two breaths each before the subway lurched into motion, accelerating rapidly into the illuminated tunnel.

  Patrick waved and followed the subway with his eyes until it disappeared around the first corner. Then he put his rifle on his shoulder and began climbing up the spikes. Please come back quickly, he was thinking, before the uncertainty becomes too much for all of us.

  He returned to their living level in less than fifteen minutes. After taking a short drink from his water bottle, he hurried down the tunnel to the museum. While he was walking, he was thinking about what he was going to say to everybody.

  Patrick did not even notice that the room was dark when he crossed the threshold. When he entered, however, and the lights came on, he was momentarily disoriented. I'm not in the right place, he thought first. I have taken the wrong tunnel. But no, his jumbled mind now said, as he glanced quickly around the room, this must be the room after all. I see a couple of feathers over there in the corner, and one of Nikki 's funny diapers…

  With each passing second his heart beat faster. Where are they? Patrick said to himself, his eyes now darting frantically around the room for a second time. What could have happened to them? The longer he stared at the empty walls, carefully recalling all the conversation before he had departed, the more Patrick realized that his sister and friends could not possibly have left of their own volition. Unless there was a note! Patrick spent two minutes searching every nook in the room. There were no messages. So someone, or something, must have forced them to leave, he thought.

  Patrick tried to think rationally, but it was impossible. His mind kept jumping back and forth between what he ought to do and terrible pictures of what might have happened to the others. At length he concluded that perhaps they had all moved back to the original room, the one his mother and Richard called the photo gallery, maybe because the lights in the museum were malfunctioning or for some other equally trivial reason. Buoyed by this thought, Patrick dashed out into the tunnel.

  He reached the photo gallery three minutes later. It was also empty. Patrick sat down against the wall. There were only two directions his companions could have taken. Since Patrick had not seen anyone on his climb, the others must have gone toward the cathedral room and the sealed exit. As he walked down the long corridor, his hand tight around the rifle, Patrick convinced himself that the Nakamura troops had not left the island and that they had somehow broken into the lair and captured everybody else.

  Just before he entered the cathedral room, Patrick heard Nikki crying. "Mom-my, Mom-my," she screamed, and then let out a mournful wail. Patrick charged into the large room, not seeing anybody, and then turned up the ramp in the direction of his niece's cry.

  On the landing beneath the still-sealed exit was a chaotic scene. In addition to Nikki's continued wailing, Robert Turner was walking around in a daze, his arms outstretched and his eyes upward, repeating over and over, "No, God, no." Benjy was quietly sobbing in a corner while Nai was trying, without much success, to comfort her twin sons.

  When Nai saw Patrick, she jumped up and ran toward him. "Oh, Patrick," she said, tears running from her eyes, "Ellie has been kidnapped by the octospiders."

  12

  It was several hours before Patrick put together a coherent story about what had happened after his exploration party had left the museum room. Nai was still near shock from the experience, Robert could not talk for more than a minute without breaking into tears, and the children and Benjy frequently interrupted, often without making any sense. At first all Patrick knew for certain was that the octospiders had come and not only had kidnapped Ellie, but also had taken away the avians, the manna melons, and the sessile material. Eventually, however, after repeated questioning, Patrick thought he understood most of the details of what had occurred.

  Apparently about an hour after the five explorers had departed, which would have been during the time that Richard, Patrick, and the others were down on the subway platform, the humans who had remained in the museum room heard the dragging brush sound outside the door. When Ellie went out to investigate, she saw octospiders approaching from both directions. She returned to the room with her news and tried to calm Benjy and the children.

  When the first octospider appeared in the doorway, all the humans moved as far away as they could, making space for the nine or ten octos who came inside. At first the creatures stood together in a group, their heads bright with the moving, colored messages that they used to communicate. After a few minutes, one of the octospiders came slightly forward, pointed directly at Ellie by lifting one of its black and gold tentacles off the floor, and then went through a long sequence of colors that was quickly repeated. Ellie guessed (according to Nai—Robert, on the other hand, insisted that somehow Ellie knew what the octospider was saying) that the aliens were asking for the manna melons and the sessile material. She retrieved them from the corner and handed them to the lead octospider. It took the objects in three of its tentacles ("A sight to behold," Robert exclaimed, "the way they use those trunklike things and the cilia underneath") and passed them to its subordinates.

  Ellie and the others thought that the octospiders would then leave, but they were sadly mistaken. The lead octo continued to face Ellie and flash his colored messages. Another pair of octospiders started moving slowly in the direction of Tammy and Timmy. "No," Ellie said. "No, you can't."

  But it was too late. The pair of octospiders wrapped many arms each around the hatchlings and then, oblivious of the jabbers and shrieks, carried the two avians away. Galileo Watanabe raced out and attacked the octospider that had three of its tentacles wrapped around Timmy. The octo simply used a fourth tentacle to lift the boy off the ground and hand him to one of its colleagues. Galileo was passed among them until he was put down, unhurt, in the far corner of the room. The intruders allowed Nai to rush over to comfort her son.

  By this time three or four octospiders, the avians, the melons, and the sessile material had all disappeared out into the hallway. There were still six of the aliens in the room. For about ten minutes they talked among themselves. All during this time, according to Robert ("I wasn't paying close attention," Nai said. "I was too frightened and too concerned about my children"), Ellie was watching the colored messages the octospiders were exchanging. At one point Ellie brought Nikki over to Robert and put their daughter in his arms. "I think I understand a little of what they're saying," Ellie said (again, according to Robert), her face absolutely white. "They intend to take me as well."

  Again the lead octospider moved toward them and started speaking in color, seemingly focusing on Ellie. Exactly what happened during the next ten minutes was a subject of considerable argument between Nai and Robert, with Benjy siding mostly with Nai. In Nai's version of the story, Ellie tried to protect everyone else in the room, to make some kind of bargain with the octospide
rs. With repeated hand gestures as well as speech, Ellie told the aliens that she would go with them, provided that the octospiders guaranteed that all the other humans in the room would be allowed to leave the lair safely.

  "Ellie was explicit," Nai insisted. "She explained that we were trapped and did not have enough food. Unfortunately, they grabbed her before she was certain that they understood the bargain."

  "You're naive, Nai," Robert said, his eyes wild with confusion and pain. "You don't understand how really sinister those creatures are. They hypnotized Ellie. Yes, they did. During the early part of their visit, when she was watching their colors so carefully. I'm telling you, she was not herself. All that malarkey about guaranteeing everyone safe passage was a subterfuge. She wanted to go with them. They altered her personality right there on the spot with those crazy colored patterns. And nobody saw it but me."

  Patrick discounted Robert's account considerably because Ellie's husband was so distraught. Nai, however, agreed with Robert on two final points: Ellie did not struggle or protest after the first octospider enwrapped her, and before she disappeared from the room, she calmly recited to them a long list of minutiae about caring for Nikki.

  "How can anyone in her right mind," Robert said, "after having been seized by an alien, calmly rattle off what blankets her daughter hugs while she is sleeping, when Nikki last had a bowel movement, and other such things? She was obviously hypnotized, or drugged, or something."

  The tale of how everyone happened to be on the landing beneath the sealed exit was relatively straightforward. After the octospiders left with Ellie, Benjy ran out into the corridor, screaming and yelling and vainly attacking the rear guard of the octos. Robert joined him and the two of them followed Ellie and the alien contingent all the way to the cathedral room. The gate was open to the fourth tunnel. One octospider held Benjy and Robert off with four long tentacles while the others departed. The final octospider then locked the gate behind itself.