Making a command dictionary was a laborious process. Richard volunteered for the duty. Using their own computers to keep notes, he began the process of developing the rudiments of a language to translate the special keyboard commands. The initial goal was simple — to be able to use the Raman computer like one of their own. Once the translation was developed, any given input into the Newton portable computers would contain, as part of its output, what set of key impressions on the Raman board would produce a similar response on the square black screen.
Even with Richard’s intelligence and computer expertise, the task was a formidable one. It was also not something that could easily be shared. At Richard’s suggestion, Nicole climbed out of the lair twice during the first Raman day they were in the White Room. Both times she took long walks around New York, casting her eyes to the sky from time to time to look for a helicopter. On the second excursion Nicole went back to the barn where she had fallen in the pit. Already so much had happened that her frightening experience at the bottom seemed like ancient history.
She thought often about Borzov, Wilson, and Takagishi. All the cosmonauts had known when they left the Earth that there were uncertainties in the mission. They had trained often to handle vehicle emergencies, problems with their own spacecraft that might prove to be life threatening… but none of them had actually believed that there would be any fatalities on the mission. !! Richard and I perish here in New York, Nicole remarked to herself, then almost half the crew will have died. That will be the worst disaster since we started flying piloted missions again.
She was standing outside the bam, in almost the exact spot where she and Francesca had talked to Richard on the communicator the last time. So why did you lie, Francesca? Nicole wondered. Did you think somehow my disappearance would silence all suspicion?
On the final morning at the Beta campsite, before she and the others had set out to look for Takagishi, Nicole had transmitted all the notes in her own portable computer in Rama through the networking system to the desktop in her room on the Newton. At the time Nicole had made the data transfer to give herself extra memory, if she should need it, in her traveling computer. But it’s all there, she recalled, if some diligent detective ever looks for it The drugs, Jason’s blood pressure, even a cryptic reference to the abortion. And of course Richard’s solution to the RoSur malfunction.
On her two walks Nicole saw several centipede biots, and even a bulldozer once, at the far limit of her vision. She didn’t see any avians and neither heard nor saw an octospider. Maybe they only come out at night, she mused as she returned to have dinner with Richard.
49
INTERACTION
We’re almost out of food,” Nicole said. They packed up what remained of the manna melon and stuffed it in Richard’s backpack.
“I know,” he replied. “I have a plan for you to obtain some more.”
“Me?” asked Nicole. “Why is it my job?”
“Well, first of all, it only requires one person. Working with graphics on the Raman computer gave me the idea. Second, I can’t spare the time. I think I’m on the verge of breaking into the operating system. There are about two hundred commands that I can’t explain unless they allow entry into another level, some kind of higher order space in the hierarchy.”
Richard had explained to Nicole during dinner that he had now figured out how to use the Raman computer like one on the Earth. He could store and retrieve data, perform mathematical computations, design graphics, even create new languages. “But I haven’t begun to tap its potential,” he had said. “Tonight and tomorrow I must discover more of its secrets. We’re running out of time.”
His plan for obtaining food was, indeed, deceptively simple. After the long Raman night (during which Richard could not have slept more than three hours), Nicole walked over to the central plaza to implement the plan. Based on his progressive matrix analysis, Richard gave her three possible locations for the panel to open the covering above the avian lair. He was so confident of his analysis that he wouldn’t even discuss what she should do if she didn’t find the plate. Richard was correct. Nicole found the panel easily. Then she opened the cover and shouted down the vertical corridor. There was no response.
She shone her flashlight into the darkness below her. The tank sentinel was on duty, going to and fro in front of the horizontal tunnel that led past the water room. Nicole shouted again. If she could avoid it, she did not want to descend even to the first ledge. Even though Richard had assured her he would come to her rescue if she was overdue, Nicole did not relish the prospect of being hemmed in with the avians again.
Was that a distant jabbering she heard? Nicole thought so. She took one of the coins that she had found in the White Room and dropped it into the vertical corridor. It sailed far down, hitting a ledge somewhere near the second main level. This time there was loud jabbering. One of the avians flew up into her flashlight beam and over the tank sentinel’s head. Moments later the cover began to close and Nicole had to move away.
She had discussed this contingency with Richard. Nicole waited several minutes and then pushed the panel again. When she yelled into the depths of the avian lair the second time, there was an immediate response. This time her friend, the black velvet avian, flew up to within five meters of the surface and jabbered at her. It was clear to Nicole that she was being told to go away. Before the avian turned around, however, Nicole pulled out her computer monitor and activated a stored program. Two manna melons appeared on the screen in graphic depiction. As the avian watched, the melons became colored and then a neat incision displayed the texture and color inside one of them.
The black velvet avian had flown up closer to the opening for a better look. Now it turned and screeched back into the dark below. Within seconds a second familiar bird, the likely mate for the black velvet one, flew up and landed on the first ledge below the ground– Nicole repeated the display. The two birds talked and then flew deeper into the lair.
Minutes went by. Nicole could hear occasional jabbering from the depths of the corridor. At length her two friends returned, each carrying a small manna melon in its talons. They landed in the plaza near the opening. Nicole walked over toward the melons, but the avians continued to clutch them. What followed was (Nicole assumed) a long lecture. The two birds jabbered both individually and together, always looking at her and often tapping on the melons. Fifteen minutes later, apparently satisfied that they had communicated their message, the avians took flight, swooped around the plaza, and vanished into their lair.
I think they were telling me that melons are in short supply, Nicole thought as she walked back toward the eastern plaza. The melons were heavy. She had one in each of the two backpacks that she had emptied that morning before she left the White Room. Or maybe that I should not disturb them in the future. Whatever it was, we will not be welcome anymore.