Plot Summary
The book picks up the story immediately after the end of The Garden of Rama. The book follows the story of Nicole Wakefield and her escape from imprisonment left at the cliffhanger of the previous book.
As the human colony continues to degenerate with respect to living conditions and human rights, the members of Nicole's family escape to the region nicknamed "New York", where they used to live in Rama II and already then came into contact with the alien species known as "Octospiders". The Octospiders were a simple species until a space-faring species made contact with them and forever changed their society. Undergoing genetic enhancements, the Octospiders became biological wizards and were eventually able to form a utopia of sorts.
Eventually, the human colony police come after Nicole's family in "New York" and they flee to the octospider city. After the human colony leader starts bombing the octospider city under a made-up pretext and the octospiders retaliate, the situation becomes dire enough that Rama's controlling intelligence intervenes to end the conflict caused by the Humans aboard, by sending everybody into hibernation until the end of the journey.
The Rama spacecraft rendezvous with another Node, an enormous tetrahedron near the star Tau Ceti, designed to research any intelligent life capable of spaceflight. The humans are divided into two groups based mainly on the degree of xenophobia they had exhibited during the journey. Both groups will stay at the Node for the rest of their lives to be studied; the xenophobes are segregated and never allowed to see another alien again. To the more adaptable group, the purpose of the universe is revealed by the Nodal intelligence.
Read more about this topic: Rama Revealed
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