Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Amazing!" said General O'Toole. "I had never thought of that before. Imagine if it really was created as some kind of a temple. That would stagger David Brown." The general laughed. "Dr. Brown insists," he said in explanation, "that we poor ignorant human beings would not have any chance of ever determining the purpose of such a spaceship, for the technology of its builders is so far advanced beyond our comprehension that it would be impossible for us ever to understand any of it. And, according to him, of course there could be no Raman religion. In his opinion they would have left all the superstitious mumbo jumbo behind eons before they developed the capability to construct such a fabulous interstellar spacecraft."

  "Dr. Brown is an atheist, isn't he?" the pope asked.

  O'Toole nodded. "An outspoken one. He believes that all religious thinking impairs the proper functioning of the brain. He regards anyone who doesn't agree with his point of view as an absolute idiot."

  "And the rest of the crew? Are they as strongly opinionated on the subject as Dr. Brown?"

  "He is the most vocal atheist, although I suspect Wakefield, Tabori, and Turgenyev all share his basic attitudes. Strangely enough, my intuitive sense tells me that Commander Borzov has a soft spot in his heart for religion. That's true of most of the survivors of The Chaos. Anyway, Valeriy seems to enjoy asking me questions about my faith."

  General O'Toole stopped for a moment as he mentally completed his survey of the religious beliefs of the Newton crew. "The European women des Jardins and Sabatini are nominally Catholic, although they would not be considered devout by any stretch of the imagination. Admiral Heilmann is a Lutheran on Easter and Christmas, Takagishi meditates and studies Zen. I don't know about the other two,"

  The pontiff stood up and walked to the window. "Somewhere out there a strange and wonderful space vehicle, created by beings from another star, is headed toward us. We are sending a crew of a dozen to rendezvous with it" He turned toward General O'Toole. "This spaceship may be a messenger from God, but probably only you will be able to recognize it as such."

  O'Toole did not reply. The pope stared out the window again and was quiet for almost a minute. "No, my son," he finally said softly, as much to himself as to General O'Toole. "I do not have the answers to your questions. Only God has them. You must pray that He will provide the answers when you need them." He faced the general. "I must tell you that I am delighted to find you so concerned with these issues. I am confident that God also has purposely selected you for this mission."

  General O'Toole could tell that the audience was coming to an end. "Holy Father," he said, "thank you again for seeing me and sharing this time. I feel deeply honored."

  John-Paul V smiled and walked over to his guest. He embraced him in the European manner and escorted General O'Toole out of his office.

  11

  ST. MICHAEL OF SIENA

  The exit from the subway station was opposite the entrance to the International Peace Park. As the escalator deposited General O'Toole on the upper level and he walked out into the afternoon light, he could see the domed shrine to his right, not more than two hundred meters away. To his left, at the other end of the park, the top of the ancient Roman Colosseum was visible behind a complex of administrative buildings.

  The American general walked briskly into the park and turned right on the sidewalk leading to the shrine. He passed a lovely small fountain, part of a monument to the children of the world, and stopped to watch the animated, sculptured figures playing in the cold water. O'Toole was full of anticipation. What an incredible day, he was thinking. First I have an audience with the pope. And now I finally visit the shrine of St Michael. I definitely saved the best day for last.

  When Michael of Siena was canonized in 2188, fifty years after his death (and, perhaps more significantly, three years after John-Paul V had been elected as the new pope), there had been an immediate consensus that the perfect place to locate a major shrine in his honor would be in the International Peace Park. The great park stretched from the Piazza Venezia to the Colosseum, wandering around and among those few ruins from the old Roman fora that had somehow survived the nuclear holocaust. Choosing the exact spot for the shrine had been a delicate process. The Memorial to the Five Martyrs, honoring those courageous men and women who had dedicated themselves to the restoration of order in Rome during the months immediately following the disaster, had been the feature attraction of the park for years. There was considerable feeling that the new shrine to St. Michael of Siena must not be allowed to overshadow the dignified, open, marble pentagon that had occupied the southeast corner of the park since 2155.

  After much debate it was decided that St. Michael's shrine should be located in the opposite, northwest comer of the park, its foundation symbolically centered on the actual epicenter of the blast, only ten yards from the place where Trajan's Column had stood until it was instantaneously vaporized by the intense heat at the core of the fireball. The first floor of the round shrine was entirely for meditation and worship. There were twelve alcoves or chapels attached to the central nave, six with sculpture and artwork following classical Roman Catholic motifs and the other six each honoring one of the world's major religions. This eclectic partition of the ground floor was purposely designed to provide comfort for the many non-Catholics who made pilgrimages to the shrine to pay their respects to the memory of the beloved St. Michael.

  General O'Toole did not spend much time on the first level. He knelt and said a prayer in the chapel of St. Peter, and looked briefly at the famous wood sculpture of Buddha in the nook beside the entrance, but like most tourists he could not wait to see the incomparable frescoes on the second floor. O'Toole was overwhelmed by both the size and the beauty of the famous paintings the moment he stepped out of the elevator. Directly in front of him was a life-size portrait of a lovely girl of eighteen with long blond hair. She was bending down in an old church in Siena on Christmas Eve in 2115 and leaving behind a curly-haired baby, wrapped in a blanket and placed in a basket, on the cold church floor. This painting represented the night of St. Michael's birth and was the first in a sequence of twelve panels of frescoes that completely circled the shrine and told the story of the saint's life.

  General O'Toole walked over to the small kiosk beside the elevator and rented a forty-five-minute audio tour cassette that was ten centimeters square and easily fit in his coat pocket. He picked up one of the tiny disposable receivers and clipped it into his ear. After choosing English as his language, he pushed the button marked INTRODUCTION and listened as a lovely feminine British voice explained what he was about to see.

  "Each of the twelve frescoes is six meters high," the woman was saying as the general was studying the features of the baby Michael in the first panel. "The lighting in the room is a combination of natural light from the outside, coming through filtered skylights, and artificial illumination from the electronic arrays in the dome. Automatic sensors determine the ambient conditions and mix the natural with the artificial light so that the viewing of the frescoes is always perfect.

  "The twelve panels on this level correspond to the twelve alcoves on the floor below. The arrangement of the frescoes themselves, which follow the life of the saint in a chronological order, flows in a clockwise direction. Thus the final painting, commemorating Michael's canonization ceremony at Rome in 2188, is right next to the painting of his birth in the Siena cathedral seventy-two years earlier.

  "The frescoes were designed and implemented by a team of four artists, including the master Feng Yi from China, who appeared suddenly in the spring of 2190 without any prior notification. Despite the fact that very little was known outside China of his skill, the other three artists, Rosa da Silva from Portugal, Fernando Lopez from Mexico, and Hans Reichwein from Switzerland, immediately welcomed Feng Yi to their team on the strength of the superb sketches that he had brought with him."

  O'Toole glanced around the circular room as he listened to the lyrical voice on the cassette. On this last day of 2
199, there were more than two hundred people on the second floor of St. Michael's shrine, including three tour groups. The American cosmonaut progressed slowly around the circle, stopping in front of each panel to study the artwork and listen to the discussion on the cassette.

  The major events of St. Michael's life were depicted in detail in the frescoes. The second through fifth panels featured his days as a Franciscan novitiate in Siena, his fact-finding tour around the world during The Great Chaos, the beginning of his religious activism when he returned to Italy, and Michael's use of the church resources to feed the hungry and house the homeless. The sixth painting showed the tireless saint inside the television studio donated by a wealthy American admirer. Here Michael, who spoke eight languages, repeatedly proclaimed his message of the fundamental unity of all humanity and the requirement for the wealthy to care for the less fortunate.

  The seventh fresco was Feng Yi's portrait of the confrontation in Rome between Michael and the old and dying pope. It was a masterpiece of contrast. Using color and light brilliantly, the painting conveyed the image of an energetic, vibrant, and vital young man being wrongly censured by a world-weary prelate anxious to live out his final days in peace and quiet. In Michael's facial expression could be seen two distinctly different reactions to what he was being told: obedience to the papacy and disgust that the church was more concerned with style and order than substance.

  "Michael was sent to a monastery in Tuscany by the pope," the audio guide continued, "and it was there that the final transformations in his character took place. The eighth panel depicts God's appearances to Michael during this period of solitude. According to the saint, God spoke to him twice, the first time in the middle of a thunderstorm and the second time when a magnificent rainbow filled the sky. It was during the long and violent storm that God shouted out, on the claps of thunder, the new "Laws of Life" which Michael later proclaimed at his Easter sunrise service at Bolsena. On His second visitation God informed the saint that his message would be spread to the ends of the rainbow and that He would give the faithful a sign during the Easter mass.

  "That most famous miracle of Michael's life, one that was watched on television by over a billion people, is shown in the ninth panel. The painting presents Michael preaching Easter mass to the multitudes gathered around the shores of Lake Bolsena. A vigorous spring shower is drenching the crowd, most of whom are dressed in the familiar blue robes that had become associated with his following. But while the rain falls all around St. Michael, not a drop ever falls on the pulpit or on the sound equipment being used to amplify his voice. A perpetual radiant spotlight from the Sun bathes the young saint's face as he announces God's new laws to the world. It was this crossover from being a purely religious leader—"

  General O'Toole switched off the cassette as he walked toward the tenth and eleventh paintings. He was familiar with the rest of the story. After the mass at Bolsena, Michael was beset by a flock of troubles. His life abruptly changed. Within two weeks most of his cable television licenses were rescinded. Stories of corruption and immorality among his young devotees, whose numbers had grown into the hundreds of thousands in the Western world alone, were constantly in the press. There was an assassination attempt, which was foiled at the last minute by his staff. There were also baseless reports in the media that Michael had proclaimed himself the second Christ.

  And so the leaders of the world became afraid of you. All of them. You were a threat to everyone with your Laws of Life. And they never understood what you meant by the final evolution. O'Toole stood in front of the tenth fresco. It was a scene he knew by heart. Almost every other educated person in the world would also recognize it instantly. The television replays of the last seconds before the terrorist bomb exploded were shown every year on June 28, the first day of the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul and the anniversary of the day that Michael and almost a million others had perished in Rome on a fateful early summer morning in 2138.

  You had called them to come to Rome to join you, To show the world that everyone was united. And so they came. The tenth painting showed Michael in his blue robes, standing high on the steps of the Victor Emmanuel Monument next to the Piazza Venezia. He was in the middle of a sermon. Around him in all directions, spilling over into the Roman fora along the jam-packed Via dei Fori Imperiali leading to the Colosseum, was a sea of blue. And faces. Eager, excited faces, mostly young, looking up and around the monuments of the ancient city to catch a glimpse of the boy-man who dared to suggest that he had a way, God's way, out of the despair and hopelessness that had engulfed the world.

  Michael Ryan O'Toole, a fifty-seven-year-old American Catholic from Boston, fell on his knees and wept, like thousands before him, when he looked at the eleventh panel in the sequence. This painting depicted the same scene as the previous panel, but the time was more than an hour later, an hour after the seventy-five-kiloton nuclear bomb hidden in a sound truck near Trajan's Column had exploded and sent its hideous mushroom-shaped cloud into the skies above the city. Everything within two hundred meters of the epicenter had been instantly vaporized. There was no Michael, no Piazza Venezia, no huge Victor Emmanuel Monument. In the center of the fresco was nothing but a hole. And around the perimeter of that hole, where the vaporization had not been quite as complete, were scenes of agony and horror that would shatter the complacency of even the most self-protected individuals.

  Dear God, General O'Toole said to himself through his tears, Help me to comprehend the message in Saint Michael's life. Help me to understand how I can contribute, in whatever small way, to Your overall plan for us. Guide me as I prepare to be Your emissary to the Ramans.

  12

  RAMANS AND ROMANS

  So, what do you think?" Nicole des Jardins stood up and turned around slowly in front of the camera beside the monitor. She was wearing a form-fitting white dress made from one of the new stretch fabrics. The hem of the dress was cut just below her knees and the long sleeves were marked by one black stripe that passed under her elbows as it ran from the shoulder to the wrist. The wide, jet-black belt matched both the color of the stripe and the color of her hair and high-heeled shoes. Her hair was pulled together by a comb at the back of her head and then left to tumble freely almost to her waist. Her only jewelry was a gold tennis bracelet containing three rows of small diamonds that she was wearing around her left wrist.

  "You look beautiful, Mom," her daughter, Genevieve, answered her from the screen. "I've never seen you before both dressed up and with your hair down. What happened to your normal sweatsuit?" The fourteen-year-old grinned. "And when does the party start?"

  "At nine-thirty," Nicole replied. "Very fashionably late. We probably won't have dinner until an hour after that. I'm going to eat something in the hotel room before I leave so that I won't starve."

  "Mom, now don't forget your promise. Last week's Aujourd'hui said that my favorite singer, Julien LeClerc, would definitely be one of the guest entertainers. You have to tell him that your daughter thinks he's absolutely divine!"

  Nicole smiled at her daughter. "I will, darling, for you. Although it will probably be misinterpreted. From what I have heard your Monsieur LeClerc thinks that every woman in the world is in love with him." She paused for a moment. "Where's your grandfather? I thought you said he would be joining you in a few minutes."

  "Here I am," Nicole's father said as his weathered, friendly face appeared on the screen next to his granddaughter. "I was just finishing up a section of my new novel on Peter Abelard. I didn't expect you to call this early." Pierre des Jardins was now sixty-six years old. A successful historical novelist for many years, his life since the early death of his wife had been blessed by fortune and accomplishment. "You look stunning!" he exclaimed after seeing his daughter in her evening wear. "Did you buy that dress in Rome?"

  "Actually, Dad," Nicole said, again turning around so that her father could see the entire outfit, "I bought this for Françoise's wedding three years ago. But of course I nev
er had a chance to wear it. Do you think it's too simple?"

  "Not at all," Pierre replied. "In fact, I think it's just perfect for this kind of extravaganza. If it's like the big fêtes that I used to attend, every woman there will be wearing her fanciest and most expensive clothing and jewelry. You will stand out in your simple black and white. Particularly with your hair down like that. You took perfect."

  "Thanks," Nicole said. "Even though I know you're prejudiced, I still like to hear your compliments." She looked at her father and daughter, her only two close companions for the last seven years. 'Tin really surprisingly anxious. I don't think I'll be this nervous on the day we encounter Rama. I often feel out of my element at big parties like this and tonight I have a peculiar sense of foreboding that I can't explain. You remember, Dad, like I felt the day before our dog died when I was a child."

  Her father's face became serious. "Maybe you'd better consider staying in the hotel. Too many of your premonitions have been accurate in the past. I remember your telling me that something was wrong with your mother two days before we received that message—"

  "It's not that strong a feeling," Nicole interrupted. "And besides, what would I give as an excuse? Everyone's expecting me, especially the press, according to Francesca Sabatini. She's still annoyed with me for refusing to have a personal interview with her."

  "Then I guess you should go. But try to have some fun. Don't take things so seriously for this one night."