Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Rama forces us to think of ourselves, and God, as beings of the universe. It is a tribute to His intelligence that He has sent such a herald at this moment. For as I have told you many times, we are overdue for our final evolution, our recognition that the entire human race is but a single organism. The appearance of Rama is another signal that it is time for us to change our ways and begin that final evolution."

  General O'Toole put down the template and rubbed his eyes. He had read the sermon before—right before his meeting with the pope in Rome, in fact—but somehow it had not seemed as significant then as it did now. So which are you, Rama? he thought. A threat to Courtney Bothwell or a herald of Christ's second coming?

  During the hour before breakfast General O'Toole was still vacillating. He genuinely did not know what his decision would be. Weighing heavily upon him was the fact that he had been given an explicit order by his commanding officer. O'Toole was well aware that he had sworn, when he had received his commission, not only to follow orders, but also to protect the Courtney Bothwells of the planet. Did he have any evidence that this particular order was so immoral that he should abrogate his oath?

  As long as he thought of Rama as only a machine, it was not too difficult for General O'Toole to countenance its destruction. His action would not, after all, kill any Ramans. But what was it that Wakefield had said? That the Raman spaceship was probably more intelligent than any living creatures on Earth, including human beings? And shouldn't superior machine intelligence have a special place among God's creations, perhaps even above lower life forms?

  Eventually General O'Toole succumbed to fatigue. He simply had no energy left to deal with the unending stream of questions without answers. He reluctantly decided to cease his internal debate and prepared to implement his orders.

  His first action was to rememorize his RQ code, the specific string of fifty integers between zero and nine that was known only by him and the processors inside the nuclear weapons. O'Toole had personally entered his code and checked that it had been properly stored in each of the weapons before the Newton mission had been launched from Earth. The string of digits was long to minimize the probability of its being duplicated by a repetitive, electronic search routine. Each of the Newton military officers had been counseled to derive a sequence that met two criteria: The code should be almost impossible to forget and should not be something straightforward, like all the phone numbers in the family, that an outside party might figure out easily from the personnel files.

  For sentimental reasons, O'Toole had wanted nine of the numbers in his code to be his birthdate, 3-29-42, and the birthdate of his wife, 2-7-46. He knew that any decryption specialist would immediately look for such obvious selections, so the general resolved to hide the birthdates in the fifty digits. But what about the other forty-one digits? That particular number, forty-one, had intrigued O'Toole ever since a beer and pizza party during his sophomore year at MIT. One of his associates then, a brilliant young number theorist whose name he had long forgotten, had told O'Toole in the middle of a drunken discussion that forty-one was a "very special number, the initial integer in the longest continuous string of quadratic primes."

  O'Toole never fully comprehended what exactly was meant by the expression "quadratic prime." However, he did understand, and was fascinated by, the fact that the string 41, 43, 47, 53, 61, 71, 83, 97, where each successive number was computed by increasing the difference from the previous number by two, resulted in exactly forty consecutive prime numbers. The sequence of primes ended only when the forty-first number in the string turned out to be a nonprime, namely 41 X 41 = 1681. This little known piece of information O'Toole had shared only one time in his life, with his wife Kathleen on her forty-first birthday, and he had received such a lackluster response that he had never told anybody about it again,

  But it was perfect for his secret code, particularly if he disguised it properly. To build his fifty-digit number, General O'Toole first constructed a sequence of forty-one digits, each coming from the sum of the first two digits in the corresponding term in the special quadratic prime sequence beginning with 41. Thus "5" was the initial digit, representing 41, followed by "7" for 43, "1" for 47 (4 + 7 = 11 and then truncate), "8" for 53, etc. O'Toole next scattered the numbers of the two birthdates using an inverse Fibonacci sequence (34, 21, 13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1) to define the locations of the nine new integers in the original forty-one-digit string.

  It was not easy to commit the sequence to memory, but the general did not want to write it down and carry it with him to the activation process. If his code were written down, then anyone could use it, with or without his permission, and his option to change his mind again would be precluded. Once he had rememorized the sequence, O'Toole destroyed all his computations and went to the dining room to have breakfast with the rest of the cosmonauts.

  "Here's a copy of my code for you, Francesca, and one for you, Irina, and the final one goes to Hiro Yamanaka. Sorry, Janos," Admiral Heilmann said with a big smile, "but I'm all out of bullets. Maybe General O'Toole will let you enter his code into one of the bombs."

  "It's all right, Herr Admiral," Janos said wryly. "Some privileges in life I can do without."

  Heilmann was making a big production out of activating the nuclear weapons, He had had his fifty-digit number printed out multiple times and had enjoyed explaining to the other cosmonauts how clever he had been in the conception of his code. Now, with uncharacteristic flair, he was allowing the rest of the crew to participate in the process.

  Francesca loved it. It was definitely good television. It occurred to O'Toole that Francesca had probably suggested such a staging to Heilmann, but the general didn't spend much time thinking about it. O'Toole was too busy being astonished by how calm he himself had become. After his long and agonizing soul-searching, he was apparently going to perform his duty without qualms.

  Admiral Heilmann became confused during the entering of his code (he admitted that he was nervous) and temporarily lost track of where he was in his sequence. The system designers had foreseen this possibility and had installed two lights, one green and one red, right above the numerical keyboards on the side of the bomb. After every tenth digit one of the two lights would illuminate, indicating whether or not the previous decade of code was a successful match. The safety committee had expressed concern that this "extra" feature compromised the system (it would be easier to decrypt five ten-digit strings than one fifty-digit string), but repeated human engineering tests prior to launch had shown that the lights were necessary.

  At the end of his second decade of digits, Heilmann was greeted by the flashing red light. 'I've done something wrong," he said, his embarrassment obvious.

  "Louder," shouted Francesca from where she was filming. She had neatly framed the ceremony so that both the weapons and the pods appeared in the picture.

  "I've made a mistake," Admiral Heilmann proclaimed. "All this noise has distracted me. I must wait thirty seconds before I can start again."

  After Heilmann had successfully completed his code, Dr. Brown entered the activation code on the second weapon. He seemed almost bored; certainly he didn't push the keyboard with anything approaching enthusiasm. Irina Turgenyev activated the third bomb. She made a short but passionate comment underscoring her belief that the destruction of Rama was absolutely essential

  Neither Hiro Yamanaka nor Francesca said anything at all. Francesca, however, did impress the rest of the crew by doing her first thirty digits from memory. Considering that she had supposedly never seen Hermann's code until an hour earlier, and had not been alone for more than two minutes since then, her feat was quite remarkable.

  Next it was General O'Toole's turn. Smiling comfortably, he walked easily up to the first weapon. The other cosmonauts applauded, both showing their respect for the general and acknowledging his struggle. He asked everyone please to be quiet, explaining that he had committed his whole sequence to memory. Then O'Toole entered the first decade of di
gits.

  He stopped for a second as the green light flashed. In that instant an image flashed into his mind of one of the frescoes on the second floor of the shrine of St. Michael in Rome. A young man in a blue robe, his eyes uplifted to the heavens, was standing on the steps of the Victor Emmanuel Monument, preaching to an appreciative multitude. General O'Toole beard a voice, loudly and distinctly. The voice said "No."

  The general spun around quickly. "Did anybody say anything?" he said, staring at the other cosmonauts. They shook their heads. Befuddled, O'Toole turned back to the bomb. He tried to remember the second decade of digits. But it was no good. His heart was racing at breakneck speed. His mind kept saying, over and over again, What was that voice? His resolve to perform his duty had vanished.

  Michael O'Toole took a deep breath, turned around again, and walked across the huge bay. When he passed his stunned colleagues he heard Admiral Heilmann yell, "What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to my room," O'Toole said without breaking stride.

  "Aren't you going to activate the bombs?" Dr. Brown said behind him.

  "No," replied General O'Toole. "At least not yet"

  56

  AN ANSWERED PRAYER

  General O'Toole stayed in his room the rest of the day. Admiral Heilmann dropped by about an hour after O'Toole's failure to enter his code. After some meaningless small talk (Heilmann was terrible at that sort of thing), the admiral asked the all-important question.

  "Are you ready to proceed with the activation?"

  O'Toole shook his head. "I thought I was this morning, Otto, but…" There was no need for him to say anything more.

  Heilmann rose from his chair. "I've given orders for Yamanaka to take the first two bullets to the passageway inside Rama. They'll be there by dinner if you change your mind. The other three will be left in the bay for the time being." He stared at his colleague for several seconds. "I hope you come to your senses before too much longer, Michael. We're already in deep trouble at headquarters."

  When Francesca came in with her camera two hours later, it was clear from her choice of words that the attitude toward the general, at least among the remaining cosmonauts, was that O'Toole was suffering from acute nervous tension. He wasn't being defiant. He wasn't making a statement. None of the rest of the crew could have tolerated those alternatives, because they would all look bad by association. No, it was obvious that there was something wrong with his nerves.

  "I've told everyone not to bother you with calls," Francesca said compassionately as she glanced around the room, her television mind already framing the images of the coming interview. "The phones have been ringing like crazy, especially since I sent down the tape from this morning." She walked over to his desk, checking the objects on its top. "Is this Michael of Siena?" Francesca asked, picking up the small statue.

  O'Toole managed a wan smile. "Yes," he said. "And I think you know the man on the cross in the picture."

  "Very well," Francesca replied. "Very well indeed… Look, Michael, you know what's coming. I would like for this interview to paint you in the best possible light. Not that I'm going to treat you with kid gloves, you understand, but I want to make certain that those wolves down there hear your side of the story—"

  "They're already screaming for my hide?" O'Toole interrupted.

  "Oh, yes," she answered. "And it will get much worse. The longer you delay activating the bombs, the more wrath will be aimed at you."

  "But why?" O'Toole protested. "I haven't committed a crime. I've simply delayed activating a weapon whose destructive power exceeds—"

  "That's irrelevant," Francesca retorted, "In their eyes you haven't done your job, namely to protect the people on the planet Earth. They're frightened. They don't understand all this extraterrestrial crap. They've been told that Rama will be destroyed and now you've refused to remove their nightmares."

  "Nightmares," mumbled O'Toole, "that's what Bothwell—"

  "What about President Bothwell?" inquired Francesca.

  "Oh, nothing," he said. He looked away from her probing eyes. "What else?" O'Toole asked impatiently.

  "As I was saying, I want you to look as good as possible. Comb your hair again and put on a fresh uniform, not a flight suit. I'll daub a little makeup on your face so you don't look washed out." She returned to the desk. "We'll place your family photos in full view next to Jesus and Michael. Think carefully about what you're going to say. Of course I'll ask why you failed to activate the weapons this morning."

  Francesca walked over and put her hand on O'Toole's shoulder. "In my introduction I will have suggested that you've been under a strain. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but admitting a little weakness will probably play well. Particularly in your country."

  General O'Toole squirmed while Francesca finished the preparations for the interview. "Do I have to do this?" he asked, becoming more and more uncomfortable as the journalist essentially rearranged his room.

  "Only if you want anybody to think you're not Benedict Arnold," was her curt reply.

  Janos came in to visit just before dinner. "Your interview with Francesca was very good," he lied. "At least you raised some moral issues that all of us should consider."

  "It was dumb of me to bring up all that philosophical crap," O'Toole fretted. "I should have followed Francesca's advice and blamed everything on my fatigue."

  "Well, Michael," said Janos, "what's done is done. I didn't come in here to review the events of the day. I'm certain you've done that plenty of times already. I came in here to see if I could be any help."

  "I don't think so, Janos," he replied. "But I do appreciate the thought."

  There was a long hiatus in the conversation. At length Janos stood up and shuffled toward the door. "What do you do now?" he asked quietly.

  "I wish I knew," O'Toole answered. "I don't seem to be able to come up with a plan."

  The combined Rama-Newton spacecraft continued to hurtle toward the Earth. With each passing day the Rama threat loomed greater, a huge cylinder moving at hyperbolic speed toward what would be a calamitous impact if no new midcourse corrections were made. The estimated crash point was in the state of Tamil Nadu, in south India, not far from the city of Madurai. Physicists were on the network news every night, explaining what could be expected. "Shock waves" and "ejecta" became terms bandied about at dinner parties.

  Michael O'Toole was vilified by the global press. Francesca had been right. The American general became the focus of a world's fury. There were even suggestions that he should be court-martialed and executed, onboard the Newton, for his failure to follow orders. A lifetime of important accomplishments and selfless contributions was forgotten. Kathleen O'Toole was forced to leave the family apartment in Boston and take refuge with a friend in Maine.

  The general was tortured by his indecision. He knew that he was doing irreparable damage to his family and his career by his failure to activate the weapons. But each time he convinced himself he was ready to execute the order, that loud and resounding "No" echoed again in his ears.

  O'Toole was only marginally coherent in his final interview with Francesca, the day before the scientific ship left to return to the Earth. She asked some very tough questions. When Francesca asked him why, if Rama were going to orbit the Earth, it had not yet made a deflection maneuver, the general perked up momentarily and reminded her that aerobraking—dissipating energy in the atmosphere as heat—was the most efficient method of achieving orbit around a planetary body with an atmosphere. But when she gave him a chance to amplify his statement, to discuss how Rama might reconfigure itself to have aerodynamic surfaces, O'Toole did not answer. He just stared at her distractedly.

  O'Toole came out of his room for the final dinner the night before Brown, Sabatini, Tabori, and Turgenyev departed for home. His presence spoiled the last supper. Irina was extremely nasty to him, upbraiding the general venomously, and refusing to sit at the same table. David Brown ignored him altogether, choosing instead to
discuss in excruciating detail the laboratory being designed in Texas to accommodate the captured crab biot. Only Francesca and Janos were friendly, so General O'Toole returned to his room right after dinner without formally saying good-bye to anyone.

  The next morning, less than an hour after the scientific ship had left, O'Toole buzzed Admiral Heilmann and asked for a meeting. "So you have finally changed your mind?" the German said excitedly when the general entered his office. "Good. It's not too late yet It's only I-12 days. If we hurry we can still detonate the bombs at I-9."

  "I'm getting closer, Otto," O'Toole replied, "but I'm not there yet. I've been thinking about all this very carefully. There are two things I would still like to do. I'd like to talk to Pope John-Paul and I want to go inside to see Rama for myself."

  O'Toole's response left Heilmann deflated. "Shit," he said. "Here we go again. We'll probably—"

  "You don't understand, Otto," the American said. He stared fixedly at his colleague. "This is good news. Unless something totally unexpected occurs, either during my call to the pope or while I'm exploring Rama, I'll be ready to enter my code the minute I come out."

  "Are you certain?" Heilmann asked.

  "I give you my word," O'Toole replied.

  General O'Toole held nothing back in his long, emotional transmission to the pope. He was aware that his call was being monitored, but it no longer mattered. A single thing was uppermost in his mind: making the decision to activate the nuclear weapons with a clear conscience.

  He waited impatiently for the reply. When Pope John-Paul V finally appeared on the screen, he was sitting in the same room in the Vatican where O'Toole had had his audience just after Christmas. The pope was holding a small electronic pad in his right hand and occasionally glanced down as he spoke.

  "I have prayed with you, my son," the pontiff began in his precise English, "particularly during this last week of your personal turmoil. I cannot tell you what to do. I do not have the answers any more than you do. We can only hope together that God, in His wisdom, will provide unambiguous answers to your prayers.