Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Dear Chamatevi, she said. You have watched over me for these twenty-six years. Now I am about to leave for an unknown place, much as you did when you came north to find the Haripunchai. Guide me with your wisdom and insight as I go to this new and wonderful world.

  3

  Yukiko was wearing a black silk shirt, white pants, and a black and white beret. She crossed the living room to talk to her brother. "I wish you would come, Kenji," she said. "It's going to be the largest demonstration for peace that the world has ever seen."

  Kenji smiled at his younger sister. "I would like to, Yuki," he replied. "But I only have two more days before I must leave and I want to spend the time with Mother and Father."

  Their mother entered the room from the opposite side. She looked harried, as usual, and was carrying a large suitcase. "Everything is now packed properly," she said. "But I still wish you would change your mind. Hiroshima is going to be a madhouse. The Asahi Shimbun says they're expecting a million visitors, almost half of them from abroad."

  "Thank you, Mother," Yukiko said, reaching for the suitcase. "As you know, Satoko and I will be at the Hiroshima Prince Hotel. Now, don't worry. We will call every morning, before the activities begin. And I'll be home Monday afternoon."

  The young woman opened the suitcase and reached inside a special compartment, pulling out a diamond bracelet and a sapphire ring. She put them both on. "Don't you think you should leave those things at home?" her mother fussed. "Remember, there will be all those foreigners. Your jewelry may be too much temptation for them."

  Yukiko laughed in the uninhibited way that Kenji adored. "Mother," she said, "you're such a worrywart. All your ever think about is what bad things might happen… We're going to Hiroshima for the ceremonies commemorating the three hundredth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. Our prime minister will be there, as well as three of the members of the Central Council of the COG. Many of the world's most famous musicians will be performing in the evenings. This will be what Father calls an enriching experience—and all you can think about is who might steal my jewelry."

  "When I was young it was unheard of for two girls, not yet finished at the university, to travel around Japan unchaperoned—"

  "Mother, we've been through this before," Yuki interrupted. "I'm almost twenty-two years old. Next year, after I finish my degree, I'm going to live away from home, on my own, maybe even in another country. I'm no longer a child. And Satoko and I are perfectly capable of looking after one another."

  Yukiko checked her watch. "I must go now," she said. "She is probably already waiting for me at the subway station."

  She strode gracefully over to her mother and gave her a perfunctory kiss. Yuki shared a longer embrace with her brother.

  "Be well, ani-san," she whispered in his ear. "Take care of yourself and your lovely wife on Mars. We're all very proud of you."

  Kenji had never really known Yukiko very well. He was, after all, almost twelve years older than she. Yuki had been only four when Mr. Watanabe had been assigned to the position of president of the American division of International Robotics. The family had moved across the Pacific to a suburb of San Francisco. Kenji had not paid much attention to his younger sister in those days. In California he had been much more interested in his new life, especially after he started at UCLA.

  The elder Watanabes and Yukiko had returned to Japan in 2232, leaving Kenji as a sophomore in history at the university. He had had very little contact with Yuki since then. During his annual visits to his home in Kyoto, Kenji always meant to spend some private hours with Yukiko, but it never seemed to happen. Either she was too deeply involved in her own life, or his parents had scheduled too many social functions, or Kenji himself had just not left enough time.

  Kenji was vaguely sad as he stood at the door and watched Yukiko disappear in the distance. I'm leaving this planet, he thought, and yet I've never taken the time to know my own sister.

  Mrs. Watanabe was talking in a monotone behind him, expressing her feeling that her life had been a failure because none of her children had any respect for her and they had all moved away. Now her only son, who had married a woman from Thailand just to embarrass them, was going off to live on Mars and she wouldn't see him for over five years. As for her middle daughter, she and her banker husband had at least given her two grandchildren, but they were as dull and boring as their parents—

  "How is Fumiko?" Kenji interrupted his mother. "Will I have a chance to see her and my nieces before I leave?"

  "They're coming over from Kobe for dinner tomorrow night," his mother replied. "Although I have no idea what I'm going to feed them… Did you know that Tatsuo and Fumiko are not even teaching those girls how to use chopsticks? Can you imagine? A Japanese child who does not know how to use chopsticks? Is nothing sacred? We've given up our identity to become rich. I was telling your father…"

  Kenji excused himself from his mother's querulous monologue and sought refuge in his father's study. Framed photographs lined the walls of the room, the archives of a successful man's personal and professional life. Two of the pictures held special memories for Kenji as well. In one of the photos, he and his father were each holding on to a large trophy given by the country club to the winners in the annual father-son golf tournament. In the other, the beaming Mr. Watanabe was presenting a large medal to his son after Kenji had won first prize in all Kyoto in the high school academic competition.

  What Kenji had forgotten until seeing the photographs again was that Toshio Nakamura, the son of his father's closest friend and business associate, had been the runner-up in both contests. In both pictures the young Nakamura, almost a head taller than Kenji, was wearing an intense, angry frown on his face.

  That was long before all his trouble, Kenji thought. He remembered the headline, OSAKA EXECUTIVE ARRESTED, which had proclaimed four years earlier the indictment of Toshio Nakamura. The article underneath the headline had explained that Mr. Nakamura, who was at the time already a vice president in the Tomozawa Hotel Group, had been charged with very serious crimes, ranging from bribery to pandering to trafficking in human slavery. Within four months Nakamura had been convicted and sentenced to several years in detention. Kenji had been astonished. What in the world happened to Nakamura? he had wondered many times in the intervening four years.

  While Kenji was remembering his boyhood rival, he felt very sorry for Keiko Murosawa, Nakamura's wife, for whom Kenji himself had had a special affection when he was a sixteen-year-old in Kyoto. Kenji and Nakamura had, in fact, vied for the love of Keiko for almost a year. When Keiko had finally made it clear that she preferred Kenji over Toshio, young Nakamura had been furious. He had even confronted Kenji one morning, near the Ryoanji Temple, and threatened him physically.

  I might have married Keiko myself, Kenji thought, if I had stayed in Japan. He gazed out the window at the moss garden. It was raining outside. He suddenly had an especially poignant memory of a rainy day during his adolescence.

  Kenji had walked over to her house as soon as his father had told him the news. A Chopin concerto had greeted his ears the moment he turned into the lane leading to her house. Mrs. Murosawa had answered the door and had addressed him sternly. "Keiko is practicing now," she had said to Kenji. "She won't be finished for over an hour."

  "Please, Mrs. Murosawa," the sixteen-year-old boy had said, "it's very important."

  Her mother was about to close the door when Keiko herself caught sight of Kenji through the window. She stopped playing and rushed over, her radiant smile sending a rush of joy through the young man. "Hi, Kenji," she said. "What's up?"

  "Something very important," he replied mysteriously. "Can you come with me for a walk?"

  Mrs. Murosawa had grumbled about the coming recital, but Keiko convinced her mother that she could afford to miss practice for one day. The girl grabbed an umbrella and joined Kenji in front of the house. As soon as they were out of view of her home, she slipped her arm through his, as she always
did when they walked together.

  "So, my friend," Keiko said as they followed their normal route toward the hills behind their section of Kyoto. "What's so very important?"

  "I don't want to tell you now," Kenji answered. "Not here, anyway. I want to wait until we're in the right place."

  Kenji and Keiko laughed and made small talk as they headed for Philosopher's Walk, a beautiful path that wound for several kilometers along the bottom of the eastern hills. The route had been made famous by the twentieth century philosopher Nishida Kitaro, who supposedly took the walk every morning. It led past some of Kyoto's most famous scenic spots, including Ginkaku-ji (the Silver Pavilion) and Kenji's personal favorite, the old Buddhist temple called the Honen-In.

  Behind and to the side of the Honen-In was a small cemetery with about seventy or eighty graves and tombstones. Earlier that year Kenji and Keiko, while adventuring on their own, had discovered that the cemetery housed the remains of some of Kyoto's most prominent citizens of the twentieth century, including the celebrated novelist Junichiro Tanizaki and the doctor/poet Iwao Matsuo. After their discovery, Kenji and Keiko made the cemetery their regular meeting place. Once, after they had both read The Makioka Sisters, Tanizaki's masterpiece of Osaka life in the 1930s, they had laughingly argued for over an hour—while sitting beside the author's tombstone—about which of the Makioka sisters Keiko resembled the most.

  On the day that Mr. Watanabe informed Kenji that the family was moving to America, it had already started to rain by the time Kenji and Keiko reached the Honen-In. There Kenji turned right onto a small lane and headed toward an old gate with a woven straw roof. As Keiko expected, they did not enter the temple, but instead climbed the steps leading to the cemetery. But Kenji did not stop at Tanizaki's tomb. He climbed up higher, to another grave site.

  "This is where Dr. Iwao Matsuo is buried," Kenji said, pulling out his electronic notebook. "We are going to read a few of his poems."

  Keiko sat close beside her friend, the two of them nestled under her umbrella in the light rain, while Kenji read three poems. "I have one final poem," Kenji then said, "a special haiku written by a friend of Dr. Matsuo's.

  "One day in the month of June,

  After a cooling dish of ice cream,

  We bid each other farewell."

  They were both silent for several seconds after Kenji recited the haiku from memory a second time. Keiko became alarmed and even a little frightened when Kenji's serious expression did not waver. "The poem talks of a parting," she said softly. "Are you telling me that—"

  "Not by choice, Keiko," Kenji interrupted her. He hesitated for several seconds. "My father has been assigned to America," he continued at length. "We will move there next month."

  Kenji had never seen such a forlorn look on Keiko's beautiful face. When she looked up at him with those terribly sad eyes, he thought his heart would tear apart. He held her tightly in the afternoon rain, both of them crying, and swore he would love only her forever.

  4

  The younger waitress, the one in the light blue kimono with the old-fashioned obi, pulled back the sliding screen and entered the room. She was carrying a tray with beer and sake.

  "Osake onegai shimasu," Kenji's father said politely, holding up his sake cup as the lady poured.

  Kenji took a drink of his cold beer. The older waitress now returned, soundlessly, with a small plate of hors d'oeuvres. In the center was a shellfish of some kind, in a light sauce, but Kenji could not have identified either the mollusk or the sauce. He had not eaten more than a handful of these kaiseki meals in the seventeen years since he had left Kyoto.

  "Campai," Kenji said, clinking his beer glass against his father's sake cup. "Thank you, Father. I am honored to be having dinner here with you."

  Kicho was the most famous restaurant in the Kansai region, perhaps in all of Japan. It was also frighteningly expensive, for it preserved the full traditions of personal service, private eating rooms, and seasonal dishes with only the highest quality ingredients. Every course was a delight to the eye as well as to the palate. When Mr. Watanabe had informed his son that they were going to dine alone, just the two of them, Kenji had never imagined that it would be at Kicho.

  They had been talking about the expedition to Mars. "How many of the other colonists are Japanese?" Mr. Watanabe asked.

  "Quite a few/' Kenji replied. "Almost three hundred, if I remember correctly. There were many top-quality applications from Japan. Only America has a larger contingent."

  "Do you know any of the others from Japan personally?"

  "Two or three. Yasuko Horikawa was briefly in my class in Kyoto in junior high school. You may remember her. Very, very smart. Buck teeth. Thick glasses. She is, or was, I should say, a chemist with Dai-Nippon."

  Mr. Watanabe smiled. "I think I do remember her," he said. "Did she come over to the house the night that Keiko played the piano?"

  "Yes, I think so," Kenji said easily. He laughed. "But I have a hard time remembering anything other than Keiko from that night."

  Mr. Watanabe emptied his sake cup. The younger attendant, who was sitting unobtrusively on her knees in a corner of the tatami mat room, came to the table to refill it. "Kenji, I'm concerned about the criminals," Mr. Watanabe said as the young lady departed.

  "What are you talking about, Father?" Kenji said.

  "I read a long story in a magazine that said the ISA had recruited several hundred convicts to be part of your Lowell Colony. The article stressed that all of the criminals had perfect records during their times of detention, as well as outstanding skills. But why was it necessary to accept convicts at all?"

  Kenji took a swallow from his beer. "In truth, Father," he replied, "we have had some difficulty with the recruitment process. First, we had an unrealistic view of how many people would apply and we set up screening criteria that were far too tough. Second, the five-year minimum time requirement was a mistake. To young people in particular, a decision to do anything for that long a period is an overwhelming commitment. Most importantly, the press seriously undermined the entire staffing process. At the time we were soliciting applications, there were myriad articles in magazines and 'specials' on television about the demise of the Martian colonies a hundred years ago. People were frightened that history might repeat itself and they too could be left permanently abandoned on Mars."

  Kenji paused briefly, but Mr. Watanabe said nothing. "In addition, as you are well aware, the project has had recurring financial crises. It was during a budget squeeze last year that we first began to consider skilled, model convicts as a way of solving some of our personnel and budgetary difficulties. Although they would be paid only modest salaries, there were still plenty of inducements to cause the convicts to apply. Selection meant granting of full pardons, and therefore freedom, when they returned to Earth after the five-year term. In addition, the ex-prisoners would be full citizens of Lowell Colony like everyone else, and would no longer have to tolerate the onerous monitoring of their every activity—"

  Kenji stopped as two small pieces of broiled fish, delicate and beautiful and sitting on a bed of variegated leaves, were placed upon the table. Mr. Watanabe picked up a piece of fish with his chopsticks. "Oishii desu," he commented, without glancing at his son.

  Kenji reached for his piece of fish. The discussion of the convicts in Lowell Colony had apparently ended. Kenji looked behind his father, where he could see the lovely garden for which the restaurant was so famous. A tiny stream dropped down polished steps and ran beside a half dozen exquisite dwarf trees. The seat facing the garden was always the position of honor for a traditional Japanese meal. Mr. Watanabe had insisted that Kenji should have the garden view during this last dinner.

  "You were not able to attract any Chinese colonists?" his father asked after they had finished the fish.

  Kenji shook his head. "Only a few from Singapore and Malaysia. Both the Chinese and Brazilian governments forbade their citizens to apply. The Brazilian decisio
n was expected—their South American empire is virtually at war with the COG—but we had hoped that the Chinese might soften their stand. I guess a hundred years of isolation doesn't die that easily."

  "You can't really blame them," Mr. Watanabe commented. "Their nation suffered terribly during the Great Chaos. All the foreign capital disappeared overnight and their economy immediately collapsed."

  "We did manage to recruit a few black Africans, maybe a hundred altogether, and a handful of Arabs. But most of the colonists are from the countries that contribute significantly to the ISA. That's probably to be expected."

  Kenji became suddenly embarrassed. The entire conversation since they had entered the restaurant had been about him and his activities. During the next few courses Kenji asked his father questions about his work at International Robotics. Mr. Watanabe, who was now the chief operating officer of the corporation, always glowed with pride when he talked about "his" company. It was the world's largest manufacturer of robots for the factory and the office. The annual sales of IR, as it was always called, placed it among the top fifty manufacturers in the world.

  "I'll be sixty-two next year," Mr. Watanabe said, the many cups of sake making him unusually talkative, "and I had thought that I might retire. But Nakamura says that would be a mistake. He says that the company still needs me…"

  Before the fruit arrived, Kenji and his father were again discussing the coming Martian expedition. Kenji explained mat Nai and most of the other Asian colonists who were traveling on either the Pinta or the Niña were already at the Japanese training site in southern Kyushu. He would join his wife there as soon as he left Kyoto and, after ten more days of training, they and the rest of the passengers on the Pinta would be transported to a LEO (low Earth orbit) space station, where they would undergo a week of weightlessness training. The final leg of their near-Earth journey would be a ride aboard a space tug from LEO to the geosynchronous space station at GEO-4, where the Pinta was currently being assembled while undergoing its final checks and being outfitted for the long trip to Mars.