Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Look, roomie, we can't wait forever. I told you yesterday that we should have made backup choices. There were seven pairs that wanted the apartment in Positano—not surprising since there were only four units left in the whole village—and we just weren't lucky. All that's left now, except for those tiny flats over the shops on the main street in Beauvois—and I don't want to live there because there's absolutely no privacy—is either here or in San Miguel. And all the blacks and browns are living in San Miguel."

  Eponine sat down in one of the chairs. They were in the living room of the small two-bedroom apartment. It was furnished modestly, but adequately, with two chairs and a large sofa that were the same brown color as the rectangular coffee table. Altogether the apartment, which had a single large bathroom and a small kitchen in addition to the living room and two bedrooms, was slightly more than one hundred square meters.

  Kimberly Henderson paced around the room impatiently. "Kim," Eponine said slowly, "I'm sorry, but I'm having a hard time concentrating on selecting an apartment when so much is happening to us. What is this place? Where are we? Why are we here?" Her mind flashed back quickly to the incredible briefing three days earlier, when Commander Macmillan had informed them that they were inside a spaceship built and equipped by extraterrestrials "for the purpose of observing Earthlings."

  Kimberly Henderson lit a cigarette and expelled the smoke forcefully into the air. She shrugged. "Shit, Eponine," she said, "I don't know the answers to any of those questions. But I do know that if we don't pick an apartment we'll be left with whatever nobody else has wanted."

  Eponine looked at her friend for several seconds and then sighed. "I don't think this process has been very fair," she complained. "The passengers from the Pinta and the Niña were all able to pick their homes before we even arrived. We are being forced to choose among the rejects."

  "What did you expect?" Kimberly replied quickly. "Our ship was carrying convicts—of course we got the dregs. But at least we're finally free."

  "So I guess you want to live in this apartment?" Eponine said at length.

  "Yes," replied Kimberly. "And I also want to put in a bid on the other two apartments we saw this morning, near the Hakone market, in case we are aced out of this one. If we don't have a definite home after the drawing tonight, I'm afraid we'll really be in bad shape."

  This was a mistake. Eponine was thinking as she watched Kimberly walking around the room. I never should have agreed to be her roommate. But what choices did I have? The living accommodations that are left for single people are abysmal.

  Eponine was not accustomed to rapid changes in her life. Unlike Kimberly Henderson, who had had an enormous variety of experiences before she was convicted of murder at the age of nineteen, Eponine had lived a relatively sheltered childhood and adolescence. She had grown up in an orphanage outside Limoges, France, and until Professor Moreau took her to Paris to see the great museums when Eponine was seventeen, she had never even been outside her native province. It had been a very difficult decision for her to sign up for the Lowell Colony in the first place. But Eponine was facing a lifetime of detention in Bourges, and she was offered a chance for freedom on Mars. After a long deliberation she had courageously decided to submit her application to the ISA.

  Eponine had been selected as a colonist because she had an outstanding academic record, especially in all the arts, was fluent in English, and had been a perfect prisoner. Her dossier in the ISA files had identified her most likely placement in the Lowell Colony as "drama and/or art teacher in the secondary schools." Despite the difficulties associated with the cruise phase of the mission after leaving the Earth, Eponine had felt a palpable rush of adrenaline and excitement when Mars had first appeared in the observation window of the Santa Maria. It would be a new life on a new world.

  Two days before the scheduled encounter, however, the ISA guards had announced that the spacecraft was not going to deploy its landing shuttles as planned. Instead, they had told the convict passengers, the Santa Maria was going to take a "temporary detour to rendezvous with a space station orbiting Mars." Eponine had been both confused and concerned by the announcement. Unlike most of her associates, she had read carefully all the ISA material for the colonists and she had never seen any mention of an orbiting space station around Mars.

  It bad not been until the Santa Maria was completely unloaded and all the people and supplies were inside New Eden that anyone had really told Eponine and the other convicts what was happening. And even after the Macmillan briefing, very few of the convicts believed they were being told the truth. "Come on, now," Willis Meeker had said, "does he really think we're that stupid? A bunch of ETs built this place and all those crazy robots? This whole thing is a setup. We're just testing some new kind of prison concept."

  "But Willis," Malcolm Peabody had replied, "what about all the others, the ones who came on the Pinta and the Niña? I've talked to some of them. They're normal people—I mean, they aren't convicts. If your theory is right, what are they doing here?"

  "How the hell should I know, fag? I'm no genius. I just know that Macmillan dude is not giving us the straight shit."

  Eponine did not let her uncertainties about the Macmillan briefing deter her from going with Kimberly to Central City to submit requests for the three apartments in Hakone. They were fortunate in the drawing this time and were allocated their first choice. The two women spent a day moving into the apartment on the edge of Sherwood Forest and then reported to the employment office in the administrative complex for processing.

  Because the other two spacecraft had arrived well before the Santa Maria, the procedures to integrate the convicts into the life in New Eden were quite carefully defined. It took virtually no time to assign Kimberly, who really did have an outstanding nursing record, to the central hospital.

  Eponine interviewed with the school superintendent and four other teachers before accepting an assignment at Central High School. Her new job required a short commute by train, whereas she could have walked each day if she had decided to teach at Hakone Middle School. But Eponine thought it would be worth the trouble. She very much liked the principal and staff members who were teaching at the high school.

  At first the other seven doctors working at the hospital were leery of the two convict physicians, especially Dr. Robert Turner, whose dossier cryptically mentioned his brutal murders without detailing any of the extenuating circumstances. But after a week or so, during which time his extraordinary skill, knowledge, and professionalism became apparent to everyone, the staff unanimously selected him to be the director of the hospital. Dr. Turner was quite astonished by his selection and pledged, in a brief acceptance speech, to dedicate himself completely to the welfare of the colony.

  His first official act was to propose to the provisional government that a full physical examination be given to every citizen of New Eden so that all the personal medical files could be updated. When his proposal was accepted, Dr. Turner deployed the Tiassos throughout the colony as paramedics. The biots performed all the routine examinations and gathered data for the doctors to analyze. Simultaneously, remembering the excellent data network that had existed among all the hospitals in the Dallas metropolitan area, the indefatigable Dr. Turner began working with several of the Einsteins to design a fully computerized system for tracking the health of the colonists.

  One evening during the third full week after the Santa Maria had docked with Rama, Eponine was home alone, as usual (Kimberly Henderson's daily pattern had already become established—she was almost never in the apartment. If she wasn't at work at the hospital, then she was out with Toshio Nakamura and his cronies), when her videophone sounded. It was Malcolm Peabody's face that appeared on the monitor. "Eponine," he said shyly, "I have a favor to ask."

  "What is it, Malcolm?"

  "I received a call from a Dr. Turner at the hospital about five minutes ago. He says there were some 'irregularities' in my health data taken by one of those robots las
t week. He wants me to come in for a more detailed examination."

  Eponine waited patiently for several seconds. "I'm not following you," she said at length. "What's the favor?"

  Malcolm took a deep breath. "It must be serious, Eponine. He wants to see me now… Will you come with me?"

  "Now?" said Eponine, glancing at her watch. "It's almost eleven o'clock at night." In a flash she remembered Kimberly Henderson complaining that Dr. Turner was a "workaholic, as bad as those black robot nurses." Eponine also recalled the amazing blue of his eyes.

  "All right," she said to Malcolm. "I'll meet you at the station in ten minutes."

  Eponine had not been out much at night. Since her teaching appointment, she had spent most of her evenings working on her lesson plans. On one Saturday night she had gone out with Kimberly, Toshio Nakamura, and several other people to a Japanese restaurant that had just opened. But the food was strange, the company mostly Oriental, and several of the men, after drinking too much, made pathetic passes at her. Kimberly chided her for being "picky and standoffish," but Eponine refused her roommate's later invitations to socialize.

  Eponine reached the station before Malcolm. While she was waiting for him to arrive, she marveled at how completely the village had been transformed by the presence of humans. Let's see, she was thinking, the Pinta arrived here four months ago, the Niña five weeks after that. Already there are shops everywhere, both around the station and in the village itself. The accoutrements of human existence. If we stay here a year or two this colony will be indistinguishable from Earth.

  Malcolm was quite nervous and talkative during the short train ride. "I know it's my heart, Eponine," he said. "I've been having sharp pains, here, ever since Walter died. At first I thought it was all in my mind."

  "Don't worry," Eponine responded, comforting her friend. "I bet it's nothing really serious."

  Eponine was having difficulty keeping her eyes open. It was after three o'clock in the morning. Malcolm was asleep on the bench beside her. What's that doctor doing? she wondered. He said he wouldn't be long.

  Soon after their arrival, Dr. Turner had examined Malcolm with a computerized stethoscope and then, telling him he needed "more comprehensive tests," had taken him into a separate part of the hospital. Malcolm had returned to the waiting room an hour later. Eponine herself had seen the doctor only briefly, when he had admitted Malcolm to his office at the beginning of the examination.

  "Are you Mr. Peabody's friend?" a voice suddenly said. Eponine must have been dozing. When her vision was in focus, the beautiful blue eyes were staring at her from only a meter away. The doctor looked tired and upset.

  "Yes," Eponine said softly, trying not to disturb the man sleeping on her shoulder.

  "He's going to die very soon," Dr. Turner said. "Possibly in the next two weeks."

  Eponine felt her blood surge through her body. Am I hearing correctly? she thought. Did He say Malcolm was going to die in the next two weeks? Eponine was stunned.

  "He will need a lot of support," the doctor was saying. He paused for a moment, staring at Eponine. Was he trying to remember where he had seen her before? "Will you be able to help him?" Dr. Turner asked.

  "I … I hope so," Eponine answered.

  Malcolm began to stir. "We must wake him up now," the doctor said.

  There was no emotion detectable in Dr. Turner's eyes. He had delivered his diagnosis—no, his assertion—without a hint of feeling. Kim is right, Eponine thought. He's as much an automaton as those Tiasso robots.

  At the doctor's suggestion, Eponine accompanied Malcolm down a corridor and into a room filled with medical instruments. "Someone intelligent," Dr. Turner said to Malcolm, "chose the equipment that was brought here from Earth. Although we are limited in staff, our diagnostic apparatus is first rate."

  The three of them walked over to a transparent cube about one meter on a side. "This amazing device," Dr. Turner said, "is called an organ projector. It can reconstruct, with detailed fidelity, almost all the major organs of the human body. What we are seeing now, when we look inside, is a computer graphic representation of your heart, Mr. Peabody, just as it appeared ninety minutes ago when I injected the tracer material into your blood vessels."

  Dr. Turner pointed at an adjacent room, where Malcolm had apparently undergone the tests. "While you were sitting on that table," he continued, "you were scanned a million times a second by the machine with the big lens. From the location of the tracer material and those billions of instantaneous scans, an extremely accurate, three-dimensional image of your heart was constructed. That is what you are seeing inside the cube."

  Dr. Turner stopped a moment, looked away quickly, and then fixed his eyes on Malcolm. "I'm not trying to make it harder on you, Mr. Peabody," he said quietly, "but I wanted to explain how I am able to know what's wrong with you. So that you will understand there has been no mistake."

  Malcolm's eyes were wild with fright. The doctor took him by the hand and led him to a specific position beside the cube. "Look right there, on the back of the heart, near the top. Do you see the strange webbing and striation in the tissues? Those are your heart muscles and they have undergone irreparable decay."

  Malcolm stared inside the cube for what seemed like an eternity and then lowered his head. "Am I going to die, Doctor?" he asked meekly.

  Robert Turner took his patient's other hand. "Yes, you are, Malcolm. On Earth, we could possibly wait for a heart transplant; here, however, it is out of the question since we have neither the right equipment nor a proper donor… If you would like, I can open you up and take a firsthand look at your heart. But it's extremely unlikely that I would see anything that would change the prognosis."

  Malcolm shook his head. Tears began to run down his cheeks. Eponine put her arms around the little man and began to weep as well. "I'm sorry it took me so long to complete my diagnosis," Dr. Turner said, "but in a case this serious I needed to be absolutely certain."

  A few moments later Malcolm and Eponine walked toward the door. Malcolm turned around. "What do I do now?" he asked the doctor.

  "Whatever you enjoy," Dr. Turner replied.

  When they were gone Dr. Turner returned to his office, where hardcopy printouts of Malcolm Peabody's charts and files lay strewn across his desk. The doctor was deeply worried. He was virtually certain—he could not know definitely until he had completed the autopsy—that Peabody's heart was suffering from the same kind of malady that had killed Walter Brackeen on the Santa Maria. The two of them had been close friends for several years, going all the way back to the beginning of their detention terms in Georgia. It was unlikely that they had both coincidentally contracted the same heart disease. But if it was not a coincidence, then the pathogen must be communicable.

  Robert Turner shook his head. Any disease that struck the heart was alarming. But one that could be passed from one person to another? The specter was terrifying.

  He was very tired. Before putting his head down on his desk Dr. Turner made a list of the references on heart viruses that he wanted to obtain from the data base. Then he fell quickly asleep.

  Fifteen minutes later the phone aroused him suddenly. A Tiasso was on the other end, calling from the Emergency Room. "Two Garcias have found a human body out in Sherwood Forest," it said, "and are on the way here now. From the images they have transmitted, I can tell that this case will require your personal involvement."

  Dr. Turner scrubbed his hands, put on his gown again, and reached the Emergency Room just before the two Garcias arrived with the body. As experienced as he was, Dr. Turner had to turn away from the horribly mutilated corpse. The head had been almost completely severed from the body—it was hanging by only a thin strand of muscle—and the face had been hacked and disfigured beyond recognition. In addition, in the genital area of the trousers there was a bloody, gaping hole.

  A pair of Tiassos immediately went to work, cleaning up the blood and preparing the body for autopsy. Dr. Turner sat on a chair, away
from the scene, and filled out the first death report in New Eden.

  "What was his name?" he asked the biots.

  One of the Tiassos rustled through what was left of the dead man's clothing and found his ISA identification card.

  "Danni," the biot replied. "Marcello Danni."

  EPITHALAMION

  1

  The train from Positano was full. It stopped at the small station on the shores of Lake Shakespeare, halfway to Beauvois, and disgorged its mixture of humans and biots. Many were carrying baskets of food and blankets and folding chairs. Some of the smaller children raced from the station out onto the thick, freshly mowed grass surrounding the lake. They laughed and tumbled down the gentle slope that covered the hundred and fifty meters between the station and the edge of the water.

  For those who did not want to sit on the grass, wooden stands had been erected just opposite the narrow pier that extended fifty meters into the water before spreading out into a rectangular platform. A microphone, rostrum, and several chairs were set up on the platform; it was there that Governor Watanabe would deliver the Settlement Day address after the fireworks were finished.

  Forty meters to the left of the stands the Wakefields and the Watanabes had placed a long table covered with a blue and white cloth. Finger foods were tastefully arranged on the table. Coolers underneath were filled with drinks. Their families and friends had gathered in the immediate area and were either eating, playing some kind of game, or engaged in animated conversation. Two Lincoln biots were moving around the group, offering drinks and canapés to those who were too far away from the table and the coolers.

  It was a hot afternoon. Too hot, in fact, the third exceptionally warm day in a row. But as the artificial sun completed its mini-arc in the dome far above their heads and the light began to slowly dim, the expectant crowd on the banks of Lake Shakespeare forgot about the heat.