Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Well, I'll be goddamned," Max said, his eyes moving from one screen to another.

  "Look over here," Nicole said. "It's El Mercado in San Miguel."

  In the poorest of the four villages of New Eden, a dozen white and yellow toughs with karate bands around their heads were beating up four black and brown youths in full view of a pair of New Eden policemen and a sorrowful crowd of perhaps twenty villagers. Tiasso and Lincoln biots picked up the broken, bloodied bodies after the beatings and placed them in a large tricycle carriage.

  On another screen a segment showed a well-dressed crowd, mostly white and Oriental, arriving for a party or a festival in Nakamura's Vegas. Bright lights beckoned them to the casino, over which a huge sign proclaimed CITIZEN APPRECIATION DAY and announced that every partygoer would receive a dozen free lottery tickets to celebrate the occasion. Two large posters of Nakamura, chest shots showing him smiling and wearing a white shirt and tie, flanked the sign.

  A monitor on the wall behind the Chief Optimizer showed the interior of the Central City jail. A new felon, a female with a multicolored hairdo, was being placed in a cell that already contained two other convicts. It appeared as if the newcomer were complaining about the crowded conditions, but the policeman just pushed her into the cell and laughed. When the policeman returned to his desk, the video revealed two photographs on the wall behind him, one of Richard and the other of Nicole, under both of which the word REWARD was written in large block letters.

  The octospiders waited patiently as the humans' eyes moved from screen to screen. "How in the world?" Richard kept asking, shaking his head. Then the screens went suddenly blank.

  "We have put together a total of forty-eight segments to show you today," the Chief Optimizer said, "all taken from observations made the last eight days in New Eden. The optimizer you call Archie will have a catalog of the segments, which have been classified according to location, time, and event description. You may spend as much time here as you like, looking at the segments, talking among yourselves, and asking questions of the two octospiders who accompanied you here. I, unfortunately, have other tasks to perform. If, at the end of your viewing, you wish to communicate with me again, I will make myself available."

  The Chief Optimizer then departed, followed by her two assistants. Nicole sat down in one of the chairs. She looked pale and weak. Ellie walked over beside her.

  "Are you all right, Mother?" Ellie asked.

  "I think so," Nicole replied. "Right after the videos began to play, I felt a sharp pain in my chest—probably from the surprise and excitement—but it has subsided now."

  "Do you want to go home and rest?" Richard asked.

  "Are you kidding?" said Nicole with her characteristic smile. "I wouldn't miss seeing this show even if there was a chance that I would drop dead in the middle."

  They watched the silent movies for almost three hours. It was clear from the videos both that there was no longer any individual freedom in New Eden and that most of the colonists were struggling to sustain even a meager existence. Nakamura had consolidated his hold on the colony and crushed all the opposition. But the colony he ruled was peopled mostly by gloomy and unhappy citizens.

  At first all the humans watched the same segment together, but after three or four had been played, Richard suggested that it was terribly inefficient for them to watch the segments one at a time. "Spoken like a true optimizer," said Max, who nevertheless agreed with Richard.

  There was one segment in which Katie briefly appeared. It was a late-night scene from Vegas. The street prostitutes were plying their trade outside one of the clubs. Katie approached one of the women, had a brief conversation about some unknown subject, and then disappeared from view. Richard and Nicole couldn't help but notice that Katie looked terribly thin, even gaunt. They asked Archie to rerun the segment several times.

  Another sequence was entirely devoted to the hospital in Central City. No words were needed for the viewers to understand that there were shortages of critical medicines, not enough staff members, and problems with equipment falling into disrepair. One particularly poignant scene snowed a young woman of Mediterranean extraction, possibly Greek, dying after a painful breech childbirth. Her delivery room was lit with candles while the monitoring equipment that might have identified her difficulties and saved her life lay inexplicably unpowered beside the bed.

  Robert Turner was everywhere in the hospital segment. The first time Ellie saw him walking through the halls, she burst into tears. She sobbed throughout the segment and then immediately requested a replay. Only when she was watching for a third time did she make any comment. "He looks haggard," she said, "and overworked. He has never learned to take care of himself."

  When they were all emotionally exhausted and nobody requested the replay of another segment, Archie asked the humans if they wished to visit again with the Chief Optimizer. "Not now," Nicole said, reflecting everyone's opinion. "We haven't had time to digest what we've seen."

  Nai asked if perhaps they could take some of the segments back to their homes in the Emerald City. "I would like to see them again," she said, "at a more leisurely pace. And it would be great if we could show them to Patrick and Eponine." Archie replied that he was sorry, but the segments could only be viewed in one of the octospider communication centers.

  On the ride back to their zone, Richard showed Archie how well his real-time translator was working. Richard had just finished his final tests the day prior to the meeting with the Chief Optimizer. The translator could translate either the octospiders' natural dialect or the language specifically tailored to the visual spectrum of the humans. Archie acknowledged that he was impressed.

  "By the way," Richard added in a louder voice, so that all his compatriots could hear him, "I guess there's not much chance that you'd tell us how you managed to obtain all those video segments from New Eden, is there?"

  Archie did not hesitate to answer. "Flying image quadroids," he said. "More advanced genus. Much smaller."

  Nicole translated for Max and Nai. "Fuck me," Max muttered under his breath. He rose and walked to the opposite end of the transport, shaking his head vigorously.

  "I have never seen Max so solemn or so tense," Richard said to Nicole.

  "Nor have I," she answered. They were taking an exercise walk an hour after having finished dinner with their family and friends. A lone firefly kept pace above Richard and Nicole as they repeated multiple times the walk from the end of their cul-de-sac to the plaza at the other end of the street.

  "Do you think Max will change his mind about leaving?" Richard asked as they circled the fountain again.

  "I don't know," Nicole replied. "I think he's still in shock, in a way. He detests the fact that the octospiders are able to watch everything we do. That's why he insists that he and his family will return to New Eden, even if everyone else stays here."

  "Have you had a chance to talk with Eponine alone?"

  "The day before yesterday she brought Marius over just after naptime. While I was putting some medication on his diaper rash, she asked me if I had mentioned to Archie that they wanted to leave. She seemed frightened."

  They marched briskly into the plaza. Without stopping, Richard pulled out a small cloth and wiped the sweat from his brow. "Everything has changed," he said, as much to himself as to Nicole.

  "I'm certain it's all part of the octospider plan," Nicole replied. "They didn't show us those videos only to demonstrate that all is not well in New Eden. They knew how we would react after we had had time to assess the real significance of what we had seen."

  The pair walked silently back in the direction of their temporary home. On the next swing around the fountain, Richard said, "So do they observe everything we do, including even this conversation?"

  "Of course," Nicole replied. "That was the primary message the octospiders transmitted to us by allowing us to see the videos. We can have no secrets. Escape is out of the question. We are completely in their power. I may be
the only one, but I still do not believe that they intend to harm us. And they might even allow us to return to New Eden… Eventually."

  "It will never happen," Richard said. 'Then they would have wasted a lot of resources for no measurable return, a decidedly nonoptimal situation. No, I'm certain the octospiders are still trying to figure out our proper placement in their overall system."

  Richard and Nicole walked at top speed on their final lap. They finished at the fountain and both of them drank some water. "How do you feel?" Richard asked.

  "Fine," Nicole answered. "No pains, no shortness of breath. When Dr. Blue examined me yesterday, she found no new pathology. My heart is just old and weak. I should expect intermittent problems."

  "I wonder what niche we'll occupy in the octospider world," Richard said a few moments later when they were washing their faces.

  Nicole glanced at her husband. "Aren't you the one," she said, "who laughed at me some months ago for making inferences about their motives? How can you be so certain now that you understand what the octospiders are trying to accomplish?"

  "I'm not." Richard grinned. "But it's natural to assume that a superior species would at least be logical."

  Richard woke Nicole up in the middle of the night, "I'm sorry to bother you, darling, but I have a problem."

  "What is it?" Nicole asked, sitting up in bed.

  "It's embarrassing," Richard said. "That's why I haven't mentioned it earlier… It started right after Bounty Day. I thought it would go away, but this last week the pain has become unbearable."

  "Come on, Richard," Nicole said, a little irritated at having her sleep disturbed, "get to the point. What pain are you talking about?"

  "Every time I urinate, I have this burning sensation…"

  Nicole tried to stifle a yawn while she was thinking. "And have you been urinating more frequently?" she asked.

  "Yes … how did you know?"

  "Achilles should have been held by his prostate when he was dipped in the River Styx," she said. "It is certainly the weakest structure in the male anatomy. Roll over on your stomach and let me examine you."

  "Now?" said Richard.

  "If you can wake me from a deep sleep because of your pain," Nicole said with a laugh, "then the least you can do is grit your teeth while I try to verify my instant diagnosis."

  Dr. Blue and Nicole were sitting together in the octospider's house. On one of the walls four quadroid frames were projected. 'The image on the far left," Dr. Blue said, "shows the growth as it looked that first morning, ten days ago, when you asked me to confirm your diagnosis. The second frame is a much magnified picture of a pair of cells taken from the tumor. The cell abnormalities—what you call cancer—are marked with the blue stain."

  Nicole smiled wanly. "I'm having a little difficulty reorienting my thinking," she said. "You never use the colors for 'disease' when you describe Richard's problem—only the word which in your language I define as 'abnormality.'"

  'To us," Dr. Blue responded, "a disease is a malfunction caused by an outside agent, such as a bacterium or a hostile virus. An irregularity in the cell chemistry leading to the manufacture of improper cells is a completely different kind of problem. In our medicine the treatment regimens are completely different for the two cases. This cancer in your husband is more closely related to aging, generically, than it is to a disease like your pneumonia or gastroenteritis."

  Dr. Blue extended a tentacle toward the third picture. "This image," she said, "shows the tumor three days ago, after the special chemicals carried by our microbiological agents had been carefully dispersed at the site of the abnormality. The growth has already begun to shrink because the production of the malignant cells has stopped. In the final image, taken this morning, Richard's prostate again looks normal. By this time all the original cancer cells have died, and no new ones have been produced."

  "So will he be all right now?" Nicole asked.

  "Probably," Dr. Blue answered. "We can't be absolutely certain because we still do not have as much data as we would like on the life cycle of your cells. There are a few unique characteristics about your cells—as there always are in species who have undergone an evolution distinct from any of our previously examined beings—that might permit a recurrence of the abnormality. However, based on our experience with many other living creatures, I would have to say that the development of another prostate tumor is unlikely."

  Nicole thanked her octospider colleague. "This has been incredible," she said. "How wonderful it would be if your medical knowledge could somehow be transported back to Earth."

  The images vanished from the wall. "There would be many social problems created as well," Dr. Blue said, "assuming that I have properly understood our discussions of your home planet. If individual members of your species did not die from diseases or cell abnormalities, life expectancy would increase markedly. Our species went through a similar upheaval after our Golden Age of Biology, when octospider life spans doubled in just a few generations. It wasn't until optimization became firmly implanted as our governing structure that any kind of societal equilibrium was reached. We have plenty of evidence that without sound termination and replenishment policies, a colony of nearly immortal beings undergoes chaos in a relatively short period of time."

  Nicole's interest was piqued. "I can appreciate what you're saying, at least intellectually," she said. "If everyone lives forever, or nearly so, and the resources are finite, the population will soon overwhelm the available food and living space. But I must admit, especially as an old person, that even the idea of a 'termination policy' frightens me."

  "In our early history," Dr. Blue said, "our society was structured much like yours, with almost all of the decision-making power resting with the older members of the species. It was easier to restrict replenishment, therefore, after life expectancy dramatically increased, than it was to deal with the difficult issue of planned terminations. After a comparatively brief period of time, however, the aging society began to stagnate. As Archie or any good optimizer would explain, the 'ossification' coefficient of our colonies became so large that eventually all new ideas were rejected. These geriatric colonies collapsed, basically because they were not able to deal with the changing conditions of the universe around them."

  "So that's where optimization comes in?"

  "Yes," said Dr. Blue. "If every individual embraces the precept that the welfare of the overall colony should be awarded the highest weight in the master objective function, then it quickly becomes clear that planned terminations are a critical element of the optimal solution. Archie would be able to show you quantitatively how disastrous it is, from the point of view of the colony as a whole, to spend huge amounts of collective resource on those citizens whose integrated remaining contribution is comparatively low. The colony benefits most by investing in those members who have a long, healthy lifetime still available and therefore a high probability of repaying the investment."

  Nicole repeated back to Dr. Blue some of the octospider's key sentences, just to make certain that she had understood properly. Then she was silent for two or three nillets. "I suppose," Nicole said eventually, "that even though your aging is delayed both by postponing sexual maturity and by your amazing medical capability, at some point preserving the life of an old octospider becomes prohibitively expensive, by some measure."

  "Exactly," Dr. Blue replied. "We can extend the life of an individual almost forever. However, there are three major factors that make extra life extension decidedly nonoptimal for the colony. First, as you mentioned, the cost of the effort to extend life increases dramatically as each biological subsystem, or organ, begins to operate at less than peak efficiency. Second, as an individual octospider's time becomes more and more consumed with the process of simply staying alive, the amount of energy that he or she might have to contribute to the colony's welfare lessens considerably. Third, and the sociological optimizers proved this controversial point many years ago—although for some num
ber of years after mental quickness and learning ability start to drop, accumulated wisdom more than compensates—in terms of value to the colony, for the diminished brainpower, there comes a time in the life of every octospider when the sheer weight of his or her past experience makes any additional learning extremely difficult. Even in a healthy octospider this phase of life, called the Onset of Limited Flexibility by our optimizers, signals a reduced ability to contribute to the colony."

  "So the optimizers determine when it is termination time?"

  "Yes," said Dr. Blue, "but I don't know exactly how they do it. There is a probationary period first, during which time the individual octospider is entered on the termination list and given time to improve his or her net balance. This balance, if I have understood Archie's explanation, is calculated for each octospider by comparing its contributions made with the resources necessary to sustain that particular individual. If the balance does not improve, then termination is scheduled."

  "And how do those selected for termination react?" Nicole asked, involuntarily shuddering as she remembered facing her own execution.

  "In different ways," Dr. Blue replied. "Some, especially those who have been unhealthy, accept that they are not going to be able to redress the unsatisfactory balance and plan for their deaths in an organized fashion. Others ask for optimizer counseling and request new assignments that have a higher probability of allowing them to meet their contribution quotas… That's what Hercules did just before your arrival."

  Nicole was momentarily speechless. A chill ran down her back. "Are you going to tell me what happened to Hercules?" she said, finally summoning her courage.

  "He was severely reprimanded for not providing proper protection for Nikki on Bounty Day," Dr. Blue said. "Hercules was then reassigned and informed by the Termination Optimizer that there was virtually no way he could recover from the high negative assessment of his recent work. Hercules requested early and immediate termination."