Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “What kind of danger?” Johann asked, puzzled. “And what kind of precautions?”

  The white Beatrice smiled again. “For reasons that you would never be able to comprehend,” she said, “I cannot give you any more specifics. In fact, I can only tell you two things: observe the nepps, for in their behavior lie the clues to your safety; also, no land upon which any of you have ever walked is safe.”

  Johann’s mind was exploding with questions. “Are those nepps the furry little creatures up in the hills behind our village?” he asked first.

  Beatrice nodded. “But that’s the only question I am allowed to answer,” she said. “Everything else, Brother Johann, you must figure out for yourself.”

  The glowing bright light, which had been stationed a few kilometers away during their entire conversation, now started moving toward them. “We have only a minute or so left, Brother Johann,” the white Beatrice said hurriedly, “and I didn’t want to forget to tell you what a big help Sister Nuba has been to me.”

  “So is Nuba still alive, then?” Johann asked.

  “She is like me,” Beatrice answered.

  She extended her hand in a farewell gesture. Johann reached out, touched her fingers fleetingly, and felt a tingle run through his body.

  “I have never stopped loving you,” he said, shielding his eyes from the oncoming light.

  “I know,” he heard her voice say. Her figure had now been engulfed by the light. “And you have been a wonderful father for Maria, Brother Johann. Especially today. Thanks for everything.”

  Johann was forced to turn his head away from whatever vehicle had returned to pick up Beatrice. Several seconds later, as the light sped away out over the ocean, he turned around and waved good-bye. In his heart he knew that she could still see him.

  EVEN THOUGH IT was very late, everyone in the West Village was still awake when Johann arrived. During his walk down the side of Black Rock, Johann had decided not to say anything just yet about the apparition of Beatrice. He did, however, explain the arrangement he had negotiated with Maria and the others, and that Jomo, Keiko, and Satoko would be temporarily moving back to the West Village in a few days.

  As expected, Siegfried and Beatrice both thought that Johann had been “too easy on the thieves,” but the other adults congratulated him on having resolved the crisis in a reasonable way Later that night, as Johann and Vivien lay side by side in the privacy of their hut, Johann was uncharacteristically silent. Vivien rolled over to face him. “I know you so well, darling,” she said. “I can tell there’s something you haven’t told us.”

  “I had a visit from Sister Beatrice,” Johann said at length. “She came to me while I was resting on the top of Black Rock Promontory. She only stayed for a minute or two, told me it was the last time I would ever see her, and warned me that we would all be in extreme danger on double full moon night.”

  Johann and Vivien spent the next half hour discussing the details of his encounter with the white Beatrice. “Except for Yasin,” Vivien said quietly after they were finished, “Maria and you are the only two of us who have seen Sister Beatrice since we parted company in that spacecraft atrium years and years ago. Maria was a baby, and remembers nothing. Yasin of course has been dead all these years. So there is nobody who can corroborate any part of your tale about the time you spent with Beatrice when she was alive, much less these amazing stories about her visits in a resurrected form.”

  “I know,” said Johann reflectively “I would certainly have a hard time believing in the apparitions myself if I hadn’t experienced them… I remember one of my discussions with Ravi soon after we arrived here… He openly asked, in spite of his Michaelite training, if it was possible that my sightings of Beatrice since her death have all been hallucinations born out of some deep, unexplained yearning or guilt. That’s why I didn’t say anything tonight about this latest apparition.”

  “Don’t you think it’s peculiar,” Vivien said after a long pause, “that this white Beatrice, as you call her, appears only to you, and never to me, who was her best friend, or to Maria, her daughter and next of kin?”

  “Maybe. I guess so.” Johann rolled over and Looked at his wife. “Are you telling me that you also have doubts about whether her visits have actually occurred?”

  Vivien sat up on her mat. “Johann, once many years ago I saw an apparition of my own, a ribbon of sparkling, dancing particles that formed into an angel in front of my disbelieving eyes. But since that time, I have personally witnessed no more of these miracles. I love you, I am your wife, and I want to believe your stories, but if I am having difficulty with them, imagine what the others, who have no experience at all with these kinds of events, must be thinking? How can we possibly convince them that the danger your white Beatrice mentioned is real? Especially since she was so vague.

  “I don’t know,” Johann said. “That’s why I wanted to discuss this whole situation with you first.”

  They were both silent for several minutes. “Do you remember,” Johann then said, “a long discussion you, Sister Beatrice, and I had that night at the church on Mars, about the reality of Joan of Arc’s voices?”

  “Yes, I do,” Vivien answered. “And I also remember you insisted that absence of any explicit proof that what the voices said was true cast doubt upon the reality of their existence. At which point Sister Beatrice gently upbraided you for your narrow view that the scientific method was the only valid approach for determining truth.”

  “Joan’s voices told her,” Johann continued, “that she would lead the French to throw off the oppressive yoke of the English, and their predictions turned out to be true. But the result does not prove that the voices existed. An equally valid argument could be made that an inspired Joan fabricated the voices as a vehicle to incite the Dauphin and the French to rally around her and drive the English from French territory.”

  “Okay,” Vivien said, “but so what? I’m not following you. What does this discussion have to do with your visit from Sister Beatrice?”

  Johann’s features were now animated. “Don’t you see?” he said. “Our situation is more straightforward. The apparition of Beatrice has warned me of an extreme danger that will occur on double full moon night. It may be that everyone, including you, believes that my visions of her are a kind of hallucination. But in this instance we will have some kind of proof in only a matter of days. If the danger turns out to be real, then voilà, the apparition must have really occurred. If there is no danger on double full moon night, then my postmortem sightings of Beatrice have probably all been hallucinations.”

  “This just might work,” Vivien said admiringly, after a brief hesitation. “I presume you intend to inform everyone about the visitation, raise the issue yourself about its reality, and ask the group to give you the benefit of the doubt and follow your recommendations between now and the double full moon.”

  “Exactly,” said Johann.

  FOUR

  AT VIVIEN’S SUGGESTION, Johann waited to mention the apparition of Beatrice until after Jomo, Keiko, and Satoko arrived in the West Village. Both Jomo and Keiko worked very hard, starting before even Siegfried and not stopping until all the rest of the work for the day had been finished. Morale was high on the third evening when Johann decided to tell everyone about the visit from Sister Beatrice and the warning she had given him.

  Johann candidly admitted that what he was describing to them might seem bizarre and difficult to believe. He even added, with some humor, that if the apparition had been only a figment of his imagination, they would all know soon enough, in approximately fifty more days. He also told everyone that he was going to take off by himself the next day, to find and observe the nepps, and he both asked their indulgence and requested that they fulfill his normal duties while he was gone.

  Early the next morning Johann, carrying the heavy knapsack that Vivien had helped him pack with supplies that he might need for as long as a two-week expedition, climbed the switchbacks beside the c
reek. He stopped at the little lake for his normal morning swim. While he was swimming he noted to himself that he had seen no sign of any of the nepps for a long time, perhaps as long as twenty days. Johann also realized that he did not really have any good ideas about where the nepps might be—on his few brief excursions into the territory above the lake he had never encountered more than a handful of them at a time.

  He began his search by climbing along the side of the broadest and strongest of the creeks that dropped into the lake. The ascent was steep, and after several hundred meters became rocky and devoid of all vegetation. Johann studied the ground for signs of tracks or nepp droppings, which he was certain he would recognize, but after walking all day he had still not seen anything that suggested the presence of the nepps. A disappointed Johann spent his first night with his sleeping mat wedged between two large boulders a few meters to the side of the creek.

  When he awakened the next day, Johann decided to retrace his steps and head back toward the swimming lake. Just before he began his descent, however, he heard a peculiar gushing sound, lasting for maybe thirty seconds, in the distance off to his right. Leaving a carefully marked stone on top of the largest boulder he could find, and etching his current location with his knife on a crude map on one of the many pieces of thin bark he was carrying in his pack, Johann headed in the direction of the sound.

  The mostly barren ground over which he was traveling became darker and more volcanic-looking as he walked. Based on his general geographic sense, Johann felt certain he was in the Eastern Hills above Black Rock Promontory. He continued to note features on his map, and to leave marking stones in prominent places, so that he would not have to worry about becoming lost.

  After nearly an hour of walking on mostly flat terrain, Johann heard the thirty seconds of gushing again, this time much louder, but unfortunately coming from his left, where a steep rock slope blocked his progress. Following some investigation, Johann found a roundabout passage up the rock slope that was difficult but not impossible. However, the three-point scrambling over the boulders tired him quickly. He was quite fatigued when he stopped for lunch.

  While he was sitting quietly eating one of the tasty yellow fruits that he and his family called a darben, Johann heard an unusual sequence of sounds, almost a song, similar in tone to the plucking of harp strings but much more rapid and not nearly as melodious. The sequence was followed by another, a variation on the same theme but with a higher pitch and in a slightly different key. As these sounds continued to alternate, first one and then the other, Johann was able to pinpoint the direction from which they were coming. Moving with great care, he edged along the side of the rock against which he had been leaning until he could see a barren pitch of dirt, in full sunlight, no more than ten meters square, in the middle of which were two of the strangest creatures that Johann had ever seen.

  At first glance they looked like two giant, segmented centipedes, perhaps a meter long, each with a vertical cluster of long thin reeds attached to its rear segment. These reeds rose thirty or forty centimeters into the air. The larger of the two animals, the one whose song had the lower pitch, was bright red in color everywhere except for the reed cluster, where each of the hundred or so different elements seemed to be a different color. The song of the creature, if that’s indeed what it was, was created by both horizontal and vertical undulations of this reed cluster, the individual notes occurring as each element was distended from its equilibrium position. Accompanying the music was a dazzling visual display as well, as the twists and twirls of the reeds produced an astonishing profusion of color.

  The other animal was cobalt-blue along the length of its segmented body. Its reed cluster was essentially colorless, but it also was able to produce a song by moving the individual elements to and fro.

  As Johann watched, the red creature sang and displayed, and then took a small step in the direction of the other. At first the cobalt-blue animal backed up after its song, but as the dance continued it began to move forward toward the red aggressor, turning its body slightly to the side.

  Just before they reached each other, the red animal suddenly introduced a significant variation into its song, increasing both the number and speed of the undulations in its reed cluster. At this signal the blue partner lay down on the ground and rolled over, exposing its lighter, soft underbelly of powder-blue.

  By this time the two creatures had traveled far enough that Johann could no longer see them clearly. When he moved himself to another location for a better view, he accidentally dislodged a small stone, which rumbled down the far side of the rock behind which he was hiding. In an instant the blue creature rolled over and stood up, its reed cluster whirling into action and making a pulsating, repeating, two-beat sound that was much louder than its earlier song. The red animal picked up the same refrain as both creatures faced the spot where the dislodged rock had struck the ground.

  Within seconds the area around Johann was full of these alarm sounds. He turned to his right and saw a new, orange creature of the same species blocking his path. Out on the barren dirt square, the red animal was moving toward Johann with its back arched and a long, needle-shaped object extending about five centimeters forward from the front segment of its body.

  Johann scrambled to the top of the largest boulder in the vicinity and counted six of the creatures in open view, each looking hostile and making the same two-syllable alarm sound. Since the first noise sounded to Johann like ack, and the second like yong, Johann began referring to these animals in his own mind as ackyongs.

  Several minutes later, when Johann had made no attempt to descend from his boulder and confront the ackyongs, the large red creature Johann had first seen retracted its stinger and called off the siege by silencing its alarm. Within moments all the ackyongs Johann could see were crawling with surprising speed toward a large rock overhang thirty or forty meters to the right. Johann followed at a distance and watched two ackyongs open and then enter a long, flat shell nested against a rock wall under an overhang. The shell, one of two dozen in a long row under that particular overhang, then closed immediately.

  JOHANN SAT WHERE he could see the ackyong shells for half an hour more. During this time he again heard the thirty-second gushing sound, and twice saw one of the shells open and an ackyong edge partially outside. Even though Johann was not moving, the creatures possessed some kind of sensors that recognized he was still present, for both times the ackyong in question sounded its two-beat alarm and retreated back into its long, hard shell.

  As fascinating as Johann found these strange new creatures, by mid-afternoon he had reminded himself that the primary purpose for his expedition was to find and observe the nepps, and that he had not yet made any progress toward that goal. Marking carefully the location of the ackyongs, Johann left the area and headed toward the gushing sound. After several minutes of difficult trekking the terrain around him changed abruptly and Johann recognized that he had entered a highly active seismic area, like the Solfatara in Italy that he had visited while a student at the University of Berlin. It was thus no surprise to him that the sound he had been pursuing turned out to be coming from a periodic geyser.

  The first time he saw the geyser erupt Johann was about a hundred meters away, and his view was obstructed by rocks and bushes. He heard it begin and, moving quickly, was able to see the geyser at its peak, when the ejected subsurface water reached an altitude of sixty meters or so. Disappointed that he had not been able to watch the eruption from start to finish, Johann decided to remain near the vent so that he could watch the next cycle in its entirety.

  While he was waiting, Johann examined the unusual landscape in the region. There were holes in the ground out of which fumes and smoke were rising, bubbling hot springs continually pumping water into a creek that ran away from the region, and innumerable open mudpots of different hues and viscosities, in which liquid material oozed and bubbled very close to the surface itself. Around two of these mudpots, which seemed to
contain the same or similar material, Johann found many sets of animal tracks. Johann bent down to examine the tracks carefully. Among them he was fairly certain he could recognize the familiar nepp tracks that he had seen so often near the swimming lake.

  Johann admired the next eruption of the geyser, but by this time his mind was focused on a plan to conceal himself so that he might observe the nepps the next time they visited one of the two special mudpots. By nightfall he had found a nearly perfect hiding place, no more than fifteen meters from one of the mudpots that had been surrounded by tracks. He stayed awake another two hours after the sun had set, but there were no visitors during that time.

  Just before dawn Johann awakened when he heard scurrying sounds plus what was unmistakably animal chatter. At the nearby mudpot, three nepps had gathered. Two were holding a round container and the third was dipping what looked like a crude spoon into the hot bubbling goo and depositing the material into the container. Before they were finished, a second trio of nepps arrived. A brief conversation ensued before the first group departed and the second threesome filled their rectangular container with the thick brown muck.

  By sunrise the nepps had all disappeared. Fortunately for Johann, it was easy to follow their tracks. They stayed. on the dirt whenever possible and even in a grassy region the recent indentations were easy to spot. Johann had thought that their colony would not be far away. He was wrong. By mid-morning, now almost five kilometers away from the mudpots, he was still following their trail.

  He was also climbing in altitude. After a particularly steep half kilometer he emerged onto a great plateau that was covered with tall grasses and surrounded by mountains on one side and thick forests on the other. Here Johann lost the trail of the nepps he had been following. He sat down to eat lunch and to consider what he should do next.