Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “I was originally created,” the Eagle said, “primarily as an interface for this particular species. My design was optimized to permit me to obtain a deeper understanding of what humans are all about, especially how their irrational, emotional component has played a significant role in their evolution and technological development. I have learned that some special humans, and I am certain this Maria belongs to this group, cannot function properly in their lives if information critical to their perception of themselves is not available.

  “What harm would be done if I informed Maria that her ancestors left Earth roughly two hundred years ago, and that since that time her forebears have been part of a grand experiment conducted by a superior alien intelligence, of which we have imperfect knowledge? I could also mention that her parents were rescued from certain death by the particle ribbons on a faraway planet with large twin moons, and then left to be discovered by the octospider species just as it was establishing its colony in Rama. At least this information would answer a few of her questions and might permit her to focus her admirable intelligence and energy on other issues.”

  “Our overall objective function,” the other replied to the Eagle, “shows no significant probability of increase as a result of providing to this young human female the general history of her origins. The only way our endeavor receives a stochastically measurable payoff is if we place her in a situation where she has an opportunity to encounter the particle beings themselves. Only they can unravel the secrets of the silver cylinder for her. And as you are well aware from the entries in our historical data base, often these encounters result in the death or permanent exile from their species for the spacefarers involved.

  “If you are recommending that we transport her to the spherical spaceship that we have allowed to remain stationed not far from our tetrahedron, then don’t tell Maria very much about her background before she arrives there. Detailed knowledge might unduly influence her behavior. We can take her to the sphere and communicate to the particles the nature of her mission. Of course, we have absolutely no control over their response, or her fate if she decides to enter their domain. If she survives and returns from her encounter with them, then we can share all that we know about her family origins.”

  “I think,” said the Eagle, “that this particular human is exceptional and has a high probability, based on what I know of the past encounters between other spacefarers and the particles, of having a positive experience inside their domain. What I propose is to give Maria a brief overview of what we know, and don’t know, about her origins, the silver cylinder, and the particles. We can let her decide whether the additional knowledge she seeks is worth risking her life to obtain. If she decides to go, and is permitted to exit from their sphere, she will almost certainly add new and valuable data about the particle beings.”

  “Your proposal is approved,” the central intelligence answered. “If Maria accepts the risks of the encounter, she will carry on her person our most advanced miniaturized remote sensing instruments. Even though the particle beings have always detected, and rendered useless, our information-seeking devices in the past, we have recently made some new breakthroughs that have resulted in sensors that operate at subatomic levels. These may escape their notice. In any case, we agree that if she survives the experience and is allowed to return to the shuttle in which you will transport her, Maria’s observations about her encounter will be a major addition to what we know about the particle beings.”

  “I will speak to her in the near future,” the Eagle said, “and carefully explain that we can neither guarantee her safety nor any answers to her questions. My guess is that Maria will still decide the risk is worth taking. In that event, how long will our preparations take?”

  “We will have her customized shuttle and the miniaturized instruments ready for deployment in a few days.”

  TWO

  MARIA HAD HARDLY slept all night. She was too excited. She knew that she had just spent the most extraordinary day of her unusual life and that in a few hours, when the Eagle came for her, she would begin an adventure unequaled in all of human experience.

  As she lay in her bed she could still see that mesmerizing face in her apartment and hear the words spoken by the Eagle the previous evening. The voice had had an electronic tone, and had seemed to be emanating from somewhere far back in the mouth, but the words had been clear and distinct. “You understand clearly,” the Eagle had said near the end of their discussion, “that we have no control over what might happen after you are in their jurisdiction.”

  “Yes, sir,” Maria had replied. “I also know that they might not even grant me an audience, and that even if they do, I may not learn anything about my ancestors. But I still believe this is my only hope. And I can’t imagine living my entire life without knowing anything about my family.”

  The Eagle had then stood silently for a long time in the middle of the living room in her small apartment, dominating the scene both by his size and his presence. Maria had an indelible print of the alien in her memory The Eagle was very tall, perhaps two and a quarter meters, and shaped like a human being from the neck down. His arms and torso were covered with small tightly woven charcoal-gray feathers. He had four fingers on each of his two hands, which were creamy white and featherless. Below his waist, the surface of the Eagle’s body was flesh colored, but it was shiny; like satin, and very much unlike human skin. There were no hairs or feathers below the waist, no visible joints or genitalia, and his strange flat feet had no toes.

  The Eagle’s face had commanded Maria’s attention throughout their meeting. It had four large powder-blue eyes, two on either side of a protruding beak that was greenish gold in color. The feathers on the top of his head were white, contrasting with the dark gray of his back, face, and neck. The Eagle’s face was smooth, with only a few feathers scattered here and there.

  “Then have you made your decision?” the Eagle had asked at length.

  “Yes, sir,” Maria had replied without hesitation. “I want to go.”

  “All right,” the Eagle had said, his expression unchanged.

  “Pack your things. I will return for you in nine hours.”

  Maria glanced over at the clock, as she had done a dozen times before. It was only thirty minutes until his arrival. She rose from her bed and went to the desk. She thought for a moment, and then started writing three short notes to her closest friends, all members of Nicole’s extended family. Maria had deliberately not contacted anyone after the Eagle’s surprise visit. She hadn’t wanted to explain what she was doing or give anyone a chance to talk her out of her decision.

  She didn’t say anything in the notes about what she had learned the night before. How could she possibly have summarized the amazing conversation? At first the Eagle had been reluctant to give her specific answers to her questions, but once Maria had explained that there was no way she could make an informed decision based on the sketchy information he had provided, the intelligent alien had been more forthcoming.

  “The particle beings are very difficult to describe or classify,” the Eagle bad said. “First, they are able to reconfigure themselves into an infinite variety of shapes and sizes. Their most common manifestation is as a three-dimensional construct that is glowing white in appearance, shaped like a long, looping ribbon. Inside the structure, whose external surface ebbs and flows, are thousands of tiny sparkling particles that move about in no discernible pattern, drifting freely until they contact the temporary edge of the formation, at which point the particle momentum reverses and the individual mote moves back in the opposite direction.

  “In addition, it is impossible to define a single individual among them. The particle beings possess an instantaneous distributed intelligence with internal communications in electromagnetic packets in codes we have not been able to decipher. Finally, they have an advanced system of fault protection that preserves their secrets—any detected attempt by an outside presence to analyze them in detail causes sel
f-destruction.”

  And these are the beings I am hoping to meet? Maria said to herself as she finished writing the notes. I certainly was feeling brave last night. I wonder if I would have made the same decision this morning.

  She walked into the living room and placed the three notes in the center of the little table in front of the couch. Then Maria returned to her bedroom, opened and checked the contents of her bag one final time, and sat down on the bed. Her heart was already pounding furiously.

  What was it that Nicole said to me the last time we were together? Maria asked herself Happiness only comes to people who are willing to take risks. She laughed nervously. I guess that’s better than Uncle Max’s favorite saying. Fools rush in where mortals fear to tread.

  THE EAGLE, PUNCTUAL as always, arrived at Maria’s apartment at the appointed time. After exchanging greetings, Maria followed him through the sterile corridors of the section of the Habitation Module that housed all the humans and the octospiders. When they reached the sealed airlock and gates that separated their environment from others in the module, the Eagle handed Maria a space suit complete with a transparent helmet that would fit over her head.

  “Are you still certain that you want to do this?” the alien asked as Maria was adjusting her new clothing and helmet. She nodded.

  By some unknown process the Eagle activated the apparatus controlling the series of gates and they passed into another area with similar offwhite corridors. Parked at the first junction in the new region was a small wheeled vehicle with two seats. Maria climbed in next to the Eagle and the doors to the windowless vehicle sealed. “For security reasons, you will not be allowed to see outside the car,” the Eagle said matter-of-factly. “You may be returning to your apartments and we do not want you to have any knowledge of the creatures living in your immediate vicinity.”

  After riding in silence for a few minutes, Maria asked the Eagle where they were going. “To the transportation center of the Habitation Module,” he replied, “the place you arrived when you were first transferred here from the starfish. Then we will be transported to the Engineering Module, where the space shuttle that will fly us to our destination is being constructed.”

  “You are making a special spaceship for me, just for this trip?” Maria asked in astonishment.

  “Yes,” the Eagle said.

  “But why?” Maria said. “Why would you go to all that trouble?”

  “We wouldn’t ordinarily,” the Eagle answered. “Our decision to permit your excursion was based on a complicated objective function in which the primary weighting was the likelihood of our obtaining any new or characterizing data about the ribbon culture for our files.”

  Maria laughed. “I have no idea what you just told me,” said.

  The Eagle looked at her. “In simpler language, we have our own reasons for supporting this endeavor.”

  When Maria and the Eagle disembarked from their small wheeled car, they were in a large room right next to the transportation center. Through the huge transparent window on the side of the room, Maria could see a long thin passageway, with blinking lights, stretching far into the distance. At the far end the lights became connected to each other and to an illuminated sphere, another of the vertices of the tetrahedron that formed the Node.

  Maria remembered the confusion and uncertainty she had felt the first time that she had stood in front of this same window, shortly after the shuttles carrying the occupants of the starfish had docked at the Habitation Module. This time, too, her heart was racing wildly, in anticipation of the adventure she had decided to undertake. But since she was not surrounded by others and being pressed to move forward, Maria took several minutes to enjoy the spectacular view out the window.

  “Is that the Engineering Module?” she eventually asked the Eagle. Her alien companion had been standing patiently beside her the entire time.

  “Actually, no,” he answered. “That particular distant sphere is the Knowledge Module. But the Engineering Module is identical in size and construction. And the linear connector along which we will travel is similar to the one you are seeing out the window.”

  Maria glanced again at the large sphere twenty-five kilometers away. “Is that where Nicole died?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said the Eagle. “She requested that her last days be spent learning things that would help her understand more clearly how human beings, and she in particular, fit into the overall scheme of the universe.”

  “She was a remarkable woman,” Maria said, surprised at the surge of sorrow and loss she suddenly felt.

  “Yes, she was,” the Eagle said.

  “You were with her when she died, weren’t you?” Maria said.

  “Yes,” the Eagle answered simply.

  THE TRANSPORTATION CENTER of the Habitation Module was laid out in a circle and was twenty meters tall. On every side of Maria and the Eagle were moving sidewalks leading in different directions, and escalators going up and down.

  Maria followed the Eagle down one of the escalators and onto a moving sidewalk. They approached a pair of tracks, on one of which was parked a sleek silver tube.

  “Each of the modules is connected to the other three vertices by long linear constructs,” the Eagle said. “We use them to move living creatures, equipment, or anything else that needs to be transported from module to module.”

  The door to the silver tube opened automatically as they approached. Maria and the Eagle were to be the only occupants. A few seconds after they were seated, the tube moved forward. It quickly accelerated to its cruising speed and raced down the corridor. Twice tubes going in the opposite direction whizzed by them, but Maria could not distinguish what, if anything, was contained inside them.

  At the transportation center of the Engineering Module, Maria followed the Eagle up several escalators until they reached a docking area where their small shuttle was waiting. The vehicle was round and flat, except for a small bulge in the middle with a transparent window Maria and the Eagle entered from the underside of the spacecraft. As soon as they were sitting down, seat restraints wrapped around Maria, doors in the side of the Node opened, and their flying saucer edged out into space.

  “Even at our high speeds,” the Eagle said as they sped away from the illuminated tetrahedron, “it will take several hours for us to reach our destination. I had the designers include a hundred or so selections of human music, in case you become bored. Is there anything in particular that you would like to hear?”

  Maria glanced over at the Eagle, who was a passenger in the automatically guided spacecraft just as she was. “I don’t suppose you would tell me what else the designers included in this vehicle, would you?”

  “No,” said the Eagle. “And even if I did, I don’t think you would understand any of the technological explanations.”

  “In that case,” Maria said with a wry smile, “I would like to hear something by Beethoven or Mozart. One of the many things Nicole shared with me was her love of fine music.”

  Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony was in the middle of its storm when Maria first caught sight of the polished white ball that was their destination. Her first surprise was how enormous it was. Then she became fascinated by its scattered red decorations, including the polar hood on the top, two red circles that looked like eyes symmetrically placed in its upper hemisphere, and the two distinct red bands, separated by a thin white line, that ran completely around its equator.

  As their shuttle drew closer to the habitat of the ribbon culture, aiming for its equatorial region, first the hood and then the two red eyes moved out of sight. Their front window was now completely filled by the whiteness of the sphere, broken only by the red lines in the middle of their view.

  “The only opening into their spacecraft,” the Eagle said, “or at least the only one that we have ever observed, is along these equatorial markings. We will cruise near the equator, broadcasting the purpose of our visit in a dozen different high-level languages that we know the particle cultu
re understands, and hope that there is some response.

  The alien could sense Maria’s anticipation from the set of her body. “Don’t be too disappointed if nothing happens,” the Eagle continued. “This sphere has only opened once when one of our spacecraft was in its vicinity during the hundreds of years that it has been stationed near us. We have seen it open many times, with our remote sensors, to deploy its own spacecraft or let one back inside, but it always remains firmly closed when any extension of the Nodal Intelligence is in the area.”

  “Why did it open that one time?” Maria asked.

  “It’s a long story;” the Eagle answered, “most of which you would not be able to comprehend. But what’s intriguing is that there were some similarities between that visit and ours. In that previous instance, the ribbons sent out their own drone—”

  As if on cue, the deep red equatorial lips of the sphere separated almost imperceptibly for a brief moment and something flew out into space, heading toward the shuttle. Maria’s first reaction was fright.

  “How do you know that whatever is coming toward us is not a weapon of some kind?” she asked the Eagle.

  “In the first place,” the alien responded, “that would be out of character with the entire history of the particle culture. Secondly, although you may not realize it, our shuttle has a very high technological level of self-protection.”

  The craft that was heading in their direction was a red sphere about the size of their shuffle. It circled Maria and the Eagle a couple of times before finally stopping on Maria’s side. The red sphere then convulsed and extended a long red hollow cylinder that came to rest against Maria’s window.