Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "I never lived, 'til I met you… I never loved, 'til I saw you…" The soft melody of the old recorded song swam in Nicole's memory and brought back an image from fifteen years before, from another dance with another man when she had still believed that love could conquer everything. Julien LeClerc misread her body signals and pulled her closer to him. Nicole decided not to fight it. She was already very tired and, if the truth were known, it felt good being held tightly by a man for the first time in several years.

  She had honored her agreement with Genevieve, When Monsieur LeClerc had finished his short set of songs, Nicole had approached the French singer and given him the message from her daughter. As she had anticipated, he had interpreted her approach to mean something entirely different. They had continued talking while Francesca had announced to the partygoers that there would be no more formal entertainment until after midnight and that all the guests were free to drink or snack or dance to the recorded music until then, Julien had offered his arm to Nicole and the two of them had walked back over to the portico, where they had been dancing ever since.

  Julien was a handsome man, in his early thirties, but he was not really Nicole's type. First of all, he was too conceited for her. He talked about himself all the time and did not pay any attention when the conversation switched to other topics. Although he was a gifted singer, he had no other particularly outstanding characteristics. But, Nicole reasoned as their continued dancing brought stares from the other guests, he's all right as a dancer and it beats standing around twiddling my thumbs.

  At a break in the music Francesca came over to talk to them. "Good for you, Nicole," she said, her open smile appearing genuine. "I'm glad to see that you're enjoying yourself." She extended a small tray with half a dozen dark chocolate balls lightly sprayed with white, possibly a sugar confection. "These are fantastic," Francesca said. "I made them especially for the Newton crew."

  Nicole took one of the chocolates and popped it into her mouth. It was delicious. "Now I have a favor to ask," Francesca continued after several seconds. "Since I was never able to schedule a personal interview with you and our mail indicates that there are millions of people out there who would like to find out more about you, do you think that you could come over to our studio here and give me ten or fifteen minutes before midnight?"

  Nicole stared intently at Francesca. A voice inside her was sending out a warning, but her mind was somehow garbling the message.

  "I agree," Julien LeClerc said while the two women looked at each other. "The press always talks about the 'mysterious lady cosmonaut' or refers to you as 'the ice princess.' Show them what you've shown me tonight, that you're a normal, healthy woman like everybody else."

  Why not? Nicole finally decided, suppressing her interior voice. At least by doing it here I don't have to involve Dad and Genevieve.

  They had started to walk toward the makeshift studio on the other side of the portico when Nicole saw Shigeru Takagishi across the room. He was leaning against a column and talking to a trio of Japanese businessmen dressed in formal attire. "Just a minute," Nicole said to her companions, 'I'll be right back."

  "Tanoshii shin-nen, Takagishi-san," Nicole greeted him. The Japanese scientist turned, startled at first, and smiled as he saw her approach. After he formally introduced Nicole to his associates, and they all bowed to acknowledge her presence and accomplishments, Takagishi started a polite conversation.

  "O genki desu ka?" he asked.

  "Okagesama de," she replied. Nicole leaned across to her Japanese colleague and whispered in his ear. "I only have a minute. I wanted to tell you that I have carefully examined all your records and I am in complete agreement with your personal physician. There is no reason to say anything about your heart anomaly to the medical committee."

  Dr. Takagishi looked as if he had just been told that his wife had given birth to a healthy son. He started to say something personal to Nicole but remembered he was in the midst of a group of his countrymen. "Domo arrigato gozaimas," he said to the retreating Nicole, his warm eyes conveying the depth of his thanks.

  Nicole felt great as she waltzed into the studio between Francesca and Julien LeClerc. She posed willingly for the still photographers while Signora Sabatini ensured that all the television equipment was in working order for the interview. She sipped some more champagne and cassis, making intermittent small talk with Julien. Finally she took a seat beside Francesca underneath the klieg lights. How wonderful, Nicole kept thinking about the earlier interaction with Takagishi, to be able to help that brilliant little man.

  Francesca's first question was innocent enough. She asked Nicole if she was excited about the coming launch. "Of course," Nicole answered, She then gave a lively summary of the training exercises that the cosmonaut crew had been undergoing while waiting for the opportunity to rendezvous with Rama II. The entire interview was conducted in English. The questions flowed in an orderly pattern. Nicole was asked to describe her role in the mission, what she expected to discover ("I don't really know, but whatever we find will be extremely interesting"), and how she happened to go to the Space Academy in the first place. After about five minutes, Nicole was feeling at ease and very comfortable; it seemed to her that she and Francesca had fallen into a complementary rhythm.

  Francesca then asked three personal questions, one about her father, a second about Nicole's mother and the Senoufo tribe in the Ivory Coast, and the third about her life with Genevieve. None of them were difficult. So Nicole was totally unprepared for Francesca's last question.

  "It is obvious from your daughter's photographs that her skin is considerably lighter than yours," Francesca said in the same tone and manner that she had used for all the other questions. "Genevieve's skin color suggests that her father was probably white. Who was the father of your daughter?"

  Nicole felt her heart rate surge as she listened to the question. Then time seemed to stand still. A surprising flood of powerful emotions engulfed Nicole and she was afraid she was going to cry. A brilliant hot image of two entwined bodies reflected in a large mirror burst into her mind and made her gasp. She momentarily looked down at her feet, trying to regain her composure.

  You stupid woman, she said to herself as she struggled to calm the combination of anger and pain and remembered love that had crashed upon her like a tidal wave. You should have known better. Again the tears threatened and she fought them. She looked up at the lights and Francesca. The gold sequins on the front of the Italian journalist's dress had grouped into a pattern, or so it seemed to Nicole. She saw a head in the sequins, the head of a large cat, its eyes gleaming and its mouth with sharp teeth just beginning to open.

  At last, after what seemed to be forever, Nicole felt that she again had her emotions under control. She stared angrily at Francesca. "Non voglio parlare di quello," Nicole said quietly in Italian. "Abbiamo terminate questa intervista." She stood up, noticed that she was trembling, and sat down again. The cameras were still rolling. She breathed deeply for several seconds. At length Nicole rose from her chair and walked out of the temporary studio.

  She wanted to flee, to run away from everything, to go someplace where she could be alone with her private feelings. But it was impossible. Julien grabbed her as she exited from the interview. "What a bitch!" he said, waving an accusing finger in Francesca's direction. There were people all around Nicole. All of them were talking at the same time. She was having trouble focusing her eyes and ears in all the confusion.

  In the distance Nicole heard some music that she vaguely recognized but the song was more than half over before she realized it was "Auld Lang Syne." Julien had his arm around her back and was singing lustily. He was also leading the group of twenty or so people clustered around them in singing the final words. Nicole mouthed the last bar mechanically and tried to maintain her equilibrium. Suddenly a moist pair of lips was pressed against hers and an active tongue was trying to pry open her mouth and force its way inside. Julien was kissing her feverishly, photo
graphers were snapping pictures all around, there was an incredible amount of noise. Nicole's head began to spin and she felt as if she were going to faint. She struggled hard, finally succeeding in freeing herself from Julien's grasp.

  Nicole staggered backward and bumped into an angry Reggie Wilson. He pushed her aside in his haste to grab a couple sharing a deep New Year's kiss in the flashing lights. Nicole watched him disinterestedly, as if she were in a movie theater, or even in one of her own dreams. Reggie pulled the pair apart and raised his right arm as if he were going to slug the other man. Francesca Sabatini restrained Reggie as a confused David Brown retreated from her embrace.

  "Keep your hands off her, you bastard," Reggie shouted, still threatening the American scientist. "And don't think for one minute that I don't know what you're doing." Nicole could not believe what she was seeing. Nothing made any sense. Within seconds the room was full of security guards.

  Nicole was one of many people ushered summarily away from the fracas while order was being restored. As she left the studio area she happened to pass Elaine Brown, sitting by herself in the portico with her back against a column. Nicole had met and enjoyed Elaine when she had gone to Dallas to talk to David Brown's family physician about his allergies. At the moment Elaine was obviously drunk and in no mood to talk to anybody. "You shit," Nicole heard her mutter, "I never should have showed you the results until after I had published them myself. Then everything would have been different."

  Nicole left the gala as soon as she was able to arrange her transportation back to Rome. Francesca unbelievably tried to escort her out to the limousine as if nothing had happened. Nicole curtly rejected her fellow cosmonaut's offer and walked out alone.

  It started to snow during the ride back to the hotel. Nicole concentrated on the falling snowflakes and was eventually able to clear her mind enough to assess the evening. Of one thing she was absolutely certain. There had been something unusual and very powerful in that chocolate ball she had eaten. Nicole had never before come so close to losing complete control of her emotions. Maybe she gave one to Wilson too, Nicole thought. And that partially explains his eruption. But why? she asked herself again. What is she trying to accomplish?

  Back at the hotel she prepared quickly for bed. But just as she was ready to turn out the lights, Nicole thought she heard a light knock on the door. She stopped and listened, but there was no sound for several seconds. She had almost decided that her ears were playing tricks on her when she heard the knock again. Nicole pulled the hotel robe around her and approached the locked door very cautiously. "Who's there?" she said forcefully but not convincingly. "Identify yourself."

  She heard a sound of scraping and a piece of folded paper was thrust under the door. Nicole, still wary and frightened, picked up the paper and opened it. On it was written, in the original Senoufo script of her mother's tribe, three simple words: Ronata. Omeh. Here. Ronata was Nicole's name in Senoufo.

  A mixture of panic and excitement caused Nicole to open the door without first checking on the monitor to see who was outside. Standing ten feet away from the door, his amazing old eyes already locked on hers, was an ancient, wizened man with his face painted in green and white horizontal streaks. He was wearing a full-length, bright green tribal costume, similar to a robe, on which were gold swashes and a collection of line drawings of no apparent meaning.

  "Omeh!" Nicole said, her heart threatening to jump out of her chest. "What are you doing here?" she added in Senoufo.

  The old black man said nothing. He was holding out a stone and a small vial of some kind, both in his right hand. After several seconds he stepped deliberately forward into the room. Nicole backpedaled with each of his steps. His gaze never wavered from her. When they were in the center of her hotel room and only three or four feet apart, the old man looked up at the ceiling and began to chant. It was a ritual Senoufo song, a general blessing and spell invocation used by the tribal shaman for hundreds of years to ward off evil spirits.

  When he had finished the chant the old man Omeh stared again at his great-granddaughter and began to speak very slowly. "Ronata," he said, "Omeh has sensed strong danger in this life. It is written in the tribal chronicles that the man of three centuries will chase the evil demons away from the woman with no companion. But Omeh cannot protect Ronata after Ronata leaves the kingdom of Minowe. Here," he said, taking her hand and placing the stone and vial in it, "these stay with Ronata always."

  Nicole looked down at the stone, a smooth, polished oval about eight inches long and four inches in each of the other two dimensions. The stone was mostly creamy white with a few strange brown lines wriggling across its surface. The small green vial that he had given her was no bigger than a traveling bottle of perfume.

  "The water from the Lake of Wisdom can help Ronata," Omeh said. "Ronata will know the time to drink." He tilted his head back and earnestly repeated the earlier chant, this time with his eyes closed. Nicole stood beside him in puzzled silence, the stone and the vial in her right hand. When he was finished singing, Omeh shouted three words that Nicole did not understand. Then he abruptly turned around and walked quickly toward the open door. Startled, Nicole ran out into the hall just in time to see his green gown disappear into the elevator.

  14

  GOOD-BYE HENRY

  Nicole and Genevieve walked arm in arm up the hill through the light snow. "Did you see the look on that American's face when I told him who you were?" Genevieve said with a laugh. She was very proud of her mother.

  Nicole shifted her skis and poles over to the other shoulder as they approached the hotel. "Guten Abend," an old man who would have made a perfect Santa Claus mumbled as he ambled by. "I wish you wouldn't be so quick to tell people," Nicole said, not really chastizing her daughter. "Sometimes it's nice not to be recognized."

  There was a small shed for the skis beside the entrance to the hotel. Nicole and Genevieve stopped and placed their equipment in a locker. They exchanged their ski boots for soft snow slippers and walked back out into the fading light Mother and daughter stood together for a moment and looked back down the hill toward the village of Davos. "You know," said Nicole,, "there was a time today, during our race down that back piste toward Klosters, when I found it impossible to believe that I will actually be way out there (she gestured at the sky) in less than two weeks, headed for a rendezvous with a mysterious alien spacecraft. Sometimes the human mind balks at the truth."

  "Maybe it's only a dream," her daughter said lightly.

  Nicole smiled. She loved Genevieve's sense of play. Whenever the day-today drudgery of the hard work and tedious preparation would begin to overwhelm Nicole, she could always count on her daughter's easy nature to bring her out of her seriousness. They were quite a trio, the three of them that lived at Beauvois. Each of them was sorely dependent on the other two. Nicole did not like to think how the hundred-day separation might affect their harmonious accord.

  "Does it bother you that I will be gone so long?" Nicole asked Genevieve as they entered the hotel lobby. A dozen people were sitting around a roaring fire in the middle of the room. An inconspicuous but efficient Swiss waiter was serving hot drinks to the après-ski crew. There would be no robots in a Morosani hotel, not even for room service.

  "I don't think of it that way," her cheerful daughter responded. "After all, I'll be able to talk with you almost every night on the videophone. The delay time will even make it fun. And challenging." They walked past the old-fashioned registration desk. "Besides," Genevieve added, "I'll be the center of attention at school for the whole mission. My class project is already set; I'm going to draw a psychological portrait of the Ramans based on my conversations with you."

  Nicole smiled again and shook her head. Genevieve's optimism was always infectious. It was a shame—

  "Oh, Madame des Jardins." The voice interrupted her thought. The hotel manager was beckoning to her from the desk. Nicole turned around. "There's a message for you," the manager continued. "I was to
ld to deliver it to you personally."

  He handed her a small plain envelope. Nicole opened it and saw just the tiniest portion of a crest on the note card. Her heart raced into overdrive as she closed the envelope again. "What is it, Mother?" Genevieve inquired. "It must be special to be hand delivered. Nobody does things like that these days."

  Nicole tried to hide her feelings from her daughter. "It's a secret memo about my work," she lied. "The deliveryman made a terrible mistake. He should never have given it even to Herr Graf. He should have put it in my hands only."

  "More confidential medical data about the crew?" Genevieve asked. She and her mother had often discussed the delicate role of the life science officer on a major space mission.

  Nicole nodded. "Darling," she said to her daughter, "why don't you run upstairs and tell your grandfather that I'll be along in a few minutes. We'll still plan dinner for seven-thirty. I'll read this message now and see if any urgent response is required."

  Nicole kissed Genevieve and waited until her daughter was on the elevator before walking back outside into the light snow. It was dark now. She stood under the streetlight and opened the envelope with her cold hands. She had difficulty controlling her trembling fingers. You fool, she thought, you careless fool. After all this time. What if the girl had seen…

  The crest was the same as it had been on that afternoon, fifteen and a half years ago, when Darren Higgins had handed her the dinner invitation outside the Olympic press area. Nicole was surprised by the strength of her emotions, She steeled herself and finally looked at the rest of the note below the crest.

  "Sorry for the last-minute notice. Must see you tomorrow. Noon exactly. Warming hut #8 on the Weissfluhjoch. Come alone. Henry."