Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "I doubt it," Francesca said casually. She jumped down from the box. "The truth always eludes those who search for it." She smiled. "Now let's go find the professor."

  On the western side of the central plaza the two women encountered another unique structure. From a distance it resembled a huge barn. The peak of its black roof was easily forty meters above the ground and it was more than a hundred meters long. There were two especially fascinating features about the barn. First, the two ends of the building were open. Second, although one could not see into it from the outside, all the walls and the roof were transparent from the inside. Francesca and Nicole took turns proving that it was not an optical illusion, Someone inside the barn could indeed see in all directions except down. In fact, the adjacent reflective skyscrapers had been precisely aligned so that all the nearby streets were visible from inside the barn.

  "Fantastic," said Francesca as she photographed Nicole standing on the other side of the wall.

  "Dr. Takagishi told me," Nicole said as she came around the comer, "that it was impossible to believe that New York was purposeless. The rest of Rama? Maybe. But nobody could have spent this much time and effort without some reason."

  "You almost sound religious," Francesca said.

  Nicole stared quietly at her Italian colleague. She's needling me now, Nicole said to herself. She doesn't really care what I think. Maybe what anybody thinks.

  "Hey. Look at this," Francesca said after a short silence. She had walked a short way into the interior of the barn and was pointing at the ground. Nicole came up beside her. In front of Francesca a narrow rectangular pit was cut in the floor. The pit was about five meters long, a meter and a half wide, and quite deep, maybe as much as eight meters. Most of the bottom was in shadow. The walls of the pit were straight up and down, without any sign of indentation.

  "There's another one over here. And another there…" Altogether there were nine pits, each constructed in exactly the same manner, that were scattered over the south half of the barn. In the north half, nine small spheres rested on the surface in a carefully measured array. Nicole found herself wishing for a legend of some kind, an instructional guide that would explain the meaning or purpose of all these objects. She was starting to feel bewildered.

  They had crossed almost the entire length of the barn when they heard a faint emergency signal on their communicators. "They must have found Dr. Takagishi," Nicole said out loud as she rushed out one of the open ends of the barn. As soon as she was no longer underneath the roof, the volume of the emergency signal nearly shattered her eardrums. "Okay. Okay," she radioed. "We can hear you. What's up?"

  "We've been trying to call you for over two minutes,"' she heard Richard Wakefield say. "Where in the hell have you been? I only used the emergency signal because of its higher gain."

  "We were inside this amazing barn," Francesca replied from behind Nicole. "It's like a surrealistic world, with one-way mirrors and weird reflections—"

  "That's great," Richard interrupted, "but we don't have time to chat. You ladies are to march forthwith to the closest spot on the Cylindrical Sea. A helicopter will pick you up in ten minutes. We'd come into New York itself if there was a place for us to land."

  "Why?" Nicole asked. "What's the hurry all of a sudden?"

  "Can you see the South Pole from where you are?"

  "No. We have too many tall buildings in the way."

  "Something weird is happening around the little horns. Huge arcs of lightning are bouncing from spire to spire. It's an impressive display. We all feel something unusual is about to happen." Richard hesitated a second. "You should leave New York immediately."

  "Okay," Nicole answered. "We're on our way."

  She switched off the transmitter and turned to Francesca. "Did you hear how loud the emergency signal was the moment we came out of the barn?" Nicole thought for several seconds. "The material in the walls and roof of that building must block radio signals." Her face now brightened. "That explains what happened to Takagishi—he must be inside a barn, or something similar."

  Francesca was not following Nicole's line of thought. "So what?" she said, taking one last panoramic image of the barn with her video camera. "It's really not important now. We must hurry out to meet the helicopter."

  "Maybe he's even in one of those very pits," Nicole continued excitedly. "Sure. It could have happened. He was exploring in the dark. He could have fallen… Wait here," she said to Francesca. "I'll only be a minute."

  Nicole dashed back inside the barn and bent down beside one of the holes. Holding the side of the pit with her hand, she shone the beam from her flashlight down into the bottom. Something was there! She waited a few seconds for her eyes to focus. It was a pile of material of some kind. She moved quickly to the next pit. "Doctor Takagishi," she yelled. "Are you here, Shig?" she shouted in Japanese.

  "Come on!" Francesca hollered at Nicole from the end of the barn. "Let's go. Richard sounded very serious."

  At the fourth pit the shadows made it very difficult for Nicole to see the bottom even with the beam from her flashlight. She could make out some objects, but what were they? She laid down on her stomach and eased slightly into the pit at an angle to try to confirm that the shapeless mass below her was not the body of her friend.

  The lights in Rama began flashing on and off. Inside the barn, the optical effect was startling. And disorienting. Nicole glanced up to see what was happening and lost her balance. Most of her body slid into the pit. "Francesca," she yelled, pressing her hands against the opposite wall of the pit for support. "Francesca, I need some help," Nicole shouted again.

  Nicole waited almost a minute before she concluded that Cosmonaut Sabatini must have already left the barn area. Her arms were tiring rapidly. Only her feet and the very bottoms of her legs were safely resting on the barn floor. Her head was next to one of the pit walls about eighty centimeters below floor level. The remainder of her body was suspended in midair, prevented from falling only by her intense arm pressure against the wall.

  The lights continued to flash off and on at short intervals. Nicole lifted her head to see if she could possibly reach the top of the pit with one of her arms, while holding her position secure with the other, It was hopeless. Her head was too deep in the hole. She waited several more seconds, her desperation growing as the fatigue in her arms increased. Finally Nicole made an attempt both to throw her body upward and to grab onto the lip of the pit in one connected motion. She was almost successful. Her arms could not stop her downward momentum when she fell. Her feet followed her body into the hole and she smacked her head against the wall. She tumbled unconscious to the bottom of the pit.

  36

  IMPACT COURSE

  Francesca had also been startled when the lights of Rama had suddenly begun to flash. Her initial impulse had been to run inside, just under the roof of the barn. Once there, she felt slightly more protected. What's going on now? she thought as the reflected lights from the adjacent buildings forced her to close her eyes to keep from becoming dizzy.

  When she heard Nicole's cry for help, Francesca started to rush over to help her fellow cosmonaut. However, she tripped on one of the spheres and banged her knee as she fell. When she rose, Francesca could see in the strobing light that Nicole's position was very precarious. Only the backs of Nicole's shoes were visible. Francesca stood quite still and waited. Her mind had already raced ahead. She had a nearly perfect image of the pits in her memory, including a fairly accurate assessment of the depth. If she falls she'll be injured, she thought, maybe even killed. Francesca remembered the smooth walk. She won't be able to climb out.

  The flashing lights gave an eerie overtone to the scene. As Francesca watched, she saw Nicole's body rise barely out of the pit and her hands scramble for a hold on the lip. In the next flashes of light the shoes changed angle with respect to the pit and then abruptly disappeared. Francesca heard no scream.

  If she had not controlled herself, Francesca would have h
urried over to the pit and looked into it. No, she said to herself, still standing amid the small spheres, I must not look. If by chance she is still conscious, she might see me. Then I will have no options.

  Already Francesca was thinking about the possibilities offered by Nicole's fall. She was certain, based on their earlier exchange, that Nicole intended to do her utmost to prove that Borzov had ingested a pain-inducing drug on the last day of his life. It might be possible for Nicole even to identify the particular compound and then eventually, since it was not common, to trace its purchase back to Francesca. The scenario was unlikely, even implausible. But it could happen.

  Francesca remembered using her special permits to buy the dimethyldexil, along with a batch of other items, at a hospital pharmacy in Copenhagen two years earlier. At the time there had been a suggestion that the drug, in very small doses, could produce mild feelings of euphoria in highly stressed individuals. A single journal article in an obscure Swedish mental health publication the following year had contained the information that sizable doses of dimethyldexil would produce acute pain that simulated an appendicitis.

  As Francesca walked rapidly away from the barn in a northerly direction, her agile mind worked through all the possibilities. She was performing her usual risk/reward trade-off. The primary issue she was facing, now that she had left Nicole in the pit, was whether or not to tell the truth about Nicole's fall. But why did you leave her there? somebody would ask. Why didn't you radio us that she had fallen and stand by until help could arrive?

  Because I was confused and frightened and the lights were flashing. And Richard had sounded so very concerned about our leaving. I thought it would be easier for us to all talk together at the helicopter. Was that believable? Barely. But it was easy to keep straight. So I still have the partial truth option, Francesca thought as she passed the octahedron near the central plaza. She realized she had walked too far to the east, checked her personal navigator, and then changed her direction. The lights of Rama continued to flash.

  And what are my other choices? Wakefield talked with us just outside the barn. He knows where we were. A search party would definitely find her. Unless… Francesca thought again about the possibility that Nicole might eventually implicate her in the drugging of General Borzov. The resulting scandal would certainly result in a messy investigation and probably a criminal indictment. In any case, Francesca's reputation would be sullied and her future career as a journalist would be seriously compromised.

  With Nicole out of the picture, on the other hand, there was virtually zero probability that anyone would ever learn that Francesca had drugged Borzov. The only person who knew the facts was David Brown, and he had been a co-conspirator. Besides, he had even more to lose than she did.

  So the issue, Francesca thought, is whether or not I can make up a believable story that both reduces the chance Nicole will be found and does not implicate me if she is. That's a very difficult task.

  She was nearing the Cylindrical Sea. Her personal navigator told her that she was only six hundred meters away. Dammit, Francesca answered herself after thinking very carefully about her situation, I don't really have a completely safe option. I will have to choose one or the other. Either way there's a significant risk.

  Francesca stopped moving north and paced back and forth between two skyscrapers. As she was walking, the ground underneath her feet began to tremble. Everything was shaking. She dropped to her knees to steady herself. She heard Janos Tabori's voice very faintly on the radio. "It's all right, everybody, don't be alarmed. It looks as if our vehicle is undergoing a maneuver. That must have been what the warnings were all about… By the way, Nicole, where are you and Francesca? Hiro and Richard are about to take off in the helicopter."

  "I'm close to the sea, maybe two minutes away," Francesca answered. "Nicole went back to check on something."

  "Roger," Janos replied. "Are you there, Nicole? Do you copy, cosmonaut des Jardins?"

  There was silence on the radio.

  "As you know, Janos," Francesca interjected, "communications are very spotty from here. Nicole knows where to meet the helicopter. She'll be along quickly, I'm certain." She paused a moment. "Say, where are the others? Is everyone all right?"

  "Brown and Heilmann are on the radio with Earth. ISA management will be completely freaked out now. They were already demanding that we leave Rama before this maneuver began."

  "We're just boarding the helicopter," Richard Wakefield said. "We'll be there in a few minutes."

  It's done. I've made my choice, Francesca said to herself when Richard was finished. She was surprisingly elated. Immediately she began to rehearse her story. "We were near the large octahedron in the central plaza when Nicole spotted an alley off to our right that we had not noticed before. The street leading to the alley was extremely narrow and she remarked that it was probably a region where communications could not penetrate. I was already tired—we had been walking so fast. She told me to go ahead to the helicopter…"

  "And you never saw her again?" Richard Wakefield interrupted. Francesca shook her head. Richard was standing on the ice next to her. Beneath them the ice was vibrating as the long maneuver continued. The lights were now on. They had stopped their flashing when the maneuver began.

  Pilot Yamanaka was sitting in the cockpit of his helicopter. Richard checked his watch. "It's almost five minutes since we landed here. Something must have happened to her." He glanced around. "Maybe she's coming out somewhere else."

  Richard and Francesca climbed into the helicopter and Yamanaka took off. They cruised up and down the island coast, twice circling over the solitary icemobile. "Edge into New York," Wakefield commanded. "Maybe we'll be able to spot her."

  From the helicopter it was virtually impossible to see the ground in the city. The 'copter had to fly above the tallest buildings. The streets were very narrow and the shadows played games with the eyes. Once Richard thought he saw something moving between the buildings, but it turned out to be an optical illusion.

  "All right, Nicole, all right. Where in the hell are you?"

  "Wakefield," Dr. David Brown's sonorous voice sounded in the helicopter, "I want you three to come back to Beta immediately. We need to have a meeting." Richard was surprised to hear that it was Dr. Brown. Janos had been the one monitoring their communication link since they had left Beta.

  "What's the hurry, boss?" Wakefield replied. "We still haven't made our scheduled rendezvous with Nicole des Jardins. She should be coming out of New York any minute."

  "I'll give you the details when you get here. We have some difficult decisions to make. I'm certain that des Jardins will radio when she reaches the shore."

  It did not take them long to cross the frozen sea. Near the Beta campsite, Yamanaka landed the helicopter on the shaking ground and the three cosmonauts descended. The remaining four members of the crew were waiting for them.

  "This is one incredibly long maneuver," Richard said with a smile as he approached the others. "I hope the Ramans know what they're doing."

  "They probably do," Dr. Brown said somberly. "At least the Earth thinks that they do." He looked carefully at his watch. "According to the navigation section in mission control, we should expect this maneuver to last another nineteen minutes, give or take a few seconds."

  "How do they know?" inquired Wakefield. "Have the Ramans landed on Earth and handed out a flight plan while we've been up here exploring?"

  Nobody laughed. "If the vehicle stays at this attitude and acceleration rate," Janos said with uncharacteristic seriousness, "then in nineteen more minutes it will be on an impact course."

  "Impact with what?" Francesca asked.

  Richard Wakefield did some quick mental computations. "With the Earth?" he guessed. Janos nodded.

  "Jesus!" Francesca exclaimed.

  "Exactly," David Brown said. "This mission has become an Earth security concern. The COG Executive Council is meeting at this very moment to consider all contingencies. We
have been told in the strongest possible language that we must leave Rama as soon as the maneuver is completed. We are to take nothing except the crab biot and our personal belongings. We are—"

  "What about Takagishi? And des Jardins?" Wakefield asked.

  "We will leave the icemobile where it is, along with a rover here at Beta. They are both easy to operate. We will still be in radio contact from the Newton." Dr. Brown stared directly at Richard. "If this spacecraft is really on an Earth impact course," he said dramatically, "our individual lives are no longer very important. The entire course of history is about to be changed."

  "But what if the navigation engineers are wrong? What if Rama has just happened to make a maneuver that momentarily intersects an Earth impact trajectory? It could be—"

  "Extremely unlikely. You remember that group of short-burst maneuvers at the time of Borzov's death? They changed the orientation of Rama's orbit so that an Earth impact could be achieved with one long maneuver at exactly the right time. The engineers on Earth figured it out thirty-six hours ago. They radioed O'Toole before dawn this morning to expect the maneuver. I didn't want to say anything while everyone was out looking for Takagishi."

  "That explains why everyone is so anxious for us to clear out of here," Janos noted.

  "Only partially," Dr. Brown continued. "There is clearly a different feeling about Rama and the Ramans down on Earth. ISA management and the world leaders on the COG Executive Council are apparently convinced that Rama is implacably hostile."

  He stopped for several seconds, as if he were reassessing his own attitude. "I think they are reacting emotionally myself, but I cannot persuade them differently. I personally see no evidence of hostility, only a disinterest in and disregard for a wildly inferior being. But the televised account of Wilson's death has done its damage. The world's populace cannot be here beside us, cannot grasp the majesty of this place. They can only react viscerally to the horror—"