Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  They slept nuzzling together before they made love. When they did finally have intercourse, it was gentle and unhurried, surprising both of them with its ease and satisfaction. A few nights later, Nicole was lying with her head on Richard's chest, quietly drifting in and out of sleep. He was in deep thought. "Several days ago," he said, nudging her awake, "back before we became so intimate, I told you that I considered committing suicide once. At the time I was afraid to tell you the story. Would you like to hear it now?"

  Nicole opened her eyes. She rolled over and put her chin on his stomach. "Uh-huh," she said. She reached up and kissed him on the eyes before he began his tale.

  "I guess you know I was married to Sarah Tydings when both of us were very young," he began. "It was also before she was famous. She was in her first year with the Royal Shakespeare Company and they were performing Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, and Cymbeline in repertory at Stratford. Sarah was Rosalind and Juliet and fantastic at both.

  "She was eighteen at the time, just out of school. I fell in love with her the first night I saw her as Juliet. I sent her roses in the dressing room every evening and used most of my savings to see all the performances. We had two long dinners together and then I proposed. She accepted more from astonishment than love.

  "I went to graduate school at Cambridge after the summer was over. We lived in a modest flat and she commuted to the theater in London. I would go with her whenever I could, but after several months my studies demanded more of my time."

  Richard stopped his narrative and glanced down at Nicole. She had not moved. She was lying partially across him, a smile of love on her face. "Go on," she said softly.

  "Sarah was an adrenaline junkie. She craved excitement and variety. The mundane and tedious angered her. Grocery shopping, for example, was a colossal bore. It was just too much trouble for her to turn on the set and decide what to order. She also found any kind of schedule incredibly constraining.

  "Lovemaking had to be performed in a different position or be accompanied by some different music every time; otherwise it was old hat. For a while I was creative enough to satisfy her. I also took care of all the routine tasks to free her from the drudgery of housework. But there were only so many hours in the day. Ultimately, despite my considerable abilities, my graduate studies began to suffer because I was spending all my energy making life interesting for her.

  "After we had been married for a year, Sarah wanted to rent a flat in London, so that she didn't need to make the long commute every night after a performance. Actually she had already been spending a couple of nights a week in London, ostensibly with one of her actress friends. But her career was soaring and we had plenty of money, so why should I say no?

  "It was not long before rumors about her behavior became quite widespread. I chose to ignore them, fearing, I guess, that she wouldn't deny them if I asked her. Then one night, late, while I was studying for an examination, I received a phone call from a woman. She was very polite, although obviously distraught. She told me that she was the wife of the actor Hugh Sinclair, and that Mr. Sinclair—who at that time was starring with Sarah in the American drama In Any Weather—was having an affair with my wife. 'In fact,' she told me, 'he is over at your wife's flat at this very moment.' Mrs. Sinclair started crying and then hung up."

  Nicole reached up and softly caressed Richard's cheek with her hand. "I felt as if my chest had exploded," he said, remembering the pain. "I was angry, terrified, frantic. I went to the station and took the late train to London. When the taxi dropped me at Sarah's place, I ran to the door.

  "I did not knock. I bolted up the stairs and found the two of them sleeping naked in the bed. I picked Sarah up and flung her against the wall—I can still remember the sound of her head smashing into the mirror. Then I fell on him in a rage, punching his face over and over, until it was nothing but a mass of blood. It was awful…"

  Richard stopped himself and began to cry noiselessly. Nicole put her arms around his heaving chest and wept with him. "Darling, darling," she said.

  "I was an animal," he cried. "I was worse than my father ever was. I would have killed them both if the people in the next flat hadn't restrained me."

  Neither of them said anything for several minutes. When Richard spoke again his voice was subdued, almost remote. "The next day, after the police station and the tabloid reporters and all the recriminations with Sarah, I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives—pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge—when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics." His voice trailed off.

  Nicole wiped her eyes and placed her hands in his. She leaned her naked body across Richard's and kissed him. "I love you," she said.

  Nicole's sounding alarm indicated that it was daylight again in Rama. Ten more days, she noted after a quick mental calculation. We 'd better have a serious talk now.

  The alarm had awakened Richard as well. He turned and smiled at his sleeping partner. "Darling," Nicole said, "the time has come—"

  "The walrus said, to speak of many things."

  "Come on now, be serious. We have to decide what we're going to do. It's fairly obvious that we're not going to be rescued."

  "I agree," said Richard. He sat up and reached across Nicole's mat for his shirt. "I have been dreading this moment for days. But I guess we have finally reached the point where we should consider swimming across."

  "You don't think there's any chance of making a boat out of our black stuff?"

  "No," he answered. "One material is too light and the other too heavy. We could probably build a hybrid that would be seaworthy, if we had some nails, but without any sails we would still have to row across… Our best bet is to swim."

  Richard stood up and walked over to the black square on the wall. "My fancy plans didn't pan out, did they?" He thumped lightly on the square. "And I was going to produce steak and potatoes as well as a boat."

  "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley."

  "What a weird poet old Scottish Robbie was. I never could understand what people saw in him."

  Nicole finished dressing and started doing some stretching exercises. "Whew," she said, "I'm out of shape. I haven't had any heavy physical activity in days." She smiled at Richard, who was looking at her coyly. "That doesn't count," she added, shaking her head.

  "It's almost the only exercise I've ever liked," Richard replied with a grin. "I used to hate it at the academy when we had those special physical training weekends."

  Richard had laid out small portions of manna melon on the black table, "Three more meals after this one," he said without emotion. "I guess we swim before it's dark again."

  "You don't want to go this morning?" Nicole asked.

  "No," he replied. "Why don't you go survey the coast and pick a spot. I found something last night on the computer that has me baffled. It won't give us food or sailboats, but it looks as if I may have finally broken through into another kind of structure."

  After breakfast, Nicole kissed Richard good-bye and wandered up to the surface. It did not take her long to reconnoiter the coast. There really were no reasons to pick one embarkation point over another. The grim reality of the coming swim oppressed Nicole. The odds are good, she told herself, that neither Richard nor I will be alive when it is dark again in Rama.

  She tried to imagine what it would be like to be eaten by a shark biot. Would it be a quick death? Or would you drown aware that your legs had just been amputated? Nicole shuddered at the idea. Maybe we should try to obtain another melon… She knew that was useless. Sooner or later, they had to swim.

  Nicole turned her back on the sea. At least these last fe
w days have been good, she said to herself, not wanting to think anymore about their predicament. He has been an excellent companion. In every way. She allowed herself the momentary luxury of recalling their shared pleasure. Then Nicole smiled and started walking back toward the lair.

  "But what am I looking at?" Nicole asked as another image flashed up on the black square.

  "I'm not completely certain," Richard replied. "All I know is that I have tapped into a long list of some kind. You remember that one particular command configuration that produces the lines of symbols that look like Sanskrit? Well, I was scrolling through the gibberish and eventually I noticed a pattern. I stopped at the beginning of the pattern, changed the position of the last three keys, and then hit the double dot again. Suddenly an image was on the screen. And every time I hit an alphanumeric, the picture changed."

  "But how do you know you're looking at sensor output?"

  Richard entered a command and there was a change in the image. "Occasionally I see something I recognize," he said. "Look at that one, for example. Couldn't that be the Beta stairway viewed from a camera in the middle of the Central Plain?"

  Nicole studied the picture. "Possibly," she said, "but I don't see how you could ever tell for certain."

  Richard commanded the screen to change again. The next three pictures were unintelligible. The fourth one showed a feature tapering to a point at the top of the frame. "And that one," he said. "Couldn't it be one of the little horns, as seen from a sensor near the top of the Big Horn?"

  No matter how hard she tried, Nicole could not visualize what the view would be like from the top of the giant spire in the center of the southern bowl. Richard continued to flip through the pictures. Only about one in five was even partially clear. "Somewhere in this system there must be some enhancement algorithms," he said to himself. "Then I can sharpen up all the images."

  Nicole could tell that Richard was about to begin another long work session. She walked over to him and put her arms around his neck. "Could I talk you into a little distraction first?" she said, reaching up and kissing him on the mouth.

  "I guess so," he replied, dropping the keyboard on the Boor. "It will probably be good for me to clear my mind."

  Nicole was in the middle of a beautiful dream. She was home again at her villa in Beauvois. Richard was sitting beside her on the couch in the living room and was holding her hand. Her father and daughter were opposite them in the soft chairs.

  Her dream was broken by Richard's insistent voice. When Nicole opened her eyes her lover was standing over her, his voice crackling with excitement. "Wait until you see this, darling," he said, extending a hand to pull her up. "It's fantastic! Somebody is still here."

  Nicole shook the dream from her mind and looked over at the black square where Richard was pointing. "Can you believe it?" he said, jumping up and down. "There's no doubt about it. The military ship is still docked,"

  Only then did Nicole realize that she was looking at a picture of the outside of Rama. She blinked her eyes and listened to Richard's rambling explanation. "Once I figured out the code for the enhancement parameters, almost every frame became clear. That set of pictures I showed you earlier must be the real-time output from hundreds of Rama's imaging sensors. And I think I have figured out how to access the other sensor data bases as well."

  Richard was exultant. He threw his arms around Nicole and lifted her off the ground. He hugged and kissed her and bounced around the room like a lunatic.

  When he finally calmed down a little, Nicole spent almost a full minute studying the image that was projected on the black square. It was definitely the Newton military ship; she could read the markings. "So the science spacecraft has gone home," she commented to Richard.

  "Yes," he answered, "as I expected. I was afraid they would both be gone and that after we swam across the sea, we would find ourselves still trapped, this time in a larger prison."

  The same concern had bothered Nicole. She smiled at Richard. "It's relatively straightforward, then, isn't it? We swim across the Cylindrical Sea and walk over to the chairlift. Someone will be waiting for us at the top."

  Nicole started packing her belongings. Richard, meanwhile, continued to flash new images on the screen. "What are you doing now, darling?" Nicole asked gently. "I thought we were going to make our swim."

  "I haven't made a full pass through the sensor list since I located the enhancement parameters," Richard replied. "I just want to make certain we're not missing anything critical. It will only take another hour or so."

  Nicole stopped packing and sat down in front of the screen beside Richard. The pictures were indeed interesting. Some were exterior shots, but most were images of different regions inside Rama, including the underground lairs. One magnificent photo was taken from the top of the large room where the hot spheres in their sponge webbing rested on the floor beneath the hanging lattices. Richard and Nicole watched the picture for a moment, hoping to see a black and gold octospider, but they detected no movement.

  They were near the end of the list when an image of the bottom third of the Alpha stairway stunned them both. There, climbing down the stairs, were four human figures in space suits. Richard and Nicole watched the figures descend for five seconds and then exploded with joy. "They're coming!" Richard said, throwing his arms into the air. "We're going to be rescued!"

  51

  ESCAPE HARNESS

  Richard was becoming impatient. He and Nicole had been standing on the walls of New York for over an hour, scanning the skies for some sign of a helicopter. "Where the hell are they?" he grumbled. "It only takes fifteen minutes by rover from the bottom of Alpha stairway to the Beta campsite."

  "Maybe they're looking somewhere else," Nicole said encouragingly.

  "That's ridiculous!' Richard said. "Surely they would go to Beta first—and even if they couldn't repair the comm system, at least they'd find my last message. I said I was taking one of the motorboats to New York."

  "They probably know that there's no place for a helicopter to land in the city. They may be coming across in a boat themselves."

  "Without first seeing if they could spot us from the helicopter? That's unlikely." Richard turned his eyes to the sea and searched for a sail. "A boat A boat. My kingdom for a boat."

  Nicole laughed but Richard barely managed a little smile. "Two men could assemble the sailboat in the supply hut at Beta in less than thirty minutes," he fretted. "Dammit, what's holding them up?"

  In his frustration Richard switched on the transmitter in his communicator. "Now hear this, you guys. If you're anywhere near the Cylindrical Sea, identify yourselves. And then hurry your asses over here. We're standing on the wall and we're tired of waiting."

  There was no response. Nicole sat down on the wall. "What are you doing?" Richard asked.

  "I think you're worrying enough for both of us," she responded. "And I'm tired of standing up and waving my arms." She stared across the Cylindrical Sea. "It would be so much easier," Nicole said wistfully, "if we could just fly across ourselves."

  Richard cocked his head to one side and looked at her. "What a great idea," he said several seconds later. "Why didn't we think of it before?" He immediately sat down and started doing some calculations on his computer. "Cowards die many times before their deaths," he mumbled to himself, "the valiant never taste of death but once."

  Nicole watched her friend furiously pounding his keyboard. "What are you doing, dear?" she inquired, glancing over his shoulder at the computer monitor.

  "Three!" he shouted, after finishing a computation. "Three should be enough." Richard looked up at the puzzled Nicole. "Do you want to hear the most outrageous plan in interplanetary history?" he asked her.

  "Why not?" she said with a doubtful smile.

  "We are going to build ourselves harnesses out of the lattice material and the avians are going to fly us across the Cylindrical Sea."

  Nicole stared at Richard for several seconds. "Assuming we can make the
harnesses," she said skeptically, "how do we talk the avians into doing their part?"

  "We convince them it's in their own best interest," Richard replied. "Or alternatively we threaten them in some way… I don't know, you can work on that issue."

  Nicole was incredulous. "Anyway," Richard continued, grabbing her hand and walking down the wall, "it beats standing around here waiting for the helicopter or the boat."

  Five hours later there was still no sign of the rescue team. When they had finished making the harnesses, Richard had left Nicole at the wall and gone back to the White Room to check through the sensor set again. He returned with the news that he thought he had seen the human figures in the vicinity of the Beta campsite, but that the resolution on that particular frame had been very poor. As they had agreed, Nicole had been calling every half hour on the communicator. There had been no response.

  "Richard," she said, while he was programming some graphics on his computer, "why do you think the rescue team was using the stairway?"

  "Who knows?" he replied. "Maybe the chairlift malfunctioned and there were no engineers left."

  "It seems strange to me," Nicole mused. Something about this is bothering me, she thought, but I don't dare share it with Richard until I can explain it He doesn't believe in intuition. Nicole glanced at her watch. It's a good thing we rationed the melon. If the rescue team doesn't show up and this wild scheme doesn't work, we won't be swimming until next daylight,

  "Preliminary design complete," Richard stated emphatically. He waved to Nicole to join him. "If you approve the line drawing," he said, pointing at the monitor in his hand, "then I will proceed with the detailed graphics."