Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Why don't I go forward, perhaps alone, or maybe even with one of the soldiers, to talk to them? Then we'll know—"

  "That's certainly brave of you, Watanabe, but unnecessary. No, I think we'll all go forward. Cautiously, of course. Leaving a couple of men at the rear to report in case we're zapped by a ray gun or something."

  The commander turned on his radio. "Deputy Ulanov, Macmillan here. We've encountered two beings of some kind. They're either human or in human disguise. One looks like Abraham Lincoln and the other like that famous Mexican cosmonaut… What's that, Dmitri?… Yes, you copy correctly. Lincoln and Garcia. We've encountered Lincoln and Garcia in a tunnel inside Rama. You may report that to the others… Now, I'm leaving Snyder and Finzi here while the rest of us advance toward the strangers."

  The two figures did not move as the fourteen explorers from the Pinta approached. The soldiers were spread out in front of the group, ready to fire at the fist sign of trouble.

  "Welcome to Rama," Abraham Lincoln said when the first scout was only twenty meters away. "We are here to escort you to your new homes."

  Commander Macmillan did not respond immediately. It was the irrepressible Max Puckett who broke the silence. "Are you a ghost?" he shouted. "I mean, are you really Abraham Lincoln?"

  "Of course not," the Lincoln replied matter-of-factly. "Both Benita Garcia and I are human biots. You will find five categories of human biots in New Eden, each designed with specific capabilities to free humans from tedious, repetitive tasks. My areas of specialty are clerical and legal work, accounting, bookkeeping and housekeeping, home and office management, and other organizational tasks."

  Max was dumbfounded. Ignoring his commander's order to "stand back," Max walked up to within several centimeters of the Lincoln. "This is some fucking robot," he muttered to himself. Oblivious to any possible danger, Max next reached out and put his fingers on the Lincoln's face, first touching the skin around the nose and then feeling the whiskers in the long black beard. "Incredible," he said out loud. "Absolutely incredible."

  "We have been manufactured with very careful attention to detail," the Lincoln now said. "Our skin is chemically similar to yours and our eyes operate on the same basic optical principles as yours, but we are not dynamic, constantly renewing creatures like you. Our subsystems must be maintained and sometimes even replaced by technicians."

  Max's bold move had defused all the tension. By this time the entire scouting party, including Commander Macmillan, were poking and probing the two biots. Throughout the examination both the Lincoln and the Garcia answered questions about their design and implementation. At one point Kenji realized that Max Puckett had withdrawn from the rest of the scouting party and was sitting by himself against one of the walls of the tunnel.

  Kenji walked over to his friend. "What's the matter, Max?" he asked.

  Max shook his head. "What kind of genius could produce something like these two? It's positively scary." He was silent for several seconds. "Maybe I'm strange, but those two bi-ots frighten me much more than this huge cylinder."

  The Lincoln and the Garcia walked with the scouting party to what appeared to be the end of the tunnel. Within seconds a door opened in the wall and the biots motioned for the humans to go inside. Under questioning from Macmillan, the biots explained that the humans were about to enter a "transportation device" that would carry them to the outskirts of the Earth habitat.

  Macmillan communicated what the biots had said to Dmitri Ulanov on the Pinta and told his Russian deputy to "blast off" if he didn't hear anything from them within forty-eight hours.

  The tube ride was astonishing. It reminded Max Puckett of the giant roller coaster at the state fair in Dallas, Texas. The bullet-shaped vehicle sped along an enclosed, helical track that dropped all the way from the bowl-shaped northern end of Rama to the Central Plain below. Outside the tube, which was encased in a heavy transparent plastic of some kind, Kenji and the others glimpsed the vast network of ladders and stairways that traversed the same territory as their ride. But they did not see the incomparable vistas reported by the previous Rama explorers—their view to the south was blocked by an extremely tall wall of metallic gray.

  The ride took less than five minutes. It deposited them in an enclosed annulus that completely circumscribed the Earth habitat. When the Pinta scouts exited from the tube, the weightlessness in which they had been living since they had departed from Earth had vanished. The gravity was close to normal. "The atmosphere in this corridor, like the atmosphere in New Eden, is just like your home planet," the Lincoln biot said. "But that is not the case in the region on our right, outside the walls protecting your habitat."

  The annulus surrounding New Eden was dimly lit, so the colonists were not prepared for the bright sunlight that greeted them when the huge door opened and they entered their new world. On the short walk to the nearby train station they carried their space helmets in their hands. The men passed empty buildings on both sides of the path—small structures that could be houses or shops, as well as a larger one ("That will be an elementary school," the Benita Garcia informed them) right opposite the station itself.

  A train was waiting for them when they arrived. The sleek subway car with soft, comfortable seats, and a constantly updating electronic status board, raced quickly toward the center of New Eden, where they were to have a "comprehensive briefing," according to the Lincoln biot. The train ran first along the side of a beautiful, crystalline lake ("Lake Shakespeare," the Benita Garcia said), and men turned to the left, heading away from the light gray walls that enclosed the colony. During the last part of the ride a large, barren mountain dominated the landscape on the right-hand side of the train.

  Throughout the ride the entire contingent from the Pinta was very quiet. In truth they were all completely overwhelmed. Not even in the creative imagination of Kenji Watanabe had anything like what they were seeing ever been envisioned. It was all much too large, much more magnificent than they had pictured.

  The central city, where all the major buildings had been located by the designers of New Eden, was the final stunner. The members of the party stood silently and gawked at the array of large and impressive structures that formed the heart of the colony. That the buildings were still empty only added to the mystical quality of the entire experience. Kenji Watanabe and Max Puckett were the last two men to enter the edifice where the briefing was to occur.

  "What do you think?" Kenji asked Max as the two of them stood on the top of the stairs of the administration building and surveyed the astonishing complex around them.

  "I cannot think," answered Max, the awe in his tone quite obvious. "This whole place defies thought. It is heaven, Alice's wonderland, and all the fairy tales of my boyhood wrapped up in one package. I keep pinching myself to make sure that I'm not dreaming."

  "On the screen in front of you," the Lincoln biot said, "is an overview map of New Eden. Each of you will be given a full packet of maps, including all the roads and structures in the colony. We are here, in Central City, which was designed to be the administrative center of New Eden. Residences have been built, along with shops, small offices, and schools, in the four corners of the rectangle that is enclosed by the outside wall. Because the naming of these four towns will be left to the inhabitants, we will refer to them today as the Northeast., Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest villages. In doing this we are following the convention, adopted by earlier Raman explorers from the Earth, of referring to the end of Rama where your spacecraft docked as the north end.

  "Each of the four sides of New Eden has an allocated geographic function. The freshwater lake along the south edge of the colony, as you have already been informed, is called Lake Shakespeare. Most of the fish and water life that you have brought with you will live there, although some of the specimens may be perfect for emplacement in the two rivers that empty into Lake Shakespeare from Mount Olympus, here on the east side of the colony, and Sherwood Forest on the west side.

 
"At present both the slopes of Mount Olympus and all the regions of Sherwood Forest, as well as the village parks and greenbelts throughout the colony, are covered with a fine lattice of gas exchange devices, or GEDs, as we call them. These tiny mechanisms serve but one function—they convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. In a very true sense they are mechanical plants. They are to be replaced by all the real plants that you have brought from the Earth,

  "The north side of the colony, between the villages, is reserved for farming. Farm buildings have been constructed here, along the road that connects the two northern towns. You will grow most of your food in this area. Between the food supplies that you have brought with you and the synthetic food stored in the tall silos three hundred meters north of this building, you should be able to feed two thousand humans for at least a year, maybe eighteen months if waste is kept at a minimum. After that you are on your own. It goes without saying that farming, including the aquaculture that has been allocated to the eastern shores of Lake Shakespeare, will be an important component in your life in New Eden…"

  To Kenji, the briefing experience was like drinking out of a fire hose. The Lincoln biot kept the information rate exceedingly high for ninety minutes, dismissing all questions either by saying "That's outside my knowledge base" or by referring to the page and paragraph numbers in the Basic Guidebook to New Eden that he had handed out. Finally there was a break in the briefing and everyone moved to an adjacent room, where a drink that tasted like Coca-Cola was served.

  "Whew," said Terry Snyder as he wiped his brow, "am I the only one who is saturated?"

  "Shit, Snyder," replied Max Puckett with an impish grin. "Are you saying you're inferior to that goddamn robot? He sure as hell ain't tired. I bet he could lecture all day."

  "Maybe even all week," mused Kenji Watanabe. "I wonder how often these biots need to be serviced. My father's company makes robots, some of them exceedingly complex, but nothing like this. The information content in that Lincoln must be astronomical."

  "The briefing will recommence in five minutes," the Lincoln announced. "Please be prompt."

  In the second half of the briefing the various kinds of biots in New Eden were introduced and explained. Based on their recent studies of the previous Raman expeditions, the colonists were prepared for the bulldozer and other construction biots. The five categories of human biots, however, elicited a more emotional response.

  "Our designers decided," the Lincoln told them, "to limit the physical appearances of the human biots so that there could be no question of someone mistaking one of us for one of you. I have already listed my basic functions—all the other Lincolns, three of whom are now joining us, have been identically programmed. At least originally. We are, however, capable of some low level of learning that will allow our data bases to be different as our specific uses evolve."

  "How can we tell one Lincoln from another?" asked one bewildered member of the scouting party as the three new Lincolns circulated around the room.

  "We each have an identification number, engraved both here, on the shoulder, and again here, on the left buttock.

  This same system is employed for the other categories of human biots. I, for example, am Lincoln 004. The three that just entered are 009, 024, and 071."

  When the Lincoln biots left the briefing room, they were replaced by five Benita Garcias. One of the Garcias outlined the specialties of her category—police and fire protection, farming, sanitation, transportation, mail handling—and then answered a few questions before they all departed.

  The Einstein biots were next. The scouts erupted with laughter when four of the Einsteins, each a wild, unkempt, white-haired replica of the twentieth century scientific genius, walked into the room together. The Einsteins explained that they were the engineers and scientists of the colony. Their primary function, a vital one encompassing many duties, was to "ensure the satisfactory working of the colony infrastructure," including of course the army of biots.

  A group of tall, jet-black female biots introduced themselves as the Tiassos, specializing in health care. They would be the doctors, the nurses, the health officials, the ones who would provide child care when the parents were not available. Just as the Tiasso portion of the briefing was ending, a slight Oriental biot with intense eyes walked into the room. He was carrying a lyre and an electronic easel. He introduced himself as a Yasunari Kawabata before playing a beautiful, short piece on the lyre.

  "We Kawabatas are creative artists," he said simply. "We are musicians, actors, painters, sculptors, writers, and sometimes photographers and cinematographers. We are few in number, but very important for the quality of life in New Eden."

  When the official briefing was finally over, the scouting party was served an excellent dinner in the large hall. About twenty of the biots joined the humans at the gathering, although of course they did not eat anything. The simulated roast duck was staggeringly authentic, and even the wines could have passed the inspection of all but the most learned enologists on Earth.

  Later in the evening, when the humans had grown more comfortable with their biot companions and were peppering them with questions, a solitary female figure appeared in the open doorway. At first she was unnoticed But the room quieted quickly after Kenji Watanabe jumped up from his seat and approached the newcomer with an outstretched hand.

  "Dr. des Jardins, I presume," he said with a smile.

  10

  Despite Nicole's assurances that everything in New Eden was completely consistent with her earlier remarks on the video, Commander Macmillan refused to allow the Pinta passengers and crew to enter Rama and occupy their new homes until he was certain there was no danger. After returning to the Pinta, he conferred at length with ISA personnel on Earth and then sent a small contingent headed by Dmitri Ulanov into Rama to obtain additional information. The chief medical officer of the Pinta, a dour Dutchman named Darl van Roos, was the most important member of Ulanov's team. Kenji Watanabe and two soldiers from the first scouting party also accompanied the Russian engineer.

  The doctor's instructions were straightforward. He was to examine the Wakefields, all of them, and certify that they were indeed humans. His second assignment was to analyze the biots and categorize their nonbiological features. Everything was accomplished without incident, although Katie Wakefield was uncooperative and sarcastic during the examination. At Richard's suggestion, an Einstein biot took apart one of the Lincolns and demonstrated, at a functional level, how the most sophisticated subsystems worked. Deputy Ulanov was duly impressed.

  Two days later the voyagers from the Pinta began moving their possessions into Rama. A large cadre of biots helped with the unloading of the spacecraft and the movement of all the supplies into New Eden. The process took almost three days to complete. But where would everyone settle? In a decision that would later have significant consequences for the colony, almost all of the three hundred travelers on the Pinta elected to live in the Southeast Village, where the Wakefields had made their home. Only Max Puckett and a handful of farmers, who moved directly into the farming region along the northern perimeter of New Eden, decided to live elsewhere in the colony.

  The Watanabes moved into a small house just down the lane from Richard and Nicole. From the very beginning Kenji and Nicole had had a natural rapport and their initial friendship had grown with each subsequent interaction. On the first evening that Kenji and Nai spent in their new home, they were invited to share a family dinner with the Wakefields.

  "Why don't we go into the living room? It's more comfortable there," Nicole said when the meal was completed. "The Lincoln will clear the table and take care of the dishes."

  The Watanabes rose from their chairs and followed Richard through the entryway at the end of the dining room. The younger Wakefields politely waited for Kenji and Nai to go first, and then joined their parents and guests in the cozy living room at the front of the house.

  It had been five days since the Pinta scouting party had entered Rama
for the first time. Five amazing days, Kenji was thinking as he sat down in the Wakefield living room. His mind quickly scanned the kaleidoscope of jumbled impressions that were as yet unordered by his brain. And in many ways this dinner was the most amazing of all. What this family has been through is incredible.

  "The stories you have told us," Nai said to Richard and Nicole when everyone was seated, "are absolutely astonishing. There are so many questions I want to ask, I don't know where to start… I'm especially fascinated by this creature you call the Eagle. Was he one of the ETs who built the Node and Rama in the first place?"

  "No," said Nicole. "The Eagle was a biot also. At least that's what he told us, and we have no reason not to believe him. He was created by the governing intelligence of the Node to give us a specific physical interface."

  "But then who did build the Node?"

  "That's definitely a Level III question," Richard said with a smile.

  Kenji and Nai laughed. Nicole and Richard had explained the Eagle's informational hierarchy to them during the long stories at dinner. "I wonder if it is even possible," Kenji mused, "for us to conceive of beings so advanced that their machines can create other machines smarter than we are."

  "I wonder if it is even possible," Katie now interrupted, "for us to discuss some more trivial issues. For example, where are all the young people my age? So far I don't think I have seen more than two colonists between twelve and twenty-five."

  "Most of the younger set are onboard the Niña," Kenji responded. "It should arrive here in about three weeks with the bulk of the colony population. The passengers on the Pinta were handpicked for the task of checking out the veracity of the video we received."

  "What's veracity?" Katie asked.

  "Truth and accuracy," Nicole said. "More or less. It was one of your grandfather's favorite words… And speaking of your grandfather, he was also a great believer that young people should always be permitted to listen to adult conversation, but not to interrupt it… We have many things to discuss tonight with the Watanabes. The four of you don't have to stay."