Rama: The Omnibus

by Arthur C. Clarke

  Eponine was coming down the street in their direction. She picked up the ball and threw it back to the boys. Nai smiled at her friend. "What a delight to see you," she said. "I can definitely use a happy face today,"

  "What's the matter, Nai?" Eponine asked. "Life in Avalon getting you down?… At least it's a Sunday. You're not working in the gun factory and the boys aren't over at the center."

  The two women walked inside. "And certainly your living conditions cannot be the cause of your despair." Eponine waved her arm at the room. "After all, you have a large room for the three of you, half a toilet, and a bath you share with five other families. What more could you want?"

  Nai laughed and hugged Eponine. "You're a big help," she said.

  "Mommy, Mommy." Kepler was standing in the door-way a moment later. "Come quickly," the little boy said. "He's back … and he's talking to Galileo."

  Nai and Eponine returned to the door. A man with a severely disfigured face was kneeling down in the dirt next to Galileo. The boy was obviously frightened. The man was holding a sheet of paper in his gloved hand. On it a large human face with long hair and a full beard had been carefully drawn.

  "You know this face, don't you?" the man said insistently. "It's Mr. Richard Wakefield, isn't it?"

  Nai and Eponine approached the man cautiously. "We told you last time," Nai said firmly, "not to bother the boys anymore. Now go back to the ward or we will call the police."

  The man's eyes were wild. "I saw him again last night," he said. "He looked like Jesus, but he was Richard Wakefield all right. I started to shoot him and they attacked me. Five of them. They tore my face apart…" The man started to weep.

  An orderly came running down the street. He grabbed the man. "I saw him," the wild man shouted as he was led away. "I know I did. Please believe me."

  Galileo was crying. Nai bent down to comfort her son. "Mama," the boy said, "do you think that man really saw Mr. Wakefield?"

  "I don't know," she answered. Nai glanced at Eponine. "But some of us would like to believe it."

  The boys had finally fallen asleep in their beds in the comer. Nai and Eponine sat next to each other in the two chairs. "The rumor is she's very ill," Eponine said quietly. "They hardly feed her at all. They make her suffer in every possible way."

  "Nicole will never give up," Nai said proudly. "I wish I had her strength and courage."

  "Neither Ellie nor Robert has been allowed to see her for over six months… Nicole doesn't even know she has a granddaughter."

  "Ellie told me last week that she has filed another petition with Nakamura to visit her mother," Nai said. "I worry about Ellie. She continues to push very, very hard."

  Eponine smiled. "Ellie is so wonderful, even if she is incredibly naive. She insists that if she obeys all the colony laws, Nakamura will leave her alone."

  "That's not surprising … especially when you consider that Ellie still thinks her father is alive," Nai said. "She has talked with every one of the people who claim to have seen Richard since he disappeared."

  "All the stories about Richard give her hope," Eponine said. "We can still use a dosage of hope from time to time…"

  There was a momentary lull in the conversation. "What about you, Eponine?" Nai asked. "Do you allow yourself—"

  "No," Eponine interrupted. "I am always honest with myself… I am going to die soon; I just don't know when. Besides, why should I fight to keep living? Conditions here in Avalon are far worse than they were even in the detention camp at Bourges. If it weren't for the few children in the school—"

  They both heard the noise outside the door at the same time. Nai and Eponine sat completely still. If their conversation had been recorded by one of Nakamura's roving biots, then—

  The door suddenly swung open. The two women nearly jumped out of their skins. Max Puckett stumbled in, grinning. "You're under arrest," he said, "for engaging in seditious conversation."

  Max was carrying a large wooden box. The two women helped him place it in the corner. Max took off his heavy jacket. "Sorry to show up so late, ladies, but I couldn't help it."

  "Another food run to the troops?" Nai asked in a soft voice. She pointed at the sleeping twins.

  Max nodded. "The king Jap," he said in a lower voice, "always reminds me that an army travels on its stomach."

  "That was one of Napoleon's maxims." Eponine looked at Max with a sarcastic smile. "I don't suppose you ever heard of him out there in Arkansas."

  "Uh-oh," Max replied. "The lovely lady teacher is in a smartass mood tonight." He pulled an unopened pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. "Maybe I should just keep her gift for myself."

  Eponine laughed and jumped up to grab the cigarettes. After a short mock struggle, Max surrendered them to her. "Thanks, Max," Eponine said in a genuine manner. "There aren't many pleasures allowed to those of us—"

  "Now, look here," Max said, still grinning. "I didn't come all the way out here to listen to you feeling sorry for yourself. I stopped in Avalon to be inspired by your beautiful face. If you're going to be depressed, I'll just take my corn and tomatoes—"

  "Corn and tomatoes!" Nai and Eponine exclaimed in unison. The women ran over to the box. "The children haven't had any fresh produce in weeks," Nai said excitedly as Max opened the box with a steel bar.

  "Be very, very careful with these," Max said seriously.

  "You know that what I am doing is absolutely illegal. There's barely enough fresh food for the army and the government leaders. But I decided you deserved something better than leftover rice."

  Eponine gave Max a hug. "Thank you," she said.

  "The boys and I are very grateful, Max," Nai said. "I don't know how we'll ever repay you."

  "I'll find some way," Max said.

  The two women returned to their chairs and Max sat down on the floor between them. "Incidentally," he said, "I ran into Patrick O'Toole over in the second habitat. He asked me to say hello to both of you."

  "How is he?" Eponine asked.

  "Troubled, I would say," Max replied. "When he was drafted, he let Katie talk him into reporting to the army—which I'm certain he would never have done if either Nicole or Richard could have spoken to him even once—and I think he realizes now what a mistake he made. He didn't say anything, but I could sense his distress. Nakamura keeps him in the front line because of Nicole."

  "Is this war almost over?" Eponine asked.

  "I think so," Max said. "But it's not clear the king Jap wants it to be over. From what the soldiers told me, there's very little resistance left. They're mostly mopping up inside the brown cylinder."

  Nai leaned forward. "We heard a rumor that another intelligent species was also living in the cylinder-something altogether different from the avians."

  Max laughed. "Who knows what to believe? The television and newspaper say whatever Nakamura tells them, and everyone knows it. There are always hundreds of rumors. I myself have encountered some bizarre alien plants and animals inside that habitat, so nothing would surprise me."

  Nai stifled a yawn. "I best be leaving," Max said, standing up, "and let our hostess go to bed." He glanced at Eponine. "Would you like someone to walk you home?"

  "Depends on who the someone is," Eponine said with a smile.

  A few minutes later, Max and Eponine reached her tiny hut on one of the side streets of Avalon. Max dropped the cigarette they had been sharing and ground it into the dirt. "Would you like someone…" he started.

  "Yes, Max, of course I would," Eponine replied with a sigh. "And if that someone were anyone, it would definitely be you." She looked directly in his eyes. "But if you shared my bed, even one time, men I would want more. And if, by some awful chance, no matter how careful we were, you were ever, ever to test positive for RV-41, I would never forgive myself."

  Eponine pressed herself against him to hide her tears. "Thanks for everything," she said. "You're a good man, Max Puckett, maybe the only one left in this crazy universe,"

  Epon
ine was in a museum in Paris surrounded by hundreds of masterpieces. A large group of tourists passed through the museum. They spent a total of forty-five seconds looking at five magnificent paintings by Renoir and Monet. "Stop," Eponine shouted in her dream. "You can't possibly have seen them."

  The knocking on her door chased the dream away. "It's us, Eponine," she heard Ellie say. "If it's too early, we can try to come back later, before you go to school. Robert was worried that we might get tied up in the psychiatric ward."

  Eponine leaned over and grabbed the robe hanging on the room's solitary chair. "Just a minute," she said, "I'm coming."

  She opened the door for her friends. Ellie was in her nurse's uniform, with little Nicole in a makeshift carrier on her back. The sleeping baby was wrapped cleverly in cotton to protect her from the cold.

  "May we come in?"

  "Of course," replied Eponine. "I'm sorry," she said, "I must not have heard you."

  "It's a ridiculous time for us to visit," Ellie said. "But with all our work at the hospital, if we didn't come out here early in the morning, we'd never make it."

  "How have you been feeling?" Dr. Turner asked a few seconds later. He was holding a scanner in front of Eponine and data was already being displayed on the portable computer monitor.

  "A little tired," Eponine said. "But it could be just psychological. Since you told me two months ago that my heart was beginning to show some signs of degradation, I have imagined myself having a heart attack at least once a day."

  During the examination Ellie operated the keyboard that was attached to the monitor. She made certain, that the most important information from the checkup was recorded in the computer. Eponine craned around to see the screen. "How's the new system working, Robert?"

  "We've had several failures with the probes," he replied. "Ed Stafford says that's to be expected because of our inadequate testing. And we don't yet have a good data management scheme, but on the whole we're very pleased."

  "It's been a savior, Eponine," Ellie said without glancing up from the keyboard. "With our limited funds, and all the wounded from the war, there would have been no way we could have kept the RV-41 files current without this kind of automation."

  "I only wish we had been able to use more of Nicole's expertise in the original design," Robert Turner said. "I hadn't realized she was such an expert on internal monitoring systems." The doctor saw something unusual in a graph that appeared on the screen. "Print a copy of that, will you, darling? I want to show it to Ed."

  "Have you heard anything new about your mother?" Eponine asked Ellie as the examination neared its completion.

  "We saw Katie two nights ago," Ellie replied very slowly. "It was a difficult evening. She had another 'deal' from Nakamura and Macmillan she wanted to discuss…" Her voice trailed off. "Anyway, Katie says that there will definitely be a trial before Settlement Day."

  "Has she seen Nicole?"

  "No," Ellie answered. "As far as we know, nobody has. Her food is brought in by a Garcia and her monthly checkups are done by a Tiasso."

  Baby Nicole stirred and whimpered on her mother's back. Eponine reached down and touched the portion of the child's cheek that was exposed to the air. "They are so unbelievably soft," she said. At that moment the little girl's eyes opened and she began to cry.

  "Do I have time to nurse her, Robert?" Ellie asked.

  Dr. Turner glanced at his watch. "All right," he said. "We're basically finished here. Since both Wilma Margolin and Bill Tucker are in the next block, why don't I call on them by myself and then come back?"

  "You can handle them without me?"

  "With difficulty," he said grimly. "Especially poor Tucker."

  "Bill Tucker is dying very slowly," Ellie said to Eponine in explanation. "He's alone and in great pain. But since the government has now outlawed euthanasia, there's nothing we can do."

  "There's no indication of additional atrophy in your data," Dr. Turner said to Eponine a few moments later. "I guess we should be thankful."

  She didn't hear him. In her mind's eye, Eponine was imagining her own slow and painful death. I will not let it happen that way, she told herself. Never. As soon as I am no longer useful … Max will bring me a gun.

  "I'm sorry, Robert," she said. "I must be sleepier than I thought. What did you say?"

  "You're no worse." Robert gave Eponine a kiss on the cheek and started for the door. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes," he said to Ellie.

  "Robert looks very tired," Eponine said when he departed.

  "He is," Ellie replied. "He still works all the time … and worries when he's not working." Ellie was sitting on the dirt floor with her back against the wall of the hut. Nicole was cradled in her arms, suckling at a breast and cooing intermittently.

  "That looks like fun," Eponine said.

  "Nothing I have ever experienced is even remotely similar. The pleasure is indescribable."

  It's not for me, Eponine's inner voice said. Not now. Not ever. In a fleeting moment Eponine recalled a night of passion when she almost hadn't said no to Max Puckett. A deep feeling of bitterness welled up inside her. She struggled to fight it.

  "I had a nice walk with Benjy yesterday," she said, changing the subject.

  "I'm sure he'll tell me all about it this morning," Ellie said. "He loves his Sunday walks with you. It's all he has left, except for my occasional visits… You know that I am very grateful."

  "Forget it. I like Benjy. I also need to feel needed, if you know what I mean… Benjy actually has adjusted surprisingly well. He doesn't complain as much as the forty-ones, and certainly not as much as the people assigned here to work at the gun factory."

  "He hides his pain," Ellie replied. "Benjy's much smarter than anyone thinks. He really dislikes the ward but knows that he can't take care of himself. And he doesn't want to be a burden to anybody—"

  Tears suddenly formed in Ellie's eyes and her body trembled slightly. Baby Nicole stopped nursing and stared at her mother. "Are you all right?" Eponine asked.

  Ellie shook her head affirmatively and wiped her eyes with the small cotton cloth that she was holding next to her breasts to catch any leakage. Nicole resumed nursing. "Suffering is difficult enough to watch," Ellie said. "Unnecessary suffering tears your heart out."

  The guard looked carefully at their identification papers and handed them to another uniformed man sitting behind him at a computer console. The second man made an entry into the computer and returned the documents to the guard.

  "Why," Ellie said, when they were out of earshot, "does that man stare at our photographs every single day? He must have passed us through this checkpoint personally a dozen times in the last month."

  They were walking along the lane that led from the module exit to Positano. "It's his job," Robert replied, "and he likes to feel important. If he doesn't make a ceremony out of it each time, then we might forget the power he has over us."

  "The process was much smoother when the biots were handling the entrance."

  "The ones that are still functioning are too critical to the war effort. Besides, Nakamura is afraid that the ghost of Richard Wakefield will appear and somehow confound the biots."

  They walked in silence for several seconds. "You don't think my father is still alive, do you, darling?"

  "No, dear," Robert answered after a short hesitation. He was surprised by the directness of the question. "But even though I don't think he's alive, I still hope that he is."

  Robert and Ellie finally reached the outskirts of Positano. A few new houses, European in style, lined the lane that sloped gently down into the heart of the village. "By the way, Ellie," Robert said, "talking about your father reminded me of something I wanted to discuss with you… Do you remember that project I was telling you about, the one that Ed Stafford is doing?"

  Ellie shook her head.

  "He's trying to classify and categorize the entire colony in terms of general genetic groupings. He thinks that such classifications, ev
en though they are completely arbitrary, may offer clues about which individuals are likely to have which diseases. I don't completely agree with his approach—it seems too forced and numerical, rather than medical—but parallel studies have been done on Earth and they showed that people with similar genes do indeed have similar disease tendencies."

  Ellie stopped walking and looked at her husband quizzically. "Why did you want to discuss this with me?"

  Robert laughed. "Yes, yes," he said. "I'm coming to that… Anyway, Ed defined a difference metric—a numerical method of measuring how different any two individuals are, using the way in which the four basic amino acids are chained in the genome—and then, as a test, divided all the citizens of New Eden into groups. Now, the metric didn't really mean anything—"

  "Robert Turner," Ellie interrupted. She was laughing. "Will you please get to the point? What are you trying to tell me?"

  "Well, it's weird," he said. "We don't quite know what to make of it. When Ed made his first classification structure, two of the people tested did not belong to any group. By fiddling with the definitions of the categories, he was eventually able to define a quantitative spread that covered one of them. But the amino acid chaining structure of the final person was so different from every other person in New Eden that she couldn't be placed into any of the groups…"

  Ellie was staring at Robert as if he had lost his mind.

  "The two individuals were your brother Benjy and you," Robert concluded awkwardly. "You were the one outside all the groupings."

  "Should I be worried about this?" Ellie said after they had walked another thirty meters in silence.

  "I don't think so," Robert said casually. "It's probably just an artifice of the particular metric that Ed chose. Or perhaps a mistake was made… But it would be fascinating if somehow cosmic radiation might have altered your genetic structure during your embryological development."

  By this time they had arrived at the main square of Positano. Ellie leaned over and kissed her husband. "That was very interesting, dear," she said, teasing him a little, "but I must admit that I'm still not sure what it was all about."