Rama Revealed r-4

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “I don’t think so,” the Eagle said.

  “Where is our solar system in this current display?” Nicole now asked.

  “Right there,” the Eagle said, using his light beam pointer.

  Nicole glanced first at the area around the Earth and then quickly surveyed the rest of the room. “So ten million years ago, there were about sixty spacefaring species living among our closest ten thousand stellar neighborhoods. And one of these species, if I understand that cluster of dark green lights, originated not too far from us and had spread to include twenty or thirty star systems altogether.”

  “That’s correct,” said the Eagle. “Should I run the display forward again, at a slower rate?”

  “In a little while,” Nicole said. “I want to appreciate this particular configuration first. Up until now everything has been happening in this display faster than I could possibly absorb it.”

  She stared at the group of green lights. Its outer edge was no more than fifteen light-years from where the Eagle had marked the solar system. Nicole motioned for the Eagle to start the display again and he told her the rate would now be only two hundred thousand years a second.

  The green lights moved closer and closer to the Earth and then they suddenly disappeared. “Stop,” yelled Nicole.

  The Eagle halted the display. He looked at Nicole with a quizzical expression.

  “What happened to those guys?” Nicole said.

  “I told you about them a couple of days ago,” the Eagle said. “They genetically engineered themselves out of existence.”

  They almost reached the Earth, Nicole thought. And how different all history would have been if they had. They would have recognized immediately the intellectual potential of the protohumans in Africa and would doubtless have done to them what the Precursors did to the octospiders. Then we…

  In her mind’s eye, Nicole suddenly had an image of Saint Michael, calmly explaining the purpose of the universe in front of the fireplace in Michael and Simone’s study.

  “Could I see the beginning?” Nicole asked the Eagle.

  “The beginning of what?” he replied.

  “The beginning of everything,” Nicole said eagerly. “The instant when this universe began and the entire process of evolution was set in motion.” She waved her hand toward the model below them.

  “We can do that,” the Eagle said after a brief pause.

  “We have no knowledge about anything before this universe was created,” the Eagle said a moment later as Nicole and he stood together on the platform in total darkness. “We do assume, however, that some kind of energy existed before the instant of creation, for we have been told that the matter of this universe resulted from a transformation of energy.”

  Nicole looked around her. “Darkness everywhere,” she said, almost to herself. “And somewhere in that darkness-if the word ‘somewhere’ even has any meaning-there was energy. And a Creator. Or might the energy have been part of the Creator?”

  “We don’t know,” the Eagle said after another short pause. “What we do know is that the fate of every single element in the universe was determined in that initial instant. The way in which that energy was transformed into matter defined eighty billion years of history.”

  As the Eagle spoke, a blinding light filled the room.

  Nicole turned away from the source and covered her eyes. “Here,” said the Eagle, reaching into his pouch. He handed Nicole a special pair of glasses.

  “Why did you make the simulation so bright?” Nicole asked after adjusting her glasses.

  “To indicate, at least in some measure, what those initial moments were like. Look,” he said, pointing below them, “I have stopped the model at 10’ 40 seconds after the creation instant. The universe has existed for only an infinitesimal length of time, yet already it is rich in physical structure. This incredible amount of light is all coming from that tiny chunk of cosmic broth below us. All that ‘stuff’ forming the early universe is completely alien to anything we could recognize or understand. There are no atoms, no molecules. The density of the quarks, leptons, and their friends is so great that a pinch of me ‘stuff’ no larger than a hydrogen atom would weigh more than a large cluster of galaxies in our era.”

  “Just out of curiosity,” Nicole said, “where are you and I at this moment?”

  The Eagle hesitated. “Nowhere would be the best answer,” he said eventually. “For illustrative purposes we are outside the model of the universe. But we could be in another dimension. The mathematics of the early universe do not work unless there were initially more than four dimensions. Of course everything in space-time that- will later become our universe is contained in that small volume producing the awesome light. The temperature over there, incidentally, if the model were a true representation, would be ten trillion times hotter than the hottest star that will eventually evolve.

  “Our model here has also distorted the concepts of size and distance,” the Eagle continued after a brief pause. “In a moment I will start the simulation of the early universe again, and we will be overpowered as that compact blob of radiation explodes outward at an astonishing rate. While the simulation of what the cosmologists call the Inflation Era is occurring, the assumed size of this room will also be increasing rapidly. If we did not change the scale, you would be unable now to see the structure of the universe at 10”40 seconds without a fantastic microscope.”

  Nicole stared below her at the source of light. “So that minuscule warped globule of hot, heavy stuff was the seed of everything? From that tiny stew of subatomic particles came the great galaxies you showed me in the other domain? It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Not just those galaxies,” the Eagle said. “The potential for everything in the cosmos is stored in that peculiar superheated soup.”

  The small globule suddenly began to expand at an enormous rate. Nicole had the feeling that the outside of the globule was going to touch her face at any moment. Millions of bizarre structures formed and disappeared in front of her eyes. Nicole watched in fascination as the material seemed to change its nature several times, moving through transitional states as peculiar and foreign as the earlier superheated globule.

  “I have ran time forward in the model,” the Eagle said several seconds later. “What you see out there now, approximately one million years after creation, would be recognizable to any dedicated student of physics. Some simple atoms have formed-three kinds of hydrogen, two of helium, for example. Lithium is the heaviest known atom that is plentiful. The density of the universe is now roughly equivalent to the air on Earth, and the temperature has fallen to a comparatively comfortable one hundred million degrees, or twenty orders of magnitude less than it was at the time of the hot globule.”

  He activated the platform and guided it among the lights and clumps and filaments. “If we were really smart,” the Eagle said, “we would be able to look at all this early matter and predict which ‘lumps’ would eventually become galactic clusters. It was at about this time that the first Prime Monitor appeared, the only intruder into this otherwise natural evolution process. No monitoring could have been done earlier, because the process is so sensitive. Any kind of observation during the first second of creation, for example, would have completely distorted the resultant evolution.”

  The Eagle pointed at a tiny metallic sphere in the center of several huge agglomerations of matter. “That first Prime Monitor,” he said, “was sent by the Creator, from another dimension of the early universe, into our evolving space-time system. Its purpose was to observe what was occurring and to create, as necessary, with its own intelligence, the other observing systems that would together gather all the pertinent information on the overall process.”

  “So the Sun, the Earth, and every human being,” Nicole said slowly, “resulted from the unpredictable natural evolution of this cosmos. The Node, Rama, and even you and Saint Michael were produced from a directed development designed originally by that first Prime Mon
itor.”

  She paused, glancing around her, and then turned to the Eagle. “You could have been predicted shortly after the moment of creation. I, and even the existence of humanity, came from a process so mathematically perverse that we could not even have been predicted a hundred million years ago, which is only one percent of the time since the beginning of the universe.”

  Nicole shook her head and then waved her hand. “All right,” she said, “that’s enough. I’m overloaded with the infinite.”

  The great room became dark again except for the small lights on the floor of the platform. “What is it?” the Eagle said, seeing a look of distress on Nicole’s face.

  “I’m not certain,” she said. “I feel a kind of sadness, as if I had experienced a deep personal loss. If I have-understood all this, then humans are far more special than you, or even Rama. The odds are very much against any creatures even nearly like us ever arising again, either in this universe or any other. We are one of the fluke products of chaos. You, or at least something like you, probably existed in all those other universes the Creator is supposedly observing.”

  There was a momentary silence. “I guess I had imagined,” Nicole continued, “after listening to Saint Michael, that there would be human voices in that harmony God was seeking. Now I realize dial it is only on the planet Earth, in this particular universe, that our songs—”

  Nicole felt a sharp burst of pain in her chest. It remained intense. She struggled to breathe, convinced for several moments that the end was coming immediately.

  The Eagle said nothing, but watched her carefully. When Nicole finally caught her breath, she spoke in short, broken clauses. “You told me… at lunch… a personal place… where I could see family and friends…”

  They talked briefly in the car while the pain was momentarily bearable. Both the Eagle and Nicole knew, without either of diem saying anything, that the next attack would be the last.

  They entered another of the exhibit areas in the Knowledge Module. This room was a perfect circle, with a space in a small floor section in the middle where the Eagle could stand next to Nicole’s wheelchair. They crossed to their central location and watched as humanlike figures began to replay events from Nicole’s adult life in each of the six separate theater settings that closely surrounded them.

  The verisimilitude of the replays was astonishing. Not only did all Nicole’s family and friends look exactly as they had at the time that the events had taken place, but all the sets were perfect reconstructions as well. In one of the scenes Katie was water-skiing boldly near the shore of Lake Shakespeare, laughing and waving with the reckless abandon that was her trademark. In another Nicole watched a re-creation of the party the little troupe on Rama II had held to celebrate the one thousandth anniversary of the death of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Seeing Simone at age four and Katie at two, and both Richard and herself when they were still young and vigorous, brought tears to Nicole’s eyes.

  It has been an astonishing life, Nicole thought. She rolled her wheelchair into the scene from Rama II and the action stopped. Nicole leaned over and picked up the robot TB that Richard had created to amuse the little girls. It felt properly weighted in her hands.

  “How in the world did you do this?’. Nicole asked.

  “Advanced technology,” the Eagle replied. “I couldn’t explain it to you.”

  “And if I went over mere, where Katie is skiing, would the water feel wet to my touch?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Nicole rolled out of the scene holding the pseudo-robot in her hands. When she was gone, another TB materialized and the scene continued. I had forgotten, Richard, Nicole said to herself, all your brilliant little creations.

  Her heart granted her a few more minutes to enjoy the vignettes taken from her life. Nicole thrilled again to the moment of Simone’s birth, relived her first night of love with Richard not long after he found her in New York, and experienced for a second time the fantastic array of sights and creatures that had greeted Richard and her when the gates of me Emerald City had first opened to them.

  “Can you replay any event from my life that I might want?” Nicole asked, feeling a sudden constriction in her chest.

  “As long as it happened after you arrived at Rama and I can find it in the archives,” the Eagle replied.

  Nicole gasped. The final heart attack was under way. “Please,” she said, “may I see my last conversation with Richard before he left?”

  It won’t be long, a voice inside Nicole said. She clenched her teeth and tried to concentrate on the scene” that had suddenly appeared in front of her. Richard was explaining to pseudo-Nicole why he was the one who should accompany Archie back to New Eden.

  “I understand,” pseudo-Nicole said in the scene.

  I understand, the real Nicole said to herself. That is the most important statement anyone can ever make. The whole key to life is understanding. And now I understand that I am a mortal creature whose time of death has come.

  Another surge of intense pain was accompanied by a fleeting memory of a Latin line from an old poem: Timor Mortis conturbat me. But I will not be afraid because I understand.

  The Eagle was watching her closely. “I would like to see Richard and Archie,” she said, laboring, “their final moments… in the cell… just before the biots came.”

  I will not be afraid because I understand.

  “And my children, if they can somehow be here. And Dr. Blue.”

  The room became dark. Seconds ticked by. The pain was terrible. I will not be afraid…

  The lights came on again. Richard and Archie were in their cell immediately in front of Nicole’s wheelchair. She heard the biots open the cellblock door down the hall.

  “Freeze it there, please,” Nicole said with difficulty. Just to the left of the scene with Richard and Archie, her children and Dr. Blue were lined up in a tableau. Nicole struggled to her feet and walked the few meters to be among them. Tears poured from her eyes as she touched one final time the faces that she loved.

  The walls of her heart began to collapse. Nicole stumbled into the scene in Richard’s cell and embraced the representation of her husband. “I understand, Richard,” she said.

  Nicole dropped to her knees slowly. She turned to face the Eagle. “I understand,” she said with a smile.

  And understanding is happiness, she thought.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ARTHUR C. CLARKE is a seminal figure in modern science fiction writing, and winner of all the field’s highest honors, including being named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986. He is the author of more than fifty books with more than fifty million copies in print. His bestsellers include Childhood’s End; 2001: A Space Odyssey; 2010: Odyssey Two; 2061: Odyssey Three; The Ghost from the Grand Banks; Rendezvous with Rama; and, with Gentry Lee, Rama II and The Garden of Rama. He co-broadcast the Apollo 11, 12, and 15 missions with Walter Cronkite and Captain Wally Schirra and shared an Oscar nomination with Stanley Kubrick for the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  GENTRY LEE has been chief engineer on Project Galileo, director of science analysis and mission planning for NASA’s Viking mission to Mars, and partner with Carl Sagan in the design, development, and implementation of the television series Cosmos. He is co-author of Rama II and The Garden of Rama. He lives in Texas, where he is at work on his first solo novel.

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