Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

There was some involuntary squirming as the cosmonauts thought about the prospect of tiny medical laboratories indefinitely embedded in their criti­cal organs. They were accustomed to the regular investigative probes that were placed in the body to obtain some specific information, like the amount of plaque blocking the arteries, but those probes were temporary. The thought of permanent electronic invasion was disquieting, to say the least. General Michael O’Toole asked two questions that were bothering most of the crew.

“Nicole,” he inquired in his usual earnest manner, “can you tell us how you make sure that the probes actually go to the right places. Even more important, what happens if one malfunctions?”

“Of course, Michael/’ she answered pleasantly. “Remember these things will be inside me as well and I had to ask the same questions.” Nicole des Jardins was in her middle thirties. Her skin was a shiny copper brown, her eyes dark brown and almond-shaped, her hair a luxurious jet black. There was an unshakable self-confidence radiating from her that was sometimes mistaken for arrogance. “You won’t leave the clinic today until we have verified that all the probes are properly positioned,” she was saying. “Based on recent past experience, one or two of you may have a monitor wander off course. It is an easy matter to track it with the lab equipment and then send overwrite commands as necessary to move it to the proper spot.

“As far as the malfunction issue is concerned, there are several levels of fault protection. First, each specific monitor tests its own battery of sensors more than twenty times a day. Any individual instrument failing a test is turned off immediately by the executive software in its own monitor. In addition, each of the probe packages undergoes a full and rigorous self-test twice a day. Failure of self-test is one of many fault conditions that causes the monitor to secrete chemicals causing self-destruction, with eventual harmless absorption by the body. Lest you become unduly concerned we have rigorously verified all these fault paths with test subjects during the past year. r

Nicole wound up her presentation and stood quietly in front of her col­leagues. “Any more questions?” she asked. After a few seconds’ hesitation she continued, “Then I need a volunteer to walk up here beside the robot nurse and be inoculated. My personal probe set was injected and verified last week. Who wants to be next?”

Francesca stood up. “All right, we’ll start with la bella signora Sabatini ” Nicole said w.th uncharacteristic flare. She gestured to the television person­nel. Focus those cameras on the tracer simulation. It’s quite a show when these electronic bugs swarm through the bloodstream.”

9 DIASTOLIC IRREGULARITY

Through the window Nicole could barely discern the Siberian snow-fields in the oblique December light. They were more than fifty thousand feet below her. The supersonic plane was slowing now as it moved south toward Vladivostok and the island of Japan. Nicole yawned. After only three hours of sleep, it would be a fight all day to keep her body awake. It was almost ten in the morning in Japan but back home at Beauvois, in the Loire Valley not far from Tours, her daughter, Genevieve, still had four more hours of sleep until her alarm would awaken her at seven o’clock,

The video monitor in the back of the seat in front of Nicole automatically turned on and reminded her that in only fifteen minutes the plane would land at the Kansai Transportation Center. The lovely Japanese girl on the screen suggested that now would be an excellent time to make or confirm ground transportation and housing arrangements. Nicole activated the com­munication system in her seat and a thin rectangular tray with a keyboard and small display area slid in front of her. In less than a minute Nicole arranged both her train ride to Kyoto and her electric trolley passage from there to her hotel. She used her Universal Credit Card (UCC) to pay for all transactions, after first correctly identifying herself by indicating that her mother’s maiden name was Anawi Tiasso. When she was finished a small printed schedule listing her train and trolley identifiers, along with the times of arrival and transit (she would reach her hotel at 11:14 a.m. Japanese time), popped out of one end of the tray.

As the plane prepared for its landing, Nicole thought about the reason for her sudden trip one third of the way around the world. Just twenty-four hours ago she had been planning to spend this day around her home, alter­nating some office work in the morning with some language practice for Genevieve in the afternoon. It was the beginning of the holiday break for the cosmonauts and, except for that stupid party in Rome at the end of the year, Nicole was supposedly free until she had to report to LEO-3 on January 8. But while she had been sitting in her office at home the previous morning, routinely checking the biometry from the final set of simulations, Nicole had come across a curious phenomenon. She had been studying Richard Wakefield’s heart and blood pressure during a variable gravity test and had not understood a particularly rapid surge in his pulse rate. She had then decided to check Dr. Takagishi’s detailed heart biometry for comparison, since he had been engaged in a strenuous physical activity with Richard at the time of the pulse surge.

What she had found when she had examined a full dump of Takagishi’s heart information had been an even bigger surprise. The Japanese professor’s diastolic expansion was decidedly irregular, maybe even pathological. But no warnings had been issued by the probe and no data channels had been alarmed. What was going on? Had she detected a malfunction in the Haka-matsu system?

An hour’s worth of detective work had resulted in the identification of more peculiarities. During the full set of simulations, there had been four separate intervals during which Takagishi’s problem had occurred. The ab­normal behavior was sporadic and intermittent. Sometimes the extra long diastole, reminiscent of a valve problem during the filling of the heart with blood, would not appear for as long as thirty-eight hours. However, the fact that it did recur four different times suggested that there was definitely an abnormality of some kind.

What had mystified Nicole was not the raw data itself—it was the failure of the system to trigger the proper alarms in the presence of the wildly irregular observations. As part of her analysis she had traced laboriously through the Takagishi medical history, paying special attention to the cardi­ology report. She had found no hint of any kind of abnormality, so had convinced herself that she was seeing a sensor error and not a true medical problem.

So if the system was working correctly, she had reasoned, the onset of the long diastole should have immediately sent the heart monitor outside the expected range and triggered an alarm. But it didn ‘t Neither the first time nor any other time. Is it possible that we have a double failure here? If so, how did the unit continue to pass self-test?

At first Nicole had thought about phoning one of her assistants in the life science office at ISA to discuss the anomaly she had found, but she decided instead, since it was a holiday for ISA, to telephone Dr. Hakamatsu in Japan. That phone call to him had completely bewildered her. He had told her flatly that the phenomenon she had observed must have been in the patient, that no combination of component failures in his probe could have produced such strange results. “But then why were there no entries in the warning file?” she had asked the Japanese electronics designer.

“Because no expected range values were exceeded,” he answered confi­dently. “For some reason an extremely wide expected range must have been entered for this particular cosmonaut. Have you looked at his medical his­tory?”

Later on in the conversation, when Nicole told Dr. Hakamatsu that the unexplained data had actually come from the probes inside one of his coun­trymen, namely cosmonaut-scientist Takagishi, the usually restrained engi­neer had actually shouted into the phone. “Wonderful,” he had said, “then I’ll be able to clear up this mystery in a hurry. I’ll contact Takagishi-san over at Kyoto University and let you know what I find.”

Three hours later Nicole’s video monitor had revealed the somber face of Dr. Shigeru Takagishi. “Madame des Jardins,” he had said very politely, “I understand that you have been talking with my colleague Hakamatsu-san about my biometry output during the simulations. Would you be kind enough to explain to me what you have found?”

Nicole had then presented all the information to her fellow cosmonaut, concealing nothing and expressing her personal belief that the source of the erroneous data had indeed been a probe malfunction.

A long silence followed Nicole’s explanation. At length the worried Japa­nese scientist had spoken again. “Hakamatsu-san just visited me here at the university and checked out the probe set inside me. He will report that he I found no problems with his electronics.” Takagishi had then paused, seem- > ingly deep in thought. “Madame des Jardins,” he had said a few seconds later, “I would like to ask you a favor. It is a matter of the utmost importance to me. Could you possibly come to see me in Japan in the very near future? I would like to talk with you personally and explain something that may be related to my irregular biometry data.”