Rama 2 by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

“What?” Hiro Yamanaka had asked.

“Are you an android?” Francesca had repeated with a mischievous smile. “No,” the Japanese pilot had responded, his features remaining absolutely expressionless while the camera zoomed in on his face.

When the car turned off the main road between Rome and Tivoli to drive the final mile to the Villa Adriana, the traffic became congested. Progress was very slow, not only because of the many cars carrying people to the gala, but also because of the hundreds of curious onlookers and paparazzi who were lining the small two-lane road.

Nicole took a deep breath as the automobile finally pulled into a circular drive and stopped. Outside her tinted window she could see a bevy of pho­tographers and reporters, poised to pounce on whoever climbed out of the car. Her door opened automatically and she stepped out slowly, pulling her black suede coat around her and trying to be careful not to catch her heels. “Who’s that?” she heard a voice say. “Franco, over here, quick—it’s cosmonaut des Jardins.” There was a smattering of applause and the flash of many cameras. A kindly looking Italian gentleman came forward and took Nicole by the hand. People moiled around her, several microphones were stuck in her face, and it seemed as if she were being given a hundred simultaneous questions and requests in four or five different languages,

“Why have you refused all personal interviews?” “Please open your coat so we can see your dress.” “Do the other cosmonauts respect you as a doctor?” “Stop a moment. Please smile.” “What is your opinion of Francesca Sabatini?”

Nicole said nothing as the security men held back the crowd and led her to a covered electric cart. The four-passenger cart moved slowly up a long hill, leaving the crowd behind, as a pleasant Italian woman in her mid-twenties explained in English to Nicole and Hiro Yamanaka what they were seeing around them. Hadrian, who had ruled the Roman empire between A.D. 117 and 138, had built this immense villa, she told them, for his own enjoyment. The architectural masterpiece represented a blending of all the building styles Hadrian had seen on his many journeys to the distant prov­inces and was designed by the emperor himself on three hundred acres of plain at the foot of the Tiburtini Hills.

The initial cart ride past the ancient assortment of buildings was appar­ently an integral part of the evening’s festivities. The lighted ruins them­selves were only vaguely suggestive of their previous glory, for roofs were mostly missing, the decorative statuary had all been removed, and the rough stone walls were bare of adornment. But by the time the cart wound past the ruins of the Canopus, a monument built around a rectangular pool in the Egyptian style (it was the fifteenth or sixteenth building in the complex— Nicole had lost count), a general sense of the huge extent of the villa had definitely emerged.

This man died over two thousand yean ago, Nicole thought to herself, remembering her history. One of the smartest humans who ever lived. Sol­dier, administrator, linguist She smiled as she recalled the story of Antinous. Lonely most of his life. Except for one brief, all consuming passion that ended in tragedy,

The cart came to a stop at the end of a short walkway. The woman guide finished her monologue. “To honor the great Pax Romana, an extended time of world peace two millennia ago, the Italian government, helped by gener­ous donations from the corporations listed underneath the statue over there on your right, decided in 2189 to construct a perfect replica of Hadrian’s Maritime Theater. You may recall that we passed the ruins of the original at the beginning of the ride. The goal of the reconstruction project was to show what it would have been like to have visited a part of this villa during the emperor’s lifetime. The building was finished in 2193 and has been used for state events ever since.”

The guests were met by formally clad young Italian men, uniformly tall and handsome, who escorted them along the walkway, up to and through Philosopher’s Hall, and finally into the Maritime Theater. There was a brief security check at the actual entrance and then the guests were free to roam as they pleased.

Nicole was enchanted by the building. It was basically round in shape, about forty meters in diameter. An annulus of water separated an inner island—on which was located a large house with five rooms and a big yard— from the wide portico with its fiuted columns. There was no roof above the water or the inner part of the portico, the open skies giving the entire theater a wonderful feeling of freedom. Around the building the guests mixed and talked and drank; advanced robot waiters rolled around carrying large trays of champagne and wine and other alcoholic spirits. Across the two small bridges that connected the island with its house and yard to the portico and the rest of the building, Nicole could see a dozen people, all dressed in white, working to set up the dinner buffet.

A heavy blond woman and her pint-size, jocular husband, a bald man wearing an old-fashioned pair of spectacles, were rapidly approaching Nicole from about thirty feet away. Nicole prepared for the coming onslaught by taking a small sip of the champagne and cassis cocktail that had been handed to her by a strangely insistent robot a few minutes before.

“Oh, Madame des Jardins,” the man said, waving at her and closing in with great speed. “We just have to talk to you. My wife is one of your biggest fans.” He walked up beside Nicole and gestured to his wife. “Come on, Cecelia,” he shouted, “I’ve got her.”

Nicole took a deep breath and forced a wide smile. It’s going to be one of those evenings, she said to herself.

Finally, Nicole was thinking, maybe III have a few minutes of peace and quiet She was sitting by herself, her hack purposely toward the door, at a small table in the comer of the room. The room was at the rear of the island house in the middle of the Maritime Theater. Nicole finished the last few bites of her food and washed them down with some wine.

Whew, she thought, trying without success to remember even half the people she had met in the last hour. She had been like a prized photograph, passed from person to person and praised by everyone. She bad been em­braced, kissed, hugged, pinched, flirted with (by both men and women), and even propositioned by a rich Swedish shipbuilder who had invited her to his “castle” outside the city of Goteborg. Nicole had hardly said a word to any of them. Her face ached from polite smiling and she was a trifle tipsy from the wine and champagne cocktails.

“Well* as I live and breathe,” she heard a familiar voice behind her say, “1 believe the lady in the white dress is none other than my fellow cosmonaut, the ice princess herself, Madame Nicole des Jardins.” Nicole turned and saw Richard Wakefield staggering toward her. He bounced off a table, reached out to stabilize himself on a chair, and nearly fell in her lap.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning and managing to seat himself beside her. “I’m afraid I’ve had too much gin and tonic.” He took a big gulp from the glass that had miraculously remained unspilled in his right hand. “And now,” he said with a wink, “if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a nap before the dolphin show.”

Nicole laughed as Richard’s head hit the wooden table with a splat and he feigned unconsciousness. After a moment she leaned over playfully and forced one of his eyelids open. “If you don’t mind, comrade, could you not pass out until after you explain to me the bit about the dolphin show.”

With great effort Richard sat up and began rolling his eyes. “You mean you don’t know? You, who always know all the schedules and all the proce­dures? That’s impossible.”

Nicole finished her wine. “Seriously, Wakefield. What are you talking about?”

Richard opened one of the small windows and stuck his arm through it, pointing at the pool of water that encircled the house. “The great Dr. Luigi Bardolini is here with his intelligent dolphins. Francesca is going to intro­duce him in about fifteen minutes.” He stared at Nicole with wild abandon. “Dr, Bardolini is going to prove, here and tonight,” he shouted, “that his dolphins can pass our university entrance exams.”

Nicole pulled back and looked carefully at her colleague. He really is drunk, she thought to herself. Maybe he feels as out of place as I do.

Richard was now gazing intently out the window. “This party is really some zoo, isn’t it?” Nicole said after a long silence. “Where did they find—”

“That’s it,” Wakefield interrupted her suddenly, giving the table a trium­phant pounding. “That’s why this place has seemed familiar to me since the moment we walked in.” He glanced at Nicole, who was eyeing him as if he had lost his mind. “It’s a miniature Rama, don’t you see?” He jumped up, unable to contain his happiness at his discovery. “The water surrounding this house is the Cylindrical Sea, the porticoes represent the Central Pkin, and we, lovely lady, are sitting in the city of New York.”