Rama 3 – The Garden of Rama by Clarke, Arthur C.

Nicole’s heart was beating so rapidly she could hardly breathe. She struggled to calm herself. “Do you have any questions?” the policeman repeated.

“What is your name, young man?” Nicole asked, her voice breaking.

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“Franz,” the man answered after a puzzled hesitation.

“Franz what?” Nicole said.

“Franz Bauer,” he replied.

“Well, Franz Bauer,” Nicole said, trying to force a smile. “Can you please tell me how long it will take me to die? After you apply the current, of course.”

“I don’t really know,” he said, somewhat flustered. “You’ll lose consciousness almost instantly, in just a couple of seconds. But I don’t know how long—” :

“Thank you,” Nicole said, starting to feel faint. “Could you go now, please? I would like to be alone.” The two men opened the door to the cell. “Oh, by the way,” Nicole added, “could you possibly leave the lantern? And maybe a pen and paper, or even an electronic notebook?”

Franz Bauer shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We cannot.”

Nicole waved him away and crossed to the far side of her cell. Two letters, she said to herself, breathing slowly to gather strength. / only wanted to write two letters. One to Katie and one to Richard. I’ve made my final peace with everyone else.

After the policemen had departed Nicole recalled the long hours that she had spent in the pit in Rama I! many years before, when she had expected to die from starvation. She had passed what she had then thought were her last days reliving the happy moments of her life. That’s not necessary now, she thought. There is no event from my past that has not been thoroughly scrutinized already. That’s the benefit of two years in prison.

Nicole was surprised to discover that she was angry about not being able to write the final two letters, /’// bring the subject up again in the morning. They’ll let me write the letters if I make enough noise. Despite herself, Nicole smiled. “Do not go gently. . .” she quoted out loud.

Suddenly she felt her pulse rate increase again. In her mind’s eye Nicole saw an electric chair in a dark room. She was sitting in it; a strange helmet was wrapped around her head. The helmet began to glow and Nicole saw herself slump forward.

Dear God, she thought, wherever and whatever you

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are. Please give me some courage now. I am very frightened.

Nicole sat down on her bed in the darkness of her room. In a few minutes she felt better, almost calm. She found herself wondering what the instant of death would be like. Is it just like going to sleep, and then there’s nothing? Or does something special happen at that very last moment, something that no living person can ever know?

There was a voice calling her from far away. Nicole stirred but did not wake up completely. “Mrs. Wake-field,” the voice called again.

Nicole sat up quickly in her bed, thinking it was morning. She felt a surge of fear as her mind told her that she had only two more hours to live. “Mrs. Wakefield,” the voice said, “over here, outside your cell. . . . It’s Amadou Diaba.”

Nicole rubbed her eyes and strained to see the figure in the dark by the door. “Who?” she said, slowly walking across the room.

“Amadou Diaba. Two years ago you helped Dr. Turner do my heart transplant.”

“What are you doing here, Amadou? And how did you get inside?” ,

“I came to bring you something. I bribed everybody necessary. I had to see you.”

Even though the man was only five meters away from her, Nicole could see only his vague outline in the darkness. Her tired eyes were playing tricks on her as well. Once, when she tried especially hard to focus, she momentarily thought her visitor was her great-grandfather Omeh. A sharp chill raced through her body.

“All right, Amadou,” Nicole said at length. “What is it that you have brought me?”

“I must explain it first,” he said. “And even then it may not make any sense. … I don’t understand it fully myself. I just know that I had to bring it to you tonight.”

He paused a moment. When Nicole did not say anything, Amadou told his story very rapidly. “The day after I was selected for Lowell Colony, while I was still in Lagos, I received this strange message from my Senoufo

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grandmother, telling me that it was very urgent that I come to see her. I went at my first opportunity, which was two weeks later, after I had received still another message from my grandmother insisting that my visit was a matter of life and death.

“When I arrived at her village in the Ivory Coast, it was the middle of the night. My grandmother awakened and dressed immediately. Accompanied by our village medicine man, we took a long trek across the savanna that very night. I was exhausted by the time we reached our destination, a little village named Nidougou.”

“Nidougou?” Nicole interrupted.

“That’s right,” Amadou replied. “Anyway, there was a strange, wizened man there who must have been some kind of super Shaman. My grandmother and our medicine man stayed in Nidougou while this man and I made the strenuous climb up a nearby barren mountain to the side of a small lake. We arrived just before sunrise. ‘Look,’ the old man said when the first rays of the sun hit the lake. ‘Look into the Lake of Wisdom. What do you see?’

“I told him I saw thirty or forty melonlike objects resting on the bottom of one side of the lake. ‘Good,’ he said with a smile. ‘You are indeed the one.’

” ‘t am the one what?’ I asked.

“He never answered. We walked around the lake, nearer to where the melons had been submerged—we couldn’t see them any longer as the sun rose higher in the sky—and the super shaman pulled out a small vial. He dipped it into the water, put a cap on it, and handed it to me. He also gave me a small stone, which looked and was shaped like the melonlike objects on the bottpm of the lake.

” “These are the most important gifts you will ever receive,’ he said.

” ‘Why?’ I said.

“A few seconds later his eyes became completely white and he fell into a trance, chanting in rhythmic Senoufo. He danced for several minutes and then suddenly jumped into the cold lake for a swim.

” ‘Wait a minute,’ I shouted. ‘What shall I do with your gifts?’

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” ‘Take them with you everywhere,’ he said. ‘You will know the time to use them.’ ”

Nicole thought that the beating of her heart was so loud that even Amadou could hear it. She extended her arm through the bars of her cell and touched his shoulder. “And last night,” she said, “a voice in a dream, or maybe it wasn’t a dream after all, told you to bring the vial and the stone to me tonight.”

“Exactly/1 Amadou said. He paused. “How did you know?”

Nicole did not answer. She could not speak. Her entire body was trembling. Moments later, when Nicole felt the two objects in her hand, her knees were so weak that she thought she was going to fall. She thanked Amadou twice and urged him to leave before he was discovered.

She walked slowly across the cell to her bed. Can it be? And how can it be? All this somehow known from the beginning? Manna melons on the Earth? Nicole’s system was overloaded. / have lost control, she thought, and I have not even drunk from the vial yet.

Just holding the vial and the stone reminded Nicole vividly of the incredible vision she had experienced at the bottom of the pit in Rama II. Nicole opened the vial. She took two deep breams and swallowed its contents hurriedly.

At first she thought nothing was happening. The blackness all around her did not seem to change. Then suddenly a great orange ball formed in the middle of the cell. It exploded, spreading color all across the darkness. A red ball followed, men a purple one. While Nicole was recoiling from the brilliance of the purple explosion, she heard a loud laugh outside her window. She glanced in that direction. The cell disappeared. Nicole was outside in a field.

It was dark, but she could still see outlines of objects. Off in the distance Nicole heard the laugh again. Amadou, she called in her mind. Nicole raced across the field at blinding speed. She was catching the man. As she drew closer, his face changed. It was not Amadou at all. It was Omeh.

He laughed again and Nicole stopped. Ronata, he