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

Chamatevi had been only twenty-three when an old soothsayer identified her to some emissaries from the north as the future queen of the Haripunchai. She was a young

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and beautiful princess of the Mons, the Khmer people who would later construct Angkor Wat. Chamatevi was also extremely intelligent, a rare woman of the era, and very much favored by everyone at the royal court.

The Mons were therefore stunned when she announced that she was giving up her life of leisure and plenty and heading north on a harrowing six-month journey across seven hundred kilometers of mountains, jungles, and swamps. When Chamatevi and her retinue, “borne by huge elephants,” reached the verdant valley in which Lamphun lay, her future subjects immediately put aside their factional quarrels and placed the beautiful young queen on the throne. She ruled for fifty years in wisdom and justice, lifting her kingdom from obscurity into an age of social progress and artistic accomplishment.

When she was seventy years old, Chamatevi abdicated her throne and divided her kingdom in half, each ruled by one of her twin sons. The queen then announced that she was dedicating the remainder of her life to God. She entered a Buddhist monastery and gave away all of her possessions. She lived a simple, pious life in the monastery, dying at the age of ninety-nine. By then the golden age of the Haripunchai was over.

On the final wall panel inside the temple an ascetic and wizened woman is carried away to nirvana in a magnificent chariot. A younger Queen Chamatevi, radiantly beautiful beside her Buddha, sits above the chariot in the splendor of the heavens. Nai Buatong Watanabe, Martian colonist-designate, sat on her knees in the temple in Lamphun, Thailand, and offered a silent prayer to the spirit of her heroine from the distant past.

Dear Chamatevi, she said. You have watched over me for these twenty-six years. Now I am about to leave for an unknown place, much as you did when you came north to find the Haripunchai. Guide me with your wisdom and insight as I go to this new and wonderful world.

3

Y;

rukiko was wearing a black silk shirt, white pants, and a black and white beret. She crossed the living room to talk to her brother. “I wish you would come, Kenji,” she said. “It’s going to be the largest demonstration for peace that the world has ever seen.”

Kenji smiled at his younger sister. “I would like to, Yuki,” he replied. “But I only have two more days before I must leave and I want to spend the time with Mother and Father.”

Their mother entered the room from the opposite side. She looked harried, as usual, and was carrying a large suitcase. “Everything is now packed properly,” she said. “But I still wish you would change your mind. Hiroshima is going to be a madhouse. The Asahi Shimbun says they’re expecting a million visitors, almost half of them from abroad.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Yukiko said, reaching for the suitcase. “As you know, Satoko and I will be at the Hiroshima Prince Hotel. Now, don’t worry. We will call every

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morning, before the activities begin. And I’ll be home Monday afternoon.”

The young woman opened the suitcase and reached inside a special compartment, pulling out a diamond bracelet and a sapphire ring. She put them both on. “Don’t you think you should leave those things at home?” her mother fussed. “Remember, there will be all those foreigners. Your jewelry may be too much temptation for them.”

Yukiko laughed in the uninhibited way that Kenji adored. “Mother,” she said, “you’re such a worrywart. All your ever think about is what bad things might happen. . . . We’re going to Hiroshima for the ceremonies commemorating the three hundredth anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. Our prime minister will be mere, as well as three of the members of the Central Council of the COG. Many of the world’s most famous musicians will be performing in the evenings. This will be what Father calls an enriching experience—and all you can think about is who might steal my jewelry.”

“When I was young it was unheard of for two girls, not yet finished at the university, to travel around Japan unchaperoned—”

“Mother, we’ve been through this before,” Yuki interrupted. “I’m almost twenty-two years old. Next year, after I finish my degree, I’m going to live away from home, on my own, maybe even in another country. I’m no longer a child. And Satoko and I are perfectly capable of looking after one another.”

Yukiko checked her watch. “I must go now,” she said. “She is probably already waiting for me at the subway station.”

She strode gracefully over to her mother and gave her a perfunctory kiss. Yuki shared a longer embrace with her brother.

“Be well, ani-san,” she whispered in his ear. “Take care of yourself and your lovely wife on Mars. We’re all very proud of you.”

Kenji had never really known Yukiko very well. He was, after all, almost twelve years older than she. Yuki

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had been only four when Mr. Watanabe had been assigned to the position of president of the American division of International Robotics. The family had moved across the Pacific to a suburb of San Francisco. Kenji had not paid much attention to his younger sister in those days. In California he had been much more interested in his new life, especially after he started at UCLA.

The elder Watanabes and Yukiko had returned to Japan hi 2232, leaving Kenji as a sophomore hi history at the university. He had had very little contact with Yuki since then. During his annual visits to his home in Kyoto, Kenji always meant to spend some private hours with Yukiko, but it never seemed to happen. Either she was too deeply involved in her own life, or his parents had scheduled too many social functions, or Kenji himself had just not left enough tune.

Kenji was vaguely sad as he stood at the door and watched Yukiko disappear in the distance. I’m leaving this planet, he thought, and yet I’ve never taken the time to know my own sister.

Mrs. Watanabe was talking in a monotone behind him, expressing her feeling that her life had been a failure because none of her children had any respect for her and they had alt moved away. Now her only son, who had married a woman from Thailand just to embarrass them, was going off to live on Mars and she wouldn’t see him for over five years. As for her middle daughter, she and her banker husband had at least given her two grandchildren, but they were as dull and boring as their parents—

“How is Fumiko?” Kenji interrupted his mother. “Will I have a chance to see her and my nieces before I leave?”

“They’re coming over from Kobe for dinner tomorrow night,” his mother replied. “Although I have no idea what I’m going to feed them. . . . Did you know that Tatsuo and Fumiko are not even teaching those girls how to use chopsticks? Can you imagine? A Japanese child who does not know how to use chopsticks? Is nothing sacred? We’ve given up our identity to become rich. I was telling your father . . .”

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Kenji excused himself from his mother’s querulous monologue and sought refuge in his father’s study. Framed photographs lined the walls of the room, the archives of a successful man’s personal and professional life. Two of the pictures held special memories for Kenji as well. In one of the photos, he and his father were each holding on to a large trophy given by the country club to the winners in the annual father-son golf tournament. In the other, the beaming Mr. Watanabe was presenting a large medal to his son after Kenji had won first prize in all Kyoto in the high school academic competition.

What Kenji had forgotten until seeing the photographs again was that Toshio Nakamura, the son of his father’s closest friend and business associate, had been the runner-up in both contests. In both pictures the young Nakamura, almost a head taller than Kenji, was wearing an intense, angry frown on his face.

That was long before all his trouble, Kenji thought. He remembered the headline, OSAKA EXECUTIVE ARRESTED, which had proclaimed four years earlier the indictment of Toshio Nakamura. The article underneath the headline had explained that Mr. Nakamura, who was at the time already a vice president in the Tomozawa Hotel Group, had been charged with very serious crimes, ranging from bribery to pandering to trafficking in human slavery. Within four months Nakamura had been convicted and sentenced to several years in detention. Kenji had been astonished. What in the world happened to Nakamura? he had wondered many times in the intervening four years.