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

Kenji Watanabe watched the first half of the video with intense concentration. During the appendices, however, his mind began to stray and to start asking questions. Who are these extraterrestrials? he wondered. Where did they come from? Why do they want to observe us? And why have they picked Nicole des Jardins as their spokesperson?

Kenji laughed to himself, realizing that there was an endless stream of such infinite questions. He decided to focus on more tractable issues.

If Nicole were still alive today, Kenji thought next, then she would be eighty-one years old. The woman on the television screen had some gray hair, and many more wrinkles than cosmonaut des Jardins had had when the Newton was launched from the Earth, but her age in the video was certainly nowhere near eighty. Maybe fifty-two or Jifty-three at the very most, Kenji said to himself.

So did she make this video thirty years ago? he wondered. Or has her aging process been somehow retarded? It did not occur to him to question whether or not the speaker was really Nicole. Kenji had spent enough time

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in the Newton archives to recognize immediately Nicole’s facial expressions and mannerisms. She supposedly made the video about four years ago, Kenji was thinking, but if so … He was still struggling with the entire situation when Nicole’s transmission terminated and the director of the ISA appeared again on the monitor.

Dr. Koch explained quickly mat the video would be replayed twice in its entirety on all channels and men would be available to each of the passengers and crew at his leisure.

“What the hell is really going on here?” Max Puckett demanded to know as soon as Nicole’s face appeared on the monitor again. He directed his question at Kenji.

“If I have understood correctly,” Kenji answered after watching for several seconds, “we have been purposely misled by the ISA about one of the primary purposes of our endeavor. Apparently, this message was first received about four years ago, back when the funding for the Low-ell Colony was still somewhat uncertain, and it was decided then—after all efforts to prove the video to be a hoax were unsuccessful—that the investigation of Rama III would be a secret objective of our project.”

“Shit,” said Max Puckett, shaking his head vigorously. “Why the hell didn’t they just tell us the truth?”

“My mind balks at the idea of supercreatures sending such awesome technology just to gather data about us,” Judge Mishkin commented after a short silence. “On another level, however, at least now I understand some of the peculiarities in the personnel selection process. I was flabbergasted when that group of homeless American teenagers was added to the colony about eight months ago. Now I see that the selection criteria were based on satisfying the ‘broad cross section’ requested by Madame des Jardins; whether or not our particular mix of individuals and skills would produce a sociologically viable colony on Mars must have always been a secondary consideration.”

“I hate lies and liars,” Max now said. He had stood up from his chair and was pacing around the room. “All these politicians and government managers are the same— the bastards will lie without any conscience.”

“But what could they have done, Max?” Judge Mishkin

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replied. “Almost certainly they didn’t really take the video seriously. At least not until this new craft showed up in Mars orbit. And if they had told the truth from the beginning, there would have been worldwide panic.”

“Look, Judge,” Max said in a frustrated tone, “I thought I was hired to be a fucking farmer on a colony on Mars. I don’t know anything about ETs and, quite frankly, I don’t want to know anything. It’s hard enough for me to deal with chickens, pigs, and people.”

“Especially people,” Judge Mishkin said quickly, smiling at his friend. Despite himself, Max chuckled.

A few minutes later Judge Mishkin and Max said goodbye and left Kenji and Nai alone. Soon after their guests were gone, the videophone rang in Kenji and Nai’s apartment. “Watanabe?” they heard lan Macmillan say.

“Yes, sir,” Kenji replied.

“Sorry to disturb you, Watanabe,” the commander said. “But you have the first assignment given to anyone other than my immediate staff. Your orders are to brief the entire Pinta crew on the Newton expedition, the Ramas, and Cosmonaut des Jardins at 1900 tonight. I thought you might want to begin your preparations.”

“. . . All the media reported in 2200 that Rama II was completely destroyed, vaporized by the multiple nuclear bombs that exploded in its vicinity. The missing cosmonauts des Jardins, O’Toole, Takagishi, and Wakefield were of course all considered to be dead. Actually, according to both the official documents of the Newton mission and the very successful books and television series distributed by Hagenest and Schmidt, Nicole des Jardins presumably died somewhere in New York, the island city in the middle of the Cylindrical Sea, weeks before the science ship of the Newton ever left Rama and returned to the Earth.”

Kenji paused to look at his audience. Even though Commander Macmillan had explained to the Pinta passengers and crew that a videotape of Kenji’s presentation would be immediately available, many of the listeners were taking notes. Kenji was enjoying his moment in the limelight. He glanced at Nai and smiled before continuing.

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“Cosmonaut Francesca Sabatini, the most famous survivor of the ill-fated Newton expedition, postulated in her memoirs that Dr. des Jardins might have encountered a hostile biot, or had perhaps fallen, somewhere in one of the blackout regions of New York. Since the two women had been together for most of the day—they were searching for the Japanese scientist Shigeru Takagishi, who had mysteriously disappeared from the Beta campsite the night before—Signora Sabatini was well aware of the amount of food and water that Cosmonaut des Jardins was carrying. ‘Even with her consummate knowledge of the human body,’ Sabatini wrote, ‘Nicole could not possibly have survived more than a week. And if, in a delirious state, she had tried to obtain water from the ice of the poisonous Cylindrical Sea, she would have died even sooner.’

“Of the half dozen Newton cosmonauts who did not return from the encounter with Rama II, it is Nicole des Jardins who has always attracted the most interest. Even before the brilliant statistician Roberto Lopez correctly conjectured seven years ago, on the basis of European genome information stored in The Hague, that the late King Henry XI of England was the father of Nicole’s daughter Genevieve, Dr. des Jardins’s reputation had become legendary. Recently the attendance at her memorial near her family villa in Beauvois, France, has increased markedly, especially among young females. People flock there, not only to pay Cosmonaut des Jardins homage and to view the many photographs and videos commemorating her outstanding life, but also to see the two superb bronze statues created by the Greek sculptor Theo Pappas. In one the youthful Nicole is depicted in her track singlet and shorts with the Olympic gold medal around her neck; in the second she is shown as a mature woman, wearing an ISA flight suit similar to one you saw in the video.”

Kenji pointed to the back of the room in the small Pinta auditorium and the lights were extinguished. Moments later a slide show began on one of the two screens behind him. “These are the few photographs of Nicole des Jardins mat were stored in our Pinta files. The reference data base indicates that many more pictures, including historical film

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clips, are available in the reserve library stored out in the cargo bay, but those data are not accessible during cruise due to the limitations of the flight data network. The extra data are not needed, however, for it is clear from these photos that the individual who appeared in the transmission this afternoon is either Nicole des Jardins, or an absolutely perfect copy of her.”

A close-up still from the afternoon video was frozen on the left screen and juxtaposed to a head photo taken of Nicole the night of the New Year’s Eve party at the Villa Adrian! outside Rome. There was no question about it. The two pictures were definitely of the same woman. An appreciative murmur rose from the audience as Kenji paused in his presentation.

“Nicole des Jardins was born,” Kenji continued in a slightly subdued tone, “on January 6, 2164. Therefore, if the video we watched this afternoon was actually filmed about four years ago, she should have been seventy-seven years old at the time. Now, we all know that Dr. des Jardins was in superb physical condition, and that she exercised regularly, but if the woman we saw this afternoon was seventy-seven, then the ETs who built Rama must also have discovered the fountain of youth.”