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

“I almost resurrected the whole story three years ago,” Kenji continued, “when I was doing the research for my book. Since it had been more than twenty-five years, all the data from the Newton mission was in the public domain and therefore available to anyone who asked for it. I found the contents of your personal computer, including the data cube that must have come from Henry ^ scattered throughout the trickle telemetry. I became convinced that Dr. Brown’s interview had indeed contained some truth.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to interview Francesca at her palace in Sorrento. Soon thereafter I stopped working on the book—”

Kenji hesitated for an instant. Should I say more? he wondered. He glanced over at his loving wife. No, he said to himself, this is not the time or the place.

“I’m sorry, Richard.”

He was almost asleep when he heard his wife’s soft voice in the bedroom.

“Huh?” he said. “Did you say something, dear?”

“I’m sorry,” Nicole repeated. She rolled over next to him and found his hand with hers underneath the covers. “I should have told you about Henry years ago. . . . Are you still angry?”

“I was never angry,” Richard said. “Surprised, yes, maybe even flabbergasted. But not angry. You had your reasons for keeping it secret.” He squeezed her hand. “Besides, it was back on Earth, in another life. If you had told me when we first met, it might have mattered. I

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might have been jealous, and almost certainly would have felt inadequate. But not now.”

Nicole leaned over and gave him a kiss. “I love you, Richard Wakefield,” she said.

“And I love you too,” he responded.

Kenji and Nai made love for die first time since they had left the Pinta and she fell asleep immediately. Kenji was still surprisingly alert. He lay awake in bed, thinking about the evening with the Wakefields. For some reason an image of Francesca Sabatini came into his mind. The most beautiful seventy-year-old woman I have ever seen, was his first thought. And what a fantastic life.

Kenji remembered clearly the summer afternoon when his train had pulled into the station at Sorrento. The driver of the electric cab had recognized the address immediately. “Capisco,” he had said, waving his hands and then heading in the direction of “il palazzo Sabatini.”

Francesca lived in a converted hotel overlooking the Bay of Naples. It was a twenty-room structure that had once belonged to a seventeenth century prince. From the office where Kenji waited for Signora Sabatini to appear, he could see a funicular carrying swimmers down a steep precipice to die dark blue bay below.

La signora was half an hour late and then quickly became impatient for the interview to be over. Twice Francesca informed Kenji that she had only agreed to talk to him at all because her publisher had told her he was an “outstanding young writer.” “Frankly,” she said in her excellent English, “at this stage I find all discussion of the Newton extremely boring.”

Her interest in die conversation picked up considerably when Kenji told her about his “new data,” the files from Nicole *s personal computer that had been telemetered down to Earth in the “trickle mode” during the final few weeks of the mission. Francesca became quiet, even pensive, as Kenji compared the internal notes that Nicole had made with the “confession” given by Dr. David Brown to the magazine reporter in 2208.

“I underestimated you,” Francesca said with a smile, when Kenji asked if she didn’t think it was a “remarkable

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coincidence” that Nicole’s Newton diary and David Brown’s confession had so many points of agreement. She never answered his questions directly. Instead she stood up in the office, insisted that he stay for the evening, and told Kenji that she would talk to him later.

Near dusk a note came to Kenji’s room in Francesca’s palace telling him that dinner would be at eight-thirty and mat he should wear a coat and a tie. A robot arrived at the appointed time and led him to a magnificent dining room with walls covered in murals and tapestries, glittering chandeliers hanging from the higii ceilings, and delicate carvings on all the moldings. The table was set for ten. Francesca was already there, standing near a small robot server off to one side of the enormous room.

“Kon ban wa, Watanabe-san,” Francesca said in Japanese as she offered him a glass of champagne. “I’m renovating the main sitting areas, so I’m afraid we’re having our cocktails here. It’s all very gauche, as the French would say, but it will have to do.”

Francesca looked magnificent. Her blond hair was only slightly tinged by gray. It was stacked on top of her head, held by a large carved comb. A choker of diamonds was around her throat and an immense solitary sapphire dangled from an understated diamond necklace. Her strapless gown was white, with folds and pleats that accentuated the curves of her still youthful body. Kenji could not believe that she was seventy years old.

She took him by the hand, after explaining that she had quickly put together a dinner party in his honor, and led him over to the tapestries against the far wall. “Do you know Aubusson at all?” she asked. When he shook his head, Francesca launched into a discussion of the history of European tapestries.

Half an hour later, Francesca took her seat at the head of the table. A music professor from Naples and his wife (supposedly an actress), two handsome, swarthy professional soccer players, the curator of the Pompeii ruins (a man in his early fifties), a middle-aged Italian poetess, and two young women in their twenties, each stunningly attractive, occupied the other places. After some consulta-

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tion with Francesca, one of the two young women sat opposite Kenji and the other beside him.

At first the armchair opposite Francesca, at the far end of the table, was empty. Francesca whispered something to her headwaiter, however, and five minutes later a very old man, halt and almost blind, was led into the room. Kenji recognized him immediately. It was Janos Tabori.

The meal was wonderful, the conversation lively. The food was all served by waiters, not by the robots used in all but the most fashionable restaurants, and each course was enhanced by a different Italian wine. And what a remarkable group! Everyone, even the soccer players, spoke passable English. They were also both interested in and knowledgeable of space history. The young woman opposite Kenji had even read his most popular book on the early exploration of Mars. As the evening wore on, Kenji, who was a bachelor of thirty at the time, became less inhibited. He was aroused by everything—the women, the wine, the discussions of history and poetry and music.

Only once during the two hours at the table was there any mention of the afternoon interview. During a lull in the conversation after dessert and before the cognac, Francesca nearly shouted at Janos. “This young Japanese man—he’s very brilliant, you know—thinks he has found evidence from Nicole’s personal computer that corroborates those awful lies David told before he died.”

Janos did not comment. His facial expression did not change. But after the meal he handed Kenji a note and then disappeared. ” ‘You know nothing but the truth and have no tenderness,’ ” the note said. ” “Thus you judge unjustly.’ Aglaya Yepanchin to Prince Myshkin. The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.”

Kenji had only been in his room for five or ten minutes when there was a knock on his door. When he opened it he saw the young Italian woman who had been sitting opposite him at dinner. She was wearing a tiny bikini that revealed most of her exceptional body. She was also holding a man’s bathing suit in her hand.

“Mr. Watanabe,” she said with a sexy smile, “please join us for a swim. This suit ought to fit you.”

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Kenji felt an immediate and enormous surge of lust that did not quickly abate. Slightly embarrassed, he waited a minute or two after dressing before he joined the woman in the hall.

Three years later, even lying in his bed in New Eden next to the woman he loved, it was impossible for Kenji not to recall with sexual longing the night he spent in Francesca’s palace. Six of them had taken the funicular down to the bay and swum in the moonlight. At the cabana next to the water, they had drunk and danced and laughed together. It had been a dream night.

Within an hour, Kenji remembered, we were all happily naked. The game plan was clear. The two soccer players were for Francesca. The two Madonnas for me.

Kenji squirmed in his bed recalling both the intensity of his pleasure and Francesca’s free laughter when she found him entwined with the two young women at dawn in one of the oversized chaise lounges beside the bay.