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

“Tell me,” he said to Patrick when they had become more comfortable with each other, “does this place called the Node really exist? Or is it part of some cockamamy story dreamed up by the ISA?”

“No,” said Patrick, forgetting that he was not supposed to discuss such things. “The Node is definitely there. My father says it’s an extraterrestrial processing station.”

Brian laughed easily. “So somewhere out near Sirius is a gigantic triangle built by an unknown superspecies? And its purpose is to help them study other creatures who travel in space? Wow. That’s the most fantastic tale I have ever

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heard. In fact, almost everything your mother told us at that open meeting was unbelievable. I will, however, admit that both the existence of this space station and the technological level of the robots do make her story more plausible.”

“Everything my mother said was true,” Patrick said. “And some of the most incredible stories were purposely left out. For example, my mother had a conversation with a caped eel who talked in bubbles. Also—” Patrick stopped himself, remembering Nicole’s admonitions.

Brian was fascinated. “A caped eel?” he said. “How did she know what it was saying?”

Patrick looked at his watch. “Excuse me, Brian,” he said abruptly, “but I’m here with my sister and I’m supposed to meet her in a few minutes.”

“Is she the one with the little red dress cut really low?”

Patrick nodded. Brian put his arm around his new friend’s shoulder. “Let me give you some advice,” he said. “Somebody needs to talk to your sister. The way she acts around all the guys makes people think she’s an easy lay.”

“That’s just Katie,” Patrick said defensively. “She’s never been around anyone except the family.”

“Sorry,” Brian said with a shrug. “It’s none of my business anyway. . . . Say, why don’t you give me a call sometime? I’ve enjoyed our conversation very much.”

Patrick said good-bye to Brian and started walking toward the door. Where was Katie? Why had she not come back inside the gymnasium?

He heard her loud laugh within seconds after he was outside. Katie was standing on the playground with three men, one of whom was Olaf Larsen. They were all smoking and laughing and drinking from a bottle that was being passed around.

“So what position do you like best?” a dark young man with a mustache asked.

“Oh, I prefer to be on top,” Katie said with a laugh. She took a gulp from the bottle. “That way I’m in control.”

“Sounds good to me,” the man, whose name was Andrew, replied. He chuckled and placed his hand sugges-

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lively on her bottom. Katie pushed it away, still laughing. Seconds later she saw Patrick approaching.

“Come over here, baby brother,” Katie shouted. “This shit we’re drinking is dynamite.”

The three men, who had been drawn in close around Katie, moved slightly away from her as Patrick walked toward them. Although he was still quite skinny and undeveloped, his height made him an imposing figure in the dim light.

“I’m going home now, Katie,” Patrick said, refusing the bottle when he was beside her, “and I think you should go with me.”

Andrew laughed. “Some party girl you have here, Larsen,” he said sarcastically, “with a teenage brother as a chaperon.”

Katie’s eyes flared with anger. She took another swig from the bottle and handed it to Olaf. Then she grabbed Andrew and kissed him wildly on the lips, pressing her body tightly against his.

Patrick was embarrassed. Olaf and the third man cheered and whistled as Andrew returned Katie’s kiss. After almost a minute Katie pulled away. “Let’s go now, Patrick,” she said with a smile, her eyes still fixed on the man she had kissed. “I think that’s enough for one night.”

12

Eponine stared out the second story window at the

gently rolling slope. The GEDs covered the hillside, then-fine gridwork pattern almost obscuring the brown soil underneath.

“So, Ep, what do you think?” Kimberly asked. “It’s certainly nice enough. And once the forest is planted, we’ll have trees and grass and maybe even a squirrel or two outside our window. That’s definitely a plus.”

“I don’t know,” a distracted Eponine replied after a few seconds. “It’s a little smaller than die one I liked yesterday in Positano. And I have a few misgivings about living here, in Hakone. I haven’t known mat many Orientals. …”

“Look, roomie, we can’t wait forever. I told you yesterday that we should have made backup choices. There were seven pairs that wanted the apartment in Positano—not surprising since there were only four units left in the whole village—and we just weren’t lucky. All that’s left now, except for those tiny flats over the shops on the main street in Beauvois—and I don’t want to live there because there’s

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absolutely no privacy—is either here or in San Miguel. And all the blacks and browns are living in San Miguel.”

Eponine sat down in one of the chairs. They were in the living room of the small two-bedroom apartment. It was furnished modestly, but adequately, with two chairs and a large sofa that were the same brown color as the rectangular coffee table. Altogether the apartment, which had a single large bathroom and a small kitchen in addition to the living room and two bedrooms, was slightly more than one hundred square meters.

Kimberly Henderson paced around the room impatiently. “Kirn,” Eponine said slowly, “I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time concentrating on selecting an apartment when so much is happening to us. What is this place? Where are we? Why are we here?” Her mind Mashed back quickly to the incredible briefing three days earlier, when Commander Macmillan had informed them that they were inside a spaceship built and equipped by extraterrestrials “for the purpose of observing Earthlings.”

Kimberly Henderson lit a cigarette and expelled the smoke forcefully into the air. She shrugged. “Shit, Eponine,” she said, “I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. But I do know that if we don’t pick an apartment we’ll be left with whatever nobody else has wanted.”

Eponine looked at her friend for several seconds and then sighed. “I don’t think this process has been very fair,” she complained. “The passengers from the Pinta and the Nina were all able to pick their homes before we even arrived. We are being forced to choose among the rejects.”

“What did you expect?” Kimberly replied quickly. “Our ship was carrying convicts—of course we got the dregs. But at least we’re finally free.”

“So I guess you want to live in this apartment?” Eponine said at length.

“Yes,” replied Kimberly. “And I also want to put in a bid on the other two apartments we saw this morning, near the Hakone market, in case we are aced out of this one. If we don’t have a definite home after the drawing tonight, I’m afraid we’ll really be in bad shape.”

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This was a mistake. Hponine was thinking as she watched Kimberly walking around the room. / never should have agreed to be her roommate. But what choices did I have? The living accommodations that are left for single people are abysmal.

Eponine was not accustomed to rapid changes in her life. Unlike Kimberly Henderson, who had had an enormous variety of experiences before she was convicted of murder at the age of nineteen, Eponine had lived a relatively sheltered childhood and adolescence. She had grown up in an orphanage outside Limoges, France, and until Professor Moreau took her to Paris to see the great museums when Eponine was seventeen, she had never even been outside her native province. It had been a very difficult decision for her to sign up for the Lowell Colony in the first place. But Eponine was facing a lifetime of detention in Bourges, and she was offered a chance for freedom on Mars. After a long deliberation she had courageously decided to submit her application to the ISA.

Eponine had been selected as a colonist because she had an outstanding academic record, especially in all the arts, was fluent in English, and had been a perfect prisoner. Her dossier in the ISA files had identified her most likely placement in the Lowell Colony as “drama and/or art teacher in the secondary schools.” Despite the difficulties associated with the cruise phase of the mission after leaving the Earth, Eponine had felt a palpable rush of adrenaline and excitement when Mars had first appeared in the observation window of the Santa Maria. It would be a new life on a new world.

Two days before the scheduled encounter, however, the ISA guards had announced that the spacecraft was not going to deploy its landing shuttles as planned. Instead, they had told the convict passengers, the Santa Maria was going to take a “temporary detour to rendezvous with a space station orbiting Mars.” Eponine had been bom confused and concerned by the announcement. Unlike most of her associates, she bad read carefully all the ISA material for the colonists and she had never seen any mention of an orbiting space station around Mars.