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

It bad not been until the Santa Maria was completely

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unloaded and all the people and supplies were inside New Eden that anyone had really told Eponine and the other convicts what was happening. And even after the Macmil-lan briefing, very few of the convicts believed they were being told the truth. “Come on, now,” Willis Meeker had said, “does he really think we’re that stupid? A bunch of ETs built this place and all those crazy robots? This whole thing is a setup. We’re just testing some new kind of prison concept.”

“But Willis,” Malcolm Peabody had replied, “what about all the others, the ones who came on the Pinta and the Nina? I’ve talked to some of them. They’re normal people—I mean, they aren’t convicts. If your theory is right, what are they doing here?”

“How the hell should I know, fag? I’m no genius. I just know that Macmillan dude is not giving us the straight shit.”

Eponine did not let her uncertainties about the Macmillan briefing deter her from going with Kimberly to Central City to submit requests for the three apartments in Hakone. They were fortunate in the drawing this time and were allocated their first choice. The two women spent a day moving into the apartment on the edge of Sherwood Forest and men reported to the employment office in the administrative complex for processing.

Because the other two spacecraft had arrived well before the Santa Maria, the procedures to integrate the convicts into the life in New Eden were quite carefully defined. It took virtually no time to assign Kimberly, who really did have an outstanding nursing record, to the central hospital.

Eponine interviewed with the school superintendent and four other teachers before accepting an assignment at Central High School. Her new job required a short commute by train, whereas she could have walked each day if she had decided to teach at Hakone Middle School. But Eponine thought it would be worth the trouble. She very much liked the principal and staff members who were teaching at the high school.

At first the other seven doctors working at the hospital were leery of the two convict physicians, especially Dr.

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Robert Turner, whose dossier cryptically mentioned his brutal murders without detailing any of the extenuating circumstances. But after a week or so, during which time his extraordinary skill, knowledge, and professionalism became apparent to everyone, the staff unanimous!? selected him to be the director of the hospital. Dr. Turner was quite astonished by his selection and pledged, in a brief acceptance speech, to dedicate himself completely to the welfare of the colony.

His first official act was to propose to the provisional government that a full physical examination be given to every citizen of New Eden so that all the personal medical files could be updated. When his proposal was accepted, Dr. Turner deployed the Tiassos throughout the colony as paramedics. The biots performed all the routine examinations and gathered data for the doctors to analyze. Simultaneously, remembering the excellent data network that had existed among all the hospitals in the Dallas metropolitan area, the indefatigable Dr. Turner began working with several of the Einsteins to design a fully computerized system for tracking the health of the colonists.

One evening during the third full week after the Santa Maria had docked with Rama, Eponine was home alone, as usual (Kimberly Henderson’s daily pattern had already become established—she was almost never in the apartment. If she wasn’t at work at the hospital, then she was out with Toshio Nakamura and his cronies), when her videophone sounded. It was Malcolm Peabody’s face that appeared on the monitor. “Eponine,” he said shyly, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it, Malcolm?”

“I received a call from a Dr. Turner at the hospital about five minutes ago. He says there were some ‘irregularities’ in my health data taken by one of those robots last week. He wants me to come in for a more detailed examination.”

Eponine waited patiently for several seconds. “I’m not following you,” she said at length. “What’s the favor?”

Malcolm took a deep breath. “It must be serious, Eponine. He wants to see me now. . . . Will you come with me?”

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“Now?” said Eponine, glancing at her watch. “It’s almost eleven o’clock at night.” In a flash she remembered Kimberly Henderson complaining that Dr. Turner was a “workaholic, as bad as those black robot nurses.” Eponine also recalled the amazing blue of his eyes.

“All right,” she said to Malcolm. “I’ll meet you at the station in ten minutes.”

Eponine had not been out much at night. Since her teaching appointment, she had spent most of her evenings working on her lesson plans. On one Saturday night she had gone out with Kimberly, Toshio Nakamura, and several other people to a Japanese restaurant that had just opened. But the food was strange, the company mostly Oriental, and several of the men, after drinking too much, made pathetic passes at her. Kimberly chided her for being “picky and standoffish,” but Eponine refused her roommate’s later invitations to socialize.

Eponine reached the station before Malcolm. While she was waiting for him to arrive, she marveled at how completely the village had been transformed by the presence of humans. Let’s see, she was thinking, the Pinta arrived here four months ago, the Nina five weeks after that. Already there are shops everywhere, both around the station and in the village itself. The accoutrements of human existence. If we stay here a year or two this colony will be indistinguishable from Earth.

Malcolm was quite nervous and talkative during the short train ride. “I know it’s my heart, Eponine,” he said. “I’ve been having sharp pains, here, ever since Walter died. At first I thought it was all in my mind.”

“Don’t worry,” Eponine responded, comforting her friend. “I bet it’s nothing really serious.”

Eponine was having difficulty keeping her eyes open. ft was after three o’clock in the morning. Malcolm was asleep on the bench beside her. What’s that doctor doing? she wondered. He said he wouldn’t be long.

Soon after their arrival, Dr. Turner had examined Malcolm with a computerized stethoscope and then, telling him he needed “more comprehensive tests,” bad taken him into a separate part of the hospital. Malcolm had

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returned to the waiting room an hour later. Eponine herself had seen the doctor only briefly, when he had admitted Malcolm to his office at the beginning of the examination.

“Are you Mr. Peabody *s friend?” a voice suddenly said. Eponine must have been dozing. When her vision was in focus, the beautiful blue eyes were staring at her from only a meter away. The doctor looked tired and upset.

“Yes,” Eponine said softly, trying not to disturb the man sleeping on her shoulder.

“He’s going to die very soon,” Dr. Turner said. “Possibly in the next two weeks.”

Eponine felt her blood surge through her body. Am I hearing correctly? she thought. Did He say Malcolm was going to die in the next two weeks? Eponine was stunned.

“He will need a lot of support,” the doctor was saying. He paused for a moment, staring at Eponine. Was he trying to remember where he had seen her before? “Will you be able to help him?” Dr. Turner asked.

“I … I hope so,” Eponine answered.

Malcolm began to stir. “We must wake him up now,” the doctor said.

There was no emotion detectable in Dr. Turner’s eyes. He had delivered his diagnosis—no, his assertion—without a hint of feeling. Kirn is right, Eponine thought. He’s as much an automaton as those Tiasso robots.

At the doctor’s suggestion, Eponine accompanied Malcolm down a corridor and into a room filled with medical instruments. “Someone intelligent,” Dr. Turner said to Malcolm, “chose the equipment that was brought here from Earth. Although we are limited in staff, our diagnostic apparatus is first rate.”

The three of them walked over to a transparent cube about one meter on a side. “This amazing device,” Dr. Turner said, “is called an organ projector. It can reconstruct, with detailed fidelity, almost all the major organs of the human body. What we are seeing now, when we look inside, is a computer graphic representation of your heart, Mr. Peabody, just as it appeared ninety mintues ago when I injected the tracer material into your blood vessels.”

Dr. Turner pointed at an adjacent room, where Malcolm had apparently undergone the tests. “While you were sit-

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ting on that table,” he continued, “you were scanned a million times a second by the machine with the big lens. From the location of the tracer material and those billions of instantaneous scans, an extremely accurate, three-dimensional image of your heart was constructed. That is what you are seeing inside the cube.”