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

“As you know, my wife Nai and I have twin sons. We feel that we are richly blessed. On this Settlement Day I ask each of you to think about your children and envision another Settlement Day, a hundred or maybe even a thou-

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sand years into the future. Imagine that you are face-to-face with those whom you have begotten, your children’s children’s children. As you talk to them, and hold them in your arms, will you be able to say that you did everything reasonably possible to leave them a world in which th^y had a good chance of finding happiness?”

Patrick was excited again. Just as the picnic was ending, Max had invited him to spend the night and the next day at the Puckett farm. “The new term at the university doesn’t start until Wednesday,” the young man told his mother. “May I go? Please?”

Nicole was still disturbed by the crowd’s reaction to Kenji’s speech and did not understand at first what her son was asking. After asking him to repeat his request she glanced at Max. “You’ll take good care of my son?”

Max Puckett grinned and nodded his head. Max and Patrick waited until the biots had finished cleaning up all the trash from the picnic and then headed for the train station together. Half an hour later they were in the Central City station waiting for the infrequent train that served the farming region directly. Across the platform from them, a group of Patrick’s college classmates were entering the train to Hakone. “You should come,” one of the young men yelled to Patrick. “Free drinks for everybody all night long.”

Max watched Patrick’s eyes follow his friends onto the train. “Have you ever been to Vegas?” Max asked.

“No, sir,” he answered. “My mother and father—”

“Would you like to go?”

Patrick’s hesitation was all Max needed. A few seconds later they boarded the train to Hakone with all the merrymakers. “I’m not terribly fond of the place myself,” Max commented as they were riding. “It seems too false, too superficial. . . . But it’s certainly worth seeing and it’s not a bad place to go for amusement when you’re all alone.”

Slightly more than two and a half years earlier, very soon after the daily accelerations ended, Toshio Nakamura had correctly calculated that the colonists were likely to stay in New Eden and Rama for a long time. Before even the first meeting of the constitutional committee and its

selection of Nicole des Jardins Wakefield as provisional governor, Nakamura had decided mat he was going to be the richest and most powerful person in the colony. Build-1 ing on the convict support base he had established during the cruise from Earth to Mars on the Santa Maria, he expanded his personal contacts and was able, as soon as banks and currency had been created in the colony, to begin building his empire.

Nakamura was convinced that the best products to sell in New Eden were those that provided pleasure and excitement. His first venture, a small gambling casino, was an immediate success. Next he bought some of the farmland on the east side of Hakone and built the colony’s initial hotel, along with a second, larger casino just off the lobby. He added a small, intimate club, with female hostesses trained in the Japanese manner, and then a more raucous , girlie club. Everything he did was successful, Parlaying his investments shrewdly, Nakamura was in a position, soon after Kenji Watanabe was elected governor, to offer to buy one fifth of Sherwood Forest from the government. His offer allowed the Senate to forestall higher taxes that would otherwise have been required to pay for the initial RV-41 research.

Part of the burgeoning forest was cleared and replaced with Nakamura’s personal palace as well as a new, glittering hotel/casino, an entertainment arena, a restaurant complex, and several clubs. Consolidating his monopoly, Nakamura lobbied intensely (and successfully) for legislation that would limit gambling to the region around Hakone. His thugs then convinced all prospective entrepreneurs that nobody really wanted to enter the gambling business in competition with the “king Jap.”

When his power was beyond attack, Nakamura permitted his associates to branch out into prostitution and drugs, neither of which were illegal in the New Eden society. Toward the end of the Watanabe term, when government policies began to conflict increasingly with his personal agenda, Nakamura decided he should control the government also. But he didn’t want to be saddled with the boring job himself. He needed a dupe. So he recruited lan Macmillan, the hapless ex-commander of the Pinta who

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had been an also-ran in the first gubernatorial election won by Kenji Watanabe. Nakamura offered Macmillan the governorship in exchange for the Scotsman’s fealty.

There was nothing even remotely like Vegas anywhere else in the colony. The basic New Eden architecture designed by the Wakefields and the Eagle had all been spare, functional in the extreme, with simple geometries and plain facades. Vegas was overdone, garish, inconsistent— a mishmash of architectural styles. But it was interesting, and young Patrick OToole was visibly impressed when he and Max Puckett entered the outside gates of the compound.

“Wow,” he said, staring at the huge blinking sign above the portal.

“I don’t want to diminish your appreciation any, my boy,” Max said, lighting a cigarette, “but the power required to operate that one sign would drive almost a square kilometer of GEDs.”

“You sound like my mother and father,” Patrick replied.

Before entering the casino or any of the clubs, each person had to sign the master register. Nakamura missed no bets. He had a complete file on what every Vegas visitor had done every time he had come inside. That way Nakamura knew which portions of his business should be expanded and, more importantly, the special and favored vice (or vices) of each of his customers.

Max and Patrick went into the casino. While they were standing by one of the two craps tables, Max tried to explain to the young man how the game worked. Patrick, however, could not keep his eyes off the cocktail waitresses in their scanty outfits.

“Ever been laid, boy?” Max asked.

“Excuse me, sir?” Patrick replied.

“Have you ever had sex—you know, intercourse with a woman?”

“No, sir,” the young man answered.

A voice inside Max’s head told him that it was not his responsibility to usher the young man into the world of pleasure. The same voice also reminded Max that this was New Eden, and not Arkansas, or otherwise he would have

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taken Patrick over to the Xanadu and treated him to his first sex.

There were more than a hundred people in the casino, a huge crowd considering the size of the colony, and everyone seemed to be having fun. The waitresses were indeed dispensing free drinks just as fast as they could— Max grabbed a margarita and handed one to Patrick.

“I don’t see any biots,” Patrick commented.

“There aren’t any in the casino,” Max replied. “Not even working the tables, where they would be more efficient than humans. The king Jap believes their presence inhibits the gambling instinct. But he uses them exclusively in all the restaurants.”

“Max Puckett. Well, I do declare.”

Max and Patrick turned around. A beautiful young woman in a soft, pink dress was approaching them. “I haven’t seen you in months,” she said.

“Hello, Samantha,” Max said after being uncharacteristically tongue-tied for several seconds.

“And who is this handsome young man?” Samantha said, batting her long eyelashes at Patrick.

“This is Patrick OToole,” Max answered. “He is—”

“Oh, my goodness,” Samantha exclaimed. “I’ve never met one of the o-rig-inal colonists before.” She studied Patrick for a few seconds before continuing. “Tell me, Mr. O’Toole,” she said, “is it really true that you went to sleep for year.??”

Patrick nodded shyly.

“My friend Goldie says that the whole story is bullshit, that you and your family are really all agents for the HA. She doesn’t even believe we have ever left Mars orbit. Goldie says all that dreary time in the tanks was also part of the hoax.”

“I assure you, ma’am,” Patrick politely responded, “that my family did indeed sleep for years. I was only six years old when my parents put me in a berth. I looked almost like I do now the next time I woke up.”

“Well, 1 find ityiw-cinatin’, even if I don’t know what to make of it all. . . . So, Max, what are you up to? And by the way, are you going to officially introduce me?”

“I’m sorry. Patrick, this is Miss Samantha Porter

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from the great state of Mississippi. She works at the Xanadu—”

“I’m a prostitute, Mr. O’Toole. One of the very best. . . . Have you ever met a prostitute before?”