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

Patrick blushed. “No, ma’am,” he said.

Samantha put a ringer under his chin. “He’s cute,” she said to Max. “Bring him over. If he’s a virgin, I might do him for free.” She gave Patrick a small kiss on the lips and then turned around and departed.

Max couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say after Samantha left. He thought about apologizing but decided it wasn’t necessary. Max put his arm around Patrick and the two of them walked toward the back of the casino, where the higher stakes tables were cordoned off.

“All right, now, yo,” cried a young woman with her back toward them. “Five and six makes a yo.”

Patrick glanced over at Max with surprise. “That’s Katie,” he said, hastening his step in her direction.

Katie was completely absorbed in the game. She took a quick drag from a cigarette, belted down the drink she was handed by the swarthy man on her right, and then held the dice high above her head. “All the numbers,” she said, handing chips to the croupier. “Here’s twenty-six—plus five marks on the hard eight. . . . Now, be there, forty-four,” she said, flinging the dice against the opposite end of the table with a flick of her wrist. . “Forty-four,” the crowd around the table shouted in unison.

Katie jumped up and down in her place, gave her date a hug, quaffed another drink, and took a long, languorous pull from her cigarette.

“Katie,” Patrick said just as she was about to throw the dice again.

She stopped in midthrow and turned around with a quizzical look on her face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said. “It’s my baby brother.”

Katie stumbled over to greet him as the croupiers and other players at the table yelled for her to continue the game.

“You’re drunk, Katie,” Patrick said quietly while he was holding her in his arms.

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“No, Patrick,” Katie replied, jerking herself backward toward the table. “I am flying. I am on my own personal shuttle to the stars.”

She turned back to the craps table and raised her right arm high. “All right, now, yo. Are you in there, yo?” she shouted.

2

Ai

kgain the dreams came in the early morning hours. Nicole woke up and tried to remember what she had been dreaming, but all she could recall was an isolated image here and there. Omeh’s disembodied face had been in one of her dreams. Her Senoufo great-grandfather had been warning her about something, but Nicole had not been able to understand what he was saying. In another dream Nicole had watched Richard walk into a quiet ocean just before a devastating wave came rushing toward the shore.

Nicole nibbed her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was just before four o’clock. Almost the same time every morning this week, she thought. What do they mean? She stood up and crossed into the bathroom.

Moments later she was in the kitchen dressed in her exercise domes. She drank a glass of water. An Abraham Lincoln biot, who had been resting immobile against the wall at the end of the kitchen counter, activated and approached Nicole.

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“Would you like some coffee, Mrs. Wakefield?” he asked, taking the empty water glass from her.

“No, Line,” she answered. “I’m going out now. If anyone wakes up tell them I’ll be back before six.”

Nicole walked down the hallway toward the door. Before leaving the house she passed the study on the right-hand side of the corridor. Papers were strewn all over Richard’s desk, both beside arid on top of the new computer he had designed and constructed himself. Richard was extremely proud of his new computer, which Nicole had urged him to build, even though it was unlikely that it would ever completely replace his favorite electronic toy, the standard ISA pocket computer. Richard had religiously carried the little portable since before the launch of the Newton.

Nicoie recognized Richard’s writing on some of the paper sheets but could not read any of his symbolic computer language. He has spent many long hours in here recently, Nicole thought, feeling a pang of guilt. Even though he believes that what he’s doing is wrong.

At first Richard had refused to participate in the effort to decode the algorithm that governed the weather in New Eden. Nicole recalled their discussions clearly. “We have agreed to participate in this democracy,” she had argued. “If you and I choose to ignore its laws, then we set a dangerous example for the others—”

“This is not a law,” Richard had interrupted her. “It’s only a resolution. And you know as well as I do that it’s an incredibly dumb idea. You and Kenji both fought against it. And besides, aren’t you the one who told me once that we have a duty to protest majority stupidity?”

“Please, Richard,” Nicole had replied. “You may of course explain to everyone why you think the resolution is wrong. But this algorithm effort has now become a campaign issue. All the colonists know that we are close to the Watanabes. If you ignore the resolution it will look as if Kenji is purposely trying to undermine …”

While Nicole was remembering her earlier conversation with her husband, her eyes roamed idly around the study. She was somewhat surprised, when her mind again fo-

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cused on the present, to find that she was staring at three little figures on an open shelf above Richard’s desk. Prince Hal, Falstaff, TB, she thought. How long has it been since Richard entertained us with you?

Nicole thought back to the long and monotonous weeks after her family had awakened from their years of sleep. While (hey were waiting for the arrival of the other colonists, Richard’s robots had been their primary source of amusement. In her memory Nicole could still hear the children’s mirthful laughter and see her husband smiling with delight. Those were simpler, easier times, she said to herself. She closed the door to the study and continued down the hall. Before life became too complicated for play. Now your little friends just sit silently on the shelf.

Out in the lane, underneath the streetlight, Nicole stopped for a moment beside the bicycle rack. She hesitated, looking at her bicycle, and then turned around and headed for the backyard. A minute later she had crossed the grassy area behind the house and was on the path that wound up Mount Olympus.

Nicole walked briskly. She was very deep in thought. For a long time she paid no attention to her surroundings. Her mind jumped around from subject to subject, from the problems besetting New Eden, to her strange dream patterns, to her anxieties about her children, especially Katie.

She arrived at a fork in the path. A small, tasteful sign explained that the path to the left led to the cable car station, eighty meters away, where one could ride to the top of Mount Olympus. Nicole’s presence at the fork was electronically detected and prompted a Garcia biot to approach from the direction of the cable car.

“Don’t bother,” Nicole shouted. “I’m going to walk.”

The view became more and more spectacular as the switchbacks wound up the side of the mountain that faced die rest of the colony. Nicole paused at one of the viewpoints, five hundred meters in altitude and just under three kilometers walking distance from the Wakefield home, and looked out across New Eden. It had been a clear night, with little or no moisture in the air.

No rain today, Nicole thought, noting that the mornings were always damp with water vapor on the days that show-

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ers fell. Just below her was the village of Beauvois—the lights from the new furniture factory allowed her to identify most of the familiar buildings of her region, even from this distance. To the north the village of San Miguel was hidden behind the bulky mountain. But out across the colony, far on the other side of a darkened Central City, Nicole could discern the splashes of light that marked Na-kamura’s Vegas.

She was instantly plunged into a bad mood. That damn place stays open all night long, she grumbled silently, using critical power resources and offering unsavory amusements.

It was impossible for Nicole not to think of Katie when she looked at Vegas. Such natural talent, Nicole remarked to herself, a dull heartache accompanying the image of her daughter. She could not help wondering if Katie was still awake in the glittering fantasy life on the other side of the colony. And such a colossal waste, Nicole thought, shaking her head.

Richard and she had discussed Katie often. There were only two subjects about which they fought—Katie and New Eden politics. And it wasn’t entirely accurate to say they fought about politics. Richard basically felt that all politicians, except Nicole and maybe Kenji Watanabe, were essentially without principles. His method of discussion was to make sweeping pronouncements about the insipid goings-on in the Senate, or even in Nicole’s own courtroom, and then to refuse to consider the subject anymore.