As she thought about Benita Garcia’s selflessness, an image of her mother came into Ellie’s mind. A montage of pictures of Nicole rapidly followed. First, Ellie saw her mother in her judge’s robes speaking articulately before the Senate. Next Nicole was rubbing Ellie’s father’s neck in the study late at night, patiently teaching Benjy to read day after day, riding off beside Patrick on a bicycle for a game of tennis in the park, or telling Line what to prepare for dinner. In the last image Nicole was sitting on Ellie’s bed late at night, answering questions about life and love. My mother is my hero, Ellie suddenly realized. She is as unselfish as Benita Garcia.
“. . . Imagine, if you will, a young Mexican girl of sixteen, home from boarding school for vacation, climbing slowly up the steep steps of the Pyramid of the Magician in Uxmal. Below her, in the already warm spring morning, iguanas play among the rocks and the ruins.”
Eponine nodded at Ellie. It was time for her poem. She stood at her seat and recited.
“You have seen it all, old lizard Seen our joys, our tears, Our hearts full of dreams and terrible desires. And does it never change?
352 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
Did my Indian mother’s mother Sit here on these steps One thousand years ago And tell to you the passions she would not, could not share? At night I look unto the stars And dare to see myself among them. My heart soars above these pyramids, flying free into the every thing-can-be. Yes, Benita, the iguanas tell me, Yes to you and your mother’s mother, whose yearning dreams years ago will now become fulfilled in you.”
When Ellie had finished her cheeks were glistening from the silent tears that had fallen. Her teacher and the other students probably thought that she had been deeply moved by the poem and by the lecture on Benita Garcia. They couldn’t have understood that Ellie had just experienced an emotional epiphany, that she had just discovered the true depth of her love and respect for her mother.
It was the last week of rehearsals for the school play. Eponine had picked an old work, Waiting for Godot, by the twentieth century Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett, because its theme was so germane to life in New Eden. The two main characters, both dressed in rags throughout, were played by Ellie Wakefield and Pedro Martinez, a handsome nineteen-year-old who had been one of the “troubled” teenagers added to the colony contingent during the last months before launch.
Eponine could not have produced the play without the Kawabatas. The biots designed and created the sets and the costumes, controlled the lights, and even conducted rehearsals when she could not be present. The school had four Kawabatas altogether, and three of them were under Eponine’s jurisdiction during the six weeks immediately preceding me play.
“Good work,” Eponine called out, approaching her students on the stage. “Let’s call it quits for today.”
“Miss Wakefield,” Kawabata #052 said, “there were
THE GARDEN OF RAMA
353
three places where your words were not exactly correct. In your speech beginning—”
“Tell her tomorrow,” Eponine interrupted, gently waving the biot away. “It will mean more to her then.” She turned to face the small cast. “Are there any questions?”
“I know we’ve been through this before, Miss Eponine,” Pedro Martinez said hesitantly, “but it would help me if we could discuss it again. . . . You told us that Godot was not a person, that he or it was actually a concept, or a fantasy . . . that we were all waiting for something. . . . I’m sorry, but it’s difficult for me to understand exactly what …”
“The whole play is basically a commentary on the absurdity of life,” Eponine replied after a few seconds. “We laugh because we see ourselves in those bums on the stage, we hear our words when they speak. What Beckett has captured is the essential longing of the human spirit. Whoever he is, Godot will make everything all right. He will somehow transform our lives and make us happy.”
“Couldn’t Godot be God?” Pedro asked.
“Absolutely,” Eponine said. “Or even the superad-vanced extraterrestrials who built the Rama spacecraft and oversaw the Node where Ellie and her family stayed. Any power or force or being that is a panacea for the woes of the world could be Godot. That’s why the play is universal.”
“Pedro,” a demanding voice shouted from the back of the small auditorium, “are you almost finished?”
“Just a minute, Mariko,” the young man answered. “We’re having an interesting discussion. Why don’t you come join us?”
The Japanese girl remained in the doorway. “No,” she said rudely. “I don’t want to—let’s go now.”
Eponine dismissed the cast and Pedro jumped down from the stage. Ellie came over beside her teacher as the young man hurried toward the door.
“Why does he let her act that way?” Ellie mused out loud.
“Don’t ask me,” Eponine replied with a shrug. *Tm certainly no expert when it comes to relationships.”
That Kobayashi girl is trouble, Eponine thought, re-
354 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
membering how Mariko had treated both Ellie and her as if they were insects one night after rehearsal. Men are so stupid sometimes.
“Eponine,” Ellie asked, “do you have any objections if my parents come to the dress rehearsal? Beckett is one of my father’s favorite playwrights and—”
“That would be fine,” Eponine replied. “Your parents are welcome anytime. Besides, I want to thank them—”
“Miss Eponine,” a young male voice shouted from across the room. It was Derek Brewer, one of Eponine’s students who had a schoolboy crush on her. Derek ran a few steps toward her and then shouted again. “Have you heard the news?”
Eponine shook her head. Derek was obviously very excited. “Judge Mishkin has ruled the armbands unconstitutional!”
It took a few seconds for Eponine to absorb the information. By then Derek was at her side, delighted to be the one giving her the news. “Are … are you certain?” Eponine asked.
“We just heard it on the radio hi the office.”
Eponine reached for her arm and the hated red band. She glanced at Derek and Ellie and with one swift movement pulled the band off her arm and tossed it into the air. As she watched it arc toward the floor her eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you, Derek,” she said.
Within moments Eponine felt four young arms embracing her. “Congratulations,” Ellie said softly.
4
Tl
•he hamburger stand in Central City was completely run by biots. Two Lincolns managed the busy restaurant and four Garcias filled the customer orders. The food preparation was done by a pair of Einsteins and the entire eating area was kept spotless by a single Tiasso. The stand generated an enormous profit for its owner, because there were no costs except the initial building conversion and the raw materials.
Ellie always ate there on Thursday nights, when she worked at the hospital as a volunteer. On the day of what became known as the Mishkin Proclamation, Ellie was joined at the hamburger stand by her now bandless teacher Eponine.
“I wonder why I’ve never seen you at the hospital,” Eponine said as she took a bite of a French fried potato. “What do you do there anyway?”
“Mostly I talk to the sick children,” Ellie replied. “There are four or five with serious illnesses, one little boy even with RV-41, and they appreciate visits from humans. The Tiasso biots are very efficient at operating
356 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AND GENTRY LEE
the hospital and performing all the procedures, but they are not that sympathetic.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Eponine said after chewing and swallowing a bite of her hamburger, “why do you do it? You are youngf beautiful, healthy. There must be a thousand things you’d rather do.”
“Not really,” EHie answered. “My mother has a very strong sense of community, as you know, and I feel worthwhile after I talk to the kids.” She hesitated a moment. “Besides, I’m socially awkward. . . . I’m physically nineteen or twenty, which is old for high school, but I have almost no social experience.” EHie blushed. “One of my girlfriends in school told me that the boys are convinced I’m an extraterrestrial.”
Eponine smiled at her protegee. Even being an alien would be better than having RV-41, she thought. But the young men are really missing something if they’re passing you by.
The two women finished their dinner and left the small restaurant. They walked out into the Central City square. In the middle of the square was a monument, appropriately cylindrical in shape, that had been dedicated in the ceremonies associated with the first Settlement Day celebration. The monument was two and a half meters tall altogether. Suspended in the cylinder at eye level was a transparent sphere with a diameter of fifty centimeters. The small light at the center of the sphere represented the Sun, the plane parallel to the ground was the ecliptic plane that contained the Earth and the other planets of the solar system, and the lights scattered throughout the sphere showed the correct relative positions of all the stars within a twenty-light-year radius of the Sun.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109