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

“She’s worried about you, Katie.”

Katie laughed nervously and took a deep drag to finish her cigarette. “Sure she is, Patrick. All she’s really worried about is whether I’ll embarrass the family.”

Patrick stood up to leave. “You don’t have to go now,” Katie said. “Why don’t you stay for a while? I’ll put on some clothes and we’ll go down to the casino. Remember how much fun we used to have together?”-

Katie started toward the bedroom. “Are you using drugs?” Patrick asked suddenly.

She stopped and stared at her brother. “Who wants to know?” Katie said defiantly. “You or Madame Cosmonaut Doctor Governor Judge Nicole des Jardins Wakefield?”

“I want to know,” Patrick said quietly.

Katie walked across the room and put her hands on Patrick’s cheeks. “I’m your sister and I love you,” she said. “Nothing else is important.”

The dark clouds had all gathered over the small rolling hills of Sherwood Forest. Wind was sweeping through the trees, blowing Ellie’s hair behind her. There was a bolt of lightning and an almost simultaneous crack of thunder.

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Benjy recoiled and Ellie pulled him close beside her. “According to the map,” she said, “we’re only about one kilometer from the edge of the forest.”

“How far is that?” Benjy asked.

“If we walk quickly,” Ellie shouted above the wind, “then we can make it out in about ten minutes.” She grabbed Benjy’s hand and pulled him alongside her on the path.

An instant later lightning split one of the trees beside them and a thick branch fell across the path. The branch struck Benjy on the back and knocked him down. He fell mostly on the path, but his head landed in the green plants and ivy at the base of the trees in the forest. The noise from the thunder nearly deafened him.

He lay on the forest floor for several seconds, trying to understand what had happened to him. At length he struggled to his feet. “Ellie,” he said, looking at the prostrate form of his sister on the other side of the path. Her eyes were closed.

“Ellie!” Benjy now screamed, half walking, half crawling over to her side. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her lightly. Her eyes did not open. The swelling on her forehead, above and to the side of her right eye, was already the size of a large orange.

“What am I go-ing to do?” Benjy said out loud. He smelted smoke and glanced up into the trees at almost the same moment. He saw fire leaping from branch to branch, driven by the wind. There was another bolt of lightning, more thunder. In front of him, down the trail in the direction that Ellie and he had been going, Benjy could see that a larger fire was sweeping through the trees on both sides of the path. He started to panic.

He held his sister in his arms and slapped her lightly on the face. “Ellie,” he said, “please, please wake up.” She did not stir. The fire around him was spreading rapidly. Soon this entire portion of the forest would be an inferno.

Benjy was terrified. He tried to lift Ellie up, but stumbled and fell in the process. “No, no, no,” he shouted, standing again and bending to lift Ellie to his shoulders.

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The smoke was getting heavy. Benjy moved slowly down the path, away from the fire, with Ellie on his back.

He was exhausted when he reached the meadow. He gently placed Ellie on one of the concrete tables and sat on a bench himself. The fire was raging out of control on the north side of the meadow. What do I do now? he thought. His eye fell on the map sticking out of Ellie’s shirt pocket. That can help me. He grabbed the map and looked at it. At first he could not understand any of it and he began again to panic.

Relax, Benjy, he heard his mother say in a soothing tone. It’s a little hard, but you can do it. Maps are very important. They tell us where to go. . . . Now, the first thing always is to orient the map so that you can read the writing. See. That’s right. Most of the time the up direction is called north. Good. This is a map of Sherwood Forest. . . .

Benjy turned the map over in his hands until the letters were all right side up. The lightning and thunder continued. A sudden change in the wind pushed smoke into his lungs and he coughed. He tried to read the words on the map.

Again he heard his mother’s voice. If you don’t recognize the word at first, then take each letter and sound it out very slowly. Next let all the sounds fall together until it makes a word you understand.

Benjy glanced at Ellie on the table. “Wake up, oh, please wake up, Ellie,” he said. “I need your help.” Still she did not move.

He bent down over the map and struggled to concentrate. With painstaking deliberation Benjy sounded out all the letters, over and over, until he had convinced himself that the green patch on the map was the meadow where he was sitting. The white lines are the paths, he said to himself. There are three white lines running into the green patch.

Benjy looked up from the map, counted the three paths leading out of the meadow, and felt a surge of self-confidence. Moments later, however, a gust of wind carried cinders across the meadow and ignited the trees on the

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southern side. Benjy moved quickly. / must go, he said, again lifting Ellie onto his back.

He now knew that the main fire was in the northern portion of the map, toward the village of Hakone. Benjy stared again at the paper in his hands. So I must stay on white lines in the bottom part, he thought.

The young man trundled down the path as another tree exploded in fire far above his head. His sister was over his shoulder, and the lifesaving map was in his right hand. Benjy stopped to look at the map every ten steps, each time verifying that he was still headed in the correct direction. When he finally came to a major trail junction, Benjy placed Ellie gingerly on the ground and traced the white lines on the map with his finger. After a minute he smiled broadly, picked up his sister again, and headed down the trail leading to the village of Positano. Lightning flashed one more time, the thunder boomed, and a drenching shower began to fall on Sherwood Forest.

7

Five hours later Benjy was sleeping soundly in his

room. Meanwhile, in the center of the colony, the New Eden hospital was a madhouse. Humans and biots were dashing about, gurneys with bodies were standing in the halls, patients were shouting in agony. Nicole was talking on the phone with Kenji Watanabe. “We need every Ti-asso in the colony sent here as quickly as possible. Try to replace those that are doing geriatric or infant care with a Garcia, or even an Einstein. Have humans staff the village clinics. The situation is very serious.”

She could barely hear what Kenji was saying above the noise in the hospital. “Bad, really bad,” she said in response to his question. “Twenty-seven admitted so far, four dead that we know of. The whole Nara area—that enclave of Japanese-style wood houses that is out behind Vegas, surrounded by the forest—is a disaster. The fire happened too fast. The people panicked.”

“Dr. Wakefield, Dr. Wakefield. Please come to room two-oh-four immediately.” Nicole hung up the phone and raced down the hall. She bounded up the stairs to the

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second floor. The man dying in room 204 was an old friend, a Korean, Kim Lee, who had been Nicole’s liaison with the Hakone community during the time that she was provisional governor.

Mr. Kim had been one of the first to build a new home in Nara. During the fire he had rushed into his bumirg house to save his seven-year-old son. The son would live, for Mr. Kim had protected him carefully while he had walked through the flames. But Kim Lee himself had suffered third-degree bums over most of his body.

Nicole passed Dr. Turner in the corridor. “I don’t think we can do anything for that friend of yours in room two-oh-four,” he said. “I’d like your opinion. Call me down in the emergency room. They just brought in another critical who was trapped in her house.”

Nicole took a deep breath and slowly opened the door to the room. Mr. Kirn’s wife, a pretty Korean woman in her mid-thirties, was sitting quietly in the comer. Nicole walked over and embraced her. While Nicole was comforting Mrs. Kim, the Tiasso who was monitoring all of Mr. Kirn’s data brought over a set of charts. The man’s condition was indeed hopeless. When Nicole glanced up from her reading, she was surprised to see her daughter Ellie, a large bandage on the right side of her head, standing beside Mr. Kirn’s bed. Ellie was holding the dying man’s hand.