Arthur Clarke - Rama Revealed

“So these were arranged marriages?” Nicole asked.

“Not exactly,” Simone said. She laughed. “Each natural child was introduced to several possible mates, all of whom had passed the genetic screening.”

“And you’ve had no problems with your grandchildren?”

“Nothing that is ‘statistically significant,’ to use Michael’s term,” Simone replied.

When they reached the dining room, the table was empty. Michael told them that he had moved the coffeepot and cups into the study. Nicole activated her wheelchair controls and followed them into a large, masculine study with dark wood bookshelves, and a fire burning in the fireplace.

“Is the fire real?” Nicole asked.

“Indeed it is,” Michael said. He leaned forward in his soft chair. “You have been asking about the children,” he said, “and we certainly want you to meet them, but we didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

“I understand,” Nicole said, taking a sip from a fresh cup of coffee, “and I agree with you. You certainly could not have had such a leisurely, informative dinner if there had been six more people.”

“And don’t forget the fourteen grandchildren,” Simone said.

Nicole looked at Michael and smiled. “I’m sorry, Michael,” she said, “but you are the part of this evening that is the most unreal. Whenever I look at you, my mind balks. You must be forty years older than I am, but you look not a day over sixty, and definitely younger than when we left you at the Node. How is this possible?”

“Their technology is absolute magic,” he said. “They have reworked virtually every part of me. My heart, lungs, liver, entire digestive and excretory systems, and most of my endocrine glands have all been replaced, some several times, by smaller, more efficient functional equivalents. My bones, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels are all buttressed by millions of microscopic implants that not only ensure the critical functions are accomplished, but also, in many cases, biochemically rejuvenate the aged cells. My skin is a special material they only recently perfected, which has all the good properties of real human skin but never ages or develops warts or moles. Once a year I go over to their hospital. I’m unconscious for two days, and when I emerge I am literally a new man.”

“Would you mind coming over here,” Nicole said, “and letting me touch you?” She laughed. “I don’t need to put my fingers through the holes in your hands, or anything like that, but you can certainly understand that what you are telling me is difficult to believe.”

Michael O’Toole crossed the room and knelt beside the wheelchair. Nicole reached out and touched the skin on his face. It was smooth and supple, like a young man’s. His eyes were fresh and clear. “And your brain, Michael,” Nicole asked softly. “What have they done to your brain?”

He smiled. Nicole noticed that there were no wrinkles in his forehead. “Many things,” he said. “When my memory started to slip, they reconditioned my hippocampus. They even supplemented it with a small structure of their own-to give me more capacity, they said. About twenty years ago they also installed what they described as a ‘better operating system,’ to sharpen my thinking processes.”

Michael was less than a meter away from her. The light from the fire reflected off his face. Nicole was suddenly swept away by a flood of memories. She recalled what close friends they had been in Rama, as well as their moments of intimacy when Richard had been gone and presumed lost. She touched his face again. “And are you still Michael O’Toole?” she asked. “Or have you become something else, part human and part alien?”

He stood up without saying anything and walked back to his chair. He moved like an athlete, not like a man who was more than one hundred and twenty years old. “I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said. “I can remember clearly all the details of my childhood in Boston, and every other important phase of my life. As far as I know, I am still more or less the same.”

“Michael is still extremely interested in religion and creation as well,” Simone added. “But he has changed some-all of us are altered by our experiences in life.”

“I have remained a devout Roman Catholic,” Michael said, “and I still say my daily prayers. But naturally my view of God, and of humanity too, has been drastically changed by what Simone and I have seen. If anything, my faith has strengthened… primarily because of my enlightening conversations with…”

He stopped and glanced across the room at Simone. “In the early years, Mother,” she said, “when Michael and I were alone at the Node, near Sirius, there were many difficulties. We had only each other to talk with. I was still just a girl, and Michael was a mature man. I could not discuss physics or religion or many of his other favorite topics.”

“There were no major problems, you understand,” Michael said. “Still, we were both lonely, in a peculiar sort of way. What we had together was remarkable and enriching… But we both needed something else, something additional.

“The Nodal Intelligence, or whatever we should call the power that was taking care of us, sensed our difficulty. It also recognized that the Eagle could not fulfill our individual needs. So a companion-like the Eagle, in a sense- was created for each of us.”

“It was a stroke of genius,” Simone said, “that removed the emotional tension that was threatening our perfect marriage. When Saint Michael—”

“Let me tell it, please,” Michael interrupted. “One night, almost two years after you and the others had left, Simone was in the bedroom of the apartment nursing Katya when there was a knock on our door. I assumed that it was the Eagle. When I opened the door, however, a young man with dark, curly hair and blue eyes, a perfect reconstruction of Saint Michael of Siena, was standing there. He informed me that the Eagle would no longer be interacting with us and that he would be my new intermediary with the intelligence governing the Node.”

“Saint Michael,” Simone said, “came equipped with a vast set of knowledge of Earth history, and Catholicism, and physics, and all the other subjects about which I was totally ignorant.”

“Plus,” Michael said, rising from his chair, “he was willing to answer questions about what was going on around us at the Node. Not that the Eagle wasn’t, but Saint Michael was much warmer, more personal. It was as if he had been sent by them, or by God, to be a companion for my mind.”

Nicole glanced back and forth from Michael to Simone. Michael’s face was positively radiant. His religious fervor has not waned, she thought. It has only been redirected.

“And is this Saint Michael character still around?” Nicole asked, swallowing the last sip of her coffee.

“Absolutely,” Michael said. “We did not introduce Patrick to him-the time was too short, as Simone said- but we definitely want you to meet him.” Michael walked across the room, suddenly bubbling with energy. “Do you remember all those infinite questions Richard used to ask, about who built the Node and Rama, and what was the purpose of this and that? Saint Michael knows all the answers. And he explains everything so eloquently!”

“Goodness,” said Nicole, with just a slight trace of sarcasm in her voice, “he sounds fantastic. Much too good to be true. When will I have the privilege of meeting Saint Michael?”

“Right now, if you would like,” Michael O’Toole said expectantly.

“All right,” Nicole said, stifling a yawn. “But remember I’m a tired, ailing, crotchety old woman. I can’t stay up forever.”

Michael walked briskly to the far door of the study. “Saint Michael,” he called, “would you come in please and meet Simone’s mother, Nicole?”