Rendezvous with Rama

A secondary protagonist, who features in a major subplot set on the southern continent of Rama, is Jimmy Pak. He’s a junior officer on the Endeavour, and his style contrasts with Norton’s: While Norton is authoritative, distinguished, and experienced, Jimmy is young, brash, and willing to flaunt the rules.

Before the mission to Rama, Jimmy was a professional athlete who competed at the Lunar Olympics. His experiences with low-gravity flight drove his interest in developing a sky-bike that defies the laws of physics. He smuggles a sky-bike aboard the Endeavour with this purpose in mind and reluctantly confesses its existence when Norton seeks a way to scale the high cliff of Rama’s southern continent. Norton authorizing Jimmy’s flight to the south pole briefly validates his disrespect for the rules.

Jimmy’s character arc emerges from the melancholy wisdom that he gains as a result of his time on the southern continent. He’s determined to prove himself with the success of his mission. Though he makes it to the south pole, an unanticipated electrical static buildup strands Jimmy on the southern continent. In isolation, he experiences a wealth of findings that would have benefited the Rama mission. He lacks the tools or the means to study the first biot he encounters and is unable to map out the tunnels under the continent or the checkered plains that mark its surface. Instead, Jimmy sets out to claim the one flower he finds on Rama, believing that, like him, it’s an aberration to the surrounding environment. When he realizes that this isn’t the case and the flower retreats from his effort to kill it, he considers it an equitable exchange between humanity and Rama. He sees the flower as having a value equal to his life, convinced that he’ll die while stranded on the southern continent. This moment drives The Beauty of the Other as one of the novel’s themes and represents Jimmy’s transformation into a more contemplative person.

A major supporting character, Boris Rodrigo functions as a sidekick to Commander Norton. Rodrigo works as the Endeavour’s communications officer and is quiet but popular. His reserved nature adds to his mystique as a member of the religious group known as the Fifth Church of Christ, Cosmonaut. Rodrigo’s faith is at odds with Norton’s secularist view of the universe. Norton doesn’t believe in a higher power, let alone the version of God and Jesus Christ that Rodrigo proposes, but he slowly comes to accept that some things are beyond his ability to understand. Whereas the idea of Rama constantly bewilders Norton, Rodrigo accepts that its existence aligns with his religion’s cosmology.

Rodrigo is an intrepid crew member. He proposes the mission to sabotage the Hermian missile and deftly carries it out when Norton authorizes it. Though Rodrigo is quick to point out the advantages of executing covert operations, he’s unsure whether his theories about the missile’s fail-safe mechanisms are correct. This underscores his willingness to undertake the risks of any mission, even if his life is at stake.

The medical officer on the Endeavour, Laura Ernst is a major supporting character in the novel and is a casual romantic interest for Norton, drawing from their history as former lovers. By the novel’s end, Ernst and Norton engage in a casual sexual relationship during their off hours. The novel positions Ernst as Norton’s equal, exercising a level of control and authority that matches her commander’s. When Norton seeks authorization to explore the Central Plain, for instance, Ernst must clear him, given the physical demands that Rama’s shifting gravity has on their bodies.

Driven by her curiosity about Rama’s biology, Ernst collects multiple samples from the Cylindrical Sea, which allows her to observe the development of microorganisms when the ship’s climate starts to change. She’s especially excited when biots appear on the northern continent. Though Norton warns her not to harm any of them for fear of starting a human-Raman conflict, Ernst is pleased when an accident neutralizes one of the biots. This gives her an opportunity to dissect it, though she’s shocked to discover that it’s more robot than organic being.

Because of her relationship with Norton, Ernst is the person who informs him that he has been given authorization to father a third child on Mars. They soon have sex and spend the rest of the “night” together, during which Norton tells her that he’s haunted by thoughts of Rama. This frustrates Ernst because she feels that Norton isn’t present in the moment, making her feel invisible in his embrace. Her presence reveals Norton’s sexist bias, especially his view that the female body is too “distracting” to male servicemen like him.