Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

“And the people who took me were?”

“Oh, Ranj,” Gamini said, “there you go again. I can’t exactly tell you that, except, I guess, in sort of general terms, without mentioning any specifics. Have you ever heard of extraordinary rendition? Or the Law Lords’ findings on torture?”

Ranjit hadn’t, but Gamini filled him in after his friend had woken from a deep sleep that had lasted hours. Back in the bad old days some great powers, such as the United States, were on record as opposed to using torture to extract information. However, they kept finding themselves in possession of some captives who surely knew things that were important but that they would never voluntarily say. Torture was an unreliable way of making people give truthful answers—at a certain stage almost anyone would say whatever their interrogators wanted to hear, true or not, just to make it stop—but these great powers had no better way available. So they worked out a little plan. Captives of that sort were handed over to the intelligence services of some other country, one that had never promised to abjure the infliction of pain as a technique in questioning, and then the information would be passed back to the United States or whatever other great power had requested it. “And that,” Gamini finished, “was extraordinary rendition. ‘Extraordinary’ because that’s what it was. ‘Rendition’ in the sense of rendering—meaning, ‘turning over’—like rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, as the Christians say.”

“Huh,” Ranjit said thoughtfully. “And that’s still going on?”

“Well, sort of. The superpowers don’t commission it anymore. There’s been too much publicity. Anyway, they don’t have to because there are plenty of uncommitted countries that automatically pick up and question people with inexplicable criminal records. Like pirates, who are beyond the pale for them anyway, and especially like pirates who seem to be hiding their identities. Like you, they thought, because of the name business. And then they trade off information to the sanctimonious countries, because that’s where the Law Lords’ decision comes in. The Lords did a commission on information derived from torture way back when, and concluded that, for moral reasons, such information could never be used in any legal proceedings. On the other hand, it would be perfectly proper, they said, to turn it over to, say, the police.” He looked up as the two women were advancing on them. “And now we have to buckle up because I guess we’re coming in to Bandaranaike. Only, listen. You wouldn’t believe what deals we had to make and what promises we had to give to spring you loose from where you were. So help me keep those promises. No matter what, you don’t ever tell anybody anything that can identify any of the people who held you. Or I’ll be in deep trouble, and so will my dad.”

“I promise,” Ranjit said, meaning it. And then he added mischievously, “You said you checked on the girls. How’s good old Maggie doing?”

Gamini gave him a pained look. “Oh, good old Maggie’s fine,” he said. “She married a U.S. senator a couple of months ago. Sent me an invitation to the reception, as a matter of fact. So I went to Harrods and picked out a nice fish slice to send her, but I didn’t go myself.”

As the BAB-2200 rapidly taxied toward a gate, Captain-Doctor Jeannie delivered her verdict: What Ranjit really needed was rest, kindly care, and food, enough food to put back the eight or ten kilos of body mass that his extraordinary-rendition diet had taken from him, although (she added) it wouldn’t hurt for him to spend the next couple days in a hospital, either. The party waiting to greet him at the gate, however, vetoed that. That party was only one person, but that person was Mevrouw Beatrix Vorhulst, and she was not in a mood to be contradicted. The place for Ranjit to recuperate, Mevrouw Vorhulst declared, was not some impersonal factory that generated quantities of medical care but very little love. No. The right place for Ranjit to regain his strength was a comfortable, caring home. Hers, for instance.

So it was. Beatrix Vorhulst was certainly right about her promise of great care, too, because at the moment Ranjit arrived, every resource of their quite resourceful household was devoted to him. He had a room as vast and cool as his hottest and sweatiest prison night could have imagined. He had three wonderful meals a day—no, more like a dozen of them, because every time he closed his eyes for a moment, he woke to find a perfect apple or banana or icy-cold pineapple spear waiting beside his bed. Better still, in the long run he won his argument with the doctors that Gamini had ordered to double-check him. True, he first had to convince them that for all the time of his captivity he had been up and about every day without harm, or at least every day when he wasn’t so bruised and beat-up that walking hurt more than it was worth. But then he had the freedom of that grand house and its grander gardens. Including the swimming pool, and what a delight it was to backstroke dreamily across that gently cool water, with the hot sun blessing him from the sky and the palms swaying overhead. And he had access to the news.

That was not altogether a good thing. His time without access to print or television had not prepared him for the details of all the things that had been going on around the planet Earth—the murders, the riots, the car bombings, the wars.

None of those were the worst of the bad news, though. That came when Gamini looked in for a minute before leaving Sri Lanka for some more urgent (but, of course, unspecified) errand. As he was actually at the door to leave, he paused. “There’s one thing I didn’t tell you, Ranj. It’s about your father.”

“Oh, right,” Ranjit said remorsefully. “I’d better call him right away.”

But Gamini was shaking his head. “Wish you could,” he said. “The thing is, he had a stroke. He’s dead.”

There was only one person in the world Ranjit wanted to speak to at that moment, and he had him on the phone before Gamini was out of the Vorhulst house. That was the old monk Surash, and he was overjoyed to hear Ranjit’s voice. Less so, of course, to discuss the death of Ganesh Subramanian, but curiously not particularly sad about it, either. “Yes, Ranjit,” he said, “your father was moving heaven and earth to find you, and I think he just wore out. Anyway, he came back from another visit to the police complaining he felt tired, and the next morning he was dead in his bed. He had not been in really good health for some time, you know.”

“Actually, I didn’t know,” Ranjit said sorrowfully. “He never said.”

“He did not wish to worry you—and, Ranjit, you must not be worried. His jiva will be greeted with honor, and his funeral was good. Since you had been taken from us, I was the one who said the prayers, and made sure there were flowers and rice balls in his coffin, and when he had been burned, I myself carried his ashes to the sea. Death is not the end, you know.”

“I know,” Ranjit said, more for the monk’s sake than his own.

“He may never even need to be born again. And if he is, I am sure it will be as someone or some creature near you. And, oh, Ranjit, when you can travel, please come and see us. And do you have a lawyer? There is a little bit in your father’s estate. Of course it all goes to you, but there are documents to file.”

That troubled Ranjit. He had no lawyer. But when he mentioned it to Mevrouw Vorhulst, she said that wasn’t a problem, and from then on he did have a lawyer. Not just any lawyer, either, but a partner in Gamini’s father’s firm, whose name was Nigel De Saram. What troubled Ranjit a good deal more was the stabbing guilt he felt. He hadn’t known of his father’s death, and the reason for that was that he had not bothered to ask.