Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

Nor was the rest of the world much better off. In Africa the continent had backslid to some of the worst days of the twentieth century. Once again they were seeing the armies of boy soldiers, some of them barely into their teens, drafted when their families were murdered, and fighting for stocks of illicit diamonds and even less licit ivory….

It was discouraging.

There was, though, one thing that did trouble Ranjit when he let himself think of it, and it came up when Mevrouw Beatrix Vorhulst looked in on a conversation with lawyer De Saram to ask, “What would anyone like for dinner?”

It was the same question that someone had to ask every morning, but this time it got a different reception. Myra turned to look inquiringly at Ranjit, who cocked an eyebrow at her, sighed, and spoke to their hostess. “That’s something we’ve been talking about, Aunt Bea. We think you’d probably like to have your house back.”

It was the first time Ranjit had ever seen Beatrix Vorhulst look indignant. “Dear boy, not at all! We’re glad to have you stay here as long as you like. You’re family, you know. We like having you here, and we’re honored, besides, and—”

But De Saram, having studied Myra’s face, was shaking his head. “Perhaps we’ve missed the point, Mevrouw,” he said. “They’re married. They want their own home, not a piece of yours, and they’re absolutely right about it. Let’s all have another cup of tea and consider the options. And as to a place for the two of you to live, you already have one, Ranjit. What used to be your father’s home in Trincomalee is now yours, you know.”

Ranjit turned to examine Myra’s face. The expression on it was very much what he had been expecting. “I don’t think Myra wants to live in Trinco,” he reported sorrowfully to the group, but she was already shaking her head.

“Trinco’s beautiful,” she said. “I’d love to have a place there, but—”

She didn’t finish. “What then?” De Saram asked, puzzled.

Ranjit answered for her. “It was a very nice house for one elderly man,” he said. “But for us—that is, for a couple who are probably going to want washing machines, dishwashers, all sorts of appliances that my father had no reason to bother with—well, what do you say, Myra? Do you want to start making changes in my father’s house?”

She took a deep breath, but managed to compress her reply to one word: “Yes.”

“Of course you do,” he said. “You wouldn’t rather tear it down and start over from scratch? No? All right. Then the first thing we do is get Surash to find us an architect who can make floor plans of what we’ve got to work with—he knows every Tamil in Trinco—and we invite him here with the plans and you and he start creating. With,” he added, “me available for creative inputs any time I’m asked. Meanwhile, Myra, you and I move our bodies into a hotel. How does that sound?”

Mevrouw was frowning more deeply than Ranjit had ever seen her. “There’s no reason for that,” she declared. “We’re perfectly comfortable with you here until the place in Trincomalee is ready for you.”

Ranjit looked at his wife, then spread his hands. “All right, but I do have another suggestion. Myra, love? Didn’t I once hear you say something about a honeymoon?”

Myra looked surprised. “No. You haven’t. I admit I think a honeymoon would be grand, but I haven’t said a single word about it—”

“Not since we were married,” Ranjit agreed, “but I remember exactly what you said to me, right in this room, a few years ago. You told me about all the wonderful parts of Lanka that I’d never visited. So let’s go visit them, Myra. While everybody’s getting the rest of our lives ready for us.”

The best place to start was the easiest, Myra declared, so the first place they tried was the turtle hatchery in Kosgoda, because Myra had loved it as a child and, mostly, because it was close enough for practice, then Kandy, the island’s grand old city. But a week later, when they had done them both and were back in the Vorhulst house and the staff wanted to know how they’d liked it, their responses were tepid. They had been recognized in Kosgoda, and small crowds had followed them about all day. Kandy had been worse. The local police had taken them around the town in a police car. They had seen everything, but hadn’t once been allowed to wander at will.

Over the dinner table Beatrix Vorhulst listened sympathetically as Ranjit explained that it was nice to be driven around, but they really would have liked to mingle with the crowds. She sighed. “I don’t know if that can happen,” she said. “You’re the best sight the people have for sightseeing purposes. You see, the trouble is that we’re a bit short on world-famous celebrities here in Lanka. You’re about all we’ve got.”

Myra disagreed. “Not really. There’s the writer—”

“Well, yes, but he hardly ever comes out of his house. Anyway, it’s not the same. If we were somewhere thick with movie stars and all kinds of famous people—Los Angeles, for instance, or London—you two could just put on some dark glasses and you’d hardly be noticed.” And then her expression changed. She said, “Well, come to think of it, why not?”

And when everyone was looking at her, she explained: “You’ve got all these invitations from all over the world, Ranjit. Why not accept a few?”

Ranjit blinked at her, then turned to Myra. “What do you think? Should we try to have a real honeymoon—Europe, America, whatever you like?”

She glanced at him, then around the table thoughtfully. She finally said, “I think that would be wonderful, Ranjit. If we’re going to do it, let’s do it soon.”

He gave her a curious look, but turned at once to questioning about what specific invitations were available. It wasn’t until they were heading to bed that he thought to ask her, “You do want to do this, don’t you? Because if you don’t want to—”

She laid a finger across his lips and then, unexpectedly, followed with a kiss. “It’s just that I think if we’re going to do long-distance traveling, it might be better to do it soon. Might be a little more difficult later on. I wasn’t going to tell you until the doctor confirmed it, but I won’t see her until Friday. The thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”

While Myra and Ranjit were making their way to London, a trip as long and wearing as Gamini had described it years before, the world was going on its own way. Which was, of course, the way of death and destruction. They had booked their flight the long way around, by way of Mumbai, so Ranjit could get a quick look at the city. But their plane was forty minutes late because of circling before being allowed to land. Artillery fighting had broken out again in the Vale of Kashmir. No one knew what underground Pakistani agents might be planning to do to targets in India’s heartland, so the couple spent their whole time in the old city in their hotel room, watching television. That didn’t have much good news, either. Units of the Adorable Leader’s North Korean army, no longer limiting themselves to creating incidents along the border with South Korea, had plucked up the courage to have a few incidents with the country that fed it, the one that was pretty nearly its only real friend in the world, the People’s Republic of China. What they were up to no one seemed able to guess, but four separate incursions, no more than a dozen or so troops each, crossed into PRC territory, where there was nothing but hills and rocks, and set up camp.

Myra and Ranjit were three hours later boarding their London plane, too, but by the time they were airborne, skirting Pakistan’s shoreline en route to Heathrow in England, the Kashmir fighting had died down and the North Korean army had turned around and gone back to its barracks, and no one could figure out what they had been up to in the first place.