Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

Myra kept right up with him, too, as fascinated by the panoply of human learning as he, with a few exceptions. The principal exception was the daily nap after lunch that he insisted on, because one of their doctors had insisted. “You are getting ready to have a baby, you know!” he informed her every day, although in fact she was never in any doubt of it. And then, on almost the last day of the convention, when Ranjit was tucking her in, they heard a gentle beep-beep from their telephone. It was a fresh text message, and what it said was:

I would be grateful if you could join me in my suite sometime today to discuss a proposal that I think will interest you.

Ranjit and Myra looked at each other. “It’s the man Gamini was talking about in New York,” Ranjit said, and Myra nodded briskly.

“Of course it is. Go ahead, call him, see what he wants. And then come back here and tell me all about it.”

The suite belonging to Lt. Col. (ret.) T. Orion Bledsoe was noticeably bigger than the one the AAAS convention had provided for Ranjit and Myra. Even the bowl of fruit on the conference table in the drawing room was larger, and it wasn’t alone on the table, either. Next to it was an unopened bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, with the ice, glasses, and mixers to go with it.

T. Orion Bledsoe himself was not much taller than Ranjit, which for an American was hardly tall at all, and at least a couple of decades older. But he still had all his hair, and a pretty muscular handshake, though it was the left hand he offered and used to pull Ranjit in. “Come in, come in, Mr. uh—have a seat. Are you enjoying our District of Confusion?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, either, but led the way to the conference table. “Care for a drink, Mr. Subra—uh—? I mean, if Jack isn’t going to be too strong for you?”

Ranjit repressed a smile. Anyone who had spent his wild sixteenth year ingesting arrack was not likely to find some American tipple too strong. “That would be fine,” he said. “Your message said something about a proposal.”

Bledsoe gave him a reproachful look. “They say we Americans are always in a hurry, but in my experience it’s you foreigners that are always jumping the gun. Sure, I want to talk about something with you, but I like to get to know a man a little bit before we do business.” And all the time his previously neglected right hand was gripping the whiskey bottle while the other was opening the seal. Bledsoe noticed where Ranjit’s eyes were focused and gave a little chuckle. “Prosthetic,” he admitted—or boasted. “Pretty good design, too. I could even shake hands with it if I wanted to, but I don’t. I can’t feel your hand if I do, so what’s the point? And if I got absentminded and squeezed a little too hard, you could suddenly be in the market for one of your own.”

The artificial arm was actually quite efficient, Ranjit observed, reminding himself to tell Myra about it. The bottle open, the hand was pouring an even two centimeters of whiskey into each glass, and then passing Ranjit’s over to him. Bledsoe watched attentively to see if Ranjit was going to use any of the mixers. When he didn’t, Bledsoe gave a little nod of approval and took a taste from his own glass. “This is what we call sippin’ whiskey,” he said. “You can chug it down if you want to—hey, it’s a free country—but you ought to give it a chance. Ever been in Iraq?”

Ranjit, sipping a little of the sippin’ whiskey out of politeness to his host, shook his head.

“It’s where I got this.” He tapped the imitation arm with his good one. “With all the Shiites and the Sunnis doing their best to kill each other, but taking time out to kill as many of us as they could along the way. It was the wrong war, in the wrong place, for the wrong reasons.”

Ranjit tried his best to sound interested enough to be polite, wondering whether Bledsoe was going to say the right war would have been Afghanistan, or maybe Iran. It wasn’t, though. “North Korea,” Bledsoe proclaimed. “They’re the ones we should’ve pulverized. Ten missiles in the ten right places and they’d have been right out of the game.”

Ranjit coughed. “As I understand it,” he said, swallowing a little more of his Jack Daniel’s, “the trouble with fighting North Korea is that they have a very large and very modern army and they’ve got it sitting right on the border, less than fifty kilometers from Seoul.”

Bledsoe waved a dismissive hand. “Hell, sure there’d be losses. A lot of them, no doubt. So what? They’d be South Korean losses, not Americans. Well,” he corrected himself, grimacing at the annoyance, “all right, there are quite a few American troops right up there, sure. But you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, can you?”

It seemed to Ranjit that the party was getting unpleasant, and then as Bledsoe tossed a crumpled napkin into a wastebasket, he thought he saw a reason. The napkin bounced off an empty whiskey bottle. Apparently his was not the first conference Bledsoe had convened that day.

Ranjit cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Bledsoe, I come from a small country with problems of its own. I don’t want to criticize American policy.”

Bledsoe bobbed his head in agreement. “And that’s another thing,” he said, and interrupted himself to offer a refill with the bottle. Ranjit shook his head. Bledsoe shrugged and recharged his own glass. “Your little island,” he said. “Shree—Shree—”

“Sri Lanka,” Ranjit politely corrected.

“That’s the one. D’you know what you’ve got there?”

Ranjit considered. “Well, I think it’s probably the most beautiful island in the—”

“I’m not talking about the whole damn island, for Christ’s sake! My God, there’s a million beautiful islands around all over the world and I wouldn’t give you a nickel for any of them. I’m just talking about one little harbor you’ve got there, Trinkum—Trinco—”

Ranjit took pity. “I think you mean Trincomalee. I was born there.”

“Really?” Bledsoe considered that datum, found no use for it, and continued. “Anyway, I don’t give a damn about the town. It’s the harbor that’s a world-beater! Do you know what that could be? It could be the world’s best base for a nuclear submarine navy, Mr. Sub—Subra—”

He had refilled his glass once again, and the sippin’ whiskey was beginning to show its effects. Ranjit sighed and rescued him again. “It’s Subramanian, Mr. Bledsoe, and, yes, we know what a base it could be. In World War II it was headquarters for the Allied fleet, and before that Lord Nelson himself said it was one of the world’s greatest harbors.”

“Oh, crap, what does Lord Nelson have to do with it? He was talking about a place for sailing ships, for God’s sake. I’m talking nukes! That harbor’s deep enough that submarines can dive well below what any enemy could find, much less attack! Dozens of them! Maybe hundreds. And what did we do about it? We let goddamn India snap up treaty rights for the whole damn port. India, for God’s sake! And what the hell India needs a navy for in the first place, I can’t—”

Ranjit was getting tired of this opinionated drunk. Gamini was Gamini, but Ranjit couldn’t be expected to put up with much more of this. He stood up. “Thanks for the drink, Mr. Bledsoe, but I’m afraid I have to be getting along.”

He held out a hand to be shaken in farewell, but Bledsoe didn’t reciprocate. He glared up at Ranjit, then deliberately put the top back on the whiskey bottle. “Excuse me one second,” he said. “We have some unfinished business.”

He disappeared into one of the suite’s bathrooms. Ranjit heard running water, thought it over, shrugged, and sat down. It was more than one second, though. It was close to five minutes before T. Orion Bledsoe appeared again, and he hardly seemed the same man. His face was scrubbed, his hair was brushed, and he was carrying a partial cup of steaming black coffee—no doubt from the coffee machine that seemed to be standard equipment in any American hotel bathroom.