Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

Ranjit, who had been regarding his boyhood chum with unalloyed wonder, obeyed, while Myra collected glasses. As he poured, Ranjit said, “Does that mean trouble?”

“Oh, not enough to worry about. He’ll get over it. And, listen, while he’s what we’re talking about, he gave me something to hand to you.”

That something was an envelope embossed with the White House official seal. When they had all been served and Ranjit had taken his first sip—and made a face—he opened the letter. It said:

Dear Mr. Subramanian:

On behalf of the people of the United States I thank you for your service. I must now relieve you of your present post, however, and ask you to take on an even more important one, which, I am afraid, entails even more secrecy.

“He signed it with his own hand, too,” Gamini said proudly. “Didn’t use one of those machines. I saw him do it.”

Ranjit set down the unfinished part of his drink, the part that was going to remain unfinished forever, and said, “Gamini, how much of this show are you personally running?”

Gamini laughed. “Me? Hardly any. I’m an errand boy for my father. He tells me what to do, and I do it. Like helping recruit the Nepalese.”

“Which I’ve been wanting to ask you about,” Myra said, tactfully sniffing the whiskey’s bouquet without actually tasting any of it. “Why Nepalese?”

“Well, two reasons. First, their great-grandfathers used to serve in the British army—they were called the Gurkhas—and they were about the toughest and smartest soldiers they had. And, the most important part, just look at them. Nepalese don’t look a bit like Americans, or Chinese, or Russians, so everybody in North Korea wasn’t trained from birth to hate them.” He sniffed his whiskey, sighed, and put it down. “They’re like you and me, Ranj,” he added. “One reason we can be so useful to Pax per Fidem. So what about it? Can I sign you up tonight?”

“Tell us more,” Myra said quickly, before Ranjit had a chance to speak. “What would you want Ranjit to do?”

Gamini grinned. “Well, not what we were going to offer you way back when. What I was thinking of then was that you could help me be an assistant to my father, but you weren’t famous then.”

“But now?” Myra prompted.

“Actually, we’ll have to work that out,” Gamini confessed. “You’d go to work for the council and they would probably have some requests to make of you—speak for them at press conferences, sell the idea of Pax per Fidem to the world—”

Ranjit gave his friend a mock-frown that was not entirely imitation. “Wouldn’t I have to know more about it to do that?”

Gamini sighed. “Good old Ranjit,” he said. “I was hoping you’d see the light and sign up right away, but, yes, I suppose that, you being you, you certainly would need to know more. So I brought some reading for you.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope of papers. “Let’s call this your homework, Ranj. I guess the best thing would be for you to read it—both of you—and talk it over tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll come by to take you to breakfast, and then I’ll ask you the big question.”

“And what question is that?” Ranjit asked.

“Why, whether you want to help us save the world. What did you think?”

Natasha got a little less playtime that night than she was used to. She gave her parents a few little wails to show that she had noticed the lack, but two minutes later she was asleep and Myra and Ranjit could go back to studying their homework.

There were two sets of papers. One seemed to be a sort of proposed constitution for (they supposed) the land that had formerly been the North Korea of one dictator or another. Both Ranjit and Myra read it attentively, of course, but most of it was procedural stuff—like the American constitution that both had read in school. Not entirely like the American, though. There were several paragraphs unlike anything in that document. One stated that the country would never go to war under any circumstances—that sounded more like the post–World War II Japanese constitution the Americans had written for them. Another wasn’t in any constitution they had ever heard of before; it described some rather unusual methods of selecting their officeholders that involved heavy usage of computers. And a third pledged that every institution in the country—including not just their government legislatures at all levels, but educational, scientific, and even religious institutions—had to permit access of observers at all of their functions. (“I guess that’s the ‘transparency’ Gamini was talking about,” Ranjit observed.)

The other document was about more tangible things. It described how the secretary-general, with maximum secrecy, had set about creating his twenty-member independent council to run Pax per Fidem. It listed the members, ranging from the Bahamas, Brunei, and Cuba to Tonga and Vanuatu (with Sri Lanka tucked in just before). And it was a little more specific about the concept of transparency. In the interests of this “transparency” Pax per Fidem was charged to create an independent inspectorate for which the organization was pledged to offer that same transparency. “I guess that ‘inspectorate’ would be where you would go,” Myra said as they turned the light out.

Ranjit yawned. “Maybe so, but I’m going to need a clearer picture of what I’d be supposed to do before I say I’ll do it.”

The next morning Gamini did his best to answer all their questions. “I talked to my father a little bit about how much freedom you’d have. It’s a lot, Ranj. He’s sure that you could go anywhere in Pax per Fidem and see anything we’re doing, with the single exception of anything to do with Silent Thunder: You won’t know how many of the weapons we have or what we’d like to do with them, because nobody below the council itself will. But anything else, sure. You can sit in on most council meetings, and if you’ve seen anything that you think is wrong, you can report it to them.”

“And just suppose,” Myra said, “that he did see something wrong and the council didn’t do anything to fix it.”

“Then he would be free to tell the world’s press about it,” Gamini said promptly. “That’s what transparency is all about. So what do you say? Any other questions before you say if you’ll join us?”

“A few,” Ranjit said mildly. “This council. They meet, right? And what do they talk about when they do?”

“Well,” Gamini said, “it’s mostly planning for every contingency. You don’t do a regime change without making sure the population has a viable society left after the change; we learned that from Germany after 1918 and Iraq after 2003. And it’s not just making sure the population has its food, and as soon as possible its electrical power, and its working police force to prevent looting and so on; it’s giving them a chance at forming their own government. And, of course, there’s the future. There are plenty of brushfire wars and threats of war going on, and the council keeps an eye on all of them.”

“Wait a minute,” Myra said. “Are you talking about doing that Silent Thunder thing in other parts of the world?”

Gamini gave her a fond smile. “Dear Myra,” he said, “whatever made you think we were going to stop with North Korea?”

Then, taking notice of the expressions on their faces, he sounded hurt. “What’s the matter? You aren’t saying you don’t trust us, are you?”

It was Myra who answered—or, more exactly, responded, because it certainly was not a specific answer to Gamini’s specific question. “Gamini, did you ever happen to read the book 1984 ? It was published in England around the middle of the last century, by a man named George Orwell.”