Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

“It would be so nice,” he said thoughtfully, “if something nice happened.” And then something did.

Its name was Joris Vorhulst. When Ranjit walked in the door after another day of sitting in his little university office and trying to figure out how to earn his salary, he heard sounds of laughter. The ladylike elderly chuckle he quickly identified as Mevrouw Vorhulst, the less restrained giggles were his own dear wife, while the baritone and definitely male one was—

Ranjit very nearly ran the dozen meters to where they were gathered on the sunporch. “Joris!” he cried. “I mean, Dr. Vorhulst! I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you!”

As soon as he said it, he realized how true it was. For days he had been wishing for someone like his old Astronomy 101 teacher—no, not someone like him! That specific person! That Joris Vorhulst who had made his astronomy course the only class in Ranjit’s experience that he’d yearned to have taken sooner. And who—maybe—could help Ranjit solve his own teaching problems.

The first thing to be settled was that it wasn’t to be “Dr. Vorhulst” anymore. “After all,” he said, “it’s one full professor talking to another now, even if I’m on extended leave to work on the Skyhook.”

Which, of course, demanded that Vorhulst give everyone a report on just how the space ladder was getting along. Very well, he assured them. “We’ve already begun deploying the micron-size cable. Once we get a decent start on that, we’ll start doubling up, and then things will really begin to move because we’ll be able to start using the ladder itself to lift material to LEO instead of all those damn rockets…. Not,” he added quickly, “that they’re not doing a hell of a job. It moves fast because the big boys are all moving it. Russia, China, America—they’ve just about turned their whole space programs over to getting the ladder going. I’ve been checking all their launch sites for two months now.” He held out his glass for a refill. “And they’ve already got started on the ground terminal down on the southeast coast. That’s why I’m in Lanka today; I’ve got to go down there and prepare a report for the three presidents.”

“I’d love to see that myself,” Ranjit said wistfully.

“Sure you would. So would anybody from Astronomy 101, I hope, but don’t go just yet. What’s there now is a couple hundred pieces of earthmoving machinery, all going at once, and I think it’s up to nearly three thousand construction workers getting in one another’s way. Give it a few months and we’ll go down for a visit together. Anyway, it’s all top secret right now—I think the Americans are afraid the Bolivians or the Easter Islanders or somebody will steal their ideas and build a skyhook of their own. You would need really top security clearances to get in.”

Ranjit was about to assure his old teacher that he had the best security clearances a human being could possess, when he stopped himself, wondering if they had all been revoked. And by then Vorhulst was saying, “And what about you, Ranjit? Outside of finding the Fermat proof and marrying the best-looking AI scientist in Sri Lanka, what’ve you been doing?”

It turned out that Joris Vorhulst had heard a great deal about the adventures of his former pupil and wanted to hear a lot more. That took them right up to dinner. Ranjit was hesitant about asking for help in front of the whole household, and anyway Aunt Beatrix had been watching news programs and had a lot of questions. “They’re sending barges full of old tanks and self-propelled guns and things like that out into the China Sea and dumping them into the water,” she informed the group. “To make false reefs where fish will breed, they say. And they showed clips of a kind of guillotine they have, like the ones from the French Revolution only they’re five stories high, and they’re using those to chop up their ICBMs. I imagine they drain the fuel and the warheads first.”

“They strip them of recyclable metals first, too,” Joris informed his mother. “I saw trainloads of the stuff going west through Siberia; the Russians called it part of Korea’s reparations bill. And have you heard about the elections they’ve got scheduled?”

“Heard about them, certainly,” Myra responded. “Understand them, not a chance.”

Joris gave her a rueful grin. “Me, too. But in China I ran into a woman who’d been there, and she tried to explain it to me. The first thing is that the basic unit for voting isn’t the town or precinct the voter lives in. It’s an arbitrary group of ten thousand people, all over the country, who were born on the same day. And from those ten thousand there’s a group of thirty-five, randomly computer-selected, who will run the group. Those thirty-five do meet; they spend one week a month in session somewhere in Korea, and they elect from their own membership a presider—sort of like a mayor—and a legislature to take care of things like issuing permits and planning construction projects. And they name judges and elect representatives to the national legislature and so on.”

“Sounds complicated,” his mother commented. “Also, that part about selecting them at random by computer? That was suggested thirty years or so ago by a science-fiction writer.”

Joris nodded. “They have all the best ideas, don’t they? Anyway, the system can’t work until they get their communications back—at least another month or two, I think. Maybe by then we’ll understand it.”

After dinner the proud parents had to show Joris how well their infant could swim, and Mevrouw insisted that Joris go to bed when Tashy did. Since the last time he’d been in a bed, he had flown halfway around the world, and it was time he got some rest!

So there wasn’t any chance to ask for Joris’s help then, either. When both Natasha and his wife were sound asleep, Ranjit fretfully flipped on the news, sitting in their dressing room, volume too low to disturb the sleepers. The Security Council had issued a whole new bundle of stern warnings to countries that were engaging in, or seemed to be on the brink of, one of those brushfire wars; Silent Thunder was not mentioned but, Ranjit had no doubt, was present in the calculations of all the belligerents. It was possible, Ranjit told himself, that he had made a mistake in turning Gamini’s offer down. Pax per Fidem had every appearance of being where the action was, while Colombo did not.

Irritated, he turned off the news. He thought he might as well get some sleep and perhaps get a word with Joris first thing in the morning, before Joris was off again on his way to the terminal’s construction site.

But there was a faint sound of music coming from somewhere.

Ranjit pulled on a robe and investigated. There, on the balcony overlooking the gardens, Joris sat, sipping a tall drink and gazing at the moon while a radio softly played. When he saw Ranjit peering at him, he gave him a faintly embarrassed grin. “You caught me. I was just thinking where I’d like to land up there, oh, maybe five or six years from now, when the Skyhook’s operational and I can get there. Mare Tranquillitatis, or Crisium, or maybe something on the far side, just to show off. Sit down, Ranjit. Would you care for a nightcap?”

Ranjit certainly would, and Joris had the fixings all ready for them. As he accepted the glass, Ranjit nodded toward the moon, nearly full, bright enough, almost, to read by. “Do you really think you’ll be able to do that?” he asked.

“I don’t think it; I guarantee it,” Vorhulst promised. “Maybe it’ll take a little longer for your average man in the street to buy a ticket. Not me. I’m an executive in the program, and rank has its privileges.” He took note of a faintly quizzical expression on Ranjit’s face. “What is it? You never expected me to take advantage of a position to get something I wanted? Well, for most things I wouldn’t. But space travel is special. If the only way to get to the moon would be by robbing banks to finance the trip, I’d rob banks.”