Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

Obviously, that would have been too hard, and too frustrating, for the handicapped little Robert.

But evidently the real-world little Robert hadn’t been deterred at all! His computer screen was rolling off hexomino pattern after hexomino pattern. Robert wasn’t satisfied to just give up. He was going to check every one off for himself.

When Ranjit hugged his son, it was with almost bone-bending force; young Robert wriggled and grunted, though mostly with pleasure.

For years the people who were supposed to be helping Myra and Ranjit with “the Robert problem” had offered the same, unsatisfying consolation: Don’t think of him as disabled. Think of him as “differently abled.”

But that had never made sense to Ranjit. Not until today, when he found something that his son not only could do, but could do better than almost anyone else Ranjit knew.

He found his cheeks damp—with tears of joy—as the family finally went downstairs to their postponed daily chores, and to the real world. And for the first time in his life, Ranjit Subramanian almost wished that there really had been a God—any kind of a God—that he could have believed in, so that there would have been someone he could thank.

It was at this point that “Bill,” on his journey homeward, stopped for a brief period in the vicinity of that mildly troublesome planet whose inhabitants called it Earth. Though it was not a long stop, it was ample for him to be deluged with many billions of billions of bits of information concerning what the condemned inhabitants of Earth were currently doing and, more important by far, what egregious action the local representatives of the Grand Galactics, the Nine-Limbeds, had taken it upon themselves to commit.

One could not say that what the Nine-Limbeds had done was of a caliber to worry the Grand Galactics. The Grand Galactics had nothing to fear from a few billion ragtag mammalian humans, with their pitiful weaponry—the nuclear kind of weapons that exploded and knocked things around, or that other nuclear kind of weapon that generated electromagnetic pulses that interfered destructively with an opponent’s own electromagnetic pulses. Such rudimentary matters were insignificant to the Grand Galactics. They would fear them about as much as some H-bomb-wielding human general might fear a gypsy woman’s curse.

Nevertheless, in letting the humans know of their existence, the Nine-Limbeds had done something that, if not strictly prohibited for them, was not specifically allowed, either.

Actions would have to be taken. Decisions would have to be made.

For the first time ever Bill wondered whether he alone should make such decisions, or whether he needed to rejoin with the other Grand Galactics to meditate these decisions’ implications.

Dr. Dhatusena Bandara did indeed resign from the Pax per Fidem board so he could run for the presidency of Sri Lanka. What left Ranjit openmouthed was that the elder Bandara’s replacement on the board was his son: Ranjit Subramanian’s boyhood friend was now part of the team that wielded Silent Thunder.

So Ranjit went to bed filled with wonder, and when he woke up the next morning, there was something else to wonder at. The breakfast he could smell cooking was not the kind of breakfast Myra usually preferred. Even stranger, when he got out of the shower and had begun to dress, he heard the distant sound of his wife singing what appeared to be some hymn from her childhood memories of Sunday school. Mystified, he pulled on a shirt and hurried to the kitchen.

Myra was indeed singing cheerfully to herself. She stopped as Ranjit came into the room, pursed her lips for a good-morning kiss, and waved him to the breakfast table. “Start with the juice,” she instructed. “I’ll have your eggs in a minute.”

Ranjit recognized what she was stirring up. “Scrambled eggs? And sausage, and those home-fried potatoes. What is it, Myra, are you homesick for California?”

She gave him a fond smile. “No, but I know you like this kind of food now and then, and I wanted to celebrate. Ranj, I woke up with an idea! I know how to make Surash happy and keep our principles intact!”

Ranjit drained the juice glass and watched with pleasure as Myra heaped the solid parts of the menu onto his plate. “If you can do that,” he declared, “I’m going to tell Gamini to put you on the Pax per Fidem board.”

She gave him another smile, but all she said was, “Can you eat four sausages? Tashy wouldn’t touch them. Said she’d get something at the university.”

Ranjit returned the smile with a mock-scowl. “Myra! Stop this talk of sausages and tell me how we make Surash happy!”

“Well,” she said, sitting down next to him and pouring herself a cup of tea, “today’s the day I take Robert in for his booster shots, you know. And I had a dream about it. I dreamed Robert was home, playing with his computer things, only he was stuck all over with little rolled-up darts of paper, and when I pulled one out of his shoulder and looked at it, I saw that they were all Bible verses.”

Ranjit’s scowl deepened. “It would be perfectly normal to have a dream that expressed concern over our child’s immunizations,” he informed her.

“Oh, yes, my darling,” she said affectionately, “but what was he being immunized against? We give the kids smallpox shots so they’ll get immunized and won’t be troubled with smallpox when they grow up. So if we inject them with Bible verses as children—I’m thinking of the kind of Sunday school I went to as a young girl—won’t they be—”

“Immunized against grown-up religion!” Ranjit shouted. He stood up and wrapped his arms around her. “You’re the best wife I ever had,” he told her. “It’s a great idea! Only—” He hesitated. “Do you think Natasha wants to take time from her busy schedule to go to Sunday school?”

“Yes,” Myra admitted, “that’s a problem. All we can do is try to persuade her.”

But when Natasha came home from her stint at the university’s solar-sail training center, she was radiant with joy. “It came!” she cried, waving a printout in the faces of her parents. “I’m confirmed for the race!”

Ranjit had never doubted that she would be, but he joined in the celebration, picking her up in a great bear hug…and then setting her down as soon as seemed proper, because his daughter was already three centimeters taller than he, with a body composed largely of muscle. Myra offered a congratulatory kiss, and then began studying the document that bore the official seal of the International Olympic Committee. “There are ten of you that are confirmed,” she observed. “And who’s this R. Olsos from Brazil? He’s another solar-sail pilot. Sounds familiar.”

Natasha produced what could only be called a giggle. “That’s Ron,” she told her mother. “Ronaldinho Olsos, the hundred-meter boy you met on the moon.”

Myra gave her an inquisitorial look. “When did he stop being a runner and turn into a solar-sail pilot?”

“Oh,” Natasha said idly, “it might be that I had something to do with it. He kept sounding jealous of what I was doing. We’ve sort of kept in touch ever since.”

“I see,” said Myra, who hadn’t known anything of the kind. However, as Myra de Soyza had at one time been a teenage girl herself, and remembered quite well how little she had wanted her parents involved in her experimental dealings with boys, she didn’t press the matter. She sent the maid out to the nearest decent bakery for a non-birthday but definitely celebratory cake for Natasha, which she herself decorated with an approximate sketch of the solar-sail ship Natasha would sail, and made a party out of that night’s dinner.