Arthur Clarke - The Last Theorem

“Well, I do,” Gamini informed him, “and so does my father. He’s ordering twenty-four-hour guards around your house and to go with any of you who goes out.”

Ranjit was shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary—” he began.

“Doesn’t matter what you think,” Gamini said cheerfully. “Dad’s the president now, so he’s the one who gives the orders. Anyway, if it wasn’t the Feds, it’d be somebody else. Your pal Joris Vorhulst is getting threats, too. He’s already got a bunch of armed guards around the Skyhook base. Now he’s talking about putting Skyhook security forces around everybody connected with the project. You included.”

Ranjit opened his mouth to protest—not as much because he couldn’t stand the idea of being guarded twenty-four hours a day as because he anticipated his daughter’s reaction—but Gamini didn’t give him the chance. “So you see, Ranj,” he said reasonably, “it’s going to happen. There’s no sense in fighting it. And, you know, it just might save all your lives.”

Ranjit sighed. “How long?” he asked.

“Well, until those One Point Fives get here, at least,” Gamini said thoughtfully. “After that, who knows?”

And that was a really good question, Ranjit admitted to himself. Leaving only that quite different question of how he was going to tell Myra and Natasha about the plan.

The chance came almost at once. Once off the phone with Gamini, he went looking for his family and found them on the back porch with binoculars in the dark, studying the constellation that held much of the Oort cloud. Passing the glasses to Natasha, Myra said to her husband, “They’re getting close. Tashy? Give your father a look.” And she did. Ranjit had no difficulty in finding the bright splash of light that—so said the experts—was the exhaust of the deceleration rockets of the approaching One Point Five armada. It wasn’t the first time he had seen it. Even before the announcement that these One Point Fives were coming to stay, Earth’s giant telescopes had been providing much brighter and more detailed images for the world’s news screens.

But they were getting closer.

Ranjit lowered the glasses and cleared his throat. “That was Gamini on the phone,” he said, and relayed what had been said. But if he had expected his daughter to object to grown-up interference with her life, he had been mistaken. She listened patiently, but all she said was, “These guards are to protect us against the nut satanists, right? But who”—she waved at the gentle starry patterns overhead—“is going to protect us from them?”

That was the question the whole world was asking—asking itself and even trying to ask of the invaders, as half of the world’s most important people began talking into microphones that beamed their question in the direction of the approaching armada. There were many questions, covering their plans, their intentions, their reasons for coming to Earth in the first place—many, many questions, in many languages, from many people great and small.

They received no answers at all.

This wasn’t easy for the human race to handle. All over planet Earth—and in the lava tubes of the moon, and in orbit, and wherever else human beings had established a foothold—people were showing the strain of what was coming. Even the Subramanian family was not immune. Myra was biting her nails again, as she hadn’t done since her early teens. Ranjit was spending hours on the phone to almost every important person he knew (and that was a lot of important people), on the chance that any of them might have some wisdom to share that hadn’t occurred to himself. (They didn’t.) Meanwhile, Natasha was obsessively trying to teach young Robert how to read Portuguese. And then one morning, while they were all at breakfast, there was a sudden eruption of raised voices from outside. When Ranjit opened the door to look, what he saw was four of their uniformed guards with their guns drawn and pointed at half a dozen strangers. Well, not all strangers. Most of them were young, scowling, their hands in the air, but in their center was someone whom, though somewhat older than the last time he’d seen him, Ranjit recognized at once. “Colonel Bledsoe,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

The situation took a little negotiating. The way it worked out, Lt. Col. Bledsoe (retired) was allowed to come into the house, although only with the captain of the guard standing by with his gun in his hand. Bledsoe’s escort remained outside, sitting on the ground with their hands on their heads, with the rest of the Sri Lankan detail making sure they stayed that way.

One might have supposed that Bledsoe would feel he was at some sort of a disadvantage. He didn’t. “Thanks for letting me come in and talk to you,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to turn my boys loose on your guards.”

Ranjit wasn’t sure whether he should be amused or angry but decided not to try to figure that out. He went right to the point. “Talk about what?” he asked.

Bledsoe nodded. “Right, let’s not waste time. I’m here representing the president of the United States, and he has determined that the human race can’t afford to let these alien assassins land on Earth.”

It was Ranjit’s intention to ask how the president of the United States proposed to prevent it, but his wife got in first. “What makes your president think he can speak for the whole human race? Don’t—for instance—Russia and China have something to say about it?”

To Ranjit’s surprise, Bledsoe seemed to expect the question. “You’re living in the past, Mrs. Subramanian. You act like there still was a big three. There isn’t. Russia and China are nothing but paper tigers anymore! They don’t need to be considered.”

He went on to explain, his tone scornful, that they were both preoccupied with internal problems they tried to keep secret. “The People’s Republic of China,” he lectured, “has just about lost control of Jilin province to the Falun Gong movement, and they can’t afford that. Oh, sure, you never heard of Jilin province, did you? But it’s where the Chinese government gets a lot of its grain, not to mention a lot of its automobiles and railway cars. You heard me. Agriculture and manufacturing! And Falun Gong’s spreading across the border to Inner Mongolia.”

He shook his head in a manner that might have been sympathetic, if the little grin at the corners of his mouth hadn’t been so obviously gloating. “And what about the Russians?” he asked. “They’re even worse off. Chechnya is a running sore. There are Muslims there, and every Islamic jihadist anywhere in the world who still wants to kill heretics is going to flock to Chechnya to pick up a gun—and there goes some of Russia’s most important oil pipelines. And if Chechnya finally does get loose, there are a bunch of other provinces that would like nothing better than to go the same way.”

Myra commented, “You look happy about it.”

Bledsoe pursed his lips. “Happy? No. What do I care what kind of trouble the Chinks and the Russkis have? But it sure simplifies things when action has to be taken and the president doesn’t have to worry about getting them on board. And that’s where you and your family come in, Subramanian. The president has a plan. And you’re all part of it.”

The mood Ranjit and his family had toward their uninvited guest had never been warmer than tepid. Now it congealed to brittle antarctic ice.

“What do you want?” Ranjit asked, in a tone that suggested that whatever it was, there was small chance he would get it.

“It’s simple,” Bledsoe said. “I want your daughter, Natasha, to go on a broadcast to say that while she was their prisoner, they let her know that ‘sterilizing’ the Earth meant killing every human being so their aliens can take possession of it.”