The Last Theorem

33 PRIVATE PAIN IN A REJOICING WORLD

The Nile waters might never threaten the world’s peace again, because both Egypt and Kenya passed the Pax per Fidem vote with resounding margins. Even before Pax’s peacekeepers were in place, teams of Kenyan hydrologists had begun setting up shop in the control buildings around the Aswân High Dam, and both countries had opened their (rather puny) missile sites to international control. Transparency of their heavy industry, such as it was, followed quickly.

They were not the last, either. The four countries in sub-Saharan Africa that had been contesting the waters of one medium-size lake saw what became of the one of their number that had sent a force to drive the other three away. When that one—properly warned, heedless of the warning—tasted Silent Thunder for itself, all three of the others joined the first in the contract.

And then there was a major breakthrough.

The Republic of Germany debated and argued and finally held a giant plebiscite of its own. Their terrible national memories of huge and violent lost battles trumped that sometimes troublesome German sense of destiny. They, too, signed up. They threw their borders open to the United Nations, disbanded the token armed forces they had retained, and signed on to Pax per Fidem’s draft constitution for the world.

Those were times for rejoicing for the people of planet Earth.

There were only two things that dampened the joys of, say, the Subramanian family. The first was the one they shared with the whole human race, namely, those pesky little apparitions that kept showing themselves—in cities at night, in the air above seagoing vessels in broad daylight, even—perhaps like young Robert’s “fish”—in space. Some people called them “bronzed bananas,” some “flying midget submarines,” some by names a lot less printable. What no one knew was exactly what they were. The devout UFO-ologists called them the final proof that flying saucers were real. The hardened skeptics suspected that one or more of Earth’s sovereign states was developing a mystery weapon unlike anything that had gone before.

What everyone agreed on, however, was that none of these objects had done any human being any detectable harm. So comedians began joking about them, and human beings have never been able to be very afraid of things they laugh at.

But for the Subramanian family, at least, there was this one other thing.

Earlier than most, little Robert had begun walking on his own, but since they’d come back from the moon, his parents had noticed something odd. The whole family would be enjoying that happy playtime between baths and bed. Little Robert would let go of his mother’s knee to wander over to where his big sister was coaxing him on. And then sometimes, without warning, Robert would drop in his tracks. Would fall like a sack of potatoes, and lie there, eyes closed, for just a moment. And then the eyes would open and he would scramble precariously to his feet and, grinning and murmuring to himself as always, head for where Natasha waited.

This was new… and frightening.

These little episodes didn’t seem to bother Robert. He didn’t even seem to notice that they happened. But then, another time, it would happen again. And again.

That was the place where there was a blemish on the otherwise nearly ideal happiness of Myra and Ranjit.

They weren’t exactly worried, because Robert was so conspicuously healthy in every other respect. But they were concerned. They were feeling guilty, or at least Ranjit was, because he was the one who had let Robert escape the secure chamber when they were already entering the upper Van Allen. And who knew if there had been enough of the wrong kind of radiation to do the child harm?

Myra didn’t believe that for one second, but she saw the worry in her husband’s eyes. They decided to seek medical help.

So they got the best and most experienced there was, and a lot of it, too. Everywhere he and Myra took their son, Ranjit’s fame was on their side. The member of the medical staff who came out to greet them was never some thirty-or-so-year-old, fresh out of medical school (and thus freshly exposed to the very latest in medical lore). It was some sixty-or-so-year-old, rich with the skills of an earlier generation and now at least a department head. All of them were honored to have the famous Dr. Ranjit Subramanian come to their facility—hospital, clinic, laboratory, whatever—and all had the same dismal tidings to offer.

Robert was in almost every aspect a healthy child. Every aspect, that was, but one. Somewhere along the line something had gone wrong. “The brain is a very complex organ,” they all said—or meant, although several of them found other ways to phrase the same bad news. There could have been an unsuspected allergy, a birth injury, an undetected infection. And then the next thing they all said was pretty much the same. There wasn’t any medicine, or surgical procedure, or anything else that could make Robert “normal,” because the one thing all their tests had agreed on was that the son of Ranjit Subramanian and Myra de Soyza had regressed. And now was developing intellectually somewhat more slowly than one would have expected.

By then the Subramanians had worked their way through a long list of specialists. It was one of those, a pediatric speech-language pathologist, who struck fear into the hearts of Robert’s parents. “Robert has begun dropping consonants—‘’athroom’ and ‘’inner,’ for instance,” she reported. “And have you noticed whether he talks the same way to you as to his play group?” Both his parents nodded. “By now most children modify their speech patterns according to whomever they’re talking to. For one of you it might be ‘give me that,’ for another child ‘gimme ’at.’ And what about comprehensibility? I imagine you can understand what he’s saying, but how about friends or relatives?”

“Not always,” Ranjit admitted.

Myra corrected him. “Not usually,” she said. “It upsets Robert sometimes, too. But isn’t there any chance he’ll outgrow it?”

“Oh, yes,” the pathologist said decisively. “Albert Einstein didn’t talk even that well as a child. But it’s something we need to watch carefully.”

But when Myra raised the question with the next doctor, he just said piously, “We can always hope, Dr. de Soyza.”

And another said even more piously, “There are times when we just can’t question God’s will.”

What no one said was, “Here are certain specific things you can do to help Robert improve.”

If there were such things, the medical profession didn’t seem to know what they were. And all this “progress” in understanding Robert’s condition had been bought at the price of some dozens of unpleasant episodes. Like strapping Robert to a gurney while they x-rayed his head. Or shaving his hair so they could wrap his skull with sticky magnetic tape. Or pinning him to a wheeled stretcher that fed him centimeter by centimeter into an MRI machine…all of which produced the effect that young Robert Subramanian, who had never been afraid of anything in his little life, began to cry as soon as anyone wearing white came anywhere near him.

There was one useful thing the medical profession had done, though. They had produced pharmaceuticals that controlled the falling down—they called it “petit mal,” to distinguish it from the grand mal of epilepsy, which it was not. He didn’t fall down anymore. But the doctors didn’t have any pills to make Robert as smart as his quite ordinary playmates.

Then came the morning when there was a knock on the door. And when Ranjit, getting ready to bike to his office at the university, opened it, the man who was standing there was Gamini. “I would have called to see if I could come over, Ranj,” he said, “but I was afraid you’d say no.”

Ranjit’s answer was to sweep him up in a thoroughgoing hug. “You are such a fool,” he told his oldest and best friend. “I thought it was the other way around. I thought you were mad at us for turning your offer down so long ago.”

Released, Gamini gave him a rueful grin. “Actually,” he said, “I’m not so sure you were altogether wrong. Can I come in?”

Of course Gamini Bandara could come in, where he got hugs from Myra and little Robert as well. Robert got the most attention, because Gamini had never seen him before, but then Robert went off with the cook to play with his jigsaw puzzles, and the grown-ups settled down on the veranda. “I didn’t see Tashy,” Gamini remarked, accepting a cup of tea.

“She’s out sailing,” Ranjit informed him. “She does a lot of it—says it’s practice for a big race she plans to be in. But what brings you to Lanka?”

Gamini pursed his lips. “You know Sri Lanka’s got a presidential election coming up? My father’s planning to resign from the Pax per Fidem board and come back to run. He’s hoping that if he gets elected, he can bring Sri Lanka into the compact.”

Ranjit looked genuinely pleased. “More power to him for that! He’d make a great president.” He paused, and Myra said what Ranjit had been unwilling to.

“You look doubtful,” she observed. “Is there a problem?”

“You bet there is,” Gamini told her. “It’s Cuba.”

He didn’t really need to say more, because naturally Myra and Ranjit had been following the events there. Cuba had been on the verge of a Pax per Fidem plebiscite of its own.

It had seemed pretty certain to pass, too. Cuba had been spared the usual third world horrors. Fidel Castro had caused much harm, but he had done a certain amount of good along the way—Cuba had an educated population; a copious supply of well-trained doctors, nurses, and other health professionals; an expert corps of pest-control people. And not a single Cuban dying of starvation in more than half a century.

But the other thing Castro had done was to inflame partisan passions. Some of the sons and grandsons—and daughters!—of the Cubans who had gone off to fight and die for the world revolution in a dozen different countries had not forgotten. Even a few of the ancient fighters themselves survived, though now at least in their eighties and more, but quite capable of pulling a trigger or setting the fuse on a bomb. How many of these were there? Not enough to put the verdict of the plebiscite in doubt, anyway. When the votes were counted, disarmament, peace, and a new constitution had achieved better than 80 percent of the ballots cast. But twelve of Pax per Fidem’s workers had been shot at, nine of them had been hit—the old fighters for socialism knew how to handle a gun—and two of the wounded had died.

“Well,” Ranjit said after a moment, “yes, tragic, but what does it have to do with Sri Lanka?”

“It has to do with America,” Gamini said angrily. “And Russia and China, too, because they do nothing. But it’s America who wants to send in about six companies of U.S. troops. Troops! With rapid-fire weapons and, I’m pretty sure, even tanks! When the whole point of Pax per Fidem is that we never use lethal force!”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then, “I see,” Myra said, and stopped there.

It was Ranjit who said: “Go ahead, Myra. You’ve got the right. Say ‘I told you so.’”