The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [117]
That first sentence to shelter was only for four days. Then they were in clear space again…for another nine days, until the warning squeals went off once more and it was time to seek shelter from the upper Van Allen.
Space travel had become possible for almost anyone. It certainly had not become easy, though. Or, come to that, particularly pleasant.
A funny thing happened as they came out of the upper Van Allen. Robert had made a dash for his favorite spot, the two-meter-long ribbon of thick plastic that was their main window to the universe outside. Myra was already climbing into the exercise straps and Ranjit was considering heading for his personal bunk and some untroubled sleep, when Robert came bouncing back to them, shrieking in excitement. Excited Robert was even harder to understand than the relaxed one. All either Myra or Ranjit could make out was the one word “fish.” Robert could not, or would not, do much in the way of clarifying, and there was no Natasha on hand to translate. What there was was the three-year-old girl who had come with one of the other families in their capsule. She listened silently to their talk for a moment and then, still silent, took Robert away to learn how to do what Myra recognized as tai chi.
That was little Luo, daughter of the couple from Taipei, who were one fragment of their fellow passengers in the capsule. There were six of the Kais in all, including the elderly mothers of both Mr. and Mrs. Kai, who were in the hotel business. This had made them filthy rich, as they needed to be to afford being among the first of the actual tourists the Olympics people were counting on. So were the family from South Korea, so also the young couple from Kazakhstan. The Norwegians weren’t, particularly, but they were the parents and siblings of one of their nation’s broad jumpers and thus were entitled to the discounted fare.
What was wrong with the seventeen other human beings who shared their capsule was that not one of them spoke English, much less either Tamil or Sinhalese. The younger Mrs. Kai was fluent in French, so Myra had someone to talk to. The others talked to each other in Russian, Chinese, and what Ranjit thought was probably German, none of which were of much use to him.
Not at first, anyway. But what they had a lot of was time. Weeks to the midpoint, weeks more to the far end, where their capsule was whipped off on its lunar trajectory, and then a day or two more until their landing at Sinus Iridium.
It was during that last lap when the Subramanians were never more than a few steps from the news screens, because that was when the eliminations were taking place on the moon. The final race would be mano a mano, just one winged flyer against one balloonist. Seven wingers had made the trip to take part in the trials…and as the Subramanians were coming up on the end of their last flight, luna itself hanging gigantic out their windows, they heard their daughter announced as the winner of the trials.
By then all of the adults had become capable of speaking at least a few words each of all their home languages, and they used them to congratulate the Subramanians.
Natasha met her family at the elevator from the surface to Olympic Village, talkative, happy, and, Ranjit was a bit surprised to find, accompanied by a tall coffee-colored young man from Brazil. Both wore the minimal garments that everyone wore in an environment that never altered much from 23°C. “This is Ron,” she told her parents. “That’s short for Ronaldinho. He’s hundred meter dash.”
It wasn’t until Ranjit made the experiment of trying to see his daughter through the eyes of Ronaldinho from Brazil that he really noticed how much a fifteen-year-old girl could resemble an attractive adult woman. To his surprise, Myra did not seem perturbed. She shook this Ronaldinho’s hand with apparently genuine warmth, while young Robert took notice of the runner only to shove him out of the way as, roaring, he threw himself into the arms of his big sister.
After covering the top of Robert’s head