The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [121]
Other client races of the Grand Galactics wouldn’t ever have taken that sort of chance in the first place. The One Point Fives wouldn’t have. Neither would the Machine-Stored. Not one of the Grand Galactics’ subject races had that keen a sense of humor, nor had ever dared such a transgression. Up until that point, that is.
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