The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [137]
At least Robert’s crying was over. The worry, the puzzlement, the terrible pain of loss, however—they weren’t over for either Myra or Ranjit. The calls never stopped coming in, either, from everyone they knew, and from an unbelievable number of people they didn’t know at all. Some were actual pests. Ronaldinho Olsos, for instance, begging their forgiveness in case they felt he was in any way responsible; T. Orion Bledsoe, from Pasadena, to offer cursory sympathy but mostly to ask if Ranjit had any idea, any idea at all that for any reason he hadn’t already communicated to the authorities, of what might have happened to his daughter.
Then there were the reporters.
Ranjit had believed that the absolute maximum invasion of his privacy had taken place after Nature had published his proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. He was wrong about that. What happened now was much worse. Although President-Elect Bandara had arranged for police to guard the approaches to the Subramanian home, they were effective only there and nowhere else. Once Ranjit got onto his bike to leave, he was fair game. So he didn’t go into his university any more often than was unavoidable. After dinner he left Myra studying her journal reports and Robert stacking marbles on the floor beside her and retreated to the master bedroom to plan his next seminar.
That was when it happened.
Myra looked up from her screen, frowning. She had heard something—a distant electronic squeal, perhaps—and at the same moment had seen a flash of golden light coming under the door.
The next thing she heard was her husband’s voice, his tone a mixture of joy and terror. “My God!” he cried. “Tashy, is that really you?”
After that there was nothing that could have kept Myra de Soyza Subramanian out of that room. When she flung the door open, she saw her husband staring at someone standing by the window. It was a young woman. What she wore was the bare minimum that any girl might wear who knew perfectly well that no outside party was going to see her.
It was a costume Myra had often enough seen her daughter wear around the house. She echoed her husband’s cry—“Tashy!”—and did what any mother might have done in these preposterous circumstances, threw herself at the girl, trying to wrap her arms around her.
That, it turned out, was impossible.
A meter from the figure of the girl something slowed Myra down, a dozen centimeters later it stopped her cold. It wasn’t anything like a wall. It wasn’t anything tangible at all. Perhaps one could say that it was something like a warm and irresistible breeze.
Whatever it was, Myra was stopped cold, right there, at arm’s length from any part of this figure that wore the face of the child she had borne, and raised, and loved.
And who now did not even look at her. Its eyes were fixed on Ranjit. When it spoke, it said, “It is not of interest to discuss who I am, Dr. Subramanian. What is important is that I must ask you many questions, all of which you must answer.”
And then, without waiting for a response from Ranjit, without any explanations or even simple courtesy, the questioning began.
“Many” questions?
Yes, that was definitely the right word. They went on forever—for, by actual clock time, nearly four hours—and they covered, well, everything. “Why are many of your tribes destroying their weapons?” “Has your species ever lived at peace?” “What is the meaning of ‘proof’ as applied to your earlier researches on the Fermat theorem?” And even stranger ones: “Why do your males and females often copulate even when the female cannot conceive?” And “Have you not calculated an optimal population for your planet?” And “Why do your actual numbers so greatly exceed it?” And, “There are areas of many square kilometers on