The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [14]
For a moment Ranjit actually considered her offer. Habit won; she was still irrevocably female. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ll be all right.” He gave her a nod to express enough gratitude to be polite, then turned and walked away.
But, although he left the woman behind him, he carried away with him what she had said.
There was wisdom in it—from a woman, yes, but still wisdom. Who was this professor to tell him that he could not do well on the final exam? There were others besides a Sinhalese schoolteacher and a Burgher woman who knew Sri Lankan history. And there was one particular place, Ranjit was quite sure, where such knowledge was stored, and those in charge would be glad to share it with him.
Pass he did. Not with the “impossible” 80 percent on the final that Dr. Mendis had found so amusing, but with a 91 percent—one of the five highest marks for those taking the test that year. And what would Dr. Mendis say now?
Ranjit had been confident that the fact that his father wasn’t speaking to him did not mean he would refuse his son help. He’d been right. When he’d explained his need to Surash, the old monk who had taken his call, he’d got the response he had expected. “I must consult with the high priest about this,” Surash had said cautiously. “Please call me back in one hour.” But Ranjit had had no doubt of the answer, and had already filled his backpack with toothbrush, clean underwear, and everything else he would need for a stay in Trincomalee before he’d called back. “Yes, Ranjit,” the old monk had said. “Come as soon as you can. We will give you what you need.”
The only way for Ranjit to get to Trincomalee had been to hitchhike in a truck that smelled of the driver’s curry and its cargo of fragrant cinnamon bark. That had meant arriving at the temple well after midnight. His father had of course been long asleep, and the assistant priest on duty did not offer to disturb him. What the assistant priest was willing to do, however, was everything Ranjit asked for: give him a cell and a bed and three plain (but adequate) meals a day—and access to the temple’s archives.
The archives weren’t written on ancient parchment or animal skins, as Ranjit had feared; this was his father’s temple, right up to speed with all the modern necessities. When Ranjit woke that morning, there was a laptop on the table by his cot, and through it he had access to all the history of Sri Lanka, from the days of the tribal Veddas who were the island’s first inhabitants, to the present. There was much that his teacher had not touched on, but Ranjit had brought his textbook along—not to study, but to give him a guide to the parts of the nation’s past he could safely ignore. He had only five days before he had to go back to the university. But five days of total dedication to one subject was quite enough for a young man as bright and motivated as Ranjit Subramanian. (Nor was he interrupting himself by multitasking. Score one for the theory of the GSSM syndrome.) And he had learned a number of things that would not appear on the final exam, too. He had learned about the vast treasure of pearls and gold and ivory that the Portuguese had looted from his father’s temple, just before they tore it down. He learned that once, for fifty years, the Tamils had ruled all of the island—and that the general who had finally defeated the Tamil forces and “freed” his own people evidently was still held in respect by the modern Sinhalese—even by Gamini’s own family, because his own father, Dhatusena Bandara, was named after him.
Ranjit headed straight for Gamini’s room when the temple van dropped him at the university. He was grinning to himself as he knocked on Gamini’s door, thinking of how amusing it would be to tell him that.
That didn’t happen. Gamini