The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [141]
What she was saying Ranjit didn’t know and didn’t at that moment care about. He headed for his study, Myra by his side, leaving the image on the news screen behind. He didn’t waste time trying to get a regular phone call through to the Skyhook car that contained his real returning daughter, either. Rank had its privileges. He called on the executive channels that were open to him as a member of the Skyhook board, and it was less than a minute before he had his own actual daughter looking out at him from her tiny bunk in the car’s radiation-shielded capsule. It took longer than that for the actual Natasha to reassure her mother that this Natasha—hair mussed, bra stained, nothing like the immaculacy of the narrator-Natasha—was really the specific Natasha that Myra had wanted.
She was also, she finally succeeded in persuading her parents, alive and unharmed, though totally unable to say how she had come to wind up in the capsule that she had definitely not been in when it was searched.
That was all good, but not quite good enough to satisfy Myra. Having frighteningly, and seemingly irrevocably, lost her daughter once, she was not prepared to give up the present contact. Might indeed not have done so for hours, except that it was actually Natasha who ended their talk. She looked up from the camera first in irritation, then in startlement, and finally in something that was almost fear. “Oh my God,” she cried. “Is that the copy of me they were talking about? On the news channels—go see for yourself!”
They did, and then they dialed back to the beginnings of the thing’s message. It started with a blaze of light. Then the Natasha figure began to speak without introduction. “Hello, members of the Earth human race,” it said. “We have three matters to communicate to you, and they are as follows.
“One, the member of the Grand Galactics formerly nearby has left this astronomical neighborhood, we suppose to rejoin its fellows. It is not known when it will return or what it will then do.
“Two, our principal decision makers have concluded that you will find it easier to converse with us if you know what we look like. Accordingly, we will display images of about fifty-five of the races most active on behalf of the Grand Galactics, beginning with ourselves, who are known as the Nine-Limbeds.
“Three, and final, the One Point Fives cannot return to their home at present because of inadequate supplies. The Machine-Stored prefer not to leave without them. Both species will therefore come to your planet. Those three species just mentioned include all of the species charged with dealing with the problems arising from your kind. Do not be alarmed, though. The Grand Galactics have rescinded their orders to sterilize your planet. In any case, when the One Point Fives arrive, they will be occupying areas that your people do not use. That ends this communication.”
It did. Myra and Ranjit looked at each other in bafflement. “What areas are they going to occupy, do you think?” Myra asked.
Ranjit didn’t try to answer her, because he had a more urgent question of his own. “What do you suppose they meant about sterilizing our planet?” he asked.
The creatures who called themselves the Nine-Limbeds not only showed all the beings they had promised—over and over, on all the world’s screens—they gave a running commentary. “We are called Nine-Limbeds,” the voice said, “because, as you see, we have nine limbs. There are four on each side used mainly for transportation. The one at the rear is used for everything else.”
And on each screen was a picture of the creature the voice was describing. “It looks like a beetle!” the cook exclaimed. Indeed it did, provided a beetle might wear girdles of bright metallic fabric between each of its four pairs of limbs. As the voice promised, there was another limb at the end of its body, a thing like an elephant’s trunk, Myra thought, but skinnier and long enough to reach to the front