The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [144]
They were all, of course, crazy. “Or the next thing to it,” Ranjit told Gamini Bandara when he called. “Why are you worrying about it?”
“Because even a crazy person can pull a trigger, Ranj. Isn’t it true that Natasha has had death threats?”
Ranjit thought that over for a moment before he answered. His daughter had been very emphatic about not telling anyone about that, but still—“Well, yes,” he admitted. “Stupid stuff. She doesn’t take them seriously.”
“Well, I do,” Gamini informed him, “and so does my father. He’s ordering twenty-four-hour guards around your house and to go with any of you who goes out.”
Ranjit was shaking his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary—” he began.
“Doesn’t matter what you think,” Gamini said cheerfully. “Dad’s the president now, so he’s the one who gives the orders. Anyway, if it wasn’t the Feds, it’d be somebody else. Your pal Joris Vorhulst is getting threats, too. He’s already got a bunch of armed guards around the Skyhook base. Now he’s talking about putting Skyhook security forces around everybody connected with the project. You included.”
Ranjit opened his mouth to protest—not as much because he couldn’t stand the idea of being guarded twenty-four hours a day as because he anticipated his daughter’s reaction—but Gamini didn’t give him the chance. “So you see, Ranj,” he said reasonably, “it’s going to happen. There’s no sense in fighting it. And, you know, it just might save all your lives.”
Ranjit sighed. “How long?” he asked.
“Well, until those One Point Fives get here, at least,” Gamini said thoughtfully. “After that, who knows?”
And that was a really good question, Ranjit admitted to himself. Leaving only that quite different question of how he was going to tell Myra and Natasha about the plan.
The chance came almost at once. Once off the phone with Gamini, he went looking for his family and found them on the back porch with binoculars in the dark, studying the constellation that held much of the Oort cloud. Passing the glasses to Natasha, Myra said to her husband, “They’re getting close. Tashy? Give your father a look.” And she did. Ranjit had no difficulty in finding the bright splash of light that—so said the experts—was the exhaust of the deceleration rockets of the approaching One Point Five armada. It wasn’t the first time he had seen it. Even before the announcement that these One Point Fives were coming to stay, Earth’s giant telescopes had been providing much brighter and more detailed images for the world’s news screens.
But they were getting closer.
Ranjit lowered the glasses and cleared his throat. “That was Gamini on the phone,” he said, and relayed what had been said. But if he had expected his daughter to object to grown-up interference with her life, he had been mistaken. She listened patiently, but all she said was, “These guards are to protect us against the nut satanists, right? But who”—she waved at the gentle starry patterns overhead—“is going to protect us from them?”
That was the question the whole world was asking—asking itself and even trying to ask of the invaders, as half of the world’s most important people began talking into microphones that beamed their question in the direction of the approaching armada. There were many questions, covering their plans, their intentions, their reasons for coming to Earth in the first place—many, many questions, in many languages, from many people great and small.
They received no answers at all.
This wasn’t easy for the human race to handle. All over planet Earth—and in the lava tubes of the moon, and in orbit, and wherever else human beings had established a foothold—people were showing the strain of what was coming. Even the Subramanian family was not immune. Myra was biting her nails again, as she hadn’t done since her early teens. Ranjit was spending hours on the phone to almost every important person he knew (and