The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [157]
“I said, do you think he can get reelected?”
Before he answered, Ranjit made the turn onto the uphill road where Surash waited. “No. But I don’t think it matters. He’s played the hard-as-nails role about as long as he can. Now he’s going to want to show himself caring.”
Myra didn’t respond to that until Ranjit had parked the car. Then she put an affectionate hand on his arm. “Ranj, do you know what? I’m feeling really relaxed.”
The old monk’s days of freedom were over. He lay on a narrow cot, his left arm immobilized so that a forest of tubing could stream unimpeded, from a wildflower bed of multicolored bags of medications at the head of the bed to the veins in his wrist. “Hello, my dears,” he said as they came in, his voice fuzzed and metallic because of the throat mike taped to his larynx. “I am grateful that you came. I have a decision to make, Ranjit, and I don’t know what to do. If your father were still alive, I could ask him, but he is gone and I turn to you. Shall I let them store me in a machine?”
Myra caught her breath. “Ada has been here,” she said.
The old monk couldn’t nod his head, but he managed a movement of the chin. “Indeed she has,” he agreed. “I invited Dr. Labrooy. There is nothing more that medicine can do for me except let the machines continue to breathe for me and continue me in this great pain. In the news it said that Ada Labrooy had another possibility. She says she can do as these people from space have taught her. I can leave my body but live on as a computer program. I wouldn’t hurt anymore.” He was silent for a moment before he found the strength to go on. “However,” he said, “there would be costs. The way to salvation through doing good works in karma yoga would no longer be possible for me, I think, but jnana yoga and bhakti yoga—the way of knowledge and the way of devotion—are still there. But do you know what that sounds like to me?”
Ranjit shook his head.
“Nirvana,” said the old monk. “My soul would be released from the cycle of eternities.”
Ranjit cleared his throat. “But that is what everyone seeks, my father used to say. Don’t you want it?”
“With all my heart, yes! But what if this is a deception? I can’t trick Brahman!”
He lay back in the bed, the ancient eyes fixed on Ranjit and Myra imploringly.
Ranjit frowned. It was Myra, however, who spoke. She laid one hand on his shrunken wrist and said, “Dear Surash, we know you would never do anything for a base motive. You must simply do what you think is right. It will be.”
And that was the end of their talk.
When they were outside again, Ranjit took a deep breath. “I didn’t know Ada was ready to try recording a human being.”
“Neither did I,” Myra said. “Last time we spoke, she told me they were getting ready to record a white rat.”
Ranjit winced. “And if Surash is wrong, that’s what he’ll be reborn as.”
“Well,” Myra said practically, “if he is going to be reborn at all—which is his belief, not mine—I am sure it would not be as a bad thing.”
She was silent for a moment, then smiled. “Let’s see how they’re coming with our house.”
The house that had been Ranjit’s father’s had now begun to show the effects of Myra’s reshaping—one big bedroom for Ranjit and Myra to share where there had been two smaller ones, three baths (and a half bath on the ground floor for visitors as well) where there had been only one. None of it, however, was finished, and sidestepping all the piles of tiling and plumbing and general refurbishing was thirsty work. And Myra said, “What would you think about a quick swim?”
It was a great idea, and Ranjit admitted as much at once. Within twenty minutes they were in their suits and on their bikes on the way to the raft anchored nearest to Swami Rock.
Since the waters nearby quickly fell off to a depth of a hundred meters and more, they took along their diving gear. That included the latest carbon-fiber tanks, capable of holding air at a pressure of a thousand atmospheres. They had no particular plans for going that deep, but there was always the brutal history of the area to view