The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [62]
So to measure anything in any of the three dimensions, whether it’s the circumference of an electron or the diameter of the universe itself, Grand Galactics simply count the number of Planck distances along a line from point A to point B.
That is invariably a large number, but that’s all right with the Grand Galactics. Looked at in one way, they are pretty large numbers themselves.
So, having found ways of at least identifying the un-understandable, let’s get back to that much simpler being, Ranjit Subramanian.
When Ranjit was quite young, his highly ecumenical father encouraged him to read some rather strange books, one of which, by a writer named James Branch Cabell, was about the nature of writing and writers. (For a time Ganesh Subramanian thought that might be a career choice for his son.) What some would-be writers were trying to say to the world, Cabell wrote, was, “I am pregnant with words, and I must have lexicological parturition or I die.”
And, curiously, that is almost exactly the condition Ranjit now felt himself to be in.
For days now Ranjit had been pleading for help, shouting into the empty hallways, explaining, though no one seemed to be listening, that he had something that absolutely had to be communicated to a journal at once. There were no answers. Even the limping old man was now just putting Ranjit’s meals inside the door and limping away as fast as he could.
So when Ranjit heard the old man’s step-slide coming along the empty corridors, he felt little interest, except that this time there was, along with it, the rap-tap-tap of the footsteps of someone who wasn’t limping at all. A moment later Ranjit’s cell door opened. The old man was there, but deferentially a step or two behind another man—a man who wore an expression of shock and dismay on a face whose lineaments Ranjit knew as well as he knew his own. “Sweet God Almighty, Ranj,” Gamini Bandara said wonderingly, “is that really you?”
Of all the questions Ranjit might have asked this unexpected visitor from his past, he chose the simplest. “What are you doing here, Gamini?”
“What the hell do you think I’m doing? I’m going to get you out of here, and if you think that was easy, you’re crazier than you look. Then we’ll get you to a dentist—what happened to your front teeth? Or, no, I suppose first you need to see a doctor—What?”
Ranjit was standing now, almost quivering with excitement. “Not a doctor! If you can get me out of here, get me to a computer!”
Gamini looked puzzled. “A computer? Well, sure, that can be arranged, but first we need to make sure you’re all right—”
“Damn it, Gamini!” Ranjit cried. “Can’t you understand what I’m saying? I think I’ve got the proof! I need a computer, and I need it right now! Do you have any idea how terrified I am that I’ll forget some part of the proof before I can get it refereed?”
Ranjit got the doctor. He got the computer, too—in fact got both of them at the same time, but not until Gamini had walked him out of his prison to where a helicopter waited, its vane turning over. As Ranjit climbed into the chopper, he saw a couple of men standing nearby. Squinty was one of them; Squinty looked astonished and worried but didn’t even gesture a good-bye. Then a twenty-minute downhill flight, among great mountains that wore brilliant caps of ice. In the helicopter Ranjit could not help turning to Gamini with questions, but this time it was Gamini who didn’t want to talk. “Later,” he said, nodding at the chopper pilot, who wore a uniform Ranjit had never seen before.
They landed at a real airport, a scant dozen meters from a plane—and not just any plane, Ranjit saw, but a BAB-2200, the fastest and, in some configurations, the most luxurious aircraft Boeing-Airbus had ever built, and it wore the blue globe-and-wreath United Nations insignia. Inside, it was even more so. Its seating was in leather armchairs. And its crew consisted of a pilot (wearing the uniform of a colonel in the American air force) and two very pretty flight attendants (wearing