The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [63]
“The computer—” Ranjit started to object.
“Oh, you’ll get your damn computer, Ranj, but first we have to get airborne. It’ll just be a minute.”
By then the two women had already retreated to their fold-down seats against a bulkhead and, sure enough, the plane had begun to move. And as soon as the seat belt sign went off, the second of the attendants—“I’m Amy. Hi!”—was magicking a laptop out of the table next to Ranjit’s chair, while the one named Jeannie was approaching with stethoscope, blood pressure machine, and several other instruments at the ready.
Ranjit didn’t protest. He let the doctor poke and prod and listen as much as she liked while he himself slowly and clumsily typed out pages of a nearly six-page manuscript, pausing every couple of lines to ask Gamini if he could find the address of the magazine called Nature for him. “Their offices are in England somewhere.” Or just to scowl at the keyboard until memory at last told him what the next line should be. It was a slow process, but when Gamini ventured to ask him if he wanted anything to eat, Ranjit ferociously and unarguably told him to shut up. “Just give me ten minutes,” he demanded. “Oh, maybe half an hour at the most. I can’t stop now.”
It wasn’t ten minutes, of course. Wasn’t half an hour, either. It was well over an hour before Ranjit looked up, sighed, and said to Gamini, “I need to check everything, so I’d better send a copy to your house. Tell me your e-mail address.”
And when he had typed that in, he at last pushed the icon marked send and then sat back.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry to have been such a pest, but it was pretty important to me. Ever since I figured it out, five or six months ago, I’ve been terrified that I might forget some part of it before I could get it refereed.” He paused, suddenly licking his lips. “And one other thing. For a long time I’ve been thinking about real food. Do you have, say, any fresh fruit juice on this plane, any kind? And maybe something like a ham sandwich, or maybe a couple of scrambled eggs?”
16
HOMEGOING
Gamini refused to listen to any talk of American breakfasts but simply signaled to the flight attendants. Who produced a fine Sri Lankan meal—string hoppers of woven rice, a rich curry of meat and potatoes, and a plate of poppadoms—causing Ranjit’s eyes to bulge in wonder. “Tell me, Gamini,” he ordered, already chewing, “when did you get to be God? Isn’t this an American plane?”
Gamini, sipping a cup of tea that had come from the fields around Kandy, shook his head. “It’s a United Nations plane,” he said, “which happens to have an American crew, only it’s not on either UN or U.S. business right now. We just borrowed it to go after you.”
“And ‘we’ is—?”
Gamini shook his head again, grinning. “Can’t tell you, or anyway not right now. Pity. I knew you’d be interested, and as a matter of fact, I was considering asking you if you wanted to join us, when you went off on your little cruise.”
Ranjit didn’t put his spoon down, but he held it motionless while he gave his friend a long and not entirely friendly look. “You’re telling me that you’re such an important person that you can just borrow a plane like this to run your errands for you?”
This time Gamini laughed out loud. “Me? No. They didn’t do it for me. They did it because my dad requested it. He’s got this high-up UN job, you see.”
“And what job is that?”
“Can’t tell you that, either, so don’t ask. And don’t ask what country you’ve just got out of, either. Finding where you were wasn’t hard, after we got hold of Tiffany Kanakaratnam—Oh,” he said, taking note of Ranjit’s response to the child