The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [69]
Then there was the question of Myra de Soyza’s “autonomous prostheses,” whatever they were. His data searches were of limited help. True, they coached him to the right spelling, but what had AI to do with artificial limbs or hearing aids?
Beatrix Vorhulst helped him out there. “Oh, they’re not talking about smart wooden legs, Ranjit,” she told him. “It’s more subtle than that. The idea is to manufacture a lot of really tiny robots that they inject into your bloodstream, and they’re programmed to recognize and destroy, say, cancer cells.”
“Huh,” he said, considering the idea and liking it. It was, of course, the exact right kind of project to interest Myra de Soyza. “And these little robots, are they working out?”
Mevrouw Vorhulst gave him a sad little smile. “If they’d had them a few years ago, I might not be a widow today. No, they’re still just hopes. There just isn’t the funding for the research—even Myra has been waiting and waiting for her own project to be funded, and it just doesn’t happen. Oh, there’s plenty of money for research—as long as what is being researched is some kind of a weapon.”
When at last Ranjit was able to take Myra de Soyza up on her invitation, Beatrix Vorhulst was happy to provide him with a car and driver. When they were well along the road to the beach, he began to recognize landmarks. He and Gamini had of course checked this beach out in their exploration of everything the area had to offer. Not much had changed. The beaches still had their quota of good-looking young women in trivial bathing costumes, of which there were quite a few.
Ranjit had no idea what the de Soyza beach house would look like, until the driver pointed it out: tile roof, screened lanai around the door, nicely planted with bright flowers. It was only when the door opened and Myra de Soyza came out, wearing a light robe over a bikini that was fully as fashionable, and trivial, as any other along the beach, that he was sure he was in the right place.
Then not quite so sure, because right behind her was a five-or six-year-old girl. Ranjit experienced a quick, dismaying reality shift.
Six-year-old girl?
Myra’s?
Had he been gone quite that long?
He hadn’t. Ada Labrooy was the child of Myra’s sister, now seriously pregnant with another and for that reason quite happy to grant her daughter’s wish to spend as much time as possible with her favorite aunt. Myra herself was happy to have Ada there, not least because Ada’s mother had sent along Ada’s nanny to make sure the child was no inconvenience. When Ranjit had changed and been anointed with UV-repellent cream by Myra, which in itself was one of his nicer recent experiences, the two of them minced across the hot sands to the pleasingly cool waters of the gulf.
What was most wonderful about a Sri Lankan beach, apart from the company, was that the water deepened so gradually. Many dozens of meters from the shoreline he could still stand up straight.
He and Myra didn’t go much farther than waist-deep, and they didn’t swim as much as they happily threw themselves about in the water. Ranjit didn’t resist the temptation to show how far he could swim underwater—nearly a hundred meters; a lot less than he had done as a teenager near Swami Rock, but still enough to get compliments from Myra, which was what the purpose had basically been.
The shrewdness of Myra’s deal with the nanny then became evident. By the time they were showered and changed, a pleasant luncheon had been laid out for them. When they finished with that, the nanny took Ada away for a nap, and herself away to wherever it was she went when not visibly on duty.
By and large, that was one of the pleasantest parts of the day for Ranjit. However, when Myra announced that she really needed to put in the exercise of at least a couple hundred yards of actual swimming—and, no, Ranjit shouldn’t come with her, because he needed to keep his time in bright sunlight down to a safe minimum until his skin got used to the stuff