The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [71]
Myra said firmly, “No. Not if he doesn’t peek or cheat in some other way.” Then, to Ranjit, “You aren’t going to peek?”
“No.”
“And you won’t know how many coins are actually in the row?”
He pursed his lips. “I didn’t say anything about what I would know… but, no, I won’t.”
“Then it’s impossible,” she declared. But when Ranjit invited her to put him to the test, she made him turn around and set Ada to watch his eyes to see that he wasn’t making use of some accidental window that could serve as a mirror. Then she swiftly smoothed most of the coins out of existence, leaving just three. She winked at Ada, and then draped her beach towel so that it covered two of the remaining three, and also covered a full meter of no coins at all—
—and said, “You’re on.”
Ranjit turned slowly, as though he had all the time in the world, while Ada squealed, “Hurry, Ranjit! You only have ten seconds! Or five, now. Or maybe only two—”
He gave the child a smile. “Don’t worry,” he admonished. He leaned forward and for the first time glanced at where the row of circles had been, took the stick, and at one end of the row scratched a straight line. Then, as he was removing Myra’s towel, he said, “There’s your answer,” and grinned. “Huh,” he said, admiring the result. “Very clever.” He waited for a reaction from Myra to the drawing in the sand—
1000
Myra stared in puzzlement for a moment, and then her expression cleared. “Oh my God! Yes! It’s the binary number for—wait a minute—for the decimal number eight! And that’s the right answer, too!”
Ranjit, still grinning, nodded and turned to Ada, now a little apprehensive. Should he explain again how binary notation worked—1, 10, 11, 100 for one, two, three, four? He hesitated.
But the child’s lips had broken into a smile. “You didn’t say you were going to go binary, Ranjit, but then you didn’t say you weren’t, either, so I guess that’s all right. It’s a good trick.”
She delivered her verdict with enough adult gravity to sustain Ranjit’s smile. His curiosity was piqued, though. “Tell me something, Ada. Do you really know what binary numbers are?”
She became mock-indignant. “But of course I do, Ranjit! Don’t you know who Aunt Myra made my parents name me after?”
Myra was the one who responded to Ranjit’s puzzled look. “I’m guilty,” she admitted. “When my sister and her husband couldn’t agree on a name for the baby, I suggested Ada. Ada Lovelace was my heroine and role model, you know. All of my friends fixated on women like Shiva or Wonder Woman or Joan of Arc, but the only woman I wanted to be just like when I grew up was Countess Ada Lovelace.”
“Countess—” Ranjit began, and then snapped his fingers. “Of course! The computer woman in, when was it, the 1800s? Lord Byron’s daughter, who wrote the first computer program ever for Charles Babbage’s calculating machine!”
“That one, yes,” Myra agreed. “Of course, that machine never got built—they didn’t have the technology—but the program was good. She’s why they named the software language Ada.”
The daily beach drive had become a fixed date, and then Ranjit thought of a way to make it even better. De Saram had opened a line of bank credit for him, based on the anticipation of his father’s estate, which meant not only that he then had an actual bank account with actual rupees in it that he could spend, but meant he had a credit card as well. Ranjit had noticed the beachside restaurants up above the tree line, and decided to take Myra to dinner.
His driver stopped at one of the restaurants along the road, but when Ranjit opened the door to investigate, the smells were not encouraging. The second he tried was better. He actually went inside, got a menu, sniffed thoughtfully, and told the person who gave him the menu that he’d probably be back, but he made no promises about when. But in the third, Ranjit got a menu but hardly looked at it. The aroma from the kitchen, the way the few diners were lingering over their tea and sweets…Ranjit inhaled deeply and made a reservation. And when he issued the actual