The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [77]
For that reason there were few people at the ceremony, as Ranjit spoke the words the old monk had written out for him and Myra allowed the monk to tie around her wrist the holy thread that would ward off evil, with the endless flowers all over the room and the unending blare of the Naathaswaram horns and the melam drums. Then it was all over and the two of them, now indissolubly wed, got back into their police car for the long ride back to the Vorhulst estate. “Long life!” called the monks as they left, and indeed Ranjit and Myra felt confident that that was what lay ahead of them.
However, other persons, farther away, had quite different expectations.
Those persons included the One Point Fives, the designated assassins for the Grand Galactics. They were executing their order to clean up the mess on Planet 3 of that trivial yellow star, and their armada was progressing on its flight. Since their vessels were material, they could not go faster than light speed. There would be many years of transit time, followed by a few days of actual extermination, after which the newlyweds, and every other human being anywhere, would be dead.
It might not be a very long life after all.
20
MARRIAGE
Now that he was everything that he had dared to dream of being, namely, free, famous, and married to Myra de Soyza, it seemed to Ranjit that his personal world just kept getting better and better. There was, however, a larger perspective that kept intruding itself on his private musings, and in many ways that wasn’t good at all.
Take the situation in North Korea, for instance. First off, there seemed to have been a regime change. Blustery luxury-loving Kim Jong Il was gone.
In some ways that was almost a pity. Kim might have been a nut, but he had been the kind of nut that had always stopped just short of an actual large-scale attack on his neighbors. Now there was this new guy. He was always referred to as “the Adorable Leader.” If he had a proper name, it seemed to be too precious to share with the decadent West.
But if the Adorable Leader’s identity was secret, what he did was all too public. Their latest generation of nuclear rockets, the Adorable Leader’s generals claimed, could easily cross the northern stretches of the Pacific Ocean. This meant that they could strike actual United States of America soil—at least Alaska, perhaps even the northern corner of Washington State. What’s more, the generals boasted, the new rockets were definitely reliable. This talk made all of their neighbors increasingly nervous. Those that didn’t already have their own nuclear stocks were under increasing pressure to acquire them.
Nor was the rest of the world much better off. In Africa the continent had backslid to some of the worst days of the twentieth century. Once again they were seeing the armies of boy soldiers, some of them barely into their teens, drafted when their families were murdered, and fighting for stocks of illicit diamonds and even less licit ivory….
It was discouraging.
There was, though, one thing that did trouble Ranjit when he let himself think of it, and it came up when Mevrouw Beatrix Vorhulst looked in on a conversation with lawyer De Saram to ask, “What would anyone like for dinner?”
It was the same question that someone had to ask every morning, but this time it got a different reception. Myra turned to look inquiringly at Ranjit, who cocked an eyebrow at her, sighed, and spoke to their hostess. “That’s something we’ve been talking about, Aunt Bea. We think you’d probably like to have your house back.”
It was the first time Ranjit had ever seen Beatrix Vorhulst look indignant. “Dear boy, not at all! We’re glad to have you stay here as long as you like. You’re family, you know. We like having you here, and we’re honored, besides, and—”
But De Saram, having studied Myra’s face, was shaking his head. “Perhaps we’ve missed the point, Mevrouw,” he said. “They’re married. They want their own home, not a piece of yours, and they’re absolutely right about it. Let’s all have another cup of tea and