The Last Theorem - Arthur Charles Clarke [96]
What the TV was displaying was an Asian-looking man who stood before a lectern. No one introduced him. He simply began to speak. “Hello,” he said, voice educated and quite unflustered at being before the cameras. “My name is Aritsune Meyuda, and at one time I was Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations. Now I am what I think you would call the personnel director for what we have been calling Pax per Fidem. That’s short for Pax in Orbe Terrarum per Fidem, or World Peace Through Transparency. We are the ones who are responsible for the events on the Korean peninsula.
“Because that operation had to be conducted in secrecy, there has been much speculation about it, and about what has gone on there since. We can now supply some answers for you. To explain how those events came about, and what they mean, the person who made them all possible will speak.”
Meyuda’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the image of a tall, bronzed, and aged but strongly built figure, the sight of whom produced a gasp from Myra. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s—That’s—”
But before she got it out, Meyuda was already introducing him. “I give you,” he said, “the secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr. Ro’onui Tearii.”
Ro’onui Tearii troubled no more with prefacing remarks than had Meyuda. “Let me begin,” he said, “by giving every one of you my assurance that nothing improper has occurred in Korea. This was not a war of conquest. It was a necessary police action, approved by a secret, but unanimous, vote of the United Nations Security Council.
“To explain how this came about I would like to clear up a matter that dates from a few years ago. Many of you will remember that at that time there was much discussion about the way in which the three most powerful nations in the world—that is, Russia, China, and the United States—were attempting to arrange a superpower conference, with the laudable stated aim of finding a solution to the many little wars that were breaking out all around the world. Many commentators thought that what then happened was ludicrous, even shameful, because of a story that was given out. The rumor was that their plan fell apart because the three nations could not agree on the city in which to hold the conference.
“In truth, however, I must now tell you that that whole episode was a deception. That was done at my request. It was needed to conceal the fact that the three presidents were actually conducting highly secret meetings on a subject of transcendental importance.
“Their subject was simply how—and when, and indeed whether—to employ a new nonlethal, but powerfully destructive, weapon, the one which we all now know by the name Silent Thunder.
“What caused them to take this exceptional action was that each of them had learned, through their quite effective intelligence services, that both of the other states had developed a Silent Thunder–like weapon and were rushing to make it operational. And all three of the presidents had advisers who were urging them to be the first to complete the development of the weapon, and then to use it to destroy the economies of their two adversaries and thus become the world’s only superpower again.
“To their everlasting credit, they all rejected that plan. In their secret meetings they agreed to turn Silent Thunder over to the United Nations.” He was somberly silent for a moment—a big and imposing man, said once to have been the strongest man on Maruputi, the tiny French Polynesian island where he had been born. Then he smiled. “And they did,” he announced, “and so the world was spared a terrible conflict, with unguessable results.”
By then Myra and Ranjit were giving each other startled looks almost as much as they were watching the screen. That was not the end of it. There was a great deal more, and, sleep deferred, indeed forgotten, they kept on listening. For nearly an hour, actually—for all the time Secretary-General Tearii was speaking, and then for the much longer time when