He looked down. Seated cross-legged on the floor next to him, Natasha Subramanian was giving signs of distress. “Did you want to say something, my dear?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” she confessed. “I mean, why is Egypt poor? I thought the high dam at Aswân made them rich.”
The president smiled, sadly. “A good many people thought that. Aswân can produce a great deal of electric power, but it can’t do two things at once. When it’s maxing the power production, it is cutting power from agriculture, and they need food even more.” He shook his head. “The money could do wonders for Egypt. Build hundreds of new power plants, for instance.”
“Why can’t they do that anyway?” Natasha asked.
The president gave her a tolerant look. “They’d love to,” he said. “They can’t. They don’t have the money. They haven’t had it for a long time. So the only way they’ve been able to build new plants is what they call the BOOT scheme—build, own, operate, transfer. Private industry pays for building the plants, and it owns them, collecting all the profits, for a period of years before transferring them to the state. But by then they’re pretty elderly plants and maybe not quite as safe as they should be.” He shook his head again. “All this,” he added, “is what my old friend Hameed told me in confidence. It would be unpleasant for him if the Americans found out he told me about it.”
Natasha sighed. “So, what can we do, then?”
She got an answer from an unexpected source. Robert looked up from his work screen. “’Olden ’Ule,” he said reprovingly.
Nigel De Saram gave him an affectionate look. “You could be right about that, Robert,” he said.
Gamini Bandara frowned. “What’s he right about?”
“Why, the Golden Rule. You know, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ That’s the simplest description of a benevolent world I know, and if everybody did it—us, the Americans, the space aliens, everyone—I’m sure a good many problems would simply vanish.”
Gamini looked doubtfully at his father’s old friend. “No disrespect, sir, but do you really think these One Point Fives are going to be moved by an ancient saying from some primitive people’s supersti—some people’s religion, I mean?”
“Oh, but I do,” the lawyer said firmly. “That Golden Rule is not just a religious notion. Others have said the same thing in other words, without invoking supernatural authority. There was Immanuel Kant, the pure reason man, for example. What he said was—” De Saram closed his eyes for a moment, then repeated the well-learned sentences: “‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ Isn’t that Robert’s Golden Rule, exactly? What Kant called it was his ‘categorical imperative.’ By that he meant that it was what every human being—and, I guess, every space alien, too, if Kant had ever let himself imagine such things—should establish as his basic rule of behavior, with no exceptions.” He tousled Robert’s hair affectionately. “Now, Robert,” he said, “all you have to do is get your father to prove that particular theorem and the world will become a better place.” He glanced across the room to where Ranjit had placed himself before the screen that displayed the One Point Fives’ multitudinous activities. “Care to try it, Ranjit?” he called.
When Ranjit looked up at last, the expression on his face was seraphic, but he wasn’t looking at Nigel De Saram. “Gamini,” he said, “do you remember when, years and years ago, you and I were discussing something from a lecture I’d wandered into? About an idea the Israelis had—they called it a hydro-solar project—for generating power at the Dead Sea?”
Gamini took no more than half a second to search his ancient memories. “No,” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“I finally figured out why the One Point Fives might be digging that tunnel!” Ranjit said triumphantly. “Perhaps they’re building a power plant! All right, the Americans won’t let the aliens give the Egyptians all that money, but the Americans can’t object to the aliens’ sharing some of the electrical power the Egyptians really need!”
46
DEAL-MAKING
Since important decisions were to be made, some eighteen or twenty of the visitors from space were crowded together—Nine-Limbeds and One Point Fives alike, even including a couple of the Machine-Stored who were the armada’s pilots. The place they were in had once been the equivalent of an admiral’s bridge for the One Point Fives’ invading armada. Now it was the approximate equivalent of a Kremlin or an Oval Office. The crowding was distasteful to the One Point Fives, since most of them were wearing only the minimal protective garb and thus were more exposed than ever before to the sounds, sights, and smells of all these others.
Of all the One Point Fives, the one least happy with all those unwanted sensory inputs was the one charged with keeping them out of trouble. Her official title was “Identifier of Undesirable Outcomes,” but she was usually called just “Worrier.” Actually, what Worrier disliked most of all was being compelled to sit through a lecture on antique human technology as delivered by the chief arbitrator of the Nine-Limbeds. When you came right down to it, Worrier didn’t really care for Nine-Limbeds in any relationship, especially one that might involve touching their nasty little ninth limbs. But sometimes she had no choice.
The bit of human gadget-building they were now being taught was quite important to the humans. Actually, it was not uningenious, Worrier admitted to herself. Water would come from the sea, drop to the floor of Qattara, and there turn turbines to generate electricity. “And this electricity,” Worrier said to the speaker for the Nine-Limbeds, “is what these creatures want?”
The Nine-Limbed said, “It is what you promised them. I have a copy of the agreement if you wish to see it.”
The creature was actually holding out a data rod in its manipulating limb. Worrier shuddered and moved a bit away. Since she did not want these negotiations to fail, she offered a more constructive comment: “When you first proposed this,” she said, “I thought you were considering teaching them the harvesting of vacuum energy as we do it. I am glad we aren’t doing that. When the Grand Galactics come back, it might anger them.”
The Nine-Limbed did not respond. Worrier pressed. “And this matter of what they call the categorical imperative?”
The Nine-Limbed covered a yawn. “It is how these creatures wish to run their planet. They want us to do the same. And actually”—it leveled its ninth limb at one of the Machine-Stored pilots, who was following the conversation with his own Nine-Limbed translator—“some technology transfer has already begun.”
Worrier, who knew that quite well, sighed. “And when the Grand Galactics come back, what will we tell them?”
The Nine-Limbed gave her an impatient hiss. “They will return one second from now, perhaps, or in ten thousand years. Time is not the same for them. You know the Grand Galactics.”
Worrier gazed at the Nine-Limbed in silence for a moment. Then, shivering inside her light armor, she said, “Actually, we don’t know them at all. However, having no better alternative, we accept the proposal. And, if we are lucky, by the time the Grand Galactics come back, we may all be dead.”
Before Worrier would come back into the command center, she insisted that it be flushed with ionized gases. Even so she paused in the doorway to sniff before entering.
This caused the other occupants to do the One Point Five equivalent of exchanging amused smiles. The one called Manager, however, was the only one who spoke up. “They are gone, Worrier,” he called to her. “Even their smells are gone. There is no longer anything to be afraid of.”
Worrier gave him a reproving look as she took her seat. But he was, after all, not only her superior in the One Point Five hierarchy but, when possible, her mate. “You know I am not afraid of the Nine-Limbeds,” she informed him and, even more, the others in the room. “Would you like me to tell you why I dislike them?”
Manager said meekly, “Please do, Worrier.”
&n
bsp; “It is not because of their offensive odor,” she said, “and not because their ninth limb, which is their organ for manipulating things, is also their sexual organ. These things are unpleasant. Sometimes they even use that limb to touch me, which is offensive. But they cannot help their biology, can they?”
“No, Worrier, they cannot,” Manager confirmed, and there were shrill hisses of agreement from the others in the room.
“What they can help, however, is the way in which we can teach and mentor the aborigines of this planet as they grow to be as civilized as we are. We can no longer accept that all our dealings with them must be through the Nine-Limbeds, since only they can speak their languages.”
The hisses abruptly dried up. Even Manager was silent for a moment before venturing, “Our superiors do not want us to be able to talk to other races directly. That is why only the Nine-Limbeds have been authorized language skills.”
Worrier was steadfast. “But our superiors are not here now. We have only one proper course for the future. We must begin at once to learn human languages…. Or would you prefer that when these human beings grow up they take after the Nine-Limbeds instead of us?”
47
PARTING
When Ranjit and Myra went back to see Surash, it was quite a bit after their previous meeting—two surgeries later, by the way the old monk had come to count time. By then their world—the world of everyone alive on Earth—was new twice over, and still changing.
“It’s not just the technology, either,” Ranjit told his wife. “It’s, well, friendlier than that. All the Egyptians hoped for was a share of the Qattara power. The One Point Fives didn’t have to give them all of it.”
Myra didn’t immediately respond, so Ranjit gave her a quick look. She was gazing out at the waters of the Bay of Bengal, with what might have been a slight smile on her face. When she felt her husband’s eye on her, the smile broadened. “Huh,” she said.
Ranjit, laughing, turned his attention back to the road. “My darling,” he said, “you are full of surprises. Have you run out of things to be suspicious of?”
Myra considered. “Probably not. Right now I can’t think of any big ones, though.”
“Not even the Americans?”
She pursed her lips. “Now that that horrid Bledsoe man is a fugitive from justice, no. I think the president isn’t going to make any more waves for a while. Bledsoe is what deniability was invented for.”
Ranjit listened quietly, but what he was thinking was not really about what she was saying. More than anything else he was thinking about Myra herself, and in particular what incredibly good fortune he had to have her. He almost didn’t hear the next thing she said to him. “What?”
“I said, do you think he can get reelected?”
Before he answered, Ranjit made the turn onto the uphill road where Surash waited. “No. But I don’t think it matters. He’s played the hard-as-nails role about as long as he can. Now he’s going to want to show himself caring.”
Myra didn’t respond to that until Ranjit had parked the car. Then she put an affectionate hand on his arm. “Ranj, do you know what? I’m feeling really relaxed.”
The old monk’s days of freedom were over. He lay on a narrow cot, his left arm immobilized so that a forest of tubing could stream unimpeded, from a wildflower bed of multicolored bags of medications at the head of the bed to the veins in his wrist. “Hello, my dears,” he said as they came in, his voice fuzzed and metallic because of the throat mike taped to his larynx. “I am grateful that you came. I have a decision to make, Ranjit, and I don’t know what to do. If your father were still alive, I could ask him, but he is gone and I turn to you. Shall I let them store me in a machine?”
Myra caught her breath. “Ada has been here,” she said.
The old monk couldn’t nod his head, but he managed a movement of the chin. “Indeed she has,” he agreed. “I invited Dr. Labrooy. There is nothing more that medicine can do for me except let the machines continue to breathe for me and continue me in this great pain. In the news it said that Ada Labrooy had another possibility. She says she can do as these people from space have taught her. I can leave my body but live on as a computer program. I wouldn’t hurt anymore.” He was silent for a moment before he found the strength to go on. “However,” he said, “there would be costs. The way to salvation through doing good works in karma yoga would no longer be possible for me, I think, but jnana yoga and bhakti yoga—the way of knowledge and the way of devotion—are still there. But do you know what that sounds like to me?”
Ranjit shook his head.
“Nirvana,” said the old monk. “My soul would be released from the cycle of eternities.”
Ranjit cleared his throat. “But that is what everyone seeks, my father used to say. Don’t you want it?”
“With all my heart, yes! But what if this is a deception? I can’t trick Brahman!”
He lay back in the bed, the ancient eyes fixed on Ranjit and Myra imploringly.
Ranjit frowned. It was Myra, however, who spoke. She laid one hand on his shrunken wrist and said, “Dear Surash, we know you would never do anything for a base motive. You must simply do what you think is right. It will be.”
And that was the end of their talk.
When they were outside again, Ranjit took a deep breath. “I didn’t know Ada was ready to try recording a human being.”
“Neither did I,” Myra said. “Last time we spoke, she told me they were getting ready to record a white rat.”
Ranjit winced. “And if Surash is wrong, that’s what he’ll be reborn as.”
“Well,” Myra said practically, “if he is going to be reborn at all—which is his belief, not mine—I am sure it would not be as a bad thing.”
She was silent for a moment, then smiled. “Let’s see how they’re coming with our house.”
The house that had been Ranjit’s father’s had now begun to show the effects of Myra’s reshaping—one big bedroom for Ranjit and Myra to share where there had been two smaller ones, three baths (and a half bath on the ground floor for visitors as well) where there had been only one. None of it, however, was finished, and sidestepping all the piles of tiling and plumbing and general refurbishing was thirsty work. And Myra said, “What would you think about a quick swim?”
It was a great idea, and Ranjit admitted as much at once. Within twenty minutes they were in their suits and on their bikes on the way to the raft anchored nearest to Swami Rock.
Since the waters nearby quickly fell off to a depth of a hundred meters and more, they took along their diving gear. That included the latest carbon-fiber tanks, capable of holding air at a pressure of a thousand atmospheres. They had no particular plans for going that deep, but there was always the brutal history of the area to view underwater. It was here that—nearly four centuries back, when Trinco was dominated by the Portuguese invaders—their sea captain had destroyed the original temple in a fit of religious fury. (The fact that some of her own ancestors had been among the vandals didn’t diminish Myra’s interest at all.) The seabed around the rock was still littered with recognizable carved columns.
Once underwater, Ranjit and Myra paused to inspect an elaborate doorway. Ranjit was giving his wife a mock-reproachful shake of the head as he traced a crack that defaced the lotus carvings, when the light above them suddenly dimmed.
Looking up through the brilliantly clear water, Ranjit saw an enormous shape passing just above them.
“It’s a whale shark!” he shouted through his aquaphone, so loudly that his voice was distorted into something resembling the old monk’s as reshaped by his throat mike. “Let’s go and make friends with it!”
Myra grinned and nodded. It was not the first time she and Ranjit had encountered these huge and entirely harmless plankton eaters in the waters around Trincomalee. As much as ten meters long, they were capital ships attended by a retinue of remoras, some attached to them by their suction pads, others swimming hopefully near the enormous m
ouths in the expectation of table scraps to feast on.
Ranjit started to inflate his buoyancy compensator, rising slowly up the shot line. He expected that Myra would follow at the same pace and was startled when he heard her voice, tightly controlled but clearly under a strain. “Something’s wrong with my inflator,” she gasped. “Be with you in a moment.” Then there was a violent hiss of air as her flotation bag suddenly filled. Ranjit was thrust aside as she was dragged violently upward.
It was in moments such as that when even the most experienced divers could panic. Myra made the fatal mistake of trying to hold her breath.
When Ranjit caught up with her on the raft, it was already too late. Blood was trickling from her mouth and he was not sure if he had caught her last whispered words.
He replayed them in his mind until he was standing on the pontoon of the air-medic helicopter that had arrived just in time to confirm what he already knew.
What she had said was, “See you in the next world.” He bent to kiss her chilled forehead.
Then to the helicopter pilot he said, “Let me use your phone. I need to talk to Dr. Ada Labrooy right away.”
48
THE SOUL IN THE MACHINE
If there was any patient for whom Dr. Ada Labrooy would pull out all the stops, it was certainly her beloved aunt Myra. It wasn’t entirely up to her, however. The alien machines that could do the job were fortunately nearby, getting ready to transform old Surash into the abstract of himself that would live on in the machines. But the parts had not yet been assembled together. Some were stacked in the hall outside Surash’s hospital room, some were on pallets in the yard, a couple were still on the trucks that had brought them from the Skyhook. It would take time to put them all together.