It was inevitable that he would then wonder, not for the first time of course, if the universe needed a goal. But he liked the idea. A whole universe churning violently inside to create the seeds of what would eventually become a state of being: little disjointed minds that would look back at the sky and acknowledge that yes, it is there, there is a universe. Why must the universe do it? It had enough real estate to create large lifeless bodies. Why must it pack enormous amounts of energy in a type of electricity called consciousness? It was simpler for the universe to make a Jupiter than a frog, or even an ant. All this was leading to an unavoidable question, but he tried to delay it because its philosophical nature embarrassed him, and philosophers were such third-rate bastards. But he asked anyway — So, why is there life? What’s the whole game? It was the sort of moment that frustrated him and made him wish that someone had left the answer in his drawer on a neatly typed piece of paper, so that he could just read it and say, ‘Oh yes, I thought so,’ and go back home for a nice long nap.
The door opened and he was annoyed to see his secretary. For some reason, he was more annoyed at the sight of him today than ever before. Such a terrible apparition Ayyan Mani was. So fresh, so eager, so much of an insider in this world. So hopelessly obsessed with living. Always busy, always up to something. Acharya found it funny that he must think a man was an insider in this world, because he did not know the function of an outsider. But he knew there were the insiders and there were the outsiders. He asked himself where he himself truly belonged.
‘Sir,’ Ayyan said, for the third time.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve brought my son.’
Adi had by then appeared at the door, and he was looking curiously at Acharya from behind his father’s back. A pleasant smile appeared on Acharya’s face and that surprised even Ayyan. After the end of the Oparna affair, Acharya had become more moody and introspective than ever. Some days, he rocked in his chair excitedly for no apparent reason, but on the whole he had simply withdrawn into himself. He was once again the mammoth ghost that was either arriving or departing.
‘There you are,’ Acharya said. ‘Come in.’
Adi did not move. He opened his mouth wide, put out his tongue and gave a silly laugh.
‘Put your tongue, in Adi,’ Ayyan said sternly. ‘And come in.’
The boy walked in gingerly. Acharya stood up and went to the white couches in the far corner.
‘Let’s sit here,’ he said.
Adi, now more confident, sat facing him across the small centrepiece where the glass jar that was once an accomplice in illicit love now lay bearing fresh orchids. The boy looked at his father and tapped the couch asking him to sit. But Ayyan did not move.
‘Sit down,’ Acharya said impatiently. And for the very first time Ayyan Mani sat in the chamber of the Director.
Acharya studied the boy carefully and said, ‘He is wearing it in the other ear.’
‘What, Sir?’ Ayyan asked.
‘In the picture that they carried in the paper today, he was wearing the hearing-aid in the right ear. But now he is wearing it in the left ear.’
‘Oh, that,’ Ayyan said with a chuckle. ‘By mistake, they flipped the picture in the paper, Sir.’
Acharya did not suspect anything. He was merely struck by the visual anomaly. He did not pursue the matter further. He was more interested in the boy. ‘He seems completely normal. Is this how geniuses are made these days?’
‘He is just an ordinary boy who is fooling around, Sir,’ Ayyan said.
‘I am a genius,’ the boy said defiantly.
‘You must be,’ Acharya said. ‘Tell me, Aditya, how do you remember so many prime numbers?’
‘They are unpredictable.’
‘Adi,’ his father said, with an edge in his voice, ‘he is asking how you remember the first thousand prime numbers.’
‘I hear it in my head.’
‘You do?’ Acharya said with a look of amusement. ‘You like prime numbers?’
‘Yes. They are unpredictable.’
‘They are, they are. But I always found prime numbers ugly. When I was your age I used to love even numbers. Do you like even numbers more than odd numbers?’
Adi shrugged.
‘You should say “yes” or “no”, Adi,’ his father said. ‘Don’t just sit there and make a face.’
‘What do you want to become, Adi?’ Acharya asked.
‘I want to join the Institute of Theory and Research.’
‘You should then. Maybe you should take our entrance test,’ Acharya said jovially.
‘OK,’ said Adi.
‘Ten thousand students from all over the country take the test. But only one hundred pass. Do you want to take it?’
‘OK.’
‘Grow up fast then.’
Acharya’s keen twinkling eyes then surveyed the boy through a comfortable silence that to him was always a form of conversation. Adi turned nervously towards his father and raised his eyebrows. Acharya’s eyes then slowly became lost and distant. ‘Of all human deformities,’ he said softly, ‘genius is the most useful.’
PART FIVE. Aliens Used Aliens To Make Curd
THE SCHOLARS OP the Institute, too, agreed that news travelled fast. But this evening there was a dispute over how fast. Ayyan Mani was at a corner table of the canteen when the argument broke out between two middle-aged mathematicians who were in a large group. They were near the window that opened to the undulating backyard and ancient solitary trees. In the sedative sea breeze and the hush of the calm sea, the debate unfolded as part banter and part science. It slowly escalated into a serious quarrel. One of the mathematicians angrily ordered a paper plate and appeared to scribble a long string of formulae to suggest that if various probabilities were known, it would be possible to calculate how fast a piece of news, like say the death of a colleague, would travel. The other mathematician angrily ordered another paper plate and wrote down something to show that even if various probabilities were known, the speed of news can never be predicted. Velocity was a function of distance, he said. Though news did travel, he said, it did not travel through a physical space, and so where was the question of speed? The first mathematician shook his head many times and said that there was a ‘nonlinear’ distance involved, and thus news indeed travelled through physical space. Ayyan did not fully understand what they meant by probabilities or nonlinear distance. But he did not have the heart to leave the canteen. After about an hour, both the mathematicians amicably agreed on the third paper plate that bad news travelled faster than good news. That, Ayyan already knew.
He was reminded of the episode a month later, one tense December afternoon, as he sat among his phones waiting for all hell to break loose. But nothing happened. Two hours had passed since the Press Officer had declared, in a release which was faxed to every newspaper and television channeclass="underline" ‘A stunning breakthrough has been achieved.’ That morning, Oparna Goshmaulik had emerged from the isolation of her basement lab along with two American scientists who were supervising the analysis of the cryogenic sampler. She was holding a bundle of papers in her hand: a collection of handwritten material bound together by a cord. On the last page she had concluded, somewhat inappropriately in thin unremarkable handwriting, ‘The results prove without dispute that living cells have been found at the altitude of 41 kilometres. Spores of rod-like bacillus and engyodontium albus de hoog, a fungus, have been found.’