But in Pasadena nobody was fighting anybody, and little Tashy Subramanian was delighting her parents. What other infant so precociously tried to turn herself over in her crib at such an early age? Or even more precociously, at that same early age, slept nearly halfway through the night, on many nights, sometimes? Natasha Subramanian was bound to be a person of high intelligence, Myra and Ranjit agreed, no matter that Jingting Jian, the baby doctor the office’s advisory service had helped them find, swore that you could tell nothing about a child’s intelligence until it was at least four or five months old.
Though weak in that area, Dr. Jian was a very comforting pediatrician to have, full of tips on the diagnosis of infant crying. Some crying meant you had to do something right away; some could be ignored until the baby had cried itself out. Dr. Jian even had recordings of many of the possible crying styles to help them figure which was which. In fact, the advisers had done nearly everything that had had to be done for Myra and Ranjit. They had located for them the pretty little apartment in a gated development—four rooms, washer-dryer installed, access to the community swimming pool, its own plant-bedecked balcony that looked down on the city of Los Angeles from above, and, maybe most important of all in these times, its twenty-four-hour guard service to check every last person going in or out. The advisers had done more than that, too, helping them choose the best dry cleaners, pizza deliverers, banks, and car rental services (until the time when they might choose to buy a couple of cars for themselves, which time had not yet arrived).
They had even provided Myra with the names of three separate maid services, but Myra chose to decline them all. “The apartment’s not that big,” she told Ranjit. “What kind of housework is there to do? Vacuuming, cooking, laundry, dishes—just for the two of us there’s not that much work involved.”
Ranjit strongly agreed. “I’m sure you can handle it,” he said, which got him a slightly frosty look.
“I’m sure we can,” she corrected him. “Let’s see. I’d better be the cook, because I’m better at it than you are, so you can clean up afterward? That would be good. Laundry—you can operate a washer and dryer, can’t you? They’ve got all the instructions written out in their manuals, anyway. Changing the baby, feeding the baby—when you’re home we can take turns. When you’re not, I can do it myself.”
Item by item they ran through the list of domestic jobs, from replacing used lightbulbs and toilet paper rolls to paying the bills. It wasn’t a problem. Neither one of them wanted the other stuck at some chore that would keep him or her away from the other for a minute longer than necessary, because neither wanted to be so deprived of the other’s talk and company.
At this point the armada of One Point Fives was cruising at its maximum speed of .94c. By the time scale of most non-Earth beings, it would reach its destination in a mere blink of time. Of course, no human being knew this, so all nine billion went right on with their usual daily concerns.
Then one evening, as the Subramanians were finishing the dinner cleanup, the voice from their intercom spoke up. “Dr. Subramanian? This is Henry, down at the gate. There’s a man here who’d like to see you. He says he doesn’t want to give his name but you’ll know him because he’s Maggie’s ex-boyfriend. All right to let him in?”
Ranjit jumped to his feet. “Gamini!” he shouted. “Sure, let the bastard come in, and ask him what he’d like to drink!”
But when the man arrived, he wasn’t Gamini Bandara at all. He was a much older man, carrying a locked case that was chained to his right arm. When he opened it, he took out a chip and handed it to Ranjit. “Please play this,” he said. “I’m not authorized to see it, so I’ll have to wait outside, but Mrs. Subramanian is specifically permitted, and”—he offered them a polite smile—“I’m sure the baby won’t tell any secrets.”
When the courier was safely stowed in the hallway, Myra fed the chip into their player, and a grinning Gamini appeared on the screen. “Sorry to put you through all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we’re walking a tightrope here. We’re answering to five different national governments, plus the UN’s own security staff, and—well, I’ll tell you all about that another time. The thing is, that other job we’ve been talking about for you is all cleared now, if you want it. You will. You’d be crazy if you didn’t. However, before I answer all those questions, there is one little thing—No, to tell the truth, there’s one extremely big thing that has to happen first. I can’t say what it is, but you’ll know it when you see it on the news, and then you can say good-bye to Pasadena. So stay loose, Ranj. That’s all those intelligence agencies will let me say now—except love to you all!”
The chip ended and the screen went blank.
Ten minutes later, when the courier had retrieved his chip and departed, Myra pulled down from the top of the cupboard the bottle of wine they saved for special occasions. She filled two glasses, cocked an ear to where Natasha was sleeping, and, when satisfied about that, said, “Do you know what’s going on?”
Ranjit clinked her glass and took a sip from his own before he said, “No.” He sat silently for a moment, and then grinned. “All the same, if I can’t trust Gamini, who can I trust? So we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Myra nodded, finished her glass, got up to check on Natasha, and said, “At least it doesn’t sound like the waiting will be much longer.”
It wasn’t. It was only three days before Ranjit—doing his best to find a few more really large prime numbers for the cryptographers to play with, because his conscience wouldn’t let him do nothing at all—heard a huge commotion in the hallway and discovered that half the staff was trying to get into the lounge at the end of the corridor. Everybody was clustered before the news channels. What the channels were displaying was a procession of military vehicles, scores of them, pouring through a gap in an unfamiliar fence. “Korea,” a man near the screen called to quiet the questions. “They’re going into North Korea! Now shut up so we can hear what they’re saying.”
And North Korea was indeed where they were heading, and none of the Adorable Leader’s huge army seemed interested in trying to stop them!
“But that’s crazy!” the man next to Ranjit was saying. “Something must’ve happened!”
He hadn’t been looking to Ranjit for an answer, but Ranjit gave him one anyway. “I’m sure something did happen,” he told the man, grinning. “Something big.”
25
SILENT THUNDER
It had a formal name in the records of the Pentagon, but to the people who invented it, the people who built it, and the people who sent it on its way, it was called Silent Thunder.