“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 all the world’s political commentators went over every word of it in their own debates. And by the time Ranjit and Myra were preparing for bed, they were still trying to make sense of it.
“So what Tearii did,” Ranjit called while brushing his teeth, “was to organize this Pax per Fidem thing, with its people from twenty different countries—”
“And all of them neutral ones,” Myra pointed out from where she was fluffing up the pillows on their bed. “And not only that but they were all island nations that weren’t big enough to be a threat to anybody else anyway.”
Ranjit thoughtfully rinsed his mouth. “Actually,” he said, drying his face, “when you look at the results, all of that doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?”
“Not really,” Myra conceded. “It’s true that North Korea has always seemed to be a threat to world peace.”
Ranjit stared at his reflection in the mirror. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “If Gamini’s coming, I wish he’d get here.”
When Gamini did get there, he bore flowers for Myra, a giant Chinese rattle for the baby, a bottle of Korean whiskey for Ranjit, and a full load of apologies. “Sorry I took so long,” he said, kissing Myra chastely on the cheek and sparing a hug for Ranjit. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging, but I was in Pyongyang with my father, just checking to see that it was all going all right, and then we had to make a quick trip to Washington. The president’s mad at us.”
Ranjit looked immediately concerned. “Mad how? Are you saying he didn’t want you people to attack?”
“Oh, of course not. Nothing like that. The thing was that right along the border, at one stretch that was kind of kinky because of the terrain, there happened to be a couple of hectares of U.S. and South Korean defense matériel that got just as wiped out as the North’s stuff.” He shrugged. “We couldn’t help it, you know. Old Adorable had a lot of his meanest armaments right on his side of the line, and it’s a pretty narrow line. We had to make sure we got it all. The president knows that, of course, but somebody made the mistake of guaranteeing him that nothing American would be touched. Meanwhile there’s about fourteen billion dollars’ worth of America’s deadliest high-tech that doesn’t work anymore. And, Ranj, are you ever going to open that bottle?”
Ranjit, who had been regarding his boyhood chum with unalloyed wonder, obeyed, while Myra collected glasses. As he poured, Ranjit said, “Does that mean trouble?”
“Oh, not enough to worry about. He’ll get over it. And, listen, while he’s what we’re talking about, he gave me something to hand to you.”
That something was an envelope embossed with the White House official seal. When they had all been served and Ranjit had taken his first sip—and made a face—he opened the letter. It said:
Dear Mr. Subramanian:
On behalf of the people of the United States I thank you for your service. I must now relieve you of your present post, however, and ask you to take on an even more important one, which, I am afraid, entails even more secrecy.
“He signed it with his own hand, too,” Gamini said proudly. “Didn’t use one of those machines. I saw him do it.”
Ranjit set down the unfinished part of his drink, the part that was going to remain unfinished forever, and said, “Gamini, how much of this show are you personally running?”
Gamini laughed. “Me? Hardly any. I’m an errand boy for my father. He tells me what to do, and I do it. Like helping recruit the Nepalese.”
“Which I’ve been wanting to ask you about,” Myra said, tactfully sniffing the whiskey’s bouquet without actually tasting any of it. “Why Nepalese?”
“Well, two reasons. First, their great-grandfathers used to serve in the British army—they were called the Gurkhas—and they were about the toughest and smartest soldiers they had. And, the most important part, just look at them. Nepalese don’t look a bit like Americans, or Chinese, or Russians, so everybody in North Korea wasn’t trained from birth to hate them.” He sniffed his whiskey, sighed, and put it down. “They’re like you and me, Ranj,” he added. “One reason we can be so useful to Pax per Fidem. So what about it? Can I sign you up tonight?”
“Tell us more,” Myra said quickly, before Ranjit had a chance to speak. “What would you want Ranjit to do?”
Gamini grinned. “Well, not what we were going to offer you way back when. What I was thinking of then was that you could help me be an assistant to my father, but you weren’t famous then.”
“But now?” Myra prompted.
“Actually, we’ll have to work that out,” Gamini confessed. “You’d go to work for the council and they would probably have some requests to make of you—speak for them at press conferences, sell the idea of Pax per Fidem to the world—”
Ranjit gave his friend a mock-frown that was not entirely imitation. “Wouldn’t I have to know more about it to do that?”
Gamini sighed. “Good old Ranjit,” he said. “I was hoping you’d see the light and sign up right away, but, yes, I suppose that, you being you, you certainly would need to know more. So I brought some reading for you.”
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope of papers. “Let’s call this your homework, Ranj. I guess the best thing would be for you to read it—both of you—and talk it over tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll come by to take you to breakfast, and then I’ll ask you the big question.”
“And what question is that?” Ranjit asked.
“Why, whether you want to help us save the world. What did you think?”
Natasha got a little less playtime that night than she was used to. She gave her parents a few little wails to show that she had noticed the lack, but two minutes later she was asleep and Myra and Ranjit could go back to studying their homework.
There were two sets of papers. One seemed to be a sort of proposed constitution for (they supposed) the land that had formerly been the North Korea of one dictator or another. Both Ranjit and Myra read it attentively, of course, but most of it was procedural stuff—like the American constitution that both had read in school. Not entirely like the American, though. There were several paragraphs unlike anything in that document. One stated that the country would never go to war under any circumstances—that sounded more like the post–World War II Japanese constitution the Americans had written for them. Another wasn’t in any constitution they had ever heard of before; it described some rather unusual methods of selecting their officeholders that involved heavy usage of computers. And a third pledged that every institution in the country—including not just their government legislatures at all levels, but educational, scientific, and even religious institutions—had to permit access of observers at all of their functions. (“I guess that’s the ‘transparency’ Gamini was talking about,” Ranjit observed.)