The other document was about more tangible things. It described how the secretary-general, with maximum secrecy, had set about creating his twenty-member independent council to run Pax per Fidem. It listed the members, ranging from the Bahamas, Brunei, and Cuba to Tonga and Vanuatu (with Sri Lanka tucked in just before). And it was a little more specific about the concept of transparency. In the interests of this “transparency” Pax per Fidem was charged to create an independent inspectorate for which the organization was pledged to offer that same transparency. “I guess that ‘inspectorate’ would be where you would go,” Myra said as they turned the light out.
Ranjit yawned. “Maybe so, but I’m going to need a clearer picture of what I’d be supposed to do before I say I’ll do it.”
The next morning Gamini did his best to answer all their questions. “I talked to my father a little bit about how much freedom you’d have. It’s a lot, Ranj. He’s sure that you could go anywhere in Pax per Fidem and see anything we’re doing, with the single exception of anything to do with Silent Thunder: You won’t know how many of the weapons we have or what we’d like to do with them, because nobody below the council itself will. But anything else, sure. You can sit in on most council meetings, and if you’ve seen anything that you think is wrong, you can report it to them.”
“And just suppose,” Myra said, “that he did see something wrong and the council didn’t do anything to fix it.”
“Then he would be free to tell the world’s press about it,” Gamini said promptly. “That’s what transparency is all about. So what do you say? Any other questions before you say if you’ll join us?”
“A few,” Ranjit said mildly. “This council. They meet, right? And what do they talk about when they do?”
“Well,” Gamini said, “it’s mostly planning for every contingency. You don’t do a regime change without making sure the population has a viable society left after the change; we learned that from Germany after 1918 and Iraq after 2003. And it’s not just making sure the population has its food, and as soon as possible its electrical power, and its working police force to prevent looting and so on; it’s giving them a chance at forming their own government. And, of course, there’s the future. There are plenty of brushfire wars and threats of war going on, and the council keeps an eye on all of them.”
“Wait a minute,” Myra said. “Are you talking about doing that Silent Thunder thing in other parts of the world?”
Gamini gave her a fond smile. “Dear Myra,” he said, “whatever made you think we were going to stop with North Korea?”
Then, taking notice of the expressions on their faces, he sounded hurt. “What’s the matter? You aren’t saying you don’t trust us, are you?”
It was Myra who answered—or, more exactly, responded, because it certainly was not a specific answer to Gamini’s specific question. “Gamini, did you ever happen to read the book 1984? It was published in England around the middle of the last century, by a man named George Orwell.”
Gamini looked offended. “Of course I read it. My father was a big Orwell fan. Are you trying to suggest we sound like Big Brother? Because, don’t forget, the secretary-general had the unanimous approval of the Security Council for everything we did!”
“That’s not what I mean, dear Gamini. What I’m thinking about is the way Orwell had the world divided in his book. There were only three powers, because they’d conquered everything else. Oceania, by which Orwell meant mostly America; Eurasia—that was Russia, then still the Soviet Union; and Eastasia. China.”
Now Gamini was visibly annoyed. “Now, really, Myra! You don’t think that the countries that created Pax per Fidem are going to try to divide the world among them, do you?”
And again Myra replied with a question of her own. “What any of them are planning I don’t know, Gamini. I hope that’s not it. But if they were, what could stop them?”
And when Gamini was gone—still a friend, a very dear friend, but now a friend they would not be seeing very often—Ranjit turned to his wife. “So,” he said, “what do we do now? The president has fired me from the job here. I’ve turned down the job he—and Gamini—wanted me to take.” He frowned at a thought. “His father wanted me to take it, too,” he added. “I imagine he’s not happy that I turned it down. I wonder if that offer of a job at the university is still open.”
28
MAKING A LIFE
Well, the job was. Whatever faults Dr. Dhatusena Bandara might be charged with, vindictiveness was not among them. The university would be delighted to welcome Dr. (if only honorary) Ranjit Subramanian to the faculty as a full and tenured professor, with his employment (and thus his pay) to begin at once, actual work to start when the professor found it quite convenient. More than that, the university would be pleased to find a faculty position for Dr. (this time not honorary but fully earned) Myra de Soyza Subramanian as well. Of course, it went without saying, her title wouldn’t be as elevated as her husband’s, and neither would her pay scale. But still…
But still, they were going back to Sri Lanka!
If the president of the United States objected to Ranjit’s walking out on the job offer, he didn’t say anything about it. Neither did anyone else. Ranjit cleared out his few personal belongings at the office; true, there was a maintenance man, who happened also to be a security man, to help him pack everything up. True, he was required to turn in his passes and badges and IDs. But no one bothered them in their apartment, or at the air terminal, or on the planes they took. And Natasha rode in her cradle-seat between the two of them without a whimper.
Mevrouw Vorhulst, of course, was waiting for them at the Colombo airport, since it was obvious that the best thing was for them all to stay at her house again. “Just until we find an apartment,” Myra said, while being hugged by her.
“As long as you like,” said Mevrouw Vorhulst. “Joris wouldn’t have it any other way.”
There was a strange thing about those classrooms at the university, Ranjit found. When his principal dearest wish had been to get out of them, they had seemed oppressively small. Not now, not to a brand-new professor who had never faced a class before. Now the room was a vast jury box, packed with young men and women sitting in judgment on him. Their eyes were unerringly focused on his every move, their ears impatient for the great revelations Professor Subramanian would have for them of the innermost secrets of the world of mathematicians.
It wasn’t just how to nurture this nest of hungry hatchlings that baffled Ranjit. It was what to nurture them with. When the university’s search committee had welcomed him to the faculty, they had generously left the exact nature of his duties to his own good plan.
He didn’t have one.
Ranjit was aware that he needed help. He even had a hope of finding it in the person of Dr. Davoodbhoy, the man who had behaved so exemplarily in the matter of the stolen math teacher’s password.