The Return of Vaman - A Scientific Novel

by Jayant V. Narlikar

  ‘He has had them before’, admitted Pyarelal, ‘but I cured him of those.’

  ‘Well, I was planning to meet him tonight.’

  Pyarelal’s face fell as he heard this announcement. ‘Karl, I need you to be incognito, at least as far as the Science Centre lot are concerned’, he added. ‘In Bangalore you would pass off as a tourist—but in a small place like Gauribidnur …’

  ‘I will stick out like a sore thumb, won’t I?’ laughed Shulz.

  ‘And, besides, you might lose your temper. Navin needs to be handled delicately, especially if he is passing through a mental conflict.’

  ‘Anyway, I will visit the site tonight, for sure. In deference to you, I will not see Navin—but I’m sure you cannot object to a nocturnal visit by me?’

  ‘Who am I to object? I will arrange for you to be collected tonight at ten. Then it is up to you.’

  Shulz glanced at his watch, which still registered 8.30 a.m. GMT. He made a mental calculation—it was now two in the afternoon. He had about seven hours of sleep ahead of him. … Fortunately, he could sleep at will anywhere, any time. His job demanded it.

  He nodded and got up.

  8 The Opening

  ‘What do you think, Laxman?’

  Arul’s question came nearly an hour after the discussion had started, an hour during which Laxman had hardly spoken. Take any committee and you will find its discussion dominated by two or three members, and it is not usual for such people to have something relevant to say. Today’s discussion was essentially a monologue by Navin, which frequently took off in a tangential direction. Arul, who vainly struggled to control the situation, finally had to appeal to Laxman, knowing that he rarely saw eye to eye with Navin.

  ‘I agree with Navin.’

  Laxman’s reply surprised everyone, not the least Navin. To elaborate further, Laxman continued, ‘We have spent enough time examining the container from outside. We are not the least bit wiser. Now we are wasting time discussing the possible dangers of opening it. The scientist in me says “Open it—and to hell with the consequences”. Those who left the container behind clearly intended the finder to open it and examine its contents. Otherwise, what was the purpose in leaving it at all? If you people are afraid to be around at the time of opening, leave the job to me.’

  ‘Well spoken mate’, Navin added as he rose and shook Laxman’s hands. ‘I for one volunteer to be with you when it is opened.’

  ‘I too’, said Arul.

  ‘But how are we going to open it? We have not yet found even traces of a lid.’ The question, of course, came from none else than the practical Raghavan.

  All the attempts so far to discover the container’s lid had indeed been unsuccessful. The container had been taken out of the deep well where it was found and placed same side up in the large hall of the workshop. All manner of detecting instruments, including electronic devices, had failed to reveal any discontinuity on its smooth surface. Brute force, in the sense of explosives, was ruled out as it might damage whatever was inside.

  The committee’s discussion thus turned to the practical issue of opening the container and it was Arul’s turn to remain intriguingly silent. But an idea had occurred to him. Indeed, so quiet was he that nobody noticed when he left the conference room. Thus, it came as a surprise to all present when he made a dramatic entry, chanting ‘Eureka’.

  ‘Gentlemen! I think I have the solution to Raghavan’s problem.’ He smiled at the profound effect this sentence produced on the group. He continued:

  ‘We could not open the cube because we were ignoring the most obvious clue.’

  ‘Nonsense! We have examined every inch of that wretched surface as minutely as we could.’ Laxman’s rebuttal found sympathetic echoes round the room. Arul experienced an impish delight in stringing them along.

  ‘No doubt you have read Edgar Alan Poe.’ He spoke quietly.

  ‘Speak to the point, Arul. Who is this Poe?’

  ‘Navin, didn’t you ever read mystery stories, the whodunnits?’

  ‘Of course! Right from Sherlock Holmes to modern-day thrillers—I can claim to be reasonably well informed’, Navin rejoined.

  ‘But you did not go as far back as Poe, who could be said to have started this kind of literature in modern times … Let me tell you of his story of the purloined letter. A compromising letter had to be retrieved. But the person who possessed it had hidden it very cleverly. The searcher ransacked the entire room looking for secret compartments and drawers—but the letter was not to be found, so cunningly was it hidden.’

  ‘Where was it?’ asked Laxman.

  ‘Exactly where nobody would think of looking! It was lying open on the desk.’

  ‘I see what you are getting at. We have missed an obvious clue … but what?’ asked Navin, exasperated.

  Arul laughed. ‘Let me demonstrate it to you! Come to the container.’

  Everyone trooped along to the workshop. Raghavan opened the doors with his special key. The container lay there as if defying the collective intellect of the twentieth century.

  ‘Look at these pictures outside. What do you make of them?’ asked Arul. ‘They are not purely decorative but have a function to serve. Could they not be intended as instructions for the finders of the cube, who would not be expected to know the language of its creators? … This is what I have been trying to work out … especially the pictures on the top.’

  Arul led the way to the overhanging gallery erected to provide a view of the container from the top. He addressed a general question:

  ‘Take that square being pulled by two elephants on opposite sides. What does it convey to you?’

  ‘Perhaps those people used elephants to drag heavy weights’, Raghavan hazarded a guess.

  Arul laughed. ‘If so, why should the elephants be shown pulling the block from opposite sides? And do you expect such an advanced civilization to employ animals for mechanical jobs?’

  There was silence. So Arul continued. ‘This square in the picture is, of course, our container. That two elephants on opposite sides are unable to pull it apart is what we are meant to deduce. Our own history had a similar episode except that there were horses instead of elephants.’

  Laxman was the first to catch on. ‘Of course … the two hemispheres of Magdeburg.’

  Several amongst those present were still blank, so Arul elaborated. ‘Back in the seventeenth century, the scientist Otto Von Guericke joined two hemispheres, evacuated the space in between and then tried to pull them apart with horses. The air pressure on the hemispheres was so great that the two hemispheres just could not be separated.’

  ‘Which implies in the present instance that the box is vacuum sealed’, Raghavan added. ‘But then, how was the air taken out from within?’

  ‘Obviously through a small hole which must be concealed somewhere. The pictures again should provide a clue. May I draw your attention to these ellipses?’

  Several ellipses with different shapes and orientations were superposed at one corner of the top. There seemed to be no symmetry in the picture. As they tried various conjectures someone remarked: ‘It reminds me of the trajectories of comets in our solar system.’

  The remark did not inspire the speaker to any interpretation. But it was Laxman again who burst out, excited:

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? Like the Sun, which is the common focus of all cometary paths, all these ellipses must have the same focus.’

  ‘Exactly’, said Arul. ‘While you were arguing I slipped out to look at our photographs of these drawings. Here is one of the ellipses.’ He produced an enlarged photograph, on which he had done some geometrical constructions.

  Every ellipse has two focal points. The ellipses drawn in Arul’s diagram had the remarkable property of all sharing one common focal point.

  ‘The makers of this box did not wish it opened by primitives. They expected some mathematical knowledge on the openers’ part. Thanks to Arul, we qualify.’ Navin’s reasoning appealed to everyon
e present.

  Raghavan procured precise measuring instruments to determine the exact common focal point on the box. This was the point where the evacuation would have been done. However, electrical drills failed to puncture the surface. Arul himself was nonplussed. Was his inspired reasoning to prove a red herring after all?

  ‘I think the drills we are using are too thick … I will try a very thin needle’, Raghavan spoke as if suddenly inspired.

  ‘Well done, Raghavan!’ Arul slapped him on the back and sent him to fetch the finest needle available.

  And to everybody’s delight the finest of all needles pierced the metal as easily as it would a piece of cork. There was the hissing sound of air entering the container as the needle was withdrawn. The entire top of the container automatically came up by two inches and turned on a hinge.

  The contents were covered by a fine cambric-like material. As it was pulled aside, everyone present had the feeling that he was looking at something out of this world.

  9 The Committee

  A letter in an envelope marked ‘secret’ and closed with sealing wax, contained within another sealed manila cover, and that too delivered by special courier … Professor Kirtikar as a rule was not a frequent receiver of such mail. He read the contents with some misgivings for he never looked forward to committee meetings in the nation’s capital. The letterhead carried the address of the Department of Science and Technology in red letters to indicate that it was an official communication from a department of the government.

  A top level committee has been constituted to look into the findings of the Gauribidnur container and you have been appointed a non-official member of this committee. The committee’s first meeting has been arranged in Technology Bhavan at 11 a.m. on 2 February and you are requested to kindly make it convenient to attend the meeting.

  An office order specifying the TA/DA rules for non-official members attending the meetings of this committee is attached for your information.

  Professor Kirtikar smiled as he read through the letter. The contents were all phrased in the passive mode so cherished by bureaucrats. The addressee must never know who was to be held responsible for all the plans reported in the letter—certainly the sender could not be held accountable for the statements in it. The only thing that could not be avoided by the sender was providing his own name (albeit slightly obscured by an illegible signature) at the end of the letter.

  Raj Nath! Kirtikar mused sadly as he read that name. Raj Nath, a one-time colleague on the institute’s faculty, was a close friend of his. And of so many others, young and old. A lively person with liberal views, Raj Nath had been affectionately called ‘Smoke Chimney’ by his colleagures, for his habit of incessantly smoking through a pipe. Indeed, it was often difficult to see Raj Nath clearly through the smoke screen around him. But those who had discussed science with him knew that beneath all that smoke there was a highly perceptive brain. A molecular biologist by profession, Raj Nath had views on fundamental physics ranging from superconductivity to cosmology and would often be found animatedly expressing them in the institute’s canteen.

  But, alas, not any more! Just over two years ago, a short while before Kirtikar himself became the director, the long arm of the government, always on the look-out for distinguished scientists to run the science administration from New Delhi, had taken Raj Nath away to head the D.S.T. His colleagues were sorry to see him go, but had hoped that a man of his freshness and liberal outlook was just what the bureaucracy in Delhi needed.

  As Kirtikar looked at Raj Nath’s letter he realized how misplaced those hopes were. The same Raj who used to be infuriated by officialdom, now excelled in writing DO’s in the best officialese. Here was yet another promising scientist eaten up by the bureaucratic Black Hole of New Delhi, thought Kirtikar as he glanced at the names of the committee members.

  The high powered nature of the committee was obvious from the fact that no less than the Home Minister, Bhagvati Dayal Upadhyay, a minister of cabinet rank, was chairing it. The Minister of State for Science was the next person, followed by secretaries from the Departments of Home Affairs (Probir Ganguly), Culture (Harisharan), Information and Broadcasting (Shafi Ahmed) and Science and Technology, represented by Raj Nath as the Convener. The list of official members also included Dr Ramesh Gupta, Director General of the Archaeological Survey and, curiously enough, two other names with no designation given. Of these two, the name of Major Samant seemed to ring a bell, but exactly when and where Kirtikar could not recall.

  The unofficial members included, apart from himself, Drs Arul, Laxmanan and Navin Chandra Pande. A Raj Nath touch, probably. Otherwise such junior people would never have found their way into a high-level committee of this kind. Well … there is still some fire left in the old dog after all, thought Kirtikar, as he called for his travel section to book him a ticket to Delhi.

  The date of the meeting, he noticed, was the very next day.

  Technology Bhavan is a single storeyed building standing next to the Qutub Hotel on the outskirts of Delhi. Unlike most other government departments which are in the neighbourhood of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Science and Technology Department was tucked miles away from the corridors of power. Was this symbolic, Kirtikar used to wonder?

  The building itself once belonged to the United States Information Service. Now maintained by the P.W.D. it had naturally lost the polish it had in earlier times. Kirtikar, who had visited the U.S.I.S. a couple of times in the past, could not fail to notice the decline in standards as he was conducted to the Secretary’s office.

  ‘Hallo, Raj!’ he greeted the figure barely visible behind the smoke. He was meeting Raj for the first time since he had left for this Delhi assignment. He was somewhat taken aback to see the change in his appearance.

  ‘Welcome Prashant … take a seat’, Raj Nath greeted him with the characteristic effusiveness that came so naturally to him.

  ‘You startled me, Raj. When did you grow such long hair? You look like one of those ancient sages living out in the jungle’, Kirtikar said, half jokingly. But Raj turned serious.

  ‘Whether I look like a sage or not is debatable. That New Delhi is a jungle, is not! … Come, tell us about good old Bombay, which I miss so much. But, first, tea or coffee?’ He pressed a bell fixed to the side of his table.

  His P.A. entered, duly took the order and departed. Yes! Things were different here. In earlier times they would both have trooped down to the canteen, stood in the queue and served themselves.

  ‘Good you came somewhat earlier, so I can brief you about this meeting’, Raj Nath relit his pipe.

  ‘You had better! In any case, a rustic from Bombay like me feels a little overawed by this high level committee.’

  ‘It was constituted by the P.M. himself … in fact, it went through an amusing metamorphosis. Strictly between us, I will tell you how.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Kirtikar recalled how often he had heard that phrase from Raj back in the institute. He knew it to be a prelude to some scandal.

  ‘The P.M. wanted an expert committee to quickly assess the container and its contents; and he so instructed the Department of Culture. Naturally, the matter landed in Harisharan’s lap.’

  ‘Harisharan?’ Kirtikar asked.

  ‘Secretary, Department of Culture’, explained Raj Nath, blowing out a smoke ring. ‘Harisharan promptly constituted a list and sent it to the P.M. for consideration … you know what the P.M.’s comment was? He said it looked like a marriage party made up of caterers and bandsmen but without the groom and bride.’

  How did Raj Nath know what the P.M. had said, wondered Kirtikar. Was this part of the grapevine for which Delhi was so notorious?

  ‘Apparently Harisharan’s list included secretaries and additional secretaries from four departments, state officials from Karnataka and the Collector of the region including Gauribidnur.’ Raj Nath continued with a smile, ‘In short there were no real experts on the committee … And so I was summoned to South Block an
d asked to constitute this committee. You know the result. Harisharan would have had a fit to see such juniors as Arul or Laxman on the committee; but he had to go by the P.M.’s decision.’

  Raj Nath then started briefing Kirtikar about the other committee members from Delhi so that he would be on guard. As he was halfway down the list, he looked at his watch and rang the bell once again.

  ‘Are Bhai, chay ka kya hua? The time for the meeting is drawing close’, he told his P.A.

  ‘It’s coming, sir! I will telephone the canteen again, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s Delhi for you, Prashant’, said Raj Nath as the P.A. left. ‘It’s all bound up with who is at what level and who can do what. I cannot go to the canteen myself—the whole deparatment would be shocked if I did. So I tell the P.A. It would be below his dignity to go there now. So he will send a peon … and so it goes on. You notice the contrast in efficiency even more when you come from our institute.

  That’s the tragedy, Kirtikar thought. Efficient people from well run places are called here just to be eaten up by the ‘system’.

  The tea came soon, however. But they were destined not to finish it. For halfway through, word reached Raj Nath that the two ministers were due any minute. He left his cup and rushed to the front gate to receive the V.I.P.’s, while Kirtikar ambled along to the committee room.

  The meeting started on schedule with the chairman calling upon members to introduce themselves. It was then that Kirtikar learned who Major Samant was. After Samant had introduced himself as ‘coming from the Intelligence Bureau’, the chairman felt the need to elaborate further.

  ‘Major Samant has been characteristically reticent. Perhaps I should add that he has been awarded the Veer Chakra for his bravery in the Bangladesh War of Independence. He has since then done a lot for the I.B. but, of necessity, the details cannot be disclosed. I am happy that he is in charge of security at the Science Centre.’

  All but one in the committee were reassured by this description, for they shared the concern for security and confidentiality about the newly found container. All but Navin, that is. Navin had already experienced the effect of Samant’s efficiency. Just how much did Major Samant know about his past?