Sorabji liked to say when asked (if not asked he would volunteer the information) that he was the descendant of a drugs baron. His great-grandfather had been a Parsi businessman in Bombay, and he had built up a fortune mainly in the opium trade. Far from being a social outcast he was a pillar of society and noted philanthropist, a man who had littered Bombay with schools and hospitals and repulsive pieces of statuary. Sorabji argued that similar benefits, only on a larger scale, would be the inevitable result of legalisation of drugs, which could be heavily taxed to pay for schools, hospitals and obscenely expensive telescopes.
The letters pages of the papers were full of heated exchanges between Sorabji and members of the public on the legalisation of drugs, astrology the pseudo-science, the absolute insignificance of our national heritage in comparison with the universe & consequent need for instant reallocation of funds to pay for obscenely expensive telescopes, and an impressive range of other subjects on which Sorabji held strong views. You could also hear Robert Donat in Winslow Boy mode on the radio or see him on TV. Last but not least he had won a Nobel Prize.
Sorabji had shared the prize with three other people; he had won it for physics because there isn’t a Nobel Prize for astronomy, and people who knew said that though he was a brilliant astronomer he hadn’t really won it for the thing he was brilliant at.
The thing he had been brilliant at was creating mathematical models of black holes, but the thing he had won the prize for was Colossus, a satellite for multi-wavelength astronomy which would never have got off the drawing board, let alone the ground, had it not been for Sorabji. Sorabji had extracted commitments for obscene amounts of money from the US, the EU, Australia, Japan and lots of other places that had never before thought of sponsoring a satellite, and he had helped to design ground-breaking telescopes for the satellite, which had caused the obscenely expensive project to go a heartstopping five times over budget. Then it went into orbit, and within three years information from the satellite had revolutionised understanding of quasars, pulsars and black holes.
Sorabji was interested in things that bored 90% of the country, and he had strong views with which 99% of the country strongly disagreed, but nobody held it against him. Some people said that say what you like he had the courage of his convictions, and some people said say what you like his heart is in the right place. They said he would lay down his life for his friends. Sorabji had once saved the life of a friend when, visiting the observatory at Mauna Koa, they had taken a helicopter up over a live volcano and crashed inside it, and he had rescued a member of his team, a Ugandan from the Lango tribe placed under house arrest by Idi Amin, by smuggling him out over the Kenyan border under a hail of bullets.
Sorabji had originally come to the attention of the British public through a programme called Mathematics the Universal Language. 99.99% of the British public were not interested in mathematics, but they were interested in the fact that Sorabji had succeeded in teaching mathematics to a boy from an Amazonian tribe when neither spoke a word of the other’s language, and in the fact that he had nearly laid down his life for his friend.
Sorabji had been en route to a conference on pulsars in Santiago when the plane made an unscheduled stop in Belem because of mechanical difficulties. Sorabji had taken a small local plane instead; it had crashed deep in the Amazonian rainforest, the pilot dead on impact, Sorabji rescued by a local tribe but stranded for six months.
At night he would look up at the brilliant Southern sky which could be seen from the clearing, thinking about how far away everything was and how long it took the light to reach him and how little time a man did have to observe the light as it came.
He would spread soft dirt on the ground outside his hut and work on mathematical problems, because there was nothing else to do.
One day a boy from the tribe stood by him and seemed interested.
Sorabji thought: But how terrible! Suppose he is a natural mathematician, born into a society without mathematics! He had not bothered to learn the language but he had a sneaking suspicion you couldn’t count in it much past four. Imagine a mathematical genius born to a language where you went one fried ant, two fried ants, three fried ants, four fried ants, lots of fried ants, lots and lots of fried ants, lots and lots and lots of— The prospect was too frightful to contemplate.
Smoothing out the dirt he gritted his teeth and addressed himself to the basics. He put a stone on the dirt, and below it he wrote: 1. He put two stones in the dirt, and he wrote: 2. He put three stones in the dirt, and he wrote: 3. Four stones: 4. Iki-go-e (or Pete, as Sorabji called him) squatted down beside him; Sorabji couldn’t tell if 5 came as a surprise.
Six months later Pete and Sorabji were in jail.
A group of loggers had turned up in the jungle. A couple of members of the tribe had been killed, others had scattered in different directions, and Sorabji had set off on the tracks of the trucks for civilisation. Pete had followed. They had come to a small town deep in the jungle, and Sorabji had tried to find a telephone. There was only one in town, at a building marked Polícia; Sorabji had walked in the door and at once been arrested.
Five days later the British consul in Belem flew up the Amazon to Manaus, then headed inland in a borrowed Land Rover.
The British consul in Belem loved Brazil. He loved the language; he loved the music; he loved the wild, savage country; he loved the people. The fly in the ointment was the fact that this marvellous country had not closed its borders to all Britons not travelling on official business. The British were not, in his opinion, actually more intrepid than other nations; they merely had a boundless belief in the powers of their consul, a belief which would have been justified had the F.O. placed at his disposition, for example, a small private army and a slush fund of several millions, but which went well beyond what could be achieved on a small emergency fund and modest entertainment allowance. What do they imagine I can do? he would fume, and What on earth do they imagine I can do? was the refrain as the Land Rover bounced and jolted over the potholes.
He arrived at the logging town in late afternoon. He went at once to the Polícia, was shown into the jail, and nearly threw up.
It was close to 100 degrees outside; worse in the jail. Twenty men were crammed into a room in which ten could have breathed.
The jailer crunched over the cockroaches and pointed at Sorabji.
Sorabji’s hair was long and matted, as was his beard. He’d spent six months in a tropical sun, and was now dark brown. His clothes had been disgusting after the first week; following local custom he had taken to wearing his shirt as a loincloth. Sorabji always liked to say that the unfortunate consul had travelled hundreds of miles into the interior to rescue a British citizen, only to find Gunga Din. It was true that the loincloth had come from Gieves & Hawkes, but this was not something you’d notice on a casual inspection.
Good of you to come, Gunga Din said suavely. So glad you could make it.
And then, because the question had been tormenting him for months, You wouldn’t happen to know if they’ve got anywhere with binary X-ray emissions?
The consul said not to his knowledge. He introduced himself.
And you are?
The name’s Sorabji, said Gunga Din. George Sorabji.
The consul explained that he would need some proof of his nationality.
Gunga Din explained that he had been on a plane that had crashed in the jungle and that his passport had gone up in flames. He suggested that the consul telephone his supervisor at Cambridge, verify his identity and determine the state of play on binary X-ray emissions. He demanded immediate release and repatriation.