He found his breath freer, despite the damned tape that went on binding and chafing. Matters came into clearer focus on all fronts. Hanks would do what she had to do or Hanks would go straight to the worst of the conservative elements on Mospheira, but Hanks, as a problem, was not theproblem, not the one that could harm atevi. The problem that could blow the Western Alliance apart was standing right over there — that was why he hadn't been able to see a path through the rest of it.
It was magical, how freely the mind jumped once a burden of necessity was off the little problems. He couldn't do what Hanks did. He wasn't capable of replacing the entire university advisory committee. Neither was Hanks, and before all was said and done, no matter if Hanks turned up the most brilliant paper of her dubious career, he knew where the real bombshells lurked and he knew the paidhi had to be forearmed.
But as the lift took them in, and Banichi pushed the button to take them to the third floor:
"Banichi-ji, I have an odd request. I need to talk to mathematicians. People whose math describes space. The shape of the universe."
"The shape of the universe, nadi?"
"Universe" was difficult in the atevi language. It as well described the Western Association as stars and space. "Stars. Physics of stars, velocity — space. That universe."
"I know of some very respected mathematicians, some resident in the Bu-javid. But none that deal in such things as that. The shape of the universe. Bren-ji, I know no such things."
"Galaxies and distances." Atevi made no constellations. Stars were stars. "The physics of light."
The lift let them out into the hall. Banichi said:
"Maybe humans have such things. I'd expect them to."
"This human doesn't have these things with him; the phones are down on Mospheira's side of the strait, and anyway, I don't think the human answer would help me that much. The math of fields and physics, Banichi. How atevi view the universe beyond the solar system. What it's shaped like. What's out there, beyond the last planet. What light does in long distances. The shape of space."
"The shape of space." Clearly that thought didn't make sense to Banichi. "Pregnant calendars?"
He laughed. "No. I've got the right word. I'm sure I've got the right word."
They'd come to the apartment door; Banichi had his key and let them in past the security precautions, to the ministrations of the servants and Saidin's oversight —"Nadiin," Bren said, and to Saidin, who evidently considered it her duty to meet her lodger at all his comings and goings, "nadi-ji."
"Will the paidhi care for supper in, tonight?"
"The paidhi would be very grateful, nadi, thank you." God, was it that late? He caught a look at the foyer table, where messages had overflowed the bowl and stacked on the table surface in Tano's absence. "God — save us."
"Nand' paidhi?" Saidin asked.
"An expression of dismay," Banichi said.
"Tano's looking for office space," Bren said. "And professional staff. I don't know how I'm to deal with it otherwise."
"The staff can sort these," Saidin said, "if the paidhi wishes."
"The paidhi would very much like that, daja-ji, thank you. We hope to have staff soon. If the phone lines clear. If — God, I don't know."
"The paidhi would like tea?"
"The paidhi is awash in tea. He just got out of a committee meeting. The paidhi would like something much stronger. Without alkaloids. Thank you, daja-ji. — Banichi, I have to have the mathematicians. I'm desperate. I need to talk to people who understand the shape of space itself. Astronomers."
"Astronomers?" Banichi gave him a frowning, considering look, and he suddenly remembered Banichi, all competent Banichi, was from the provinces; there was that back-country mistrust of the astronomers — the old failure. If there were humans in the heavens, how could the astronomers have failed to find them? If numbers ruled the universe, as devout atevi believed, then how could atevi astronomers, measuring the universe, have numbers with discrepancies in them, as they argued about distances?
In some religious minds, that was heresy. The numbers of the universe hadno discrepancies. That was the very point the Determinists and the Rational Absolutists fixed as unshakable.
"I fear that's who I need to talk to, yes, astronomers."
One rarely saw Banichi at a loss. "There's an observatory in Berigai, in the Bergid. That's an hour by air."
"None closer? The university? I mean legitimate astronomers, Banichi. Not fortune-tellers. This is a legitimate observatory in the Bergid, there's a school —"
"There is. We can call them. We can ask."
"Would you —" The paidhi was tired, and the security station was at hand. "Would you mind terribly giving them a call, asking if they have anyone who can answer my questions? I'll write my essential question out, given faster-than-light flight and the Determinist objection, and if you could ask them if there's anyone who can answer it —"
"No," Banichi said, which meant he didn't mind — one answered the question asked, not the question implied, as the paidhi's tired brain should have recalled.
The paidhi went to sit in the sitting room, write down his question for Banichi, and have the servants bring him a drink. He wished the ship had called. Or his mother had called, or someone. He took the little glass the servants offered, sat and stared at the Bergid, floating in its misty serenity above the city, wondering whether Banichi was having luck getting anyone, or whether he was totally on his own.
Atevi philosophy had used to hold, with misleading but reasonable argument, that the farthest events in the heavens were the least changeable, because you could see more of them.
And he supposed if there weren't atevi constellations, as the paidhiin had from the beginning known there weren't — no constellations such as humans from age immemorial had made out of the brighter stars, and still tried to make out of the atevi sky — then it followed that ordinary atevi didn'tgrow up with much curiosity about the night sky — hard, without those pictures, and without popular names for them, to tell where one was in a seasonally changing sky. Ask a farmer, maybe. Maybe a sailor, among nonscholarly types.
But, point of constant difference with human history, a significant part of the atevi food supply didn't depend on the stars and never had: they domesticated no food animals. They counted the winds from the sea, the turning of the wind from the south, as a reliable marker for seasons. Animals bred as animals pleased and the stars had nothing to do with it.
And in fact there was a dearth — he had heard it in school — of reliable bright stars, compared to the sky of the long-lost human earth.
Certainly the elite of the Assassins' Guild wouldn't take overmuch time memorizing random lists of stars and locations, except perhaps as it did affect navigation. But the far-faring ships of atevi history had, another long-understood point of atevi science, always hugged the coasts and felt out the abiding currents for direction.
A significant point for the paidhi's journal to pass on to the university: nobody had made a real study of atevi star-lore, because there wasn'tany atevi star-lore to speak of. Though they'd marked the appearance of the Foreign Star, as, a most strange event in atevi skies, the ship had built the station — astronomers, in those days a cross between fortune-tellers and honest sky-charters, had correctly said it foretold something strange, and maybe fearsome.