"Nand' dowager," he answered her carefully, "the aiji's own astronomers have other areas of study. And they're not independent. This man, as I understand, and this observatory, have been the principal astronomers engaged on this research. They're not affiliated with any outside agency. This is an exact copy of what I brought your grandson, nothing left out, nothing added. May I ask the dowager — to advise me?"
Ilisidi's hand left the teacup for an insouciant motion. Proceed, she signaled.
"Understand, aiji-ma, I'm not a mathematician. Far from it. But as I understand both what humans have observed and what this man has been attempting to describe in numbers — as I was flying into the city last night, I saw the lights, high places, low places of the city, lights like the stars shining in dark space." He knew Ilisidi had flown at night — very recently — into Shejidan. "I saw — out the airplane window, in those lights in high and low spots, all over Shejidan — what humans have described with their numbers. And what Grigiji's vision also describes, as I faintly understand it. His answer to lord Geigi."
"In the city lights. Writ in luminous equations, perhaps?"
"The paradox of faster-than-light, aiji-ma; say that the universe doesn't stretch out like a flat sheet of black cloth. That it has — features, like mountains, like valleys. Say there's a topology of such places. Stars are so heavy in this sheet they make deep valleys. Therefore the numbers describing the path of light across this sheet are quite, quite true. One doesn't violate the Determinists' universe: light can't go faster, by the paths that light must follow. Light and all things within the sheet that is this universe follow those mountains, and take the time they need to take. So nothing that travels along that sheet violates the speed of light. One can measure the distances across the sheet, and they are valid. Right now the effects of atmosphere diminish the accuracy of atevi observations, but when one observes from the station — as atevi will — the accuracy will be far, far greater."
"You're buying time," Ilisidi said, with another small quirk of the mouth, a flash of golden eyes. "You very rascal, you're setting it on a shelf they can't reach."
"But it is true, nand' dowager, and up there they'll prove it. Those papers, as I understand what I'm told, describe that sheet I'm talking about in terms that admit of space not involved in that sheet. What we call folded space."
"Folded space. Space folds."
"A convenience. A way of seeing it for people who aren't as mathematical as atevi, people whose language doesn't express what that paper expresses. It's the way starships travel, aiji-ma. It's the highest of our high technology, and an ateva may have foundit without human help — if I could read those notations I copied. Which I can't, because I don't have the ability an ateva mathematician has to describe the universe."
"Your madman told you this."
"Aiji-ma, light doesn't travel in a straight line. But because light is how we see, how we define shape, how we measure distance, over huge scale — that makes space act flat."
"Makes space act flat."
"We don't operate on a scale on which the curves normally matter. Like a slow rise of the land. The land still looks flat. But the legs feel the climb. Scale makes the difference to the viewer. Not to the math. Not to the hiker's legs."
Ilisidi regarded him with a shake of her head. "Such a creature you are. Such a creature. And not in touch with your university. Done it all yourself, have you."
"I knowthe essence of things I can't explain by mathematics, 'Sidi-ma." To his dismay he let slip the familiar name, the way he held the dowager in his mind. And didn't know how to cover it. "You show your children far more complex things than they have the mathematics to understand. That's the way I learned. That's what I have to draw on. A child's knowledge of how his ancestors moved between the stars. They didn't teach me to fly starships. I just know why they work."
"Faster-than-light."
"Much faster than light."
"Do you know, paidhi, an old reprobate such as myself could ask to what extent all this celestial mapmaking is new, and how much humans were prepared to give at this juncture. You certainly aren't using Hanks-paidhi for a decoy, are you?"
"Nand' dowager, on my reputation and my goodwill to you, I emphatically did notclear Hanks-paidhi to leak that to Geigi. And I didn't clear with my Department what I've just told you."
" Whencethis astronomer, whenceGeigi's dilemma, at the very moment this ship beckons in the heavens — when you need the goodwill of such as myself, nand' paidhi? Is this my grandson's planning? Is this one of his adherents?"
He was in, perhaps, the greatest danger he had ever realized in his life, including bombs falling next to him.
The daylight had increased as they sat, and those remarkable eyes, so mapped about with years, were absolutely cold. One didn't betray 'Sidi-ji and live to profit from it. One didn't betray Cenedi and harm Ilisidi's interests — and walk free.
Ilisidi snapped her fingers. A servant, one of Cenedi's, he was sure, brought a teapot and poured for each of them.
He looked Ilisidi in the eyes as he drank, the whole cup, and set the cup aside.
"So?" Ilisidi asked.
"Nand' dowager, if it's Tabini's planning, his means eludes me. This is an old and respected man in his district, no new creation, that I detected."
"Then what is your explanation? Why this coincidence?"
"Simply that the man may be right, nand' dowager. The man may have found the truth, for what I know. I'm not a mathematician — but I should never wonder at someone finding what really exists."
"At the convenient moment? At this exactly convenient moment for him to do so? And my grandson had nocollusion with humans to slip this cataclysm in on us, to destroy a tenet of Determinist belief?"
"It doesn't destroy it! By what I can tell, it doesn't destroy it, it supports it."
"So you've been told. And you just happen to rush out where a man has just happened to find the truth."
"Not 'just happened,' nand' dowager. Not'just happened.' It's the whole progress of our history behind this man. We've not been transferring just thingsinto atevi hands. We've transferred our designs and our mathematical knowledge to a people who've proceeded much more slowly in their science than humans did withoutatevi skill at numbers — a speed we managed because we dead-reckon, approximate, and proceed as atevi won't. One can do this — when one builds steam engines and builds things stronger than economical, rather man risk calamity. We were astonished that you took so long to advance. We watched the debates over numbers. We waited."
"For us poor savages."
"We thought so in the beginning. We couldn't figure why you couldn't just accept what we knew as fact, keep quiet, and build by our designs — but the point is, it wasn't fact, it was very close approximation. And atevi demanded to understand. Then, then, we began to realize it wasn't just the designs we were transferring: you were extracting our numbers, refining them in an atevi conceptualization that we knew was going to break out someday in a way we didn't foresee. When we gave you the computers that most humans use to figure simple household accounts, you questioned our logical designs. We knew there'd come a day, an insight, a moment, that you'd make a leap of understanding we might not follow. Not in engineering, perhaps. You are such immaculate perfectionists, when our approximations will bear traffic and hold back the waters of a lake; but in the pure application of numbers — no, I'm not in the least shocked that a breakthrough has come at this moment, not even that it's come in astronomy, in which we've had the very leastdirect contact with your scientists. We gave atevi mathematicians computers. We knew study was going on. It never surprised me that the Determinists hold the speed of light as a matter of importance: it is important; it's far from surprising that astronomers seeking precision in their measurements are using it and discovering new truths —"