In 1827 he became rector, head of the university. He built it up in every way, including literally; he learned architecture so he could design proper structures. In 1830, when cholera struck, he pulled the academic community through with scant mortality, by enforcing sanitation as opposed to the medieval measures taken elsewhere in Kazan. Another time a fire totalled half the town. His new observatory, his best buildings went. But he rescued the instruments and books, and two years later had restored what was lost.
As early as 1826, he’d discussed non-Euclidean geometry. He might as well have done it in Kansas as Kazan. Word spread to western Europe with a slowness that would have driven a less patient, unegotistical man up the wall. But it did travel. When Gauss heard, he was impressed enough to get Lobachevsky elected to the Royal Society of Gottingen in 1842.
Maybe that xenophobia, or simple spiteful jealousy—was what prompted the Czarist regime in 1846 to bounce him as rector. They let him keep his study at the university, but scant else. Heartbroken, he with drew to his mathematical work. His eyesight failed. His son died. He thought on, dictating the Pangeometry that crowned his life. In 1856, shortly after he finished the book, that life ended.
Of course he was a saint!
—No, Steven Pavlovitch, you should not raise me above my worth. I stumbled and sinned more than most, I am sure. But the mercy of God has no bounds. I have been . . . it is impossible to explain. Let us say I have been allowed to progress.
The blackboard filled. Janice wielded an eraser and the chalk squeaked on. To those who knew French—which the Russian and the Hungarian had switched to as being more elegant than German—it gradually became clear what had happened. But I alone shared Lobachevsky’s degree of comprehension. As this grew, I fretted over ways to convey it in American. Time was shrinking on us fast.
—Indeed, Lobachevsky answered. Brusque though contemporary manners have become (pardoranez-rnoi, je vous en prie), haste is needed, for I agree that the hour is late and the peril dire.
Therefore I called the group to me when at last the questioning was done. Except for Ginny, who couldn’t help being spectacular, and Svartalf, who sat at her feet with a human soul in his eyes, they were an unimpressive lot to see, tired, sweaty, haggard, neckties loosened or discarded, hair unkempt, cigarets in most hands. I was probably less glamorous, perched on a stool facing them. My voice grated and I’d developed a tic in one cheek. The fact that a blessed saint had joint tenancy of my body didn’t much affect pain, scared, fallible me.
“Things have got straightened out,” I said. “We made a mistake. God doesn’t issue personal orders to His angels and saints, at least not on our behalf. It appears, Pastor, from the form of your invocation, you understood that. But consciously or not, the rest of us assumed we’re more important than we are.” Lobachevsky corrected me. “No, everybody’s important to Him. But there must be freedom, even for evil. And furthermore, there are considerations of—well, I guess you can’t say Realpolitik. I don’t know if it has earthly analogues. Roughly speaking, though, neither God nor the Adversary want to provoke an early Armageddon. For two thousand years, they’ve avoided direct incursions into each other’s, uh, home territories, Heaven or hell. That policy’s not about to be changed.
“Our appeal was heard. Lobachevsky’s a full-fledged saint. He couldn’t resist coming down, and he wasn’t forbidden to. But he’s not allowed to aid us in hell. If he goes along, it has to be strictly as an observer, inside a mortal frame. He’s sorry, but that’s the way the elixir elides. If we get scragged there, he can’t help our souls escape. Every spirit has to make its own way—No matter. The result was, he entered this continuum, with me as his logical target.
“Bolyai’s different. He heard too, especially since the prayer was so loosely phrased it could well have referred to him. Now, he hasn’t made sainthood. He says he’s been in Purgatory. I suspect most of us’d think of it as a condition where you haven’t got what it takes to know God directly but you can improve yourself. At any rate, while he wasn’t in Heaven, he wasn’t damned either. And so he’s under no prohibition as regards taking an active part in a fight. This looked like a chance to do a good deed. He assessed the content of our appeal, including the parts we didn’t speak, and likewise chose me. Lobachevsky, who’s more powerful by virtue of sanctity, and wasn’t aware of his intent, arrived a split second ahead of him.”
I stopped to bum a cigaret. What I really wanted was a gallon of hard cider. My throat felt like a washboard road in summer. “Evidently these cases are governed by rules,” I said. “Don’t ask me why; I’m sure the reasons are valid if we could know them; in part, I guess, it’s to protect mortal flesh from undue shock and strain. Only one extra identity per customer. Bolyai hasn’t the capability of a saint, to create a temporary real body out of whatever’s handy, as you suggested a while back, Dr. Nobu. In fact, he probably couldn’t have used organized material if we’d prepared some. His way to manifest himself was to enter a live corpus. Another rule: the returned soul can’t switch from person to person. It must stay with whom it’s at for the duration of the affair.
“Bolyai had to make a snap decision. I was preempted. His sense of propriety wouldn’t let him, uh, enter a woman. It wouldn’t do a lot of good if he hooked up with one of you others, who aren’t going. Though our prayer hadn’t mentioned it, he’d gathered from the overtones that the expedition did have a third member who was male. He willed himself there. He always was rash. Too late, he discovered he’d landed in Svartalf”
Barney’s brick-house shoulders drooped. “Our project’s gone for nothing?”
“No,” I said. “With Ginny’s witchcraft to help-boost his feline brain power-Bolyai thinks he can operate. He’s spent a sizable chunk of afterlife studying the geometry of the continua, exploring planes of existence too weird for him to hint at. He loves the idea of a filibuster into hell.”
Svartalf s tail swung, his ears stood erect, his whiskers dithered.
“Then it worked!” Ginny shouted. “Whoopee!”
“So far and to this extent, yeah.” My determination was unchanged but my enthusiasm less. Lobachevsky’s knowledge darkened me—I sense a crisis. The Adversary can ill afford to let you succeed. His mightiest and subtlest forces will be arrayed against you.
“Well,” Karlslund said blankly. “Well, well.”
Ginny stopped her war dance when I said: “Maybe you better make that phone call, Dr. Griswold.”
The little scientist nodded. “I’ll do it from my office. We can plug in an extension here, audio-visual reception.” We were far too groggy to give a curse about the lawfulness of that, though I do believe it’s permissible, not being an actual scryertap.
We had a few minutes’ wait. I held Ginny close by my side. Our troops muttered aimlessly or slumped exhausted. Bolyai was alone in his cheerfulness. He used Svartalf to tour the lab with eager curiosity. By now he knew more math and science than living men will acquire before world’s end; but it intrigued him to see how we were going about things. He was ecstatic when Janice found him a copy of the National Geographic.
The phone awoke. We saw what Griswold did. The breath sucked in between my teeth. Shining Knife was indeed back.