Yet that did not explain the guilt West felt. Camlann—or CAMLANN—had the ring of a code name for an operation or an asset. Arthurian code names had been a fad in the early days of the SIS.
If there was an SIS file documenting plans of a war with the Soviet Union, obtaining it was of paramount importance—especially if there was a risk that the fire burning in Spain would spread to the rest of the world, and Summerland itself.
It had to be worth the price he was going to pay for it.
Peter went up to one of the archivists, Astrid, a young woman who had gone through a premature Fading during her time at the Registry. When he joined the Court, she had been pretty, with auburn hair, a prim figure and legs with the perfect geometry of sharpened pencils. She still wore white blouses and short skirts, but her hair was now colourless and her face had become a translucent oval, illuminated from within by the faint prismatic glow of her luz stone.
‘Mr Bloom,’ Astrid whispered. Her voice was nearly gone as well, a barely audible vibration in the aether. ‘How have you been?’
‘Too busy to see you, I’m afraid. Visiting the living.’
‘No wonder you look pale.’ In spite of her condition, Astrid was sharp as a tack, and even liked to joke about it.
‘Merely looking forward to forgetting our first meeting so I can experience meeting you again.’
Astrid laughed, a gentle, tickling sensation in the aether, like leaves brushing Peter’s face.
‘And here I thought today might finally be the day.’
Fading affected everyone differently, and even a regular intake of vim did not necessarily protect you from it in the long run. Before Tickets, it happened very quickly, and it was no wonder that early mediums were accused of being charlatans when the spirits they channelled could only recall fragments of their past lives. Sometimes Peter wondered what it had been like for his father, and what was the last thing that had remained with Mr Bloom at the very end.
Peter sighed. ‘I’m afraid not. I need a couple of files.’
‘I heard you were moving up in the world.’
‘I wish. If I make a mess of this one, C will have my head.’
‘Only your head? He is getting soft in his dotage.’
Peter grinned and took a request slip from Astrid’s desk. He scribbled keywords and an operation code on it and signed it with his luz. It was for an early report from BRIAR.
Astrid glanced at the slip briefly and stood still for a moment. The memories she had lost via Fading had largely been replaced by the vast and complex index of the Registry.
She conjured a Hinton Cube from the aether, a flowing, shifting crystal the size of a small die. It represented a unique four-dimensional address that one could thought-travel to, just like the Tickets and ectophone beacons.
Peter made a show of frowning at the Cube. ‘You know, Astrid, I am not feeling terribly well. I had a bad connection with a medium, gave us both a headache the size of Gibraltar. Would you mind helping me with this?’
‘Of course,’ Astrid said. She leaned closer. ‘It would be my pleasure.’
Peter winked at her. You could find a flaw in any system, no matter how carefully constructed. That was what the philosopher Ludwig Unschlicht had taught him.
* * *
It was seven years ago, during Peter’s second year in Cambridge.
The lecture had been strange from the start. Dr Unschlicht walked into the seminar room at Trinity, pushed a chair to the centre of the small space and sat down. He sat quietly for a while, face tense in extreme concentration. The German philosopher was almost fifty but could have passed for thirty. He had an aquiline profile and a mass of brown curly hair atop a high forehead.
Finally, he began chopping the air with his right hand.
‘I shall try and try again to show that what is called a mathematical discovery had much better be called a mathematical invention.’
That made Peter grip his exercise book and fountain pen with anger. Of course mathematics was discovered, not invented! Invention was a degrading word, better suited for engineers. Mathematics was about how things were, in every possible world. He looked around at the handful of other students and fellows in the room and was disappointed when he did not see other expressions of outrage.
Still, Dr Unschlicht’s presentation was as compelling as it was strange. He had no notes; he simply talked. Every now and then he stopped and muttered briefly to himself, brow furrowed as he attempted to pull a thought from some unseen well with the sheer force of his will. When he spoke again, his next statement was perfectly coherent, logical—and to Peter’s ears, blasphemous.
‘Think of the case of the Liar’s Paradox,’ Unschlicht said. ‘It is very queer in a way that this should have puzzled anyone, because the thing works like this: if a man says I am lying, we say that it follows that he is not lying, from which it follows that he is lying and so on. Well, so what? You can go on like that until you are blue in the face. Why not? It doesn’t matter. It is just a useless language game. Why should anyone be excited?’
‘Because it’s a contradiction!’ Peter shouted, unable to contain himself. ‘If mathematics allows statements that can be both true and false, it all falls apart!’
Unschlicht looked at him, eyes blazing. His thin-lipped mouth curled into a smile.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why does everything fall apart? Nothing has been done wrong. Why is this young man so afraid of contradictions?’
Peter blushed. ‘Well, if you can’t build mathematics on logic, then what is it built upon?’ he asked. ‘Russell and Moore showed that—’
‘I am very familiar with their work. But you haven’t answered my question. What harm is there in a contradiction?’
‘What about a situation where you are building a bridge?’ a new voice said, high and full of enthusiasm.
The owner of the voice was one of the first New Dead Peter had seen. He, or his medium, wore full spirit armour, a bulky contraption like a diving suit covered in wires and coils. A faint smell of burning dust emanated from it.
‘If you want to build a bridge,’ the armoured stranger continued, ‘you want to make sure your calculations are correct. And how can you make sure it won’t fall down if there is a contradiction in your calculus?’
‘Doctor Morcom,’ Unschlicht said, ‘don’t you give a class on this very topic? Perhaps you would like me to enrol.’
Peter recognised the name. Dr Christopher Morcom was a mathematical prodigy who had passed over at a young age but continued his work in Summerland and even obtained a posthumous fellowship at Trinity.
‘I am indeed teaching a class on the foundations of mathematics,’ Dr Morcom said. ‘But I was intensely curious about your approach.’
‘You can educate me in turn, then! Has a bridge ever fallen down because of the Liar’s Paradox?’
‘Of course not. But mathematics and physical reality are intimately linked. At the end of the last century, we saw the Scottish mathematician Tait’s perfect correspondence between the classification of knots and the Periodic Table of elements. In Summerland, we are discovering even deeper links between geometry and the nature of souls. How can we continue this journey if our entire edifice of logic rests on a shaky foundation?’
‘Your argument is irrelevant. The process of mathematics is agnostic to its material or aetheric nature. It is a language game, nothing more than a matter of grammar, social conventions and practical demands. Doctor Morcom, you will have to agree with me that our bridges stand. If they fall, it is not due to a flaw in the foundations of calculus. Find me a perfect bridge made of mathematics in your Summerland that collapses under your weight. Then I may look at things differently.’
‘Let us hope our aetheric bridges continue to carry us, then,’ Morcom said.