Invader (29 page)

"These needs are still cultural decisions," the head of committee said. "That's why this committee exists. That's why we don't take your lordly designs, nadi, and go and build them exactly as you built them."

"Wisely so, my lord." God, he saw the cliff coming. Geigi was listening, chin on fist, glowering, and he took the jump, knowing the danger. "But cultural needs are one thing. There cannot be mathematical differences in our universes, my lord of Rigin. Physics is physics, whether accommodated by humans or by atevi."

"There is one universe," Geigi muttered.

"As efficient machines are what they need to be, no more, no less. To be efficient in a given environment, they turn out to look very much alike, nadiin, and manuals for running them turn out very similar, and people who run them eventually think very similarly, apart from their philosophical beliefs. Given that humans and atevi need similar machines to explore the same environment, we will grow more and more alike in our thinking. Physics guided even the wi'itkitiin, in their evolution, to have wings and not fins, to adjust their wing-surfaces in flight, as airplanes do, as atevi and human pilots do; in short, nadiin, neither humans nor atevi are immune to the numbers of the natural world. And atevi who live in space will use true numbers to understand its demands, and therefore enter harmony with the behaviors of humans who Likewise live in harmony with those numbers. Numbers rule us all, nadiin. We admire atevi minds and your language that so readily expresses the harmonies of numbers: atevi have that advantage over us. We can admire. We respect atevi ability. We want association with atevi not least of all because of your remarkable language and your faculty with numbers, which may well develop new understandings in this new environment."

"Not when ships violate natural law," Geigi muttered. "I want to hear an explanation for your ships moving faster than light, nand' paidhi. I want to see the numbers."

Tension hung heavy in the conference room. Civil peace and civil war hinged on that question. Lord Geigi posed a demand the answer to which could shatter his belief, his political stability, the existence of his house and the institutions it supported, and he did it in public, with his personal fortunes at absolute low ebb — a man with nothing to lose but the philosophy on which he pinned his beliefs.

"Nadi-ma," Bren said, "I will find you an answer. I promise that. Mosphei' doesn't express such concepts easily, which hampers my understanding of the physics as well as my attempt to translate."

"Does mat ship exceed the velocity of light?"

"Mosphei' expresses it in that way." The paidhi was desperate, and the tape around his ribs made him short-winded and probably pale as a sheet. "But the human language often approximates more complex situations, lord Geigi, since we have no convenient way to express what the atevi languages do — especially in high numbers and spatial concepts. We're entering on a field of math that

I've never tried to express." And never damn well understood. "Let me work on the problem a few days. I'm sure there's a better way of putting it than either I or Hanks has done."

Lord Geigi was not a happy man. Perhaps he'd hoped for the paidhi to deny it outright. There were uneasy looks elsewhere at the table.

But the Minister of Transportation moved for the paidhi to undertake such a study, the committee expressed confidence in the paidhi's research on the matter, and they went on to specific topics like the cost estimates on the launch facility and what they ought to recommend to the legislature on continuation of the rocket engine project, in serious doubt pending the receipt of far more modern design, with the contractors justifiably besieging the legislators' doors and demanding some payment on work already completed.

He thought — he
thought
that FTL encompassed areas of math he'd never completely understood, and he thought at least he knew where his deficiencies began. The paidhi had to have mathematical ability: it went with the job, and one learned it right along with a language that continually made changes in words according to number and relationship — sometimes you needed algebra just to figure the grammatically correct form of a set-adjective, when the wrong form could be infelicitous and offend the person you were trying to win. You formed sets on the fly in your conversation just to avoid divisible plural forms, like the dual or quad not offset by the triad or monad, and in learning rapid conversation, even with the shortcut concepts the language held, your head hurt — until you got to a degree of familiarity where you could chain-calculate while holding a conversation, and no restaurant ever got away with padding your bill. He'd slid out of higher math in desperation for more study time, found later that he could sight-solve the problems in the math he'd skipped if he thought in Ragi, and the university had given him six credits he'd never sat in class for.

But by everything he could access at this point, looking through the window of truly esoteric math from the outside, and studying atevi philosophy from the outside, and without the neural hardwiring atevi had, he didn't know how in hell to translate what didn't, emphatically didn't, fit into the ordinary framework of the language. There had to be forms as yet not in the dictionary, or acceptable forms had to be created that wouldn't violate felicity —

Which wasn't exactly a job for a human proceeding past the limits of his own education.

And if pedestrian and literal-minded atevi (and there were such) believed that computers through demonic processes assigned infelicitous numbers to airplanes, he didn't know what he was going to do when the numbers began to describe processes of an imperfectly perceived universe.

Atevi demanded perfection in their numbers. It was the demon in the works, that both kept atevi from sliding back into dark ages once they'd made an advance: and kept atevi from advancing as fast on a single front — because they had to adjust
all
their philosophy to accommodate new concepts. The numbers of a situation entered philosophy, integrated with it — and numbers could take forever to find proof enough for someone to try a new thing.

Or they could, absent the gadfly effect of human presence and human tech that patently and demonstrably
worked
, stop all progress while atevi worked out perfection, while amateur 'counters and philosophers rose up to claim the space program would puncture the atmosphere —

I detest amateurs, Banichi had said, in so many words. The paidhi thought the same. God save them all from paidhiin who revealed translight physics with no understanding that to atevi the math involved was far more earth-shattering than the ship was; no understanding that atevi would take the mathematics of folded space and integrate it at every level of their languages, their philosophies, their thinking, until, if humans had trouble understanding atevi logic now, humans were in for a century of real, devastatingly confusing adjustment, right when the whole world had a lot else to adjust to.

It was a wrench in the works for sure. If he'd spent months thinking of exactly what mathematical concept he wouldn't want to toss into the atevi-human interface at this precise moment in history, he thought that folded space would probably sit at the top of the don't-mention list. But it was all on the negotiating table now.

Not everyone they had to deal with had Geigi's brand of courage. He
liked
the man. The same recklessness that had gotten Geigi into financial difficulty had evidently moved Geigi to that blunt, public question, and if there was
an
influence among the opposition to Tabini that deserved preservation right along with Ilisidi, Geigi's blunt willingness to confront the paidhi and demand a truth that might wreck him had the paidhi's respect.

With a word in the right ear — he might be able to help Geigi. He was moved to help Geigi — and damned right the paidhiin occasionally took wide decisions, and played, he hoped, lifesaving politics without consultation. He checked it through the professional filter: he believed he acted independently of human emotion, though human emotion appreciated what Geigi had done; intellect evaluated Geigi's character. And the value of a man who asked reasonable questions, he was convinced, did cross species lines. Any way he could take to help the man — he resolved to use the channels he did have.

Adjournment proceeded, on a vote of the committee, to reconvene in five days for a presentation by the paidhi on FTL.

The paidhi smiled and looked, he hoped, serene in the prospect.

It wasn't what the paidhi felt. And if Hanks had financial expertise, and if,
if
he could rely on her, Hanks still couldn't rescue him from this one. Financial modeling just didn't exactly suit the problem.

Jago had walked him down to the meeting, since Algini, who might have drawn the duty, was still feeling the effects of his injuries. Reasonably, he expected Jago to be waiting outside to walk him back to the apartment, but it was Banichi instead, standing with his shoulders against the wall, easing, one suspected, the stress on his lately injured leg.

"Banichi," he said, and Banichi stood upright quickly enough, though caught by some surprise, which one could rarely do with Banichi, as the committee adjourned without the usual fuss and members walked out the door.

Banichi was tired and in pain, Bren suspected. That rarely showed, either. One could almost guess Jago was taking the walking jobs and Banichi was handling those that didn't require that much;
he'd
sent Tano, the other of his security with two good legs, off looking for offices, another job his security shouldn't have to do.

"That was well done," Banichi said as they walked toward the lift.

"I hope so," Bren said.

"Tabini was pleased."

"How did he know?" He was startled into asking the unaskable; and Banichi returned:

"In the Bu-javid? Of course he knew."

Possibly through Banichi, who knew? Banichi carried a pocket-corn that might have a sensitive enough mike. Banichi didn't say. But Banichi next spoke to someone on the pocket-corn, probably clearing their passage to the lift: security's code was verbal and seemed to change day by day.

"Do
not
take gifts with you into secure areas," Banichi said.

"What gift?" he asked, like a fool.

And remembered.

"The pin." He was utterly chagrined.

"Fortunately it's Tabini's."

"Why?"

"He was anxious about Hanks."

"As if she'd leap on me? Hardly."

"One wasn't certain."

"She might have use. She might use better sense. I don't know."

They were still using the back ways, avoiding the main hall and any ordinary traffic that threatened the casted arm; but the paidhi was considering other things than his surroundings — until he waited at the lift, watching the faces of other committee members, covert glances that came his way, all speculative: a small group hung about Geigi and his aides, and looks came his way.

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
the
problem, 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."