"They're a small village," Tano said, bringing him the requested cup of water. "And a truly important visitor and the aiji's personal interest is an event."
"We can only hope," Bren said, "for a felicitous outcome. I do begin to ask myself —"
But the staff was arriving in the room, and the session resumed, with a brief address by the senior astronomer and another by the head of Philosophy, the latter of which was at least contributive of a history of the impact of philosophy on astronomical interpretation, and the formation of major schools of thought. A small and respectful contingent of students sat in on the speech at the back of the room, furiously taking notes; the paidhi took his own, writing, and not recording without formal consultation — he wanted, he made a note to himself, to obtain a copy of the speech. Which he thought might please the elderly gentleman.
"Lately," the gentleman said, "the funding for research into astronomy has sadly declined from the magnificent days of the Foreign Star, in which the science of telescopy was funded by every aiji across the continent, particularly among the Ragi. The estimation that humans have far more exact and secret data, nand' paidhi, has made aijiin and the legislatures certain that such will be handed them on some appropriate day and that funding atevi astronomers is superfluous. Which I do not believe, nand' paidhi. We have dedicated ourselves to the proposition that it is not superfluous to study the heavens in our own way. We hope for the paidhi's consideration of our proposal, for the quick release of human observations of the heavens, and human —"
There was a disturbance at the back of the room. Tano and Algini came to sudden alertness where they stood, at either side of the room, and Bren turned his head, ready to fling himself to the floor.
An elderly ateva had wandered in, in a bathrobe, barefoot, hair in disarray. "The answer," he said, "the answer, to the dilemma of the philosophers: the universe does not consist in straight lines, and therefore the path of light is not economical."
"The emeritus," someone said, and the students rose in respect to the old man. Bren rose more slowly.
"Aha!" the emeritus said, pointing a finger. "The paidhi! Yes, nadi! I have the proof —" The emeritus indeed had a sheaf of papers in his fist and brandished them with enthusiasm. "Proof of the conundrum you pose! Elegant! Most elegant! I thank you, nadi! This is the corrob-oration I've been searching for — I've written it in notation —"
"Tea and wafers," the senior astronomer ordered, and arrived at Bren's elbow to urge, in a hushed tone: "He's quite old. He will notremember to eat!"
"By all means," Bren said, and to the elderly gentleman: "Nand' emeritus, I'm anxious to know your opinions — I fear I'm no mathematician, nor an astronomer, merely the translator — but —"
"It's so simple!" the emeritus declared, and descended on him with his sheaf of papers, which he insisted on giving to Bren, and then, with the students and the astronomers crowding around, began to make huge charcoal notes on the standing lectern pad —
The paidhi sat with notepad in hand and copied furiously. So did the senior astronomer, though, thank God, the charcoaled paper simply flipped over the back, as good as computer storage. And the emeritus began to talk about orders of numbers in terms the paidhi had never quite grasped. There were notations he'd never used. There were symbols he'd never met. But he rendered them as best he could, and rapidly decorated his notes with annotated commentary in as quick a hand as he could manage.
A handful of determined local officials were standing on the tarmac in the plane's lights, a group which faded away into stars as the plane lifted.
Then the paidhi was landing at Malguri Airport, and in the distance his beast wandered over reduced-scale hills, over which other, smaller game fled.
But the subway arrived, a dark figure beckoned and he had to leave his beast; the subway delivered them back to the basement station in the Bu-javid much after supper, and one had to wake the emeritus— to tell him something urgent, and in the dream he said it, but he couldn't himself hear it, or understand the words.
But Banichi was at hand to meet them, with a handful of the Bu-javid officers, and a handful of passes, which lodged the students and nand' Grigiji upstairs, wonder of wonders, in the residence of the dean of the university, who proclaimed himself interested in this theory, and they were holding national meetings on the matter.
He himself couldn't get into the meeting. He'd arrived late, and all the doors were locked. He could see the emeritus standing at the lectern and he could see all the atevi listening, but the paidhi was locked out, able only to see the mathematical notations on the pad, which held symbols that he couldn't make sense of.
Then he tried to go by another stairway to get in by the back entry to the hall— and lost his way. He tried door after door after door in the hall, and they led to more stairs, and other halls, increasingly dark places that he thought were unguessed levels of the Bu-javid. He was supposed to address the assembled scholars, but he couldn't find his way back and he knew that he was the only one that could make the symbols on the notepad make sense to the hasdrawad, which otherwise wouldn't listen to the emeritus.
He wandered into a place with a door that let out into the hall above the lecture hall. But he couldn't find a stairway down. At every turn he found himself isolated.
He found a lift, finally, and pushed the button for 1, or he thought he'd pushed that button. The car's light panel developed numbers and symbols he didn't understand and kept traveling. He knew Banichi and Jago would be angry at him for getting into a car and pushing buttons he didn't understand. But they'd looked fine when he pushed them.
He called on the emergency phone, and Jago answered, but she said she had an appointment this afternoon, would tomorrow be acceptable? And he said, he didn't know why he said, that he couldn't wait, and he was going to get off at the floor where it was going.
Which eventually did come, and let out into a gray and brown haze in which he was totally lost. He called Jago on a phone that turned up, and Jago said, sorry, she would be there tomorrow. He'd have to wait. So he kept walking, certain that sitting still here would never get him to the meeting on time. He came to the turn in the lower hallway.
And became aware that his beast was following him, and that it was the hall outside his bedroom in Malguri. He was out of sandwiches. But the beast was hunting small vermin that ran along the edges of the hallway.
It passed him, snuffling for holes in the masonry, and left him in the dark, looking toward the crack of light that came from under his own bedroom door, beckoning him out of the nightmare and into the warmth of the familiar, if he could only get there. He walked and walked, and there always seemed progress, but he couldn't reach it. The light became the cold light of dawn, and then it was possible, but he had to leave, he had something to do, and couldn't remember what it was…
Thump.
His head jerked up. He blinked, looked about him in confusion.
"We're coming in, nand' paidhi," Tano said.
He looked out the window, at dark, at the lights of Shejidan, unable for a moment to understand how he'd come here. He moved a foot and felt his document case stowed quite safely where he'd put it.