He flipped open his computer and began to compose his specific questions, pull up his specific vocabulary, trying to be as sure of what he was going to imply to scholarly people as he could possibly be.
Universe — basheigi— was right at the top of the list. Was there a better word for it? One hoped the venerable astronomer had explanations. One hoped the profession had come up with words that could at least be trimmed down in the minds of nonexpert hearers to stand for certain difficult concepts.
He pulled up a hundred fifty-eight words and spent the next forty-eight minutes being sure of his contextual and finely shaded meanings, before the plane entered final approach and seemed to be aiming itself at a very impressive wall of rock.
"One hopes the airport is coming soon," he said, and Tano, in all seriousness, offered to ask the crew, but he told Tano and Algini to sit down — the plane was suffering the buffeting a mountain range tended to make, and in a moment they indeed made the requisite turn, slipping down toward a wooded, remote area that argued public lands.
It was a fair-sized airport, and there was a hunting village, such as one found in the public lands, all inhabitants employed by the Association, all engaged, the paidhi was informed, in the maintenance and care of the Caruija Forest Reserve.
And one didn't expect there to be too much in the way of public transport, but a narrow-gauge railroad waited for them at the airport, a quaint little thing that had to date back almost to the war.
Cheaper, in the mountains, for small communities. One didn't have to blast out a large roadbed, and the little diesel engine didn't have to haul much in either direction — in this case, one wooden-seated car with glass windows and a green roof with red eaves. A spur led from the airport to the village; another spur led somewhere he had no idea; a third led up to the mountain: Saigiadi Observatory, a small sign informed them, as, with a small stop for a railway manager to throw a switch, they were off on their rattling way.
His hand worked. He could bend the elbow. He was still entranced with that freedom. He exercised the wrist and elbow as he got the chance — hadn't put the salve on it this morning because the salve had a medicinal smell. He sat, suffering just a little discomfort, enjoying the noisy ride up the mountain, enjoying the smell of wilderness and trees and open air that got past the diesel that powered the engine: the Ministry of Transportation was trying to replace diesel in all trains, for air quality… but electrics wouldn't make thisgrade; he could report that to the minister, with no doubt at all. The train lurched and a vista of empty space hung outside the window.
Then a beige-furred, white-tailed game herd sprinted along the side of the train, keeping pace until it reached a turn. He turned in his seat to watch them left behind.
Pachiikiin, fat and sleek with the summer. He was in a vastly better mood and didn't care if the shoulder ached.
He'd scared Tano and Algini with his sudden reaction to the animals. They tried to settle unobtrusively, but he knew he'd alarmed them — and they'd looked for some agency that might have spooked them, that was the way their minds worked.
"I miss Malguri," he said to them, by way of explanation. He didn't think they justly should miss the place, Algini in particular, with his bandages — and he had to ask himself what Algini could do, slow-moving as he still was, if there was a security problem.
Safer than the Bu-javid, Jago had said. Which was probably true.
And a thirty-minute ride, during which he saw no few examples of mountain wildlife, brought them within sight of the Saigiadi Observatory dome. A handful of minutes more brought them to a debarkation at the small depot that verged — inelegantly but efficiently — on a storeroom.
Students met them, bowing and offering to carry anything that wanted carrying — excited students, thrilled, as the student leader said, that the paidhi came to dignify their school, and offering a — God help him — small presentation copy of the observatory's work, which he was relieved to see consisted not of a recitation but a written report, a history of the place, with photographs, put together in that scrapbook way that very small businesses used to promote their craft, their wares, their trade.
"Please keep it, nand' paidhi," they wished him, and he was quite touched by the trouble they'd gone to, and vowed to look through it and see — he was moved to such extravagance — if the observatory could not be recipient of some of the first data that they derived from the ship's presence —
Which he was very willing to do if only he could get through the ceremony to talk to the venerable astronomer emeritus, who was, the students assured him, quite brilliant, and very willing to talk to him, but who — it developed after a quarter-hour of close questioning — was asleep at the present moment, and the students didn't want to waken the venerable, who waked when he wanted to wake and who, it developed in still more questioning, this time of the senior astronomer who put herself forward to explain the astronomer emeritus, became irritable and difficult if waked out of a thinking sleep.
"The paidhi has come all the way from Shejidan," Tano objected, which was the thought going through the paidhi's mind, too. But on Banichi's warning that the man was elderly and noncommunicative… the paidhi thought it better to be politic.
"When does he usually wake?"
There was embarrassed silence, on the part of the senior astronomer, her staff, and the students.
"We pleaded with him, nand' paidhi. He said he'd thinking to do, he took to his room, and we — can tryto wake him, if the paidhi wishes."
"Against your advice."
"Against our experience, nand' paidhi. Assuring the paidhi that the emeritus by no means intends a slight."
"He does it in classes," a student said, "nand' paidhi."
One began to get the idea.
"Perhaps," he said moderately, "the faculty and staff could work on my answers."
"We have," the senior said, bowing again.
"For two days," the second senior said.
"You have my questions, then," he asked, and, oh, yes, the senior said, on receipt of them — no regard to any secrecy of the aiji's seal, oh, no — they'd posed them to the whole class and they had every reference looked up with all propitious calculations — so far as they had data.
"But the shape of the universe," the senior said, "that persistently eludes speculation, as the paidhi may know, since the imprecision of measurements taken from the earth, together with its deviations — which are negligible in the scale of the earth, and considerable in such precise measurement as one makes of the stars —"
"Together with atmospheric flutter and distortion," the second senior said, and dug among his papers while the senior diverted herself to maintain she had taken that into account in her sample figures —
The paidhi was getting a headache, and the head of astronomical philosophy, nand' Lagonaidi, was handing him sheets and sheets of arguments on cosmological theory — while Algini and Tano sat quietly by the door and perhaps understood one word in ten.
"Actually," the head of Philosophy broke in to say, "the Determinists have taken the imprecisions of earthly measurement as a challenge. But all scientists in astronomical measurement are automatically suspect."
"Because of changing measurement."
"Because, among other things, of eccentricities of position. — Which can be explained, by modern astronomy — — -"
"Mostly," the senior astronomer interjected.
"But," Philosophy reprised, "where does one possibly find smooth transition from the finite to the infinite when the numbers only grow more and more vague? I confess I find it disturbing — but I have moral confidence that such a system will evolve. And necessarily along the way toward such perfection, atevi will quarrel over the branchings of the path only to discover that some paths have woven back together in harmony. There will be gaps in our understanding, not in the order of the universe."