‘Can’t complain, sir.’
‘And work?’
‘No particular problems that I’m aware of.’
‘Good. Good.’ Sivaraksa made a quick, cursive annotation in the notebook he had opened on his desk, then slid it beneath the smoky-grey cube of a paperweight. ‘How long has it been now?’
‘Since what, sir?’
‘Since your sister… Since Mina…’ He seemed unable to complete the sentence, substituting a spiralling gesture made with his index finger. His finely boned hands were marbled with veins of olive green.
Naqi eased into her seat. ‘Two years, sir.’
‘And you’re… over it?’
‘I wouldn’t exactly say I’m over it, no. But life goes on, like they say. Actually I was hoping…’ Naqi had been about to tell him how she had imagined the arrival of the visitors would close that chapter. But she doubted she would be able to convey her feelings in a way Dr Sivaraksa would understand. ‘Well, I was hoping I’d have put it all behind me by now.’
‘I knew another conformal, you know. Fellow from Gjoa. Made it into the élite swimmer corps before anyone had the foggiest idea…’
‘It’s never been proven that Mina was conformal, sir.’
‘No, but the signs were there, weren’t they? To one degree or another we’re all subject to symbiotic invasion by the ocean’s micro-organisms. But conformals show an unusual degree of susceptibility. On one hand it’s as if their own bodies actively invite the invasion, shutting down the usual inflammatory or foreign cell rejection mechanisms. On the other, the ocean seems to tailor its messengers for maximum effectiveness, as if the Jugglers have selected a specific target they wish to absorb. Mina had very strong fungal patterns, did she not?’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ Naqi said, which was not entirely a lie.
‘But not, I suspect, in anyone who ever attempted to commune. I understand you had ambitions to join the swimmer corps yourself?’
‘Before all that happened.’
‘I understand. And now?’
Naqi had never told anyone that she had joined Mina in the swimming incident. The truth was that even if she had not been present at the time of Mina’s death, her encounter with the rogue mind would have put her off entering the ocean for life.
‘It isn’t for me. That’s all.’
Jotah Sivaraksa nodded gravely. ‘A wise choice. Aptitude or not, you’d have almost certainly been filtered out of the swimmer corps. A direct genetic connection to a conformal — even an unproven conformal — would be too much of a risk.’
‘That’s what I assumed, sir.’
‘Does it trouble you, Naqi?’
She was wearying of this. She had work to do: deadlines to meet that Sivaraksa himself had imposed.
‘Does what trouble me?’
He nodded at the sea. Now that the play of light had shifted minutely, it looked less like dimpled leather than a sheet of beaten bronze. ‘The thought that Mina might still be out there… in some sense.’
‘It might trouble me if I were a swimmer, sir. Other than that… No. I can’t say that it does. My sister died. That’s all that mattered.’
‘Swimmers have occasionally reported encountering minds — essences — of the lost, Naqi. The impressions are often acute. The conformed leave their mark on the ocean at a deeper, more permanent level than the impressions left behind by mere swimmers. One senses that there must be a purpose to this.’
‘That wouldn’t be for me to speculate, sir.’
‘No.’ He glanced down at the compad and then tapped his forefinger against his upper lip. ‘No. Of course not. Well, to the matter at hand—’
She interrupted him. ‘You swam once, sir?’
‘Yes. Yes, I did.’ The moment stretched. She was about to say something — anything — when Sivaraksa continued, ‘I had to stop for medical reasons. Otherwise I suppose I’d have been in the swimmer corps for a good deal longer, at least until my hands started turning green.’
‘What was it like?’
‘Astonishing. Beyond anything I’d expected.’
‘Did they change you?’
At that he smiled. ‘I never thought that they did, until now. After my last swim I went through all the usual neurological and psychological tests. They found no anomalies; no indications that the Jugglers had imprinted any hints of alien personality or rewired my mind to think in an alien way.’
Sivaraksa reached across the desk and held up the smoky cube that Naqi had taken for a paperweight. ‘This came down from Voice of Evening. Examine it.’
Naqi peered into the milky-grey depths of the cube. Now that she saw it closely she realised that there were things embedded within the translucent matrix. There were chains of unfamiliar symbols, intersecting at right angles. They resembled the complex white scaffolding of a building.
‘What is it?’
‘Mathematics. Actually, a mathematical argument — a proof, if you like. Conventional mathematical notation — no matter how arcane — has evolved so that it can be written down on a two-dimensional surface, like paper or a readout. This is a three-dimensional syntax, liberated from that constraint. Its enormously richer, enormously more elegant.’ The cube tumbled in Sivaraksa’s hand. He was smiling. ‘No one could make head or tail of it. Yet when I looked at it for the first time I nearly dropped it in shock. It made perfect sense to me. Not only did I understand the theorem, but I also understood the point of it. It’s a joke, Naqi. A pun. This mathematics is rich enough to embody humour. And understanding that is the gift they left me. It was sitting in my mind for twenty-eight years, like an egg waiting to hatch.’
Abruptly, Sivaraksa placed the cube back on the table.
‘Something’s come up,’ he said.
From somewhere came the distant, prolonged thunder of a dirigible discharging its cargo of processed ore. It must have been one of the last consignments.
‘Something, sir?’
‘They’ve asked to see the Moat.’
‘They?’
‘Crane and her Vahishta mob. They’ve requested an oversight of all major scientific centres on Turquoise, and naturally enough we’re on the list. They’ll be visiting us, spending a couple of days seeing what we’ve achieved.’
‘I’m not too surprised that they’ve asked to visit, sir.’
‘No, but I was hoping we’d have a few months’ grace. We don’t. They’ll be here in a week.’
‘That’s not necessarily a problem for us, is it?’
‘It mustn’t become one,’ Sivaraksa said. ‘I’m putting you in charge of the visit, Naqi. You’ll be the interface between Crane’s group and the Moat. That’s quite a responsibility, you understand. A mistake — the tiniest gaffe — could undermine our standing with the Snowflake Council.’ He nodded at the compad. ‘Our budgetary position is precarious. Frankly, I’m in Tak Thonburi’s lap. We can’t afford any embarrassments.’
‘No, sir.’
She certainly did understand. The job was a poisoned chalice, or, at the very least, a chalice with the strong potential to become poisoned. If she succeeded — if the visit went smoothly, with no hitches — Sivaraksa could still take much of the credit for it. If it went wrong, on the other hand, the fault would be categorically hers.
‘One more thing.’ Sivaraksa reached under his desk and produced a brochure that he slid across to her. The brochure was marked with a prominent silver snowflake motif. It was sealed with red foil. ‘Open it; you have clearance.’
‘What is it, sir?’
‘A security report on our new friends. One of them has been behaving a bit oddly. You’ll need to keep an eye on him.’