‘Let’s look at what we’ve got,’ she added. ‘Does Alan realize I’m no mathematician?’
It was a logician’s treasure-trove: papers on symbolic logic, lambda calculus, abstract groups, and quantum mechanics; while among the books were the Russell and Whitehead Principia, commentaries of Gödel’s work, and Karl Popper’s Logik der Forschung. Only in Oxford could someone carry a German book without raising suspicion. Slightly less challenging were Russell’s Why I Don’t Believe, H.G. Wells’ A Short History of the World, something by Dorothy Sayers, and a first edition of The History of Mr Polly, a Wells novel she had never read.
‘The Gödel material,’ said Stafford, ‘is not entirely irrelevant to Alan’s disposal of the deep Entscheidungsproblem.’
Gavriela felt a wide grin spread across her face.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Whatever for?’
‘For assuming I have a brain capable of more than baby talk.’
Stafford blushed again.
‘One takes it for granted,’ he said.
His Entscheidungsproblem remark pointed out the relationship between Gödel’s proof that some truths cannot be proven and Turing’s proof that the computability of some problems cannot be decided in advance of working the problem through. Neither those proofs nor any of the material here was classified, but no matter. This was challenging enough: her brain could cope with more than baby talk, but not much more, not yet.
With a grin, Stafford added: ‘In the other place, they still don’t allow women to graduate, did you know that?’
‘I presume they consider themselves the last bastion of civilization.’
‘Last bastion of a broken empire,’ he said, ‘along with ourselves. And that’s assuming we survive the war. An empire that fails to defend itself without assistance is doomed. Continuing to groom young men to rule such an empire is going to become, well, irrelevant.’
‘An empire spanning the globe, and containing a quarter of it,’ said Gavriela. ‘Surely rebuilding is possible.’
‘That’s what everyone seems to think. Personally, I believe Hitler’s done what Communism and economic depression failed to achieve: begun the dismantling of our rotten class system.’
‘But …’ Gavriela wanted to point out his patrician accent and manner, but in some way that would not offend.
‘Oh, I’m as rotten as the rest of them.’ Stafford’s laugh was both girlish and self-deprecating. ‘Believe me, I’m aware of it.’
He rose then, and promised he would come again next week. Gavriela said she would look forward to it, and meant it.
When Stafford was gone, Mrs Wilson took the baby for a walk around the house, meaning she carried and rocked him as she perambulated, humming and talking softly, then came back, and said: ‘He’s told me he wants to be called Algernon.’
Gavriela smiled.
‘Really,’ she said.
Twenty miles into his prayer run, Kanazawa’s mind was as close to mu-shin, to no-mind, as he could achieve at his current level. The heavy straw sandals slapped at the stones of the winding path as he came out of the woods and onto a clear stretch of high wall overlooking the valley. Behind him rose the slopes of Mount Hiei, the clean lines of the temple buildings obscured by the mountain’s bulk.
He accelerated past a tiny pond into which water dripped from a bamboo pipe.
The world ripples.
The water is still.
Every stride of his run was a prayer of deep devotion, just as much as the ritual words recited at every shrine en route. His spiritual discipline was now twenty-seven miles of daily running in his gathered-up white robes, this being the thirteenth consecutive day. The paradox was this: in freeing his mind of thought, he was following a path that was his alone, not laid out for him by superiors in school then the Navy, not even by his parents. Even though the other monks followed the same rituals, it was different from the enforced uniformity of his earlier life.
It was his parents who had first shown him the mountain monks running their devotions, though they were arguably modernists: Father had been among the first volunteers to have the top-knot shorn. But Mother and Father had liked to watch the monks, as had so many others. Today, though, few spectators waited along on the route: times were different.
Something rippled among the treetops below.
No.
Something dark.
Let the thoughts go.
It was something he had glimpsed before: a symptom of his earlier wrongheaded life. But if anything the illusion was stronger now that he was following the spiritual path.
Keep to the path.
Yet reality was an illusion that the Buddha called maya, while his true path was not a physical route but something deeper. He would have thought it should lead away from darkness; but something told him he needed to descend towards it, the enemy. Pine needles and soft soil meant his approach was soundless. The thickness of the trees was enough, perhaps, to hide his robes.
‘—to you, Moscow is safe.’
‘Not thanks to me, but Dmitri. He’s off doing something else now.’
The voices were Russian, only just comprehensible.
‘And you’re the most important part of the network.’
Moving to catch sight of the men, Kanazawa understood his mistake. The darkness, twisting and rippling, had been something associated with the other gaijin of the pair, the two westerners he had spent time with – including the day he witnessed the dojo death that changed everything. One of those two gaijin was here; but it was the assistant, the judo man. Perhaps contaminated by his master, he showed touches of the darkness now. But it was the other, his contact, who manifested the greater abomination: twisting black, impossible perspectives.
My path is devotion.
He stepped out from the trees, still upslope from the two men.
‘What’s this? A monk?’
‘Looks like … I think I know him. Is that you, Kanazawa-san?’
Their faces were a blur, though they were only ten paces below him, maybe less.
‘But he’s like us. Like Dmitri.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Or maybe’ – the man pulled out a pistol – ‘I should say he’s our mirror image. He can see it but he does not hear. Does not feel.’
More words followed, but they were faint, as though pulled off into a great distance. Beyond the men, beyond the abrupt drop and far downslope, a mountain stream – perhaps the same one that fed a trickle into the pond above – shone white and fierce in its descent.
The way is peace.
And then he ran, as he was born to do, the discipline becoming him and he the discipline, hurtling downslope.
‘—him, you fool!’
Accelerating. Arms outstretched as if to embrace, and the impact against their torsos.
Yes.
The world ripples.
Taking them with him beyond the edge.
The water is still.
Into the inviting void.
In Gavriela’s dream, she spoke in vacuum to a man of living crystal.
—If you had a son, what would you call him?
—I’ve never thought about it, Gavi.
—Could you think about it now, for me?
Light refracted strangely through his features.
—I’d name him after my father, I guess.
The airless hall and moonscape melted away with the ending of the dream.
She had decided that today was the day. Mrs Wilson and Stafford accompanied her to register the birth. The registrar was too young for his brush moustache and round glasses. If he found the delay in registering to be procedurally lax, he did not reveal his thoughts. Instead, as Gavriela sat down in front of the mahogany desk, he asked: ‘And what is the baby’s name?’
Mrs Wilson craned her neck to look at Gavriela; even Stafford looked interested, intrigued not by the naming but the mystery: Gavriela had given no hints what it might be.