Anathem

The Geometers have us pinned down like a biological sample on a table,” said Ignetha Foral, after we had served the soup. “They can poke and prod us at their leisure, and observe our reactions. When we first became aware that they were in orbit around Arbre, we assumed that something was going to happen soon. But it has been maddeningly slow. The Geometers can get all the water they need from comets, all the stuff they need from asteroids. The only thing they can’t do-we suspect-is go on interstellar voyages. But it could be that they aren’t in that much of a hurry.” She paused to whet her whistle. A bracelet gleamed on her wrist. It looked valuable but not gaudy. Everything about her confirmed what Tulia had told us, months ago, at Edhar: that she came from a moneyed Burger clan with old ties to the mathic world. It wasn’t clear, yet, why she was here, and carrying the impressive-sounding title of “Madame Secretary.” According to the information Tulia had dug up, she had been deposed from her Sæcular job by the Warden of Heaven. But that was old news. The Warden of Heaven had been thrown out of the airlock a few weeks ago. Perhaps, while I’d been distracted on Ecba, the Sæcular Power had reorganized itself, and she’d been dusted off and given a new job.

Having taken a bit of refreshment, Madame Secretary made eye contact with the other six at the table. “Or at least that’s what I say to my colleagues who want to know why I’m wasting my time at this messal.” She said this in a good-humored way. Fraa Lodoghir laughed richly. Everyone else was able to manage at least a chuckle except for Fraa Jad, who was staring at Ignetha Foral as if she were the aforementioned biological specimen. Ignetha Foral was sharp enough to notice this. “Fraa Jad,” she said, inclining her head slightly in his direction, in a suggestion of a bow, “naturally takes the long view of things, and is probably thinking to himself that my colleagues must have dangerously short attention spans. But my metier, for better or worse, is the political workings of what you call the Sæcular Power. And to many in that world, this messal looks like a waste of some very good minds. The kindest thing some will say of it, is that it is a convenient place to which difficult, irrelevant, or incomprehensible persons may be exiled, so that they don’t get in the way of the important business of the Convox. How would you at this table recommend that I counter the arguments of those who say it ought to be done away with? Suur Asquin?”

Suur Asquin was our host: the current Heritor of Avrachon’s Dowment, hence its owner in all but name. Ignetha Foral had called on her first because she looked as though she had something to say, but also, I suspected, because it was the correct etiquette. For now, I was giving Suur Asquin the benefit of the doubt, because she had helped us make dinner, working side by side with her servitor, Tris. This was the very first Plurality of Worlds Messal, and so it had taken us a while to find our way around the kitchen, get the oven hot, and so forth.

“I believe I’d have an unfair advantage, Madame Secretary, since I live here. I’d answer the question by showing your colleagues around Avrachon’s Dowment, which as you’ve all seen is a kind of museum…”

I was standing behind Fraa Lodoghir with my hands behind my back holding the knotted end of a rope that disappeared into a hole in the wall and ran thirty feet to the kitchen. Someone tugged on the other end of it, silently calling for me. I leaned forward to make sure that my doyn didn’t need his chin wiped, then walked around the table, sidestepping in front of other servitors. Meanwhile Suur Asquin was trying to develop an argument that merely looking at the old scientific instruments scattered around the Dowment would convince the most skeptical extra that pure metatheorics was worthy of Sæcular support. Seemed obvious to me that she was using Hypotrochian Transquaestiation to assert that pure metatheorics would be the sole occupation of this messal, which I didn’t agree with at all-but I mustn’t speak unless spoken to, and I reckoned that the others here could take care of themselves. Fraa Tavener-aka Barb-was standing behind Fraa Jad, looking at Suur Asquin as a bird looks at a bug, just itching to jump in and plane her. I gave him a wink as I went by, but he was oblivious. I passed through a door, padded for silence, and entered a stretch of corridor that served as an airlock, or rather sound-lock. At its end was another padded door. I pushed through-it was hinged to swing both ways-and entered the kitchen, a sudden and shocking plunge into heat, noise, and light.

And smoke, since Arsibalt had set fire to something. I edged toward the sand bucket, but, not seeing any open flames, thought better of it. Suur Asquin could be heard over a speaker; the Sæcular Power had sent in Ita to rig up a one-way sound system so that we in the kitchen-and others far away, I had to assume-could hear every word spoken in the messallan.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“No problem. Oh, this? I incinerated a cutlet. It’s all right. We have more.”

“Then why’d you yank me?”

He made a guilty glance at a plank on the wall with seven rope-ends dangling from it, all but one chalked with a servitor’s name. “Because I’m desperately bored!” he said. “This conversation is stupid!”

“It’s just getting started,” I pointed out. “These are just the opening formalities.”

“It’s no wonder people want to abolish this messal, if this is a fair sample of-”

“How is yanking my rope going to help?”

“Oh, it’s an old tradition here,” Arsibalt said, “I’ve been reading up on it. If the dialog gets boring, the servitors show their disdain by voting with their feet-withdrawing to the kitchen. The doyns are supposed to notice this.”

“The odds of that actually working with this group are about as high as that this dinner won’t make them sick.”

“Well, we must begin somewhere.”

I went over to the ropes, picked up a lump of chalk, and wrote “Emman Beldo” under the one that was still unlabeled.

“Is that his name?”

“Yeah. He talked to me after Plenary.”

“Why didn’t he help cook?”

“One of his jobs is driving Madame Secretary around. He only got here five minutes ago. Anyway, extras can’t cook.”

“Raz speaks the truth!” said Suur Tris, coming in from the garden with a bolt-load of firewood. “Even you guys seem a little challenged.” She hauled open the hatch of the oven’s firebox and gazed on the coal-bed with a critical eye.

“We shall prove our worth anon,” said Arsibalt, picking up a huge knife, like a barbarian warlord called to single combat. “This stove, your produce, your cuts of meat-all strange to us.” And then, as if to say speaking of strange…Arsibalt and I both glanced over at a heavy stew-pot, which had been pushed to the back of the stove in hopes that the vapors belching out of it would stink less if they came from farther away.

Suur Tris was nudging coals around and darting bits of wood into the firebox as if it were brain surgery. We’d made fun of her for this until our efforts to manage it ourselves had produced the kinds of outcomes normally associated with strategic nuclear warfare. Now, we watched contritely.

“Kind of weird for Madame Secretary to open by saying the messal’s a drain trap for losers,” I said.

“Oh, I disagree. She’s good!” Tris exclaimed. “She’s trying to motivate them.” Tris was podgy and not especially good-looking, but she had the personality of a beautiful girl because she’d been raised in a math.

“I wonder how that’s going to work on my doyn,” I said, “he’d like nothing more than to see this canceled, so he can go dine with cool people.”

A bell jingled. We turned to look. Seven bells were mounted to the wall above the seven rope-ends; each was connected, by a long ribbon routed through the wall and under the floor, to the underside of the table in the messallan, where it terminated in a velvet pull. A doyn could summon his servitor, silently and invisibly, by yanking on the pull.

The bell rang once, paused, then began to jangle nonstop, more and more violently, until it looked like it was about to jump off the wall. It was labeled “Fraa Lodoghir.”

I returned to the messallan, walked around behind him, and bent forward. “Get rid of this Edharian gruel,” he breathed. “It is perfectly unpalatable.”

“You should see what the Matarrhites are cooking up!” I muttered. Fraa Lodoghir glanced across the table at an avout-one of those who’d celebrated Inbrase with me, earlier in the day-whose face was covered by his or her bolt. The fabric had been drawn sideways over his or her head, as if to form a hood, but the hood had then been pulled down to cover the face, with an opening below through which food-if that was the correct word for what the Matarrhites put into their mouths during meals-could be introduced. “I’ll have what it’s having,” Lodoghir hissed. “But not this!”

I glanced significantly at Fraa Jad who was shoveling the stuff into his mouth, then confiscated Lodoghir’s serving and whisked it out of there, happy to have an excuse to go back to the kitchen. “Perfectly unpalatable,” I repeated, heaving it into the compost.

“Perhaps we should slip him some Allswell,” Arsibalt suggested.

“Or something stronger,” I returned. But before we could develop this promising theme, the back door swung open and in walked a girl swathed in a hectare of heavy, scratchy-looking black bolt, lashed to her body with ten miles of chord. Her punched-in sphere was overflowing with mixed greens. Out of doors, she kept her head covered, but once she had set the greens down she swept her bolt back to reveal her perfectly smooth dome, all dotted with perspiration, since it was a warm day and she was overdressed. Arsibalt and I did not feel as easy around Suur Karvall as we did around Tris, so all banter stopped. “That’s a lovely selection of greens,” Tris began, but Karvall flinched and held up a bony, translucent hand, gesturing for silence.

Fraa Lodoghir had begun speaking. I reckoned that was why he’d wanted his “gruel” cleared away.

“Plurality of Worlds,” he began, and let it resonate for a long moment. “Sounds impressive. I haven’t the faintest idea what it means to some here. The mere fact of the Geometers’ existence proves that there is at least one other world, and so on one level it is quite trivial. But since it appears that I am the token Procian at this messal, I shall play my role, and say this: we have nothing in common with the Geometers. No shared experiences, no common culture. Until that changes, we can’t communicate with them. Why not? Because language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that are perfectly meaningless until we associate them, in our minds, with meaning: a process of acculturation. Until we share experiences with the Geometers, and thereby begin to develop a shared culture-in effect, to merge our culture with theirs-we cannot communicate with them, and their efforts to communicate with us will continue to be just as incomprehensible as the gestures they’ve made so far: throwing the Warden of Heaven out the airlock, dropping a fresh murder victim into a cult site, and rodding a volcano.”

As soon as he paused, reactions came through on the speakers, several people talking over each other:

“I don’t agree that those are incomprehensible.”

“But they must have been watching our speelies!”

“You’re missing the point of the Plurality of Worlds.”

But Suur Asquin spoke last, and most distinctly. “Many other messals are addressing the topics you mentioned, Fraa Lodoghir. In the spirit of Madame Secretary’s opening question: why should we have a separate Plurality of Worlds Messal?”

“Well, you might simply ask the hierarchs who brought it into existence!” Fraa Lodoghir answered a little disdainfully. “But if you want my answer as a Procian, why, it is quite straightforward: the arrival of the Geometers is a perfect laboratory experiment, as it were, to demonstrate and to explore the philosophy of Saunt Proc: put simply, that language, communication, indeed thought itself, are the manipulation of symbols to which meanings are assigned by culture-and only by culture. I only hope that they haven’t watched so many of our speelies that their minds have been contaminated, and the experiment ruined.”

“And this relates to our theme how?” Suur Asquin prodded him.

“She knows perfectly well,” Suur Tris assured us, “she’s just making sure it all gets spelled out for Ignetha Foral.”

“Plurality of Worlds means a plurality of world cultures-cultures hermetically sealed off from one another until now-hence, for the time being, unable to communicate.”

“According to Procians!” someone put in. I didn’t recognize the oddly accented voice, so I thought it might be the Matarrhite.

“The purpose of this messal, accordingly, is to develop and, I would hope, implement a strategy for the Sæcular Power, assisted by the avout, to break down the plurality-which is the same thing as developing a shared language. We shall put ourselves out of business by making the Plurality of Worlds into One World.”

“He hates this messal,” I translated, “so he’s trying to talk Ignetha Foral into turning it into something else: which would just happen to be a power base for the Procians.”

Suur Karvall really hated it when we talked over the doyns, but she was going to have to get used to it. We were all standing around distributing the greens among half a dozen salad plates. Only six, because Matarrhites, apparently, didn’t eat salad.

While making dinner, some of us servitors had had a good argument as to why a Matarrhite had been invited. One theory was simply that, because the Sæcular Power was religious, they wanted some Deolaters in on the discussion. The Matarrhites were going to have Convox clout way out of proportion to their significance in the mathic world, or so this argument went, because the Panjandrums felt more comfortable with them. The other theory was more in line with the notion, just voiced by Ignetha Foral, that this messal was a dumping ground.

Clanking sounds over the speaker told us that those servitors who were still in the messallan were collecting the soup bowls. This led to a break in the dialog; but we could hear an elderly woman’s voice, speaking up, in a more informal mood, as the servitors worked: “I believe I can put your fears to rest, Fraa Lodoghir.”

“Why, that’s good of you, Grandsuur Moyra, but I don’t remember voicing any fears!” said Fraa Lodoghir, trying and failing to sound jovial.

Moyra was Karvall’s doyn, so, out of respect for Karvall, we actually did shut up for a moment.

Moyra returned, “I believe you did express concern that the Geometers had contaminated their own culture by watching too many of our speelies.”

“Of course you are right! That’s what I get for contradicting a Lorite!” Fraa Lodoghir said.

The door opened and in came Barb with seven bowls stacked on his arms.

“I think you ought to change my designation,” said Moyra delicately, after considering this for a moment, “and now call me a meta-Lorite, or, in honor of this occasion, a Plurality of Worlds Lorite.”

This got a murmur out of everyone-in the messallan and in the kitchen. Suur Karvall had drifted over to the speaker and was standing there rapt. Arsibalt had been chopping something; he stopped and poised his knife above the block.

“We Lorites are always making nuisances of ourselves,” Moyra said, “by pointing out that this or that idea was already come up with by someone else, long ago. But now I do believe we shall have to broaden our sphere to include the Plurality of Worlds, and say ‘I’m terribly sorry, Fraa Lodoghir, but your idea was actually dreamed up by a bug-eyed monster on Planet Zarzax ten million years ago!’”

Laughter around the table.

“Splendid!” Arsibalt said. He turned and looked at me.

“She’s a closet Halikaarnian,” I said.

“Exactly!”

Fraa Lodoghir had seen the same thing and was trying to lodge an objection: “I’d say you can’t know such a thing until you communicate with that bug-eyed monster or his descendants…” And then he went on to reiterate what he’d said before. I rushed the salad out in the hopes that it would shut him up. Suur Moyra didn’t seem quite taken with his arguments, and Ignetha Foral was beginning to look a little frosted.

Meanwhile, Arsibalt’s doyn, who happened to be seated next to Fraa Jad, was leaning to exchange whispers with the Thousander. When first I’d seen this man, he’d struck me as oddly familiar. Only when Arsibalt told me his name had I realized where I’d seen him before: standing alone in the chancel of Saunt Edhar, looking straight up at me. This was Fraa Paphlagon.

Fraa Jad nodded. Paphlagon cleared his throat as Lodoghir began to wind down, and finally barged in: “Perhaps while we’re proving that everything Saunt Proc ever wrote was just perfect, we can get some theorics done too!”

This shut even Lodoghir up, so there was a short pause. Paphlagon continued, “There’s another reason for having a messal about the Plurality of Worlds: a reason that some would say is almost as fascinating as Fraa Lodoghir’s remarks about syntax. It is a pure theorical reason. It is that the Geometers are made of different matter from us. Matter that is not native to this cosmos. And what is more, we have results just in from Laboratorium, concerning the tests that were performed on the four vials of fluid-assumed to be blood-on the Ecba probe. These four samples are made of different matter from each other, which is to say that each of them is as different from the other three, as it is from the matter we are made of.”

“Fraa Paphlagon, I was only made aware of this as I was en route. I’m still absorbing it,” said Ignetha Foral. “Say more, please, of what you mean when you speak of the matter being different?”

“The nuclei of the atoms are incompatible,” he said. Then, surveying the faces at the table, he shifted back in his chair, grinned, and held up his hands like parallel blades, as if to say “imagine a nucleus.” “Nuclei are forged in the hearts of stars. When the stars die, they explode, and the nuclei are thrown out as ash from a dead fire. These nuclei are positively charged. So, when things get cool enough, they attract electrons, and become atoms. Further cooling enables the atoms’ electrons to interact with one another to form complexes called molecules, which are what everything is made of. But, again, the making of the world begins in the hearts of stars, where those nuclei are forged according to certain rules that only apply in very hot crowded places. The chemistry of the stuff we are made of reflects, in a roundabout way, those rules. Until we learned to make newmatter, every nucleus in our cosmos was made according to the set of rules that naturally obtains. But the Geometers are aware of-they are made of-four other slightly different, but totally incompatible, sets of rules for making nuclei.”

“So,” said Suur Asquin, “they too learned to make newmatter or-”

“Or they came from different cosmi,” Fraa Paphlagon said. “Which makes a Plurality of Worlds Messal seem awfully relevant to me.”

“This is bizarre-fantastical!” said a reedy voice with a heavy and strange accent. No one’s lips were moving that we could see, so, by process of elimination, we turned to the Matarrhite, who was chalked up on the bell-board as one Zh’vaern, with no “Fraa” or “Suur” to give a clue as to sex. Zh’vaern turned slightly in his seat-I was guessing male, from the voice-and made a gesture. His servitor, a column of black fabric, loomed forward, grew a pseudopod, and took his plate-to the visible relief of those seated to either side. “I can hardly believe we are talking about a possibility so inconceivable as that other universes exist-and that the Geometers originate there!”

In this, Zh’vaern seemed to speak for the entire table.

Except for Jad. “The words fail. There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes-that is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers came from other Narratives-until they came here, and joined ours.”

Having dropped this bomb, Fraa Jad excused himself, and went to the toilet.

“What on earth is he going on about?” Fraa Lodoghir demanded. “It sounded like literary criticism!” But he did not speak scornfully; he was fascinated.

“So perhaps this messal has already turned into what its detractors claim of it,” said Ignetha Foral. And having issued that challenge, she turned toward the topic of the research she had performed, years ago, as a Unarian.

Paphlagon was in his seventh decade, impressive-looking rather than handsome, no doubt accustomed to being the most senior, the most eminent person in any given room. He was sitting there with a trim, wry smile, staring at the center of the table-resigning himself, with all good humor, to being Fraa Jad’s interpreter. “Fraa Jad,” he said, “speaks of Hemn space. It’s probably just as well he broached the subject early. Hemn space, or configuration space, is how almost all theors think about the world. During the Praxic Age, it became obvious that it was a better place for us to go about our work, so we decamped, left three-dimensional Adrakhonic space behind, and moved there. When you talk of parallel universes, you make as little sense to Fraa Jad as he does to you.”

“Perhaps you can say a few words, then, about Hemn space, if it is so important,” suggested Ignetha Foral.

Paphlagon got that wry look again, and sighed. “Madame Secretary, I am trying to think of a way to sum it up that will not turn this messal into a year-long theorics suvin.”

And he gamely launched into a primer on Hemn space. He learned to look to Suur Moyra whenever he got stuck for a way of explaining some abstruse concept. More often than not, she was able to drag him out of trouble. She’d already shown herself to be good company. And the vast stock of knowledge that she, as a Lorite, carried around in her head made her good at explaining things; she could always reach back to a useful analogy or clear line of argument that some fraa or suur had written down in the more or less distant past.

I got yanked in the middle of it and, going back to the kitchen, found Emman Beldo on the other end of the rope. Zh’vaern’s servitor was standing at the stove, stirring the mystery pot, and so Emman and I wordlessly agreed to retreat to the other end of the kitchen, near the open door to the garden. “What the hell are we talking about here?” Emman wanted to know. “Is this some kind of ‘travel through the fourth dimension’ scenario?”

“Oh, it’s good that you asked,” I said, “because it is precisely not that-Hemn space is anything but. You’re talking about the old thing where a bunch of separate three-dimensional universes are stacked on top of each other, like leaves in a book, and you can move between them-”

Emman was nodding. “By figuring out some way to move through the fourth spatial dimension. But this Hemn space thing is something else?”

“In Hemn space, any point-which means any string of N numbers, where N is how many dimensions the Hemn space has-contains all the information needed to specify everything that can possibly be known about the system at a given moment.”

“What system?”

“Whatever system the Hemn space describes,” I said.

“Oh, I see,” he said, “you’re allowed to set up a Hemn space-”

“Any time you feel like it,” I said, “to describe the states of any system you are interested in studying. When you are a fid, and your teacher sets a problem for you, your first step is always to set up the Hemn space appropriate to that problem.”

“So what is the Hemn space that Jad’s referring to, then?” Emman asked. “What is the system that his Hemn space gives all of the possible states of?”

“The cosmos,” I said.

“Oh!”

“Which, to him, is one possible track through an absurdly gigantic Hemn space. But that very same Hemn space can have points in it that do not lie on the track that is the history of our cosmos.”

“But they’re perfectly legitimate points?”

“A few of them are-a tiny few, actually-but in a space so huge, ‘a few’ can be enough to make many whole universes.”

“What about the other points? I mean the ones that aren’t legitimate?”

“They describe situations that are incoherent somehow.”

“A block of ice in the middle of a star,” Arsibalt suggested.

“Yes,” I said, “there is a point somewhere in Hemn space that describes a whole cosmos similar to ours, except that, somewhere in that cosmos, there’s a block of ice in the middle of a star. But that situation is impossible.”

Arsibalt translated, “There’s no past history that could make it happen, so it can’t be accessed by a plausible worldtrack.”

“But if you can suppress your curiosity about those for a moment,” I said to Emman, “the point I was getting at was that you can string the legitimate points-ones not visited by our worldtrack, but that make sense-into other worldtracks that make as much sense as ours.”

“But they’re not real,” Emman said, “or are they?”

I balked.

Arsibalt said, “That is a rather profound question of metatheorics. All of the points in Hemn space are equally real-just as all possible (x, y, z) values are equally real-since they are nothing more than lists of numbers. So what is it that imbues one set of those points-one worldtrack-with what we call realness?”

Suur Tris had been clearing her throat, more and more loudly, the last few minutes, and now graduated to throwing things at us. To this was added the jingling of several bells. It was time to bring out the main course; other servitors had been picking up the slack for me and Emman. So we got very busy for a while. Several minutes later, the fourteen were all back in their formal positions, doyns at the table waiting for Suur Asquin to pick up her fork, servitors standing behind them.

Suur Asquin said, “I believe we have all decided-albeit with some reservations-to move over into Hemn space with Fraa Jad. And according to what we hear of it from Fraa Paphlagon and Suur Moyra, there should be no lack of room for us there!” All the doyns laughed dutifully. Barb snorted. Arsibalt and I rolled our eyes. Barb was clearly dying to plane Suur Asquin by explaining, in excruciating, dinner-wrecking detail, just how colossal the configuration space of the universe really was, complete with estimates of how many zeroes it would take to write down the number of states it could describe, how far said string of digits would extend, et cetera, but Arsibalt raised a hand, threatening to rest it on his shoulder: steady, now. Suur Asquin began to eat, and the others followed her lead. There was a little interlude during which some of the doyns (not Lodoghir) made the requisite comments on how tasty the food was. Then Suur Asquin continued, “But looking back on our discussion, I find myself puzzled by a remark that Fraa Paphlagon made before the topic of Hemn space was mentioned, concerning the different kinds of matter. Fraa Paphlagon, I believe you were citing this as evidence that the Geometers all came from different cosmi-or, to use Fraa Jad’s term, different Narratives.”

“A somewhat more conventional term would be worldtracks,” Suur Moyra put in. “Use of Narrative is somewhat-well-loaded.”

“You’re speaking my language now!” said Lodoghir, clearly delighted. “Who besides Fraa Jad uses Narrative, and what do they really mean by it?”

“It is rare,” Moyra said, “and it is associated, in some people’s minds, with the Lineage.”

Fraa Jad appeared to be ignoring all of this.

“Terminology aside,” Suur Asquin went on-a little brusquely-“what I don’t quite understand is how it all fits together-what is the link that you see between the fact of the different kinds of matter, and the worldtracks?”

Paphlagon said, “The cosmogonic processes that lead to the creation of the stuff we are made of-the creation of protons and other matter, their clumping together to make stars, and the resulting nucleosynthesis-all seem to depend on the values of certain physical constants. The most familiar example is the speed of light, but there are several others-about twenty in all. Theors used to spend a lot of time measuring their precise values, back when we were allowed to have the necessary equipment. If these numbers had different values, the cosmos as we know it would not have come into being; it would just be an infinite cloud of cold dark gas or one big black hole or something else quite simple and dull. If you think of these constants of nature as knobs on the control panel of a machine, well, the knobs all have to be set in just the right positions or-”

Again Paphlagon looked to Moyra, who seemed ready: “Suur Demula likened it to a safe with a combination lock, the combination being about twenty numbers long.”

“If I follow Demula’s analogy,” said Zh’vaern, “each of those twenty numbers is the value of one of those constants of nature, such as the speed of light.”

“That is right. If you dial twenty numbers at random you never get the safe open; it is nothing more to you than an inert cube of iron. Even if you dial nineteen numbers correctly and get the other one wrong-nothing. You must get all of them correct. Then the door opens and out spills all of the complexity and beauty of the cosmos.”

“Another analogy,” Moyra continued, after a sip of water, “was developed by Saunt Conderline, who likened all of the sets of values of those twenty constants that don’t produce complexity to an ocean a thousand miles wide and deep. The sets that do, are like an oil sheen, no wider than a leaf, floating on the top of that ocean: an exquisitely thin layer of possibilities that yield solid, stable matter suitable for making universes with living things in them.”

“I favor Conderline’s analogy,” said Paphlagon. “The various life-supporting cosmi are different places on that oil-sheen. What the inventors of newmatter did was to devise ways to move around, just a little, to neighboring points on that oil-sheen, where matter had slightly different properties. Most of the newmatter they created was different from, but not really better than, naturally occurring matter. After a lot of patient toil, they were able to slide around to nearby regions of the oil-sheen where matter was better, more useful, than what nature has provided us. And I believe that Fraa Erasmas, here, already has an opinion on what the Geometers are made of.”

So unready was I to hear my name called that I didn’t even move for several seconds. Fraa Paphlagon was looking at me. In an effort to jog me out of my stupor, he added: “Your friend Fraa Jesry was kind enough to share your observations concerning the parachute.”

“Yes,” I said, and discovered that my throat needed clearing. “It was nothing special. Not as good as newmatter.”

“If the Geometers had learned the art of making newmatter,” Paphlagon translated, “they’d have made a better parachute.”

“Or come up with a way to land the probe that was not so ridiculously primitive!” Barb sang out, drawing glares from the doyns. His name hadn’t been called.

“Fraa Tavener makes an excellent point,” said Fraa Jad, defusing the situation. “Perhaps he shall have more of interest to say later-when called upon.”

“The point being, I take it,” said Ignetha Foral, “that the Geometers-the four groups of them, I should say-each use whatever kind of matter is natural in the cosmos where they originated.”

“The four have been given provisional names,” announced Zh’vaern. “Antarcts, Pangees, Diasps, and Quators.”

This was the first and probably the last time Zh’vaern was going to get a laugh out of the table.

“They all sound vaguely geographical,” said Suur Asquin, “but-?”

“Four planets are depicted on their ship,” Zh’vaern continued. “This is clearly visible on Saunt Orolo’s Phototype. A planet is depicted on each of the four vials of blood that came in the probe. People have given them informal names inspired by their geographical peculiarities.”

“So-let me guess-Pangee has one large continent?” asked Suur Asquin.

“Diasp a lot of islands, obviously,” put in Lodoghir.

“On Quator, most of the landmasses are at low latitude,” Zh’vaern said, “and Antarct’s most unusual feature is a big ice continent at the South Pole.” Then, perhaps anticipating another correction from Barb, he added: “Or whichever pole is situated at the bottom of the picture.”

Barb snorted.

If Fraa Zh’vaern seemed strangely well-informed for a member of a fanatically reclusive sect of Deolaters who’d only arrived at the Convox a few hours ago, it was because he had attended the same briefing as I had: a meeting in a chalk hall where a succession of fraas and suurs had gotten the Inbrase groups up to speed on diverse topics. Or (taking the more cynical view) fed us what some hierarchs wanted us to know. I was only beginning to get a feel for how real information diffused through the Convox.

This touched off a few minutes of banter, which made me impatient until I saw that Moyra and Paphlagon were using it as an opportunity to catch up with the others in cleaning their plates. Some of the servitors went back to the kitchen to look after dessert. It wasn’t until we began to clear away the dinner plates that the conversation paused, and Suur Asquin, after an exchange of glances with Ignetha Foral, hemmed into her napkin and said: “Well. What I have collected, from what we heard a few minutes ago, is that none of the four Geometer races has invented newmatter-”

“Or wishes us to know that they have,” Lodoghir put in.

“Yes, quite…but in any case, each of the four has originated from a cosmos, or a Narrative, or a worldtrack where the constants of nature are ever so slightly different from what they are here.”

No one objected.

Ignetha Foral said, “That to me seems like an almost incredibly strange and remarkable finding, and I don’t understand why we haven’t heard more of it!”

“The results of the tests were not definitive until today’s Laboratorium,” Zh’vaern said.

“This messal seems to have been thrown together immediately afterwards-actually during Inbrase, as a matter of fact,” said Lodoghir.

“There were some who had inklings of these results a day or two ago, in Lucub,” said Paphlagon.

“Then we ought to have been made aware of it a day or two ago,” said Ignetha Foral.

“It is in the nature of Lucub work that it does not get talked about as readily as what is done in Laboratorium,” Suur Asquin pointed out, deftly playing her role as social facilitator, smoother-out of awkward bits. Jad looked at her as if she were a speed bump stretching across the road in front of his mobe.

“But there is another reason, which Madame Secretary might look on a little more benignly,” said Suur Moyra. “The predominant hypothesis, until this morning, was that the propulsion system used by the Geometers to travel between star systems had changed their matter somehow.”

“Changed their matter?”

“Yes. Locally altered the laws and constants of nature.”

“Is that plausible?”

“Such a propulsion device was envisioned two thousand years ago, right here at Tredegarh,” Moyra said. “I brought it up last week. The idea gained currency for a few days. So, you see, it is all my fault.”

“The idea would not have gained currency,” Fraa Jad announced, “but for that many were unsettled, disturbed by talk of other Narratives. They longed for an explanation that would not force them to learn a new way of thinking, and forgot the Rake.”

“Most eloquent, Fraa Jad,” said my doyn. “A fine example of the hidden currents that so often drive what pretends to be rational theoric discourse.”

Fraa Jad fixed Lodoghir with a look that was hard to read-but not what you’d call warm.

I got yanked. I’d learned to recognize Emman’s touch on the rope. Sure enough, he was waiting for me when I entered the kitchen. “The first thing Madame Secretary will say to me in the mobe on her way home is that I have to find my way into the right Lucub.”

“You yanked the wrong guy then,” I said, “I just got out of quarantine this morning.”

“That’s why you’re perfect: you’re going to be in the market.”

The picture, as I’d pieced it together, was that mornings (ante Provener) were spent in Laboratorium. I would go to a specific place and work on a given job with others who’d been similarly assigned. Post Provener, but before Messal, was a part of the day called Periklyne, when people mixed and mingled and exchanged information (such as Laboratorium results) that could be further sorted and propagated in the messals. After Messal was Lucub-burning the midnight oil. Everyone was saying there was going to be a lot of Lucub activity tonight because so much of the workday had been wiped out by the Inbrase and the Plenary. Lucub tended to be where the action was anyway. Everyone here wanted to get things done, but many felt that the structure of Laboratorium, Messal, and so on was only getting in their way. Lucub was a way for them to exercise a little initiative. You might be working with a bunch of lunkheads all morning, the hierarchs might have assigned you to a real snoozer of a messal, but during Lucub you could do what you wanted.

“I’d be happy if you wanted to accompany me to Lucub,” I told Emman-and I meant it. “But you have to understand that I can’t guarantee-”

I was drowned out by indignant shushing from Arsibalt and Karvall.

Barb turned to me and announced: “They want you to be quiet, because they want to hear what is being said in the-”

I shushed Barb. Arsibalt shushed me. Karvall shushed him.

The topic seemed to have turned to the crux of the whole evening’s discussion: how the idea of worldtracks and configuration space were related to the existence of different kinds of matter on “Pangee,” “Diasp,” “Antarct,” “Quator,” and Arbre.

“It was a strong meme, around the time of the Reconstitution,” Moyra was saying, “that the constants of nature are contingent-not necessary. That is, they could have been otherwise, had the early history of the universe been somehow different. As a matter of fact, research into such ideas is how we got newmatter in the first place.”

“So, if I’m following you,” Ignetha Foral said, “the correctness of that idea-that those numbers are contingent-was proved. Proved by our ability to make newmatter.”

“That is the usual interpretation,” said Moyra.

“When you speak of ‘early history of the universe,’” put in Lodoghir, “how early-”

“We are speaking of an infinitesimal snatch of time just after the Big Bang,” Moyra said, “when the first elementary particles congealed out of a sea of energy.”

“And the claim is, it happened to congeal in a particular way,” Lodoghir said, “but it could have congealed a little differently-leading to a cosmos with different constants and different matter.”

“Exactly,” said Moyra.

“How can we translate what’s just been said into the language that Fraa Jad prefers, of Narratives in configuration space?” asked Ignetha Foral.

“I’ll take a crack at it,” said Paphlagon. “If we traced our worldtrack-the series of points through configuration space that is the past, present, and future of our cosmos-backwards in time, we would observe configurations that were hotter and brighter, more closely packed-like running a photomnemonic tablet of an explosion in reverse. It would lead us into regions of Hemn space scarcely recognizable as a cosmos at all: the moments just after the Big Bang. At some point, proceeding backwards, we’d get to a configuration in which the physical constants we’ve been speaking of-”

“Those twenty numbers,” said Suur Asquin.

“Yes, were not even defined. A place so different that those constants would be meaningless-they would have no value, because they still had the freedom to take on any value. Now, up until this point in the story I’m telling you, there really is no difference between the old one-universe picture, and the worldtrack-through-Hemn space picture.”

“Not even when newmatter is taken into account?” asked Lodoghir.

“Not even then, because all the newmatter makers did was to build a machine that could create energies that high, and then make their own little Big Bangs in the lab. But what is new to us now, as of this morning’s Laboratorium findings, is that if you, in the same manner, traced the worldtracks of Antarct, of Pangee, Diasp, and Quator backwards, you would find yourself in a very similar part of Hemn space.”

“The Narratives converge,” said Fraa Jad.

“As you go backwards, you mean,” Zh’vaern said.

“There is no backwards,” said Fraa Jad.

This occasioned a few moments of silence.

“Fraa Jad doesn’t believe in the existence of time,” Moyra said; but she sounded as if she were realizing it and saying it at the same moment.

“Ah, well! Important detail, that,” said Suur Tris, in the kitchen, and for once no one shushed her. For some minutes, we’d all been standing around a set of dessert plates, ready to serve, waiting for the right moment.

“I don’t recommend we get sidetracked on the question of whether time exists,” said Paphlagon, to the almost audible relief of everyone else. “The point is that in that model that views the five cosmi-Arbre, and those of the four Geometer races-as trajectories in Hemn space, those trajectories are extremely close together in the vicinity of the Big Bang. And we might even ask whether they were the same up to a certain point, when something happened that made them split off from one another. Perhaps that is a question for another messal. Perhaps only Deolaters would dare to attempt it.” In the kitchen, we risked glancing at Zh’vaern’s servitor. “In any case, the different worldtracks ended up with slightly different physical constants. And so you could say that even if we were to sit in a room with a Geometer who seemed similar to us, the fact is that they would carry in the very nuclei of their atoms a sort of fingerprint that proved they came from a different Narrative.”

“As our genetic sequences carry a record of every mutation, every adaptation, every ancestor to the first thing that ever lived,” said Suur Moyra, “so the stuff of which they were made would encode what Fraa Jad calls the Narrative of their cosmos, back to the point in Hemn space when we all diverged.”

“Farther,” Fraa Jad said. Which was followed by the customary silence that followed most Jad-statements; but it was shattered, this time, by a laugh from Lodoghir.

“Ah, I see it! Finally! Oh, what a fool I’ve been, Fraa Jad, not to notice the game you’ve been playing. But now at last I see where you have been leading us, ever so subtly: to the Hylaean Theoric World!”

“Hmm, I don’t know which is more annoying,” I said, “Lodoghir’s tone, or the fact that he figured this out before I did.”

I’d been shocked, a few hours ago, when Lodoghir had wandered up to me during Periklyne and begun chit-chatting about our encounter on the Plenary stage. How could he come anywhere near me without body armor and a team of stun-gun-brandishing Inquisitors? How could he not have foreseen that I’d devote the rest of my life to plotting violent revenge? Which had forced me to understand that it really wasn’t personal, for him: all the rhetorical tricks, the distortions, salted with outright lies, the appeals to emotion, were every bit as much parts of his tool kit as equations and syllogisms were of mine, and he didn’t imagine I’d really object, any more than Jesry would if I pointed out an error in his theorics.

I had stared dumbly at Lodoghir throughout, judging the distance separating my knuckles and his teeth. I had had the vague idea that he was bossing me around a little, concerning this evening’s messal, but I hadn’t heard any of it. After a while he had lost interest, since I hadn’t said a word, and had wandered off.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this, between him, and the Inquisition!” I said.

“You’re already in trouble with the Inquisition?” Arsibalt asked, sounding amazed and appreciative at the same time.

“No-but Varax let me know he’s watching me,” I said.

“How in the world did he do that?”

“Earlier, I had a really annoying encounter with Lodoghir.”

“Yes. I saw it.”

“No, I mean I had a second one. And a few seconds later, guess who walked up to me?”

“Well, given the context in which you are telling the story,” Arsibalt said, “I would have to guess it was Varax.”

“Yeah.”

“What did Varax say?”

“He said, ‘I understand you’re up to Chapter Five! Hope it didn’t ruin your whole autumn.’ And I told him that it had taken me a few weeks but I didn’t blame him for what had happened.”

“That was all?”

“Yeah. Maybe some chitchat afterwards.”

“And how do you interpret these words of Varax?”

“He was saying ‘don’t pop your doyn in the nose, young man-I’m watching you.’”

“You’re an idiot.”

“What!?”

“You got it all wrong! This was a gift!”

“A gift!?”

Arsibalt explained: “A doyn has the power to discipline his servitor by assigning chapters in the Book. But you, Raz, hardened criminal that you are, are already up to Five. Lodoghir would have to give you Six: a very heavy punishment-”

“Which I could appeal,” I said, getting it, “appeal to the Inquisition.”

“Arsibalt’s right,” said Tris, who’d been listening (and who seemed to be looking at me in a whole new way, now that she knew I was up to Five). “It sounds to me like this Varax was giving you a big fat hint that the Inquisition would throw out any sentence from Lodoghir.”

“They would almost have to,” said Arsibalt.

I picked up Lodoghir’s dessert and headed for the messallan in a whole new mood. The others followed me. We came into a room of flushed faces and bitten lips: a tableau of strained and awkward body language. Lodoghir had been having his usual effect on people.

“Just when I’d thought we were getting somewhere,” Ignetha Foral was saying, “I see that once again the messal has been sidetracked into some old and tedious dispute between Procians and Halikaarnians. Metatheorics! Sometimes I wonder whether you in the mathic world really understand the stakes that are now in play.”

Clearly I had come in at the wrong moment. But it was too late now, and others were piling up behind me, so I barged on in and gave my doyn his dessert just as he was saying, “I accept your rebuke, Madame Secretary, and I assure you that-”

“I don’t accept it,” said Fraa Jad.

“Nor should you!” put in Zh’vaern.

“These matters are important whether or not you take the trouble to understand them,” Fraa Jad went on.

“How am I to distinguish this from the partisan bickering that goes on in the capital?” Ignetha Foral asked. Others at the table had been horrified by Fraa Jad’s tone, but she seemed to find it bracing.

Fraa Jad ignored the question-it was none of his concern-and turned his energies to his dessert. Fraa Zh’vaern-who was surprising us all with his interest in the topic-took it up. “By examining the quality of the arguments.”

“When the arguments come out of pure theorics, I am unable to make such judgments!” she pointed out.

“I would not assume that the existence of the Hylaean Theoric World comes out of what is called pure theorics,” Lodoghir said. “It is as much a leap of faith as believing in God.”

“As much as I admire the ingenuity with which you find a way to skewer Fraa Jad and Fraa Zh’vaern with the same sentence,” said Ignetha Foral, “I must remind you that most of the people I work with believe in God, and so, among them, your gambit is likely to backfire.”

“The hour is late,” Suur Asquin pointed out-though no one seemed tired. “I propose that we take up the topic of the Hylaean Theoric World in tomorrow evening’s messal.”

Fraa Jad nodded, but it was hard to tell whether he was accepting the challenge, or really enjoying the cake.