"Very much so. Asking humans does me no good. I've consulted the words I do have, in what study I can make of it, and I don't know I can find what I want — I'm not sure the average atevi knows, if any atevi at all know what to call it."

"Faster-than-light. Doesn't that say it?"

"I mean concepts. I need mathematical pictures. Ideas, Banichi. I'm not sure that faster-than-light is the best word. Mosphei' has no precision about it."

"Translate. Is that not what the paidhi does?"

"Not when there may be precise atevi words."

"For faster-than-light?" Banichi was clearly doubtful.

"For foundational concepts. For the numbers. For ways of looking at what nature does."

"I fear the astronomers aren't the best method. They invite the paidhi to come in person and talk to this venerable. But —"

"But?"

"Such a meeting could generate controversy in itself."

"You said they were respectable people."

"I said they were scholarly. I didn't say they were respectable, nadi-ji."

"And are atevi astronomers still fortune-tellers? We've released a certain amount of astronomical data to your universities — measurements, data about stars, techniques of measurement — I doubt that the numbers your astronomers have are vastly different from our numbers. I don't see how they could be. I want to find out how they express the math. I want to find out if someone can take Hanks' statement and resolve the paradox the Determinists make of it. Clearly they see things differently than humans. Possibly it's simply terminology."

"There will still be controversy."

"Do they still tell the future? I'd be vastly surprised if they did."

"Certain ones do."

Bren took a sip of the liquor, found his hand trembling considerably: fatigue, he supposed. He was tired. He thought he'd found an answer and it was turning itself into a further problem. "I assure you our data does no such thing," he said, but he saw how astrology might still have greater attraction than astronomy for some atevi, and how the paidhi's simple inquiry after better terminology might offend other, more learned atevi. "We have far more uses for star data than telling the future, I assure you, and I would assume at least some atevi share that interest. Perhaps this old man."

"Their mathematics is reputedly highly suspect, Bren-ji, at the university. That's all I know."

That wasn't good news. For more than scientific reasons. "The university itself doesn't believe them?"

Banichi drew a long breath. Had a sip. "They hold that the stars should agree with the numbers humans provide. There are, I'm told, discrepancies. Changes."

"Banichi —" He was exasperated, and asked himself whether he might do far better looking into the truly eosteric corners of atevi physics, not observational astronomy — but that, considering the topic Hanks had broached, was a source of questions he wanted less than the ones observational astronomers might ask. "Banichi, stars move. Everything's moving. So is our observation point. We've put this forth time and time again. It doesn't mean the astronomers are wrong."

"I don't say it makes clear sense," Banichi said, "not to me."

"The earth goes around the sun. In winter it's at one point of its orbit and in the summer it's the opposite. If you're looking at a star and want to know its real numbers, you can measure by taking the numbers from the earth at opposite extremes of the earth's orbit. But the margin of error rapidly gets larger than the measurement itself. We're dealing in very great distances, Banichi, very big numbers, and they have nothing to do with forecast or philosophy: stars have to do with burning hydrogen, that's all."

"Then what use are they?"

"The sun's rather useful."

"What's the sun to do with anything?"

He was perplexed, now, and flung out the obvious. "The sun's a star, Banichi-ji. Close up, the stars look like the sun."

"I believe you," Banichi said after a moment. "I can see your point, I think. But do you wish to add philosophical extremes to the debate? I counsel you, nadi, surely you can come up with something else."

"The ship up there has been to other stars, Banichi, almost certainly. We came from another star very much like the sun."

"This may be true, nadi, and I surely wouldn't dispute the paidhi's word."

He'd gone beyond impatience. He was arriving at curiosity himself, on topics the paidhiin didn'toften ask atevi. "Well, where did you thinkwe came from?"

"From another star, nadi."

"Like one of those little points of light up there."

"Actually —" Banichi said, "one had rarely wondered."

"Did you think we lived ona star?"

"Well…" Banichi said with a shrug. "People just don't ask such questions on the streets, nadi-ma. I think if you want such explanations for lord Geigi, you're only going to confuse him."

"I've got to do better than that, Banichi. Geigi at least has a scientific background. He understands the solar system."

"Better than I do," Banichi said. "But still, in public, I wouldn't make a great issue about the sun, nadi. I don't think many people will understand you."

He took a slow sip. He'd never in his administration had access to the astronomical faculties, never had recourse to them — he supposed Wilson-paidhi hadn't, nor — if one went on — earlier paidhiin — and that got into increasingly more primitive science. No one in the prior century would have wanted to raise questions of cosmology — or provide, God help them, heavily mathematical data to atevi — except the information that more or less accompanied certain stages of technology, much as knowledge of the ionosphere went along with radio, and the solar wind and the source of auroras would be, he was well sure, a part of current science curriculum — since it mattered. But, but, and but — no study he'd seen had ever speculated on the reach of systematic knowledge of cosmology into the popular understanding —

Of — damn — course. Atevi mentality integrated smaller systems quite well. But atevi truly didn't readily think of the whole earth, didn't have a word for universe that didn't equally mean one's immediate personal world. Atevi didn't have a real interest in understanding the theory of Everything, just in getting the right numbers on their individual circumstances. Philosophers were there to care about larger systems while ordinary atevi adhered to the dominant philosophy of their personal set of associations and trusted the philosophers to get the big picture right — that was exactly what was at stake with lord Geigi, who understood his philosophy better than the average atevi. Geigi had been led deep into that understanding because he'd pursued a scientific education, and he'd been forced to integrate astronomy into his personal system. What fell outside that meticulously ordered system — challenged that system. What couldn't be integrated — challenged that system.

And no wonder people with busy lives, people like Banichi, were content to let the philosophers hammer out the major, theoretical problems, and — in Banichi's and Tabini's case — take all philosophy with a large grain of salt, possibly because they dealt with multiple philosophies, and thought of them in terms of atevi political motives, not underlying fact. Tell Banichi the sun was a star? All right. It didn't shatter Banichi's world. He wouldn't lie awake thinking about it tonight. He might think about it when he had leisure. But he wouldn't worry about his personal universe falling apart because he couldn't integrate that information.