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."
"They have to be perfect numbers," the senior astronomer said. "Numbers to make more than delusory and misleading sense need to be perfect numbers."
"I assure you they're perfect numbers," Bren said, feeling out of his depth, but fearing to let the conversation stray further toward the abstract. "Since stars are definitely there, at a distance and a continual progress of positions relative to our own which is quite specific if one knew it."
"But the wobble in the earth itself —" Philosophy said, which launched another argument on divine creation versus numerical existentialism that left the paidhi simply listening and despairing he could gain anything.
Lunch… was a formal affair involving the head of the village in the valley, the local justice, the chairman of the Caruija Hunt Association, the Caruija Ridge Wildlife Management and Research Organization, the regional head of the Caruija Ridge Rail Association, as well as spouses, cousins, and the legislative representative's husband, the wife being in the hasdrawad, currently in session.
Not to mention the junior poetry champion, who read an original composition praising the region, followed by a local group of children who, with drums, sang a slightly out of unison popular ballad.
The paidhi kept shielding his arm from chance encounters and hoping simply to get through the day. His notes were very little more than he'd arrived knowing, held words the exact meaning of which he was still trying to pin down, and he'd escaped to the academic meeting room where he was due for his next session, with Tano and Algini to hold the door against early arrival.
He had aspirin with him. He dared take nothing stronger. He asked Tano for a cup of water from the nearest source, and sat trying to make his elbow and his shoulder work — his intellectual occupation for the moment.
"I think they're quite mad," Algini confided in him. "I think the faculty has been out in the mountains too long."
"They're a small village," Tano said, bringing him the requested cup of water. "And a truly important visitor and the aiji's personal interest is an event."
"We can only hope," Bren said, "for a felicitous outcome. I do begin to ask myself —"
But the staff was arriving in the room, and the session resumed, with a brief address by the senior astronomer and another by the head of Philosophy, the latter of which was at least contributive of a history of the impact of philosophy on astronomical interpretation, and the formation of major schools of thought. A small and respectful contingent of students sat in on the speech at the back of the room, furiously taking notes; the paidhi took his own, writing, and not recording without formal consultation — he wanted, he made a note to himself, to obtain a copy of the speech. Which he thought might please the elderly gentleman.
"Lately," the gentleman said, "the funding for research into astronomy has sadly declined from the magnificent days of the Foreign Star, in which the science of telescopy was funded by every aiji across the continent, particularly among the Ragi. The estimation that humans have far more exact and secret data, nand' paidhi, has made aijiin and the legislatures certain that such will be handed them on some appropriate day and that funding atevi astronomers is superfluous. Which I do not believe, nand' paidhi. We have dedicated ourselves to the proposition that it is not superfluous to study the heavens in our own way. We hope for the paidhi's consideration of our proposal, for the quick release of human observations of the heavens, and human —"