"Are you asking me to find such people?"

"I fear none of that philosophy have cast their lot with your grandson. You, on the other hand…"

"Tabini asks me to rescue this foolish man."

"I ask you. Personally. Tabini knows nothing about it. Rescue him. Don't buy him. Don't take a public posture. Don't say that I suggested it. Surely he could never accept it."

"Why?" Ilisidi asked. "Is thisthe mysterious trip to the north?"

"I'd be astonished if I ever achieved mystery to you, nand' dowager."

"Impudent rascal. So you were out there rescuing Geigi the melon?"

"Yes."

"Why, in the name of the felicitous gods?"

He couldn't say in terms he knew she couldn't misapprehend. He looked out toward the Bergid, where dawn was turning the sky faintly blue. "There's no value," he discovered himself saying, finally, "in the collapse of any part of the present order of things. The world has achieved a certain harmony. Stability favors atevi interests. Yours, your grandson's. Everyone's. Stability even favors Mospheira, if certain Mospheirans weren't acting like fools."

"This woman is a wonder," Ilisidi said. "She should have sought me out. But she had no notion she should."

"She's harmless on Mospheira. Where I'd like to send her. But in moments of fright, my government freezes solid. This is such a moment. Let me tell you, dowager-ji, one secret truth of humans: we have self-interests, and truly selfish and wicked humans can be far more selfish than atevi psychology can readily comprehend."

"Ah. And are atevi immune?"

"Far more loyal to certain interests. Humans can be thorough rebels, acting alone and in total self-interest."

"So can atevi be great fools. And if Geigi believed this woman, still I wonder why you took this very long, very urgent excursion, and sought advice of such eccentrics."

"A brilliant old man, nand' dowager. I recommend him to your attention."

"An astronomer"Ilisidi said with scorn.

"Possibly a brilliant man, aiji-ma. I'd almost have brought him back to court, aiji-ma, but I feared court was too fierce a place for him. His name is Grigiji. He's spent a long life looking for a reconciliation of human science and atevi numbers. His colleagues at the observatory have devoted themselves to recovering the respectability of atevi astronomers. They want to create an atevi science that uses atevi numerical concepts to look past human approximations… approximations which I will assure you humans do use, from time to time… to an integration of very vast numbers with the numbers of. daily life."

He said what he said with calculation, in hope of catching Ilisidi's interest in things atevi, and in atevi tradition. And he saw the dowager paying more than casual interest for that one instant, the mask of indifference set aside.

"So?" Ilisidi asked. "So what does this Grigiji say to Geigi?"

Ilisidi was intellectual enough to set aside beliefs that didn't gibe with reality, politician enough to accept some for political necessity; and atevi enough, he suddenly thought, to long for some unifying logic in her world, logic which the very traditions she championed declared to exist.

He reached inside his coat and found the small packet he'd made, copies of the emeritus' equations and his own notes such as he'd been able to render them. She didn't reach for it: the wind was blowing.

"What is this?" Ilisidi asked.

"A human's poorly copied notation of what the astronomer emeritus had to say. And his own words, aiji-ma." A servant, young and male — Ilisidi's habit — showed up at his elbow to take the papers into safekeeping.

"Not the astronomer-aiji?"

It was a gibe. Is there some reason, the question meant, that Tabini's own astronomers, high in the court, failed — and a human sought his sources elsewhere? Doubtless this very moment, Cenedi would be sending out inquiries about Grigiji, his provenance, his background, his affiliations. And Ilisidi, who habitually gave the paidhi a great deal of tolerance, but — propositioned — would notcommit herself to touch such an obviously political gift: clearly the paidhi was being political; so, in turn, was she.

"Nand' dowager," he answered her carefully, "the aiji's own astronomers have other areas of study. And they're not independent. This man, as I understand, and this observatory, have been the principal astronomers engaged on this research. They're not affiliated with any outside agency. This is an exact copy of what I brought your grandson, nothing left out, nothing added. May I ask the dowager — to advise me?"

Ilisidi's hand left the teacup for an insouciant motion. Proceed, she signaled.

"Understand, aiji-ma, I'm not a mathematician. Far from it. But as I understand both what humans have observed and what this man has been attempting to describe in numbers — as I was flying into the city last night, I saw the lights, high places, low places of the city, lights like the stars shining in dark space." He knew Ilisidi had flown at night — very recently — into Shejidan. "I saw — out the airplane window, in those lights in high and low spots, all over Shejidan — what humans have described with their numbers. And what Grigiji's vision also describes, as I faintly understand it. His answer to lord Geigi."

"In the city lights. Writ in luminous equations, perhaps?"

"The paradox of faster-than-light, aiji-ma; say that the universe doesn't stretch out like a flat sheet of black cloth. That it has — features, like mountains, like valleys. Say there's a topology of such places. Stars are so heavy in this sheet they make deep valleys. Therefore the numbers describing the path of light across this sheet are quite, quite true. One doesn't violate the Determinists' universe: light can't go faster, by the paths that light must follow. Light and all things within the sheet that is this universe follow those mountains, and take the time they need to take. So nothing that travels along that sheet violates the speed of light. One can measure the distances across the sheet, and they are valid. Right now the effects of atmosphere diminish the accuracy of atevi observations, but when one observes from the station — as atevi will — the accuracy will be far, far greater."

"You're buying time," Ilisidi said, with another small quirk of the mouth, a flash of golden eyes. "You very rascal, you're setting it on a shelf they can't reach."

"But it is true, nand' dowager, and up there they'll prove it. Those papers, as I understand what I'm told, describe that sheet I'm talking about in terms that admit of space not involved in that sheet. What we call folded space."

"Folded space. Space folds."

"A convenience. A way of seeing it for people who aren't as mathematical as atevi, people whose language doesn't express what that paper expresses. It's the way starships travel, aiji-ma. It's the highest of our high technology, and an ateva may have foundit without human help — if I could read those notations I copied. Which I can't, because I don't have the ability an ateva mathematician has to describe the universe."

"Your madman told you this."

"Aiji-ma, light doesn't travel in a straight line. But because light is how we see, how we define shape, how we measure distance, over huge scale — that makes space act flat."

"Makes space act flat."

"We don't operate on a scale on which the curves normally matter. Like a slow rise of the land. The land still looks flat. But the legs feel the climb. Scale makes the difference to the viewer. Not to the math. Not to the hiker's legs."