“And what is that, exactly?”

“We have a sense for what is plausible. Let’s say there are two aerocraft, full of passengers, going just under the speed of sound, and that during the interval between two radar sweeps, their paths cross at right angles. The machine can’t tell the bogeys apart. So there are a few possible interpretations of the givens. One is that both planes executed sharp right-angle turns at the same moment and veered off in new directions. Another is that they bounced off each other like rubber balls. The third interpretation is that the planes are at different altitudes, so they didn’t collide, and both simply kept flying in a straight line. That interpretation is the simplest, and the only one consistent with the laws of dynamics. So the syndev must be programmed to evaluate the different interpretations of the givens and choose the one that is most plausible.”

“So we have taught this device a little of what we know of the action principles that govern the movement of our cosmos through Hemn space, and commanded it to filter out possibilities that diverge from a plausible world-track,” Orolo said.

“In a very crude way, I suppose. It doesn’t really know how to apply action principles in Hemn space and all that.”

“Do we?”

“Some of us do.”

“Theors, yes. But a sline playing catch knows what the ball will do—more importantly, what it can’t do—without knowing the first thing about theorics.”

“Of course. Even animals can do that. Orolo, where is Evenedrician datonomy getting us? I see some connection to our pink dragon dialog back home, a few months ago, but—”

Orolo got a funny look on his face. He’d forgotten. “Oh yes. About you and your worrying.”

“Yes.”

“That’s something animals can’t do,” he pointed out. “They react to immediate, concrete threats, but they don’t worry about abstract threats years in the future. It takes the mind of an Erasmas to do that.”

I laughed. “I haven’t been doing it so much lately.”

“Good!” He reached out and gave me an affectionate thud on the shoulder.

“Maybe it’s the Allswell.”

“No, it’s that you have real things to worry about now. But please remind me how it went—the dialog about the pink nerve-gas-farting dragon?”

“We developed a theory that our minds were capable of envisioning possible futures as tracks through configuration space, and then rejecting ones that didn’t follow a realistic action principle. Jesry complained it was a heavyweight solution to a lightweight problem. I agreed. Arsibalt objected.”

“This was after Fraa Paphlagon had been Evoked, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Arsibalt had been reading Paphlagon.”

“Yes.”

“So tell me, Fraa Erasmas, are you still with Jesry, or with Arsibalt?”

“I still think it seems fanciful to think we are all the time erecting and tearing down counterfactual universes in our minds.”

“I’ve become so used to it that it seems fanciful to think otherwise,” Orolo said. “But perhaps we can go on another hike tomorrow and discuss it further.” We were reaching the outskirts of the math.

“I’d like that,” I said.

As we drew near enough to smell supper cooking, I recollected that I needed to get a message out to my friends the next day. But it was not the right moment to bring this up and so I resolved to mention it the next morning.

I had it in my mind that this would force Orolo to make a decision, but as soon as I explained it to him, he made a point that was embarrassingly obvious, once he’d made it: the three-day deadline was perfectly arbitrary, and hence the only sound approach was to brush it aside without any further mention. He called in Fraa Landasher, who proposed that my friends be invited into the math and allowed to lodge here for as long as it might take to sort things out. This was shocking until I reminded myself that things were done differently here and that Landasher was beholden to no one except, possibly, the dowment that owned Ecba. Then I felt sure that my four friends would have no interest in biding in such a place as this. But a couple of hours later, when I walked out of the gate and down to the souvenir shop to explain matters to them, they accepted unanimously and without discussion. That in itself made me a little nervous, so I accompanied them back to the cove and helped them strike camp, using the afternoon to provide them with a running lecture on mathic etiquette. I was especially worred that Ganelial Crade would preach to them. But soon, beginning with Yul and spreading quickly to the others, they began to make fun of me for being so worried about this, and I realized that I had offended them. So I said nothing more until we got back to Orithena. Cord, Yul, Gnel, and Sammann were let in through the gate and given rooms in a sort of guest lodge, set apart from the cloister, where they were allowed to keep jeejahs and other Sæcular goods. Dressed in their extramuros garb—but without the jeejahs—they joined us at dinner and were formally toasted and welcomed by Fraa Landasher.

The next morning I rousted them early and led them down to the dig for a tour. Gnel looked as if he were having some sort of Deolatrous epiphany, though in all fairness I’d probably had a similar look on my face when Suur Spry had taken me down there.

I asked Sammann if he’d learned anything more about who was running Ecba and he said “yes” and “it’s boring.” Some burger, just after the Third Sack, had become an Enthusiast for all things Orithenan. He was very rich and so he’d bought the island and, to run it, set up the foundation, complete with tedious bylaws that ran to a thousand pages—it was meant to last forever and so the bylaws had to cover every eventuality they could think of. Executive power lay in the hands of a mixed Sæcular/Mathic board of governors, Sammann explained, warming to the task even as my attention was beginning to wander…

So getting my friends squared away at Orithena distracted me for a couple of days. After that I resumed my walks up the mountain with Orolo.

“I know that our last conversation was not completely satisfactory to you, Erasmas. I apologize for that. These ideas are unfinished. I am tormented, or tantalized, by the sense that I’m almost in view of something that is at the limit of my comprehension. I dream of being in the sea, treading water, trying to see a beacon on shore. But the view is blocked by the crests of the waves. Sometimes, when conditions are perfect, I can pop up high enough to glimpse it. But then, before I can form any firm impression of what it is I’m seeing, I sink back down of my own weight, and get slapped in the face by another wave.”

“I feel that way all the time, when I am trying to understand something new,” I said. “Then, one day, all of a sudden—”

“You just get it,” Orolo said.

“Yeah. The idea is just there, fully formed.”

“Many have noted this, of course. I believe it is related, in a deep way, to the sort of mental process I was speaking of the other day. The brain takes advantage of quantum effects; I’m sure of it.”