“Thanks. Name one thing we get by working in configuration space that we don’t get any other way.”

“Time,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Time.”

“I thought time didn’t exist!” Emman said sarcastically.

Jesry looked at Emman for a few moments, then looked at me. “What, has your friend been talking to Fraa Jad?”

“It is nice that Hemn space gives us an account of time,” I said, “but Emman will say that the Panjandrums he has to talk to already believe in the existence of time—”

“Poor, benighted fools!” Jesry exclaimed, getting a low, painful laugh out of Emman, and quizzical looks from his avout companions.

“So of what relevance to them is the Hemn space picture?” I continued.

“None whatsoever,” Jesry said, “until strangers come to town from four different cosmi at once. Hey, can I get you guys something to drink?”

It was yet another of Jesry’s annoying qualities that he did some of his finest work while drunk. We servitors had sampled our share of wine and beer in the kitchen, and I was just beginning to get my head clear, so I decided to drink water. Presently we found ourselves in the largest chalk hall of the local Edharian chapter—or at least I assumed it had to be the largest. The slate walls were covered with calculations I recognized. “They’ve got you doing cosmography?” I asked.

Jesry followed my gaze and focused on a table of figures chalked up on a slate. One column was longitude, another latitude—and seeing fifty-one degrees and change chalked up in the latter, I realized I was looking at the coordinates of Saunt Edhar.

“This morning’s Laboratorium,” he explained. “We had to check a bunch of calculations that the Ita did last night. All of the world’s telescopes—including the M & M, as you can see—are to be pointed at the Geometers’ ship tonight.”

“All night long or—”

“No. In about half an hour. Something is going to happen,” Jesry proclaimed in his usual confident baritone. I noticed Emman cringing. “Something that will give us a different view,” Jesry went on, “more interesting than the pusher plate on its arse which I spent so many hours staring at.”

“How do we know this?” I asked, though I was a little distracted by Emman’s conspicuous nervousness.

“I don’t,” Jesry said, “I’m just inferring it.”

Emman jerked his head toward the exit and we followed him out into the cloister.

“I’ll tell you guys,” he said, once we’d gotten out of earshot of the rest of the Lucub, “since the secret is going to be out in half an hour anyway. This is an idea that was cooked up at a very influential messal after the Visitation of Orithena.”

“Were you in on it?” I asked.

“No—but it’s why I was brought here,” Emman said. “We have an old reconaissance bird up there in synchronous orbit. It’s got loads of fuel on board, so that it can move around when we tell it to. We don’t think the Geometers know about it. We’ve kept the bird silent, so it hasn’t occurred to them to jam its frequencies. Well, earlier today we narrow-beamed a burst of commands to the thing and it fired up its thrusters and placed itself into a new orbit that will intercept that of the Hedron in half an hour.” He used his toe to render the Geometers’ ship in the gravel path: a crude polygon for the envelope of the icosahedron, a heel-stomp on one edge for the pusher plate. “This thing is always pointed at Arbre,” he complained, tapping his toe on the pusher plate, “so we can’t see the rest of the ship”—he swept his foot in an arc around the forward half—“which is where they keep all of the cool stuff. Obviously a deliberate move—this half has been like the dark side of the moon to us, so we’ve had to rely entirely on Saunt Orolo’s Phototype.” He stepped around to the flank of the diagram and swept out a long arc aimed at the bow. “Our bird,” he said, “is approaching from this direction. It is radioactive as hell.”

“The bird is?”

“Yeah, it draws power from radiothermal devices. The Geometers are going to notice this thing headed their way and they’ll have no choice but to execute a maneuver—”

“To get the pusher plate—which is their shield—between themselves and the bogey,” Jesry said.

“They’ll have to spin the whole ship around,” I translated, “exposing the ‘cool stuff’ to view from ground—based telescopes.”

“And those telescopes are going to be ready.”

“Is it even possible to spin something that big around in any reasonable amount of time?” I asked. “I’m trying to imagine how big the thrusters would have to be—”

Emman shrugged. “You ask a good question. We’ll learn a lot just from observing its maneuver. Tomorrow we’ll have lots of pictures to look at.”

“Unless they get angry and nuke us,” Jesry put in, while I was trying to think of a more delicate way of saying it.

“There’s been some discussion of that,” Emman admitted.

“Well, I should hope so!” I said.

“The Panjandrums are all sleeping in caves and bunkers.”

“That’s comforting,” Jesry said.

Emman missed the sarcasm. “And the mathic world has experience in coping with nuclear aftermaths.”

Jesry and I both turned to look in the direction of the Precipice, wondering how deep we could get in those tunnels, how fast.

“But this is all considered low-probability,” Emman said. “What happened on Ecba was a serious provocation, if not an outright act of war. We have to make a serious response—show the Geometers we won’t just sit passively while they drop rods on us.”

“Will this bird actually hit the icosahedron?” I asked.

“Not unless they’re stupid enough to get in its way. But it’ll come close enough that they’ll have to respond, as a precaution.”

“Well!” Jesry said, after we had spent a minute absorbing all of this. “So much for getting anything done during Lucub.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I guess I will have that wine after all.”

We took a bottle out onto the lawn between the Edharian and Eleventh Sconic cloisters. We knew where to look in the sky, so we arranged ourselves and lay in the grass waiting for the End of the World.

I really missed Ala. For a while I hadn’t been thinking about her much. But she was the one I wanted to be next to when the nukes rained down.

At the appointed moment there was a tiny, momentary flash of light in the middle of the constellation where we knew the Hedron was. As though a spark had jumped between their ship and our “bird.”

“They nailed it with something,” Emman said.

“Directed energy weapon,” Jesry intoned, as if he actually knew what he was talking about.

“X-ray laser, to be specific,” said a nearby voice.

We sat up to see a stocky figure in an antique bolt-and-chord getup, shambling toward us on weary legs.

“Hello, Thistlehead!” I called out.

“Feel like a stroll while we await massive retaliation?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’m going to bed,” Jesry said. I guessed he was lying. “No Lucub tonight.” Definitely lying.

“Then I’m doing the same,” said Emman Beldo, who knew when he was being gotten rid of. “Lots of work tomorrow.”

“If we still exist,” Jesry said.

“I really have to get in touch with Ala,” I told Lio, after we had wandered for half an hour without saying a word. “I looked for her at Periklyne this afternoon but—”

“She wasn’t there,” Lio said, “she was getting ready for this.”

“You mean aiming the telescopes or—”

“More the military side of it.”

“How’d she get mixed up in that?”

“She’s good. Someone noticed. The military gets what it asks for.”

“How would you know? Are you mixed up in the military side too?”

Lio was silent. We walked for a few minutes more. “A few days ago they put me in a new Laboratorium,” he said. I could tell that he’d been laboring to get it off his chest for a while.

“Oh really? What have they got you doing?”