“Certainly.”

“I’m just thinking back to my conversation with that Inquisitor.”

“Varax?”

“Yeah. I’m wondering whether his interest in the topic—”

“Correction: he was interested in whether we were interested in it,” Arsibalt pointed out.

“Yeah, exactly—whether that might be further evidence for the existence of the Hypothetical Important Fid of Suur Aculoa.”

“I think we should be careful speculating about the HIFOSA until Suur Tulia has actually found evidence of his or her existence,” Arsibalt said. “Otherwise we’ll be coming up with all manner of speculations that would never make it past the Rake.”

“Well, without telling me everything you know about it,” I said, “can you give me a clue as to why anyone in the Sæcular world would think Paphlagon’s work might be of practical importance?”

“Yes,” he said, “if you fix this beehive for me.”

“You know about atom smashers? Particle accelerators?”

“Sure,” I said. “Praxic Age installations. Huge and expensive. Used to test theories about elementary particles and forces.”

“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “If you can’t test it, it’s not theorics—it’s metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.”

“Wow,” I said, “I’ll bet a philosopher would really jump down your throat for talking that way. It’s like saying that philosophy is nothing more than bad theorics.”

“There are some theors who would say so,” Arsibalt admitted. “But those people aren’t really talking about philosophy as philosophers would define it. Rather, they are talking about something that theors begin to do when they get right up to the edge of what they can prove using the equipment they’ve got. They drive philosophers crazy by calling it philosophy or metatheorics.”

“What kind of stuff are you talking about?”

“Well, they speculate as to what the next theory might look like. They develop the theory and try to use it to make predictions that might be testable. In the late Praxic Age, that usually meant constructing an even bigger and more expensive particle accelerator.”

“And then came the Terrible Events,” I said.

“Yes, no more expensive toys for theors after that,” Arsibalt said. “But it’s not clear that it actually made that much of a difference. The biggest machines, in those days, were already pushing the limits of what could be constructed on Arbre with reasonable amounts of money.”

“I hadn’t known that,” I said. “I always tend to assume there’s an infinite amount of money out there.”

“There might as well be,” Arsibalt said, “but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water, and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators.”

“So the Turn to Cosmography might have happened even without the Reconstitution.”

“It was already happening,” Arsibalt said, “as the theors of the very late Praxic Age were coming to terms with the fact that no machine would be constructed during their lifetimes that would be capable of testing the theorics to which they were devoting their careers.”

“So those theors had no alternative but to look to the cosmos for givens.”

“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “And in the meantime we have people like Fraa Paphlagon.”

“Meaning what? Both theors and philosophers?”

He thought about it. “I’m trying to respect your earlier request that I not simply bury you in Paphlagon,” he explained, when he caught me looking, “but this forces me to work harder.”

“Fair is fair,” I pointed out, brandishing a crosscut saw that I had been putting to use.

“You could think of Paphlagon—and presumably Orolo—as descendants of people like Evenedric.”

“Theors,” I said, “who turned to philosophy when theorics stopped.”

“Slowed down,” Arsibalt corrected me, “waiting for results from places like Saunt Bunjo’s.”

Bunjo was a Millenarian math built around an empty salt mine two miles underground. Its fraas and suurs worked in shifts, sitting in total darkness waiting to see flashes of light from a vast array of crystalline particle detectors. Every thousand years they published their results. During the First Millennium they were pretty sure they had seen flashes on three separate occasions, but since then they had come up empty.

“So, in the meantime, they’ve been fooling around with ideas that people like Evenedric came up with when they reached the edge of theorics?”

“Yes,” Arsibalt said. “There was a profusion of them, right around the time of the Reconstitution, all variations on the theme of the polycosm.”

“The idea that our cosmos is not the only one.”

“Yes. And that’s what Paphlagon writes about when he isn’t studying this cosmos.”

“Now I’m a little confused,” I said, “because I thought you told me just a minute ago that he was working on the HTW.”

“Well, but you could think of Protism—the belief that there is another realm of existence populated by pure theorical forms—as the earliest and simplest polycosmic theory,” he pointed out.

“Because it posits two cosmi,” I said, trying to keep up, “one for us, and one for isosceles triangles.”

“Yes.”

“But the polycosmic theories I’ve heard about—the circa-Reconstitution ones—are a whole different kettle of fish. In those theories, there are multiple cosmi separate from our own—but similar. Full of matter and energy and fields. Always changing. Not eternal triangles.”

“Not always as similar as you think,” Arsibalt said. “Paphlagon is part of a tradition that believed that classical Protism was just another polycosmic theory.”

“How could you possibly—”

“I can’t tell you without telling you everything,” Arsibalt said, holding up his fleshy hands. “The point I’m getting at is that he believes in some form of the Hylaean Theoric World. And that there are other cosmi. Those are the topics Suur Aculoa is interested in.”

“So if the HIFOSA really exists—” I said.

“He or she summoned Paphlagon because the polycosm somehow became a hot topic.”

“And we are guessing that whatever made it hot, also triggered the closure of the starhenge.”

Arsibalt shrugged.

“Well, what could that possibly be?”

He shrugged again. “That’s one for you and Jesry. But don’t forget that the Panjandrums might simply be confused.”

Finally one day I made it down into the sub-cellar of Shuf’s Dowment and spent three hours watching Sammann eat lunches. He made the trip almost every day, but not always at the same time. If the weather was fine and the time of day was right, he would sit on the parapet, spread out some food on a little cloth, and enjoy the view while he ate. Sometimes he read a book. I couldn’t identify all of his little morsels and delicacies, but they looked better than what we had for lunch. Sometimes, if the wind blew out of the northeast, we could smell the Ita cooking. It always seemed as if they were taunting us.

“Results!” I proclaimed to Lio the next time I was alone with him in the meadow. “Sort of.”

“Yeah?”

“You were right, I think.”

“Right about what?” For so much time had passed that he had forgotten our earlier talk about Sammann. I had to remind him. Then, he was taken aback. “Wow,” he said, “this is big.”

“Could be. I still don’t know what to make of it,” I said.

“What does he do? Hold up a sign in front of the Eye? Use sign language?”

“Sammann’s too clever for that,” I said.

“What? It sounds like you’re speaking of an old friend.”

“I almost feel that way about him by this point. He and I have had a lot of lunches together.”

“So, how does he—did he—talk to you?”

“For the first sixty-eight days, he’s a real bore,” I said. “Then on Day Sixty-nine, something happens.”