Incandescence

Roi listened closely. She, Zak and Ruz had lured Tan away from the sign-age team where he'd honed his geometrical skills. Calculating distances through the tunnels of the Splinter had given him both an extraordinary facility with numbers and a powerful sense of how they could be used to analyze paths, shapes and motion.

«Keep in mind,» Tan continued, «that there is one ingredient in the idea of natural motion that doesn't show up when we study a surface like this. Zak has argued that the natural path for any stone you throw from a given point depends, not just on the direction you throw it, but also upon its speed. The natural path of the Splinter appears to be a circle, but an object that starts out on that circle and travels in the same direction as the Splinter will still follow a path with a different shape if it's moving faster or slower than the Splinter. So we need to find a way to incorporate that into our geometrical scheme. We need to merge the idea of speed with the idea of direction.»

Roi had to make an effort to tear herself away. She had heard Tan explain these ideas many times, but on each occasion the concepts became a little clearer, a little bit more precise. If he ever reached the point where they were defined with sufficient mathematical rigor to allow her to start making calculations, she hoped she could find a way to merge them with Zak's other principle — that the true weights everywhere summed to zero — and then she might finally be able to start mapping the possibilities for the Splinter's past and future.

She clambered across the wall to the crevice where Zak was resting. She tapped the adjacent rock gently, and after a moment a single claw emerged from the crack.

«It's Roi,» she said, «I've brought you some food.»

«Thank you.» Zak slid out on to the wall, awkwardly. Roi opened her carapace and took out a bundle of food. She'd spent half the shift collecting it, but she did not begrudge the effort. Zak was old, his body was failing, but she had no intention of letting him starve to death.

Zak ate slowly, in silence. Roi no longer asked him what hurt and what didn't; she gathered that almost everything did.

When he'd finished, he surveyed the activity in the chamber with a satisfied air. Roi could see the meal dissolving smoothly inside him, unhindered by the obstructions she'd noticed the last few times. Clearly the rest had done him some good.

«How are you finding things on your travels?» he asked.

«What do you mean?» She'd returned from the last recruiting expedition with two young students, but that had been several shifts ago, and she'd reported the result to him then.

«How do people think of us? Word must have spread out from the Calm by now, that there's a new team here, doing a new kind of work.»

«Ah.» It was a good question, but a difficult one to answer. «I wouldn't say that there's any particular resentment directed against us. Nobody likes having their team-mates taken, but recruitment is recruitment, it's a fact of life.»

«And work is work?» Zak pressed her. «The mere existence of a team is its own justification?»

Roi replied cautiously, «It seems that way. Most people don't consider themselves experts in the history of the Splinter, to the point of declaring 'There has never been a team like that before'. Work is whatever a group of people do, and most of us take it for granted that what other teams do is useful in some way. There might be only five or six jobs that literally everyone knows about and understands, but that doesn't mean people are hostile or suspicious toward all the rest.»

Zak pondered this. «I've been wondering at what point we'll need to let some of our own members get poached.»

Roi was startled. «Can we afford that? Our numbers are still very low.»

«Can we afford not to?» Zak replied. «It's not just a matter of being sure we play the game, being sure our existence is accepted. It would also be of value if some of our ideas could spread outside the team itself. Almost every child learns writing and simple arithmetic; they're parts of the culture that have managed to move beyond the specializations where they originated. Imagine if the facts about weight and motion could acquire the same status.»

Roi could see where this was heading. «So by the time the next division of the Splinter is imminent, everyone will have at least a basic understanding of what's going on. It won't be necessary to try to educate them from scratch.»

«Is that too ambitious?» Zak wondered.

«I don't know. Tell me when the next division is coming.»

Zak emitted a sarcastic rasp. «I have a feeling you'll know that before I do.»

«Don't count on it.» In truth, the idea of being able to predict the event still seemed almost as strange and metaphysical a prospect to Roi as the thing itself.

«When is the next overview meeting?» Zak asked.

«Two shifts from now.»

«I think I'll attend.»