The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

“Swimmers have occasionally reported encountering… minds… essences… of the lost, Naqi. The impressions are often acute. The conformed leave their mark on the ocean at a deeper, more permanent level than the impressions left behind by mere swimmers. One senses that there must be a purpose to this.”

“That wouldn’t be for me to speculate, sir.”

“No.” He glanced down at the compad and then tapped his forefinger against his upper lip. “No. Of course not. Well, to the matter at hand…”

She interrupted him. “You swam once, sir?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.” The moment stretched. She was about to say something-anything-when Sivaraksa continued. “I had to stop for medical reasons. Otherwise I suppose I’d have been in the swimmer corps for a good deal longer, at least until my hands started turning green.”

“What was it like?”

“Astonishing. Beyond anything I’d expected.”

“Did they change you?”

At that he smiled. “I never thought that they did, until now. After my last swim I went through all the usual neurological and psychological tests. They found no anomalies; no indications that the Jugglers had imprinted any hints of alien personality or rewired my mind to think in an alien way.”

Sivaraksa reached across the desk and held up the smoky cube that Naqi had taken for a paperweight. “This came down from the Voice of Evening. Examine it.”

Naqi peered into the milky gray depths of the cube. Now that she saw it closely she realised that there were things embedded within the translucent matrix. There were chains of unfamiliar symbols, intersecting at right angles. They resembled the complex white scaffolding of a building.

“What is it?”

“Mathematics. Actually, a mathematical argument-a proof, if you like. Conventional mathematical notation-no matter how arcane-has evolved so that it can be written down, on a two-dimensional surface, like paper or a readout. This is a three-dimensional syntax, liberated from that constraint. It’s enormously richer, enormously more elegant.” The cube tumbled in Sivaraksa’s hand. He was smiling. “No one could make head or tail of it. Yet when I looked at it for the first time I nearly dropped it in shock. It made perfect sense to me. Not only did I understand the theorem, but I also understood the point of it. It’s a joke, Naqi. A pun. This mathematics is rich enough to embody humour. And understanding that is the gift they left me. It was sitting in my mind for twenty-eight years, like an egg waiting to hatch.”

Abruptly, Sivaraksa placed the cube back on the table.

“Something’s come up,” he said.

From somewhere came the distant, prolonged thunder of a dirigible discharging its cargo of processed ore. It must have been one of the last consignments.

“Something, sir?”

“They’ve asked to see the Moat.”

“They?”

“Crane and her Vahishta mob. They’ve requested an oversight of all major scientific centres on Turquoise, and naturally enough we’re on the list. They’ll be visiting us, spending a couple of days seeing what we’ve achieved.”

“I’m not too surprised that they’ve asked to visit, sir.”

“No, but I was hoping we’d have a few months grace. We don’t. They’ll be here in a week.”

“That’s not necessarily a problem for us, is it?”

“It mustn’t become one,” Sivaraksa said. “I’m putting you in charge of the visit, Naqi. You’ll be the interface between Crane’s group and the Moat. That’s quite a responsibility, you understand. A mistake-the tiniest gaff-could undermine our standing with the Snowflake Council.” He nodded at the compad. “Our budgetary position is tenuous. Frankly, I’m in Tak Thonburi’s lap. We can’t afford any embarrassments.”

“No sir.”

She certainly did understand. The job was a poisoned chalice, or at the least a chalice with a strong potential to become poisoned. If she succeeded-if the visit went smoothly, with no hitches-Sivaraksa could still take much of the credit for it. If it went wrong, on the other hand, the fault would be categorically hers.

“One more thing.” Sivaraksa reached under his desk and produced a brochure that he slid across to her. The brochure was marked with a prominent silver snowflake motif. It was sealed with red foil. “Open it; you have clearance.”

“What is it, sir?”

“A security report on our new friends. One of them has been behaving a bit oddly. You’ll need to keep an eye on him.”