Hugh Cook: The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers

‘What is it doing now?’ said the Master of Law.

‘A statistical analysis of the recent census,’ said Ivan Pokrov. ‘The inland revenue wants to know how best they can screw more money out of the populace. We’ll give them the answer. In time! The mills of Jod grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.’

The albinotic sorcerer could take a hint. He knew what Pokrov was telling him. That the Analytical Institute had friends in high places. It worked for the inland revenue, no less. Very well then! Even Varazchavardan was reluctant to go up against the inland revenue department, at least for the moment. Nevertheless, when he seized power on Jod he would make a point of smashing the Engine and burning Pokrov alive.

On principle.

What principle?

A very simple principle: namely, that anything occult is dangerous. Varazchavardan’s main objection to the existence of the Analytical Engine was that he could not for the life of him understand it. Oh, he could see the hard-muscled engine operators sweating at the treadmills. He could see how the transmission system worked, feeding the energy of manpowered cylinders to whirling metal.

He saw copper cards with their inscrutable arrays of punched holes. He saw other operators feeding these cards into the interstices of the Engine. He saw needles descend upon the cards — and, in his imagination, he substituted Ivan Pokrov’s flesh for the insensate cards thus tortured.

All this he saw.

But — how did any of this senseless insectile activity allow the Engine to think? And it did think, it did, it must, it had to! Else how could it outperform even the hard-headed analysts of the inland revenue? Pokrov was lying. Had to be lying. This conglomeration of metal was a farcical front. There was true magic hidden here. Somewhere. There was Power. And Varazchavardan vowed to win its secrets from Pokrov’s seared and bleeding corpus before he made that corpus a corpse.

With his inspection completed, Varazchavardan took his leave of Ivan Pokrov at the door of the Analytical Institute and began to walk down to the shore. He had almost got there when fluids began to well up from the wealth fountains which studded the slopes below the Counting House.

‘Oh no!’ said Pokrov.

Oh yes! It was happening! Nothing could stop it!

As Pokrov watched helplessly, familiar pungent odours filled the air as chemicals flooded out of the wealth fountains. The flood swelled around the ankles of Aquitaine Varazchavardan then rose higher yet with prodigious speed. The albinotic sorcerer was suddenly waist-deep in a veritable torrent of bile-green dikle and filthy grey shlug. He lost his footing and was swept away into the sea.

‘I hope he drowns,’ muttered Pokrov.

Don’t get the wrong idea. Pokrov was a very nice man. But he knew the Analytical Institute and everyone associated with it would be ten thousand times safer if Varazchavardan came to a nasty end.

However, Aquitaine Varazchavardan swam with remarkable facility to the harbour bridge and hauled himself aboard. Then he stood up. The Master of Law was not given to histrionics, and therefore did not turn and shake his fist. Nevertheless, as he set off for the shores of Injiltaprajura, something about his purposeful stride made his mood perfectly clear.

One would like to think that all this time Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba were hard at work on their mathematical studies. But they were not. Olivia had a considerable aptitude for figures yet disliked them. Her redskinned companion lacked both aptitude and liking entirely.

It must be admitted that, in spite of lacking such, young Chegory had nevertheless made considerable progress in the study of numbers both real and unreal, positive and negative, whole and fractional, prime and partial, imaginary and obscene, and by now the construction of basic algorithms was second nature to him. He was familiar also with the mathematics of potentials and unpotentials, of points and infinities, of singularities and of blanks.

Furthermore, while Chegory lacked Olivia’s intellectual finesse, he had nevertheless absorbed basic games theory, and understood the sociopolitical implications of the same. He had attained a degree of competence in the slippery contextual arithmetic of hyperspace, in the calculus of probability curves in n-dimensional true space and in the calculation of the structure of fundamental topographical harmonics in polydimensional non-space.

However, he had been defeated entirely by Thaldonian Mathematics, which is essential to a correct understanding of everything from the nature of reality to the construction of trans-cosmic junctions, for it is that branch of theory developed to assist with the description of that event-class associated with the manifestation of klayta, or, as Habada Kolebhavn has so elegantly termed them, ‘dynamic objects of intermittent existence and indefinite probability’. To put it more crudely, it is the mathematics of the stresses which exist between the probable and the improbable, without which an understanding of true Advanced Theory is impossible.

I can understand Chegory’s problems, since I myself studied under Ivan Pokrov for thirty years yet remained equally defeated by Thaldonian Mathematics. Nevertheless, Chegory’s failure to persist in his studies in the absence of his tutor shows the Ebrell Islander in him manifesting itself beyond a doubt.

[One’s opinion of the Originator is much diminished by finding the Originator equating his own talents with those of an Ebrell Islander, albeit in a very minor field of endeavour. One also feels that the Originator has here indulged in language which is unnecessarily pretentious, with the consequence that much is here mentioned which is difficult to explicate. ‘Games theory’, for example, presumably refers to score-keeping in so-called amusements such as the ritualised conflict known in the Ebrell Islands as ruck, but you would not know it from the Text. One regrets the lack of any footnote to identify the briefly cited Habada Kolebhavn, unknown to our own researchers. (There is a minor poet of Obooloo called Handana Koden-darden, but this is most unlikely to be the person referred to.) The term ‘klayta’ is unknown to our lexicographers. Context suggests that it refers to dreams, or, possibly, to memories, to shadows or to lies. But how could one have a mathematics of dreams? Or of shadows? Here it is worth repeating that a diligent search of all the authorities has confirmed that only four mathematical operations are possible, these being addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Some of our Readers have suggested that the Text above implies otherwise. If so, then the Text is wrong. A brief application of common sense will soon show why this is so. This Commentary inserted by Order of Jan Borgentasko Ronkowski, Fact Checker Superior.']

Usually Chegory was at pains to hide his idleness, but on this occasion he was caught out, for when Ivan Pokrov returned to the study room he found Olivia and Chegory playing paper-stone-scissors.

‘Why aren’t you working?’ said Pokrov.

‘With that stink?’ said Olivia. ‘How can we possibly work when we can’t hardly breathe?’

It must be admitted that the stench of so much dikle and shlug was hard to endure. Nevertheless, Pokrov refused to admit to sympathy.

‘We will work,’ he said. ‘We will begin with a review of basic solid-shape topology. With a viva voce examination, in fact.’ So saying, he opened a dusty cupboard untouched for many months, took out a box of shapes and began. ‘What is this?’ he said, holding up a solid wooden model resembling an octahedron with a three-faced pyramid on each face.

‘That,’ said Chegory Guy, ‘is a triakisoctahedron.’