“But believe me, my crimes were appalling. What I did was unimaginable and wicked, and that’s why I was tried in a secret court and stripped of my degrees, my fancy titles. It has been thousands of days since I told anybody what I did. Not since I came to Corona and met with the local police. Not since long before any of you were born.”

Squirming in his seat, Diamond glanced at the passing branches, details smeared by the rubber window and their fantastic speed.

The Master said his name.

The boy blinked and looked at those great black eyes.

“We count our days,” Nissim continued. “From the beginning of time, humans have used the days to measure time. Everybody knows this. But most people don’t realize that there are a few scholars, very unusual researchers, who spend their lives doing nothing but trying to make a fair full count of the world’s days and nights. An honest number would tell us quite a lot. That’s the logic, at least. Knowing when the world was born would give us a huge number, and wouldn’t that be fine evidence of the world’s greatness?”

“How many days are there?” Elata asked.

Nissim smiled grimly and lifted his hand, clamping it over Seldom’s mouth.

“You don’t know,” he said to the boy. “And don’t bother guessing.”

Seldom shrank back and stayed quiet.

Nissim said, “Various counts exist. Scholars are divided into important factions—warring tribes, really—and nobody agrees. Nobody can ever agree. Each answer has a different path behind it, and long gray reaches of history compromise every number. There have been wars: tree-walkers against papio; civil insurrections. Governments have fallen into the sun, and chaos has ruled for generations, and nobody knows how many times our records were burnt or left to rot.

“Now most authorities believe the world was born at least one million days ago, and some claim it was more than ten million days ago. I’ve known smart men and smart women who invest all of their intelligence in one number and then convince themselves that it’s not just right, but inevitable and beautiful and theirs. But there are a few of us, always just a few, who are interested in finding a new means of counting.

“Which brings me to me.”

He paused. The fletch dove suddenly and then just as suddenly jumped higher, and someone from up in the cockpit screamed—a boyish wail of approval at the airborne dance.

“The edge of the world is marked with the living coral.” Nissim was looking at a point behind Diamond’s head. “The coral grows from where existence begins, and it creates a strange terrain. This is where the other people live, the papio. They live in villages and giant towns, and except for all of their differences, they’re exactly like us. They fight each other and sometimes they pick fights with us. The papio are intense and very intelligent and they like to be silent when they’re with us, but they have their own language and their own wonderful alphabet, and like us, they have scholars who keep count of the days.”

Nissim paused, licking his lips.

“The coral grows,” he said. “Every day, it lays down a tiny layer of new coral along the reef’s belly. What lives is as blue as it is green, and every night that coral rests. Nights leave behind faint dark lines in the ground. When I was a young student, I read that it was possible to take a core sample from the coral and count the daily rings, measuring the passage of time. As a scholar, I decided to make that my life’s work. The deepest and presumably oldest coral happens to be there.” He pointed forward. “That’s why I passed through the District of Corona on my way to visit the papio. I needed to learn their customs and language before receiving permission to drill, which took effort and time and a good deal of luck. And even with those accomplishments, everything remained difficult.

“I had to hire papio engineers to design the drilling apparatus. Cutting into deep old coral isn’t easy work, and I don’t know how many times wise people from both species warned me that I was attempting the impossible.

“And to a degree, those doubters were correct.

“The first drill went into the old blue-green stone on top. It cut deep and then wore out, and I pulled a core sample and the second drill cut even farther. Eventually I had the deepest hole in the world. But the youngest coral is far tougher than the grandfatherly stuff, and after nine drills, the stone was too young and too deep, and I was only halfway to the bottom of the ancient reef.

“Still, I had my lines to count. I was young and proud, and that’s why I boasted too much. The papio were offended. One old papio man, dead now for thousands of days, looked at this little tree-scrambling human with his wasted learning and his stacks of cylindrical rock. ‘Come with me,’ he said. ‘Something needs to be seen by ignorant you.’

“Few know about this place. Even the papio don’t know about it. High on the reef country, beyond where even the papio live, there is one tiny patch of existence on which nothing grows. There is no coral and no soil, and not even the woeful-vines take root there. It is a different part of the world than anything I’ve seen anywhere—a place no larger than a large man’s arms can stretch across. The surface is smooth and gray and perfect, except for the words embossed in the middle.”

The fletch shuddered and dove again. Nothing changed outside the window. The same twisted branches raced past, little dashes of color showing a flock of scattering birds. The day was older, but the sunlight insisted on growing even brighter.

“Were those papio words?” Seldom asked.

“And what did they mean?” Elata pressed.

“Oh, the language was a mystery to me and to my guide too,” Nissim confessed. “But there were similarities to parts of archaic human language, and I saw hints of papio in the lettering. So I made an exact copy. I brought the words back to the District of Districts, and I brought my core samples too. For a thousand days, I buried myself inside the University library. The oldest surviving books in the world are stored in a special room, in the driest possible air, and I studied there until my sinuses were full of dust, and I learned as much or more about old languages than anyone else in the world. And only then did I try to translate that mysterious emblem.”

Nissim stopped talking. Suddenly he resembled an old man wrung empty of breath and stamina. He shook his head slowly and narrowed the eyes that refused to let go of what he had seen, and he dipped his head, watching the back of one hand as he began reciting the words.

“ ‘We are boys and we are girls,’ ” he said, “ ‘and we have come to this fruit of perfection, this utopia, to live as good people must. Every temptation has been left behind. We bring nothing but pure thoughts. In this great realm, we will build a society of fairness and modesty, or we shall fail and suffer the doom that failed souls must suffer. Then we will die, and the great fire will consume us, and nothing will remain of our good dream but the eternal promise that always and forever draws creatures of courage, pulling us onward.’ ”

His voice stopped and he lifted his hand, watching it close and then open again. “To the best of my ability, that is the full text.”

Diamond closed his eyes, absorbing each word. But nothing made sense, and he felt foolish.

“I don’t understand,” said Seldom.

“What does that mean?” Elata asked.

Again, the Master placed his hand on Diamond’s head

The boy opened his eyes.

Nissim was showing him a wary smile and hard unblinking gaze.

“These words likely mean more than I realize,” the man said. “And I won’t pretend to understand the people who wrote them. But the phrase that destroyed my life, the piece of this puzzle that utterly fascinated me . . . it is where they wrote, ‘We have come to this fruit of perfection.’