After the hasdrawad and the tashrid, the bicameral legislature, had determined for the second time that Ilisidi would notbe aiji, they had appointed Tabini to head the aishidi’tat.

And the whole assembly, caught between the bells and the lights, heard felicitous, redeeming threes. Every atevi nerve rang as a human could only intellectually comprehend—not feel, gut-deep: felicitous one, then the two strokes of we live. Then I speak, disastrous two—felicitous threeof we live. And now no resolution of the first cahi, the first proposal, at all, but the infelicitous twoof I am. A human brain could short-circuit keeping up with the bracketing structures, but Bren swore he felt it in his own nerves: and he felthis knees go weak when Tabini gave the assembly that third, redemptive I am. The whole audience held its breath, angry as they must be at this tactic. That, in this audience, didn’t matter. They were caught up, snared, and couldn’t move. Daren’tmove. Feltthe aishidi’tatthreatened—and were drawn, unwillingly, to hope that it, and their lives, continued.

“ I speakas your appointed guide into time to come,” Tabini said. And delivered the nextthird stroke, that painfully woundup, merciful third: “ I speakfor the unity of the assembly of us all.

“We do not forget,” Tabini continued, as nerve and flesh all but liquified in relief and bodyguards stood down from red alert. Tabini swept on in possession of all attention. Thank Godno program dropped. Breathing itself was at a minimum. Tabini’s oratory was all fortunate threes now, rapid, hammering into nerves still resounding to two strokes of the bell, still waiting for the resolution of their universe. “We do not break our strong connections with all that Valasi-aiji built. We do not abrogate our traditions. The more knowledge we acquire, the more we rationally comprehend the universe, the more we control our own destiny—”

Sensitive spot: the number-counters who so powerfully ruled the traditional world had long discounted the numbers of the heavens, meaning they had deliberately, scornfully dismissed the work of astronomers, who had failed to foresee the Landing.

But the modern-day Astronomer Emeritus, a genius of his age, brandished numbers that confounded the number-counters—those mathematicians who claimed to guide the less talented to understand the balance of the universe. The newly respectable Astronomer Emeritus was Tabini’s. And with Tabini’s blessing, the Astronomer Emeritus worked to understand the stars and make reliable paths through the heavens. The numbers flowing down from the heavens now ran a starship and promised to connect atevi to a rational universe that also accounted for humans—

To a universe, what was more, that brought them a secondforeign species. That this new species happened to be hostile—well, well, but the soaring optimism of good numbers insisted the difficulties could be overcome, irresistibly so.

Atevi relied on a rational universe.

Humans on the island enclave of Mospheira had faith in miracles.

Humans on the starship over their heads had more faith in a second armed starship and a planetful of allies, in a universe otherwise sparse with life.

But atevi being an independent lot, fiercely so, and hating worse than poison to be handed a fait accompli involving someone else’s numbers, had politely declined to make too strong a point that a human species that had misplaced its own home planet was not infallible. In the main atevi were impressed by what they saw going on in the heavens—what, at least, the dedicated and the suspicious alike, armed with binoculars, could make out as going on in the heavens. It was at least a personal enough contact with the presence up there to make it a national obsession, and binoculars and telescopes enjoyed a vogue at garden parties and secret meetings.

The latter—since a last die-hard cadre of the traditionalists wanted their world back the way Tabini had inherited it, sanstelescopes, sansautographed roof tiles— sansthe frantic push of atevi interests skyward. But the majority even of the conservatives had dropped the traditionalist fight over the very concept of Air Traffic Control: they’d lost that argument, long since, and scrambled to get aerospace industry in their own districts.

Yet did the builders of such facilities properly consider the numbers? They derived them from new-fangled computers, to the contempt of the die-hard traditionalists and the dedicated ‘counters. Dared one trust them?

“The more numbers we gain,” Tabini was saying to the assembled lords, “the more I myself appreciate Valasi’s work. Not,” Tabini added, before certain die-hard conservatives burst a blood vessel, “that I would argue less with my father, but certainly that I would listen more. His time was too soon to know everything: but in his wisdom he laid a foundation for the aishidi’tatthat would assure a strong leadership… and now I know that he saw change coming. Now I know that he prepared for it. Now I know that my father was a wise man.”

Oh, thatwas clever: generational authority was a tenet of the conservatives… while the aiji’s increasing power over their lives as a central authority was a continual sore point. Now Tabini equated one with the other, wound the cord of their own argument around a strong young fist, and yanked.

Count your fingers when dealing with Tabini. His enemies and his allies both said that.

“My father warned me,” Tabini said. “He saw us growing reliant on advances that we would never have the chance to make for ourselves. But becausethese inventions, like all real things, come of true numbers, he saw that they use the natural universe, he saw that they were good, he saw that if we did invent them they would be much the same. He had, however, every intent of shaping what came to us into our own design, he had every intent of maintaining sovereignty—” Another sore point. “ And because it follows from every previous invention— he clearly had every intent of going into space.” The cadence dragged them right into it… and marched on, leaving the fiercest opponents to mull over a very strong point: if not that aim, what aim? “In the new numbers, our economy runs white-hot. We have no hunger, we haveno feuds, we haveno want of employment for the clans. We mine, we build, we distribute, and we have no scarcity anywhere. Thanks to our vantage from orbit we rescue a forest from blight. We warn a village on the coast to put up the storm shutters. We cure diseases we once thought hopeless. In the new numbers we send and speak and travel from one end to the other of every association, without wires or roads that blight the world. In the new numbers, we draw power from the sun’s free light without smoke to obscure the sky.

“Never let us forget what is kabiu, or break the rhythm of the seasons, or of the wild things, or of our own bodies. Let us never forget how to build a fire, light a candle, or use our hands to spin thread. Let no single village forget how to weave cloth, shape a pot, or hunt its own food. If a machine made a pot, it serves for a while. But if hands made it, it is kabiu, and fit to pass to our children. This was the true understanding I learned from Valasi. This is what I now give to my son. This is what he will in his day give to his son. This observance of true value is what keeps kabiu. This is the source of things unseen. This quality, this fitnessremains so long as we have the keen sense of what is real. And in a hundred thousand pots, one is kabiu.

“We canheal the sick, warn against weather, and supply common pots to every village in the world. But let us teach our children to make what is kabiu, and to recognize what is kabiu, and to value what is kabiu.