“Perhaps we should slip him some Allswell,” Arsibalt suggested.

“Or something stronger,” I returned. But before we could develop this promising theme, the back door swung open and in walked a girl swathed in a hectare of heavy, scratchy-looking black bolt, lashed to her body with ten miles of chord. Her punched-in sphere was overflowing with mixed greens. Out of doors, she kept her head covered, but once she had set the greens down she swept her bolt back to reveal her perfectly smooth dome, all dotted with perspiration, since it was a warm day and she was overdressed. Arsibalt and I did not feel as easy around Suur Karvall as we did around Tris, so all banter stopped. “That’s a lovely selection of greens,” Tris began, but Karvall flinched and held up a bony, translucent hand, gesturing for silence.

Fraa Lodoghir had begun speaking. I reckoned that was why he’d wanted his “gruel” cleared away.

“Plurality of Worlds,” he began, and let it resonate for a long moment. “Sounds impressive. I haven’t the faintest idea what it means to some here. The mere fact of the Geometers’ existence proves that there is at least one other world, and so on one level it is quite trivial. But since it appears that I am the token Procian at this messal, I shall play my role, and say this: we have nothing in common with the Geometers. No shared experiences, no common culture. Until that changes, we can’t communicate with them. Why not? Because language is nothing more than a stream of symbols that are perfectly meaningless until we associate them, in our minds, with meaning: a process of acculturation. Until we share experiences with the Geometers, and thereby begin to develop a shared culture—in effect, to merge our culture with theirs—we cannot communicate with them, and their efforts to communicate with us will continue to be just as incomprehensible as the gestures they’ve made so far: throwing the Warden of Heaven out the airlock, dropping a fresh murder victim into a cult site, and rodding a volcano.”

As soon as he paused, reactions came through on the speakers, several people talking over each other:

“I don’t agree that those are incomprehensible.”

“But they must have been watching our speelies!”

“You’re missing the point of the Plurality of Worlds.”

But Suur Asquin spoke last, and most distinctly. “Many other messals are addressing the topics you mentioned, Fraa Lodoghir. In the spirit of Madame Secretary’s opening question: why should we have a separate Plurality of Worlds Messal?”

“Well, you might simply ask the hierarchs who brought it into existence!” Fraa Lodoghir answered a little disdainfully. “But if you want my answer as a Procian, why, it is quite straightforward: the arrival of the Geometers is a perfect laboratory experiment, as it were, to demonstrate and to explore the philosophy of Saunt Proc: put simply, that language, communication, indeed thought itself, are the manipulation of symbols to which meanings are assigned by culture—and only by culture. I only hope that they haven’t watched so many of our speelies that their minds have been contaminated, and the experiment ruined.”

“And this relates to our theme how?” Suur Asquin prodded him.

“She knows perfectly well,” Suur Tris assured us, “she’s just making sure it all gets spelled out for Ignetha Foral.”

“Plurality of Worlds means a plurality of world cultures—cultures hermetically sealed off from one another until now—hence, for the time being, unable to communicate.”

“According to Procians!” someone put in. I didn’t recognize the oddly accented voice, so I thought it might be the Matarrhite.

“The purpose of this messal, accordingly, is to develop and, I would hope, implement a strategy for the Sæcular Power, assisted by the avout, to break down the plurality—which is the same thing as developing a shared language. We shall put ourselves out of business by making the Plurality of Worlds into One World.”

“He hates this messal,” I translated, “so he’s trying to talk Ignetha Foral into turning it into something else: which would just happen to be a power base for the Procians.”

Suur Karvall really hated it when we talked over the doyns, but she was going to have to get used to it. We were all standing around distributing the greens among half a dozen salad plates. Only six, because Matarrhites, apparently, didn’t eat salad.

While making dinner, some of us servitors had had a good argument as to why a Matarrhite had been invited. One theory was simply that, because the Sæcular Power was religious, they wanted some Deolaters in on the discussion. The Matarrhites were going to have Convox clout way out of proportion to their significance in the mathic world, or so this argument went, because the Panjandrums felt more comfortable with them. The other theory was more in line with the notion, just voiced by Ignetha Foral, that this messal was a dumping ground.

Clanking sounds over the speaker told us that those servitors who were still in the messallan were collecting the soup bowls. This led to a break in the dialog; but we could hear an elderly woman’s voice, speaking up, in a more informal mood, as the servitors worked: “I believe I can put your fears to rest, Fraa Lodoghir.”

“Why, that’s good of you, Grandsuur Moyra, but I don’t remember voicing any fears!” said Fraa Lodoghir, trying and failing to sound jovial.

Moyra was Karvall’s doyn, so, out of respect for Karvall, we actually did shut up for a moment.

Moyra returned, “I believe you did express concern that the Geometers had contaminated their own culture by watching too many of our speelies.”

“Of course you are right! That’s what I get for contradicting a Lorite!” Fraa Lodoghir said.

The door opened and in came Barb with seven bowls stacked on his arms.

“I think you ought to change my designation,” said Moyra delicately, after considering this for a moment, “and now call me a meta-Lorite, or, in honor of this occasion, a Plurality of Worlds Lorite.”

This got a murmur out of everyone—in the messallan and in the kitchen. Suur Karvall had drifted over to the speaker and was standing there rapt. Arsibalt had been chopping something; he stopped and poised his knife above the block.

“We Lorites are always making nuisances of ourselves,” Moyra said, “by pointing out that this or that idea was already come up with by someone else, long ago. But now I do believe we shall have to broaden our sphere to include the Plurality of Worlds, and say ‘I’m terribly sorry, Fraa Lodoghir, but your idea was actually dreamed up by a bug-eyed monster on Planet Zarzax ten million years ago!’”

Laughter around the table.

“Splendid!” Arsibalt said. He turned and looked at me.

“She’s a closet Halikaarnian,” I said.

“Exactly!”

Fraa Lodoghir had seen the same thing and was trying to lodge an objection: “I’d say you can’t know such a thing until you communicate with that bug-eyed monster or his descendants…” And then he went on to reiterate what he’d said before. I rushed the salad out in the hopes that it would shut him up. Suur Moyra didn’t seem quite taken with his arguments, and Ignetha Foral was beginning to look a little frosted.

Meanwhile, Arsibalt’s doyn, who happened to be seated next to Fraa Jad, was leaning to exchange whispers with the Thousander. When first I’d seen this man, he’d struck me as oddly familiar. Only when Arsibalt told me his name had I realized where I’d seen him before: standing alone in the chancel of Saunt Edhar, looking straight up at me. This was Fraa Paphlagon.

Fraa Jad nodded. Paphlagon cleared his throat as Lodoghir began to wind down, and finally barged in: “Perhaps while we’re proving that everything Saunt Proc ever wrote was just perfect, we can get some theorics done too!”

This shut even Lodoghir up, so there was a short pause. Paphlagon continued, “There’s another reason for having a messal about the Plurality of Worlds: a reason that some would say is almost as fascinating as Fraa Lodoghir’s remarks about syntax. It is a pure theorical reason. It is that the Geometers are made of different matter from us. Matter that is not native to this cosmos. And what is more, we have results just in from Laboratorium, concerning the tests that were performed on the four vials of fluid—assumed to be blood—on the Ecba probe. These four samples are made of different matter from each other, which is to say that each of them is as different from the other three, as it is from the matter we are made of.”