Against the Day (117 page)

   
“What
happened to vectorism?” Yashmeen teased.

“There
are vectors,” Kit replied, “and vectors. Over in Dr. Prandtl’s shop, they’re
all straightforward lift and drift, velocity and so forth. You can draw
pictures, of good old threedimensional space if you like, or on the Complex
plane, if Zhukovsky’s Transformation is your glass of tea. Flights of arrows,
teardrops. In Geheimrat Klein’s shop, we were more used to expressing vectors
without pictures, purely as an array of coefficients, no relation to anything
physical, not even space itself, and writing them in any number of
dimensions—according to Spectral Theory, up to infinity.”

   
“And
beyond,” added Günther, nodding earnestly.

·
    
·
    
·

In
Hilbert’s class
one
day, she raised her hand. He twinkled at her to go ahead.
“
Herr Geheimrat
—”

   
“ ‘
Herr Professor’ is good enough.”

   
“The
nontrivial zeroes of the ζfunction . . .”

   
“Ah.”

She
was trembling. She had not had much sleep. Hilbert had seen this sort of thing
before, and rather a good deal of it since the turn of the century— since
his own muchnoted talk at the Sorbonne, he supposed, in which he had listed the
outstanding problems in mathematics which would be addressed in the coming
century, among them that of the zeroes of the ζfunction.

   
“Might
they be correlated with eigenvalues of some Hermitian operator yet to be
determined?”

The
twinkle, as some reported later, modulated to a steady pulsation. “An
intriguing suggestion, Fräulein Halfcourt.” Usually he addressed her as “my
child.” “Let us consider why this should be so.” He peered, as if she were an
apparition he was trying to see more clearly. “Apart from eigenvalues, by their
nature, being zeroes of
some
equation,” he prompted gently.

“There
is also this
. . .
spine of reality.”
Afterward she would remember she actually said
“
Rückgrat von Wirklichkeit.
”
“Though the members
of a Hermitian may be complex, the eigenvalues are real. The entries on the
main diagonal are real. The ζfunction zeroes which lie along Real part =
½, are symmetrical about the real axis, and so . . .” She hesitated. She
had
seen it,
for the moment, so clearly.

“Let
us apply some thought,” said Hilbert. “We will talk about this further.” But
she was to leave Göttingen shortly after this, and they would never have the
chance to confer. As years passed, she would grow dim for Hilbert, her words
those of an inner sprite too playful to frame a formal proposition, or to
qualify as a fully habilitated Muse. And the idea itself would evolve into the
celebrated HilbertPólya Conjecture.

One morning Lew walked into the breakfast parlor at Chunxton
Crescent to find Police Inspector Vance Aychrome, angelically revealed in early
sunbeams through the stainedglass dome overhead, relentlessly despoiling a Full
English Breakfast modified for the Pythagorean dietary here, including
imitation sausages, kippers and bloaters, omelettes, fried potatoes, fried
tomatoes, porridge, buns, baps, scones, and loaves in various formats. Robed
acolytes crept timidly between the tables and the great kitchen with caddies,
tureens, and trays. Some wore mystical facial expressions as well. Late risers,
sandals twinkling, sought to avoid the Inspector, preferring to fast rather
than compete with his allbutentitled insatiability.

“One fancies a wee fryup at this
hour,” Aychrome somehow between huge mouthfuls greeted Lew, who, smiling
grimly, went looking for some coffee, a fool’s errand around here on the best
of mornings, which this already wasn’t. These English were a people of many
mysteries, none more peculiar than their indifference to coffee.

“All right,” he called out, “who’s
taken the bloody Spong machine again,” not that it mattered—coffee around
here was apt to taste like anything but coffee, owing to folks’s tendencies to
use the only grinder in the house to prepare curry powder, incense, even
pigments for indecipherable works of art, so he ended up, as usual, with a
chipped mug full of pale, uneventful tea, and took a seat across from Aychrome,
gazing in some fascination. Assuming he was not here only to deliver another
gentle suggestion from Scotland Yard to back off of the Gentleman Bomber case,
Lew took from an inner pocket a Tarot deck thinned to the twentytwo Major
Arcana and dealt them one by one onto the table, between the remains of a
vegetarian haggis and a platterful of pea fritters, until Aychrome began to nod
frantically and wave about a finger dripping with what Lew hoped was only
treacle. “Ggbbmmhhgghhkkhh!”

Indeed. The card was not
Renfrew/Werfner’s number XV after all, but XII, The Hanged Man, whose deeply
veiled secret meanings always seemed to place it in a particularly critical
area of investigation. Lew had got to thinking of it as his own personal card,
because it had been the first “future” card that Neville and Nigel had turned over
for him. Last time he’d checked, its position in the Icosadyad was occupied by
one Lamont Replevin, of Elflock Villa, Stuffed Edge, Herts.

When at last Aychrome’s mouth seemed
relatively unengaged, “So, Inspector,” as chirpily as possible given the hour,
“nothing too political I hope.”

“Hmm,” as if to himself, “bit of this
. . .
kedgeree, I think
. . .
yes lovely
. . .
and where was that marmalade pot. . . ah very nice
indeed.” Lew was thinking about leaving the man to his appetite when Aychrome,
as if just bitten by an insect, fixed him with a popeyed stare, wiped his
mustaches, and barked,
  
“Political!
well I should say so, but then it’s all political, isn’t it.”

   
“According
to the dossier, this Replevin is an antiques dealer.”

“Oh
beyond a doubt, except that there’s a sheet on the subject half a mile long.
The Lombro work alone is most suggestive, yes, most suggestive indeed.”

Lew
was aware that Inspector Aychrome was a zealous disciple of the criminological
theories of Dr. Cesare Lombroso, notably the popular one that deficiencies of
moral intelligence were accompanied by an absence of corresponding tissue in
the brain, and a consequently warped cranial development which could be
observed, by the trained eye, in a subject’s facial structure.

“Some
faces are criminal faces, is the long and short of it,” declared the
Metropolitan veteran, “and woe unto them that ignore it or can’t interpret it
properly. This one,” handing across a “mug” photo, “as you can see, has
International Mischief written all over his map.”

   
Lew
shrugged. “Seems like a wholesome enough fellow.”

   
“We’ve
had men watching the place, you see.”

   
“Why?”

Aychrome
gave the room a quick melodramatic onceover and lowered his voice. “Germans.”

   
“Beg
pardon?”

“The
subject Replevin runs a shop in Kensington, dealing, according to his file, in
‘TransOxanian and GræcoBuddhist antiquities,’ whatever those may be when
they’re at home, which is visited by a constant stream of suspect characters,
some of whom we already know, bad hats just from their facial types alone,
forgers and counterfeiters, fences and collectors
. . .
but our main worry at the Yard is the high proportion of
German traffic between

here and Inner Asia that always seems
to find its way through Replevin’s establishment. Most of the archaeology out
there is being done by German teams, you see, a perfect excuse for these
visitors to keep entering the country with dozens of their huge heavy crates
labeled, helpfully, ‘Antiquities.’ And then Sands calls in about the Inner
Asian show—this Shambhala state of affairs—and as if that wasn’t
enough, the Gas Office are on the doorstep stark mental with what
they’re
overhearing.”

   
“ ‘
Gas Office.
’ ”

Gripping
a knife and fork expressively in either fist, the Inspector was happy to
explain. Lamont Replevin, it seemed, was a practicing devotee of communication
by means of coalgas—that is, gasmains city and suburban figured, in his
map of London, as networks of communication, every bit as much as pneumatic or
telephone lines. The population who communicated by Gas, who indeed were
unwilling to communicate in any other way, appeared pretty substantial and,
according to Aychrome, was growing daily, as
secret interconnections
continued
to be made among urban and local or village gasmains, and the system expanded,
netwise, as if destined soon to cover all Britain. For those blessed with
youth, money, and idle time, it amounted to little more than a faddish embrace
of the Latest Thing, though many corresponded by gas for emotional reasons,
including those so vehemently discontented with the post office that they might
have been out seeking to chuck bombs into postboxes, were it not for the many
Suffragettes queued up ahead of them. Scotland Yard, taking the lively interest
one might expect, had set up a department to monitor Gas traffic.

“As
to Replevin, we’re frankly of mixed opinion at the Yard. Some feel he’s only in
it for, as they say, the aesthetics of the thing. I’m not much for modern
poetry, but I know codes when I see them, and our Lamont seems to be using a
particularly fiendish one. The cryptos have been on it around the clock, but so
far they haven’t cracked it.”

   
“Is
any of it being sent in clear? English? German?”

“Oh,
aye, not to mention Russian, Turkish, Persian, Pashto, spot of Mountain Tadjik
as well. Something going on out there, all right. We’re not allowed, of course,
to visit the premises officially, but we wondered if, in light of all this
Shambhala todo, it being up your street here at the T.W.I.T., and you
personally enjoying a freedom from legal constraint we can only dream about. .
. well, you see.”

   
“If
it was me? I’d just break open a crate and see what’s inside.”

“And
find it full of precious Chinese rubbish, and next thing I’m down in Seven
Dials on the graveyard watch poking me torch into dustbins. Perhaps not.” He
regarded the ruinous aftermath of his breakfast. “Don’t suppose

there’d be anything like a nice dish of baked beans on these
premises? There never do seem to be any.”

“Something
religious, I think.” Lew waved his thumb at a sign over the entrance to the
kitchen which read κυάμων
’απέχου, “Avoid beans”—according to Neville and
Nigel a direct quote from Pythagoras himself.

   
“Well.
I’d better finish up this spotted dick, then, hadn’t I.”

That
wasn’t all that was on the Inspector’s mind, but it took a Yarmouth bloater and
several currant buns for him to get to it. “I’m supposed to reiterate once
again how little enthusiasm there is around the Yard for your continued
interest in the socalled Headingly bomb subject.”

   
“Closing
in on him at last, are you?”

“We’ve
several very promising leads, and the investigation just now’s at a
particularly sensitive stage.”

   
“Sounds
familiar.”

“Yes,
and who’s to say we mightn’t’ve had him by now, too, if not for these
unauthorized dilettantes all pottering about and queering the pitch.”

   
“You
don’t say. How many of us are there?”

   
“One.
It only
seems
like a dozen of you.”

“But
he knows I’m after him. Thought you Yard folks would’ve appreciated having some
kind of sacrificial goat out there, to draw him in, maybe force him into a
mistake.”

   
“Full
of yourself today.”

“Ordinarily
I’d be full of my breakfast, but it don’t look like there’s much left.”

“Yes
well if you don’t mind I believe I shall take a bit of this ‘shape’ here,
unusual color I must say, what’s it made of I wonder mgghhmmbg
. . . .
”

   
“Maybe
you don’t want to know.”

At
that moment an acolyte came in with a message for Lew to report with all
dispatch to Grand Cohen Nookshaft’s office. Inspector Aychrome industriously
wiped his face, sighed tragically, and prepared to withdraw to the Embankment
again, and his chill homeelement of grimy brickwork, blue lamps, and the smell
of horses.

The
Grand Cohen received Lew in official regalia with an emphasis on lamé surfaces
and faux ermine trimming. On his head, in some vivid shade of magenta, with
gold Hebrew lettering embroidered on the front, perched what would have been a
yarmulke except for its high crown, dented Trilby style fore and aft. “Any
lastminute toadying, lad, better get it in while you can, coz me term’s almost
up, yes it’ll be back to Associate Cohen for little Nick Nookshaft, a truly
blessed release, and the turn of the next poor ‘sap’ to enjoy this thankless
groveling before the contempt of a High Directorate