“But where does it all stop?”
“It can’t. Endless dimensions.”
She shivered. “It scares me.”
“Don’t worry. Even the Chief Engineer only has to fret about the first dozen dimensions. And — look, you know we turn inside out when the ship goes irrational. Can you feel it?”
“No. And I’m not sure I believe it.”
“It doesn’t matter, because we aren’t equipped to feel it. It can happen while eating soup and you never spill a drop, even though the soup turns inside out, too. So far as we are concerned it’s just a mathematical concept, like the square root of minus one — which we tangle with when we pass speed-of-light It’s that way with all multi-dimensionality. You don’t have to feel it, see it, understand it; you just have to work logical symbols about it. But it’s real, if ‘real’ means anything. Nobody has ever seen an electron. Nor a thought. You can’t see a thought, you can’t measure, weigh, nor taste it — but thoughts are the most real things in the Galaxy.” Thorby was quoting Baslim.
She looked at him admiringly. “You must be awfully brainy, Thorby. ‘Nobody ever saw a thought.’ I like that.”
Thorby graciously accepted the praise.
When he went to his bunkie, he found Fritz reading in bed. Thorby was feeling the warm glow that comes from giving the word to an eager mind. “Hi, Fritz! Studying? Or wasting your youth?”
“Hi. Studying. Studying art.”
Thorby glanced over. “Don’t let Grandmother catch you.
“Got to have something to trade those confounded slugs next time we touch Finster.” Woolamurra was “civilization’; the bachelors had replenished their art. “You look as if you had squeezed a bonus out of a Losian. What clicks?”
“Oh, just talking with Loeen. I was introducing her to n-space . . . and darn if she didn’t catch on fast.”
Fritz looked judicial. “Yes, she’s bright” He added, “When is Grandmother posting the banns?”
“What are you talking about!”
“No banns?”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Mmm . . . you find her good company. Bright, too. Want to know how bright?”
“Well?”
“So bright that she taught in El Nido’s school. Her specialty was math. Multi-dimensional geometry, in fact.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Happens I transcribed her record. But ask her.”
“I shall! Why isn’t she teaching math here?”
“Ask Grandmother. Thorby, my skinny and retarded brother — I think you were dropped on your head. But, sorry as you are, I love you for the fumbling grace with which you wipe drool off your chin. Want a hint from an older and wiser head?”
“Go ahead. You will anyhow.”
“Thanks. Loeen is a fine girl and it might be fun to solve equations with her for life. But I hate to see a man leap into a sale before he checks the market. If you just hold off through this next jump, you’ll find that the People have several young girls. Several thousand.”
“I’m not looking for a wife!”
“Tut, tut! It’s a man’s duty. But wait for the Gathering, and we’ll shop. Now shut up, I want to study art.”
“Who’s talking?”
Thorby did not ask Loeen what she had done in El Nido, but it did open his eyes to the fact that he was playing the leading role in a courtship without having known it. It scared him. Doctor Mader’s words haunted his sleep ” — before Grandmother decides to marry you to someone . . . if you wait that long — you’re lost!”
Father and the Woolamurra official gossiped while Thorby fretted. Should he leave Sisu? If he wasn’t willing to be a trader all his life he had to get out while still a bachelor. Of course, he could stall — look at Fritz. Not that he had anything against Loeen, even if she had made a fool of him.
But if he was going to leave — and he had doubts as to whether he could stand the custom-ridden “monotonous life forever — then Woolamurra was the best chance he might have in years. No castes, no guilds, no poverty, no immigration laws — why, they even accepted mutants! Thorby had seen hexadactyls, hirsutes, albinos, lupine ears, giants, and other changes. If a man could work, Woolamurra could use him.