«I fail to see what you intend to prove, Scholar Falkrith,» said Nimavar-Povis-Alkati, Head of Science and Technology for the Andalite High Council. «It has repeatedly been mathematically demonstrated that matter cannot be transmitted through Zero-space.»
Falkrith-Ispadagar-Konin rolled all four of his eyes, as though despairing of ever making his fellow Andalites see reason. «Mathematically demonstrated, Master Nimavar?» he said. «How can a scientific fact ever be mathematically demonstrated? Sessagal-Junhyb-Eteri did not develop the theory of gravitation by writing "Gm1m2/r^2" on a blackboard; she developed it by dropping weights from high places, and studying the motions of the moons. She did it, in short, by observing the universe – which is the only way to truly make any scientific discovery.»
«In an ideal world, that may well be true, Scholar Falkrith,» said Nimavar patiently, «but it seems somewhat impractical in this case. After all, a four-dimensional being can never directly perceive Zero-space.»
«Of course not,» said Falkrith, «but we can observe its effects on the universe we do know. We can measure the changes in the photons and neutrinos we send through low-level Z-space loops; we can examine the quantum nature of the light coming from QSO-1135; and then we can determine whether the reality affecting them is more like the non-dimensional singularity of a cone or the multi-dimensional "blossom" surrounding a volip particle.»
Nimavar nodded. «Yes, yes, Scholar Falkrith,» he said. «I am familiar with all the arguments you made in your paper. I confess, however, that they have as yet failed to convince me.»
«So I was told, Master Nimavar,» said Falkrith. «I can only hope that, when you see the thing actually occurring, you will find it rather more persuasive.»
Nimavar sighed. «Well, then, proceed,» he said. «Let me warn you, however, that, should your experiment fail, I will personally see to it that you will never have the opportunity to perform another.»
Falkrith cocked his head. «I had not realized that you harbored such a dislike for me, Master Nimavar,» he said.
«Nor did I,» said Nimavar, «until you called me away from my daughter's wedding ceremony to witness a scientific impossibility.»
«Ah,» said Falkrith with a smile. «Well, perhaps if we hurry, you can present her with the first object to travel through Z-space as a wedding token. Now, then, would you care to examine the apparatus?»
Nimavar glanced at the mechanical monstrosity suspended over the river, and frowned. «That is your apparatus?» he said.
«It is,» said Falkrith.
«May I ask why it is obstructing the flow of a major waterway?»
Falkrith frowned, and seemed uncertain for the first time during the interview. «Yes, I was concerned about that also,» he said, «but the nature of the reactions involved required a fairly rapid cooling system, and the Ilarda was the only nearby river that flowed swiftly enough.»
«I see,» said Nimavar. «And you believe, of course, that the discovery that you are certain you will make is more important than whether several hundred Andalites living alongside the Ilarda have clean water for the next few weeks – to say nothing of the therant and quilfin trees.»
«Yes, Master Nimavar,» said Falkrith, «that is precisely my belief.»
«Has anyone ever told you, Scholar Falkrith,» said Nimavar, «that you are a hubristic fool who should never have been allowed to receive Council funding?»
«Oh, yes,» said Falkrith. «You, my sister, my old physics teacher, approximately one colleague every week…»
Nimavar stamped his right hind hoof in his trademark gesture of impatience. «Enough of this,» he said. «Demonstrate your machine, Scholar Falkrith.»
«Gladly, Master Nimavar,» said Falkrith. «If you will keep your stalk eyes focused on the palladium cube atop the transmitter pyramid, and your main eyes on my hands…»
With practiced speed, he guided his fourteen fingers through an elaborate series of motions on the computer terminal resting on the riverbank. The apparatus began to whir and hum, and a large, crystalline pyramid, on which rested a shining, gray-white cube, began to glow with a piercing white light.
Falkrith leaped from the riverside and handed Nimavar a pair of concave lenses made from blue glass. «Don these optic shields and shut your main eyes, Master Nimavar,» he said. «The transmitter pyramid will soon become too bright to safely view unprotected.»
Nimavar complied, and the landscape took on a subdued lapis tone in his eyes – all save the crystalline pyramid, which retained much the same piercing whiteness it had had before. Whatever muting of its light had been accomplished by the shields was negated by the rapidity with which it was gaining in luminous intensity.
«In approximately 7.3 seconds,» said Falkrith, «the portal will open and transport the cube to the receptacle pyramid. The process will take less than three-thousandths of a second, so do not avert your eyes.»
This was easier said than done. The glowing pyramid was now so bright that it was physically painful to look at it, even with the optic shields. Nonetheless, Nimavar forced his stalk eyes to focus on it; if there was trickery involved in this demonstration, he wanted to see it at work, and if there wasn't, he scarcely wanted to go down in history as the Andalite who looked away during the first demonstration of Z-space mass transfer.
Then, for the briefest instant, he thought he saw a ripple in the air just above the pyramid – "an archway of nothingness", as he would famously describe it in a letter to Kirath-Monessim-Shapeel some days later. At the same moment, the palladium cube gave off a peculiar shimmer and disappeared – only to reappear, an instant later, on the somewhat smaller pyramid at the other end of the apparatus.
That was all. The glow of the transmitter pyramid faded into nothingness, the rumble of the machinery slowed to a halt, and Nimavar-Povis-Alkati, Head of Science and Technology for the High Andalite Council, ripped the optic shields from his stalk eyes and stared at Falkrith-Ispadagar-Konin as a child stares at a magician. «How did you do that, Scholar Falkrith?» he breathed.
«Through an application of special harmonics on the fifth-inversal sub-space level,» said Falkrith dryly. «Did you not read my paper, Master Nimavar?»
«But, by the Bodiless Powers, man,» said Nimavar, «this means the end of the lunar barrier. This means an Andalite race that can extend itself across the stars. This means…»
«A great deal for every person on this planet,» Falkrith agreed. «You see now, I trust, why I judged it worth your while to call you away from your daughter's wedding ceremony so that you could see it.»
Nimavar bowed his head. «My apologies, Scholar Falkrith,» he said. «I should not have made such a to-do over your request. It was merely that I am an old man, and that she is my only child.» He sighed. «You, who have never had a daughter, cannot fully understand – but I would almost rather that the Andalite race should never leave this world than that Ethalan should be disappointed today.»
Falkrith, indeed, did not understand this. Though he was capable of heroic passion where his work was concerned, in the area of ordinary affection he was as ignorant as any human sociopath, and the notion that some young female's marriage festivities were more important than the exploration of the universe (for so he understood Nimavar to be suggesting) seemed to him supremely contemptible. Andalite courtesy, however, prevented him from expressing this idea in thought-speak; he said, instead, «A noble sentiment, Master Nimavar. Indeed, there is little point in preparing a glorious future for the race if the race itself were to have no future – and therefore the reproductive union that your daughter is accomplishing is as important as anything we have done beside this river today.»
«Yes,» said Nimavar slowly, his tone suggesting that that was not quite what he had meant. «And since you value that… ah… reproductive union so highly, perhaps you would do me the honor of accompanying me when I return?»
«I would be honored, Master Nimavar,» said Falkrith.
He trotted over to his mechanism and removed the palladium cube from the receptacle pyramid, and the two of them turned and followed the Ilarda's current towards the ceremonial space – oblivious to the invisible, matter-contorting residuum that was leeching off the mechanism and mixing itself with the river's water.
The wedding of Ethalan-Povis-Tilagren, daughter of the Andalite High Council's Head of Science and Technology, to the young botanist Hilanal-Sitek-Parshini was, unsurprisingly, a rigidly formal affair. (If any error, or any abbreviation, was made in the ancient ritual, this would have been leaped upon by Nimavar's rivals as an indication of a slipshod or imprecise temperament – and this, bad enough in the military or artistic departments of the Council, would have been intolerable in a Head of Science.) Since a formal Andalite wedding is nearly three hours long, and since Andalites do not like to stay still for extended periods of time, this meant that the crowd of idle sensation-hunters had greatly dwindled by the time the ceremony reached its central moment: the mutual dipping of hooves into the water.
«Our destinies are intertwined, as the leaves of an alaksha,» said Hilanal, pressing his right hand to Ethalan's left.
«Our blood is to be mingled, as the waters of the Ree and the Sikarfa,» said Ethalan, pressing her right hand to Hilanal's left in turn.
«Henceforth,» said Hilanal, «our eight hooves shall be as four; they shall tread the same paths, mark the same sethlars, (1) and drink from the same streams, till the both of us have departed from life.»
The two of them touched their forehooves to each other, then turned and dipped their hooves into the swift-flowing river. Ethalan let out a little sigh of pleasure as she felt the waters of the Ilarda flow through her leg, cold and bracing, sealing the bond between herself and her beloved – and, she thought with a slight pang of shame, legitimizing the young Andalite growing inside her.
For there was one respect in which the wedding of Ethalan and Hilanal deviated from custom. Typically, Andalite weddings were held on the first day of the mating season, but the exigencies of Nimavar's duties had made a three-day delay necessary if he was to attend. Ethalan and Hilanal, who had never been in close contact during mating time, had taken unfortunate advantage of this delay – and, when Ethalan had performed her routine medical scan that morning, she had learned that their union had borne fruit.
She had told no-one, not even Hilanal or her father, and she did not expect that they would ever learn. After all, even the most observant gossip would think nothing of a pregnancy thirteen months and thirty-three days long, rather than the usual fourteen months of an Andalite gestation period.
She had no notion of how her brief drink from the river Ilarda would affect her child.
Nor did she begin to conceive how that child, and a few dozen others like him, would one day change the course of Andalite history forever.
(1)
«Mark the same what?» said Tobias.
«Sethlars,» said Ax. «At that time in history, an Andalite warrior would signal triumph over a fallen enemy by dipping his hoof in the enemy's blood and leaving a bloody hoofprint, called a sethlar, on his forehead. The implication in the wedding ritual is that the groom's enemies and the bride's have become the same.»
«Ah.»