Sev's current plan is that Graf Zeppelin is more genki/like her child version, since she isn't stuck with the same run of bad luck
If thou art diligent and wise, O stranger, compute the number of cattle of the sun, who once upon a time grazed on the fields of the Thrinacian isle of Sicily, divided into four herds of different colours, one milk white, another a glossy black, a third yellow and the last dappled.
Leonardo da Vinci tapped on the paper with her pencil and tried to wrap her head around the problem. At the very least, she had the problem in Italian and not ancient Greek, although that was only the first step in making the problem comprehensible. That was all the help da Vinci would accept, though. She knew the problem had been solved, in part, by others– she had been told as such when she was sent the puzzle in the first place– but her pride wouldn't let her tackle Saida's problem with any sort of outside help.
(Well, splitting hairs, it was Archimedes' problem, although whether or not he had actually written it was questionable.)
Saida was nice, and da Vinci was glad they had the chance to write to her and some of the other girls in Germany and Austria. Of course, da Vinci wouldn't get away with writing letters to the Reds in La Spezia, but the Two Sicilies were courting both the Austrians and the Germans, so writing letters and maybe even picking up a bit of the language was a good thing.
Oh, da Vinci knew those letters were getting read over by censors– at least one on both ends– plus some interested naval intelligence people, but shipgirls were of such a rare breed she practically had to talk with them. As much as Vinci loved her sisters, there was only so much talk about swordsmanship and exercise a girl could bear!
In Germany, there was, of course, the distinguished Derfflinger, the one who revolutionized repair and construction, but there were other keen minds up north as well. Saida and Spaun were both the intellectual, letter-writing sort, but where Derfflinger zealously focused on the matter of bulins, Saida and Spaun both saw math and science as things that were enjoyable for their own sake.
There was something funny about the Austrians caring more about the Konigsberg bridges than the Germans themselves, da Vinci supposed. She found something like that a bit more engaging than just chewing through the mathematics for magic squares. Well, that might have been pretty rich to say, considering her current problem was, at its core, heaping piles of mathematics.
The start was fairly simple, at least with her modern tools. Archimedes described groups of cattle and bulls in several ratios, and that could be solved with some basic algebra. Well, not that the man had algebra at the time, but she certainly wouldn't pass up such a tool. Solving for the absolute smallest number of cattle in the herd of the sun god using the ratios alone, you'd get 50,389,082 cows. Which was, by her mathematician's estimate, probably a bit more than the island of Sicily could bear at the moment.
But no no no, it couldn't be that easy. Because the number of white and black bulls made a perfect square and the number of yellow and dappled bulls made a triangle. That took a mathematical problem that was perhaps solvable at the time (and certainly solvable now) and thrust it into the realm of impossibility. She could work at it for years without getting the whole of it.
Saida wasn't quite cruel enough to challenge her to solve the problem completely, but she had asked Leonardo to see if she could get an estimate of the solution's order of magnitude and the first few digits. That could be done. Had been done already, not that da Vinci cared to spoil the problem for herself.
Da Vinci was fiddling with her slide rule when there was a knocking on her door. With a sigh, she left the problem on her desk– it wouldn't migrate away, even if her mind would constantly wander back to it– and opened the door to find Cavour waiting for her.
"Mornin', Cavour!"
"It's after noon, da Vinci."
She checked her watch. "That it is, Cavour." da Vinci grinned.
"Have you eaten?"
"Yes…?"
Cavour pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long exhale. "I'll fetch you something, but don't make a habit of this, Vinci."
"Never."
They were currently based in Naples. As fitting as solving Archimedes' problem on his native isle might have been, there wasn't much reason to go down there, at least not for official naval business. The fancy naval business they were grappling with today was a certain visitor from Germany: one of their brand-new carriers.
From what da Vinci had heard, the two were of very different breeds: Graf Zeppelin was, from what the rumors said, a sort of scout for the German navy's heavy hitters, while Weser was of a more independent sort– larger air groups, less armor– built for colonial defense off Indochina. Da Vinci wondered if that meant she could get all the rubber she wanted for projects. That would be pretty swell…
But not everybody could have colonies, could they? They scraped out a living in Italy's boot and got to occasionally gawk at whatever toys Germany showed in the Mediterranean. Part of it was some big showboating thing, considering that the Ligurian was a Syndicalist sea in all but name.
(Well, there were the Sardinians, but their navy wasn't much compared to the major powers on the peninsula. Da Vinci was pretty sure that the Reds had produced an equivalent navy in the last half a year.)
She was glad to see that the weather was good. Clear skies, a sun that might have been a bit too warm if there wasn't a strong wind. That was honestly pretty good news for the carriers, considering.
What? da Vinci had eventually received some floatplane launchers, and even if she hadn't she would be interested. Her namesake had his screw, it was only fair that she lived up to his legacy and figure out how modern heavier-than-air flight worked. And really, it was quite elegant.
It wasn't quite the grace of a bird in flight, but there was something almost more remarkable about the construction of airplanes. A bird had evolution on its side, was tuned by that harsh mistress called nature. That a bird came to be at all was a testament that it was right on some fundamental level, that it fit properly into whatever niche it filled.
There was no such guarantee with a plane. You could build a plane and it could fail at so many points. In construction and manufacturing, of course, but even then a plane was built on endless testing, wing shapes refined and tuned by intentional hands. War provided the evolutionary pressure here, nothing more or less than human hands put a plane together.
A plane was pure intentionality, like a battleship. There was nothing incidental about the construction and the commissions and the plans. Perhaps you could argue the birds of the air had a purpose dictated to them by evolution: to live and to procreate, but it felt strange to da Vinci. Perhaps you could say a gene was successful if it propagated itself, but to assign intent to something spreading itself… you wouldn't say that a fire was successful for growing larger, would you?
In the most flattering way possible, shipgirls were tools.
Yeah, she knew how that sounded, she really did, and while she supported the ships who were arguing that they should have similar rights to the fighting men that staffed them, she thought there was something remarkable about being built for something. Perhaps a human child might be sired with some purpose in mind– an heir, a caretaker in old age, some other who you could love and be loved by in turn– but a shipgirl was all purpose.
They were… vital, in some sense. Oriented towards something, whatever that something might be, just by their very nature. A ship cut a path through the waves, spiting the currents. A plane flew through the air, spiting the surly bonds of gravity. Perhaps there was some design in nature, but a ship or a plane was built by man, built to transcend some barrier once thought impossible to surpass.
Who could have imagined the dreadnought back when triremes roamed the dark Mediterranean? Could the Wright Brothers have imagined the smooth operation of a German carrier, steam catapults firing and dipping arrestor hooks? Well, one of them lived still, if she remembered correctly. He might be facilitating such a thing right now, but that only showed how swift their progress was.
If only her namesake could behold the wonders that had followed him, shipgirls especially! What a happy marriage of the great passions of his life, the physics and keen design of weapons of war married with the anatomy he had captured with such precision.
The ships were nearly as beautiful as the girls themselves and just as unique. They didn't exactly see many carriers in this particular neck of the woods, and they certainly didn't see many girls with hair the color of blood or silver. Well, some of the old folks had white hair, but it wasn't that healthy, nor did it have the same strange sheen to it…
As the capital ships of the Two Sicilies, they were the obvious choice to greet their German counterparts. Cesare stood in the middle, Cavour and Vinci flanking her. They were supposed to play it by ear, really. Cavour would provide formality if that's what the Germans wanted, Cesare and da Vinci would swoop in otherwise.
The first to speak was the silver-haired one: "Uh, buongiorno?" She smiled broadly as they walked over.
(Tall and leggy, huh? She supposed that what's extra length got you… some of the time. Ships of the same class got different heights because fate apparently despised some people.)
"Hello!" da Vinci waved. As nice as that much height might have been, there was no reason to fuss over her lack of it… and any extra respect that might have come with.
From what she had heard those German ships weren't always getting the respect they hoped for, even with an actual contingent of liberals and social democrats rooting for them. Dozens of capable women, striving and conniving and playing to their preferred party's tune…
Who did these two favor? Was redhead a social democrat? Was silver hair– chipper as she might have appeared– in with the reactionaries? You got the occasional knightly type who carried that onto into being straight-up reactionary. Or at least, that was what da Vinci was informed the girls were like up in northern Europe.
She shouldn't have been getting distracted. One of the two, either Graf Zeppelin or Weser (she couldn't pin down which one was which) was chatting happily with Cesare while the other watched with a hint of a smile. Plan Cheerful, then.
"Oh yes," Cesare laughed, "The sweets are perhaps too remarkable. Mind them carefully. A ship should stay in the prime of her health, no?"
"I would say Zeppelin deserves some," the redhead said, defining herself as Weser… unless she was the sort who referred to herself in the third person. "She's been a remarkable teacher."
Zeppelin smiled. "I'm glad to guide the way."
"The way to the patisserie?" Weser asked, her lips curling up ever so faintly.
"Oi! I'm still your senior on this mission."
"Yes, ma'am."
Fortunately, there were enough restaurants in Naples to cater to their tastes, plus some chefs spared from the royal household. Zeppelin seemed very glad to hear that particular piece of news, and it was almost enough to mitigate her disappointment at not being able to roam. Because of course, such an important ship couldn't be left to ramble down the streets of a foreign capital.
Zeppelin would constantly steal glances at the window, trying to catch some glimpse of the city that sat beyond manicured gardens and high walls. Which seemed a bit rich, considering that she could overlook the city with whole wings of aircraft instead of the one or two scout craft da Vinci had sitting on her catapults. (Well, the Admiralty would have her butt if she launched planes willy-nilly, but German planes formation flying over Naples was an impressive display. Lucky ducks.)
They didn't even get to see much of the chefs. Sure, the public knew they existed, but they were set apart from their still, delivered food and news from the outside world by soldiers. Da Vinci didn't like incomplete data.
Well, she didn't like incomplete data when it came to something important. Not knowing as much as she could about the world they were living in? That was bad. Not knowing the cards in someone else's hand? Well, when the stakes were low, it was just a fun game, a chance to test her analysis.
Weser kept her cool very well, but Zeppelin could not. It was almost too easy to fleece the girl, and as the hands passed by she gained a growing pout. It was almost cute. "Give me that deck, if you would?"
Cavour gave her a questioning look. "Is something wrong with my dealing?"
"Well," Zeppelin said, "If I'm not winning, the game's got to be rigged!"
Cesare managed to make her snort look like a cough, while Cavour hesitantly passed the cards over to Zeppelin. Any offense she might have taken was overwhelmed by desire to be a good host for their much stronger ally. Zeppelin spread the deck out to get a good look at all the cards– even teasing the corners of a few with her fingers, like she expected a front that could peel off– before nodding and sweeping them back up into a pile. A quick tap against the table straightened the lot, and then she began the slow process of shuffling them.
Zeppelin attempted (and mangled) a dovetail shuffle when there was a knocking at the door. Before Cavour or Cesare could stand up and get it, Zeppelin shot up from her seat– probably doing more to shuffle the cards with that one action than she had in the last five minutes– and moved over to the door. Weser trailed behind, but Zeppelin was already hauling it open.
Da Vinci got a vague impression of gleaming medals and buttons on top of a uniform that looked worryingly German, before Zeppelin spoke: "Critical shipgirl business. No interruptions. Ciao!" She slammed the door in his face and stomped back to her seat as Weser groaned.
"Is something the matter?" Zeppelin asked.
"I think that man was sent by the admiral, Zeppelin."
"And what of it?" Zeppelin asked, fumbling with the cards. Almost despite herself, da Vinci's mind lept to a math problem. Forty cards in their Neapolitan deck, make that a factorial and you'd get a stupidly big number of possible decks. Not as stupidly big as a fifty-two card deck, but each botched shuffle Zeppelin executed was some new probabilistic miracle.
Zeppelin would keep the room on lockdown for the rest of the night, essentially, shutting down anything that wasn't food or drink. Cavour was upset, of course, but it was pretty funny and just… a good time. Zeppelin didn't particularly care for the Sicilian admiralty, and her bucking against their authority loosened the reins on da Vinci, Cavour, and Cesare, if only for a night.
Watching the pride of Germany's naval air force get absolutely plastered was certainly a unique experience, da Vinci would admit. Weser apologized many a time before she helped her senior out the door.
The Germans excused themselves from Naples, with no small amount of embarrassment, leaving da Vinci and her sisters to their usual lives in the Mezzogiorno. They didn't even really face serious consequences for Zeppelin's little revolt, considering that kowtowing to the Germans was practically their foreign policy at this point.
Da Vinci was thinking. Well, she thought a lot, har de har, but the visit by the Germans and her correspondence with the Austrians got her thinking about things other than math problems or how much she wanted to fiddle with airplanes.
(A carrier conversion wasn't an impossibility, in the sense that it could be done to her ship, but could and would were leagues apart. She didn't have the size to make a good carrier, she wouldn't be able to execute on the speed, and fundamentally, the Two Sicilies didn't need one. It was a possibility, sure, but with the resources available, it was impossible.
The idea hung in her mind, tempting in its possibility but out of her grasp. Like Tantalus, reaching for something that was eternally out of her grasp.)
She thought about numbers. The whole of the German navy, compared to a mere three battleships… through pictures and letters, da Vinci got a sense of just how diverse the German capital ships were. The childish Bayerns who became mascots for their namesake states, the zealous nationalists Westfalen and Nassau, the friendly Kaiserin, the jaded imperial trooper Seydlitz…
Perhaps they were family in a broad sense, with strange bonds of motherhood or apprenticeship linking separate classes together, but they were too broadly spread. They bickered among themselves, picking and choosing the politics they preferred. And that wasn't even mentioning Austria.
Having three battleships in the middle of the Mediterranean was not stellar, considering the way things were heating up. But if you only had three battleships…
Da Vinci made up thirty-three point three (repeating) percent of the Sicilian battleship force, and she had an actual relationship with the remainder. They loved each other. Not to start sounding like a Red or anything… but the admirals would probably sweat a bit if they lost a third of their battleship force. They'd definitely sweat if they lost all of it.
Those were simple numbers, no need for a slide rule to figure that one out.
She was also pretty sure that she had managed to find the answer to Saida's problem: an estimate to the size of that great herd. Perhaps she could get her sisters to help her push for a little vacation to the Trinacria. She felt an urge to visit Syracuse.
It would take more years than any man had to calculate two hundred and six thousand digits, but she'd like to give Archimedes a bit of notice. Surely, the men of those days did not conceive of birds of alumina or ships of steel.
Perhaps… there were some impossibilities worth straining for.
If thou art able, O stranger, to find out all these things and gather them together in your mind, giving all the relations, thou shalt depart crowned with glory and knowing that thou hast been adjudged perfect in this species of wisdom.