Free The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers by Hugh Cook

Injiltaprajura, something about his purposeful stride made his mood perfectly clear.
     

CHAPTER SIX
     
    One would like to think that all this time Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba were hard at work on their mathematical studies. But they were not. Olivia had a considerable aptitude for figures yet disliked them. Her redskinned companion lacked both aptitude and liking entirely.
    It must be admitted that, in spite of lacking such, young Chegory had nevertheless made considerable progress in the study of numbers both real and unreal, positive and negative, whole and fractional, prime and partial, imaginary and obscene, and by now the construction of basic algorithms was second nature to him. He was familiar also with the mathematics of potentials and unpotentials, of points and infinities, of singularities and of blanks.
    Furthermore, while Chegory lacked Olivia’s intellectual finesse, he had nevertheless absorbed basic games theory, and understood the sociopolitical implications of the same. He had attained a degree of competence in the slippery contextual arithmetic of hyperspace, in the calculus of probability curves in n-dimensional true space and in the calculation of the structure of fundamental topographical harmonics in polydimensional non-space.
    However, he had been defeated entirely by Thaldonian Mathematics, which is essential to a correct understanding of everything from the nature of reality to the construction of trans-cosmic junctions, for it is that branch of theory developed to assist with the description of that event-class associated with the manifestation of klayta, or, as Habada Kolebhavn has so elegantly termed them, ‘dynamic objects of intermittent existence and indefinite probability’. To put it more crudely, it is the mathematics of the stresses which exist between the probable and the improbable, without which an understanding of true Advanced Theory is impossible.
    I can understand Chegory’s problems, since I myself studied under Ivan Pokrov for thirty years yet remained equally defeated by Thaldonian Mathematics. Nevertheless, Chegory’s failure to persist in his studies in the absence of his tutor shows the Ebrell Islander in him manifesting itself beyond a doubt.
    [One’s opinion of the Originator is much diminished by finding the Originator equating his own talents with those of an Ebrell Islander, albeit in a very minor field of endeavour. One also feels that the Originator has here indulged in language which is unnecessarily pretentious, with the consequence that much is here mentioned which is difficult to explicate. ‘Games theory’, for example, presumably refers to score-keeping in so-called amusements such as the ritualised conflict known in the Ebrell Islands as ruck, but you would not know it from the Text. One regrets the lack of any footnote to identify the briefly cited Habada Kolebhavn, unknown to our own researchers. (There is a minor poet of Obooloo called Handana Koden-darden, but this is most unlikely to be the person referred to.) The term ‘klayta’ is unknown to our lexicographers. Context suggests that it refers to dreams, or, possibly, to memories, to shadows or to lies. But how could one have a mathematics of dreams? Or of shadows? Here it is worth repeating that a diligent search of all the authorities has confirmed that only four mathematical operations are possible, these being addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Some of our Readers have suggested that the Text above implies otherwise. If so, then the Text is wrong. A brief application of common sense will soon show why this is so. This Commentary inserted by Order of Jan Borgentasko Ronkowski, Fact Checker Superior.']
    Usually Chegory was at pains to hide his idleness, but on this occasion he was caught out, for when Ivan Pokrov returned to the study room he found Olivia and Chegory playing paper—stone-scissors.
    ‘Why aren’t you working?’ said Pokrov.
    ‘With that stink?’ said