Complete Stories by Rudy Rucker Page B

symbols.”
    Mies and I exchanged a look. Lord Vickers was a crank, an eccentric amateur whose work was devoid of serious mathematical interest. But it was thanks to him that Lady Vickers had bothered to come to our little conference. She was the only member of the Europarliament who had.
    “Vat you think our chances are?” Rozzick asked her in the sudden silence, his mouth full of unchewed cauliflower.
    “Dismal. Unless you can find some way of making your research appeal to the working man, you’ll be cut out of next year’s budget entirely. They need all the mathematics money for that new computer in Geneva, you know.”
    “We know,” I said gloomily. “That’s why we’re holding this meeting. But it seems a little late for public relations. If only we hadn’t let the government take over all the research funds.”
    “There’s no point blaming the government,” Lady Vickers said tartly. “People are simply tired of paying you mathematicians to make them feel stupid.”
    “Zo build the machine,” Rozzick said with an emphatic bob of his bald little head.
    “That’s right,” Mies said, “Build a machine that will play mathematics like music. Why not?”
    Lady Vickers clapped her hands in delight and turned to me, “You mean you know how?”
    Before I could say anything, Mies kicked me under the table. Hard. I got the message. “Well, we don’t have quite all the bugs worked out …”
    “But that’s just too marvelous!” Lady Vickers gushed, pulling out a little appointment book. “Let’s see…the vote on the math appropriation is June 4…which gives us six weeks. Why don’t you get your machine ready and bring it to Foxmire towards the end of May? The session is being held in London, you know, and I could bring the whole committee out to feel the beauty of mathematics.”
    I was having trouble moving my mouth. “Is planty time,” Rozzick put in, his eyes twinkling.
    Just then Watson caught the thread of conversation. In the journals he was a famous mathematician…practically a grand old man. In conversation he was the callowest of eighteen-years-olds. “Who are you trying to kid, Fletch?” He shook his head, and dandruff showered down on the narrow shoulders of his black suit. “There’s no way …” He broke off with a yelp of pain. Mies was keeping busy.
    “If you’re going to make that train, we’d better get going,” I said to Lady Vickers with a worried glance at my watch.
    “My dear me, yes,” she agreed, rising with me. “We’ll expect you and your machine on May 23 then?” I nodded, steering her across the room. Watson had stuck his head under the table to see what was the matter. Something was preventing him from getting back out.
    When I got back from the train station, an excited knot of people had formed around Watson, Rozzick and Mies. Watson spotted me first, and in his shrill cracking voice called out, “Our pimp is here.”
    I smiled ingratiatingly and joined the group. “Watson thinks it’s immoral to make mathematics a sensual experience,” Mies explained. “The rest of us feel that greater exposure can only help our case.”
    “Where is machine?” Rozzick asked, grinning like a Tartar jack-o’-lantern.
    “You know as well as I do that there is none. All I did was remark to Lady Vickers …”
    “One must employ the direct stimulation of the brain,” LaHaye put in. He was a delicate old Frenchman with a shock of luminous white hair.
    I shook my head. “In the long run, maybe. But I can’t quite see myself sticking needles in the committee’s brainstems five weeks from now. I’m afraid the impulses are going to have to come in through normal …”
    “Absolute Film,” Rozzick said suddenly. “Hans Richter and Oskar Fischinger invented in the 1920s. Abstract patterns on screen, repeating and differentiating. Is in Warszaw archives accessible.”
    “Derisory!” LaHaye protested. “If we make of mathematics an exhibit, it should not be a