This time there were no robes, no hoods, no masks. Students were expected to become friends, and allies. And everyone knew why you were in the classroom. It would have been pointless to pretend you weren't in the Conspiracy.

Their sensei was Jeffreyssai, who might have been the best of his era, in his era. His students were either the most promising learners, or those whom the beisutsukai saw political advantage in molding.

Brennan fell into the latter category, and knew it. Nor had he hesitated to use his Mistress's name to open doors. You used every avenue available to you, in seeking knowledge; that was respected here.

"—for over thirty years," Jeffreyssai said. "Not one of them saw it; not Einstein, not Schrödinger, not even von Neumann." He turned away from his sketcher, and toward the classroom. "I pose to you to the question: How did they fail?"

The students exchanged quick glances, a calculus of mutual risk between the wary and the merely baffled. Jeffreyssai was known to play games.

Finally Hiriwa-called-the-Black leaned forward, jangling slightly as her equation-carved bracelets shifted on her ankles. "By your years given, sensei, this was two hundred and fifty years after Newton. Surely, the scientists of that era must have grokked the concept of a universal law."

"Knowing the universal law of gravity," said the student Taji, from a nearby seat, "is not the same as understanding the concept of a universal law." He was one of the promising ones, as was Hiriwa.

Hiriwa frowned. "No... it was said that Newton had been praised for discovering the first universal. Even in his own era. So it was known." Hiriwa paused. "But Newton himself would have been gone. Was there a religious injunction against proposing further universals? Did they refrain out of respect for Newton, or were they waiting for his ghost to speak? I am not clear on how Eld science was motivated—"

"No," murmured Taji, a laugh in his voice, "you really, really aren't."

Jeffreyssai's expression was kindly. "Hiriwa, it wasn't religion, and it wasn't lead in the drinking water, and they didn't all have Alzheimers, and they weren't sitting around all day reading webcomics. Forget the catalogue of horrors out of ancient times. Just think in t...

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