“You are nearing the final destination of this train: Talon’s End Central Station,” said the mechanical voice ten minutes after their departure. “The weather is as scheduled, a pleasant 17.5 degrees Celsius—63.5 degrees Fahrenheit—with clear skies. The latest attraction is the unveiling of the monument to Interworld Co-Operation on Space Exploration. If you are here as a tourist, please visit the information center in the station for a full list of events. When disembarking please take care not to leave any baggage behind.”
“Door opening.” There was another hiss. Did the mechanism that made the door open require such a hiss? Silver Compass wondered why they would make a train that ran almost without noise and then install a loud and unpleasant door opener.
The ride had been uneventful, if much shorter than he had expected. The track wound through the hilly province and the mountains in the background had been quite picturesque even at the high speed they had been travelling. Unfortunately, the last minute had consisted of travelling through another tunnel.
Taking care not to leave any baggage behind, Silver Compass walked through the door. He was on another small railway platform. It looked identical to the one where he had boarded, except there were no cages here. There was, however, another human, wearing an elaborate green and white suit with an unfamiliar letter stitched into it.
Silver Compass did not have to wonder why the human was there, because he was holding a square white sign with Silver Compass’ cutie mark on it and looking expectantly at him.
“Hello,” Silver Compass said hesitantly, in Griffonian.
“Hello. I am Xiang. I was sent from The Palace to be your driver.” As Bright Lance had said, Xiang looked similar enough to be a brother to Charles. Perhaps his hair was a slight shade closer to black or his skin a bit more yellow, but nothing more distinctive. Silver Compass wondered if they were closely related, not that he could really guess accurately. Genetics was complex and varied widely among species.
“The palace? Does your Queen live there?”
“There have been many monarchs who stayed at The Palace. Most recently, Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Sabah. I can, of course, neither confirm nor deny that there are any at present.”
“Huh. What kind of a palace is it?” Silver Compass asked, ignoring the string of gibberish that he presumed was a name and title. Did they have many rulers who took turns at having power?
“It was the winter palace of Queen Odilla. It was auctioned shortly after the peace settlement and bought by Interworld Hospitality Limited. It is unquestionably one of the finest luxury hotels in either world.”
As he spoke, Xiang led them through the station towards a waiting carriage. It was very long, but narrower and shorter than the ones he was used to. Rather than being painted a cheerful purple or yellow it was a glossy black; it looked rather like a carriage Sombra might have ridden in. Xiang opened one of the rear doors and politely waited for them to get inside.
The inside was as small as it had looked from the outside, but very luxurious, as he’d expected of a carriage that came with an attendant. He and his guards could lie down upon the L-shaped seats, but he could not stand on them without hitting his head.
The theme of black had also been continued on the inside. Even the seats were covered with a black layer of some material. It was comfortable, but felt like nothing he had sat on before. There were glass windows everywhere, although they were tinted so that it everything looked darker and greener. There was even a sheet of glass between his seat and Xiang, who was sitting upright with his back to them.
With a rumbling noise the carriage started to move. Xiang was clearly in control, but as far as Silver Compass could see nothing was pulling it. It was the first self-moving carriage he’d ridden in, they were extremely rare in Equestria. The enchantment itself would be fairly simple, but it was fraught with potential problems. Who would be culpable if the carriage were to hit somepony? The enchanter or the driver? Not to mention the safety concerns and the cab-driver’s union. Clearly the humans had solved all these problems, somehow.
When their carriage cleared the enclosed parking area, he saw the city of Talon’s End for the first time. Tall grey buildings were everywhere, illuminated by the fading sunlight. It was not close to the scale of Manehattan, or as beautiful as Canterlot. But there were cranes and scaffolding everywhere, standing alongside incomplete buildings. Clearly, they meant Talon’s End to become a city on the same level as Manehatten. Or at least on the same scale as the big port cities of the Griffon Empire.
Their carriage was slowly moving on an asphalt road along with many others. Silver Compass guessed that rush hour was universal. Almost all of the other carriages were smaller than his, and the majority were a bright colour. Some had mirrors as windows—one-way glass, he hoped—but through the rest he could see griffons and sometimes humans controlling them. The sidewalks were also packed with humans and griffons walking. Here and there he could see a griffon flying above the crowd, perhaps in too much of a hurry to walk. Silver Compass could not see a Griffon that was not elaborately dressed.
Soon they turned down a narrow street and arrived at The Palace. It was a magnificent building, elegantly carved white stone with Prench windows, presumably imported at great cost. However, what drew Silver Compass’ eye as he stepped out was the building across the road. It was a squat grey thing, behind a high wire fence with a thick metal gate.
The building itself was not that remarkable, but the flags hanging from its gate made it stand out. They were sky-blue and white, with what looked like ears of some plant flanking a circular pattern. Inside the circular pattern was an ugly mess of blobs, like the flag designer had spilled his paint on the design and called it a day.
“What is that?” he asked Xiang, who was holding the door open for him.
“The Liaison Outpost of the United Nations.”
“United Nations?” Silver Compass asked. Was it like the United Buffalo Tribes?
“The United Nations is… well, not exactly a government of Earth. It sort of speaks collectively for the governments of Earth. But really only the Security Council members. It is fairly complicated, you’re better off asking the people you’re scheduled to meet tomorrow morning.”
His suite was magnificent. According to the brochure he had received with his key—again the flat square kind—it had once been the Royal Quarters. The decor was very typical classical Prench; the style popular among the rich and elite of every species in the world. The brochure had helpfully explained that the hotel had taken great pains to restore the guest accommodations to their original decor. The throne room, however, had been repurposed into storage space, the throne itself lost in the post-war chaos.
He wondered at the large amount of luxury. In his experience, It was not common for visiting academics. Perhaps it was because his visit was being handled by their diplomats, and they gave him the usual treatment for foreign dignitaries. If their standard policy was to use these rooms for important guests, they had certainly meant a very pointed insult towards any Imperial Diplomats that had to stay in their former palace.
They must be at least trying to impress him on some level. He had been told any reasonable expenses of his would be covered. He could have room service and it even extended to the hotel’s casino which he had been told was a sort of gambling establishment. Quite fun, according to Bright Lance. He could not imagine they gave that to every guest; just Blueblood alone would empty their coffers in a day.
He was currently eating breakfast is his dining room. It was something very similar to cornflakes; the griffon he had summoned had been very helpful in figuring out what he meant when he tried to describe cornflakes. There was even warm milk to eat them with.
This is where the normality had ended. When he had asked for milk, he could have sworn the chef had winked at him. And indeed, when he had looked through the menu later he had found no mention of any dairy products on it. Milk had been available—for a price—in the Griffon Empire, imported from Equestria in flasks with enchantments of permanence. But he supposed Queen Odilla was not going to let a trade ship just float through the blockade.
When his cornflakes were finished he started combing his mane. Short as it was, it could still get very wild. He had been able to wash it, even though he had feared the hygienic facilities would be unusable for anything that could not stand on two legs. He was glad the hotel seemed to be suited to griffons, meaning everything was oversized for him.
Silver Compass still had two hours to himself; he had to meet Xiang in the lobby at 8 AM to be at the university at 8:30 to get an “early start”. Perhaps humans had odd sleeping schedules; he could not imagine a world where three hours after sunrise would count as “early”.
He decided to organize his effects. He had brought a large satchel, which mainly had personal things inside and one very big desk reference. He had debated how much to bring: he could probably bring an entire library and still miss a book. But from the letter it had sounded more like they were interested in the extent of Equestrian mathematical knowledge, rather than learning any particular techniques. So he had decided to travel light, which also meant he had a lot of room to bring things back.
He started pacing. After half an hour of pacing and some consideration, he put on his only tie.
Two hours of pacing and a brief ride through the city later he was at the university. It looked like a typical griffonian university from any corner of the Empire: a collection of coloured brick towers with various traditional banners hanging from them. Whatever they had done to the inside, the outside was unchanged from the traditional appearance.
Xiang held the door again, as Silver Compass and his guards exited. The entrance hall was also typical, except that there was a large green sign above the door saying “EXIT.”
Standing in the entrance hall was a mixed group. There were several humans, as well as a female griffon. He could not judge what griffons found attractive very well but she certainly was beautiful in a generic sense, with a sleek black and white look.
There was also Charles again, with a different bright tie and the same suit. Next to him were three other humans.
“Welcome again,” said Charles. “I am sorry that I could not ride with you on the train, but I had an urgent appointment. Please, let me introduce you.”
“This is Professor Tom Simpson, Deputy-Head of Mathematics, visiting from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” He motioned to a human with grey hair and blue eyes. Tom was also wearing a suit, but a faded brown one. Silver Compass had never been much of a dresser, but it looked friendlier than Charles’ sharp black and grey. The professor twitched an arm forward, but then let it drop again after a moment’s consideration.
“This is Professor Hitoshi Yugoro, head of Mathematics and Computer Science here at Talon’s End,” he motioned to a younger—Silver Compass thought—human wearing a brown suit with a bow-tie. Yugoro gave a brief nod of his head. Silver Compass realized he could never hope to keep their names straight; they had too many alien syllables.
“And this is…” Charles paused, trying to translate, “Combined-Division-Leader Florian Müller of the United Nation’s Strategic Intelligence Taskforce.” Florian Müller was also in a suit, with a great many tiny medals pinned to it. Silver Compass would have expected at least a helmet, or some token indication that he was anything more than a bureaucrat.
“Lastly, but certainly not least, this is Torgunna Kvinnesland,” he motioned to the griffon, “official ambassador of the GDR to Earth.” Even she was fully clothed. Silver Compass was beginning to feel underdressed, but there was not anything more formal he could wear than a tie. Party clothes were more covering, but they were not exactly appropriate for an academic meeting.
Charles led the group into the university. Silver Compass noted his guards had not been introduced, or even spoken to. Canterlot nobles could be that rude, but most ponies would have at least greeted the guards. They did not appear offended; they fell in step behind him, and followed him into the building.
As they came into what he guessed was the conference room he was very relieved. At last the strangeness had started, instead of just being implied and hinted at. There was a large circular table of a light wood in the centre of the room, with chairs and glasses of water. He recognized nothing else on the table. Various devices lay on it, with wires from them splayed across the table and joined together in a white box at the center. There was one empty spot, without a device on it, he presumed it was his.
They all sat around the desk, Silver Compass’ seat was uncomfortably low—meant for a griffon clearly—but at least not the impossibly narrow things the humans sat on. His guards went to stand at the door.
“I hope you do not mind, we agreed to let General Müller have the first question,” started Charles, “he is a very busy man and can only spare a few minutes.”
“Of course,” said Silver Compass, caught a bit off guard. This was it then, he was about to make a potential dozen new discoveries in a day.
“This one respectfully asks thee if thou wouldst explain how this may be solved.” said Müller, sliding across two printed pages taking from his briefcase.
Müller’s Griffonian was in one sense the best he’d heard so far from a non-griffon. It was difficult for Silver Compass to understand, but it was exactly the language they spoke at the Imperial Court; the same Imperial Court which was many hundreds of miles away and had never hosted a human, as far as he understood the history of the GDR.
He looked at the papers. The body of the text was in Griffonian, while the notation was technically Griffonian as well its usage was more than a little unorthodox. He could understand it though.
It was two fairly simple problems. One dealt with elliptic curves, the other with retrieving two absurdly large prime numbers from their product. The elliptic curves one was a known open problem. As for the other, clearly their invitation letter proved the university here could factor numbers better than any other entity or organisation he had ever heard of, so why did they even ask?
The entire group, except for Torgunna, was staring expectantly at him. Was this a test? If he failed to provide solutions would they just tell him they were no longer interested, but thanks for coming? He couldn’t very well solve them right now in his head. He had no choice but to be honest.
“No. They’re not solvable as far as I know.”
“Thine knowledge is then certain? Not through any means, even magical?”
“Yes,” Silver Compass said. He need not have bothered specifying ‘magical’; most ponies skilled in magic disliked maths. Why plod slowly from conclusion to conclusion, when you could tweak an old spell to do amazing things with guesswork and inspiration.
Visible signs of relief ran around table. Delayed in the case of Professor Simpson, until he had had a translation.
“My gratitude,” said Müller getting up to leave.
“Wait, why are those two so important?” Silver Compass asked.
“Because,” started Professor Yugoro. He was silenced by a sharp glare from Müller, who was in the process of packing his briefcase. Yugoro met his gaze levelly, as far as Silver Compass could read their body language, and continued speaking.
“If you could solve those, you could do anything. We call it cryptography. It is the key on just about every digital lock, including probably your hotel room. You could open most secure doors, withdraw unlimited money from a bank, read every piece of mail of every person, whatever you wanted.”
Silver Compass was deeply curious how elliptic curves could be a key. And they were happy to explain. The meeting began in earnest. They did not bring any references, but it seemed they could summon a page of any journal ever written—including his own—onto the glass surfaces of their devices.
At one point Yugoro had wanted to make note on a particular formula, and made a perfectly printed copy appear from another device in the middle. He then proceeded to scribble on it to explain something. Silver Compass had flinched when he ruined the copy, but he quickly realized if they could produce printed text that easily they probably did not really see any reason to respect it.
The practical applications were enormous. Perfect privacy. An unforgeable seal of authenticity. Of course, magic could provide both of these but a stronger magician could just reverse the spell. On top of that, you needed highly gifted magicians on both ends.
All their algorithms for encryption assumed both parties were prepared to do a very large number of mathematical operations per letter, a process which they had explained was automated. But a simplified version would be well within the reach of a calculation device, or a more difficult to manufacture dedicated machine, like the Enigma Machine they had mentioned.
His satchel quickly filled with notes. For all that they were a different species, they were clearly academics in a familiar way. They loved knowledge. Even Simpson participated, with the help of Charles and Yugoro translating. Charles and Torgunna clearly did not know that much about the actual subject matter, but they managed to look politely interested.
“Oh, before I forget,” Charles took out a thick manuscript from his briefcase. “The entire department here worked very on hard on translating this, at my request. It is a proof of what you call Starswirl’s Unsolved Theorem. We know it as Fermat’s Last Theorem.”
“What.” said Silver Compass.
“If by the entire department, you mean I made a bunch of grad students do it then yes,” said Yugoro. “It is unpleasantly large both because Wiles, who authored it, had to introduce several new mathematical concepts to prove it and because I had to add several concepts Wiles knew but your universities would not. Griffonian, or Equestrian for that matter I think, lacks the symbols to express many of the concepts involved. I used the Earth ones and included a good appendix.”
This was rather monumentous. Leafing through it quickly, his muzzle trembling too much for choosing a precise page, he saw it would be no minor thing to publish. It had many parts, some introducing entirely new branches of mathematics, others existing discoveries applied in new ways.
Perhaps even better that it was so large, cleaned up and published in parts, it would shoot his journal into the stratosphere. It would be the topic of discussion at every university in the world. Every issue would be. The room seemed to dim some.
“Are you okay?” asked Charles, concerned. “Perhaps we should break for lunch.”
The humans were standing around, holding a paper plate with food in the one hand and eating with the other. They had just walked to the foodcart, brought in by a human in a chef’s hat, and put things on their plates with silver tongs from the serving dishes.
After some consideration, Silver Compass decided not to join them. Eating from a plate while standing would require some tricky balancing and being about half as tall as them standing would make conversation awkward; rather he decided to take a plate back to the table. When he reached the foodcart he realized he was not sure how they expected him to use the tongs; he had not been offered an opportunity to wash his hooves.
He carefully picked up a pair with his mouth and started looking at the food. It was all tiny pieces with little wooden sticks in them. Curiously there were two large silver platters, with mostly identical food on them put on clearly opposite sides of the cart. He did not know what the difference between them was. Both smelled strange in different ways, but neither smelled like meat. Not that he could hope to identify every processed meat variety—and the griffons had many—by smell.
While he hovered indecisively, Torgunna approached. She took a small pouch from a pile in the middle of the cart, tore it to reveal a wet cloth and wiped her talons. Then she grabbed the tongs and picked up food from the left plate.
'Oh, that is how it is done,' he realized. He had noticed that the humans had favoured the right plate. Clearly, the left had meat in it and the humans were probably vegetarians. They had no talons or other natural weapons after all.
He grabbed some things that vaguely resembled spring rolls from the right plate. Adding some boiled eggs, what looked like savoury cakes, and a bit of salad made a basic lunch. As he turned around he noticed Simpson pointing at him with a startled expression and asking Charles something in the human language.
‘It is not very polite to point at an etiquette mistake like that,’ he thought, putting down the tongs.
“Don’t eat that!” Charles broke into a strange staggered gait, presumably to reach him quicker. Silver Compass had thought their normal way of walking looked weird.
“Why?”
“It is from Earth!” Seeing that he was confused, Charles elaborated. “I don’t know exactly what will happen to you, but if you were a griffon it would probably be kidney failure or liver failure.”
“What failure?”
“Failure of the blood cleaning organs. We have a similar protein structure. Your digestive system can break them down into peptides and amino-acids because those enzymes are generic. These would be absorbed in whatever your equivalent of a small-intestine is. However we have only three amino-acids in common. You’d be dumping highly soluble gunk in your bloodstream.”
“So… human food is poison to us and vice versa?” Silver Compass had not really understood the technical explanation, and he did not really care to. It sounded very involved.
“No, not really. Sugars and starches are fine. Just nothing with protein, even plant protein.” Charles grabbed the tongs and quickly put together the same arrangement from the other platter. His hands were amazingly dexterous, especially combined with the reach his long arms gave him.
“Thank you,” Silver Compass accepted the new plate in return for the inedible one. “Are you a sort of doctor?”
“Hah, no. I was working here during the food crisis, I had to pick up a functional knowledge of digestive systems pretty quickly.”
“Food crisis?”
“Queen Odilla decided to extend the blockade to rainclouds, making every harvest fail. She knew our food was inedible and figured we’d let the province starve or surrender it back to her. She didn’t know why the food was inedible though, and starches kept immediate starvation from being a problem. Synthesizing amino acids was difficult under such pressure, but we had a lot of resources and thankfully griffons have fewer essential amino acids than humans. We were just starting to bring out flavoured versions of the nutritional paste when she got bored with the idea.”
Silver Compass doubted she had gotten bored. As the blockade continued, the sheer amount of effort to turn away every bit of moisture from such a large area would have become impossible to maintain. Especially for griffons, who were much less gifted at weather magic than pegasi.
“In truth, she could not have done us a better favour. When your former leader does their best to starve you old loyalties tend to fade quickly.”
There was a buzzing noise from Charles’ clothes. Charles excused himself and left the room again. Silver Compass did not quite know what to make of it, except that it had happened several times so far. He went to sit down at the table, choosing a seat near Torgunna.
“You are the ambassador, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What is that like?”
“It is quite nice, really. I don’t really do much ambassadorial work, like negotiating treaties and things like that. Mostly I travel their world meeting important humans and posing for photographs. It’s a bit surprising that you do not know me, I didn’t think Odilla’s blockade would be that effective. The human media promised me my place in history was more secure than anyone currently living.”
“Why?”
“I was the first griffon in space.” She used the Griffonian word for an open area, but he did not think that was quite what she meant. “All part of my job convincing humans we aren’t monsters directly out of their nightmares.”
“I imagine it must be difficult to build relationships after a war.”
“I wish there had been a real war with equal sides, it would have made it much easier. The Imperial Army scared the humans very badly. Their governments threw just about everything they had at forcing them back and failed. Humans almost never act in unison; they’re divided into many nations who at best distrust each other. But when united in a common purpose they have a terrifying amount of resources. So imagine how scared they were when they could not even hold the Imperial Army back with all their might. Their world is lonelier than ours, they had never met another sapient species. Then their first encounter was an unstoppable army pouring across their world.”
Silver Compass was unpleasantly reminded of the changeling attack on Canterlot. He’d never heard of a changeling, except as vague legends, and suddenly there had been a great many in his office. If the Royal Guard had not pulled together and defeated them at the last minute—he still was not sure how that happened; they had been losing badly—he imagined there would have been widespread panic across Equestria fairly quickly.
“It scared the humans enough to use really horrible weapons which instantly swung the balance of power back into their favour,” Torgunna continued, “Although, if you think the Silent Province is bad, you should see the other side of the portal. The Central African Republic was entirely destroyed and large parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo were devastated. You won’t know what they are, but that is a much larger area than the Silent Province.”
Not sure what to say, Silver Compass redirected his attention to food. The toothpicks in the pieces were clearly very useful if one had fingers or talons, but were proving quite problematic for him. Spitting out a half-chewed piece of toothpick he recalled something he had been told as he was travelling through the Silent Province.
“An administrator from the Griffon Empire told me you were all enslaved.”
“Hah, she is not entirely wrong. You’ve seen their devices, right? That is just a very small part of what they have to offer. All the information and entertainment you could imagine, at your fingertips. Instant communication close enough to a sort of species-wide telepathy, news spreads across their entire world within minutes. And they have an incredibly high standard of life due to their efficient manufacturing processes. Things that we used to save up for over months now cost a few hour’s wages. Magic can do almost anything they can do, and usually do it better, but it could never be as efficient and cheap.”
Silver Compass was used to living on the pay of an academic. While he certainly was not poor, he was nowhere close to rich. He tried to image the price of everything falling a hundredfold. He was sure he would run out of things to buy fairly soon.
“Perhaps this would mean nothing if we could not afford their currencies, but due to the blockade we are the only source they have for anything magical. And there is insatiable demand at any price we charge, far more than a few hundred thousand of us can provide. The GDR is, per capita, one of the richest members of the United Nations. Only the most extreme of us would be prepared to give all that up and become again the poorest province in a large empire. The invisible threat of them cutting off our supply of luxury goods is far more effective than chains would be.”
Silver Compass was seated at an elegantly carved oak desk in his hotel room, going through the notes he had made again. He had spent most of the rest of the meeting getting as much detail as he could of their proof of Starswirl’s Unsolved Theorem. He would need to consult with several experts back home just to help him reformat it for publication and to understand it fully. It was clear their mathematical understanding, at least in the field of number theory, was leaps and bounds ahead of Equestria’s.
It was not the only thing his mind was going over. At the end of the first day he had had to pose for photographs in front of a bunch of flags with them. He’d been told they were to be given to the media. Charles had said they could not have hoped to keep Silver Compass isolated from them forever and indeed there had been a swarm of reporters at the university gates attempting to get a glimpse of him through the tinted glass of Xiang’s carriage.
However, just after the photography session Charles had sought out Night Wing and given him a brown paper package. Night Wing had silently put it away, and Silver Compass was very curious to know what was inside. He was wondering if he should ask Night Wing, or if he should just mind his own business.
He was interrupted by a piercing cry that tore through the dusk. It sounded vaguely like a wolf howling, but much louder. Silver Compass wondered if it was a thing the humans occasionally did just after sunset. Canterlot loved to have various noisy ceremonies around sunset and sunrise, but usually they managed to not sound like the world was ending. Annoyed, he turned back to his notes.
Fifteen minutes later there was a sharp sizzling. The air felt charged, and not with static electricity. He was not a unicorn, but he could still feel the vibrations of the magical field in his bones. The room was humming like a bell as the shape of the world shifted. A teleport spell, he realized, one across a huge distance. His guards jumped to stand between him and the centre of the disturbance.
With a thunderous crackle a large golden griffon appeared in the room. He immediately turned to Silver Compass, glaring between his two guards. He looked savage and predatory in a way that the mathematician found hard to pin down. He suddenly realized why; it was because the griffon was unclothed.
“How did you get in here?” Bright Lance demanded.
“Hah. They can steal our palace, but it is still our palace and its passages are known to my mother and I.” The griffon threw his head back and sneered. “But I don’t have time to bandy words. I am here for you, Academic.”
“Me?” Silver Compass edged back, but his desk was against a wall.
“You. We were persuaded by Celestia to allow you. This permission is withdrawn. You will surrender whatever you have gained from them and leave. Their ridiculous flying train runs during the night.”
“No!” Silver Compass shouted. “Give up a proof of Starswirl’s Unsolved Theorem? Are you mad?”
“I don’t give an eggshard about whoever’s theorem. We allowed you—just you—because you are an Earth Pony Mathematician. You could teach them nothing dangerous and you could gain nothing dangerous from them. Imagine my surprise when you managed to gain a technique that would give an incredible advantage to any army using it to communicate. Unbreakable encoding.”
“I think it is time for you to leave,” said Bright Lance firmly.
“Oh, I intend to. The general alarm has been sounding for many minutes now; their forces are mobilizing. They’re more skittish than deer during hunting season. Any little disturbance, like an unauthorized series of teleports, and they rush to defend the border. But I will have those notes first.”
“No,” said Silver Compass and Bright Lance together.
“Please,“ the griffon starting pacing, trying to keep a moderate tone. “You have no idea what you have there. You think their knowledge will help you. But there is a terrible price for using it; you can not wield it without accepting their worldview. Look at what happened to the griffons who they ensnared.”
“I understand how you may be confused. Mathematics is not like magic. It is pure. It can not be tainted by the inventor or wielder,” Silver Compass tried to keep his tone reasonable and his body language nonthreatening. Perhaps he could convince the griffon to leave without violence.
“Hah, you think it will stop at a few academic theorems. Their encoding systems will spread across our world like wildfire. Encoding machines will follow, then decoding machines will follow to break the codes. Soon every nation will be banging at our door, demanding that we let the humans give them even more powerful machines.”
“Perhaps,” Silver Compass said. “But that sounds like your problem, not mine. Maybe you should not try and keep them bottled up like that.”
“We have been doing you a great favour with our policy of containment! Their knowledge would completely change your economies. You would have to accept their means of mass-production, because even if you remained traditional your neighbours would outpace you very quickly.”
“Would that be so bad?” Silver Compass asked. He would rather like a large drop in prices. He would no longer need to ration coal during winter or pay the printers through the nose for every printed draft of his journal. And best of all, he would no longer have to deal with the supply room clerk constantly hinting that his lecture-style made the students use an inordinate amount of ink and foolscap.
“Yes! What do you think will happen to the great many suddenly without employment? I was on the other side of that portal. There is incredible misery and suffering. Impoverished nations fighting endless bloody wars over scraps. If you’re useful, humans are your greatest friends. If you’re useless to them they’ll let you starve without a second thought even if you are a fellow human. We declared by Royal Decree that such injustice can not stand! We will unify them into our just empire!”
The howling had not stopped. Now it was joined by a series of incredibly loud bangs followed by the sound of a terrible rushing wind. It sounded like the Wonderbolts practicing, except it was much much louder. It sounded like something was pushing through the air with brute force rather using magic to make it yield.
“If you cause the war to be restarted….” Bright Lance warned him.
“Please. They do this every other month. It is a show of force. That is not how it sounds when they really mean war. I was there, when they first attacked. Mere hours after we told their diplomats we would not have peace unless they yielded completely. Endless explosions from a clear sky without a hint of warning. The flying things come later.”
The howling noise had been joined by a chorus of nearer, similar, noises now. Silver Compass could swear it sounded like they were getting closer and closer.
“I spent two weeks beneath a shield there, as part of the first expedition. They rained endless fury down. Every day we thought it could not get worse, but every day it did. If they’d had an ounce of subtlety they’d have disrupted the shield, but they only know brute force. We were more than a little delirious from exhaustion when my mother finally brought in the Imperial Army to reinforce us. Although, wisely, she left half of them on the other side of the portal as a rear-guard. If she had not had that wisdom, we would have lost much more than two provinces. That stopped all but one of their abominations from coming through to wreak havoc.”
“You forced them in a corner and terrified them! Of course they lashed out!” Silver Compass’ annoyance at the griffon’s bias finally came to a head. “They have been nothing but kind to me and your former subjects and they truly care about knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Did you even speak to them, before announcing that they were part of your empire?”
“You don’t understand!” The Griffon Prince shouted. “They have not stopped attacking us. They do anything that could hurt us, just to hurt us. They forge our currency by the cartload and dump it near the border where smugglers steal it. Then when we enact harsh measures to save our economy, they criticize us for ‘a brutal and unfair justice system’ and offer asylum to our criminals. They steal away more of our populace every year!”
He squatted, in preparation to jump at them. “Enough. If you are so taken in by them, I shall have to use force.” Bright Lance’s horn glowed and Night Wing shifted. Silver Compass tried again to lean further back against the desk, but it did not budge.
There was a lot of shouting outside the door. Suddenly, it shattered, sending splinters of wood flying through the room. A squad of what looked very much like giant changelings jumped onto the griffon.