Doctor Who_ The Algebra of Ice - Lloyd Rose [13]
Let Lethbridge-Stewart find that out in his own time. In the meantime, Molecross was doing some investigating on his own.
Ethan woke up. His tongue tasted as if a rubber eraser had decomposed on it, and he had a stabbing headache. Things didn’t get any better when he opened his eyes and saw the little man perched on the piano stool, legs crossed, elbows on knees, chin in hands, watching him. Unnerved, Ethan looked around for Ace, but she was gone.
‘Off at an INXS concert,’ said the Doctor, ‘and very relieved to be there, I imagine. Who is U?’
Ethan just gaped at him for a moment. Then he looked at the computer.
‘You’ve been in my files!’
‘I apologise; it was necessary. I didn’t find anything personal. You don’t seem to have much of a life.’
30
The Algebra of Ice
‘What gives you the right to break into my computer!’ Ethan yelled. He regretted it immediately, as a particularly vicious bolt of pain hit his skull. He put his face in his hands.
‘Nothing,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I need your help. I need it very badly. Please tell me who U is.’
‘He used to work for us, that’s all. I never knew his name. Here!’ Ethan looked up sharply. ‘How’d you open it? I have so many passwords and blind alleys it takes me a full minute to get in there.’
The Doctor shrugged. ‘I have a lot of experience. U’s computations are interesting. He appears to have started out working on infinity.’
‘Yeah, well, that in itself is a problem. People have gone around the twist working on infinity.’
‘He does go off in some very odd directions.’
‘It’s rubbish,’ said Ethan. ‘He convinced himself there were equations that could solve entropy. Entropy! That’s like something out of a comic book.’
‘An end to disorder,’ said the Doctor thoughtfully.
‘That’s it. And of course, that’s why he was working on infinity.’ Ethan leaned back and closed his eyes. ‘Infinity and zero are twins: everything forever and nothing ever, the irrational poles of the sphere of mathematical order.’
‘One can understand wanting to master it.’
‘Yes,’ said Ethan wearily. ‘Like the poles of Earth. Do you know that there isn’t even such a place as the north pole? There’s no land there. The pole is a point on the latitude-longitude graph. How many poor bastards threw themselves into that vacuum?’
‘Of course, now there are planes and helicopters.’
‘Yes,’ Ethan agreed dismissively. ‘But to this day, no one has ever got to the pole and back by foot. It can’t be done. It’s what I was saying earlier about Fermat’s Last Theorem – it was solved with the aid of computer computation speed, but it hasn’t been solved the way Fermat indicated it could be.’
‘Still, so long as it’s solved. . . ’
‘Ah yes: practicality. Concern with the beauty of a solution is trivial romanti-cism.’
‘Speaking of beauty, or lack thereof, I wonder whether you’d mind looking at these.’
Ethan opened his eyes. The Doctor was holding out a sheaf of photographs.
Ethan took them and sorted rapidly through them. ‘Crop circles? That is, crop other-things-than-circles?’
‘Yes.’
Chapter Three
31
‘I’ve never heard of this sort of pattern.’
‘I believe it’s unique.’ The Doctor retrieved the photographs and squinted at them, frowning. ‘Something here is eluding me. Tell me, what’s the first difference that strikes you between something like this and a circle.’
‘Other than that it’s harder to do?’
‘Other than that.’
‘Well, the circle contains irrationality and the straight-sided figures don’t.
Some do – the ones that fulfil the proportions of the Golden Ratio, for example
– and these particular figures don’t. The mathematical delineation of a circle includes pi, which so far as we know goes on in decimals forever, so it’s one of the irrational numbers. But the –’
‘Of course.’ The Doctor sat up straight. ‘Of course. That’s it. Mr Amberglass,