Wizardry
I was five when they realised that I was a Wizard. They found me arranging lines of stones on the beach; two, three, five, seven, thirteen. They sent for one of the Emissaries, travellers who wandered the world looking for the sparks of childlike curiosity, the clues that separated those whose inner light was on from the dark dull minds of the untouched.
I did not know I was a Wizard at the time. I had no idea what they really did or what they were really like, being five; only that they were wise and powerful and somehow elevated above other people, and that without their Art our ways of life would stumble and collapse. I did not know that was I was doing was wisdom, that the patterns I was making were magic.
The Emissary was very old and his white beard scared me at the time, floating at twice my height, wizened stratocumulus. He carried with him an air of untouchable wisdom and undeniable respect. It was only later that I would learn that despite his dirty but stately white robes and beard, he was a failure; like all the Emissaries, he was one who had failed in his search for the Art. Now I am far above his level, with beard and robes of my own; though mine are clean and pure and black.
I was still on the beach when he came. I had just completed my sixth line (seventeen stones) and was beginning to wonder how many I should align next. The Emissary came quietly up behind me, on his own, unfollowed by my family and friends. I looked up as his long shadow fell across my stones, turned around to see the tall figure in dusty robes once white, stained dusky orange by the sun going down into the sea.
“What are you doing with those stones?” he asked, his lips unseen behind his beard.
“Lining them up,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because they go together,” I said, because he seemed interested in what I was doing, and adults usually dismissed my playing and told me to get on with things. He cocked his head on one side, asking why.
“Well,” I said. And realised that the reason why, in my mind, my lines went together wasn’t really able to express itself; it couldn’t find the words. I thought about it for a bit.
“Well,” I said, pointing at the first line of two stones. “That one… isn’t in any of the other ones. And that one-” pointing at the three-stone line next along- “isn’t in any of the ones after. And they’re all like that.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to say what I meant, but I knew. Somehow he knew I knew. He was quite happy about this; I could tell from the way one corner of his beard hitched up, so you could tell there was a smile going on underneath.
“Why haven’t you put a line at the beginning containing one stone?” the Emissary asked.
“Because… that would be in all the other lines. If I did.”
The other side of his beard hitched up as well. Then he went away to talk to my parents.,
The next day they took me away and began to teach me Magic. Now, many years later, I can tell you quite easily that I was constructing, in stones, the first seven prime numbers. And what I really meant was that every line would not divide any of its successors.
I stayed on the beach as the sun went down, constructing a line of nineteen stones. It got dark before I could finish it.
Few of us will ever be Wizards. Few of us have the intellect, the distilled cunning, the fearsome temerity and the superhuman calm required to master or even glimpse the Art. Many try and most fail.
I was twenty-six when I first spoke to the Master Programmer. I was taking him a cup of tea.
He lives on the top floor of the kilometre-tall tower of the Wizards in Surpriyavali, where the view changes slowly as the balanced steel superstructure sways backwards and forwards in the wind. He has a whole floor to himself, the top slice of the many-sectioned cylinder, and it is empty and pristine except for a cushion in the exact centre and the big screen, a metre and a half wide, in front of it.
You come up to his floor through a spiral staircase recessed into the floor, and it is like climbing up through an actor’s hatch on to a deserted stage in an empty opera house. The floor is uniform and black, and so is the ceiling. The tower is cylindrical, the ceiling average height, the circular wall on this floor an unbroken, crystal transparent window. It looked as though the builders had forgotten about this floor, forgotten to add inner walls and corridors and furniture. There is nothing else there except for a dozen candles scattered about the floor.
It was evening, and the sun was near enough to the horizon to shine upwards onto the black ceiling of the high tower. The Master Programmer was sitting cross-legged. In the centre of the room with his back to me, facing his wide screen. I could see coloured lines, curves, symbols and patterns flashing and sweeping over it, faster than I could follow, obscured by the unmoving silhouette of the Master.
I paused for a second, unsure of what to do, and then started to walk slowly towards him, carrying the steaming cup of tea. The tower was wide and this floor was a big disc about the diameter of a small theatre; the staircase hatch was by the edge, and it was a minute or so’s walk to the centre. I watched the screen as I quietly moved, the patterns becoming clearer as I drew nearer.
On one side of the screen were two sound wave displays, both nearly flatlining- except that they would pulse and jump whenever one of my feet came down on the ground, and fuzzed as the wind rose outside. In the middle was a third, overlayed with twisting curves in red and blue that responded to the waveform. On the left seemed to be a frequency analysis of the each of the preceding three curves, with a few areas heavily amplified.
Experimentally I blew quietly through my lips, too quietly to be heard, and watched the waveforms wrinkle and stutter. The Master Programmer still had his back to me, unmoving, fixed on the screen.
“Brewed for too long,” he said suddenly, when I was still a good twenty metres away across the floor. I heard him perfectly in the silence, his detached, calm voice.
“The tea?” I asked, and the waveforms buzzed.
“Yes.”
I knew it was disrespectful, but I had to ask. “Master, how can you know it is brewed for too long if you have not yet tasted?”
“The sound. There are microbubbles in the tea; they form faster the more it is brewed. They pop. They make noises.”
I looked at the heavily amplified frequency analyses on the screen. He knew. He could read them. He could see the popping sounds of the bubbles in the tea and the padding of my footsteps, all in the dancing feeds. I was quiet.
A few more steps later I was standing behind the Master. I stopped, not saying a word, and held out the cup of tea.
The Master held out one hand behind him and took the cup. As I was about to leave he turned his head to look at me.
He was wearing a blindfold.
“Thank you,” he said, “and tread quietly on the way back down.”
