Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley Read Online Free

to think of himself as smart, and the fact that he could barely count undermined this notion. He blamed his lack of mathematical aptitude on an early childhood illness: he was off school with measles for a week and while he was away the rest of his class learned subtraction and Danyl never caught up. Now his mind went blank. He tried to think. How many ways could you order four books? Was it the square root of four? The log? What was ‘log’, anyway? No, wait—wasn’t it just simple multiplication? Four books, four different positions …
    â€˜Sixteen,’ he said.
    Ann said, ‘Twenty-four.’
    â€˜Twenty-four. Yes.’
    â€˜Four possible positions for the first book times three for the second, times two for the third one for the fourth equals twenty-four.’
    â€˜I get it, yes. I meant to say twenty-four. What does this have to do with your missing student, or Verity?’
    â€˜I’m getting to that. If there were five books there are 120 ways to organise them. Six books, 720 ways, and so on. If you divide each of these numbers by one and add the series together it tends towards a number called the infinite sum. The first few digits of the infinite sum are 2.71828 but it goes on forever, never repeating. It’s what we call an irrational transcendental number. It’s closely related to pi and the square root of negative one, which are also important irrational, transcendental numbers. And it appears in physical systems. The infinite sum controls the rate of radioactive decay in atoms. People spend their entire lives studying this one number. They go mad thinking about it.’
    â€˜Is that what happened to your student?’ said Danyl. ‘He went mad thinking about a number?’
    â€˜He didn’t go mad. He asked himself the question that mathematicians aren’t supposed to ask. He thought about the thing they’re not supposed to think about.’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜If numbers have no physical reality—if they’re just symbols created by humans—then how could we find a number like the infinite sum embedded in the deep structure of the universe? Any other intelligent species studying radioactive decay will encounter this same irrational number. Therefore it must be real. But if this number is real, then surely all numbers are real? And if they are, where are they? How does the universe interact with them? How do our brains comprehend them?’
    Danyl thought about this for a few seconds then asked, ‘What’s the answer?’
    â€˜No one knows,’ Ann replied. ‘But that’s not the point. Maths is supposed to be about logic. Reason. Reality and incompleteness are outside the parameters of mathematical enquiry. That’s why some mathematicians turn to mysticism. They seek unorthodox paths to the truth.’
    â€˜And you’re afraid your student took one of those paths?’
    â€˜I’m sure he did. There are things he told me just before he disappeared. And you know this valley. There are sects, cults, tribes of nudists living in yurts. Worse. Sophus and I fought the night he vanished. He claimed he’d stumbled upon something here in the valley. A path leading to a breakthrough. He mentioned someone or something called Gorgon. Tell me,’ Ann whispered, ‘does that name mean anything to you?’
    Gorgon? It sounded familiar. Then Danyl remembered the children’s rhyme. Back when he lived with Verity, he was often woken by the sounds of children playing in his neighbour’s yard. Yelling. Screaming. Singing. He wanted to complain to the council: get some local ordinance passed preventing the noise of children’s games exceeding a quiet murmur, but Verity wouldn’t let him. Danyl remembered well the words to all their songs, one of which went:

    Be me
    Seem me
    Or Gorgon will see me
    Hide me
    Blind me
    Or Gorgon will find me
    He recited this for Ann and her