Will the Assyrians invade Mesopotamia?’ He laughed, confused. ‘Meso- what? When?’ I calculated quickly and blurted a date, not in years and centuries of course, because then the units of measuring time weren’t conceivable in lengths of that sort, and to indicate a precise date we had to rely on formulae so complicated it would have taken a whole blackboard to write them down. ‘How can you tell?’ ‘Come on, (k)yK, are they going to invade or not? I say they do; you say no. All right? Don’t take so long about it.’
