Ninefox Gambit (The Machineries of Empire, #1)

by Yoon Ha Lee

She wished she had paid more attention during the obligatory history survey her first year in academy. As it stood, she had done well in all her courses, but some of them had gone clean out of her head as soon as she got her grades back.

A soft pause. “All communication is manipulation,” Jedao said. “You’re a mathematician. You should know that from information theory.”

Even so, she knew that she didn’t understand numbers, that a number over a million was a series of scratched lines and curves. If she heard tomorrow that her parents had choked on their soup and fallen over dead, it would hurt her more than the deaths of people who would have died anyway generations before she was born.

“Are you trying to pass off a massacre of your own soldiers as a pedagogical exercise?”

In mathematics you had peer review, definite proofs and answers, but war was nothing but uncertainty multiplied by uncertainty.

A mathematical solution: reduce a problem to a previously solved problem.

A senior cadet had once told her that proofs were just like essays, no one expected the rough draft to be a work of art, but it was hard not to feel that she should try for elegance from the outset.

“Second: what do you think games do? What are they about?” The flippant answers weren’t going to be right, but she had no idea what he was after. “Winning and losing?” she said. “Simulations?” “It hasn’t escaped me that your first answer is a Kel answer and the second is a Nirai answer,” Jedao said. “A Rahal would say that games are about rules, an Andan would say they’re about passing time with people, and who knows what the Vidona are authorized to say.” “You’re a Shuos,” Cheris said, “so I presume you’re going to tell me what the Shuos answer is.” “According to the Shuos,” Jedao said, “games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invested with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work.”

“Everyone stay under cover,” Mikev said, which he wished was an unnecessary order.

her ties to the Mwennin community (minimal, except for her parents), her tastes in music (suspiciously aligned with the soundtracks of her favorite dramas), and most troublesome of all, her mathematical papers (few, mostly in number theory, but brilliant).

but Doctrine recognizes that the changed geometry of the Fortress alters its calendrical effects, and the fix will be nontrivial.

“Captain,” Ragath’s long-suffering voice came back, “one of these days I’ll figure out why the Nirai can recite transcendental numbers to hundreds of digits while drunk out of their minds, but can’t remember their own ranks.” Weniat was impressed that the colonel knew about transcendental numbers. He must stop underestimating the Kel.

“I’ve never heard you speak your native language.” She felt a rush of embarrassment. “I don’t speak it well anymore.” Was she embarrassed because of her ineptitude, or because she spoke it at all?

It couldn’t just be that sociopaths were immune. The heptarchate’s leadership didn’t lack for those, historically speaking.