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breach between them that seemed, in the light of morning, to be scarcely more than a meaningless spat between tired friends.
"The man Jane has chosen for us to visit is a philosopher."
"Like me?" Wang-mu said, keenly aware of her false new role.
"That's what I wanted to discuss with you. There are two kinds of philosophers here on Divine Wind. Aimaina Hikari, the man we will meet, is an analytical philosopher. You don't have the education to hold your own with him. So you are the other kind. Gnomic and mantic. Given to pithy phrases that startle others with their seeming irrelevancy."
"Is it necessary that my supposedly wise phrases only seem irrelevant?"
"You don't even have to worry about that. The gnomic philosophers depend on others to connect their irrelevancies with the real world. That's why any fool can do it."
Wang-mu felt anger rise in her like mercury in a thermometer. "How kind of you to choose that profession for me."
"Don't be offended," said Peter. "Jane and I had to come up with some role you could play on this particular planet that wouldn't reveal you to be an uneducated native of Path. You have to understand that no child on Divine Wind is allowed to grow up as hopelessly ignorant as the servant class on Path."
Wang-mu did not argue further. What would be the point? If one has to say, in an argument, "I am intelligent! I do know things!" then one might as well stop arguing. Indeed, this idea struck her as being exactly one of those gnomic phrases that Peter was talking about. She said so.
"No, no, I don't mean epigrams," said Peter. "Those are too analytical. I mean genuinely strange things. For instance, you might have said, 'The woodpecker attacks the tree to get at the bug,' and then I would have had to figure out just how that might fit our situation here. Am I the woodpecker? The tree? The bug? That's the beauty of it."
"It seems to me that you have just proved yourself to be the more gnomic of the two of us." Peter rolled his eyes and headed for the door.
"Peter," she said, not moving from her place.
He turned to face her.
"Wouldn't I be more helpful to you if I had some idea of why we're meeting this man, and who he is?"