“Talking money? That's something you don't hear every day, Xeno.”
“Yeah. And it's about to say goodbye.”
“Look, don't be stupid. It's a tortoise. It's just doing a mating dance . . .”
There was a breathless pause. Then a sort of collective sigh.
“There!”
“That's never a right angle!”
“Come on! I'd like to see you do better in the circumstances!”
“What's it doing now?”
“The hypotenuse, I think.”
“Call that a hypotenuse? It's wiggly.”
“It's not wiggly. It's drawing it straight and you're looking at it in a wiggly way!”
“I'll bet thirty obols it can't do a square!”
“Here's forty obols says it can.”
There was another pause, and then a cheer.
“Yeah!”
“That's more of a parallelogram, if you ask me,” said a petulant voice.
“Listen, I knows a square when I sees one! And that's a square.”
“All right. Double or nothing then. Bet it can't do a dodecagon.”
“Hah! You bet it couldn't do a septagon just now.”
“Double or nothing. Dodecagon. Worried, eh! Feeling a bit avis domestica? Cluck-cluck?”
“It's a shame to take your money . . .”
There was another pause.
“Ten sides? Ten sides? Hah!”
“Told you it wasn't any good! Whoever heard of a tortoise doing geometry?”
“Another daft idea, Didactylos?”
“I said so all along. It's just a tortoise.”
“There's good eating on one of those things . . .”
The mass of philosophers broke up, pushing past Brutha without paying him much attention. He caught a glimpse of a circle of damp sand, covered with geometrical figures. Om was sitting in the middle of them. Behind him was a very grubby pair of philosophers, counting out a pile of coins.
“How did we do, Urn?” said Didactylos.
“We're fifty-two obols up, master.”