Part 17 — Picarré de Soixante

When the world was new the Prophet Mohammed needed an android to brew tea and carry the suitcases, so he ordered one from a German company, Boltzmann-Stefan GmbH. The android they sent was named Picarré. His head was hollow, for carrying water, and the little finger on his left hand was a thermometer.

Picarré could see in the infrared and he could tell the brightness of surfaces with amazing accuracy. At prayer time he would put down the suitcases and look for a patch of sand radiating just exactly the right amount of heat for the prophet, which was three ponies of infrared glow per square pace area. There he would unroll the Prophet's rug, which was exactly one tenth of a square pace in size. When the rug had acquired the temperature of the sand, it would radiate three tenths of a pony, matching the brightness of the surrounding sand.

This thermal brightness of three chi from his rug was agreeable to the Prophet. Things at a temperature of 2.07 grade, which the Infidel call "room temperature" and which is an excellent temperature for prayer, tend to radiate with that brightness. Indeed there is a connection between how hot things are and how brightly they radiate, which the android, whose full name was Picarré de Soixante, understood perfectly.

He knew which brightness goes with which temperature and he could tell whether the water for tea was ready simply by looking at the glow from the side of the kettle. This is how androids check the temperature without having to dip their fingers in the water.

Picarré was actually an aristocrat who'd turned android as a disguise to help him elude his creditors. His name meant "Pi-squared of Sixty", but he preferred anonymity and used to sign his name simply pi²/60.

If you take 2.07 and square it twice in succession and multiply by pi²/60, you do indeed get 3—and at 2.07 grade an unreflective surface the size of a square pace does indeed glow with 3 ponies. Nature works that way at every temperature — the Infidel call it the "Stefan-Boltzmann fourth power radiation law."