Numbers in the Dark is a collection of short stories covering the length of Italo Calvino's extraordinary writing career, from when he was a teenager to shortly before his death. They include witty allegories and wise fables a town where everything has been forbidden apart from the game of tip-cat a pitiable tribe watching the flight paths of guided missiles from outside their mud huts a computer programmer considering the possible sequence of a series of brutal acts and dialogues with Henry Ford, a Neanderthal and the gloomy, overthrown Montezuma.