Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

  But it comes with its own rewards. Dodger lights up, smiling like a sunrise. “I can meet with one of the professors to talk about math? I can really?”

  “If I can set it up,” says Peter. His mind is already racing, considering and rejecting names. He needs someone he can trust to take Dodger seriously, despite her age; someone who’ll look at her work for what it is and not let their preconceptions of what a nine-year-old girl is capable of color their reactions. He closes her notebook. “May I take this?”

  Dodger wants to tell him no; wants to explain that she needs it to sleep at night. All she does is bite her lip and nod.

  Peter smiles. “I’m impressed, baby girl, even if you don’t win this prize. Do you want to play a game of chess?”

  “I’ll set up the board,” she says, and she’s out of her chair and already running for the pieces, running for a future filled with professors and prizes, where she’ll be able to finally meet Roger, and he’ll understand that they were always meant to be best friends, forever.

  That night she goes to bed and falls asleep almost immediately. She never hears Roger trying to make contact. She’s already too far away.

  Isolation

  TIMELINE: 9:35 PST, FEBRUARY 11, 1995 (TWO DAYS LATER).

  It’s nine-thirty in the morning. Dodger is supposed to be in school, but her father got her out with a note and an apology, and here she is walking alongside him, falling into another world. She feels awkward and small in her starched cotton dress and pale pink sweater. This isn’t her: this isn’t how she dresses, or how she stands, or anything. She’s a creature of jeans and blouses with capped sleeves, sneakers and T-shirts and shredded knees. This is the sort of thing she wears when her grandparents come on Easter to take her to church, even down to the pinching patent leather shoes. It feels like a costume. It feels like she’s being put on display.

  In a weird way, she’s grateful for the discomfort, because it blunts the force of her awe. Her father is leading her through the halls of Stanford, his hand grasping hers, and she’s been here before—she’s been visiting him at work since she was a baby—she knows these halls and this campus like it belongs to her, but she’s never been here for official business. She’s here to show her work to a real mathematician, which is even better than showing it to Batman. So, while she hates that she has to do it in a dress, hates that she can’t look like herself while she’s trying to prove she’s as good as she thinks she is, she’s also glad for the distraction. It’s keeping her hands from shaking quite so hard.

  “Now remember what we talked about, Dodger,” says her father. “Answer any questions he asks, but only the questions he asks. Don’t start babbling about things he doesn’t care about.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “He may ask you to do some math on his blackboard. If he does, it’s all right for you to do it. He just wants to see that this isn’t a trick.”

  If Professor Vernon asks her to do math on his real college blackboard, she thinks she’ll probably die right on the spot. They’ll bury her with a smile on her face, and maybe they’ll be glad she got to go out that way. At least they’ll know for sure she died happy. “Yes, Daddy.”

  “No backtalk, and don’t ask about his own work unless he invites you to.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” she says, and then they’re there, they’re really there, at the door of a classroom where a man who looks like her grandpa is waiting, smiling the tolerant smile of an adult who’s about to see a child do a very impressive trick. Her feet suddenly feel like they’re made out of lead, but she forces them to keep moving her forward, into the classroom, into the future.

  * * *

  “Well?” asks Peter.

  Professor Vernon shakes his head. He is an aging ostrich of a man, tall and spindly, with limbs that seem too long for his body. He’s seen many things in this classroom, geniuses and fools and people who don’t care about math and people who love it like it’s the only language in the world. He’s done his best to teach them all, to offer each of them the support that they need. He’s never seen anything like this.

  “She’s solving the problems correctly,” he says. “She’s not referencing a cheat sheet or getting tripped up by things she hasn’t seen before. I think her answer to number three may be wrong, but I’ll be honest: I’d have to pull out a textbook to be sure. If you say that’s her work on the Monroe equation, I believe you. She’s solved it.” He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d see the day. You need to get this girl into advanced classes.”

  “She’s already in advanced classes.”

  “Then you need to get her into more advanced classes. She needs tutors, access to books … She’s a genius, Peter. A mind like hers comes along once a generation, if that. You say she found out about the prize money on her own?”

  “She solved the problem before she told us about the prize,” says Peter. “The only thing she wants to do with her share of the money is go to Cambridge to see a pen pal. I’m just relieved she isn’t asking for a pony.”

  Professor Vernon is quiet for a moment before he asks, “Cambridge? Really?”

  “Mmm-hmm. She says she met him last summer when we sent her to chess camp. We’re inclined to say yes. Dodger doesn’t make friends easily with children her own age. This could be good for her.” What Peter doesn’t say—doesn’t need to say—is that any pen pal of hers is likely to have the same problems. There’s little to be lost by bringing these children together, and there could be a great deal to be gained.

  Dodger has finished the problems Professor Vernon left for her. She turns, chalk in hand, chalk dust on her nose, cheeks glowing with exertion and pride. “Do you wanna check my work?” she asks.

  “I suppose I should,” says Professor Vernon, and walks over to look at the figures she’s written, perfectly mapping a small slice of eternity.

  * * *

  Later, after Peter and his daughter have left, Professor Vernon stands looking at the board. The girl’s better than he’d expected her to be at this age. He’s been waiting years for this call—for the announcement that Dodger has done something out of proportion with her supposed grade level—but he never thought it would be something this momentous, or this fortuitous. If Peter hadn’t slipped and mentioned the pen pal …

  No matter. The boy was mentioned. Because Professor Vernon doesn’t need a name to know who Dodger has been corresponding with, or that no letters have ever passed between them. The Doctrine will seek itself. That’s been true of every iteration, even the ones that failed and have been mercifully retired from the program. The Middleton boy and the Cheswich girl sought each other once before, and then, only the presence of a babysitter loyal to Reed had allowed them to intervene before it was too late.

  The Congress is watching. The Congress is always watching. They know Reed’s program is in the wind, loose and wild and evolving: they’ll seize it for their own if given the chance. The children are too young to be entangling their lives in this way. They need to finish maturing. They need to learn how much they owe the man who made them.

  The girl is committed, body and soul, to whatever course of action she chooses: she’s not the weak link. He must admit that he doesn’t want her to be. She has a remarkable mind. He wants to spend some time in the safe harbor of her good regard before Reed calls her back to the Impossible City to become a pet. He became an alchemist because he wanted power; he became a mathematician because of his love for the subject. The chance to study with the girl who will one day be the laws of mathematics is too tempting to be set aside. But the boy …

  Anyone can learn to read the dictionary. At this stage, his half of the Doctrine is little more than an eidetic memory and a love for the written word. He can be leveraged. He can be used to stop this before it goes too far; before they come together on their own. Yes.

  Professor Vernon is only protecting the Cheswich girl, really. Contact with the Middleton boy at this delicate stage of her development would only drag her d
own to his level. She needs the freedom to soar.

  His course of action thus set and justified to himself, Professor Vernon tears his eyes away from the blackboard. It’s time to make a phone call.

  Telephone Wire

  TIMELINE: 13:51 CST, FEBRUARY 11, 1995 (IMMEDIATELY).

  “I see,” says Reed. “Yes, your loyalty is noted; yes, I will consider allowing you to tutor the girl. Thank you for your dedication.”

  He drops the phone back into the cradle without waiting for the man on the other end to finish babbling his gratitude and terror. Vernon had not expected Reed himself to answer the phone, had expected to deliver his terrible discovery to some apprentice, or better, to some technician. Moments like this are precisely why Reed makes it a point to be the one on the other end of the line whenever possible. Nothing terrifies an underling like being confronted with someone who can actually hurt them.

  Rage pounds in his temples; fear, unwanted and unfamiliar, thunders in his chest. He grips the side of the desk, head bowed, waiting for the moment to pass.

  There is a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He looks up. A child stands there, older than his cuckoos, but not by much, no, not by much. One day, he’ll be able to pass her off as their peer.

  She is dressed in a shapeless gown of flowered cotton, and her hair is strawberry blonde, a color that belongs in a bottle, not on a body. She watches him with solemn, frightened eyes. He terrifies the child: he knows that. That, alone, is enough to clear his panic away, at least partially. He terrifies her and yet here she is, looking at him, waiting.

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “Something’s broken,” she says, in a voice like a wounded animal, all hurt and dismay. “Something’s not right.”

  Of course. The girl is from Leigh’s little project, a minor incarnation of a simple, controllable force. She’s not the first to carry that mantle. He doubts she’ll be the last. “What’s broken, child?” he asks.

  She raises a trembling hand and points to the wall. He frowns—and then freezes as understanding strikes.

  The astrolabe is on the other side.

  “It spins and spins and spins, but it never gets where it wants to go,” she says. “It hurts. It isn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he agrees. Then, carefully, he asks, “Do you know how to fix it?”

  Her mouth opens. Closes again. Finally, she shakes her head, and says, “It’s too big. I can’t see where the break ends.”

  “But it can be fixed.”

  This time she nods.

  Reed smiles. “Come here, girl.” He holds out his hand.

  Her fear is a beacon, a radiant light that almost hurts to behold, but she comes to him obediently enough, folding her fingers around his own. “Where are we going?” she asks.

  “To see your maker. I have a task for her.”

  He leaves the lab and the girl walks silently by his side, her bare feet making no sound on the tile. She’s a charming little thing, if half-feral—Leigh lacks the simple social graces necessary for childrearing, is too easily distracted by the latest bit of mastery or mayhem to catch her magpie eye. Perhaps it’s time for him to take more of a role in the lives of these minor incarnations. Having the living personification of Order itself walking beside him could be pleasant when she’s older, when her creator has finally come to the end of her usefulness. There’s something pleasant and poetic about the idea of Leigh engineering her own successor.

  Yes. This is something to consider.

  Leigh is in her own lab, measuring alkahest into a tungsten flask held by a sullen-looking dark-haired boy whose every motion seems to be the precursor to escape. The girl pulls her hand out of Reed’s when she sees her counterpart, drifting across the room to stand quietly beside him, watching the precious, flesh-eating liquid transfer drop by drop from one vessel to another. Reed says nothing. There is a hierarchy to be observed, but alkahest cares little for who is or is not in charge. It will devour the worthy and the unworthy alike.

  The only sign that Leigh has noticed his presence is a slight tensing of her shoulders. She finishes the task at hand, setting the container of alkahest gingerly back on the shelf before claiming the flask from the boy.

  “Erin, Darren, both of you, run along,” she says. Their names are an imperfect rhyme, ever so slightly out of true, and this, too, is intentional: Chaos could not tolerate perfection. She finally glances at Reed. “I have work to do, and children will just be in the way.”

  The girl—Erin—grabs her counterpart’s hand, and they’re off, running from the dangerous adults with every scrap of strength and self-preservation their tiny bodies can contain.

  Reed lifts an eyebrow. “Keeping them from me?”

  “They’re not mature yet. Erin is useful, but Darren … he fights me. I can use him for tasks that could turn fatal, because he’s afraid of leaving her. Anything else, he’ll make a mess.” Leigh sets the flask into its cradle. “Why are you here?”

  The matter of the cuckoos is urgent. Still, he has another question. “They’re paired but they’re not linked, correct?”

  “They’re distinct embodiments. Order can survive without Chaos. It just won’t be happy.” Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

  “Would the girl mature more quickly if the boy were removed?”

  Leigh hesitates before she says, “Perhaps. Why?”

  “I want her useful. Sooner rather than later.”

  “It will be done. Now. Why are you here?”

  “The third set of cuckoos has made contact again.” Reed raises a hand as Leigh opens her mouth to protest. “It’s confirmed. Professor Vernon reported it, and he’s been waiting years for the girl to start manifesting her potential. He wouldn’t sound a false alarm.”

  Leigh scowls. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Fix it. Before the Congress notices them entangling across a continent, and we lose this pair to meddling old fools who don’t know when to keep their hands to themselves.”

  “You’ll have to deal with them sooner or later.”

  Cuckoos or Congress, it doesn’t matter: her words apply equally to both. “Yes, I will. But for now, I need you to break the contact. Break it thoroughly enough that they won’t think to try again until we’re ready for them.”

  “Can I break them?”

  Splitting them apart may do precisely that. It’s a risk Reed is prepared to take. “Only if you must. Start with the Middleton boy. His parents will make sure he toes the line, once they understand what’s at stake. If that doesn’t work, you can go to see the girl.”

  “Your will be done,” says Leigh, bowing her head.

  “When you get back, I want to discuss—Darren was his name?”

  Her nod is a study in resentment.

  “Excellent. He may be ready for retirement.” The girl who can measure the motion of the astrolabe without laying eyes on it—he wants her ready.

  He’s going to have use for her.

  * * *

  There are ways to travel quickly, when one has power, and purpose, and the willingness to damage the world to achieve one’s goals. Ohio to Massachusetts should be a longer journey, and yet when Roger comes home from school not two hours later, he finds his parents in the living room, both his parents, sitting with sorrowful expressions on their faces and coffee mugs cupped in their hands. The smell of coffee is almost overwhelming. (Later in life, when his own molars are coffee-stained and his hands feel empty without a mug in them, part of him will remember that this is where it started; this is where coffee became a symbol for adulthood and authority to be conquered and claimed as his own. But that is very far away from the timid, trembling now.)

  The third person in the room is a stranger, a woman too pretty to be real, her hair styled short and swept back, so that she looks less like a kindly librarian and more like a school counselor, someone whose job it is to explain why you can’t have what you think you want—that really, you didn’t want
it in the first place. She’s wearing a sensible pantsuit and sensible pearls, and he has never been so afraid of someone he didn’t know before.

  “Roger.” His mother half-rises, only to be pressed back down to the couch by his father’s hand. Her face is pinched and drawn; she looks like she’s been crying.

  Roger’s heart seizes in his chest. He’s young: panic is a foreign thing to him. Fear, yes, but panic is supposed to be reserved for years from now, when he’s lost his elasticity of thought. “Is it Grandpa?” he asks, voice trembling. “Did he have another stroke?” Roger loves his grandparents. They live in faraway Florida (but not the part with Disney World, which sort of seems like a waste of grandparents in Florida to him), and he only sees them twice a year, but he loves them with the sort of bright, single-focus love that could consume the world, if he let it.

  “No, son,” says his father, and gestures toward the one remaining chair in the room—not toward the remaining slice of couch, where Roger would be pressed against his mother’s hip, safe from anything that might hope to harm him. “Sit down.”

  Roger’s heart seizes again, leaving him dizzy. Maybe this is what dying feels like. Maybe he’s the one having the stroke, and they’ll be sorry they scared him so bad when he collapses and stops breathing and his lips turn blue and they realize they had a son, they had one, but now he’s gone, and all because they scared him.

  His legs are numb as he walks across the room and sits. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. They’re suddenly awkward, taking up too much space at the ends of his arms. He finally folds them in his lap, looking from face to face, waiting for someone to tell him what’s going on.

  “Roger, this is Dr. Barrow,” says his mother, glancing at the woman with the sensible hair. She grimaces, just a little. The doctor probably doesn’t see it; the doctor doesn’t know Melinda Middleton the way Roger does. He’s made a lifelong study of his mother’s face, and he can see that she’s disgusted, even as he can see that she’s afraid. “Dr. Barrow is here because she received a disturbing phone call from your school nurse. Our agreement with the adoption agency where we … where we got you means that any time there’s a question about your situation, she gets to come discuss it with us.”