Middlegame

by Seanan McGuire

  “Roger?” Her voice is inside and outside his head at the same time, coming from far away and from so close that it’s as much a part of him as his own skin. It’s unnerving. It’s so welcome that it’s almost like a physical ache, a cruel reminder of how alone he’s been these last seven years, even with Erin by his side.

  “I’m here,” he says.

  “But where’s ‘here’?” Dodger sounds frustrated. “What happened? All I did was touch you—”

  “After seven years of not touching me, when we were close enough to whatever it means to manifest that we nearly leveled Berkeley,” he says. It’s amazing how reasonable he can sound when he has someone else to worry about. Maybe that’s the real reason there had to be two of them. So he’d always have someone else to worry about, and couldn’t just run rampant, revising the world to his liking. “I think this is the Doctrine trying to force us back together.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know. How would I? This is as new to me as it is to you.”

  “Couldn’t we be the living proof of Euler’s identity? That seems a lot less dangerous.”

  “What’s Euler’s identity?”

  “It’s basically the prettiest equation in the world. It’s the Helen of Troy of mathematical ideals.” She sounds like she’s getting closer as she speaks, like the math is drawing her to him. He doesn’t interrupt, and she continues, almost dreamily, “It contains three of the basic arithmetic functions, it links five mathematical constants…”

  He turns and there she is, standing behind him on this endless black-and-white plane. She blinks, and pink and red lines flare around the edge of the horizon. Wherever they are, they’re sharing visual inputs. He can see the color of her hair, the shadings of the freckles on her cheeks, and when she smiles, he sees how pale she is. Nervousness has stolen much of her color, and even its absence is a revelation to him now. He smiles back, matching her anxiety with his own.

  “See, I always knew we’d figure out how to find each other again,” he says.

  “But is it safe? A lot of people died last time, Roger. No matter what some weirdo mad scientist built us to be, we can’t bring those people back. We can’t change what we’ve done.”

  “You and I both know that’s not true.”

  Dodger is quiet for a moment. Then, finally, she says, “Posit a timeline in flux.”

  “Done.”

  “If we can modify our pasts to change our futures, who’s to say we haven’t been doing it all along? That everything that’s happened, good or bad, hasn’t been changed because changing it would result in an even worse overall situation?” She catches her lower lip between her teeth, worries it for a moment, and finally says, “Erin says if either one of us dies, the other dies too.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t call from the future and tell me not to kill myself. I didn’t call from the future and tell me it was going to be okay, we were going to wind up in the same place for grad school, and you wouldn’t be better off without me. What if … that’s because we needed to know she was telling the truth? So neither of us would say ‘forget this, you’re on your own’ and refuse to go? We’re taking a lot on faith, but we’re taking it partially because it matches what we already know. She isn’t contradicting the existing numbers, she’s adding to them by putting the equations we have into context. Conservatism bias writ large.”

  Roger frowns. “What’s worse than that quake, Dodge? We killed so many people because we didn’t know what we were doing. What could possibly be so bad that letting the quake stand is necessary?”

  “Letting the sort of people who’d build biological weapons and put them out into the world to experiment with their powers have control of the fully manifest Doctrine of Ethos,” says Dodger, and there’s sudden steel in her tone, like she’s figuring out the shape of the problem one function at a time. “According to Erin, we’ll be stronger when we’re manifest. Earthquakes will be easy. But we didn’t mean to do it. We didn’t mean to hurt those people. What happens if someone who doesn’t care that much gets that sort of power? Anyone who would make us is not someone who can be trusted. The earthquake tells us that. The earthquake says ‘this is horrible, now manifest, because otherwise, something even worse is going to happen.’”

  Roger is silent. Dodger stays where she is, waiting. She’s the cold one: she’s the one who can reduce everything to numbers, weighing lives now against lives later. It’s not a part of herself that she’s proud of or has ever truly embraced. Here, now, it’s the most important thing she can be.

  “Isn’t there a way we could make it not happen?” he asks finally.

  “I think we have to see the whole equation before we can decide,” she says. “We’re not there yet. We’re in the middle of the problem. If we get to the end, if we manifest, maybe we can revise more than we can right now.”

  And maybe they can’t. She doesn’t say that part, but Roger hears it anyway: it’s implicit in the pause between her sentences, sculpted out of silence and hesitation. He doesn’t want to hear it. The unspoken pieces of language are sometimes the most painful.

  “How many people have to die for us?” he asks. “How can we pretend to be important enough to be worth that?”

  “How many more would die if we took ourselves out of the equation and let someone else have this sort of power?” she counters. “I know you’re a good person. I hope I’m a good person. We won’t break things for fun, or because someone tells us to. We’re not perfect. We’re the best choice I can see.”

  Roger sighs. It only takes one step to close the distance between them, one step before his arms are around her and his face is against her shoulder. She holds him tight, and they are matched in both placement and position, two halves of the same platonically ideal whole. They should never have been separated; they had to be apart, or they would never have been able to become individuals, would never have learnt how to span the missing places in their own souls.

  “All right,” says Roger. “We’ll do it.”

  They continue holding each other, eyes closed, until the shared mindscape fades away, and they are only two bodies in the back of a car, tangled together like a thorn briar, impossible to separate, dangerous to touch.

  Erin, in the front seat, smiles and keeps on driving.

  War

  TIMELINE: 22:31 CDT, JUNE 16, 2016 (SAME DAY).

  “I understand,” says Leigh. “Comb the ashes: look for anything that tells us where they’re going. If you find Erin’s body, contact me. We need to know what we’re up against.”

  She hangs up the phone before Professor Vernon can object. The man is old, almost used up, still trying to earn his share of the Philosopher’s Stone: he’s an excellent mathematician and was instrumental in their figuring out the necessary invocations to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, but he’s never been a good alchemist. Without the aid of Reed and his clever connections, Vernon would have given up the discipline entirely. No big loss. He’s unlikely to survive any confrontation with the cuckoos, and that’s fine too, as far as Leigh’s concerned. One less mouth to feed in the new world can only be a good thing.

  Her skin feels like it’s on fire as she leaves her lab, walking fast, hands balled by her sides. Most of the rooms she passes are empty, their subjects long since flown. She’s taken a few of them apart herself, using their blood and organs in alchemical tinctures that have taught them a great deal about the universe. The subjects would probably think it was an unfair exchange, but that’s why none of them have ever been given a vote.

  Reed stopped actively pursuing anything apart from the Doctrine years ago. The other manifest forces are too easy to create and refine. Other alchemists have snatched some of them up, pinning them in place; others have been able to manifest on their own, with no alchemy involved. Only the Doctrine has defied him, and so only the Doctrine matters: it is the alkahest, the universal solvent that dissolves everything else and allows the universe to be remad
e.

  Leigh’s footsteps echo in shadowed halls, and the few who walk here this close to the plan’s fruition scurry to avoid her wrath. She is the monster in their midst, and not one of them wants to face her when she walks with such purpose, such anger, such intent.

  Reed is in the observation lounge, standing in front of a wide glass window looking in on a room containing two teens. The male is balled on their shared bunk, his arms gripping his knees, his face hidden from view. The female sits beside him, one arm draped protectively around his shoulders, glaring at everything around her like she could make it all go away through sheer force of anger. His hair is dark blond, like wheat; hers is almost white, almost green, the color of fresh cornsilk in the light.

  “It’s fascinating, isn’t it,” says Reed, without turning, “how their natures change the activation of their genes? The math children are always so much more strikingly colored than their fellows. I think it’s because they can handle more damage without compromising the Doctrine. It’s protecting itself, in them, by making sure people will aim first for the math children. The language children can always order them to change things, as long as they’re breathing long enough to do it. Anyone aiming at these two will shoot her first, every time.”

  “We’ve lost Cheswich and Middleton,” says Leigh.

  Reed goes still.

  “Erin was instructed to terminate the male; the shock of losing him should have killed the female, but just in case, we dispatched Peters to her location. Both cuckoos are missing. Both their homes burnt down—a favorite tactic of Erin’s, if you recall. One body was found, in the female’s home. Peters. Either Erin has switched sides, or they’ve managed to subdue her.”

  Reed turns. Still he says nothing. Leigh looks at him with bland fearlessness. He can see the anger in her eyes.

  “It’s possible the male is closer to manifestation than expected and was able to talk Erin around into working with him,” says Leigh. “If that’s the case, his influence will wear off at some point, and she’ll finish her job. He doesn’t know what he can do. There’s no way he’s given her instructions that would compel her loyalty on a permanent basis. It simply wouldn’t occur to him at this stage in his development.”

  “And if he has?”

  “Then he has her, and we’ll never get her back.” It doesn’t matter at this point. If they did get her back, if they did have her loyalty returned to them, Leigh would still take pleasure in taking her apart. An agent compromised is no longer an agent who can be relied upon, no matter how well that agent may have performed in the past. As an avatar of Order whose Chaos has long since been recycled for parts and knowledge, Erin has been living on borrowed time for years. Her debts are finally coming due.

  “I see.” Reed straightens, seeming to grow tall and terrible in the light coming through the two-way mirror. He has always been tall; he has always been terrible. He is simply putting the masks aside. “What are you going to do about this, Leigh?”

  “Me?” Her eyes narrow. “This was your project. This has always been your project. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me terminate them when they got entangled, the one who said I couldn’t send someone to collect them and get them safely under lock and key. You’re the one who’s defended this pair of flawed avatars every step of the way. Why am I the one who has to clean up your mess?”

  “Because I’m the one who’s going to make us immortal,” he says, gesturing toward the window, toward the tired and trembling teens on the other side. “That is our future. That is absolute control of the forces that bind this universe. I need to prepare them for what they’re going to become. I need to anoint and uplift them, and you need to remove the competition from their path. Take whatever you need. Men, weapons, anything. Go to California. Fix this.”

  Leigh looks at him in silence for a count of ten, eyes narrowed, assessing. In her breast, the ghostly wings of the carrion birds that were used to stitch her wounded flesh back to life beat against her ribs. Finally, she says, “You’re still following a dead woman’s blueprint. Haven’t you ever wondered what you could have become if you’d broken free of Asphodel’s design?”

  “It became my design when I killed her.”

  Did it? She wants to ask the questions he has forbidden, questions of purpose and motivation and reason, questions of how much of this has been his own idea and how much of it has been Asphodel Baker mapping her own path down the improbable road. Can a dead woman claim the Impossible City?

  Perhaps soon, they’ll know. “I can’t guarantee any of them will survive the recovery,” she says. “Killing half a pair kills the other in all but the most extreme cases, and I’m not what you send into the field when you want something done subtly.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Then I’m gone. Just remember, when you turn on the evening news, that this was what you asked for.” Leigh turns on her heel and walks away, not looking back. She doesn’t want him to see the color rising in her cheeks, or her growing excitement at the idea of being released from the lab that has been her home and her prison for so very long.

  She’s an experiment too. And like any experiment, she wants to be free.

  Reed watches her go before turning to the window. On the other side, the boy is crying again, and the girl with the almost green hair is trying to comfort him, still glaring daggers at everything around her, as if she could protect him through the sheer application of her hatred.

  “You’re going to change the world for me,” he says.

  In the silence that comes after his words, he thinks he can smell Asphodel’s perfume.

  Science

  TIMELINE: 20:53 PDT, JUNE 16, 2016 (THE UNENDING DAY).

  Roger wakes first. For a horrifying moment, he doesn’t know who he is. His body fits wrong. The moment passes, and then he doesn’t know where he is. There’s a woman in his arms, too tall and lanky to be Erin, who has always been a compact, comforting weight when she curls against him. He realizes the light is coming from all around him as the landscape slides by outside the car windows, and that the woman clinging to his side has red hair. Dodger.

  He pauses. Blinks. And in a slightly strangled voice, asks, “Why am I seeing colors?”

  “You are? That’s good news.” Erin doesn’t sound like she thinks it’s good news. Erin sounds grim, like the world has been canceled while she drove. “How many colors you don’t normally see are you seeing right now?”

  “Red. Um. Purple, pink…” Roger swings his head wildly around, looking at everything. “Lots. All? Lots.” They’re faded around the edges, like whatever’s allowing him to see them isn’t fully integrated with his senses yet. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re starting to re-entangle, is what’s going on. See if you can get Dodger off you. Don’t push her out of the car, just stop touching her.”

  “What?”

  “She’s touching you. See if you can make her stop.” Erin’s gaze flicks to the rearview mirror, regarding him with black amusement. “You’re good at letting go. Do it again.”

  Roger gapes at her, the woman he thought he loved, the woman he thought loved him. Then, with exquisite care, he turns to the sister he hasn’t seen in years and begins prying her off his arm.

  It’s hard. Dodger has an incredibly strong grip for someone who’s never done a day’s physical labor, and he doesn’t want to wake her; he can’t shake her or pull for fear that it will put her over the edge and open her eyes. He’s not ready for that. When he was running from a burning home and into her presence, everything was moving too fast for him to stop and consider what he was doing. Now he’s here, and she’s here, and he doesn’t know how to talk to her. If she wakes up, he’ll have to figure it out. The awkwardness between them will pass—if nothing else, Erin’s still driving like she expects to be attacked at any moment, and somewhere between her producing Smita’s severed, mummified hand and her setting the house on fire, he’s stopped doubting her—but right now, awkwardness still reigns
.

  Finally, he manages to get untangled from Dodger’s grasp. The new colors fade out of the world. Not all at once: no switch has been flipped, no filter has been removed. They just … fade, like someone is adjusting the balance on reality.

  “The red’s gone,” he says, resisting the urge to lean over and take Dodger’s hand, to see if the color comes back. Everything seems gray without it, sapped of meaning and potency. He’s been without color for most of his life, and now it feels like he can’t live without it for another moment.

  “That’s because you’re not fully manifest. When you are, you probably won’t even need to be touching to see things the way she does—or vice versa. She’ll get depth perception, you’ll get color, it’ll be a wonderland for everybody.” Erin’s voice has gone bitter.

  “Erin? What’s wrong?”

  She laughs brutally. “Everything. You get her back, okay? Be grateful for that. My other half is gone forever, and what he gave me, he took with him when he went.”

  “What…”

  “I’m the living manifestation of Order, Roger. I see chaos everywhere I look. If it’s out of place, if it doesn’t belong, that’s all I can see. I live in a world that can never be harmonious, because the only person who could describe actual order to me is gone.” Erin’s fingers drum a hard staccato on the steering wheel. “Wake her up. We need to figure out our next move, and she’s a part of that.”

  “Why—”

  “Just do it. We don’t have much time.”

  He could argue. He could try to make her explain. But she’d have to explain again after Dodger was awake, and he doesn’t want to talk to her without his sister to act as a buffer between them. Part of him still insists on looking at her as the woman he’s loved for the last seven years. No amount of telling himself it was never real is going to make the adjustment any faster.

  He’ll probably hate her when this is over. He wishes the thought weren’t such a relief.