The Atlas Six

by Olivie Blake

  “Yes?” she asked, a little breathless from her jaunt to the door.

  He was as inscrutable as always, peering down at her in his hawkish way. “Do you still have the Lucretius?”

  “Oh, yes, of course—hang on. Come in.”

  She left the door open for him, turning to sort out where she’d left the book. “Working on a Saturday?” she asked him, peering around for it in her pile of things. She hadn’t planned to touch the manuscript any time soon; she was rather intent on spending the day in her yoga pants, recovering in advance of whatever massive energy output she’d need to produce on Monday.

  “I just want to have another look at it,” he said.

  “Truthfully, I don’t know if it’ll be much help,” she said, finally spotting it in the pile beside the nightstand. She wasn’t the neatest person alive, nor was she the best at rising early. All in all, she felt woefully inadequate next to Tristan, who was so pulled together he nearly sparkled. “I can’t say it has much in it that hasn’t been addressed by later works.”

  “There’s something about time,” Tristan said, “isn’t there?”

  “Sort of. Nothing concrete, but—”

  “I’d like to see for myself,” he told her curtly, and she blinked.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t trying t-”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said impatiently. “I just have a theory I’d like to test.”

  “Oh.” She held the book out for him, and he took it. Before he could leave, though, she cleared her throat. “Any chance you’d like to tell me what theory you’re testing?”

  “Why?”

  “I… curiosity, I guess.” Incredible how he made it feel like a capital crime just to ask him a simple question. “I do actually care about the research we do, you know.”

  He bristled slightly. “I never suggested you didn’t.”

  “I know, I’m s-” She broke off before apologizing again. “Never mind. You can hang onto it, by the way,” she said, gesturing to the book. “I don’t think there’s anything useful. Theoretically, I suppose the idea that time and movement aren’t separate functions is an interesting baseline, but that’s hardly unique to—”

  “You and Nico manipulate force, correct?”

  She was startled, first by the interruption and secondly, by having her abilities addressed.

  “What?”

  “Force. Yes?”

  “Yes, force.” He seemed to be playing with something in his head, so she added, “We use it to alter the physical makeup of things.”

  “Why couldn’t you make a wormhole through time?”

  “I—” That wasn’t what she expected his follow-up to be. “Well, I… theoretically I suppose we could, but that would require understanding the nature of time to begin with.”

  “What would you need to know in order to understand?”

  He didn’t seem to be mocking her; she hazarded an attempt to explain without getting defensive at being asked a moderately obvious question.

  “Well, time’s not a physical thing,” Libby said slowly. “Var- Nico and I can manipulate things we can see and feel, but time is… something different.”

  “You can’t see or feel it?”

  “I—” Again, she stopped, a little taken aback. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can?”

  He regarded her for a moment, mildly troubled.

  “I didn’t say that,” he amended. “I just want to be prepared for whatever we do on Monday.”

  It didn’t seem worth it to point out that Tristan had done almost nothing the past few weeks as it was. Aside from posing theoretical arguments to guide their experiments, he hadn’t contributed all that much.

  But she supposed it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t. At least he worked hard, didn’t he? He was reading and annotating all the texts, working on his own over the weekend. And maybe if he could see differently than she could when it came to illusions, he could see other things differently, too.

  The idea that maybe Tristan, like Reina, had some additional talent that Libby could make use of and report back to Nico filled her with a little thrill. Why should Nico de Varona be the only one to sort out what a person was good for?

  “There’s a theory that quanta is space,” Libby said, exciting herself with the prospect that she might have stumbled onto something. “That space itself isn’t emptiness, but a fabric of tiny individual particles. So, I assume that time could be made up of similar particles? The gravitational potential is—”

  “Look, I appreciate the book,” Tristan said, “but I don’t really have anything to chat about.”

  “Oh.” The word slipped out of her defeatedly. “Right, sorry.”

  Tristan’s jaw tightened, annoyed, and she grimaced.

  “Not sorry,” she amended, forcing a smile. “I only meant—”

  “You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,” Tristan cut in irritably, and then he turned to leave, prompting Libby to wish she’d stayed on the phone with Ezra instead of answering the door.

  Ezra was so good about being supportive. That was why she liked him, really. He was her number one fan, her tireless champion. He believed in her so much and so powerfully that it always made her feel there was someone in her corner, and at times like these, she longed for something to make her feel centered. Secure.

  “Rhodes,” Tristan said, startling her into noticing he’d paused in the threshold before exiting the room. “Thank you for the book.”

  She blinked, and then nodded.

  “Hope it helps,” she said.

  He shrugged and closed the door behind him, leaving her to fall back on her bed with a sigh.

  CALLUM

  Parisa didn’t trust him now. It radiated from her, suspicion, her misgivings warping irreparably in the air between them. Considering their respective talents, she must have known he was aware of how she felt; of the corrosion atrophying their potential from one side. That she hadn’t bothered to conceal it could only mean she had no intention to repair it, and if she did not care to repair it, then it appeared she had chosen to draw a line.

  Which was too bad, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because it meant Callum had been mistaken. He had taken Parisa for the sort of girl who admired when a man took control of a situation instead of leaving her to do the work herself.

  Evidently not.

  In terms of allying himself with the others, Libby was out for obvious reasons, and so was Nico. Reina was an island, so that was useless, but Callum would have to befriend someone. Not to keep from being eliminated, of course; he could persuade them if it really came down to it, or if he even decided to stay.

  It was more an issue of entertainment, and since Callum wasn’t entertained by books or research, he would have to find stimulation in a person.

  Luckily, one potential source still remained.

  “You look distressed,” Callum commented to Tristan, leaning over to speak with him in pseudo-privacy. “Something bothering you?”

  Tristan’s gaze slid to his, and then back to Libby and Nico. “Aren’t you seeing this?”

  “I’m seeing it.”

  “And you’re not distressed?”

  Callum smiled thinly.

  “I suppose I don’t see much use for having a black hole in my living room,” he said.

  It wasn’t as if Callum was unaware that what Libby and Nico (and, he supposed, Reina) were doing was relatively monumental. He could understand, theoretically speaking, why magically modeling a previously unexplained phenomenon was a matter of significance, and for purposes of the Society, he could acknowledge it as the sort of thing belonging somewhere in the archives. There was no question of academic value.

  It all just seemed terrifically impractical, and Callum was a practical sort of man.

  “Most people are stupid enough that this sort of information is useless,” Callum offered Tristan in explanation. “Why bother understanding the universe when everything it’s made of exceeds basic hu
man comprehension?”

  “But they just proved a major element of quantum theory,” Tristan said, frowning. He, Callum noted, couldn’t take his eyes from what they’d done. “Those two twenty-something medeians just created something that all of human history has tried to understand and couldn’t.”

  He sounded unreasonably awed, in Callum’s view. Unsurprising; it was all dreamland all the time in this house. Clearly somebody needed a reality check.

  “Those two twenty-something medeians put into practice a theory that has been all of human history in the making,” Callum corrected Tristan, trying to shine a little much-needed pragmatism on the situation. “Though, again, I don’t know what possible use could come out of dropping something into a black hole and watching it bounce back out again.”

  Tristan finally managed to tear his attention from Nico and Libby’s molecular sleight of hand, glancing sharply at Callum. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Lethally, I’m afraid,” said Callum. “I think it’s a clever parlor trick.”

  “Parlor trick,” Tristan echoed, disbelieving. “And what is it you can do, then?”

  Tristan was being facetious, of course, merely proving a point and not genuinely asking, which was a pity, as the answer would have been decently silencing. For starters, Callum could make the twin cosmologists do anything he wanted. That meant, among other things, that he could take ownership of that black hole quite easily himself. If he were in a particularly enterprising mood, he could go a step further and persuade every person in the room to leap inside it.

  Across from them, Parisa stiffened.

  “I dislike physical magics,” Callum said eventually, turning his attention back to Tristan. “Gives me a sort of unidentifiable itch. Like a scratch in my throat.”

  It took a moment, but Tristan did catch the undertones of a joke. Good, so he wasn’t totally inept, then.

  “At least tell me,” Tristan sighed, “that you can recognize the significance of what’s happening here.”

  “Recognize it? Yes, certainly. An enormous magical event,” Callum confirmed, “which will soon be swallowed up by some other enormous magical event.” That was how all of science worked, anyway. They were all pieces of some other eventual thing. The atom was part of the atomic bomb. Cataclysm, carnage, world wars, subprime mortgage lending, bank bailouts. In Callum’s mind, human history was interesting because of humans, not science. Because humans were idiots who turned the elements of life into a weapon. The only interesting thing Libby and Nico had accomplished so far was to successfully terraform a miniature model of the moon, because it meant the moon could eventually be conquered. Someone would try to build Rome anew, or start a new Vatican. It would be madness, and therefore interesting.

  More interesting, anyway, than studying the altered carbon levels or whatever it was they’d managed to do.

  “On the bright side, there haven’t been a thousand questions,” Callum commented at dinner that evening, gesturing across the table to Libby with his chin after Tristan had taken the vacant chair beside him. The table was currently occupied with the sound of low chatter between Nico and Libby, who were comparing notes; Parisa had already excused herself for the evening, and Reina was absently spooning food into her mouth while she pored over the duplicate of some ancient journal.

  “I will regret leaving Rhodes’ element,” Callum added at a murmur, “if only because that will no longer be true.”

  Tristan gave a reluctant sort of smirk, as if principles of moral superiority had compelled him not to laugh, but only just. “You really don’t like her, do you?”

  “Some people are flawed and interesting,” Callum said with a shrug. “Others are just flawed.”

  “Remind me not to ask you what you think of me,” Tristan said.

  “Actually,” Callum said, “I rather think you should.”

  Tristan said nothing.

  “I know you’re very suspicious of me,” Callum said, before amending, “Of everyone.”

  “I find people to be largely disappointing,” Tristan commented.

  “Interestingly, so do I.”

  “Is that considered interesting?”

  “Well, seeing that my specialty requires me to grasp most details of human nature, yes, I think so,” Callum said. “Knowing what I know, I should really find other people fascinating, or at least valuable.”

  “And do you?”

  “Some. Most, I find, are just replicas of others.”

  “Do you prefer good people,” Tristan asked tangentially, “or bad?”

  “I like to have a bit of both. Discord,” Callum replied. “You’re a prime example.”

  “Am I?”

  “You want to be loyal to Parisa, which is interesting,” Callum observed, as Tristan gave a little involuntary twitch of acknowledgement. “For a woman you slept with once, you seem to feel you owe her something. Same with Rhodes.”

  Tristan blanched. “I hardly think they’re the same category.”

  “Oh, they’re not,” Callum agreed. “You feel you owe Rhodes your life. Parisa you simply want to owe your life to.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. And you want very badly to mistrust me on her behalf.” Callum gave Tristan another wary smile. “Unfortunately, you also find me appealing.”

  “In what way?”

  “Nearly all of them,” Callum said, adding with a glance between them, “You’re not alone in that.”

  Tristan was silent another moment.

  “You seem to have done something to Parisa,” he noted, and Callum sighed.

  “Yes, I do seem to, don’t I? Pity. I like her.”

  “What did you do? Insult her?”

  “Not that I know of,” Callum said, though the real answer was no, he had not insulted her. He had scared her, which was the only sensation Parisa Kamali could not abide. “But I think perhaps she’ll come around.” She was the sort of person who would always do what was best for herself, even if it took her some time to puzzle it out.

  “You don’t concern yourself much with being liked, do you?” Tristan asked, half-amused.

  “No, I don’t.” Doubtful Tristan would be capable of understanding that, but the sensation of being liked was extraordinarily dull. It was the closest thing to vanilla that Callum could think of, though nothing was truly comparable. Being feared was a bit like anise, like absinthe. A strange and arousing flavor. Being admired was golden, maple-sweet. Being despised was a woodsy, sulfuric aroma, smoke in his nostrils; something to choke on, when done properly. Being envied was tart, a citrusy tang, like green apple.

  Being desired was Callum’s favorite. That was smoky, too, in a sense, but more sultry, cloaked and perfumed in precisely what it was. It smelled like tangled bedsheets. It tasted like the flicker of a candle flame. It felt like a sigh, a quiet one; concessionary and pleading. He could always feel it on his skin, sharp as a blade. Piercing, like the groan of a lover in his ear.

  “Being liked is fairly ordinary, I’m afraid,” Callum said. “Intensely commonplace.”

  “How unimpressive,” Tristan said drily.

  “Oh, it can be helpful at times. But I certainly don’t aim for it.”

  “How exactly do you plan to avoid being eliminated, then?”

  “Well,” said Callum patiently, “for one thing, you won’t let it happen.”

  Tristan raised a hand to release a scoff into his palm, curling his fingers around it. “And how won’t I?”

  “Rhodes listens to you. Varona listens to her. And Reina listens to him.”

  Tristan arched a brow. “So your presumption about me is…?”

  “That you will not want to eliminate me.” Callum smiled again. “It’s really quite simple, don’t you think?”

  “I noticed you didn’t include Parisa in your calculations. Or me, for that matter,” Tristan said in his usual drawl, “though I’m willing to overlook that for the sake of argument.”

  “Well,” Callum said, �
�a telepath is useful, of course, if your goal is to interfere with someone’s thoughts. But do you know how infrequently people actually think?” he prompted, raising his glass to his lips while Tristan, inescapably in agreement, offered the echo of a soundless laugh. “With very rare exceptions, emotions are far stronger. And, unlike thought, emotion can be easily manipulated. Thoughts, on the other hand, must be implanted or incepted or stolen, which means a telepath will always burn more energy than an empath when magic is being used.”

  “So you think you are the more useful option, then?”

  “I think I’m the better option,” Callum clarified. “But more importantly, I think that, at the end of the day, you understand me more than you care to admit.”

  The statement rang with relative clarity. Callum had almost no doubt that whatever reasoning the others had to dislike him, Tristan would find his rationale more persuasive. Tristan’s cynicism, or his disillusionment, or whatever it was that left him so bitterly disenchanted with the world, was useful that way.

  “My offer is this,” Callum said. “I am on your side.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing,” Callum said. “Surely you see this is a game of alliances? I am your ally.”

  “So then I should be yours?”

  At that precise moment, Libby looked up. She had already adopted a habit of skirting Callum’s attention (probably wise) and so managed to lock eyes with Tristan by accident before quickly looking away, returning to her conversation with Nico.

  Tristan tensed; aware, probably, that he had just been caught in discussion with Callum, whom none of the others were in a rush to befriend.