An Annoyance of Grackles (Applied Topology Book 3)

by Margaret Ball

  One of the first things we did with the third floor was to partition it. Someone coming up the stairs now would see an oddly proportioned room with a wall just to the right of the stairs. But they wouldn’t check to see what was behind that wall, because there was no door in it. (There had been one, briefly, last fall, but we took care of that little problem as soon as we got rid of the idiot who had it put in.)

  The only way to get into the private side was to visualize a Möbius strip at right angles to the wall, and then to walk that imaginary strip until it deposited you on the other side. Or, if you weren’t a topologist, to get one of us to take you by the arm and walk you across. That didn’t happen often, because the crossing tended to make non-topologists seasick.

  On this side of the wall there were offices for Dr. Verrick and for the four research fellows – that would be Colton, Ingrid, Ben and me – and several empty offices testifying to Dr. Verrick’s optimism about recruiting more topologists. On the public side were a rather large general area, the break room – otherwise known as the beating heart of the Center, with a coffee maker and occasional doughnuts - a desk for our receptionist Annelise, and offices for the other support staff: Jimmy DiGrazio for computer hackery, Meadow Melendez for robotics, Bradislav Lensky for liaison with the funding agency.

  “I’m beginning to dislike this guy already,” Ben grumbled. “I want to keep exploring Riemann surfaces, not try to explain the Center to someone who’s already decided not to believe in it.”

  “If you’re messing with Riemann surfaces again,” said Ingrid, “maybe you’d better get a fireplace put in.” Ben’s first attempts to generate light via Riemann surfaces had instead generated enough fire to set off the alarms and start the automatic sprinkler system.

  “Maybe,” I said hopefully, “he won’t be able to cross the wall. Dr. Verrick did imply he was leaving Bhatia to figure that out on his own, didn’t he?”

  “You can’t trust what Dr. Verrick implies,” Ingrid said.

  “Well, anyway… if he does cross the wall, maybe the experience will open his mind a tiny bit.”

  Ingrid gave me a sour look. “What have you been doing, Thalia, reading one of those pop psychology articles on Leadership?”

  Actually, it had been a pop psychology article on Optimism, claiming that optimistic people were happier and had better relationships than pessimists. I’d thought it was worth trying out, but the attitude change was somewhat more challenging than I’d realized.

  Footsteps just outside, in the hall! Definitely on this side of the wall. So he’d passed the first test.

  The man who entered was tall, dark haired, somewhat dark skinned – think coffee with a generous dollop of cream – and looked to be pissed off already. He was super-formally dressed for a college campus: white button-down shirt, dark red tie, tailored dark gray pants and a matching vest, and I bet there was a suit coat somewhere to complete the outfit.

  Oh, and one more thing. He was devastatingly handsome. Movie-star-level good looks. We were to learn that he was all too aware of this fact, but in this moment of relative ignorance I just happily enjoyed the eye candy. In some ways, Intern Bhatia would constitute quite an upgrade to this office.

  “The Center for Applied Topology?”

  “Research Division,” I said. “Congratulations on passing the wall.”

  He ignored me and talked over my head to Ben. “I have been hearing many things about this so-called Center. Most recently have I been hearing that you have persuaded Miss Thorn to drop out of graduate school in favor of this… research.” He said the last word with all the enthusiasm of somebody identifying dog poop.

  “If you know Miss Thorn at all,” Ben said with a tight smile, “you must know how very unlikely it is that I – or anyone else – could persuade her to a course of action contrary to her own judgment.”

  “I would have been thinking this also,” said Bhatia, “but she is only a woman. She may have been led astray, or perhaps this is way to conceal that her mind is not strong enough for the rigors of doctoral program.”

  Ingrid jumped to her feet. “If you want to insult me to my face, Bhatia, at least look at me while you’re doing it!”

  “There, there,” he said, making little patting motions in her direction. “You see, feminine emotionalism. Not so good for pure mathematics, isn’t it?” He looked back at Ben. “I am only wishing to make it clear that your Center will not affect me in the same way. Because Doctor Verrick is my dissertation adviser I take his advice to come here for one semester only, then I shall return to real mathematics department.”

  “I think we can bear up under the loss,” Ben said tightly. “Look, Mr. Bhatia…”

  “Not Batia, Bhatia.”

  “Batia.”

  “No, Bhatia. Bha, ta, ya.”

  “Bataya.”

  “Not Ba, Bha. And not ta ya, tya.”

  (Sigh) “Ok, how about we just call you Prakash?”

  “Since you are unable to pronounce my last name correctly, that is perhaps least painful option.”

  “Okay,” Ben said through gritted teeth, “Prakash it is. I just wouldn’t want you to leap to the conclusion that I’m being friendly or anything by using your first name.”

  Prakash indicated that, being such an easy-going fellow himself, he could sympathize with Ben’s feeling awkward at addressing a Tata Institute M.A. by his first name.

  It didn’t get any better after that. He looked down his nose at Ben and Colton because they had only bachelor’s degrees, he found half a dozen ways to imply that Ingrid had lost the respect of the entire mathematics department when she gave up “real” research for “this,” and he was apparently incapable of seeing or hearing me at all. Well, you know… another peon with no advanced degrees, and female, and short…. I guess it was just too, too painful for him to contemplate the prospect of a semester spent around such a nobody.

  Optimism is probably overrated, anyway.

  When we finally got rid of him, we tried to toss around some ideas for Colton’s flight project. It wasn’t a good day for it: all four of us were spitting grit after a morning with the Blessed Prakash. Ingrid and Colton didn’t have the patience to explain how they expected path-connected spaces to let them defy gravity, and Ben and I didn’t have the patience to follow any explanations we couldn’t understand immediately.

  Eventually Colton, at least, had a worthwhile breakthrough. He looked out the window and said, “It’s getting late. And all we’re doing is bickering. I think we should reconvene in a better location.”

  “And you had in mind?”

  “Hole in the Wall is just across the Drag. And their happy hour has already started.”

  That proposition passed with unanimous consent and no bickering.

  I stopped on our way out to leave Mr. M. with Lensky. Now that he had taken up singing as a hobby, I was kind of afraid to take him any place where there might be live music.

  “You’re going to some place where there might be live music?” He seemed less than thrilled to hear of my plans. “Do you want me to wait and drive you back?”

  “I don’t know how long we’ll be,” I said. “After meeting the Blessed Prakash, the entire research division is on the verge of insurrection. Sorry we didn’t invite you, but this is kind of a topologists-only bitch session. Look, you go on home and I’ll teleport back to your place when we break up. There can’t be a safer place to teleport into than a spy’s condo.”

  “I have no desire to be ground zero at your critical mass,” Lensky said. “Go, go. Come over afterwards and I’ll let you chop the garlic.”

  “What a tempting offer!”

  “Those who chop no garlic, get no Capelli Livornese.” Lensky had recently displayed a surprising talent for cooking, mostly Italian. I had no clue what Capelli Livornese was, but based on past performance it would be something I wouldn’t want to miss.

  The sky was covered with light gray clouds when we came out of Allandale House. The
intertwined black branches of the winter trees exploded into a mass of moving black shapes that rose and wheeled, dancing against the bright clouds, and settled again. I zipped up my jacket. It wasn’t that cold, but I was that chilled.

  3. The Mathematical Mafia

  Even with Happy Hour prices, Hole in the Wall wasn’t quite as good a deal as Scholz’s; they sold their beer by the bottle, not by the pitcher. On the other hand, ever since I’d carelessly given myself a hangover with too many pitchers of Scholz’s beer on my first date with Lensky, I’d been promising myself that I’d cut back to drinking by the glass, not the pitcher.

  I did not inhale my first Lone Star. I just stared at the bottle.

  “Are you going to drink that or just flirt with it?” Ben asked. He’d chugged his first bottle and was already signaling for another.

  “I’m getting too old for serious drinking during the week. I’m cutting back.”

  Ben brushed his hair out of his eyes. I thought of suggesting to Annelise that she make regular haircuts her next project, now that she finally had him wearing clothes that were designed for his tall, narrow body type. “With respect, Lia, this is one hell of a time to go on the wagon.”

  “I said cutting back, not giving it up. I’m going to take the time to taste and savor every sip.”

  “Maybe you’d better switch to Scotch, then. I don’t think you can sip beer fast enough to neutralize the Prakash Effect.”

  “I don’t think there is enough beer for that.” I tilted the bottle and rolled a mouthful of Lone Star around on my tongue.

  “He’s not all bad,” Ingrid said. Coming from her, that was practically a glowing recommendation. Then again, coming from her, it might just be a statement about his mathematical ability.

  “Oh, right. You know him. Give!”

  “It’s more that I know who he is, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t have any classes together?” Disappointing, that. I’d been hoping she had some secret data on Bhatia that we could use to beat him into shape.

  “No, he didn’t do any of his course work here, he’s an import. The Tata Institute asked Dr. Verrick to oversee his dissertation because they don’t have anyone in general topology who’s up on Prakash’s chosen topic.”

  That was an unusual thing for a rival university to admit, but we’d heard it before. Dr. Verrick’s Honors Topology course and the follow-on graduate program had produced so many successful mathematicians that even Ivy League schools had been known to try and insert their students for a couple of semesters, and there was no shortage of graduate students trying to transfer into the department. If Bhatia had gotten to the head of that line, he must be really sharp.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Started in June.”

  Last June, we’d been extremely busy recovering from the havoc wreaked by the Master of Ravens. Last June, Lensky had come back from DC with the news that his agency was assigning him to work with us permanently because they’d decided we were a valuable resource and “you maniacs need somebody sane to watch out for you.” Last June, I probably wouldn’t have noticed a Tyrannosaurus Rex being admitted to the Ph.D. program, as long as it was a polite Tyrannosaurus, didn’t step on our offices and ate only education majors.

  “Well, I noticed him,” Ingrid said. “Okay, he’s a jerk, but you’ve got to admit he’s great eye candy. He joined a cricket team about ten minutes after he registered, and they played all summer. Wait until you see him in his cricket whites, Lia!” She fanned herself.

  And he could make Ingrid respond like an actual human female. That could become interesting. And it wasn’t going to make Jimmy DiGrazio, our resident computer nerd and Ingrid’s boyfriend, happy. About the only thing Jimmy had going for him in the way of looks was that he was taller than Ingrid.

  “We’re only stuck with him for one semester,” Colton reminded her. He pushed floppy yellow hair away from his forehead. Unlike Ben, he got it cut that way on purpose. And on him it looked good.

  “I may have to kill him before it gets warm enough for cricket again.” Lone Star wasn’t really designed for serious savoring; I killed that bottle and ordered a local artisanal beer that was only affordable during happy hour.

  “He’s a pill,” Colton conceded, “but he did walk through the wall, and that without any of us telling him to use a Möbius strip. If he can call up the relevant math without even thinking about it, that’s some serious talent there.”

  “Which he absolutely denies having.”

  “Well, yes. I can see why Dr. Verrick considers him a hard nut to crack. But when he accepts the reality of what he can do, he could be a fantastic member of our team.” Colton was still working on his first beer. I need a minimum of three drinks to achieve that level of cockeyed optimism. But then, Colton is a genuinely nice person, and nobody ever accused me of that.

  “I don’t know,” said Ben gloomily. “I’m afraid that when this nut cracks, he’ll go nuts.”

  “Good!” Well, I told you I’m not a nice person.

  “Can I help crack him?” Neither is Ingrid.

  Colton frowned at all three of us.

  “It’s not very kind, talking that way. And Ingrid, I thought you at least liked him to look at.”

  Ingrid gave him one of her patented Norse-goddess freezing looks. “Prakash may think that women are weak and emotional, but that’s his problem. I am entirely capable of appreciating his perfectly chiseled lips while finding him too insufferably conceited to live.”

  “Better not discuss his perfectly chiseled lips with Jimmy, though,” I said, just to bring her back into touch with reality.

  Despite what I’d told Lensky, we did not spend much more time griping about Prakash. The subject was too depressing. As I sipped my second beer we rambled through such gripping topics as the chances for seeing actual snow in Austin this winter, the practical uses of N-manifolds, the apartment Ben and Annelise had just rented, whether Lindelöf spaces would be better for personal shields, loose ends remaining for the Center after an extremely fraught fall semester, and the skiing and snowboarding competitions in Sweden. I had nothing to contribute to the last bit. I’ve always thought of skiing as a sign of insanity: surely the top of a snow-covered mountain is the last place where you’d want to put yourself in a position of unstable equilibrium? And I wasn’t clear on what snowboarding even was. Like waterboarding? Only colder?

  “Going home,” I announced when the second beer was done.

  “Wait a minute,” Ben said. “Annelise wants to have a party to celebrate us getting this apartment.”

  “Well, that’s your problem.”

  Ben gulped. “I already said yes. As long as it’s just Center people. Saturday night.”

  That was short notice. Annelise probably didn’t want to wait long enough for Ben to get cold feet. As long as it really was just the Center for Applied Topology staff, it should be okay. Strangers would be a different story. Most topologists don’t socialize well; new people are stressful, and Prakash had been quite enough stress for one week.

  I worked my way to the bathroom at the back of the bar, made sure the door was closed but not locked, and teleported.

  The condo smelled wonderful. I followed the scent to the kitchen, where Lensky handed me a chef’s knife and a head of garlic.

  Chopping and sautéing and simmering, all the support tasks of cooking that I'd had no patience for when Mom tried to teach me so that I could catch a man, took on another flavor entirely when I was doing them in the company of the man who'd caught me. But then, with Lensky, the sous-chef jobs didn't come with lectures about my personal life. It was just, “Can you cut these into this size chunks?” or, “Sauté this in a little olive oil until the onions are translucent.”

  Turns out, I liked cooking just fine; it was the sauce of “you're-a-disappointment-to-us” I found so bitter.

  It may have helped that I wasn't required to do any planning. Chop this, stir that, peel these, the strin
g of minor tasks ran on without hurry or drama or people screaming at each other in the middle of the kitchen, and things just kept smelling better and better until it was time to bake the pasta dish or slow-simmer the sauce or whatever, and then we'd share glasses of whatever wine Lensky was putting in the sauce that day and I'd lean back against him and he'd put his arms around me.

  And the food was pretty good, too.

  On this particular evening I wielded the chef's knife so ferociously that I reduced half a head of garlic to a mound of garlic paste before Lensky gently reclaimed the knife. “The new guy must be a disaster if you've still got so much nervous energy after blowing off steam with the rest of the Mathematical Mafia for two hours. What did you do, talk so much that you forgot to drink your beer?”

  I started to wipe the sweat out of my eyes, remembered the garlic on my hands at the last minute and settled for drawing the back of one wrist across my forehead. “There is not enough beer in the world to reconcile me to working with Prakash Bhatia,” I told him, “so I decided to spare myself the hangover that would result from trying.”

  “It took you guys two hours to trash the man? You can’t know that much about him yet.”

  “Don't underestimate him,” I said. “Every time he opened his mouth he offended at least two of us, frequently in three different directions. Anyway, that wasn't all we talked about.”

  “What else?”

  “Oh, all kind of things. Ben and Annelise’s new place – oh, they’re having an apartment-warming party Saturday. Grackles… Loose ends… Whether we're going to have to defend the Center against the Master of Ravens again.” Calling himself first Raven Crowson and then Jay Corbin, this wizard with power drawn from black birds had first threatened Lensky's niece and me in a bid to halt an investigation into his business, and afterwards had tried to destroy the entire Center in revenge for our disruption of his profitable sex trafficking operation. We had no idea where he'd disappeared to after the failure of that last attack.