Imaginary Numbers

by McGuire, Seanan

  “Cut out how?” asked Mom.

  “As I said, we’re the descendants of exiles, even if we don’t know what their crimes were,” said Mark. “The memory transference is not exact, or we’d all be clones of our parents, little buds carrying their precise personalities into the future. We get more of a general sense of history, things that were big enough or catastrophic enough to carry forward. We get the rules of behavior. We get something that looks a lot like instinct, which is good, because we don’t have instincts anymore.”

  “You don’t need them,” said Aunt Evie. “Not if you’re getting a handbook to proper behavior straight from your mother’s mind. Instincts would only get in the way.”

  Mark nodded, looking relieved that at least one of us understood what he was talking about. “Exactly. And the memories, they play an essential role in our maturation, because their release triggers a chemical response that properly finishes our metamorphosis.”

  “If you don’t start explaining what this has to do with Sarah, I’m going to cut your toes off one by one and make you eat them,” I said.

  Everyone went quiet as they turned to look at me. Sam let out a long, low whistle.

  “Damn, Harrington,” he said. “You’re cold.”

  “I’m terrified,” I corrected.

  “You’re right to be,” said Mark. “Look. When Sarah was a child, her adoptive parents were killed. It was a tragedy, absolutely. When a cuckoo child is in sufficient distress, they can sometimes unlock a level of telepathic strength they shouldn’t have been able to access for literally years. She called for help. Your family replied. Specifically, Angela Baker replied.”

  “Be careful what you say about her,” said Aunt Evie pleasantly. “She’s my mother.”

  “She’s not a receptive telepath,” said Mark.

  Aunt Evie blinked. “You didn’t call her broken. Usually, cuckoos call her broken, or a freak, or something even nastier.”

  “She’s not broken. She’s perfectly normal. There are one or two like her born every generation, and most of the time we’re not preparing to force a Queen, so they’re killed. But they keep cropping up in the populace, and sometimes they’re allowed to live, because sometimes we know we’re going to need them.” Mark managed to sound apologetic as he said, “Once she acquired Sarah, and it was clear that she was going to keep and properly prepare her, everyone else pulled out of the region. Angela was to be left alone to cultivate our Queen.”

  “Talk faster,” said Antimony, in a voice that was suddenly devoid of emotion. I glanced at her. She had gone pale and was looking at Mark like she couldn’t decide whether to slit his throat or run for the hills.

  Mark looked placidly back. “You’re finally catching on,” he said. “A non-receptive cuckoo never receives the histories. They don’t go through the first traumatic morph, and they don’t understand why the rest of us are the way we are. They call us cruel, call us evil . . . and when one of them somehow acquires custody of a normal cuckoo child, their first instinct will always be to crack the child’s mind open and scoop the offending pieces out. They still get instincts, those non-receivers. They have room for them. They don’t understand that normal cuckoos don’t have that. They take out every scrap of the history, of the law, and they leave a void behind. A void that heals so slowly. But it does heal. It comes together the tiniest bit at a time. Puberty happens, but the metamorphosis doesn’t. The larval stage stretches on and on, years past when it should have ended.

  “Sometimes that’s the end of it. Those stunted cuckoos live their whole lives in a suspended larval state, never quite becoming full adults, no longer children, and they try to be good, and they hate themselves, and they never learn what they’re capable of, and eventually they die.” Mark shook his head. “It’s a terrible, self-loathing way to live, but it’s part of our life cycle, and it can’t always be avoided. Sometimes, though—sometimes they don’t stay stuck that way. Sometimes they either trigger their own metamorphosis or have it triggered for them, and when that happens, something wonderful can follow. The metamorphosis continues past its normal limits. They become adults and, when their brains can’t find the missing information, they enter their second instar and metamorphosize again almost immediately, entering a third instar.”

  “Sarah never metamorphosized at all,” I said. “I’d notice if she grew wings or an ovipositor or something.”

  “Our metamorphosis is internal,” said Mark. “Cuckoo children don’t turn into giant wasps when they hit puberty. They simply . . . well, change their minds.”

  Slow-growing horror filled the pit of my stomach. “When she hurt herself in New York,” I said. “That’s what made it happen, isn’t it?”

  Mark nodded. “She pushed so hard that her mind, which had healed up completely around the missing pieces, finally understood that it was supposed to transform. It contracted, losing most of its ability to form coherent thought, and then it expanded, growing in potential, growing in strength. She entered her first instar years later than most of her kin and entered her second instar inside of the week. She was well on her way to becoming the strongest of us. Becoming something we only know exists because of the information in our heads, the information passed down from our ancestors. She was becoming a Queen.”

  A life lived around Aeslin mice can make capital letters pretty easy to hear. “What’s a Queen? Are you saying that Sarah’s going to become your leader or something?”

  “No. We don’t have ‘leaders,’ as such. We’re too solitary. We can’t stand each other long enough to give or receive orders. I think maybe we did have leaders, back on Johrlar. That feels right, somehow. It feels like an evolutionary inevitability. But here, in exile, we prefer to stick to ourselves. Queens don’t lead. Queens are powerful. They have the kind of strength someone like me can only dream of. They—”

  Mark stopped mid-sentence, eyes going gray, like they had frosted over. He began to shake.

  I knew, immediately, what had to be happening. I whirled, and there was Heloise, still cuffed to the table where we’d left her, eyes now open and solid, blazing white, staring at us with the kind of hatred that starts wars.

  There wasn’t time to think about what I was going to do next. I ran across the barn to the cabinet where we kept the actual gardening and yard supplies, jerking it open and grabbing the big can of Raid. Then I ran to Heloise’s side, shaking the can with every step. I aimed it right between her eyes.

  She shrank back, the glow in her eyes dying, replaced by blue irises and utter terror. Behind me, I heard Mark gasp for air.

  “You’re a big bug,” I said flatly. “I don’t judge—I’m in love with a big bug—but you’re a big bug, and this is bug spray. What happens if I squirt this in your eyes? Nothing good, I bet. Nothing you’d be too excited about experiencing. Want to find out?”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” she whispered.

  “What’s that? Oh, sorry, it may be hard to talk for a while, since my cousin’s boyfriend crushed your trachea and all. Which you totally deserved, and I hope it hurts like hell.”

  “Here, bud.” Dad took the can of Raid from my hand. “I’ll keep her busy while you hear the rest of what our other prisoner has to say. And then we’ll figure out whether or not we’re taking one of them apart.”

  Heloise sneered at him.

  “I vote this one,” I said, before walking back over to Mark. “Talk faster.”

  “Everything is math,” he blurted.

  I blinked. So did everyone else.

  “That’s what my mother always says,” said Aunt Evie. “She says the universe is numerical in nature, so the better a mathematician someone is, the closer they draw to the divine. It’s why she became an accountant. For her, that was like joining the priesthood.”

  “Only without the celibacy,” said Uncle Kevin, and snickered as Evie elbowed him in the side.

&n
bsp; Mark nodded, ignoring my uncle entirely, and said, “Exactly. Everything is math, and everything is made of math, and if you can manipulate the numbers, you can change the world. Literally change the world. You need to know the right equations, or you need the raw power to punch your way to the correct answer without taking the steps in the middle. But if you can accomplish one of those two things, there’s nothing you can’t do.”

  A cold ball of dread was growing in the center of my chest, filling the space where my heart was supposed to be. Wherever my heart had gone, it would stop beating at any moment, I just knew it, forced out by that killing cold. “Cuckoos aren’t from around here,” I said quietly.

  Mark met my eyes, not flinching away. “No.”

  “But we’ve never seen any evidence they could travel between dimensions. They don’t use magic the way most sapient species use it,” I said. “They don’t make charms or cast spells or bend the laws of physics. They just influence minds and do math.”

  “Yes,” said Mark.

  “Is cuckoo magic math-based?”

  “Yes,” said Mark again. “But the equations are . . . they’re huge. They’re resource-intensive in a way that almost always results in the death of the person who completes them, and those are the ones we still have. There are pieces of the math missing. Whole sections that were wiped clean when our ancestors were put into exile.”

  The urge to sit down was suddenly overwhelming. “You’re saying that when the people back on Johrlar decided to throw your ancestors out, they stole the math that would have allowed them to go home.”

  “Shut up,” snarled Heloise.

  There was the distinct sound of an aerosol can being shaken, and she stopped talking.

  “Yes,” said Mark. “We don’t know what our ancestors did, we don’t know whether they were political dissidents or cultural outcasts or criminals—”

  “Can I vote ‘criminals’?” asked Antimony. “I’m going to vote criminals.”

  Mark ignored her. All his focus was on me, which was a little unnerving, even knowing that the charm around my neck was preventing him from doing anything to psychically influence my reactions. “—but when they were expelled from their home dimension, the knowledge of how to get back was wiped from their minds. They were supposed to remain where they were, forever. They hadn’t been killed, but they had been cast out, and their exile was intended to be eternal.”

  “I don’t think I like where this is going,” said Sam.

  “We know the original equations were beautiful and subtle and kind,” said Mark. “We know that when our ancestors were exiled, Johrlar survived. We know the equations could be performed over and over and over again.”

  “Yeah, because they were being performed by a whole bunch of people,” said Elsie. Everyone turned to look at her. She glanced up from her nails and shrugged. “What? You know I’m right. Look, you’re talking about math that’s so big that it kills people. Well, that’s what research teams are for. That’s what think tanks are for. If you have a spell that’s so resource-intensive it uses a sorcerer up, you get a whole bunch of sorcerers to come and cast it. If you have an equation that’s so resource-intensive it melts brains, you get a whole bunch of smart people to think about different pieces of it at the same time, so nobody’s brain gets melted. The equations aren’t meant to be a solo voyage. No big. Why are you telling us all this?”

  “We don’t know the equations, but this isn’t the dimension where we were first exiled,” said Mark. “We found another way. A cruder way. It’s like a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel. The equations we have, the ones we’ve developed, require a Queen to resolve them. Once she finishes her final morph and enters her fourth instar, she can do the math. She can find the right answers. And she can rip a hole in the fabric between dimensions, allowing us to move on.”

  Antimony’s eyes widened. “That’s how you got here,” she said. “You ripped a hole in the fabric of our dimension, and you came through it.”

  “Not me, personally, but yes,” said Mark. “It was centuries ago. The world where we’d been was no longer . . . welcoming. Once the beings native to a dimension figure out that we exist, things tend to grow unpleasant fairly quickly, and we have to move on to better, safer hunting grounds. It’s a matter of survival. We don’t really have a choice.”

  “Other things followed you through the hole you made, you prick,” snapped Antimony. She took a step backward, flexing her hands. Tiny balls of flame danced around her fingertips, burning lambent white.

  Sam gave her a concerned look. “Uh, if it’s cool with the rest of you, I’m going to take my sort of overly-excited girlfriend inside to check on James before she sets the barn on fire.”

  “Not interested in dying in a fiery conflagration today, so that sounds great, thanks,” said Aunt Evelyn. She glanced at Antimony. “Remember your calming words, sweetie. Ask the mice if you need help with guided meditation.”

  “Sure, Mom,” Annie mumbled, and let Sam pull her out of the barn, reducing our numbers by two and lowering the temperature by several degrees. I hadn’t even realized how warm it was getting with her standing there, setting herself on fire.

  “Eyes forward, missy,” said Dad, giving another shake of the Raid can. “You want to stay focused on me, unless you want a blast of pesticide to the face.”

  “Can I just say how much I’m enjoying this?” asked Mark. “I mean, there’s still a chance you’re going to murder me rather than letting me go, and that’ll suck pretty badly as far as I’m concerned, but I’d probably die anyway when the world ends, and at least this way I get to watch you all torment Heloise first.”

  “Wait.” I held up one hand. “Why do you keep saying the world is going to end?”

  “Because it is, if you don’t stop it.” Mark looked at me levelly. “Sarah Zellaby is the daughter of an ordinary cuckoo woman. There was nothing special about her until her parents were killed and she was adopted by a crèche-keeper—Angela Baker. Angela instinctively rewired Sarah’s brain in the process of removing what she registered as negative conditioning, creating space sufficient for the brain to undergo substantial physical transformation when Sarah pushed herself too far and strained her psychic capabilities. That was her morph from first instar to second. The second instar lasted less than a week before she entered her second morph, which lasted years. Second morph is dangerous. It’s rare, and cuckoos who enter it are usually ripped apart by their own kin, rather than allowed to finish the process. They have too much power when it ends.”

  “So Sarah’s a super-cuckoo,” I said.

  “So Sarah was in her second instar when she arrived here,” he said. “She triggered and completed her third instar in the process of removing the trap Amelia had placed inside your mind. The morph into third instar is brief. It’s painless, compared to the variant form of second. It’s a preparational step, if that makes sense.”

  “None of this makes sense,” I muttered.

  “Biology rarely does,” said Uncle Kevin, eyes gleaming. I realized he was excited. Thanks to the anti-telepathy charm, I couldn’t sense his emotions the way I normally could, which was how I’d been able to miss it for this long.

  I glanced at Mom. She had the same half-hungry look on her face, barely concealed behind the veil of her concern for Sarah. I managed, barely, not to wince.

  We’re all Prices, even me and Elsie; there’s never really been any question that if and when we marry, it’ll be the “Harrington” part of our names we shed, because we’re Prices. We were born to this fight and to the endless scholarship started by our ancestors when they left the Covenant and realized how little work had been done to preserve the secrets and stories of the various sapient beings who shared this world with humanity. People talk a lot about what it means to be a Price. We’re terrifying to the ones who oppose us, we’re weird to the ones who stand with us, we’re heroes t
o the ones who depend on us. But there’s one thing that tends to get left out of the conversation, treated as less important than the need to keep fighting and keep winning until the war is over:

  We’re scientists. Mom and Uncle Kevin even more than Elsie and me. They’re the direct descendants of Thomas and Alice Price. They were raised to believe that the world can make sense, if they just try hard enough and refuse to stop poking at its soft bits. The cuckoos have been one of the greatest mysteries our family has ever encountered. We’d tried for years to learn more about their biology, without taking apart one of the two cuckoos we considered part of the family. To have one walk into our home and just start talking was, well . . .

  It was no wonder this was going so slowly. The people who would normally have hurried things along—the people we instinctively still listened to, thanks to their age and our familial relationship—were too enthralled by the potential to learn something to focus on what actually mattered.

  I was focused on what actually mattered. I was focused on Sarah. I took a step toward Mark.

  “Third instar is a preparational step, fine,” I said. “Preparing for what?”

  “When there are multiple potential Queens ready for their fourth instar, we test them,” said Mark. “I don’t mean ‘we’ as in ‘me,’ I mean ‘we’ as in ‘whoever has them.’ They’re tested, and they’re tried, and when one of them proves stronger than all the others, she’s given the numbers she needs to unlock her fourth metamorphosis. First morph is a necessity, second morph is a gift, third morph is a challenge, and fourth is an ascension.”

  “So Sarah’s a god now?” asked Elsie. I doubted Mark could hear, or understand, the warning in her tone. “That’s going to make Thanksgiving dinner awkward.”

  “If she survives the process, she’s not going to be a god, she’s going to be a Queen,” said Mark. “She’ll have the strength to do the math and put enough power behind it to blow this dimension to pieces. She’s going to smash this world like an eggshell. She’s going to open the way for the cuckoos to go somewhere else. If you don’t stop her, she’s going to destroy everything she’s ever cared about, and she’s going to destroy you in the process.”