Chapter 8
Eight
SARAH
“Biology makes a lot of choices for us. That’s inevitable. You were always going to be a biped, you were always going to have your mother’s thumbs and your father’s funny eyebrows. But everything else is up to you. Figure it out.”
—Angela Baker
Location? To be honest, I have no idea, but I have my suspicions
THE TRANSITION WAS SEAMLESS, PAINLESS, and swift.
One moment we were in Mark’s hospital room, and then I was wrapped in diaphanous veils of mathematics, the numbers sliding rapidly by, so smooth and fluid that I could barely follow them.
If I focused on a single line, I could watch it evolve and branch, but I would be lost as soon as it encountered another function and combined with a series of numbers I hadn’t been watching.
This was math taken to the point of poetry, so advanced it became its own language, and like all languages, it told me stories about the culture that had defined it.
Math is a constant. To go back to the absolute basics, two plus two is going to be four whether you’re a human, a cuckoo, or a silica-based organism that has just figured out how to think as an individual being.
But the way we write it down can vary from person to person, and will absolutely be impacted by the assumptions of the mathematician.
This was math starting from a lot of assumptions I didn’t know or understand, and it was holding me so tightly that it was something of a wonder I could think, much less move.
We weren’t in the hospital anymore. We weren’t anywhere.
The world was a sheet of brilliant, eye-searing blue in front of me, and deep, textured darkness behind, crackling red around the edges.
Even as the thought formed, part of me understood that the words “blue” and “red” had no meaning here: I was looking at the Doppler shift, seeing the expansion and contraction of the universe in real time.
Flashes of gray-violet and white-pink began to gather around the edges of my vision, ultraviolet signals of the transition ahead.
I caught my breath, abstractly relieved that I still could—I had breath to catch, which meant I had lungs, and a body, and the ability to make decisions about both those things—and braced against the transition I knew was about to hit.
I needn’t have bothered. We slid through the phase shift without hesitation, the numbers continuing to dance and twine around me, and this was infinity, this was forever.
I was going to spend the rest of my existence in a silken cocoon of mathematics, and I wasn’t certain time could find me here: it seemed possible that this would just continue until the Doppler shift resolved itself and reality settled into a calm, motionless infinity, no longer conflicted, no longer expanding or contracting or anything at all.
I didn’t like the idea, but none of this had been my decision.
Then, like the bubble dropping Glinda in front of Dorothy and the others, the cocoon popped and disappeared, leaving me standing on a perfectly normal tile floor, head spinning and aching from the absence of the sheltering numbers.
The five people who’d surrounded me in Mark’s hospital room were standing around me, none more than an arm’s length away, unruffled by the transition.
They weren’t saying anything or moving much, and so I decided to take a moment to focus on my surroundings.
We were in a small room, barely large enough for the six of us to stand without touching each other.
The floor was made of pearlescent gray tile, while the walls looked like they’d been made from rough bleached paper, off-white and almost exactly the color of human bones that had been baking in the sun.
There were no windows, and no doors. There was also no furniture.
I put a hand against my temple, trying to steady myself.
Wherever we were, there wasn’t a human inside my range for receptive telepathy. Given how enormously expanded my range had been since I completed the queen instar, that almost certainly meant we weren’t anywhere near Earth.
Cuckoos—Johrlac—can’t see the color red.
We don’t have the right receptors in our eyes.
I can see red when I’m around humans, because I’ve borrowed the concept from their minds, and their eyes guide me to what’s red and what isn’t.
Well, the Johrlac who had taken me were no longer wearing red and black.
Instead, they were wearing black and gray, and the gray part of their jumpsuits was patterned in fractal arcs, ultraviolet detailing a human captive would have missed.
Well, bully for me.
“Do not move,” snapped one of the Johrlac in black and gray. “You have been arrested, and will not attempt to evade custody.”
“My head is spinning,” I said. “I’d ask if I could sit down, but since there aren’t any chairs, I’m just going to stand here and try to keep myself from falling over. Assuming that’s all right with you?”
I couldn’t see their minds at all, couldn’t read the shape of their thoughts or what they might be thinking.
But I could tell when two of them exchanged a look, moving somewhat closer to each another.
Their eyes glazed over white for a moment, and I strained mentally, trying to pick up the thread of their conversation.
I didn’t want to listen in. I just wanted to feel less like I’d been cut off from the world.
“Fine,” snapped one of them. “We’ll send the request for seating. Your time among the mammals has made you weak, aberration. You were always going to be a disappointment to your hive. We did not expect you to shame your species.”
The words were clearly intended to hurt, but they missed their mark, mostly because I didn’t care what these people thought of me.
They were strangers who happened to share some essential biology with my own; I’d erased my own biological mother’s mind and left her to be ripped apart by giant spiders.
Blood has never been the yardstick I measure by.
“Who are you people, and where are we?” I asked, lowering my hand. “I think you owe me at least a few answers, considering what you just did.”
“What we just did?” asked one of the blue ones. “We removed an invasive species from a fragile ecosystem.”
Those words sounded so much like the ones I’d heard from my own family whenever they needed to justify themselves that I paused for a moment, blinking, before I asked, “Have you been reading my mind?”
“You are a criminal. You have no right to expect privacy of the mind,” said the other blue one.
“I haven’t broken any laws,” I protested.
“Your existence says otherwise,” said one of the gray ones. “For a cuckoo to achieve maturity, others must die. The dimension in which you were raised remains intact, and we found no other cuckoo minds in your vicinity: you are guilty of the extermination of your species on your world of birth.”
It all sounded so reasonable when it was laid out like that, like a logic problem that had a right answer and a wrong answer, and had to be resolved.
“I didn’t do that on purpose,” I objected. “I only acted to save my world. It was self-defense.”
“Was it self-defense when you erased the self of the human you believed you loved? Or was it the cuckoo need for control lashing out under the pretense of preserving some intangible greater good?” The gray one cocked their head to the side.
“I can see you were afraid, and that you were so deep into wrangling the equation you were trying to complete that you had the convenient excuse of your distraction, but you should have noticed his intrusion into the mathematics. And instead of acknowledging it, you pulled him deeper in and made use of him like he was merely a tool for your employment, like his existence was inferior to your own. You acted as a cuckoo. Your crimes are greater than your excuses, and you will pay for them.”
A ripping sound from across the room caught my attention.
Honestly, I was grateful to have something to distract me from the horrible things the stranger was saying.
I needed them to introduce themselves, or at the very least to drop their mental shielding long enough for me to get their pronouns.
I wasn’t used to being this devoid of context.
A knife protruded through the paper wall, and as I watched, it slid downward, cutting a clear channel.
Two people in black-and-yellow jumpsuits stepped through the opening, both holding knives, and each gripping one side of what looked like a simple kitchen chair.
They put it down in the center of the room, looking to one of the people in blue, and I realized with some relief that I could feel their minds.
They were both female, bright and eager to do their jobs.
I withdrew my thoughts as soon as I knew how to address them. They’d give me their names if they wanted to share, and until then, the relief of having the correct pronouns was going to be enough to keep me going. Sometimes it’s the little things.
“We have brought the chair, Inspector,” said the first of the pair. “Have we fulfilled your request?”
“Yes,” said one of the people in blue. “Fix the wall as you leave.”
“Yes, Inspector,” chorused the two, and they turned in unison to make their way back to the opening they’d created. I watched them go, all but despondent. Having a moment where I’d been able to claim context on my situation had been wonderful: losing it was terrible.
But at least now I could say with certainty that I was on Johrlar. I’d never seen the dimension my species originated from, but nothing else explained being surrounded by this many Johrlac.
“Well, sit,” said one of the Johrlac in gray and yellow. “You asked for the chair, and it was brought before you. We’re not here to serve your comfort, prisoner.”