Chapter 8 #2
The slit in the wall was already disappearing, seemingly mending itself from the bottom up. The minds of the two Johrlac who had brought the chair were already gone, making me suspect the paper had some sort of anti-telepathic quality, blunting the thoughts of everyone on the other side.
“Do you have any weapons?” asked one of the blue ones.
I turned to blink at them, startled by the question. “What?”
It would have been a foolish thing to ask any other member of my family, even Elsie; Isaac and Charlotte didn’t carry weapons to school as far as I knew, but every one of my relatives over the age of fourteen was armed at all times, ranging from a few knives in Verity’s case to a veritable walking armory in Alice’s.
I, on the other hand, generally counted on my telepathy and giant spider to get me through, since both of those things were more useful on a general basis than a handgun small enough to hide in my clothing.
“Weapons,” repeated the blue one, impatiently. “Are you carrying any weapons right now?”
“No. You snatched me from a hospital.”
“Good. You will remain here, inside this room, and not make any attempts to escape our custody. If you do, it will go poorly for you, and will be considered during your sentencing. Do you understand?”
“Sentencing? What? You’re not going to be sentencing me. I don’t acknowledge your authority over me.”
“Criminals never do,” said the blue one. Their eyes flashed white, and all the strangers blurred for a moment, becoming intangible before they disappeared, and I was left alone in a prison cell with paper walls.
Exhausted, I sat down in the chair and dropped my head into my hands. What the hell was supposed to happen now?
After taking an unknown amount of time to feel sorry for myself—as if the last several years of my life hadn’t been shitty enough without adding in an entire dimension of self-righteous assholes who happened to be related to me—I sat up, took a deep breath, and began trying to figure out my next move.
Technically, I could cross dimensions the same way they did, if I just had the equation I needed to get myself back to Earth.
Issue there: I didn’t have the equation, and while I might be able to work it out if they left me alone for long enough, the only method I knew for building world-jumping equations was based on cuckoo math.
It was brute force and brutality, not the elegant Doppler shift of the Johrlac method.
The cuckoos had presumably understood their methods, once, but that knowledge had been excised from their minds before they were exiled.
Everything they knew, they’d rebuilt painfully from basic principles: those first cuckoos had known they were from another dimension, one where math could open doors and smooth passages, and they’d pushed and pushed and pushed against the possible until it finally agreed to yield to them.
Cuckoo math was like using a nuclear weapon to do the job of a housekey.
It left devastation in its wake, and if that wasn’t bad enough, it was massive.
They used enormous, sprawling functions to achieve simple means.
Writing their math down took reams of paper; I could probably have reached the same conclusion in Johrlac math on a Post-it.
And when you’re talking about arithmancy, you’re not using paper.
You’re using minds.
The Johrlac had almost certainly sent a team of six just so they’d have the processing power necessary to run even their streamlined version of the universal math without straining or endangering any of their arithmancers.
I didn’t have those extra minds. I just had me.
If I put together the equation that would let me leave without having anyone to help me hoist it up, I would destroy a large portion of this planet, and melt my own mind in the process. Not optimal.
I slumped in my chair, rubbing my temples with my forefingers.
The Johrlac had come as soon as they heard Mark’s mental shriek, but they hadn’t realized Mark and I were different people.
That made a certain sense—he hadn’t really been packing a lot of personally identifying information into his screaming—but it was also sloppy.
They should have realized they were hearing the screams of a male cuckoo while they were busy arresting a female one.
Paper walls might be good for quick repairs and even quick construction, but they didn’t have a lot going for them in the sturdiness department.
I stood, turning to take a look at the chair itself.
It was made of what looked like hard-pressed paper maché, the same stuff as the walls, and had no metal or wood, nothing harder than stiff cardboard.
Interesting. I turned back to the walls.
It wasn’t a large room; a few long steps took me to the wall that had been cut before. I touched it experimentally. It was warm and rough under my fingers, slightly yielding, but still solid. I pressed harder, and quickly discovered there was a limit to the amount of give it would offer me.
Right. Only one thing to try. I pushed the sleeve of my sweater up, pulled back my fist, and punched the wall as hard as I could.
The impact reverberated along my arm all the way to the shoulder and I yelped, jumping around and trying to shake the sudden ache out of my hand.
It felt like, well. Like I’d just punched a wall.
There wasn’t even a dent to show where I’d hit.
If I was getting out of here, it wasn’t going to be that easy.
I waited until the pain had dulled down to a roar, then prodded the wall more gently with my fingertips. Paper, yes, but hard paper, almost like a form of drywall. I took a disgusted step back, then paused, reviewing the contents of my pockets.
They’d been oddly concerned about weapons for people who’d already taken me captive and allowed themselves to remain within arm’s length for an extended period of time.
So maybe they weren’t worried about themselves.
Maybe they’d been worried about the walls.
And in a place without metal, maybe the definition of “weapon” was a little bit broader than I usually considered it.
I stuck a hand into my skirt pocket, rummaging around. I had a pack of tomato-flavored novelty chewing gum—from Japan, naturally—some loose change, a Metro card, and my house keys. I pulled them out, considering their sharp, irregular edges, then turned back to the wall.
Gripping one key firmly between my fingers, I pressed it against the wall and leaned on it like I thought it could support me. To my deep relief and delight, it punched through almost as soon as I shifted my weight onto it, and I began to pull downward, sawing as I pulled.
I was rewarded with a rough gash in the papery substance, opening slowly but inexorably in the path of the key.
I didn’t hear anyone on the other side, which might mean I wasn’t in any immediate risk of being caught.
Emboldened by the thought, I pulled harder, until I had opened a wide-enough gash to shove my hands through and start pulling to the sides, rather than straight up and down.
I stuck my head out, finding myself looking at a long, perfectly straight hallway made from the same tile-and-paper combination as the room.
The two workers I’d seen earlier were standing across from the wall I’d been busily cutting through, leaning against the opposite wall and watching me with the patient interest of schoolteachers watching a child perform a trick.
I froze. They kept watching me, silent and unmoving.
Several seconds ticked by. When they didn’t move or sound up any alarms, I started sawing downward with my key again, opening the gash in the wall wider and wider, until I was able to grip the sides and pull them far enough apart to let me step out into the hall.
Something about the room where I’d been left was clearly responsible for the telepathic dampening, because as soon as I was in the hall, it was like the world acquired another dimension that had been quietly suppressed before.
I could see the two people in front of me properly, and identify them as individuals who looked nothing alike.
They were both female Johrlac, close friends if not lovers, and members of the same creche group, whatever that meant. Their names were—
They didn’t have any names. I stopped, blinking at them in bemusement. The one on the left took pity on me.
“Names are meant to be shared aloud,” she said. “Not like castes or gender or anything else innate. We know you’re not from here, so we’re not going to take offense, but if you want to know our names, you need to ask us.”
Oh. That made sense. “I’m Sarah,” I said. “Who are you?”
They flashed amusement at each other, eyes still on me. “My name is Fetch,” said one.
“My name is Carry,” said the other.
“We’re assistants,” they said in unison.
I blinked again, more slowly this time, trying to put my thoughts into some semblance of a coherent order. Finally, I said, “Those are your … names?”
“And our tasks,” said Fetch. “I’m most frequently sent to retrieve things that have been put in other places.”
“And once she finds them, I carry them back to where they’re intended. I’m one of the best we have at my job,” said Carry, proudly.
“That sounds very … I’m sorry, did you change names when you got these jobs?”
They radiated bewilderment at me. “What do you mean?” asked Carry. “We were born to these positions, and we’ll hold them until we’re too old to continue any longer. Once that happens, we’ll be renamed and released from service.”
“I … What?”
“You’re a cuckoo, aren’t you?” asked Fetch. Unlike the others, she didn’t sneer when she said the word “cuckoo”: it was just a question on her lips, an innocent inquiry that needed to be answered.
I nodded.
“That explains everything,” she said sagely. “You can’t possibly be expected to understand.”