Page 19 of Middlegame

If Professor Vernon asks her to do math on his real college blackboard, she thinks she’ll probably die right on the spot. They’ll bury her with a smile on her face, and maybe they’ll be glad she got to go out that way. At least they’ll know for sure she died happy. “Yes, Daddy.”

“No backtalk, and don’t ask about his own work unless he invites you to.”

“Yes, Daddy,” she says, and then they’re there, they’re really there, at the door of a classroom where a man who looks like her grandpa is waiting, smiling the tolerant smile of an adult who’s about to see a child do a very impressive trick. Her feet suddenly feel like they’re made out of lead, but she forces them to keep moving her forward, into the classroom, into the future.

“Well?” asks Peter.

Professor Vernon shakes his head. He is an aging ostrich of a man, tall and spindly, with limbs that seem too long for his body. He’s seen many things in this classroom, geniuses and fools and people who don’t care about math and people who love it like it’s the only language in the world. He’s done his best to teach them all, to offer each of them the support that they need. He’s never seen anything like this.

“She’s solving the problems correctly,” he says. “She’s not referencing a cheat sheet or getting tripped up by things she hasn’t seen before. I think her answer to number three may be wrong, but I’ll be honest: I’d have to pull out a textbook to be sure. If you say that’s her work on the Monroe equation, I believe you. She’s solved it.” He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d see the day. You need to get this girl into advanced classes.”

“She’s already in advanced classes.”

“Then you need to get her into more advanced classes. She needs tutors, access to books . . . She’s a genius, Peter. A mind like hers comes along once a generation, if that. You say she found out about the prize money on her own?”

“She solved the problem before she told us about the prize,” says Peter. “The only thing she wants to do with her share of the money is go to Cambridge to see a pen pal. I’m just relieved she isn’t asking for a pony.”

Professor Vernon is quiet for a moment before he asks, “Cambridge? Really?”

“Mmm-hmm. She says she met him last summer when we sent her to chess camp. We’re inclined to say yes. Dodger doesn’t make friends easily with children her own age. This could be good for her.” What Peter doesn’t say—doesn’t need to say—is that any pen pal of hers is likely to have the same problems. There’s little to be lost by bringing these children together, and there could be a great deal to be gained.

Dodger has finished the problems Professor Vernon left for her. She turns, chalk in hand, chalk dust on her nose, cheeks glowing with exertion and pride. “Do you wanna check my work?” she asks.

“I suppose I should,” says Professor Vernon, and walks over to look at the figures she’s written, perfectly mapping a small slice of eternity.

Later, after Peter and his daughter have left, Professor Vernon stands looking at the board. The girl’s better than he’d expected her to be at this age. He’s been waiting years for this call—for the announcement that Dodger has done something out of proportion with her supposed grade level—but he never thought it would be something this momentous, or this fortuitous. If Peter hadn’t slipped and mentioned the pen pal . . .

No matter. The boy was mentioned. Because Professor Vernon doesn’t need a name to know who Dodger has been corresponding with, or that no letters have ever passed between them. The Doctrine will seek itself. That’s been true of every iteration, even the ones that failed and have been mercifully retired from the program. The Middleton boy and the Cheswich girl sought each other once before, and then, only the presence of a babysitter loyal to Reed had allowed them to intervene before it was too late.

The Congress is watching. The Congress is always watching. They know Reed’s program is in the wind, loose and wild and evolving: they’ll seize it for their own if given the chance. The children are too young to be entangling their lives in this way. They need to finish maturing. They need to learn how much they owe the man who made them.

The girl is committed, body and soul, to whatever course of action she chooses: she’s not the weak link. He must admit that he doesn’t want her to be. She has a remarkable mind. He wants to spend some time in the safe harbor of her good regard before Reed calls her back to the Impossible City to become a pet. He became an alchemist because he wanted power; he became a mathematician because of his love for the subject. The chance to study with the girl who will one day be the laws of mathematics is too tempting to be set aside. But the boy . . .

Anyone can learn to read the dictionary. At this stage, his half of the Doctrine is little more than an eidetic memory and a love for the written word. He can be leveraged. He can be used to stop this before it goes too far; before they come together on their own. Yes.

Professor Vernon is only protecting the Cheswich girl, really. Contact with the Middleton boy at this delicate stage of her development would only drag her down to his level. She needs the freedom to soar.

His course of action thus set and justified to himself, Professor Vernon tears his eyes away from the blackboard. It’s time to make a phone call.

TELEPHONE WIRE

Timeline: 13:51 CST, February 11, 1995 (immediately).

“I see,” says Reed. “Yes, your loyalty is noted; yes, I will consider allowing you to tutor the girl. Thank you for your dedication.”

He drops the phone back into the cradle without waiting for the man on the other end to finish babbling his gratitude and terror. Vernon had not expected Reed himself to answer the phone, had expected to deliver his terrible discovery to some apprentice, or better, to some technician. Moments like this are precisely why Reed makes it a point to be the one on the other end of the line whenever possible. Nothing terrifies an underling like being confronted with someone who can actually hurt them.

Rage pounds in his temples; fear, unwanted and unfamiliar, thunders in his chest. He grips the side of the desk, head bowed, waiting for the moment to pass.

There is a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye. He looks up. A child stands there, older than his cuckoos, but not by much, no, not by much. One day, he’ll be able to pass her off as their peer.

She is dressed in a shapeless gown of flowered cotton, and her hair is strawberry blonde, a color that belongs in a bottle, not on a body. She watches him with solemn, frightened eyes. He terrifies the child: he knows that. That, alone, is enough to clear his panic away, at least partially. He terrifies her and yet here she is, looking at him, waiting.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Something’s broken,” she says, in a voice like a wounded animal, all hurt and dismay. “Something’s not right.”

Of course. The girl is from Leigh’s little project, a minor incarnation of a simple, controllable force. She’s not the first to carry that mantle. He doubts she’ll be the last. “What’s broken, child?” he asks.