Page 37 of Middlegame

Book III

Graduate

Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.

—Edward Lorenz

There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.

—Homer, The Odyssey

FAMILIAL VISITATION

Timeline: 0:00 PST, September 6th, 2003 (midnight).

The man in the purple coat walks through the hospital by candlelight, and no one stops him, or asks him where he’s going. No one even looks in his direction. He is invisible, or close enough as to make no difference, and all thanks to the wax-dipped hand he carries. Wicks sprout from beneath the fingernails, burning with a steady blue light.

Darren would be pleased to know that every part of him has been put to good use, or so Reed supposes. It was always difficult to tell, with that boy.

He walks on, heels clicking against the polished floor, until he reaches a private room. The door is closed. Good. He wants to see her. He hasn’t seen any of them since they were born, and they came so close to losing this pair today.

Reed opens the door with a twist of his hand and slips inside, into the room where Dodger sleeps.

She looks so small, lost in the tangle of sheets, connected to the machines which monitor her fate. He thinks this may be the best way to see her: a hospital is much like a lab, after all, sterile and polished and perfect. She is perfect. With her eyes closed, red lashes resting against pale cheeks, she looks so much like Asphodel that even his wizened, hardened heart feels a pang of regret for what might have been, had he not killed his master and taken everything she’d ever loved.

Heredity is not only in blood. It is in the sympathetic vibration of the universe, in the places where atom becomes alchemy. Asphodel made him and he made this broken child: she is, in a very real sense, Asphodel’s granddaughter, her Zib finally become flesh and laid out in a bed of white linen and gauze, waiting for his approval.

“Hello, child,” he says, and runs the fingers of his free hand along the curve of Dodger’s cheek.

The girl whimpers and twists in her sleep, but she does not wake. The Hand of Glory does its work, and does it well.

“You’ve presented me with a quandary,” he says. “You tried to kill yourself. You nearly succeeded. Either you are weak, or you’re a failure, and either way, I fear you may be unfit for the program you were designed for. Two of your siblings are already gone. Two more show no promise, only a plodding determination to survive. You have too much fire and not enough firmament. Why should I let you continue?”

Seth and Beth, dead and dust and dissected; Andy and Sandy, enduring and emotionless and uninspired. They’ll be eliminated soon, failing some great and unexpected change. Dodger and Roger are the last hope of their generation, and as he looks at her, it’s difficult to see where that hope could possibly bear fruit. Perhaps it’s time to start over.

But the astrolabe began running backward when this pair drew their first breath. Their birth began the final part of his plan, and he wants it to be them, oh yes, he wants it to be them. Even if they lack the strength to lead him to the City, he wants them to draw the Doctrine fully down.

“Why?” he asks again, and his word has the power of command.

Dodger sighs in her sleep, small and sad. “The sky burns gold, and the road is so long,” she says. “He can’t get there without me.”

“He?” Reed leans closer. “He who?”

“There’s a tower,” she says. “At the center of the city. A tower made of calculations. If I solve them, I’ll know what the universe is made of. Please, may I solve them?”

Reed hesitates. She’s math, not language; she could be speaking imprecisely. “Can you?” he asks.

Eyes still closed, breath still steady, she laughs. “I can, I can, I know I can, but I have to get there, may I? Please, please, may I?”

“Will you solve them for me?”

“I’ll solve them for myself. I don’t care what happens after.”

She isn’t Asphodel’s after all, lacks the ambition of the grandmother she so impossibly resembles. She isn’t even his, for all he’s ever wanted is to know the secrets of the City, the lost words in the golden library, the hidden numbers in the diamond tower. She wants to uncover them for the sake of knowing it’s been done, and then walk away.

She’s perfect.

“For now, the road is yours,” he says, and leans forward, and kisses her temple. “A gift for you, my daughter, to see you through the days ahead, while you recover: none of this was ever real. The boy was a dream. When you wake up, he’ll be gone.”