Page 61 of Imaginary Numbers

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.