Page 68 of Imaginary Numbers

“What if I can’t?” I whispered. The numbers nibbling at the edges of the world felt . . . big. They felt massive in a way I’d never encountered before, like they were the numbers that underpinned the entire universe. Tackling them wouldn’t just be like adding two and two together to see whether I got four. It would be like reinventing calculus, written in starlight and graded by the moon.

“You’re Sarah Zellaby,” she said. “Of course you can.”

I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Verity was gone.

Slowly, I sank back down into the seat I’d conjured and opened my laptop. Ingrid was still filling the screen with my name, over and over again, an unending stream of letters that seemed to lose all meaning as they went on. Words were like that. They were fragile, mutable. Their meanings changed depending on the context. “Sarah” could be me, or someone else, or a pet, or a doll, or a piece of heavy machinery owned by an overly sentimental construction engineer. It wasn’t fixed.

Math, though . . . math never changed. Math always meant exactly what it said, no more and no less, and refused to be written for anyone. Math was always math. If I turned myself into numbers, I would be a wholly unique equation, something so much bigger and wilder and harder to define than “Sarah.” I looked at the screen again. I put my fingers on the keys.

Give me one good reason, I typed. Give me one good reason I should help you after you hurt Artie, and threatened my family, and brought me here against my will. Give me one good reason I should do this math for you, and not for myself.

Because if you do, she replied, we’ll go away forever.

I stopped. Then, haltingly, I typed, What do you mean, you’ll go away forever?

I mean the cuckoos. All of us. We’ll take the answer you give us, and we’ll open a door, and we won’t look back. They’re gathering, Sarah. The cuckoos are sending out the call, and they’re gathering, ready for you to open the way. You can save this world from us. You can create a future without fear of what’s lurking where you can’t see. Isn’t that enough for you?

There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. But the numbers were nibbling at the edges of the world, and whatever it was, I couldn’t see it.

I solve, you go, I typed. Promise.

Promise.

Something about this felt wrong. I took a deep breath and answered anyway.

Fine, I wrote. Now go away and let me work.

I closed my eyes. Only for a moment, but when I opened them the laptop was gone, taking the desk with it. It was just me and the chalkboard, pristine, inviting, waiting for me to get started.

I rose and walked over to the board, picking up the first piece of chalk. It fit perfectly against my fingers. The numbers whispered, urging me to begin. I pressed the chalk to the board.

I began.

Nineteen

“Well, bugger.”

—Thomas Price

A sleepy residential neighborhood in Beaverton, Oregon, about to have a real problem

MARK’S DIRECTIONS HAD BROUGHT us out of the woods, past Portland to Beaverton, a suburb where the lights always seemed to turn off before the sun had fully committed to going to bed. The streets were asleep, lined in darkened houses, sidewalks empty.

Until.

We turned one last corner, and the sidewalks abruptly acquired a thriving, if silent, population of pale-skinned, black-haired people whose clothing came from all walks of life. One woman who looked like she’d just stepped off the pages of Vogue turned her head to watch us roll by, her eyes flashing briefly white. Two men dressed like bikers did the same, followed by a man in the pastel scrubs of a pediatric nurse and a woman in a bathing suit. She wasn’t shivering, despite the chill of the early morning air. None of them seemed to be bothered even a little by the cold.

We passed what looked like an entire preschool class, all of them wearing pajamas. Some were clutching stuffed toys. All of them looked absent, somehow, like they didn’t really understand where they were or what was going on.

“What’s up with the kids?” I asked.

Mark glanced in their direction. “They’re still larval. They haven’t reached their first instar. They don’t have the history yet. Someone had to go and get them from their host families. Most of them probably think they’re having a really strange dream.”

Voice carefully measured to contain her horror and growing rage, Elsie asked, “And the host families . . . ?”

“They weren’t the target. A few of them are probably dead, if that’s what you’re asking, but most would have been asleep when the children were taken.” Mark sounded utterly unconcerned, like this was nothing of any real importance. “Either you’ll stop your cousin and they’ll get their kids back, or you won’t, and they’ll be vaporized before they can wake up. So I guess they’re fine.”

“You guess?” snapped Elsie. “What happened to you being the kinder, gentler cuckoo?”