the world was a brilliantly coloured firework display, each scintillating hue a variation on the central theme of pain. “It’s invisible,” he explained. “That’s why you didn’t see it.”
“Invis—” She stared at him. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s quite all right.” He spread his fingers out on his knee and took a couple of deep breaths. “It was the accident, you see. I was the only person in the building at the time, thank God, and something really, really weird happened, I honestly don’t remember anything about it; and when I came round in the hospital, it was gone. Only it wasn’t. I tried to tell the doctors it was still there, but they didn’t believe me. They just told me about phantom limb syndrome and arranged counselling.” He shrugged. “It can be a real nuisance sometimes, but what the hell?”
She was looking at the end of his sleeve. “Couldn’t you, like, paint it or something?”
He grinned. “Anything that touches it disappears too,” he said. “There’s an invisible shirt sleeve covering it right now. When I take the shirt off, it’ll reappear.”
“Oh wow.” Her eyes were wide. “That’s just so amazing. What makes it do that, do you think?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, I was a physicist. These days, I’m just a one-armed unemployable. I just try not to think about it.”
“But—” She stopped. “I understand,” she said. “It must be so painful for you. But still, it’s such a waste, I mean, one of the most brilliant minds of the twenty-first century—” She stopped again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll shut up now.”
He grinned. “Actually, I’ve been called worse,” he said. “But you’re wrong. A brilliant mind doesn’t make all that extra work for the cartographers.”
She laughed, then immediately resumed her serious face. “If I had a talent like yours, nothing on earth would stop me using it. I’d force them to listen to me, no matter what. I mean, you actually discovered the twelfth dimension. That was so cool.”
There’s only so much of that kind of thing a man can take. “Tell me more about what you’re doing,” he said. “It sounds really—”
Fortunately he didn’t have to supply a suitable adjective. She launched into another long and detailed account, allowing him time to give himself a stern talking-to. No more self-belief, because look what that got you into the last time. And positively no more falling in love. Absolutely not.
“So I was wondering if…” She’d sort of ground to a halt, and was looking hopefully at him, like a dog that can see the biscuit in its owner’s hand. “I know, it’s, like, so presumptuous of me, and if you say no, no way, I’ll quite understand, I really, really will. But if you could see your way to just running your eye over these equations, see if you can find where I’ve gone wrong—”
Ah. Right. Actually, he was so grateful to her for exhibiting properly normal opportunism that he forgave her completely. It made the whole encounter that bit less surreal. “Sure,” he said. “Let me see what you’ve got.”
She dived into her bag like a trained seal and emerged with the latest model LoganBerry. “The truth is,” she said, “my maths isn’t good enough for me to tackle a set of equations like this. I mean, I can ask the question, but I’m, like, not equipped to answer it, which is so frustrating, because I’m sure I’m nearly there, only—”
“Mphm.” He glanced at the complex patterns of numbers and symbols and blinked twice. Hot stuff. Tuning out her voice, he began to trace his way through the maze.
Halfway down the screen, he stopped. I know this place, he thought.
Or at least, once upon a time I came quite close. So, let’s see: if x is the interface, the dividing wall between dimensions, and y is the energy required to convert that interface into matter, and z is – He frowned. He could see quite clearly that z in this context was a whole lot more than just the last letter of the alphabet, but what, exactly? Hell, if he didn’t know better, he could almost believe that z was –
He realised he’d stopped breathing. “Are you OK?” she said.
“What? Oh, yes, fine.”
“Only you went this funny colour.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
If z was what he thought it was, and if he followed it through and actually found z, which was more than likely, given the direction the numbers were flowing.