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.”
Dodger moans in her sleep, and is still.
In the morning, she will have a blister where he kissed her. It will burst in a week, remaining red and weeping for the better part of a year before it finally, resentfully heals. But no matter.
The morning finds her sleeping, alive and alone. Everything continues from there.
ENROLLMENT
Timeline: 08:35 PST, August 15, 2008 (five years later).
Dodger hits the edge of campus like she has a grudge, hunched over the handlebars of her bike and pedaling hard. She knows she’s late, three hundred and seven seconds, ticking over into three hundred and eight as she swerves to avoid a squirrel. Three hundred and nine when she rides over the curb, tires somehow finding purchase. She almost wishes they wouldn’t. She won’t hurt herself on purpose—the razor blades and nightmares and group therapy sessions for victims of violent crime are in the past, not the future—but showing up bruised and bloody might garner her a little sympathy, whereas “sorry, I was up until four in the morning arguing with mathematicians on the other side of the world” just makes her look like a flake.
(Sometimes she thinks the razor blades aren’t that far behind her. She’s transmuted her self-destructive impulses into “healthier” forms, like riding her bike into traffic and shorting herself on sleep until she starts seeing things, but that doesn’t mean the impulses are gone. They’re just harder for anyone else to see.