by Tom Pollock
Time to grieve for the fallen later, Agent Blankman thought grimly. He’d known when they’d volunteered how high the price of this mission could be, both in blood and—his stomach flipped over as he remembered pirating the operational funds from Mum’s purse—honour. He tightened his grip on the bag in his other hand, the donuts inside bulging greasily against the paper. The objective had been achieved—that’s what young Private Trousers would have cared about.
It was 6:04 on a Sunday morning, the streets were deserted, and there were no lights in the windows when Agent Blankman pushed through the gate to his little front garden and made it to his door. He actually thought he’d got away with it until he realised he’d forgotten his keys.
And then Agent Blankman was gone, and all that was left in his place—shivering on the doorstep in my ruined underwear, miserably chewing donuts until my fear of frostbitten testicles overcame my fear of my vengeful, disappointed mother—was me.
There was nothing for it. I rang the bell.
I held my breath as I heard the footsteps. Come on, come on, I know you sleep light. The door swung open and I exhaled explosively in relief.
“Morning, sis.” I went for a winning grin, but with jam still caked around my mouth, I probably looked like a cannibal.
“Pete?” Bel rubbed at her eyes. Her hair was a halo of fire where she’d slept on it. “What are you . . . It’s six in the . . . Where the hell are your trousers?”
I bustled in past her and shut the door as quietly as I could.
“Dog got them, big one, seemed very keen on them, figured it was best to let it have them. Got a newfound respect for our postman.”
“You’re lying.”
“You can always tell.”
She waited, but I didn’t expand. All I could think about was how the blade felt slicing through the fabric. Some lies you tell, not to be believed, but because you can’t bear what will happen if you tell the truth.
Her gaze travelled from my bare legs to the donut bag, and from there to the smeared sugar at my lips. Her posture softened.
“Your attacks are getting worse,” she said. “You’re getting in food from outside so you can hide them. But, Pete . . .” I see her waking up, making the connections. She was there when I spent the last of my pocket money in the comics shop last week.
“Where did you get the money?”
I ignored the question. “Bel, please, I know Mum heard the door go, don’t tell her about this, tell her it was a delivery but they had the wrong house. Tell her—”
“Tell me what, Peter?”
My gaze jerked up and my heart fell down. Mum was on the landing, calmly tying the knot on her robe.
All the predictable questions came. All those Bel had asked plus one more. The worst one: “Peter, did you steal from me?”
I fled, face burning, choking on tears and half-formed explanations, clomping up the stairs to my room and slamming the door.
I sat on the floor. Donuts spilled from my arms, rolling galaxy-like spirals of sugar across the carpet. I stared at them, hating them, hating my need for them, and hating the shame that had driven me to buy them in secret. Superheroes and mathematicians stared down from the walls in condemnation. Galois, in particular, sneered at me.
You broke, he whispered. You coward.
But they were my friends, and their displeasure was never going to last long. Up, they urged me. To work. You can solve this. ’Tis but an equation. Rise, and bend it to your will.
You can’t blame them for talking like that; half of them died before 1900.
I went to my desk and opened the topmost of the hardback notebooks stacked there. On the pale red line at the very top of the page was written one word:
ARIA
Underneath, a string of equations unspooled down the page. Despair and hope warred inside me, and finally hope won, like it always did. I pulled up a chair, shivered as the chilly plastic hit my bare thighs, and got to work.
The fastest thing in the universe—light in a vacuum—travels at 299,792,458 metres per second. That’s a big number, but you still need to square it to get the energy released by a single kilo of uranium when it tears itself apart in the panic of nuclear fission. There were 64 such kilos in Little Boy, the atomic bomb that detonated in the air over Hiroshima one cloudy Monday in August 1945. Only 1.38 percent of that actually fissioned, but the blast still flattened concrete buildings, ignited a firestorm two miles across, and killed more than 66,000 men, women, and children instantly. And it all began with the decay of an atomic nucleus less than fourteen-thousandths of a millionth of a millionth of a metre across—a metre that’s defined by the speed of light.
Maths governs everything in the world: light, gravity, rivers, moons, minds, money. And everything, everything’s connected.
So, under the gazes of Burnell and Euler and Einstein, men and women who discovered the mathematics of quasars and mazes and space itself, I lost myself in the numbers trying to find the mathematics of me.
Trying to find a way to change those equations, a way to make myself brave.
NOW
The car brakes hard and lurches me awake.
In the front, Mum’s swearing at a black Ford that pulled out in front of us without signalling. Donuts and knives and mushroom clouds go grainy and fade as I blink sleep out of my eyes.
What was I dreaming about? I’ve already forgotten.
I count under my breath, waiting for my stomach and pulse to settle.
I remember reading somewhere that the human body can survive (brief) forces of up to a hundred Gs in car crashes. What I just felt must have been less than 2 percent of that, but it was still enough to set all my internal alarm bells ringing. Ever hear that story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”? Well, right now every nerve ending in my body is yelling:
WOLF! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLF! WOLFIE WOLFIE WOLF WOLF! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? NO, IT’S A FUCKING WOLF!
“Well,” Mum mutters. “We’re here.”
A heavy blanket of cloud lies over London, a pale sun showing through it like a lighthouse in heavy fog. The Natural History Museum rears in front of us, all cathedral-like spires and arches. In less than two hours, Mum will be receiving her award there, right under the blue whale skull.
Like I said, today’s a big deal.
Bel looks across the seat at me.
“Leap of faith, Petey,” she says.
I take a deep breath and hop down from the car. Bel shoves her hands in her coat pockets and saunters off ahead, but Mum stops me with a touch on the arm.
“Anabel tells me you’ve been dreading today. She says you’re scared you’ll mess it up somehow. Is that why this morning happened?”
I stare at the pavement.
“Peter, you could never mess it up. Even if you wanted to. Today is because of you and your sister. My work, my life, I wouldn’t have any of it without you, you know?”
She takes my face in her hands, tilts it up. Her face is glowing with pride, with love.
“I am so happy to have you here with me today.”
Inside, light streams down from vast skylights and arched windows onto ash-coloured bones. At the end of the lazy sine wave of her spine, Hope the blue whale’s massive skull gapes down at us. While I queue to pass through security, I count her bones (221), then the panes of glass in all the windows above us (368), and finally the paces between me and the door (55 and rising at an alarming rate). I can’t help myself. Thank Christ I never started smoking.
Around us, the hall is being transformed. Barked instructions echo off the walls; wheels squeak over tiles and keys jingle on belts as black-clad technicians (8 of them) rig lights and drag flight cases into position.
“How are you doing?” Bel whispers.
“Swell, fabulous, invincible, magnificent, superlative, out—”
Sh
e sighs, cutting me off. “Look, worst comes to worst, you can step out.” She points to a small black security camera wedged under the balcony like a roosting metal bat. “If you’re that desperate to see people hooting and hollering for Mum, you can watch the tape.”
A slick-looking man in a grey suit approaches us with a clipboard.
“Ah, Dr. Blankman,” he greets Mum as he swoops. “And you must be Peter, and Anabel.” He looks a little crestfallen when first Mum, then Bel ignore his proffered hand. “Delighted to meet you,” he presses on. There are patches of white on his knuckles where he’s gripping his clipboard. “Thank you for agreeing to come in early. If it’s all right, I’ll walk you through the process . . .”
He guides us around to the end of Hope’s bony whip of a tail.
“Tables are being set up, as you can see—ah yes, thank you, Steven.” He steps back as a techie wearing a black baseball cap rolls a big, round table past on its edge. There’s a long, deep scratch in the black leather of his boot. The steel toe cap beneath glints.
“And the event proper should begin in forty-five minutes or so.”
I’m starting to feel sick and I shiver inside my new suit. All of this; it’s too big, too bright, too loud.
Wolf, the voice inside me whispers.
“Where are we sitting?” I ask.
“All the recipients and their families will be seated in this central area here,” Captain Clipboard replies. “Brunch will take an hour and the presentation will follow immediately.” He turns to Mum. “Dr. Blankman, please wait at your table until your name is announced, then head to the podium to collect—a handshake will of course suffice when he gives you the award, but he does like to go for the double kiss on the cheek, even though we keep telling him how French it plays on TV, so if you could indulge him . . .”
“I will decide,” Mum says coolly, “who gets to kiss me, and how many times.”
“Ah . . . indeed.” Captain Clipboard’s crest wilts a little further. “The PM’s very much looking forward to your speech. The floor is, naturally, yours for as long as you wish, but we are trying to carve out a few extra minutes for his schedule today, so if you could, uh . . .”
“Yes?”
“Well, personally I always think brevity is the soul of wit. Don’t you?”
Mum stares at him.
“Dr. Blankman?” Captain Clipboard presses.
“Yes?”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I was being witty.”
“Ah . . .” He looks again to his trusty clipboard, as though it could offer him somewhere to hide. “Er, well then, that’s everything. The PM will be here in a half hour or so. He’s looking forward to meeting you.” Duty done, he retreats hastily.
Oh yeah, I meant to say: the Prime Minister’s handing out the awards. He wants to look like he’s big into British science and research. Like I said: BIG DEAL.
As we get closer to showtime, white-clothed tables sprout like mushrooms on the tiled floor, and white-jacketed waiters set each with silver cutlery so fancy the knife blades have little serrated edges and are even embossed with the museum logo, a black nhm. My mouth feels like a desert, so I take an orange juice from a table and sip. You know when that’s not a good idea? When you’ve spent the morning chewing crockery and your mouth is full of tiny cuts. I gasp with the shock of it and put the glass of sunshine-coloured torture liquid back on the table. The black clothes of the technicians gradually give way to brighter colours, sharp suits, and elegant dresses. I count thirty-six people dressed like guests rather than crew. Captain Clipboard does the rounds with them as well. They smile and chat with him. None of them have Mum’s wit, I guess.
I glance back to the central area where we’ll be sitting, and the knot in my stomach tightens. I’m going to be surrounded by strangers. People I can’t predict. I will be sitting with my back to them. A ruddy-faced man in a grey suit laughs with a black woman with braided hair in a green dress. Four more men and one woman show up. Their clothes look cheap and they’re not drinking the Buck’s Fizz. Security, I figure, for our nation’s chinless leader.
I now see that single sheets of paper have been placed on the plates in the middle of our places. I sneak a closer look. They’re TV waiver forms. Sweat prickles along the edge of my collar. I rub the back of my neck and look up. Above, on the landing of the great staircase, a TV camera perches like a predator ready to spring.
Wolf.
“Mum,” I whisper. “Mum. Are they going to broadcast this?”
“He’s the Prime Minister, Peter. It might make the news.”
Shit. Don’t freak out, don’t freak out.
“The other people, sitting near us, do you know them?
Are any of them likely to make any sudden moves or loud noises? Do any of them go bump in the night? Will any of them trigger an attack? Mum looks at me, frowns, and scribbles something in her ever-present notebook.
“They’re all colleagues, Peter, old friends of mine. It’ll be fine.”
Fine means okay, but it also means narrow, close.
An old colleague, laughing delightedly, touches Mum’s shoulder. She shoots me a worried look—Are you all right?—but I wave her off and he leads her away to meet his starstruck friends.
“Get a grip,” I mutter to myself, but I already have a grip on myself and it’s tightening, squeezing the air out of me.
“Bel?” It comes out in a hoarse mumble, because I can barely breathe. “Bel?”
There’s no air, my lungs are telling me. Nonsense, lungs, you big drama queens. This hall is 64 by 28 by 30. Even allowing for the internal walls, the staircase, and the arch in the ceiling, there are still more than fifty thousand cubic metres of the good stuff. More than I could breathe in a year even if this place were airtight. So you, Mr. and Mrs. Lung, have nothing to complain about.
I check my watch: it’s 10:45 a.m. Still two and a half hours before I can get out of here and I’m already engaging my lungs in conversation.
Shit.
My hands are shaking and it takes me three goes to open my pillbox. I dry-swallow a lorazepam and it feels like a thornbush in my throat. I cast around for Bel, and I see her chatting amiably with the black woman in the green dress. She’s smiling, but for the first time I can remember, her face doesn’t reassure me.
“What?” she mouths at me, her forehead crinkled into an irritated line. “What’s wrong?”
I spread my hands. Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. That’s the only sane, rational answer. Only there are too many people, or too few, or the tables aren’t spaced out evenly enough, or the lights seem superfluous in a room with 368 panes of glass in the windows, or some other perfectly normal thing that today just screams, Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I can feel myself slipping, hear the familiar click of the talons as the prehistoric lizard advances down the hallways of my brain, prising my hands off the controls, wrapping its scaly claws around in their place. I’m fighting it, but I know it’s inevitable.
Now the sweat’s pouring in stinging sheets into my eyes and I blink it away. The red light on the camera above me blinks back. Did I imagine that? Are they filming already? There’s still half an hour until showtime. A stagehand pulls a flight case across the room. The wheels growl over the tiles like a . . .
Wolf.
Black mites swarm in front of my eyes. People are talking to me, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. Now they’re looking at me, faces confused, concerned, now blurring, because I’m moving fast, turning, spinning, almost losing my balance as I sprint for the door. 53 paces and counting, 52, 51 . . .
“Peter!”
Mum’s voice, already a long way behind me. Movement is good; it forces breath, but not now, not today. I’m stumbling and wheezing and coughing but somehow still running. Wait, take a second; think. But my legs won’t l
et me. I sprint down corridors lined with display cases of butterflies; inkblot eyes stare at me from their wings. Pins and needles race up and down my arms as I pump them. I can’t feel my feet.
How did I get here? Which turns did I take? I look back. Identical dark stone corridors stretch behind me. Am I one turn of a corner from the hall, or twenty?
“Peter!” Mum’s voice: though faint, she sounds furious and disappointed. I don’t know how far I’ve run. Stop. Turn around. You’re ruining everything.
I can’t.
I blink sweat out of my eyes and see fossils, the grinning bones of a dinosaur. Desperately, I try to wrestle my thoughts back under control. There are twenty-three bones of the dinosaur skeleton; twenty three’s a prime, primordial; these bones are the old lizard’s primes, indestructible and irreducible.
I can’t do it. I take off again down the hallway. The lights dim and the walls seem to fade until all I can see are the bones in the cabinets around me. My legs are screaming with the effort of running. It’s as if there’s something pushing back against me, like the darkness is solid. I’m no longer running through air, but earth. I’m buried and blind. I can’t keep it up. My chest’s going to burst. I stumble to a stop, coughing, and my legs fold up under me. Mr. and Mrs. Lung are backed up, full of dark, wet soil. I hear a whisper of welcome from the bones around me, my fellow buried things.
“Peter!” It’s Mum, still faint, but still I hear an edge to her voice, a touch of hysteria, almost out of control. I’ve never heard Mum out of control before. “Peter!”
Oh god, I’ve really screwed up this time. I’ve embarrassed her, upstaged her moment in the sun.
Two: get talking.
“Sun. Son. Words. Fffuck!” My tongue and brain are numb, and the words won’t come.
“Peter . . .”
And then,
