Root of Unity

by SL Huang

  “It is marvelous, isn’t it?” Her eyes were shining. “Thank you, Miss Russell, for…for giving me this. For everything, but—for this especially.” She huffed a laugh. “Is that wrong, that rebuilding my work was the most important part to me?”

  I shrugged. “It’s math, right?”

  “It’s math,” she repeated reverently.

  We sipped for a moment in silence.

  “I wish you would let me add you as an author,” Halliday said, gazing out into the woods. “This will be history, some day, and it’s your work, too.”

  “Nice of you,” I said, “but it isn’t. I filled in the gaps, but those were your leaps, every one of them.” I raised the bottle. “To a job well done.”

  She didn’t toast, instead speaking very quickly. “Collaborate with me.”

  I spewed tequila all down my front, my good feeling evaporating like a popped soap bubble. “What?”

  “We work well together. Keep collaborating with me.”

  I shrank away from her. The cool mountain afternoon was suddenly too hot and close. “What are you talking about? No!”

  “I don’t—I don’t understand,” she faltered.

  “This isn’t what I do, okay?” I snapped. I backed away from her until I hit the other rail. “It’s fine for you, but it’s not for me. Not ever. No.”

  “But why not?” Her voice rose, disturbed and hurt. “I asked Arthur—he said you don’t work, not that he knows of—you don’t publish—why not?”

  “Why not?” I cried. “Why would I?”

  She stepped over and literally got in my face. “Because the type of talent you have—not to use it is tragic!”

  “I use it!”

  “You know what I mean.” Her face tightened, her anger personal. “When I think what you could give—the advancements—I know it’s not a matter of interest; you clearly keep up with the field. If it’s money you need, I can get you a research position—”

  “It’s not money,” I said.

  “Please.” Her voice cracked on the word. “I’m pleading with you. What you could bring to mathematics—you can’t walk away. You can’t.”

  “It’s my life,” I said, slamming down the tequila bottle on the rail. “I sure as hell can.” I turned and pushed off the deck, down the stairs, and away from the house.

  Chapter 21

  Professor Halliday’s words echoed in my ears all the way back to my current apartment, as if my skull were empty with only her voice rattling around inside.

  Collaborate with me. We work well together.

  I shook my head, violently, as if that would fling the words out, make me forget what we had just done.

  I went inside and sat down at my table. I had some printouts on it, some journal papers I’d been reading before this case started. A lifetime ago.

  I picked one up. One of the latest advancements in number theory.

  I glanced it over. I’d read to the end of this one already. The final conclusion included questions for future research.

  Number theory.

  Number theory was easy. Piece of cake, I told myself, the claim trembling even in my thoughts.

  I looked at the questions, picked up a pen, and turned the sheet of paper over. The blank back stared up at me, ready to envelop me.

  I put the pen against the paper. Considered the first question in the future research section.

  Do the upper and lower bounds proved here for g(k) hold true for all n?

  I could answer it. I should be able to answer it.

  The white page mocked me. The faint outline the black ink on the front showed through: words, formulas, lemmas, equations—ones I hadn’t written. Such unassuming text, and suddenly so monumentally unreachable.

  I had taken down a global conspiracy using mathematics.

  I had survived a sniper shot using mathematics.

  For fuck’s sake, I had just helped Professor Halliday complete her proof of one of the most fundamental results in modern complexity theory.

  I was unbelievably, impossibly good.

  The ballpoint pen dug through the page, stabbing a hole in it and indenting and blackening the tabletop beneath.

  I could see patterns, build structures out of them. I could compute faster than anyone should be able to. I could connect the fucking dots when someone else laid the insights out in front of me.

  But those insights themselves…the ones Halliday had drawn out, the brilliant jumps she had made, the ideas she had thought to use…

  The leap of inspiration, the piece of my brain that made me a mathematician instead of a computer, I reached for it, and, and nothing. I groped as if for a phantom limb and found myself lost, with no touchstone, no mathematics.

  Inspiration isn’t supposed to come every second, I reminded myself. Was I being too paranoid? Used to seeing things so fast that I leapt to a conclusion something was wrong if the math took only a little more work?

  I knew the answer even as I asked the question. Because I hadn’t always been like this, had I? I knew I hadn’t. A ghost of memory whispered by; I recalled the feeling of making connections as fast as I could write. I’d had the skill. Had the power.

  And now I…didn’t. I was broken. And I hadn’t even realized it until this moment. I could understand, I could calculate, but I couldn’t create. I didn’t have the one most important skill that made me a human mathematician instead of…instead of a very slick computer.

  My hand shook as I pressed on the pen, as I dug a trench into the table, tearing the paper, and then I flung the pen away from me with so much force it left a black slash on the wall before dropping to the floor. I scooped up the pages in front of me, tearing at them, shredding them. Cast the crumpled papers away as if they scorched me. My breath heaved. I felt a dizzying vertigo, as if the ground had just opened up and swallowed me into darkness, and I was floating, disoriented. Lost.

  Mathematics was who I was. If I didn’t have math…then I had nothing.

  The papers strewn across my table and floor grew monstrous, mocking. I bolted out of the apartment, down the steps, blindly trying to escape from the brokenness I carried inside me.

  It had started to rain, the flat, drenching downpour LA got a handful of times out of the year, and it stuck my clothes and hair to me immediately, waterlogging the cloth against me and plastering it to my skin. The rain fit, somehow, the flood washing me away just as I so desperately felt everything else in me washing away. Dribbling out of me.

  Leaving me empty. Desolate.

  I didn’t know who I was anymore.

  I found myself standing in the rain outside Checker’s house without remembering how I’d gotten there. The grayness of the sheeting rain combined with the grayness of the evening, but Checker’s living room window was a yellow square shining through the shadows; he wasn’t in the Hole for once. I trudged up the ramp onto his porch and rang the doorbell. My fingers were numb.

  “Cas! Are you all right?”

  Checker had swung open the door; he wore a dark green fleece and was backlit by a bright and warm entryway. I stood on the porch, shivering.

  “My God, come in—you look like a drowned rat. Come in. Are you okay? There aren’t any bad guys chasing you or anything, are there?” He cast a quick and slightly nervous glance at the street behind me as he ushered me inside and shut the door.

  I shook my head and stood still. I was dripping all over his floor. That was probably rude.

  He touched my arm. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  I kept dripping.

  “Hey, um, let me get you a towel—and some clothes—hang on a sec—”

  Within seconds he had thrust a thick towel and some folded sweats into my hands and was gently pushing me into the bathroom. “Get cleaned off; shower if you want to—you’re covered in mud—you’re okay, right? I mean physically? You don’t need a first-aid kit or anything?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Good, good, okay, then, uh, get dry, and I
’ll, uh, I’ll make some tea or something, okay? You need anything else?”

  “No,” I said, and shut the door.

  I took a long shower, the steam scalding my skin raw. I didn’t know why I had come here. I didn’t know what I was doing.

  When I came out, wrapped in the warmth of thick, dry clothes, Checker immediately thrust a hot mug into my hands. A half-sweet, half-spicy aroma spiraled up with the steam from the contents.

  “It’s cider,” said Checker. “With, uh, some whiskey in it. It looked like you could use some. But if you want it without, I’ve got that, too. And I put some soup on; it’ll be another few minutes, though.”

  I’d known Checker over two years and had no idea he was capable of being so domestic. I stood stupidly with the warm mug of cider in my hands.

  “Cas.” He tugged gently at my wrist. “Come sit down, okay?”

  I followed him into the living room and allowed him to ensconce me on his couch. He levered out of his chair to sit next to me; across from us, a black-and-white Western played on the flat screen, the volume muted. Tall, rugged white men squinted at each other and put meaningful hands on their six-shooters.

  I can draw faster than that, I thought. But I couldn’t do what really mattered.

  “What happened?” said Checker softly.

  I stared down into the cider. The steam coming off it burned my face and made my eyes water. “I think I lost something,” I said.

  He waited.

  “I don’t know if I can explain it,” I mumbled. “Working with Halliday…I hadn’t realized, before. I can’t…I used to be able to do that.”

  “Do what?” asked Checker gently.

  “The…the spark.” I wasn’t sure what to call it. “The leap…the inspiration, or intuition, or—I can’t…I can’t do it. I can’t do…math. Not real math. Not the type that counts.” My voice crackled around the edges.

  He digested that. I wasn’t sure what I would do if he told me just to keep on, that he knew I could do it, or some bullshit like that. Or, worse, if he told me it wasn’t important, that lots of people couldn’t do it, that this was a minor thing, a nothing thing—because it didn’t matter if other people couldn’t; other people had husbands and wives and children and hobbies and passions and lives, but mathematics was the only thing I had, the only thing that made me worth anything at all. And the one piece of it that made me a person…it was gone.

  “You’re sure?” Checker said finally.

  “I know I used to be able to, a long time ago.” The admission took effort to force out. “And now I know I…can’t. I’m—I’m damaged, somehow.”

  Checker reached over and took one of my hands off the mug to squeeze it in his. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I was sorry, too.

  “You don’t have to answer,” he said. “But do you know what—the way you’re talking, what you’re saying, it sounds…it sounds like something happened. To you.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. My memories jumbled up against each other, a chaos of kaleidoscoping emotion. “Yeah,” I said. “Something happened.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” That much I was sure of.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I took a sip of the cider. It was still too hot, but the scalding burn fit my mood. The whiskey spread through my senses, a blessed surcease.

  “I wish I could do something,” Checker said, the words low and weighted like it was what he wanted more than anything in the world right now. “I wish I could fix it for you.”

  “Me too,” I said. Emotions I didn’t want to have balled up inside me, stifling, strangling.

  Checker snaked one arm around me and leaned me into him. I stiffened for a moment and then let him. The sensation was odd, a warring mix of relief and strangeness, that someone would touch me like that who wasn’t trying to hurt me. I leaned into the strangeness, trying to let my mind blank out, to divorce myself from the desolation just for a moment.

  Some time later, a faint ding sounded from the kitchen. “I’ll be right back,” Checker murmured. He gave me a squeeze and kissed the top of my head before shifting back to his chair and heading into the kitchen.

  Wait.

  What?

  People didn’t make affectionate gestures toward me. I didn’t know how to parse one. Didn’t know what I was supposed to do in response.

  I sat and waited, trying to mull it over, but my brain stalled out against the swamp of depression and self-pity. I finished the cider instead of thinking; it was lukewarm now but still spicy-sweet, the whiskey strong and sharp.

  Checker came back after a few minutes, balancing a tray with steaming soup bowls. He slid it to the coffee table and moved to sit next to me again, leaning forward to arrange the food. “Here. You should eat something. It’s good, I promise.”

  “You kissed me,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said it, except he’d confused me, and I was too drained, too empty, to try to translate social cues the way I was probably supposed to.

  “Sorry?” He looked up, and I could almost see his thoughts rewind. “Oh! I wasn’t—sorry. I didn’t mean—not that I don’t find you attractive, of course, but I wasn’t trying to—”

  “No, it’s okay,” I assured him. “Wait. Attractive?”

  He looked befuddled. “Well, yes.”

  I squinted at him. These sorts of revelations were supposed to make you happy or angry or upset or disconcerted or…or something, but I didn’t feel anything like that. It didn’t matter whether Checker wanted to jump into bed with me, or whatever he might want. Because nothing mattered.

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable,” Checker said earnestly. “It’s not like I want to—well, anything. I just meant, you know, in the semi-objective sense of women I would find attractive, being that I’m me, I mean…you’re on the list. It’s, uh, it’s not like I want anything from you.”

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” I said. “I was just confused.”

  “About what?”

  “You flirt with everyone,” I pointed out mechanically. “You don’t do it with me.”

  His face wrinkled in surprise. “Well, I did, when we first met, but you never flirted back. I try not to be a creeper.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Cas?” He touched my arm. I’d never taken note before of how tactile Checker was. The relief-mixed-with-strangeness flooded back, an almost dangerous feeling. Daring me.

  “I don’t want anything from you, either,” I said. I slid my hand down so I was touching his, very lightly. It was the strangest sensation in the world. “But I want…to not think for a while. Is that okay? Can we do that?”

  He turned his hand under mine, rotating it to interlace our fingers. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. We can do that.”

  We let the soup grow cold on the coffee table.

  Chapter 22

  Checker’s breath was slow and even beside me, but I stayed staring up into the dark. I hadn’t drunk enough to pass out, and right now I wasn’t even sure if that would be enough.

  Besides, I felt…strange. Not better, not exactly, but less…untethered. Not because of the sex; I didn’t think that was the important piece. All I knew was that I felt less desolate, here, with the warmth of another person beside me, a person who cared enough to let me in out of the rain and be…whatever I needed.

  Weird.

  I didn’t realize I’d said the word out loud until Checker stirred next to me. “Weird?” he said sleepily, a touch of humor in his voice. “Well, I’ve had girls say worse.”

  I smacked him lightly across the chest. “No, I meant…” I wasn’t sure what I had meant. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling, or why, or even if the physical intimacy had been significant. What did I usually feel after sex? I thought back, but the memories were hazy, like mirages that were only there if I saw them out of the corner of my eye. Maybe they weren’t even real at all.

  “Don’t worry about it,” murmured Check
er, shifting to snug one arm around me under the blanket. His goatee was tickling my shoulder, and he was very warm. And smelled nice, like slightly burned plastic. “The legs thing, I know. It’s different.”

  I could feel myself flushing in the dark, and tried to explain too fast, my sudden discomfort at what he had thought making the words trip over each other. “That’s not what I—that wasn’t even—okay? It’s all weird to me. That’s what I meant. Not you, but, this.” I wasn’t even sure what I meant by “this”—intimacy, friendship, the bizarre idea that someone would be there to catch me when I fell—but I didn’t know how to articulate any of that, so I went with the easiest option. “Sex,” I grumbled at the ceiling. “I don’t remember if I ever—I think this might have been the first time, for me.”

  Checker didn’t say anything.

  “Christ,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “I’m not. I’m just…confused,” he said, and I was acutely and awkwardly aware we were reversing our conversation from the previous night. “What do you mean, you think?”

  “It’s one of those things,” I said, already tired of discussing this. “I thought I had, but I can’t pinpoint…you know.”

  “No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t.”

  “I probably forgot, that’s all,” I mumbled into the pillow.

  “You…forgot?” he echoed.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but the silence was too weighty, full of pressure and worry and expectation.

  “Look,” I exploded, “It’s not a big deal. Maybe I just got really drunk one night and forgot.”

  “You’re incapable of getting that drunk. You’d have to inject it into your veins.”

  “Then maybe it was something other than alcohol. Or something. Look, there are a hundred possible explanations. I’m telling you, it’s no big deal.”

  “You think someone might have drugged you and you say—you say it isn’t a big deal?” Checker shifted, levering himself up on one elbow next to me. “Cas, you’re worrying me. Roofies make you forget; it could’ve been—” He bit down on the sentence.