The Zanna Function

by Daniel Wheatley

  Zanna stepped into a small waiting room. Remembering the bland and neutral car Dr. Mumble had created yesterday, she was surprised to see his waiting room actually had a bit of personality to it. The wallpaper was a flourishing pattern of coffee and cream, and the Victorian couches along the walls were lavishly upholstered in pillowy gold. He had no receptionist, so Zanna stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering how she was supposed to make her arrival known. There was only one other door in the room, a heavy-looking door made out of some kind of golden alloy. Zanna raised her fist and knocked on it, just once.

  It sprung open with a breath, and Zanna jumped back, not expecting so heavy a door to be so quick. Dr. Mumble stood on the other side. “Ms. Mayfield. You have found your way here.”

  His office was far less colorful than the waiting room. Parts of it, he had compromised on—the desk commanding the center of the room was enormous and made out of copper, and the grandfather clock off to the side was far too ornate for a man with no sense of humor. But the bookshelves were gray and devoid of any kind of silly knickknack or framed picture. There were no curtains on the windows.

  Two men sat at a table off to the side. One was an Englishman with a rich gray suit, a full mustache, a scolding demeanor, and a bronze sheriff’s badge pinned to his lapel. The other was a genial old man in a black business suit whom Zanna recognized at once. “Head Primer, Lord Baxter Hemmington,” Dr. Mumble said, gesturing to the Englishman. “And the president of the United States, Oliver Ernst.”

  Zanna stuttered. “The president?” she finally managed to spit out. “Here?”

  President Ernst nodded. “Congratulations, Zanna.” Even when it was just her, he spoke like he was addressing a crowd of people.

  “President Ernst has very graciously taken time out of his busy schedule to return,” Dr. Mumble said. With a flick of his eyes, something flew off a nearby shelf and settled in front of Zanna. She gasped. It was a small plate of silver with an ingot of pure gold on top of it.

  The fact that he had just handed her a small fortune seemed lost on Dr. Mumble, who launched into a rote speech without an ounce of emotion to it. “Welcome to St. Pommeroy’s. This is a school for the education and development of gifted children in the realms of math, chemistry, physics, and the self. You have been extended an invitation to study with us due to your innate abilities and the potential you promise. Before we begin, however, we ask that all our students undergo a registration. This is a courtesy we provide to our respective governments due to the nature of our studies. Place your hand upon the Summation and state your name. It will be brief.”

  “Hang on.” Her brain felt like it was chewing through a hunk of tough meat. “What do you mean, registration?”

  “Put your hand upon the Summation,” Dr. Mumble repeated, pointing to the gold ingot. “Then state your name. It will not take long.”

  She extended her hand. The metal was surprisingly soft under her fingertips. It almost felt as if her hand sunk into it a little.

  “Zanna Mayfield.”

  The sensation began all the way at the top of her head and worked its way down. Not painful but still uncomfortable—a feeling like someone was walking around her with an intense scrutiny in his eyes, taking in every inch of her. Every blemish in her skin, every bulge in her eyes, every tip of her choppy haircut. Then she felt a sharp, piercing pain, and she jerked her hand away. Where her thumb had rested, a small and perfect dot of blood remained.

  “It bit me!”

  “Yes,” Dr. Mumble said, and he produced a soft white towel that smelled of orchids for her to wrap her hand in. “Some methods must always remain classical.”

  Two thin pieces of gold foil separated from the Summation, like someone had torn the top sheets off a pad of paper. Imprinted on the foil was Zanna’s name, a picture of her looking extremely dubious, her handprint, and the dot of blood. Two arms sprouted from the Summation’s silver plate and rolled each of the delicate foils up tight. The arms offered both to Dr. Mumble, who took them and put them in silver cylinders no bigger than a pen. The dean screwed a cap on each and handed one to Lord Hemmington and one to the president.

  “Thank you,” President Ernst said. He touched a piece of chrome metal beside him on the table, and it opened like a briefcase. Inside were rows of empty cushions just big enough to hold an entire class’s worth of registration tubes. The president put Zanna’s tube inside, and the briefcase sealed itself without a seam. “I shall leave you to your studies. Good luck, Zanna. Hubert, Baxter, until we meet again.”

  “Safe travels,” Lord Hemmington said. It was the first thing he had said since she arrived. But the president didn’t head toward the front door. Instead, he went out onto Dr. Mumble’s back balcony and took a smartphone out of his pocket. For a moment, Zanna wondered if he was just making a phone call, but then the phone unfolded and kept unfolding until it had wrapped around the president entirely. With a cheery wave through the glass window of his strange one-man craft, he sailed off into the sky.

  “There is one other piece of business,” Dr. Mumble said, turning Zanna’s attention back to the table. “Concerning yesterday’s events.”

  He gestured to the seat the president had vacated, and Zanna sat down, still a little stunned. After all, it wasn’t every day she met the president of the United States, gave him a drop of her blood, and then watched him fly away in an escape pod. She drew a deep breath through her nose and sorted through the odors, wondering if this was another illusion. But she could still smell the fancy cologne of the president lingering on the chair, the distinct chemical taste of the block of gold, and the England damp of Lord Hemmington. No one could make such an unreal illusion anyway.

  “I want you to know that we take these sorts of crimes very seriously,” Lord Hemmington said. His hands clenched together stiffly as he talked, as if he were holding a live frog and who knew what might happen if it escaped. “Whoever created that illusion will be found, and they will answer for their crimes.”

  Lord Hemmington had an archaic tone to his voice that reminded her of tales of righteous knights and dragon slayers. She almost felt sorry for the poor woman who had broken into her bedroom last night.

  “Do you or your parents have any enemies?” he continued. “Anyone who would have a motive to kidnap you? How much per year would you say your parents make? Are you wealthy?”

  “Kidnap?” Zanna said. “You think it was a kidnapping attempt?”

  “It’s more common than you think,” Lord Hemmington said. “Though this instance was more elaborate than most.”

  “She wasn’t trying to kidnap me,” Zanna said. Even if she didn’t know what exactly the strange woman wanted, Zanna was sure it wasn’t kidnapping. A kidnapper wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of creating a fake school and asking her to sign a contract.

  The Head Primer drew a calculating breath through his nose. “And why are you so sure it was a woman?”

  Zanna froze. “I . . . I saw her last night.” There wasn’t any point in keeping it to herself. “She came to my house. I woke up in the dead of night, and there she was, sitting at the foot of my bed, trying to make me sign a contract to decline my enrollment at St. Pommeroy’s.”

  Lord Hemmington’s eyebrows furrowed. “That is most distressing. I hope you have not alerted your local authorities.”

  “N-no,” Zanna said. The Head Primer’s intense stare made her feel guilty, even though she had done nothing wrong. “I didn’t think they would be much help.”

  Lord Hemmington made a noncommittal sound, and Dr. Mumble tapped on the table with his pointer finger. “Do you still have this contract?”

  She nodded and found it among the books in her backpack. The men looked it over, their expressions turning worried. Lord Hemmington touched a part of the contract and rubbed his fingers together, as if he were testing whether a fresh coat of paint was dry ye
t. His mustache grumbled.

  “This is very helpful,” Dr. Mumble said. Zanna blew out an exasperated breath. If she had dragged the woman into his office and thrown her at his feet, she was sure he would have said the exact same thing, in the exact same tone. It infuriated her.

  “How?” Her voice snapped out, finally catching up with the last two impossible days. “How is it helpful? What’s going on? I nearly died last night, and I—” Without warning, she remembered that helpless feeling of all the air around her being sucked away. Her body had been so frail. The anger sputtered out of her voice. “I just want an explanation.”

  Lord Hemmington nodded, not surprised or taken back at all by her outburst. “You are a Scientist. It is in your nature to ask for explanations.” He glanced over at Dr. Mumble, perhaps wondering if the other man wished to say anything, but when the dean remained silent, Lord Hemmington continued. “It is a clever scheme your kidnapper has concocted. This contract would have explained your absence from St. Pommeroy’s. The Primers would have marked you down for another student who wished to continue their studies in the control group. It would have been CG authorities who carried out the search when it became known you were missing, not us, and I have serious doubts they would have ever found you. They lack the proper resources and cannot comprehend the possibilities available to a Scientist.”

  That feeling from the morning returned, the one where Zanna had stood in front of the mirror and touched her neck and realized how close she had come to death. Her fingers curled and dug into the table. “But why me?”

  “Ransom seems the most likely,” Lord Hemmington said. “You hold no political importance.”

  “Ransom?” Zanna couldn’t stop herself from spitting out the word. “My grandfather’s been retired for years.”

  “Your parents?”

  Her face scrunched. “My mom’s dead. My father probably couldn’t care less.”

  “Apologies.” Lord Hemmington said it so stiffly it nearly brought a smile to Zanna’s face and washed out the scowl she always got from talking about her father. “Do you have a wealthy extended family? Friends?”

  She shook her head. “I told you, she wasn’t trying to kidnap me. She just didn’t want me going to St. Pommeroy’s.”

  Lord Hemmington straightened the cuffs of his suit, all the while still fixing Zanna with that intimidating gaze. “So you have said. Why do you think that?”

  She shrank like a mouse. “I just do,” she confessed.

  “Ms. Mayfield,” he said, leveling with her. “We are Scientists, and, as you are enrolled here, so are you. We do not go by simple feelings and hunches. We demand evidence. If you wish to claim that this was not an attempted kidnapping, present your case. I will gladly accept any contrary evidence you may have, but as it stands now, I see nothing to support your theory.”

  She clenched her fists, but the truth was Lord Hemmington was right. She didn’t have any evidence. “I don’t know.”

  Lord Hemmington picked up the contract and touched the police badge on his lapel. It morphed and ran like a liquid, reshaping into a brass ring that he held over his head. “I will send someone to your house to put protections around it, in case our criminal decides to strike again. I hope the next time we meet, it is on happier business. Hubert, Ms. Mayfield, good day.”

  And with a jolt of physics, the Head Primer shot out Dr. Mumble’s back balcony and into the sky.

  “That is all you are needed for,” Dr. Mumble said, flicking a hand at the Summation to send it back to its shelf. “I believe you have a Mathematics class to attend. Can you find your way back from here?”

  Zanna thought about all the ancient Greek hallways and castle rooms the Particle had led her through on the way there, and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  He tore a thin sheet of copper metal from the top of his desk and handed it to Zanna. Printed on it was a map of St. Pommeroy’s, with an X marking a room near the center of the island. “This may be useful, then. Best hurry. You’ve got quite a bit to learn.”

  Chapter Five

  When the bell rang for first period, Zanna was lost. Even with Dr. Mumble’s map, she got turned around as soon as she left the administration tower and its surrounding English rose garden. She had just found the spot where the architecture changed back to the classical Greek style and knew she must be heading toward the center when a pair of oil lamps detached themselves from the wall and blocked her way. She jumped back a little, afraid of getting burned, but then she saw that nothing was actually burning inside their metal bowls. Instead, the fire seemed to just spring out of the air. There wasn’t any warmth, either. Just light.

  “Hall pass?” the lamps asked in a surprisingly gruff and Scottish voice.

  “I don’t—Dr. Mumble wanted to see me before class.” She didn’t know how to address a pair of menacing oil lamps. They sounded a bit like a woman, but she wasn’t entirely sure. And she didn’t feel like risking a polite “ma’am” and getting it wrong.

  “Name?”

  “Zanna Mayfield.”

  “Hold, please.”

  Nothing changed in the lamps, but she had the same feeling as when someone on the other end of a phone call puts it down for a moment. Zanna took the opportunity to test the illusionary fire with an inquisitive finger, but she had barely reached out when it snapped back into life. “Very well. I’ll escort you to your classroom. Don’t touch my lamps.”

  She dropped her hand with a little yip. “Okay.”

  The lamps took her back to the entrance hall with the olive trees and down a different hallway, not saying anything until they stopped at an intersection. “To the right is Mathematics 101,” the lamps said. “In the future, all students outside of a classroom during study hours must have a hall pass.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, now you do.” The lamps turned. “Stay out of trouble now.”

  There was no door to the classroom. A hazy, shimmering curtain like a liquid mirror separated it from the hallway. Zanna touched the privacy screen experimentally, only dipping the smallest bit of her pinky into it. Nothing happened, and so she stepped through into a classroom she had never seen the likes of before.

  It was a neat square, with all four sides gently sloping down to a stage in the center. Benches of decorated marble sat around the room, and the ceiling was open to the sky, though somehow the sunlight was pleasant and mellow, as if there were an invisible screen stretched overhead that calmed the harsh light down a little. On the back wall, she could make out the faded remains of a large painting in the plaster, depicting a roomful of toga-clad men come to take in a lecture. Beneath it, in block capital letters, was an inscription: MATHEMA.

  “Divisible by three! I said so! Come on, come on!”

  So amazed she was by the classroom that it took Zanna a moment to register that someone was talking to her. A woman stood on the stage in the center of the room and beckoned to Zanna, pointing to a boy and girl sitting on one of the nearby benches. “I do love it when I remember things properly. Zanna Mayfield, aren’t you? Come on, come on! Don’t be a dilly-dally!”

  “Sorry,” Zanna said, tearing her eyes away from the architecture and descending the gentle slope. “I was—”

  “I’m well aware of it all,” her teacher said. There was a strange electricity around her, and it made her white-and-hot-pink hair poof out in a tangle. Her complexion seemed a bit timeless—not elderly but not youthful either, as if she had stolen bits and pieces from across her entire timeline and blended them together. She was dressed in a smart black pencil skirt and modest white blouse with a black tie, but the most curious thing was the belt around her waist. It was heavy, cracked leather with a spyglass of polished brass slung at her hip, the kind a nineteenth-century sea captain would use to look toward the horizon. “Now hurry up and sit down, you silly girl. This is my favorite lecture, and
I won’t have you delaying it any longer!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Zanna said.

  The class had been divided into teams of three, and Zanna spotted Nora sitting a little ways off. Unfortunately, it seemed the plan to save her a seat had failed, as Nora had been grouped with Libby and Amir. They flashed apologetic smiles.

  The only group with an open spot was up near the front. A small girl with sun-drenched skin, a hawkish nose, and luminous brown eyes sat next to a boy Zanna had seen before. It took her a moment to place him, but then she remembered Cedwick Hemmington, the younger brother she had seen getting out of the limousine that morning.

  “Excellent,” her teacher said as Zanna settled in. “We’ll do introductions again. My name is Dr. Maru Fitzie, and welcome to Mathematics 101! I’ve put you in teams of three because triangles are so much more fun than single points. Let’s all take a moment to meet our new friends.”

  “I’m Beatrice,” the small girl said. She spoke with a soft Italian accent, her English otherwise impeccable.

  “Zanna,” Zanna said with an awkward wave.

  “Ah, so you’re the one who nearly got herself kidnapped yesterday,” Cedwick drawled, not even bothering to properly introduce himself. “I read all about that in The Constant. Metallurgical illusion, was it? And the smell didn’t tip you off?”

  Zanna scowled. The way Cedwick talked reminded her of a snobbish aristocrat looking down his nose at the peasant on his doorstep. “Yeah, how dare I not know about metallurgical illusions?” she snapped. “I didn’t even know all this existed yesterday.”

  It seemed a lot more violent and forceful in her head. Maybe she just lacked the proper voice to really yell at someone. Either way, Cedwick smirked and brushed her remark off like a bit of dust. “No worries. I’m Cedwick, Cedwick Hemmington. If there’s anything you want to know, just ask. You’re both obviously CG. I’m sure I can answer any questions you might have.”