Imaginary Numbers

by McGuire, Seanan

  “I had other things on my mind,” I said. He laughed again. I leaned in, intending to go for a second kiss before this mysterious interlude into everything I’d ever wanted came crashing to an end.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I pulled back and whipped around. James was standing in the doorway, one hand still raised to knock.

  “What,” said Artie flatly. He didn’t sound happy.

  “I lost the coin toss,” said James. “I was tasked to, and I am quoting here, ‘sneak up there while they can’t hear you coming and see whether they’ve figured their shit out.’ Was your shit making out like teenagers? Because if so, you appear to have figured it out, and I will hopefully never be asked to do anything like this ever again.”

  “So you’re leaving,” said Artie.

  “Sadly, no,” said James. “I would pay almost anything to not be standing here right now. Unfortunately for me, your Aunt Evelyn wants to see you. Downstairs. Now.”

  “Why?” I asked. I was having a hard time imagining anything more urgent than what we’d been doing.

  “They’ve finished their initial autopsy.” His voice turned grim. “There’s apparently some information she feels you need to have.”

  Well. Anything but that.

  Ten

  “Life happens. So does death. The trick is putting as much time as possible between the two.”

  —Mary Dunlavy

  Heading for the living room, because that’s way better than making out with the boy you’ve loved since you were just a kid

  THE REST OF MY family snapped back into clear psychic focus as soon as I stepped outside the room that had been warded for my use. Their minds were . . . loud, even for them. We’re a boisterous, argumentative lot, and we’re fully capable of violating most noise ordinances in the process of figuring out what we want to do for dinner. This, though—this was something else. All of them were screaming, but only inside their own minds. No sound was coming up the stairs.

  That was enough to make me walk faster. James and Artie paced me, Artie radiating a degree of anxiety that nicely mirrored my own. His empathy had to be picking up the disconnect between the waves of anxiety rolling up the stairs and the dead silence that accompanied them.

  We were almost to the stairs when Artie reached over and took my hand. His anxiety immediately calmed, and mine dropped in response. We could handle this. Whatever it was, whatever it meant, we could handle it. We didn’t have a choice.

  Annie and Sam had joined Elsie on the couch. Evie and Kevin were standing nearby, their heads close together, murmuring to each other. Their thoughts were opaque, veiled in trivial inconsequentialities, which made my anxiety spike again. Everyone in our family knew how to mask their thoughts, if not always their emotions, because Mom and I weren’t the only cuckoos they were likely to encounter on a regular basis. If I could read them, so could the enemy. Better to use me as a means of testing their defenses.

  Aunt Jane and Uncle Ted were nowhere to be seen. I reached out automatically, finding the flickering traces of their minds in the barn. They were disposing of the cuckoo’s body, burning the parts that looked too human to be safe to keep around, preserving the rest in specimen jars. I got a flash of the cuckoo’s eyes, floating in a jar of clear fluid that was probably the cuckoo’s own blood, and pulled myself away from them, physically shuddering. Some things are better off unseen. This was one of them.

  “I found them,” announced James, heading for the couch, where he took up a position leaning against the arm, next to Annie. “I’m choosing to view this whole experience as a form of familial hazing, to make up for the fact that I spent my foolish teenage years in another time zone. Please, can you be done torturing me soon?”

  “Nope,” said Annie, and punched him amiably in the arm.

  “About damn time,” said Elsie, radiating smug satisfaction as she looked at my hand, still firmly clasped in Artie’s.

  My cheeks warmed with an invisible blush. I squared my shoulders and looked toward Evie and Kevin. “What’s going on?” I asked. “What did you find?”

  “Honey, do you want to sit down?” Evie took a step forward, spreading her hands like she was trying to soothe a panicky animal. If I hadn’t already been a little bit freaked out, that gesture would have been enough to do it. “We need to talk to you about what happened. Both of you.”

  “I’m not going to be all weird about Sarah because a cuckoo decided to mess with my head,” said Artie. He let go of my hand with a sudden bolt of self-consciousness, like he’d just realized he was still holding it. Which, to be fair, he had.

  I couldn’t blame him. The thoughts rolling off Annie and Elsie were curious, amused, and even relieved, all covered by a thin veneer of worry. Evie and Kevin mostly just felt worried. I didn’t want our relationship, whatever it was actually going to be, to become their next topic of dissection.

  “I know, dear,” said Evie. “Nothing’s ever going to make you weirder about Sarah.”

  “That’s the truth,” said Annie.

  Elsie snorted laughter, covering her mouth with her hand. I shot her an imperious glare. She laughed harder, abandoning any pretense of swallowing it. Sometimes having cousins can be really annoying.

  “We dissected the cuckoo who attacked you in the woods,” said Kevin, apparently realizing that the only way forward was to barrel straight through without hesitation. “The blood we found in her nose and ears was the result of a massive aneurism, leading to an even more massive brain bleed.”

  “Is that what killed her?” I asked.

  “Not quite.” He removed his glasses, wiping them on his shirt as he spoke, so he wouldn’t have to see my reaction. I almost wished I could do the same. He was thinking too loudly for that; every word was accompanied by an image, whether I wanted to see it or not. And I didn’t want to see it.

  “Most intelligent creatures have highly crenulated brains. It’s a matter of biological necessity. Smooth brains have less surface area, which means less space for the neurons to do what they need to do. Crenulated brains have more surface area, allowing for greater intelligence, memory retention, all the requisites of intelligence as we currently understand it. A domestic dog may have a larger brain than an Aeslin mouse, but due to the crenulations, the Aeslin mouse actually has greater surface area and hence more potential for intelligence.”

  This was biology 101; we’d all learned this stuff when we were kids. Well, maybe not James and Sam. I still couldn’t catch sight of their minds through their telepathy blockers, and so I had to assume they looked interested enough to be considered an appropriate target audience for this little anatomy lesson.

  Kevin didn’t notice that I was confused, or maybe he just didn’t care. He put his glasses on as he continued, “We’ve seen Johrlac brains before, although not many of them, and only one that was undamaged. Our current model for their morphology says that we should have found a brain of the same approximate weight and size as a comparable human brain, but with deeper crenulations, creating a greater surface area and allowing for the development of psychic powers such as telepathy.”

  “I know you’re trying to tell us something, but this is all making me feel uncomfortably like I’m going to be the next one on the dissection table, so it would be really swell if you could get to the point before I have to leave the room,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I know this isn’t easy.”

  I laughed unsteadily. “A member of my own species—which is predatory and sort of evil, and that sucks for me—attacked me. Twice. And then she attacked Artie, and now she’s dead, and you’re tiptoeing around actually telling me why that is. So no, this isn’t easy. It’s confusing and it’s scary and I just want to know what’s going on. Please, can you tell me what’s going on?”

  Kevin sighed. “We opened her skull to confirm she’d suffered from a brain bleed, and to ad
d her brain to our specimen collection. We get better equipment every year. We may eventually be able to design better anti-telepathy charms by looking at the structure of the Johrlac brain.”

  “We did find evidence of the brain bleed,” said Evie. “It was catastrophic in scope. She must have died almost instantly. I don’t believe she would have had any real time to suffer.”

  It was difficult to worry too much about whether or not the cuckoo had suffered. She was dead and that was sad, but mostly because her being dead meant I couldn’t track her down and hurt her for what she’d done to Artie. Being near me shouldn’t have been considered enough to make him a target. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, and I wasn’t okay with it.

  “We also found some alarming morphological changes to the brain itself,” said Kevin, sounding suddenly grim. “Most of the crenulations were either shallower than we expected them to be based on earlier specimens, or entirely gone. The tissue was both dehydrated and less stable than it should have been.”

  “He means the brain fell apart as soon as we touched it,” said Evie. “It was like brain pudding. No structural integrity. No elasticity. The trauma she suffered was incredible.”

  And unnerving. “Do you think it was pathogenic?”

  “We’ve never discovered a single disease in this dimension that can infect cuckoos,” said Evie. “But I thought of that, and I started some cultures. We should know more soon.”

  Meaning she didn’t think it was a virus. That was good, since I’d been close to the dead cuckoo both before and after she collapsed. It was also bad. It meant we didn’t know anything. “What else could have done this?”

  Evie and Kevin exchanged a look, discomfort rolling off them in waves. Artie twitched, picking up on it as clearly as I was.

  “I need to know,” I said.

  Evie sighed. “When you had your . . . accident . . . you were lucky enough to be near an actual cryptid hospital,” she said.

  I nodded slowly. St. Giles’ Hospital was cryptid-owned and cryptid-operated and maintained solely for the care and keeping of people who couldn’t walk into a human emergency room and expect to have any chance of walking out again. It had been the nearest available source of medical care when I’d been hurt. I didn’t remember anything of my time there—not even the names of the doctors who’d helped me—but Mom had sent them an edible arrangement every year since I’d come home.

  “St. Giles has an MRI machine,” she continued slowly. “They were able to take some pictures of your brain, both immediately after your injury and when they were getting ready to let Mom take you home. The initial pictures showed . . .” She stopped, glancing at Kevin.

  Wearily, I rubbed my left temple and said, “You’re thinking about how you don’t want to tell me this so loudly that you might as well be shouting it. Please just say whatever it is out loud, so everyone will know it, and we can move on to whatever comes next, okay? I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

  “The initial pictures showed reduced crenulation,” said Evie. “The later pictures showed increased crenulation. It was like your injury had caused the surface of your brain to contract in preparation for expansion.”

  I blinked. “Wait, what?”

  “The crenulations of your brain grew deeper,” said Evie. “According to the doctor who worked on your case, it looks like the changes are permanent. We don’t know what could have caused that sort of morphological change. It’s possible that your disorientation after the incident was partially because your brain had literally reconstructed itself, and it didn’t know how to think yet. It was still relearning what it meant to be a brain.”

  I lowered my hand from my temple, staring at her. I couldn’t think of what to say.

  On the couch, Sam put up his hand and said, “Wait, do cuckoos not get doctor-patient privilege? Because none of this sounds like stuff you should be telling us.”

  “None of this sounds like stuff you should know,” I said. “I didn’t know any of this. Why do you get to know things about me that I don’t know?” The injustice of it burned brighter than I would have thought possible.

  “Mom was scared,” said Evie. “I don’t think you understand how terrifying it was when you first went down. We didn’t have another telepath we could ask to look at your actual thoughts, but your vital signs were all over the map. Sometimes you’d have so much brain activity that it overloaded the machines. Other times, you’d have no brain activity at all. If you were human, you would have been declared brain dead several times, because you were. It was like your brain was shutting down by stages. So yes, she talked to me, and maybe she told me some things you’d rather she hadn’t mentioned, but I’m not going to feel bad about that. I refuse to feel bad about that. My sister was dying.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me, then? I was the one who was hurt!”

  “Because she didn’t want to worry you.”

  I turned.

  Artie looked at me, fear and concern and quiet resignation coloring his every thought. Guess we only got to do that once, he thought, clearly enough for me to hear it, and said, “I wouldn’t have told you, if I’d known. I was scared, too. I thought . . . I didn’t know any of this, and I wouldn’t have told you, because what if it had been the last straw? What if you’d decided not to try getting better because you heard that from me? I would have kept it a secret until I was dead to make sure it didn’t hurt you.”

  “Artie . . .” I reached for him, and hesitated, not sure what I was supposed to do next.

  His fear dimmed, replaced by wariness. “It’s okay. I know you don’t want us to treat you like you’re broken. You’re not broken. You’re just Sarah.”

  “Always have been,” I said, and finished reaching for him, wrapping my fingers solidly around his before looking back to Evie. “I wish you’d told me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Given the pictures we have of what happened to your brain after your injury, and what happened to this cuckoo’s brain around her time of death, we think she may have killed herself in the process of planting that trap in Artie’s subconscious,” said Kevin. “Her brain started to do what yours did, and then it, well, failed. It couldn’t expand again after it contracted.”

  I stared at him. “Did my biology have to get weirder?”

  “We’re pretty sure you evolved from insects,” said Annie. “There are lots of insects that metamorphize during their lives. Maybe the brain thing is like that. It’s a physiological change triggered by some outside factor, and it’s perfectly normal, and she just couldn’t cut it.”

  “Not helping,” I said.

  “Why does she have a rack like that if she used to be a bug?” asked Sam.

  Annie hit him in the arm, her amusement coloring the air around the pair of them like sunlight.

  “This is all really interesting, but what does it have to do with me?” I asked.

  “Sarah . . .” Evie sighed. “Do you have any idea why this cuckoo would have been willing to risk her life for the sake of hurting you?”

  I didn’t. Not only did I not know, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. “She’s dead,” I said. “Does it matter?”

  Kevin and Evie exchanged a look.

  “I hope not,” Evie finally said. “I really, really do.”

  * * *

  “Come on, nerd,” shouted Elsie, gesturing for Artie to follow her down the driveway. “You can text her like the sad geek you’ve always been.”

  “I hate you,” Artie called back, conversationally. “I hate you like I have hated nothing else in my life. My hatred is the sun, and you are the fields which it will burn.”

  “Love you, see you in a second,” chirped Elsie. She waved to me. “Later, Sarah. See you in the morning.”

  “Bye, Elsie,” I called, before turning my attention back to Ar
tie. “Um. So.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So.”

  “Are we—?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced at me, thoughts tinged with hope. “Are we?”

  “We could be. I mean, if you wanted to. I mean . . .” I took a deep breath and stopped talking. I mean, I want to. I’ve wanted to for a long time.

  He blinked. Why aren’t you talking out loud?

  Because Evie’s right inside, and she’s listening to everything we say. She and Kevin were waiting by the front door for me to come back. They’d been willing to give me a little bit of privacy while I said goodbye to Artie and Elsie, but that was about all.

  Ted and Jane were still in the barn, and probably would be for the rest of the night. There’s nothing like a cryptozoologist when there’s something to be taken apart. It’s basically Christmas morning for them, and when they have the opportunity to wallow in it, they really wallow. Evie and Kevin would be joining them once they were sure I was safely in for the night. I could hear Kevin thinking distantly of all the tests he wanted to run on the dead cuckoo’s tissues, now that they were reasonably sure she’d died of something I couldn’t catch.

  Oh, thought Artie. Then: Kissing was nice. I liked kissing. Did you . . . I mean, can we do more of that? If you liked it?

  I liked it a lot. I’d like to do more of it. Maybe not with our family watching, though. That’s a little bit much.

  Yeah, thought Artie, with chagrin.

  Elsie had reached her car. She leaned on the horn, sending it blasting through the night. I laughed before I could catch myself.

  “Okay, you win,” I said. “Text me when you get home, Artie?”

  “I’ll text you from the road,” he said, and leaned over to plant a glancing kiss on the corner of my mouth. The contact was brief, but long enough for me to feel his thoughts brush against mine, warm and familiar and suffused with a lemony brightness that I was coming to accept, finally, as love.

  He loved me. Artie loved me. Artie loved me, and Artie had loved me for a long time, maybe as long as I’d loved him. We’d just been too stubborn and too stupid and too scared to tell each other.