Dark Matter (47 page)

Panic trilled on his nerves.

“I wanted a number not a dragon,” he cried.

The dragon tilted its head, bringing a jewelled-eye
the size of a Cadillac to bear on him.

“Might as well ask for space without time,
little one,” it said.

“It speaks!” he shrieked.

“Only the universal language.”

Rasputin straightened up. He was done
cowering in his own mind.

“I want a number, dragon. A ten-digit
number. I think it is in your tail.”

The beast glanced along its coiled form to
its tail. The appendage sprouted, thick at its base, but did not taper. It
wound away into the void’s ink, diminishing only with distance.

“There are many numbers in my tail, and
more besides; it still grows. Which ten digits in particular did you desire?”

“Reim’s.”

“I’m not familiar with that index.”

“It’s not an index. It’s a name: Reim De
Groot.”

The creature blinked. The motion of its
eyelids was like the raising and lowering of a mainsail.

“The first three digits of the number are
101,” said Rasputin. “I just need the next seven. Does 101 occur in your tail?”

The dragon bared its teeth, in what
Rasputin belatedly realised was a smile. Saliva dripped from a tooth like a
stalactite, became vapour, and whorled chaotically out of existence before
reaching the ground.

“That sequence of digits occurs three
hundred and ninety million, six thousand, and twenty three―twenty four―times in
my tail. Which occurrence would you like me to recite?”

Great,
thought Rasputin:
Pi is a smartarse.

He had a flash of inspiration.

“What is the ten digit sequence in your
tail beginning at place 314?”

“1558817488” said the dragon, suddenly
serious.

“No good. What about 3141?” Wrong. “31415?”
Wrong.

Rasputin spoke to Dee. “It’s no good. There
are too many places in Pi’s tail that start with 101. Any more ideas?”

She was silent a moment, while he listened
to the vault of the dragon’s lungs heave rhythmically, then: “Are you asking in
decimal?”

“What?”

“Are you asking in base-10? 101 could be
binary.”

He turned again to the dragon.

“Try those places again, but with Pi
represented in binary―only 1s and 0s.”

The creature pondered.

A transformation rippled along its body,
from snout to the base of its tail and onwards. Green scales shrank, became
more numerous and red. Its eyes, colossal amethysts, became rubies. Its wings
folded in on themselves, again and again, until they were mere stubs, and then
disappeared. Its body now had the sinuous look of a snake.

“Yes, at position 3141: 1010010100,” it
said, in a voice perhaps an interval of a fifth higher than before.

Rasputin almost squealed with delight.

“Dee, try 1010010100.”

He heard the strike of keys faintly, then
the familiar bleep of denial.

“Damn.” He said to the dragon, “Any more?”

Rasputin conveyed another four candidate
numbers to Dee. All were incorrect.

“Two and half minutes,” said Dee. In her
panic, her voice sounded nearly normal pitch.

“Get ready to yank the timer,” he said,
heavy with foreboding.

“Alright dragon: check for 101 again in
those positions, for Pi represented in base 3, 4, 5―keep going.”

He reasoned that the occurrence of 101 at
the special positions would diminish as the base got higher.

The dragon morphed from its red sinuous
form to something more squat, and bright yellow. It began to recite numbers,
and Rasputin dictated them to Dee. Before long it changed again. In that guise
it had two numbers, before changing again. Thereafter it began to morph in
silence, pausing only occasionally to utter a ten-digit number. Soon it was
warping so fast it began to blur in a kaleidoscope of colour. Watching it made
Rasputin nauseous.

Finally he held his palms up and yelled,
“Stop!”

It did, and he could see it was pale purple
with crystalline flanks. Crystal spires, stark as wintering trees, without
membranes formed its wings. Each eye was a hollow lit with a wavering green
flame.

“What base are you in?” said Rasputin,
curiosity momentarily trumping panic.

“An imaginary number.”

He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it
sounded impressive. No wonder he was developing a headache.

To himself he said, “Where are you Reim?”

The dragon startled him by morphing again
into a comparatively orthodox form with multi-hued scales.

It said: “The sequence of letters r-e-i-m
occurs in my tail at position 1011167941, if encoded with the minimal 5 bits.”

Rasputin was dumbstruck. Of course, numbers
could encode
letters
. Computers did
it every day. He repeated the number to Dee. The denial bleep was a stab to his
heart.

“We’ve got perhaps twenty seconds,” she
said.

The dragon surprised Rasputin by speaking
unbidden. It told him the position of the sequence r-e-i-m-d-g.

Rasputin repeated it, blurring his
pronunciation with haste.

Bleep.

“Ten seconds. I’m going to pull it.”

“No. Wait!”

A thought was forming. Too slowly, but
there was something...

Within the
lesser love, is set the greater.

He turned to the dragon.

“Myrtle De Groot. His wife, m-y-r-t-l-e.
Does that exist?”

The dragon paused for an infuriating
second.

“Yes. Position 1015689788.”

“I’m going to pull it,” said Dee.

“No. Please. Trust me Dee―1015689788. If I’m
wrong, then pull it.”

It had to be right, didn’t it? Or had he
doomed them both?

He heard key presses. 1, 2, 3...10. A
pause.

A click.

A hiss.

The door was opening.

He heaved himself out of within by a
disorienting lunge for the surface, and into the real world.

The door stood open. Dee still held the
vial.

“Put it down, carefully. We have to shut
the door.”

Dee placed the vial on the bench with
slowed haste, and beat a path through the doorway. In the corridor, Rasputin
fumbled after the button that would secure the door.

It clicked, thought about closing, then
slid shut and sealed with a hiss.

Through the pane of glass, they watched as
the vial jumped almost imperceptibly, as though it had hiccupped. Cracks laced
its side, and the liquid within leaked onto the desk in a tiny pool.

“That’s one deadly puddle,” said Rasputin,
turned his back to the door, and slid down it, exhausted.

Dee followed. “Where did you get the
number,” she said, her expression somehow both vacant and harrowed.

“Reim loved Pi. But of course he wouldn’t
look for himself within it. He might look for the wife he loved―someone
cherished set within something cherished.”

“
Might
?”

The light returned to her eyes and she
punched him in the arm.

They sat in silence, beneath the
fluorescent green glow, content to be alive.

A minute passed, then he said, “We have to
find him.”

Dee put up no argument.

It was when they rose, and stood leaning
against the door, that Rasputin’s phone rang.

There was no caller id. Dee shrugged.
Rasputin picked up the call.

“Dee? Monk?”

“
Jordy?
” Rasputin said.

Dee ripped the phone from his grasp.

“Jordan?!”

Rasputin reached across her and put the
call on speaker.

“Dee?―yes, yes, it’s me. Dee: I love you.”

Her voice choked on a great sob. “I love
you, too.”

Rasputin pretended to stick a finger down
his throat and said, “Don’t get the phone wet.” He leaned near the phone.
“Where are you? What happened?”

“Your phone has been out of reach. It only
just got signal, and began to upload a bug payload. I’m at Reim’s place,” he
said, causing Dee and Rasputin to glance at each other in alarm.

“Well get the hell out of there,” said
Rasputin. “He’s probably on his way there right now.”

“I can’t. I’m trussed like a Christmas
turkey, and anyway―he’s not coming. I know where he is.”

“How?” they said in unison.

“I’m sitting at Hitler’s laptop. It’s the
base station for his bugs.”

“Bugs?”

“Yes, the one you’re carrying, and
another―for listening to yours. The laptop receives your payload and
retransmits it to his mobile listening device, only...” Jordy fell silent, and
the pause was filled with the sound of key presses. “Data comes downstream from
his phone too. There is a third channel spliced into all of this mess.”

Rasputin shook his head, unable to follow
it. The thought of Cain free was pressing on him.

“But you know where he is,” he said.

“Yes. He’s been parked in Winthrop Hall for
a quarter of an hour.”

“Okay. Call the cops. Tell them about the
lab here. Tell them there’s something very nasty locked inside, and they must
not open it. Got it?”

“I already have. They took some convincing
I wasn’t some New Year’s drunk. What are you going to do?”

“Go after Cain.”

“Not with Dee, you’re not.”

Dee attempted to interject, “You don’t know—”

“Don’t know what, Dee?” said Jordy. “I know
enough. I was listening.” He broke off, and Rasputin heard an unfamiliar sound.
His best friend sobbed.

Rasputin was puzzled a moment, then: “Cain’s
phone was transmitting?”

“Yes,” Jordy managed, sounding as though it
were a struggle to speak.

The scene in the lab had been bad enough as
a participant; being audience to it must have been a peculiar kind of torture.

“If his phone had signal, why didn’t mine?”

“I don’t know. It’d be weak down where you
are. Are your pockets lined with metal?” It wasn’t a serious question, but
Rasputin touched his pocket and felt the solid form of the gun through his
jeans pocket. Being on the outside of the lab door must have pushed the signal
strength across the threshold.

“Forget it. I’ll go after him,” said
Rasputin.

“Wait for the police, Monk,” said Jordy.

“No. If he gets even a whiff of them―blue
lights and noise―who knows what he’ll do. Best case he’ll slip out of here easy
as oil off grease. Worst case he’ll get apocalyptic and crack open one of his
vials for them.”

Rasputin paused to gather his courage. “The
last thing he’ll expect is me.”

“Rasputin,” said Dee. “He still has his
phone. He’ll know we’re out.”

“No, he wont,” said Jordy, his voice laced
with regret. “The entire payload from within the lab―your escape―began
uploading when you got out. But I killed the upload. As far as Hitler’s
concerned, you still don’t have signal, you’re stuck in the lab.”

“That’s it then,” said Rasputin, and strode
down the corridor.

Dee followed, speaking to Jordy. “Is Reim
there with you?”

Rasputin winced. It was a long shot. When
it fell short, it was going to hurt.

“Yes,” said Jordy. “He’s dead. I saw him
die.”

Rasputin halted at the door to the outer
lab.

“Monk,” said Jordy. Rasputin took the
phone, brought it near. “He went with unbroken spirit. I only knew him for a
few days, really, but he was made of something special. He didn’t just roll
over. When he saw what Hitler was, what he could do, what he was
doing
,
he tried everything to undermine his disguise.”

Rasputin thought back to the gaff that had
given Cain away. Had Reim authored that...?

“I think you’re right,” said Rasputin. “I
never met someone so full of life, and so ready to die.”

“How did you end up at Reim’s?” said Dee.

“I told you I was going to unpick that
phone. It was the only lead in this bizarre mess. I succeeded. Pity it turned
out to be the tripwire on a trapdoor spider’s nest. It led to Reim’s place,
where Hitler met me at the door and straight-out clubbed me.”

“We’re wasting time,” said Rasputin. “He
might leave any time. Where is he,
exactly
.”

“An alcove behind the pipe organ, best I
can tell. The hall’s big stained glass windows would be letting in enough
satellite signal to fix a location. And it’s live signal, not dead-reckoned.”