Root of Unity (32 page)

The sun set, but the bright cheeriness of enticing storefronts blazing across the street made it as easy to see as in the daytime. I watched and waited.

At a little before half-past eight, Rita Martinez appeared.

She had on a shapeless sweater covering bulky layers of clothing and a scarf over her hair, and huge sunglasses that disguised her features. She wandered toward the concert hall, sat down on a bench, and checked her watch.

I stood and slipped out of the coffee shop, keeping my eyes on her.

Pedestrian traffic flowed by her. She looked around and then checked her watch again. She crossed and uncrossed her ankles. Then, before I was halfway to her, she stood and walked over to the ticket window at the concert hall, handed in some cash, and toddled inside.

I stopped, frustrated. Why on earth was she going into a concert?
Because you told her ten p.m., and she allowed too much margin for error and doesn’t want to sit in the open on a bench for an hour and a half.

Great.

I could find a way to break in, but the path of least resistance would be faster. Fortunately, I always kept a large amount of cash on my person. I marched up to the window. “I need a ticket for tonight.”

The little old man behind the window paused in the act of closing up. “We still do have some mezzanine seats. I can sell you one, but…” His eyes glanced up and down at my cargo pants and combat boots, and I wondered if he was about to quote a dress code at me. I tried to remember the last time I’d showered, and couldn’t. “But the performance has already started,” he continued. “You’ll have to wait for an usher to seat you.”

“That’s all right,” I said, shoving money at him.

An honest entrant for once, I pushed through the door and into the concert hall. Martinez was nowhere in sight—she must’ve been seated already.

Only mezzanine seats left, the attendant had said. I climbed the broad staircase in front of me, my boots soundless on the luxurious carpeting.

An usher stood sentinel near the top of the stairs. I waited until she glanced away and then slipped by her. Classical music poured out when I opened the door, but I was inside before the usher could turn around.

The mezzanine was only sparsely filled. I slid into the nearest empty seat and waited for my eyes to adjust, the rich acoustics of the symphony swelling around me. Then I studied the rows of heads in front of me, measuring heights and eliminating hairstyles.

There. There she was.

Martinez was a few rows back from the more populated section at the front of the mezzanine, a small, squat silhouette in the darkness. Keeping low, I slipped out of my seat and forward, then down the row so I could sink onto the red velvet of the seat next to her.

She was perched straight-backed and alert but staring at nothing, twiddling her fingers against each other along with the music. The movements were jerky and almost fanciful, like she was a witch incanting over a nonexistent cauldron.

“Professor,” I said softly. “Remember me?”

She ignored me. The music swelled, bursting to a climax.

“I was working with Professor Halliday,” I said. “We discovered what you proved. We know.”

Cymbals crashed. The violins screamed across the scale.

“Sonya,” said Martinez. Her voice was a grandmother’s voice, scratchy yet delighted, tired but mischievous. “She was always too smart for her own good, was Sonya. I’m sorry for what I’ve done to her.”

“We’re not the only ones who know,” I said.
Thanks to me.

Her head bobbed up and down, resigned. “The NSA?”

“No. None of us told the government; even Dr. Zhang kept you a secret. But the men who had Halliday before—they’re coming. They know you’re here. They—” I swallowed, wondering if or how I should reveal my own part in it. “They don’t really have Halliday again; she’s safe with the Feds. They were just saying that to get you back here.”

“I suspected.” The slightest sigh escaped her. “But in the expectation calculation, Sonya’s life has infinite value. I had to come.”

It was so like something I would say.

I slid the envelope of clean documents out of my jacket. “Here. Use these to disappear again. Check in with Halliday later; let us know you’re—let us know you’re safe.” I clenched my mouth shut. I shouldn’t have said that last bit. But even after everything, I couldn’t bear the thought of her disappearing entirely again. I had to leave that window open, that sliver of hope we could find another way, a better way, for her to fix me. “Go now, Professor.”

She made no move to take the envelope. The music paused, holding its breath, then dove into a smooth, slow river of sound.

“The second movement,” whispered Martinez. “The andante. Mozart was a perfecter, you see. Haydn the inventor; Mozart the perfecter. The perfect symphony. Almost half a hundred of them.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Arthur was the classical music buff. “Professor, did you hear what I said? They know you’re in Los Angeles. They’re coming—”

“I think I could do it.”

I closed my eyes and forced myself to patience. I couldn’t drag her out of here; we’d make a scene. “Do what?” I bit out.

“Write one,” she answered. “Write a Mozart. I think I could quantify my appreciation sufficiently.”

And then it hit me.
If you can verify, you can solve.
So if you could appreciate…you could create.

Martinez’s proof potentially let her solve any problem in the universe. It could lift the veil from any spark of human inspiration, including Mozart.

Potentially.

“I think maybe I should do that,” she said quietly. “Just once, before I die. To see how it feels. The world might like another Mozart. Do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I said, even though nothing had ever mattered more, in the grand scheme of things.

She lifted her hands and took the envelope from me, cradling it as if it were something fragile.

“If you’ve been using any credit cards, give them to me now, and then go,” I said.

A disturbing frisson ran through the orchestra. Martinez didn’t seem to notice, but I did. The mathematical rhythm was off, the pitches ever so slightly discordant as their frequencies failed to line up in pleasing ratios. Something was wrong.

“Get out of here,
now,”
I hissed, grabbing Martinez by the elbow and heaving her to her feet.

There was a shuffling down below, in the packed orchestra section. The planes of music from the stage were sliding apart, offset, the harmonies gliding further and further apart.

The shuffling got louder. Someone a few rows in front of us coughed, and whispers rose across the mezzanine. I dragged Martinez toward the door.

The music finally collapsed, jaggedly trailing into silence, the whispers from below becoming shouts and cries. We reached the door and I yanked on it only to find it barred from the other side.

That’s okay,
I thought.
That’s okay; a proper application of force—snap off the door handles, the screws will pop—

I tried to draw back to kick and almost fell, my foot impacting limply against the hinge like a soggy French fry.

The people in the mezzanine were staggering up now, climbing over each other, a faceless, clawing mass.

“Gonna get…trampled…” The voice sounded like mine, but I didn’t remember speaking. The voice was right, though—the rest of the audience was going to maul us trying to get to the door, the door that wouldn’t open—

Martinez lolled against me and started to sit down. I heaved her back up and half-threw us into the last row of seats, covering her body with mine. Someone kicked me in the head with a high heel as we went down. Someone else stepped on my hand.

I curled over Martinez’s limp form, pushing us as far under the row of seats as I could. The concert hall’s house lights had come on, but for some reason it felt darker than before. Maybe because I couldn’t open my eyes…

That was stupid. Of course I could open my eyes. Of course I could.

I just needed to sleep for a moment first…

Chapter 34

Clack, clack, clack.

I woke up still on the floor, but it was a different floor, and I couldn’t move.

Clack, clack, clack.

I strained at pulling my eyelids up and managed a foggy strip of light.

Clack, clack, clack.

I pushed as hard as I could, willing my muscles to contract, to twitch, but nothing happened.

“It’s a neuromuscular blocker,” said a voice above me. “It paralyzes you. And besides that, you’re trussed up like a Christmas turkey.”

I managed to focus my eyes a bit. My wrists were on the floor in front of me, in irons. They looked like my arms, my hands, but felt completely divorced from my body, like someone else’s limbs.

In the background were two large booted feet and an intricately carved walking stick.

Clack, clack, clack,
went the meditation balls.

A stack of papers hit the ground in front of the feet: the documents and credit cards I’d had Tegan mock up.

“Seems you were planning to double-cross me,” said the Lancer’s voice. “I’m not into that.”

Yeah.

“I would have killed you right off—I usually kill people who double-cross me. But you still have information I want.”
Clack, clack, clack.

Halliday’s proof. Right.

“I’ll take great pleasure in breaking you.” He giggled like a hyena. “But I confess you’re not my top priority right now. You’ll have to wait. I just wanted to say hi.”

Oh. Oh,
shit.

Martinez. He had Martinez, too. Of course he did—we hadn’t gotten out; he’d taken us both.

That hadn’t been part of the plan. She was supposed to get away before he caught me.

She was supposed to get away.

This was my fault. I had to protect her. I pushed my neurons to move a finger with no success. The helplessness sandbagged me. I had to be able to do—to do something—

I managed to make a sound in my throat, something like a sick rhinoceros.

“Oh? You have something to say?”

Don’t hurt her.
Oh, God.

“Mathematics should be shared, don’t you agree?” the Lancer said carelessly. “Oh, I forgot. You’re only in this for the money. Playing both ends against the middle. You don’t care.” The meditation balls stopped, and he was suddenly a lot closer, half-crouching, half-sitting so his face was near mine. “People like you are the scum of humanity. You don’t care about the field, about what humanity can discover. You’re only in it for your payday. Perelman would weep.”

I would have liked to point out that he’d been planning on using Halliday’s proof for his own ends as well, and that he was almost certainly going to steal the fame and million-dollar prize from Martinez by convincing the world—and maybe even himself—that it was his own work. He was a delusional hypocrite.

But then, he wasn’t entirely wrong about me.

He stood back up. I pushed my vocal cords until I thought I would choke myself, straining to the breaking point, and managed a few unintelligible sounds.

“What was that?” said the Lancer. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or not.

“Weak…heart,” I got out. “Martinez…” The consonants slurred; I wasn’t sure if they were understandable.

“Does she,” said the Lancer, after an interminable pause. “How do you know?”

“Sh’told me,” I managed.

He crouched down again. “I think you’re lying. But it will be easy enough to check.”

Right. Computer skills. He’d get her medical records.

Hell, Martinez wasn’t young; with any luck she really would have a heart condition. But at least I’d bought her some time…time for my plan to work.

Time for Arthur to come for us.

Faith…

The Lancer pushed himself up and tapped his walking stick against one boot. “In the meantime, if you are telling the truth, then she thinks you’re chummy enough to share your health with each other. What, did you tell her you were going to protect her?” He snorted. “There’s no one you haven’t betrayed, is there?”

He wasn’t wrong about that, either.

“But I doubt our dear doctor is wise to that. She seems such a trusting sort. If you want so much for me to spare her ‘weak heart,’ if you two are such
good friends,
I know an excellent solution.”

He snorted with laughter again and called to someone in another language. Rough hands manhandled me, hoisting me up under my arms, dragging me. It hurt, more than it should have—oddly unspecific blobs of pain floating through my fried nervous system. It took a few minutes, but I got around to figuring that someone had kicked me in the face and ribs while I was out.

By the time I’d worked out that conclusion I was being shoved into a very solid-feeling chair. Chains clanked as they fastened me down.

“We’ll wait for the drugs to wear off a touch,” said the Lancer, from somewhere behind me. “After all, we want a show.”

I strove to move again, heaved like I was trying to pull a muscle, and managed to twitch my wrist on the arm of the chair. Metal bit into my skin, cold and unyielding.

The Lancer had started up with his meditation balls again; the sound traced out where he paced behind me. I wasn’t keeping good track of time at the moment, but it wasn’t very long before his men brought in Martinez.

She was walking under her own power, and aside from also being cuffed up, she didn’t look any the worse for the wear. Apparently the Lancer had only felt the need to take out his anger on the person who had personally fucked him over. Thank God.

Martinez plopped herself down in a chair across from me, and the goons chained her in, just as they had done to me. She managed to sit in the manacles primly, somehow, as if she were about to take tea and cakes.

My muscles were responding now, a little bit, though twitching my fingers still felt like I was pushing through glue.

The
clack, clack, clack
approached my shoulder, and I felt the Lancer lean on the chair behind me. “Last chance,” he said. “You really don’t want us to touch her?”

I knew what was coming. I could take it, I hoped. As long as it bought us time.