Math, though . . . math never changed. Math always meant exactly what it said, no more and no less, and refused to be written for anyone. Math was always math. If I turned myself into numbers, I would be a wholly unique equation, something so much bigger and wilder and harder to define than “Sarah.” I looked at the screen again. I put my fingers on the keys.
Give me one good reason, I typed. Give me one good reason I should help you after you hurt Artie, and threatened my family, and brought me here against my will. Give me one good reason I should do this math for you, and not for myself.
Because if you do, she replied, we’ll go away forever.
I stopped. Then, haltingly, I typed, What do you mean, you’ll go away forever?
I mean the cuckoos. All of us. We’ll take the answer you give us, and we’ll open a door, and we won’t look back. They’re gathering, Sarah. The cuckoos are sending out the call, and they’re gathering, ready for you to open the way. You can save this world from us. You can create a future without fear of what’s lurking where you can’t see. Isn’t that enough for you?
There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. But the numbers were nibbling at the edges of the world, and whatever it was, I couldn’t see it.
I solve, you go, I typed. Promise.
Promise.
Something about this felt wrong. I took a deep breath and answered anyway.
Fine, I wrote. Now go away and let me work.
I closed my eyes. Only for a moment, but when I opened them the laptop was gone, taking the desk with it. It was just me and the chalkboard, pristine, inviting, waiting for me to get started.
I rose and walked over to the board, picking up the first piece of chalk. It fit perfectly against my fingers. The numbers whispered, urging me to begin. I pressed the chalk to the board.
I began.
Nineteen
“Well, bugger.”
—Thomas Price
A sleepy residential neighborhood in Beaverton, Oregon, about to have a real problem
MARK’S DIRECTIONS HAD BROUGHT us out of the woods, past Portland to Beaverton, a suburb where the lights always seemed to turn off before the sun had fully committed to going to bed. The streets were asleep, lined in darkened houses, sidewalks empty.
Until.
We turned one last corner, and the sidewalks abruptly acquired a thriving, if silent, population of pale-skinned, black-haired people whose clothing came from all walks of life. One woman who looked like she’d just stepped off the pages of Vogue turned her head to watch us roll by, her eyes flashing briefly white. Two men dressed like bikers did the same, followed by a man in the pastel scrubs of a pediatric nurse and a woman in a bathing suit. She wasn’t shivering, despite the chill of the early morning air. None of them seemed to be bothered even a little by the cold.
We passed what looked like an entire preschool class, all of them wearing pajamas. Some were clutching stuffed toys. All of them looked absent, somehow, like they didn’t really understand where they were or what was going on.
“What’s up with the kids?” I asked.
Mark glanced in their direction. “They’re still larval. They haven’t reached their first instar. They don’t have the history yet. Someone had to go and get them from their host families. Most of them probably think they’re having a really strange dream.”
Voice carefully measured to contain her horror and growing rage, Elsie asked, “And the host families . . . ?”
“They weren’t the target. A few of them are probably dead, if that’s what you’re asking, but most would have been asleep when the children were taken.” Mark sounded utterly unconcerned, like this was nothing of any real importance. “Either you’ll stop your cousin and they’ll get their kids back, or you won’t, and they’ll be vaporized before they can wake up. So I guess they’re fine.”
“You guess?” snapped Elsie. “What happened to you being the kinder, gentler cuckoo?”
Mark turned to look at her. “I never said I was. I said I loved my sister and my parents. Three humans, out of however many billion there are currently running around this shithole of a planet. And before you judge me for that, how many cuckoos do you care about, again? Because I’m counting two. Two cuckoos, full stop. Seems like I’m doing a little better with the cross-species empathy project.”
Elsie narrowed her eyes and kept on driving.
The house we wanted was at the end of the street, a small, standard, 1970s tract home that didn’t stand out in any way from its neighbors, save for the seven RVs parked out front, and the dozen or so cuckoos standing patiently on the lawn. Their eyes were glowing a steady white, like Christmas lights strung through the air. Elsie stopped the car in the middle of the street, just staring at them.
“That’s it,” she said. “We can’t get any closer.”
“You don’t need to,” said Mark. “All of you are wearing anti-telepathy charms. You’re basically invisible to me right now, unless I’m looking directly at you. All the cuckoos in the house have already sunk into the corona of Sarah’s metamorphosis. They’re watching her do the math, waiting for the moment when it all comes together and she wakes up with the knowledge like an egg waiting to hatch inside her mind.”
“Meaning if we stay quiet, they won’t realize we’re here,” I said slowly.
“Bingo.”
“What’s to stop you from telling them? We’re outnumbered.”
“There aren’t enough bullets in the world,” Antimony muttered.
“Nothing,” said Mark. “If I want to betray you, I’ll betray you, and you won’t be able to stop me. So I guess this is the part where you either trust me or don’t. If you trust me, we go get your cousin. If you don’t . . .” He let his voice trail off.
His meaning was still perfectly clear. “If we don’t, we lose her,” I said. I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Fuck this.”
The sound of the car door opening was incredibly loud in the eerily silent neighborhood. A few cuckoos looked our way, only to look away again immediately afterward. We weren’t people to them. We didn’t matter.
Mark waited until we were all out of the car before starting toward the house. We fell into step behind him, forming a short, terrified line. My palms were sweating. I wiped them on my jeans. I’d never wished my pheromones were more effective before, but in that moment, I did. If I’d been able to affect cuckoos, I wouldn’t have needed to worry about a thing. I could have just wiped off my cologne and waltzed right into the middle of things, demanding they all love me, knowing that I would be obeyed.