The machine glanced pointedly at his still-connected limbs.
“Moira fixed it for me,” he replied. “And she never misses an opportunity to remind me about it, but that’s beside the point.”
“It sounds as if you already know whatever it is you want to know,” observed Gary.
“Have you ever heard of a tesseract?” asked Matthew suddenly.
That brought the android up short. “Are you talking about a four-dimensional cube, or did I mishear you?”
“Yes, exactly that,” he replied. “I’m having difficulty envisioning them. I thought you might be able to help explain a few things to me about them.”
“Imagining higher-dimensional objects is naturally difficult for three dimensional entities,” said Gary. “Even I have difficulty with it, though thankfully this android body has significantly more processing power than the PM I was using when I came here before.”
“If you’re inside a tesseract, and you try to walk out one side, you wind up re-entering from the other side, right?”
“That’s not technically correct,” said Gary. “Though if you move in the wrong direction it can seem that way, and being a three-dimensional being it’s impossible to perceive it correctly while inside.”
Matthew frowned.
Gary leaned against the worktable. “I take it that isn’t what you wanted to hear.”
“No,” said Matthew simply, without explanation.
“Instead of worrying about what a tesseract is, why not describe what it is that you’re actually trying to do?” suggested the machine. “That might be more helpful than trying to relate it to hypercubes.”
“All right, this is what I’m thinking of trying…”
***
He spent the next two weeks primarily in his workshop, sometimes going so far as to take his meals there. It was the sort of thing that Moira had once called ‘voluntary self-confinement,’ but it was Matthew’s preferred way to spend his time.
He only saw Karen occasionally, something that might have caused him a small amount of guilt, but his enthusiastic youngest sister, Irene had taken an interest in the newcomer and spent countless hours entertaining her, or as Matthew called it, ‘badgering her with endless questions.’ He was doubly grateful for it, since it both relieved his guilt at being absent so much and kept Irene out of his hair.
Gram’s sister Carissa was almost always with Irene at these times, and the two of them did an admirable job of making certain that Karen’s hours were rarely dull. Moira was notably absent from their gatherings, for she continued to keep mainly to herself, which concerned her mother greatly and bothered Matthew not at all, though he did notice on some level.
Since his father’s initial warning not to return to Karen’s homeworld, Matthew saw little of either of his two parents. The upheaval that Moira had precipitated in Dunbar was occupying much of their time, and they were constantly busy managing arrangements for assisting the neighboring country in their time of need.
It was early morning when Matthew stuck his head out the door of his workshop. There were dark circles under his eyes. He was hoping to make it back to his bed without encountering anyone or having to answer awkward questions. Lately everyone seemed to think he was losing weight, which wasn’t a good observation since he was already a fairly lean young man. He just needed sleep.
If anyone did see him, they might be surprised, since he was known as a late-riser, but in fact he had not yet been to bed.
He was almost to the door in the castle that led to the portal that would take him to his family’s home in the mountains when he stumbled into his youngest sister.
“There you are!” she exclaimed. She was brightly clad in a yellow dress with matching ribbons braided into her hair. It was something of a fashion among the young ladies of the castle these days, largely started by Irene and Carissa themselves.
He groaned. This was not how he wanted to end his day—err, morning. Ignoring her he shuffled past, hoping she would let him go without a struggle. If she had something more interesting in her head she might not bother trying to coax him into conversation.
“Have you seen Karen?” she asked, catching him by the sleeve.
Dammit. “No.”
Irene pursed her lips. “Me either. She wasn’t in her room earlier, and I didn’t see her at all yesterday.”
“That’s terrible,” he intoned vaguely.
Her bright eyes focused on him intently. “You could sound a little more worried—she is your girlfriend, after all, not that you show the slightest interest in anyone.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
Irene wasn’t ready to give up. “She said the same, but no one believes it.”
“Who is ‘no one’?” he asked, interested in spite of himself.
“Probably everyone in the castle,” said Irene bluntly, “but Carissa and me for certain. Honestly, it’s shameful how you’ve treated her.”
Defensively, he put up his hands. “What did I do?”
“Nothing,” said his sister. “That’s the point.” Studying him again, she added, “What’s wrong with your face? Are you ill?”
“Just tired.”
“That’s most of your problem,” she advised him. “You never sleep. You would probably be a lot more pleasant to people if you weren’t perpetually exhausted.”
He sighed, “That’s what I was trying to do when you assaulted me.”
She shook her head in amazement, probably bewildered at the thought of anyone going to bed in the morning. As he turned to go, she added, “If you run into Karen later, let her know I was looking for her.”
“Sure,” he muttered and continued on without looking back.
As Irene got farther away, he heard her muttering, “I wonder if she’s avoiding me?”
He was about to open the enchanted door, the one that activated a portal to his family home, when he sensed a presence in the apartments behind it. Officially, those apartments were where his family was supposed to reside, but they served mainly as a decoy. When most people opened the door before him, it opened into those rooms.
After a second, he realized it was Karen. What’s she doing in there? he wondered. He was so tired he considered pretending he hadn’t noticed her and just going to bed, but he knew she had likely sensed him as well. Trying to force himself to seem more awake, he opened the door without activating the enchantment, and entered the front room of the mostly unused Cameron suite.
Karen was farther back in one of the bedrooms, so he passed through two doors and down a short hall until he reached it. “Karen?” he asked, knocking lightly.
“You can already see I’m dressed—come on in,” she answered.
He did, and found her sitting beside the bed, holding the PM in her hands. She was wearing a somber blue dress that had probably belonged to one of his sisters at one time. “Are you talking to Gary?”
“No, just reading a book,” she replied. “Quietly—by myself.”
It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be reading. He had always associated the device with her virtual father. “Oh,” he said simply.
“Why don’t you lie down?” she suggested. “You look like you might fall over at the slightest breeze.”
That sounded like an excellent idea. If he was going to be forced to have a conversation, doing it while prone would be a great way to conserve energy. People should do more things lying down, like eating, he thought drunkenly. Sleep deprivation was definitely making his thoughts haphazard.
“Irene was wondering where you were,” he said absently, as he got comfortable.
“You didn’t tell her, did you?” said Karen worriedly.
“No, I didn’t notice you were in here until I got to the door,” he mumbled.
Karen put the PM down. “Good. I like your sister, and Carissa, but the past week has been overwhelming. I just need some time alone.”
“Sorry to intrude,” he apologized.
She smiled. “N
o, you don’t count. Besides, you’re half-asleep. As soon as I let you, you’ll be snoring.”
“What’s overwhelming?” he asked.
Karen rubbed her face. “Everything. Some of it is just the newness of it all, but there’s also the difference in people, and the language… it’s exhausting. You know, in my world, everyone is connected, all the time, but we ignore one another for the most part.”
He listened silently.
“Here, it’s completely different,” Karen went on. “There’s no network, no computers, no implants or PM’s. People are accustomed to talking face to face, all the time. I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of people and chatter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, and I love it, but I was an only child growing up in a place where you didn’t see many people to begin with. Now I feel as though I’m being constantly bombarded.
“That’s why I thought I’d find a quiet place to read for a while,” she finished. “And there’s no better place for solitude than your parents’ fake residence. You don’t think they’d mind, do you?”
He didn’t reply, and when she leaned over to look at his face, she found him fast asleep.
She stared at him thoughtfully before opening the chest at the foot of the bed and removing a coverlet to spread over him, and then she went back to her book.
The rest of the morning was thankfully quiet and peaceful, for both of them.
Chapter 40
Another week passed, and still he kept up his obsessive routine, spending almost every waking hour at his workbench. It was sometime in the evening now, though Matthew couldn’t have been bothered to know what exact hour it was. His magesight alerted him to someone approaching the door, but he didn’t pause. It was his father, so he kept working until the door opened.
“Son,” said Mordecai.
He glanced up. “Hi Dad.”
“You missed dinner again,” said his father.
“I ate earlier. Cook was kind enough to send lunch to the shop for me.”
Mort frowned. “I spoke to Cook. He wanted to know if he should send your evening meal over. Lunch was almost ten hours ago. Have you eaten since then?”
Now that he let his thoughts drift a little, Matt realized his stomach had a painful ache in it; it simply hadn’t become demanding enough to break his concentration yet. “Oh,” said Matt with some surprise. “I guess I am hungry. I kind of lose track of time when I’m working.”
Mordecai grinned. “Like father like son I suppose. Your mother always says she’s a w…”
“Workshop widow, I know, Dad,” finished Matthew.
His father grimaced. “I think I know how she feels now.” Stepping closer, he put a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Why don’t you come get something to eat? You can tell me about what you’re working on.”
His dad was probably the one person he could reasonably expect to understand his work, but he was loath to stop just then. “It’s complicated. It will be easier to show you when it’s finished.”
“Let me see what you have so far.”
He worried briefly. He didn’t want his father to figure out that his project was related to his plan to return for Desacus, but he decided it couldn’t hurt to show him what he had so far. Picking up four metal cubes from one side of the bench, he tossed them into the air. With a touch of aythar, they spread out into a floating square formation in front of him, roughly two feet to a side. Matthew voiced the command word, and the enchantment worked into the cubes flared to life. The area between the cubes turned black—not an everyday black, like coal or ink, but an absolute black that gave nothing back. It was as if everything ceased to exist where it touched the black square hanging in the air.
“Fascinating,” said Mordecai. “I sense nothing of it from this side, and from the other…” He moved to stand beside Matthew on the other side of the square; from that perspective, the square had a different appearance. It was still black, but not the same unforgiving void it had been on the other side. He reached out as if he might touch it.
Matthew slapped his hand away. “Don’t!”
“I wasn’t going to touch it,” said his father, with a hint of petulance in his voice. “What is it doing, exactly? It feels odd to my magesight. On this side it’s strange, and on the other it feels like a complete absence of anything.”
“It’s a one-way translation pane,” he answered, making up the name as he said it. “It’s a gateway to another dimension, but it only goes in one direction. Things can pass through, but they can’t come back, and if you put something through only partway and then pull it out… here, let me demonstrate.”
Matthew picked up a slender stick from a pile he had lying on the bench for that purpose. Holding it out, he stuck the end of the branch into the square from the side that was absolute void. “As long as the stick keeps going in it’s fine, but if I pull back…” As he pulled, the stick came away missing the portion that had entered the translation pane.
“Wow.”
“Now look at this,” he added, warming to his subject. Matt picked up a small rock from the bench and threw it at the translation pane, this time from the other side. It passed through and hit the wall of the shop without harm. He gathered it up from the floor and threw it back, this time into the other side. It vanished completely. “It’s one directional,” he explained. “From this side, it’s a one-way portal, but from the other it doesn’t exist at all.”
“But it’s dark on the other side as well,” began Mordecai.
“Because the light from the other side is being completely absorbed,” said Matt. Taking up another branch, he stuck it through from the less dark side. It emerged from the other side, but as soon as he pulled back, the portion that entered the void side vanished and the stick fell to the floor in two pieces. “If you try to pull back from that side, it gets cut as well, so it’s still dangerous.”
His father’s eyes were full of interest. “That’s fascinating. What are you planning to do with it?”
Matthew chose his words with care. “After my last trip to Karen’s world it felt like there was almost no way to defend myself properly. A normal shield takes a lot of power to maintain, and over there aythar is at a premium, since the whole dimension is devoid of it. This could be used as a shield of sorts, one that could absorb any attack, since it doesn’t stop the attack, it merely translates it to another dimension.”
Mordecai rubbed his beard. “It could do that just as well if it was a normal two-way portal.”
Matt nodded, “Yes, but this makes it more dangerous to would-be attackers. If they touch it, they’ll lose hands, arms, whatever, but more importantly,”—standing on one side he sent a small blast of fire through the square, scorching the air on the other side—"you can still attack from this side.”
His father spoke up, “Though the main problem is you’ll still be vulnerable from other directions.”
“Which is why I’m working on a design to let each cube serve as an interstice for three sides instead of just one…”
“So you can connect them up and surround yourself on every side,” agreed Mordecai, “or even above and below. But if you did that…”
“You’d be blind,” finished Matt. “I have an idea to handle that problem.”
“What about gravity?”
He smiled. “I worried about that too, but it doesn’t seem like it’s as much of a problem as you might think. It doesn’t affect the translation panes. They only move with the cubes, which the user directs.”
“So you won’t fall through the ground? But you can’t stand on one, you just demonstrated what happens to anything that goes through from even the wrong side,” said Mordecai.
“I’m planning to add a shield on the inner surface of the bottom pane to prevent that,” said Matthew enthusiastically.
“What about the other ones?” asked his father. “If you accidentally touch one you’ll lose a finger, or worse.”
“This is just a test model. I’ll make it much bigger,
roughly six feet on a side, so that it will be more than an arm’s length away. I’ll also tie the position of the translation cubes to a master that the user wears, so that they move with you. You won’t be able to fall into them.”
“Can you move them if they’re active on all sides?” asked Mort.
Matthew shrugged. It was a problem he hadn’t found an answer to yet. “I’m not sure. I think not, but I haven’t gotten far enough to test it. Probably the bottom will have to be turned off if the user wants to walk or run.”
“Let me see your enchantment formulae,” said his father.
“It’s still a little rough,” he answered. “It’s a work in progress.” He pulled out a large sheet of parchment and rolled it out flat on the workbench.
His father stared at it with interest, and then observed, “Your handwriting is atrocious.”
“I know, Dad.”
“What does this part do?”
He began explaining the structure, and after a while his father started making suggestions. “There’s a way to simplify this piece…” Soon the two of them were in the thick of it, and the hours began to melt away.
***
“This again?!” said a sharp voice.
Matthew rubbed his eyes. The voice belonged to his mother, and as he became aware of his surroundings, he could see she was glaring at his father, who was raising his head groggily from the bench where he had been resting it. They had fallen asleep in the workshop.
“Mmm, good morning?” said Mordecai.
Penny scowled. “Don’t give me that! You said you were going to talk to him.” She gestured in Matthew’s direction. “Instead, I find you sleeping in here. Is this where you’ve been all night?!” Her hands were on her hips, and Matthew could tell she was just getting started.
His father grinned. “No, of course not, m’dear. I was with another woman. I just stopped by this morning to see if the boy had taken my advice and I was so worn out by the drinking and debauchery that I had to take a nap.” Mort winked at his son. “He was only here to try and help cover for his father’s sins, but now you’ve caught me. Don’t blame the boy, though. He has promised to mend his ways. I’m the only one at fault.”