“Yes, I’d like that. Thank you.” He twists a long, flat noodle into a spoonful of broth. “For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing. I’m not saying saving your mother was possible—I don’t think it was—but nothing they did seemed to even try. Stringing your mother along like that seems to me more cruel than kind.”
Ellie and Daniel exchange glances. The latter looks triumphant. A single sentence from Ahdi justifies what he did or, rather, didn’t do.
“See? I knew I wasn’t the only one who didn’t tell the Chief Architect.” Daniel is jubilant. He recoils a bit at Ellie’s and Ahdi’s glare in response. “What?”
“I know why Daniel didn’t tell her, but why didn’t you?” Ellie twirls her chopsticks idly in the broth.
Ahdi stares down at his bowl for a moment before he meets her gaze again. When he speaks, he’s picking his words carefully.
“Everyone grieves in their own way.” Ahdi sets down his spoon. “I figured whoever was involved needed it.”
“You don’t know who?”
“Very little is changed in the skunkworks without me noticing. I kept an eye on and adjusted the skunkworks to make sure the universe didn’t grow too unstable. They needed to do this to cope. It would have been impossible for pretty much anyone to convince them to stop.”
“It doesn’t matter who did this to my mom.”
“Really.” Ahdi holds Ellie in his gaze for a moment before he swallows a spoonful of soup. “Having torn down their abomination, I might want to give them a piece of my mind for torturing your mom like that, or at least find out why. She would have found perverting physics, even for her sake, unacceptable. How did you find out about it, anyway?”
“Daniel showed it to me.” She sets her chopsticks across the bowl. “He led me to it and explained why it was there.”
“Daniel…”
Ellie sees who Daniel learned his reproving look from. Daniel, however, can only muster gravity, the weakest of the fundamental forces. Coming from Ahdi, it’s six thousand trillion trillion trillion times stronger. It’s as though the strong force is disappointed in you. Ellie half expects Daniel to disintegrate because his quarks will refuse to bind together to form his protons and neutrons.
“What?” Daniel looks scandalized, absolutely undeserving of disintegration. “She did the right thing. There were only two people with the moral authority, and Chris was never going to be of any help.”
Ahdi relents. His gaze softens and he sighs.
“I suppose I should be happy you didn’t simply go to every builder you could track down and insist they remove it for you.”
“You didn’t, did you?” Ellie wouldn’t put it past him.
“Ellie.” Daniel’s appalled expression is epic.
“So, if it’s not to find out who designed and built that contraption, why did you call me?”
Neither Ellie nor Daniel react. At least, that’s what Ellie thinks until Ahdi speaks again.
“I see. There’s a serious problem with the skunkworks. You’re trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“How did you do that?” Ellie tilts her head, studying Ahdi the way she might a complex set of gears.
“I’ve known Daniel since he was a kid.” Ahdi shrugs and picks up his chopsticks again.
“So have I.”
“But you were an even younger kid when you two first met.” Ahdi slurps a noodle, chews thoughtfully, and swallows. “It seems to me you need an architect if you’re going to fix it. No, you’re not here to ask me to help fix it. You’re wondering whether I created the problem in the first place.”
“You didn’t create a covert channel in the universe.” Daniel rushes his words as though if he said them fast enough, they could reach Ahdi before any accusation can land.
Ahdi drops his chopsticks. They clatter on the table. His gaze widens and either the man is also an excellent actor or this is the first he’s heard of it.
“Covert channel? Have you looked into it? Yes, you clearly have, Daniel. So, of course, you’ve worked out the mechanism.” Ahdi’s words are an expectation, not a question. “Show me.”
A structure of folded air materializes on the table, a theoretical construct resting on a Platonic notion. It is a giant, translucent sea urchin in desperate need of a haircut and designed by an impractical urban planner who has a thing for spires but no sense ofproportion. The sea urchin barely has a body, and its spikes jut out in all directions. They vary in height, and their widths range from gossamer to Polish sausage. Each spike is built out of folds upon folds, forming facets that reflect the room this way and that.
Daniel’s theoretical construct is nestled among the small plates scattered on the table. Sparks dance from one teetering spike to another as the construct settles. It rolls for a few inches before it finally finds a stable configuration.
