“Well, I wouldn’t call it flopping—”
“And you didn’t comment.”
“Is there anything I could have said that you’d have found helpful?”
“Fair.”
He’s seen her trapped inside whatever machine she was trying to construct. She’s seen him fill a living room with accidental herring. Still, she gets anxious at the idea of him seeing her screw up. She shouldn’t. He’s not the one who lords her failures over her. Chris’s exuberant flappy-handed glee can be hard to take but, apparently, that’s because Ellie can’t take a joke.
Ellie grips a shelf for balance, then takes one step at a time. The haze pushes back against her feet as long as she pushes against it first. There’s a faint crackle with each step. The nonexistent floor feels thin and brittle, as though it would shatter if she stamped down too hard. Or, rather, her foot would push straight through. Knowing she’s wrong is surprisingly unhelpful.
“You’re still moving away from me.”
“I’m traveling on only one axis at a time.”
“Nevertheless.” Daniel’s tone may be drier than several deserts.
The sign on the closest bookcase hangs with a dejected cast. When she checks it, Daniel’s right, of course.
Ellie browses the shelves as she walks. How the stacks are organized makes more sense as she zigzags toward Daniel. The bookcases form a gigantic hypercube. The physical structure of the stacks is practically uniform in every direction. The coordinates are a classification that narrows a document’s location down to the bookcase.
The last number in the string clearly represents a date. As Ellie steps closer to Daniel, the folded planes flip by on the shelves. The architecture of her universe evolves fast enough to see. Design fads come and go. Breakdowns in the machinery are either repaired or become the new normal. Maybe it’s not a surprise that a group of people who refuse to interfere in the workings of any universe have such a comprehensive record of how it has changed. Still, they have to believe in keeping their archives in good working order. Ellie has never thought to ask Chris about that.
Daniel hovers in the haze next to a bookcase. His arms hang at his sides. A vague but pleasant smile covers his face. In contrast to how he behaved in his apartment, he is now the epitome of calm and patience.
The end of her trip in sight, Ellie bounds toward Daniel. Her feet thump against the haze. Every step strikes stone as it lands.As she sprints, it occurs to her that maybe this is what she should have been doing all along.
Ellie slams into Daniel. She throws her arms around him and hangs on to his torso. Daniel, for his part, is unmoved. Literally. He is exactly where he was before, which is surprising, and as unyielding as bronze, which isn’t. The only real difference between his body and a bronze statue is that the bronze statue is colder.
“Getting around here is easier if you’re heavier.” Daniel’s hand brushes Ellie’s back. “Look, you hang on as long as you need to but, at some point, we need to get a move on.”
The haze stops Ellie’s feet when she stamps. Her body is crouched when she lets go. She straightens and it may be the first time she’s seen the top of Daniel’s head. He lifts his head to look up at her.
“Listen.” Daniel’s voice is even softer than his typical sand shifting on a desolate beach.
It takes the eternity of a minute before she hears it. Tiny pinpricks of sound, like fingernails skittering across glass, surround her. Daniel’s head turns and his ears perk up on the first click. A few seconds later, everything’s silent again.
“That clicking sound. They’re looking for us.” Daniel barely breaks the silence. “Letting people wander their stacks is really not something they’re happy about.”
“Well, lead on then.” She frowns when she sees him frown. “We could go back to Ahdi and have him show us where to go.”
“No.” Daniel stares off in a direction that shouldn’t exist.
“So you do know where you’re going?”
“No, I don’t.” He turns back to Ellie. “I just don’t want to bug Ahdi.”
“Daniel.” Ellie forces herself to take a deep breath. “Ahdi isn’t going to think any less of you.”
Ahdi wasn’t the least bit surprised when Daniel flew out of hisapartment. Going back to ask him to take them to the reference desk is not going to change his mind about Daniel.
“I know. But I think I should be able to find the reference desk by myself.” His gaze pivots, and he looks through Ellie rather than at her. “He’s probably already gone to talk to the folks who maintain the physics of the universe our skunkworks lives in anyway.”
Daniel walks into Ellie. His resting puppy face shows no sign that he’s about to plow through her. He takes large steps, and she doesn’t have time to do more than throw her hands in front of her. Like that’s helpful.
He’s a step past her before her hands have stopped moving. A beat goes by before she realizes he wasn’t even walking toward her. It’s like passing your hand above or below a piece of paper in her own universe. If you’re not seeing all three dimensions, it looks like your hand’s going to hit the paper. The walking mountain has apparently navigated this many dimensions before.
“Wait.” Ellie rushes after him. “Where are we going?”
