The Spacetime Pool (5 page)

When she looked up
again, Dominick brushed her hair back from her face, and calluses on his palm
scraped her cheek. She wondered how he had developed them—and then remembered
the swords his men wore.

“Welcome to my home,”
he murmured. Then he bent his head.

Janelle knew what he
intended, but she froze, unable to believe he would go through with it. When he
kissed her, his lips felt as full as they looked, a sensual contrast to his
harsh power. She tensed, but before she could respond, someone behind them
coughed.

Dominick raised his
head, letting go of her, and she turned around, relieved by the interruption. A
lanky man was coming down the steps of the palace, his attempt not to stare at
her all the more obvious for its lack of success. He stopped next to them and
spoke with Dominick. Although Janelle couldn’t catch all of their words, it
sounded as if the man was reporting another raid. Dominick and his men had been
out searching for the outlaws, intent on stopping the harassment of his people.

Dominick turned to
Janelle. “I will see you later.” He took off his jacket and wrapped it around
her shoulders. His smile was crooked, almost boyish. “It looks much better on
you than on me.”

“Thank you,” she
said, uncertain how to act with him.

He climbed the steps
with the other man, leaving her with two guards. She noted how easily Dominick
assumed authority. He listened carefully and asked questions. When he gave
orders, he did it with confidence and tact. She had seen those same qualities
in the strongest leaders she had met while her father was the American
Ambassador to Spain.

Bracketed by guards,
she went up the steps, through a foyer, and into a hall gleaming in the light
of torches carried by Dominick’s men. Janelle’s breath caught. Soaring arches
filled the immense hall, row after row of them, a forest of pillars in perfect
lines. Tessellated mosaics in gold, blue, and green curved around columns and
patterned the vaulted ceiling. In each V-shape where the arches met, a
stained-glass window glowed with gem colors, showing scenes similar to those of
Catholic churches in Spain. It was like an exquisite blending of Moorish art
with the styles of a European cathedral.

A group of men met
Dominick just inside the entrance. Janelle’s guards drew her to a stop. She
just waited, too tired to deal with her confusion over what had happened with
him in the courtyard. It had to be past two in the morning.

People came and went.
It wasn’t long before three women appeared, walking through the arches from
deeper within the palace. Silk wrapped them from neck to ankle, glistening in
the smoky torchlight, crimson and saffron, shot through with gold threads.
Their shimmering dark hair fell to their waists.

The trio stopped in
front of Janelle. The oldest woman, a matron with silver hair, spoke in melodic
phrases that almost sounded like English, but that went by too fast to catch.

“I’m sorry.” Janelle’s
voice rasped with fatigue. “I don’t understand.”

The woman tried more
slowly. “Come with us.” She didn’t smile. “To someplace you can wash. And
sleep.”

Relief washed over
Janelle. “Thank you.”

The woman just barely
inclined her head, stiff and cool.

As Janelle set off
with them, accompanied by her guards, she glanced back at Dominick. He remained
deep in conversation with his men, and she wasn’t certain he knew she had left.

The older woman spoke
curtly. “His Highness has important matters to attend.”

Janelle nodded, not
wanting to interrupt his conference. They went down a “corridor” of arches, one
of many in the hall, walkways delineated by columns instead of walls. It was
dizzying, all that geometrical beauty gleaming in the torchlight.

The older woman was
watching her face. “This hall is why Prince Dominick-Michael’s home is called
the Palaces of Arches.”

“It’s glorious,”
Janelle said. “Is this the Hall of Arches?”

“No. The Fourier
Hall.”

“Fourier?” She
blinked. “Like the mathematician?”

The woman gave a
sharp wave of her hand. “It has always been called this. That is all I know.”

Janelle didn’t push.
Having lived as the child of a diplomat for so many years had taught her a
great deal about dealing with cultures other than her own, and she could tell
her interactions here were on shaky ground. She had discovered early on that if
she wasn’t certain how her words would be received, it was often better to say
nothing.

She couldn’t stop
staring at the arches, though. What an exquisite challenge, to portray those
graceful repeating patterns as a periodic function. Their Fourier transform
would be a work of art. An unsteady urge to laugh hit her, followed by the
desire to sit down and put her head in her hands. Such a strange thought, that
she could capture in mathematics the essence of a dream palace that couldn’t
exist.

The women’s slippered
feet padded on the tiled floor, and Janelle’s tennis shoes squeaked. At the
back of the hall, they passed under a huge arch built from gold-veined marble
rather than the wood used in the Fourier Hall. A true corridor lay beyond, with
stone walls tiled in star mosaics. Its size dwarfed their party, and other
halls intersected it at oddly sharp angles. The pillars at corners where the
halls met were carved to portray men with great broadswords or women in elegantly
draped robes holding long-stemmed flowers. It spoke to the European influence
here that the designs included human statues, which weren’t seen in Moorish
architecture.

Janelle tried to keep
track of their route through the maze of halls, but exhaustion dulled her mind.
She was lost by the time they stopped at an oaken door. The guards stayed
outside while the women took her into a small room. Plush rugs covered the
floor, and mosaics with pink tulips and swirling green stems graced the lower half
of the walls. Something odd about the stems tugged at her mind, but she was too
tired to puzzle it out. In one corner, a white table supported a blue vase with
real flowers. Blue velvet bedcovers lay in another corner, on a thicker pile of
rugs, with pillows heaped there like a tumble of rose and jade clouds.

“It’s beautiful,”
Janelle said. “Thank you.”

No one answered. They
led her across the room and under an archway. In the chamber beyond, a small,
sunken pool steamed, and a lamp glowed dimly in a seashell claw on the wall.

The older woman
finally spoke. “We can help you bathe.”

Janelle’s face
heated. “It’s kind of you to offer. But I can manage.”

“Then we will leave
you to rest.” She was so aloof, she could have been a hundred miles away. The
trio bowed and gracefully exited the chamber. A moment later, the outer door
creaked on its hinges.

Janelle hoped she
hadn’t just committed some social blunder. Unsure what she would find, she
returned to the bedroom. An oil lamp hung on a scrolled hook by the entrance.
It gave less light than the torches, which was probably why the women hadn’t
carried it, but Janelle preferred the lamp, which neither smoked nor sputtered.
To her relief, the door had a lock on this side and opened when she tried it.
One of her guards stood a short distance down the hall, severe in his leather
armor. Light from a wall sconce glinted on the hilt of the broadsword strapped
across on his back.

“Hello,” Janelle
said.

He turned with a
start. Then he said what sounded like, “My greetings, Lady.”

“Isn’t that sword
heavy?” she asked.

He seemed bemused by
her attention. “Not for me.”

“Oh. Good.” She wasn’t
sure why she asked, but she felt the need to connect to people, to make this
less strange. “Goodnight.”

His craggy face
softened. “Goodnight.”

Janelle closed the
door and sagged against the wall. She could think of many reasons Dominick
might post a guard: to keep her in, as a courtesy, or because she wasn’t safe
even in his home. For all its extraordinary beauty, his world had a starkness that
kept her off balance.

Ill at ease, she
explored her suite. In the bathing room, an elegantly carved bench stood
against one wall, with a jade-green towel, a silver brush inlaid with
mother-of-pearl from abalone, two soaps carved like tulips, and a crimson silk
robe. It was all gorgeous, everything handmade. The suite, however, had only
the one exit. They had closed her in well.

No one said you
couldn’t leave,
she reminded herself.
More than anything, she wanted to clean up. She carried the soaps to the pool,
an oval filled with scented water, but then she hesitated. The idea of
undressing made her feel vulnerable. The grimy scrapes on her arms and legs
decided her; she quickly peeled off her clothes, shivering as the cold air
chilled her bare skin. Then she slid into the heated pool.

Warmth seeped
blissfully into her body as she lay back. Silence filled the room, a contrast
to the muted city roar she had lived with these last years, at MIT. No sirens
or engines interrupted the quiet, none of the constant hum that rumbled even in
the deepest hours of an urban night. She was immersed in a great ocean of
quietude.

Her thoughts drifted
to Dominick’s gate. A branch cut? They came from complex numbers. She could
write such a number as z = e(iF), where F was called the phase angle. Varying
the phase from F = 0 to F = 2pi was like going around an analog clock from 12
to 12. Just as 12 was the same at the start and finish, so 0 and 2p were the
same. However, if she divided F by 2, then z = e(iF/2). Now the phase was F/2
As F went from 0 to 2pi the phase only changed to p. The angle F had to go
around a second time before F/2 returned to its starting value of 2p. But the
same F couldn’t have two different values of
z.
To avoid that
contradiction,
z
slipped through a branch cut to a second sheet for the
second cycle F. Just as 3 am and 3 pm were different times, so F on each sheet
was considered different. Her world was one “clock” and Dominick’s was another.

That suggested some
sort of phase here had to go through a full cycle before Dominick’s gate
reopened. Her twelve-hour model was an only analogy; she had no idea how long
would she have to wait before the actual gate reopened. Days? Months?
Years?

Nor was that her only
problem. Suppose she divided F by 3. The phase would be F/3. It meant she would
need three “clocks.” Three universes. Divide F by 4, and she needed four. Many
sheets could exist. If she went through a gate, she could end up on yet some
other “clock”—some other universe—instead of her own.

Janelle groaned. Her
head hurt, and the water had cooled. Putting away her thoughts, she soaped her
body and washed her hair. Then she climbed out and dried off with the luxuriant
towel. She reached for her wrinkled sundress, but then paused. The robe was far
nicer and scented with perfume, certainly more pleasant than her gritty
clothes. She slipped on the robe, and the sensuous glide of silk against her
bare skin stirred her thoughts of Dominick. She tried to smile at her
reflection in the pool. “Hey, Aulair, you look hot.” But her voice shook like
the ripples flowing over the water.

She padded barefoot
into the other room. She was so tired she could barely stand, but she felt too
exposed to sleep. The bed consisted of no more than layers of rugs covered by
velvet. She sat on it in the corner, with the wall at her back, facing the door
as she drew pillows around her. It wasn’t until they crumpled in her grip that
she realized how tightly she had clenched them.

Her eyelids drooped,
and she forced them up. She wouldn’t sleep. The lamp swung on its hook, moving
shadows on the walls, back and forth, back and forth...

The scrape of wood
against stone roused Janelle. She lifted her head, disoriented. She had slid
down and was lying amid the pillows. The lamp had burned low, leaving the room
swathed in velvety shadows.

The scrape came
again. She thought she said,
Who is it?
but no words came out.