The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(2)

I what?

Called me a spectral operator.

I never called you any such thing. It’s a mathematical term.

Yeah. Say you.

You can look it up.

You always say that.

You never do that.

Yeah, well. It’s water under the bridge.

Is that what it is? What, you’re worried about a low grade on your job report?

Call it what you like, Princess. We did the best we could. The malady lingers on.

That’s all right. It wont linger much longer.

Yeah, I keep forgetting. Off to the bourne from whence no traveler whatever the fuck.

You keep forgetting?

Figure of speech. I dont forget much. Of course you dont seem to have all that much in the way of recollection concerning the state we found you in when we first showed up.

I dont have to recollect it. I’m still in it.

Yeah, right. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think I remember a young girl on tiptoes peering through a high aperture infrequently reported upon in the archives. What did she see? A figure at the gate? But that aint the question, is it? The question is did it see her? A small bore of light. Who would notice? But the hounds of hell can pass through the weem of a ring. Am I right or what?

I was fine till you showed up.

Jesus you’re a piece of work. Did you know that? Still, I’ve got to hand it to you. As the trick said to the blind hooker. Hell’s own, drooling and leering, and she’s trying to look over their shoulder. What’s out there? Dunno. Some atavism out of a dead ancestor’s psychosis come in out of the rain. Over there smoking in the corner. Well what the hell. Let me get the lights. No good. Shut off the projector. Who the fuck ordered this anyway? Roll up the screen and the fucking things are on the wall. The other thing you called me was a pathogen.

You are a pathogen.

See?

Are they coming in or not?

Is who coming in?

Cut it out. I know they’re out there.

The horts, that would be.

That would be.

All in good time.

I can see their feet under the door. I can see the shadows of their feet.

Feet and the shadows of feet. Just like in the real world.

What are they waiting for?

Who knows? Maybe they dont feel welcome.

That never stopped them before.

The Kid arched one mothgnawn eyebrow. Yeah? he said.

Yeah, she said. Pulling the blanket about her shoulders. No one invited you. You just showed up.

Okay, said the Kid. Someone in the hallway, right? Well let’s take a look.

He skated to the door in a long glissade and stopped and pushed back his sleeve and gripped the knob with his flipper. Ready? he called. He hauled the door open. The hallway was empty. He looked back over his shoulder at her. Looks like they flew the coop. Unless—how do I put this—it was your imagination?

I know they were there. I can smell them. I can smell Miss Vivian’s perfume. And I can certainly smell Grogan.

Yeah? Could just be somebody cooking cabbages down the hall. Anything else? Any sulphur? Brimstone?

He shut the door. Immediately the crowd outside was back. Shuffling and coughing. He rubbed his flippers together. As if to warm them. All right. Where was I? Maybe we should bring you up to date on some of the projects. You might stabilize a bit if you saw some of the progress we’ve made.

Stabilize?

We ran the stuff we got from you and so far everything looks good.

What stuff you got from me? You didnt get any stuff from me.

Yeah, right. We’re still getting one hundred leptons to the drachma which is okay in the sense that it’s not really wrong but we hope that most of this classical stuff will come out in the wash and we can get down to the renormal. You’re always going to see different shit once you get everything under the light. You just differentiate, that’s all. No shadows at this scale of course. You got these black interstices you’re looking at. We know now that the continua dont actually continue. That there aint no linear, Laura. However you cook it down it’s going to finally come to periodicity. Of course the light wont subtend at this level. Wont reach from shore to shore, in a manner of speaking. So what is it that’s in the in-between that you’d like to mess with but cant see because of the aforementioned difficulties? Dunno. What’s that you say? Not much help? How come this and how come that? I dont know. How come sheep dont shrink in the rain? We’re working without a net here. Where there’s no space you cant extrapolate. Where would you go? You send stuff out but you dont know where it’s been when you get it back. All right. No need to get your knickers in a twist. You just need to knuckle down and do some by god calculating. That’s where you come in. You got stuff here that is maybe just virtual and maybe not but still the rules have got to be in it or you tell me where the fuck are the rules located? Which of course is what we’re after, Alice. The blessed be to Jesus rules. You put everything in a jar and then you name the jar and go from there à la the G?del and Church crowd and in the meantime real stuff which is probably some substrate of the substrate is hauling ass off down the road at deformable speeds with the provision that what has no mass has no volume variant or otherwise and therefore no shape and what cant flatten cant inflate and vice versa in the best commutative tradition and at this point—to borrow a term—we’re stuck. Right?

You dont know what you’re talking about. It’s all gibberish.