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26.
"Moping?" Lindy said. They had already discussed the whole thing on their way home from work before dawn. It was clear that Tedda had suddenly become a liability, and must be removed as far as possible, but why?
"Huh?" Tedda had been lying on her bed, chin on her palms, while she stared into a rainy day that matched her mood. The sky outside was gray, and the leaves in the tree outside glistened with water. Tedda heard dripping in various places outside, and the disconsolate cooing of a dove or pigeon hiding in the building's worm-eaten eaves outside.
"You look as if you lost your best friend."
Tedda shrugged. "In a way I have."
Lindy plopped down near her, a thin rail wrapped in ragged clothing, mostly earth tones. "How do you figure?"
Tedda shrugged again. "Board games."
Lindy did an eye-thing. "Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, it's a lot of fun. Maybe you'll meet new friends down there."
"Too bad you're not coming along. Next thing, they'll separate us completely."
Lindy grinned. "I wouldn't be surprised if they shift me down there too."
"Oh?"
"Yes. The project is grinding to a stop. It's hit a snag. I'm not sure what it is."
"Overheating."
Lindy's turn to say "Huh."
Tedda rolled over on her back, gesticulating as she spoke. She felt more animated. It was like getting this off her chest. "I've been sensing something wrong, and I've done the math backwards and forwards."
"Yes?"
"The rapid proliferation of tunnels and cells and objects, coupled with a certain presence of background radiation and its equivalent (charm, chatter, whatever they call it) from the black monopoles, all suggest to me that the system is being overloaded."
"That's all over my head."
"No, listen, I'm just thinking out loud." Tedda tried to take it to the next step, but couldn't. Her mind wasn't ready for the leap. Instead, the two women sat together on the floor by the window, smelling the fresh air blowing in through leaky seals, and sipping fresh hot green tea. Wind kicked up outside, banging on the window, rattling the glass in its frame. The heater sighed on and on in the room, warming the air and making it dry and cozy.
With gusty wind and rattling windows as background music, and the ever-darkening sky as a rain storm moved in, the two women retired to their separate beds at opposite sides of the room. Lindy was soon snoring lightly, turning away in her customary sleeping position. Tedda fell into a shallow and turbulent sleep, in which she had terribly nervy and vivid dreams. She heard herself, woke herself, several times when she started up, crying out in fear.
Her dreams were muddled, but full of weird kinetic high energies. It was like being in a too-hyped cartoon world running on 240 volts after drinking ten cups of coffee. It was jittery. Tedda tossed this way and that, or dreamed that she did, for she rose and fell on waves of passing calculations, ten, fifteen feet, more than anyone could bounce around in a bed in real life.
The solution came to her, as these things do, with a brilliant flash of sickening, alkaline light, and deeply, invasively ringing bells rocking the frame of her bones. Before she sat up with a start and had to catch her breath, drenched in sweat, she had a realization.
The Other Side (East Gotha) and Tedda's fatherland (West Gotha) were mirroring each other. The two nations were locked in a deadly competition that went on and on with a life of its own. Now they were playing with the newly discovered monopole subfloor of existence, and even though each side's calculations suggested they were well in hand, far from tipping over the critical edge of any energy levels, what if the combined presences of their monopole activities was causing critical mass?
Startled, she awoke—thinking this had significant implications, but what would those be? She sat groggily on the edge of her bed, tangled in the sheets, and couldn't get her mind to return to the brilliant focus it had enjoyed moments earlier.
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