Bloody Fabulous (28 page)

“Where?”

“With me. Same university.”

Grant turned around. His shoes squeaked again. He forced himself not to wince. Duncan looked as exactly as he imagined.

“Isn’t that overkill?” Grant glared down at Duncan. He had so few chances to do that. “With tenure, how will you get rid of me when you don’t need me anymore?”

Duncan lifted his torso and legs parallel to the bench. His smile faded as his gaze focused onto the bench’s graffiti. “You know, you get older, you realize the first guy you first bounced ideas off of has ruined you for everyone else since. So you change.” His hands thumped against the bench as he walked himself away from Grant. “You become what that first guy wants.”

Duncan straightened into a handstand, lowered his legs, then stood upright on the bench facing one end. He backflipped off the bench landing to one side. The control required to avoid crashing into the lockers was intimidating. His hands spread in front him as if to ask, “Well?”

The day Duncan didn’t look confident was the day the world would end. However, the years had abraded the smugness from his demeanor. His blistering gaze had always been inquisitive, but it now also yearned. Grant had walked away from the smug Duncan, but this one taunted him with possibilities he’d long convinced himself didn’t exist.

Grant pursed his lips. His hands gripped his gym bag. He’d ask for the ridiculous. That ought to cool Duncan’s ardor.

“For a start, the university will matriculate my grad students.”

Not only did he want the university to fund his students, but he wanted enough funding from Duncan’s theorem house that he could buy off his teaching responsibilities. No reason why undergrads should suffer. Grant set down his gym bag and for what felt like minutes detailed his dream job.

“Done.” Duncan unzipped Grant’s gym bag.

“What?” Grant felt sucker punched. “My demands aren’t reasonable.”

“Done.” Duncan teased the manila folder out of Grant’s gym bag then handed it to Grant. “I told you. No one knows you better than I do.”

Grant studied the pages he’d glazed past the first time. They met his conditions term for term.

Duncan had changed, but he hadn’t become what Grant wanted. Life hadn’t taught Duncan any humility. Rather than scaling his self-assurance down to match his achievements, he’d scaled his achievements up to match his self-assurance.

“It’s up to you, Grant.” Duncan walked towards the locker room exit. “Refuse my offer and I’ll never bother you again. I promise.”

Grant stuffed the folder back into his bag. “Tell me this, Duncan. What are you really trying to prove?”

Duncan turned around. His gaze pressed against Grant. He looked as if he were intuiting the right response from how Grant’s bag pressed against his back, how Grant hadn’t tucked in his t-shirt or how off-kilter Grant had knotted his boot laces.

“I should have known you’d see it right away even if I hid the conclusion from my outline.” Duncan shrugged. “But I knew you’d find proving P=NP sexier.”

“You’ve jumped ahead a few steps again. Back it up, Duncan.” For years, saying that might as well have been Grant’s full-time job. If Duncan expected mere humans to understand him, he needed to take it step by step.

This time, Duncan had skipped past surprise and straight to wistful. As he sighed, he seemed to deflate. Grant had never seen him look this mortal before.

“P≠NP. Or maybe I’m wrong.” Duncan took a deep breath. “Rehashing old results in ever more elegant ways has done so well for me, I don’t have to be practical. I can do real math now. You know, throw yourself into unsolvable problems. Get lost in every twist and leap the way young mathematicians say they’ll do until they realize they need to eat. It’s time to tackle the impossible and . . . I just thought you’d want to do that too. With me.” Duncan showed his palms to Grant again. “Like I said, it’s up to you.”

P≠NP meant that computationally intractable problems would always be intractable. The best anyone could do was recognize that then focus on heuristics and other approximate solutions. Mathematicians would care about that result, but no one else. The proof might become the most elegant anyone has ever seen but his theorem house would never sell it. No one, not even Duncan, had a body perfect enough to wear it in public without embarrassing themselves.

They held each other’s gaze for what seemed like days before Duncan turned around. He started towards the door, his motion so perfectly controlled, Grant couldn’t tell how Duncan felt.

“I think when we flesh out your outline, we may find that P=NP is undecidable.” Grant allowed a small smile on his face. Duncan was at least capable of the truth on occasion. That was a start.

Duncan stopped, then pivoted around. Grant made a note to ask Duncan someday how he did that without squeaking.

The puzzled look on Duncan’s face melted into one of realization then resolve. “Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Let’s discuss it over dinner. My treat.”

Wind swept across the parking lot. A hoodie coalesced around Duncan. His giddy smile outshone the stars and the moon. The light poles seemed bunched together, corralled by the encroaching Jersey barriers. Not even the parking lot could contain Duncan tonight.

No wonder he was so happy. Grant had done exactly what Duncan wanted. Maybe Duncan had discovered the virtue of telling Grant the truth. Maybe Duncan had maneuvered Grant here the way he’d maneuvered Grant back onto the runway. Grant only knew one way to find out what was true. Take Duncan on. They’d tumble and swirl around each other until either they covered each other or Grant fell into the trenches of spikes.

Grant suspected he could tumble on the runway forever and never really know. Not everything that’s true had a proof. No consistent formal system was complete. He wouldn’t be a mathematician though if he didn’t want to find out.

About the Authors

Holly Black
is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Her titles include the Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tale series, the Good Neighbors graphic novel trilogy (with Ted Naifeh), and the Curse Workers series. Holly has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of the Andre Norton Award. She lives in New England with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret door.

Die Booth
is a fan of pencil notes and analogue film and can most often be found lurking in abandoned buildings in the English countryside. An award-winning author who writes mainly horror and slipstream, Die has most recently worked on a co-edited anthology of traditional horror stories entitled
Re-Vamp
and is currently editing a second novel.

Richard Bowes
has won major and minor awards, published seven books and many, many stories. His Lambda winning novel
Minions of the Moon
will be reprinted by Lethe Press in late 2012. Other recent and forthcoming appearances include
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Icarus, Apex, Jenny
and the
Million Writers Award: The Best Online SF & Fantasy, After, Wilde Stories 2012
and
Blood and Other Cravings
anthologies.

John Chu
designs microprocessors by day and writes fiction by night. His fiction has appeared in
Boston Review.

Zen Cho
is a Malaysian writer living in London. Her fiction has appeared in various publications including
Strange Horizons, GigaNotoSaurus, Steam-Powered II,
and
Heiresses of Russ.
Her short story “First National Forum on the Position of Minorities in Malaysia” was nominated for the Selangor Young Talent Awards and the Pushcart Prize.

Shirin Dubbin
is known as a “chic geek,” and she likes the sound of it. Especially since she’s secretly a closet wallflower (a fact her gusto for karaoke belies). When not working in graphic design, Shirin spins tales of urban fantasy and sci-fi, both with romantic edge. The battle between good and evil, humor, and break neck action are ink to her imagination.

Kelly Link
is the author of three collections of short stories,
Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners,
and
Pretty Monsters.
Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (”Because you can’t go through it.”) Link and her family live in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Nick Mamatas
is the author of several novels, including
Bullettime
and the forthcoming
The Last Weekend,
and of over eighty short stories, some of which have appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction, New Haven Review, Tor.com,
and
Weird Tales.
His fiction and editorial work have variously been nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Shirley Jackson, International Horror Guild, and the Bram Stoker award—the last five times in five different categories. His anthology with Ellen Datlow,
Haunted Legends,
won the Stoker. A native New Yorker, Nick now lives in California.

Sandra McDonald
is the award winning author of the collection
Diana Comet and Other Impossible Stories,
a
Booklist
Editor’s Choice for Young Adults. She also writes adventure novels for gay and straight teens and science fiction romances for adults. Her short fiction has appeared in more than sixty magazines and anthologies. She currently resides in Florida with a backyard full of wild things. Visit her at www.sandramcdonald.com

Sharon Mock
’s short stories have appeared in
Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy Magazine,
and
The Mammoth Book of Steampunk.
She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop. She lives in Southern California with her husband, the writer and artist Zak Jarvis.

Maria V. Snyder
switched careers from meteorologist to fantasy novelist when she began writing the
New York Times
best-selling Study Series (
Poison Study, Magic Study,
and
FireStudy
) about a young woman who becomes a poison taster. Born in Philadelphia, Maria dreamed of chasing tornados and even earned a BS degree in Meteorology from Penn State University. Unfortunately, she lacked the necessary forecasting skills. Writing, however, lets Maria control the weather, which she gleefully does in her Glass Series (
Storm Glass, Sea Glass,
and
Spy Glass).
Maria returned to school and earned a MA in Writing from Seton Hill University where she is currently one of the teachers and mentors for the MFA program. Her published young adult novels include
Inside Out,
and its sequel,
Outside In,
both are about the dystopian and fully-contained world of Inside. Her latest release is
Touch of Power,
which is about healer dealing with a plague stricken world. Readers can find more information on her books, including the first chapters of all of them, a number of free short stories, and maps on her website at www.MariaVSnyder.com

Rachel Swirsky
is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and Clarion West, two writing programs with much emphasis on how to style words, and almost no emphasis on how to style clothing. She makes up for this deficit by obsessively watching Project Runway, collecting books on fashion design, practicing fashion illustration, and never wearing white after Labor Day. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Hugo, the Sturgeon, the World Fantasy Award, and other honors, and her novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” won the Nebula in 2011.

Anna Tambour
’s other stories published in 2012 include “The Dog Who Wished He’d Never Heard of Lovecraft” in
Lovecraft eZine,
“King Wolf” in
A Season in Carcosa
edited by Joseph S. Pulver, and “Marks and Coconuts in
Memoryville Blues
(PS Publishing). A novel,
Crandolin,
that David Kowalski described as “A fairy tale Dostoevsky would have liked . . . It’s like it was written by a demented chef” will be released by Chômu Press later this year, for the feasting season.

Genevieve Valentine
’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in
Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Fantasy, Lightspeed,
and
Apex,
and in the anthologies
Federations, The Living Dead 2, Running with the Pack, After, Teeth,
and more. Her nonfiction has appeared in
Lightspeed, Tor.com,
and
Fantasy Magazine,
and she is the co-author of
Geek Wisdom
(out from Quirk Books). Her first novel,
Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti,
won the 2012 Crawford Award. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog, genevievevalentine.com

Publication History

“Coat of Stars” © 2007 by Holly Black. Originally published in
So Fey.
Ed. Steve Berman. Haworth Press, Binghamton, NY, 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Savage Design” © 2012 by Richard Bowes. Original to this volume.

“Bespoke” © 2009 by Genevieve Valentine. Originally published in
Strange Horizons,
July 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Dress Code” © 2012 by Sandra McDonald. Original to this volume.

“The Anadem” © 2008 by Sharon Mock. Originally published in
Coyote Wild,
Volume 2, January 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The First Witch of Damansara” © 2012 by Zen Cho. Original to this volume.