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  “I don’t wanna drive, yo,” Kayla said. “I wanna beam up there, like on TV!”

  The class tittered so much the teachers had to calm them down.

  “We’re working on that,” Andie said after the riot had subsided. “I hope you can one day.”

  In the third row, a Latino boy with glasses and a gap between his front teeth meekly raised a hand. “How big is the universe?”

  She always got this question, and it always provoked a soft smile. If these children couldn’t even grasp the distance to the nearest star, how then to explain that our solar system alone, the region of space affected by the gravitational force of the sun, is more than twenty-three trillion miles in diameter? How to explain that our Milky Way galaxy is infinitely larger than our solar system, so big as to defy belief, and contains four hundred billion stars?

  How to explain the estimates that the universe contains more than two trillion galaxies similar to our own and is ninety-three billion light-years across, a distance so unfathomably vast that no analogy Andie had ever heard could render it comprehensible?

  And that was just the observable universe. Who knew how big it really was, or what else was out there?

  “Even we scientists don’t know for sure,” she said. “It’s bigger than you can possibly imagine. But just think about how much adventure is waiting in space! Maybe you’ll all be astronauts one day, and you can tell me the answers.”

  This led to a series of rapid-fire questions, the polite raising of hands forgotten in the excitement.

  “What do astronauts eat?”

  “Are there aliens?”

  “What’s inside a black hole?”

  Andie put her hands on the podium and leaned forward. “Do you want to know a couple of really cool facts?” As the children quieted, she pointed at the projector screen. “First, did you know that outer space is only fifty miles away? If a car could drive straight up, you’d be there in less than an hour.”

  That got her some more oohs and aahs. She pointed at Proxima Centauri again. “Remember when I said this star was about four light-years away? That means that when we see it in the night sky, we’re not actually looking at the star itself. We’re looking at light from the star that has traveled all the way through space for over four years to reach us. Some of the light in our night sky has been traveling for hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years. When you look at the stars, you’re actually looking back in time.”

  “You mean like time travel?” Kayla asked.

  “Not exactly. But you are looking at a snapshot of the past. Starlight is the history of the universe itself.”

  As their pliable young minds tried to grasp this, Andie felt her cell phone buzzing in her pocket. Normally she unplugged during these talks, but this time she had forgotten. Unable to resist checking to see if the guy she’d met last week was texting her back, she discreetly pulled out her iPhone behind the podium.

  The message wasn’t from the drummer in a local band who had chatted Andie up in a dive bar. It was from Lisa Cranton, one of her colleagues at Duke.

  You’ve seen the news about Dr. Corwin? I’m so sorry.

  No, Andie hadn’t seen the news. Nothing had popped up in her email, and she hadn’t had time to browse. But if there was important news, why wouldn’t her mentor have told her himself? And more importantly, what was Lisa sorry about?

  What news? she quickly texted back, feeling uneasy.

  Her phone buzzed again within seconds. Not wanting to disrupt the lecture, but too curious to wait, Andie let her eyes slip downward as she spoke.

  He was mugged and shot in Italy. He died on the way to the hospital. I can’t believe it.

  Andie lurched against the podium, dropping the laser pointer. Unable to find words, she ran out of the auditorium and into the nearest bathroom. She locked herself in a stall, pulled up her browser, and prayed there had been a mistake. But the awful truth was splattered like cheap paint all over the internet.

  LEADING PHYSICIST KILLED IN BOLOGNA

  She knew that Dr. Corwin, one of the top physicists in the world and an authority on quantum gravity and the geometry of space-time, had gone to Italy to attend an international conference. It was a routine event for him.

  So what in the hell had happened?

  She scanned the online reports. The night before, after a lecture at the university of Bologna, Dr. Corwin was assaulted outside his hotel. It was a brazen attack, a senseless robbery. A hooded assailant had stolen his wallet and his watch, a midrange Swiss brand that Dr. Corwin favored.

  A modest timepiece, 150 euros, and a few credit cards that had probably bought the mugger a tank of gas and a case of beer before the cards were flagged as stolen.

  This was the price of a human life.

  Andie leaned over the toilet and vomited.

  After returning to the auditorium and apologizing to the kids, mumbling something about an emergency, Andie hurried to the cantankerous Buick Riviera convertible handed down from her father. She was glad the threat of an afternoon shower had convinced her to leave the top on. She didn’t want to be visible.

  Though a little eccentric, Dr. Corwin was a kind and thoughtful man who always had time for Andie, despite his brilliance and international renown.

  Yet it went much deeper than that. Andie was never quite sure why, after her mother left, Dr. Corwin had taken Andie under his wing. He was not particularly close with her father. An affair with her mother was unlikely—Andie’s pale skin and pointed nose spoke strongly against a Jamaican heritage. She knew only that Dr. Corwin and his mother had been close, he had no children of his own, and that for whatever reason, he had appointed himself Andie’s guardian.

  Maybe he had known more about her mother than he had told her. Maybe he had made her mother a promise.

  Andie had never asked. She figured it was his story to tell.

  During her undergrad years, Andie was an angry young woman who careened from crisis to crisis. Her father was an alcoholic writer with whom she barely talked. She resented her parents and the sorry state of the world and the fact that her car never started in the cold northern winters. Her reckless behavior culminated in a lost year: she dropped out of school, took a bus to California, and bummed a ride to Puerto Vallarta with some surfers. Telling herself she was searching for sunshine and good times, inspiration and meaning, she spent the year in a haze of wild parties and self-loathing. After ending up in a Mexican drunk tank for a night, the bottom of the bottom, terrified she was turning into her father, she knew she had to make a change. But then she was hit with a bogus fine, the equivalent of three thousand US dollars, and told if she didn’t pay it she was going back to jail. Broke and staying in a hovel, she asked her father for money for the first and last time in her life.

  And he refused. He simply didn’t have it. A novelist who had published one semisuccessful book in his thirties, he had continued to chase a fading dream that took him further and further into poverty and depression. Andie had grown up on welfare checks and secondhand clothes.

  The next day, Dr. Corwin—Andie assumed her father had told him—flew to Mexico himself, paid the fine, and put her on a plane home. Her father met her at the airport, reeking of liquor and sobbing with relief.

  Andie walked right past him.

  Somehow, she managed to graduate with a decent GPA in physics, and aced her GREs. Still, she didn’t have the résumé for Duke. Dr. Corwin convinced her to apply anyway, and her acceptance came a month later. He never admitted to pulling strings, but it was the only explanation, and Andie had vowed not to let him down.

  She had no siblings, no connection to an aunt or uncle or cousin, no living grandparents. After her father, Dr. Corwin was the closest thing to family she had left. He was her mentor, her benefactor, her only real compass in life.

  This can’t be real, she whispered to herself as the first drops of rain splashed against the windshield, bringing her back to the present.

  This can’t
be real.

  Christened by the shower, the leafy streets of Durham glistened with moisture as Andie drove home in a daze. She pulled into her long gravel drive, shaken, unable to order her thoughts. Everything felt surreal, the colors of late spring muted around her.

  Andie’s rental home was in a rural area fifteen minutes from campus, on a wooded lot that linked up to the Eno River trail. After sitting in the driveway with her hands gripping the wheel, lost in sadness, she left the car and went straight to the shed where she kept her heavy bag. A dedicated kickboxer during her undergrad years, she was too busy now to keep it up and had taken up running instead. Yet at times, when she was particularly stressed or angry, she let loose on the bag.

  It was as hot as Hades inside the shed. She kicked until her thighs ached and sweat washed away the tears. When she was finished, panting and wobbly, she went inside for a cup of tea.

  Though Andie had a few friends in the astrophysics department, she struggled to form lasting bonds. Her chosen profession was very demanding, and she knew she had trust issues. Her love life was a train wreck, or more precisely a theoretical train wreck.

  With a pang in her chest, she realized that if anyone else close to her had died, she would have sought refuge with Dr. Corwin.

  Numb to her surroundings, ignoring the intermittent buzz from her phone, she spent the afternoon on the couch, drowning in misery.

  Needing some noise in the room, she ordered some moody electronic beats from the voice assistant. She let the music wash over her, though after a time it started to cloy, and she realized the sentiment wasn’t right. Dr. Corwin was dead, murdered, and it wasn’t fucking fair. Andie was sad, desperately sad, but above all, she was angry at the world for letting it happen. She needed something with an edge. A serrated one.

  After considering a witch-house mix or some old-school Nine Inch Nails, she decided what she wanted. “Okay, Google, play Johnny Cash instead.”

  “Ring of Fire” came on, and Andie frowned. “No, not that. Play ‘Hurt,’ Google.”

  She raised the volume as a voice full of pain filled the room, a voice with too much knowledge of the world, a voice of loss and bitterness and love gone away. A voice filled with the quiet rage of the dying.

  “That’s better,” she murmured, and replaced her tea with a bottle of whiskey.

  The next morning, head throbbing, she started a pot of coffee and checked her email. One of the deans had left a heartfelt message about Dr. Corwin.

  After breakfast, she stepped outside, breathing in the loamy smell of pine. There was a UPS Express envelope on the doorstep. To her surprise, the envelope was addressed to her given name, Andromeda Genesis Zephyr.

  Zephyr was her mother’s surname, which her father had taken when they married. A feminist and high-powered career woman, her mother had dominated her handsome but flighty husband. Or at least that had been Andie’s young impression.

  Whether from love or inertia, her father had never reverted to his own surname. But the day Andie turned eighteen, to further excise the memory of her mother, she had legally changed her last name to Robertson, her father’s family name.

  Not many people knew her true name, and when she saw the return address on the UPS envelope, Andie’s breath stuck in her throat.

  Starhotels Excelsior in Bologna, Italy.

  Sent by Dr. James Corwin.

  With a melancholy smile at the name of the hotel, she opened the envelope, curiosity cutting through her grief, wondering why in the world he had sent her a snail-mail package. And UPS Express international? That must have cost a fortune.

  Inside was a handwritten note, dated May 27, on a piece of paper ripped from a Moleskine journal. God, he had sent this right before his murder. As she read Dr. Corwin’s distinctive scrawl—there was no doubt it was his—her pulse quickened, and a series of chills swept through her.

  Dearest Andie,

  I apologize for the bizarre circumstance, but there’s no one else I can trust. If this message reaches you before you hear from me, go immediately to Quasar CAM Labs in the Research Triangle, give the note to Dr. Lars Friedman, and tell him where the birthplace of mathematics is. Do not ask questions. Do not try to reach me under any circumstances. Do not call or send an email to Dr. Friedman—go in person, as soon as you get this.

  Should I fail to return from Italy, trust no one with this message besides Lars. Not the police. Not even your own family.

  No one.

  3

  Feeling a sudden chill, Andie clutched the piece of paper and returned inside her house. She sat cross-legged on the love seat in her study, surrounded by piles of books and papers. The view of the forest outside the tall windows normally beckoned, but now the silent trees felt watchful, menacing. She wished she had curtains to draw.

  She read the note again and again, trying to parse the message.

  What had Dr. Corwin gotten himself into? And why had he come to her? If he knew he was in trouble, she would have expected him to go to someone on the faculty, or a family member. Dr. Corwin had never married, but he had siblings in London and Jamaica.

  Do not ask questions. Trust no one. Not the police.

  The implication of these words, and the use of regular mail—suggesting his phone and email might be tapped—unnerved her even further.

  Andie rose to pace the room, gnawing on her thumbnail so hard it started to bleed. That was clearly no random mugging, and she realized the UPS package had been sent from Bologna the morning after his murder. He must have paid someone to send it, knowing he was in danger.

  She had never heard of Quasar CAM Labs or Dr. Lars Friedman, but the reference to mathematics she understood. In his office, Dr. Corwin kept a framed photo of the Ishango bone: a baboon fibula unearthed in present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At least eighteen thousand years old, the clearly defined notches on the bone indicated an ancient counting device.

  If asked, most people would point to an Egyptian papyrus or ancient Mesopotamian texts as the earliest evidence of human computation. But the Ishango bone—and other bones like it, less intact but far older—proved that Paleolithic tribes in central and southern Africa were using protomathematics more than fifteen thousand years before the pyramids.

  It was the first known evidence of human calculation. The birthplace of mathematics.

  Dr. Corwin knew she was familiar with the Ishango bone. But plenty of his colleagues would have understood the reference as well.

  She put her head in her hands. None of this made any sense.

  For a moment, she wondered if her mentor had started to unravel. Had his brilliant mind developed schizophrenia later in life? Or had he medicated in secret all these years, then stopped taking his drugs for some reason?

  It was possible, though schizophrenia usually started at a young age. And he was so personable. Witty and cosmopolitan, schooled at the best universities, never exhibiting any of the antisocial or erratic behavior typically associated with advanced schizophrenia.

  Even more compelling evidence that mental illness was the wrong line of inquiry: his murder had proven his fears correct.

  Yet as she continued studying the note, the line that kept hitting her the hardest, the one that made her feel dizzy and unmoored, was the next-to-last one.

  Not even your own family.

  Andie didn’t have a family. Just her estranged parents and some distant cousins. Dr. Corwin knew this. So what the hell did that mean?

  She blew out a long breath. Her province was the realm of science, a cold and beautiful place where logic held sway. She loved mysteries, but had never done well with psychology and hidden meanings. At least not as they applied to human beings. That was the beauty of her field. The rules of the universe, as insanely complex as they might be, did not change once unraveled. They did not deceive.

  She kept pacing and biting her nails, trying to decide what to do. A quick internet search revealed that Quasar CAM Labs specialized in quantum metallurgy. Though the
company kept a low profile, she found a number of patents pending in obscure areas of materials science. Dr. Corwin was on the board of directors, but that did not surprise her. He was on a lot of boards.

  The siren song of grief called out to her, urging her to lie in a dark place and close her eyes to the world. She wanted to succumb, but too many questions flooded her mind. Maybe Dr. Lars Friedman could shed some light on what had happened, and maybe not.

  Yet all of that could wait. Her first decision was easy: she was going to carry out the dying wish of her beloved mentor.

  Trees and more trees surrounded her Buick as it sped through Duke Forest, the ribbon of asphalt a blackened tongue flicking through the woods. The surrounding jaws of the forest opened briefly to expose the city and then snapped shut once more, spitting her out on a lonely road delving into the heart of the Research Triangle.

  The Silicon Valley of the South, the Triangle was the largest science-and-technology park in the world, in terms of acreage. VC money poured in like water, and it was home to a surfeit of Fortune 100 satellite offices, start-ups, and lab facilities.

  Yet none of this was obvious on a drive through the heavily forested park. Most of the office buildings and laboratories were hidden from view, set far back off the road. The Research Triangle had always creeped her out a little. The isolated location, miles from the surrounding cities, evoked images of secret labs and nefarious corporations, of a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein performing illicit research in the bowels of a gleaming glass fortress. As a scientist herself, she knew the feeling was unwarranted. Yet she couldn’t shake it—especially when driving alone through the woods to a cutting-edge tech company in order to fulfill the bizarre edict of a murdered professor. She also had the unsettling thought that perhaps her vision the previous morning had been a reaction to her impending stress.

  As if, in that place inside her head, time didn’t exist in the same way.