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There was a bowl of soup sitting on his nightstand. It was cold, but as Alan looked at it, he realized he was so hungry that he didn’t care. He slurped it down, and considered what he’d found. He was, firstly, sure that he’d inadvertently invented a new kind of dimensional analysis—he’d had to in order to effectively get his head around a tricky couple of equations that he’d seen in Zindel’s notes. He was secondly sure, beyond the barest shadow of the tiniest doubt, that he was dealing with heretical science. He’d been deep into discovering precise mathematical rules for leaving the four walls of nature and leaving the language of the Word behind. It was unquestionably wrong, it was dangerous, it was blasphemous. The horror, formerly displaced by the power of his obsessive intellect, was now beginning to seep in.

Alan Charterhouse had, with Herman Zindel’s help, found the cracks in the edges of the world, and they terrified him. There was a whole, second universe, separated from his own by no more than the breadth of an atom, yet so far away it might as well be on the other side of the moon. And the rules that this second universe followed...Alan wasn’t even sure there were any rules to it. It could simply be a place of utter, squalid chaos, where nothing like light, matter, or life could survive.

Worse than all of this was the third thing that he had discovered about Herman Zindel’s equations. They were a schematic, he was sure of it now, for a theoretical translation engine that was manifestly different from the Excelsior’s. But there was something else, something that had been bothering him since he’d first glimpsed the formulae in Zindel’s house.

Thunder rumbled outside and echoed in his mind, echoed. The Charterhouse home had good, solid copper shutters and copper insulation in the walls, but still, the eerie insanity of the psychestorm tended to seep in, thunder echoing strangely. Alan Charterhouse rubbed his eyes. His heart fluttered, and he felt his breath catch in his throat.

I have to tell them, he thought. The consequences, though, of revealing what he knew, were deadly. I can’t help it. It’s not my fault, I can’t just stop thinking about it. Alan was getting hysterical, and tried to keep himself calm. If he told the coroners about what he knew, they’d execute him, without question. He already knew more about Aetheric Geometry than anyone but Wolfram himself, and that made him a terrible threat to the entire Empire. He could try writing a note and delivering it anonymously, but Beckett would have to be pretty stupid not to connect the note about Aetheric Geometry and the young man that he’d called on to discuss it, and the old coroner didn’t seem like a stupid man.

Besides, Alan wasn’t sure he’d be able to explain Zindel’s theory effectively in a letter. That meant that he’d have to go to the coroners directly. That meant that Elijah Beckett could execute him on the spot. Maybe he won’t, Alan thought. I could just tell him…I can show him that I can help him…he remembered all of his Ted East novels. The heretics were always trying to convince Ted East that, yes, their sciences were dangerous, but this time, this time, it was okay. They’d discovered it by accident. They’d never use it. They could help him in his work, tracking down other heretics. It never held up. Ted East was never fooled. He would shoot them on the spot.

And if I don’t tell them? The thought was a lead weight in his belly. The danger presented by Zindel’s theories was astronomical. A real, bona fide threat to the Empire. To the world. I have to. I have to tell them.

Alan Charterhouse lay down on his bed, while the psychestorm buried Trowth in snow and madness. He wanted to cry.

Twenty-One: Mudside

The psychestorm cleared up shortly after noon, breaking apart into tattered wisps of iridescent green clouds that disappeared over the top of the great sea-wall in Trowth harbor, while a thicker, blacker cloud cover replaced