true that Delta had lost consciousness shortly after, but (attached to Yo-yo’s collar and still at nano-scale) she had been the last person to see her sister alive. Infinity Drake was presumed to be secreted somewhere about her person.
King waited a moment.
“We have no evidence, apart from a few doubtful videos, that Kaparis is holding either Infinity or your sister.”
Delta took comfort in this and bit her lip not to show it.
Al looked at the Zurich picture again and felt his stomach twist. Whenever he thought of Kaparis, his body tensed to take a punch. Exactly what Kaparis would have wanted, Al thought. Maybe that was the problem. Al looked round at the experts at the table or on screen, perhaps the finest minds ever assembled. He had led them to disaster. All his life he had been the smartest guy in the room, the brain. He had surfed his intellect and got as far as Boldklub and nearly bust open the laws of physics, but now it seemed he was all washed up.
“Stubbs is right …” said Al (but Stubbs took no pleasure in it). “We should never have fallen for Monte Carlo. That was ridiculous. We’ve become too predictable. Too logical. We’re scientists. We want the world to be rational, but we know that most of the time it isn’t. Life is random, absurd. That scares and confuses us. That’s why most of us are so bad at personal relationships!”
Al looked around. He was right. The room was full of blinking, uncomfortable nerds.
“If we can’t logically figure a way through this, then we’ve got to embrace the irrational, the unconscious. Look for answers there. We – no, I – I’ve got to stop digging the hole we’re in, I’ve got to step back and feel it, you know?”
“May I be excused?” requested Stubbs at this point.
“It’s time to get Zen, get patient,” Al continued. “It’s time to look beneath. This is a game of chess, not noughts and crosses.” He got up and paced. “We’ve got to think forwards, think backwards, think laterally; find the gap, the clue.” He slapped the table – “Come on! Let’s think outside the box! Let’s burn the damn box! You’re the brightest and the best. The only thing that trumps facts, that trumps time, that trumps the inevitable – that breaks E=MC2 – is the HUMAN IMAGINATION!”
Al climbed on to the desk and threw himself into a headstand. His legs flailed and split, but he held it, just.
He regarded them all, upside down. They looked ridiculous.
“It seems,” sighed Stubbs, “we’re back to square one.”
FEBRUARY 20 10:12 (GMT). Blue Valley Mall, Woking, Surrey, UK
There were too many variables, thought Li Jun.
There were six small children and approximately six thousand polyurethane spheres in the ball pool, featuring nine different colours with a predominance of red, blue, green and yellow. Four per cent of the spheres were misshapen or dented. Every movement caused a chaotic chain reaction through the surrounding balls that was predictable only to a low standard deviation. Too many differential calculations were required.
But what was causing Li Jun’s real distress was that the activity of the six small children in the ball pool had no point or goal. She looked out of the ball pool to where Grandmother Allenby stood with the other adults.
In an exaggerated mime, Grandma clutched her diaphragm and said, “Breathe, dear.”
Li Jun took a deep breath. She should be able to cope. She had a formidable mind. She had been Kaparis’s chief technician, after all—
“INCOMING!” Hudson cried, sprinting towards the edge of the pool while holding on to his glasses.
Grandma watched the speeding dork bellyflop in, causing an explosion of colour.
“Hudson! Really!”
“Come on, Li Jun! Get your shoulders under!” said Hudson, and he began to splash her with balls, an activity enthusiastically taken up by the little ones, so that Li Jun soon stood, uncomprehending, in the centre of a mad fountain.
“Is she … quite normal?” asked one of the other parents, looking at the slim teenage girl who seemed to be part Asian, part alien.
“She’s from another culture,” explained Grandma, biting back the urge to call Hudson and the toddlers off.
Li Jun was, in fact – thanks to Grandma – the world’s only liberated Tyro. After they had been rescued in the South China Sea, she had managed to provide vital information about Kaparis and his Tyro programme, but more lay buried in her mind and scans proved her brain had been deliberately manipulated. How could they unlock the memories within it? Grandma had a simple strategy: Li Jun had to be normalised. So Grandma had taken her home to clean sheets, fresh flowers, and fun. Finn’s best friend, Hudson, was brought in to act as a surrogate sibling and she had begun “play therapy”.
Li Jun bloomed, even if she hadn’t opened up completely yet. But most of all, it was good for Grandma, who liked Li Jun. She kept her busy and she kept her from thinking about Finn.
“INTO THE CASTLE!” cried Hudson, leading a Pied Piper charge on the coloured rope ramparts of the Maze Adventure. Li Jun stared after him like a frightened cat.
She is a jigsaw, thought Grandma with a sigh. Like any teenager. Except that with most young teenagers the edge pieces and corners were mostly in place, even some of the sky. In Li Jun’s case, the bits that were in place were few and far between and the pieces looked as if they all came from different sets …
“HELP!”
Hudson, far too big for the soft play apparatus, had managed to get himself stuck.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake …” said Grandma, and she started to wade through the coloured ball pool to rescue him.
It was while Hudson was being released – by Grandma, a four-year-old boy called Donald and a member of the security detail that followed them everywhere – that the first breakthrough occurred.
Li Jun had stepped out of the ball pool to wave goodbye to the other children. As their parents led them back through the shopping mall, the children played a game, which Li Jun instantly saw the logic of. The floor was made up of a series of tiles; the object of the game was never to step on the lines between them.
Li Jun looked down and centred her feet in the tile squares … and a thread tugged in her mind … She saw mountains … felt cold …
She moved forward, step by step, avoiding the lines. And with every step, stone slabs started to appear in her mind’s eye and fit together to form … another floor, in another place …
“Li Jun? What is it, dear?” asked Grandma as she reappeared with Hudson.
“I don’t know, Grandmother,” she whispered. Then she asked in a trance, “Hudson? Do you have your tablet?”
Hudson took his iPad out of his pack and
