Rachel Cantor - A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World

I’m good where I am, Leonard said.

I daresay you are not! Mill replied. But I have never asked: How is it that you have learned this mystical connection? You know that I have learned it from … well, you know from whom I have learned it. I recall well the days in that arid land. You know I met others there from Italy, though they did not travel there by ship. One, a Spaniard from Saragossa, had settled in Sicily. He was a Jew, with a Jew man’s beard and puzzling paraphernalia. He was freakishly tall and had a pronounced gap between his teeth. He juggled letters in the air. Look, he’d say, look! The letters are dancing!

Dancing? Leonard asked. The letters were dancing?

Letters are insubstantial, I know, but in that unusual place many things were possible.

Dancing? Leonard asked. Did you say they were dancing?

Another man arrived, a Greek obsessed with mathematics. He had settled in Crotone …

Like Pythagoras, Leonard murmured.

I believe that was his name! Mill said. Do you know him? You have traveled perchance in the south?

Not likely, Leonard said. He’s been dead thousands of years.

When the Jew with the letters met the Greek with the numbers, he wept. Can you imagine? You live! he cried. We are one! cried the Greek, and together they danced. They juggled letters and numbers together, making the most glorious patterns, which the people of that place turned into the most peculiar paintings, some of them made with sand. But you — how did you learn such fantastic methods of communication? How is it that you and I speak?

I just pick up the telephone, Leonard said.

You just pick it up. Fantastic, Mill said. No need to mutter formulas or turn this way and that around an invisible circle?

A what? Leonard felt the hairs in his afro stand on end.

You must be very advanced indeed, Mill said.

I gotta go, Leonard said, and hung up the phone. And did something he’d never done before: he took the phone off the hook, disabled call queuing, and walked out of his White Room in the middle of his shift.

The world was strange

The world was strange; the moon shone silverly on the safety swing, on which Felix seemed to have left some crowdies.

Milione knew about the circle? It was one thing to say he’d met Pythagoras in a desert, and saw a Spaniard with dancing letters, but the circle? Leonard sat on the swing facing the moon and held the crowdies out to Medusa, who was suddenly there. He pushed himself forward and back inchwise with his toe, not caring whether he dirtied his whitesuit.

A rare bird cried out in response to the swing’s rhythmic creakings.

How could a crazy man in the Finger Lakes District know about the circle? What was the circle? He seemed to think the circle enabled mystic communication …

Thwack! Leonard felt a sharp thrusting pain in the back of his head and fell forward, insensate, into the besoiling mud.

Whagghes

When he awoke, it was still night. Carol had him under the armpits and was dragging him through the mud toward her house.

Whagghes, he murmured. Carol looked back at him. There were actually three Carols in the starlight, three Carols all in fuzzy outline, wearing black climbing suits and dust caps, clutchbags slung over three of their six shoulders.

What were you doing out here? they hissed at him in unison. You’re supposed to be at work! What am I supposed to think when I look out my window and see a stranger swinging on the safety swing?

He knows about the circle, Leonard mumbled. Who do you think he really is?

If you can talk, you can walk, Carol said, dropping his arms so his head fell back again into the mud.

Am I wasting my life, Carol? Leonard asked, looking up at the stars. Should I find a ship, head out to sea?

Come inside for some chicory, she said. We’ll talk.

The world is full of wonders, Mill had said. All places have their fascination, you only have to pay attention. Bravery is easier, in the long run, than the alternative. The alternative being loneliness and fear.

Leonard rolled and turned gingerly onto his knees, then waited for the yard to stop swirling. When he finally stood, the back of his head pounded like justice sticks smashing against a door.

Inside, Carol had disposed of her clutchbag and was now wearing nightgear, as if Leonard really had disturbed her sleep with his spectral swinging. She was brewing chicory in a large earthenware samovar.

Leonard thought she was going to quiz him on his outrageous behavior, leaving the White Room in the middle of his shift, but no, she wanted to talk about Felix.

He’s the best boy in the world, isn’t he? she asked.

Of course, Leonard said, sitting down in a high-backed chair.

We’d do anything for him, wouldn’t we?

We would, Leonard said. Are there any tatties left?

We would never let anything bad happen to him, would we?

We wouldn’t, Leonard agreed.

We would protect him no matter what, Carol suggested.

No matter what.

Good, Carol said. I’m glad we had this little talk. Chicory’s almost ready. See you in the morning!

It is Isaac

I must tell you, Milione said the next night. Some days when I speak to Rustichello, I see someone looking out through his eyes. It is not Rustichello, for he is a shallow man; nothing lurks behind his eyes but lunacy and the basest of passions. No, it is someone else. Can you imagine this?

Leonard said nothing. His grandfather’s eyes on occasion had slipped from blue to palest green, his pupils expanding, becoming one with the deepest dark: then young Leonard had looked into something strange and black, an emptiness larger than the world he knew. His grandfather would return then and say, Boychik, you’re trembling, what do you see?

You think me mad, Mill said sadly.

No, I have felt this, Leonard whispered, and wiped a tear from his eye.

You understand! Mill said. I knew you would. Leonard, you are like my very own brother. It is Isaac, he confided. I know it is he. But why?

Who is this Isaac? Leonard asked. Why do you dream of him?

He is a Jew, he is blind, and a holy master of secrets — this is all I know.

What does he want from you?

He wants me to talk with you, that is all.

With me? Leonard asked.

No other, Mill said.

Do you know a story about four men who walk into an orchard?

No.

Do you know a story about demons in the third ether?

No, but if it is a good one, I will gladly hear it.

But you know about the invisible circle? You know what to do with it?

Of course.

And this is what you propose to write about in your book?

Yes, I will do this.

Leonard’s heart began to pound. This was very wrong. Leonard knew this because his grandfather had told him so, and because the thought of it made him sick, a sickness he knew would never leave him if Mill did as he said. Only the grandson of grandsons could know about the circle.

It is a bad idea, Leonard said. A very bad idea.

No, Leonard, it is a very good idea! Imagine how useful it will be for seamen and merchants, separated as they are from their families! Imagine if kings could speak with each other as we do now, separated by immense distances: trade could be conducted, and wars averted.

Leonard had to think quickly; there were no Listener algorithms to help him now.

Have you used your circle and formulas to speak with anyone but me? he asked.

Not exactly.

You’ve tried?

I tried to reach Kokachin, Mill admitted.

What happened?

Nothing. I heard a sound like forests falling inside the ocean. It was quiet but for six days it deafened me.

And when you got me you were trying to reach someone else, right?