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door
creaked on its hinges.
     
    Janelle hoped she
hadn’t just committed some social blunder. Unsure what she would find, she
returned to the bedroom. An oil lamp hung on a scrolled hook by the entrance.
It gave less light than the torches, which was probably why the women hadn’t
carried it, but Janelle preferred the lamp, which neither smoked nor sputtered.
To her relief, the door had a lock on this side and opened when she tried it.
One of her guards stood a short distance down the hall, severe in his leather
armor. Light from a wall sconce glinted on the hilt of the broadsword strapped
across on his back.
     
    “Hello,” Janelle
said.
     
    He turned with a
start. Then he said what sounded like, “My greetings, Lady.”
     
    “Isn’t that sword
heavy?” she asked.
     
    He seemed bemused by
her attention. “Not for me.”
     
    “Oh. Good.” She wasn’t
sure why she asked, but she felt the need to connect to people, to make this
less strange. “Goodnight.”
     
    His craggy face
softened. “Goodnight.”
     
    Janelle closed the
door and sagged against the wall. She could think of many reasons Dominick
might post a guard: to keep her in, as a courtesy, or because she wasn’t safe
even in his home. For all its extraordinary beauty, his world had a starkness that
kept her off balance.
     
    Ill at ease, she
explored her suite. In the bathing room, an elegantly carved bench stood
against one wall, with a jade-green towel, a silver brush inlaid with
mother-of-pearl from abalone, two soaps carved like tulips, and a crimson silk
robe. It was all gorgeous, everything handmade. The suite, however, had only
the one exit. They had closed her in well.
     
    No one said you
couldn’t leave, she reminded herself.
More than anything, she wanted to clean up. She carried the soaps to the pool,
an oval filled with scented water, but then she hesitated. The idea of
undressing made her feel vulnerable. The grimy scrapes on her arms and legs
decided her; she quickly peeled off her clothes, shivering as the cold air
chilled her bare skin. Then she slid into the heated pool.
     
    Warmth seeped
blissfully into her body as she lay back. Silence filled the room, a contrast
to the muted city roar she had lived with these last years, at MIT. No sirens
or engines interrupted the quiet, none of the constant hum that rumbled even in
the deepest hours of an urban night. She was immersed in a great ocean of
quietude.
     
    Her thoughts drifted
to Dominick’s gate. A branch cut? They came from complex numbers. She could
write such a number as z = e(iF), where F was called the phase angle. Varying
the phase from F = 0 to F = 2pi was like going around an analog clock from 12
to 12. Just as 12 was the same at the start and finish, so 0 and 2p were the
same. However, if she divided F by 2, then z = e(iF/2). Now the phase was F/2
As F went from 0 to 2pi the phase only changed to p. The angle F had to go
around a second time before F/2 returned to its starting value of 2p. But the
same F couldn’t have two different values of z. To avoid that
contradiction, z slipped through a branch cut to a second sheet for the
second cycle F. Just as 3 am and 3 pm were different times, so F on each sheet
was considered different. Her world was one “clock” and Dominick’s was another.
     
    That suggested some
sort of phase here had to go through a full cycle before Dominick’s gate
reopened. Her twelve-hour model was an only analogy; she had no idea how long
would she have to wait before the actual gate reopened. Days? Months? Years?
     
    Nor was that her only
problem. Suppose she divided F by 3. The phase would be F/3. It meant she would
need three “clocks.” Three universes. Divide F by 4, and she needed four. Many
sheets could exist. If she went through a gate, she could end up on yet some
other “clock”—some other universe—instead of her own.
     
    Janelle groaned. Her
head hurt, and the water had cooled. Putting away her thoughts, she soaped