“My discipline? Why do you think it’s so hard to figure out?”

“Could be a few things.” She smoothed her straight blond hair back behind her ears and switched lenses. “It could be occluded. Some disciplines just by their natures don’t want to be found. Some are just really minor, pointless really, and it’s hard to pick them out of the background noise.”

“Right. Though could it also be”—he stumbled over a stool—“because it’s something interesting? That no one’s ever seen before?”

“Sure. Why not.”

He’d always envied Penny his fancy and apparently unique discipline, which was interdimensional travel. But from her tone he suspected she could have listed a few reasons why not.

“Remember when I made those sparks, that one time?”

“I remember. Aha. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. Stand still.”

He stopped, and Pearl rummaged in a drawer and took out a heavy, brass-edged ruler marked in irregular units that Quentin didn’t recognize.

“Close your eyes.”

He did, and immediately an electric bar of pain flashed across the back of his right hand. He clamped it between his knees; it was ten seconds before he even recovered enough to say ow. When he opened his eyes he half expected to see his fingers sheared right off at the second knuckle.

They were still there, though they were turning red. She’d whacked them with the sharp edge of the ruler.

“Sorry,” she said. “The pain response is often very revealing.”

“Listen, if that doesn’t do it I think I’m all right with not knowing.”

“No, that did it. You’re very sensitive, I must say.”

Quentin didn’t think that not wanting to get smacked across the knuckles with a ruler made him unusually sensitive, but he didn’t say anything, and Pearl was already paging through a huge old reference book printed all in jewel type. Quentin had a sudden crazy urge to stop her. He’d been living with this for so long, it was part of who he was—he was the Man Without a Discipline. Was he ready to give that up? If she told him he’d be like everybody else . . .

But he didn’t stop her.

“I had a pet theory about you.” Pearl ran her finger down a column. “Which was that I couldn’t find your discipline last time because you didn’t have one yet. I always thought you were a bit young for your age. Personality is a factor—maturity. You were old enough to have a discipline, but emotionally you weren’t there yet. You hadn’t come into focus.”

That was kind of embarrassing. And like his crush, it had probably been obvious to more people than he realized.

“I guess I’m a late bloomer,” Quentin said.

“There you are.” She tapped the page. “Repair of small objects, that’s you.”

“Repair of small objects.”

“Uh-huh!”