“It should,” she replied. “I invented it. It’s a sweet theory because it’s obligingly self-proving and fits in nicely with the human psyche. It will prove itself correct because we want it to. Why are you dressed like that?”

“I got covered in . . . Actually, it doesn’t matter. You look terrific. Ready?”

She pulled a face and crossed both fingers. She looked more like a schoolgirl about to give her first flute solo, rather than the twenty-sixth-finest mind on the planet about to address her peers.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said the emcee, who had just strode onto the stage. “And welcome to day one of MadCon2004.”

There was a burst of applause, and the emcee went on to welcome everyone to the conference, and then followed five minutes of boring stuff about where the fire exits were in case someone tried to blow something up or create a white hole or a small bang or something, and then he listed the high points of the conference, such as tomorrow’s demonstration of AA-size Duraspin kinetic batteries, a new form of copperless copper and how earthquakes could be harnessed to prevent earthquakes.

He started to ramble after this, and I lost interest.

I was pondering over Jack Schitt’s curious behavior regarding the copied Zvlkx book when the emcee suddenly announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to call on . . . Tuesday Next!”

There was more applause, and Tuesday walked nervously onto the stage.

“It is a great honor to be here,” she began, “speaking at a conference that my great-uncle loved so much and gave so much energy toward. I’d like first to thank the staff of MadCon and the board of trustees for their generous help in . . .”

I moved closer to Landen and grasped his hand, and he squeezed mine in return. Despite recent events— the smiting, Goliath, HR-6984— all I could think of was how much I loved my children and how proud I was. I like to think I’m pretty resilient, but listening to Tuesday talk, I felt my my eyes water and my chest tighten. I remembered what a small baby she had been, how she had walked late, talked early. Of her first Erector Set at two, her first long-chain polymer at four, and of learning Latin at five, so she could better understand the Principia Mathematica. I remembered her first day at nursery school and how the teachers said how much they’d learned, her first patent application for an improved alphabet with only eighteen letters, her going up to collect her doctorate in mathematics at age eight.