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would take a minimum of an hour, and could take much longer if he didn’t remain calm.

 

    Chapter Four
     
     
    T OBE DIDN’T SEE his Students for their tutorials the day after he had taken up his interest in probability. The day after that was a rest day, and no tutorials were Scheduled. It was not difficult for Metoo to switch the Schedule out so that rest days were irregular, and Tobe would not lose any work-time. The Students’ hours would be made up in short order, and everything would return to normal.
     
     
    P ITU 3 WOKE up, hit his button, and checked his Schedule. Metoo had cancelled tutorials. Pitu had hoped to finish his sock project, and deliver the results with aplomb during his tutorial, which had been Scheduled for the afternoon session: plenty of time. He had just been given an extra day.
    Pitu stood on the hard, cracked linopro of his room, his feet naked, his hands wrapped around a very mediocre bowl of oatpro; the grittiness had been swapped for a watery texture and a faintly soapy taste. He didn’t notice either after the first couple of spoonfuls. The spoon sat in the half-empty bowl, untouched for several minutes as the contents cooled quickly, and began to congeal.
    Pitu stared at the wipe-wall. Not only had he intended getting the maths and physics of the sock problem down, he had actually managed to do it quickly and without apparent errors. It never crossed his mind to wonder why.
    He hit the compress button on the wall, and several neat pages of mathematical workings emerged from the mini-print slot. The work was both immaculate and correct. He hoped that the solution was elegant, but could not be sure.
    Pitu 3 had accomplished his task, and had twenty-four hours to catch up with the other Students, and get a little further forward with the theoretical problems that tended to stretch his thinking past its natural elastic limit. He put the bowl of cold oatpro on the chair, the spoon sticking out of it at an unlikely angle created by the congealed breakfast food, and took the rag off its hook on the wipe-wall. It would take him an hour to reinstate the hard-learned formulae on the left of the wall before he could even begin to add to his learning, or at least make the attempt.
     
     
    M ETOO PLACED THE dish of perfectly cooked eggpro in front of Tobe, and excused herself. She turned her back on him, and walked the short distance to the only closed door in the flat. Tobe liked to be able to see the space around him when he was not working. When he was in his office, he was content with his four walls and all the ideas they contained; at home, he liked to know what was beyond every threshold. He never entered Metoo’s room, and her door was never much more than barely ajar, but he didn’t like the door to be closed, and, beyond the door, he didn’t like the room to be in darkness. It was as though it might contain something predatory.
    As it was, he was a little afraid of other people. He disliked their private domains: the places that he had no reference for, and didn’t understand, with their odd smells and strange, unnecessary objects, arranged without purpose, or thought to symmetry. When Metoo knew she would be spending time with Tobe, she left all the doors wide open, and Tobe’s door was kept permanently open with a little wooden wedge, carved with a stylised owl. Neither Metoo nor Tobe could remember the door in any other position, nor did either of them know where the wedge had come from; it had certainly been in situ when Metoo had joined the household.
    Metoo kept the door closed on the Companion’s room. It was a superior space to the Assistant’s room, with better climate control, a bigger floor-plan and better light. It had, originally, been intended for the Master, but he preferred the small, Spartan room at the end of the corridor, which had been designed for the lowliest member of the household: the room that Pitu 3 still believed he could earn.
    She opened the door to