"Found another one, sir."

Colin looked around at the call, then went over to where the tech was prodding around in the innards of one of the Rig servers, in the subsystem that controlled internal communications. He bent slightly to look at the place the woman was indicating, then sighed a little.

"That's six now. I wonder how many of them there are in total?"

"Unknown," he replied, scanning the very well disguised data tap that was cross-linking some of the optical fibers in a way that undoubtedly let someone outside the Rig monitor it without it showing up on the logs. They'd looked for such things before, had been looking for them ever since Tattletale's original information, but it was only now that they were physically moving things around that some of them were coming to light. The small number of surveillance devices they'd discovered before were nothing compared to the complexity of the stuff that was popping up at the moment.

He was starting to suspect that the ones they'd found before might even have been made deliberately easier to discover than they could have been, as a decoy. Make them fairly well hidden, only locatable by someone looking seriously, and it's not impossible that your hunters might assume that they were the only ones. If they were too easy to find it would be obvious it was a trap, but the previously found hardware backdoors had been quite well hidden, as if someone had put a lot of work into it.

They undoubtedly had, but someone had put even more time and work into hiding these devices, to the point that it looked like they might even have been installed before the equipment was initially delivered. He wasn't surprised that they'd missed them although he was somewhat embarrassed.

On the other hand, if what they had deduced about Calvert's power was accurate, it was entirely possible that he'd tried over and over until he finally came up with something that worked. Against that sort of ability, it would take either blind luck, one hell of a lot of paranoia, outside information, or a combination of all of those to beat it.

"Good work," he added to the technician. "Mark the location and type on the plan and leave it. We don't want to tip off anyone who's monitoring it too soon."

"Yes, sir," she nodded, delicately separating the hair-thin glass fibers that went around the tiny device, inspecting exactly how it was connected. She made a couple of notes on the Dragon-supplied secure tablet that was part of the new parallel system they had nearly finished installing. "Looks like it's connecting Trunk Feed NC103 to Auxiliary Power Control L34. Sneaky, who'd be watching for extra data on a tertiary backup power supply comms channel?"

"It's a good choice," he said, almost impressed. Looking at his copy of the data on his HUD, he considered the so-far discovered malicious data taps. In combination with the extremely subtle software changes he and Dragon had found over the last few weeks, it looked like the external surveillance feeds monitored a little over half the Rig's more critical systems, including a lot of the internal and external cameras. Hannah's paranoia about disconnecting them every time she went into a room was definitely validated.

"Carry on." She nodded absently as she worked, so he left her to it, pleased with the dedication she showed. Their hand-picked and incredibly well vetted teams were definitely proving to be worth the huge effort that had gone into it. Making a note to suggest that some of the protocols they'd come up with during the crisis were implemented as standard practice, and also recommending that all the people involved were bumped up a pay level as reward for a difficult job done efficiently and well, he headed to the next location on his list.

Lisa played the WCC Endbringer tracking logs again, pondering over the meaning of the latest movements of both the Simurgh and Leviathan. There was still no sign at all of Behemoth, he appeared to be staying entirely still at a great depth. She smiled to herself when she pictured him hiding behind the core of the planet, shivering slightly.

Who could say? Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn't. Whichever way it was, he was not in evidence and that was all to the good. And it was an amusing fantasy if nothing else.

On the other hand, Leviathan and the Simurgh were both definitely still around, and acting oddly again. Well, more oddly, to be accurate.

The hydro-kinetic Endbringer was currently, according to Dragon's system, orbiting in a tight circle around the center of his new position, even more tightly than before. His motions suggested agitation to her, something her power agreed with, and if she was being entirely honest about it, seemed to find funny.

Her power was probably smugger than it really should be, which she was fairly certain was her fault, as she'd told the others a while ago. And it had a warped sense of humor, which she firmly blamed Taylor and the Varga for. The fucking thing was easily impressed by the looks of it and thought the pair were the best toys ever, even if it couldn't work them out at all. From what she could tell, it didn't actually care about that any more, since the data that it could get simply from observing their effect on everything else was at least as much fun. The thing really loved that, she was completely sure.

On the other hand, Leviathan didn't seem to find either the great demon, his host, or both together any fun at all. Every time Taylor worked out a new trick, he got more agitated, and from all the evidence she could locate or deduce if the thing could actually shit itself it would have done so numerous times by now.

She grinned a little at the thought. Taylor's dual-aspect method seemed to have come as a horrible surprise to Leviathan, based on the logs. She'd wondered about what the reaction would be as soon as her friend had so dramatically shown her, and had meant to come and see what the far-off creatures did in response since then, but had only now had a chance to. It was worth the effort, since the logged movements were pretty funny in what she could read from them.

Leviathan had stopped absolutely dead in his tracks at a time she estimated was about the point Taylor had first managed the two aspect trick, with the normal slight delay they'd seen several times in the past. He'd simply sat there, in what Lisa liked to think was horrified awe, for nearly a minute, before suddenly running in circles like a demented underwater race-horse for another four and a half minutes. Eventually he calmed down and resumed his normal semi-random wanderings, although at a considerably higher speed.

When she'd demonstrated the 'teleporting' trick Lisa had suggested, he'd practically crapped himself based on the movement tracker. The Endbringer had dived off to one side, then corrected and shot back to the antipodal position at a speed high enough that he'd probably left a hole in the water. After that he'd bounced back and forth a couple of miles at a time in almost every possible direction, at ludicrous speeds that spoke of total panic, before stopping dead again and doing a good impression of something cowering in fear with its hands over its eyes.

Another mental picture she found funny.

It had taken him a good half hour to recover and resume his wanderings, which had ended up being the circling that he was still doing. Clockwise at the moment, although he changed direction intermittently.

All in all, it looked like the new abilities her wildly overpowered friends had come up with had come as a very nasty surprise to the distant Endbringer.

The Simurgh, on the other hand, hadn't reacted nearly as visibly, or at least in such a panic-stricken manner. The telescopic images from both the ground based and satellite cameras showed she had suddenly opened up some of her wings enough to expose her face, rotated in her currently very elliptical high orbit to face Brockton Bay dead on, and shifted orbital plane to put her apogee into a location where she could keep watch on them all. But from as far away as possible, the thing was currently nearly half-way to geostationary orbit on a rising phase and would take several days to finally disappear behind the planet again.

Having carefully watched the video several times, in slow motion, and compared times, Lisa was certain that the faint expressions she was sure she could make out on the otherwise serene features denoted shock, genuine surprise, what looked all for the world like impressed awe, and mild terror, in varying combinations. Coupled with resignation and determination as well.

All in all it was a very odd mix, and one that she was pretty sure most people couldn't discern.

She wondered if Dragon could…

If what she and her power were both almost certain was true about the Guild Tinker actually was true, it was quite likely.

That particular can of worms was going to be interesting, when they finally got around to opening it. She was also pretty sure it would be Dragon who would initiate that opening, and in the not too distant future. And she was also certain that Taylor had worked out the same thing she had some time ago, marked it down as a cape secret she wasn't prepared to push on, and simply filed it for later.

Her friend didn't judge, human or not human was irrelevant. A person's actions spoke much more about them than their origin in her view. Whatever that origin was…

On the whole Lisa felt the same, but was still very curious. Not enough to do anything unwise, but as and when Dragon felt like confiding in them, she had a lot of questions.

'I wonder if Amy's worked it out as well?,' she mused. Her power basically smirked at her, making her roll her eyes and sigh faintly.

"You're a pain in the ass, you know," she muttered to herself, poking her 'Metis' head between the eyes with one clawed finger. "You make me feel the way I make everyone else feel and it's annoying." The thing more or less stuck out a metaphorical tongue at her, causing her to sigh again, but smile to herself.

Shaking her head a bit she watched the video once more, decided that there was nothing else she could extract from it, and reached out to switch the feed to the live camera. The Simurgh was staring right at the camera once again, making her stare back.

"Surprised you, didn't she," she said idly, and wasn't entirely startled when the Endbringer floating in space thousands of miles away gave a very tiny nod, then furled her wings up to cover her face and went dormant again. It was noticeable that she remained facing Brockton, though.

"We're getting closer to figuring you guys out," Lisa added quietly. "Sooner or later, I think we're going to have a very long talk. I don't know if I'm looking forward to it, or terrified about it. Or both."

There was no visible response this time.

Wondering if Dragon had looked at the same logs recently, and what she'd make of them when she did, Lisa shut the system down, left the facility and locked up, then headed back to the DWU again to see how Linda's work was progressing.

She was looking forward to seeing the thing in action.

Taylor studied Chris's face as he watched the end of the movie, seeing that the boy was now much more relaxed than he had been when he'd arrived. His scent let her know that as well. At first, he'd definitely been worried, then abruptly shocked when he'd set eyes on her Saurial aspect, although oddly enough that had quickly lapsed and left him less keyed up than before. Possibly because her alter-ego was familiar to him? Who could tell.

The movie, the jokes and comments from the others, and the food seemed to have completed the job and as far as she could tell he was now entirely at home, which was good. Returning her primary aspect's attention to the textbook she read the last few pages, then closed it, while her Saurial aspect made an amused comment about the movie. Varga was mostly running that one at the moment, filtering his speech through her so all her normal 'Saurial' body language and mannerisms seemed unchanged. In a way it was quite similar to the method Amy had come up with for the bio-suits and was inspired by it, followed by a lot of experimentation.

Both of them were pleased with the result, it let them seamlessly switch between the two aspects without the fairly distinctive mannerisms and speech patterns of the demon showing.

They were reserving that for close friends, and special occasions…

She considered the text she'd read, and the research both of them had done on the internet the night before. Being able to use two computers at the same time and correlate the results was an unexpected but very helpful benefit of the latest ability. Dyscalculia seemed to be something that was only fairly recently even recognized as a distinct disorder, having been lumped into the general dyslexia category for a long time.

It seemed to often occur in association with other issues like ADHD or anxiety disorders, but as far as she could tell, and from what Amy had told her as well, Chris didn't suffer from anything like that. Amy had checked him out enough times to be pretty certain his overall biology was working more or less normally, with the exception of something her rule about not touching brains might cover. Making a mental note to ask her friend if she thought one of the symbiotes might fix whatever organic problem was at the root of the boy's condition, assuming something actually was, she gently tapped her fingers on the closed textbook, thinking hard.

She'd found a list on a medical website of common symptoms that led to the dyscalculia diagnosis and wanted to check with Chris how many of them he had. There were some other tests that she needed to run as well, to give her a better idea of what they were dealing with.

The movie ended so she got up to turn the lights on again, while Mandy, who was closest, popped the disk out of the player. "That wasn't bad," the girl said with a smile.

"Not as good as the first one," Rich put in.

"But that one had such terrible graphics by today's standards," Eric argued, making his friend shrug.

"Maybe. For the time they were pretty good. But I think it was better."

"This one was still fun, though, right?"

"Oh, sure, I didn't say it was a bad movie, just not as good as the first one," Rich smiled. Lucy nodded, as did Chris and Amy.

"I enjoyed it," the healer commented.

"Me too," Taylor said truthfully. It had even given her a few ideas. And the Varga had been watching with interest the entire time, fascinated yet again by human imagination, as he put it.

"It was certainly watchable," 'Saurial' said, reaching for another bag of chips and slitting it open with a claw tip, then offering it to Lucy who had ended up sitting next to her. The Chinese girl took a handful with a murmur of thanks. "Those light cycles are pretty cool. I wonder..."

Amy looked at her, her eyes narrowed a little, then at Taylor, who was grinning. "Oh, hell," she mumbled.

"Hey, all I said was that they were cool," Saurial protested, belying the words with a definite smirk.

"And you're going to mention it to someone, aren't you?" Amy asked suspiciously. Taylor's reptilian aspect nibbled some chips and met her eyes with a silent yet amused look. Everyone else was exchanging glances. Vicky, who had so far been remarkably quiet although she seemed to have enjoyed the movie, looked between both of them with a slightly raised eyebrow. The blonde had spent a lot of the last hour and a half apparently cogitating deeply on some problem or other and had said very little, not that this had prevented her eating half her own body weight in snacks.

"Right, then, I guess we need to start the next phase of this little endeavor," Taylor said brightly, slapping the book in her hand down on the coffee table and making everyone twitch at the sound. "On to the wonders of… Math."

"Oh, god," Mandy mumbled. Taylor fixed her with a hard look. "Oh, good!" her friend immediately said, smiling widely. "I said, 'oh, good'. Honest."

"Yeeess," Taylor drawled, giving her a sidelong look. Amy was quietly snickering and several of the others were grinning. "Sure you did. OK. Saurial, add a couple of extra questions to Mandy's homework, will you? I think she might be slipping behind."

"As you command, oh mammalian one," the smirking reptile said, saluting smartly.

"Oops," Lucy giggled, nudging her friend, who looked worried now for real.

"Like I said, strict," Amy chuckled. Chris stared at her, then began laughing to himself.

"You people really are very strange," he commented when he recovered. Everyone looked around at each other, then shrugged en-masse. "So what do I do?"

"You come over here in the corner with me, and we talk for a while," Taylor told him. "Saurial will deal with the rest of them on the other side of the room. Without mentally scarring them for life." She gave her other aspect a warning look, the demon currently driving it meeting her gaze with hidden amusement. Both of them were having a wonderful time playing off the dual-aspect situation and she was certain Amy was having trouble not breaking out into hysterical laughter every now and then.

"I'll be good," her other body assured her with an evil grin.

"Sure you will." Taylor looked dubious, but accepted it. "OK. Everyone get any food they want to keep them going, then we spend a couple of hours on the math, before we see what else we can do. Maybe look at PHO and laugh at the weirdos some more."

"That's always good for a giggle," Vicky noted wisely, apparently back with them from whatever deep thoughts she'd been working on.

Shortly all but Taylor and Chris were gathered on one side of the living room, around a whiteboard Taylor's reptilian aspect had created, on which she was writing a series of fairly simple calculus exercises. They were all listening carefully as she began explaining the process for solving them, notebooks and pens in hand.

Taylor turned a couple of the chairs around and moved them as far away as possible from the study group, shifting the sofa to make room, then waved Chris to one of them. Sitting in the other one, she regarded him for a moment. "I can't guarantee I can help you, Chris, as I told Vicky. So please don't get your hopes up too high. But I'll certainly give it a good try, and maybe we'll work out something that will be useful. Worth the attempt, right?"

The boy nodded, looking slightly apprehensive, yet resolved. "I'll take anything I can get," he assured her. "I'm not expecting miracles, trust me. But this whole condition is so fucking frustrating! Kids in first grade know more about basic math than I do, all because there's something broken up here." He poked the side of his head.

Inspecting him, Taylor shook her own head a little. "I'm not sure broken is the right word, personally. Different might be a better description. That said, it might be worth asking Ianthe to check you over at some point if you're up for it. She knows a hell of a lot about how humans work and might be able to suggest something." Chris looked startled, then somewhat discomfited, making her smile. "Don't worry, it's only a suggestion, and my friends are people you can trust. But if you don't want to do that, don't."

"Would you let a bunch of giant lizards treat a medical problem of yours?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"Yes," she replied instantly. "So would quite a few people at the DWU, and in fact they do. Ianthe and Metis have both fixed quite a lot of things there in the last few weeks." At his somewhat shocked expression, she shrugged. "It's an industrial site with a lot of people doing sometimes dangerous work. Accidents happen, although nothing bad, since they're careful. Even so, equipment breaks, people slip, shit happens. Those two fix it. Everyone seems pleased about having them around." She glanced at the Dallon sisters, who were listening as her other aspect walked Mandy through an equation. "Amy too, she's helped a lot of people there."

Chris followed her eyes, then nodded slowly. "She seems a lot happier these days."

"I like to think I helped a little," Taylor smiled. "But right now, we're concentrating on you." He redirected his attention to her. "I've been reading up on dyscalculia since last night, since it's not something I've got any experience with. From what Amy told me, and what I've observed since I first met you, you don't seem to have a lot of the commonly associated other issues that can go with it. Does that match what you've been told?"

He nodded. "Yes. I don't have ADHD, dyslexia, any other sort of developmental issue anyone can find, and they've checked a lot. It's only this dyscalculia. From what the specialist said, I got lucky, but sometimes it doesn't feel like it."

"OK." Taylor regarded him with interest. "By the sounds of it, you might not have it too badly, then."

Chris shrugged. "Not as bad as some people do, I guess. From what I was told, if it had been caught when I was in kindergarten, using the most recent methods, I might have been able to overcome it a lot more effectively. But no one noticed what the real problem was until I was thirteen or so, they just put it down to math anxiety or something like that. By the time anyone realized what the real problem was it was too late for that sort of treatment to really help."

"I know you're in some sort of special class," she said after a pause to think. "What happens there?" Taylor held up one of the specialist textbooks, which seemed to consist of a large number of basic arithmetic problems laid out in several different ways, presumably in an attempt to find one that the student would be able to work most effectively with. "Is it all this sort of thing?"

"Not entirely," he replied. "There are other exercises, using counters on a board and that sort of thing to let people like me get a feel for numbers in a more visible manner. That's really aimed more at little kids, though." He sighed faintly. "They do try, I think, but there aren't many people at Arcadia with my sort of problem, and there aren't enough teachers to sit down for one on one sessions all the time, which is what the experts say is needed."

Taylor nodded, understanding his point. She put the book down and rubbed her chin thoughtfully, still watching him. "Interesting… OK, let's try to define the problem a little better. Find out where your main issues are. From what I read, there are a number of different problem areas with dyscalculia, but not everyone has all of them. So, I'll go through a list and you tell me what you know is a problem, all right?"

"OK," he nodded.

She retrieved the notebook she'd written a few things in that morning and flipped it to the right page. "Great. Let's see… can you do basic addition? What's five plus nineteen?"

He thought for a moment, gazing at the wall with his lips moving slightly. She could see he was basically counting in his head. "Twenty four."

"Yep. Thirty plus sixteen?"

"Forty five… No, forty six."

"Correct. But it's not something you just know, is it, you have to work it out?"

"Pretty much." He looked a little upset. "I can add fine, but the larger the numbers the longer it takes. And sometimes I forget where I'm getting to."

"So you take one number and add the other one to it, one at a time?" she pushed. He nodded.

"That way always works, if I can remember what I'm doing."

"OK." She made some notes. "Very inefficient, but effective. Can you do it with paper and pencil in the more traditional ways?"

"Slowly," he replied.

"All right. How about subtraction?"

"That's a little harder but not too bad."

"Multiplication?"

"I need to work it out on paper, but yes. Most of the time. It's basically just adding over and over anyway."

"OK." She was still making notes. "How about division."

"That's a pain in the ass," he grumbled. "I prefer a calculator."

"That's understandable," she grinned. "Great. So you more or less understand the four basic arithmetic functions, but you find them difficult to do in your head. Not too surprising, a lot of people do one way or the other." Ticking off an entry, she moved to the next one. "Right, count from one to twenty as fast as you can, out loud."

He looked at her, then at the others, who were ignoring them, then shrugged. "One, two, three, four..." Chris rattled off the numbers in a few seconds.

Taylor nodded. "Now do it backwards."

"Twenty, nineteen, seven… no, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, thirteen… fuck… fifteen..." He closed his eyes and thought, then went on counting down, not making any more mistakes but much more slowly than the counting up was. Taylor listened, remembering what her research had shown. This was one of the common symptoms, losing number order especially when reversing it. She made some more notes.

"All right. Thanks." After a moment, she got up. "Hold on a moment, I need to get something." Leaving the room, she went into her father's study, then quickly generated a cardboard box full of a couple of hundred small plastic dice, in a number of different colors. Thinking about it, she made a few more props as well, in another, larger box, then went back into the living room and sat again. "Found them." Opening the box of dice she took out a handful and put them on the small table near them.

Chris looked at them, then at her, his eyebrows up a little.

"A little exercise," she smiled. "How many blue dice are there?"

He looked back, counting under his breath. "Seven."

"Green ones?"

"Five."

"Red ones?"

"Ten… no, eleven."

"OK." She swept them up in her hand. "How many blue ones were there again?"

"Seven."

"Good. Red ones?"

He frowned slightly. "Ten."

"And green ones?"

"Um..." There was a pause. "Six?"

She looked at him with interest. "How many dice in total?"

Staring at her closed hand, he thought hard, his lips moving. "Twenty three," he finally said, not sounding sure of himself.

"That's interesting," she noted, spilling the dice out of her hand onto the table again. "Right number in total, but the wrong individual numbers." He counted them, pushing them around with a finger, while she wrote down some more thoughts.

They did a few more tests, ones that had been suggested by the websites she'd visited, until she was satisfied she had a handle on the problem, or as much of one as could be discerned in so short a time. It was fascinating to both her and the Varga. The boy seemed to have major problems deliberately working basic mathematics problems, and recalling numbers for more than a couple of seconds, but at the same time his ability to come up with a quick estimate of the number of something when he didn't have time to consciously think about it was oddly good.

She scattered another random handful of dice on the table, instantly assessing the spread, and summing the total of displayed dots. "Quick, how many yellow ones?" she snapped. "Don't think, just tell me."

"Fifteen." There were indeed fifteen.

"Green ones?"

"Eight?" Again correct.

"Total number?"

"Thirty… two?" He sounded hesitant. "I think."

"Thirty three. Not bad. And really interesting."

Picking them up and re-scattering them, she snapped her fingers sharply, causing him to look at her hand. "OK, look at them, then back at me. Tell me how many orange dice."

He glanced at the table, then fixed his eyes on her face. "Ten."

"And the total of the displayed dots?" she said as quickly as possible.

"Thirty seven."

They both looked at the dice again. He reached out and moved all the orange ones, which did indeed number ten, into a line, then carefully counted up the top face totals. Which was thirty seven.

"How the fuck did I do that?" he wondered out loud.

"I'm no expert, but I have a feeling that your subconscious is better at math than you realize," she replied slowly. She was also wondering if his 'processor' as they were thinking of whatever was behind powers was helping him. If the thing was indeed some sort of alien computer, it would have to be ridiculously good at math, which somewhat raised the question of how a mechanically-orientated Tinker could be so bad at it. But that wasn't something they could get into. "If you don't actually think about it, you get the right answer a lot of the time. If you start trying to work it out consciously it looks like you sort of get bogged down in the details and lose track. That's what it looks like to me, anyway."

"Weird."

"But not unheard of. A lot of people can come up with a decent estimate of something without knowing how they did it, or being able to prove it," she pointed out. "Although they can also come up with entirely ridiculous answers and be completely certain they're right, of course. But not being able to show your work isn't necessarily a fatal flaw, unless you're trying to produce a mathematical proof. Which I think isn't what you need right now anyway."

Chris shook his head. "Not even close. But does this help?"

"I'm not sure yet," she admitted. Looking at her notes, she referred to the documentation on dyscalculia. "I think you're right, though, you have a fairly mild case of it, and if it had been caught ten years ago it probably wouldn't be a problem now. So what do we do to try and help you?"

After a moment, she picked up the other box she'd brought in and reached into it, discreetly forming a new tool slightly different from her first thoughts. Pulling the thing out of the box, she put it on the table. "Ever seen one of these?" she asked.

"It's an abacus, right?" He looked at the device with interest. "I haven't seen one of those things since I was in kindergarten. Although that one was all different bright colors for little kids."

"This is a Japanese abacus, it's actually called a soroban. My mom had one like this years ago, I used to play with it when I was a little girl. She taught me math on it from a very early age. I'm wondering if this might help you. In Japan they used them right up to the disaster, even long after calculators were invented, and someone who was really good with one was even faster than a person with a calculator could work it a lot of the time."

He looked surprised and impressed.

"One of the things they're good at is teaching you to visualize numbers, which I think is one of your problem areas. That matches what I read about dyscalculia as well. I admit it's a bit of a long shot, but it's worth trying," she added. "Mom always said that learning to use one also more or less automatically made you good at mental math. When you're taught to use it properly, you're also taught to visualize one in your mind and work it there. I know it sounds weird but it works."

All this was true, but she was also leaving out the fact that the Varga had told her a lot about the variant of abacus that his former world's humans used, which was very similar. Princess Luna had used something like this most of her life and was extremely adept at it. Taylor herself was far past needing anything of that simplicity, but it seemed like it might possibly help.

Picking it up again, she held it up to him, looking at it from the rear. "This is a twenty-one rod version. It uses decimal representation, which makes life easier. The single bead above the bar here represents fives. The lower four beads represent ones. The bar is called the reckoning bar, and a bead that is moved towards it is… in use? Active? Whatever you want to call it, that's the position that says you count it. Moved away from the bar it's the other way. So you move the five bead down to be counted, and the ones up to be counted."

Chris was listening intently, studying the thing in her hand closely. "I think I get it."

"Great. Now, every third rod has a dot next to it, see?" She pointed and he nodded. "Those ones you normally decide to use as decimal point markers, although you could use any of them. This just makes it easier. You read it left to right just like a calculator or on paper. So, to represent, for example, six three five zero, you'd set it like this." She put it flat on the table, then moved all the beads to the off positions with her fingers.

"This is zeroed out. So, we move to the forth rod, move the five bead to the bar, then the top ones bead to the bar as well. That's six, see?" He nodded slowly. "Next one along, we move the top three ones beads to the bar. Then the next place, the five bead down like this, and finally we leave the last rod with all the beads away from the bar. Six… three… five… zero." Her finger moved along the bars one at a time.

"If we wanted to put a fractional number in, like twelve point two seven, we'd move along to the other side of the first decimal dot, then start again. Like this." Quickly resetting it, she flicked the various beads into position with her fingertips. "Get it?"

"I… think so." Chris moved the beads back to the zero position, then moved a number of them around, studying the results carefully. "Three hundred and fifty seven."

"Yep."

He did it again. "Eighteen thousand, two hundred and five point six zero."

"Exactly." She smiled at him. "Easy, right?"

"Well… not hard, let's put it like that. But how do you do actual math with it?" He looked at her, then the abacus, frowning slightly.

"There are lots of methods to use one for a whole series of math operations. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are the simplest ones. They can be used to find square roots, and all sorts of other things as well, a lot faster than you'd believe." She reset the thing. "The abacus is absolutely ancient, one way or another they go back thousands of years, all over the world. In all that time, people came up with a lot of ways to do things with them."

Taylor glanced at her student. "Give me a four digit number."

"Three thousand two hundred and sixty one."

"OK." She entered it into the device. "Another one?"

"Um… twelve hundred and four."

"Great. All right, to add those, we do it like this. Take the leftmost digits, which in this case are three and one, and change the thousands column to match by adding them." She moved the last bead in the units section up. "Then we move to the right and do it again." This time two beads moved, again giving four. "And repeat all the way down. Those numbers are easy as there aren't any carries involved." Flicking the beads into position, she smiled at him. "See? Just read off the result, four thousand four hundred and sixty five."

Chris stared at the soroban for a while, then nodded. "I see."

"Good. Now, this is how you do carries, which is a little more involved, but not hard. It's still just adding things up." She walked him through the relevant exercises for fifteen minutes or so, eventually setting him a number of test additions, ranging from simple to hard. He struggled a little and she had to remind him of the rules a couple of times, but he ended up with the correct results each time. And, critically, without having to count the entire thing off in his head. "It takes practice, but you can see how you could end up being really damn quick with one of these. Most of it is muscle memory and some simple rules, your subconscious does most of the work. You just read the results."

"Cool." He studied the results of his last calculation, holding the small wood and metal device in one hand. "I can't believe that works so well."

"Addition is the easiest part. Here, this is how you do subtraction, which isn't too much harder." She took it from him, then showed him the process. "It's just the reverse of addition. Start on the left again, work to the right, borrow from the rod to the left of the one you're working on. See?" She worked a few simple subtractions, then when he had the pattern, gave it back and set him some more problems. This didn't take much longer than adding had.

"OK. Multiplying and dividing are more complicated, but not really hard, just a bit tedious," Taylor said when he'd pretty much mastered the process. "Multiplying first." Teaching him the relevant actions took close to half an hour, and a lot of corrections and repetition, but the grin he was wearing when he finally multiplied thirty-three and fifteen to get the answer four hundred and ninety five was worth it.

"Holy crap, it worked," he muttered, staring at the results.

"Not too hard, was it?" she smiled. "I know the rules are a little complicated, but once you memorize them, it's easy enough to extend it to as many digits as you have rods to use. Want to try division?"

Chris nodded eagerly, obviously feeling very pleased with his progress so far. She was a little surprised how well it had worked to this point and was wondering if it would really help as much as she hoped it would, but so far the signs were encouraging. If she could get him to the point of being able to picture a mental abacus and use it, which was certainly not going to be easy, but was definitely possible, he might well be able to overcome some if not all of his math problems.

If nothing else, it was a good start. She could definitely get into this teaching thing.

After a moment, she grinned to herself. So far she'd taught two of the Wards some new tricks. What were the chances that in time she'd do the same with more of them?

And what would Director Piggot make of it if she ever found out?

Vicky watched Taylor and Chris, both of them bent intently over that little abacus thing she'd come up with, talking quietly and appearing pleased with whatever it was they were doing. Chris was definitely looking a lot more cheerful than he'd been the day before, so she could hope that her friend was actually helping. As far as she could see from Taylor's expression, she was having fun as well. The girl was definitely a born teacher.

Her attention turned back to Saurial, who was patiently explaining the integration function she'd just demonstrated to Lucy, who seemed to have a minor conceptual issue with understanding it. The reptilian girl was at least as good at teaching as Taylor was, apparently happy to go over the problem again and again until her students understood.

The blonde had been thinking very hard about the Heberts, the Family, and how both parties were connected. And what else they might be connected to as well. Some of her more paranoid suspicions had receded, but she was becoming more convinced by the moment that one of her earliest thoughts might well be right.

Clearly her first idea, that Saurial was actually Taylor, or the other way around, was incorrect considering both of them were sitting not twenty feet apart. On the other hand, the idea that Saurial might, somehow, have been brought up alongside Taylor was looking more and more plausible. It would explain a hell of a lot, in fact. How Saurial fitted in so well with her more human companions, whereas her sisters tended to have some very unusual mannerisms that made them stick out even more than the being an eight foot tall giant lizard would have done anyway.

And how both she and Taylor shared certain mannerisms of their own. Both speech and body language had some eerie similarities, something she'd noticed when she'd first had the idea and flown into that damn building. Growing up in close contact would certainly make that possible, as she'd recognized some time ago. It might go some way to accounting for the insanely good math skills both had as well. Taylor was obviously very gifted in that area anyway, but if Saurial was teaching her, and had probably been teaching for years, Family math skills…

Her friend probably knew more about math than most professors did.

And, interestingly, could use some of those skills in a somewhat unusual way, if her actions with that disturbing little 'children's toy' that Saurial had made earlier was anything to go by. She'd probably grown up with things like that around the place, which was why she could apparently use it the way it was meant to be used, and didn't seem even slightly surprised about it.

For a moment, Vicky had a mental image of a half-sized Saurial and Taylor flinging weird little knots of warped space around the room like frisbees, giggling manically as they curved around the place in unearthly patterns…

She closed her eyes and shook her head a couple of times, trying to get the disturbing image out of it.

With an inner sigh, she yet again pushed the ruminations about the past interactions between the lizard-girl and Taylor to the back of her mind, so she could concentrate on the current problem, which was a difficult one.

If she didn't get the answer, she didn't get dessert.

Priorities, Vicky, she told herself, and applied her thoughts to the notebook.