Sometimes little Anya just wanted to be a lightyear away from everyone and everything. To float among the stars, surrounded in the swirling blue free fall of space, spiraling into the infinity of the galaxy. Alone with her ever-expanding thoughts, she would map the possibilities of the universe with her eyes, derive the equations of the stars with her mind. Artists saw the colors of a nebula; poets saw the brilliance of a thousand lights against the black; Anya saw the numbers that held the world together. If physics was her second language, mathematics was her first. She was one of the most natural Arithmes that Domdva Station had ever seen.

Too bad then that she was born for something entirely different.

The chrome of Domdva Ballroom glittered with the white light of a hundred floating glow-orbs. Anya gaped as ballerinas glided through the anti-grav chamber in costumes their body could never support in standard conditions. In a little throne below her aunt's—or above, if a dancer was silly enough to orient themselves opposite of the tsarina's chosen down—Anya tracked their trajectories. There flew the evil sorcerer with a constant velocity of one meter per second. Too easy. There twirled the swan princess, hands above her head and spinning with an impressive angular acceleration. Anya counted and calculated, wondering how many rotations she might get in a minute. But then the enchanting prince caught her and ruined Anya's experiment, so her eyes flicked to find something new in the ever-moving ballet—

"Anya!" her aunt hissed.

Anya's eyes snapped up. "Yes, Aunt Khrishta?"

"Oh. Now you see fit to answer me."

Anya winced. Sound always faded to the background when her Arithme nature got the better of her.

Khrishta's clear grey eyes regarded Anya. Her aunt's spiked silver crown drew out both the dark beauty and crystal-cut sharpness of her features, and Anya squirmed under the weight of her gaze. Khrishta's mouth twisted. "If you weren't the end of the Domdva line, I think I'd abandon you to the peasants, little daydreamer." Her gaze turned back to the room. Anya followed her eyes to a handsome man sitting in a box across the ballroom. "Sometimes I think I still might."

Anya's eyes stung, but if she cried, the heavy mascara her nursemaid had applied to her lashes would run sticky down her cheeks. So, she took a deep breath, looked back at the ballerinas, and tried her best to see them as faces and stories rather than velocities and equations.

She might wish she was among the stars sometimes, but she would do her best to prove she belonged here.

"Are you nervous?" Lada asked as she plaited Anya's hair. On her vanity, her tiara stared at her from its cushion as if reprimanding her for planning to leave it here today. The station jolted, lights dimming for a moment, and Lada dropped the strand in her fingers. "Sorry, Your Highness," she murmured.

Anya waved it away. Terrorizing servants was the other nobility's job. Anya had nothing but respect for this kind, dedicated girl, no matter how many meteors were knocking the station nowadays and causing smudged makeup and messy braids. People shouldn't have to apologize for problems they didn't cause. "We don't have anything to fear. The Arithmes have the situation under control."

Lada's frown stared back at Anya from the mirror. "And that's why we're all going to the airlock again today?"

Anya's eyes dropped. The thought of yet another punishment Aunt Khrishta had prepared for the Arithmes curdled like spoiled food in her stomach.

"Why don't you just work with them? You're ten times smarter than Pieter. You'd find us a path out of this meteor field like that." An empty millisecond passed where Anya felt Lada would have snapped had her hands been empty, and she clucked her tongue as if to make up for it.

A smile ghosted to Anya's lips despite herself. "I am not 'ten times smarter' than your brother. I'm not even an Arithme."

"You could be! If–"

"In another life." Anya met Lada's eyes in the mirror. Normally, the servant girl would have dropped the subject, and she shocked Anya by shaking her head.

"Not in another life! You only get one. And Pieter only gets one. And the Arithmes only get one! You can't just stand back because your aunt thinks mathematics is beneath–"

"Lada!" Anya trembled, a concoction of anger, guilt, and fear fizzing in her veins. "I think that's quite enough."

Lada's lips pressed together, sharp and pale, but for once, Anya didn't care. Math might be something she did in her head or in secret, but it would never be something she did in the open, working with the Arithmes. Her aunt's wrath was not something that could be charted and analyzed; it was only something that could be feared and avoided. Anya was smart, but Khrishta was sly. Whatever punishment she administered would be worse than Anya could build in her nightmares; stars save whoever she was working with.

She could not help the Arithmes. Today's protest would already be pressing the line enough.

After a long moment, Lada said, "I have another note from him for you."

Anya's eyes lit up, but she tugged a frown onto her face. "You need to tell him to stop. If the tsarina finds out, he'll be lucky not to find himself at the airlock next."

"Don't say things like that!"

"Don't speak truth?"

"Don't be so calloused."

A warble in Lada's voice caught Anya's ear—a frequency maybe a dozen hertz higher than usual. Worried, Anya's eyes flicked up, but Lada's gaze refused to move from her hair. Guilt pricked Anya's chest, but not knowing what to say, she let the air fill with silence.

"Which pins do you want?"

Anya pulled the pin box out of the vanity drawer, and Lada weaved them through her hair. "Will that do, Your Highness?"

Anya regarded her reflection. With her severe braid and dark makeup on, she looked like the holo-pics of her mother attending her father's funeral. Even if she was the only one in black today, even if Khrishta despised her for it, she would be glad she wore it. The Arithmes deserved that much respect at least. "Yes, Lada. Thank you."

Lada nodded and turned stiffly. But before she left, she paused, hand slipping into her apron pocket. "He'd want you to have this. Even if he does get caught for it."

A scrap of paper fluttered onto Anya's vanity as Lada's soft footsteps whispered out the door. Anya picked it up, running her finger over Pieter's familiar handwriting.

Riddle #103: Why are some infinities larger than others? Meet me in Buyer's Square to give your answer—or to admit defeat.

There was no signature or meeting time because either would be redundant and dangerous. Instead, there was just the little Fibonnaci spiral he signed all his notes with, like the curves of a tiny galaxy.

"You're going to get yourself hurt one day," she murmured. Even so, she tucked the note into her bodice, the paper crinkling against her skin, and left.

Voices hummed in worry and excitement as Anya threaded her way through the crowded Viewer Room. The brightly-dressed nobles dipped their heads and stepped out of her way, but harsh whispers followed her as she passed. She itched under the weight of their eyes, but she kept her head high. If her mourning attire inflamed their guilt, then all the better.

Anya made her way to the front of the room where the tsarina stood on a dais in a bright blue dress and her spiked crown. Before them, a giant, thick window took up the whole back wall. The empty, chrome room behind it was deceptively innocuous.

Anya stepped onto the dais. "Aunt Khrishta."

The tsarina's gaze broke from the window and flitted over Anya. Khrishta's cheeks lit aflame. "What exactly do you think you are wearing?"

Anya faced the viewing window and shoved down the urge to analyze its reflective properties. "Mourning is an appropriate response when one's country is in crisis, no?"

"You look like an insolent brat."

"You told me I had to come. You did not tell me I had to celebrate."

She sneered. "I did not realize you were still a child that needed told what the mood of a crowd was."

"I believe I judged the mood correctly, Your Majesty." Anya's eyes flicked to the nearby Arithmes Corps, forced to mount the second best viewing dias. Every single one of them wore black.

Khrishta turned back to the window. "The garments of peasants are of no concern to me."

Anger burned in Anya's chest, but she put it out with cool analysis. There was no use arguing with her on this; there was rarely any use arguing with her on anything. All there was now was to endure, just as the Arithemes would, until they discovered some solution.

"Dishonor me again, and you'll have the honor of choosing the next Arithme."

Why does she assume there must be a next one? The weight of her aunt's sideways gaze bore down on her, but Anya stared straight ahead. "Yes, your Majesty."

"For now..." Krishta looked her over. "Why don't you call the orders?"

Anya's heart dropped into her stomach, and her wide eyes snapped to her aunt's. The woman held her gaze, a smile tilted on her lips like that of a cat who knows they have trapped a mouse. Anya could protest in black all she wanted, but she could never disobey a direct order of the tsarina's. No matter what she wore, it would be her voice the crowd heard, her choice—

Anya swallowed. "I–"

"You what?"

I can't. Anya's lips pressed together, locking out the words before they could escape.

"Get on with it, daydreamer. Your Arithmes are waiting."

The rote murmur slipped from her mouth. "Yes, your Majesty."

Anya turned to the crowd like a bot with its joints rusted. Never before had a moment felt so long, so heavy. Why are some infinities larger than others? This was not the first time she had stood in this room, nor the first time she had heard these words, but she had never thought to say them. The seconds counted in her head, a measurement she couldn't banish.

One. "All! View well lest the same happen to you." Anya's bones were buzzing lead.

Two. The crowd rustled, excitement and fear rolling in waves over them.

Three. Under Khrishta's heavy stare, words forced their way to Anya's lips. "Guards! Escort the prisoner to the chamber."

Four. Inside the other room, a side door opened, soldiers pulling a thin man with gray, wispy hair and a gag over his mouth into the center.

Five. They left, closing the door tightly, the man trembling alone in the vast chrome room.

Six. Anya's throat closed up so much, she was sure she'd never say another word.

Seven. "Finish it!" Khrishta hissed.

Eight. Anya opened her mouth and nothing came out. Her heart hammered wildly in her chest, the eyes of the nobles heavy on her, hungry, demanding, waiting. If I don't say it, she will. If I don't say it, she will. Why are some infinities larger than others?

Nine. "Prisoner! May space be a punishment fit–" Anya's voice broke, but it didn't matter. They'd heard enough.

Ten. The airlock door opened, and the pressure difference drug the old man into the void of space as if he'd never existed at all.

When the doors closed, there was nothing but the wails of the Arithmes to remember him.

Anya's ears turned to cotton as her mind threw itself into mathematics—for three point two seconds, the walls were strewn with numbers, faces transformed into data points, bodies into trajectories, and there was no tragedy, no fear, no blood on her hands. The world was an equation.

Something slammed into the station, and Anya stumbled, fell. The numbers disappeared like a holo-pic flicking off, and screams crashed against her ears. Around her, everyone was on the ground, was struggling to their feet. The air was wrong.

"What was that?" Khrishta demanded.

No one had an answer, murmuring among themselves, crying, shocked silent. The air was wrong.

A nobleman—Prince Someone, Khrishta was courting him, Anya usually knew his name—helped the tsarina to her feet. Why is the air wrong?

A boy's face swam in front of hers—dark hair, worried eyes, sharp nose. "Are you alright?"

He took her hand, but she didn't stand. "The air is wrong."

Gaze sweeping over her, he frowned. "You're bleeding."

"No, Pieter!" Anya pushed up. "The air is wrong."

Horror dawned in his eyes as she held his gaze. "It can't have–"

"No, or we'd all be dead by now. The breech doors must have activated."

"But if there really is a pressure difference–"

"Then we leaked air."

Pieter cursed and took back off to the Arithmes. It wasn't the missing air they were worried about—that they could replace eventually. But breech doors weren't meant to be the hull of the ship, and if something hit them hard enough to cause a leak that Anya noticed—

The structural integrity of the ship was damaged. Anya wasn't an Arithme, hadn't studied the ship designs like Pieter had, but it didn't take any brilliant calculations to figure it out.

Domdva Station would not survive another hit like that.

Anya paced the floor of her bedroom. There was supposed to be a feast going on right now, but she couldn't have stomached it. After what happened in the Viewing Room, she doubted she was the only one who had retired early.

People can only pretend like nothing is going on for so long.

Anya snagged her tiara from its cushion and threw it across the room. Five Arithmes executed, a field of ship-killing meteors, and no end in sight.

A stream of epithets dripped unbidden from her lips. She cursed a tsarina who couldn't see past her own petty self. She cursed the callous, weak hearts of nobles who let her get away with it. She cursed dumb rocks that float through space.

She cursed herself.

"Your Highness?"

Anya spun around at the timid voice of her maid, head peeked around the door.

"Is now a bad time?"

"No, of course not." Anya waved her in, cheeks burning. "What news do you have?"

Lada's skin was paler than the chrome walls. "It's the Arithme Control, your Highness." She rocked on her heels, and her voice caught as she said, "It's gone."

"Gone?" The word felt flat and impossible in Anya's mouth, and she drifted to sit on her bed. Cut the Arithme Control room off Domdva station, and you might as well cut the mind off an engineer. Their ship was a husk, a drifting corpse, alive only in the same way you might consider someone brain dead alive. There was still power pumping through the ship's veins—but they couldn't redirect any of it. They were still flying through space—but they couldn't change their trajectory. And the Arithmes—all their tablets and calculations and knowledge passed down generation to generation... "Gone."

A hand clasped around Anya's. She looked up, surprised to see Lada sitting on the bed beside her, tears in her eyes. Anya's heart ached anew, and she leaned her head on Lada's shoulder. They sat in the quiet for a long time, mourning for tragedies past and tragedies to come. How broken the Arithmes must be, how devastated Pieter surely was.

How angry Khrishta will be.

Anya straightened, swiping her eyes. "Does the tsarina know yet?"

Lada wiped her face with her palms. "I don't know, your Highness. I found out from Pieter and came to tell you as soon as I heard."

"Let us hope she has not." Anya trembled, a desperate plan racing through her mind. The words wavered on her lips, longing to not come out, to not be necessary, but they didn't have enough now time for hesitation. "Come. Take me to the Arithmes."

Lada scrambled up. "You're going to help them?"

"We're going to see what can be done. And then..." Anya's gaze swept over her servant's expectant face. Her hope will not be in vain. No matter what it costs. "And then we will do what we must."

Lada nodded, hurrying to the door, and Anya came after her, black skirts trailing behind.

They passed through the empty chrome halls of the nobility until they hit a sealed door. Lada palmed a keypad, and after waiting for her clearance to go through, the passage hissed open. In Buyer's Square, a handful of sellers hawked their wares, but most stalls were closed. Even though she knew it was in honor of the executed Arithme, the half-dead air filled Anya with chills. It felt like a premonition, a view of the future to come.

As they walked straight through the ghostly square, Anya admired and feared for the stall owners brave enough not only to close, but to also hang black cloths over their stalls. They might as well have shook their fist at the tsarina and dared her to do something about it. Anya just hoped that she'd meant it when she'd said peasant's garments weren't her concern.

When they stopped at the next door, Lada keyed in again. As it authenticated, a series of scratches in the wall caught Anya's eye.

they laugh while we cry

MURDER is not SPORT

stars bless the arithmes!!

DOWN WITH DOMDVA

One day...

approx.
1 mil to 10 halls
1 thous to 100

my children deserve to eat

Rust > Silver

we won't be silent forever

Anya's breath caught. Thousands of anonymous messages left on this wall, visible only if you came this far, if you cared enough to stare...

"Your Highness?"

Lada stood in the now-open door, waiting for her. Tearing her gaze away, Anya stared instead at the portal, the door that had been closed to her all her life and now begged to be walked into. If Khrista catches me with the Arithmes...

Then she would probably kill them. But she would do that anyway once she found out about the Control. Who cares what Khrista did to her.

Anya's racing nerves and thumping heart protested that they did. With one large, definitive step, she crossed the threshold into the peasants' wing for the first time in her life.

Here, the halls were lowlit and dirt-streaked. Lada threaded past bundles on the floor, and Anya followed her. Feet in, her heart almost stopped when one moved. They're people. Her eyes panned the long expanse of the corridor, all dotted with huddled masses: women with no home beside here, children with no room other than the edges, men with no place but the floors.

It wasn't until Lada took Anya's wrist that she realized she'd stopped moving.

"Stay close," Lada whispered.

They walked for a long time until Lada finally ducked into a room. It was no bigger than Anya's bedroom yet held ten tiny beds, not a foot of space between them. Men and women in black huddled on them, talking in low tones. The mood felt even more negative than a curve pointing down to infinity.

Why are some infinities larger than others?

"Anya." Pieter rose from a bed, coming to usher her in. "What are you doing here?"

Murmurs rustled around the room as people turned toward her.

"..a Domdva..."

"...going to get us killed..."

"...called the orders..."

The people she'd always been sympathetic toward, that she'd always admired and pitied, looked at her with the same hostile, calculating faces of the nobles. She'd seen an old holo-doc about starving predators once; scientists had been working with them, trying to preserve the species on Earth.

The predators ate them.

Her eyes flicked to the door, but she was in the middle of the room now. And even if she'd been right at the entrance, she hadn't come all the way down here to flee at the first obstacle.

Anya took Pieter's hand. He glanced at her, brows raised, then schooled his expression. His fingers twined with hers.

"I know you have plenty of reason to hate me, but I haven't come here to hurt you. We don't have much time. I doubt it will take long after the tsarina finds out about the Control for her to blame you again for something that is not your fault. I don't want to see that. So—where are we at? What can we do?"

A woman sneered. "What's a Domdva brat think she can do that we can't?"

Anya's heart ticked at a beat of ninety meters a minute. These people who had studied this their whole life, who had been used for their talent but reviled for their birth, who had nothing but math and physics and this ship—who was Anya to think she was smarter or better than them? Solutions died in her mouth.

The woman's lips twisted. "Like I thought." She turned away, and others started to go with her.

"I can keep you from getting the airlock," Anya blurted.

People's steps stopped, heads turning back toward her. The silence was so thick, Anya could feel it in her throat.

Pieter looked over at her. "How, Anya?"

She swallowed. "That's what I'm here to find out precisely. So." She straightened, taking in the fearful, wary, faintly hopeful crowd, all their eyes and lives resting on her. "Where are we at?"

Arithme Control wasn't destroyed exactly. It just wasn't accessible.

The most important controls, the ones for viewing their trajectory and charting their course, were attached to what had been the inside wall of the room—now the hull of the ship, exposed to space. And Anya had been wrong. The power in the ship could be redirected manually from the auxiliary engines. With enough time, the Arithmes could build a permanent redirect to manage the power flow more easily. Yes, the Arithmes' knowledge base had been destroyed, but Domdva Station wasn't a corpse.

And it didn't have to be dead in the water either.

Anya, Pieter, and the other Arithmes sat around a scratched-out drawing of post-meteor Control on the floor. After they'd quickly explained the situation, Anya pointed at the course-charting wall on the chart. "Why don't we send someone out to chart the new course? They could go in a suit."

Yta, the woman who had challenged her before, laughed. "Because we still don't have a course to chart, Domdva."

"That's not entirely true," Pieter said. "Vaskei had been working on something before–"

"Well, whatever Vaskei was working on died with him." Yta's expression twisted, voice dropping. "His tablet was in Control."

But Pieter shook his head, drawing out a scrap of paper from his pocket. He passed it to Anya, murmuring, "I was planning to give this to you when we met in the Square."

"Where did you get that?" Yta demanded.

"I took down his last few lines," Pieter said. "I didn't have time for more before the soldiers escorted us to the airlock–"

Their conversation faded as the numbers on the paper came alive. They danced before Anya's eyes like ballerinas, joining hands to reach greater heights, telling their stories in steps, proclaiming their purposes in lines and curves. Rapt, Anya watched their dance, ready to guess at its ending.

The numbers bowed.

Anya blinked, sound crashing back on her ears. "It's all here."

"What?" Pieter reached for the paper, and Anya handed it over.

"It's all there, all over but the arithmetic." Complex arithmetic, a couple interesting tricks still needed to clean it up, but arithmetic all the same.

"Vaskei did it," Pieter breathed.

Yta snatched it from Pieter, looked over it, and shook her head. "And the airlock got him anyway." She cursed. "Why didn't he tell the soldiers he had a solution?"

"There was so much chaos when they came to get us. Maybe he didn't realize–"

"He must have," Anya said.

"Then why–"

Anya stood, angry realization filling her mind like the light of a star. "Because the soldiers either didn't understand him or were too scared to speak up lest they take his place."

The eyes of the room lit on her, bubbling clouds of emotion rising in their expressions.

Fire burned in Anya's blood. "And because he never got a chance to give a testimony."

People rose to their feet, stepped closer, leaned in.

"Because he wasn't punished as a criminal; he was paraded for entertainment!"

Voices chorused in angry agreement.

"Because the tsarina doesn't care about truth. The tsarina doesn't care about you."

The cries of women and children cut off the shouts of the Arithmes. Outside, stomping boots echoed down the hall. Everyone fell silent, gaze fixing on the door.

"That's the soldiers, isn't it?" Lada whispered. Pieter took his sister's hand.

The fire in Anya's veins iced over. For a moment, she could see the future as clearly as she could see numbers. All the Arithmes, sucked out of the airlock into the deadness of space. Buyer's Square, abandoned in terror and protest. A million peasants, left crowded and starving and homeless. And one day, the ship, torn apart by one final meteor. There would be no Arithmes to blame then—or to save them. And everyone, from the all-powerful tsarina to the most helpless child, would be equal. They would all be floating free in the vastness of space, offered the same view of the stars, the same breathless lungs, the same icy burial. Her childhood daydream would become everyone's final nightmare.

Yta met Anya's gaze. "What do we do?"

Everyone else turned to look at her too, but for once, she wasn't scared by the weight of the people's eyes. Anya wasn't a daydreamer anymore; she wasn't even an Arithme. But she was, and always had been, a Domdva.

"We make the soldiers listen to us this time. And then–" Anya's voice was as certain as the laws of the universe. "We tell the tsarina she's lost the right to rule us."

The soldier's footsteps stopped right outside.

"Her power isn't infinite. And even if it was–" Anya turned to face the door, and the Arithmes gathered behind her. "Some infinities are greater than others."

—Author's Note—
Fun fact: "дом два" (or "dom dva" if you transliterate it) means "home two" in Russian.