Spherical Harmonic Read Online Free PDF Page B

faces, human in shape but over two meters tall. Gods only knew what lived under that armor. Manq?
     
     
"Husband," I said. "Take Manq."
     
     
"He took the Manq?"
     
     
"No. They took him. My son—" My son what ?
     
     
"You have a boy?"
     
     
"Yes. No. Adult. Grown-up."
     
     
His eyebrows went up. "A young mother you were."
     
     
"No. Old." I pulled angrily against the roots holding my wrists. "My son. Where?"
     
     
"I have seen only you."
     
     
"Cut me free. Please. Help me find my family."
     
     
He made a derisive noise. "Why ****?"
     
     
I felt his reaction more than I understood his words. If I was Manq, then as far as he was concerned my family could rot in perdition. If the Manq had captured or killed them and wanted me, it gave him all the more reason to deny them what they sought. They owed him reparations and I had appeared. For him, that was enough.
     
     
I blinked…
     
     
    * * *
Night had become day. Only embers remained of the fire.
     
     
I groaned. Not again. How long had I lost this time? Unlike before, however, this last transition was softer, filled in with vague memories. I hadn't become as much of a ghost, at least not enough to work free of my bonds. During that strange, half-real time, the treeman had made soup. I recalled his disquiet as he gave me a bowl. My hands had been translucent. He had hoped the food would make me solid again.
     
     
The cavity was empty now. Beyond the entrance, day was darkening into night. Iridescent arthrops flitted around the fire. They must have been coming in for a while, because some hung on my hair, giving it a sheen. The effect created a sense of familiarity— one I hated.
     
     
Aversion surged through my mind. Pain. My thoughts recoiled. Frustrated, I turned my concentration to the now absent treeman. What did he want? His mind had roiled with conflicted emotions: the urge for revenge that prodded violence; the compassion that stayed his hand; the desire that urged him on; the kindness that counseled restraint; the fear that gave him pause; the loneliness that sought company; and his growing doubt I was Manq. Unfortunately, no matter which emotions won out, none of the likely results involved him letting me go.
     
     
How to leave? Cut the cords? With what? Yell for help? To whom? Those hordes of people I had seen roaming the forest? Even if anyone else lived here, I had no reason to believe they would help. My struggles so far had succeeded only in tightening the cords. I suspected the plant grew these "roots" to feed itself by holding its captured prey until it died, after which the decomposing body provided nutrients. Being plant mulch wasn't on my list of useful pastimes.
     
     
I needed a new approach, an escape too quirky for the treeman to foresee. It would help if I understood why I had ended up here. But when I concentrated, the memories fled. So I let my mind wander. Math swirled in my thoughts: Fourier sums, Laplace transforms, Bessel integrals, Airy functions, beautiful, fascinating…
     
     
Selei transforms.
     
     
Selei?
     
     
Like my name.
     
     
My name.
     
     
Dyhianna Selei. That was my name. Hah! I was getting somewhere.
     
     
I had invented the Selei transform at age ten. A strange pastime for a child, but I had enjoyed it. It was a game, really, one that interested only a handful of scholars. The transform defined a universe outside our spacetime. That itself wasn't dramatic; many math theories described spaces that were unusual compared to our own. They weren't real in a physical sense. You couldn't visit them. They were just math. But the Selei universe had a difference.
     
     
We found a way to visit.
     
     
Academicians had a catchy phrase for it: a Hilbert space spanned by an infinite set of orthonormal Selei eigenfunctions. Everyone else just called it psiberspace. Or Kyle Space. Matter couldn't move from our universe into Kyle Space. Only thoughts. People couldn't enter that universe any more than