"Yes." Blaise nodded and stood up. He didn't expect the slap. It came, at least to him, from out of absolutely nowhere.

"You fool!" Jacqueline would have hit him again had Allan not grabbed her arm and spun the girl about and wrapped her in his arms. "Let me go! I will kill him! He is my brother! I have the right to kill him! What would Father say?"

"Hold her!" Blaise begged Mr. Sebastian. His sister had hit him with her prized notebook. Blaise knew, though didn't fully appreciate, that his sister saw writing in much the same way he saw mathematical equations.

For his sister to hit him with her notebook meant she was very angry, possibly worse.

"Fool!" Jacqueline screamed, tears in her eyes.

Jacqueline loved her brother.

She had waited and watched all day as Blaise was berated and shouted at. One thing she knew without any uncertainty. The adults hadn't been merely angry. They had been scared too. Her brother had almost died.

She loved him even if some fool book declared him the world's greatest mathematician, which had caused something of a panic in their father's circle. Because of that stupid book they had been sent fleeing from Paris.

She loved her brother enough to want to kill him because she would have very much hated to see him dead.

Archie hated making this kind of decision.

He looked at the eleven rulers on his desk.

"That one was the most difficult." Blaise pointed at the last ruler he laid on Archie's desk.

Allan laughed. It was a short, quick laugh.

"This one," Blaise pointed at the first ruler he had put down, "is the best, I think. If there are to be twelve of these inches in a foot then one should use the base twelve system to number the units. I could do one in base two…"