Tallow Smith swam with a coxswain’s mantra, ‘mind of fire, mind of peace’ beating in his mind. His arms shot past his shoulders with a power that belied his scrawny frame. He struggled to remember a time before being bullied by Fat Gazza at school. He was called a poof, a spaz, a dick and a weirdo. At lunchtimes Gazza would sit on his chest and let the slag hang pendulous from his lower lip as the circle of other kids would chant, ‘spaz!’ ‘spaz!’ ‘spaz!’

The mucous saliva fell on Tallow’s check and rolled towards his ear. Then Gazza would slap his face hard and bang his head on the grass of the back oval.

“You’re an idiot, Smith,” Gazza yelled, “and don’t forget it,” as he lumbered towards the school canteen.

Tallow spent most afternoons after school, swimming at the local pool. The blue tiles at the bottom of the pool made him feel like an astronaut floating above a planet. When he swam, he felt the tug of a distant memory, as if hunting for a missing phrase of a song. He pushed the thought away and did another ten laps.

Tallow was too young to remember being adopted by Bob and Ursula Smith. Ursula drank too much and Bob tried to teach him to box. They lived in a small rented house near the harbour. They’d hoped Tallow would reignite their love. On his seventh birthday, Ursula gave him a black Labrador puppy. It’s big clumsy paws and sharp teeth tore sheets and socks in to rags. Tallow called her Pie.

Tallow’s recurring dream started with him standing on the edge of a large circle of children. Each child was called and placed in a capsule, the size of a large dog kennel and induced to sleep, then music would play and the capsule disintegrated as the child fell in to a dream and travelled to worlds at the edge of the universe. On their return, each child would return to the circle and be asked to report on their adventures.

In Tallow’s dream something had gone wrong. He hadn’t returned home and he hadn’t awoken from the dream. He was stuck on a planet whose species terrified him. Stuck with a man who hit him hard with old leather boxing gloves and a woman who cried and squeezed him to her stomach.

The psychiatrist’s office was on the posh side of town. Bob’s old Chrysler took two parking spaces next to a BMW and a new SAAB.

“He might be an idiot savant,” Doctor Kareen said, “but he doesn’t fit the profile.”

“He’s an idiot all right doc,” Bob said “and I’m the silly bastard who’s going to have to foot your bill. Can you fix him? I know it ain’t a big point but it’s unsettling when we walk down the street with junior here and the other parents stare and whisper – unless they’re talking about my wife’s drinking of course.”

Ursula threw him a withering look and ran her hands down the side of her cotton dress. Tallow watched as a bee on the windowsill kept hitting its head on the pane, desperately trying to get out.

“Tallow’s no idiot. His math’s abilities are extraordinary,” Dr Kareen said. “He has low social skills, probably indicative of Savant Syndrome. But he’s not obsessive about order and routine. He’s extremely alienated as if suffering from post-traumatic stress. It’s unusual alright.”

Ursula popped a nicotine lozenge in her mouth. She craved a cigarette. Now wasn’t the time to give up smoking. Not with the bills mounting and Bob about to lose his truck driving job.

“Is there anything we can do doctor?” Ursula said. “Since we adopted him he hasn’t smiled once. The only thing he likes is the dog.”

Tallow opened the window and watched the bee crawl to the ledge and fly off.

“His falling dreams are interesting,” Doctor Kareen said. “He hits the ground and then starts running. Most boys and girls wake up before that. I’d like to know why Tallow feels the need to run. You say he gets on well with the dog – with Pie?”

“They’re inseparable,” Bob grunted. “They sleep together. Now the bloody dog is sick too. It’s got epilepsy. Has fits at night. That’s just bloody great. Mad dog and a loony kid.”

“Bob!”

“That’s alright Ursula,” Doctor Kareen said. “It’s a difficult situation. Shall we meet again next week and talk about this more?”

“Thanks Doc,” Bob said pulling out his Visa card, “but just at the moment our marriage is pretty full. How about we call you? As it is, we’re paying your bill on instalments.”

Tallow kept a bottle of cold water by his bedhead and an old towel in case Pie had a fit. He fell asleep watching her legs kick as if chasing rabbits. He dreamed of a yellow sunset and of a deep blue ocean and eating something that tasted like chocolate and salt. It was delicious. He reached out for the water bottle and knocked it to the ground.

His eyes flew open and he saw Pie floating in the air above the bed. The dog was deep in a fit. Foam and slobber fell to the blankets. Two beams of light shone from Pie’s eyes, projecting number code on the bedroom wall. Tallow grabbed a pen and paper and copied down as much as he could. There were squiggles and dots that made no sense. One of the co-ordinates looked like the sun. He knew that from reading books on space flight. The others were gobbledygook.

Pie awoke and fell into Tallow’s arms. She was shaking and frightened. She smelt of the sea. Tallow wiped her snout and gave her a drink of water. Pie looked at him for a long time and then fell asleep, with a paw over Tallow’s hand. He pulled the blankets down over both of them and that’s how his mother found them in the morning.

Bob dropped Ursula off at dry out centre later that week. She was a regular visitor. Bob signed the papers for a six-week stretch.

“It’s for your own good, darl,” Bob said. “You’re all over the shop. Sooner or later you’ll burn down the bloody house. I’ll visit you every day and I’ll bring the boy too. It won’t be that bad. I got the doctor to put you on sickness benefits so there will be a bit more money coming in. It’ll be sweet.”

Ursula looked at his curly black hair. He used to be handsome. His big hands would throw her around the dance floor. His right arm would wrap around her lower back and he’d bend her over, planting a strong kiss. She liked that. He would take care of her and she of him. It was a deal made every Friday night on the dance floor of the Challa Gardens Hotel. That was 10 years ago, before she couldn’t have kids, before the fights, the mounting bills and the drinking. Before hope bled out of her.

Bob walked to the car. There were going to be changes, he thought. His life had gone to shit ever since that whacko kid had landed on them and now a bloody vomiting dog. First the dog. Then the kid. He made a mental note to speak to the foster home people.

Tallow typed the numbers and squiggles in to his laptop. Pie was having fits every night, projecting code on to his bedroom wall. The levitation was weird. A dog floating in thin air, like a cheap magician’s trick. He was glad Bob hadn’t seen it. Pie would get a bullet in the head, for sure.

He saw in his mind’s eye Ursula lying in a white room, staring at a ceramic bowl, the wind blowing white curtains, as a nurse took her pulse. He saw Bob driving home, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. First the dog, then the kid. He got that tight feeling in his gut like when Fat Gazza spotted him across the oval and started yelling, “Hey spaz boy! Hey shithead, come ‘ere!”

Tallow fired up the laptop. There was something familiar about the number sequence 3.14159265358979. Tallow looked up the coordinates of the sun and then starting looking at coordinates for the constellations of Ursa Major and Scorpio. Nothing. Then he tapped in the coordinates of Orion as Pie lay on the bed with her legs in the air. A star map appeared on the screen. The coordinates matched perfectly. He heard Bob’s car pull in to the drive. Pie hid under the bed.

“Well, if it isn’t Einstein and his wallet-flattening mutt,” Bob snarled. “Your Mum is drying out in the booby hatch, so I’m in charge now. Rule number one: the dog has to go. I’ll drop him off at the pound tomorrow morning. Rule two: you need to learn how to fight. Beginning tomorrow night, its boxing lessons on the back lawn. Rule three: you’re getting a haircut. You look like a girl. Got it?”

Tallow accessed his ‘understood’ face, pulled it and then went back to staring at the laptop screen as Bob slammed the door.

He entered the numbers in to Google and hit search. The numbers were the numerical formulation of π to 761 places. Then at the 762th place, a string of six 9’s beat in his mind. Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine… The Feynman Point. He closed his eyes and heard the beat like a military tattoo. Where had he heard that before? He gave each number a musical note. It sounded chaotic, like an orchestra tuning up and then those nines came out of nowhere. Pie’s ears flew up and down. She put her paws on the desk, stared at the numbers on the screen and gave Tallow a long, sloppy lick.

That night Bob entertained a young woman in the lounge room. He told Tallow she was a long lost cousin. She had dyed blonde hair and unnaturally pert breasts. Tallow thought she looked filmy, like taking a picture with a thumbprint on the lens. He said as much and was sent to bed. “Remember what I said about the dog,” Bob yelled.

Tallow closed his eyes and saw those nines beating like a drum. Then another image appeared of the blue star, Rigel, in Orion. His mind filled with blue and white light as he fell asleep.

He was falling, his legs bicycling through the air. He had practiced it before. In the first dream he landed so hard he had knocked the wind out of his lungs. He saw the roof tops of the city. A yellow sodium halo surrounded the street lights. Most of the houses and apartments were dark, their inhabitants fast asleep. He saw Ursula sitting on her bed in the rest home, staring up at the sky. She was wearing the Mickey Mouse cotton pyjamas he had given her last Christmas.

Pie was turning end-over-end beside him, barking with joy. The ground zoomed towards them. They landed gently on a bouncing castle near the wharf. On Saturdays Bob and Ursula would take him there to look at the fishing boats and they’d eat hot dogs.

Tallow ran as fast as he could with the laptop tucked under his arm. Pie ran in front of him. A colossal star field glittered overhead. The bitumen held the heat of the day as he sprinted down the causeway to the where the local council mined sand. The earth moving machines looked like prehistoric dinosaurs in the moonlight. Pie started digging in the loose sand in a small gully, unearthing a small tube just big enough for a boy and a dog. They crawled inside and sealed the hatch. He reached out and touched a small crystalline panel, which glowed a faint iridescent green.

Tallow called up the coordinates for Orion on the laptop. The pod started to pulse. He needed to have a pee but there was no time. He fired up the program and played the music of π, which filled the tiny capsule. Tallow wiped his mouth and started to feel sleepy. Pie’s fur tickled his face and then as if from a great distance, the number string hit, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine – and they were gone.

Bob kicked open Tallow’s door at 1.00 am with a beer in hand and the blonde hanging loosely off the other arm.

“Hey Tallow, do you want to see cousin Nancy’s tattoo of a side show freak? It’s a dead set splitting image of you!”

The window was open and Venus shone high in the night sky.

Tallow held Pie as they turned slowly in the womb of space. He opened his eyes as they started to fall through streaks of high white cumulus clouds. Then a pair of strong hands lifted him from the capsule. The rich brine scent of the sea filled his nostrils. Pie ran across the room to her food bowl. Through a large window to his right, he saw children swimming in a large pool with blue tiles. They were splashing each other.

He was wrapped in a white towel and led him towards a large half circle of children, who were laughing and pushing each other. They fell silent as Tallow stood before them. Pie trotted through the children’s legs and sat at his feet. In the far distance, a voice from above said, “what do you have to report?”