Quarantine

fortress, they know they’d have to pay for it. They’ve been running prisons long enough to understand the costs.’

He hesitates, then says, ‘“Enough to keep the patients in?” Yeah? Laura Andrews got out twice before.’ He glares at me. ‘And if that ever reaches the sister, I’ll break your fucking neck.’

I stare at him, grinning sceptically, waiting for the joke to be made clear. He just stares back glumly. I say, ‘What do you mean, she “got out”? How?’

How? Shit! I don’t know how. If I knew how, then she wouldn’t have been allowed to do it again, would she?’

‘But… I thought she couldn’t even turn a door handle.’

‘That’s what the doctors say. Well, nobody’s seen her turn a fucking door handle. Nobody’s seen her do anything smart enough to shame a cockroach. But anyone who can get past locked doors, and cameras, and movement sensors, three times, isn’t what she appears to be, is she?’

I snort. ‘What are you getting at? You think she’s been shamming total imbecility for more than thirty years? She never even learnt to speak! You think she started faking brain damage when she was twelve months old?’

He shrugs. ‘Who knows about thirty years ago? The records say one thing, but I wasn’t there. All I know is what she’s done in the last eighteen months. How would you explain it?’

‘Maybe she’s an idiote savante. Or an idiot escapologist.’ Casey rolls his eyes. ‘Okay. I have no idea. But… what happened? The first two times? How far did she get?’

‘Into the grounds, the first time. A couple of kilometres away, the second. We found her in the morning, just wandering about, with the same bland dumb innocent expression on her face as always. I wanted to put a camera inside her room, but the Hilgemann wasn’t having that—some UN convention on the Rights of the Mentally III. IS got enough flak over that Texan prison thing that they’re ultra-careful now.’ He laughs. ‘And how could I argue that I needed more hardware? The patients are vegetables. The rooms have one door and one window; both are monitored twenty-four hours—how could I justify anything more? I mean, I couldn’t say to the fucking Director, “If you’re such a genius, you tell me how she does it. You tell me how to stop her.”’

I shake my head. ‘She didn’t do any of this. She can’t have. Somebody took her. All three times.’

‘Yeah? Who? Why? What do you call the first two times—dry runs?’

I hesitate. ‘Disinformation? Someone trying to convince you that she could break out on her own, so that when they finally took her, you’d think—’ Casey is miming severe incredulity, verging on physical pain. I say, ‘Okay. It sounds like a load of crap to me, too. But I can’t believe she just walked out of there, alone.’

It takes me forever to get to sleep. Boss (Human Dignity, $999) may have rendered it a matter of conscious choice, but somehow I still manage to be an insomniac; I always have some reason to delay the decision, I always have some problem I want to think through—as if every last nagging question which once might have kept me awake had to be dealt with in the old way, regardless.

Or maybe I’m just developing what they call Zeno’s Lethargy. Now that so many aspects of life are subject to nothing but choice, people’s brains are seizing up. Now that there’s so much to be had, literally merely by wanting it, people are building new layers into their thought processes, to protect them from all this power and freedom; near-endless regressions of wanting to decide to want to decide to want to decide what the fuck it is they really do want.

What I want, right now, is to understand the Andrews case, but there’s no mod in my head which can grant me that.

Karen says, ‘Okay. So you have no idea why Laura was kidnapped. Fine. Stick to the facts. Wherever she’s been taken, someone must have seen her along the way. Forget about motives for now—just find out where she is.’

I nod. ‘You’re right. As always. I’ll put an ad in the news systems—’

‘In the morning.’

I laugh. ‘Yes, okay, in the morning.’

With her familiar warmth beside me, I close my eyes.

‘Nick?’

‘Yes?’

She kisses me lightly. ‘Dream about me.’ I do.

2

‘Hallelujah! I can see them! I can see the stars!

I turn, startled, to see a young woman on her knees in the middle of the crowded street, arms outstretched, gazing ecstatically into the dazzling blue sky. For a moment, she seems to be frozen—transfixed, enraptured—then she screams again, ‘I can see them! I can see them!’ and starts pounding her ribs, rocking back and forth on her knees, gasping and sobbing.

But that cult died out twenty years ago.

The woman shrieks and twitches. Two embarrassed friends stand beside her, while the traffic smoothly detours around the scene. I watch with mounting dismay, as childhood memories of ranting, convulsing street mystics start flooding back.

‘All the beautiful stars! AH the glorious constellations! Scorpius! Libra! Centaurus!’ Tears stream down her face.

I fight down a sense of panic and revulsion that’s growing out of all proportion. This is just one woman, just one freak. The very fact that she’s such a spectacle only proves what a rarity this is, proves that most people have adapted, have accepted The Bubble and moved on. What am I afraid of? That every last form of Bubble hysteria, every last obscure religious sect, every last bizarre mass psychosis, is destined to be revived?

As I turn away, the woman’s companions suddenly burst out laughing. A moment later, she joins them—and belatedly, I think I understand. Astral Sphere is back in fashion, that’s all. A planetarium in the skull. A gimmick, not an epiphany. I’ve read the reviews; the mod offers a variety of settings, ranging from a realistic view of the stars ‘exactly as they would be’—complete with accurate diurnal and seasonal motions, masking by clouds and buildings, and convincing fade-ins at dusk and fade-outs at dawn—through to the dissolution of all obstacles (the sunlit atmosphere and the Earth beneath your feet included), and the option of moving the point of view millennia into the past or the future, or half-way across the galaxy.

The trio are falling in and out of each other’s arms now, laughing. The cult is being mocked, not revived; these teenagers must have seen it portrayed in some old documentary. I walk on, feeling slightly foolish—and greatly relieved.

When I reach my building, I take the stairs slowly, reluctant to face an empty calls log, again. I’ve had ads in all the news systems for four days running, and they’ve yet to attract even a hoax call. The New Year should have helped; news-system readership increases on public holidays, when people have nothing better to do. Maybe ten thousand dollars isn’t a large enough reward, but I doubt that my client would appreciate me doubling it. Not that I’m any closer to knowing who my client is. The Hilgemann’s patient records listed no one with family ties to spectacular wealth or fame—and in retrospect, I’m not surprised. The very rich would, at the very least, take care that the records were meticulously falsified, and the obscenely wealthy would keep their demented relatives right out of harm’s way, in soundproof wings of their own impenetrable mansions. I’m tempted to dig deeper, but I won’t. I may suffer the (purely aesthetic) urge to incorporate my client into the Big Picture, but as yet I have no good reason to believe that it would help me find Laura.

No calls.

I resist punching the sofa; the upholstery has already split to the point where further damage yields diminishing satisfaction. It’s getting close to the deadline for lodging the ad for one more day; I display the copy on my terminal and stare at it glumly, wondering if there’s anything I could change that would make a difference, short of adding a zero or two to the reward. I’ve used a picture of Laura straight from the Hilgemann’s patient records; it closely matches my own received mental image, suggesting that my client’s knowledge of Laura’s appearance was