Vortex

“Sailing to Antarctica is an act of desperation, and it’s only postponing the inevitable.”

“Okay, so reality sets in sooner or later—then what? Chaos, anarchy, blood in the streets?”

I was Voxish enough to feel a trace of shame at the answer to that question. “There have been other limbic cult communities in the past, and when they fail… well, it’s ugly. Fear and frustration are amplified by the Network to the point of self-destruction. People turn on their neighbors, their families, ultimately themselves.” There was no one to hear us, but I lowered my voice. “Social breakdown, maybe communal suicide. Eventually starvation when the food supply fails. And no one can opt out. You can’t just reconfigure the prophecies or choose to believe something else—the contradiction is built into the Coryphaeus.”

I had seen hints of it even today, as we traveled through the city—a general sullenness too subtle for Turk to pick up on but plain enough to me, like the sound of thunder on a rising wind.

“And there’s no way to protect ourselves?”

“Not if we stay here, no.”

“And nowhere to go even if we had a way out. Christ, Allison.” He couldn’t stop staring at the mottled horizon, the rotting forest. “This was a pretty nice planet, once upon a time.”

I stood closer to him, because we had come to the heart of the matter. “Listen. There are aircraft on Vox that can fly from pole to pole without refueling. And because you’re Uptaken, the Arch is still open to us. We can leave. If we’re careful and lucky, we can get ourselves back to Equatoria.”

And in Equatoria we could surrender to Vox’s ancient enemies, the people who had nuked Vox Core in an attempt to prevent us from provoking the Hypotheticals. The cortical democracies despised and feared Vox, but they wouldn’t refuse to accept a pair of earnest refugees—I hoped. They might even help us make our way from Equatoria to one of the pleasanter Middle Worlds, where we could live out our lives in peace.

Turk was giving me a hard look. “You can fly one of these vehicles?”

“No,” I said. “But you can.”

* * *

I told him all of it then. I told him the plan I’d worked out in the long nights when I couldn’t sleep, nights when Treya’s loneliness threatened to shut down Allison’s defiance, nights when it was almost impossible to find a space between those two borders of self, impossible even to name myself with any real conviction. The plan was practical, I believed, or might be. But it required a sacrifice Turk might not be willing to make.

When he understood what I was asking, he didn’t give me an answer. He said he’d have to think about it. I accepted that. I said we could come up here in a few days and talk about it again.

“In the meantime,” he said, “there’s something else I need to do.”

“What?”

“I want to see the other survivor,” he said. “I want to see Isaac Dvali.”

Chapter Nine Sandra and Bose

After she left Bose’s condo Sandra had to drive to her apartment for fresh clothes, so she was most of an hour late for work. Not that she really cared, under the circumstances. Yesterday, Orrin Mather had been accused of a violent outburst—perhaps, or probably, if what Bose had told her was true, because Congreve or someone above him had been paid (in cash or longevity) to keep Orrin locked up. Sandra tried to contain her anger during the drive, but succeeded only in damping it down to a low simmer.

She had disliked Arthur Congreve since the day he was appointed supervisor, but it had never occurred to her that he might be as corrupt as he was unpleasant. But she knew Congreve had connections with municipal government—a cousin who was a sitting councilman—and although the street cops at HPD thought he was too stingy with admissions, the chief of police had made approving visits to State not once but twice since Congreve had been installed.

She parked carelessly and hurried through the metal detector at the building’s entrance. As soon as she was badged up, she walked directly to the isolation wing.

It looked like any other part of the State Care building. “Isolation” didn’t imply dank, sealed cells, as it might have in a federal prison. The isolation ward was just a little more generously supplied with locks and unbreakable furniture than the open wards, designed to segregate potentially violent patients from less aggressive inmates. Such cases were relatively few: the State system was empowered to deal with chronic homelessness, not outright psychosis. In a sense these were the least troublesome of the patients who passed through the system; they required little debate among the staff and were usually transferred to psychiatric hospitals in short order.

Whatever else Orrin Mather might be, he wasn’t a psychopath. Sandra would have bet her degree on it. She wanted him out of isolation as soon as possible, and she meant to begin by getting his side of the story.

It was sheer bad luck that Nurse Wattmore happened to be presiding over the entrance to the locked ward. She should have buzzed Sandra through without comment, but she didn’t. “Sorry, Dr. Cole, but I have my instructions,” and she proceeded to page Congreve while Sandra stood and helplessly fumed. Congreve appeared promptly. His office was only a few doors down the corridor, and he took Sandra by the arm and steered her there.

He closed the door behind him and folded his arms. His office was at least twenty degrees cooler than the temperature outside—the air-conditioning murmured stoically in its vents—but the air smelled stale and greasy. The empty wrappers of fast-food breakfast items littered his desk. Sandra started to speak, but Congreve held up his hand: “I want you to know, first of all, that I’m really disappointed by the unprofessional behavior you’ve been displaying lately.”

“I don’t know what you mean. What unprofessional behavior?”

“Talking to this patient, Orrin Mather, after I assigned the case to Dr. Fein. And I have to assume that’s where you were headed again this morning.”

“Follow-up with a patient is hardly unprofessional. When I conducted his intake interview, I told him I’d be working his case. I wanted to make sure he was okay with Fein and that he didn’t feel he’d been abandoned.”

“That ceased to be your concern when I pulled you off the file.”

“Pulled me off the file for no good reason.”

“I’m not obliged to justify that decision or any other I might happen to make. Not to you, Dr. Cole. When the board appoints you to a managerial position you can question my choices; until then you need to take care of the duties I assign to you. You might be better able to do that, by the way, if you show up on time.”

It was the first time she had been late in, what, a year and a half? But she was too angry to slow down. “And this story about Orrin assaulting an orderly—”

“Excuse me, were you a witness to that event? Do you know something you haven’t told me?”

“It can’t be true. Orrin wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

The objection was feeble and she knew she had made a mistake as soon as she said it. Congreve rolled his eyes. “You determined this after a twenty-minute interview? That makes you a pretty remarkable diagnostician. I guess we’re lucky to have you.”

Her cheeks were burning. “I talked to his sister—”

“You did? When? ”

“I met her outside the facility. But—”

“You’re telling me you consulted with the patient’s family on your own time? Then I guess you must have written up a formal report… or at least a memo to me and Dr. Fein. No?”

“No,” Sandra admitted.

“And you fail to see a pattern of unprofessional behavior here?”

“That doesn’t explain—”

“Stop! Just stop, before you make it worse.” Congreve softened his tone. “Look. I admit your work has been satisfactory up to this point. So I’m willing to write off recent events as stress-related.