But he wasn’t. When I turned to face him I found his suit was clean: there were no butterflies on him. His face through the moist blur of his mask was shocked but relatively calm. “Stop,” he gasped. “We’re out of range. We’re beyond the perimeter now. Please,
I took a long look back.
We had come a fair distance. The abandoned lamps were still working, the Hypothetical machines plainly visible in a skewed crosshatching of artificial light. Nothing human was moving.
The wind blew grains of snow around our feet and the stars glittered overhead. We stood shivering, waiting for whatever might come out of the darkness after us—another attack, a straggling survivor. But there was no one, nothing.
Then, in quick succession, the distant lamps began to blink off.
We reached the aircraft guided by signal-finders built into our suits. It was a long walk but we were too shaken to talk much. Oscar eventually managed to establish voice contact with Vox Core, and he exchanged curt messages with managers and military personnel. Remote telemetry had broadcast most of what happened, and Vox was already attempting to analyze the data. “Probably,” he said at one point, “our presence triggered a defensive reflex of some kind.” Maybe so. But I wasn’t Voxish and I didn’t have to believe in the benevolence of the Hypotheticals—I didn’t have to make excuses for a senseless slaughter.
Our aircraft rested on the Antarctic plain like some incongruous deposition from a vanished glacier. I asked Oscar whether he would be able to pilot it back to Vox.
“Yes. Really, I just need to tell it to carry us home.”
“You sure? You’re bleeding, Oscar.”
He glanced down at his ravaged clothing. “Not badly,” he said.
Once we passed the airlock he stripped off his gear. His upper body had sustained a number of small cuts, none of them deep or life-threatening. He told me where to find a medical kit, and I smeared his wounds with something that stopped the bleeding.
A few of the tiny crystalline butterflies—dead or dormant—were still clinging to his discarded survival gear. Oscar emptied a ration box, tweezed one of the dead butterflies between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it inside. A sample for analysis, he said. Then we dumped the rest of our tattered clothes out the airlock.
“They didn’t touch you,” Oscar said, once we were aloft and the aircraft was following a programmed route to Vox.
What had been a crowded crew cabin on the flight out now seemed grimly and cavernously empty. The air, our bodies, even the fresh clothing we put on all reeked of hydrogen sulfide.
“No…”
“Because they
“I don’t know what that means, Oscar.”
“Obviously, they recognized you because you were Uptaken.”
“I don’t understand what happened any more than you do. But I’m not Isaac—I don’t have any Hypothetical biotech inside me.”
“Mr. Findley,” he said, “are you still denying it, even now? A human body doesn’t pass through a temporal Arch the way it might pass through one of the spatial Arches. We know this from many years of study. You weren’t
I was too exhausted to argue. Oscar was clinging to one of the few expectations this encounter had actually borne out: that the Hypotheticals had recognized me and singled me out for salvation. He believed he had survived because I was beside him, helping him. He imagined he had been saved, in other words, by a truculent and stupid demigod.
Chapter Fifteen
Sandra and Bose
Sandra arrived at the State Care intake facility at noon. The parking lot was silvered with heat mirages and the air was thick and oppressive, worse, if that was possible, than yesterday. The guard manning the desk at the entrance—his name was Teddy—sat basking in the breeze from a small rotary fan, but he stood up hastily when he recognized Sandra. “Dr. Cole! Hi! Hey, listen, I’m sorry, but I have instructions not to let you pass—”
“That’s okay, Teddy. Give Dr. Congreve a call and tell him I’m here and that I’d like to speak to him.”
“I guess I can do that—yes, ma’am.” Teddy murmured into a handset, waited, murmured again; then he turned to Sandra and smiled. “All right. Again, sorry about that! Dr. Congreve says you can go to his office. He wants me to tell you you should go there directly.”
“Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nothing. Thanks, Teddy.”
“You’re welcome! Have a nice day, Dr. Cole.”
Congreve was wearing a triumphant look when Sandra stepped into his office. She reminded herself that she was here to play a role, the same way she had played Desdemona in her high school production of
“I’m surprised to see you, Dr. Cole. I thought you understood you were to take the rest of the week off.”
“I do understand. But I wanted to apologize for my behavior, and I thought I should do it in person.”
“Really? That’s a sudden change of heart.”
“I know it seems that way. But I’ve had time to think it over. Time to do a little soul-searching, you could say. Because I do value my career here at State. And looking back, I believe I acted improperly.”
“In what way?”
“Well, by overstepping my authority, to begin with. I took a proprietary interest in Orrin Mather, and I guess I resented it when you gave the case to another physician.”
“I explained to you why I thought that was a good idea.”
“Yes, sir, and I understand now.”
“Well—I appreciate you saying so. It can’t be easy for you. What’s so special about this particular patient, can you tell me that?” Steepling his hands, regarding her thoughtfully, assuming a grave judiciousness.
“I don’t suppose he
“All our patients are vulnerable. That’s why they’re here. That’s why we’re in the business of helping them.”
“I know.”
“And it’s why we can’t afford the luxury of identifying too closely with them. The best gift we can give the men and women under our care is absolute objectivity. That’s what I meant when I called your behavior
