Vortex (21 page)

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
Othello
.
My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty.
Not that she was much of an actress. “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Congreve.”

“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
is
special. He just seemed particularly … I don’t know. Fragile? Vulnerable?”

“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 unprofessional. Do you see what I’m driving at?”

“Yes sir, I do.”

“And do you understand why I suggested you take some time off? Usually, when a physician begins to project his own anxieties onto his patients, it’s because he’s tired or distraught.”

“Really, I’m fine now, Dr. Congreve.”

“I’d like to believe that. Is there anything happening in your personal life that might be interfering with your work?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Are you sure of that? Because if you want or need to talk about it, I’m willing to listen.”

God forbid.
“Thank you. No, it’s just…” She sighed. “Honestly, it’s the weather as much as anything. My air-conditioning’s broken and I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for days. And yes, the work is sometimes a little overwhelming.”

“All the staff are feeling it. Well, I’m pleased you decided to come to me with this. Do you honestly feel fit enough to go back to work?”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

“I won’t say we can’t use you. How about we ease up on the caseload for the next couple of weeks? Maybe you can tutor Dr. Fein—I’m sure he could benefit from your experience.”

“I’d like that.”

“Not on the Mather case, of course.”

She nodded.

“In fact we’ve run into some complications in that regard. I’ll need a formal letter from you acknowledging that you voluntarily turned over the Mather file to Dr. Fein. Are you willing to do that?”

She pretended to be surprised. “Is that really necessary?”

“It’s a formality, but yes.”

“If you think it would be helpful, then of course I’ll submit a letter.”

“Well, then. All right, Dr. Cole. Take the rest of the day off and come in tomorrow.” He smiled. “On time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we’ll forget about this unpleasantness.”

Not likely.
“Thank you. Actually, if it’s all right, I was hoping I could spend the rest of today in my office. I don’t want to do consults, but there are four or five case reports I need to write up.”

Congreve gave her a careful look. “I guess that would be all right.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And I have to say I appreciate your attitude. As long as that doesn’t change, we should get along fine.”

“I hope so,” she said.

*   *   *

Sandra went to her office, feeling slightly unclean, and opened up her desktop interface. How long until Congreve went home? He was usually out of the building by six, but a consultation or a board meeting could keep him later. In the meantime she systematically went through her files, pulling and deleting anything personal. It was funny how
separate
she already felt from State, as if her years here had faded into a single blurred image, a picture on an antique postcard.

When that was done—and it didn’t take long—she took a printed copy of Orrin’s document out of her bag and began to read. As usual, the document raised more questions than it answered.

At half past three she stood up, stretched, and headed to the staff washroom. She was surprised to find Jack Geddes sitting in a chair in the hallway opposite her door, humming to himself. “Hey, Jack,” she said. “Are you guarding the medical staff now?”

“Just keeping an eye on things.” His grin was lopsided and insincere.

“Dr. Congreve’s orders?”

The grin lapsed. “Yeah, but—”

“I see. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

“None of my business what you do, Dr. Cole.” But his eyes followed her to the washroom door and watched her when she returned.

Back in her office she took out a pad of paper and a pen and wrote the word
QUESTIONS
at the top.

Then she paused, nibbled the pen top, collected her thoughts.

Re: Orrin Mather document

1. Did Orrin write this or is it someone else’s work? If someone else, who?

It occurred to her that she might be able to find out whether the document was a blatant act of plagiarism. She called up a search function on her desktop and entered a couple of text strings from the document. No meaningful matches. Which proved only that the text, if it existed outside of Orrin’s notebooks, hadn’t been posted to the Web—a positive result would have been significant; a negative result proved nothing.

2. Is this a work of fiction or a delusional construct?

She couldn’t answer that without access to Orrin. Bose had said there was something about the Findley warehouse later on in the document, which suggested that Orrin had contributed at least a few words of his own to the story. Which led to the next question:

3. Is there a real “Turk Findley,” and, if so, is he connected to the Findley who operates the warehouse?

She searched a Houston-area phone directory and found a whole raft of Findleys, but nothing between Tomas and Tyrell. No T. Findleys, either.

4. Is there a real Allison Pearl?

According to Orrin’s document, Allison Pearl had lived in Champlain, New York. Feeling more than a little foolish, Sandra accessed a Champlain directory and searched it. It listed five Pearls. The majority were singletons, none of them A. or Allison. Two were couples, listed under the male partner’s name. Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Pearl and Mr. and Mrs. Franklin W. Pearl.

She opened her phone and closed it again twice before she worked up the courage to tap in one of the numbers.
Idiotic,
she thought. She might as well try to place a call to Huck Finn or Harry Potter.

Harvey Pearl answered on the fourth ring. He was friendly but bemused. Nope, no Allison here. Sandra apologized hastily and hung up. She could feel herself blushing.

One more call, she told herself; then she could give up and forget about it.

Mrs. Franklin Pearl answered this time, a younger and friendlier-sounding voice. Sandra asked meekly whether she could speak to Allison.

“Um—may I ask who’s calling?”

Sandra’s pulse quickened. “Well, I don’t even know if I have the right number … I’m trying to find an old friend, Allison Pearl, and last I heard she was in Champlain, so…”

Mrs. Pearl laughed. “Well, this is Champlain, and you got the name right. But I doubt Allison’s your old friend. Not unless you met her in grade school.”

“Excuse me?”

“Allison’s ten years old, hon. She doesn’t
have
any grown-up friends.”

“Oh. I see. I’m sorry…”

“She must be a popular woman, though, the Allison you’re looking for. We had another call for her a while back. A man who said he was with the Houston police.”

Oh!
“Did he give his name?”

“Yes, but I don’t recall it. I told him the same as I’m telling you—sorry, but it’s not our Allison. Good luck finding the one you’re hunting for, though.”

“Thank you,” Sandra said.

*   *   *

A staff conference—Sandra wasn’t invited—kept Congreve in the building well past his usual departure time. He knocked at her office on his way out, a few minutes after seven. “Still here, Dr. Cole?”

“I’m just finishing up.”

“Did you prepare the letter I asked for?”

“It’ll be on your desk in the morning.”

“Fine.”

She glanced out the door as he left. Jack Geddes was still sitting in the hallway, chair tipped back, humming to himself. She listened until Congreve’s footsteps had faded down the corridor. The State facility had begun to take on its after-hours aspect. Most of the day staff had already left; the open-ward patients were back from the commissary, some of them watching TV in the common room. She heard a couple of orderlies laughing together down by the main entrance.

She closed the door and went back to her desk. Then she opened her phone and tapped in Bose’s number.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

TURK’S STORY

1.

The medics kept Oscar and me in a weeklong quarantine, scanning us for any sign of contamination. They failed to find anything unusual in our bodies or our psyches, though that wasn’t conclusive—Hypothetical devices were perfectly capable of eluding detection. But we measured consistently clean, and the sample we had brought back with us, the crystalline butterfly in its sealed container, remained dead or dormant.

News of what happened out in the Wilkes Basin quickly spread through Vox. Collective grief for the lost soldiers and scientists was written in the faces of the medics who examined us and in Oscar’s face, too. I asked him what it was like to feel an emotion amplified by the entire population of a city.

“It’s painful,” he admitted. “But it’s better than being alone. What was unbearable was what we felt after the attack that shut down the Coryphaeus—so many dead, and no way to
share
that grief. It was agonizing, horrible beyond belief.”

“Coryphaeus” was the word scholars had chosen to translate a concept for which there was no English equivalent. In the ancient dictionaries it was defined as a noun from classical Greek: the leader of a chorus, a choirmaster. In Vox it referred to the nest of feedback loops and functional algorithms that regulated the input and output of the community’s neural nodes. It was the emotional heart of the Network—Allison had called it “the parliament of love and conscience.”

Solitary grief (like guilt, like love) was an inescapable part of the human condition, or at least it once had been. We had endured it for most of our tenure as a species. I guessed it wasn’t a bad thing to be able to share that burden in a way that lessened the pain, and maybe there was something admirable in the willingness of the people of Vox to shoulder their countrymen’s burden of tears. But the price of that anodyne was reckoned in personal autonomy; it was reckoned in privacy.