“Figured I’d keep up with the rest of the world by getting one,” he said, squinting at it with ancient, farsighted eyes. “They told me I could have the newest one.”
“George, getting that thing implanted is an outpatient procedure. You’ve already been here too long. You’re more likely to get seriously sick in here with all these germs floating around than you are back at home.”
MacGruder pointed up at me.
“You know, the other doctor said the same thing,” he said. “Really strange. It was like he was warning me to get out of the hospital. Like there was danger or something.”
“What other doctor?” I asked, panic raising my voice. “What did he look like?”
“Oh, you know, the old guy,” MacGruder said. “Older than me, even—a hundred if he’s a day. He’s the guy I’ve seen you around with here and there. White hair, crotchety. The name’s Witherfork or something?”
“Wetherspoon?”
“That’s the one.”
I went over to the room terminal and searched the treatment history.
“When did you see him?” I said.
“Early this afternoon, I think,” MacGruder said. “It was just after I got the implant. I was zonked out on painkillers. Right after the nurses settled me down in the bed and went out, he appeared. He was kind of whispering, real close to me. He looked crazy. White hair all over the place, like he hadn’t showered in a week. He kept looking over his shoulder, like he expected somebody to sneak up on him. Quite a sight, that guy.”
As he talked, I found it, right there on the monitor. A single entry from 1:37 p.m. A person named Shiro Ishii visited for two minutes, then left, without running any diagnostics, or any other check-up of any kind. The phantasmal doctor had again appeared, checked in on a patient, and then left—all in the middle of the day. The video records in the entire wing of the hospital had been deleted from the database, somehow. I turned to MacGruder.
“George, I’m urging you to get your things and immediately leave the hospital,” I said. “You could be in danger.”
MacGruder waved at the air with a shaky hand, as he settled deeper into the pillow.
“With these painkillers I’m on, it would be more dangerous for me to be driving,” he said. “Just let me lay here, doc. I’ll push this big red panic button if I feel sick. Sound good?”
I put my hands on my hips, looking down at my patient. We stared at each other. The poker game again. We both knew I couldn’t force him out, due to those Bureau regs. He could stay as long as he wanted once he was in the hospital—that was the law. I shook my head in defeat.
“You might die,” I said.
“I’m old, doc,” said MacGruder. “I could die any moment anyway.”
“I’ll give you my personal number,” I said. “The minute something happens, somebody shows up at the door unannounced, you call me. Got it?”
“Even doctors?”
“Especially doctors,” I said, shaking my finger reproachfully.
Hands raised in the air defenselessly, MacGruder chuckled.
“Jeez, doc. What are you expecting, another mass shooting? Relax. I heard they already caught the guy.”
I frowned.
“I hope so,” I said.
I rushed downstairs to Wetherspoon’s door. This time there was no pretense. I rattled the knob once more. I looked in both directions, then I kicked hard at the door. It rattled, but held fast. I backed up, got a running start, and kicked again. The third time something splintered. At the seventh, the door crashed open. I crossed the threshold into darkness.
All was silence—no computer whirring, no working machines. Vague shades of books stood out in the light from the single window like bas-relief on the wall of an ancient tomb. The Old Man’s musky cologne still hung in the air. The darkness seemed to stick to my skin. I found the chain to the single banker’s lamp and yanked it, lighting up the lower half of the room.
There was the usual mess—the stacks of books, empty glasses and a stubbed-out cigar on the desk’s blotter. But the big chair was overturned, and as I came around the desk, I stepped on the crunching shards of a broken wineglass on the carpet. I stooped and felt around; the crimson stain was still wet. I righted the chair, glanced around, and sat. An enormous void was left by the Old Man in that subterranean lair. The far corners of the room were invisible because of the dying light from the window and the weak glow of the lamp; I couldn’t see the familiar framed degrees and pictures of his long-dead colleagues on the walls, the pieces of the smashed Atman in the corner, and even the spilled books from my first visit a decade before. I tugged on the handles of all four drawers in the desk, but all were locked. I cursed and pounded the desk with my fist.
What was the Old Man hiding? I crossed my legs and leaned back in the chair. He was not a killer—even if he resented humanity after a century of disappointments. Cornelius Wetherspoon was not a bad man. But he was up to something. I put my feet up on the desk, but I knocked off a huge pile of books that cascaded down to the floor on the other side. I went around to the other side of the desk and stooped to pick up the mound of ancient books.
Again, I marveled at the Old Man’s collection of old books, the biggest collection I had seen in years. I noted one of the volumes: The 20th Century in Pictures. The old cover had a bright emblem showing it had won some award before the Blackout—before the presses all stopped. Hell, this was all printed in the old alphanumerics, years before the half-pictographic half-acronymic Gliffs had been developed. Although I had learned the old alphanumerics back in my schooldays, after years of the simplified and dumbed down Gliffs on glowing screens had weakened my eyes, like it had for everyone else. Reading off paper was a chore, and not everyone could still do it. But I flipped through the book, looking at the grainy black-and-white pictures from the century before. Minimalist captions were hard to read on the paper, but they apparently told who was smiling, or being killed, what campaign or battle was depicted, and the date. In the middle of the book there were four dog-eared pages. These images were particularly indistinct and out of focus. They showed blurry forms of masked surgeons standing around mounds that I realized, with rising disgust, were eviscerated human forms. Within the pile were amputated limbs and disembodied parts. Several of the indistinct doctors’ faces were circled in thick red ink.
My eyes, used to the Gliffs, squinted to make out the caption in the old style. It read, “Manchukuo, 1942.” I rubbed my face. I had no idea what that meant.
I shut the book, lifted its heavy bulk, and stood. But I knocked something else over—a folder still on the edge of the desk. Papers flew in every direction. I cursed and stooped again to pick up the contents. But they were so old, they seemed they would crumble.
The documents were full of black splotches, redactions of confidential names and places. The old flimsy sheets spanned back as much as a century. I scanned the places, the dates, the letterhead: 1945, 1955, 1977, 1991, 2012, 2037, Kansas City, Alabama, the Department of Defense, U.S. Army Medical Command, Homeland Security. I sank slowly to the floor, struggling to read the ancient typeface.
But the collection proved to be indecipherable, in the old alphanumerics. My eyes couldn’t crack that ancient code at that moment. The few characters I could make out were no help, either. Random words, euphemisms, acronyms, operation titles with free-association names. Letters from one executive assistant official, to another deputy director of something, the sentences were written in incomprehensible bureaucratic language. I stuffed them all back in the folder. At the end were the most baffling items of all. Labels, about an inch wide and half-a-foot long, were stacked in a series. I looked closer.
There were about thirty of them. Two were blood-stained. They only had serial numbers on them, no other identifying markings.
They were the same as the ones I’d found in the rooms where Cruzen and Steelman had died. They all began with the same cryptic prefix, big and easy to read.
BOW-137.
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br /> On the back of one of them, the Old Man’s handwriting had scratched something in the same critical red ink. I stared, squinted, turned it over and around, but I couldn’t make it out. Try as I might, I couldn’t decide whether it was writing or tiny drawings. I shut the dossier.
It was important, I knew that. The Old Man’s secret was in my hands, I was sure of that. I clutched it to my chest, picked up the book, stood, and turned off the lamp. I stumbled and slipped over the fallen mound of books and went out to the hallway. I turned and shut the smashed door as best I could.
I rushed up the back stairwell, from the basement to the third floor. I heard the echo of my own hectic footsteps and tried to slow myself. I heard someone descending from the fifth floor, and I quickly ducked into the door on the third. As I passed, I heard nurses talking with some of the patients, adjusting pillows, administering the last medications of the day. Speedwalking, I kept my head down, even as some of the voices called out to me, asking for an extra hand with a bed or a wheelchair. Normally I would have. But I pretended I didn’t hear, banged through the door to my office, and shut the door behind.
The Kraken had sent me a message, which blinked on my terminal. It demanded I stay late to draft a report for her about the bubonic plague cases. I scoffed and deleted it. She would have all the information from the real-time updates from the scene anyway. I swung off my white coat, took the lucky test-tube off the wise-man statue and left the stethoscope in its place, stuffed the book in my briefcase, and turned off the terminal.
I needed to get back home, to be in the silence of my house. I needed to talk things over with Mary, to get a handle on the situation.
Looking both ways down the hallway, I saw the gurneys lining the walls. But all the bodies were gone. A camera trained on me; I turned my face away from it. The muffled echo of talking, laughing, and shouting came from ahead. As I neared, I realized it was coming from George MacGruder’s room. I walked to the door, swiped myself in, and entered.
MacGruder was sitting up in bed, watching his Atman, his wrinkled face squished together in laugh lines. It took him a moment to notice me in the doorway.
“Hi, Doc. Ever watch How Low Can You Go?” he asked, wiping his eyes with his free sleeve. “Amazing stuff. Some guy just pulled out his own fingernails with pliers for forty thousand bucks. Can you imagine? What an idiot.”
I set the briefcase down and went to the terminal. I logged in, using the new portable drive. Gone was the mention of Shiro Ishii. The ghost had vanished yet again. I checked the records two and three times more. I did a triple-take up at the wall monitors, the scoreboard of pulse and blood pressure and breathing rate.
“You okay, Doc? Something wrong?” asked MacGruder, muting his Atman.
I turned to him.
“George, I’m going to have to ask you to leave again, for your own safety,” I said. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I do know people have been dying in Saint Almachius. I urge you to get out now, while you still can.”
“I just need one more night on my back, being cared for by some pretty, young nurses,” MacGruder said, folding his hands behind his head, a numb smile on his face.
I picked up my briefcase and went for the door. But I stopped at the threshold.
“Damnit, George. Just know I tried. I really did. Remember the panic button. And call me whenever something looks suspicious. Your life may depend on it.”
Hand at brow, MacGruder mock-saluted me. I scowled at him and waved my finger at him impotently. I left. As I walked toward the stairwell, I heard the far-off voice of the Kraken reprimanding one of the night-shift nurses on their sheet-folding technique. I quickened my steps and left the hospital before she could find me.
I felt like a coward, retreating from a battlefield. But I had to figure this all out. I had to get home and regroup, figure out what to do next.
* * *
On the way home, the satellite radio played the feel-good hit of the Summer of ‘87 three times in a row. Now, now, now, baby, now, now, now, the electronic voice repeated again and again, like an incantation. I didn’t turn it off. It had a savage rhythm, a pulsing beat that seemed to dull my brain. As I pulled into my driveway, I glanced up at the top floor of the house. Lights danced in the windows. One went on, then off, the next flickered, and then the third stayed on. Then a large dark shadow whisked across. Someone was inside the house—someone was attacking Mary.
I jumped out of the car and rushed up to the front door. It was ajar. I burst inside and rushed upstairs, again grabbing the loose banister rung.
Under the master bedroom door was a bright line of light, broken by the play of shadows. I took a deep breath.
I burst into the room, cocking the banister pole like a club. But I stopped short. Mary sat there on the floor with a circle of Atmans around her, glowing like ceremonial candles. She was wearing her reading glasses and her camouflage nightie. There was nobody else there. She tapped at her Atman and lowered her wrist. She smiled at me, eyes arched over her glasses.
“Did everything go alright?’” she said. She sprung up from the floor and grabbed me in a hard hug. But when she caught sight of the spindle of wood in my hand, her brow furrowed.
“Joe, did you break the railing again?”
“Oh—this,” I said. I half-hid it behind my back. “The front door was ajar. I thought you might be in trouble.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “You’re getting overprotective. Like a crazy daddy-to-be.”
She clutched me around the neck, touching her lips to my cheek and neck. I didn’t move—I eyed the screens flashing on the floor.
“What’s all this? Looks like some kind of strange Unified Three ritual.”
She smirked at me, her lips parting to a smile.
“Very funny, Joe. This is all of the baby stuff,” she said. “This is all the documentation Adam gave me.”
“Adam?”
“Dr. Abbud. You know—the obstetrician? Your colleague at the hospital?”
I squatted to look at some of the screens, all different Atmans on loan from the hospital. There were applications about breastfeeding and maternal nutrition, with checklists so simple a child could learn how the sexual act could mix together a new person, like a cocktail, in a lady’s organs. One was titled “So How Did I Get Pregnant?” with journalistic edge.
“Seems pretty thorough,” I said, shaking my head.
“It sure is,” she said. “Still lots for us to do, Joe. I start the Tough Mothers Pregnancy Boot Camp at work tomorrow. And then there are the supplemental nutrition waivers Abbud had me sign.”
“Waivers?”
“He said it would be best for me and especially for the baby if I took some iron and folic acid supplements. He said it’s no big deal. You already initialed them, remember?”
“I did?” I asked, scratching my chin. “Well, I trust Abbud. He’s a good doctor. He was in the top ten in our class. Just behind yours truly.”
“Yes, I know, hon,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know our baby’s in good hands.”
Looking down at her, I watched her brow furrow as she pored over the Atmans. The maternal instinct had already taken on a kind of spiritual possession. I loved this woman—I could feel it tingle across my chest. We were making a family. This time, finally, after so many years of failure, it was going to work.
“I’m proud of you. I’m proud of us,” I said. “It took a long time. But we’ll be better for it. We’re going to be great parents.”
A moment of silence. I stared. She glanced up at me. She blinked.
“Did you say something, hon?” she said, her eyes unfocused. She had not heard a word I had said.
“Nevermind,” I said, dipping forward to give her a kiss on the forehead. I walked back toward the door, swinging the banister up onto my shoulder. “By the way, when’s the next appointment with Abbud?”
No response came, as she pored over Atmans in each hand. Shaking my head, I walked out of
the room. Dinner had not been made, after all. Down in the kitchen I fixed up a NutriFast bag. After a while she came down the stairs, explaining she was not hungry because she had eaten a late lunch. We talked over the kitchen counter about finances, and about choices: whether we would pick a boy or a girl or just leave it to genetic chance, and what we would do if there was a congenital defect. We agreed to let nature take its course, come what may; we would love our child, no matter what. She asked about the Black Death outbreak and I told her the things I’d seen over the course of the day, the precautions, and the delirious lunatic we’d found who claimed responsibility for a biological weapons attack. Later, we lay in bed and talked some more, until our words drifted past one another. She turned out the lights after midnight. I hit the broken Dormus with my open palm, but after a few minutes I gave up and fell back on the pillow. I lay there for hours in the empty dark, thinking about the dossier sitting on my desk back at the hospital.
A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
U.S.A., 2087
The dream washed over me once again. The water rushed past, the drowning dark and the breathless pain as I splintered in the current. Once again, the black mouth approached, swallowing the prisms of light from above. But this time the cavernous maw clamped over me. A bone-cracking chill pierced me, and I felt myself swallowed alive in the infinite black.
I awoke, with the air-conditioning vent in the ceiling gusting an icy gale directly on my bare chest. Dawn cracked through the window. I rubbed my face, crawled from bed, and went to the bathroom.
As I shaved, the dreams faded from my brain. No one dreamed with the Dormus—it was one of the perks of the technology. I barely remembered ever having to shake away the orphan’s nightmares of my youth. I prepared for my day like in a trance, shivering under the blast of the shower, even though it was scalding hot.
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