Shelter (5 page)

    Maybe Sergei and the courts and the shrinks were right. Maybe she really was crazy. Why else would she have tried to walk to the soup kitchen, more than a mile away along flooding streets? The Western Addition was no place to be on foot, even in decent weather, and she'd known the odds of a successful journey weren't good when she set out. Fueled by the turbotab she'd dry-swallowed as she left her apartment, she'd pushed her way past amazing amounts of detritus: dead birds, a dead dog, bits of furniture, books and papers and cardboard boxes, a baby carriage. The dog had a collar and tags: that meant someone had loved it, fed it, taken it for its shots and thrown balls for it to fetch. Somebody had brought it home when it was a pup, given it a name, trained it to sit and heel. She pictured the owners, frantic, leaning out their windows in the storm, calling and calling above the wind. Lassie, come home.

    She'd pushed that image aside, her throat aching with loss, and forced herself to focus on another object as she plowed through the filthy water. Tell yourself a happy story now, Roberta. It was something Fred would have said. She heard the words in his voice, even all these years later.

    All right, she'd tell herself a happy story. That ratty couch with the springs popping up through the cushions, say: it had been new once, a proud acquisition. Someone had sat on it, watched TV and ate popcorn, read the paper, made love. It had gotten old, and now it was a hazard to anyone who sat on it, but that was all right, because someone had gotten a raise, gotten new furniture, triumphantly put the couch on the street for scavengers. Someone was moving up in the world. And the baby carriage: whoever had lost the baby carriage was holding the baby now, thanking Gaia that the child was safe and sound, that the child hadn't been lost too.

    No. Don't think about lost children. Wading through the deserted streets, she'd tried to force herself to tell only happy stories, but it had become more and more difficult. She kept being afraid that she'd see Mason's ancient manual wheelchair or one of Camilla's motley shopping bags: or Mason or Camilla themselves, facedown and bloated. When she found a tree blocking the street, washed down from Goddess only knew where, she'd finally turned back to go home, and acknowledged her own relief.

    You're damn lucky to be alive, she told herself now, pushing her way back into the building. You heard the radio: If the buses weren't running, what made you think you could get there on foot? So what if Sergei didn't call to excuse you from work? It's not like he would have blamed you for staying home in this weather. He probably would have written up a commendation and put it in your file.

    She had no idea what he'd do now. The GPS record would show that she'd left the building, that she'd gotten as far as Franklin and Gough before the water forced her to turn back. Sergei could easily use her futile expedition as proof that she had no voluntary control over her condition, that she needed gene therapy after all. Or he could argue the reverse: that turning back showed conscious volition and admirable self-interest. That would certainly be her argument, if he gave her a hard time about it.

    If the courts didn't want her to obsess about helping people, she wondered for the millionth time, why the hell had they placed her at a soup kitchen, anyway? But she knew the answer: if she could keep her balance there, if she could take care of the clients and still take appropriate care of herself, she'd be all right anywhere. It was the ultimate challenge, conclusive proof that she didn't need an injection of gengineered brain-stem cells to change her neurochemistry for good.

    The formal name for her psychiatric diagnosis was "excessive altruism," but the media had promptly shortened it; these days, everyone referred to people like her as "the exalted." It wasn't a compliment. No matter how morally superior she felt next to Sergei—that smug, smarmy sack of bureaucratic shit—she didn't dare let him know it. Only six more weeks of probation, she thought as she waded into her foyer. Six more weeks and she'd be rid of Sergei, rid of the GPS cells, rid of the surveillance. Six more weeks and she could be as altruistic as she wanted. It wasn't like any of the clients at the soup kitchen were going to complain.

    The water in the foyer tugged at her knees. There was no chance the elevator was still working, and it wouldn't have been safe even if it had been. Roberta would have to take the stairs, even though she suddenly felt as if she couldn't move another step. The turbotab had worn off; another one, wrapped in plastic, sat in her shirt pocket, but a second this soon, on top of the fatigue toxins in her system, wouldn't do much more than ruin her stomach. Not to mention that it was a definite probation violation, although Sergei hadn't bothered with substance testing for three years now. "Your problem," he'd told her gently, "is your internal chemistry, not anything exogenous."

    Fuck you, Sergei. My internal chemistry's worth ten of yours. Not that it's going to help me if you decide that this little expedition warrants gene therapy after all. She checked her watch. She was still well within the window for her morning call: good. Time to get home and call the creep. Reassure him that you've gotten over—how do they put it?—your "fixation on helping others at unacceptable risk to the self."

    All she had to do was get up two flights of stairs. She could do that without extra drugs. Two more flights and she'd be home, and safe. She tried not to think about the people she fed at the soup kitchen, the ones who didn't have homes to be safe in: old Camilla with her shopping bags, Leon with his scars and tattoos, Legless Mason, who'd been begging on the street for five years to raise enough cash for a smart wheelchair. Thinking about them, caught in the rain and the wind, was what had made her go outside in the first place, driven by the same fierceness that had made her beat up bullies when she was a child. But beating up bullies had only gotten her into trouble, and trying to beat the weather was equally stupid.

    Shaking from cold and wet and exhaustion, the crash from the tab, she fought the current and made her way to the stairs. Here was the stairway; here was the rail. Step. Step. She'd reached the third step, the margin of safe dryness, when she heard someone calling through a lull in the wind. "Help me," a woman screamed. "Help me! I'm going to die! Kevin? Where are you? Help!"

    The wind rose again, drowning out the frantic, keening voice. It was coming from Zephyr's apartment. Trust that place, Roberta thought savagely, to keep making trouble even after Zephyr wasn't living there anymore. Zephyr must have bought it, or be paying her rent in absentia; otherwise the space would have been snapped up by permanent tenants. Instead, various unsavory strangers had stayed there for short periods of time after Zephyr left: artist friends of hers, probably. Or AI smugglers. Roberta had carefully avoided all of them, but none of them had ever screamed for help during a flood.

    "Kevin? Kevin?"

    Kevin? Roberta, frowning, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Never mind. It wasn't that uncommon a name. "Help me!"

    Roberta stood on the third step of the twenty-eight she had to climb, her jeans drenched and her teeth chattering. She wondered, a little hysterically, if the voice could be a trap set by Sergei. She was more tired than she'd ever been in her life, and she had every reason in the world to ignore the screams. Risking hypothermia and drowning to save a stranger—especially a stranger who was a friend of Zephyr's—would definitely be considered exalted. If she pulled a stunt like that, there was no way she'd be able to convince Sergei she was cured.

    Fuck it. She'd never had any intention of being cured, only of fooling Sergei and his bosses into thinking she was. She'd probably blown that by going into the storm, and since she hadn't been able to help Mason or Camilla or any of the others, she could at least help somebody else. If Sergei ordered gene therapy, it might be the last chance at anything like selflessness she'd have, anyway.

    Going down is easier than going up, she told herself, and fumbled for the extra tab in her pocket. It would give her another half an hour, maybe, and if she was lucky, it would kick in by the time she reached Zephyr's door.

    Her legs like rubber, she fought her way back down into the flooded hallway, bumping past bots, as the stranger howled, "Help me!" After what seemed like weeks, Roberta reached Zephyr's door and began pounding on it as hard as she could, praying for the second rush, praying that when it came the megalomania wouldn't be too bad. Wading home along Eleventh Street, before the crash came, she'd felt truly exalted, as if she could do anything. Now she didn't know if she had enough strength to keep standing for the next two minutes.

    The door opened. "Kevin?" said the woman who stood there. Roberta could see only her outline in the dimness. She must have been on pills of her own, to keep the door even partially closed against the pressure of that water. "Kevin? Is that you?"

    "No," Roberta said, and the second tab hit. Energy as scalding as hot lava flowed down her spine, along her arms and legs. She was invincible. She was immortal. She reminded herself that she was on drugs, and said, "Can you walk?"

    ''I'm so weak," the woman said, and started to sob. "The flu—I have the flu and I have to wait until Kevin gets here and he's taking too long and the water—"

    Roberta sighed and picked the stranger up, slung her over her shoulder, fireman's carry. Flu. Just her luck. One of the benefits of working at the soup kitchen was that she'd been innoculated against every identified strain, but new ones cropped up so often that it was dubious insurance. Still, she'd had CV, and that was the worst thing out there. Her childhood illness, and the immunity it conferred, was one of the reasons she'd been placed at the soup kitchen in the first place. Germs were the least of her worries.

    The woman was taller than Roberta, making movement difficult even with the tabs, but she'd manage until they got to where the water stopped, anyway. The crash would hurt like hell, but not for at least half an hour. "Okay, listen, we're going upstairs. I live on the second floor. It's safe there." I think. "Ready? Okay, here we go."

    She had to fight for her footing for both of them, in the dark hallway, struggling with her awkward load. The wind had picked up again, and she couldn't hear what the woman muttered against her back. Knocking aside bobbing bots, she plowed doggedly up the stairs until she'd gotten to a dry one, and then, muscles screaming, put the woman down. "Okay. You've got to try to walk now, all right? You're killing my back. This is my arm around you: go on. Step, step, here's another one, careful. Good girl."

    Finally they got up to the second floor and into Roberta's apartment, warm and still blessedly dry. The phone was blinking furiously: six messages. All from Sergei, no doubt. Roberta wasn't about to listen to them in front of a stranger.

    "Kevin?" said the woman, and sneezed.

    "He's not here," Roberta said. "If he's smart, he's not coming. I'll make up the couch for you, okay?"

    She steered her guest to a chair and got her to sit down. "When's the last time you took aspirin?"

    "Aspirin? I-I don't know. A few hours ago?"

    Not very specific, but it would have to do; the stranger wouldn't OD on four aspirin even if it was too soon. Roberta knew she had to make the most of the time she had until the tab wore off; it was going to be a seriously ugly crash. She got her guest more aspirin, got her a puke bowl and a blanket and an oversize flannel nightgown—Roberta herself was still sopping, but she'd change later—got her to lie down, and ducked into the kitchen to get a pitcher of filtered water.

    Her lone cleaning bot, a gift from Zephyr, had fallen from the counter onto his back, where he lay waving his legs in midair. When Roberta righted him, he began hobbling in sluggish circles. "Bad day, Mr. Clean?" she asked, and picked him up again to give him a vigorous shake. A mangled twist tie drifted down onto the kitchen floor. "Gotta watch that diet," she said, but when she put Mr. Clean back down he staggered, gears wheezing, back toward the twist tie. "No," Roberta said, holding Mr. Clean down with one foot while she bent and retrieved the tie to toss it into the trash can. "You could really use a better brain," she said with a sigh, and released the bot. Machines were so much easier to help than people.

    She had to help the woman in the living room. Stay on task, Roberta. She filled the water pitcher and went to check on the stranger, who lay on the couch as if marooned, huddled shivering in the blanket Roberta had given her. "Kevin?" she said. "Where's Kevin?"

    ''I'm not Kevin," Roberta said, as soothingly as she could, and turned on the lamp next to the couch so that her guest could see her better. As she did so, she got her first good look at the other woman's face.

    The features were a maze of scars, angry keloid ridges crisscrossing cheeks and chin, forehead and shaven skull. The asymmetrical scars seemed haphazard, meaningless: if this was ritual scarification, it fit no pattern Roberta had ever seen. Which meant that it was either self-mutilation or gang vengeance, which made the woman either crazy or criminal: just what Roberta needed. She didn't need Sergei to tell her that it served her right.

    "Kevin? Please help me!"

    I already have, Roberta thought, fighting panic, and I'm almost certain to regret it. "You're safe," she said, as soothingly as she could. "The water won't come this high. Don't worry."

    The woman on the couch blinked at her and said, "Oh. You aren't Kevin."

    "No," Roberta said, "I'm not Kevin. My name's Roberta. What's yours?"

    Her guest shuddered. "No, you can't be Roberta. I called Kevin."

    Roberta's stomach flip-flopped. She squinted at the ruined face, trying to imagine it whole, trying to imagine a full head of hair. What was it they called those police sketches? Artists' reconstructions?

    No. Couldn't be. Roberta, you're having drug delusions. Calm down. Your past has not come to roost, scarred and raving, in your living room.