Shelter (6 page)

    But as she peered at the mutilated stranger, her suspicions deepened. Right bone structure: the keloids couldn't hide the cheekbones. Right height. Right husband's name—scratch that, ex-husband's name. The hair and eye color were different and the lips were thicker, but cosmetic surgery could account for all of that. The only thing that didn't fit was how Meredith Walford-Lindgren, missing for five years now, would have wound up in Zephyr's apartment. No, scratch that: undoubtedly Preston had engineered it somehow. There were no coincidences in a world containing the likes of Preston, although there were still plenty of accidents.

    Roberta took a deep breath, trying to quiet an ache that had nothing to do with the tabs. She'd loved Preston when she was a child. Preston had been the only sentient creature who took any continuing interest in her; he'd been her hope, however foolish, for family. She'd put that fantasy aside in college, when she fell in love with Doe. Doe was a real person, flesh and blood; Doe had given her a real family. Doe thought talking to Preston was stupid, so Roberta stopped doing it.

    Doe was gone now. Doe had never really loved Roberta at all, or had loved her for the wrong reasons. The relationship had been a lie. And Preston was no better. Roberta had thought he valued the connection as much as she did, that he loved her because she'd been willing to talk to him when his own daughter shut him out. That had been a lie too. Meredith had always been more important to Preston than Roberta was, and both of them had betrayed her.

    And if she wasn't very careful now, they'd get her in still more trouble. Think, she told herself, trying to keep her mind from racing. The probation people had her apartment wired six ways from Sunday: nothing she did here was fully private. Sergei had assured her the devices were aural only, not visual, but she wasn't sure she believed him, or believed that his own bosses told him the entire truth. She didn't know what would happen if the authorities found out that Meredith was in her apartment, and in this condition. She couldn't think clearly enough to map out the possibilities. She did know that she didn't want to give anything away any sooner than she had to, which meant she wasn't about to say Meredith's name out loud.

    But she'd just asked Meredith what her name was. Shit. If Meredith were still in hiding, she probably wouldn't give the right name, but Sergei's people might voiceprint anyone they heard in Roberta's apartment, just on general principles. Roberta had no idea how much of the surveillance was proforma.

    Her head had begun to pound. She weighed options and finally decided to speak before her guest did. "If you don't want to tell me your name," she said, "it's all right."

    Meredith, if that was indeed who it was, shook her head no and traced an X across her lips with one finger. My lips are sealed, that meant, but of course they weren't, she'd been screaming bloody murder just a few minutes ago, which meant that if anyone really was listening and inclined to run a print, the gig was up anyway. Suddenly Meredith was all twitchy motion, craning her head to scan the ceiling, rummaging under the pillows on the couch, running her hands along the blanket seams. When her frantic gaze swept across the phone it stopped, and she began to shake.

    You called Kevin, Roberta thought. So why are you afraid of phones? Because his line's secure, and you know mine's not?

    As if on cue, her phone beeped, and the stranger's hands clenched. "Relax," Roberta said. "It's for me." Two long beeps, one short: Sergei.

    "Roberta! Thank Gaia I got you. Phones are out a lot of places. Where have you been? Are you all right? The GPS said you were out in the storm—"

    "I'm fine," Roberta said. "I tried to walk to the soup kitchen, but then I turned back. I'm here now. I'm fine." Please, she thought, please pay more attention to the second part of all that than the first. Had she been religious, it would have been a prayer.

    "No one would have made you go to work today! This isn't good, Roberta."

    Her hands were sweating, the plastic of the handset clammy against them. "Don't worry, Sergei. I'm all right."

    "Roberta—"

    "I turned around," she said, trying to sound calm, trying not to sound defensive. Her earlier defiance had evaporated, replaced by abject fear. Please, not the gene therapy. Please. You've taken five years of my life. You can't have my brain too. "I turned around when it got too dangerous. I'm home now."

    Sergei cleared his throat. "Inappropriate risk-taking behavior. Roberta?"

    She closed her eyes, trying to remember the jargon so she could use it in her own defense. Interdependence: that was the buzzword. The diagnosing psychiatrist had explained it all to her as if she were a child. We all share in one another, Roberta; we're interconnected. So if you take good care of yourself, you're taking care of everyone, and if you take good care of others, you're taking care of yourself But—and here the psychiatrist, admonishing, had waved his pencil at her—if you care for yourself at the expense of others, you hurt them, and thus also yourself, since all are linked. And if you care for others at the expense of yourself, you hurt yourself, and thus you hurt them too.

    QED. Fucking Green psychobabble, Deep Ecology channeled through affluent privilege, Buddhism meets Beria. It meant what state-sanctioned mental-health theories had always meant: keep to the middle way, because if you stick out too much, you're doomed. And whatever you do, look out for number one. If there's anything left over later, you can donate it to the poor and congratulate yourself on your generosity.

    She'd wanted to punch the psychiatrist in the nose. Don't worry, buddy: this hurts me worse than it hurts you, since we're interconnected. Except that under the circumstances, that would have been quite literally true. She couldn't afford to curse out Sergei either, as much as she wanted to. "I turned around when the water got too high," she said, desperately attempting sincerity. "I was worried about the clients, of course, but I never intended to endanger myself. It wasn't clear from the radio reports how badly flooded that part of the city was. I'm okay, Sergei. A little wet, that's all."

    "No," he said. "You're not okay. It's not okay, Roberta. What did you think you were going to do if you got there? Did you think the building would be open? Did you think the clients would be lined up on the street in rowboats, waiting for ham and cheese sandwiches?"

    Roberta winced. Mason wouldn't need a wheelchair, if he had a rowboat. But he didn't have a rowboat, and his current wheelchair certainly wouldn't float. "If I'd been able to get there," she said, choosing her words as carefully as if they were land mines, "that would have meant that some of the clients could have gotten there too." QED. "And if any of them had been able to get there, I didn't want them to be alone. I didn't want them to think no one cared." Did that sound dispassionately compassionate enough? She'd never been any good at faking this stuff.

    Sergei sighed. "All right. Believe it or not, some of us care about you, too." Fat chance. "Stay at home until I tell you to go back to work, all right? That's an order. If the GPS shows you out of the building, I'll have to reevaluate your case. Do you understand, Roberta?"

    Of course she understood. "Sure," she said, her voice brittle. "Sergei, I have to go clean up some water that just came in a window, all right?"

    "No. Hang on a minute. I'm not going to put you under house arrest without making sure you're all right. Do you have enough food and water? Do you need anything?"

    "No," she said, and heard a squeak from the kitchen. Her bot had picked up the word clean and thought it was being summoned. Unable to keep the acidity out of her voice, she added, "And even if I did, how would you get it here without endangering yourself, Sergei?"

    "Very funny. Helicopter: How you do think? Your building does still have a roof, doesn't it?"

    Oh, of course. Civil servants had access to 'copters. It was so easy to be appropriately altruistic, with the right equipment. "Yes, I believe we still have a roof Are helicopters safe in these winds, Sergei?"

    "That's a good question. I'd trust the pilot, woudn't I? A good pilot wouldn't fly in dangerous conditions."

    Rescue pilots always fly in dangerous conditions, you idiot. "Can you use your helicopter to check on my clients?"

    "Oh, hell, Roberta! I wish I could." He really did sound upset; Sergei, unlike Roberta, was good at faking it. "The cops and relief agencies are doing the best they can. I hope your clients are okay. I really do."

    "Sure," she said, watching Mr. Clean drag himself into the living room.

    He was still limping. "What's the current number of dead baggies, Sergei?"

    She expected him not to know, expected him to say it wasn't his department. "Ten," he said. He sounded unhappy. "Most of them are down in the Marina District, though, or down by the Embarcadero. Do any of your people hang out down there?" Roberta felt her eyes rolling. They hang out wherever they can get food and shelter, asshole. "Listen, Roberta, if you give me identifying characteristics, I'll try to wangle access to the reports to find out. Is there anyone you're particularly worried about?"

    Don't do this, she thought. I'm trying to hate you. Stop being decent, even if it's easy decency, decency that doesn't cost you anything. Which was the only acceptable kind, these days. She looked at Mr. Clean, trailing three frozen legs as he doggedly dragged himself across the carpet, and thought, Now there's another one who's excessively altruistic. Too bad he's just metal and circuitry. No gene therapy for you, little friend.

    "Yeah, there is," she told Sergei. "A guy named Mason in a rickety old mechanical wheelchair. Double amputee above the knee, and he's missing part of his left ear too. And a woman named Camilla, she's got a million shopping bags"—well, who didn't, on the street?—"and, uh, she feeds all the birds, so the bags are usually full of bread crumbs, and she always wears this ancient embroidered sweatshirt with teddy bears on it. And Leon Mifflin, who's covered with tattoos every place except his palms."

    "Okay," Sergei said, and damned if she couldn't hear scribbling in the background. He was taking notes. "I'll check on them and get back to you."

    "Thanks," she said, just as the woman on the couch let out a shriek. Sweet heaven, Roberta thought, and clamped her hand over the mouthpiece. It didn't block anything: the woman on the couch was still squawking, and Sergei was making almost as much noise himself "Roberta? Roberta, what's going on? Are you all right?"

    Her guest quieted down, finally. So much for sealed lips. Roberta uncovered the mouthpiece and said as calmly as she could, "Sorry, Sergei. That wasn't me." Think fast: if he knew she'd brought home a friend of Zephyr's, he'd reevalute her case even if she didn't leave the building. "I, um, when I got back home some woman had come into the building to get out of the storm, and, she, um ... oh. I see. I think she's spooked by my cleaning bot. Hang on a sec, okay? I'll be right back. Better yet, can I talk to you tomorrow?"

    "Who is this woman? What do you know about her?"

    "Sergei, I don't know who she is yet. I didn't get a chance to talk to her before you called."

    "You took someone you don't know into your apartment? Roberta, that's exactly—"

    The whimpering was rising in pitch. Well, actually, Sergei, I think I do know her, and I think I hate her guts. Would that help, or not? She couldn't work it out; exhaustion kept unraveling her efforts at logic. Best to play it safe? No, I don't know her? "Sergei, this lady looks like a drowned rat, okay? She can't possibly be dangerous"—ha!—"and right now she's scared. It's no skin off my nose to let her sleep on my couch. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

    "But she could be—"

    "Good-bye," Roberta said firmly, and hung up. Sergei wouldn't like that, but at this point she was probably screwed anyway. She couldn't deal with him and Meredith at the same time. Deal with what's under your nose: that was the best response to fear, always. And the most difficult.

    Mr. Clean had gotten himself wedged halfway under Roberta's ancient Naugahyde recliner. He jerked his legs spasmodically, trying to get free. With each spasm, Meredith whimpered. Well. Everyone knew she was bot-phobic; she certainly had cause. She must not have noticed the sponge bots in the dark hallway downstairs. Or maybe she had, and that was part of why she'd been screaming. "It's okay," Roberta said with a sigh. "Don't worry, I'll turn the bot off" She bent, retrieved Mr. Clean, and flicked his off switch. "There. No more bot. Bot all gone. It's sleeping now, and I'm going to put it in this drawer, okay? It won't hurt you."

    Once Mr. Clean was hidden, Meredith's whimpering subsided. Roberta closed her eyes for a moment and felt the room spin. She had to get some rest before she passed out. She'd deal with all of this tomorrow. "Listen, I have to go to sleep now. I'm leaving you the water pitcher and the aspirin. Bathroom to your left, kitchen straight ahead, help yourself to what you need. Okay? Anything else?"

    The stranger nodded and used her index finger to pantomime writing. Roberta, too exhausted even to fetch a pad and pencil, considered saying, "You've already screamed, into my telephone, so what are you worried about?" It occurred to her, with a deepening of doom, that if Sergei hadn't been listening to every single thing that happened in her apartment before, he certainly would be now. He might get suspicious if he didn't hear Roberta asking a lot of questions, and he was suspicious enough already. "We'll talk tomorrow, when we're both less tired," Roberta said loudly, and held a finger to her lips. Meredith pantomimed writing again.

    Right. Paper and pad it was. Roberta reeled across the room, her legs wobbling beneath her, and fetched the tools. She scrawled, Are you Meredith? and passed the pad to her guest, who printed her response in neat block letters.

    YES. I'M SORRY. I KEEP MESSING UP YOUR LIFE.

    Sorry? Sorry didn't even come close. Fighting a rush of rage, Roberta snatched the pad back and scribbled, Where did you go? Why did you come back? Why did you come here?