The Nirvana Plague (34 page)

“I guess we can’t take the interstate. 90 is a tollway too.” Karen scrolled the map around on her screen. “Take the exit north. We’ll have to go up 41.”

“That’s going to be slow.”

“We can jump back on the interstate when we get to Wisconsin. It’s toll free after you cross the state line.”

“What if they have checkpoints on 41 too?”

“Then we’ll take side roads. They can’t block every street, can they?”

“Better check the traffic report.”

Karen started flipping through the traffic menus, muttering. “This is ridiculous. All this for what?”

“Did you notice the tollgate guy was wearing a mask?”

“Yes. And gloves.”

They emerged onto the northbound road again and headed through the suburbs of Highland Park.

“So how far is it to Juneau?” Ally asked.

“Three thousand miles.”

“And how many miles have we made so far?”

“Ten.”

“You know what they say. Even a journey of three-thousand miles begins with a single step.”

“You’re not going to do this the whole way are you?”

Suddenly Ally pulled over to the side of the road.

“What’s wrong?” Karen said.

“Maybe you should go on by yourself. You have a get-out-of-jail-free card and I don’t. You can take Carl’s car.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I can’t drive your car all the way to Alaska!”

“It’s insured.”

“That’s not the point. It’s three-thousand miles!”

“If this is how it’s going to be, you’ll never make it at all with me along.”

“Let’s go on and see what happens. If it comes to that, then we’ll see.”

“All right,” Ally said, putting the car back into gear.

She swung the car back out into the empty street again. Karen thought of the other time she’d been inside this machine — the night Marley rescued her from the side of the street in a desolate north Chicago neighborhood. The night Roger was attacked. It seemed years ago now.

The box on the back seat issued an annoyed meow.

“Well, this should be fun,” Ally said. “How’s that thing about somebody’s cat go? The thing about a cat in a box with a vial of poison. Is the cat dead or alive, or half dead and half alive, or neither dead nor alive?”

“Some guy named Schrödinger stuffed a cat in a box and sealed it up. Nobody could prove the cat was dead, so he got away with it.”

“Why didn’t they just open the box and look?”

“They were all physicists.”

“Ah. Well, that makes sense then.”

Marley checked the surveillance video before he went back to Roger’s room the next morning. Roger was lying on his bed, nude, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His clothes lay in a heap with his bed sheets in a corner of the room.

Marley went down to the room, ID’d himself into the airlock. Roger turned his head and watched Marley gown up through the inner glass doors.

Gowned, gloved, goggled, and masked, Marley stepped into the room. The heavy door slid shut behind him with a sigh.

“Good morning, Roger.”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“You s-smell like a psychiatrist.”

Roger’s speech was still a little slurred. Marley made a note, thinking, but that should clear up quickly.

“How are you? You look better.”

“Hot. Heat.”

Indeed, he looked sweaty. His pale skin looked flushed.

“Yes,” Marley said. “That’s the Fenacol. Hot flashes are a common withdrawal side effect. Probably not very comfortable.”

Automatically, he glanced at Roger’s vital signs again, on his tablet, though he’d looked at them just a minute ago inside the airlock. Sensors embedded in the white walls of the little room continuously recorded Roger’s core, skin, and extremity temps, his respiratory rate, his pulse rate, blood pressure, body weight, fluid volume intake and output, caloric balances, wake/sleep cycles, all with up to the minute rolling averages… All of it completely irrelevant to the problem of IDD, of course.

Marley sat down in one of the white plastic chairs. Everything in the room was white. It seemed designed for sensory deprivation.

“Do you remember our conversations from yesterday? I visited you twice.”

Roger’s head rolled back as before. He answered to the ceiling: “Someone told me in a dream the dream that we were dreaming could not be dreamed no more. Mmm.”

“Do you remember me telling you that we were going to stop your drug treatments?”

“Were you the other dreamer in the dream with me?”

“I have to say you are recovering remarkably well. Many patients have to be weaned off NTX inhibitors in slow stages. It can be disorienting and—”

“My door is locked.”

“Yes. You’re in isolation.”

Roger sat up on his elbows and looked at him. “You’re in isolation,” he said.

Marley made notes (
drowsy, weak, slight tremors
) as he answered: “Yes. Because we’re not sure how IDD—”

“Who’s in isolation, spaceman?”

Marley smiled to himself behind his mask. “Personally,” he said in a confidential tone, “I think all this gowning and gloving is pointless. But it’s protocol. So I play along.”

Roger was not impressed. “My door is locked.”

“Yes. Like I said. Protocol.”

He lay back down again, staring at the ceiling. “
Whose
protocol, spaceman?”

Marley let a moment pass, pausing before opening his main line of discussion. He noticed that Roger didn’t blink very much. He tried to remember if he’d ever noticed that before. Mental note.

“Roger,” he said after a moment, “I spoke to Karen yesterday.”

“Where is Karen?”

“In Chicago. She misses you.”

“Where are you?”

“Don’t you remember where we are?”

“Asked you first.”

“I’m not here to play games, Roger.”

Roger’s abdomen fluttered. He might have been laughing. “In a white room,” he said to the ceiling, “with a locked door, a spaceman spoke to me in a dream. Mm. He plays along although he isn’t here to play. He’s here, but he’s not here. He’s not here, but he is here. Go away, little spaceman.”

“I know you don’t want to be here, Roger. But here is where we are.”

The fingers of one hand flicked weakly at Marley, shooing him away. “Go away, little spaceman,” he said in a fading voice. “Back to space. Back to the other world. Far away. Far away.”

And then without another word he went to sleep.

For a moment, Marley thought Roger was just ignoring him, but when he looked at his vital signs again, indeed Roger gave every biometric indication of being fast asleep.

Marley stood and left. In the airlock, he tore off his goggles, mask, gown, and gloves and threw them in a ball into the biohazard chute.

“Observations,” he said.

The voice-activated recorder in his tablet blinked on.

“Roger Sturgeon. Patient effects on doctor. After interviewing patient, physician is experiencing marked feelings of anger and frustration. Scratch frustration. Embarrassment. Physician is angry and embarrassed.”

He punched open the outer door and stalked down the corridor to his next patient, Fred Peters.

Peters was not coming out from under the drugs as quickly as Roger. Probably because Roger had a great deal more first-hand experience with psychopharmacology. Or because he had more experience with IDD. Or both.

Marley keyed in, scrubbed, gowned, gloved, and goggled, and went in.

“Good morning, Fred.”

Peters was sitting in one of the white chairs, rocking forward and back, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the wall.

“Morning,” he said without shifting his gaze. “Muh muh muh muh muh morning. Muh muh muh muh morning.”

Marley checked his telemetry. Nothing exceptional.

“How are you?”

“Muh muh muh — you you you you.”

He shook his head violently, trying to clear it.

“Fi fi fi fi fine! — Fuh fuh fuh fuh fuck!”

“Want to see if we can outrun him?” Ally said.

She was turned around in the passenger seat, looking out the back window of the car. The red and blue lights of a police car were flashing behind them on the shoulder of I-94 in Wisconsin.

Karen’s eyes were glued to the rearview mirror. “Are you nuts?”

“Come on!” Ally said. “I bet we can take him!”

“What is wrong with you!” Karen snapped.

“Chicken!”

“Why did he pull us over anyway? I wasn’t speeding.” She’d been driving scrupulously within the law just to avoid this fate. That in itself probably looked suspicious.

“Maybe they ID’d the car on the road,” Ally said. “They have those automatic tracker things.”

“I told you they made us at the tollbooth this morning!”

“Boy, you really got the lingo down, Karen. Did you pick that up in the pokey?”

“Yeah. That, and body lice.” Karen was catching Ally’s easy mood despite herself.

“It’ll be all right,” Ally said.

Still no sign of life from the patrol car.

“How long does it take to run our plates anyway?” Karen said.

Ally suddenly turned back around and swung her door open. “I’ll go ask.”

Karen grabbed her arm. “No! What’s wrong with you?”

The unseen officer barked at them over his car’s loudspeaker:
“Stay in your vehicle!”

Karen jumped.

“Is he talking to us?” Ally said, grinning.

“What do you think?” Karen said. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Close your door!”
barked the car again.

“Shut your door, Ally,” Karen said.

But she’d let go of Ally’s arm, and a second later Ally was out of the car, standing up and facing the patrol car behind them.

“Get back in your vehicle!”

Ally smiled and waved.

“Are you out of your mind?” Karen said. “Get in the car for Christ’s sake!”

Ally looked in at Karen.

“It’s all right,” she said. “He’s just scared.”

Karen was speechless.

“Get back inside your vehicle now!”

Ally started walking toward the patrol car.

Instantly, the driver’s side door flew open and the officer jumped out. Shielding himself behind the open door, he drew his weapon and leveled it at Ally as she strolled around the back corner of Carl’s Mercedes.

“Get back in your fucking car!” the officer yelled.

Karen was twisted around in her seat now, watching in disbelief. Her heart was thudding wildly in her chest, the patrol car lights flashing in her eyes. Ally had lost her mind. This cop was going to blow her head off.

Ally didn’t even hesitate, just kept going in her easy pace directly toward the officer, a big friendly smile on her face.

“Halt!” the officer yelled. “Stop where you are, goddamn it!”

He
did
sound scared, Karen thought. He was starting to realize he was going to have to shoot a beautiful woman in the face and he was scared to death. Her mind raced. Maybe he’ll just shoot her in the leg, she thought. Do they still fire warning shots?

There were about two car-lengths distance between the vehicles. Ally covered the distance in a few seconds. The officer screamed at her twice more to stop. But she didn’t stop. Not till she came right up to the front fender of the police car, not two yards from the point of the officer’s gun, leveled right at her nose. She looked past it, into his eyes.

“Are you all right?” she said.

The officer came round the door, keeping the gun high between them.

“Turn around!” he screamed.

Ally did not turn around.

He was so scared, Karen could see the barrel of the gun trembling in his hand. He was young and bulky — big chest, short arms, square face, military haircut.

Keeping the gun on Ally with his right hand, he grabbed her right elbow with his left hand and roughly spun her round and shoved her down hard on the hood of his car.

The next thing Karen knew she was out of the car, moving toward him fast, yelling as she came:

“What the hell is your problem?”

The officer turned to look at Karen advancing toward him. Keeping Ally pinned down, his left hand wrenching her arm behind her back, he lifted his gun away from the back of her head and brought it across his chest to bear on Karen. “Stop!” he screamed. “Get back in your car!”