Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “Thanks. I actually like it this way.” Ostentatiously he busied himself with the printouts, which was also pretty cold of him, but better to cut her off now rather than after she embarrassed herself. As she set the box on a folding chair, he still ignored her, expecting her to leave.

  Instead she said, “Are those MRI scans of Dr. Erdmann? What do they say?”

  Jake looked up. She was eyeing the printouts, not him, and her tone was neutral with perhaps just a touch of concern for Dr. Erdmann. He remembered how fond of each other she and Henry Erdmann were. Well, didn’t that make Jake just the total narcissist? Assuming every woman was interested in him. This would teach him some humility.

  Out of his own amused embarrassment, he answered her as he would a colleague. “No, these are Evelyn Krenchnoted’s. Dr. Erdmann’s were unremarkable but these are quite the opposite.”

  “They’re remarkable? How?”

  All at once he found himself eager to talk, to perhaps explain away his own bafflement. He came around the desk and put the scan in her hand. “See those yellow areas of the brain? They’re BOLD signals, blood-oxygen-level dependent contrasts. What that means is that at the moment the MRI image was taken, those parts of the subject’s brain were active—in this case, highly active. And they shouldn’t have been!”

  “Why not?”

  Carrie was background now, an excuse to put into concrete words what should never have existed concretely at all. “Because it’s all wrong. Evelyn was lying still, talking to me, inside the MRI tube. Her eyes were open. She was nervous about being strapped down. The scan should show activity in the optical input area of the brain, in the motor areas connected to moving the mouth and tongue, and in the posterior parietal lobes, indicating a heightened awareness of her bodily boundaries. But instead, there’s just the opposite. A hugely decreased blood flow in those lobes, and an almost total shut down of input to the thalamus, which relays information coming into the brain from sight and hearing and touch. Also, an enormous—really enormous—increase of activity in the hypothalamus and amygdalae and temporal lobes.”

  “What does all that increased activity mean?”

  “Many possibilities. They’re areas concerned with emotion and some kinds of imaginative imagery, and this much activation is characteristic of some psychotic seizures. For another possibility, parts of that profile are characteristic of monks in deep meditation, but it takes experienced meditators hours to build to that level, and even so there are differences in pain areas and—anyway, Evelyn Krenchnoted?”

  Carrie laughed. “Not a likely monk, no. Do Dr. Erdmann’s scans show any of that?”

  “No. And neither did Evelyn’s just before her seizure or just after. I’d say temporal lobe epilepsy except—”

  “Epilepsy?” Her voice turned sharp. “Does that ‘seizure’ mean epilepsy?”

  Jake looked at her then, really looked at her. He could recognize fear. He said as gently as he could, “Henry Erdmann experienced something like this, didn’t he?”

  They stared at each other. Even before she spoke, he knew she was going to lie to him. A golden lioness protecting her cub, except here the lioness was young and the cub a withered old man who was the smartest person Jake DiBella had ever met.

  “No,” she said, “Dr. Erdmann never mentioned a seizure to me.”

  “Carrie—”

  “And you said his MRI looked completely normal.”

  “It did.” Defeated.

  “I should be going. I just wanted to bring you these things to brighten up your office.”

  Carrie left. The box contained a framed landscape he would never hang (a flower-covered cottage, with unicorn), a coffee cup he would never use (java is joy in the morning), a patchwork quilted cushion, a pink African violet, and a pencil cup covered in wallpaper with yellow daisies. Despite himself, Jake smiled. The sheer wrongness of her offerings was almost funny.

  Except that nothing was really funny in light of Evelyn Krenchnoted’s inexplicable MRI. He needed more information from her, and another MRI. Better yet would be having her hooked to an EEG in a hospital ward for several days, to see if he could catch a definitive diagnosis of temporal-lobe epilepsy. But when he’d phoned Evelyn, she’d refused all further “doctor procedures.” Ten minutes of his best persuasion hadn’t budged her.

  He was left with an anomaly in his study data, a cutesy coffee cup, and no idea what to do next.

  “What do we do next?” asked Rodney Caldwell, the chief administrator of St. Sebastian’s. Tara Washington looked at Geraci, who looked at the floor.

  It was covered with papers and small, uniform, taped white boxes with names written neatly on them in block printing: M. MATTISON, H. GERHARDT. C GARCIA. One box, however, was open, its lid placed neatly beside it, the tissue paper peeled back. On the tissue lay a necklace, a gold Coptic cross set with a single small diamond, on a thin gold chain. The lid said A. CHERNOV.

  “I didn’t touch anything,” Caldwell said, with a touch of pride. In his fifties, he was a tall man with a long, highly colored face like an animated carrot. “That’s what they say on TV, isn’t it? Don’t touch anything. But isn’t it strange that the thief went to all the trouble to ‘blow the safe’ ”—he looked proud of this phrase, too “—and then didn’t take anything?”

  “Very strange,” Geraci said. Finally he looked up from the floor. The safe hadn’t been “blown”; the lock was intact. Tara felt intense interest in what Geraci would do next. She was disappointed.

  “Let’s go over it once more,” he said easily. “You were away from your office . . .”

  “Yes. I went up to Nursing at 11:30. Beth Malone was on desk. Behind the front desk is the only door to the room that holds both residents’ files and the safe, and Beth says she never left her post. She’s very reliable. Been with us eighteen years.”

  Mrs. Malone, who was therefore the prime suspect and smart enough to know it, was weeping in another room. A resigned female uniform handed her tissues as she waited to be interrogated. But Tara knew that, after one look, Geraci had dismissed Malone as the perp. One of those conscientious, middle-aged, always-anxious-to-help do-gooders, she would no more have attempted robbery than alchemy. Most likely she had left her post to do something she was as yet too embarrassed to admit, which was when the thief had entered the windowless back room behind the reception desk. Tara entertained herself with the thought that Mrs. Malone had crept off to meet a lover in the linen closet. She smiled.

  “A thought, Detective Washington?” Geraci said.

  Damn, he missed nothing. Now she would have to come up with something. The best she could manage was a question. “Does that little necklace belong to the ballerina Anna Chernov?”

  “Yes,” Caldwell said. “Isn’t it lovely?”

  To Tara it didn’t look like much. But Geraci had raised his head to look at her, and she realized he didn’t know that a world-famous dancer had retired to St. Sebastian’s. Ballet wasn’t his style. It was the first time Tara could recall that she’d known something Geraci did not. Emboldened by this, and as a result of being dragged several times a year to Lincoln Center by an eccentric grandmother, Tara continued. “Is there any resident here that might have a special interest in Anna Chernov? A balletomane—” She hoped she was pronouncing the word correctly, she’d only read it in programs “—or a special friend?”

  But Caldwell had stopped listening at “resident.” He said stiffly, “None of our residents would have committed this crime, detective. St. Sebastian’s is a private community and we screen very carefully for any—”

  “May I talk to Ms. Chernov now?” Geraci asked.

  Caldwell seemed flustered. “To Anna? But Beth Malone is waiting for . . . oh, all right, if that’s the procedure. Anna Chernov is in the Infirmary right now, with a broken leg. I’ll show you up.”

  Tara hoped that Geraci wasn’t going to send her to do the useless questioning of Mrs. Malone. He didn’t. At the Infirmary door, he said, “
Tara, talk to her.” Tara would have taken this as a tribute to her knowledge of ballet, except that she had seen Geraci do the same thing before. He liked to observe: the silent listener, the unknown quantity to whoever was being questioned.

  As Caldwell explained the situation and made the introductions, Tara tried not to stare at Anna Chernov. She was beautiful. Old, yes, seventies maybe, but Tara had never seen anyone old look like that. High cheekbones, huge green eyes, white hair pinned carelessly on top of her head so that curving strands fell over the pale skin that looked not so much wrinkled (though it was) as softened by time. Her hands, long-fingered and slim-wristed, lay quiet on the bedspread, and her shoulders held straight under the white bed jacket. Only the bulging cast on one leg marred the impression of delicacy, of remoteness, and of the deepest sadness that Tara had ever seen. It was sadness for everything, Tara thought confusedly, and couldn’t have said what she meant by “everything.” Except that the cast was only a small part.

  “Please sit down,” Anna said.

  “Thank you. As Mr. Caldwell said, there’s been a break-in downstairs, with the office safe. The only box opened had your name on it, with a gold-and-diamond necklace inside. That is yours, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it the one that Tamara Karsavina gave you? That Nicholas II gave her?”

  “Yes.” Anna looked at Tara more closely, but not less remotely.

  “Ms. Chernov, is there anyone you can think of who might have a strong interest in that necklace? A member of the press who’s been persistent in asking about it, or someone emailing you about it, or a resident?”

  “I don’t do email, Miss Washington.”

  It was Detective Washington, but Tara let it go. “Still—anyone?”

  “No.”

  Had the dancer hesitated slightly? Tara couldn’t be sure. She went on asking questions, but she could see that she wasn’t getting anywhere. Anna Chernov grew politely impatient. Why wasn’t Geraci stopping Tara? She had to continue until he did: “softening them up,” he called it. The pointless questioning went on. Finally, just as Tara was running completely out of things to ask, Geraci said almost casually, “Do you know Dr. Erdmann, the physicist?”

  “We’ve met once,” Anna said.

  “Is it your impression that he has a romantic interest in you?”

  For the first time, Anna looked amused. “I think Dr. Erdmann’s only romantic interest is in physics.”

  “I see. Thank you for your time, Ms. Chernov.”

  In the hall, Geraci said to Tara, “Ballet. Police work sure isn’t what it used to be. You did good, Washington.”

  “Thank you. What now?”

  “Now we find out what resident has a romantic interest in Anna Chernov. It’s not Erdmann, but it’s somebody.”

  So Anna had hesitated slightly when Tara asked if any resident had a special interest in her! Tara glowed inwardly as she followed Geraci down the hall. Without looking at her, he said, “Just don’t let it go to your head.”

  She said dryly, “Not a chance.”

  “Good. A cop interested in ballet . . . Jesus H. Christ.”

  The ship grew agitated. Across many cubic light years between the stars, spacetime itself warped in dangerous ways. The new entity was growing in strength—and it was so far away yet!

  It was not supposed to occur this way.

  If the ship had become aware earlier of this new entity, this could have happened correctly, in accord with the laws of evolution. All things evolved—stars, galaxies, consciousness. If the ship had realized earlier that anywhere in this galactic backwater had existed the potential for a new entity, the ship would have been there to guide, to shape, to ease the transition. But it hadn’t realized. There had been none of the usual signs.

  They were happening now, however. Images, as yet dim and one-way, were reaching the ship. More critically, power was being drawn from it, power that the birthing entity had no idea how to channel. Faster, the ship must go faster . . .

  It could not, not without damaging spacetime irretrievably. Spacetime could only reconfigure so much, so often. And meanwhile—

  The half-formed thing so far away stirred, struggled, howled in fear.

  NINE

  Henry Erdmann was scared.

  He could barely admit his fright to himself, let alone show it to the circle of people jammed into his small apartment on Saturday morning. They sat in a solemn circle, occupying his sofa and armchair and kitchen chairs and other chairs dragged from other apartments. Evelyn Krenchnoted’s chair crowded uncomfortably close to Henry’s right side, her perfume sickly sweet. She had curled her hair into tiny gray sausages. Stan Dzarkis and Erin Bass, who could still manage it, sat on the floor. The folds of Erin’s yellow print skirt seemed to Henry the only color amid the ashen faces. Twenty people, and maybe there were more in the building who were afflicted. Henry had called the ones he knew of, who had called the ones they knew of. Missing were Anna Chernov, still in the Infirmary, and Al Cosmano, who had refused to attend.

  They all looked at him, waiting to begin.

  “I think we all know why we’re here,” Henry said, and immediately a sense of unreality took him. He didn’t understand at all why he was here. The words of Michael Faraday, inscribed on the physics building at UCLA, leapt into his mind: “Nothing is too wonderful to be true.” The words seemed a mockery. What had been happening to Henry, to all of them, did not feel wonderful and was “true” in no sense he understood, although he was going to do his damnedest to relate it to physics in the only way that hours of pondering had suggested to him. Anything else—anything less—was unthinkable.

  He continued, “Things have occurred to all of us, and a good first step is to see if we have indeed had the same experiences.” Collect data. “So I’ll go first. On five separate occasions I have felt some force seize my mind and body, as if a surge of energy was going through me, some sort of neurological shock. On one occasion it was painful, on the others not painful but very tiring. Has anyone else felt that?”

  Immediately a clamor, which Henry stilled by raising his arm. “Can we start with a show of hands? Anybody else had that experience? Everybody. Okay, let’s go around the circle, introducing yourself as we go, starting on my left. Please be as explicit as possible, but only descriptions at this point. No interpretations.”

  “Damned teacher,” someone muttered, but Henry didn’t see who and didn’t care. His heart had speeded up, and he felt that his ears had somehow expanded around his hearing aid, so as not to miss even a syllable. He had deliberately not mentioned the times of his “seizures,” or outside events concurrent with them, so as not to contaminate whatever information would be offered by the others.

  “I’m John Kluge, from 4J.” He was a heavy, round-faced man with a completely bald head and a pleasant voice used to making itself heard. High-school teacher, Henry guessed. History or math, plus coaching some sort of sports team. “It’s pretty much like Henry here said, except I only felt the ‘energy’ four times. The first was around seven-thirty on Tuesday night. The second time woke me Wednesday night at eleven forty-two. I noted the time on my bedside clock. The third time I didn’t note the time because I was vomiting after that food poisoning we all got on Thursday, but it was just before the vomiting started, sometime in mid-afternoon. That time the energy surge started near my heart, and I thought it was a heart attack. The last time was yesterday at eleven forty-five a.m., and in addition to the energy, I had a . . . well, a sort of—” He looked embarrassed.

  “Please go on, it’s important,” Henry said. He could hardly breathe.

  “I don’t want to say a vision, but colors swirling through my mind, red and blue and white and somehow hard.”

  “Anna Chernov’s necklace!” Evelyn shrieked, and the meeting fell apart.

  Henry couldn’t stop the frantic babble. He would have risen but his walker was in the kitchen; there was no room in the crowded living room. He was grateful
when Bob Donovan put two fingers in his mouth and gave a whistle that could have deafened war dogs. “Hey! Shut up or nobody’s gonna learn nothing!”

  Everyone fell silent and glared resentfully at the stocky man in baggy chinos and cheap acrylic sweater. Donovan scowled and sat back down. Henry leapt into the quiet.

  “Mr. Donovan is right, we won’t learn anything useful this way. Let’s resume going around the circle, with no interruptions, please. Mrs. Bass?”

  Erin Bass described essentially the same events as John Kluge, without the Wednesday night incident but with the addition of the earlier, slight jar Henry had felt as he let Carrie into his apartment Tuesday before class. She described this as a “whisper in my mind.” The next sixteen people all repeated the same experiences on Thursday and Friday, although some seemed to not have felt the “energy” on Tuesday, and some not on Tuesday or Wednesday. Henry was the only one to feel all five instances. Throughout these recitations, Evelyn Krenchnoted several times rose slightly in her chair, like a geyser about to burst. Henry did not want her to interrupt. He put a restraining hand on her arm, which was a mistake as she immediately covered his hand with her own and squeezed affectionately.

  When it was finally Evelyn’s turn, she said, “None of you had pain this last time like Henry did on Thursday—except me! I was having a medical MIT at the hospital and I was inside the machine and the pain was horrible! Horrible! And then—” she paused dramatically “—and then I saw Anna Chernov’s necklace right at the time it was being stolen! And so did all of you—that was the ‘hard colors,’ John! Sapphires and rubies and diamonds!”

  Pandemonium again. Henry, despite his growing fear, groaned inwardly. Why Evelyn Krenchnoted? Of all the unreliable witnesses . . .

  “I saw it! I saw it!” Evelyn shrieked. Gina Martinelli had begun to pray in a loud voice. People jabbered to each other or sat silent, their faces gone white. A woman that Henry didn’t know reached with a shaking hand into her pocket and pulled out a pill bottle. Bob Donovan raised his fingers to his lips.