Henni picked up a pad and scrolled through another document. I stood up. But I couldn’t go. My hands were balled in fists. I stood there and waited until Henni had no choice but to address me again.
“You’re still here, Dr. Singh. Do you want me to have security throw you out as well?”
I tried to keep my anger in check. “What if she’s right?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said: what if she’s right?”
“I don’t care.”
“You say they might save a million lives. But they might have murdered billions.”
“They did murder billions, Dr. Singh, but Ilfenard was a long time ago.”
“They might have murdered three billion more just last year!”
“That’s an accusation, not a fact.”
I swallowed. “Yes. And Liss has the right to make that accusation before the Interversal Criminal Tribunal.”
Henni put her pad down. She was about to yell at me but put a hold on herself for a moment and considered her words more carefully. “I am trying to save a species, Dr. Singh. People who are still living. I can’t bring back the dead.”
“They need to be investigated.”
“Do they need to be investigated now?”
“Yes.”
“You really think this is a good time?”
“There’s never going to be a good time. There’s always going to be another evacuation.”
“And would you want to be left behind to die just so we could feel better about ourselves?”
“I wouldn’t want to be rescued by someone who might have committed genocide.”
“Well. And did you know they helped with the evacuation from your world?”
I didn’t answer. A memory flashed before me: the Quillian Government Crest. I’d seen it before, so many years ago, on a dying world, on the side of a ship…
Henni realised she’d found a weakness in my argument, or perhaps just in me.
“Think about that, if you would,” she said. “Let me know when you make up your mind about your job.”
She picked up her pad again, and this time I left. I stopped outside, and steadied myself on the wall. She’d had the measure of me from first to last, and there was very, very little I could do. I couldn’t go to the media because of the confidentiality of my patients. An employment tribunal, perhaps? But she was right; I was only in my position because they’d been having trouble finding someone to replace me. I’d still be put on leave while they decided my case and the group would end up with whoever could be found, rather than someone I could trust to do the job.
I needed help.
14. Asha
Ranev wasn’t by the sea. He didn’t even have his feet planted on solid ground. When my call found him, he was high above the world, higher even than the Lift: he was on Grainger Station, the massive reception and quarantine station at the L1 point halfway between the competing gravity of Earth and Moon.
“I’ve been reassigned,” he explained, and turned his pad to show me the view of the Arrivals Bay: he sat in a viewing hall that looked down on rows and rows of docking ports for all the little shuttles that would come in from the transit spheres, and kilometres distant, the wall of spheres itself. Twenty of them, girder-shells floating in space that could send you anywhere. Or pull you back, if you were in the right position and waiting. I saw the flashes of energy inside half a dozen that meant ships were being brought through to our universe, ships that could only be coming from Ardëe.
“It’s crazy,” said Ranev. “They’re pulling in everyone. They’ve put me on triage. I don’t know how we’re going to manage these numbers…”
“Yeah.”
“A billion people. Maybe more…”
“That just leaves all the ones who have to stay behind.”
He nodded. “I know. I know.”
“Makes you wonder how they’re choosing who lives and dies.”
“You’re right. It puts all our problems in perspective, doesn’t it?”
“Apocalypses tend to do that, yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Asha. I forgot. You must be thinking how it was for you. Are you calling up for a session? I think I’ve got half an hour before they need me.”
“Yes. No… I don’t know. I need advice.”
“Okay.”
“They’ve reassigned me as well.”
“Oh?”
I looked away. I was sitting in a park in Hub Metro. Behind me, a ten storey building was being added to, floor by floor as new levels were lifted onto it and slotted into place, all of it dormitory space for the refugees who were hurt but not so disturbed that they had to be kept away from the city. “Medical leave,” I said. “Compulsory. Permanent.”
“What happened?”
“Liss attacked someone again,” I explained. “It ended up in a diplomatic incident… they’re blaming me. And I was all set to take leave on medical grounds anyway…”
He sighed. “I’m so sorry…”
“Did you tell them? Anything?”
“Now, Asha. You know our sessions are confidential.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
“You said yourself: you were taking leave on medical grounds. Was it Henni who made the decision?”
I nodded.
“That makes sense. She’s never one for patience.”
“She’s going to assign someone else to the group.”
“What…?”
“She said she didn’t care who.”
“That’s really not a good idea…”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I shouted. Ranev was surprised.
“Are you angry, Asha?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m angry! They’re going to get some student in to deal with the group and everything’s… all the work I did… my patients — they don’t trust anyone else! Some of them hardly even trust me!”
“I see—”
“Aren’t you angry? Who’s taking your group?”
“I had an assistant,” he said. I looked down and squeezed my eyes shut to try and stop the tears. “I’m sorry,” he added. The tears came anyway.
“Veofol could have taken them…” I said.
“Yes. He could. He was a fine therapist.”
“He was.”
“How angry are you?”
“What?”
“How angry are you, Asha?”
I looked down at the pad, at him, sitting there on a space station, making no sense.
“I don’t understand.”
“Okay. You don’t normally get angry, do you?”
“No.”
“You absorb pain. You bear the suffering. You shoulder the burden and you hardly ever complain. But you don’t get angry. You don’t trust yourself when you’re angry, do you?”
“I make bad decisions.”
“I think being angry will help you now.”
“What?” I was about to tell him exactly how crazy I thought he was, but he carried on regardless.
“If you’re going to help your patients, you can’t do it through the usual channels. You need to think of something else. Being angry can help with that. Use it, Asha. Help your patients.”
“I don’t understand—”
“I don’t mean do something stupid. I mean you should look at options you wouldn’t consider otherwise. Things you wouldn’t dare do in another situation.”
A chime sounded in the space station. Ranev looked up. “I have to go. There are shuttles docking. We haven’t even got enough people to move the wounded… call me later, if you can. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
The screen blanked. He was gone, off to save lives high above the world, where I would be if I didn’t have lives to save down here. I sat there in the park that was no longer really a park, listening to the construction and thinking about anger.
I was angry. I was incensed. Henni had her reasons and they were valid, and just, and overwhelming: she had a billion people to save. And my poor six were
specks of dust she would allow to be lost in that storm of people fleeing from a murderous sun.
The group was going to suffer, and no one cared enough to do anything it about except me. No one could save them. No one could protect them. No one could give them the therapy they needed. No one else could keep them out of the Psychiatric Centre and a lifetime of gentle care that might as well have been a torture chamber. Some of them might be able to stand alone, some might even be able to find a life outside; but Olivia would not. Pew would not. Kwame was still not ready. Liss might be sent to prison. And no one had shown them the slightest shred of—
I realised I was wrong. Someone had shown a shred of kindness to them, and an interest in their fate. It might only be a professional interest. But still…
Ranev was right; it took anger to see past the problem, anger to see a solution, anger to drive me on and do something I could never have contemplated before.
I pulled up my contacts list on my pad, and put a call through to Eremis Ai at the Interversal Criminal Tribunal.
15. Liss
Liss found herself in a secure transport, whisked across Hub Metro to a place she had never seen in real life, but which she knew well from her frantic and pointless appeals for an investigation into the genocide on her world: the headquarters of the Interversal Criminal Tribunal. The building had only just been assigned to the ICT, and like most structures in Hub Metro, it soared to an almost capricious height. But there was something more serious about this place. Whatever architect from a distant universe had been given the opportunity to show off their skills in front of the multiverse had chosen to create something inspired by devotional architecture, and knew well the effect on the human mind of a lofty, endless space stretching to an unimaginably high ceiling. It looked to be made of stone, but no mere stone could bear the weight of such high, curving pillars, or support the obsidian sheets that formed the walls. And this was just the lobby, stretching up into something surpassing the human scale. Beyond it, all the floors that held the offices, workrooms and assorted facilities the ICT needed were arrayed on the back wall of the broad cathedral that sustained the noise of steps and voices into an endless fading sonic glow.
I met Liss at the front desk as she was led in by two guards. She wore a mohib suit under the prison uniform, and was surprised to see me. I was still surprised to be there. “I need you to meet someone,” I said, and led her inside. The guards stayed with us. No one would trust her now, and the guards were a non-negotiable item when we asked for her presence.
Inside the room — a remote meeting room like so many others across Hub — Eremis Ai stood, but did not offer to shake her hand, mindful of the protocols we’d had to sign up to in order to get her there. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
“Okay…” replied Liss, amused. The choice hadn’t really been hers. I joined Eremis at the meeting table, and asked Liss to sit down opposite us.
“I’m sorry about the mohib suit,” I said.
“It’s itchy,” she muttered.
“There’s nothing I can do about it, Liss.”
“Yeah. I got that. You can’t do anything. Except drag me halfway across town. What’s this about? You investigating me now?”
Eremis gave me a look: my questions came first.
“Why did you attack him, Liss?
“It’s like you said. I’m supposed to be investigating. That’s what I did.”
“You planned it?”
“Well, no, not all of it. But he pissed me off.”
“How did he do that?”
She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. “He just did.”
“You know, if you’d been honest with me, I could have helped you find a way to do this that didn’t end up with you in detention.”
“It’s my job. Not yours.”
“I could have helped. Or the ICT could have helped.”
She gave Eremis a look of contempt. “I’m not the priority, am I? You’re all gung-ho on finding out what killed Iokan’s world, not mine.”
“That’s not the case,” he said.
“Sure it is! How long did you say it would take before you got round to me? Months? Years?”
“Liss,” I said. “That’s not the case.”
“Oh, so they were lying to me?”
“No. Things have changed.”
That got her attention. “Changed? How?”
Eremis said: “We can start investigating your case right away.”
Her eyes went wide. “What…?”
“You didn’t give us a choice,” he said. “We have to move immediately or else the Quillians will claim we don’t take the matter seriously.”
She grinned with delight. “Hah!”
“We wanted more time to establish ourselves before we started an open-ended investigation like this. So I can’t make any promises.”
“Who cares?” She laughed and tried to punch the air but the mohib suit cut in and restrained her. “Ow. Damn thing.”
I sighed. “You won’t be permitted to take any part in the investigation, except as a witness.”
She shrugged. “Good. The professionals can do it.”
“And you’ll have to accept the custody of the ICT.”
“So you can keep an eye on me?”
“You’ll have to stay in therapy longer than I was hoping. We need to work on your aggressive tendencies. That was part of the deal to avoid prosecution.”
She laughed louder than before. “My aggressive tendencies?” The irony of it made her weep with laughter.
“Are you going to co-operate with us?”
“Of course I’m going to co-operate.”
She was still smiling, thinking she’d won, not knowing how long the path ahead would be, or how much more difficult she’d made it for herself.
“There’s another thing,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m leaving the Refugee Service.”
“What? So who’s my therapist going to be?”
“Me. If you’ll have me.”
“Okay, now you’re just deliberately trying to confuse me.”
“I’m leaving the Refugee Service, and joining the ICT.”
She was still sarcastic. “Oh? Really?”
“You didn’t give me a choice,” I said. “They blamed me for what you did. I would have been transferred, or put on permanent leave.”
A first flicker of regret crossed her face.
“Oh. Shit…”
“They’d have got rid of me, and the group would have been taken by the first therapist they could find.”
“But they can’t do that!”
“You gave them a reason. Please think about that, Liss.”
She slumped in her chair, full of guilt. As selfish as she’d been, she was far from malicious. She was simply a terrible judge of tactics and strategy, as she’d always claimed.
“I’m going to be a consulting therapist for the ICT. But the group can come too, if it wants. That’s why we’ve brought you here. We need your permission, and theirs, if we’re going to give them a home. Liss, the Refugee Service doesn’t have room any more. Millions of people are dying. We’ve just started the biggest evacuation anyone’s ever seen. After the Refugee Service, the ICT are the ones most interested in your wellbeing, and they’re willing to give the resources to look after you. All of you. If you agree.”
She didn’t hesitate. “I agree. Of course. The others, they, they need you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Eremis looked at me. “Shall we bring them in?”
16. Group
I nodded to Eremis, who reached for a pad, and left the room. Liss watched him go.
“He’ll be back in a moment. We need everyone’s agreement,” I said. “So we’re going to talk to the whole group. You can keep the details of your involvement confidential, if you wish.”
She still looked puzzled. “The group? Now?”
“Now,” I said.
“D
o they know—?”
“They know you did something foolish. I’ve asked them not to inquire about it for the moment.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I pressed a control on my pad. Kwame faded in, standing with arms folded, looking around and plainly seeing me and Liss appear in the meeting room back at the centre. Alongside him, Olivia was caught in the act of sitting down as she appeared, alarmed by the sudden manifestations. Iokan was already waiting in a seat, wearing his robe. Pew fretted as far from everyone as he could, until Elsbet materialised beside him in a hospital dressing gown, making him jump. She was still at the hospital and just as surprised to see them all.
Liss’s prison uniform drew looks of interest. “Get yourself arrested again, dear?” asked Olivia. Liss gave me an irritated look, knowing full well that my request not to talk about her situation had been pointless. But Kwame had another concern. He glared at Elsbet.
“I thought I had made it clear I had no wish to participate when Katie is present—”
“Oh, shove it up your bum,” said Elsbet.
“That’s not Katie,” smiled Iokan.
Kwame’s face brightened. “Oh. Well. In that case I owe you an apology. Welcome back, Sergeant.”
She stuck her tongue out at him and grinned at the others. I decided to try and persuade her to eat less sugar in the future.
“So what did you get us in here for?” said Olivia. “Are we just saying hello?”
“Hello!” said Elsbet, plainly thinking she was very funny.
“Yeh, yeh, hello to you an’ all.” She looked at me. “Well?”
“No, we have another reason to bring you here today,” I said. Liss looked up at me, but said nothing. “You all remember Eremis Ai of the ICT?”
“I remember,” said Kwame.
“Yes…” said Pew, taking an interest in the meeting for the first time.
“Annoying little shit,” said Olivia. Heaven only knew what he’d done to earn her displeasure, other than being born. But it made for an interesting look of surprise when he walked in the door, followed by a narrow look at me once she realised Eremis had been there all along.
“Good afternoon,” he said to them all. Various grunts and greetings came back. “I’ve asked you all to come today because of a change in your situation. As you’ve probably heard by now, the Refugee Service is engaged in the biggest evacuation it’s ever had to undertake. A billion or more refugees are going to be coming in from Ardëe—”
The Last Man on Earth Club Page 55
