Vortex s-3

by Robert Charles Wilson

  We had been calling these structures “the Hypothetical machines,” but from the ground they looked less like machines than huge geometric solids. The nearest of them was a perfectly rectangular cube, half a mile on a side and moving at a slow but (barely) perceptible speed. Now that we were close to it I believed I could feel that ponderous motion under my feet, a gentle seismic tremor.

  We approached the cube in silence. The soldiers on point were dwarfed by it. The technicians began to angle up their lamps, playing the beams against the nearest vertical face, a featureless surface the texture of sandstone. Because of its regularity it was hard not to think of this thing as an absurdly large building, but it was a building without windows or doors, as enigmatic as a sealed pyramid.

  For a while we did nothing but stare at it. Oscar said it must already have detected our presence; but if it did, it failed to react in any obvious way. Then the technical crew got down to business. They erected tripods and secured their lamps on them; they unpacked sensors and recording devices and anchored them in the pebbly, cold soil. A steadily increasing number of fiercely bright beams divided the desert into a quilt of light and dark.

  On the plain beyond the cube, scattered over a couple of kilometers, were a half dozen objects of similar size and different but equally simple shapes—huge cylinders, octagons, truncated spheres, conical sections. Some were sandstone-colored, like the cube; others were black, cobalt blue, obsidian black, cadmium yellow. Any one of them could have enclosed a small city, and all of them were creeping at the same patient speed toward the distant mountains and the sea. “So immense,” Oscar said breathlessly, “these objects, but such an insignificant fraction of the whole body of the Hypotheticals.” The stark light cut shadows into his mask and made him look like a timid animal peering out of a hole. “It would be easy to commit the impertinence of fear.”

  Way too easy, out here on the polar desert of the planet that had given birth to the first human beings and had become an unmarked grave for billions more. While the scientific crew activated sensors and surveying devices, I walked without Oscar’s permission (but he scurried after me) to within a few hundred yards of the base of the cube.

  It was old. It wasn’t weathered or cracked, and for all I knew it might have been manufactured a day or an hour ago, but it felt old—age seemed to radiate from it like cold air from an icefield. Inches ahead of it the thin layer of new-fallen snow was disappearing from the desert floor, sublimating into the night air.

  “The Hypotheticals are endlessly patient, Mr. Findley. They’re older than most of the stars in the sky. To be so close to their work… this is a sacred moment.”

  We all wore earpieces to facilitate communication. I had turned down the volume on mine—the few simple Voxish words I had learned weren’t much use here—but we both heard a burst of excited chatter erupt from the technical crew. Two beams of high-intensity light swept upward.

  The beams diffused into what appeared to be a pale cloud at the top of the cube. Snow or mist, I thought; but no—elsewhere, the sky was clear. The cloud appeared to be boiling off the top of the cube itself—and the other, more distant objects were generating similar clouds, pale mists that sifted down gently despite a wind that should have dispersed them.

  I took an instinctive step backward. Then: “Look,” Oscar said in a hushed voice.

  Something had landed on the arm of his protective suit. Oscar regarded it with a kind of terrified reverence. A snowflake, I thought at first. But on closer inspection it was more like a tiny crystalline butterfly—two pale and perfectly translucent wings beating over a body the size of a grain of rice.

  Oscar lifted his arm so we could get a better look. The winged crystal had no eyes or segments or any other division in its body. It was just a curl of something like quartz, with legs (if you could call them that) as fine as eyelashes, which it used to cling to the fabric of Oscar’s suit. Its wings beat against the pressure of the wind. It looked as harmless as a piece of costume jewelry. The cloud descending the walls of the cube was composed of countless numbers of these things—millions, maybe billions of them.

  Then, out along the periphery of the lights, a soldier began to scream.

  2.

  The soldiers reacted quickly and professionally: they grabbed the portable lights and began waving the civilians back the way we had come. They did this despite the fact that hundreds or thousands of these tiny crystalline butterflies were swarming them, obscuring their vision and covering their clothing.

  The butterflies were settling on me and Oscar, too, but not as aggressively. When I flicked my arm they fell away and dropped to the ground, inert. And when I brushed them away from Oscar they scattered from my hand.

  Nevertheless we ran. Everyone was running now. The lamps the soldiers carried cast wheeling, hectic beams ahead of us. Through my earpiece I could hear barked commands and more screams, while the cloud of crystalline devices swirled around us like silent snow.

  Other members of the expedition began to fall away behind us. I saw this in serial glances, looking back over my shoulder. Anyone who dropped to the ground was instantly swarmed, covered in a glassy drift, becoming a pale mound that heaved at first but quickly settled —I don’t have a better word for it. I began to understand that these men and women were dying.

  The technicians died first. The soldiers wore heavier protective clothing, but even they were slowly being overwhelmed. The lamps when they dropped them raked light at static angles across the plain.

  Twice I had to stop and brush Oscar free of the butterflies. I was too terrified to wonder why I was apparently immune to them. Oscar clearly wasn’t: his protective clothing was ragged now, torn in places by their small but razor-sharp legs, and some of those ragged patches were speckled with blood. I worried about his mask and oxygen supply and I tried to make sure I cleared the most vulnerable parts first. For a while we ran arm-in-arm, which seemed to keep the swarms at bay. All the panicked chatter and terrified screaming that had filled my earpiece slowly began to fade, and the final silence, when it came, was even more terrifying than the screams. I couldn’t say how long or how far we ran. We ran until we couldn’t run any more, until there was no sound but the roar of my own labored breath. Then I felt a sudden resistance, Oscar’s arm tugging me backward, and I thought, They got him, he’s dead weight —

  But he wasn’t. When I turned to face him I found his suit was clean: there were no butterflies on him. His face through the moist blur of his mask was shocked but relatively calm. “Stop,” he gasped. “We’re out of range. We’re beyond the perimeter now. Please, stop. ”

  I took a long look back.

  We had come a fair distance. The abandoned lamps were still working, the Hypothetical machines plainly visible in a skewed crosshatching of artificial light. Nothing human was moving.

  The wind blew grains of snow around our feet and the stars glittered overhead. We stood shivering, waiting for whatever might come out of the darkness after us—another attack, a straggling survivor. But there was no one, nothing.

  Then, in quick succession, the distant lamps began to blink off.

  * * *

  We reached the aircraft guided by signal-finders built into our suits. It was a long walk but we were too shaken to talk much. Oscar eventually managed to establish voice contact with Vox Core, and he exchanged curt messages with managers and military personnel. Remote telemetry had broadcast most of what happened, and Vox was already attempting to analyze the data. “Probably,” he said at one point, “our presence triggered a defensive reflex of some kind.” Maybe so. But I wasn’t Voxish and I didn’t have to believe in the benevolence of the Hypotheticals—I didn’t have to make excuses for a senseless slaughter.

  Our aircraft rested on the Antarctic plain like some incongruous deposition from a vanished glacier. I asked Oscar whether he would be able to pilot it back to Vox.

  “Yes. Really, I just need to tell it to carry us home.”

  “You
sure? You’re bleeding, Oscar.”

  He glanced down at his ravaged clothing. “Not badly,” he said.

  Once we passed the airlock he stripped off his gear. His upper body had sustained a number of small cuts, none of them deep or life-threatening. He told me where to find a medical kit, and I smeared his wounds with something that stopped the bleeding.

  A few of the tiny crystalline butterflies—dead or dormant—were still clinging to his discarded survival gear. Oscar emptied a ration box, tweezed one of the dead butterflies between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it inside. A sample for analysis, he said. Then we dumped the rest of our tattered clothes out the airlock.

  * * *

  “They didn’t touch you,” Oscar said, once we were aloft and the aircraft was following a programmed route to Vox.

  What had been a crowded crew cabin on the flight out now seemed grimly and cavernously empty. The air, our bodies, even the fresh clothing we put on all reeked of hydrogen sulfide.

  “No…”

  “Because they recognized you.” His voice had been reduced to a shocked querulousness.

  “I don’t know what that means, Oscar.”

  “Obviously, they recognized you because you were Uptaken.”

  “I don’t understand what happened any more than you do. But I’m not Isaac—I don’t have any Hypothetical biotech inside me.”

  “Mr. Findley,” he said, “are you still denying it, even now? A human body doesn’t pass through a temporal Arch the way it might pass through one of the spatial Arches. We know this from many years of study. You weren’t preserved, like a frozen vegetable. In all likelihood you were re-created from stored information. The reconstruction may seem flawless to human eyes and human instruments. But they know you for one of their own.”

  I was too exhausted to argue. Oscar was clinging to one of the few expectations this encounter had actually borne out: that the Hypotheticals had recognized me and singled me out for salvation. He believed he had survived because I was beside him, helping him. He imagined he had been saved, in other words, by a truculent and stupid demigod.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sandra and Bose

  Sandra arrived at the State Care intake facility at noon. The parking lot was silvered with heat mirages and the air was thick and oppressive, worse, if that was possible, than yesterday. The guard manning the desk at the entrance—his name was Teddy—sat basking in the breeze from a small rotary fan, but he stood up hastily when he recognized Sandra. “Dr. Cole! Hi! Hey, listen, I’m sorry, but I have instructions not to let you pass—”

  “That’s okay, Teddy. Give Dr. Congreve a call and tell him I’m here and that I’d like to speak to him.”

  “I guess I can do that—yes, ma’am.” Teddy murmured into a handset, waited, murmured again; then he turned to Sandra and smiled. “All right. Again, sorry about that! Dr. Congreve says you can go to his office. He wants me to tell you you should go there directly.”

  “Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Nothing. Thanks, Teddy.”

  “You’re welcome! Have a nice day, Dr. Cole.”

  * * *

  Congreve was wearing a triumphant look when Sandra stepped into his office. She reminded herself that she was here to play a role, the same way she had played Desdemona in her high school production of Othello. My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty. Not that she was much of an actress. “Sorry to bother you, Dr. Congreve.”

  “I’m surprised to see you, Dr. Cole. I thought you understood you were to take the rest of the week off.”

  “I do understand. But I wanted to apologize for my behavior, and I thought I should do it in person.”

  “Really? That’s a sudden change of heart.”

  “I know it seems that way. But I’ve had time to think it over. Time to do a little soul-searching, you could say. Because I do value my career here at State. And looking back, I believe I acted improperly.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, by overstepping my authority, to begin with. I took a proprietary interest in Orrin Mather, and I guess I resented it when you gave the case to another physician.”

  “I explained to you why I thought that was a good idea.”

  “Yes, sir, and I understand now.”

  “Well—I appreciate you saying so. It can’t be easy for you. What’s so special about this particular patient, can you tell me that?” Steepling his hands, regarding her thoughtfully, assuming a grave judiciousness.

  “I don’t suppose he is special. He just seemed particularly… I don’t know. Fragile? Vulnerable?”

  “All our patients are vulnerable. That’s why they’re here. That’s why we’re in the business of helping them.”

  “I know.”

  “And it’s why we can’t afford the luxury of identifying too closely with them. The best gift we can give the men and women under our care is absolute objectivity. That’s what I meant when I called your behavior unprofessional. Do you see what I’m driving at?”

  “Yes sir, I do.”

  “And do you understand why I suggested you take some time off? Usually, when a physician begins to project his own anxieties onto his patients, it’s because he’s tired or distraught.”

  “Really, I’m fine now, Dr. Congreve.”

  “I’d like to believe that. Is there anything happening in your personal life that might be interfering with your work?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Are you sure of that? Because if you want or need to talk about it, I’m willing to listen.”

  God forbid. “Thank you. No, it’s just…” She sighed. “Honestly, it’s the weather as much as anything. My air-conditioning’s broken and I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep for days. And yes, the work is sometimes a little overwhelming.”

  “All the staff are feeling it. Well, I’m pleased you decided to come to me with this. Do you honestly feel fit enough to go back to work?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely.”

  “I won’t say we can’t use you. How about we ease up on the caseload for the next couple of weeks? Maybe you can tutor Dr. Fein—I’m sure he could benefit from your experience.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Not on the Mather case, of course.”

  She nodded.

  “In fact we’ve run into some complications in that regard. I’ll need a formal letter from you acknowledging that you voluntarily turned over the Mather file to Dr. Fein. Are you willing to do that?”

  She pretended to be surprised. “Is that really necessary?”

  “It’s a formality, but yes.”

  “If you think it would be helpful, then of course I’ll submit a letter.”

  “Well, then. All right, Dr. Cole. Take the rest of the day off and come in tomorrow.” He smiled. “On time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And we’ll forget about this unpleasantness.”

  Not likely. “Thank you. Actually, if it’s all right, I was hoping I could spend the rest of today in my office. I don’t want to do consults, but there are four or five case reports I need to write up.”

  Congreve gave her a careful look. “I guess that would be all right.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. And I have to say I appreciate your attitude. As long as that doesn’t change, we should get along fine.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  * * *

  Sandra went to her office, feeling slightly unclean, and opened up her desktop interface. How long until Congreve went home? He was usually out of the building by six, but a consultation or a board meeting could keep him later. In the meantime she systematically went through her files, pulling and deleting anything personal. It was funny how separate she already felt from State, as if her years here had faded into a single blurred image, a picture on an antique postcard.

  When that was done—and it didn’t ta
ke long—she took a printed copy of Orrin’s document out of her bag and began to read. As usual, the document raised more questions than it answered.

  At half past three she stood up, stretched, and headed to the staff washroom. She was surprised to find Jack Geddes sitting in a chair in the hallway opposite her door, humming to himself. “Hey, Jack,” she said. “Are you guarding the medical staff now?”

  “Just keeping an eye on things.” His grin was lopsided and insincere.

  “Dr. Congreve’s orders?”

  The grin lapsed. “Yeah, but—”

  “I see. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  “None of my business what you do, Dr. Cole.” But his eyes followed her to the washroom door and watched her when she returned.

  Back in her office she took out a pad of paper and a pen and wrote the word QUESTIONS at the top.

  Then she paused, nibbled the pen top, collected her thoughts.

  Re: Orrin Mather document

  1. Did Orrin write this or is it someone else’s work? If someone else, who?

  It occurred to her that she might be able to find out whether the document was a blatant act of plagiarism. She called up a search function on her desktop and entered a couple of text strings from the document. No meaningful matches. Which proved only that the text, if it existed outside of Orrin’s notebooks, hadn’t been posted to the Web—a positive result would have been significant; a negative result proved nothing.

  2. Is this a work of fiction or a delusional construct?

  She couldn’t answer that without access to Orrin. Bose had said there was something about the Findley warehouse later on in the document, which suggested that Orrin had contributed at least a few words of his own to the story. Which led to the next question: