Robert Charles Wilson - SPIN

"Will that cure her?"

"No, Simon, I'm afraid it won't. A month ago it might have. Not anymore. She needs medical attention."

"You're a doctor."

"I may be a doctor, but I'm not a hospital."

"Then maybe we can take her into Phoenix."

I thought about that. Everything I'd learned during the flickers suggested that an urban hospital would be swamped at best, a smoldering ruin at worst. But maybe not.

I took out my phone and scrolled through its memory for a half-forgotten number.

Simon said, "Who're you calling?"

"Someone I used to know."

His name was Colin Hinz, and we had roomed together back at Stony Brook. We kept in touch a little. Last I'd heard from him he was working management at St. Joseph's in Phoenix. It was worth a try—now, before the sun came up and scrubbed telecommunications for another day.

I entered his personal number. The phone rang a long while but eventually he picked up and said, "This better be good."

I identified myself and told him I was maybe an hour out of town with a casualty in need of immediate attention— someone close to me.

Colin sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, Tyler. St. Joe's is working, and I hear the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale is open, but we both have minimal staff. There are conflicting reports from other hospitals. But you won't get quick attention anywhere, sure as hell not here. We've got people stacked up outside the doors—gunshot wounds, attempted suicides, auto accidents, heart attacks, you name it. And cops on the doors to keep them from mobbing Emerg. What's your patient's condition?"

I told him Diane was late-stage CVWS and would probably need airway support soon.

"Where the fuck did she pick up CVWS? No, never mind—doesn't matter. Honestly, I'd help you if I could, but our nurses have been doing parking-lot triage all night and I can't promise they'd give your patient any priority, even with a word from me. In fact it's pretty much a sure thing she wouldn't even be assessed by a physician for another twenty-four hours. If any of us live that long."

"I'm a physician, remember? All I need is a little gear to support her. Ringer's, an airway kit, oxygen—"

"I don't want to sound callous, but we're wading through blood here… you might ask yourself whether it's really worthwhile supporting a terminal CVWS case, given what's happening. If you've got what you need to keep her comfortable—"

"I don't want to keep her comfortable. I want to save her life."

"Okay… but what you described is a terminal situation, unless I misunderstood." In the background I could hear other voices demanding his attention, a generalized rattle of human misery.

"I need to take her somewhere," I said, "and I need to get her there alive. I need the supplies more than I need a bed."

"We've got nothing to spare. Tell me if there's anything else I can do for you. Otherwise, I'm sorry, I have work to do."

I thought frantically. Then I said, "Okay, but the supplies— anywhere I can pick up Ringer's, Colin, that's all I ask."

"Well—"

"Well, what?"

"Well… I shouldn't be telling you this, but St. Joe's has a deal with the city under the civil emergency plan. There's a medical distributor called Novaprod north of town." He gave me an address and simple directions. "The authorities put a National Guard unit up there to protect it. That's our primary source for drugs and hardware."

"They'll let me in?"

"If I call up and tell them you're coming, and if you have some ID to show."

"Do that for me, Colin. Please."

"I will if I can get a line out. The phones are unreliable."

"If there's a favor I can do in return…"

"Maybe there is. You used to work in aerospace, right? Perihelion?"

"Not recently, but yes."

"Can you tell me how much longer all this is going to last?" He half whispered the question, and suddenly I could hear the fatigue in his voice, the unadmitted fear. "I mean, one way or the other?"

I apologized and told him I simply didn't know—and I doubted anyone at Perihelion knew more than I did.

He sighed. "Okay," he said. "It's just galling, the idea that we could go through all this and burn out in a couple of days and never know what it was all about."

"I wish I could give you an answer."

Someone on the other end of the line began calling his name. "I wish a lot of things," he said. "Gotta go, Tyler."

I thanked him again and clicked off.

Dawn was still a few hours away.

Simon had been standing a few yards from the car, staring up at the starry sky and pretending not to listen. I waved him back and said, "We have to get going."

He nodded meekly. "Did you find help for Diane?"

"Sort of."

He accepted the answer without asking for details. But before he bent to get in the car he tugged at my sleeve and said, "There ... what do you suppose that is, Tyler?"

He was pointing at the western horizon, where a gently curving silver line arced through five degrees of the night sky. It looked as if someone had scratched an enormous, shallow letter C out of the blackness.

"Maybe a condensation trail," I said. "A military jet."

"At night? Not at night."

"Then I don't know what it is, Simon. Come on, get in— we don't have time to waste."

* * * * *

We made better time than I expected. We reached the medical supply warehouse, a numbered unit in a dreary industrial park, with time to spare before sunrise. I presented my ID to the nervous National Guardsman posted at the entrance; he handed me over to another Guardsman and a civilian employee who walked me through the aisles of shelving. I found what I needed and a third Guardsman helped me carry it to the car, though he backed off quickly when he saw Diane gasping in the backseat. "Luck to you," he said, his voice shaking a little.

I took the time to set up an IV drip, the bag jury-rigged to the jacket hanger in the car, and showed Simon how to monitor the flow and make sure she didn't snag the line in her sleep. (She didn't wake even when I put the needle in her arm.)

Simon waited until we were back on the road before he asked, "Is she dying?"

I gripped the wheel a little tighter. "Not if I can help it."

"Where are we taking her?"

"We're taking her home."

"What, all the way across country? To Carol and E.D.'s house?"

"Right."

"Why there?"

"Because I can help her there."

"That's a long drive. I mean, the way things are."

"Yes. It might be a long drive."

I glanced into the backseat. He stroked her head, gently. Her hair was limp and matted with perspiration. His hands were pale where he had washed off the blood.

"I don't deserve to be with her," he said. "I know this is my fault. I could have left the ranch when Teddy did. I could have gotten help."

Yes, I thought. You could have.

"But I believed in what we were doing. Probably you don't understand that. But it wasn't just the red calf, Tyler. I was certain we'd be raised up imperishable. That in the end we'd be rewarded."

"Rewarded for what?"

"Faith. Perseverance. Because from the very first time I set eyes on Diane I had a powerful feeling we'd be part of something spectacular, even if I didn't wholly comprehend it. That one day we'd stand together before the throne of God—no less than that. 'This generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled.' Our generation, even if we took a wrong turn at first. I admit, things happened at those New Kingdom rallies that seem shameful to me now. Drunkenness, lechery, lies. We turned our backs on that, which was good; but it seemed like the world got a little smaller when we weren't among people who were trying to build the chiliasm, however imperfectly. As if we'd lost a family. And I thought, well, if you look for the cleanest and simplest path, that should take you in the right direction. 'In your patience possess ye your souls.'"