Robert Sawyer - Quantum Night

Vic materialized in the doorway, and, for once, her all-black garb seemed totally appropriate, the perfect thing to wear on doomsday. “Let’s see if we can wake Menno,” she said. We headed to her living room, the Mennonite’s gentle wheezing audible above the background hiss of her air conditioner. He’d voided his bladder, but Vic seemed unperturbed by that. The aluminum case for the quantum tuning fork was on the ledge of the pass-through to her kitchen, next to the green pucks. She opened it, pried the silver instrument from its foam rubber, and moved over to Menno. I noticed the twin tines were now marked with small white labels, one saying “L,” the other, “R.” Vic thumbed the red on switch, pressed the projections against Menno’s lined forehead, and—

The sound of air-conditioning; face touched by coolness. Muffled traffic sounds.

A voice, very close, female, concerned. “Professor Warkentin? Are you okay?”

Another voice, male, from farther away. “Menno? It’s me, it’s Jim.”

Tokens processed, shuffled, dispatched: “I’m okay. Thank you, Padawan.” More? More. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Victoria turned off the quantum tuning fork and put it back in its case. I got Menno’s glasses off the teak table. “Here you go,” I said, placing them in his hand. He sat up and perched them on his nose. Pax, who’d gone over to watch the sun come up, padded back across the wooden floor to join him. I looked for any sign that the dog detected something different in him, but although she could hear and smell better than any of us, and probably could detect impending earthquakes or tornadoes in a way we couldn’t, whatever quantum-state shift Menno had just undergone seemed to be as imperceptible to her as it was to me.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to the Light Source.”

“Yes,” said Vic. “Time’s running out.”

“Oh?”

“I checked the news on my phone as I was getting up. Putin’s issued a deadline for the American withdrawal—four hours from now.”

It tore Kayla apart, knowing that Jim was in town. Oh, she’d had numerous fast-and-furious love affairs in her youth, back when she’d been a Q2, but this one had seemed real—a partnership of peers, much better than her marriage to Ben. She’d known that had been a mistake, known it as she was walking down the aisle. If she’d still been a Q2, she’d have said “fuck this,” spun on her high heels, and headed right out the door, leaving that loser at the altar. But her days of psychopathy were long behind her by then, and with each step she’d taken in her white dress, she’d thought, “But it’ll be embarrassing,” or “But Mom will be heartbroken,” or “But we’ve already booked the honeymoon trip,” or “Maybe it’ll be okay; maybe Ben will change.”

There’d been none of those second thoughts back in college: Jim Marchuk had been good, solicitous company, bending over backward to do whatever she wanted, until right at the end. And, when they’d reconnected, what a joy it had been to find an intellectual equal and someone who wasn’t needy, didn’t require constant reassurance, wasn’t an emotional vampire, and who was a kind and attentive lover.

Kayla was following the worsening news, as she imagined every other Q3 in the world was—and she wanted to be with her family today. She didn’t really think the world was going to come to an end in the next few hours, but, still, she’d kept Ryan, whom she’d finally managed to pick up last night, home from day camp, and she’d called in sick to the Light Source, and the two of them had headed back to her mother’s place so they could all be together.

They made breakfast—eggs, bacon, sausages, all the things Jim would disapprove of—then, as Ryan was helping her grandmother with the dishes, Kayla went down the hall to talk privately with Travis. She sat on the edge of the bed so they’d be at the same eye level.

“So,” she said, “Jim came by here last night?”

Travis nodded.

“And Ryan mentioned a blind man and a dog. I presume that’s Professor Warkentin, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did, um, did he mention me?”

“He said you were an A student.”

“Not Warkentin. Jim.”

“I know.” And Travis smiled the smile with which brothers had teased sisters for millennia. “Sure, he mentioned you. He said he was sad about how things had gone down.” A pause. “And you know what I said? ‘I know how you feel.’ And I do.” He shook his head and looked at her as if he were about to add something more.

“What?” asked Kayla.

“Nothing.”

“I’ve had years of practice now,” she said, “but you’re still learning. Biggest difference, once you start listening to that voice in your head? Q2s are terrific liars; Q3s are lousy ones. What’s going on?”

Travis looked—well, like Kayla had never seen him look, at least not when he was younger: like he was at war with himself. And then at last, lifting his arms slightly from the chair’s rests, he said, “You and I, we’re mistakes.”

“Huh?”

“We got shifted,” he said. “Displaced.” Then, looking away: “This will fix it.”

“What will?”

“What Jim is planning to do.”

“You mean with the synchrotron? There’s no way. He’d need Vic’s help, and she’d never—”

“She is. She is helping Jim and Warkentin. Jim called her from here; I overheard.”

Kayla pushed her palms against the mattress, standing up. “I—no, no. That can’t be.”

“She agrees with him, with Jim: if something isn’t done, the world’s going to come to an end—if not today, with Putin or Carroway igniting World War III, then next week, or next month, or next year.”

Kayla ran out. Ryan called out “Mommy!” as she careened through the living room.

“Stay here!” Kayla said. “I’ll be back.”

“But—”

“I love you!”

And she hurried out the front door into the merciless summer heat.

Vic got Menno, Pax, and me in through security; she clipped a dosimeter to Pax’s collar. We headed along the first indoor mezzanine-level balcony and came to where it made a left-hand turn into the second one. Vic nodded affably at people who passed us going the other direction. We made another left onto the third balcony, went down its length, and at last came to the stairs, which Pax managed quickly—she knew to get out of the way and wait for Menno at the bottom. He headed down, his left hand on the railing. “Three more steps,” I said. “Two. One.”

And at last, we were on the experimental floor. But instead of heading out toward the synchrotron, Vic led us down a small side passage, and then, after a final ninja look over her shoulder to see if the coast was clear, she used a keycard to open a doorway and then ducked inside. Pax, Menno, and I followed.

The room was filled with conduits and pipes, compressors and tanks. The walls were bare cement; the floor crisscrossed by tire skid marks presumably from heavy equipment having been wheeled in and out. We closed the door, and I took out the disposable pay-as-you-go voice-only cell phone I’d picked up at 7-Eleven this morning. Shit. No bars! But, after a couple of seconds one appeared, and then, like its taller brother, another popped up beside it. Cell phones aren’t great for calling 911, so I’d jotted down the regular number for the Saskatoon Police Service on the back of an old restaurant receipt—the one from that meal Kayla and I had shared at Sydney’s—and punched it in now.

On the second ring, the phone was answered by an automated attendant. I worked my way through menus, until, at last, a gruff male voice said, “Saskatoon Police.”