Грег Иган: The Nearest

It was midmorning by the time Kate arrived in Coomera, but Emily worked from home, so there was no reason for her not to be around. Kate rang the bell and stood waiting, anxiously. She could feel herself already gloomily prejudging the verdict, on no evidence whatsoever.

She rang again, then banged on the door. “Emily?”

A young man emerged from the house next door. “I think she’s still away for another week.”

“Oh.”

“Either that, or she’s tricked me into watering her plants while she sleeps all day,” he joked.

Kate smiled. “I should have called first.” As she walked down the road toward the bus stop, she remembered Emily talking about a business trip to Texas to meet with potential investors. She’d apologized for dropping in so soon after Kate came home from hospital with Michael, but she’d been preparing to leave in the next day or two. Kate hadn’t entirely forgotten; she’d just assumed she would have been back by now.

Half an hour into the long ride north, the bus passed a battered pay phone. Kate rang the bell and got off at the next stop. She walked back to the pay phone, trying to recall Emily’s number; it had been years since she’d had to dial it. When she punched her best guess into the keypad, a bland synthetic voice offered her a hint of success: “The number you have dialed currently redirects to an international destination. Do you wish to proceed with the call?”

Kate said, “Yes.”

After six rings, she heard: “You’ve reached Emily’s phone, please leave a message.” Kate slammed the handset down. She recognized her friend’s voice, but it had been stripped of any trace of warmth and humor.

She stood by the phone as the traffic sped past beside her, trying to understand what had happened. Had Emily been carrying the virus even before she’d flown out of Brisbane, and only succumbed to it after she’d arrived in America? And then… what? She’d re-recorded her phone’s greeting, to reflect her new, diminished state of consciousness? Unless she was actually an alien pod-person signaling to her fellow invaders, why would she even think of doing that?

Kate called the number again, listened to the recording again. She’d heard the same words dozens of times over the last ten years. And she could not put her finger on any change in timing, pitch, or intonation.

She called a third time, covering her left ear against the traffic noise. Every syllable was shaped and positioned just as it always had been—like the freckles on Reza’s shoulders. It was only the deeper meaning that had slipped away.

But this was a sound file, a digital waveform—and if it was literally unchanged, then any meaning with which the speaker had imbued it ought to remain intact.

Kate called again, trying to block out any emotional reaction to the voice and judge it entirely as she would a series of beeps in an audiology test. The result was not what she’d expected: The affectless drone she’d been hearing before suddenly seemed more human, not less.

Just as the tone sounded for the caller to leave a message, the faint hiss on the line changed, and a live voice, thick from sleep, said, “Hello?”

Kate said, “Emily?”

“Kate? Is something wrong?”

“No. Did I wake you?”

“It’s all right; it’s not that late here.”

“I didn’t realize you’d still be away.”

“Yeah… I’ve had a lot of interest in the project, but these things never go to plan.”

Kate kept the conversation going while saying as little as possible herself, prodding Emily along with small talk, while tuning her own expectations in and out. The more she sought a feeling of solace and intimacy, the more her friend’s voice mocked and disappointed her. But when she emptied her mind and just listened, everything sounded normal.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Emily asked. “You sound a bit out of it.”

“Work’s been crazy,” Kate replied. “There’s a case… I can’t talk about it now, but maybe when you get back.”

When she’d hung up the call, she sat on the concrete beside the pay phone. There was only one conclusion that made any sense now, but trying to acknowledge it was like trying to take control of an optical illusion. The cube needed to evert; the vase needed to recede into the gap between two faces. All along, she’d been confusing figure and ground. But she’d been right to believe that the people who’d fled their families had been the ones affected by disease; her mistake had been to change her mind. Because she had fled for the very same reason.

Kate felt her whole body shaking, as if she’d just clawed her way back from a precipice. Michael and Reza weren’t suffering from any kind of illness. Beth, Chris and Emily were all in perfect health. And whatever she’d been afflicted with, herself, she had to believe that it could be treated. She had to cling to that hope, just as she had when the roles had appeared to be reversed.

She staggered to her feet. She thought of calling Reza, to set his mind at ease, but she was afraid that if she heard his voice everything might flip again.

As she walked toward the bus stop, she pictured herself back in the emergency department—where she should have remained, as Reza had beseeched her to, all those nights ago. But once she was admitted to hospital, once the psychiatrists and neurologists were debating the cause and extent of her delusions, how seriously would any of her colleagues treat her testimony? How much of what she had actually discovered would they believe?

How quickly would they act to protect the families who were marked for the same fate as Natalie’s?

She couldn’t take the risk that they’d ignore her. She couldn’t run away and hide in a hospital bed while the righteous army rose up against the hollow ones, and the true believers honored those they’d loved by granting them peace.

“I’ve been wondering about something,” Kate said. She was sitting with the other runaways: Linda, Gary, Suzanne and Ahmed, huddled in a circle away from the merely homeless, who were hostile or agnostic when it came to their cause. “Exactly where did this disease come from? And exactly how does it spread?”

“Does it matter?” Linda replied. “We know it’s spreading fast, whatever the route.”

But Suzanne was less dismissive. “It could be important. Did you have something in mind?”

Kate said, “My yard has a couple of fig trees, right at the back. And those fig trees are full of fruit bats. I don’t actually go down there and roll around in the guano, but our dog was doing that all the time.” She looked around the circle, hunting for any sign that this scenario, based on what she’d seen at Natalie’s house, might be describing a shared condition. “Remember the Hendra virus? It went from fruit bats to horses, then people. What if this is something like that—but with dogs instead of horses as the link?”

The group was silent for a while, then Ahmed said, “My dog was acting strangely for a couple of days before I left. But my wife had nothing to do with him; she wouldn’t even let him in the house.”

“Do you have fig trees?” Kate asked.

“No. But our neighbor does, and some of the branches hang over the fence.”

She waited, but no one else volunteered their own zoonotic risk profile. If the details didn’t match, why not say so?

Gary said, “In any case, we know it must be jumping straight from human to human now.”

Kate frowned. “What makes you so sure?”

“Because of the speed,” Linda interjected.

“But what exactly do we know about the speed?”

Linda was starting to lose patience. “My mother, in Sydney, was already affected the very same day my husband changed. I called her up to try to tell her something was wrong, and she was… gone.”