Peter Watts. Bethelhem
Denial, for instance...
It was her own damn fault.
No. No, that's not right. But Christ, look at this place; what did she expect, living here?
A dried blood stain smears a meter of sidewalk, a rusty backdrop for broken bottles and the twisted skeleton of an old ten-speed. Everything is too big. All this jagged structure, so solid and visible, frightens me. I focus on the stain, search for some hint of its unseen complexity. I want to throw myself down through familiar orders of magnitude and see inside; dead erythrocytes, molecules of ferrous haemoglobin, single atoms dancing in comforting envelopes of quantum uncertainty.
But I can't. It's just a featureless brown blot, and all I can see is that it was once part of someone like me.
She's not answering. I've been buzzing for five minutes now.
I'm the only one in sight, sole occupant of a narrow window in time: all the victims have made for cover, and the monsters aren't out yet. But they're coming, Darwin's agents, always ready to weed out the unfit.
I push the buzzer again. "Jan, it's Keith." Why doesn't she answer? Maybe she can't, maybe someone got in, maybe...
Maybe she just wants to be alone. That's what she said on the phone, isn't it?
So why am I here? It's not that I didn't believe her, exactly. It's not even that I'm worried about her safety. It's more a matter of procedure; when your best friend has been raped, you're supposed to be supportive. That's the rule, even these days. And Janet is my friend, by any practical definition of the term.
Glass breaks somewhere in the distance.
"Jan—"
If I leave now I can still make it back before it gets too late. The sun doesn't go down for at least another twenty minutes. This was a stupid idea anyway.
I turn away from the gate, and something clicks behind me. I look back; a green light glows by the buzzer. I touch the grating, briefly, jerking my hand back after the slightest contact. Again, for longer this time. No shock. The gate swings inward.
Still no words from the speaker.
"Jan?" I say into the street.
After a moment, she answers. "Come on up, Keith. I—I'm glad you came by..."
***
Five floors high, Janet bolts the door behind me. The wall holds her up while I step past.
Her footsteps trail me down the hall, stiff, shuffling. In the living room she passes without eye contact, heading for the fridge.
"Something to drink?"
"There's a choice?"
"Not much of one. No dairy products, the truck got hijacked again. They had beer, though." Her voice is strong, vibrant even, but she walks as though rigor mortis has already taken hold. Every movement seems painful.
The room is dimly lit; a lamp with an orange shade in one corner, a TV with the volume down. When she opens the fridge, bluish light spills across the bruises on her face. One of her eyes is swollen and pulpy.
She closes the refrigerator. Her face falls into merciful eclipse.
She straightens in stages, turns to face me, bottle in hand. I take it without a word, careful not to touch her.
"You didn't have to come," she says. "I'm doing okay."
I shrug. "I just thought, if you needed anything..."
Janet smiles through the swelling. Even that seems to hurt.
"Thanks, but I picked up some stuff coming back from the precinct."
"Janet, I'm sorry." How else can you say it?
"It wasn't your fault. It was mine."
I should disagree. I want to disagree.
"It was," she insists, although I haven't spoken. "I should have seen it coming. Simple scenario, predictable outcome. I should have known."
"Christ, Jan, why are you still living out here?" It sounds like an accusation.
She looks through the window. By now it's dark enough to see the fires on the east side.
"I lived here before," she reminds me. "I'm not going to let the fuckers drive me out now."
Before. I follow her gaze, see a tiny dark spot on the sidewalk below. Families lived here once. It's April. Warm enough that kids would be playing out there now. There are people who think that somewhere, they still do. Somewhere at right angles to this twisted place, some place where the probability wave broke onto a more peaceful reality. I wish I could believe that. There would be a little solace in the thought that in some other timeline, children are playing just outside.
But that world, if it even exists, diverged from ours a long time ago. Three, maybe four years...
"It happened so fast," I murmur.
"Fold catastrophe." Absently, Janet speaks to the window.
"Change isn't gradual, Keith, you keep forgetting. Things just cruise along until they hit a breakpoint, and zap: new equilibrium.
Like falling off a cliff."
This is how she sees the world: not reality, but a trajectory in phase space. Her senses gather the same data as mine, yet everything she sees sounds so alien...
"What cliff?" I ask her. "What breakpoint? What's breaking?"
"What, you don't believe what they say?"
They say a lot of things. With perfect hindsight, they moan about the inevitable collapse of an economy based on perpetual growth. Or they blame an obscenely successful computer virus, a few lines of code that spread worldwide and turned the global economy to static overnight. They say t isn't their fault.
"Twenty years ago they'd be blaming alligators in the sewers," I remark.
Janet starts to speak; her voice erupts in a great wracking cough.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, winces. "Well, if you'd prefer, there's always Channel six's interpretation," she says, pointing to the TV.
I look at her, quizzical.
"The Second Coming. We're almost up to crucifixion plus two thousand years."
I shake my head. "Doesn't make any less sense than most of the stuff I've heard."
"Well."
Mutual discomfort rises around us.
"Well, then," I say at last, turning to leave. "I'll come by tomorrow, see how you're doing—"
She gives me a look. "Come on, boss. You know you're not going anywhere tonight. You wouldn't even make it to Granville."
I open my mouth to protest. She pre-empts me: "There's a bus goes by around eight every morning, one of those new retrofits with the fullerene plating. Almost safe, if you don't mind being a couple of hours late for work."
Jan frowns for a second, as though struck by sudden realization.
"I think I'll work at home for a few days, though," she adds. "If that's okay."
"Don't be ridiculous. Take some time off. Relax."
"Actually, I doubt that I'll really be in the mood to relax."
"I mean—"
She manages another smile. "I appreciate the gesture, Keith, but sitting around just wallowing... it would drive me crazy. I want to work. I have to work."
"Jan—"
"It's no big deal. I'll log on tomorrow, just for a minute or two. Should be able to download what I need before any bugs get in, and I'll be set for the rest of the day. Okay?"
"Okay." I'm relieved, of course. At least I've got the good grace to be ashamed about it.
"In the meantime"—she takes a wooden step towards the hall closet—"I'll make up the couch for you."
"Listen, don't worry about anything. Just go lie down, I'll make supper."
"None for me. I'm not hungry."
"Well, okay." Damn. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do. "Do you want me to call anyone? Family, or—"
"No. That's fine, Keith." There's just a hint of caution in her voice. "Thanks anyway."