Permafrost(14)

All right. I’ll tell you this much. I’m aboard a ship, an icebreaker, in northern Russia. I’m in a chair, with doctors and scientists fussing around me. And I’m coming into you from fifty-two years in the future.

Another silence—longer this time. Nearly enough to make me think she might have gone away for good.

I’d say you were mad, or lying. Then again, there is a voice in my head, and you have been making me do things. So, for the moment, I’m going to accept this stupid thing you’ve just told me, because I’d still rather believe you than accept that I’m the mad one.

You’re not the mad one.

Then how about you start by telling me how this is happening? How are you in me?

By means of something we put into your head. You were having an MRI scan, and . . . that’s how we do it. That’s how we reach the past, from 2080. We inject something into your head, a thing about the size of a grain of pollen, and it grows through your brain and lets me take you over, just for a short while.

Why?

So we can get something done. Something important.

And what gives you this right?

Nothing. No right at all. But it still has to be done. We’re in a mess here, Tatiana, a really bad one, but we can fix things a little by altering the past. Just a tiny amount—not enough to change your life or anyone else’s. And after we’re done, after you’ve helped us, you’ll never hear from us again. The thing in your brain, the control structure, will self-dismantle. It’ll flush itself out of you harmlessly, and you just get on with being you, as if nothing had ever happened.

She echoed back my words with a cold mockery.

As if nothing had ever happened. Do you really think it’ll be that simple?

I do.

Then at least you’ve settled one question for me. I know which one of us is insane.

*

After that, she let me get on with eating in peace and quiet.

Perhaps she’d decided to see if I went away if she stopped interrogating me. That said, it was very definitely me in charge of her as I worked my way through the hospital meal. But exactly how strange would that have felt, anyway? I thought of the times I’d spooned my way through government rations, my mind on the homework I was supposed to be marking, barely conscious of my hand as it went from plate to mouth. There were days when all of us might as well be under the control of disembodied spirits from the future, for all the difference it makes.

Yet this was a screwup, and no mistake. She wasn’t supposed to be able to talk to me or hear me in return. It was nothing Cho had ever mentioned as a normal aspect of the control structure functionality. But then again, all of this was experimental. No one had ever linked together two control structures through time, via Luba Pairs.

The meal wasn’t bad. I could already smell and taste quite well by then, and it was surprising how full-up I felt by the time I’d emptied the plate. The food wasn’t going into my stomach, but the signals from Tatiana’s digestive system were still finding their way to my brain, producing the effect of a steadily diminishing appetite.

“We’re not bad people,” I’d mouthed to myself.

Then what are you?

She was back again.

Please . . . for my sake . . . for your sake . . . just pretend none of this is happening.

I wish I could. Trouble is, I keep getting these flashes of double vision. I’m here, and then I’m somewhere else. Not this room. Somewhere without any windows, all metal. I’m in a chair, leaning back, and there are people crowding around. Lots of machines and lights. What is it, some secret government laboratory? Are you testing some way of turning ordinary people into zombies? Putting things in our heads, while we’re in hospital? Is that it?

Yes. That’s exactly it. Mind-control drones. The government’s in on it. So’s the hospital. And they’re reading your mind right now. You’re about the tenth subject we’ve burned through so far. I’d really like to protect you, too, but if you keep talking aloud in your own head, keep asking questions, they’re going to pick up on it, and . . .

And nothing. You just want me to shut up, is all it is. Still, I think you told me the truth about Kogalym. I had an aunt there once. And you’re right, it really is a shithole. No one would ever have made that part up.

*

The one good thing was that sooner or later even Tatiana Dinova had to sleep.

I’d worked out a system with the knife by then, one we’d rehearsed upstream as best we could. If I pushed the admissions bracelet as far up my arm as it would go, I could wedge the handle of the knife under it, with the sharp end digging into the crook of my elbow. It wasn’t comfortable, and it relied on my keeping an angle in my arm, but it kept the knife from showing when I let down my sleeve.

The hospital wasn’t a restful place at night. There were fewer admissions, the televisions were turned down, and the staff kept their conversations low, but it made very little difference. Electronic monitors still went off at all hours, beeping tones cutting through walls and floors, patients coughed and complained, telephones rang and elevators whined and clattered. Then there were shift changes and people being paged, and fire and security alarms going off in distant wings.

By five the blinds were doing a bad job of masking the arrival of daylight. The doctors were starting their morning rounds. Curtains were being swished back along curving rails. Voices were going up again, the coughs and complaints more full-throated. I reached under the pillow and extracted the knife, then slid it back up my sleeve.