“Or he could be a trap,” Amanda countered. “Or a Pelletier. Or he might not be there at all. We’re not ready to face the next step, David. Not with Theo like this.”
David threw a pleading look at Zack. “Are you going to help me here? Or are you relishing the thought of a smaller group?”
The cartoonist exhaled from his easy chair, splitting his pity between Theo and David. The boy’s rational insights were consistently drowned out by the emotional concerns of the majority. Clearly he was about to be outvoted again.
Zack looked to Amanda. “For what it’s worth, I agree with him. You’re taking an insane risk for a bunch of pills you might not even get. I mean without ID—”
“I’m bringing a sick man and a fat wad of cash. That’ll be enough.”
“And if they give you a written prescription?”
“They should have samples. I’ll ask for extra. I’ll pay through the nose if I have to.”
Zack shrugged with hopeless uncertainty. “Well, you know that scene better than I do. I’m just telling you where I stand. That said, if I were the one in Theo’s shoes, I wouldn’t want this put to a group vote. It’s his pain and your risk. It should be his decision and yours.”
Amanda leaned back on the couch and looked to Hannah’s lap. In all the hubbub, nobody had noticed until now that Theo was awake. He fixed a dull gaze at the ceiling.
“Did you hear all that?” Amanda asked.
“I heard enough.”
“What do you think?”
He barely had the space for thoughts. Over the last two days, the future had been thrown in a blender and funneled into him. He’d progressed beyond fretting over individual images and now worried about the patterns. Hannah kept suffering at the cruel hands of Evan. Zack kept dying at the tempic hands of Esis. The skyline of San Francisco kept crumbling in a distant cloud of dust.
Between all the flashes and glimpses, Theo detected a hint of a much larger problem, a lingering shade of despair in the minds of his elder selves. It always stayed the same from future to future. The only merciful aspect of his ordeal was that he never stayed in one place long enough to see the true shape of it. Theo didn’t consider himself a particularly strong or brave man. He was willing to take any risk, any detour to avoid the awful thing ahead of him.
“I can walk,” he said, in a weak and jagged voice. “I can go.”
—
Amanda’s preconception of the health fair was generous in hindsight. The admission line was a hundred-yard backlog of impoverished treatment-seekers, all as surly and grim as the weather itself. Volunteer organizers in white rain slickers floated around them like angry ghosts, shouting incomprehensible orders. A line cutter provoked a fistfight, causing a human domino topple that ended ten feet shy of Amanda and Theo.
After snaking through the rain for sixty-eight minutes, they finally reached the admission tent. Amanda filled the reception clerk’s ear with an elaborate tale of muggings and lost wallets before learning that ID was required only for those who wished to waive the hundred-dollar entry fee. She paid the money so cheerfully that the clerk wondered why she even bothered with the sob story.
Amanda led Theo to the waiting room tent and sat him down in a folding chair, rubbing his back as he rested his face in his palms. She nervously glanced around for cameras, then jumped in her seat when she spotted an elderly man reading a magazine with her own tempic fist on the cover. In the center of the shot, Zack winced in purple-faced agony while Amanda’s giant fingers dangled him from a hotel balcony, cracking ribs.
And you wonder why he’s been so cold to you, she thought.
They waited in silence for thirty more minutes, until a young and anxious nurse led them to a small private tent. An hour passed without anyone checking on them, then another. Every time Amanda flagged a staffer, she received a shrug and a jittery assurance that a doctor was coming.
“I don’t like this,” Theo moaned from the cot. “Something’s wrong.”
“I told you these places were disorganized.”
“No. I don’t like this. We need to get out of here.”
She parted the curtain and peered at the waiting room tent across the way. Just five minutes ago, it had been packed with patients. Now all the chairs were empty.
Her fingers curled in tension. “God. I think you’re right.”
Theo struggled to a sitting position. “Shit! Shit! I didn’t see it in time!”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s too late. They’re here.”
“Theo, what—”
“Hold your breath!”