Bose said, “I’m worried about how dangerous this has become for you.”

“Thank you. So am I. But I still want to help Orrin.”

“I’m sorry about all this. Getting you involved in it. Short of doing what the caller suggested, I think you’re pretty much out of a job at this point.”

“I expect so.”

“And you’re not the only one. I was called into the precinct captain’s office yesterday. He said I have a choice. I can keep my distance from whatever’s going on at State Care or I can turn in my gun and badge.”

“I take it you’re not planning to keep your distance?”

“I’ll worry about my career tomorrow. We need to get Orrin out of that building. Then he and his sister can lay low until all this is resolved, one way or another.”

“Okay, great. How do we do that?”

Another evaluative silence. “You absolutely sure you want to get deeper into this?”

“Just tell me what to do, Bose.”

“Well, it depends.” He scrutinized her. “Are you willing to go back there and apologize, make it look like you’re cooperating?”

“That’s your plan?”

“Part of it.”

“All right, suppose I do go back … what then?”

“You give me a call as soon as Congreve leaves for the night. I’ll come by when I hear from you. Then we’ll see if we can pry Orrin out of the locked ward.”

Chapter Fifteen. Sandra and Bose

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TURK’S STORY

1.

The “vanguard expedition,” as Oscar insisted on calling it, consisted of fifty people, mostly soldiers but including a half dozen manager-class civilians and twice that many scientific and technical personnel, plus all their gear and an aircraft big enough to accommodate us.

Allison had told me one of these vehicles could be flown by a single pilot with a nodal link. The link made it possible to gain access to the control interfaces—the real pilot was the ship itself, quasi-autonomous subsystems that enacted the operator’s intentions. Touch menus and visual displays popped up on any available surface. Exterior views were distributed throughout the cabin on virtual windows, one of them on a wall opposite the bench where Oscar and I were seated.

The view was uniformly drab until we crossed onto the mainland and approached the Queen Maud Range. There was still a trace of glaciation on the highest peaks of these mountains. The ice was clean, distilled by evaporation from the cesspool of the sea, and in the shadowed slopes it gave back a crisp blue radiance.

Coming down the windward slope into the interior desert we ran into heavy cloud and intermittent snow. I asked Oscar whether it was safe to fly under these conditions. He looked at me as if I’d asked a child’s question. “Yes, of course.”