Viator

That gave her pause, but then not for long. A science team went in and found these crates, she said. Nobody knew where they came from…

—Arlene?

—It’s obvious now they came from Viator. They contained an engineered virus.

—I want to fuck you, he said gleefully.

—This is serious, Thomas! That thing you’re always drawing? That thing in your dreams? That’s it!

—The…what?

—The virus! That thing you’ve been dreaming about. There’s a picture of it the web page he sent me. The crates must have cracked open. You’ve got to get off the ship! We’re on our way out, Terry and me…

Sternly, he said, I thought we’d settled that.

—What?

—I’m not leaving.

—Haven’t you been listening? You’re at risk!

—You can’t expect me to leave now…now we’re so close.

—God, Thomas! Don’t you understand! Everything that’s happened is the fault of that fucking ship!

He sat up, swung his legs off the bunk. Not everything…not everything’s the fault of that fucking ship! You turned into an animal! You didn’t have to do that! An animal! That wasn’t the ship’s fault, that wasn’t the ship’s fault!!

—Thomas, please. I’m just…

—You keep telling me to leave! You keep telling me! Well, why don’t you try it, huh? Why don’t you try! Ahhh…fuck!

He threw the phone at the wall, satisfied to watch it splinter into little plastic bones, and sank back on the bed, emptied by rage, empty of hope, of vitality, of delirium—he could make a long list of the things he was empty of; and for a while he checked off this item and that, yes, yes, no, almost, and it got to be like counting sheep, he tried to sleep, but the sound and light were almost constant, and he just lay there, listening to the groaning, watching the flashes of light, so vivid, so pure a white he could see every color in them, see anything he wanted, and he wanted to see Arlene, she wasn’t really angry at him, she was sad he was leaving, and it saddened him to be leaving. He had a long, cool thought of her, an eyes-closed thought of how she’d drag her pendulant breasts over his chest, and when he opened his eyes she was sitting astride him, her red hair undone, in all her full, sweet, hot life, but as for him, his chest was bones, just a ribcage and shriveled heart and lungs within, and he wasn’t shocked, the image tired him, but he wasn’t shocked, because he was leaving, she was staying; it was the voice of hallucinatory reason warning him away from things he could not have. He replaced her with the whistler. The queen of Kaliaska replaced by a kitten with vacant eyes who made lustful cooing noises; but at least his chest had been restored. The weight of his thoughts dragged him under the ground of sleep and into a dream; he was back in school, something about acorns, Bliss put in an appearance, as did Arlene and a giant, and then he woke to a prolonged grating shudder, to the signal long awaited, of Viator getting under way.