Vortex (39 page)

Papers tumble out and unfold themselves in his hand. Orrin hasn’t yet learned to read, but, magically, he can read these words. He reads them all, page after page. What he reads here, he will never forget.

My name is Turk Findley,
he reads.

And:
My name is Allison Pearl.

And:
My name is Isaac Dvali
.

*   *   *

My name is Isaac Dvali and

*   *   *

I can’t write this anymore.

*   *   *

My name is Orrin Mather. That’s what my name is.

*   *   *

My name is Orrin Mather, and I work in a greenhouse in Laramie, Wyoming.

In the greenhouse at this nursery where I work, there are paths between the plants and the seedling tables. That’s so you can get from one place to another. Also so you can work on the plants without stepping on them. Those paths all connect with one another. You can go this way or you can go that. It all has the same beginning and the same ending. Though you can only ever stand in one place at once.

I believe I was born with these dreams or memories about Turk Findley and Allison Pearl and Isaac Dvali. They troubled me much when I was younger. They came to me like visions. They blew through me like a wind, as my sister Ariel liked to say.

That’s why I went to Houston on the bus so suddenly. That’s why I wrote down my dreams in my notebooks.

Things in Houston didn’t happen the way I expected. (As you know, Dr. Cole, and I expect you’ll be the only one to read these pages … unless you show them to Officer Bose, which is all right with me if you do so.) I suppose I took a different path from how I dreamed it. I never robbed any stores, for instance. I guess I could have. God knows I was hungry and angry enough from time to time. But whenever I felt like hurting someone I thought about Turk Findley and the burning man (which was me!), and how terrible it would be to carry around the weight of another man’s death.

I work in the greenhouse mainly at night but they keep the big lights on all the time. It’s like a house where it’s always noon on a sunny day. I like the wetness in the air and the smell of growing things, even the sharp smell of the chemical fertilizer. Do you remember those flowers outside my room at State Care, Dr. Cole? Bird of paradise you said they were called. They look like one thing but they’re really another. But they didn’t choose to look like that. They’re just what time and nature made of them.

We don’t grow that kind of flower in the greenhouse where I work. But I remember how pretty they were. They really do look like birds, don’t they?

*   *   *

I don’t believe I will write to you again, Dr. Cole. Please don’t take that the wrong way. It’s only that I want to put these troublesome things behind me.

The people Officer Bose introduced me to have been real kind. They found me this job, and a place for Ariel and me to live. They are good people, even if what they do is outside of the law. They are not criminals exactly. They just think they can invent a better way of living.

Maybe they will succeed at their work. If they do then maybe the world won’t turn barren and poisonous, like in the dreams I wrote down. I hope that is the case.

I don’t know, of course. But you can trust these people, Dr. Cole.

And I know you trust Officer Bose. He helped me when he didn’t have to. He’s a good man, I believe.

I thank him, and I thank you for the same reason.

Well, that is all I have to say. I have to go to work pretty soon.

Don’t expect to hear from me again.

Ariel sends her kind regards, and asks me to tell you that Houston is too damn hot.

Orrin Mather

Laramie, Wyoming

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book couldn’t have been written without the help and patience of friends and family members too numerous to mention; needless to say, I thank them all. Thanks also to Glenn Harper, who generously answered a technical question (about the relative size of a human being vis-à-vis the Planck length and the limits of the observable universe)—the answer didn’t make it into the final text of
Vortex,
at least not explicitly, but it helped clarify my thinking about the nature of “the Hypotheticals” and their intervention in human history. On the subject of oceanic eutrophication and the fate of the Earth, I drew on
Under a Green Sky
and
The Medea Hypothesis,
by the reliably pessimistic Peter Ward, and I commend both books to the attention of curious readers.

By Robert Charles Wilson from Tom Doherty Associates

A Hidden Place

Darwinia

Bios

The Perseids and Other Stories

The Chronoliths

Blind Lake

Spin

Axis

Julian Comstock

Mysterium

Vortex

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

VORTEX

Copyright © 2011 by Robert Charles Wilson

All rights reserved.

Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

A Tor
^®
eBook

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
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is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Robert Charles, 1953–

Vortex / Robert Charles Wilson. — 1st ed.

        p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-2342-2

I.  Title.

PR9199.3.W4987V67 2011

813'.54—dc22

2011011559

First Edition: July 2011

eISBN 978-1-4299-6073-1

First Tor eBook Edition: July 2011