I pushed aside the drapes and squinted at the planet. The room was on the tenth floor, and I looked down on Bay Street at full morning rush. Not a pretty sight. Each lane was a conveyor belt for delivering boxed humans into the mouths of hungry corporations. All those people, thinking that they were unique and special. A million brains throwing off waves of stupidity and pettiness and ba.n.a.lity, thinking, I gotta lose weight, I should have charged my pen, Why didn't I leave that idiot? The telepaths of the NAT had to be fakes, I thought. Any real mind-readers would have shot themselves at the earliest opportunity.

I managed to find my jeans. The pen Ollie had given me last night was in the back pocket, pulsing with a message alert.

It was Rovil. He'd returned my call an hour ago. I pulled on my clothes, then called him back. He answered in seconds.

"Did you get Edo's address?" I asked.

"I'm sorry," Rovil said. "I'm trying. I've left messages everywhere. I didn't want to be too ... indiscreet. I've contacted friends in my social network, however, and I'm hoping somebody will have a number."

"Thanks, kid. Keep trying. Now, do you have access to a GC-MS machine?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Come on-gas chromatograph and ma.s.s spectrometer. One-stop shopping for all your molecular identification needs."

"I know what one is," he said. "I was just surprised by the question. And the answer is yes, there are several at work."

"I mean private access. Where you could look at something without having it reported."

His eyebrows arched. "You found samples?"

"Just one," I said. "I can FedEx it to you."

"Amazing! Where did you get it?"

"I don't want to talk about it just yet."

He thought for a moment. "If you mail it to my home, I could take it in after hours."

"You rock."

He laughed, and I told him I'd get it to him right away.

Ollie came out of the bathroom while I was pulling on my boots. She wore a white hotel robe. Wet hair shining, skin glowing. She seemed ten years younger than she had in the NAT. She looked me over, taking in the information that I was already dressed. She glanced at the duffel bag, the window, then back to me.

"I thought you were maybe talking to her," she said. "But she's not here, is she?"

"Dr. Gloria? How do you know that?"

"There's a thing you do with your eyes when she's around. You can't look at someone straight on for too long-your pupils jump around, up to the right, then back again."

"I-I didn't know that."

"It's not that noticeable. So where is she?"

"We had a disagreement."

"So that's good, right? No hallucinations?"

"Oh yeah, it's great."

She frowned. "You want her back."

"She's useful," I said. "Sometimes."

"What can an invisible, imaginary angel do for you?"

"You'd be surprised. Have you looked at the news yet?"

Ollie decided to overlook my blatant change of subject. "There's nothing about a double murder," she said. "I don't think the bodies have been discovered."

"Cool." I stood up and grabbed my jacket. "Listen, I have to run an errand."

"I was serious about the room service," she said.

"You order without me. I've got to mail the sample to Rovil. I'll be back in a half hour, hour at the latest."

She regarded me silently. Something had closed down in her face.

I knew this would be a problem. s.e.x would mean more to her than it would to me. And as soon as I didn't act as she expected, she would look for data to explain that-and we'd be off and running on the Paranoia Express.

I kissed her. "Croissants and a pot of hot coffee," I said. "That's all I want."

I held the open FedEx envelope in one hand, and the sheet of rice paper in the other. I didn't want to put the paper inside and send away my only connection to Numinous. But what choice did I have? I needed the verification Rovil could provide.

I called up his home address-his apartment building was called "The Ludlow," which sounded tony-waved it onto the package's smart label, then dropped the envelope into the FedEx box.

I walked for fifteen, twenty minutes, looking for a quiet place to sit down. Here in downtown the sidewalks were crowded with young people in an array of skin tones, wearing clothing I could no longer afford. Canada, unlike the United States, was still a predominately white nation, but not in Toronto. You could see the future here. This was the final century for my species, the Pale North American Red-Crested b.i.t.c.h. Good riddance.

I found a tiny courtyard between two buildings that had the tidy, curated feel of a nationally mandated green s.p.a.ce, and sat down on a marble bench. The cold stone immediately numbed my backside. On the next bench sat a homeless man, probably Caucasian, with wild gray hair and a face ruddy from long exposure to sun and wind and snow. He wore several layers of clothing and guarded a black garbage bag of belongings. He was talking to no one I could see, speaking in a low, angry voice. I figured I'd fit right in.

I waited until no one was pa.s.sing by on the sidewalk, and then I said aloud, "I'm sorry." When Dr. Gloria was being difficult, talking silently in my head was no good. She wanted audible respect. "Did you hear me?" I said, louder. "I'm sorry."

The angel did not appear. I hugged myself, the wind tugging at my jacket, as the bench turned my a.s.s into a frozen pork chop.

After a while I said, "I admit it. I'm using her. But I would say in my defense that she's using me, too. She wanted out of that hospital. She wanted me to ... want her."

I kept my b.u.t.t planted on the freezing bench. Trying to score points by enduring some discomfort. I said, "I promise that as soon as I can, I'll get her back in the hospital. And if she won't go, then we'll figure out what dosage she should be on, and I'll do it. I just need her sharp enough to help me."

The homeless guy squinted at me. He'd stopped talking to himself. I ignored him.

"I need her right now, okay? You know how important this is. And I need your help, too."

A minute pa.s.sed. She refused to appear.

"Jesus Christ!" I said to the air. The man shook his bushy gray head at me, looked away. Everybody's a critic.

After a while I reached into my boot and withdrew the green box cutter I'd borrowed from Ollie's duffel bag. I turned it in my hands. "Please," I said. "Don't make me do this."

Dr. G was an Old Testament girl. She knew the story of the binding of Isaac. Abraham climbed the mount with his son, making the kid carry the wood for his own sacrifice, all because his G.o.d demanded proof of obedience.

I slid open the catch on the box cutter. The blade, when it touched the skin of my inner arm, made a dimple, then summoned a dot of blood. There were other, older scars in the vicinity. I had done this before, and Dr. G knew I could do it again. She had to.

Abraham's biggest problem was that G.o.d was omniscient. Yahweh couldn't be bluffed. There was no way for Abraham to fake his way through the preparations for the sacrifice, counting on a holy interruption, because G.o.d could see into his heart each moment and know whether he was absolutely ready to kill his own son. I had the same problem. Dr. G lived in my head, and even when she wasn't talking to me, she saw what I saw, heard what I heard. My mind was an open book.

"Hey now," a voice said. It was the homeless man. He was hunched over, looking at me and the knife.

I breathed in. One, I thought. Two.

I opened my eyes. The man was still staring at me with frank interest. But he made no move to stop me. And neither did Dr. G.

I screamed, an extended, primal "Fu-u-u-ck!" I jumped up and threw the box cutter behind me.

"Hey now," the man said again. "You can't just leave that there. A little kid could pick that up."

"And f.u.c.k you, too," I said. "You were just going to sit there and watch me cut myself?" The bright plastic box cutter was easy to find. I closed the blade and put it in my pocket.

"What kind of sick G.o.d would let you murder your own child?" I asked him. "Not one worth worshiping, that's what. It wasn't G.o.d testing Abraham, it was Abe testing G.o.d. If G.o.d let him do that to Isaac, then f.u.c.k it, the holy covenant is null and void."

The man did not quite nod.

"That's right," I said. "Ruminate on that."

CHAPTER NINE.

Later, I started referring to it as the Greenland Summit. I had called the meeting, and I was determined to forge a treaty, or perhaps "covenant" would be a better word, among three clinically insane people-me, Edo, and Rovil-and their G.o.ds. It was on a Sunday seven months after the party, on the day before Gil's trial was finally to begin.

My situation dictated the meeting place. Greenland House was a private hospital in the suburbs of Chicago where I'd been staying since the night Mikala died. I chose to use the cafe. It was midafternoon, between meals, and I had the place to myself except for a nurse who hovered in the hallway. I took a table near the fireplace where I could watch the door. The decor was a cut above any medical building I'd ever been in, and the cafe was like an upscale restaurant. It had atmosphere. Edo was paying for it, of course.

They came in at the same time, as if they'd traveled together. Probably they had. Edo opened his arms, but I was not going to hug him. I stayed behind the table. Edo sat down awkwardly. Rovil, polite as ever, shook my hand before sitting. Dr. Gloria sat to my right. Edo and Rovil's G.o.ds did not seem to require their own seats. Only my divine presence was a diva.

"Tell me how you're doing," Edo said.

"I'm fat, sad, and crazy. How 'bout you?"

He laughed, but it wasn't the typical Edo guffaw that he once deployed like a weapon in negotiations. The laugh was a warm, commiserating chuckle. "Are they taking care of you and the-"

"They take care of everybody," I said.

Edo seemed to take up less s.p.a.ce than he used to. He was still a physically big man, a giant who overwhelmed the seat like a visiting parent squatting at an elementary school desk. But he was subdued, watchful.

Dr. Gloria said, "Ask them if they want something to drink."

I ignored her. At that moment, I knew she was a hallucination manufactured by fast-growing neurons in my temporal lobe. Other times I was equally sure she was the manifestation of G.o.d on this plane, sent to guide me. When this happens to sane people, it's called cognitive dissonance.

We'd all been warned by our lawyers not to talk about the murder. They didn't want us to pollute our testimonies in case we were called to the stand, as if three people with verifiable mental disorders could possibly be trusted to relay facts of the case. I was in the worst shape: clinically depressed and minimally medicated, and the only one of us still in a facility. Edo and Rovil, at least, had managed to impersonate the sane and the unsainted long enough to escape the psych wards.

"You could leave if you wanted to," Dr. Gloria said. "I'll be with you."

Again I ignored her. "Let's talk about the NME," I said.

Edo and Rovil glanced at each other. They didn't know where this was going.

"We bury it," I said. "It can never see the light of day."

Edo frowned. "I don't think..."

"The intellectual property stays locked up. We get the lawyers to write something for us. We make sure that Little Sprout never gets re-formed to make the drug, and we don't sell the IP to anyone, for any reason. Promise me."

"Of course," Rovil said. "I would never-"

"I wasn't talking to you," I said.

Edo thought for a long moment. "I know you're hurt," he said. "I can feel it. But Numinous is not the problem."

"Jesus Christ, Mikala's dead because of it."

"I can't tell you why Gil-why he did what he did," Edo said. "But that was an overdose; we were all ... disoriented. Most of us were knocked unconscious. That doesn't mean Numinous can't-"

"Stop calling it that." Numinous was Mikala's name for it. The trial had turned up her computerized log books. She'd been taking the drug, ramping up dosages week by week. Sometime during the experiments she stopped calling it by its number and gave it a name.

"One-Ten can still help people," Edo said. "Not in the amounts that we took, of course. Perhaps tiny dosages. Something that would open the door just a little bit."

"What f.u.c.king door?"

"To G.o.d," Edo said. He was perfectly sincere.

That's when I realized he'd been taken in by the drug. He wasn't even struggling to keep himself sane. He'd given in.

I turned on Rovil. "What about you? Is Numinous a doorway to Jesus?"

Rovil glanced at Edo, then looked at his hands. "I cannot say that, but it has certainly helped me."

"You f.u.c.kers."

Edo stared at me. His eyes gleamed.

I pushed back from the table and started to get up. My belly was huge, a thing with its own gravity. Dr. Gloria put out a hand to help me up, but I shoved her away. "After all this," I said to Edo, "you would still put the drug out there. You think people can take just one small dose, then stop? What do you think Mikala was doing before she lost herself? She became a fanatic. She made a neurochemical bomb, then she dropped it-on her own child. Why? So we could all see G.o.d together."

"Please, sit down...," Edo said.