Shelter by Susan Palwick Read Free Book Online

soup kitchen, anyway? But she knew the answer: if she could keep her balance there, if she could take care of the clients and still take appropriate care of herself, she'd be all right anywhere. It was the ultimate challenge, conclusive proof that she didn't need an injection of gengineered brain-stem cells to change her neurochemistry for good.
        The formal name for her psychiatric diagnosis was "excessive altruism," but the media had promptly shortened it; these days, everyone referred to people like her as "the exalted." It wasn't a compliment. No matter how morally superior she felt next to Sergei—that smug, smarmy sack of bureaucratic shit—she didn't dare let him know it. Only six more weeks of probation, she thought as she waded into her foyer. Six more weeks and she'd be rid of Sergei, rid of the GPS cells, rid of the surveillance. Six more weeks and she could be as altruistic as she wanted. It wasn't like any of the clients at the soup kitchen were going to complain.
        The water in the foyer tugged at her knees. There was no chance the elevator was still working, and it wouldn't have been safe even if it had been. Roberta would have to take the stairs, even though she suddenly felt as if she couldn't move another step. The turbotab had worn off; another one, wrapped in plastic, sat in her shirt pocket, but a second this soon, on top of the fatigue toxins in her system, wouldn't do much more than ruin her stomach. Not to mention that it was a definite probation violation, although Sergei hadn't bothered with substance testing for three years now. "Your problem," he'd told her gently, "is your internal chemistry, not anything exogenous."
        Fuck you, Sergei. My internal chemistry's worth ten of yours. Not that it's going to help me if you decide that this little expedition warrants gene therapy after all. She checked her watch. She was still well within the window for her morning call: good. Time to get home and call the creep. Reassure him that you've gotten over—how do they put it?—your "fixation on helping others at unacceptable risk to the self."
        All she had to do was get up two flights of stairs. She could do that without extra drugs. Two more flights and she'd be home, and safe. She tried not to think about the people she fed at the soup kitchen, the ones who didn't have homes to be safe in: old Camilla with her shopping bags, Leon with his scars and tattoos, Legless Mason, who'd been begging on the street for five years to raise enough cash for a smart wheelchair. Thinking about them, caught in the rain and the wind, was what had made her go outside in the first place, driven by the same fierceness that had made her beat up bullies when she was a child. But beating up bullies had only gotten her into trouble, and trying to beat the weather was equally stupid.
        Shaking from cold and wet and exhaustion, the crash from the tab, she fought the current and made her way to the stairs. Here was the stairway; here was the rail. Step. Step. She'd reached the third step, the margin of safe dryness, when she heard someone calling through a lull in the wind. "Help me," a woman screamed. "Help me! I'm going to die! Kevin? Where are you? Help!"
        The wind rose again, drowning out the frantic, keening voice. It was coming from Zephyr's apartment. Trust that place, Roberta thought savagely, to keep making trouble even after Zephyr wasn't living there anymore. Zephyr must have bought it, or be paying her rent in absentia; otherwise the space would have been snapped up by permanent tenants. Instead, various unsavory strangers had stayed there for short periods of time after Zephyr left: artist friends of hers, probably. Or AI smugglers. Roberta had carefully avoided all of them, but none of them had ever screamed for help during a flood.
        "Kevin? Kevin?"
        Kevin? Roberta, frowning, felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Never mind. It wasn't that