Read Shelter for Free Online Page B

here."
     
        Two
     
        CURSING the weather, herself, and her probation officer, Roberta struggled back into her building through twelve inches of water and the carapaces of a small herd of sponge bots. They had absorbed all they could, poor stupid things, before enfolding themselves in the waterproof shells that would allow them to float out the storm. Sponge bots trying to mop up a flood: not a bad metaphor for her own situation. But the bots weren't on probation, and no one was going to tell them they were mentally ill.
        Maybe Sergei and the courts and the shrinks were right. Maybe she really was crazy. Why else would she have tried to walk to the soup kitchen, more than a mile away along flooding streets? The Western Addition was no place to be on foot, even in decent weather, and she'd known the odds of a successful journey weren't good when she set out. Fueled by the turbotab she'd dry-swallowed as she left her apartment, she'd pushed her way past amazing amounts of detritus: dead birds, a dead dog, bits of furniture, books and papers and cardboard boxes, a baby carriage. The dog had a collar and tags: that meant someone had loved it, fed it, taken it for its shots and thrown balls for it to fetch. Somebody had brought it home when it was a pup, given it a name, trained it to sit and heel. She pictured the owners, frantic, leaning out their windows in the storm, calling and calling above the wind. Lassie, come home.
        She'd pushed that image aside, her throat aching with loss, and forced herself to focus on another object as she plowed through the filthy water. Tell yourself a happy story now, Roberta. It was something Fred would have said. She heard the words in his voice, even all these years later.
        All right, she'd tell herself a happy story. That ratty couch with the springs popping up through the cushions, say: it had been new once, a proud acquisition. Someone had sat on it, watched TV and ate popcorn, read the paper, made love. It had gotten old, and now it was a hazard to anyone who sat on it, but that was all right, because someone had gotten a raise, gotten new furniture, triumphantly put the couch on the street for scavengers. Someone was moving up in the world. And the baby carriage: whoever had lost the baby carriage was holding the baby now, thanking Gaia that the child was safe and sound, that the child hadn't been lost too.
        No. Don't think about lost children. Wading through the deserted streets, she'd tried to force herself to tell only happy stories, but it had become more and more difficult. She kept being afraid that she'd see Mason's ancient manual wheelchair or one of Camilla's motley shopping bags: or Mason or Camilla themselves, facedown and bloated. When she found a tree blocking the street, washed down from Goddess only knew where, she'd finally turned back to go home, and acknowledged her own relief.
        You're damn lucky to be alive, she told herself now, pushing her way back into the building. You heard the radio: If the buses weren't running, what made you think you could get there on foot? So what if Sergei didn't call to excuse you from work? It's not like he would have blamed you for staying home in this weather. He probably would have written up a commendation and put it in your file.
        She had no idea what he'd do now. The GPS record would show that she'd left the building, that she'd gotten as far as Franklin and Gough before the water forced her to turn back. Sergei could easily use her futile expedition as proof that she had no voluntary control over her condition, that she needed gene therapy after all. Or he could argue the reverse: that turning back showed conscious volition and admirable self-interest. That would certainly be her argument, if he gave her a hard time about it.
        If the courts didn't want her to obsess about helping people, she wondered for the millionth time, why the hell had they placed her at a