She shrugged.

“You don’t need to stay here, Ruth. That was a long time ago. Show me the way out and come with me.”

Her eyes widened in surprise then narrowed to suspicion. “Mother Lola says it’s dangerous outside.”

The cannibals and brigands? Starvation and disease? Small potatoes. “You’d be free outside. Mother Lola doesn’t want that. She wants to control you. Get me loose and we can go together. There are risks, yes, but that’s what it means to be free.”

She shook her head vehemently. “I can’t.”

“You can. Unbuckle the straps on my wrists.”

“No.” But her hands went to the buckles and loosened them. She moaned the whole time, as if the weight of rebellion caused her physical pain.

Mortimer sat up, rubbed his wrists, then bent to release his ankles. He slid off the operating table, the tile floor cold on his bare feet.

“I need my clothes.”

“Mother Lola took them.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Mortimer grabbed her by the forearms, and the sudden contact made her gasp. She went weak, going to her knees. Mortimer sank to the floor with her, shook her until she met his eyes.

“Listen to me,” Mortimer said. “You’ve got to make a decision. What is it you want?”

“I want to go outside,” Ruth said. “I want to go with you.”

“Then show me the way.”

“Take this.” Ruth shoved something into his hand. “I saved it for you. I wanted you to know that I…that I was thinking about you.”

He opened his hand, looked at what she’d given him. His pink Joey Armageddon’s platinum card. “Thanks.” His only possession in the world. “Ready to get out of here?”

She searched his face, then nodded slowly. “It’s mealtime. If we’re quick, we might get out without anyone knowing. Follow me.”

Mortimer again confronted the words HOLY OF HOLY spray-painted over the door. The yellow police tape lay in tatters where he’d ripped it down earlier. He touched the padlock, looked at Ruth.

“Only Mother Lola has the key,” she said.

“Why does it say ‘Holy of Holy’?”

“Mother Lola says it holds the total knowledge of the society. Nobody but God should know all, so it’s kept locked.”

Mortimer walked down the hall, opened a glass door in the wall and came back with a fire extinguisher. He slammed it three times against the padlock until it popped open. He looked up and down the hall, but apparently no one had heard. He paused, then twisted the knob and entered.

The moldy smell hit him, the old, dusty odor of a room long unused. He turned around, looked back at Ruth still out in the hall. “Coming?”

She shook her head, took a step back.

The room was dark. Mortimer felt his way to a desk lamp and switched it on, the low-wattage bulb splashing its feeble light around the interior of the office. Desk, filing cabinets, bookcases. A big black leather couch along one wall.

A dead body on the leather couch.

He’d been dead a long time, his skin shriveled and dried. Most of his hair had fallen out. White lab coat with pens in the pocket. A plastic I.D. card with photo hanging from his neck. Mortimer noticed the corpse’s pants were down around his ankles. A large pair of rusty scissors stuck out of a vacant eye socket. A mummified fist clutched a pair of faded red panties.

You horny old bastard.

Mortimer examined the cabinets. Patient files. This was what Mother Lola must have meant about the total knowledge of the society. He brushed aside the temptation to look up Ruth’s file. He was curious, but it was none of his business. It took ten minutes of searching to find Mother Lola’s file.

Unless there was more than one transsexual admitted to the hospital, it had to be her file. Lawrence “Lola” Jameson was a real piece of work. According to the file, he hated men and therefore himself. No wonder the sex change operation looked so shoddy. Lola had done it to herself, eliminating, according to the doctor’s notes, “all that was male about herself.” The doctor had allowed for Lola to be transferred to his care, theorizing that Lola might feel better among women. The doctor’s scribbled notes went on to muse, “Lola blames men for the evils of the world, and supposes an all-female society as an ideal utopia.”

Mortimer closed the file and returned it to the cabinet. He didn’t want to read any more, and there wasn’t time anyway.

He saw a door in the back corner of the room and went to it. He turned the knob and went inside. A very small, dank-smelling bathroom. He closed the door, pissed and flushed.

A pinstripe suit hung from a hook on the back of the door. It was in plastic from a long-defunct dry cleaner. Navy blue with gray stripes, a blue shirt. No underwear or socks. He put on the suit. It was a half-size too big, but it would do. The pant legs were long, so he rolled them up.

He went back into the office and took the dead man’s shoes. He left the socks. The shoes fit perfectly. He took the belt too, cinched up the loose trousers.

Ruth stuck her head into the office. “What are you doing?”

Mortimer ignored her, went to the desk and searched the drawers, hoping to find anything useful. Stationery, pens, paper clips, a calculator. In the bottom drawer he found a set of keys on a big ring.

He held them up so Ruth could see, jingled them. “What do these go to?”

“I don’t know. Mother Lola never lets us-”

“Think, Ruth. There has to be a door out of this place.”

She wrung her hands, looked back over her shoulder, then back at Mortimer. “There is this one place-I don’t know if it’s anything. It might not be-”

“Show me.”

Her deep, pleading eyes met his. “You’ll take me with you?” she whispered.

“I’ll take you.”

She nodded, finally deciding, grabbed his hand tight and led him from the office. “There’s not much time.”

They continued down the hall past other offices with doctors’ names on the doors. The farther they went, the more obvious it became that the hall was unused, dusty, almost none of the fluorescent bulbs burning overhead. As far as Mortimer had observed, this was the only portion of the hospital that had fallen into such disrepair.

The hall terminated in almost total darkness. Ruth led Mortimer forward, her hand gripping his almost too tightly, her other hand held out in front of her as her steps slowed near a wall.

Mortimer’s eyes adjusted. Fake potted plants in the corners, covered by years of dust; a cheap oil painting of a sailing ship on choppy waters hung in the middle of the wall. A dead end.

“What is this, Ruth?”

She shrugged, her eyes unreadable in the darkness. “I was hiding in one of the offices. Mother Lola came from this direction.”

“Why were you hiding, Ruth?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was looking in the offices. I was curious. Nobody is ever supposed to come down here.” She latched suddenly on to Mortimer’s arm. “Please, we have to go. If she catches us here…”

Mortimer shook his arm loose, stepped up to the wall, ran his hand along its surface. Knocked. The material was thin, flimsy. “This is cardboard painted to look like the wall.”

Mortimer shoved, and the wall shook; the ship picture fell, frame glass shattering on the floor. Ruth started, yelped. He pushed the wall again, and the cardboard structure flopped over. Light streamed in, and Mortimer flinched. He pushed on, kicking the wall down until it was flat.

The hallway led to a glass door.

They went to it, pulled. Locked.

Mortimer looked for a place to try the keys he’d found in the doctor’s desk. No luck.

Ruth put her hands flat against the glass, looked through to the other side. “What is it?”

“Some kind of reception area. Or maybe a security checkpoint,” Mortimer said.

There was a counter, a phone and two cheap office chairs in a small waiting area. Half the lights still worked. Mortimer jerked on the door, but it wouldn’t budge.