The Mad Scientist's Daughter (21 page)

  Eventually, Cat had danced with everyone willing, all the awkwardly suited young men from SynLodge, a handful of her father's friends. She broke away from the dance floor and drifted out amongst the twinkling tables strewn with champagne flutes, making sure to keep moving, a fluff of dandelion seed caught on the wind. She drifted over to where Finn was sitting.

  "Dance with me," she said, and he looked at her with his black eyes. Miguel sat next to him, his tie loosened, and Cat saw him watching her with an expression of drunken amusement.

  "Was he bothering you?" she asked Finn.

  "Not at all."

  Miguel winked conspiratorially at her. Cat had drunk too much champagne to care. She grabbed Finn by both hands and pulled him to standing. He wore the same ill-fitting suit he had worn to her mother's funeral. They walked out to the dance floor and the music changed, became something old and slow and sad, too sad to be romantic, too sad for a wedding. No one else was dancing. She put her arms around Finn's neck, and he put his hands on her waist. The dress's weight disappeared. She moved her face close to his, and he didn't pull away. They were close enough to kiss.

  The song lasted three and a half minutes. For three and a half minutes, Cat lived a completely different life. For three and a half minutes, she had married Finn instead of Richard. For three and a half minutes, the version of her life that rolled out in front of her did not fill her heart with dolor.

  For three and a half minutes, Cat understood joy.

  When the song ended, Cat felt something rushing out of her, as though she had been holding her breath underwater. Finn pulled away, his hands at her elbows. Cat looked dazedly around the room. It was late in the afternoon, and no one was paying any attention to her. Richard loitered by the bar, laughing raucously with his friends. Felix and Lucy and Miguel leaned against one another at one of the tables, passing a bottle of vodka between them. Her father, sitting alone by the door, looked toward the annihilated wedding cake, his hands folded neatly in front of him. Cat turned back to Finn. His eyes vibrated.

  "Thanks for the dance," she said.

  "You're welcome. Congratulations on your marriage." A pause. "Mrs Feversham."

 

When Cat stepped outside the reception hall, the glare from the sun flashed up off the jewels on her dress and blinded her. She threw up one hand, eyes fluttering, pupils contracting into tiny pinpricks. She saw nothing but white light.

  "Time to go." Richard's voice was in her ear; his breath was at the nape of her neck. The heat of his hands pressed against her lower back, pushing her into a shower of birdseed. Cat lifted up her skirts, tilted her head down. In the miasma of sunlight she spotted the shine of Richard's car. Everyone was cheering. She couldn't breathe.

  She climbed into the car, hoisting her skirts up around her. It was pointless even to try to buckle the safety belt. She slipped off her shoes and tucked her legs up underneath her and peered out the window at everyone peering back at her. She didn't see Finn.

  "We're fucking married." Richard threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her across the shift stick. Kissed her. "I have a surprise for you."

  "A good surprise or a bad surprise?" The last thing Cat wanted today was a surprise. What she wanted more than anything was to sleep.

  He smiled. "A good one." He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. A cheer erupted behind them. Cat watched the reception hall disappear in the rearview mirror.

  Richard pulled onto the freeway. He reached down and turned on his music player, drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.

  Cat almost said,
You're in a good mood
, before she stopped herself, realizing,
He just got married. He married you. You're married.

  She took a deep breath.

  They weren't driving in the direction of the condo; they were, in fact, driving out of the city. Everything here was brand new, reconstructed in the last few years. This part of the countryside had flooded, many years ago, before Cat was born. Three hurricanes in a month, with winds strong enough to shoot off strings of tornados like Christmas lights.

  "Where are we going exactly?" Cat pressed one hand to the window. The thin strips of grass lining the freeway were greener than the grass in the city.

  "I told you, it's a surprise." Richard guided the car off the freeway, onto a road surrounded by sound walls the pearly color of conch shells. He turned down one street and then another. Huge suburban houses flashed by. A stone sunk to the bottom of Cat's stomach. She didn't like the look of these houses. They were more normalcy than she was prepared to handle.

  Richard pulled up to a guarded gate, pressed his ID card to the glassy computerized reader. A dot of ice-blue light blinked three times, and the gate slid open. Richard drove through twisted, curving streets, leaning back confidently in his seat. The houses here were bigger than in the other parts of the neighborhood, each one surrounded by trees and a swath of empty, impossibly green yard. Richard pulled into a cul-de-sac.

  Cat's heart hammered. Heat built up behind her eyes.

  "I bought you a house," Richard said. The car rolled to a stop. He turned off the engine.

  "Oh my God."

  Richard grinned. "It's this one." He pointed through the windshield to a house made entirely of glass. Cat stared. She could see straight through the walls to the blinding blue sky.

  "You bought a house?" She looked at Richard. "I thought we were just going to live in the condo–"

  "Oh, hell no," he said. "Do you like it? I know I should have asked for your input. I mean, I know this really should be a decision we make together, but–" He bit his lip earnestly. "I wanted to see the expression on your
face
, you know."

  "It's lovely," said Cat. "Um. Thank you."

  Richard laughed. He pushed the car door open, stepped out. Cat followed, not bothering to put her shoes back on. The grass was cold beneath her feet. The wind blustered through the trees, and Cat's veil streamed out behind her, fluttering at the ends. Her skirts billowed around her legs. Richard walked up the narrow stone pathway to the front door. Cat didn't follow him. She just stood at the edge of the yard, her veil tugging gently at her temples. Cataracts of white light fell off the angles of the house.

  "Well?" Richard called out. He gestured for Cat to join him on the porch. "You want to see the inside or not? It's completely outfitted with Robocile."

  "What?"

  For a second, Richard's eyes narrowed. Then he swiped a card across the door. Cat lifted up her skirts and walked across the yard.

  "This is a new subdivision." Richard leaned against the door to hold it open. "Pretty trendy. Lots of big names designed the houses. I mean, I didn't recognize any of them, but I was told they were big names." He paused as Cat stepped on the porch. Faint lines of disappointment traced around his eyes.

  Robocile. Of course. His AI program.

  "So I'll finally get to see what you were working on all those late nights," she said.

  Richard beamed and gestured for her to step inside. There was no foyer – only an enormous room, full of sunlight and empty of furniture. The ceiling extended above her head for two stories.

  "So everything's automated?" Cat prompted.

  "Yep," Richard said. "Well, most everything. The computer's built into the structure of the house, although I don't think it's been turned on yet. And of course you talk to it." He paused. Cat gazed around the room. There were no clouds of golden dust to catch the sunlight. "You're going to be the first person outside the company to test it. You can let me know if you think we faked the sentience well enough."

  "All right."

  "Let me show you around." He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. "I like how everything's open, you know? Here, let me show you the bedroom." He led her down a wide, sunny corridor, a pair of discrete control panels set into the walls. All the lights on the panels were dark and still. The master bedroom was around the corner and encased in alabaster-white walls, although a square of blue sky was visible through the ceiling.

  "Isn't it fantastic?"

  "It's beautiful." Cat pulled away from him and walked back out into the corridor, ran her fingers over the control panels. The house was silent save for the
swish swish swish
of her dress. She followed the corridor into the main room, where she found a sliding glass door leading out to a stone patio. She tugged the door open with the pads of her fingers, and stepped out onto the smooth, cool stone. There was no grass in the backyard, just tilled-up dirt. The yard was surrounded by a ring of fast-growth pine trees that looked plastic. Cat gathered up her skirt with both hands and stepped off the patio. Her feet sunk into the soil. The hem of her dress dragged across the dirt.

  "Oh," said Richard behind her. She looked over her shoulder at him. "Yeah, they haven't laid the grass out yet. Sorry."

  Cat didn't say anything. She walked to the center of the yard. The wind whipped up her dress like a bit of cloud. She turned around and looked up at the glittering house, at Richard standing in his tuxedo in the doorway.

  "Smile," said Richard. "You're home now."

 
 

 
 
 

Six months into her marriage, Cat discovered a coffee shop she liked. Ever since the honeymoon she was alone most of the time, and the coffee shop was the sort of place that favored aloneness. It was in an old wooden house in a leafy, gentrified neighborhood on the edge of the suburbs, the rafters strung with tarnished silverware that clinked and jangled whenever someone opened the door. Cat liked to sit at the same table next to the window, drinking a café breve and looking at the wildflower garden growing in the backyard. Hidden speakers played sad, whispery music. Dusty beams of sunlight fell through the skylights.

  One of the baristas was an android.

  Not quite like Finn. The android was vaguely female and moved more stiffly and possessed a more limited vocabulary that Finn did. Her facial features didn't change as much. But like Finn, she was truly automatous. She was not like the computer in Cat's glass house in the suburbs; she wasn't even like the army of electric servants that now paraded up and down the streets of middle-class neighborhoods, children and dogs in tow.

  "Hello," the android said when Cat drifted through the door one balmy autumn afternoon, setting off the chiming chain reaction of the silverware overhead. The android's mouth and eyes lit up electric white. "Caffe bre-ve?" she said.

  "Yes, please."

  "Com-ing right up."

  Cat paid and then slouched near the table covered with sugar canisters and pitchers of cream. Behind the counter, the android slid a metal filter packed with espresso into the coffee maker. Milky steam clouded up into the air.

  "Do you like working here?" Cat asked.

  The android turned around, steam curling around her expressionless face. "Oh, yes," she said. "Mr Rodriguez hired me."
Rodriguez
slurred slightly, the final zee sounding more like an ess.

  "Is he the owner?"

  The android nodded, a quick jerk of her head.
Finn can nod, really nod
. Cat smiled, hoping she looked trustworthy. The android poured the steamed cream over the espresso. "He found me. Long ago. At McCallister's." The android's mouth lit up again. She slid the café breve down the bar toward Cat.

  "McCallister's." Cat tried to place the name.

  "Yes."

  "Oh my God. That's the junkyard, isn't it?" She remembered Lucy talking about it – she used to jump the fence on rainy nights, when the guards would be curled up with their computers inside the little shack next to the gate, to scrounge around for found-art objects.

  "Yes."

  "Who would–"

  "I was de-fec-tive." The android's mouth did not light up.

  Cat didn't say anything. The android stared at her for a moment longer, but then the silverware rattled along the ceiling. A trio of college students walked in, their faces pink from the sun.

  Cat carried her coffee over to her favorite table. Loose granules of sugar glittered in the sunlight. It was too hot for a café breve, but Cat drank it anyway. The college students sat nearby and erupted periodically into screeching laughter, the legs of their table clicking against the wood floors. Cat always felt like she was the same age she had been in college, but the college students here seemed so young. They were children.

  When Cat finished her coffee she went out into the wildflower garden and lit a cigarette in the shade of an enormous magnolia tree. The sun's glare made it difficult to see through the coffee shop windows, but every now and then pale white lights would blink inside.

 

Cat didn't work at the vice stand any more. She still went to the artist's co-op, where she would weave a few rows on her project, the yarn unfamiliar against her skin. The drive there from the suburbs was long, though, and often slow with traffic, and sometimes the co-op seemed more of an artifact of her past than a reality of her present. But every month she paid in her portion of the rent, and at least twice a month she roused herself out of bed to make the trip and work at her loom.

  Even so, the mild sun-kissed winter transformed nearly unnoticed into the mild, sun-kissed spring and Cat's life took on a uniform sameness.

  She exercised most mornings, doing Pilates off the screen in the living room. The house always chimed to remind her, even though she couldn't remember asking it to. She reread the books of her childhood, all those stories Finn recited to her from memory: the
Metamorphosis
was still her favorite. These many years later she was still enamored of the idea of things becoming other things, of bodies changing into other bodies.