The Mad Scientist's Daughter (23 page)

  Cat pulled up a chair and began to weave. The rhythm of it was simple and instinctual, the way it had been before she married. Felix came back inside and sat down at his potting wheel without saying anything. They worked in silence.

  After two hours, Cat took a break. She stepped outside for a smoke, watching the rain fall in sheets over the street. Droplets sprayed across her face, clung to her cheekbones and eyelashes. She only smoked half her cigarette before she flicked it out into the storm and went back inside.

  Felix had disappeared. The potting wheel sat empty; he must have gone to the kiln room, in the back of the studio. Cat ran her fingers over the completed portion of the tap estry, rolled up tight in front of her. It seemed flat. Lifeless. She knew, suddenly, the problem: there wasn't enough of herself in it. Miguel had told her that once, a long time ago, when they first met.

  "If you make a gift for someone," he had said, "particularly someone you love, you have to put part of yourself into it." It was Christmas. They were at some Stella bar. Strings of lights twinkled around his head.

  "You do?" said Cat, half-drunk, playing along. Miguel looked so serious.

  "Of course. Otherwise, it's just a lopsided candy dish from fifth grade art class. It's junk. I mean, they'll take it, if they're polite, and then they'll wait till you're gone to toss it in the trash." The legs of his chair slammed down on the bar floor, and Miguel picked up his beer, knocked it back. "Making gifts is not something to be taken lightly, Mad Scientist's Daughter."

  Now, years later, Cat plucked out one of her hairs and wound it together with the waft thread. It glinted reddishgold in the studio lights. Cat wove the waft thread through, combed it down. Worked back the opposite direction. When her hair was firmly woven in place, Cat stood up. She took a deep breath. Her legs shook. It was only a hair woven into a tapestry but she felt drained, exhausted.

  The back door slammed and Felix walked into the studio, raised an eyebrow at Cat standing, shaking in front of the loom.

  "You OK?"

  Cat nodded. She slid back down in her seat, picked up the wafting thread. And then she worked for another three hours, as the storm abated, as the moon came out from behind the clouds.

• • • •

"Where the fuck have you been? I've been calling you."

  Cat dropped her purse on the floor. Richard barreled up to her. He wore a tie and a jacket. Cat stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out why he wasn't in his usual jeans and T-shirt.

  "Oh my God," she said.

  "Great, now you remember."

  "The Noratech party. It was tonight."

  Richard jerked his head up and down. Cat knew he was nodding yes but it didn't really look like it.

  "When were…" Her voice faltered. She had completely forgotten the party. The rain, the photograph, the loom: they had made her so melancholy she had slipped into the recesses of the past. The present had become the future, and therefore not worth bothering with.

  "Thirty minutes ago. Why the hell didn't you answer your slate?"

  "I didn't hear it."

  Richard glared at her. Cat kicked off her shoes, headed toward the bedroom. "Let me throw on a dress," she said. "And pull my hair back. I can do my makeup in the car–"

  "Why didn't you hear your slate? Where were you?" Richard caught her by the upper arm, whirled her around. Cat shook off his grasp. "Were you–" He stopped and took a deep breath. "Just tell me where you were."

  "At the studio with Felix. The roof's metal so with the rain I didn't hear you calling." Cat stomped into the bedroom. "Jesus, where did you think I was?"

  "I don't know." Richard stayed in the hallway. Cat shimmied out of her clothes, stiff with dried rainwater, and pulled a black cocktail dress out of the closet. She checked her hair as she dressed: the rain had curled it into ringlets. She probably didn't even need to pull it back. Cat twisted her arm around behind her to jerk up the zipper.

  "Are you sure you're gonna go like that?"

  Cat stopped, half-zipped. She looked over her shoulder at Richard. "Like what?" she said.

  "I don't know, your hair's a little wild."

  Cat pulled up her zipper the rest of the way.

  "We're thirty minutes late," she said. "My hair's not that important."

  Richard shrugged. "I know," he said. "It's just… There'll be photographers there."

  "So?" Cat grabbed her makeup bag, filled it with a tube of mascara and a couple of shades of lipstick.

  "Well, I mean, you need to look good, you know. It makes me look good if you look good."

  Cat stared at him. "Seriously?" she said. "Do you want me to go to this party with you or not? I'm sorry I was late, but I lost track of time–"

  "Forget it." Richard smiled. "You look beautiful. And you're right, we need to get going."

  Richard drove, the air in the suburbs steaming from the rain and fragrant with pine trees and potted plants. Cat put on her makeup by the flickering light of the street lamps. Red lipstick, black mascara, yellow light. She refused to allow herself to think about anything but eyeliner. Even so, constantly in the back of her mind, was this:
Finn's tapestry.

  
Finn.

  
Finn.

  
Finn.

  Cat finished putting on her makeup. She felt like a seashell, pretty enough but empty and easily broken.

  The party was at a hotel overlooking the glassy, manmade lake on the edge of the suburbs, not far from the tree-lined business park where Richard was thinking about relocating his offices. When they walked in a few boredlooking photographers snapped their pictures. They floated up to the party in a glass elevator. Cat put her hand on Richard's bicep and held herself up tall and straight because this, going to parties in a designer dress, was the only thing she really had to do in her marriage. Her one responsibility was to be a pillar of light, thrusting Richard out of the darkness.

  She smiled as dazzlingly as she could to all those strange faces in the party's soft golden glow.

  They only stayed for a couple of hours, long enough for Richard to cycle through the investors, shaking their hands and charming them with flashes of white teeth. Cat peeled away from him and found herself in a huddle of corporate wives, all in dresses that looked like hers, their hair ironed flat or wound up in elaborate bouffants, their laughter sharp as diamonds.

  "Caterina Feversham," one of them said, holding out her hand limply. Cat shook it. "We've heard a lot about you. You're an artist, right?"

  "I pretend to be," Cat said. They all tittered like they didn't quite get the joke. Cat took a long drink of champagne. She glanced at her reflection in the window and for a moment she couldn't see herself: just another corporate wife in a cluster of corporate wives.

  A wife in a slinky green dress tilted her head and tapped one manicured finger against her chin. She frowned. "Feversham," she said. "I know that name."

  "My husband owns SynLodge," said Cat.

  The wife shook her head, her brow furrowed. The other wives shifted their weight and tossed bored glances at one another.

  "She's an
artist
, hon," one of them said. "That's probably where you've heard of her."

  "No, it's not that." Then the wife in green snapped her fingers. "Of course! I've seen that name on the ADL donation roster."

  Cat did not move. Her champagne glass hung beside her, bubbles drifting to the surface.

  "ADL," she said.

  "Aren't they involved with the whole robot-rights thing?" asked one of the sideline wives. The rest picked up their heads, alert to the possibility of gossip. "Haven't they been protesting the merger?"

  The wife in green narrowed her eyes. "My husband works for Noratech," she said. "And so do I. ADL makes all their donation records public."

  Cat sipped her champagne.

  "It doesn't reflect very well on your husband," said the wife in green, and she smiled, curling up her lips to reveal a row of perfect teeth.

  "Excuse me." Cat turned away from the cluster of wives. It occurred to her that this revelation should be more distressing to her than it was: she had been keeping the donations a secret from Richard but she no longer cared what his reaction would be if he found out. Cat's heart beat normally, as though she had been discussing the weather, the quality of the food.

  After the party, Richard and Cat drove home in silence. The freeway was nearly empty. Cat stared out the window. She slipped off her shoes and when they arrived at the house she walked in her stockings up the damp stone sidewalk, her skirt swishing around her knees. The porch light switched on. She could smell the oleander growing along the side of the house.

  "Well?" she said to Richard. "I say we got there fashionably late. No harm done." She only spoke because she couldn't bear the silence any longer.

  But Richard didn't answer. He walked away from the bedroom, in the direction of his office. Cat heard the sigh of the door shutting behind him.

  She went into the bedroom, took off her stockings and then her dress, tossing them both down the laundry chute. She lay across the bed in her underwear and looked up through the glass ceiling at the pale scatter of stars.

  
You're married.

  This was her marriage. This was her life.

 
 

 
 
 

Cat followed Miguel through a dark, narrow corridor, past a law office, the glowing sign in its window missing a handful of letters, and a noisy bahn mi place. They were in an old storefront near the center of the city. The floor was dusty from disuse and the storm tape in the windows hadn't been taken down since the last hurricane. Cat hadn't seen storm tape since she was a child – most buildings came equipped with automatic shutters these days.

  "Are you sure we're in the right place?" Cat kicked a pile of broken glass with the toe of her shoe.

  Miguel turned toward her. "I come out here twice a month, Mad Scientist's Daughter."

  Cat smiled; she hadn't heard the nickname in years. Miguel grinned, then whirled on his heel and followed the corridor until it dead-ended into a pair of double doors, a handwritten sign reading
Automaton Defense League
propped up against the wall.

  Miguel held the door for Cat. She smoothed the skirt of her dress; she smoothed the loose pieces of her hair. She hadn't wanted to come to the meeting at all, but Miguel had insisted, telling her that her donations were a tremendous help to the group, that everyone wanted to meet her. Cat thought back to that party a month ago, the Noratech wife knowing she had given money to an organization working against everything Richard had worked for. Sometimes Cat wondered if Richard knew. She wasn't sure that she cared.

  There were about fifteen people at the meeting, sitting in folding chairs and eating from the potluck dishes spread out on a table near the door, and five robots of varying degrees of complexity. None of them as complex as Finn.

  Everyone, even the robots, turned to look at Cat and Miguel standing in the doorway. Cat felt herself curling up like a morning glory in the heat of the afternoon. Then a man near the front of the room raised a hand in greeting, and Miguel called out a cheerful, "Hey, everybody!" and there was a murmur in return and then all the faces turned away. Cat let out a long slow breath. It was harder and harder for her to be looked at these days. All that time spent under glass.

  One of the robots, an android, male-identified, filled a paper cup with punch and brought it to her. His movements were fluid, graceful, but his skin had a glossy plastic sheen to it and his eyes possessed the flatness of computer monitors. Cat accepted the punch. It was too sweet, like syrup, like medicine.

  "Welcome." The android's voice reverberated with electronic feedback.

  Cat nodded. "Thanks." She looked down at the surface of the punch, swirled it in its cup.

  "Would you like some information about the organization?" the android asked. He smiled at her, rows of too-small perfect teeth. Cat shook her head.

  "I already donate."

  "Oh! Are you…" For a second his eyes went blank, like a turned-off screen, and then he blinked. "Caterina Feversham?"

  Cat nodded, feeling suddenly shy.

  "Thank you." The android grasped Cat's free hand and she jumped, because his touch was cool and dry and felt exactly like Finn's. "Thank you so much. You don't know how grateful we are–" The android stopped, dropped his hand to his side.

  "You're welcome." Cat hesitated. "What would you like me to call you?"

  "Oh! I'm sorry, I forget myself sometimes." The android smiled. "I'm Alastair."

  Cat repeated the name to herself, letting it ripple over her tongue.
Alastair.

  "I gave it to myself after I was emancipated," he said. "I didn't have a name before."

  "That's a shame."

  "Just a numerical designation."

  Cat nodded. She sipped her punch. When she looked at Alastair and met his steady mechanical gaze, a numbness wrapped tight around her heart. Her entire body sagged. She didn't know what to say.

  "Best of luck to you," she murmured, and Alastair smiled again. He was constantly smiling. For a moment Cat wondered what sort of work he had been programmed to do before. She assumed it impolite to ask.

  The man at the front of the room called the meeting to order, banging his fist a few times on an old wooden podium. Miguel waved at Cat, and then pointed at a chair up front. Cat excused herself from Alastair. Everyone was taking a seat, coming together in clumps, humans and robots both. Cat sat down next to Miguel.

  "Welcome to the July 15 meeting of the Automaton Defense League, chapter number 4938." The man ran one hand over his hair, slicking it away from his face. He was tall and thin and middle-aged, his life etched out in arrows from the corners of his eyes. "We'd like to extend a welcome to any visitors here today." Cat was relieved he didn't look at her. "The ADL welcomes both humans and robots in its membership, and works to change legislation dealing with the rights of manufactured life forms at both the local and national level."