The Mad Scientist's Daughter (40 page)

  And Cat drove away, her palms sweating, her heart racing.

 

Friday afternoon came much more quickly than she expected. She stayed in a cheap motel near the STL offices. Everything about it was faded, as though it had been left in the sun too long. Even the complimentary breakfast looked worn out. Cat ate her beige toast and thin eggs and went up to her room to wait. She kept her computer turned on in case AJ needed to talk to her, but she never heard from him, she never heard from anyone.

  An hour before it was time to go, she pulled out her gray Chanel suit – an artifact of her time with Richard, a luxury she had never brought herself to throw away – and dressed. She put on stockings despite the heat and wound her hair around the top of her head. Applied eyeliner and mascara and lipstick. Then she sat on the edge of the bathtub, sliding her stocking feet nervously against the tile, and sent a spoken message to Daniel's computer.

  "I hope you're having fun at Maybelle's. Don't spend too much time on the Internet. Say hi to the llamas for me." Her voice echoed off the bathroom walls, and it sounded much more cheerful than she felt. Cat felt like she was going to throw up.

  She drove to the offices. She parked her car in the visitors' garage. She went into the lobby and told the receptionist she was there to meet AJ Aziz.

  "You can go on up," the receptionist said, her eyes not once moving away from the screen of her computer. An enormous monitor was set into the wall behind her, flashing images of the lunar station. Cat lingered for a moment, half-hoping to see Finn. She didn't.

  The elevator was narrow and modern and made of glass, just like the STL offices. As the atrium fell away below her, Cat clutched her handbag a little too tightly. Air conditioning blew down the back of her neck. The elevator chimed, stopped. The glass doors slid open. Cat stepped out into the empty hallway. Her tall heels clicked against the tiles. She could hear herself breathing. She was so light-headed she almost didn't think she would make it to AJ's office.

  "Dr Novak?"

  His head appeared in one of the doorways. He held out his hand, and she shook it. "Did you get a chance to talk to your father?" he asked.

  Cat nodded dumbly.
Dr Novak
. The sound of it made her heart hurt.

  He jerked his head toward the elevators. "Shall we? The conference room is all set up. Do you mind if I sit in?"

  Cat shook her head, and they walked side by side back to the elevator. He pressed the up button. They didn't say anything to each other while they waited. Another chime. Up they went, so high Cat thought they might take the elevator to the lunar station itself. But then the doors slid open, and AJ led her through a hall identical to the one they had left. And then through a pair of swinging doors that opened into a cavernous dark room. A long, low table stretched from one end to the other, and a screen was lowered in the front of the room, the STL logo splashed across it, glowing faintly.

  A half second after they entered, the lights flickered on.

  "OK." AJ gestured toward the table. "You can sit right here. I'll need to test the camera."

  Cat walked the length of the room. Her legs shook. She slid down in the chair, set her handbag beside her. Folded her hands on the table. AJ pushed a black camera the size of her fist so that it lined up directly with her face. She didn't move. He looked at the camera and then at his laptop sitting on the table and then at her. His eyes were the same color as Finn's. He adjusted the camera's arm.

  "Perfect," he said. "I think that's it." He nodded to himself. "I'm just going to sit back there. I might type a few notes on the tablet. Is that all right?"

  Cat nodded. She wondered what would happen when he learned that she had no interest in explaining the engineering behind the signal.

  AJ tapped the computer. "We're dialing up now." He watched the screen. So did Cat. It went black and then went white and then suddenly she was staring at the face of the woman in the video she had watched that sweltering afternoon in the glass house.
Kristine Korchinsky
. The woman looked more serious now, her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, the skin around her eyes pale from a lack of makeup.

  "Is everything working?" she said. The movement of her lips didn't quite match up to the sound of her voice. Cat could see the white walls of the lunar station gleaming behind her. "I don't see you – oh, there." She smiled insincerely. "You're Cat Novak. AJ said you had some information about that anomaly."

  Cat nodded. She looked at the camera. "Yes," she said. "Is there any way I can speak to Finn?"

  "Who?" Dr Korchinsky frowned. Cat opened her mouth to speak but then Dr Korchinsky said, "Oh, you mean George, don't you? He did call himself Finn, before flying out here."

  "You said him," said Cat. "Like AJ."

  "What? Oh, yes, well, you get used to him, you know…" Dr Korchinsky touched one hand to her hairline and looked away from the camera. She sighed. "Dr Novak, my time is precious. What's going on with that system reboot? Did you or your father send it from Earth?"

  "Yes." Cat hesitated. "I mean, I did."

  "Why? He's not your concern anymore."

  Cat wished she could talk to Finn directly. She wished she could touch him.

  "My father is dying," she said flatly.

  Dr Korchinsky's face softened.

  "He wanted Finn to know. I didn't even think it was possible to contact Finn at all. I'm not a cyberneticist, by the way. I studied philosophy in school, and I used to roll cigarettes in a vice stand. Finn programmed that beacon, and he made it easy enough for me to use." The words came bubbling out, and Cat was afraid she would start crying. "So if you could send Finn my message. That's really why I came here today. I'm divorced, and my father is dying, and I'm sorry."

  She had not meant to mention her divorce, hadn't even meant to say she was sorry. She had told herself over and over that this was not why she had driven into the city, not why she had lied her way into the STL conference room. But now that she was here, now that she sat at this conference table and saw the perimeters of the walls where Finn lived, she couldn't help herself.

  Cat heard a chair creak from the back of the room. AJ. She felt guilty, thinking about him sitting there, listening to her conversation, knowing she had lied to him.

  "Your father," Dr Korchinsky said. "Daniel Novak. Yes, I believe George – Finn – will want to hear that. As for the rest–"

  "He's in the hospital," Cat said. "He has a brain tumor. If Finn could come home, and see him before he dies–"

  Dr Korchinsky held out one hand. "I want you to know that I'm sympathetic. I really am. But STL will not take too kindly to me sending property back down without cause."

  "Property!" Cat's voice echoed off the conference room walls, leaving a faint reverberation. She covered her mouth with her hand. "What about the rights bill? He can't be seen as property anymore."

  Dr Korchinsky's face darkened. "Things may be more complicated than you realize."

  Cat had no idea how to respond. For a moment she simply stared at the monitor.
More complicated? How?

  "Please," she finally said. "My father – he saved him. He took care of him."

  Dr Korchinsky frowned, and Cat saw in her eyes exhausted sadness. "I know," she said, very softly. "This is a very… unusual circumstance. And STL's legal department basically does nothing but find loopholes…" She glanced at something off-camera.

  Cat looked down at the table, gleaming beneath the overhead lights. Up on the screen, Dr Korchinsky shifted her position. The sound of rustling paper.

  "I would send him down this moment if I thought I could get away it," she said. Cat looked up at her image. "I'll see what I can do."

  Cat took a deep, sighing breath. "Can I see him?" she whispered. "Can I talk to him?"

  Dr Korchinsky looked so sad that for a moment Cat thought she was staring at her own reflection. "He's out on the surface," she said. "I'm sorry." There was a long pause, and the screen crackled with static. "For what it's worth, and this may not be much, but… he has spoken of you." She smiled. "You were… You were friends, right?" A slight hesitation on the word
friends.

  "Yes," Cat said.

  Dr Korchinsky smiled, tilting her head downward. "I'll tell him. I'll tell him everything. And fuck it, I'll tell STL this whole conversation was legit." She glanced up, away from the camera. "OK with you, AJ?"

  Cat held her breath. AJ coughed, clearing his throat. "Fine with me."

  Cat's cheeks burned.

  Dr Korchinsky lifted her hand like she was reaching for the camera, and then stopped. "Oh," she said. "By the way. Let me give you an email address. George doesn't have one but if you want to send him anything you can send it to me." She paused. "I promise I won't read your message."

  Cat whispered a thank you. She pulled out her comm slate and entered the address into the contact list as Dr Korchinsky recited it.

  Dr Korchinsky said, "I know what it's like. To be separated from someone you love."

  Cat froze. She looked at Dr Korchinsky's features, blurred by the camera quality, and tried to find some trace of irony. But her expression was clear and calm as a tide pool.

  "I need to sign off," she said.

  Cat nodded.

  The screen went black.

  Cat sat still. An electric current was moving through her body. She heard AJ shifting in his seat behind her but he didn't say anything. For a long time she stared at the black screen and wondered if Dr Korchinsky had lied when she said she would tell Finn everything. She wondered if Finn would come home – if Finn wanted to come home, if he thought of her father's house as home at all.

 

When Cat drove to Maybelle's that night, Daniel was sitting on the stoop hitting a stick against the white cement. She turned off her car and bounded across the yard, scooped him up into a great big whirling hug. He shrieked and laughed, pounded his tiny fists against her shoulders.

  "Did you miss me?" she asked.

  "Yes," he said. Cat dropped him into the grass. She'd had enough sorrow the last few days, driving down the flat highway, remembering Finn, every touch he'd ever given her. Daniel threw his stick out into the yard and said, "Maybelle and Jim let me feed the llamas. They have weird teeth. But their fur was really soft."

  Cat rubbed the top of his head, looked at the dark hair poking up between her fingers. Maybelle came out on the porch and waved, said everything had gone well, asked, with an inquisitive tilt of her head, how Cat's trip had been. Cat declined to offer any detail beyond
it was fine.

  She drove Daniel to the Dairy King drive-in restaurant over by the high school stadium and bought them both cheeseburgers and malted milkshakes. Daniel bounced up and down in his seat. "Maybelle made me eat shard."

  "I think you mean chard."

  "It was green and gross."

  Cat laughed. It was easy to laugh when Daniel was around. She rolled down the windows and the unseasonably cool breeze blew across the front seat. The girl at the counter called their number. Cat picked up the food and went back to the car and said, "Why don't we just eat here?" and Daniel nodded vigorously. He always wanted to eat in the car at the drive-in, and she always said no.

  The air smelled of bubbling grease and the faint toxic whiff of truck exhaust. Cat balanced the cup of French fries on the dashboard and took a bite of her cheeseburger. The salt was exactly what she needed. She had cried too much on the long way home.

  Afterward, Cat drove back to the house. It loomed against the pale orange sunset. Daniel raced ahead, leaving his plastic suitcase on the backseat. He dug the hidden key out from under the potted plants on the porch and let himself inside, but Cat stayed out in the cool twilight air, walking in zigzags across the front yard, smoking one cigarette after another until it was too dark to see.

 
 

 
 
 

As the days went by, Cat's father grew worse. She went to the hospital after her trip to the city and told him how she had talked to Dr Korchinsky.

  "She gave me her email address," said Cat. "And told me we could email Finn that way."

  "Well, have you?" her father asked in his cottony voice. His eyelids drooped.

  Cat told him no. Now that she had nearly communicated with Finn she was not so sure he wanted to hear from her. Maybe he hadn't been out on the surface of the moon at all. Maybe he had stood just off-camera, listening in.

  
No,
she thought
. He's not that cruel. He's not that human.

  Her father lifted one hand off the bed and let it hang limply in the air. That one movement seemed an enormous accomplishment. The hand twisted like a periscope until his fingers were pointing at her.

  "Email him. Or her. Whoever. This has gone on too long."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Her father closed his eyes completely. He dropped his hand. She watched him struggle with the weight of his eyelashes. His head turned toward her. His neck was so thin.

  "This whole thing is my fault," he said. "It was too much at once, that was the problem. I'm not a psychologist. I don't understand this shit. So I just want to make it right."

  Cat sighed. She wound her fingers around her father's. The treatments made him lose more weight and he looked shriveled up in his bed, as if he had died already. She saw the outline of his bones. She saw the threads of his veins.

  "She told me she'd try to send him back to Earth," Cat said. "So he could… visit. Visit you."

  "And you, too, of course." His face cracked into a smile.