The Mad Scientist's Daughter (41 page)

  Before Cat could respond, a nurse-bot wheeled into the room. Cat's father sighed. "Time for my treatments," he muttered, just as the nurse-bot chirped, "Time for your treatments, Dr Novak." He turned to Cat. "Go on, you don't want to watch this."

  Cat smiled sadly. An enormous metal apparatus lowered down from its hiding place in the ceiling and hovered over her father's supine body. He closed his eyes. The nurse-bot rolled up to Cat.

  "You will need to leave the room."

  "Of course." Cat said goodbye to her father, and he raised his hand in response. She went into the hallway and shut the door and watched through the tiny window as bursts of white light filled her father's room. The treatments did nothing to help his illness, as she understood it. They only diminished his pain.

  She waited until the lights stopped flashing, and then she went out to the parking lot, her mind blank.

 

"Mama, Mama! There's a car outside our house."

  Cat sat on the back porch drinking a glass of homemade limeade spiked with tequila. Two weeks had passed since the conversation with her father, and nearly a month since she had spoken to Dr Korchinsky. Daniel ran up to her and tugged on the hem of her skirt. The air was hazier than usual.

  "Oh?" Cat's heart raced but she was able to keep her voice calm and steady. "What sort of car?"
Richard.

  "A yellow one."

  Cat drank the rest of her limeade in one gulp. She set the glass down on the ground and told Daniel to go to his room and stay there.

  "But why?" he asked, his voice dragging out into a whine.

  "Because I said so." Any other time she might have twinged internally at saying something so ridiculous, but with each rapid pump of her heart she saw Richard's face, broad and tan, his sharp white teeth, his expression when he caught sight of Daniel and counted backward.

  "Go," she said, as sharply as she could. A waver rose through her throat. She ushered Daniel inside, through the kitchen door, catching the last notes of the doorbell as it echoed through the house. She pushed him toward the stairs, and he scowled at her from underneath the railing.

  "Your
room
, Daniel," she said. He disappeared into the shadows.

  Cat walked into the foyer. The doorbell rang a second time. When she came to the door she stopped and put one hand on the knob and tried to steady her breathing. She couldn't. She pulled the door open.

  It was Finn.

  Cat nearly screamed. She stumbled backward, away from the door, away from Finn. He didn't move. The hot dry wind pushed his hair across his forehead. It had been over eight years since she had watched him walk out of the glass house. It had been over eight years since the last time she touched him. She was so dizzy her eyesight faltered and the shadows beneath the furniture swam in and out of her line of vision.

  "You're here," she said.

  "Yes."

  "But I thought–"

  "Dr Korchinsky called HR and reminded them they had to give me a leave of absence like an employee. Because of the AI bill. She threatened to go the press with some of the… some of the less-than-legal things the company has been doing. So they sent me back in one of the cargo runs." He paused. She had forgotten the sound of his voice. All these years her memories had produced a facsimile – a higher pitch, a less mechanical cadence. Finn stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him. The hot outside air lingered in the foyer.

  "Where is Dr Novak?" he asked.

  "At the hospital."

  Finn frowned. His eyes seemed to dim. Cat had never been so aware of the expression of emotion on a man's face until this moment.

  "So I'm not too late," he said.

  Cat shook her head.

  They hadn't moved from the door. He didn't have any bags, and he wore a pair of ill-fitting black pants, a ratty old band shirt. Otherwise he looked the same.

  Cat thought then about her own face, the web of lines erupting from the corners of her eyes, the soft swell of her stomach left over from when Daniel was born. She touched her hair, and Finn moved toward the living room without saying anything more. When he passed her, electricity seemed to arc between them.

  "I'd like to see him as soon as possible," he said.

  "Of course." Cat followed behind him, chewing on her lower lip. "How long do you have here? Before you have to go back?"

  Finn looked over his shoulder at her. "Three weeks until the next shuttle launch."

  "Three weeks."

  Finn nodded. He turned away from her.

  All the things Cat wanted to say to him, all the things she had rehearsed during bright moonlit nights, evaporated on the tip of her tongue.
Why did you sell yourself? I'm sorry I used you.

  
I love you.

  Finn walked around the edge of the living room. He touched the top of the couch. He touched the wallpaper bubbling and peeling off the walls. He stopped in front of the dusty windows and looked out at the yard: the brown grass, the rustling woods. He put his hand on the glass and the sunlight shone through his skin.

  A creak on the stairs.

  They both turned simultaneously.

  Daniel pushed his pale face against the banister. Finn stared at him, and he stared at Finn. Cat took a deep breath. She held out her arms.

  "Come on out. I want you to meet someone."

  "You told me to go to my room," said Daniel.

  Finn looked over at her sharply.

  "That was before I knew who was here."

  Daniel crept into the living room. He looked up at Finn through the fringe of his hair and ran to Cat. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him close against her knees.

  "Daniel," she said. "This is Finn." She looked at Finn when she spoke. "Say hello."

  "Hello." Daniel blinked up at Finn.

  "It's very nice to meet you." Finn held out one hand. Cat nudged Daniel forward. He took Finn's hand. They shook, and then Daniel dropped back to Cat's side.

  "Finn is an old friend," said Cat. "He's come to see Grandpa."

  Daniel considered this. He squinted at Finn. "Are you a robot?" he asked.

  Cat closed her eyes.

  "No," said Finn. "I'm an android."

  "Oh. We learned about androids at school. There's one on the lunar station. Do you know it?"

  "Him," said Cat. "Do you know him."

  "I am the android on the lunar station." Finn smiled, and the smile was so easy and bright that Cat nearly gasped. It wasn't the smile she remembered; it was better. It was what his smile had always aspired to before. "Well, I'm not on the lunar station
now
, of course."

  Daniel's eyes widened. "Can you come to my school? For show and tell?"

  "No," said Cat.

  Finn ignored her. He crouched down so he was eye-level with Daniel. "I would be happy to come to your school."

  Daniel clapped his hands together and turned to Cat. "I'm going to tell Robbie!" And then he bounded out of the room, up the stairs.

  "You don't have to go to his school," said Cat.

  "I want to." Finn's black eyes were impervious to her guilt. "Is that your son?"

  Cat nodded.

  "He doesn't resemble Richard Feversham."

  The way he said Richard's name made Cat's throat tighten. "No."

  "Dr Korchinsky told me about your divorce." Finn did not look her in the eye. "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "Why?" said Cat. "Why would you be sorry?"

  Finn studied the dust that had built up in the cracks between the wooden slats of the floor.

  "Because," he said, "that's what I am supposed to say." He looked at her, and she couldn't read his expression. It wasn't like before, when you could look at the blankness of his features and believe he didn't feel anything. Now he seemed to wear a mask. "Will you be able to drive me to the hospital?"

  She nodded. "Do you want to go right now?" Her voice trembled. "You just got here–"

  "I don't need to rest," he said. "You know that."

  "Of course."

  "You weren't doing anything, were you? I apologize–"

  "It's fine." Even after all this time, she was still being selfish. The thought made her feel guilty and embarrassed. She wanted to keep Finn to herself, now that he was here, now that she could see him illuminated by the dusty sunlight.

  "Let me go get Daniel," she said.

  The drive to the hospital took half an hour. Cat had driven down this particular stretch of freeway so many times she no longer saw it. But with Finn sitting in the passenger seat beside her, his face turned toward the window, she was suddenly aware of the rippling rows of stunted corn, growing in land that had once been a swampy forest in the years before the Disasters. Aware of the little white agri-engineering buildings that poked up against the washed out sky. Finn drummed his fingers against the car door, and Cat kept her eyes on the road, her entire body crackling with the desire to look at him.

  Daniel peppered the silence with questions about the lunar station and the moon's surface, and Finn answered them genially, his words like sound bites in a corporatesponsored outreach video.

  When they came to the hospital, and Cat heard the swish of the automatic glass doors and the beeps of the nursebots, she remembered her father. She remembered why Finn was here at all.

  Cat and Finn walked side by side, unspeaking, to her father's room, and Daniel clutched Cat's hand with a surprising force. She hadn't brought him to the hospital often, choosing instead to let him talk to his grandfather over the computer, thinking the white hospital, its walls gleaming like the side of a light bulb, would overwhelm him. She could feel his fingers shaking now, and she drew him close to her. She could feel Finn watching them both.

  "Here it is," she said when they came to the room. She eased open the door. "Daddy?" He was a mound of white sheets on the bed. When she spoke the mound shifted, a face appeared, everything white except for the dark sunken hollows of his eyes.

  "Grandpa?" said Daniel shakily. He slid behind Cat's legs and wrapped his tiny hands around her knees.

  "My favorite grandson," said Cat's father. He moved to sit up and Cat rushed across the room, held out her hands to stop him.

  "Daddy," she said. "Daddy, Finn's here."

  Her father's head lifted an inch off the pillows. Cat heard Finn's footsteps behind her, thudding against the tile. Her father's eyes widened.

  "You came back," he said, and his head dropped.

  Finn stood next to the bed. Cat drew away. She wrapped her arms around Daniel's shoulders.

  "Dr Novak," said Finn. There was a sound in his voice Cat didn't recognize, a crack of disbelief. He took her father's hand in his own. "Daniel."

  "How's the moon this time of year?"

  "Cold and hot."

  Her father laughed. Cat pulled Daniel toward the door. She would wait in the lobby. This was not something for her to see.

  As she slipped out the door her father's eyes shifted toward her and then back to Finn. Finn did not turn around.

  She and Daniel walked to the waiting room. Daniel didn't say anything when she plopped him down on one of the uncomfortable, sterile-looking chairs, and he didn't say anything when she asked if he wanted a Coke from the vending machine – just shook his head solemnly.

  "Well, I'm going to get a cup of coffee," she said. What she really wanted was a cigarette but she didn't want to take Daniel outside into the hot parking lot. She walked into the concession alcove, swiped her bank card, watched the cardboard cup fill with thin, watery coffee. When she went back into the waiting room, Daniel stared at her.

  "Grandpa's a ghost," he said.

  "No, he isn't." She sipped her coffee, and it burned the roof of her mouth.

  "He will be soon, though."

  Cat set the coffee on the arm of her chair and reached over and hugged Daniel closer to her. "Yes," she said, because she didn't know what else to say.

  "Can I see him again? Before he becomes a ghost?"

  Cat nodded. "When Finn's finished talking to him. They haven't seen each other in… in a very long time. Not since before you were born."

  "Finn's nice."

  "Yes," said Cat. "Yes, I think so too."

  Finn stayed in the room with her father for almost two hours. Daniel fell asleep in his chair, curled up, his head resting on the crook of Cat's arm. She read through the newsfeeds on her slate, forgetting everything five minutes after she read it. The hospital sounds were muted and far away. Daniel's breath on her arm was warm and moist and comforting.

  Finn appeared in the waiting room. He walked over to Cat.

  "He's dying," he said.

  "I know," said Cat.

  "I knew it intellectually of course, but I hadn't… I hadn't realized…" He ran his hands through his dark and unchanged hair. "It hurts. It hurts to see him."

  Cat slid her arm out from under Daniel's head. He didn't wake up. She stood up and she was closer to Finn than she had been for nearly eight years. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She didn't even think about it.

  He put his hand on her waist and pulled her close and there was that clean electric scent of him and he pressed his face against her hair and they stayed like that, for a minute, for five minutes, and it was familiar and safe even as Cat's heart broke over and over again.

  "Mama?"

  Daniel's voice was slurred with sleep. Cat pulled herself out of Finn's arms and lifted Daniel off the chair. He buried his head in her shoulder. When she turned around, Finn seemed to be smiling.

  "I want to take him to see Dad."