The Mad Scientist's Daughter (6 page)

  "Very good," said Finn. Cat blinked. Finn switched off the learning tablet and all the math blinked out of existence. Cat lay her head on the table. The sunlight streaming through the windows was bright and hot.

  "You are improving," said Finn. But Cat only sighed.

 

Time passed. Cat learned enough algebra to prompt her mother to ask about trigonometry. There was a fight at the dinner table, and Cat stormed up to her room and slammed her door shut so hard the walls of the house shook. Then, only a few weeks later, Cat's parents announced she would be attending the consolidated high school in town the following autumn.

  "What?" she shrieked. They were sitting at the table in the kitchen – her parents and Cat. No Finn. A storm churned up the soil outside. It had rained constantly that summer.

  "I don't want to go to school," Cat said. "I thought you said it wasn't very good. Why are you suddenly changing your minds?"

  Her mother sighed and pressed her hand to her forehead. Her father leaned forward over the table.

  "We think it would be a good idea for you to make some friends," he said. "Friends your own… age."

  Cat slouched down in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. School. She associated the word with things she had seen on shows or read in stories: a place where you had to sit in the same room for eight hours a day, where you couldn't run through the woods in the sparkling mornings, where kids would torment you because you didn't have the right haircut. Cat touched her own reddish-brown hair reflexively.

  "I won't go."

  "You have to," her mother said.

  "Why? Because you said so?"

  "Basically."

  Cat wanted to scream. Instead she pushed away from the table and put on her rain boots and raincoat and went outside. The trees thrashed and shimmered from the rain. Through the foggy kitchen window she could see her parents sitting at the kitchen table, leaning forward, faces intent. Talking about her. She kicked at a patch of loose grass, and it splattered out across the yard, mud mixing in with the rainwater. Cat trudged toward the woods.
School. They can't make me go
. But she knew they could. Her parents' acts of injustice had been increasing lately, to the point where Cat could barely stand to look at them. They ignored her all through her childhood and now suddenly they wanted to take an interest in her development.

  Cat walked all the way down to the river, slipping a little over the wet grass, grabbing on to the tree branches to make sure she didn't fall. The leaves came off in her hands and pasted themselves to her skin.

  The river had risen since the last time she'd been out here, a few days ago. Then it had been calm, but now it twisted and churned and swirled with clouds of silt and mud, rushing up against the cypress trees. Cat stood right at the water's edge and watched as it carried along smooth round stones and broken sticks and clumps of drowned grass.

  The rain dripped off the hood of her raincoat and into her eyes. She grabbed hold of one of the trees and leaned out over the water, and that's when she saw Finn, standing several meters away from her, looking out over the river, not moving, not wearing a rain coat or boots. His hair curled with the weight of water.

  "Finn!" Cat shouted. He turned, and she waved. Then she began to make her careful way along the river's edge toward him. She had done this many times before, clinging to the cypress trees' low-hanging branches to propel herself along. But today she was upset by her parents, by the threat of school, and the rain kept falling into her eyes. She lost her handling on the trees and fell.

  Time slowed until it became immeasurable. She hung suspended above the water rushing toward the sea, the rain dropping in perpendicular lines across her bare face.

  She was in Finn's arms.

  He'd caught her, nearly instantly, even from the place where he'd been standing. He pulled her away from the edge of the water until they were on more solid ground, away from the loose soil eroding into the river. His body beneath his wet clothes was warm, the way a computer is warm when it overheats. His arms wrapped around her stiffly. When he removed them, the places where his skin had touched hers tingled.

  "Are you hurt?"

  She shook her head and tried to draw herself up, but she was embarrassed at having almost fallen into the river, embarrassed that she had to be saved. Her whole body was flushed and hot. She pushed her hood away and fell down into the mud and closed her eyes against the rain.

  "What are you doing out here?" Drops of water, steely and cold, landed on her tongue.

  "I was thinking."

  
What do you possibly think about? Everything in the universe?

  "I have to go to high school next fall." She rolled over onto her side. Finn sat down at the base of a twisting old oak tree. Leaves and twigs were caught in his hair. His pale skin shimmered from the rain. He looked like a fairy.

  "Yes, Dr Novak told me."

  Cat sighed. "I don't want to go."

  Finn didn't say anything. Cat rolled over onto her back.

  The rain fell harder, weaving through the net of leaves overhead, smelling faintly of metal.

  They stayed there for a long time, unspeaking.

 

Cat started at the high school in town. Her parents could still tell her what to do. That first day, everyone stared at her when she walked into the courtyard with a bag slung across her chest. She wore a dress she had made from looking at videos on fashion sites on the Internet, but she could tell instantly it was all wrong, she was all wrong.

  The other students whispered about her all day, and then all week, and no one spoke to her except her teachers. Between classes, when she had to walk through the crowded, noisy, humid hallways, Cat's heart pounded and her breath came out short and gaspy. People stared at her and the weight of their eyes was so heavy Cat thought she might burn up. She was constantly dizzy. She walked close to the rows of lockers to keep herself upright, one hand running over the line of padlocks.

  She had spent too much time alone in the woods, in front of a loom, with Finn.

  During lunches those first few days, Cat walked off campus to the neighborhood across the street. The houses made her nervous, but during the heat of the day nothing stirred and no one looked out their windows. She ate the lunches she packed at home in the shade of an enormous hibiscus bush, then walked back to school for her afternoon classes.

  On Friday one of the security officers caught her. She was sent to the office, her heart panicking. They searched her bag for drugs. When they didn't find anything, the assistant principal came and sat down in the chair beside her and said, "You're not in trouble, but I'm going to call your parents to let them know what happened." She paused, twisting her mouth in concern. "You can't just go traipsing off campus during lunch."

  On the ride home after school Cat dug her nails into the palms of her hands and tried not to cry. Her mother just leaned her head against the window and looked tired.

  The weeks went by. Cat didn't make any friends. She was behind in her math and engineering classes even though her teachers all acted as though she should be ahead. She was bored by the business and marketing classes. She thought she'd like her English class but everything they read was simple and boring. There was only one art class, an elective for seniors.

  When she complained about this to her parents, her mother said, "We let Finn coddle you, sweetheart. The math is good for you. You'll be better prepared for the job market."

  Cat was full of hate. It was the only way to describe it. She walked around campus during the day thinking
I hate I hate I hate
. She hated her parents, she hated the kids at school, she hated her teachers. She even hated Finn, because he hadn't stopped this from happening.

  A month went by. Then, on a day so hot and bright it felt like August, a boy came up to Cat as she sat beneath the magnolia tree in front of the school. She had finished her lunch and was sketching on her electronic drawing pad. The boy walked right up to her and stared at her until she glanced up. She knew he was popular. He exuded an air of being adored.

  "You're Novak's daughter, right?" He tilted his head to the side and squinted.

  Cat nodded and looked back down at her drawing. It was a woman's face. It didn't look like anyone in particular.

  "What's your name?" the boy asked.

  Cat tilted her head up at him. He was smiling. She didn't trust him, but she told him her name, and he nodded thoughtfully.

  "So Novak finally let you out." He crouched beside her and looked her in the eye. "I'd always heard he had a daughter but no one told me she looked like you." He grinned. "Wish they had."

  Cat gazed at him with a sense of mild alarm. She didn't know what to say.

  "I had a tutor at home," she said. "That's why I didn't go to school."

  "A tutor! Shit." The boy ran his hand over the top of his hair. His name flashed into her mind:
Erik Martin
. "You know everyone talks about your dad." He laughed. "The mad scientist. That's what my uncles all call him."

  
Why would you tell me that
? But she only tightened her fingers around the edge of the sketch pad.

  "Yeah, I dunno. I met him once. He seemed cool." Erik leaned back on his heels, wobbling. He put one hand out for balance. "There was some crazy robot thing with him, though. Almost looked real. He said it was his
assistant
."

  "That's Finn."

  "Wait, it has a name?" Erik threw back his head and laughed. "Oh fuck, man. Wait'll Andrew hears about that–"

  "He's not an it." Cat clenched her drawing pen in her fingers. Sweat dripped down her spine.

  "He?" Erik stood up and frowned at her. "Nah. You don't understand. They can't be
he's
. They're just machines. You wouldn't call your oven a he, would you?"

  "No," said Cat. "Because an oven is just… an oven."

  She stopped. Erik looked down at her, his features darkened by the shadow of the magnolia tree.

  "Just like daddy, huh?" he said. "My uncle says that's the problem with letting damn scientists come live around here. Brings in money, I guess. Brings in a lot of creepy-ass robots, too. Like, that one time I saw it, it kept staring at me, and–"

  "He's not an it," Cat said. "He's a person." All the hate she carried around inside was building up like a second skeleton. It tingled in the tips of her fingers. She slid the drawing pad off her lap.

  "A person?" Erik's eyes narrowed. "No, it's just a machine made to look like a person." He rocked back on his heels and tilted his face up toward the sky. "So they can steal jobs from us easier. It plain ain't right. That's what my preacher says." His face dropped down. He looked Cat straight on. Her entire body shook. "I mean, your dad made it, right? A human being? Way I see it, any robot that close to a person is an abomination."

  He spoke so casually, as though it were a fact, as though he had no idea how it hurt her.

  And for a second the entire world fell away, and Cat felt only a white-hot anger burning at the core of her heart, radiating out through her limbs. Then in one clean motion she slid to her feet and fell upon Erik Martin, her hands curled up tight into fists. They hit the ground, Cat on top, Erik squirming and shrieking beneath her. She heard feet pounding against the sidewalk. People jeering and yelling. Cat slammed her fist into Erik's nose and heard a crack and cried out at the burning pain in her own knuckles. He scratched at her face, and she scratched back. Her hair was flying everywhere, and the sun illuminated all the red in it like she'd caught on fire.

  Hands grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away from Erik. He crawled backward over the grass. A column of blood was smeared across the lower half of his face, from his nose to his chin. Cat tried to catch her breath, her chest heaving.

  "The hell did you do to her, Martin?" shouted the security guard. He tossed Cat aside and stalked over to Erik. The hand Cat had used to punch him was covered in blood, her knuckles jutting out at unnerving angles.

  "Nothing, man! We were talking. She fucking went crazy." Erik stood up and wiped at the blood on his face. The security guard whirled around.

  "We have a zero-tolerance policy toward fighting at this school," he said to Cat. "Now, if he touched you–"

  "He didn't touch me." Cat glanced at the dissipating crowd of students. No one would meet her eyes but she felt the lingering ghosts of their stares. And for once it didn't bother her. She felt strong, powerful. Amazonian. "He said something about… about my father."

  The guard rolled his eyes. "OK, I've heard enough. I'm taking both of you to the office. Come on."

  He took Erik's upper arm in one hand and Cat's in another and led them up the front steps, into the cold, dark school building. Cat heard the sound of blood dripping across the tile floor, and she rubbed her hand against the edge of her shirt.

  Erik leaned around behind the security guard.

  "Bitch," he hissed.

  "Martin! Don't you say another word to her."

  The assistant principal kept Cat and Erik separate while they waited for their parents. She sent Cat to the nurse's office first, and the nurse poured hydrogen peroxide over the cuts on Cat's knuckles. Cat clenched her teeth but didn't scream. Her hand was swollen and red and wouldn't straighten out. The nurse wrapped it in a bandage.

  Both Cat's mother and father came to the school. When Cat walked out to meet them they regarded her silently, her mother's eyes narrowed into two angry slits. Her father looked disappointed. This was worse.

  "A fight, Caterina?" her mother said. "A
goddamn fistfight
? What were you thinking?"