Blind Lake

“Ray has an agenda of his own, Mr. Fleischer.”

“My concern is with Tess.”

“Well, I—” Marguerite restrained an urge to bite her lip. How had this gone so badly wrong? Fleischer was looking at her now with patient concern, patronizing concern, but he was a grade eight teacher, after all, and maybe that big-eyed frown was just a defensive reflex, a mask that slid into place whenever he was confronted with an hysterical child. Or parent. “You know, I, obviously, I’m willing to do whatever will help Tess, help her focus on her schoolwork…”

“Basically,” Fleischer said, “I think we’re on the same wavelength here. Tess missed a good deal of school at Crossbank — we don’t want to repeat that.”

“No. We don’t. Honestly, I don’t think it will happen again.” She added, hoping it didn’t sound too obviously desperate, “I can sit down with her, talk to her about being more thorough with her work, if you think that would be a good idea.”

“It might help.” Fleischer hesitated, then: “All I’m saying, Marguerite, is that we both need to keep our eyes open where Tess is concerned. Stop trouble before it happens.”

“My eyes are all the way open, Mr. Fleischer.”

“Well, that’s good. That’s the important thing. If I think we need to touch base again, can I call you?”

“Anytime,” Marguerite said, ridiculously grateful that the interview seemed to be drawing to a close.

Fleischer stood up. “Thank you for your time, and I hope I didn’t alarm you.”

“Not at all.” An outrageous lie.

“My door is always open if you have any concerns of your own.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

She hurried down the corridor to the school door as if she were leaving the scene of a crime. Mistake to mention Ray, she thought, but his fingerprints were all over this encounter, and what a slick setup it had been — and how like Ray to use Tessa’s problems as a weapon.

Unless, Marguerite thought, I’m kidding myself. Unless Tessa’s problems went deeper than a mild personality disorder; unless the whole Crossbank circus was about to repeat itself… She would do anything to help Tess through this difficult passage, if only she knew how to help, but Tessa’s own refractory indifference was almost impossible to breach… especially with Ray ru

Ray, seeing every conflict as a war and driven by his own dread of losing.

Marguerite pushed through the doors into autumn air. The afternoon had cooled dramatically, and the clouds overhead were closer, or seemed so in the long light of the sun. The breeze was frigid but welcome after the claustrophobic warmth of the schoolroom.

As she let herself into her car she heard the wail of sirens. She drove cautiously to the exit and stopped long enough to let a Blind Lake Security vehicle roar past. It looked like it was heading for the south gate.

Nine

Sue Sampel, Ray Scutter’s executive assistant, tapped on his door and reminded him that Ari Weingart was scheduled for a meeting in twenty minutes. Ray looked up from a stack of printed papers and pursed his lips. “Thank you, I’m aware of that.”

“Plus the guy from Civilian Security at four o’clock.”

“I can read my own day pla

“Okay, then,” Sue said. Screw you, too. Ray was in a dark mood this Wednesday, not that he was ever sweetness-and-light. She supposed he was chafing under the lockdown like everybody else. She understood the need for security, and she could even imagine that it might be necessary (though God knows why) to make it impossible to place so much as a phone call outside the perimeter. But if this went on much longer people were going to get seriously PO’d. Many already were. The day workers, for sure, who had lives (spouses, children) outside the Blind Lake campus. But the permanent residents, too. Sue herself, for example. She lived in the Lake but she dated off-campus, and she had been anxious to get that all-important second phone call from a man she’d met at a Secular Singles group in Constance, a man her age, mid-forties, a veterinarian, with thi

Ari Weingart popped into the office at the appointed hour. Good old Ari: polite, fu

“The boss is in?” Ari asked.

“As luck would have it. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

Ray Scutter’s window looked south from the sixth floor of Hubble Plaza, and he was often distracted by the view. Usually there was a constant stream of traffic in and out of the Lake. Lately there had been none, and the lockdown had made his window view static, rendered the land beyond the perimeter fence as blank as brown paper, no motion but gliding cloud-shadows and the occasional darting flock of birds. If you stared long enough it began to look as inhuman as the landscape of UMa47/E. Just another imported image. It was all surface, wasn’t it? All two-dimensional.

The lockdown had created a number of irritating problems. Not the least of which was that he appeared to be the senior civilian authority on campus.

His status in the Administration hierarchy was relatively junior. But the a

It meant that people were coming to him with problems he wasn’t empowered to resolve. Demanding things he couldn’t give them, like a coherent explanation of the lockdown or a special exemption from it. He had to tell them he was in the dark too. All he could do was carry on under the standing protocols and wait for instructions from outside. Wait, in other words, for the whole shitting mess to reach a conclusion. But it had already gone on for an uncomfortably long time.

He looked away from the window as Ari Weingart knocked and entered.

Ray disliked Weingart’s cheery optimism. He suspected it disguised a secret contempt, suspected that under his hale-fellow exterior Weingart was peddling influence as enthusiastically as every other department head. But at least Weingart understood Ray’s position and seemed more interested in coping than complaining.

If he could only suppress that smile. The smile bore down on Ray like a klieg light, teeth so white and regular they looked like luminous mahjong tiles. “Sit,” Ray said.

Weingart pulled up a chair and opened his pocket desktop. Down to business. Ray liked that.

“You wanted a list of situations we’ll have to address if the quarantine goes on much longer. I drew up some notes.”

“Quarantine?” Ray said. “Is that what people are calling it?”

“As opposed to a standard six-hour lockdown, yeah.”

“Why would we be quarantined? No one’s sick.”

“Talk to Dimi.” Dimitry Shulgin was the Civilian Security chief, due here at four. “The lockdown follows an obscure set of regs in the military manual. He says it’s what they call a ‘data quarantine,’ but nobody ever really expected it to come into effect.”

“He hasn’t mentioned this to me. I swear to God, he’s like some fucking Slavic clam. What exactly is a ‘data quarantine’ meant to accomplish?”

“The regs were written back when Crossbank was just begi