Blind Lake

A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain, Shakespeare had said. Chris understood that. It was a lesson he should have learned a long time ago. If he had learned it soon enough, his sister Portia might still be alive.

“Stop talking like that!” Tess screeched.

At that moment Ray seemed to wake, seemed to realize he had done something peculiar, embarassed himself in public. His face was brick-red.

“What I mean to say—”

The silence dragged on. The audience murmured.

“What I mean—”

Ari Weingart took a half-step out from stage left.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said. “I apologize if I said something — if I misspoke. This meeting—”

He waved his hand, knocking the empty water glass onto the floor of the stage. It broke spectacularly.

“This meeting is over,” Ray growled into the barrel of the microphone. “You can all go home.”

He stalked into the wings. Sebastian Vogel began whispering frantically into his pocket server. Marguerite clambered down from the stage and ran to comfort her daughter.

Sue Sampel had just shuffled the printouts back into their original order when her server chimed.

The small noise seemed very large in the silence of Ray’s i

“Shit!” she said, then fumbled the phone wand out of her pocket. “Yes?”

It was Sebastian. Ray had left the stage, he said. Looking pissed. Could be headed anywhere.

“Thanks,” Sue said. “Meet me out front, five minutes.” She gathered the papers from the floor — they had scattered into a broad circle, and some had slipped under the desk — and shuffled them back into a crude semblance of order. No time to be more precise. Even if Ray didn’t come roaring through the door, her nerves were stretched to the breaking point. She locked the papers into Ray’s desk drawer, left his office, packed up the stuff she had left on her own desk, then hurried into the corridor and shut the door behind her.

The elevator ride took approximately forever, but the lobby was empty when she got there and Sebastian had already pulled up at to the front. She ducked into the car and said, “Go, go, go.”

The wind had kicked up since morning. Out in the wide meadows between the town of Blind Lake and the cooling towers of Eyeball Alley, fresh snow began to fall.

Twenty-Three

Ray Scutter left the auditorium without a destination in mind, sucking in gusts of bitterly cold air as the doors closed behind him. Trading pain for clarity.

He’d made a mistake onstage. No, worse than that. He’d lost track of himself. That ridiculous digression about apes and men. Not that the ideas weren’t sound. But his delivery had been self-absorbed, almost manic.

Some of this was Marguerite’s fault. That pious little speech of hers had demanded rebuttal. But he shouldn’t have risen to the bait. Ray had always been able to command an audience, and it troubled him that he had let this one get so completely out of hand. Put it down to stress, he thought.

Stress, frustration, a contagious madness. Ray had read the Crossbank printouts closely, and that was his diagnosis: insanity as a transmissible disease. Here at Blind Lake, of course, it could start at any time; perhaps had already started; he hadn’t been kidding when he called Marguerite’s speech a symptom.

Grains of snow snaked across the mallway, writhing in the wind. Ray had left his jacket backstage at the community center, but going back for it was out of the question. Ray decided to shelter in his office half a block away, make a couple of calls, do some damage assessment, find out how badly he had fucked himself with that outburst on stage. Errant thoughts still circled in his head. Daylight dreams.

He crossed the lobby of the Plaza and rode an empty elevator up to the seventh floor, snow melting to dew in his hair. He felt dizzy, nauseated. His ears vibrated with some buzzing, interminable noise. He had embarrassed himself, he thought, okay, but in the long term, even in the short term, did that really matter? If no one was leaving Blind Lake alive (and he considered that a real possibility), of what significance was his outburst? Made him look bad to the senior researchers, big fucking deal. He wasn’t playing career games anymore.

He was still well-placed to survive. He could even come through this crisis looking relatively good, if he did the right thing. What was the right thing? Killing the O/BECs, Ray thought. Too late to generate popular support, but he had laid the groundwork and might even have made a few converts if Marguerite hadn’t provoked him. If he hadn’t lost himself in a maze of ancillary ideas. If Tess hadn’t interrupted him.

He came to a dead halt at the door to his office.

Tess.

He had forgotten his daughter. He had left her in the audience.

He took his server out of his shirt pocket and pronounced Tessa’s name.

She answered promptly: “Dad?”

“Tess, where are you?”

She hesitated. Ray tried but failed to read significance into the pause. Then she said, “I’m in the car.”

“The car? Whose car?”

“Uh, Mom’s.”

“You don’t go back to your mother until Monday.”

“I know, but—”

“She shouldn’t have taken you with her. That was wrong. That was absolutely dead wrong for her to do that.”

“But—”

“Did she force you, Tess? Did your mother make you get in the car with her? You can tell me. If she’s listening, just give me a hint. I’ll understand.”

Plaintively: “No! It wasn’t like that. You left.”

“Only for a few minutes, Tess.”

“I didn’t know that!”

“You should have waited for me.”

“Plus you said all those things about killing her!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I would never hurt your mother.”

“What? I mean when you were up onstage! You talked about killing Mirror Girl!”

“I didn’t—” He stopped, forced himself to calm down. Tess was sensitive and, by the sound of her voice, already frightened. “I didn’t mention Mirror Girl. You must have misunderstood.”

“You said we have to kill her!”

“I was talking about the processor at the Eye, Tess. Please put your mother on.”

Another pause. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“She has to bring you to me. That’s in the agreement we signed. I need to tell her about that.”

“We’re going home.” Tess sounded near tears. “I’m sorry!”

“Going to your mother’s house?”

“Yes!”

“She’s not allowed—”

“I don’t care! I don’t care what she’s not allowed! At least she doesn’t want to kill anyone!”

“Tess, I told you, I don’t—”

The server clicked. Tess had broken the co

When he tried her again there was no answer, only her standard voice message. He tried Marguerite. Likewise.

“Fucking bitch,” Ray whispered. Meaning Marguerite. Maybe even Tess, who had betrayed him. But no, no, back up, that wasn’t fair. Tess had been misled. Misled by her mother’s pampering and indulgence. Which was exactly what all this Mirror Girl bullshit was about.

Marguerite was using it against him. Daddy wants to kill Mirror Girl. Indoctrinating her. Ray was furious, picturing it. He could only imagine what lies Tess had been asked to believe about him.

So was Tess lost to him, too?

No. No. Impossible. Not yet.

He locked himself into his office, turned his chair to the window, and thought about calling Dimi Shulgin. Shulgin might have some ideas.

The view from the window was lifeless and hostile. Blind Lake had learned to live without weather reports, but you didn’t have to be a meteorologist to see the clouds roll in. Low clouds, weighty with snow, moving on a gale-force wind from the northwest. One more installment in this endless winter.