Blind Lake

“God, Chris… I’m so sorry!”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s not a good story for a stormy night.” He touched her hand. “It doesn’t even have a moral, except ‘shit happens.’ But if I seemed a little reluctant to jump in between you and Ray…”

“I understand. And I do appreciate your help. But, Chris? I can handle Ray. With you or without you. Preferably with, but… you understand?”

“You’re telling me you’re not Portia.”

There was no light in the room now but the glow of the sunset on UMa47/E. Subject had reclined for the night. Above the canyon wall, stars shone in constellations no one had named. No one on Earth, at least.

“I’m telling you I’m not Portia. And I’m offering you a cup of tea. Interested?”

She took his hand and walked with him to the kitchen, where the window was blank with snow and the kettle sang counterpoint to the sound of the wind.

Twenty-Five

Sue Sampel was wide awake when the doorbell chimed, though it was well after midnight — almost three, according to her watch.

Between the storm outside and the nervous energy she had stoked up during her raid on Ray’s office, sleep was out of the question. Sebastian, bless him, had gone upstairs around midnight and fallen immediately and soundly asleep. She had curled up with his book as a sort of vicarious presence. His book, plus a big snifter of peach brandy.

But the book seemed less substantial on her second go-through. It was beautifully written and full of striking ideas, but the gaps and leaps of logic were more obvious now. She supposed this was what had put Elaine Coster’s back up, Sebastian’s cheerful love of outrageous hypotheses.

For instance, Sebastian explained in the book how what people called “the vacuum of space” was more than just an absence of matter: it was a complex brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence too quickly to interact with the ordinary substance of things. That jibed with Sue’s memory of first-year physics. She suspected he was on less firm scientific ground when he said that localized irregularities in the quantum vacuum accounted for the presence of “dark matter” in the universe. And his fundamental idea — that dark matter represented a kind of ghostly neural network inhabiting the quantum vacuum — was taken seriously by almost no one apart from Sebastian himself.

But Sebastian wasn’t a scientist and had never claimed to be one. Pressed, he would say these ideas were “templates” or “suggestions,” perhaps not to be taken literally. Sue understood, but she wished it could be otherwise; she wished his theories were solid as houses, solid enough to shelter in.

Not that her own house seemed especially solid tonight. The wind was absolutely ferocious, the snow so dense that the view from the window was like an O/BEC image of some planet unsuitable for human life. She nestled a little deeper into the sofa, took another sip of brandy and read:

Life evolves by moving into preexisting domains and exploiting preexisting forces of nature. The laws of aerodynamics were latent in the natural universe before they were “discovered” by insects and birds. Similarly, human consciousness was not invented de novo but represents the adoption by biology of an implicit, universal mathematics…

This was the idea Sue liked best, that people were pieces of something larger, something that popped up in a shape called Sue Sampel here and in a shape called Sebastian Vogel over there, both unique but both co

The doorbell startled her. Her house server was kind enough to ring it quietly, but when she asked who was there the server said, “Not recognized.” Her stomach clenched. Someone not in her catalogue of regular visitors.

Ray Scutter, she thought. Who else? Elaine had warned her that something like this might happen. Ray was impulsive, more impulsive than ever since the lockdown, maybe impulsive enough to brave the storm and show up on her doorstep at three in the morning. By now he might have seen Elaine’s massive mailing. He would know (though he might not be able to prove it) that Sue had duped the copies from his desk. He would be furious. Worse, enraged. Dangerous. Yes, but how dangerous? Just how crazy was Ray Scutter?

She wished she’d had a little less to drink. But she had thought it would help her sleep, and she’d run out of pot a month ago. In Sue’s experience drugs and alcohol were like men, and pot was the best date. Cocaine liked to get dressed up and go out, very elegant, but coke would abandon you at the party or hector you into the small hours of the morning. Alcohol promised to be fun but ended up as an embarrassment; alcohol was a guy in a loud shirt, a guy with bad breath and too many opinions. Pot, however… pot liked to cuddle and make love. Pot liked to eat ice cream and watch the late show. She missed pot.

The doorbell rang again. Sue peeked out the side window. Sure enough, that was Ray’s little midnight-blue car parked against the drifts at the curb, and it must have a pretty good drive system, she thought, to have made it this far through the deepening snow.

There was another round of ringing, which the server muted disdainfully.

She could, of course, ignore him. But that struck her as cowardly. Really, there was nothing to be afraid of. What was he going to do? Yell at her? I’m a grown-up, she thought. I can deal with that. Better to get it over with.

She thought about waking up Sebastian and decided against it. Sebastian was many things, but he wasn’t a fighter. She could handle this herself. See what Ray wanted, if necessary tell him to bugger off.

But she went to the kitchen and took a carving knife out of the knife rack just in case. She felt idiotic doing it — the knife was really just a kind of emotional insurance, something to make her feel brave — and she kept it hidden behind her back as she approached the door. Opening the door because, after all, this was Blind Lake, the safest community on the surface of the Earth, even if your employer happened to be seriously pissed at you.

Her heart was beating double-time.

Ray stood under the yellow porch light in a long black jacket. The wind had tousled his hair and adorned it with snow stars. His lips were pursed and his eyes were bright. Sue kept herself squarely in the doorway, ready to slam the door should the necessity arise. Bitter air gusted into the house. She said, “Ray—”

“You’re fired,” he said.

She blinked at him. “What?”

His voice was flat and level, his lips fixed in what looked like a permanent sneer. “I know what you did. I came to tell you you’re fired.”

“I’m fired? You drove out here to tell me I’m fired?”

This was too much. The tension of the day had accumulated inside her like an electric charge, and this was so ludicrously anticlimactic — Ray firing her from a job that had long ago become redundant and unimportant — that she had to struggle to keep a straight face.

What would he do next, kick her out of Blind Lake?

But she sensed it was absolutely necessary to conceal the amusement she felt. “Ray,” she said, “look, I’m sorry, but it’s late—”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. You’re nothing but a thief. I know about the documents you stole. And I know about the other thing too.”

“The other thing?”

“Do I have to draw you a diagram? The pastry!”

The DingDong.

That did it. She laughed in spite of herself — a choked giggle that turned into a helpless, full-throated roar. God, the DingDong — Sebastian’s ersatz birthday cake — the fucking DingDong!