Blind Lake

Chris ran into outbound traffic on the road to the Eye. Night staff leaving the facility, he guessed, as rumors circulated that the siege was coming to an end.

Even in this wan daylight the road was treacherous driving. He saw more than one car abandoned in the drifts, workers in burly winter coats flagging rides from colleagues.

He drove past an untenanted guardpost directly to the entrance to the Eye, where he found Charlie Grogan herding stragglers out of the lobby into the cold morning air. The sound of Klaxons beat against the raging wind.

“Not even remotely possible,” Charlie said when Chris explained what he wanted to do. “The building suffered a tremor of some kind early this morning and all kinds of electrical and communications problems since then. We’ve got strict protocols about this. I can’t let anyone in until the building is declared structurally sound. Even after we get inspectors inside, we still have to worry about containment on the cryogenics.” He looked mournful. “The O/BECs are probably dead already.”

“Tessa’s inside.”

“So you said, but I doubt that a whole lot, Mr. Carmody. Our Security people conducted a very orderly evacuation. What would Tessa be doing here at five in the morning, anyway?”

Looking for Mirror Girl, Chris thought. “It wouldn’t be the first time she got inside without being seen.”

“You really have a solid reason to believe Tess is in this building?”

“Yes.”

“You want to share that information with me?”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to trust me.”

“I’m sorry too. Look, even if she is inside, we’ve got the Lake’s Security people headed in. Maybe they can give you some advice.”

“Charlie, you need to double-check on that. I heard Shulgin’s men were detoured to the south gate.”

“What, this thing about the military coming in?”

“Call Shulgin. Ask him when you can expect to see a Security detail.”

Charlie sighed. “Look, I’ll talk to Tabby Menkowitz and see if she can get a volunteer from our own people to do a walk-through—”

“If Tess sees a stranger she’ll just hide. In an installation this big, I’m sure an eleven-year-old girl can avoid getting caught.”

“But she’ll come out for you?”

“I believe there’s a chance she will.”

“What do you mean to do, look inside every room in the building?”

“Last time you found her in the O/BEC gallery, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“It’s the O/BECs she’s interested in.”

“I could lose my job,” Charlie said.

“Is that really an issue at this point?”

“Jesus, Chris.” Then: “If they end up pulling your body out of the rubble, what am I supposed to say?”

“Say you never saw me.”

“I wish it was true.” Charlie’s server buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it. “Tell you what. Take this.” He gave Chris his yellow-striped hard hat. “There’s a transponder in the crown. It’ll give you emergency all-pass privileges if any of the automated security is still up. Put it on. And if she’s not where you think she is, get the fuck out of there, all right?”

“Thank you.”

“Just bring back my goddamn hat,” Charlie said.

Thirty-Three

As soon as Marguerite identified the voice as Tessa’s, Tess herself stepped out from behind (or somehow inside) the nearest iridescent pillar.

But it wasn’t really Tess. Marguerite knew that instantly. It was the image of Tess, down to the denim overalls and yellow shirt in which Marguerite had hurriedly dressed her daughter for the trip to the Blind Lake clinic. But Tess had never looked so surrealistically flawless, so lit from within, so unblinkingly clear-eyed.

This was Mirror Girl.

“You don’t have to be scared,” Mirror Girl said.

Yes, Marguerite thought, I think I do, I do have to be scared. “You’re Mirror Girl,” she stammered.

“Tess calls me that.”

“What are you really, then?”

“There’s no simple word for it.”

“Did you bring me here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because this is what you wanted.”

Was it? “What do you have to do with my daughter?”

“I learned a lot from Tess.”

“Have you hurt her?”

“I don’t hurt people.”

This creature, this thing that had appropriated Tessa’s appearance, had also mastered Tessa’s diction and Tessa’s oblique way with questions and answers. “Tess said you live in the Eye. In the O/BEC processors.”

“I have a sister at Crossbank,” Mirror Girl said proudly. “I have sisters in the stars. Almost too many to count. I have a sister here. We talk to each other.”

This conversation was too bizarre to be real, Marguerite decided. It had the trajectory and momentum of a dream and, like a dream, it would have to play itself out. Her participation was not only necessary but mandatory.

Ursa Majoris 47 had begun to settle toward the horizon, casting long and complex shadows into the maze of arches. “This planet is years and years away from Earth,” Marguerite said, thinking of time, the passage of time, the paradox of time. “I can’t really be here.”

“You’re not out there,” the image of Tess said, gesturing at the desert; “you’re in here. It’s different in here. More different the farther inside you go. It’s true, if you walked out of here you would die. Your body couldn’t breathe or go on living, and if you counted the hours they would be different hours than the Blind Lake hours.”

“How do you know about Blind Lake?”

“I was born there.”

“Why do you look like Tess?”

“I told you. I learned a lot from her.”

“But why Tess?”

Mirror Girl shrugged in a distressingly Tess-like fashion. “She knew my sister at Crossbank before I was born. It could have been someone else. But it had to be someone.”

Like the Subject, Marguerite thought. We could have picked any individual to follow. It just happened to be him.

The Subject regarded this exchange indifferently, if his motionlessness signified anything like indifference.

“Go on,” Mirror Girl said, “talk to him. Isn’t that what you want to do?”

Ultimately, yes, but it had never been more than a daydream. She didn’t know how to begin. She faced the Subject again.

“Hello,” she said, feeling idiotic, her voice cracking.

There was no response.

She looked back helplessly at Mirror Girl.

“Not like that. Tell him a story,” Mirror Girl suggested.

“What story?”

“Your story.”

Absurd, Marguerite thought. She couldn’t just tell him a story. It was a childish idea, a Tess-like idea. She had been here too long already. She wasn’t like the Subject; she couldn’t stand in one place indefinitely. She was still a mortal human being.

But even as she had these thoughts she felt a wave of calm coming over her. It was like the feeling she had putting Tess to bed, tucking her in, reading (before Tess had become too sophisticated for this) something from the old, strange children’s books she had found so fascinating: Oz, The Hobbit, Harry Potter. Marguerite’s fatigue lifted (perhaps this was a spell cast by Mirror Girl), and she closed her eyes and found herself wondering what she could tell the Subject about the Earth, not its history or geography but her own experience of it. How frighteningly strange it would no doubt seem to him. Her story: born in the customary ma