Blind Lake

It ran to a page and a half, and it was a good piece. Thoughtful and carefully reasoned. The byline belonged to Elaine Coster, “a respected science journalist only recently released from the quarantine camp in Utah.”

Chris glanced at Tess, who was yawning, sprawled across the upholstered cushions of her grandfather’s sofa.

Tess hadn’t mentioned Mirror Girl to the authorities. Nor had Marguerite, nor had Chris.

They had not agreed in advance to a conspiracy of silence. It was a decision each had reached singly, arising, at least on Chris’s part, from a reluctance to report events that could only be misunderstood.

An untellable tale. Should a journalist really believe in such a thing? But what he had felt was more than just fear of ridicule. Things had happened that he couldn’t explain satisfactorily even to himself. Things that would never be set in ba

Tess said, without taking her eyes off the video panel, “I’m kind of tired.”

“Getting on toward bedtime,” Chris said.

He walked her up to the small spare bedroom of her grandfather’s house. She said she might read until Marguerite came to tuck her in. Chris said that would be okay.

She sprawled across the comforter on the bed. “This is the same room I stayed in last time we visited,” Tess said. “Three years ago. When my father was with us.”

Chris nodded.

The window was open an inch or so, spilling late-summer perfumes into the room. Tess left the window ajar but pulled the yellowing blind all the way down to the sill, hiding the glass.

“You haven’t seen her since the Lake, have you?” Chris said.

Her. Mirror Girl.

“No,” Tess said.

“You think she’s still around?”

Tess shrugged.

“You think about her much, Tess? Do you ever wonder who she was?”

“I know who she was. She was—” But the words seemed to tangle her tongue, and she stopped and frowned for a moment.

Back in Blind Lake, Tess had identified Mirror Girl with the O/BEC processors. As if the O/BECs, aroused to a dawning consciousness, had wanted a window onto the human world into which they had been born.

And at both Crossbank and Blind Lake they had chosen Tess. Why Tess? Maybe there was no real answer, Chris thought, any more than the Blind Lake researchers could say why they had chosen the Subject out of countless nearly identical individuals. It could have been anyone. It had to be someone.

Tess found the thought she had been struggling for: “She was the Eye,” Tess said solemnly. “And I was the telescope.”

Marguerite followed her father into the cool summer night, the backyard of the house on Butternut Street. Only the garden lights were lit, luminescent rods planted among the coleus, and she paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

“I assume you know what this is,” Chuck Hauser said. He stood aside and gri

Marguerite’s breath caught in her throat. “A telescope! My God, it’s beautiful! Where did you get it?”

Optical telescopes for amateur stargazing hadn’t been commercially manufactured for years. These days, if you wanted to look at the night sky, you hooked a photomultiplier lens into your domestic server; or better, linked yourself to one of the public celestial surveys. Old Dobsonian scopes like this sold for high prices on the antique market.

And this one was genuinely old, Marguerite realized as she examined it: in lovely condition, but definitely pre-mille

“The works have been restored and refitted,” her father said. “New optics ground to the original specs. Otherwise it’s totally vintage.”

“It must have cost a fortune!”

“Not a fortune.” He smiled ruefully. “Not quite.”

“When did you take up an interest in astronomy?”

“Don’t be dense, Margie. I didn’t buy it for myself. It’s a gift. You like it?”

She liked it very much indeed. She hugged her father. He couldn’t possibly have afforded it. He must have taken out a second mortgage, Marguerite thought.

“When you were young,” Chuck Hauser said, “all this stuff was a mystery to me.”

“All what stuff?”

“You know. Stars and planets. Everything you cared about so much. It seems to me now I should have stopped and looked a little closer. This is my way of saying I admire what you’ve accomplished. Maybe I’m even begi

“We’ll find a way.”

“I notice you put your luggage in the same room with Chris.”

She blushed. “Did I? I wasn’t thinking — really, it’s just habit—”

Making it worse.

He smiled. “Come on, Marguerite. I’m not some hard-shell Baptist. From what you’ve said and from what I’ve seen, Chris is a good man. You’re obviously in love. Have you talked about marriage?”

Her blush deepened; she hoped he couldn’t see it in the dim light. “No immediate plans. But don’t be surprised.”

“He’s good to Tess?”

“Very good.”

“She likes him?”

“Better. She feels safe with him.”

“Then I’m happy for you. So tell me, does presenting you with this gift entitle me to offer a word of advice along with it?”

“Anytime.”

“I won’t ask what you three have been through at Blind Lake, but I know it’s been especially tough for Tess. She used to be a little uncommunicative. It doesn’t look like that’s changed.”

“It hasn’t.”

“You know, Marguerite, you were exactly the same way. Thick as a brick when your interests weren’t engaged. I always had a hard time talking to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. All I’m saying is, it’s easy to let these things glide past. People can become almost invisible to each other. I love you and I know your mother loved you, but I don’t think we always saw you very clearly, if you know what I mean.”

“I know.”

“Don’t let that happen to Tess.”

Marguerite nodded.

“Now,” her father said. “Before we pack this thing up, you want to show me how it works?”

She found him 47 Ursa Majoris in the optical scope. An undistinguished star, no more than a point of light among many points of light, less bright than the fireflies blinking under the bushes at the back of the yard.

“That’s it, huh?”

“That’s it.”

“I guess you know it so well by now, it must feel like you’ve been there.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like.” She added, “I love you too, Daddy.”

“Thank you, Marguerite. Shouldn’t you be putting that girl of yours to bed?”

“Chris can take care of it. It might be nice to sit out here a while and talk.”

“It’s pretty chilly for August.”

“I don’t care.”

When at last she came back into the house she found Chris in the kitchen, mumbling over his pocket server, making notes for the new book. He had been working on it for weeks, sometimes feverishly. “Has Tess gone to bed?”

“She’s in her room reading.”

Marguerite went up to check.

The most disturbing thing about the events at Blind Lake, Marguerite thought, was that they implied a co

Seeing changes the seen. Had Tess been watched in the same way? Had Marguerite? Would that bring them, then, at the end of some unimaginable pilgrimage, to one of those enigmatic places linked to the stars — in lieu of death, a plunge into the infinite?

Not yet, Marguerite thought. Maybe never. But certainly not yet.

She found Tess fully clothed, asleep on the bedspread with her book splayed open and her hair askew. Marguerite woke her gently and helped her into her nightgown.