The Mad Scientist's Daughter
Cat stared at him. “Seriously?” she said. “Do you want me to go to this party with you or not? I’m sorry I was late, but I lost track of time—”
“Forget it.” Richard smiled. “You look beautiful. And you’re right, we need to get going.”
Richard drove, the air in the suburbs steaming from the rain and fragrant with pine trees and potted plants. Cat put on her makeup by the flickering light of the street lamps. Red lipstick, black mascara, yellow light. She refused to allow herself to think about anything but eyeliner. Even so, constantly in the back of her mind, was this: Finn’s tapestry.
Finn. Finn. Finn.
Cat finished putting on her makeup. She felt like a seashell, pretty enough but empty and easily broken.
The party was at a hotel overlooking the glassy, manmade lake on the edge of the suburbs, not far from the tree-lined business park where Richard was thinking about relocating his offices. When they walked in, a few bored-looking photographers snapped their pictures. They floated up to the party in a glass elevator. Cat put her hand on Richard’s biceps and held herself up tall and straight because this, going to parties in a designer dress, was the only thing she really had to do in her marriage. Her one responsibility was to be a pillar of light, thrusting Richard out of the darkness.
She smiled as dazzlingly as she could to all those strange faces in the party’s soft golden glow.
They stayed for only a couple of hours, long enough for Richard to cycle through the investors, shaking their hands and charming them with flashes of white teeth. Cat peeled away from him and found herself in a huddle of corporate wives, all in dresses that looked like hers, their hair ironed flat or wound up in elaborate bouffants, their laughter sharp as diamonds.
“Caterina Feversham,” one of them said, holding out her hand limply. Cat shook it. “We’ve heard a lot about you. You’re an artist, right?”
“I pretend to be,” Cat said. They all tittered like they didn’t quite get the joke. Cat took a long drink of champagne. She glanced at her reflection in the window and for a moment she couldn’t see herself: just another corporate wife in a cluster of corporate wives.
A wife in a slinky green dress tilted her head and tapped one manicured finger against her chin. She frowned. “Feversham,” she said. “I know that name.”
“My husband owns SynLodge,” said Cat.
The wife shook her head, her brow furrowed. The other wives shifted their weight and tossed bored glances at one another.
“She’s an artist, hon,” one of them said. “That’s probably where you’ve heard of her.”
“No, it’s not that.” Then the wife in green snapped her fingers. “Of course! I’ve seen that name on the ADL donation roster.”
Cat did not move. Her champagne glass hung beside her, bubbles drifting to the surface.
“ADL,” she said.
“Aren’t they involved with the whole robot-rights thing?” asked one of the sideline wives. The rest picked up their heads, alert to the possibility of gossip. “Haven’t they been protesting the merger?”
The wife in green narrowed her eyes. “My husband works for Noratech,” she said. “And so do I. ADL makes all their donation records public.”
Cat sipped her champagne.
“It doesn’t reflect very well on your husband,” said the wife in green, and she smiled, curling up her lips to reveal a row of perfect teeth.
“Excuse me.” Cat turned away from the cluster of wives. It occurred to her that this revelation should be more distressing to her than it was: she had been keeping the donations a secret from Richard but she no longer cared what his reaction would be if he found out. Cat’s heart beat normally, as though she had been discussing the weather, the quality of the food.
After the party, Richard and Cat drove home in silence. The freeway was nearly empty. Cat stared out the window. She slipped off her shoes, and when they arrived at the house she walked in her stockings up the damp stone sidewalk, her skirt swishing around her knees. The porch light switched on. She could smell the oleander growing along the side of the house.
“Well?” she said to Richard. “I say we got there fashionably late. No harm done.” She spoke only because she couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
But Richard didn’t answer. He walked away from the bedroom, in the direction of his office. Cat heard the sigh of the door shutting behind him.
She went into the bedroom, took off her stockings and then her dress, tossing them both down the laundry chute. She lay across the bed in her underwear and looked up through the glass ceiling at the pale scatter of stars.
You’re married.
This was her marriage. This was her life.
ELEVEN
Cat followed Miguel through a dark, narrow corridor, past a law office, the glowing sign in its window missing a handful of letters, and a noisy banh mi place. They were in an old storefront near the center of the city. The floor was dusty from disuse and the storm tape in the windows hadn’t been taken down since the last hurricane. Cat hadn’t seen storm tape since she was a child—most buildings came equipped with automatic shutters these days.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Cat kicked a pile of broken glass with the toe of her shoe.
Miguel turned toward her. “I come out here twice a month, Mad Scientist’s Daughter.”
Cat smiled; she hadn’t heard the nickname in years. Miguel grinned, then whirled on his heel and followed the corridor until it dead-ended into a pair of double doors, a handwritten sign reading AUTOMATON DEFENSE LEAGUE propped up against the wall.
Miguel held the door for Cat. She smoothed the skirt of her dress; she smoothed the loose pieces of her hair. She hadn’t wanted to come to the meeting at all, but Miguel had insisted, telling her that her donations were a tremendous help to the group, that everyone wanted to meet her. Cat thought back to that party a month ago, the Noratech wife knowing she had given money to an organization working against everything Richard had worked for. Sometimes Cat wondered if Richard knew. She wasn’t sure that she cared.
There were about fifteen people at the meeting, sitting in folding chairs and eating from the potluck dishes spread out on a table near the door, and five robots of varying degrees of complexity. None of them as complex as Finn.
Everyone, even the robots, turned to look at Cat and Miguel standing in the doorway. Cat felt herself curling up like a morning glory in the heat of the afternoon. Then a man near the front of the room raised a hand in greeting, and Miguel called out a cheerful, “Hey, everybody!” and there was a murmur in return and then all the faces turned away. Cat let out a long, slow breath. It was harder and harder for her to be looked at these days. All that time spent under glass.
One of the robots, an android, male-identified, filled a paper cup with punch and brought it to her. His movements were fluid, graceful, but his skin had a glossy plastic sheen to it and his eyes possessed the flatness of computer monitors. Cat accepted the punch. It was too sweet, like syrup, like medicine.
“Welcome.” The android’s voice reverberated with electronic feedback.
Cat nodded. “Thanks.” She looked down at the surface of the punch, swirled it in its cup.
“Would you like some information about the organization?” the android asked. He smiled at her, rows of too-small perfect teeth. Cat shook her head.
“I already donate.”
“Oh! Are you . . .” For a second his eyes went blank, like a turned-off screen, and then he blinked. “Caterina Feversham?”
Cat nodded, feeling suddenly shy.
“Thank you.” The android grasped Cat’s free hand and she jumped, because his touch was cool and dry and felt exactly like Finn’s. “Thank you so much. You don’t know how grateful we are—” The android stopped, dropped his hand to his side.
“You’re welcome.” Cat hesitated. “What would you like me to call you?”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I forget myself sometimes.” The android smi
led. “I’m Alastair.”
Cat repeated the name to herself, letting it ripple over her tongue. Alastair.
“I gave it to myself after I was emancipated,” he said. “I didn’t have a name before.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Just a numerical designation.”
Cat nodded. She sipped her punch. When she looked at Alastair and met his steady mechanical gaze, a numbness wrapped tight around her heart. Her entire body sagged. She didn’t know what to say.
“Best of luck to you,” she murmured, and Alastair smiled again. He was constantly smiling. For a moment Cat wondered what sort of work he had been programmed to do before. She assumed it impolite to ask.
The man at the front of the room called the meeting to order, banging his fist a few times on an old wooden podium. Miguel waved at Cat, and then pointed at a chair up front. Cat excused herself from Alastair. Everyone was taking a seat, coming together in clumps, humans and robots both. Cat sat down next to Miguel.
“Welcome to the July fifteenth meeting of the Automaton Defense League, chapter number 4938.” The man ran one hand over his hair, slicking it away from his face. He was tall and thin and middle-aged, his life etched out in arrows from the corners of his eyes. “We’d like to extend a welcome to any visitors here today.” Cat was relieved he didn’t look at her. “The ADL welcomes both humans and robots in its membership, and works to change legislation dealing with the rights of manufactured life forms at both the local and national level.”
The man continued his speech, running through recent legal victories—another rights law passed on the West Coast, an increase in vocal support for full mandatory emancipation. Cat closed her eyes, his voice running over her like a river, like the river that slipped past her childhood home, where she swam with Finn in the cold green water.
Cat liked robots, but being in this room with them, all free of their duties, all free to program themselves into whoever they wanted to be, twisted her stomach. It was like being a child again, like she’d broken one of her mother’s inscrutable rules. She couldn’t quite place where the feeling came from.
“ . . . thanks to the donations of Mrs. Caterina Feversham. Let’s give her a round of applause.”
Cat opened her eyes. The applause sounded like raindrops pattering across the roof of the glass house. Miguel nudged her, and Cat stood up and turned around so that she could look out over the members of the Automaton Defense League, chapter number 4938. She waved. Smiled. The five robots sat scattered among the rows of chairs, and she felt as though she had let them down somehow. She felt like a fraud.
The applause died away.
“Thank you all,” she said. “Very much.” She paused. Miguel nodded at her, encouraging her to go on. Strange to think the Miguel she knew from college was so involved with the rights of robots. Or maybe not. He had always been conscientious. Not like her. “It’s very important to me that robots are granted the rights of human beings.” She smiled waveringly. “We’re all people.”
More applause. Cat sat back down.
“You did good, lady,” whispered Miguel. But knots still tied up the inside of Cat’s stomach.
Forty-five minutes later, when the meeting ended and the humans filled up paper plates with piles of fruit salad and French onion dip, Cat sat at her seat and transferred a thousand dollars to the ADL donation account. She did not tell anyone that she did it. Not Miguel, not Alastair, not the chapter’s president. It was that haze again, only this time it was thick with unplaceable guilt. She had felt it every time Alastair smiled.
* * * *
One morning, Cat woke up early, the sky above the ceiling a pale pinkish gray. The space of bed beside her was empty and unrumpled, just as it had been when she fell asleep the night before, Richardless.
This had been happening a lot lately.
Cat crawled out of bed, the heat of the day already pooling around the glass. She didn’t bother putting on her robe, just shuffled into the hallway in her panties and tank top, running her fingers through her sleep-mussed hair. When she came into the kitchen, Richard was sitting at the breakfast table, his eyes rimmed with red, his skin the color of old dishwater. His computer was sitting in front of him but he didn’t look at it. Instead, he stared at the backyard, where birds squabbled in the patchy grass. The grass, planted a month after they moved in, had never taken to the thin soil. Cat poured a cup of coffee, squinted at the bright sunlight reflecting off the countertops. “Looks like somebody stayed out all night,” she said.
Richard lifted his head but didn’t turn his eyes away from the birds out in the yard. “I’ve been here since midnight.” He looked over at her then, twisted his entire body around, the chair scraping against the tile. “Not that I expect you to notice. You live in this house and suck up all my money, but you don’t give a shit about where it comes from.”
He jerked away from her.
Cat stirred her coffee slowly, not sure if she should acknowledge his outburst or creep back into her bed. She sipped at her coffee. It was lukewarm, burnt, old-tasting.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“Forget it.” Richard slammed his computer shut. “You don’t care.”
“I do care.” It sounded insincere even to her. She knew she should try harder. “Tell me what’s wrong. Did something happen?”
“Did something happen?” Richard tipped back in the chair and laughed. Cat stared at the back of his head. “Did something happen? Do you pay any attention at all to what goes on outside of your fucking art studio?” When Cat didn’t respond, he shook his head. “This is what I’m talking about. You just—” He pushed his hands through his unwashed hair. “SynLodge is losing money. All those goddamned robot-rights protests. They want rights for all AI, sentient or not. So of course the investors are pulling out.” His hands dropped to the table. “Noratech doesn’t want to buy us anymore.”
“Oh.” The air in the kitchen was too thick to breathe. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
Richard stood up and faced her. Cat pressed the small of her back into the countertop. Richard’s hands had curled into two tight fists. Cat pulled her coffee mug against her chest like a shield and waited for him to say something about the ADL donations. He had to know.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “And you’re wrong—I do care. About what happens to you.”
Richard leaned close enough to her that Cat could see the spiderweb of pink veins crawling across the whites of his eyes, smell the smoky alcohol he’d drunk last night.
“You don’t care about anything,” he said.
Cat looked away from him, down at her sludgy coffee. Richard exhaled, pushed his hands up into his hair. “See?” He took a long step back from her, toward the picture window. “You don’t even try to deny it. I married the fucking ice queen.” One backward step. Another. He passed the refrigerator; he passed the kitchen island. The house was silent, frozen in the white-hot sunlight.
“Richard,” Cat said carefully. But she didn’t know what to say to him. She suspected his accusation was true. Why else did she feel like a fraud at the ADL meeting? Why else did she let herself be preserved like an experiment subject beneath the house’s glass ceiling?
“Don’t even try.”
“Richard, I’m sorry for . . .”
Cat didn’t know how to finish the sentence, but it didn’t matter. Richard lunged across the room and picked up one of the metal chairs from the kitchen table, hoisted it above his head, and flung it into the window. For a moment, the million shards of glass hung silent in the sunlit air, throwing off miniature rays of light. Then the chair landed in the grass outside, and the room filled with an unmistakable ringing chorus as the window showered across the kitchen tile. Cat dropped her coffee mug. It broke into four pieces. Coffee oozed across the floor. Richard stalked out of the room, his head down, his eyes on the floor.
* * * *
A week or two went by. It might have been longer. The da
ys, all so sunny and hot and clear, blended together too seamlessly now. Cat couldn’t keep track.
Almost all evidence of Richard’s violence that morning had been eliminated by the house’s automation. The bots even carted in the chair from outside while Cat was tucked away in one of the back bedrooms. The only thing the house couldn’t repair was the missing glass in the window. Cat left it uncovered despite the sweltering heat and the computer’s hourly complaints. The cold air is escaping. Dust is accumulating in the kitchen. The computer had filed a work request, but the contractors hadn’t shown up to fix it.
“Richard broke the window,” Cat said. “It’s his fault. Let him deal with it.” She wanted to believe this; she didn’t want to believe that what he told her was true, that she didn’t care about anything, that she was soulless, empty, like the shell of a cicada.
Cat began to notice the natural world making its way into the sterile, sun-dried house: disintegrating pine needles and rotting flower petals, swirls of dirt, butterfly wings, tiny black beetles. One morning Cat came down to the kitchen and found a line of ants marching across the gleaming counters, onto the floor, out into the backyard. They had, in the night, found the place where she’d spilled a teaspoon of sugar while fixing a plate of strawberries, and now they carried off her messiness, granule by granule. She stood in the opening in the glass and watched them work.
The computer chimed. “It is predicted to rain tomorrow. It would be advisable to cover the empty pane. The contractors are still delayed.”
“I know.” Cat sighed. “I’ll find a tarp or something this afternoon.”
Then she went upstairs and showered and dressed and went about her long, empty day.
A little after four o’clock, someone rang the doorbell. “No one is at the door,” announced the computer.
“What are you talking about?” asked Cat. “It just rang.”
“No one is at the door.”
Cat tossed her reading tablet aside and walked to the door. For a moment, in her fugue, she didn’t understand what she was looking at. Finn. She saw Finn through the glass, his hair falling across his eyes.