The Mad Scientist's Daughter

  Maybe it didn’t matter anymore that she was married. Maybe she had completed enough unspoken penance to earn back his affection.

  “Finn!” she cried. “You stupid machine,” she said to the computer. “Somebody is there! It’s Finn.”

  “No one is at the door.”

  Cat laughed and slid open the door. Finn blinked. “Cat,” he said, and the way he said her name made her breath catch in her throat. Had it always sounded like that? Her name in his voice?

  “Finn,” she said. “Oh my God, come in—I can’t believe you finally showed up! Did you call? Sometimes I don’t hear my comm slate, the house is too big.”

  “I didn’t call.” He paused. “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Surprise me?” She laughed. “Well, you certainly did that.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a sad, unusual way.

  Cat couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him, even though he stood in the doorway, where the neighbors might see them together, so she brushed her lips against his cheek, pulled herself away before it went further. He stared at her.

  “Let me show you the house,” she said.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Oh, come on, it’s made of glass. That’s crazy, right?”

  “It’s certainly . . . strange . . . to live in a glass house.”

  “I think the neighbors spy on us.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  Cat laughed. She felt transformed. Leavened. When she laughed she imagined a string of bubbles drifting up toward the transparent, sun-filled ceiling. She forgot about the hole in the kitchen and she forgot about Richard and she even forgot about the computer lurking silently in the circuitry of the house. She floated into the living room, and Finn followed her.

  “You seem well,” said Finn.

  “I’m okay.” Cat collapsed into the expansive folds of the couch. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Yes.” Finn stayed standing. “It’s good to see you as well.” Cat crossed her legs and tugged on her skirt. Finn watched her. The weight of his eyes on her was heavier than she remembered. Maybe it had been too long since she’d seen him: in real life, not through the distortion of video chat. He looked the exact same. He would always look the exact same, until the end of time.

  But even so, something had changed. “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Something’s happened.” A pain in her heart. “Is it Daddy?”

  “Nothing has happened to Dr. Novak.” For a second, Finn didn’t speak. “You shouldn’t worry about him. He wouldn’t like it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Finn looked out through the transparent wall, where the oleander bushes pressed against the glass. The sky was bleached white from the heat.

  “I’m no longer the property of your father,” he said.

  “What?” Cat pushed herself forward on the couch. He still wouldn’t look at her. “You were never anybody’s property.”

  “I am now.” Said so softly it sounded like a disruption in the white noise of the air conditioner.

  Cat stared at him, a cold horror gnawing at the edges of her stomach. She wiped her palms against the couch. The light in the room was suddenly too bright. Finn turned his head toward her.

  “I believe it was on the news.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The auction. I auctioned myself off.”

  Everything in the world went still. Cat could no longer feel her lungs contracting and expanding. She could no longer feel her heart beating.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “I decided,” said Finn, “that I no longer wished to belong to your father. And so—”

  “You didn’t belong to him!” Cat shrieked. She put one hand to her forehead. Stay calm, stay calm. Tears welled up at the base of her lashes, and she tried to blink them away. “You belong to yourself.”

  Finn smiled in that same sad strange way. “That’s what Dr. Novak said. I contacted all the parties involved myself. Of course the money went to him, but . . . I have no need for money.”

  A tear escaped the cage of Cat’s eyelashes and slid down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. “Why?” she asked.

  Finn looked at her. Impassive. Always so goddamned impassive. “It’s . . . difficult to explain.” His eyes twitched away from her. That movement again. The sight of it made her sick to her stomach.

  “That’s not fair,” she said. “You can’t just . . . do something like that. And not have a reason.”

  “I have a reason.” His gaze settled at a point above her head. “I just can’t tell you.” And then he moved across the living room floor and sat down beside her on the couch. He tilted his head and picked up her hand and she let him, because now more than ever his touch electrified her.

  “You can tell me anything,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

  His words stung her. Cat looked down at their hands, at their fingers entwined together. For a moment, they sat unspeaking, the room hot and bright and still. Outside, the oleander scraped against the glass.

  “I was purchased by Selene Technologies,” he said. “STL.”

  Cat froze. She tightened her grip on Finn’s hand. “The lunar station,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to the moon.” She thought about the videos she’d seen on the news programs. Bots crawling across the lunar surface. Like little remote-control cars.

  He nodded.

  “The moon?” Cat slumped against the couch. She gripped Finn’s hand, her sweat beading up in the space between their palms. The moon. Of course. He didn’t need to breathe, he didn’t need to sleep, he didn’t need to eat. He would not go mad from loneliness or isolation.

  “You can’t do this,” she said. He regarded her with his black eyes, and she shook her head. “No, you can’t. They just . . . You’ll be like a slave. They’re just using you—”

  He jerked his hand away from her. Cat stopped. She’d never seen so violent a movement from him.

  “Yes, I already know what that’s like.”

  “What do you mean?” Cat stared at him. “Daddy never—”

  “I am not,” said Finn, “talking about your father.”

  An airplane flew overhead, and the sunlight in the room flashed as though reflected from a mirror. For a split second Cat went blind. Finn’s words carved out her heart. The fucking ice queen.

  “I have to go,” Finn said. “I have preparations to make.”

  “When do you leave?” Cat jumped up and grabbed his upper arm and tried to pull him close to her. He was heavier than she expected when he resisted. She couldn’t make him move.

  “For the lunar station? In two weeks. However, they’re shipping me to Florida tomorrow—”

  “Shipping you?” Finn stopped.

  “Yes.”

  “They can’t put you in a plane like you’re a human fucking being?”

  “I am not a human being. This method is more cost effective. And safer.”

  Cat tried to protest but the words caught in her throat. For the first time in a long time she felt something other than dull, weary malaise. She felt panic.

  She cupped his face in her hands and leaned in to kiss him on the mouth. It was the only thing she could think to do. But he pulled away from her. She faltered.

  Cat thought her heart had stopped beating.

  “Finn,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say and she didn’t know what else to think. Only his name. Finn. Finn. Finn.

  “I have to go,” he said. He turned away from her.

  “Wait!”

  He stopped.

  “Is there a way . . . a way I can contact you? Like when I was in high school?”

  Finn turned his head just enough that she could see his profile.

  “No,” he said.

  The front door hissed open. The heat from outside
washed over Cat, and instantly sweat prickled out of her pores. Finn turned and looked at her over his shoulder. The sunlight cast him in silhouette. Like the first time she ever saw him. A silhouette, a shadow. A ghost.

  “Don’t go.” Her voice cracked in two.

  “Good-bye, Cat,” he said.

  He stepped outside and the door shut and through the glass Cat watched him walk down to the auto-taxi idling on the curb. He pulled open the door and stepped inside. His arm reached across the front seat to program in his destination.

  Cat forced herself to move. She ran out through the door, into the blazing dried-out yard, just as the taxi pulled away. It was so hot. She was the only living thing in the world.

  She walked barefoot onto the asphalt, the soles of her feet burning, and jogged halfheartedly down the street. She smelled the electricity from the taxi. But it was gone.

  The sun burned the tops of her bare shoulders. A hot wind picked up, tossing her hair away from her face.

  And although she wanted to, she didn’t cry. All her tears would have turned to steam anyway.

  TWELVE

  “It was his decision,” her father said.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Cat. “I don’t believe he’d just . . . decide something like that. What happened?”

  She sat in the house’s office. Her father ran his hand over his thin white hair.

  “You got sick of living here, didn’t you?”

  “He can’t get sick of anything,” Cat said. “At least, that’s what he would say.”

  Her father laughed sharply. Cat frowned. “It’s not funny.”

  “Cat, I can’t tell him what to do.” He looked away from the camera. “I don’t like it, either.”

  “I wish you’d just tell me what happened.”

  The house computer chimed. “Welcome home, Mr. Feversham.”

  Cat sighed.

  “The hell was that?” said her father.

  “The AI,” Cat said. “Richard programmed it to do that.”

  “Charming.”

  “I should go.” She heard Richard rustling around in the bedroom.

  “He’ll be fine.”

  Cat nodded, unconvinced, and said good-bye. She flicked off the camera and walked into the hallway. Richard stuck his head out of the bedroom door, his shirt unbuttoned.

  “The computer just told me I need to cover up the hole in the kitchen,” he said. “I thought you were going to take care of that?”

  His voice sounded far away, even though he was only one room over.

  Cat leaned against the hallway wall, her arms crossed over her chest. “I’ve been distracted,” she said. “I guess I forgot about it.”

  “Jesus, hasn’t it been chiming at you all this time? You know I programmed it to direct all household matters to you.” He appeared in the doorway again. Shrugged out of his shirt. He had gotten a haircut a few days ago and his hair was shorter than usual, his scalp peeking through. He looked so unlike someone Cat would ever want to speak to, much less marry, that she wanted in that moment to enrage him.

  She herself felt numb.

  “I told the computer it should take it up with you,” she said. He looked at her, an eyebrow raised. “It was, after all, your fault.”

  “Cat, I really don’t need this right now.”

  “Need what?”

  Richard closed his eyes. “Please don’t be a bitch.”

  “I just want you to cover the window, Richard.”

  He looked at her. He was glowing with the orange light of the sun setting into the subdivision. “I want to point out here that, of the two of us, I have a job. A shitty job at the moment, but it’s still a job. I’m sure you can take ten minutes out of your busy fucking schedule doing Pilates and gossiping with the goddamn AI to cover the hole in the kitchen.” He moved closer. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed all the dirt and shit that’s gotten in. The house can’t clean it up that fast.”

  “The mess,” Cat said, “came from a hole. That you made. When you threw a fucking chair through a fucking window.”

  Richard’s chest rose and fell. He clenched his hands into fists. His eyes burned straight into hers. She kept her gaze steady. Dealing with his anger was easier this time. She soaked it up without damage. She was merely a receptacle, and if she wanted she could throw his anger back at him like a mirror reflecting light.

  “And I don’t spend all day doing Pilates,” she said. “God knows I have to keep my schedule clear in case you decide I need to get my hair done two hours before we go meet a bunch of corporate assholes.”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed.

  “It takes a lot of time keeping myself pretty for your investors.”

  “Seriously?” Richard’s jaw moved. The muscles in his neck tightened. “Because I’m not seeing it.”

  Cat dug her nails into the palms of her hands, her skin tingling.

  Richard pushed past her. “There are plenty of secretaries I could fuck, you know,” he said. “Five in my offices alone. God knows how many in the building.”

  “Oh please, like you can get it up for anything other than a venture capitalist writing a check.”

  Richard’s hand slammed into the wall above the computer console. There was a crack, the sizzle of short-circuited electricity. The computer chirped. He turned his back to her, the muscles rippling in his shoulders. Cat shrank against the hallway wall. Richard turned and glared at her, his face flushed red, his eyes burning like two stars going supernova. “Get out,” he said. “Get out. I can’t look at you.”

  “What? I live here. It’s my house, too.”

  “No, it’s my house, I fucking bought it, and I’m telling you to get. The fuck. Out.”

  The computer continued to beep.

  “Fine,” said Cat. “I can’t stand looking at you anyway.” She slid past him, and even though she made sure their skin didn’t touch, static electricity sparked between them, forcing the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. She picked up her purse and slipped on a pair of shoes she kept next to the door. She could feel his rage in the way he watched her leave.

  And then she was outside. It was still too hot to breathe. The storms hadn’t shown up yet but she felt them on the air. She climbed into the car and flew out of the driveway. She didn’t bother to switch to the fully automated mode. She wanted to direct her energy, her anger, her grief, into driving. Two days since Finn disappeared into a taxicab parked outside her house. He would be in Florida by now, surrounded by orange trees.

  Cat fumbled in her purse, trying to find her cigarettes. They weren’t there. Neither was her comm slate. The suburbs shimmered as she drove out of the subdivision and onto the freeway. She was too inflamed to stop at a vice stand. She clutched the steering wheel so tightly her fingers tingled as she sped past the cars dotting the road. The city lit up the horizon, turned the rim of the sky violet.

  She drove to the studio.

  Lights glowed in the windows when she pulled up to the curb. Felix’s car was parked out front, but no one else’s. Cat put her car into park but didn’t turn off the engine. She left the air-conditioning running, wanting the cool, dry air to blow across her hot face. She took a deep breath. All of the anger from before had evaporated on the drive into downtown, and now she was deflated, dried out.

  Wind rustled the pecan trees lining the street. Cat turned off her car and walked to the studio. In the city the air felt different: wilder, hotter, more toxic.

  She rang the buzzer next to the door, her key still at the glass house. Felix’s laughter drifted through the cracks in the foundation. She heard his footsteps. The door swung open.

  “Holy shit, it’s Cat!” He looked at her and said, “What’s wrong? Get in here and tell me everything.”

  Cat stepped inside. The studio was flooded with soft white light. The loom sat patiently where she’d left it. She realized with a jolt of sadness that she had nearly finished the tapestry for Finn. And he’d never see it.

 
Felix wasn’t alone in the studio. Miguel sat on the floor beside the potting wheel, drinking from a bottle of apple schnapps, and when he saw Cat he raised the bottle and called her the mad scientist’s beautiful daughter. And for half a second Cat was back in college and Finn was only a few hours’ drive away and she had never met Richard.

  “You look upset.” Felix took both of her hands and pulled her over to the potting wheel. Miguel handed her the bottle of schnapps. She took a long, burning drink.

  “Richard kicked me out of the house.” Said aloud, in the light of the studio, it sounded absurd. She laughed and took another drink.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” said Miguel. “Did you sleep with your secretary or something?”

  “I need a cigarette,” said Cat. “I left my pack at home.”

  Felix pulled his pack off a nearby table. “It’s my last one,” he said, handing it to her. “And I won’t make you go outside.” He paused. “Just this once.”

  “I’ll buy you an entire case.” Cat drew the smoke into her lungs, and that deep toxic breath almost made her feel normal. She closed her eyes and saw the afterimage of the studio lights fractaling against her lids. Inhale, exhale. It didn’t matter if the smoke caught in the tapestry.

  “So,” said Felix. “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. I don’t want to think about it.”

  “Seriously, I want to know what you did to him.” Miguel leaned forward, a smile teasing up the corners of his mouth. “Did he find out about the ADL donations?”

  Cat shook her head. “I insulted his manhood. At least, I think that’s what did it. Everything sort of blurs together.”

  “His manhood?” Miguel and Felix looked at each other and laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” said Felix. “It’s not funny.”

  “No, it is,” said Cat. “I told him he could only get it up for a venture capitalist.”

  This made Felix and Miguel laugh even harder, and Cat laughed a little, and then a lot, and then her laughter edged over into hysteria. She knew it wasn’t only because of Richard. She wiped the tears away from the edges of her eyes and finished the cigarette. Dropped it into the sink stained with paint and clay.