Cat’s father leaned back in his chair. Cat considered asking him if Judith Condon was still alive but she decided against it: he was lying; he always lied to protect her. There was something comforting about it, his lies of omission, and she knew she could learn more on her own.
When her father stood up, he trembled. Cat leapt up and put her hand on his back. He swatted her away. “I’m fine,” he said. “I need to get back to work.”
“Thanks for telling me all that.”
He smiled. “I should have told you sooner. Your mother—she didn’t approve.”
“Of Finn? No shit.”
“Well, of the particular combination of you and Finn. Finn by himself, I think she could have managed.” He laughed, then took Cat by the chin and looked her in the eye. “It bothered me, when you were younger. Because you were younger. But now—” He stopped. “I could have handled things better. I just wanted . . . I just wanted you to be happy. Both of you.”
Cat hugged him. Now she had a purpose, a goal: she would find Judith Condon and through her she would find Finn, the part of Finn she had heretofore been much too selfish to even know existed.
FIFTEEN
The next afternoon when her father was in the lab, working and wasting away, she went into the dining room and sat down at the computer set into the otherwise unused table. The room was full of dust and sunlight. She brought up the list of all the networked computers in the house and stared at it for a long time, her fingers tapping the table.
Which computer held the information she wanted? Not the antiquated learning slabs tucked away in boxes in the hall closet, not the cheap laptop where her mother had filed all her recipes. One of the laboratory computers. Maybe the one Finn had kept in his room. Cat scrolled through the list until she found the lab computers, until she found one labeled with nothing but a string of numbers. Finn wouldn’t have bothered giving his computer a name.
She tapped the icon. It was Finn’s computer: here was a robotic diagnostic program, here was the video chat program he had used when she went away to college. A folder of unfinished code she only half understood. A collection of images saved from the Internet: ballet dancers and Barnett Newman paintings, photographs of the city skyline lit up at night, a shot of the band that had played at the Stella rent party, so long ago it may as well have been another lifetime, when Cat made the decision to marry Richard.
She flicked through the images, each one adding to the others to form a picture of Finn. It was a picture she didn’t quite understand.
Cat closed Finn’s computer and began searching methodically through the lab computers. Files for her father’s space-exploration contract work. She went back farther. Notes on earthbound robots—the files used the old word automata. Cat frowned, furrowed her brow. She went back even farther, from computer to computer, tracking in reverse the trajectory of her father’s career.
And then she found it. A directory of files labeled “Finn.” Cat’s breath caught. She touched her belly without realizing it and watched the file list load on the dim old monitor. Everything about him in one place.
She tapped on a file labeled “Schematics,” and an entire universe blossomed onto the screen. She leaned closer. The text, amber on black, blurred together. She only understood bits and pieces, left over from her high school engineering classes. She knew enough to know: This was him. This was every part of him, translated, laid out in front of her.
I am a machine.
Cat closed the file. Her hands trembled. She walked over to the window and pulled aside the curtain, the fabric worn thin from moths and sunlight and time. The window looked out into the backyard, out at the tree line of the forest.
“All right, baby,” Cat said. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing?”
She waited. Movement fluttered through her womb, like butterfly wings dusting across the back of her hand. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She remembered how she used to eavesdrop on her father’s video conferences so she could learn bits and pieces of Finn’s specifications—the size of his memory processors, the speed of his electronic brain. Scraps of mostly meaningless information that she knitted together and memorized. Now she wanted to cry. Here was an entire directory of files, stored on a computer in the house, not even hidden behind a password, and she hadn’t bothered in all this time even to glance at them.
Cat sat back down at the computer. “Schematics” was still highlighted. She scrolled down, looking for something she could understand.
There. “Contact.” Cat touched the link.
The folder was mostly empty. The files were labeled with dates. The first brought up some saved e-mail files, exchanges between her father and Dr. Condon. I need some of that famed Novak genius, Daniel, Dr. Condon wrote. You didn’t win that grant for nothing, did you?
There were no details. Dr. Condon never mentioned the specifics of her project: Only that there was a project, that she had relocated to the desert.
I’ve brought in some artists to do shell work. They love the light out here. They won’t stop raving about it. I dunno, I just like the isolation. I need it. Just like I need the artists even though they’re pissing me off.
Cat went to the next file. It was an electronic copy of an old magazine article, dated toward the end of the worst of the Disasters. Dr. Judith Condon, read the article title. Forerunner in the Automata Revolution.
There was a black-and-white picture, the lines blurred, the capture grainy. Dr. Condon looked young, not much older than Cat, and intense, the dark smudge of her eyes staring straight into the camera, her hair swept away from her face, her mouth unsmiling. Cat stared at the picture and something sparked inside her, electricity rushing from one circuit board chip to another, forming a half second of connection. Here was the woman who made him. Here was the woman who cast him out.
Just like I did. Cat closed the article, wiping the monitor clear.
One more file. Another set of e-mail exchanges, this time between Cat’s father and Dr. Ramirez. Cat read through them all, trying to jostle Dr. Condon’s dark staring eyes out of her memory. Friendly banter, most of them, how-are-yous, invitations to dinner. She read for a long time. And then she found something.
Over twenty-five years ago, Dr. Ramirez had sent an e-mail to Cat’s father in which he listed the address of Dr. Condon’s desert laboratory.
Per our conversation, he wrote, as though discussing a business proposition, here’s the address in case I can’t meet you.
Cat hit print screen. Then she collected the e-mail from the rickety old printer set into the telephone alcove, folded the printout into fourths, and slid it into her pillowcase like a love letter.
* * * *
After Cat found the address, she set about making clandestine preparations to travel into Kansas. Drought had transformed the Midwest into a desert long before Cat was born, and then human innovation had transformed that desert into a source of energy for not just the country but the entire continent. Windmills grew instead of corn. It was not a place people lived. Nor a place they visited. Cat learned she would have to apply for a travel permit if she wanted to go farther than the city on the desert’s edge.
It could take months to get approval. Still, Cat filled out the form on the website in a flush of excitement. A screen came up after she submitted it, telling her the expected date of her permit’s approval; she would be nearly seven months pregnant then. She should still be able to travel.
After that, she could only wait. She went about her days as best she could, preparing for the baby, cooking meals for herself and her father, working in the garden. She felt the itch to weave again, and so she contacted some of her old clients, one of whom was delighted to commission a new piece from her. She borrowed her father’s car and drove into the city for her supplies and began the tapestry that evening. It was an accounting firm, and they gave her free rein to create what she wanted: so she wove the night sky, constellations of stars glittering against an indigo background, the
moon stitched in bone-colored silk.
Because it was coming into winter and the days had cooled to a bearable temperature, she wove in the mornings and relegated her garden work to the afternoon, when weak sunlight slanted through the tree branches. The air was tinged with the cold-weather scent of metal, and Cat scooped up the soil, hard and cold in her fingers, digging up the virulent honeysuckle vines that had grown over the fence. Her fingers turned red but she was warm enough from working that she didn’t notice.
When she finished clearing away the honeysuckle she carried the vines in armfuls to the compost pile set up next to the old air-conditioning unit. She walked back to the garden, which rustled forlornly, and shoved her dirty hands in her pockets. She tried to imagine how it would look when her baby was born: heavy with flowers and greenery, indolent with extra oxygen. Maybe she would plant some vegetables.
Tires crunched along the driveway. Her father was down in the lab, too involved in his work to leave the house. She walked onto the porch and followed it around the house’s perimeter. When she came to the front, her heart stopped.
Richard’s car.
She recognized it immediately, sleek and dark as a beetle. He sat in the front seat, staring at the porch. He saw her. Cat’s entire body prickled with sweat. Out there on the porch, it was as though she were back in the glass house and everything she did was on display.
The driver’s-side door swung open, and he stepped out. His hair was longer than she remembered, and he wore a thin black coat that flapped around his knees as he trudged through the yard. He held something in his right hand. A slim, dark brown comm slate, the sort lawyers used.
“Caterina,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”
“No,” she whispered. Her hand dropped down to her stomach. She was showing a little, probably not enough for him to realize she was pregnant. She snatched her hand away. Don’t draw attention to it.
He clomped up the steps to the porch. “Damn, it’s cold out here.”
“What do you want?”
“Don’t be like that.” He looked her up and down. She curled her hands into fists.
“You look radiant,” he said. She didn’t respond.
“Can we go inside?”
“Why are you here?”
Richard looked down at the tablet like he couldn’t imagine how it had found its way into his hands. He sighed. “You need to sign this. Slap your thumbprint on there. It’s not the final papers, so . . .” His voice trailed off. “Seriously, I’m freezing my ass off. Can we go inside?”
Of course. The papers. The lawyers still called them that even though nothing was on paper anymore. Vaguely Cat recalled the last conversation she’d had with the lawyer. She always lost track of everything he said, but he had mentioned needing her signature, her thumbprint. Cat sighed, ran her hands through her hair. Cold dirt clung to her scalp.
“Why didn’t you just send it?” she said.
Richard stared at her. “I wanted to see you. I miss you. Cat—”
She pushed the front door open so roughly it slammed against the doorstop and bounced back, almost clicking shut again. She caught it with the tip of her toe. “Come in.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “You’re not staying.”
Richard frowned. The lines in his brow were deeper than she remembered, his eyes paler. She remembered how she used to care for him, how she used to find those transparent eyes compelling. His normalcy had been so appealing: he had been an antidote to Finn, one that failed utterly. Thinking on it made her stomach ache.
She led him into the dining room. Her father was still in the basement. No need to let him know what was happening. Richard sat down but Cat stayed standing. For a moment he stared at her. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, trying to ward him off.
“Caterina,” he said. “I’m sorry. You have to know that. I didn’t mean—”
“Let’s get this over with.”
Richard sighed and handed her the slate. Cat sat down at the table, two seats away from him, and turned it on, blinking at the flash of light from the screen. For a moment she pretended to read over the block of words she was too tired to understand. Then she plucked the stylus off the side of the tablet and carved her name into the electronic signature line. The screen went gray, and Cat saw the ghost of her signature. Caterina Novak.
“We don’t have to do this,” Richard said.
The screen brightened. It wanted her thumbprint. Cat pressed her right thumb against the glass.
“You hit me.” She handed him the tablet and stood up. “What else is there after that?”
He stared at her.
“Please leave.”
“I drove all the way out here—”
“When you could have just sent it. Don’t try to guilt me into letting you stay.”
He shook his head. His eyes had iced over. “You were fucking that robot, weren’t you?” he said. “That’s why you donated all that money to ADL. It wasn’t because you actually cared.”
The room suddenly seemed too small and devoid of air. Of course he’d always known, but hearing him say it out loud, Cat was struck with a flare of anxiety in the center of her chest. She could never be normal because she wasn’t normal. She had kept Finn secret for so long because of that deviancy. Now she was pregnant. It wouldn’t affect only her anymore.
Cat willed herself to keep her expression blank and dispassionate.
“I’ll take that as a yes. I can’t believe this.” Richard looked her right in the eye. She held his gaze. “It’s sick.”
“What? Donating to ADL?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“You hit me. I don’t think you have the right to pass judgment on anyone.”
Richard slid his chair away from the table and stood up. He tucked the tablet under his arm. Cat ran her hand, unthinking, across her stomach and then dropped it to her side. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I came here,” he said, “to apologize for that.”
“Fine,” said Cat. “Accepted. Now get out.”
Richard’s hands curled into fists, and the room jolted. Cat took two steps back. Her fingers went to the spot beneath her right eye that had hurt the most in those weeks that followed. But then Richard let out a muffled grunt and stalked out of the dining room. Cat followed him, keeping her distance. He stopped in the foyer and turned around.
“Why aren’t you keeping anything?” he said.
“What?”
“You’re so weird,” he said. “You don’t even want my money, at least?”
“You hit me.”
Richard seemed to recoil, as though a moth had fluttered against the tips of his eyelashes. Then he said, “Ella warned me. She didn’t get why I’d marry someone like you. I should have listened to her.”
“You think I’m weird because I don’t want your money and your horrible fucking house?” Cat laughed. “What, am I supposed to do that? Because I’m a woman? Because you’re rich?” Her laughter tinged on hysteria. She was so relieved the conversation had turned to money, to material possessions, instead of the fact that she was an ice queen who could only be with a robot. Richard glared at her. He pulled against the door, and a rush of cold air filled the foyer. Cat couldn’t stop laughing.
“You’re planning something,” he said. “You and that lawyer of yours.”
“I don’t want your money, Richard.” Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I know that’s a difficult concept for you to grasp, but there it is.”
“Bitch.”
He said it almost tenderly, and then he turned away from her, stepped through the door and out to the porch, out to his car, away.
Cat pushed the door shut and leaned against the cold wall and listened to the sound of his car engine starting up and disappearing down the driveway. When she heard only silence she looked at her hands. Dirt stained the crescents of her nails.
Ella was right. He should never have marrie
d someone like her. She used to think that he was using her in their marriage—as a decoration on his arm, as a test subject for his AI—but she understood now that she had used him, that he had loved her and she never once reciprocated despite claiming otherwise, over and over again. When he gave her the ring that day of the freeze, her thoughts had been with Finn. She should have said no.
Cat stared through the window at the void where his car had been. She felt as though Richard had pricked her and all her energy had flooded out.
She left the living room and sat down at the dining room computer, where she pulled up the directory with Finn’s information. She opened the schematics file. The schematics reminded her of threads on a loom. She ran her finger across the monitor, tracing the path of one electronic neuron to another. She wished more than anything that she could decipher them completely, that she could understand Finn through the logic of engineering, if nothing else.
“Cat?”
Cat jumped and switched off the monitor. “What were you looking at?” her father asked.
“Nothing.”
Her father pulled up a chair beside her and turned the monitor back on. Finn’s schematics flared into place.
“Oh, Cat,” he said.
“There wasn’t a password or anything.”
“I know. It isn’t that . . .” Her father rubbed his forehead. His fingers looked like sticks. “I thought I heard talking. Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” said Cat. “Richard came by—”
“What? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No. He just brought the papers. Or one set of them, anyway. The last set before everything’s finalized.” She spoke in the direction of the schematics. “It doesn’t matter. I’m an adult, I can take care of myself.” She turned off the monitor.
“I know that.”
They sat in silence. Her father ran one hand over his thin hair. Scratched at his arm. Their reflections moved in the darkened screen.