The Mad Scientist's Daughter

  The airplane finally landed, dropping down in jerks until it touched the tarmac. Cat looked past the woman with the daughter named Sarah, out at the flat, brown landscape. This close to the ground the sky was yellow from the dirt. The woman unbuckled her seat belt and stood up. She looked down at Cat.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “And good luck.”

  Cat dragged her suitcase down the plane’s narrow aisle—the bedraggled attendant said good-bye to Cat’s stomach—and then out into the tiny, nearly empty airport. Country music played over the loudspeakers, and Cat bought a bottle of water from a faceless robot at the coffee shop next to the bathrooms. She followed the signs directing her to the car rental kiosk. Her footsteps echoed in time with the steady revolutions of her suitcase’s plastic wheels. Every now and then she passed another human being.

  At the kiosk, Cat punched in her rental number and fed her ID card and driver’s license to the attendant bot. The computer beeped and whirred, informed her the receipt had been e-mailed to her, and spat out a slim plastic key. It told her the make and model in its pleasant mechanical voice, then informed her that she could find the map to the car’s current parking spot in her e-mail.

  “Thank you,” said Cat, out of habit.

  The rental cars were housed in a dim, cavernous parking garage where giant metal fans circulated the thick, dusty air. Cat hadn’t stepped outside once since her arrival but the dust was already coating her skin and clothes, matting her hair. When she found her car, the headlights flashing helpfully, she noticed that it was the color of champagne, and her fingers came away from the door handle dirty.

  “Baby,” Cat said. “Here goes nothing.”

  * * * *

  Cat checked into a motel situated on the edge of Halcyon, the last town before the land became unlivable. The Windswept Motel. Halcyon was little more than a sprawling power plant, built for the rows and rows of wind turbines out in the desert, and Cat spent the rest of the afternoon halfheartedly reading the baby books she’d downloaded onto her slate, the heating unit beneath the window rattling and whining. Cat left the hotel to find dinner after the sun set, and in the darkness the town had transformed completely from its tangle of dirty white buildings to a net of twinkling amber lights. Like a city of ghosts and fireflies. Cat ate some bad Mexican food at a cantina in the town’s windy downtown. She watched hockey on the monitors hanging above the bar. She wished she could order a shot of tequila; she wished she could sit outside in the cold dust and smoke a cigarette. Instead, she drove back to the hotel and ran a bath that turned to mud the minute she slid into the water. So she turned on the shower and rinsed herself off and then she sat dripping on the side of the tub and watched the dirt swirl down the drain.

  Afterward, she crawled into the king-size bed, which felt empty and cold in the buzzing silence of the motel. To warm herself up she thought about Finn, and slipped her hand between her legs, and cried out as though he were there.

  She woke up early the next morning to the insistent chiming of the hotel alarm. Weak wintry sunlight filtered through the orange curtains. She didn’t get up, just lay in the bed, her hand resting at the apex of her belly. The baby kicked his tiny feet against her womb as though he were sending her a message in Morse code. Long. Long. Short. She fluttered her fingers against her belly in response. I’m here, Baby. She hadn’t decided on a name. None of the ones her father or Maybelle suggested felt right. The last time she spoke to Miguel, he said, “As long as you don’t name it Richard I’m totally cool with anything you decide.”

  Eventually, Cat pulled herself out of bed. She dressed in black maternity tights and a black skirt and a dark blue cashmere sweater that still fit. She regretted bringing it, considering the dirt, but she wanted to look nice in case she met Judith Condon. She buttoned her coat to her throat, pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and brought up the map to the laboratory on her comm slate. It was a four-hour drive. She checked the list of dust storm warnings but conditions were calm, so she climbed into her car and left. The landscape outside of the town was unchanging.

  For the first hour she plugged her music into the car’s stereo until she couldn’t stand the sound of it any longer. She switched to the radio. The car didn’t have digital, and so she listened to a Pentecostal preacher ranting about the sins of technology, the sorrows of the modern world. His voice shimmered with static until it faded out completely and there was only the rushing sound of wind.

  Eventually she arrived at the wind farms, turbines spinning like pinwheels in tandem. Cat pulled the car onto the side of the road and stepped out. Immediately dust flew into her eyes. She ran around to the passenger side of the car so she wouldn’t be standing so close to the road—not that she’d seen very many cars out here, only a few filthy trucks from the power plant—and wiped at her face. The wind calmed. She squinted up at the turbines. They were bigger than she would have guessed from the pictures she’d seen—like lazy-armed colossi—and spread more widely across the landscape. Swirls of dirt lit up in the sun, flowing around the turbine’s slow machinations. The baby kicked. Cat crawled back into her car and drove on.

  She drove and drove. She tried not to fall asleep. The wind farms disappeared; the flat, brown landscape returned. She stopped again, her comm slate telling her she was forty-five miles from the laboratory, to squat clandestinely beside her car to pee.

  She drove.

  And then she saw an imperfection on the smooth, flat line of the horizon. A dot of color against the choleric sky. She pressed her foot down on the gas and drove faster, following the arrowshot of the road. The land here was so flat she knew the dot was twenty miles away, but she also knew this was the house where he was born. As she approached, she saw the color came not from the house but from a garden. The green was so vivid she nearly lost her breath. There was an orchid tree and a line of hibiscus bushes and many more plants and flowers she didn’t recognize. The house flashed from behind the vegetation: a tawny brown, nearly the same color as the landscape. She pulled her car off the main road and drove over the loose soil, stirring up clouds of sediment too thick to see through. When she activated the window cleaner, it only smeared the dirt across the glass. She parked the car a few meters from the edge of the garden and stepped outside. She knew if she dwelled on what she was doing, she would turn around and drive away.

  In the open, the air smelled of dirt and metal.

  Cat bent her head low as she walked through the gate into the garden. The plants blocked most of the loose dust as they shook in the wind. She heard a noise that reminded her of wind chimes, a kind of metallic twinkling, but she couldn’t place it. There were no wind chimes in the garden.

  She walked up the narrow stone path and rang the doorbell. She waited. No one answered.

  Cat cursed beneath her breath. The house didn’t look abandoned, not with so vibrant a garden blossoming around it—

  No, thought Cat. It’s winter. But the garden was in bloom. A pomegranate tree drooped with the weight of its brilliant red flowers. Wisteria curled around the gate. Daffodils swayed in the biting wind. Cat stepped off the tiny concrete porch and followed the path through the lush, twinkling garden. Sunflowers taller than her stretched toward the sky. The orchid tree she had seen from the road rippled and shimmered, its delicate, insectlike flowers hanging low and heavy on the branches. All that excessive growth only reminded Cat of how cold the air was.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Cat jumped and, turning, tried to find the source of the voice. It was an old woman’s voice, scratchy, deep throated.

  “My name is Caterina—Caterina Feversham.” It was the first name she could think of that wasn’t her own. “I’m a postdoc in . . . electrical engineering.” Was that even the right subject? She didn’t care. A shadow moved past the trunk of the orchid tree. Cat took a few steps forward. “I’m looking for Judith Condon.”

  A woman stepped onto the path. She’d let her hair go gray and the lines in her face ran dee
p, but she stood up straight and haughty, and her forearms, poking out of the pushed-up sleeve of her sweater, were wiry and strong.

  “What do you want?” she said. “And, perhaps the more interesting question, how’d you find me?”

  Cat considered her options. “I worked with Dr. John Ramirez—”

  “Bullshit. You’re too young.”

  Cat fumbled over her words, trying to work out what to say. The woman—Dr. Condon—stomped her boots on the path, knocking off clumps of sticky earth.

  “I met him through Dr. Novak,” she said. “Daniel Novak?”

  “And how did you meet Daniel?” Dr. Condon crossed her arms over her chest and peered at Cat. Her gaze was unflinching. “Save you some trouble: if you say ‘university,’ I’ll know you’re lying.”

  Cat tried to remember those meaningless acronyms from years-old dinner conversations. “NDIL,” she said, hoping she had the letters in the right order.

  “Mmhmm,” said Dr. Condon. “I don’t think I believe you.”

  Cat sighed. The wind picked up, rustling the plants’ leaves. The sky had turned a darker shade of yellow, like burnished gold. Dr. Condon glanced up and frowned.

  “I’ll give you one more chance to tell the truth,” she said. “Else I’m chasing you off with a shotgun.” She pointed at the sky. “And there’s a dust storm coming. You won’t want to get trapped in that.”

  Cat didn’t doubt her. Dr. Condon seemed like the sort of woman who owned a shotgun. A strange charge crackled in the air, heavier than the thunderstorms Cat was used to, and more foreboding. Cat took a deep breath. She rested her hand on top of her stomach. She couldn’t feel the baby moving inside her but she knew he was there.

  “I’m Dr. Novak’s daughter,” she said.

  Dr. Condon raised an eyebrow and rested her weight against the trunk of the orchid tree and said nothing.

  “When I was five years old he brought a robot—an android—named Finn to our house.” Cat watched Dr. Condon’s face. It remained completely expressionless. “I grew up with him. He was my tutor for while, and then later . . . we were friends. We were . . . quite close.”

  Dr. Condon pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. Her hand shook. “Finn.” She laughed. “That wasn’t Finn. That robot your father brought home? Not Finn at all.”

  Cat didn’t say anything. Dust coated her skin, and she could smell it on the inside of her nostrils. She didn’t want to get run off and stranded in a storm.

  “I don’t like to talk about it,” said Dr. Condon. “I’m warning you now. I’ll let you stay till the storm blows over, but I don’t much like discussing my failures.” She jerked her head toward the house. “Shall we? Before it gets too thick to breathe?” She breezed past Cat, toward the front door, and Cat had no choice but to follow.

  Inside, the house was dim and warm and smelled faintly of cinnamon. Dr. Condon tapped against a control panel set into the wall. The lights flickered and turned a peculiar golden color; Cat heard the guttural sound of a generator kicking on somewhere in the back of the house, heard the snick of guards sliding over the windows.

  “You can sit down if you want,” said Dr. Condon. “No sense standing when there’s a perfectly good couch.” She strolled away from the console and settled herself into an old easy chair, pulled off her muddy boots. “How’s Daniel doing? He know you’re out here?”

  Cat shook her head.

  “Didn’t think so. You have the look of subterfuge about you.”

  Cat didn’t know what to say to that. She took off her coat and sat down on the edge of the couch. “Daddy’s doing fine,” she said.

  “Still doing all that contract work?”

  “I believe so, yes.” Cat shrugged. “I never really kept up with it, to be honest. He was doing stuff for the lunar station—”

  “The lunar station, huh? Yes, I think I heard something about that.” Over the sound of the generator was the sound of the wind, howling and shrieking. Cat had waited out plenty of storms in her life but never had she heard wind that sounded like that, like a woman screaming. Goose bumps prickled up the sides of her arms, and she rubbed at them through the fabric of her sweater.

  The two of them sat in silence. Cat wanted to broach the subject of Finn but Dr. Condon looked so harsh and unyielding in the weird sallow light. Dr. Condon rocked back and forth in her chair, and then, just when Cat didn’t think she could stand the sound of the wind anymore, Dr. Condon stood up, and announced she was going into the kitchen for a drink.

  “You want anything?” she asked, as though she had only a vague memory of how to treat a houseguest.

  “Water would be fine.”

  Dr. Condon disappeared through a doorway into the back of the house. Cat looked around the living room. All the furniture and decorations were old-fashioned, out of style. Dusty. The pictures sitting on the mantel weren’t even digital. The only thing that looked like it had been produced in the last twenty years was the console in the wall.

  Cat stood up and stretched her legs. She was tired of sitting. She walked over to the photographs. One was of Dr. Condon at about Cat’s age, her hair thick and black, her cheekbones sharp. She was laughing, sunlight radiating out behind her head. Beside it was a photograph of a little boy with serious green eyes. He looked familiar. Cat leaned in close, squinting. The picture was old, taken long before she was born, and yet—

  It hit Cat like a punch in the chest. It’s Finn. But of course it wasn’t Finn. Finn was never a little boy. But she saw the resemblance nonetheless: the pearly skin, the dark hair already falling across his forehead. In the picture, the boy who was not Finn cradled a white kitten to his chest. He looked straight at the camera. The room spun.

  “Oh, so you’re snooping now?”

  Dr. Condon appeared at Cat’s side holding a bottle of beer and a glass of water. Cat took the water and drank. It tasted of dirt. She felt Dr. Condon watching her. When she finished, she looked over at her. “Who’s that little boy? He looks exactly like—”

  Dr. Condon’s face darkened. “He was my son.”

  “Was?” said Cat weakly.

  “Yes. He died.”

  Cat felt her own son spinning inside her. She put her hand on her stomach. “Finn,” she said. “My Finn . . . He was a . . . he was a . . .”

  “It was a copy. I told you I won’t talk about this.”

  “Please,” said Cat. “I’m in love with him.”

  All the air went out of the room. The wind screeched and hollered outside. Cat drew herself up, held her back straight and tall. Dr. Condon sipped from her beer and looked Cat up and down.

  “Oh, really?” She tilted her beer at the curve of Cat’s stomach. “It knock you up, too?”

  “I mean it,” Cat said. “I love him.” She had never said it aloud before. She closed her eyes. She imagined him standing in the room with her. “I love him.”

  But when she opened her eyes it was just Dr. Condon. “You do mean it.” The beer bottle tipped up, obscured her face. “Fuck me.”

  Cat stumbled over to the couch and sat down. Sweat prickled up all over her body. Dr. Condon sat down beside her. “Why’d you come here?” she said. “You know I didn’t want it. It would have told you that, I imagine. It or your father.”

  “Daddy told me.” Cat rubbed her forehead. “Finn’s gone. I’m not . . . I’m not sure why, but he auctioned himself off. Like a piece of property. And now he belongs to STL—the lunar station—and I haven’t spoken to him in months. I just want to know more about him, you know? I just wanted to see where he came from.”

  “Jesus, honey, don’t start crying.” Dr. Condon set her beer on the floor and patted Cat’s shoulder unenthusiastically. She grimaced in a way Cat suspected was meant to be a smile. “I’m not sure I can help you,” Dr. Condon said.

  “How did you make him?”

  Dr. Condon sighed. She looked at the ceiling. “You don’t want to know that,” she said. “It’s impossible to love something you know’
s made out of wire and metal.” She dropped her head down. Turned to Cat. “You ever see inside him?”

  Cat thought about the schematics she had studied so diligently in the drafty rooms of her house. “I’ve seen him switched off.”

  “Not the same.” Dr. Condon stood up. Her eyes glinted in the loamy house lights. “I think you should know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “I already know what I’m getting myself into.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Dr. Condon walked toward the back of the house and this time Cat followed, listening to the low mechanical whine of the generator. The hallway was so dark she could barely see in front of herself. Dr. Condon stopped, and Cat ran up against her. She heard the chime of a card key unlocking a door. Light flooded the hallway.

  “My lab,” said Dr. Condon.

  Cat stepped inside. The lab looked like the inside of a greenhouse: ropes of honeysuckle and wisteria, green, leafy stems scattered across the counter. Cat ran her fingers across the vines curling next to the door, not quite understanding.

  “Ah yes, the big secret of my garden.” Dr. Condon grabbed a handful of honeysuckle and pulled. It didn’t snap off in her hand. The green peeled away and a bouquet of copper wires spilled out from between her fingers.

  “The whole thing’s like that?”

  “What, you thought I actually got something to grow out here?” Dr. Condon laughed. “No, it’s just . . . this is all I know how to do. And plants can’t . . . plants can’t disappoint you.” She dropped her hand and the vivisected honeysuckle twisted back and forth, its exposed wires catching the light.

  Dr. Condon strode across the room. Cat stayed standing next to the honeysuckle. She touched her fingers to one of the yellow blossoms. Now that she knew it was a machine, the texture felt unusual—slicker, slightly rubbery. Something chimed. Across the room, Dr. Condon pushed a metal door across the wall, its edge scraping against the cement floor. She looked over her shoulder.