The Mad Scientist's Daughter

  “You said him,” said Cat. “Like AJ.”

  “What? Oh yes, well, you get used to him, you know . . .” Dr. Korchinsky touched one hand to her hairline and looked away from the camera. She sighed. “Dr. Novak, my time is precious. What’s going on with that system reboot? Did you or your father send it from Earth?”

  “Yes.” Cat hesitated. “I mean, I did.”

  “Why? He’s not your concern anymore.”

  Cat wished she could talk to Finn directly. She wished she could touch him.

  “My father is dying,” she said flatly.

  Dr. Korchinsky’s face softened.

  “He wanted Finn to know. I didn’t even think it was possible to contact Finn at all. I’m not a cyberneticist, by the way. I studied philosophy in school, and I used to roll cigarettes in a vice stand. Finn programmed that beacon, and he made it easy enough for me to use.” The words came bubbling out, and Cat was afraid she would start crying. “So if you could send Finn my message. That’s really why I came here today. I’m divorced, and my father is dying, and I’m sorry.”

  She had not meant to mention her divorce, hadn’t even meant to say she was sorry. She had told herself over and over that this was not why she had driven into the city, not why she had lied her way into the STL conference room. But now that she was here, now that she sat at this conference table and saw the perimeters of the walls where Finn lived, she couldn’t help herself. Cat heard a chair creak from the back of the room. AJ. She felt guilty, thinking about him sitting there, listening to her conversation, knowing she had lied to him.

  “Your father,” Dr. Korchinsky said. “Daniel Novak. Yes, I believe George—Finn—will want to hear that. As for the rest—”

  “He’s in the hospital,” Cat said. “He has a brain tumor. If Finn could come home, and see him before he dies—”

  Dr. Korchinsky held out one hand. “I want you to know that I’m sympathetic. I really am. But STL will not take too kindly to me sending property back down without cause.”

  “Property!” Cat’s voice echoed off the conference room walls, leaving a faint reverberation. She covered her mouth with her hand. “What about the rights bill? He can’t be seen as property anymore.”

  Dr. Korchinsky’s face darkened. “Things may be more complicated than you realize.”

  Cat had no idea how to respond. For a moment she simply stared at the monitor. More complicated? How?

  “Please,” she finally said. “My father—he saved him. He took care of him.”

  Dr. Korchinsky frowned, and Cat saw in her eyes exhausted sadness. “I know,” she said, very softly. “This is a very . . . unusual circumstance. And STL’s legal department basically does nothing but find loopholes . . .” She glanced at something off camera.

  Cat looked down at the table, gleaming beneath the overhead lights. Up on the screen, Dr. Korchinsky shifted her position. The sound of rustling paper.

  “I would send him down this moment if I thought I could get away with it,” she said. Cat looked up at her image. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Cat took a deep, sighing breath. “Can I see him?” she whispered. “Can I talk to him?”

  Dr. Korchinsky looked so sad that for a moment Cat thought she was staring at her own reflection. “He’s out on the surface,” she said. “I’m sorry.” There was a long pause, and the screen crackled with static. “For what it’s worth, and this may not be much, but . . . he has spoken of you.” She smiled. “You were . . . You were friends, right?” A slight hesitation on the word friends.

  “Yes,” Cat said.

  Dr. Korchinsky smiled, tilting her head downward. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him everything. And fuck it, I’ll tell STL this whole conversation was legit.” She glanced up, away from the camera. “Okay with you, AJ?”

  Cat held her breath. AJ coughed, clearing his throat. “Fine with me.”

  Cat’s cheeks burned.

  Dr. Korchinsky lifted her hand like she was reaching for the camera, and then stopped. “Oh,” she said. “By the way. Let me give you an e-mail address. George doesn’t have one but if you want to send him anything you can send it to me.” She paused. “I promise I won’t read your message.” Cat whispered a thank-you. She pulled out her comm slate and entered the address into the contact list as Dr. Korchinsky recited it.

  Dr. Korchinsky said, “I know what it’s like. To be separated from someone you love.”

  Cat froze. She looked at Dr. Korchinsky’s features, blurred by the camera quality, and tried to find some trace of irony. But her expression was clear and calm as a tide pool.

  “I need to sign off,” she said. Cat nodded.

  The screen went black.

  Cat sat still. An electric current was moving through her body. She heard AJ shifting in his seat behind her but he didn’t say anything. For a long time she stared at the black screen and wondered if Dr. Korchinsky had lied when she said she would tell Finn everything. She wondered if Finn would come home—if Finn wanted to come home, if he thought of her father’s house as home at all.

  * * * *

  When Cat drove to Maybelle’s that night, Daniel was sitting on the stoop hitting a stick against the white cement. She turned off her car and bounded across the yard, scooped him up into a great big whirling hug. He shrieked and laughed, pounded his tiny fists against her shoulders.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. Cat dropped him into the grass. She’d had enough sorrow the last few days, driving down the flat highway, remembering Finn, every touch he’d ever given her. Daniel threw his stick out into the yard and said, “Maybelle and Jim let me feed the llamas. They have weird teeth. But their fur was really soft.”

  Cat rubbed the top of his head, looked at the dark hair poking up between her fingers. Maybelle came out on the porch and waved, said everything had gone well, asked, with an inquisitive tilt of her head, how Cat’s trip had been. Cat declined to offer any detail beyond It was fine.

  She drove Daniel to the Dairy King drive-in restaurant over by the high school stadium and bought them both cheeseburgers and malted milkshakes. Daniel bounced up and down in his seat. “Maybelle made me eat shard.”

  “I think you mean chard.”

  “It was green and gross.”

  Cat laughed. It was easy to laugh when Daniel was around. She rolled down the windows and the unseasonably cool breeze blew across the front seat. The girl at the counter called their number. Cat picked up the food and went back to the car and said, “Why don’t we just eat here?” and Daniel nodded vigorously. He always wanted to eat in the car at the drive-in, and she always said no.

  The air smelled of bubbling grease and the faint toxic whiff of truck exhaust. Cat balanced the cup of french fries on the dashboard and took a bite of her cheeseburger. The salt was exactly what she needed. She had cried too much on the long way home.

  Afterward, Cat drove back to the house. It loomed against the pale orange sunset. Daniel raced ahead, leaving his plastic suitcase on the backseat. He dug the hidden key out from under the potted plants on the porch and let himself inside, but Cat stayed out in the cool twilight air, walking in zigzags across the front yard, smoking one cigarette after another until it was too dark to see.

  NINETEEN

  As the days went by, Cat’s father grew worse. She went to the hospital after her trip to the city and told him how she had talked to Dr. Korchinsky.

  “She gave me her e-mail address,” said Cat. “And told me we could e-mail Finn that way.”

  “Well, have you?” her father asked in his cottony voice. His eyelids drooped.

  Cat told him no. Now that she had nearly communicated with Finn she was not so sure he wanted to hear from her. Maybe he hadn’t been out on the surface of the moon at all. Maybe he had stood just off camera, listening in.

  No, she thought. He’s not that cruel. He’s not that human.

  Her father lifted one hand off the bed and let it hang limply in
the air. That one movement seemed an enormous accomplishment. The hand twisted like a periscope until his fingers were pointing at her.

  “E-mail him. Or her. Whoever. This has gone on too long.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Her father closed his eyes completely. He dropped his hand. She watched him struggle with the weight of his eyelashes. His head turned toward her. His neck was so thin. “This whole thing is my fault,” he said. “It was too much at once, that was the problem. I’m not a psychologist. I don’t understand this shit. So I just want to make it right.”

  Cat sighed. She wound her fingers around her father’s. The treatments made him lose more weight and he looked shriveled up in his bed, as if he had died already. She saw the outline of his bones. She saw the threads of his veins.

  “She told me she’d try to send him back to Earth,” Cat said. “So he could . . . visit. Visit you.”

  “And you, too, of course.” His face cracked into a smile. Before Cat could respond, a nurse-bot wheeled into the room. Cat’s father sighed. “Time for my treatments,” he muttered, just as the nurse-bot chirped, “Time for your treatments, Dr. Novak.” He turned to Cat. “Go on, you don’t want to watch this.”

  Cat smiled sadly. An enormous metal apparatus lowered down from its hiding place in the ceiling and hovered over her father’s supine body. He closed his eyes. The nurse-bot rolled up to Cat.

  “You will need to leave the room.”

  “Of course.” Cat said good-bye to her father, and he raised his hand in response. She went into the hallway and shut the door and watched through the tiny window as bursts of white light filled her father’s room. The treatments did nothing to help his illness, as she understood it. They only diminished his pain.

  She waited until the lights stopped flashing, and then she went out to the parking lot, her mind blank.

  * * * *

  “Mama, Mama! There’s a car outside our house.”

  Cat sat on the back porch drinking a glass of homemade limeade spiked with tequila. Two weeks had passed since the conversation with her father, and nearly a month since she had spoken to Dr. Korchinsky. Daniel ran up to her and tugged on the hem of her skirt. The air was hazier than usual.

  “Oh?” Cat’s heart raced but she was able to keep her voice calm and steady. “What sort of car?” Richard.

  “A yellow one.”

  Cat drank the rest of her limeade in one gulp. She set the glass down on the ground and told Daniel to go to his room and stay there.

  “But why?” he asked, his voice dragging out into a whine.

  “Because I said so.” Any other time she might have twinged internally at saying something so ridiculous, but with each rapid pump of her heart she saw Richard’s face, broad and tan, his sharp white teeth, his expression when he caught sight of Daniel and counted backward.

  “Go,” she said, as sharply as she could. A waver rose through her throat. She ushered Daniel inside, through the kitchen door, catching the last notes of the doorbell as it echoed through the house. She pushed him toward the stairs, and he scowled at her from underneath the railing.

  “Your room, Daniel,” she said. He disappeared into the shadows.

  Cat walked into the foyer. The doorbell rang a second time. When she came to the door she stopped and put one hand on the knob and tried to steady her breathing. She couldn’t. She pulled the door open.

  It was Finn.

  Cat nearly screamed. She stumbled backward, away from the door, away from Finn. He didn’t move. The hot dry wind pushed his hair across his forehead. It had been over eight years since she had watched him walk out of the glass house. It had been over eight years since the last time she touched him. She was so dizzy her eyesight faltered and the shadows beneath the furniture swam in and out of her line of vision.

  “You’re here,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought—”

  “Dr. Korchinsky called HR and reminded them they had to give me a leave of absence like an employee. Because of the AI bill. She threatened to go to the press with some of the . . . some of the less-than-legal things the company has been doing. So they sent me back in one of the cargo runs.” He paused. She had forgotten the sound of his voice. All these years her memories had produced a facsimile—a higher pitch, a less mechanical cadence. Finn stepped through the doorway and closed the door behind him. The hot outside air lingered in the foyer.

  “Where is Dr. Novak?” he asked.

  “At the hospital.”

  Finn frowned. His eyes seemed to dim. Cat had never been so aware of the expression of emotion on a man’s face until this moment.

  “So I’m not too late,” he said. Cat shook her head.

  They hadn’t moved from the door. He didn’t have any bags, and he wore a pair of ill-fitting black pants, a ratty old band shirt. Otherwise he looked the same.

  Cat thought then about her own face, the web of lines erupting from the corners of her eyes, the soft swell of her stomach left over from when Daniel was born. She touched her hair, and Finn moved toward the living room without saying anything more. When he passed her, electricity seemed to arc between them.

  “I’d like to see him as soon as possible,” he said.

  “Of course.” Cat followed behind him, chewing on her lower lip. “How long do you have here? Before you have to go back?”

  Finn looked over his shoulder at her. “Three weeks until the next shuttle launch.”

  “Three weeks.”

  Finn nodded. He turned away from her.

  All the things Cat wanted to say to him, all the things she had rehearsed during bright moonlit nights, evaporated on the tip of her tongue. Why did you sell yourself? I’m sorry I used you. I love you.

  Finn walked around the edge of the living room. He touched the top of the couch. He touched the wallpaper bubbling and peeling off the walls. He stopped in front of the dusty windows and looked out at the yard: the brown grass, the rustling woods. He put his hand on the glass and the sunlight shone through his skin.

  A creak on the stairs.

  They both turned simultaneously.

  Daniel pushed his pale face against the banister. Finn stared at him, and he stared at Finn. Cat took a deep breath. She held out her arms.

  “Come on out. I want you to meet someone.”

  “You told me to go to my room,” said Daniel. Finn looked over at her sharply.

  “That was before I knew who was here.”

  Daniel crept into the living room. He looked up at Finn through the fringe of his hair and ran to Cat. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him close against her knees.

  “Daniel,” she said. “This is Finn.” She looked at Finn when she spoke. “Say hello.”

  “Hello.” Daniel blinked up at Finn.

  “It’s very nice to meet you.” Finn held out one hand. Cat nudged Daniel forward. He took Finn’s hand. They shook, and then Daniel dropped back to Cat’s side.

  “Finn is an old friend,” said Cat. “He’s come to see Grandpa.”

  Daniel considered this. He squinted at Finn. “Are you a robot?” he asked.

  Cat closed her eyes.

  “No,” said Finn. “I’m an android.”

  “Oh. We learned about androids at school. There’s one on the lunar station. Do you know it?”

  “Him,” said Cat. “Do you know him.”

  “I am the android on the lunar station.” Finn smiled, and the smile was so easy and bright that Cat nearly gasped. It wasn’t the smile she remembered; it was better. It was what his smile had always aspired to before. “Well, I’m not on the lunar station now, of course.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “Can you come to my school? For show and tell?”

  “No,” said Cat.

  Finn ignored her. He crouched down so he was eye level with Daniel. “I would be happy to come to your school.”

  Daniel clapped his hands together and turned to Cat. “I’m going to t
ell Robbie!” And then he bounded out of the room, up the stairs.

  “You don’t have to go to his school,” said Cat.

  “I want to.” Finn’s black eyes were impervious to her guilt. “Is that your son?”

  Cat nodded.

  “He doesn’t resemble Richard Feversham.”

  The way he said Richard’s name made Cat’s throat tighten. “No.”

  “Dr. Korchinsky told me about your divorce.” Finn did not look her in the eye. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Why?” said Cat. “Why would you be sorry?”

  Finn studied the dust that had built up in the cracks between the wooden slats of the floor.

  “Because,” he said, “that’s what I am supposed to say.” He looked at her, and she couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t like before, when you could look at the blankness of his features and believe he didn’t feel anything. Now he seemed to wear a mask. “Will you be able to drive me to the hospital?”

  She nodded. “Do you want to go right now?” Her voice trembled. “You just got here—”

  “I don’t need to rest,” he said. “You know that.”

  “Of course.”

  “You weren’t doing anything, were you? I apologize—”

  “It’s fine.” Even after all this time, she was still being selfish. The thought made her feel guilty and embarrassed. She wanted to keep Finn to herself, now that he was here, now that she could see him illuminated by the dusty sunlight.

  “Let me go get Daniel,” she said.

  The drive to the hospital took half an hour. Cat had driven down this particular stretch of freeway so many times she no longer saw it. But with Finn sitting in the passenger seat beside her, his face turned toward the window, she was suddenly aware of the rippling rows of stunted corn, growing in land that had once been a swampy forest in the years before the Disasters. Aware of the little white agri-engineering buildings that poked up against the washed-out sky. Finn drummed his fingers against the car door, and Cat kept her eyes on the road, her entire body crackling with the desire to look at him.

  Daniel peppered the silence with questions about the lunar station and the moon’s surface, and Finn answered them genially, his words like sound bites in a corporate-sponsored outreach video.