Blind Lake

  Chris pulled out Sandoval’s wallet, charred, and the items that had been salvaged from it: his cash card, melted beyond utility; an I.D. disc with his digital bona fides, also charred, but bearing the legible name ADAM W. SANDOVAL; his pilot’s license; a photograph of a middle-aged woman with a wide, pleasant smile, the photo three-quarters intact; a receipt from a Pottery Barn in Flint Creek, Colorado; and coupon for a ten-dollar discount at Home and Garden, six months past its expiration date. If Mr. Sandoval was a terrorist, Marguerite thought, he was definitely the domestic variety.

  “Please be careful,” Rosalie said, her cheeks flushed.

  The items gleaned from his burned backpack were even more sparse. Chris handled them quickly: a fragment of a smartbook, a blackened plastic pen, and a handful of loose, partial pages from a print magazine.

  Chris said, “Has anyone else seen this material?”

  “Only Dr. Goldhar. I thought maybe we should call Ray Scutter or someone in Administration and tell them about it. Dr. Goldhar said not to. He said it wasn’t worth worrying Ray about all this.”

  “Dr. Goldhar is a wise man,” Chris said.

  Rosalie checked the corridor again, looking guiltier by the minute. Chris kept his back to her. She didn’t see—but Marguerite did—when Chris picked up one of the magazine pages and slipped it under his jacket.

  She wasn’t sure Chris knew she had seen him take the page and she didn’t mention it during the drive back. What he had done was probably some sort of crime. Did that make her an accomplice?

  He didn’t say much in the car. But she was sure his intent had been journalistic, not criminal. All he had taken, after all, was a scrap of singed paper.

  Several times she got up enough nerve to ask him about it, several times she refrained. The sun had set and it was almost dinnertime when they reached the house. Chris had promised to cook tonight. He was an enthusiastic if not especially talented cook. His stir-fries were a mixed blessing, and he complained that the siege rations didn’t include lemongrass or coriander, but—

  “There’s a car in the driveway,” Chris said.

  She recognized it instantly. The car was obscure in the wintery dusk, black against the asphalt and the shadow of the willow, but she knew at once it was Ray’s.

  Eighteen

  “Stay in the car,” she told Chris. “Let me talk him out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “I lived with him for five years. I know the drill.”

  “Marguerite, he crossed a line. He came to your house. Unless you gave him a key, he broke in.”

  “He must have used Tessa’s key.

  Maybe she’s with him.”

  “The point is, when people go this far beyond the boundaries it starts to get serious. You could get hurt.”

  “You don’t know him. Just give me a few minutes, all right? If I need you, I’ll scream.”

  Not funny, she told herself. Chris obviously didn’t find it funny, either.

  She put her hand on his knee. “Five minutes, okay?”

  “You’re telling me to sit in the car?”

  “Sit in the car, walk around the block, anything you want, but it’ll be easier to get rid of him if you’re not there putting his back up.”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. She climbed out of the car and walked resolutely to the front door of her home, more angry than frightened. Fucking Ray. Chris didn’t understand how Ray operated. Ray wasn’t there to beat her up. Ray had always aimed at humiliation by other means.

  Inside—the living room lights were blazing—she called out Tessa’s name. If Ray had brought Tess there might be some excuse for this.

  But Tess didn’t answer. Neither did Ray. Fuming, she checked the kitchen, the dining room. Empty. He must be upstairs, then. Lights were burning in every room in the house.

  She found him in her office in the spare bedroom. Ray sat in her swivel chair, shoes on her desk, watching the Subject cross a waterless graben under a noonday sun. He looked up casually when she cleared her throat. “Ah,” he said. “Here you are.”

  In the diffuse light of the wall screen Ray looked like a chinless Napoleon, ridiculously imperial. “Ray,” she said levelly, “is Tess in the house?”

  “Certainly not. That’s what we need to talk about. Tessa’s been telling me about some of the things that go on here.”

  “Don’t start. I really, really don’t want to hear it. Just leave, Ray. This isn’t your house and you have no right to be here.”

  “Before we start talking about rights, are you aware that your daughter was left in the snow for almost an hour while your boyfriend played hero last week? She’s lucky she doesn’t have frostbite.”

  “We can talk about this some other time. Go, Raymond.”

  “Come on, Marguerite. Just drop the bullshit about ‘my house, my rights.’ We both know you’ve been systematically ignoring Tess. We both know she’s having serious psychological problems as a result of that.”

  “I won’t discuss this.”

  “I’m not here to fucking discuss it. I’m here to tell you how it’s going to be. I can’t in good conscience continue to allow my daughter to visit with you if you’re not willing to provide her with appropriate care.”

  “Ray, we have an agreement—”

  “We have a tentative agreement written under radically different circumstances. If I could take it to court, believe me, I would. That’s not possible because of the lockdown. So I have to do what I think is right.”

  “You can’t just keep her,” Marguerite said. But what if he tried? What if he refused to let Tess come home? There was no family court in Blind Lake, no real police she could call on for help.

  “Don’t dictate to me. Tess is in my care and I have to make the decisions I think are best for her.”

  It was his smug, oily certainty that infuriated her. Ray had mastered the art of speaking as if he were the only adult on the planet and everyone else was weak, stupid, or insolent. Under that brittle exterior, of course, was the narcissistic infant determined to have his own way. Neither aspect of his personality was particularly appealing.

  “Look,” she said, “this is ridiculous. Whatever’s wrong with Tess, you can’t make it better by coming here and insulting me.”

  “I have no interest in your opinion on the subject.”

  Without thinking, Marguerite took two steps forward and slapped him. She had never done that before. Her open palm hurt immediately, and even this brief physical contact (the coarseness of a day’s growth of beard, his flabby jowls) made her want to wash her aching hand. Bad move, she thought, very bad move. But she couldn’t help taking a certain pride in Ray’s astonishment.

  When she was little Marguerite used to hang out with a neighborhood boy whose family owned a gentle and long-suffering springer spaniel. The boy (his name had also been Raymond, coincidentally) had once spent an hour trying to ride that dog like a horse, laughing at the poor animal’s yelps, until the dog had finally turned on him and taken a bite out of his right-hand thumb. The boy had looked the way Ray did now, astonished and tearful. For a second she wondered whether Ray would start to cry.

  But his face reformed on its familiar lines. He stood up.

  Oh, shit, Marguerite thought. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

  She backed into the hallway. Ray put his hands on her shoulders and shoved her against the wall. Now it was her turn to be surprised.

  “You really don’t get it, do you? In the words of the song, Marguerite, you’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  A movie, not a song. One of Tessa’s favorites. Ray, of course, didn’t know that.

  He pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I shouldn’t have to tell you how far we all are from that pedestrian little world of divorce counselors and social workers you imagine you’re still living in. Why do you think the Lake is under a quarantine? You quarantine a place because of sickness, Marguerite. It’s that simple. A contagious, deadly si
ckness. We’re alive on sufferance, and how much longer is that sufferance going to last?”

  It could end at any time.

  Ray put his face close to hers. His breath smelled like acetone. She tried to turn away but he wouldn’t let her.

  “We could all be dead in a month. We could be dead tomorrow. Given that, why should I let you ignore Tess in favor of that freakish thing on the screen, or worse, your new boyfriend?”

  “What are you talking about?” Moving her jaw against the pressure of his fingers. Because he sounded like he knew something. Like he had a secret. Ray had always enjoyed knowing something Marguerite didn’t. Almost as much as he hated being wrong.

  He gave her a last, almost perfunctory shove—her shoulders connected again with the plaster wall—then stepped back. “You are so fucking naive,” he said.

  What Ray didn’t see was the large form of Chris Carmody lumbering down the hallway from the stairs. Marguerite caught sight of him but glanced away quickly so as not to let Ray catch on. Let it happen. For a big man, Chris made very little noise.

  Chris put himself between her and Ray and pushed a very startled Ray back against the opposite wall, not gently. Marguerite was terrified—there was real male violence in the air, an actual smell, a locker-room funk—but she was secretly pleased to see Ray’s venomous expression morph back to an incredulous “Oh!” She had wanted to see that look on him for many dry years. It was intoxicating.

  “Did you,” Ray stammered when he had sized up the situation, “did you just put your fucking hands on me?”

  “I don’t know,” Chris said. “Did you just commit a break-and-enter?”

  Now they’ll fight, Marguerite thought, or one of them will back down. Ray made a good show of it. He puffed up like a bantam rooster. “Mind your own fucking business!” But he was talking, not fighting. “I don’t have to go through you to deal with my wife. Do you know who I am?”

  “Come on, Ray,” Chris said calmly. “Take it outside, all right?”

  Here was something she hadn’t seen from Chris before. Anger, real anger, not Ray’s piss-and-vinegar face-making. He looked like a man preparing to perform some unpleasant task with his fists. She reached out and put a hand on his arm. “Chris—”

  Ray seized the opportunity, as she had suspected he might. He stepped back, held up his hands, and began a very Ray-like back-down. “Oh, please. I don’t want to play macho games. I said what I came to say.”

  He turned his back and walked away—a little shaky in the knees, she thought.

  When he was gone, after she had watched from Tessa’s bedroom window to make sure he drove away in his ugly little black car, what Marguerite felt was not anger or fear but embarrassment. As if Chris had been witness to some shameful part of her life. “I didn’t mean for you to see that.”

  “I got tired of waiting.”

  “I mean, thank you, but—”

  “You don’t have to thank me and you don’t have to apologize.”

  She nodded. Her pulse was still racing. “Come on down to the kitchen,” she said. Because it was going to be one of those long, sleepless, adrenaline-charged nights. Maybe this was a habit she had picked up from her father, but where do you a spend a night like that except in the kitchen? Making tea and toast and trying to put your life back in some sort of order.

  Ray had said some disturbing things. There was a lot here to think about, and she didn’t want to further embarrass herself by breaking down in front of Chris. So she led Chris to the kitchen and sat him down while she put on the kettle. Chris himself was subdued—in fact, he looked a little mournful. He said, “Was it always like that? You and Ray?”

  “Not so bad. Not always. And especially not at first.” How to explain that what she had mistaken for love had turned so quickly into loathing? Her hand still ached where she had slapped him. “Ray’s a pretty good actor. He can be charming when he wants to.”

  “I imagine the strain wears on him.”

  She smiled. “Apparently. Did you hear much of what he said upstairs?”

  Chris shook his head.

  “He said he won’t give Tess back.”

  “Think he means it?”

  “Ordinarily I’d say no. But ordinarily, he wouldn’t even make the threat. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have come here. Back in the real world, Ray was pretty good about respecting legal limits. If only because he didn’t want to leave himself vulnerable. Upstairs, he was talking like somebody with nothing to lose. He was talking about the quarantine. He said we could all be dead in a week.”

  “You think he knows something?”

  “Either he knows something or he wants me to believe he does. All I can say is, he wouldn’t be dicking around with our custodial arrangements if he thought I’d have legal recourse. I mean, ever.”

  Chris was silent for a while, mulling that one over. The kettle whistled. Marguerite focused on making the tea, this calming ritual, two tea bags, a dollop of milk for her cup, none for Chris.

  “I guess I never really let myself think about that,” she said. “I want to believe that one day soon they’ll open the gates and restore the data links and somebody in a uniform will apologize to us all and thank us for our patience and beg us not to sue. But I guess it could end another way.” Another deadly way. And, of course, at any time. “Why would they do that to us, Chris? There’s nothing dangerous here. Nothing’s changed since the day before the lockdown. What are they afraid of?”

  He smiled humorlessly. “The joke.”

  “What joke?”

  “There’s an old comedy routine—I forget where I saw it. It’s World War Two and the Brits come up with the ultimate weapon. A joke so funny you die laughing if you hear it. The joke is translated word-by-word into phonetic German. Guys on the front lines are yelling it through bullhorns, and the Nazi troops drop dead in the trenches.”

  “Okay…so?”

  “It’s the original information virus. An idea or an image capable of driving someone mad. Maybe that’s what the world is afraid of.”

  “That’s a dumb idea, and it was retired during the congressional hearings a decade ago.”

  “But suppose it happened at Crossbank, or something happened there that looked like it.”

  “Crossbank isn’t looking at the same planet. Even if they found something potentially dangerous, how would it affect us?”

  “It wouldn’t, unless the problem arose in the O/BECs. That’s all we really have in common with Crossbank, the hardware.”

  “Okay, but that’s still ridiculously conjectural. There’s no evidence anything bad happened at Crossbank.”

  Marguerite had forgotten about the partial magazine page Chris had stolen from the clinic. He took it out of his jacket pocket and put it on the kitchen table.

  “There is now,” he said.

  Nineteen

  Tess watched television while her father was out. Blind Lake TV was still running through its store of previously downloaded entertainment, mostly old movies and network serials. Tonight they showed an Anglo-Hindi musical with lots of dancing and colorful costumes. But Tess had a hard time paying attention.

  She knew her father was acting strangely. He had asked her all kinds of questions about the plane crash and Chris. The only surprising thing was that he had not once mentioned Mirror Girl. Nor had Tess mentioned her; Tess knew better than to raise that subject with him. Back at Crossbank, when her parents were together, they had fought over Mirror Girl more than once. Her father blamed her mother for Mirror Girl’s appearances. Tess couldn’t see how that was supposed to work—her mother and Mirror Girl had nothing in common. But she had learned not to say anything. Intervening in those fights did no good and usually just made her or her mother cry.

  Her father didn’t like hearing about Mirror Girl. Lately he didn’t like hearing about her mother or Chris, either. He spent most evenings in the kitchen, talking to himself. Tess ran her own bath those nights. She put herself to bed and read a book until
she could sleep.

  Tonight she was alone in the house. Tess had made popcorn in the kitchen, cleaned up carefully afterward, and tried to watch the movie. Bombay Destination, it was called. The dancing was good. But she felt the pressure of Mirror Girl’s curiosity behind her eyes. “It’s only dancing,” she said scornfully. But it was unsettling to hear herself talk out loud when there was nobody home. The sound echoed off the walls. Her father’s house seemed too large in his absence, too unnaturally neat, like a model of a house put together for showing-off, not living in. Tess walked restlessly from room to room, turning on lights. The light made her feel better, even though she was certain her father would bawl her out for wasting energy.

  He didn’t, though. When he got home he hardly spoke to her, just told her to get ready for bed and then went to the kitchen and made some calls. Upstairs, after her bath, she could still hear his voice down there, talking talking talking. Talking to the phone. Talking to the air. Tess put on her nightgown and took her book to bed, but the words on the page evaded her attention. Eventually she just turned off the light and lay there looking out the window.

  Her bedroom window at her father’s house looked south across the main gate and the prairie, but when she was lying down all she could see was the sky. (She had closed her door to make sure no light reflected from the windowpane, turning it into a mirror.) The sky was clear tonight and there was no moon. She could see the stars.

  Her mother talked often about the stars. It seemed to Tess that her mother was someone who had fallen in love with the stars. Tess understood that the stars she saw at night were simply other suns very far away and that those other suns often had planets around them. Some stars had strange, evocative names (like Rigel or Sirius) but more often had numbers and letters, like UMa47, like something you might order from a catalog. You couldn’t give a special name to every star because there were more stars than you could see with the naked eye, billions more. Not every star had planets, and only a few had planets anything like Earth. Even so, there might be lots of Earthlike planets.