“God, Chris…I’m so sorry!”
“No. I’m sorry. It’s not a good story for a stormy night.” He touched her hand. “It doesn’t even have a moral, except ‘shit happens.’ But if I seemed a little reluctant to jump in between you and Ray…”
“I understand. And I do appreciate your help. But, Chris? I can handle Ray. With you or without you. Preferably with, but…you understand?”
“You’re telling me you’re not Portia.”
There was no light in the room now but the glow of the sunset on UMa47/E. Subject had reclined for the night. Above the canyon wall, stars shone in constellations no one had named. No one on Earth, at least.
“I’m telling you I’m not Portia. And I’m offering you a cup of tea. Interested?”
She took his hand and walked with him to the kitchen, where the window was blank with snow and the kettle sang counterpoint to the sound of the wind.
Twenty-Five
Sue Sampel was wide awake when the doorbell chimed, though it was well after midnight—almost three, according to her watch.
Between the storm outside and the nervous energy she had stoked up during her raid on Ray’s office, sleep was out of the question. Sebastian, bless him, had gone upstairs around midnight and fallen immediately and soundly asleep. She had curled up with his book as a sort of vicarious presence. His book, plus a big snifter of peach brandy.
But the book seemed less substantial on her second go-through. It was beautifully written and full of striking ideas, but the gaps and leaps of logic were more obvious now. She supposed this was what had put Elaine Coster’s back up, Sebastian’s cheerful love of outrageous hypotheses.
For instance, Sebastian explained in the book how what people called “the vacuum of space” was more than just an absence of matter: it was a complex brew of virtual particles popping in and out of existence too quickly to interact with the ordinary substance of things. That jibed with Sue’s memory of first-year physics. She suspected he was on less firm scientific ground when he said that localized irregularities in the quantum vacuum accounted for the presence of “dark matter” in the universe. And his fundamental idea—that dark matter represented a kind of ghostly neural network inhabiting the quantum vacuum—was taken seriously by almost no one apart from Sebastian himself.
But Sebastian wasn’t a scientist and had never claimed to be one. Pressed, he would say these ideas were “templates” or “suggestions,” perhaps not to be taken literally. Sue understood, but she wished it could be otherwise; she wished his theories were solid as houses, solid enough to shelter in.
Not that her own house seemed especially solid tonight. The wind was absolutely ferocious, the snow so dense that the view from the window was like an O/BEC image of some planet unsuitable for human life. She nestled a little deeper into the sofa, took another sip of brandy and read:
Life evolves by moving into preexisting domains and exploiting preexisting forces of nature. The laws of aerodynamics were latent in the natural universe before they were “discovered” by insects and birds. Similarly, human consciousness was not invented de novo but represents the adoption by biology of an implicit, universal mathematics…
This was the idea Sue liked best, that people were pieces of something larger, something that popped up in a shape called Sue Sampel here and in a shape called Sebastian Vogel over there, both unique but both connected, the way two distinctive mountain peaks were also pieces of the same planet. Otherwise, she thought, what are we but lost animals? Lost animals, exiled from the womb, ignorant and dying.
The doorbell startled her. Her house server was kind enough to ring it quietly, but when she asked who was there the server said, “Not recognized.” Her stomach clenched. Someone not in her catalogue of regular visitors.
Ray Scutter, she thought. Who else? Elaine had warned her that something like this might happen. Ray was impulsive, more impulsive than ever since the lockdown, maybe impulsive enough to brave the storm and show up on her doorstep at three in the morning. By now he might have seen Elaine’s massive mailing. He would know (though he might not be able to prove it) that Sue had duped the copies from his desk. He would be furious. Worse, enraged. Dangerous. Yes, but how dangerous? Just how crazy was Ray Scutter?
She wished she’d had a little less to drink. But she had thought it would help her sleep, and she’d run out of pot a month ago. In Sue’s experience drugs and alcohol were like men, and pot was the best date. Cocaine liked to get dressed up and go out, very elegant, but coke would abandon you at the party or hector you into the small hours of the morning. Alcohol promised to be fun but ended up as an embarrassment; alcohol was a guy in a loud shirt, a guy with bad breath and too many opinions. Pot, however…pot liked to cuddle and make love. Pot liked to eat ice cream and watch the late show. She missed pot.
The doorbell rang again. Sue peeked out the side window. Sure enough, that was Ray’s little midnight-blue car parked against the drifts at the curb, and it must have a pretty good drive system, she thought, to have made it this far through the deepening snow.
There was another round of ringing, which the server muted disdainfully.
She could, of course, ignore him. But that struck her as cowardly. Really, there was nothing to be afraid of. What was he going to do? Yell at her? I’m a grown-up, she thought. I can deal with that. Better to get it over with.
She thought about waking up Sebastian and decided against it. Sebastian was many things, but he wasn’t a fighter. She could handle this herself. See what Ray wanted, if necessary tell him to bugger off.
But she went to the kitchen and took a carving knife out of the knife rack just in case. She felt idiotic doing it—the knife was really just a kind of emotional insurance, something to make her feel brave—and she kept it hidden behind her back as she approached the door. Opening the door because, after all, this was Blind Lake, the safest community on the surface of the Earth, even if your employer happened to be seriously pissed at you.
Her heart was beating double-time.
Ray stood under the yellow porch light in a long black jacket. The wind had tousled his hair and adorned it with snow stars. His lips were pursed and his eyes were bright. Sue kept herself squarely in the doorway, ready to slam the door should the necessity arise. Bitter air gusted into the house. She said, “Ray—”
“You’re fired,” he said.
She blinked at him. “What?”
His voice was flat and level, his lips fixed in what looked like a permanent sneer. “I know what you did. I came to tell you you’re fired.”
“I’m fired? You drove out here to tell me I’m fired?”
This was too much. The tension of the day had accumulated inside her like an electric charge, and this was so ludicrously anticlimactic—Ray firing her from a job that had long ago become redundant and unimportant—that she had to struggle to keep a straight face.
What would he do next, kick her out of Blind Lake?
But she sensed it was absolutely necessary to conceal the amusement she felt. “Ray,” she said, “look, I’m sorry, but it’s late—”
“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. You’re nothing but a thief. I know about the documents you stole. And I know about the other thing too.”
“The other thing?”
“Do I have to draw you a diagram? The pastry!”
The DingDong.
That did it. She laughed in spite of herself—a choked giggle that turned into a helpless, full-throated roar. God, the DingDong—Sebastian’s ersatz birthday cake—the fucking DingDong!
She was still laughing when Ray reached for her throat.
Sebastian had always been a sound sleeper.
He was quick to nod off, slow to wake. Morning classes had been the bane of his academic career. He would have made a lousy monk, he had often thought. Incapable of celibacy and always late for matins.
He slept through the distant sound of the doorbell and through the considerable noise that followed. He wo
ke to the sound of someone whispering his name.
Or maybe it was only the wind. In a cocoon of blankets he opened his eyes to the darkened room, listened a moment and heard nothing but the keening of the storm about the eaves. He reached across to Sue’s side of the bed but found it cold and empty. Not unusual. Sue was something of an insomniac. He closed his eyes again and sighed.
“Sebastian!”
Sue’s voice. She was not in bed but she was in the room with him, and she sounded terrified. He shed layers of sleep like a wet dog shaking off water. He reached for the bedside lamp and nearly toppled it. The light sprang on and he saw Sue by the bedroom door, one hand clenched against her lower abdomen. She was pale and sweating.
“Sue? What’s wrong?”
“He hurt me,” she said, and lifted her hand to show him the blood on her nightgown, the blood pooling around her feet.
Twenty-Six
Charlie Grogan, when he wasn’t troubleshooting the Eye, lived in a one-bedroom condo-style unit a couple of blocks north of the Plaza.
Charlie slept in the bedroom; his old dog Boomer slept in a nest of cotton blankets in a corner of the kitchen. The chime woke them simultaneously, but Boomer was first on his feet.
Charlie, coming out of a confused dream about the Subject, grabbed for his pocket server and punched the lobby connection. “Who’s there?”
“Ray Scutter. I’m sorry, I know it’s late. Hate to disturb you, but it’s something of an emergency.”
Ray Scutter, down in the lobby in the worst storm of the winter. Middle of the night. Charlie shook his head. He was unprepared for serious thought. He said, “Yeah, okay, come on up,” and buzzed the lock.
He had thrown on a shirt, pants, and socks by the time Ray reached the door. Boomer was freaked by all this late-night activity, and Charlie had to order him to keep quiet as Ray entered the apartment. Boomer sniffed at the man’s knees, then shuffled uneasily away.
Ray Scutter. Charlie knew the executive administrator by sight, but he hadn’t spoken to him one-on-one before now. Nor had he watched Ray’s Town Hall address earlier, though he’d heard it was a disaster. Charlie was generous about such things: he hated public speaking and knew how easy it was to get tongue-tied at a podium.
“You can hang your jacket in the closet,” Charlie said. “Sit down.”
Ray did neither. “I won’t be here long,” he said. “And I’m hoping you’ll leave with me.”
“How’s that?”
“I know how strange this sounds. Mr. Grogan—it’s Charlie, right?”
“Charlie’ll do.”
“Charlie, I’m here to ask for your help.”
Something in Ray’s voice troubled Boomer, who whined from the kitchen. Charlie was more troubled by the man’s appearance—rumpled suit, hair askew, what looked like fresh scratches on his face.
There had been a lot of gossip about Ray Scutter, to the effect that he was a lousy manager and an asshole to deal with. But Charlie held such hearsay inadmissible. In any case, the boss was the boss. “Tell me what I can help you with, Mr. Scutter.”
“You carry an all-pass transponder out at the Eye, right?”
“I do, but—”
“All I want is a tour.”
“Pardon me?”
“I know it’s extraordinary. I also know it’s four in the morning. But I have some decisions to make, Charlie, and I don’t want to make them until I personally inspect the facility. I can’t tell you more than that.”
“Sir,” Charlie said, “there’s a night shift on duty. I’m not sure you need me. I’ll just call Anne Costigan—”
“Don’t call anyone. I don’t want people to know I’m coming. What I want is to go out there, just you and me, and we’ll do a discreet walk-through and see what we see. If anyone complains—if Anne Costigan complains—I’ll take responsibility.”
Good, Charlie thought, since it was Ray’s responsibility. Reluctantly, he took his winter jacket off the hook in the hall.
Boomer wasn’t happy with this turn of events. He whined again and stalked off to the bedroom, probably to find a warm spot in Charlie’s bed. Boomer was an opportunistic hound.
They rode in Ray’s car, a squat little vehicle with lots of bad-weather options. It took the snow pretty well, microprocessors controlling each wheel, finding traction where there should have been none. But it was still slow going. The snow came down like bags of wet confetti, almost too fast for the wipers to clear from the windshield. In this opacity of space and time the only landmarks were the streetlights, candles passing in the darkness with metronome regularity.
In the close interior of the car Ray smelled pretty ripe. His sweat had a strange acetic undertone, not pleasant, and there was something coppery on top of that, the kind of smell you registered with your back teeth. Charlie tried to figure out how he could crack a window in the middle of a blizzard without insulting Ray.
Ray talked a little as he drove. This wasn’t really a conversation, since Charlie had very little to contribute. At one point Charlie said, “If you tell me what you’re looking for at the Eye, Mr. Scutter, maybe I can help you find it.”
But Ray just shook his head. “I trust you,” he said, “and I understand your curiosity, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”
Since Ray was pretty much the boss of Blind Lake since the shutdown, Charlie would have thought he was at liberty to discuss anything he liked. He didn’t press the issue, however. He realized he was afraid of Ray Scutter, and not just because Ray was executive management. Ray was giving off very peculiar vibes.
The spots on his jacket and slacks, Charlie thought, looked like dried blood.
“You’ve worked a long time with the O/BEC processors,” Ray said.
“Yessir. Since Gencorp. Actually, I knew Dr. Gupta back in the Berkeley Lab days.”
“Did you ever wonder, Charlie, what we woke up when we built the Eye?”
“Excuse me?”
“When we built a motherfucking huge mathematical phase space and populated it with self-modifying code?”
“I guess that’s one way to think of it.”
“There’s no phenomenon in the universe you can’t describe mathematically. Everything’s a calculation, Charlie, including you and me, we’re just little sequestered calculations, water and minerals running million-year-old make-me instructions.”
“That’s a bleak point of view.”
“Said the monkey, apprehending a threat.”
“Pardon me?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m a little short on sleep.”
“I know the feeling,” Charlie said, though he felt as wide awake as he had ever been.
Somehow, Ray kept the car on the road. Charlie was vastly relieved when he saw the guardpost coming up on the left. He wondered who had pulled guard duty on a miserable night—no, morning—like this. It turned out to be Nancy Saeed. She scanned Charlie’s all-pass and registered with visible surprise the presence of Ray Scutter. Nancy was ex-navy; when she saw Ray she began a salute, then thought better of it.
Moments later Ray parked by the main entrance. The nice thing about coming in early was, you could always find good parking.
He escorted Ray to his own office, where they left their jackets. Charlie had conducted enough of these dignitary and VIP tours that he had gotten it down to a routine. Prep and instructions in his office, then the walk-through. But this wasn’t the usual dog-and-pony show. A long way from it.
“I met your daughter here the other day,” Charlie said.
Ray cocked his head like a hunting animal catching a scent. “Tessa was here?”
“Well, she—yeah, she came by and wanted to see the works.”
“By herself?”
“Her mom picked her up afterward.”
Ray grimaced. “I wish I could tell you I’m proud of my daughter, Charlie. Unfortunately I can’t. In many ways she’s her mother’s child. You always take that chance when you spin the genetic roule
tte wheel. You have any kids?”
“No,” Charlie said.
“Good for you. Never unwind your base pairs. It’s a sucker’s bet.”
“Sir,” Charlie said, trying not to stare.
“What did she want, Charlie?”
“Your daughter? Just to look around.”
“Tess has had some emotional problems. Sometimes madness is contagious.”
If it’s catching, Charlie thought, then you’re overdue for a checkup. “Strange things happen,” he said, trying to make himself sound amicable. “Why don’t you take off your shoes and put on a pair of these disposables. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Where are you going?”
“See a man about the plumbing,” Charlie said.
He walked far enough down the main corridor to make it look convincing. As soon as he turned a corner he thumbed his pocket server and asked for Tabby Menkowitz in Security. She picked up a moment later.
“Charlie? It’s an hour to dawn—what are you doing here?”
“I think we might have a problem, Tab.”
“We’ve got lots of problems. What’s your flavor?”
“Ray Scutter’s in my office and he wants a tour of the plant.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I was.”
“Tell him to make an appointment. We’re busy.”
“Tabby, I can’t just tell him—” He thought about what she’d said. “Busy with what?”