Blind Lake (8 page)

It was also a nine-day-wonder, a media bubble, a briefly lucrative source of income for the novelty industry. Ten years had passed, the O/BEC effect had proven difficult to understand or reproduce, Portia was gone, and Chris’s first attempt at book-length journalism had been a disaster. Truth was a hard commodity to market. Even at Crossbank, even at Blind Lake, internecine squabbling over target images and interpretation had almost engulfed the scientific discourse.

And yet, here he was. Disillusioned, disoriented, fucked-over and fucked-up, but with a last chance to dig out that pearl and share it. A chance to relocate the beauty and significance that had once moved him nearly to tears.

He looked at Sebastian Vogel over the breakfast-stained plastic tabletop. “What does this place mean to you?”

Sebastian shrugged amiably. “I came here the same way you did. I got the call from
Visions East
, I talked to my agent, I signed the contract.”

“Yeah, but is that all it is—a publishing opportunity?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I may not be as sentimental about it as Elaine, but I recognize the significance of the work that goes on here. Every astronomical advance since Copernicus has changed mankind’s view of itself and its place in the universe.”

“It’s not just the results, though. It’s the process. Galileo could have explained the principle behind the telescope to almost anyone, given a little patience. But even the people who run the O/BECs can’t tell you how they do what they do.”

“You’re asking which is the bigger story,” Sebastian said, “what we see or how we see it. It’s an interesting angle. Maybe you should talk to the engineers at the Alley. They’re probably more approachable than the theorists.”

Because they don’t care what I told the world about Galliano, Chris thought. Because they don’t consider me a Judas.

Still, it was a good idea. After breakfast he called Ari Weingart and asked him for a contact at the Alley.

“Chief engineer out there is Charlie Grogan. If you like, I’ll get ahold of him and try to set up a meet.”

“I’d appreciate it,” Chris said. “Any new word on the lockdown?”

“Sorry, no.”

“No explanation?”

“It’s unusual, obviously, but no. And you don’t have to tell me how pissed-off people are. We’ve got a guy in Personnel whose wife went into labor just before the gates closed Friday. You can imagine how happy he is about all this.”

His situation wasn’t unique. That afternoon Chris interviewed three more day workers at the Blind Lake gym, but they were reluctant to talk about anything except the shutdown—families they couldn’t reach, pets abandoned, appointments missed. “The least they could do is give us a fucking audio line out,” an electrician told him. “I mean, what could happen? Somebody’s going to bomb us
by phone
? Plus there are rumors starting to go around, which is natural when you can’t get any real news. There could be a war on for all we know.”

He could only agree. A temporary security block was one thing. Going most of a week without information exchange in either direction bordered on lunacy. Much longer and it would look like something truly radical must have happened outside.

And maybe it had. But that wasn’t an explanation. Even in times of war, what threat could a web or video connection pose? Why quarantine not only the population of Blind Lake, but all their data conduits?

Who was hiding what, and from whom?

He intended to spend the hour before dinner putting his notes in some kind of order. He was beginning to imagine the possibility of a finished article, maybe not the twenty thousand words
VE
had asked for but not far short of it. He even had a thesis: miracles buried under the human capacity for indifference. The somnolent culture of UMa47/E as a distant mirror.

A project like this would be good for him, maybe restore some of his faith in himself.

Or he could wake up tomorrow in the usual emasculating fog of self-revulsion, the knowledge that he was kidding absolutely nobody with his handful of half-transcribed interviews and fragile ambitions. That was possible too. Maybe even likely.

He looked up from the screen of his pocket server in time to see Elaine bearing down on him. “Chris!”

“I’m busy.”

“There’s something happening at the south gate. Thought you might want to see.”

“What is it?”

“Do I know? Something big coming down the road at slow speed. Looks like an unmanned vehicle. You can see it from the hill past the Plaza. Can that little gizmo of yours capture video?”

“Sure, but—”

“So bring it. Come on!”

It was a short walk from the community center to the crest of the hill. Whatever was happening was unusual enough that a small group of people had gathered to watch, and Chris could see more faces leaning into the windows of the south tower of Hubble Plaza. “Did you tell Sebastian about this?”

Elaine rolled her eyes. “I don’t keep track of him and I doubt he’s interested. Unless that’s the Holy Ghost rolling down the road.”

Chris squinted into the distance.

The sinuous road away from Blind Lake was easily visible under a ceiling of close, tumbling clouds. And yes, something was approaching the locked gate from outside. Chris thought Elaine was probably right: it looked like a big eighteen-wheel driverless freight truck, the kind of drone vehicle the military had used in the Turkish crisis five years ago. It was painted flat black and was unmarked, at least as far as Chris could tell from here. It moved at a speed that couldn’t have been more than fifteen miles per hour—still ten minutes or so away from the gate.

Chris shot a few seconds of video. Elaine said, “You in good shape? Because I mean to jog down there, see what happens when that thing arrives.”

“Could be dangerous,” Chris said. Not to mention cold. The temperature had dropped a good few degrees in the last hour. He didn’t have a jacket.

“Grow some balls,” Elaine scolded him. “The truck doesn’t look armed.”

“It may not be armed, but it’s armored. Somebody’s anticipating trouble.”

“All the more reason. Listen!”

The sound of sirens. Two Blind Lake Security vans sped past, headed south.

Elaine was spry for a woman of her age. Chris found himself hurrying to keep up.

Marguerite left work early Wednesday and drove to the school for her interview with Mr. Fleischer, Tessa’s homeroom teacher.

Blind Lake’s single school building was a long, low two-story structure not far from the Plaza, surrounded by playgrounds, an athletic field, and a generous parking lot. Like all of the buildings in Blind Lake, the school was cleanly designed but essentially anonymous—it might have been any school, anywhere. It looked much like the school at Crossbank, and the smell that greeted Marguerite when she stepped through the big front door was the smell of every school she had ever been inside: a combination of sour milk, wood shavings, disinfectant, adolescent musk, and warm electronics.

She followed the corridor into the west wing. Tess had entered grade eight this year, a step away from the hopscotch and Barbie crowd, tottering on the brink of adolescence. Marguerite had suffered through her own high school years, and still felt a conditioned wave of apprehension amidst these rows of salmon-colored lockers, though the school was largely empty—the students had been sent home early to allow for this round of parent-teacher interviews. She imagined Tess already at the house, maybe reading and listening to the hum of the floorboard heaters.
Home safe
, Marguerite thought a little enviously.

She knocked at the half-open door of Room 130, Mr. Fleischer’s room. He waved her in and rose to shake her hand.

She didn’t doubt Mr. Fleischer was an excellent teacher. Blind Lake was a flagship federal institution, and a key part of its employment package was the availability of a first-class school system. Marguerite was sure Mr. Fleischer’s credentials were impeccable. He even looked like a good teacher, or at least the kind of teacher you could safely confide in: tall, somewhat doe-eyed, well but not intimidatingly dressed, with a trim beard and a generous smile. His grip was firm but gentle.

“Welcome,” he said. The room was equipped with child-sized desks, but he had imported a pair of parent-friendly chairs. “Have a seat.”

Funny, Marguerite thought, how awkward all this made her feel.

Fleischer glanced at a sheet of notes. “Good to meet you. Meet you again, I should say, since we were introduced at Tessa’s orientation. You work in Observation and Interpretation?”

“Actually, I’m the department head.”

Fleischer’s eyebrows levitated briefly. “Here since August?”

“Tess and I moved here in August, yes.”

“Tessa’s father was here a little earlier, though, wasn’t he?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re separated?”

“Divorced,” Marguerite said promptly. Was it paranoia, or had Ray already discussed this with Fleischer? Ray always said “separated,” as if the divorce were a temporary misunderstanding. And it would be just like Ray to describe Marguerite as “working in Interpretation” rather than admit she was heading the department. “We have joint legal custody, but Tess is in my care the majority of time.”

“I see.”

Maybe Ray had failed to mentioned that, too. Fleischer paused and added a note to his files. “I’m sorry if this is intrusive. I just want to get a sense of Tessa’s situation at home. She’s been having some trouble here at school, as I’m sure you’re aware. Nothing serious, but her marks aren’t where we’d like them to be, and she seems a little, I don’t know how to say it, a little
vague
in class.”

“The move—” Marguerite began.

“No doubt that’s a factor. It’s like an army base here. Families move in and out all the time, and it’s hard on the kids. The kids can be hard on newcomers, too. I’ve seen it far too often. But my concerns about Tess go a little bit beyond that. I had a look at her records from Crossbank.”

Ah, Marguerite thought. Well, that was inevitable. Raking these old coals again. “Tess had some problems last spring. But that’s all over now.”

“This was during the process of the divorce?”

“Yes.”

“She was seeing a therapist at that time, right?”

“Dr. Leinster, at Crossbank. Yes.”

“Is she seeing anyone now?”

“Here at Blind Lake?” Marguerite shook her head decisively. “No.”

“Have you thought about it? We’ve got people on staff who can provide absolutely first-rate counseling.”

“I’m sure you do. I don’t feel it’s necessary.”

Fleischer paused. He tapped a pencil against his desk. “Back at Crossbank, Tess had some kind of hallucinatory episode, is that correct?”

“No, Mr. Fleischer, that’s not correct. Tess was lonely and she talked to herself. She had a made-up friend she called Mirror Girl, and there were times when it was a little hard for her to distinguish between reality and imagination. That’s a problem, but it’s not a
hallucination
. She was tested for temporal-lobe epilepsy and a dozen other neurological conditions. The tests were uniformly negative.”

“According to her file, she was diagnosed with—”

“Asperger’s Syndrome, yes, but that’s not a terribly uncommon condition. She has a few tics, she was language-delayed, and she’s not very good at making friends, but we’ve known that for some years now. She’s lonely, yes, and I believe her loneliness contributed to the problem at Crossbank.”

“I think she’s lonely here, too.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Yes, she’s lonely and disoriented. Wouldn’t you be? Parents divorced, a new place to live, plus all the usual cruelties a child her age endures. You don’t have to tell me about it. I see it every day. In her body language, in her eyes.”

“And you don’t think therapy would help her deal with that?”

“I don’t mean to be dismissive, but therapy hasn’t been a huge success. Tessa’s been on and off Ritalin and a host of other drugs, and none of them has done her any good. Quite the opposite. That should be in the file too.”

“Therapy needn’t involve medication. Sometimes just the talking helps.”

“But it didn’t help Tess. If anything it made her feel more unique, more alone, more oppressed.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“She didn’t have to.” Marguerite discovered her palms were sweating. Her voice had tightened up, too.
That defensive whine of yours
, Ray used to call it. “What’s the point, Mr. Fleischer?”

“Again, I’m sorry if this seems intrusive. I like to have some background on my students, especially if they’re having trouble. I think it makes me a better teacher. I guess it also makes me sound like an interrogator. I apologize.”

“I know Tess has been slow with her written work, but—”

“She comes to class, but there are days when she’s, I don’t know how to describe it—emotionally absent. She stares out the window. Sometimes I call her name and she doesn’t respond. She whispers to herself. That doesn’t make her unique, much less disturbed, but it does make her difficult to teach. All I’m saying is, maybe we can help.”

“Ray’s been here, hasn’t he?”

Mr. Fleischer blinked. “I’ve talked to your husband—your ex-husband—on a couple of occasions, but that’s not unusual.”

“What did he tell you? That I’m neglecting her? That she complains about being lonely when she’s with me?”

Fleischer didn’t respond, but his wide-eyed look gave him away. Direct hit. Fucking Ray!

“Look,” Marguerite said, “I appreciate your concern, and I share it, but you should also know that Ray isn’t happy with the custody arrangements and this isn’t the first time he’s tried to set me up, make me look like a bad parent. So let me guess: he came in here and told you how
reluctant
he was to raise the issue, but he was worried about Tess, what with all the problems back at Crossbank, and maybe she wasn’t getting the kind of parental attention she deserves, in fact she’d said a thing or two to him… is that the gist?”

Fleischer held up his hands. “I can’t get involved in this kind of discussion. I told Tessa’s father the same things I’m telling you.”