Blind Lake (32 page)

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.

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 roulette 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?”

“You don’t know? Talk to Anne. Maybe it’s a good thing you showed up when you did. What I hear is, the O/BECs are putting out strange numbers and the Obs people are all excited about something… but it’s not my department. All I know is, everybody’s too busy to play politics with management. So keep Mr. Scutter on hold.”

“I don’t think he’s in a mood to wait. He—”

“Charlie! I’m
busy
, okay? Handle it!”

Charlie hurried back to his office. Something major was happening with the O/BECs, and he wanted to get downstairs and look into it. But first things first. See Ray out the door, if possible, or put him on the phone to Tabby if he had a problem with that.

But the office was empty.

Ray was missing. Also missing, Charlie realized, was his own all-pass card, plucked off the lapel of the jacket he had hung up on the hook by the door.

“Shit,” Charlie said.

He called Tabby Menkowitz again, but this time he couldn’t get through. Something wrong with his pocket server. It chimed once and went blue-screen.

He was still fiddling with it when the floor began to move under his feet.

Chris came out of a black and dreamless sleep to the chirping of his pocket server, which he had left on the bedside table and which glowed there like a luminous pencil. He checked the inset clock before he thumbed the answer button. Four in the morning. He’d had about an hour of real sleep. The storm was still gnawing at the skin of the house.

It was Elaine Coster calling. She was at the Blind Lake clinic, she said, with Sebastian Vogel and Sue Sampel. Sue had been stabbed. Stabbed by Ray Scutter. “Maybe you guys ought to get down here, if you can make it in this weather. I mean, it’s not totally
dire
; Sue’s going to live and everything—in fact, she was asking after you—but I keep thinking it would be wise for the bunch of us to stay together for a while.”

Chris watched Marguerite turn uneasily under the blankets. “We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

He woke her and told her what had happened.

Marguerite let Chris drive through the snow. She sat in the back of the car with Tess, who was only grudgingly awake and still ignorant of what her father had done. Marguerite meant to keep it that way, at least for now. Tess was under more than enough stress.

For the duration of the drive, with Tessa’s head cradled in her lap, and snow clinging to the windows of the car, and the whole of Blind Lake wrapped in a gelid, bitter darkness, Marguerite thought about Ray.

She had misjudged him.

She had never believed Ray would let himself be reduced to physical violence. Even now, she had a hard time picturing it. Ray with a knife. It had been a knife, Chris had said. Ray with a knife, using it. Ray putting the knife into Sue Sampel’s body.

“You know,” she said to Chris, “I only fainted once in my life. It was because of a snake.”

Chris wrestled the steering wheel as they turned a corner toward the mallway. The car fishtailed, microprocessors blinking loss-of-traction alerts before it straightened out. But he had time to shoot her a curious look.

“I was seven years old,” Marguerite said. “I walked out of the house one summer morning and there was a snake curled up on the porch stairs, basking in the sun. A big snake, bright and shiny against the old wood step. Too big and too shiny to be real. I assumed it was fake—that one of the neighbor kids had left it there to tease me. So I jumped over it. Three times. Three separate times. In case anyone was looking, just to prove I couldn’t be fooled. The snake never moved, and I went off to the library without giving it a second thought. But when I came home my father told me he’d killed a rattler that morning. It had come up on the porch and he’d used a shovel to cut it in half. The snake was lethargic in the cool air, he said, but he had to be careful. A snake like that can strike faster than lightning and carries enough venom to kill a horse.” She looked at Chris. “That’s when I fainted.”

They reached the Blind Lake clinic twenty minutes later. Chris parked the car under the shelter of a concrete overhang, its passenger-side wheels straddling the sidewalk. Elaine Coster met them in the lobby. Sebastian Vogel was there, too, slumped in a chair, his head in his hands.

Elaine gave Marguerite a hard look. “Sue wants to see you.”

“Wants to see
me
?”

“The wound is more or less superficial. She’s been stitched and drugged. The nurse says she ought to be sleeping, but she was wide awake a few minutes ago, and when I mentioned you guys were coming in she said, ‘I want to talk to Marguerite.’”

Oh, God
, Marguerite thought. “I guess if she’s still awake—”

“I’ll show you the way.”

Chris promised to look after Tess, who was taking a sleepy interest in the waiting-room toys.