Blind Lake

Thirty-Eight

They crossed the Ohio border at the end of a languorous August afternoon.

Chris drove the last leg of the trip while Maguerite listened to music and Tess dozed in the back of the car. They were ultimately bound for New York, where Chris was scheduled for a series of meetings with his publisher, but Marguerite had lobbied for a weekend at her father’s house, a couple of days of gentle decompression before they were borne back into the world.

It was reassuring, Chris thought, to see how little this part of the country had changed since the events of last year. A National Guard checkpoint stood abandoned at the Indiana border, mute testimony both to the crisis and its passing; otherwise it was cows and combines, truckstops and county lines. Many of these roads had never been automated, and it was a pleasure to drive for hours at a time with no hands on the wheel but his own — no proxalerts, overrides, or congestion-avoidance protocols; just man and machine, the way God intended.

He nudged Marguerite as they approached the county limits.

She took off her headphones and watched the road. She had been away too long, she told Chris; she was distressed by the shabby mallways, drug bars, and cordiality palaces that had sprung up along the old highway.

But the heart of the town was just as she had described it: the century-old police station, the commons lined with chestnut trees, the more modern trefoil windmills riding the crest of a distant ridge. The several churches, including the Presbyterian church where her father used to preside.

Her father was retired now. He had moved from the rectory to a frame house on Butternut Street south of the business district. Chris followed her directions and parked at the curb-side out front.

“Wake up, Tess,” Marguerite said. “We’re here.”

Tess climbed out of the car smiling groggily at her grandfather, who came down the porch steps beaming.

Marguerite had worried that the meeting between Chris and her father might be awkward. That fear proved baseless. She watched in mild surprise as her father shook Chris’s hand warmly and ushered him into the house.

Chuck Hauser had changed very little in the three years since her last visit. He was one of those men who reach a physical plateau at middle-age and glide into their seventies only lightly touched by time — same salt-and-pepper beard, stubble-cut scalp, respectably small paunch. Still wearing the monochrome cotton shirts he had always favored, in and out of fashion. Same blue eyes, despite a recent keriotomy.

He had prepared a meal of meat loaf, peas, corn, and mashed potatoes, served on the big dining room table where (he informed Tess) Marguerite used to do her homework when she was a girl. That had been at the rectory on Glendavid Avenue. She had worked out math problems every evening after dinner, sitting next to a big fake-Tiffany lamp that cast a light she remembered as buttery yellow, almost warm enough to taste.

Her father’s dinner table conversation made no reference to Crossbank, Blind Lake, Ray Scutter, or the global events of the previous year. He encouraged Chris to call him “Chuck”; he reminisced at length with Marguerite; and when Tess grew obviously restless he let her take her dessert into the living room, where she turned on the quaintly rounded old video panel and began to search for cartoons.

He came back to the table with a pot of coffee and three mugs. “Until the day I got that call from Provo last February I didn’t know whether you were alive or dead.”

Provo, Utah, was where the people of Blind Lake had been held after the end of the lockdown — six more months of medical and psychological quarantine, living like refugees on a decommissioned Continental Defense Force base. Six months waiting to be declared sane, uncontaminated, and not a threat to the general population. “It must have been awful,” Marguerite said, “not knowing.”

“More awful for you than me, I imagine. I had a feeling you’d come through okay.”

The sky outside had grown dark. Chris finished his coffee and volunteered to keep Tess company. Her father switched on a floor lamp, illuminating the oaken bookcase behind the table. As a bookish child Marguerite had been both drawn and repelled by these shelves: so many intriguing buff or amber-colored volumes, which turned out on closer inspection to be marrowless church-related or “inspirational” works. (Although she had swiped the Kipling Just So Stories.) She noticed some books he had lately added — astronomy and cosmology titles, most published within the last couple of years. There was even a copy of Sebastian Vogel’s god-and-science doorstop.

He pulled his chair next to Marguerite’s. “How’s Tess dealing with the death of her father?”

“Well enough, given the circumstances and considering she just turned twelve. She still insists he might not be dead.”

“He vanished inside the starfish.”

Marguerite winced at that popular name for the O/BEC-generated structures. Like “Lobsters,” it was a gross misnomer. Why must every unfamiliar thing be compared to something washed up on a beach? “Lots of people vanished the same way.”

“Like those so-called pilgrims at Crossbank. But they don’t come back.”

“No,” Marguerite said, “they don’t come back.”

“Does Tess know that?”

“Yes.”

That, and perhaps more.

“There were times,” Chuck Hauser said, “when I despised that man for the way he treated you. I was more relieved than I let on when you divorced him. But I think he genuinely loved Tess, at least so far as he was able to love anyone.”

“Yes,” Marguerite said. “I think that’s true.”

He nodded. Then he cleared his throat, a phlegmy bark that reminded her just how old he had become.

“Looks like a clear night,” he said.

“Clear and cool. You’d hardly know it’s August.”

He smiled. “Come out into the backyard, Marguerite. There’s something I want to show you.”

Tess had already found something to watch on the video panel: one of those twentieth-century black-and-white movies she was so fond of. A comedy. The jokes were either bizarre or incomprehensible, it seemed to Chris, but Tess laughed obligingly, if only at the expressions on the actors’ faces.

Chris leafed through a stack of magazines Marguerite’s father had left in the rack beside the sofa. They were all news magazines, and the oldest dated back to September of last year.

It was a year’s history in miniature. The Burbank murders, military setbacks in Lesotho, the devaluation of the Continental dollar, the Pan-Arab Alliance — and of course, above all else, the screaming headlines about Crossbank/Blind Lake.

Everything he had missed during the lockdown, history from the outside looking in.

No real details, but much speculation about the O/BEC platens. There was a sidebar explaining how Crossbank’s processors differed from the usual quantum computers: Qubits, Excitons, and Self-Evolving Code.

Another issue, dated a week later:

Crossbank had discovered an apparently artificial structure on the watery world of HR8832/B. The Crossbank processor had promptly generated a near-exact copy of the structure around itself, like a kind of spiky armor.

Was this contamination or procreation? Infection or reproduction?

Both Crossbank and Blind Lake had been immediately quarantined.

Automated probes revealed that the labyrinthine interior of the Crossbank “starfish” was a very strange place. Human volunteers retreated in confusion; robots vanished; remote telemetry quickly became unintelligible.

The now-familiar image. From the air, the six radial arms; from ground level, the iridescent arches and spongiform caverns. In the text, a note that the material from which the anomaly was constructed was “scale invariant — under a microscope, any piece looks much like the whole thing does to the human eye.”

Chris leafed ahead:

The second structure had manifested overnight in a soybean field south of Macon, Georgia. Apart from a few acres of fallow ground, it destroyed nothing and killed no one, though a curious farmhand disappeared inside it before local authorities could establish a cordon. Nevertheless, large numbers of residents had fled their homes and spread confusion across the Southeast.

(Since then five more “starfish” had appeared in isolated areas around the globe, apparently following force lines in the Earth’s magnetic field. None had proved dangerous to anyone prudent enough to avoid stepping inside.)

These had been the weeks of greatest panic. The apocalyptic pronouncements and instant cults; the hawks and the pilgrims; the blockaded highways.

Introducing Adam Sandoval, 65, owner of a Loveland, Colorado, hardware store, who had since admitted his intention of flying his aircraft directly into the Blind Lake O/BEC installation (a.k.a. the Alley), in order to prevent another manifestation of the kind that had lured his wife away from him. (Sandoval’s wife had been a pilgrim, vanished and presumed dead in a group penetration of the Crossbank artifact.)

Chris had gotten to know Adam Sandoval during the post-lockdown confinement in Provo. Sandoval had recovered from his coma and his burns, though his skin was still shockingly pink where it had been restored. He had been contrite about his aborted suicide attempt, but remained bellicose on the subject of his wife’s disappearance.

Introduced to Sebastian Vogel in the Provo provision line one evening, Sandoval had refused to shake Sebastian’s hand. “My wife read your book,” he said, “shortly before she decided to run off looking for transcendence, whatever that fucking word means. Don’t you ever think about the people you peddle your bullshit to?”

Last week Sebastian and Sue had left Provo to set up housekeeping in Carmel, where a friend had offered Sue a job at a real-estate firm. Sebastian was refusing interviews and had announced that there would be no sequel to God the Quantum Vacuum.

“Rescue” meant a terrifying roundup initiated as soon as the Blind Lake Eye began to transform itself into the familiar symmetric starfish structure. “Quarantine” meant six more months of detention under the newly enacted Public Safety Protocols. “Debriefing” meant a series of interviews with well-dressed and well-meaning government personnel who recorded everything and often asked the same questions twice.

Most of the population of Blind Lake had cooperated willingly. Everyone who had lived through the lockdown had a story to tell.

The last and most recent issue of Chuck Hauser’s newsmagazines contained no screaming headlines, only a guest editorial in the back pages:

It ran to a page and a half, and it was a good piece. Thoughtful and carefully reasoned. The byline belonged to Elaine Coster, “a respected science journalist only recently released from the quarantine camp in Utah.”

Chris glanced at Tess, who was yawning, sprawled across the upholstered cushions of her grandfather’s sofa.

Tess hadn’t mentioned Mirror Girl to the authorities. Nor had Marguerite, nor had Chris.

They had not agreed in advance to a conspiracy of silence. It was a decision each had reached singly, arising, at least on Chris’s part, from a reluctance to report events that could only be misunderstood.

An untellable tale. Should a journalist really believe in such a thing? But what he had felt was more than just fear of ridicule. Things had happened that he couldn’t explain satisfactorily even to himself. Things that would never be set in banner headlines.

Tess said, without taking her eyes off the video panel, “I’m kind of tired.”

“Getting on toward bedtime,” Chris said.

He walked her up to the small spare bedroom of her grandfather’s house. She said she might read until Marguerite came to tuck her in. Chris said that would be okay.

She sprawled across the comforter on the bed. “This is the same room I stayed in last time we visited,” Tess said. “Three years ago. When my father was with us.”

Chris nodded.

The window was open an inch or so, spilling late-summer perfumes into the room. Tess left the window ajar but pulled the yellowing blind all the way down to the sill, hiding the glass.

“You haven’t seen her since the Lake, have you?” Chris said.

Her. Mirror Girl.

“No,” Tess said.

“You think she’s still around?”

Tess shrugged.

“You think about her much, Tess? Do you ever wonder who she was?”

“I know who she was. She was—” But the words seemed to tangle her tongue, and she stopped and frowned for a moment.

Back in Blind Lake, Tess had identified Mirror Girl with the O/BEC processors. As if the O/BECs, aroused to a dawning consciousness, had wanted a window onto the human world into which they had been born.

And at both Crossbank and Blind Lake they had chosen Tess. Why Tess? Maybe there was no real answer, Chris thought, any more than the Blind Lake researchers could say why they had chosen the Subject out of countless nearly identical individuals. It could have been anyone. It had to be someone.

Tess found the thought she had been struggling for: “She was the Eye,” Tess said solemnly. “And I was the telescope.”

Marguerite followed her father into the cool summer night, the backyard of the house on Butternut Street. Only the garden lights were lit, luminescent rods planted among the coleus, and she paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness.

“I assume you know what this is,” Chuck Hauser said. He stood aside and grinned.

Marguerite’s breath caught in her throat. “A telescope! My God, it’s beautiful! Where did you get it?”

Optical telescopes for amateur stargazing hadn’t been commercially manufactured for years. These days, if you wanted to look at the night sky, you hooked a photomultiplier lens into your domestic server; or better, linked yourself to one of the public celestial surveys. Old Dobsonian scopes like this sold for high prices on the antique market.

And this one was genuinely old, Marguerite realized as she examined it: in lovely condition, but definitely pre-millennial. No attachments for digital tracking; only manual orbits and worm-drives, lovingly oiled.

“The works have been restored and refitted,” her father said. “New optics ground to the original specs. Otherwise it’s totally vintage.”

“It must have cost a fortune!”

“Not a fortune.” He smiled ruefully. “Not quite.”

“When did you take up an interest in astronomy?”

“Don’t be dense, Margie. I didn’t buy it for myself. It’s a gift. You like it?”

She liked it very much indeed. She hugged her father. He couldn’t possibly have afforded it. He must have taken out a second mortgage, Marguerite thought.

“When you were young,” Chuck Hauser said, “all this stuff was a mystery to me.”

“All what stuff?”

“You know. Stars and planets. Everything you cared about so much. It seems to me now I should have stopped and looked a little closer. This is my way of saying I admire what you’ve accomplished. Maybe I’m even beginning to understand it. So — think you can get this thing packed up tight enough to fit it in that little car of yours?”

“We’ll find a way.”

“I notice you put your luggage in the same room with Chris.”

She blushed. “Did I? I wasn’t thinking — really, it’s just habit—”

Making it worse.

He smiled. “Come on, Marguerite. I’m not some hard-shell Baptist. From what you’ve said and from what I’ve seen, Chris is a good man. You’re obviously in love. Have you talked about marriage?”

Her blush deepened; she hoped he couldn’t see it in the dim light. “No immediate plans. But don’t be surprised.”

“He’s good to Tess?”

“Very good.”

“She likes him?”

“Better. She feels safe with him.”

“Then I’m happy for you. So tell me, does presenting you with this gift entitle me to offer a word of advice along with it?”

“Anytime.”

“I won’t ask what you three have been through at Blind Lake, but I know it’s been especially tough for Tess. She used to be a little uncommunicative. It doesn’t look like that’s changed.”

“It hasn’t.”

“You know, Marguerite, you were exactly the same way. Thick as a brick when your interests weren’t engaged. I always had a hard time talking to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. All I’m saying is, it’s easy to let these things glide past. People can become almost invisible to each other. I love you and I know your mother loved you, but I don’t think we always saw you very clearly, if you know what I mean.”

“I know.”

“Don’t let that happen to Tess.”

Marguerite nodded.

“Now,” her father said. “Before we pack this thing up, you want to show me how it works?”

She found him 47 Ursa Majoris in the optical scope. An undistinguished star, no more than a point of light among many points of light, less bright than the fireflies blinking under the bushes at the back of the yard.

“That’s it, huh?”

“That’s it.”

“I guess you know it so well by now, it must feel like you’ve been there.”

“That’s exactly what it feels like.” She added, “I love you too, Daddy.”

“Thank you, Marguerite. Shouldn’t you be putting that girl of yours to bed?”

“Chris can take care of it. It might be nice to sit out here a while and talk.”

“It’s pretty chilly for August.”

“I don’t care.”

When at last she came back into the house she found Chris in the kitchen, mumbling over his pocket server, making notes for the new book. He had been working on it for weeks, sometimes feverishly. “Has Tess gone to bed?”

“She’s in her room reading.”

Marguerite went up to check.

The most disturbing thing about the events at Blind Lake, Marguerite thought, was that they implied a connection over immense distances through a medium not understood, a connection that had made it possible for her to touch (and be touched by) the Subject; the Subject, who had known, somehow, all along, that he was being watched.

Seeing changes the seen. Had Tess been watched in the same way? Had Marguerite? Would that bring them, then, at the end of some unimaginable pilgrimage, to one of those enigmatic places linked to the stars — in lieu of death, a plunge into the infinite?

Not yet, Marguerite thought. Maybe never. But certainly not yet.

She found Tess fully clothed, asleep on the bedspread with her book splayed open and her hair askew. Marguerite woke her gently and helped her into her nightgown.

By the time Tess was properly tucked into bed she was wide awake again. Marguerite said, “Do you want anything? A glass of water?”

“A story,” Tess said promptly.

“I don’t really know a whole lot of stories.”

“About him,” Tess said.

Who? Chris, Ray, her grandfather?

“The Subject,” Tess said. “All the things that happened to him.”

Marguerite was taken aback. This was the first time Tess had expressed an interest in the Subject. “You really want to know about all that?”

Tess nodded. She lay back and bumped her head against the pillow, about one beat per second, gently. Summer air moved the window blinds against the wooden sill.

Well. Where to begin? Marguerite tried to recall the pages she had written with Tess in mind. Pages she had written but never shared. Stories untold.

But she didn’t need pages.

“First of all,” Marguerite said, “you have to understand that he was a person. Not exactly like you and me, but not completely different. He lived in a city he loved very much, on a dry plain under a dusty sky, on a world not quite as big as this one.”

Long ago. Far away.