Read Online Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
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overhead in noisy V-formation all this autumn.
Beyond that was another fence, or rather the same fence that surrounded all of the Blind Lake National Laboratory and the wetlands too. This land was enclosed, but it was also wild. It lay within the so-called perimeter of security. Tess, if she wandered into these marshes, would be safe from terrorist attack or espionage agents, though perhaps not from snapping turtles or muskrats. (She didn’t know what a muskrat looked like, but Mr. Fleischer had said they lived here and Tess disliked the sound of the name.)
She walked downhill a little way farther, until the ground oozed under the pressure of her feet and the cattails loomed before her like brown sentinels with woolly heads. In a pool of still water to the left of her she could see her own reflection.
Unless it was Mirror Girl looking back at her.
Tess was barely willing to entertain that possibility even in the privacy of her own mind. There had been so much trouble back at Crossbank. Counselors, psychiatrists, all those endless and maddeningly patient questions she had been asked. The way people had looked at her; the way even her father and mother had looked at her, as if she had done something shameful without being aware of it. No, not that. Not again.
Mirror Girl had only been a game.
The problem was, the game had seemed real.
Not
real
real, the way a rock or a tree was real and substantial. But more real than a dream. More real than a wish. Mirror Girl looked just like Tess and had inhabited not only mirrors (where she had first appeared) but also empty air. Mirror Girl whispered questions Tess would never have thought to ask, questions she couldn’t always answer. Mirror Girl, the therapist had said, was Tessa’s own invention; but Tess didn’t believe she could invent a personality as persistent and frequently annoying as Mirror Girl had been.
She risked another glance at the reflective water at her feet. Water full of clouds and sky. Water where her own face looked back at an oblique angle and seemed to smile in recognition.
Tess
, said the wind, and her reflection vanished in a corrugation of ripples.
She thought of the astronomy book she had been reading. Of the deepness of time and space in which even an Ice Age was only a moment.
Tess
, the cattails and the rushes whispered.
“Go away,” Tess said angrily. “I don’t want any more trouble with you.”
The wind gusted and died, though the sense of unwanted presence remained.
Tess turned away from the suddenly forbidding wetlands. When she faced west she found the sun peeking out from a rack of cloud almost level with the hilltop. She glanced at her watch. Four o’clock. The house key she kept on a chain around her neck felt like a ticket to paradise. She didn’t want to be out in this lonely wetness anymore. She wanted to be home, with this leaden knapsack off her back, curled into the sofa with something good on the video panel or a book in her hands. She felt suddenly doubtful and guilty, as if she had done something wrong just by coming here, though there were no rules against it (only Mr. Fleischer’s passing remark that it was possible to get lost in the marshes and that the shallow water wasn’t always as shallow as it looked).
A huge blue heron rose into the air from the rushes only a few yards away, cracking the air with its wings. It carried something green and wiggling in the vise of its beak.
Tess turned and ran to the top of the ridge, anxious for the reassuring sight of Blind Lake (the town). Wind whistled in her ears, and the shush-shush noise of her trouser legs brushing together sounded like urgent conversation.
She was comforted by the towers of the Alley as she hurried past them, comforted by the smooth blackness of the asphalt road as it wound into the town houses, comforted by the nearness of the tall buildings of Hubble Plaza.
But she didn’t care for the sound of police-car sirens down by the south gate. Sirens
Beyond that was another fence, or rather the same fence that surrounded all of the Blind Lake National Laboratory and the wetlands too. This land was enclosed, but it was also wild. It lay within the so-called perimeter of security. Tess, if she wandered into these marshes, would be safe from terrorist attack or espionage agents, though perhaps not from snapping turtles or muskrats. (She didn’t know what a muskrat looked like, but Mr. Fleischer had said they lived here and Tess disliked the sound of the name.)
She walked downhill a little way farther, until the ground oozed under the pressure of her feet and the cattails loomed before her like brown sentinels with woolly heads. In a pool of still water to the left of her she could see her own reflection.
Unless it was Mirror Girl looking back at her.
Tess was barely willing to entertain that possibility even in the privacy of her own mind. There had been so much trouble back at Crossbank. Counselors, psychiatrists, all those endless and maddeningly patient questions she had been asked. The way people had looked at her; the way even her father and mother had looked at her, as if she had done something shameful without being aware of it. No, not that. Not again.
Mirror Girl had only been a game.
The problem was, the game had seemed real.
Not
real
real, the way a rock or a tree was real and substantial. But more real than a dream. More real than a wish. Mirror Girl looked just like Tess and had inhabited not only mirrors (where she had first appeared) but also empty air. Mirror Girl whispered questions Tess would never have thought to ask, questions she couldn’t always answer. Mirror Girl, the therapist had said, was Tessa’s own invention; but Tess didn’t believe she could invent a personality as persistent and frequently annoying as Mirror Girl had been.
She risked another glance at the reflective water at her feet. Water full of clouds and sky. Water where her own face looked back at an oblique angle and seemed to smile in recognition.
Tess
, said the wind, and her reflection vanished in a corrugation of ripples.
She thought of the astronomy book she had been reading. Of the deepness of time and space in which even an Ice Age was only a moment.
Tess
, the cattails and the rushes whispered.
“Go away,” Tess said angrily. “I don’t want any more trouble with you.”
The wind gusted and died, though the sense of unwanted presence remained.
Tess turned away from the suddenly forbidding wetlands. When she faced west she found the sun peeking out from a rack of cloud almost level with the hilltop. She glanced at her watch. Four o’clock. The house key she kept on a chain around her neck felt like a ticket to paradise. She didn’t want to be out in this lonely wetness anymore. She wanted to be home, with this leaden knapsack off her back, curled into the sofa with something good on the video panel or a book in her hands. She felt suddenly doubtful and guilty, as if she had done something wrong just by coming here, though there were no rules against it (only Mr. Fleischer’s passing remark that it was possible to get lost in the marshes and that the shallow water wasn’t always as shallow as it looked).
A huge blue heron rose into the air from the rushes only a few yards away, cracking the air with its wings. It carried something green and wiggling in the vise of its beak.
Tess turned and ran to the top of the ridge, anxious for the reassuring sight of Blind Lake (the town). Wind whistled in her ears, and the shush-shush noise of her trouser legs brushing together sounded like urgent conversation.
She was comforted by the towers of the Alley as she hurried past them, comforted by the smooth blackness of the asphalt road as it wound into the town houses, comforted by the nearness of the tall buildings of Hubble Plaza.
But she didn’t care for the sound of police-car sirens down by the south gate. Sirens
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