Blind Lake by Robert Charles Wilson Page A

could even imagine that it might be necessary (though God knows
why
) to make it impossible to place so much as a phone call outside the perimeter. But if this went on much longer people were going to get seriously PO’d. Many already were. The day workers, for sure, who had lives (spouses, children) outside the Blind Lake campus. But the permanent residents, too. Sue herself, for example. She lived in the Lake but she dated off-campus, and she had been anxious to get that all-important second phone call from a man she’d met at a Secular Singles group in Constance, a man her age, mid-forties, a veterinarian, with thinning hair and gentle eyes. She imagined him with a phone in his hand, gazing sadly at all those NO SIGNAL or SERVER UNAVAILABLE tags and eventually giving up on her. Another lost opportunity. At least this time it wouldn’t be her fault.
    Ari Weingart popped into the office at the appointed hour. Good old Ari: polite, funny, even
prompt
. A saint.
    “The boss is in?” Ari asked.
    “As luck would have it. I’ll let him know you’re here.”
     
     
    Ray Scutter’s window looked south from the sixth floor of Hubble Plaza, and he was often distracted by the view. Usually there was a constant stream of traffic in and out of the Lake. Lately there had been none, and the lockdown had made his window view static, rendered the land beyond the perimeter fence as blank as brown paper, no motion but gliding cloud-shadows and the occasional darting flock of birds. If you stared long enough it began to look as inhuman as the landscape of UMa47/E. Just another imported image. It was all
surface
, wasn’t it? All two-dimensional.
    The lockdown had created a number of irritating problems. Not the least of which was that he appeared to be the senior civilian authority on campus.
    His status in the Administration hierarchy was relatively junior. But the annual NSI Conference on Astrobiology and Exocultural Science had been held in Cancun this weekend past. A huge delegation of academic staff and senior administrators had packed their swimsuits and left Blind Lake a day before the lockdown. Pull those names out of the flow chart and what remained was Ray Scutter floating over the various department heads like a loose balloon.
    It meant that people were coming to him with problems he wasn’t empowered to resolve. Demanding things he couldn’t give them, like a coherent explanation of the lockdown or a special exemption from it. He had to tell them he was in the dark too. All he could do was carry on under the standing protocols and wait for instructions from outside. Wait, in other words, for the whole shitting mess to reach a conclusion. But it had already gone on for an uncomfortably long time.
    He looked away from the window as Ari Weingart knocked and entered.
    Ray disliked Weingart’s cheery optimism. He suspected it disguised a secret contempt, suspected that under his hale-fellow exterior Weingart was peddling influence as enthusiastically as every other department head. But at least Weingart understood Ray’s position and seemed more interested in coping than complaining.
    If he could only suppress that smile. The smile bore down on Ray like a klieg light, teeth so white and regular they looked like luminous mahjong tiles. “Sit,” Ray said.
    Weingart pulled up a chair and opened his pocket desktop. Down to business. Ray liked that.
    “You wanted a list of situations we’ll have to address if the quarantine goes on much longer. I drew up some notes.”
    “Quarantine?” Ray said. “Is that what people are calling it?”
    “As opposed to a standard six-hour lockdown, yeah.”
    “Why would we be quarantined? No one’s sick.”
    “Talk to Dimi.” Dimitry Shulgin was the Civilian Security chief, due here at four. “The lockdown follows an obscure set of regs in the military manual. He says it’s what they call a ‘data quarantine,’ but nobody ever really expected it to come into effect.”
    “He