"I'm sorry?" Jonathan finally said plaintively, and Laura returned to the present her vision blurred by teary eyes.
"You put in my Web address, Jonathan! I've gotten thousands of messages from all over the world, some of them totally obscene."
"O-o-u. Can I read those?"
"If you were gonna pull a stunt like that for cheap sexual titillation, why didn't you just profile yourself, for God's sake?"
He made a face. "Who wants to send pornographic messages to a potbellied, middle-aged, gay professor?"
"Jonathan, please. I have a lot on my mind." She tossed the letter across the desk to him. "Here. Read that."
"I thought you'd never ask," he said, eagerly picking it up.
"Do you know anything about that letter?"
"I know that a perfectly gorgeous young man delivered it. He stopped to ask where you were, and I…" Jonathan fell silent, his eyebrows arching high as he read. "Well, well, well. I do believe we have the makings of a true moral dilemma here."
Laura slumped in her chair. "What're you talking about?"
"H-m-m, let see." Jonathan looked up at the ceiling. "Evil rich recluse," he said thoughtfully, his finger pointing as if at the words he spoke, "hovers on brink of abnormal behavior." His finger returned to his mouth. "Knowing he's in need of psychotherapy, his 'people' check out the Harvard psychology department. Eager aides find a beautiful, young psychologist to fly down to Gray's South Pacific island for a week of fun and analysis. Little do they know, however, that there's a world of difference between psychiatry and psychology, and that the lovely young lass they have chosen specializes not in the real world of healing but in the nether regions of arcane research about 'consciousness' and 'selfhood' and other such imaginary creations of animal brains."
Laura rubbed her eyes. "You know, you're really turning into an old bitch in your waning days, Jonathan."
"But a million dollars," he said dreamily, undeterred. "What one could do with a million dollars. Why, one could fund research to determine whether aphids are capable of developing a true human-like attachment to Coca-Cola. Or perhaps… whether a toaster oven feels 'shame' when it repeatedly singes the waffles."
"I'm not going to take that offer," Laura said, incredulous that he would even suggest such a thing.
"But why not? A week or so in your tender care — those warm island breezes," he threw his head back and flicked his fingers through his thinning and graying hair, "and your patient'll be chipper as a schoolboy! Just ask a few questions about his childhood, mouth some psychiatric mumbo jumbo, then get his doctor to prescribe Prozac."
With her arms resting heavily on her desk, Laura shot Jonathan a dirty look and then pressed her face down into the crook of her elbow — groaning.
"No, really," he said — his tone slightly less playful. "I'm not kidding."
"You really think I might take that job?" she said, looking up in astonishment.
"Why not? He doesn't need the money. He's the richest man in the world! Hell, I'd hold out for ten million. What's it to him? They say he may be worth seventy, eighty billion now that he's cornered the high-definition television market. Besides" — Jonathan leaned forward and spoke with mock sincerity—"it's a cry for help. He's a person too, after all."
"I can't go work for somebody like Joseph Gray."
"A-a-ah," Jonathan said, nodding and sinking back into the sofa. "Tenure, huh?" She looked up at him. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes were sad. "Look, Laura," he said, glancing at the door, "I don't know quite how to say this, but not getting tenure isn't the end of the world."
She held Jonathan's gaze until his expression began to look vaguely sympathetic, then looked down at her cluttered desk. The emotions poured in, and Laura fought hard to keep her eyes from filling with moisture again. Her lip quivered and she bit down on it, determined not to humiliate herself. "Do you know something?" she asked, the high pitch of her voice strained and unnatural.
Jonathan was shaking his head. "No." He hesitated. "Nothing definite." He looked pained — at a loss. "But… look, Laura, after the Houston thing there's been a lot of talk about Paul." Laura felt her face flush with anger as the carousel of emotions took a turn, and she ground her teeth together. Paul Burns was the other candidate.
"You took a gamble with that paper. I told you that was what it was. If it'd taken, you'd be a star. Book deals, speaking circuit, the works. But you ran it up the flagpole and nobody saluted."
"So, what should I have done? More lab rats in mazes like Burns, for Christ's sake?" It was so unfair. Paul Burns didn't have an original thought in his head, but every year like clockwork he'd touched another base of publishing success. Journal after journal, obscure university press texts that were forgotten within weeks, nowhere a single notable achievement. But he was going to make it, she could tell. She could tell it from the body language of the people she passed in the hall.
She could tell it from Burns's blossoming self-confidence. And now she could tell it from Jonathan, who had just pounded the final nail in the coffin of her career. She opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated not certain she wanted to hear more.
"But you think," she said anyway, tentatively, "you think I'm right, though, don't you?"
"Oh, you mean about the substance of your paper? I think it's some of the most original, thought-provoking work to come out of this building in years. But do I think it was right to put it forward last summer? With the tenure committee meeting at the end of the fall semester?" He grimaced slightly and shook his head. "I told you. People aren't ready for a paradigm shift on something as fundamental as human consciousness. How would you feel sitting there and having some thirty-four-year-old associate professor tell you that there are no such things as 'moods'? That it's really another self — another personality — rising to the surface and assuming control over its host organism? 'Everybody's possessed with multiple personalities, only we don't normally notice the shift from one to the other because the different personalities' identities are so similar. We only diagnose it as multiple personality disorder when they're radically distinct like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'" He was shaking his head. "You could've circulated a draft and gotten some input instead of just hitting them out of the blue with it."
"'Input,'" she said, frowning. "By the time they finish 'inputting,' the paper is twice as long and half as good." Laura rolled her eyes and huffed. "If I'd been gray-haired and male they would've paid attention."
"And if I'd been Grace Kelly, I would have married a prince."
"You don't know how much it hurts, Jonathan! How many times I've been in professional conferences or bullshit sessions and voiced an opinion only to be ignored. Then, fifteen minutes later, a man says the same goddamn thing and everybody feels [garbled] themselves to discuss it!"
"Me-o-ow."
"This isn't a game, Jonathan!"
"Oh, but it is!" he said, suddenly animated — on the front edge of the sofa. "It is a game. They told me not to bring my lover to the annual cocktail party with the trustees, so I didn't. They want me to be butch? No more turtlenecks or wine spritzers. A little healthy heterosexual harassment of the coeds? Sure thing, boss! You do what it takes to get tenure, and then you do whatever the hell you want."
He sat back, casting his eyes toward the ceiling again. "Being an associate professor, you see, is like being a juvenile sea squirt. You search the sea for a suitable patch of coral to make your home for life. You only need a rudimentary nervous system for the task, and once you've found the right spot and taken root, you don't even need that and you can do as the sea squirts do and eat your own brain."
Laura laid her head on the back of her chair, looking straight up at the ceiling. Taking a deep breath, she said with growing fatigue, "Thanks ever so much for the helpful analogy."
Jonathan hesitated, as if carefully considering his next words. "Burns plays the game."
"Of course he does!" Laura burst out, glaring at him. "Jesus! If you mean I have to be a P
aul Burns to get tenure, I'm just not going to do that."
Jonathan huffed in feigned exasperation and sank further back into the deep recesses of the leather cushions. "God, I hate talking to people with principles. I never know what to say."
Laura felt a rising, panicked desire to take action, only she didn't know what to do. How she could salvage her career — her life.
"I screwed up, didn't I?"
After a moment's hesitation, Jonathan leaned forward with a loud noise from the leather and gently tossed the letter onto the desk. The thick sheet of stationery landed in front of her, its two folded ends rising into the air.
"So," she said, picking it up mainly just to look again at the flawless script, "what are you saying? This is my future? Psychoanalysis?"
Jonathan shrugged. "If you can make a million a week shrinking heads let me know."
"God, Jonathan," she said, looking around at the familiar surroundings of her small office. An office she would soon have to leave — forever.
She took a deep breath and let out a ragged sigh. "I can't believe this is happening." She looked down at the letter through bleary eyes. "If I take this job, it'll seal my fate, won't it?" She looked up at him. "They'll think it's a sign that I'm looking."
Jonathan shrugged. "It's not so much that as… You know, this Gray guy is like a real raper and pillager. It'd be sure to come up. I mean, why do you think he's offering a million bucks, for God's Sake?"
She looked at him, missing his point. "What do you mean?"
"Really, Laura. That's a lot of money. He probably…"
Jonathan stumbled, shrugging.
"What?" she asked, suddenly incensed. Jonathan said nothing.
"What? He's probably been turned down already? He's upped the price because nobody else is willing to take the job? What are you saying, Jonathan? I'm not his first choice?" He squirmed.
"La-a-aura…"
"Did he ask you?" she asked. Jonathan looked up at her. "He didn't, did he?" Jonathan shook his head. Laura allowed herself to sink back into the warm pool of self-pity.
Jonathan shrugged again. "Just be careful. I mean" — he shook his head—"I don't really know much about the guy, but from what I've read it sounds like he may be bad news. I mean, like, dangerous."
3
Laura's hair was still wet from her shower as she sat at a computer terminal in the main library. She had gone for her regular morning run, but it had failed to burn off her anxiety.
With a deep sigh, Laura logged onto the Web. The massive computer network — the "information superhighway" connecting millions of smaller networks into one high-speed global system — was occasionally useful, but it was hardly the revolution it had been touted to be. Laura frowned, staring at the cursor-turned-hourglass and waiting some time before finally getting a query screen.
"Gray, Joseph," she typed, hit Enter, and surreptitiously took a bite of the sandwich she'd snuck into the building. The computers response was delayed an inordinate length of time. Laura chewed, waiting. She hated computers.
"10,362 entries" finally appeared on the screen.
"Damn," she mumbled, her mouth an full. It was much more than she'd counted on. How could she look through that many? Maybe she could search some other parameters to narrow the list down. She tried, but couldn't think of any. She wanted to know something about the man, she just didn't know what.
Laura waded into the articles. The most recent was ten days old.
Forbes magazine listed Gray as the richest man in the world at forty to seventy billion dollars' net worth. Commercial electronics, telecommunications, Internet access, satellite launch, computers, robotics, space exploitation. Laura's eyes returned to the last word.
"Exploitation," she reread, having first read it to say "exploration."
"With no government backing, the Gray Corporation has bankrupted virtually all competition from the U.S., Japan, and Europe in the direct broadcast, high-definition television market. With its one-inch-thick, one-meter-square phased-array satellite antenna and user-selectable block-compressed high-definition television programming and Internet downloads broadcast from a network of over one hundred low-altitude satellites, the Gray Corporation can expect worldwide sales of over $50 billion this year alone. Joseph Gray is the sole shareholder of the Gray Corporation, which is essentially debt-free."
There was a telephoto picture of a strange-looking flat-sided rocket sitting at its gantry. "A single-stage, liquid-fueled reusable rocket," the caption read. There was no picture of Gray. Laura scanned the article for more. She found his birth date.
He is thirty-seven years old, she thought — momentarily pausing in amazement.
Laura took a large bite of her sandwich and skipped a few hundred articles — going back in time. As she read the article from two years ago, she remembered now where she had first heard Gray's name.
"Commerce Department Subpoenas Businessman's Records."
Gray denied any violations of technology transfer regulations in using Russian facilities to launch his satellites. She jumped from article to article. They all tended to repeat the same facts, but some put an ominous, sinister spin on events. "Boy Wonder Buys Russian Rockets."
Gray had purchased dozens of huge Russian ICBMs scheduled for destruction under START III for use in launching his satellites into space at bargain-basement prices.
She skipped further back. "Federal Trade Commission Loses Antitrust Suit." Gray's proposed satellite transmission prices were outrageously low, but they weren't illegal "predatory" prices, the court had held.
Laura moved on. "Federal Communications Commission Begins Investigation." Gray said he would sell his systems in Europe and Japan if they were not licensed in the United States.
"Bad Boy Businessman Back Before Congress." Gray had been subpoenaed to testify in front of the Science and Technology Committee.
"What are your intentions?" he'd been asked. "To make money" had been his only reply. The packed hearing room had exploded in laughter, the Time Magazine article reported.
With a sigh, she leapt randomly a third of the way back through the search — further back in time. There was a Wall Street Journal article about a failed savings and loan in early 1988. Gray was called to testify on Capitol Hill as one of the people who had gotten a major loan from the S&L before it went under. Laura frowned and nodded. "It figures," she mumbled, mildly disappointed. He's just like all the others. The only way to get to the top is to cheat. One line at the end of the article caught her eye. "Mr. Gray's research laboratory in Palo Alto had repaid its promissory note in full with interest on request of the board audit committee one month before the S&L failed under its crushing load of bad real estate loans." Repaid in full? she wondered, perplexed for a moment. But who knows what went on? Laura decided, and she jumped randomly further back.
Just six months before that, Gray had been investigated again, this time in connection with allegations of market manipulation in the wake of the great stock market crash in October 1987. "Lovely," she whispered, tossing her sandwich wrapper into the trash. Her finger hesitated over the Exit key. She'd learned enough and was ready to get back to the pile of papers she needed to grade. Laura hesitated, and then read on.
Gray had purchased almost two hundred million dollars in something called "puts" in the options markets on the Thursday before the Monday crash. Put options, she read, give the holder the right to sell — or "put" — stock to the other party to the contract at a specified price.
They were "naked" puts, meaning Gray didn't own the stocks that he had the option to sell. When the price of the stocks plummeted, Gray bought the stocks cheap, "put" them to the other parties to the options for the contractually agreed higher price, and pocketed the difference.
In one week, Gray had turned two hundred million dollars into six billion, after taxes. He had made a fortune in the market's collapse, claiming during the government's investigation that he had used a sophisticated new computer program call
ed a "probabilistic neural network" to spot the impending downward correction in the market.
The government found no evidence of any illegal manipulation.
Laura sighed. It looked dirty: 1987, she thought, Gray was twenty-four years old. A multibillionaire at twenty-four.
Somewhere, way back, there was the wellspring. The source of the money, the success. The more she looked, the dirtier the money appeared. Gray had been Michael Milken's whiz kid at Drexel Burnham in the early eighties, making millions analyzing high-tech stocks for the soon-to-be-jailed junk-bond king. Gray had been called to testify at the Milken trial. There apparently had been a falling-out between Gray and Milken in 1984, and the two had parted company. "Gray denied that he had resigned from Drexel Burnham on ethical grounds, insisting instead that he had resigned over disagreements regarding the feasibility of a computer project designed to forecast market trends. After leaving Drexel, Gray made hundreds of millions by putting together an investor group and undertaking a petrochemical project on his own."
Laura scanned further back through the articles. "Local Businessman Sells Plant," the Houston Chronicle had reported earlier in 1987.
"Industry giant Monsanto agreed to pay the Gray Corporation $700 million for the plant, which makes polyvinylchloride products."
Laura's upper lip curled on seeing a picture of the grimy plant, shaking her head as she imagined the tons of toxic products belched out to glutinous American consumers. "The products' main use is in lightweight pipes for drinking water of the sort found in most new construction." Gray had put four million dollars into the deal — every penny he had — in 1984 after leaving Drexel Burnham.
Society of the Mind Page 2