Blaise’s throat was too dry to squeeze a word through. He had expected Hemmett to yell about visiting Gordon. But going up to see Giovanni Oesti?
“I started this company.” Hemmett’s face was swollen, plum-colored skin the texture of putty. “You, you’re trying to ruin it. Drunken irresponsible bastard—you’ll never work again!”
“What’s wrong with talking to an old man? All I wanted was to find Gordon. For his wife. You could have told me.”
Hemmett was breathing heavily. “You’re going to have plenty of time to find him. I’ve already called the university. They don’t think much of you there either, Doctor.” Suddenly Hemmett smiled. Blaise liked it better when he was mad.
Blaise fought the clamp over his chest. He’d known the risk. Even subconsciously hoped it would happen. This would break him loose from GENRECT. But now there was no going back. Even if he found excuses Hemmett could accept.
“I’ll get my stuff . . .”
“Your booze hidden in distilled water bottles? I had that thrown out. Nothing else here belongs to you. The receptionist has your check. Don’t talk to her. You might infect her.”
Suddenly Hemmett looked very tired. “Get out. If you ever come back on company property, I’ll have you shot.”
Hemmett turned and stared out a window.
Blaise could not talk to Hemmett’s back. What could he say if he did? For a while it had been exciting. Linda had been right about his showing off. She had just not seen the full scope of his folly. He hadn’t found Gordon for Stella Hill. He’d done it to get a pat on the head from Linda.
Now the pat had worn off.
And Hemmett was a tired old man deep into something he was afraid of. He hadn’t fired Blaise. He had propitiated West.
“Good-bye, Dr. Hemmett.” Blaise couldn’t tell if the older man heard. Nobody spoke on his way out. The receptionist handed him his check in a sealed envelope. The place was tomblike and Blaise realized the word had spread. Like execution night on death row, neither inmates nor guards wanted to be in range of his contagion.
He sat with the engine running and thought he saw Hemmett watching. It was funny; he had never oriented the windows to the executive offices and he didn’t know which was Hemmett’s. Could have been just a trick of the light. Even old Ben was gone. He eased the bug in gear and drove away.
A Datsun Z100 sat squeezed over on the apron so he could slide the VW into the garage. Metallic gold, the car had cream-colored leather upholstery. Blaise wondered what rental agency Linda was doing business with. She seemed to change cars as casually as her dress. Blaise thought that over and retracted. She changed her dresses with more panache.
He found her on one end of the couch with Dobie holding down the other. The dog was chewing one of Blaise’s shoes out of the bedroom closet and Linda had the phone. Looking up, she said, “Hi,” then returned to dialing.
Her feet were curled under her on the white and flower print sofa. She wore a sheer lace blouse and a half-in-the-ocean sun through the big picture window outlined her breasts from beneath.
He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “You smell good.”
She put the cordless phone down. “I’m hungry.”
Examining the sun, Blaise said, “It’s late enough.”
Absently, Blaise scratched the dog’s ears. Dobie dropped the shoe and licked Blaise’s hand.
“We can eat at the airport,” she said.
“I can’t go anywhere right now.”
“You’ve got to.”
“I have to see Gordon’s wife. And there may be problems.”
“It can wait.” Linda stood in one lithe motion and patted her hair, making sure all the curls were still in place.
“I was fired today.”
Linda shrugged. “You’ll get another job.”
“Probably. But I still can’t go.”
“Well, I can’t stay. I have to talk with Uncle Milo.”
“Stay tonight. Go up early in the morning.”
“Whatever for?”
“Just an idea.”
“Not a very good one. I’ll eat in the airport restaurant.” She shifted her hips and swirled the hem of her skirt. “You know, I’m losing weight from all this running around.”
The telephone rang and she picked it up first and listened. “For you.” She passed the handset to Blaise.
“You thieving bastard! Bring that damn dog back here!” Hemmett’s yelling made the telephone chatter. Blaise pressed the cut-off button. He pulled the cord to the base station.
“What are you doing?” Linda stared. “How can I get a telephone call?”
“You’ll think of something. You wouldn’t know how Dobie got my shoe, would you?”
“I gave it to him.”
“You gave it to him?”
Linda examined her nails. “He was taking up too much of the couch. The trainer who writes for our paper says to give your dog an old shoe. It alleviates boredom and helps him remember who his master is.”
“But, my shoe!”
“Did you expect me to give him one of mine?” Linda dabbed polish on a nail and waved her fingers in the air.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Blaise admitted.
Linda examined her fingernails. “I tried to use the computer, but I couldn’t access the mainframe.”
“The mainframe is Alfie. He discriminates.”
“Against women?”
“Against everybody except me.”
“To each his own. Would you like to take me to the airport?” Linda had her Peruvian serape at the door.
“You have your own car.” Blaise did want to take her but to show his desire would indicate total irrationality.
Linda patted his cheek. “Try to get used to it.”
Blaise took her arm. Physically small, mentally she was not. “Your bag?”
“It’ll be here when I come back, won’t it?” She smiled and hugged his arm. “I have clothes in San Francisco.”
Blaise snapped his fingers and Dobie dropped the shoe. “We’ll take my car. I don’t want him chewing up the upholstery in a rental.”
In the VW Dobie stretched everywhere he could, which was like being inside a tennis ball with a warm, reddish brown and black rubber band with teeth and a cold nose. Finally the dog settled with his head lolling on the backrest and his bright black eyes counting start.
“Do you love me?” Linda asked as they rolled sedately down the freeway.
He put his arm around her and she snuggled close, tucking her head under his chin like a violin. “Could you repeat the question?”
Customers at the airport restaurant lined up for a twenty-minute wait. Blaise settled Linda in the bar and brought chili dogs from across the corridor.
The waitress came to the tiny booth and he ordered an orange juice for himself and a martini for Linda. A five-dollar tip persuaded the waitress not to bother them.
Barely larger than a silver dollar, the table inspired togetherness. Blaise could not restrain himself. He put a hand on a silky knee and experienced an adolescent thrill.
“Stop that.” Linda did not move her knee.
Blaise shrugged and put his hands in his pockets. “You remind me of my mother,” he said. Adding hastily, “I don’t mean you look like her. It’s just things you say and do remind me.”
“I know.” Linda’s gaze was distracted. Their knees were touching. Linda moved hers.
“Why did you do that?”
“You’re not concentrating. Did Dr. Hill give any hints about what he was doing?”
“You were there. Gordon wasn’t speaking siciliano.”
“It might as well have been.”
Blaise made wet rings on the imitation onyx with his old. fashioned glass of orange juice and ice.
Linda put her hand over his. “You’re doing very well.”
Before Blaise could reply she added, “I have to go.” She turned her wrist so he could see her gold watch set with a tasteful sp
arkle of rubies looking like something from Car! tier’s. It was just as late as if the watch had only cost ten dollars. She wore a ring that matched, an old-fashioned design with raised rubies, emeralds, and diamonds on a thick gold band.
Blaise started with her to the boarding gate and she pushed at him. “I can get on the plane by myself, silly.” She gave him a warm kiss before disappearing.
He sat a long time. The waitress returned and smiled. Reminding himself that he was now unemployed, he left before he could be tempted into a drink. Back at the car Dobie gave him a kiss. It wasn’t the same as Linda’s. But he knew Dobie was expressing love.
Stella Hill opened the door on the first ring. She wore a soft organdy dress that clung to her like a man’s hands and Blaise knew she had been waiting for a man to walk through the door. Unfortunately he was not the man.
“Dobie!” The Doberman whimpered happily. She flung her arms around the big dog’s neck, crying.
Blaise closed the door and stood awkwardly out of the way until Mrs. Hill stood and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not myself today. Will you . . .” She looked toward the living room and Blaise nodded and snapped his fingers, calling Dobie.
“Gordon is all right,” Blaise said when he was seated. He didn’t comment on Stella Hill’s loss of control.
Stella Hill had made coffee. Blaise played with his, sipping it scalding hot and trying to expunge the need for a drink. Dobie tried to be fair about having two people around who liked him. He sat against Blaise’s leg, then lay with his nose resting on Mrs. Hill’s shoe. Dobie knew she really cared.
“Dobie, that tickles.” She didn’t sound annoyed so Dobie sighed hotly against her ankle. “When’s he coming home?”
“I don’t know. But Gordon’s well and hard at work. He’s serious about what he’s doing.
“Something is wrong. It’s dangerous. Like he’s working with a germ he doesn’t want us to catch accidentally. Otherwise he wouldn’t bury himself. He loves the children.” She wanted confirmation. Her eyes were desperate.
“It couldn’t be that. He saw me. Shook my hand, knowing I’d come straight back to you. If it was that kind of danger he’d be afraid I’d infect you.”
“Then tell me, Dr. Cunningham, what my devious husband is up to.”
Blaise wondered if she thought Gordon had found another woman. He rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his bony hands and contemplated Mrs. Hill over his knuckles. He stared into her eyes because even educated people believe they can read candor. It is the easiest way to begin a lie.
“I think,” he said slowly and deliberately, “that Gordon is covering up some hocus-pocus for Dr. Hemmett. The company’s broke and Hemmett needs a miracle to raise fresh dollars.”
“Gordon wouldn’t do that!” Dismay lined her voice.
“He would if his contract is anything like mine. The money’s all in the stock options. Gordon worries about getting kids through college and paying off the house, Mrs. Hill.”
“But you don’t know Gordon! He wouldn’t—”
“Yes, he would, Stella. Because Gordon can deliver. Your husband is GENRECT’s resident genius. He’s just buying time.”
By the time Blaise had repeated the story several different ways he almost believed it. When he started taking himself seriously, she plunged and accepted whatever he wanted to predict. After talking her into taking the kids to her mother’s home, Blaise promised to tell Gordon where she had gone.
He couldn’t tell her what Gordon meant by refusing to come home. He wasn’t sure. And it would have been sinful to upset Mrs. Hill any more.
Because the machine may be made immortal, when defined for most intents and purposes, and memory may be expanded to an infinite degree in theory, then the machine with human intelligence would technically surpass the ability of man to reason.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 10
Desperation drove Blaise by the time his class started. Strange noises tensed his muscles. Pain drove stakes through his body as every shred of his psyche ached for a drink.
Ears closed, he dragged through a session that, mercifully, set no new lows in education. Afterward, he tinkered with Alfie. Alfie took awhile to recognize his touch. The computer was not used to a sober Blaise.
Alfie had set a flag for his attention: an asterisk and code number blinking in the upper right-hand comer of the monitor. Blaise punched in the numbers.
RE: DR MARIE GIBSON. RESEARCH TEAM MOUNT SINAI MED CENTER, NEW YORK, TRIGGERED FERTILITY By INJECTING HEALTHY BRAIN CELLS INTO BRAINS OF INFERTILE MICE. LANDMARK EXPERIMENT PROVED ABILITY OF BRAIN TO INGEST FOREIGN CELLS AND DUPLICATE FUNCTIONS WHICH STIMULATE HORMONAL ACTIVITY FOR FERTILITY. CURRENTLY LICENSED EXPERIMENTS INCLUDE POSSIBLE HUMAN USE. PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS: 88%. COMPANIES ENGAGED IN RESEARCH AND PROBABLE IMPACT ON STOCK PRICES IN FIRST YEAR OF RELEASE ARE: . . .
A list of pharmaceutical firms filled the screen with an elaborate series of numbers after each entry.
“Hello.” Helen smiled uncertainly. Her eyes shifted nervously to the monitor.
“You wouldn’t know anything about . . . this?” Blaise waved his hand at the display. He hadn’t heard her come in.
“You installed the new program last month. Alfie asked if I wanted to use it in preference to the old program. It’s better.”
Blaise felt uncertain, as if he had walked in his sleep. “Alfie must have modified the program, but he shouldn’t have let you use it until I gave him instructions.”
“Maybe you don’t remember. You were a little foggy.”
Foggy was a diplomatic way of putting it. “I imagine you’re right.” He smiled. But under the smile Blaise worried. He didn’t remember. Could he have left Alfie instructions that would let anyone access discretionary material?
Helen’s eyes swung from Blaise to the numbers, then back and forth again as if they fascinated her. “Would you mind if I used some of that information?”
“Are you interested in having babies?”
Helen blushed.
Her red cheeks gave Blaise an odd pleasure. Something quaint was implied by a grown woman blushing. He had never known another woman so closely in touch with her feelings that she could not dissemble. “Whatever you want.”
“I could make a lot of money.” Helen spoke with an air of apology, as if afraid the profit motive would cause dissension.
That Helen felt she had to explain made Blaise uncomfortable. She attached too much importance to his opinions—about everything. “You’re welcome to all you can make.” He logged off and stood.
“Why do you log off, Blaise? Couldn’t I just start there?”
“Not unless Alfie has a lobotomy. When I’m on, I’m telling the computer what to think. When you’re on you’re just talking.”
“What if I get into his brain accidentally?”
“I’d have to marry you to keep it in the family.”
“That’s interesting.” Helen’s eyes were drifty, as if she were trying to imagine what Blaise had hidden in Alfie.
Blaise hadn’t noticed her eyes in a while. Very large and very blue, the pastel of a translucent spring sky.
“I have to go.” He shattered her mood abruptly. Without liquor the world filled with nuances he’d forgotten about, with concerns about other people’s feelings that he’d dulled until they barely existed.
“Thank you.”
“Make Alfie behave. He’s a lecher. I taught him myself.” The messenger ricocheted off Blaise at the door.
“Sir, Dr. Cunningham?” Short of breath, the student had obviously been running. Helen’s face tightened. Running wasn’t normal on the campus.
“Yes.” Blaise picked up Helen’s anxiety.
“I’m sorry I’m so late, sir. The dean wants to see you before you go off campus.”
“Did he say when?”
“I think he means right away, sir.”
“Thank you.�
� Blaise watched the student messenger disappear into the crowd moving through the hall. No use asking. Deans didn’t tell undergraduates.
When he left the dean’s office twenty minutes later Blaise was shaken. He’d been informed that the class was being dropped and a note would go in his confidential file stressing that he not be hired by the university system again.
“You can appeal,” Dean Carden said. “That would mean an academic review and we would be forced to give specific reasons. I’m sure you know them, Dr. Cunningham.
“With great difficulty and the calling-in of some personal obligations, the university has kept your name out of the papers in connection with that unfortunate woman who was murdered. Though I presume your innocence, the media could enjoy a sensation at both the university’s and your expense.
“For the sake of the students in your seminar, we’ll keep you for the last three weeks of this term.” The dead waited. When Blaise did not speak, he said, “I’m grieved that our association has come to this.
“Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, Doctor, not abreast of an era which permits academics the morality of movie stars. But if the intellectual community cannot behave at least as well as a grammar school graduate in personal discipline and adherence to standards, it cannot lead the society of man.” Dean Carden took off his glasses and polished them as he gazed nearsightedly at Blaise. “On a daily basis we must deal with a great deal of human foolishness. Perhaps it was better in the Middle Ages when a doctorate indicated a standard of personal achievement and ethical growth, rather than just a reflection of intelligence. I am sorry, Doctor, to lose your mind from a community that needs it. But the foolishness that will pay any price for glitter must not prevail.”
Blaise was stunned. He wanted to scream, to throw things. Hemmett had helped engineer the dismissal. He knew that instinctively. The dean’s features were slightly damp. He seemed sincere in his regret.
Blaise was lightheaded when he left the office. Soon they’d get around to canceling his parking permit. Undesirable. Suspected molester prowls parking lots. Reeling even though he was not drunk, he found his car. Sitting with the windows rolled up, he waited until feeling returned to his hands and feet. Then he drove home slowly.
The Cunningham Equations Page 11