“What’s that mean?” Helen stared at him, her face fearful, as if she didn’t know how far she was stepping in the dark.
Blaise bit off what he was going to say. “Nothing. But Gordon’s not near as helpless as I, you know.”
“You have to do what’s right, Blaise.”
“Right doesn’t cut it. Big fish eat little fish.”
“I’ll help.”
He made a face.
“There was a young lady from Niger
Went riding on back of a tiger.
She hadn’t the knack,
. . . So when they got back,
The Lady was inside the tiger.”
Helen bit a knuckle but tears leaked down her cheeks. “You think I’m stupid because I don’t come from a family of snobs and I didn’t go to a fancy school. You think I’m dull and grasping because I want to make money and not worry about being poor!”
“Helen . . .” Blaise struggled to sit. She put her hand on his chest and shoved him back down.
“Well, I am!” Her lips were trembling and she slurred her words and tasted the salt of her own tears. “But I can say things straight out without talking in limericks to put people down. And I’ve been working since my father . . . died when I was thirteen and I don’t have to ask anything from anybody.”
“Helen—”
“Nothing!” she screamed, and ran out of the room.
Blaise flopped back on the bed and let the silence seep through him. He’d been to Naples and Paris, Vienna, London, even Prague and Krakow once each, and later to Moscow. And schools until he had a string of degrees for someone to hang on the door.
“Why don’t you just die?”
He could think of no reply. The distant doorbell impinged on his consciousness as he started to drift off again. Seconds later the click of the bedroom door awakened him.
“Get up,” Helen snapped. “Get shaved, a shower, and some clothes on.”
Blaise could not collect his muddled thoughts. Helen yanked the covers off and turned away and he realized she was actually shy about seeing him naked. “And hurry. We’re waiting.” She left the room.
He felt his way along the wall. In the bathroom he leaned against the tile and let the water pelt down. Cold or hot, he was too numb to tell. Pain released its grip on his lungs. He shaved in the shower without cutting himself more than was necessary.
Helen hadn’t said who “we” were, so he slipped into conservative green golf slacks and a canary-yellow pullover. Lime-colored socks and a pair of loafers completed the transformation into doctor ready to play nine holes and sit out the rest at Torrey Pines Course, home of the Andy Williams Open.
Everything was okay as long as he didn’t think. But at the door, he couldn’t open it. Not and look Helen in the face. She had done more for him than anybody ever had or ever would again. And he didn’t treat her as well as most people did their dogs. The door opened without his help. Helen stood in the hallway. Her yellow hair framed her tight lips.
“Come along.” Her voice was taut.
“Blaise!” Linda wore a white summer dress and white gloves and a tiny Easter hat that was more adornment than clothing. She could have stepped out of the pages of Vogue. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“I haven’t been anywhere,” Linda in Helen’s living room left Blaise breathless. The shock emptied him of reactions.
She looked at him. “Of course not. Where would you go if you didn’t go home?”
“I suppose you have things to talk about.” Helen fidgeted with her hands. She didn’t leave, though.
“Oh, yes. We have a lot to talk about, Miss McIntyre.” Blaise could not meet Helen’s gaze.
“I guess you do,” Helen said.
He listened to her footsteps retreating down the hallway to the back bedroom and the sound of the door shutting. “Why did you come back?”
“Blaise, did I ever say I wasn’t coming back?”
“No.”
“I had to stay home for a while. Uncle Milo needed me.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Blaise.” Linda put her hand on his forearm. “Because I was gone for a while doesn’t mean we’re not friends.” She looked around Helen’s front room. “Where’s the dog?”
“Dobie?” Blaise thought. “The backyard, I think.”
“He’s a nice dog, if you like big ones.”
“Yes.”
“I think you’re too self-conscious here, Blaise. Why don’t we go out for lunch—just the two of us?”
“I’ll have to tell Helen.”
“You do that.” Linda patted his arm as if he’d made a brilliant decision. Blaise wanted to wag his tail.
Helen did not seem surprised. “You’re both adults,” she said. “Sort of.” But she didn’t come out of the bedroom to say good-bye to Linda.
Blaise staggered when they were out front. He opened the passenger door of a white BMW coupe and got inside.
“How did you know it was mine?” Linda twisted the mirror to look at her lipstick.
“I’m psychic.”
Blaise supposed Linda picked the restaurant for its parking lot. For a stranger in La Jolla that was an excellent reason. When the waitress cruised by she ordered a grasshopper and a double vodka for him. Blaise made no comment.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble.” Linda’s face was bland. “Have you talked with Dr. Hill since I was down?” Blaise rolled the glass in his hands. Ice cubes bobbed like drowning men. “No.”
“Things have changed, Blaise.”
“Do you want something to eat?”
“I suppose. You order. Have you heard of Human Enhancements?”
He was sure Helen had mentioned it. But she’d wanted to tell him something and he’d wanted a bottle. As usual, she lost. The blocked memory added a sour taste to his stomach. He shook his head.
“Human Enhancements is a closely held corporation. No public shares. But it’s controlled by Tenro.”
“That’s their business.”
“Dr. Gordon Hill is listed as chief of staff.”
Blaise played with the food the waitress placed in front of him. It was a good excuse for not saying anything.
“You’re not drinking.”
“I’ve been thinking about quitting.”
“Is Dr. Hill still with GENRECT?”
Blaise shrugged. “I’m not.”
“Have you talked to Mrs. Hill?”
“No.”
“But you know where she is?”
“Home, I suppose.”
“I tried there.”
“Before you tried to find me?”
Linda put her hand on top of Blaise’s. “I looked for you and your home looks like you haven’t been there in a month.
I thought your friend’s wife might know where you were.”
“You’re not interested in GENRECT as an investment?”
“Not anymore.” Her fingers tightened on his hand. Blaise stifled the need to respond. But the need was still there.
“Then what is it you want?”
“I started out investigating the investment potential in GENRECT. A lot more is involved now, Blaise. Human Enhancements makes people smart. Improves memory, speeds their thinking. At sixty thousand dollars a pop.”
“That’s out of my league.”
“It’s important, Blaise.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know how safe it is. The process is being bootlegged without adequate investigation. Somebody responsible has to help resolve the new problems.”
“Like your uncle?”
“We’re not fanatics, Blaise. My uncle and his friends are like you and me. We’re intelligent and educated and responsive to social issues. We’re concerned with the future of mankind—not some petty political ideology.”
“I’m not.” Blaise shuttled his drink back and forth, creating a wet click on the tabletop. “I don’t respond to social issues.” He looked up
at Linda. “Unless being antiprohibition is a social issue.”
“Come to San Francisco. Talk to my uncle.”
“Is that why you came back?”
Linda cupped his face in her hands and stroked him. “You know why I came back.”
Blaise closed his eyes and felt the tingle of her fingers and he didn’t have the courage to back off.
“I know,” he said softly.
Helen jerked the door open before he had the knob. “About time,” she snapped, then spun, furious and desperate to get away without saying something else stupid.
“You didn’t have to wait around.” The red in Blaise’s eyes was clearing but the ache hung on. He wasn’t coping with his own problems, not to mention two women.
“I live here, remember?”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Helen.”
“No.” Her voice softened. “I suppose not.”
“I have to go to San Francisco to see Linda’s uncle.” Blaise felt more defensive than he had expected. He owed Helen. The way he repaid her was, at best, shoddy.
“It’s about Gordon.”
Helen contemplated Linda and waited.
“Nothing’s changed, Helen. Alfie stays and you can run the business with him. Alfie’s housebroken.” Blaise fidgeted.
“Can you take care of Dobie? I’ll pick him up when I get back.”
Helen could recognize a truck about to run her down. The Peters woman examined her May Company lookalike drapes as if they were Irish lace instead of a short step up from Sears.
Helen supposed Linda did her shopping at Gump’s and thought the May Company was an outlet for the Salvation Army. It hurt, but she nodded. If she’d spoken it would have come out a snarl. On cue, Dobie trotted in and nuzzled Helen’s hand. He looked up with soft brown eyes. Dobie liked to be liked.
If she’d been alone, Helen would have howled in fury. But not with that woman watching from the corner of her eye while pretending indifference. “What are we partners for?”
“I know I could count on you, Helen. I’ll be back”—he glanced at Linda—“in a couple of days. How about if I have Dobie guard you while I’m gone?”
Helen looked amused. “He’s a puppy.”
Blaise took Helen’s hand and held it to the dog’s nose. “Guard!” he said.
Dobie yawned.
“Look,” Blaise said, pressing Helen’s hand to Dobie’s nose. Helen pulled away but he was determined. “Dobie, guard!”
“He licked my hand,” Helen said.
“He likes you. Dobie’s smart. He knows what to do.”
“It means I feed him all the time.”
“You’re just making it hard, Helen.” But Blaise was pleased. Helen’s acute unhappiness had seemed to soften under his kidding.
“If only you were as smart as the dog,” Helen said. Linda smiled.
On the PSA flight, Blaise and Linda watched rectangles of garden disappear as the plane skimmed toward the misty white line that separated ocean from sky.
“I appreciate your coming.”
“I meant what I said before. About wanting you.”
Linda hunched down in her seat. Turning to gaze out the window at billowing clouds, she said, “Leave it.”
“Why did you take off your ring?” Blaise held her hand.
separating her fingers. The ruby, diamond, and emerald ring with the old-fashioned look of a family heirloom was gone. An untanned band of skin contrasted with her golden tan. Closing her hand, she hid the mark.
“I didn’t feel like it.” She turned to gaze out the window at the hazy horizon. “It isn’t important.”
To be fluent in a language constitutes brilliance. Such a circumstance, however, does not promise the ability to learn a new language. Intelligence, linked with adequate and efficient memory, does.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 12
“Just remember you promised to behave yourself,” Linda said briskly.
Blaise could not recall having promised anything.
She led him past a maroon Jaguar saloon with big fenders and a small silver-gray Rolls in the gloomy basement garage. Four black mushroom-shaped buttons adorned the elevator’s antique brass control plate. It lifted them to an Edwardian entrance hall with seventeenth-century portraits in gold leaf frames and an elephant’s-foot umbrella holder. Woodwork gleamed with generations of elbow grease. Leaded glass yellowed by time sketched faint epiphanies of trees.
The hallway opened into a room large by Victorian standards: parquet oak floor, mostly hidden beneath a massive blue and red Bokhara rug with greens and yellows. Three walls of bookshelves held up a ten-foot ceiling. Massive leather chairs glowed under the yellowish light.
“Good evening, Dr. Cunningham.”
The man by the window was bluff, with white hair and glowing baby-pink skin. He seemed an advertisement for the difference money makes. From manicure to hairstyle to hand-caressed skin, Blaise would have no difficulty picking Milo Burkhalter out of a crowd—except in financial districts where they all look alike.
“Mr. Burkhalter?”
“Doctor, but the rest is correct, young man.” Milo beamed but his gray eyes remained cool under white eyebrows. “Linda promised to bring you by.”
“She did, Dr. Burkhalter?” Blaise wondered if Milo Burkhalter was the kind of man who took offense because of his slip. It was an old-fashioned kind of offense, but Linda’s uncle seemed an old-fashioned gentleman.
Milo Burkhalter put Blaise in a chair by the window, moving with a smooth confidence that was difficult to resist. “How is your computer work coming, Doctor? Linda tells me you’re doing wizard things in artificial intelligence. That you have in fact a computer predicting the market.”
“Something of the sort. What else has Linda told you about Alfie, sir?”
“That you talk to the computer and it talks back.” Milo’s eyes seemed amused. “That would be quite something, but young women are prone to exaggeration, are they not, Dr. Cunningham?”
“Alfie communicates to the extent of his programming. His vocabulary is adequate for syntax logic.” Blaise looked around the study with its rows of books. “No poetry, Doctor. But Alfie is loquacious on stock market futures.”
“I see. Then Linda hasn’t exaggerated.” Milo nodded. “Perhaps some day you would honor me with a demonstration. I’d be interested in anything that would make the market easier.”
“My pleasure.” Blaise glanced around but Linda had left them alone. “However, the market isn’t Alfie’s main purpose.”
Milo offered Blaise a cigar and took it for himself when Blaise refused, lighting it and exhaling a fragrant cloud. “What is its main purpose—may I call you Blaise?”
“Of course. Alfie is the prototype for a pure form of artificial intelligence.”
“But the computer isn’t perfected yet?”
“Every day he learns a little. Since I’ve been letting other people enter data, Alfie has apparently evolved a routine to identify each user by typing pattern and interests. It’s a beginning.” Blaise had said it to impress Milo, but he realized abruptly that he was telling the truth. That Alfie distinguished between operators without instruction was a breakthrough! He didn’t really hear Milo’s comments. He had to get back to La Jolla and find out. The implications stunned him. He had been drunk for three precious weeks that could have put him that much closer to a second Prize.
Milo was thoughtful. “You’re not planning on telling me any more?”
“I’m afraid it would be premature.”
“It’s a pity your parents are dead, isn’t it? If you’re right, then this is the final vindication of their work.”
Blaise licked suddenly dry lips. “Yes, it would be what they wanted all along.”
Milo examined Blaise for a moment, then dismissed the subject. “I trust you know why you’re in San Francisco?”
“Not really, except that Linda asked me. I can’t di
scuss my colleagues’ business without their consent.”
Milo surprised Blaise by saying “Fair enough.” He shook Blaise’s hand with warmth and promised an interesting evening.
Milo excused himself, leaving Blaise alone in the study watching fog roll in from the bay. A middle-aged lady in crinoline supplied Blaise with coffee, which provided no respite from his need for a drink. The cup gave his hands something to do. The elevator motor shrieked a number of times. A grandfather clock disturbed the peace every fifteen minutes.
“Blaise?”
Linda had changed into a black evening dress that clung and made the bare skin of her face and neck glow in contrast. “Uncle Milo is upstairs with everybody.” She led him to the elevator where her perfume filled the tiny cage. She avoided his eyes.
A baker’s dozen of men clustered around her uncle. Milo began introductions with a white-haired elder in tweed. Dr. Hazeltine was a professor of philosophy. Savile Row shoes suggested he had found a way to make money outside of school—or been born to it.
A liquor cabinet with ice maker sat at one side of the upstairs dining room, dominated by a black oak table with several leaves inserted. Milo took one end of the table and seated Blaise at his right. Linda faced them from the other end.
When everyone had a drink and a seat, Milo rapped a crystal goblet with a stirring spoon. The single clear note cut through conversation.
“We need expert advice and”—Milo beamed—“Dr. Cunningham has very kindly come to discuss Human Enhancements.”
Two lines of heads swiveled toward Blaise, who had the uncomfortable impression that they knew all about him while he knew nothing about them. Not even Linda’s uncle.
“Gentlemen,” Blaise said. “I’m here to listen. Dr. Burkhalter believes I can be of some help, but that’s to be seen.”
“I thought—” It was a pompous, fat man.
“Dr. Whitman,” Burkhalter said smoothly, “Dr. Cunningham has pointed out, rightly, that the information we want affects other people to whom he also has a responsibility. We must convince him that what he can tell us is in humanity’s best interest.”
The Cunningham Equations Page 13