A Slow Cold Death

by Susy Gage

  Everyone still seemed incapable of response. Finally Walter echoed himself, “So there was a bomb…”

  “Yes, there was,” Radi affirmed. “But we warned the driver and it just exploded in the empty truck.”

  Wigbert van Gnubbern slowly, deliberately looked at his watch. “So now that the bad guys are in jail, you have some work to do. There are still two hours and fifteen minutes before the last FedEx truck.”

  This should have been good news, but Lori was exhausted. The thought of printing all those color pages, collating them, and then running to the FedEx suddenly seemed overwhelming.

  Abby, on the other hand, was ready to rumble. “Hear that, Barrow? To work!” she commanded, prodding Lori in the back. “Where on earth is Lou?”

  Going towards Lou’s office, they heard heaving and thumping noises and all of them froze.

  Walter burst through the door first, playing the conquering hero, and when he let out a squeal of relieved laughter the others followed.

  Lou’s left hand and a part of his forearm were completely covered in cyan ink. The front of his new printer yawned open and the poor machine appeared to be gasping its last.

  On the table in front of him were massive stacks of paper. “I heard what I needed to hear, and decided to finish the printing while you all gabbed,” he explained sheepishly. “But there was to be something wrong with the cartridge, and when I tried to replace it, it exploded.”

  “Theorists should not touch tools,” Lori snorted. “You can wash it off with ethan—” the word stopped in her throat as suddenly she realized the implications of Grandpa Waddles’s data. “Ink!” she yelled, turning to Abby. “Kuzno’s ink!”

  “What about it?”

  “It contains a bunch of solvents that evaporate at different rates, and zinc chloride, which Dr. Waddles said will decolorize dyes. As the solvents evaporate, the zinc compound reacts with the cyanine dye. It’s disappearing ink! But not the usual Bubo kind—it’s a very clever formula that will no doubt disappear at a precisely calculated rate.”

  “Kuzno signed the proposal in disappearing ink?” said Lou. He handed the broken cartridge to Walter, who fumbled it like a football.

  “He tried,” said Abby, “but I interrupted him, remember?”

  “Right.” The corner of Lou’s mouth twitched as he recalled what had no doubt been a ridiculous scene. “Maybe that’s why he insisted upon using his private printer. Could the ink require special paper?”

  “It might,” Lori agreed, making a mental note to get the recipe from Grandpa Waddles.

  “He’s not going to go to jail for that, though, is he?” Lou sounded disappointed.

  “I kind of doubt it,” Abby replied, smirking.

  “But it’s something I would do,” Lori admitted. “It certainly isn’t murder.” Actually kind of funny, she thought with the beginnings of reluctant admiration.

  “Not a killer, just a butthead,” Abby agreed.

  “Could have fooled me,” Lori admitted. “But then, I spent a whole night and half a day thinking it was Dr. van Gnubbern who’d killed people.”

  “I’ve never killed anyone in my life, and don’t intend to try,” Wigbert promised.

  “So then…” Lou looked exhausted and bewildered. He spoke as if the words caused him pain. “Who exactly was it, then?”

  “It was Ellis D. Tripp,” said Radi and Walter together—then the latter squealed with glee that he had been right.

  “The Chief Engineer at the LEPERLab,” Walter added by way of explanation. “The safety Nazi who came up with the killer deer.”

  “So are we going to kill him?” Lou persisted in the same voice.

  “The State of California will do that for us,” Radi declared confidently. “In fact, you can see him get tased on the evening news. When we’re done here, we can go to Bubo House and watch the show.”

  “I think we’re almost done here.” Lou peeked out over the mountains of paper, gesturing at Lori with a pink page. “Principal Investigator, you need to sign this. There’s one more page that mentions Rose that we need to replace—and I think it looks pretty good in magenta, don’t you?”

  Thirty-Seven: Let’s Lick the LEPERs

  Pasteur House was dramatic in the night and the rain. A rickety wooden staircase led up among the branches of three large olive trees, and the lights of the common room shone through as if the house were perched in the treetops. Triumphant laughter issued from the open windows.

  “Wow,” Radi breathed.

  “To soothe the beasts within,” Lori explained, leading the way up the slimy stairs.

  Once inside they realized how wet and freezing they were. They stood dripping for a few seconds, and then a parade of Buboes appeared—one with maroon towels, the next with cups of tea, the third with a bag of popcorn and a blanket. The fourth brought Lori her suitcase, and she realized that maybe, just maybe, she would make it home tonight. She cast one last glance around the white room and decided that leaving didn’t make her sad. She was still a Bubo and her tricks lived on, as much if not more so than her science.

  Various Buboes arranged themselves on the shag rug in front of the thirteen-inch TV, drinks and snacks in hand. One of them, shrouded in covers, was sunk deeply into a beanbag chair with a beer. Heads wrapped in towels and cuddled under the blanket, Lori and Radi took their spot of honor just in front of the screen.

  They could see the flames and fire trucks before the newscaster’s voice began. “An unorthodox and illegal warning saved the life of a truck driver on the Pasadena Freeway this evening,” it began, and Lori scooted closer to see the delivery van gutted by fire, a huge hole blown in one side.

  “Wiggy and I were afraid to tell anyone what we were planning,” Radi admitted. “Especially Papa Waddles. It’s a felony, and he’s…”

  “He’s a LEPER,” boomed a voice from behind them.

  They jumped and turned around, finding that the “Bubo” in the beanbag chair was a highly amused Ben Gerson. “Isn’t it a Bubo rule to check under the blanket for spies?” he wondered, with a wink at Lori and Radi.

  Lori inched away from Radi, embarrassed to be caught snuggling. “Ben! What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for answers, of course. Your friend here called me up and told me to block traffic, and next I know there’s a bomb on the news. I want the story.” He gestured to the Buboes with an empty beer can, and they rushed over with a fresh one and a bag of popcorn.

  “It’s almost obvious in retrospect, isn’t it?” Lori wondered. “Tripp pushed Silverman off the mountain, and then he was able to take over two billion dollars a year of funding. Technically STI runs the LEPERLab, but there was no one here with the desire or status to oppose him.”

  “Only Rose,” Ben agreed, “and to some extent Walter Waddles III.”

  “Did I hear my name?” A blond head poked into the common room.

  “Walter!” Lori wondered if her student always looked so guilty, or if he had something to hide. “Did the proposal make it onto the truck? Where are Lou and Abby?”

  “It’s on its way to LAX as we speak.” Walter surveyed the scene and sat at the back of the room on a stuffed purple cube, as far away from Lori and Ben as possible. “Dr. Lou didn’t want to talk about it; he went home to bed. Not like that!” he scolded the tittering Buboes. “…Or maybe like that, I don’t know,” he corrected himself, looking so longingly at Lori’s empty popcorn bag that a Bubo finally brought him one of his own. “Have you guys figured out what’s going on?” he asked, digging into the popcorn like a starving man.

  They all turned toward the TV as the Buboes hooted. An image flickered on the TV of Tripp being arrested in his home in the foothills, followed quickly by a landslide warning and a bit of Christmas cheer.

  “We don’t understand anything,” said Lori. “We were talking about your dad. Why did he become a LEPER? To oppose Tripp?”

  “No one could oppose Tripp,” Walter muttered through his mouthful, voluntee
ring nothing more until Ben rose from his seat and gestured for him to speak. Walter’s voice grew bitter as he described how his father and others had been helpless to prevent the implementation of LEPER policies to investigate the employees, and to fire them for visiting suspect websites, drinking alcohol on lab, or making mistakes on their time cards. The policies were bad enough on their own, but their racist implementation was even worse, leading to dozens of lawsuits in the thirteen years that Tripp was Colony Manger. Perhaps most surreal of all, the mere mention of the incidents could bring punishment, and whole ranks of managers were hired to pretend that none of it was happening. Lori wondered if it was all of this and not the Vomit Comet that had destroyed her student’s dreams of being an astronaut.

  Even Ben, who would rather break rocks in Siberia than be a LEPER, looked surprised. “It was measurably less bad in the Science Colony. We weren’t actually physically abused.”

  “Dr. Rose created the Science Colony,” Walter said miserably. During his tirade, Buboes were busy behind him—removing the TV, setting up a projection screen and some speakers, occasionally rubbing their hands and cackling. “Immediately afterwards, Tripp tore out all the rosebushes at the LEPERLab, claiming they were dangerous. At first Professor Rose was going to get Kuzno to run the Colony, but he realized that wouldn’t work—so he hired my dad. He made him all sorts of promises, not the least of which was that my dad could head the physics department here once it was returned to its former glory. Tripp knew what dad was up to, of course. If the Science Colony and STI could get the NASA money for the big projects, like the ones at the South Pole, then his regime would come to an end.”

  “So anyone Rose recruited who was interested in the South Pole had to die,” concluded Radi, who had the best powers of synthesis of anyone on earth.

  “Erk,” said Walter, with a guilty glance at Ben. “So it seems.”

  “Everyone knew it was a trap,” growled Ben, “or so I’m told. Being a pure microbiologist who’d never thought about rockets in his life, I hadn’t heard the rumors when I took the job here.”

  “And Lou was a kid,” Lori added. “He’d done his PhD with Rose’s best friend and never even done a postdoc.”

  “Oh, the old son-of-a-bitch wanted him to do a postdoc, all right,” snorted Ben. “Lou was supposed to go off to Princeton while you came here and got rid of the bad guys. But you refused to leave Canada.”

  “Fuck Canada!” Lori and Radi shouted at once, then glanced at each other as if surprised to hear the other say it.

  The Buboes decided this was time to make their move. They stepped in between Lori and Ben and between Radi and Walter, clapping their hands.

  “We have a show for you, eh,” said a tall redhead who could have been Canadian. “I hope you didn’t think you came all the way here for a silly clip on the television.”

  As he spoke, the video began. It showed an overdone foothills neighborhood, speckled with mini-mansions and perfectly manicured landscaping through which the videotaping Buboes were slinking.

  They knocked on a door, then ran. Ellis D. Tripp came out, glanced around, and shouted, “I see you!”

  “Hands up!” yelled a Bubo in a phony, too-young voice. “You’re under arrest!”

  “You kids get offa my property!” bellowed the LEPER.

  But the Buboes’ timing was nearly perfect. Tripp had barely finished shouting when a real cop car came out, and a real officer shouted at him to keep his hands visible.

  “I will personally see you expelled—” Tripp bellowed, taking a step towards the real cop.

  So they Tased him.

  He fell to the ground, shrieking as they Tased him again, kicking his head and belly as they rolled him over to cuff him.

  The Buboes played the clip over and over again: “expelled—” ZAP! “Aaaah!”, “expelled—” ZAP! “Aaaah!” until Lori couldn’t stand it any more.

  She hadn’t known Tripp, and nothing that happened to him would undo any of the horror of the past decade and a half. “All right, kids, that’s enough,” she grumbled.

  “One more time!” pleaded Ben.

  They obliged, of course. “You won’t get us expelled, will you, Dr. Barrow?” asked the redhead.

  “Of course not. I’m just surprised the cops didn’t catch you.”

  “Should’ve seen me sprint just after that scene,” he admitted. “The video ends there, I’m afraid.”

  Lori was almost relieved. The last thing they needed was more violence. “So what about Kuzno?” she asked to change the subject. “He’s been so evil all term—then it turns out the worst thing he’s done is to sign our proposal in disappearing ink?”

  “Well, not the worst thing.” Walter got up from the uncomfortable-looking cube and moved over to the VCR, playing the Taser scene one more time for his own personal enjoyment.

  Ben let him wallow in it, then pursued, “I imagine Kuzno was traded down to campus to weaken the department, keep it closed and provincial. When Rose tried to recruit me, Kuzno said I couldn’t be hired on campus because I wasn’t a string theorist.”

  “That may be part of it,” Walter agreed. “The LEPERs only agreed to take my dad if the department took Kuzno. It also may just have been to get rid of Kuzno, who’s a pain in the ass on all counts. But I have to say, in retrospect, not everything Kuzno did was wrong—he was calling attention to the reign of terror. He was furious that the guard let his postdoc die, and the whole business with the killer deer was designed to cover that up. LEPERs could be fired if they said anything or anyone besides deer was involved. Kuzno, of course, would not be silent and apparently at one point called the security guards `murderers’ in public.”

  “Wow,” Lori breathed. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  “Maybe the guy was a great postdoc,” suggested Ben, chuckling.

  “Then why did Kuzno let Rose hire Lou and me?” Lori wondered. “Unless he knew we were doomed to die, of course.”

  “I’m sure he just figured you were too young and naïve to oppose him,” replied Ben, wadding up his empty popcorn bag. “The LEPERs thought they could bend me to their will, and they were wrong. I’m just grateful to be here in one piece.”

  “And what about Marybeth?” Lori pursued. “Was that just designed to scare us?”

  “No.” Walter put down his popcorn and stared at the vaulted wooden ceiling as if it would pardon him. “This is the worst part. If I had… well, never mind. What’s done is done.” He wiped his hands on his shirt, still facing away from his audience. “Tripp was scared, so instead of coming to campus to do his own dirty work, he tried to get minions. Dim Bulb was one, Marybeth was another.”

  “Marybeth?” Lori exclaimed. “But she was worthless! What could she do? And how could he control her, for that matter?”

  Walter finally managed to face her. “You have her pencil bag, don’t you, Dr. Barrow?”

  “It was practically the only thing the police didn’t take.” Lori reached over to her suitcase and rummaged around for the pink cylindrical bag. She unzipped it, tugging at the pencil blocking its cavity. It finally came loose, allowing a dozen empty bottles of Schedule II painkillers to tumble out onto the carpet. Most of them had Lou’s name on them, although one was Kuzno’s.

  “She’d been addicted for many years,” Walter told her. “I’m sure she would have done anything for more pills. Dim Bulb stole Dr. Maupertuis’s prescriptions, and it looks as if Kuzno helped out as well.”

  Lori squinted at Walter. It was hard to take him seriously. “Are you saying that Tripp was trying to force Marybeth to hurt people? Cutting the elevator cable, de-stabilizing the freezer door? And when she failed, he whacked her.” She remembered the curlicued M, so unlike Marybeth’s block letters. “I bet he forged the incident report. Marybeth must have refused to sign it.”

  She shivered thinking of Marybeth trying to stand up to Tripp, and being shoved into the cold room as a reward. “And apparently he tried to kill Dim Bulb twice,” sh
e continued. “The first time Dimmy lived, and Tripp tried to silence him with a promotion, but it must not have been enough because he tried again. How could he get away with this?”

  “He hid his tracks well,” Walter scowled. “Dad is still banging his head on the wall, unable to believe it. But of course it all fits—Tripp was confiscating all the chemicals at the LEPERLab so he could use them to build bombs without any of the materials ever being traced to him. Brilliant, really.”

  “The old man knew everything,” Ben repeated, pounding his fists on his knees. “And he skipped town before we could kick his ass.”

  That was another surprise to Lori and Walter—but apparently not to Radi. She tried to object that it wasn’t even sinister that the old man had hopped a flight to Honolulu before the proposal had even gone in. “Rose has been officially retired for ten years. I was originally planning to meet him in Honolulu on New Year’s Day to discuss a start-up company.”

  “Thank your lucky stars that you can still run away,” hissed Ben. He put his hands on his knees and got to his feet, none too steadily. “Now, would you ladies like a ride home?”

  Lori looked at the circle of beer cans around the beanbag. “Er, better to let me drive, Ben,” she suggested. “Or else we could all spend one more night here in Bubo House.”

  The Buboes cheered at that, and one dutiful soul came to lead Ben off towards an empty dorm. The she-Bubo who shared Lori’s room promised to sleep in the common room, leaving her and Radi and the unpacked suitcase alone at last.

  “Oh boy!” said Radi. “Bunkbeds!”

  Lori didn’t want to sleep in bunkbeds. She wanted to go home, unpack her dirty clothes, and have enough room to tell Radi that it was silly to sleep on the couch. She sat down on the bottom bunk and sniffled, but found she was incapable of actual tears.

  Radi noticed, at least, and sat next to her. “Are you OK?”

  “No,” Lori replied, staring at a spot on the carpet that looked suspiciously like scrubbed blood. “I gave up everything else in life to get where I am, and they didn’t even really want to hire me. I was just cannon fodder.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m so alone. No one loves me.”