by Susy Gage
Tripp had known that Kalb’s presence on Maupertuis’s proposal was not legitimate and had done everything to make sure the contract went through without both sides ever being in the same room. He had accomplished that, making his control over Kalb complete. When Kalb had tried to fight back, Tripp had murdered him.
What outraged Carol the most was that Bob too had fallen under the control of Tripp and, worse, had enjoyed it. Tripp had obviously rewarded and then punished Bob so that Bob would have to try to redeem himself. Tripp then never missed an opportunity to suggest that all would be forgiven if Bob stopped the STI proposal from going in using any means necessary. Bob had been foolish enough to think that all of his scheming was his own idea.
Perhaps even worse, his time on Unclean status had brought out the worst in Bob’s treatment of his employees. He had always been—at least Carol had believed he had always been—a sympathetic and kind boss. Now she knew that he had tried to get the people in his group to bear the brunt of the punishment for Kalb’s “accidental” death, firing a young guy just because he was in his first six months and so easiest to dismiss. He had been acting like a mini-Tripp, tyrannizing anyone he could rather than stand up to the unfairness of his own punishment.
Now that Tripp was on his way to prison, it was hard to say what would become of Bob at the LEPERLab. He could almost certainly get off Unclean status, claiming his punishment was a spiteful move on the part of a murderer. When all was said and done, Bob would probably stay there—and it was that this final submission that Carol could not forgive. After a year or so he would have forgotten all about the drama, erasing his own sins from his conscience and denying his role in Tripp’s little killing spree.
Carol finally managed to doze a little in her seat, kicking off her shoes and curling up against the window (it helped to be short in economy class). When she woke, she saw bare branches and scattered patches of white, which reminded her that it was almost Christmas and that the East Coast had been hit by a particularly severe cold snap. A “wintry mix” pounded against the airplane wings as they came in for a landing, drops illuminated by the flashing lights, a million tiny comets in an extraterrestrial sky.
There was no point in hurrying out of the plane. She had hours and hours before the due date and could imagine herself dropping the illegal hundred-pound carryon on someone’s head and causing a disaster. She watched the other passengers exit in a steady stream, continuous yet discrete like photons, and then asked for help with the bag and lugged it behind her.
Her struggle was not yet over for the day. It took two hours to cross the city by taxi, the drivers unused to anything resembling snow. When she finally got to the government building where she was supposed to take the proposals, it was a maze crawling with people who were either slow-moving zombies or panicked howler monkeys. She took the wrong elevator several times, once getting stuck on a “secret” floor where guards prevented her from getting off, before she finally found the little room where the proposals were to be delivered.
It appeared that the LEPERLab wasn’t the only institution delivering their proposal in person. Someone from another government center—oily and arrogant in a three-piece suit—squabbled with the secretary for a good half hour about getting proof of delivery. In the meantime, Carol looked around the room and saw it: Polar Arctic Research In Astrobiology (PARIA), a Proposal Submitted by the Superior Technological Institute, Principal Investigator Lori Anna Barrow was sitting on the table just behind the secretary’s left shoulder. She didn’t know how they’d done it, but they had. When the pushy man finally stepped aside, she remembered the burden in her hands, which seemed weak and stupid as she handed it over to be judged by its peers.
Then she was free, and something made Carol not go back to the airport right away. She took a taxi to the Mall, went to the Museum of Natural History (who would have thought a duck beak had so many nerves?), and read the local paper while drinking a very large cup of coffee.
She felt a thrill of excitement when she saw that Five Hundred MilliCoulombs was playing at a club tonight here in town. It would be so much fun to show up and surprise them here in DC right before Christmas. They weren’t going to be performing until much later that night, which made her hesitate a moment before she remembered that she was rich.
A fancy hotel room and a nice nap later, she checked her email one last time before heading out.
It was a mistake. No fewer than ten messages from Human Resources, Finance, and her layers of line management told her that she was under investigation for “time card fraud” for having taken a SLAP from campus. The best-case scenario, they all warned, would be a demotion and a few weeks Unclean. The worst case…
Well, the worst case couldn’t possibly be any worse than what she had already thought long and hard about. If she never came back, they couldn’t fire her, so she slammed her computer shut and went to do some shopping.
It felt so good to shed her nasty, scratchy business suit and try on dresses for dancing, lycra shorts and bra tops for working out, and shoes by the dozen. In the end she bought two complete outfits: one for spending a couple of hours in the nearby Gold’s Gym on the treadmill and in the aerobics class, and the second for going to see the show afterwards.
After her workout she had a facial and then ate a fruit salad and a turkey panini, and finally it was time to take a taxi to the club. Five Hundred MilliCoulombs was opening, and she was planning just to go for that, stay for a quick chat, and then go back to her hotel to seriously plan her future.
Talking with Kurt was like being home again, and she didn’t even drink a full martini before she was telling him everything about what brought her here. The proposal, the murders, the rivalry she still couldn’t grasp between the LEPERs and the STImpies, her history, her hopes and fears, and Bob. As they talked and drank, he moved closer and closer to her, finally slipping his hand underneath the tiny table and placing it on her thigh.
Carol, who at forty-two had never even kissed anyone but Bob Drift, leaned in close and whispered, “I have a room at the Wyndham.”
Epilogue: Six Months Later
Lori and Lou won their proposal, but because of the small size of their team, their budget was reduced to five hundred million dollars. They are not complaining.
Lori gave up her house in the hills, which she never saw anyway, and took a position as Residential Associate in Pasteur House, where she is part den mother and part cat lady.
Lou bought a house about halfway up the hill, and although Abby kept her apartment, the pale furniture and a new baby grand piano adorn his living room. They subscribe to Dog Fancy but they still don’t have a puppy.
Solomon Rose lives in Honolulu, running an astrobiology consulting company with Radi’s help. The only part of Ben’s advice that Radi took was to make sure she was also offered a tenured position at the University of Hawaii.
Kuzno stepped down over the incident with the ink, and took a tenured position at another local university, where no one knows the story.
Carol left Bob and fled to Canada with Kurt, the drummer from 500 milliCoulombs of Happiness, which he tried to recreate as 500 milliCoulombs de Bonheur in Montreal. But they quickly decided that learning French was too hard and installed themselves in Toronto.
Bob Drift denies all knowledge of or responsibility in anything except the theft of Lori’s backpack. He lives alone in the foothills and keeps waiting for Carol to get cold and come back.
The trial is scheduled for the end of summer, with only Tripp up on murder charges, and Lou and Lori dread it for the time it will take away from their ability to concentrate on Lori’s tenure review and the interviews for the two senior positions that will find replacements for Kuzno and Rose.
Wigbert van Gnubbern is the most senior remaining member of the department and the acting department head—a position he is singularly unsuited for.
Ben Gerson is still at the Enemy School, where he continues to win awards for research and teaching.
All of the Walter Waddles are continuing as usual. Papa Waddles tries to protect his scientists from LEPERs, and Waddles IV has become the department’s best student. He is beginning to show a remarkable talent for molecular biology—but that is a story for another day.
Gage—A Slow Cold Death
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