“All the more reason not to wave it in people’s faces.” Carson nodded down the hill, “If you try to use that gun now, it’ll misfire and blow off your little ponytail. By the time you’ve cleaned it, I’ll be gone.”
There was a long silence. The late-afternoon sun refracted through Nye’s eyes, giving them a strange dark gold color. Looking into those eyes, Carson saw that the fiery tints were not completely a trick of the sun; the man’s eyes had a reddish cast, like the inward flames of a secret obsession.
Without another word Carson turned his horse and headed north at a brisk trot. After several minutes he stopped, looking back. Nye remained motionless on his mount, silhouetted against the rise, gazing after him.
“Watch your back, Carson!” came the distant voice. And Carson thought he heard a strange laugh drift toward him across the desert, before being whisked away by the wind.
The portable CD player sat on an outspread Wall Street Journal on a white table in the control room, exploded into twenty or thirty pieces. A figure wearing a dirty T-shirt was bent over it, the picture of concentration. The T-shirt’s legend, VISIT BEAUTIFUL SOVIET GEORGIA, was proudly emblazoned over a picture of a grim, fortresslike government structure, the epitome of Stalinesque architecture.
De Vaca stood to one side of the immaculate control room, wondering if the T-shirt was a joke. “You said you’ve never fixed a CD player before,” she said nervously.
“Da,” the figure muttered without looking up.
“Well, then how do you ...?” She let the sentence hang.
The figure muttered again, then popped a chip out of a circuit board, holding it up with a pair of plastic-coated tweezers. “Hmmmph,” he said, and tossed it carelessly on the newspaper. Working the tweezers again, he popped out a second chip.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” said de Vaca.
The figure eyed her over a pair of reading glasses fallen halfway down his nose. “But is not fixed yet,” he protested.
De Vaca shrugged, sorry she had ever brought the CD player to Pavel Vladimirovic. Though she’d been told he was some kind of mechanical genius, she’d seen no evidence of it so far. And the man had even admitted he had never even seen a CD player before, let alone fixed one.
Vladimirovic sighed heavily, dropped the second chip, and sat down heavily, pushing the glasses back up his nose.
“Is broke” he announced.
“I know,” said de Vaca. “That’s why I brought it to you.”
He nodded and indicated with his palm for her to sit in a chair.
“Can you fix it or not?” de Vaca said, still standing.
He nodded. “Da, don’t worry! I can fix. Is problem with chip that controls laser diode.”
De Vaca took a seat. “Do you have a replacement?” she asked.
Vladimirovic nodded and rubbed his sweaty neck. Then he stood up, moved to a cabinet, and returned with a small box, green circuit boards peeping from its open top. “I put back together now,” he nodded
De Vaca watched while, in a burst of activity, he cannibalized parts from the box full of circuit boards. In less than five minutes he had assembled the player. He plugged it in, inserted the CD that de Vaca had brought, and waited. The sound of the B-52s came roaring out of the speakers.
“Aiee!” he cried, turning it off. “Nekulturny. What is that noise! Must still be broke.” He roared with laughter at his own joke.
“Thank you,” de Vaca said, real delight in her voice. “I use this just about every evening. I was afraid I’d have to spend the rest of my time here without music. How’d you do it?”
“Here, many extra pieces from the fail-safe mechanism,” Vladimirovic said. “I use one of those. Is nothing, very simple little machine. Not like this!” he gestured proudly at the rows of control panels, CRT screens and consoles.
“What do they all do?” de Vaca asked.
“Many things!” he cried, lumbering over to a wall of electronics. “Here, is control for laminar airflow. Air intake here, furnace is controlled by all these.” He waved his hand vaguely. “And then all these control cooldown.”
“Cooldown?”
“Da. You wouldn’t want one-thousand-degree air going back in! Has to be cooled, the air.”
“Why not just suck in fresh air?”
“If suck in fresh air, must vent old air. No good. This is closed system. We are only laboratory in world with such system. Goes back to fail-safe mechanism of military days, shunt hot air to Level-5.”
“You mentioned that fail-safe system before,” de Vaca asked. “I don’t remember hearing about it.”
“For stage-zero alert.”
“There is no stage-zero alert. Stage one is the worst-case-scenario.”
“Back then, was stage-zero alert.” He shrugged. “Maybe terrorists in Level-5, maybe accident with total contamination. Inject one-thousand-degree air into Level-5, make complete sterilization. Not only sterilization. Blow place up real kharasho! Boom!”
“I see,” said de Vaca, a little uncertainly. “It can’t go off by accident, this state-zero alert, can it?”
Pavel chuckled. “Impossible. When civilians took over, system was deactivated.” He waved his hand at a nearby computer terminal. “Only work if put back on line.”
“Good,” said de Vaca, relieved. “I wouldn’t want to be fried alive because someone tripped over the wrong switch up here.”
“True,” Pavel rumbled. “It’s hot enough outside without making more heat, nyet? Zharka!” He shook his head, eyes staring absently at the newspaper. Then he stiffened. He picked up the rump end of the Journal and stabbed his finger at it.
“You see this?” he asked.
“No,” said de Vaca. She glanced over at the columns of tiny numbers, thinking that he must have stolen the paper from the Mount Dragon library, which had subscriptions to a dozen or so newspapers and periodicals that were not available on-line. They were the only printed materials allowed on the site.
“GeneDyne stock down half point again! You know what this mean?”
De Vaca shook her head.
“We losing money!”
“Losing money?” de Vaca asked.
“Da! You own stock, I own stock, and this stock go down half point! I lose three hundred fifty dollars! What I could have done with that money!”
He buried his head in his hands.
“But isn’t that to be expected?” de Vaca asked.
“Shto?”
“Doesn’t the stock go up and down every day?”
“Da, every day! Last Monday I made six hundred dollars.”
“So what does it matter?”
“Makes even worse! Last Monday, six hundred dollars richer I was. Now it’s all gone! Poof!” He spread his hands in despair.
De Vaca tried to keep from laughing. The man must watch the movement of the stock every day, feeling elated on the days it went up—thinking how he was going to spend the money—and horrified on the days it went down. It was the price of employee ownership: giving stock to people who had never invested before. And yet, she was sure overall he must have made a large profit on his employee plan. She hadn’t checked since arriving at Mount Dragon, but she knew the GeneDyne stock had been soaring in recent months, and that they all were getting richer.
Vladimirovic shook his head again. “And in last few days, worse, much worse. Down many points!”
De Vaca frowned. “I didn’t know that.”
“You not heard talk in canteen! It’s that Boston professor, Levine. Always, he talking bad about GeneDyne, about Brent Scopes. Now he say something worse, I don’t know what, and stock go down.” He muttered under his breath. “KGB would know what to do with such a man.”
He sighed deeply, then handed her the CD player.
“After hearing decadent counterrevolutionary music, I’m sorry I fixed it,” he said.
De Vaca laughed and said good-bye. She decided the T-shirt had to be a joke. After all, the man must have h
ad top secret clearance to work at Mount Dragon in the old days. She’d have to search him out in the canteen some evening and get the whole story, she decided.
The first heat of summer lay like a sodden blanket over Harvard Yard. The leaves hung limply on the great oaks and chestnut trees, and cicadas droned in the shadows. As he walked, Levine slipped out of his threadbare jacket and slung it over his shoulder, inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass, the thick humidity in the air.
In the outer office, Ray was at his desk, idly picking at his teeth with a paper clip. He grunted at Le vine’s approach.
“You got visitors,” he said.
Levine stopped, frowned. “You mean, inside?” He nodded toward his closed office door.
“Didn’t like the company out here,” Ray explained.
As Levine opened the door, Erwin Landsberg, the president of the university,’ turned toward him with a smile. He held out his hand.
“Charles, it’s been a long time,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Much too long.” He indicated a second man in a gray suit. “This is Leonard Stafford, our new dean of faculty.”
Levine shook the limp hand that was offered, stealing a furtive glance around the office. He wondered how long the two had been there. His eyes landed on the laptop, open on one corner of the desk, telephone cord dangling from its side. Stupid, leaving it out like that. The call was due in just five minutes.
“It’s warm in here,” said the president. “Charles, you should order an air conditioner from Central Services.”
“Air conditioners give me head colds. I like the heat.” Levine took a seat at his desk. “Now, what’s this about?”
The two visitors sat down, the dean glancing around at the disorderly piles with distaste. “Well, Charles,” the president began. “We’ve come about the lawsuit.”
“Which one?”
The president looked pained. “We take these matters very seriously.” When Levine said nothing, he continued. “The GeneDyne suit, of course.”
“It’s pure harassment,” Levine said. “It’ll be dismissed.”
The dean of faculty leaned forward. “Dr. Levine, I’m afraid we don’t share that view. This is not a frivolous suit. GeneDyne is alleging theft of trade secrets, electronic trespass, defamation and libel, and quite a bit else.”
The president nodded. “GeneDyne has made some serious accusations. Not so much about the foundation, but about your methods. That’s what concerns me most.”
“What about my methods?”
“There’s no need to get excited.” The president adjusted his cuffs. “You’ve been in hot water before, and we’ve always stuck by you. It hasn’t always been easy, Charles. There are several trustees—very powerful trustees—who would much prefer if we’d left you outside for the vigilantes. But now, with the ethics of your methods being called into question ... well, we have to protect the university. You know what’s legal, and what isn’t. Stay within those bounds. I know you understand.” The smile faded slightly. “And that’s why I’m not going to warn you again.”
“Dr. Landsberg, I don’t think you even begin to appreciate the situation. This is not some academic tiff. We’re talking about the future of the human race.” Levine glanced at his watch. Two minutes. Shit.
Landsberg raised a quizzical eyebrow. “The future of the human race?”
“We’re at war here. GeneDyne is altering the germ cells of human beings, committing a sacrilege against human life itself. ‘Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.’ Remember? When they came to clear the ghettos, it was no time for worrying about ethics and the law. Now they’re messing with the human genome itself. I have the proof.”
“Your comparison is offensive,” Landsberg said. “This is not Nazi Germany, and GeneDyne, whatever you think of it, is not the SS. You undermine the good work you’ve done in the name of the Holocaust by making such trivial comparisons.”
“No? Tell me the difference, then, between Hitler’s eugenics and what GeneDyne is doing at Mount Dragon.”
Landsberg sat back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. “If you can’t see the difference, Charles, you’ve got a warped moral view. I suspect this has more to do with your personal feud against Brent Scopes than with some high-flown worry about the human race. I don’t know what happened between you two twenty years ago to start this thing, and I don’t care. We’re here to tell you to leave GeneDyne alone.”
“This has nothing to do with a feud—”
The dean waved his hand impatiently. “Dr. Levine, you’ve got to understand the university’s position. We can’t have you running around like a loose cannon, involved in shady activities, while we’re litigating a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit.”
“I consider this to be interference with the autonomy of the foundation,” Levine said. “Scopes is putting pressure on you, isn’t he?”
Landsberg frowned. “If you call a two-hundred-million-dollar lawsuit ‘pressure,’ then, hell, yes!”
A telephone rang, then a hiss sounded as a remote computer connected to Levine’s laptop. His screen winked on, and an image came into view: a figure, balancing the world on its fingertip.
Levine leaned back casually in his chair, obscuring their view of his computer screen. “I’ve got work to do,” he said.
“Charles, I get the feeling that this isn’t sinking in,” the president said. “We can pull the foundation’s charter any time we like. And we will, Charles, if you press us.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Levine said. “The press would hammer you like a nail. Besides, I have tenure.”
President Landsberg abruptly stood up and turned to leave, his face livid. The dean rose more slowly, smoothing a hand over his suit front. He leaned toward Levine. “Ever heard the phrase ‘moral turpitude’? It’s in your tenure contract.” He moved toward the door, then stopped, looking back speculatively.
The miniature globe on the screen began to rotate faster, and the figure balancing the earth began to scowl impatiently.
“It’s been nice chatting with you,” Levine said. “Please shut the door on your way out.”
When Carson entered the Mount Dragon conference room, the cool white space was already packed with people. The nervous buzz of whispered conversations filled the air. Today, the banks of electronics were hidden behind panels, and the teleconferencing screen was dark. Urns of coffee and pastries were arrayed along one wall, knots of scientists gathered around them.
Carson spotted Andrew Vanderwagon and George Harper standing in one corner. Harper waved him over. “Town meeting’s about to start,” he said. “You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Hell if I know,” Harper said, ruffling a hand through his thinning brown hair. “Ready for the third degree, I suppose. They say if he doesn’t like what he finds here he might just shut the place down.”
Carson shook his head. “They’d never do that over a freak accident.”
Harper grunted. “I also heard that this guy has subpoena power and can even bring criminal charges.”
“I doubt it,” said Carson. “Where’d you hear these things?”
“The Mount Dragon rumor mill, of course: the canteen. Didn’t see you there yesterday. Until they reopen Level-5 there’s nothing else to do, unless you want to sit in the library or play tennis in the hundred-degree heat.”
“I went for a ride,” Carson said.
“A ride? You mean, on that hot young assistant of yours?” Harper cackled.
Carson rolled his eyes. Harper could be irritating. He had already decided not to mention meeting Nye to anyone. It would just create more problems.
Harper turned to Vanderwagon, who was chewing his lip and staring expressionlessly into the crowd. “Come to think of it, I didn’t see you in the canteen, either. Spend the day in your room again, Andrew?”
Carson frowned. It was obvious that Vanderwagon was still upset about what had happened in the Fever Tank, and about his dressing down
by Scopes. By the look of his bloodshot eyes, he hadn’t had much sleep. Sometimes Harper had the tact of a hand grenade.
Vanderwagon turned and eyed Harper as a sudden hush fell over the crowd. Four people had entered the room: Singer, Nye, Mike Marr, and a slight, stooped man in a brown suit. The stranger carried an oversized briefcase that bumped against his legs as he walked. His sandy hair was graying at the temples, and he wore black-rimmed glasses that made his pale skin look sallow. He radiated ill health.
“That must be the OSHA man,“ whispered Harper. “He doesn’t look like much of a terror to me.”
“More like a junior accountant,” Carson replied. “He’s going to get a nasty burn with that skin.”
Singer went to the lectern, tapped the microphone, and held up his hand. His normally pleasant, ruddy face looked bone-tired. “As you all know,” he said, “tragic accidents such as the one that occurred last week must be reported to the proper authorities. Mr. Teece here is a senior investigator from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He’ll be spending a little time with us at Mount Dragon, looking into the cause of the accident and reviewing our safety procedures.”
Nye stood next to Singer, silent, his eyes traveling over the assembled scientists. A knot in his jaw was working away, his powerful frame rigid in the tailored suit. Marr stood next to him, nodding his closely cropped head and smiling broadly beneath a hat brim so low it hid his eyes. Carson knew that in some ways, as director of security, Nye was ultimately responsible for the accident. He was obviously all too aware of it. The security director’s gaze met Carson’s for a moment before it moved on. Perhaps that explains his paranoia out in the desert, Carson thought. But what the hell was he up to? Whatever it was must have been damn important, keeping him out overnight before a meeting like this.
“Because industrial secrets of GeneDyne are involved, the specifics of our research will remain secret regardless of the outcome of the investigation. None of this will be reported to the press.” Singer shifted at the podium. “I want to emphasize one thing: everyone at Mount Dragon will be expected to cooperate fully with Mr. Teece. This is an order that comes directly from Brent Scopes. I assume that’s sufficiently clear.”
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