Vaz

by Laurence Dahners

  She shook her head and dabbed at her eyes.

  Suddenly, Meri, Tiona’s best friend appeared and put an arm around her, “What’s the matter girl?!” Meri shot a glare a Dante, evidently thinking he must be at fault.

  In a choked voice Tiona said, “My dad quit his job.”

  “Oh,” Meri said in a freighted tone. Quietly, she asked, “Are you going to have to go to public school?”

  Tiona’s eyes widened, she hadn’t considered that. She shrugged, choked and unable to speak.

  Meri said, “Well at least you’ll get a scholarship to college. Think on the bright side.”

  Dante’s eyes widened, “She will?”

  Meri looked at Tiona with surprise, “You haven’t told him?”

  Tiona shook her head, still having trouble speaking.

  Meri turned to Dante, “She maxed the SATs.”

  Tiona shook her head as Dante stared at her and said, “What?!”

  “Just the math,” she choked out.

  “Just the math,” Meri snorted. “That’s maxing to me. She made a great score on the language section too.”

  Dante stared at his sister with a mixture of admiration and jealousy. Finally he said, “Hey, way to go Sis.” He reached out and clumsily patted her shoulder. “Don’t cry, ‘T,’ you’re gonna get through college. It’s gonna happen, even if you have to take out loans. Those scores are gonna help a lot.”

  Head still bowed, Tiona dabbed at her eyes and nodded minutely.

  ***

  Stillman Davis walked to the back of Jerrod’s place again. When Jerrod told him to come in he asked, “How’s your man doing?”

  “He’s gonna live. And he’s kept his contract with me a secret, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”

  “Did he say what happened… you know; how Gettnor put him in the hospital?”

  Jerrod quirked his mouth, “Says Gettnor sucker punched him in the gut, then when he bent over with the wind knocked out of him, the SOB hit him in the face too.” He grinned, “Billy’s pretty offended by the unsportsmanlike behavior of your man. Kinda wants to get even some night.”

  Davis leaned forward, “Maybe we should give him a chance.”

  Jerrod, “I’m not trying any more of that kinda crap for you. Payin’ Billy’s upkeep while he’s ‘inactive’ has eaten up all the money you paid me. It’s windin’ up that I did that little service for you out of the kindness of my heart for an old friend.”

  Davis snarled, “But, you accomplished exactly zip for my money buddy.” He took a deep breath, remembering who he was talking to. “Sorry, Jerrod, we both took a loss on this. But there’s something that’s potentially a lot more lucrative here.”

  Jerrod frowned, “Lucrative?”

  “You know, money making.”

  Jerrod lifted his chin indicating Davis should continue.

  “I still have contacts at Querx and they tell me there’s a shit-storm there over Gettnor patenting something else.”

  “So?”

  “It may be something that’s worth a lot of money?”

  Jerrod snorted, “So you want to go steal his idea from him?!”

  Stillman shrugged, “Maybe we could make him give us the plans or design or whatever for the thing. I could find a buyer and we could turn over a pretty profit.”

  Jerrod frowned, “What good is a design for something if Gettnor has the patent. No one else could build it?”

  Davis grinned in a predatory fashion, “That’s where my contacts come in. I know some folks in China who don’t care all that much about patents. They just need to know how to build it and then they make the product anyway, patent or no.”

  “And you think you could sell it to them for… how much?”

  “I don’t know, we don’t even know what it is yet. But when I find out, if it looks good I’d like to be ready to move on it.”

  Jerrod looked dubious, “Do you really think we’d be able to force him to draw us up some plans?!”

  “No, they’re probably too complex to put on a napkin. But he’ll have them stored away. All we have to do is make him export us a copy.”

  “And how much is this Chinaman going to pay?”

  Davis shrugged, “Again, depends on what it is. Potentially millions.”

  Jerrod rolled his eyes, “Talk to me when you have some idea what you’re talking about, OK?”

  Jerrod felt like he’d dismissed Davis for being clueless but Davis felt he’d agreed to go along once Davis had the info. He left with a jaunty step.

  ***

  Vaz heard someone stumping down the stairs to the basement. He’d stopped locking the door now that Lisanne wasn’t riding his case. He hoped that she wasn’t coming down to yell at him.

  The door opened and Tiona stepped in, blinking a little in the bright lighting. He straightened from where he’d been bent over “Mark 3” as he thought of the latest version of the fusion device and watched her expectantly.

  Startled at the transformation in the basement Tiona looked around in amazement. Lab type equipment seemed to be everywhere. All highly organized as she would expect from her Dad. Towards the back stood a huge, featureless metal… structure. For a moment she wondered what kind of physics experiments her dad was doing down here and if it would be interesting to talk to him about. Then she remembered her purpose in coming down here, “Dad! You quit your job?!”

  Vaz stared blankly at her. After a moment he said, “Fired.”

  “What?” Tiona said not registering the meaning of what he’d said.

  “I didn’t quit. I was fired.”

  “Oh!” she gasped. “What did you do?”

  After another unblinking moment Vaz said, “I left work early and one of my experiments melted down.”

  Tiona’s gaze swept again over all the expensive looking equipment in the basement. Her hand had risen to her mouth. “Dante says you aren’t even looking for another job…” in a small voice she asked, “that isn’t true is it?”

  Vaz nodded.

  Appalled, she said, “So you’re just going to let Mom support the family?”

  He slowly shook his head.

  Relief flooded through her, “You are going to apply for a job?”

  He shook his head again.

  Incredulous she said, “What are you going to do?”

  He pointed to the device he’d been working on when she entered, “This should be worth quite a bit of money.”

  Uncertainly she said, “What’s it do?”

  “Fuses hydrogen and boron.”

  Tiona had finished Chemistry and didn’t know of a particular reason you’d want to make hydrogen-boron compounds, “Why would you want… boron hydrides?” a lift in her tone indicating she wasn’t sure that a hydrogen-boron compound would be a “hydride.”

  “Not a chemical reaction. Nuclear fusion.”

  She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by “nuclear fusion.” She stared at him a moment, then let her eyes wander around the lab again, “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It produces energy.”

  “Oh, OK.” Tiona felt confused and uncertain. She turned and opened the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Tiona?”

  She stopped, “Yes?”

  “We have enough money to send you to college.”

  Without looking back she rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. She closed the door and started up the stairs.

  Vaz stared after her. Once again he pondered how he could explain the money in his royalty account to his family without making them angry that he’d hid it for so long. There would be a lot of distressful emotions. For a moment he considered that the happiness of having the money might outweigh the anger that he’d been hiding it. But then he considered that Lisanne might want to use the money to travel and his stomach clenched. He’d never left the “Triangle” area near Raleigh and as he aged he seemed to be developing more and more apprehension about being in unfamiliar places. He felt so comfortable
in his basement and loved the fact that now he didn’t even have to leave the house to go to work. He wasn’t even going to Mike’s Martial anymore.

  Occasionally, he worried that if he kept this up, he might eventually reach the point that he would be unable to leave the house.

  His mind ping ponged back and forth around these uncomfortable thoughts but then his eye caught on the coil for the Mark 3 version of the fusion device. He bent back over it. Working on it brought a comfortable feeling gently back over him without his even having to hit the bag.

  Tiona went back to her room and started searching the web for information about hydrogen-boron fusion. It was fascinating! The amount of energy available from fusion astounded her. She also came to realize that hydrogen-boron fusion in particular had very desirable characteristics because it didn’t release neutrons except through accidental side reactions. The fact that the majority of the energy was released as electrically charged alpha particles meant that this type of fusion didn’t have to heat water to create steam like standard atomic energy plants. The high energy particles could generate electricity simply by passing through coils!

  Then she started reading about the prerequisites for fusion. Enormous heat had to be generated in order to cause atomic nuclei to crash into one another hard enough to fuse. The repulsive forces between nuclei were enormous. They hadn’t successfully produced more energy than it required to achieve fusion of heavy hydrogen yet, and they had been trying different methods since the 1950s! Hydrogen-boron fusion required ten times as much heat as heavy hydrogen fusion!

  Tiona sagged back in her chair, wondering how she could have believed, even for a moment, that her bizarre father could have achieved fusion. No one else had been able to, despite decades and decades of trying. In fact, if his own family thought he was weird, was it any wonder he got fired? No matter how smart Mom said he was, they’d have to be able to talk to him down at the job, wouldn’t they? Hell, his own daughter could barely make sense of a conversation with him.

  She got up and walked slowly into her parents’ room. Her mother lay propped up on the bed working on something on the big screen in their room. She closed it when she saw Tiona.

  “What ‘cha workin’ on Mom?” Tiona said in a quiet voice.

  “Tryin’ to work out how to send you kids to college.” Seeing the look on Tiona’s face, she quickly said, “Hey kid, it won’t be impossible, we just need to figure out how to shift money around.”

  Tiona grimaced, “I talked to my counselor. I should be able to get a scholarship. He said he’d put me up for some.” As she said this she climbed up on the bed and leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder.

  Lisanne clapped her hands together delightedly, “Hey! That’s great! What kind of scholarship? Academic?”

  Lisanne could feel Tiona nod against her shoulder. She put her arm around her and hugged her, ecstatic to have Tiona leaning against her like she used to when she was younger. But Tiona seemed so sad. “Is something wrong ‘T’?”

  “I’m worried about Dad.”

  Lisanne tensed but tried not to let Tiona feel it. Had Tiona learned that Vaz wasn’t working? Or had he done something else. “What’s worrying you?”

  “I think he might be delusional.”

  Lisanne blinked over the top of Tiona’s head. Not what she’d expected. Her brow furrowed, “Why would you think that?”

  “I went down to confront him about… about his not working and leaving it all on you.”

  Lisanne wanted to ask how she’d found out Vaz wasn’t working but Tiona continued, “He gave me this story about how he’d built a fusion machine and that it was going to make money. Then he told me not to worry about money for college… Mom, I looked up fusion and that just isn’t possible. Then I looked up delusions and… claiming you can do impossible things is a pretty typical thing if someone’s manic. If you’re religious you might claim you’re Jesus. Since he’s into physics… I think that’s why he’s claiming he can achieve fusion.”

  Lisanne’s heart climbed into her throat. She wanted to dismiss Tiona’s concerns, but… she’d sometimes worried that Vaz might have a breakdown someday. Not having a job could have put a huge amount of stress on him. After he’d lost his job at Virginia Tech he’d spent a long time in a deep funk and it had been incredibly difficult to get him to go out and apply for jobs. He hated changes in his routine after all. How could she not have seen that something similar or worse might be happening now? Just the thought of going out to talk to new people in the process of making applications would have driven him right into his shell. And Lisanne hadn’t helped; she’d just ridden him about how he needed to get another job.

  So, he’d climbed into his basement cave and, she thought, started doing research. But maybe just deluded himself into thinking that he was doing something important. After all if he’d been successful at Querx they’d have paid him more than they did. What was she going to say to Tiona?

  At that moment, worried about her mother’s lack of response, Tiona said, “Mom?”

  “Uh, yeah girl. Just been thinking. I didn’t know your dad was working on fusion and I don’t know much about it. I guess I’ll have to look into it before I know what to make of your worries. Delusions… seem… like something that couldn’t be true, but I’ve got to look into it. He can be pretty… odd.”

  “Mom? Why did Dad get fired?”

  Icy fingers slid down Lisanne’s back, “Fired?”

  Tiona drew back, “You didn’t know?”

  Eyes glistening Lisanne merely shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Even if she could talk him into beginning the process of applying, having been fired would make it a lot harder for him to get a job.

  “He told me it was because he left work early and one of his experiments melted down. I think there must have been more to it than that, don’t you?”

  Lisanne only trusted herself to shrug. A successful scientist not only would have been paid more by Querx, but they wouldn’t have been fired either.

  A failed scientist wouldn’t suddenly have succeeded at achieving fusion when no one else could either.

  Tiona shifted her head to look up at her mother and saw the tears running down her cheeks. “Mom! I’m sorry! I didn’t know you didn’t know! I’m so sorry…” she petered out, not sure whether she was sorry she’d told her mother or sorry her dad was crazy. She realized she’d entered the room hoping her mother would explain away her concerns about her dad. She’d only frightened her mother and hadn’t made herself feel any better. “I’m sorry.”

  Lisanne sniffed, “It’s OK kid. I needed to know.” She hugged her daughter’s shoulder and tried to smile. “We’ll get through this… somehow.”

  Tiona said, “Don got a wrestling scholarship to ECU.”

  “Oh! That’s great. Why hasn’t he told me?”

  “I think it’s ‘cause he’s still hoping to get one at State.”

  “Oh, OK. I hope he gets it.”

  Tiona looked back up at her mom, “Are you gonna be OK?”

  Lisanne nodded.

  “I need to study, OK?”

  “Sure Honey. I need to read up on fusion.”

  Tiona rolled over and gave Lisanne a momentary hug before she left.

  Lisanne lay trying to remember when she’d last gotten a hug from her daughter. Too bad it took a crisis like this to bring it on. Sighing she looked up at the wall screen and started bringing up information on fusion.

  After a while she cursed and brought up information on manic personality disorders.

  Lisanne cried herself to sleep.

  ***

  Phil Dennis knocked on Vangester’s door but then entered without an invitation. “We have a request from Gettnor’s attorney for a meeting about our failure to pay him his full share of royalties.”

  “Ah Christ! Do you know his attorney? Is he any good?”

  “She, one Anbala Singh, and yeah, she’s got a reputation, smart and aggressive.�
��

  “What do we do?”

  “Negotiate a settlement.”

  Vangester’s jaw worked and he turned a little red, but he didn’t explode. “I told you to figure a way out of this!”

  “There isn’t a way ‘out of this.’ The law’s on his side.”

  Vangester closed his eyes, then opened them again, “OK, we negotiate. We need to come to the table ready to play hardball though. What kind of leverage do we have?”

  Dennis shrugged microscopically, “We can say that we’re ready to take them to court on the basis that we think his failure to object constitutes acceptance of a modified contract. Remind them how expensive court can be.”

  “All right!” Vangester sounded cheered.

  “She’ll just laugh at us though. It’s pretty clear cut and she should be able to hammer us flat and maybe charge us for court costs.” He paused, “The other thing we’ve got on them is Gettnor stealing those discs. We could threaten criminal charges and claim knowledge that they are an important part of whatever new thing he’s patenting, demand a share, or a reduction in what we owe in back royalties.”

  “Oh, yeah! Let’s plan on that. Hire outside counsel too, have them look at everything. Maybe they’ll see something we’ve missed.”

  Dennis shrugged, “OK. I think you’re wasting your money, but it’ll be a pittance compared to what we owe.”

  ***

  Lisanne eyed her husband during dinner. He’d cooked, which he’d been doing more nights than not lately. Occasionally what he cooked wasn’t all that great, but tonight he’d cooked something vaguely Asian with chicken smothered in peanut butter that tasted awesome. As usual, it wasn’t out of a recipe book and it was hard for her to reconcile the notion that someone delusional could cook something that complex, off the cuff, and have it turn out so well. His behavior during dinner was… odd, saying little unless spoken to, seldom looking up from his plate.