She downed it in one gulp. Then smiled genuinely as the alcohol hit her system. “Vodka. Thank you.”
He jutted his chin towards the Vice Chancellor who was flapping around like an overdressed vulture. “Speech time. Try to look friendly.”
“I was trying last time,” she whispered, as the room quieted. “That was my friendly smile.”
“Smile like when you finish writing the perfect algorithm. Smile like that. It’s my favourite one.”
She glanced at his face, trying to read his expression. This banter had never been part of their friendship. “What is with you tonight?”
He shrugged, a faint self-conscious smile on his lips. “Heatstroke?”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
The speeches and congratulations stopped any further conversation.
Mortification flared inside Flick when the Vice Chancellor mentioned she had one of the highest IQs in the country. Humiliation squirmed and burned when he started on about her ‘under-privileged’ background and how she’d been discovered by the University and nurtured by one of their scholarships.
Sure her parents didn’t have much money, but there had been love and laughter and enough, just enough, of everything. They’d uncovered her unnatural abilities with numbers and spatial reasoning at an early age and there were abundant scholarships for gifted children.
The University of Sydney had no right to claim her. They had no right to advertise her IQ in some crass effort at boasting, or humiliate the people she loved the most with talk of poverty and need. It happened every time and now she avoided these social events, afraid one day her bitterness would bubble over and she would, as her first year students so charmingly put it, lose her shit.
She kept smiling. She acknowledged the thanks and congratulations. Made sure they understood that Bellona was as much Andy Grey’s work as hers. She said the right things and never once, for a single moment, showed her resentment.
Then it was over. The guests and dignitaries swarmed to the bar to make the most of the crappy wine and she crept towards the exit.
“Very good, very good.” The Vice Chancellor beamed, catching her on the cusp of escape. “Let me introduce you to some people. David Darkthorne is here. The CEO of Darkthorne Industries — he came just to meet you.”
Flick’s heart jumped. The CEO of the premier weapons development company in the world. Here? She glanced around for Andy. This could not be a coincidence. Apprehension crept over her. What was going on?
“Professor Smith.” David Darkthorne clasped her hand in a damp handshake. “Congratulations on the Bellona project. We’ve been watching you with some interest.”
“It was a lot of fun.”
He was a small, slight man; his skin pale and his hair so uniformly black she wondered if he dyed it.
“We’ve got a few projects coming up that you might like to take a look at.” He smiled, though it looked like it was an unpractised expression and took some effort to maintain.
“That would be great.” She spoke with genuine enthusiasm. Darkthorne Industries was the world leader in weapons research and involved with almost all American military technology. Great was actually an understatement.
He handed her his card and she glanced at it. “Thank you Mr Darkthorne.”
“Just Darkthorne, please. I prefer it. Bellona has a lot of potential, you know. Cyber-war is the new military frontier. We’ve been working on something similar, but you’ve gone at it from a whole new direction, in a way my engineers hadn’t even thought of.” He looked a little piqued.
“Now Darkthorne, you’re not stealing this girl from me.” The Vice Chancellor barked a laugh, even though they all knew Darkthorne Industries could pay her triple what the University did.
Darkthorne ignored the Vice Chancellor. “How close is Bellona to being an actual working model?” His cold dark eyes watched Flick with an unsettling intensity.
“It works in controlled experiments. We shut down the Wagga RAAF base in eighteen seconds, after spending three months adapting it to the computer network there. But real world?” She shook her head. “It’s not viable.”
“How unusual, that you’re negative about your own project. Most would try to sell it to me.” Darkthorne watched her, amused speculation in his expression. “I wonder why?”
Flick hesitated, and wondered if he’d talked to Andy. Did he have detailed knowledge about Bellona? Or was he fishing for information?
“You can buy it if you want. But you’d have to spend months adapting it to the target system. Then you’d have to find someone to manually upload the program. A virus, trojan or logic bomb would be quicker and easier.”
Darkthorne nodded in agreement. “I do wonder where Bellona might take us, if modified.”
Flick thought of Andy’s weird code, dread niggling at her. What had he done? What had he added?
“Bellona is just a fun project. Professor Grey and I thought it might be useful in the gaming industry.” She sought to de-rail Darkthorne’s questions, to distract him.
“The gaming industry?” His eyebrows shot up in disbelief.
“Yes.” Everyone wanted in on the gaming industry, with its money and prestige. “The whole idea of cyber-war is about as realistic as the world being taken over by self-replicating nano-bots.”
“Are you aware of what the Russians did in Estonia and Georgia?” Scorn edged his voice.
“They were just crude denial-of-service attacks. Bellona does not have those capabilities.” She wilfully misunderstood his comment, and ignored the contempt that tinged his frown.
He tilted his head on one side and smiled slightly. “Well then, that is a great shame. A great shame indeed.” Sarcasm tinged his words.
Flick stepped back, sure Andy had been bragging at best, and trying to sell Bellona at worst. The egotistical idiot. The dread bunched in the pit of her stomach, and she glanced around, looking for him. He’d disappeared, which was odd; usually he was the last man standing.
“Call me, Felicity, when you are ready.” Darkthorne tilted his head and gave her a thin grimace. Then walked away.
Reluctant to get cornered again, Flick slipped from the room, and hurried to the stairs.
“Night Professor Smith,” said the security guard, as she passed the front desk. He watched her as if he knew her, but they’d never met.
“Night.” Her skin prickled.
She stepped out into the darkness. Even though the intense heat of the day had barely lessened, she shuddered.
The roar of the Uni bar drew her down the hill towards the main campus. The Engineering boys would be up there, lusting after pretty first-years and would, no doubt, be thrilled at the prospect of her company.
She took the stairs up to the bar two at a time, grinning as the noise surrounded her. She was anonymous amongst these faces. Nobody cared about her IQ, or her working-class parents. Not a soul.
She headed for the pool tables. Time to dish out some humiliation to foolish boys who thought girls couldn’t play.
Rayessa and the Space Pirates Page 13