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been part of a collusion that intended to kill his father and steal his Kevin's inheritance. He
suspected from the absence of any really violent reaction that the true enormity of it had not
percolated through fully, even yet. Even so, he tried to detach a part of his mind to see if it
could observe the rest and tell him how he felt about what had.
The most unbelievable part was not being able to do anything. This feeling of apparent
helplessness was something he couldn't accept. He felt like a rabbit in a cage with a snake,
having no option but to let it pick its time. How could such a situation come about? With all the
ritual and ceremony and rules and procedures that adults heaped upon the world, how could
something as basic as being able to demonstrate that a murder was probably being planned not
trigger some kind of preventive action automatically?
And until something did happen, was he supposed to magically have the insight to know what
to say, how to deal with all the situations that might conceivably develop domestically in the
house? He felt like a psychic dowser who was supposed to know how to avoid buried
mines except he'd never claimed to anyone that he was psychic.
Eric and Vanessa were both home when Kevin got back. He found Vanessa in the den,
composing something on the computer screen. She was deep in thought, and didn't become
aware of him at once when he appeared in the passage outside the room. He stood, studying
her through the open doorway, almost as if he should have expected to see some kind of
alteration about her, some kind of visible change. But there were no horns poking through the
dark hair, suddenly; no hump between her shoulders, fangs sprouting from her upper jaw. She
looked, as always, calm, dispassionate, utterly composed and in control. Other words tumbled
in his mind like clothes in a dryer: resolute; capable; indefatigable, undeflectable. A
Terminator locked onto its goal.
She looked up suddenly. "Oh, Kevin! You're back. I didn't hear the van come in."
"I walked up the driveway. Doug took the van on to his place to unload the stuff that we got.
He'll stop by in the morning and pick up his car." He was conscious of her bright, uncannily
reflective eyes interrogating him silently, giving him the spooky feeling that it was futile to
think he could conceal anything that had transpired. She knew. It was written plainly. She could
read everything straight out of his mind.
"What did you get?" she asked him instead.
"Some wood, a door, and some bits and pieces for a room he's remodeling hinges, screws,
and stuff." Kevin noticed Vanessa's briefcase to one side, along with some folders and the
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slide carousel box that had been in the hallway on Friday. He didn't see the plastic bag that had
been aboard the yacht. Just to prove that she could read his mind, Vanessa said, "Oh yes, I
found something when I got to the seminar that looked as if it might be yours something
electronic, wrapped in plastic. It must have got mixed up with my things when we were loading
the car."
"Oh yes." Kevin did a good job of feigning surprise. "It's Taki's. He was looking for it on
Friday."
"I put it in one of those boxes of yours in the trunk of the Jaguar. Are you ever going to
remove them?"
"Have you got the keys? I'll get them now."
"Oh, do it tomorrow sometime. Taki called, by the way. I told him you'd be back later. Can you
call him back?"
"Sure. Was it about the relay?"
"Is that what it is? I don't know. He didn't say." Vanessa's eyes had strayed back to the
screen and began scanning over what she had written. "Have you eaten? There are some cold
cuts in the kitchen. Or there's the last of a stew that Harriet made that needs finishing."
"I had something with Doug in town . . . thanks. You, er, look busy. I'll let you get on with it.
Where's Dad?"
"Downstairs, I'd presume. Yes, I do have a lot to do. Goodnight, in case I don't see you
again."
" 'Night."
Kevin turned from the doorway and made his way down to the lab at the rear, trying to tell
himself that this wasn't really happening. He'd read somewhere about lucid dreaming, that was
so real you couldn't tell the difference from being awake he'd even experienced it himself a
couple of times. Sometimes he had "woken" up from such a state only to find out later that he
wasn't awake at all, and then gone through it again and ended up with no idea if he was really
awake now, or what was going on. But if this was a dream, then so must everything else have
been all the way back to thinking he'd been in a mec on Payne's yacht. What yacht? Who was
Payne? How did he know they existed? Neither of them had figured in his life before a few
days ago, when everything had seemed so serene. Maybe they weren't real, then, and life was
still serene. And maybe the stories about DNC were true, and this was what it did to you inside
your head. Probably just as likely.
Eric was hunched on a stool at one end of the large bench, studying some graphs in a
molecular circuitry catalog and comparing numbers with the content of an e-mail item showing
on a screen. He looked over as Kevin came in from the stairs. "Ah, so you're back. What
happened to Doug? Did he go straight on home?"
"Yes. He's got some stuff to unload. He'll pick up his car in the morning."
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Eric looked him over briefly through his spectacles. "So, did you have a good time?"
"Well, I guess it was . . . something different. We ate out too."
"Fine. I talked to Patti Jukes just before I left. She told me about the mec that you were
almost flying today. It sounds as if you've almost got it licked. That's terrific."
Suddenly everything seemed almost normal again. "A microprogrammed transmission is
definitely the way to go," Kevin said. "The trouble is it gives coarse control-tuning. I think
we're going to have tolearn to fly. It doesn't look like something that'll precode easily into an
algorithm."
"Well, if gnat-size brains can get the hang of it, I'm sure you will too, in time. I've got some
papers on insect simulations that you ought to read. One of them has a good section on wing
dynamics that might help you get the microprogram right. I'll dig them up tomorrow."
Eric's innocence as he sat there talking about mecs and flight dynamics, his utter unawareness
of all that had been said that night, was affecting Kevin. It seemed to symbolize the whole
pattern of Eric's life. He wanted to reach out, put an arm around his shoulder, and tell him to be
careful because Kevin cared; and so did Doug, and Michelle, and they'd all be looking out for
him, and everything would be okay. He wanted to spend more time with Eric, do all the things
they kept promising each other they would do, and usually ended up putting off. People were
always saying that time went faster as you got older. Kevin wondered if he was beginning to
experience it already.
"Maybe we could look at it together this weekend," he said.
"I have to go to this thing at Barrow's Pass," Eric reminded him.
"Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten. What's happening there? Tell me again."
"It's a sort of conference on basic physics. I'll be playing Giordano Bruno to the Bishops of
Relativity again."
That was an aspect of Eric's interests that Kevin had never gotten involved in, although he
knew it had been Eric's prime subject when he was an academic physicist. All Kevin knew was
that according to Eric, most of the experimental "proofs" cited in the text books were
derivable from classical physics and said nothing exclusive about Relativity at all. That was
something he'd have to sit down and find out more about, he kept telling himself and putting
off.
"When will you be leaving?" Kevin asked.
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