conference room were six more nerds — male and female — and one distinctly non-nerd. The one exception was a brawny, tanned man who had the square-jawed look of a soldier. He seemed totally out of place amid that group, and remained silent while the nerds engaged in an animated free-for-all.
His keen eyes locked onto Laura as she took the seat next to Gray.
When Gray leaned forward and rested his forearms on the table, everyone fell silent as if on cue. 'First off,' Gray said in the suddenly calm conference room, 'I'd like to introduce to you the newest member of our team, Dr. Laura Aldridge.' There were a couple of weak nods, but no chorus of welcome.
Laura was instantly on guard. Gray turned to the woman on his left.
'Dr. Aldridge, this is Dr. Margaret Bickham. She's our director of artificial intelligence — that's 'software.'' The severe woman nodded — her lips pinched so tightly they were puckered and wrinkled, her mouth cutting across her face in a perfectly straight line that was neither a smile nor a frown. 'To her left,' Gray said, lying his palm out toward the pointed end of the oval table, 'is Dr. Georgi Filatov, our head of computer operations.'
'So pleased to meet you, I'm sure,' the man said with a thick Russian accent. He looked like some legendary chess champion or a mentalist who bent spoons with brainpower. His bushy, graying hair served to double the apparent size of his head.
'Georgi keeps the main computer's hardware operational. Next is Dr. Philip Griffith,' Gray said, nodding to the man seated across the table. 'Dr. Griffith is director of robotics. I guess that's self-explanatory.' The man waggled his [garbled] to wave clumsily at Laura, his eyes smiling behind thick glasses and his grin spreading wide his mutton chop sideburns, revealing a perfectly unmatched set of crooked teeth.
Laura's eyes moved on to the next man — to the hard stare from across the table that hadn't left her since she entered the room.
'And this is Franz Hoblenz. He's my security chief.' The man nodded curtly at Laura. He was large, had the weathered look of an outdoorsman, and regarded her so openly that his manner was fairly suggestive of a baseness — that particularly male baseness — from which Laura instinctively recoiled.
'Next up is Dr. Dorothy Holliday. She's our 'epidemiologist.''
Everyone laughed, but the joke was completely lost on Laura.
'I'm actually in charge of 'E and V,'' the blushing woman said, her voice surprisingly high in pitch. 'Errors and viruses,' she translated.
Laura's gaze lingered on the relatively talkative girl. She was young — early twenties, at most — and pretty. She had an engaging but self-conscious smile, without the grace and ease that maturity would bring. She was Laura — only a decade or more younger.
'We just call her 'Doc' Holliday,' the soldier from across the table growled. The joking reference to the ancient gunfighter drew titters from the group. The muscular man's comment had surprised Laura, not because of his deep and gravelly voice — which was appropriate to his appearance — but because of his thick Texas accent.
She had expected the blond security chief to be German.
Gray completed his introductions with the heads of production and space operations, who looked to Laura like more clones from Gray's mad scientist factory.
'Okay,' Gray said, changing tones and holding his hands out in query, 'what's the latest error report?'
Dorothy Holliday poked a pen at her palmtop computer. 'We had a pneumatic door close right in the face of a guy at the gym two hours ago.'
'Was it verified?' Margaret Bickham asked from the opposite end of the table.
'Yep,' Dorothy replied, bobbing her head somewhat awkwardly in affirmation. 'The guy had just finished, like, having a humongous fight with his wife in front of God and everybody. When he stomped off, he walked' — she clapped her upright palms together in demonstration—'right into the door. Must've been twenty people standing around who saw it. Word I got was they had a good laugh,' she said, ready to laugh herself but getting no takers from her somber audience. 'Anyway, the door operated normally after that. Phase one's scan was negative.'
When nobody commented, Dorothy arched her eyebrows and compressed her lips into a frown, then moved on. Laura smiled at the girl's unaffectedly juvenile manner — her every feeling displayed naturally on a face not yet adept at the art of deception.
Dorothy's palmtop made quiet bings with every press of her pen. 'Then,' she continued, her voice little more than a squeak that you had to strain hard to hear, 'about an hour ago, we had a customer in Copenhagen — one of our former checkers, as a matter of fact — who complained that her account balance was, like, way off. We looked into it, and the account showed a several hundred thousand dollar balance.'
'Jesus,' Georgi Filatov said, shaking his head in disgust. The bushy mop of his hair swayed with the motion, and he leaned forward to exchange glances with the others.
'When finally…' Dorothy began.
'Another error?' Margaret asked, seemingly incredulous.
Dorothy frowned again and nodded. 'A vapor lamp in the parking lot of our Taiwan facility burned out. One of the security guards reported it, but the outage obviously should've triggered an operator notice.'
'I'm gonna send a team to Taipei to check it out,' Hoblenz said to Gray. 'That's the second fault at the same facility. Security integrity could've been compromised.'
Gray nodded. 'Okay. What are we doing about the problem? Margaret?' he asked, starting on his left with the director of artificial intelligence. She lifted a metal briefcase from the floor, which she methodically placed on the table and opened with popping sounds from its latches. As she leafed through her papers, Laura studied the woman. She was a goodly number of pounds overweight, and she wore glasses, as did everyone there other than Laura, Gray, and Hoblenz. And Dorothy, Laura amended as she looked around.
Sitting at opposite ends of the table, Dorothy and Margaret formed 'bookends' of a sort. They were the only women at the table… until Laura's arrival.
Laura glanced back and forth between the two women.
Dorothy's light brown hair was thin and straight and pinned back from her face with barrettes. Small wisps dangled here and there in an unintended but attractive way. Margaret's dark and graying thatch sprouted into what looked like an army helmet pressed tightly around her skull. Neither woman wore any makeup to speak of, although the fresh-scrubbed youth of Dorothy's skin obviated any real need for it.
And both clearly paid no attention to clothes.
Margaret wore maroon polyester slacks and a military-style white shirt complete with epaulets and piping and a buttoned-up breast pocket filled to the bursting point with some hidden cargo. Dorothy wore faded, baggy blue jeans and a tight-fitting sleeveless blouse over a frame that was all skin and bones.
Laura sat between the two, wondering idly which she resembled more. It was then she felt, more than saw, that Gray was watching her.
Suddenly alert, Laura grew more and more conscious of Gray's presence next to her — of his unwavering and unnerving scrutiny. She made certain she didn't catch Gray's eye — looking anywhere but in his direction — and in so doing her gaze ran headlong into the unblinking stare of Hoblenz. The man didn't bother to avert his eyes, brazenly checking her out and not at all disturbed at being caught. It was instead Laura who felt compelled to turn away.
'Jesus Chest, Margaret!' Filatov burst out. 'We don't have all night!'
Margaret ignored the barb. In fact, she slowed her search through the briefcase to a crawl, checking each nook and cranny in utter disregard of her colleague's histrionics. Filatov snorted like a bull, scanning the table for support.
Finally, Margaret cleared her throat and adjusted her glasses. She placed a single sheet of paper on the table, wove her fingers together, and nested her chin in the mesh. 'We asked the computer to run a pattern- recognition routine on the errors to date.'
'What did it turn up?' Gray asked.
'Nothing.'
There was a moment of silence, then Filatov exploded. 'Goddamn!' He slammed his hand on the table with a resounding boom, causing Laura to flinch.
Margaret couldn't have cared less. 'The errors appear to be random,' she continued as if she were in a different universe from Filatov. 'It has instituted a constant monitoring, though, and will report any matches it finds.'
'She's a Vulcan!' Filatov shouted, his hands gesturing wildly. 'Not a Vulcan — a Klingon!'
