chocolate milk, “is from spending three months under a sun lamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you.”
Edward looked closely, lifting Vergil’s lip with one finger. “So they were. Still discolored, though.”
“Yes,” Vergil said, rubbing his lip and taking a deep breath. “Well. I’ll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk in private, or at least with nobody paying attention.”
Edward steered him to the smoker’s corner, where three die-hard puffers were scattered among six tables. “Listen, I mean it,” he said as they unloaded then trays. “You’ve changed. You’re looking good.”
“I’ve changed more than you know.” Vergil’s tone was motion-picture-ominous, and he delivered the line with a theatrical lift of his brows. “How’s Gail?”
“Doing well. We’ve been married a year.”
“Hey, congratulations.” Vergil’s gaze shifted down to his food—pineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana cream pie. “Notice something else?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
Edward squinted in concentration. “Uh.”
“Look closer.”
“I’m not sure. Well, yes. You’re not wearing glasses. Contacts?”
“No. I don’t need them anymore.”
“And you’re a snappy dresser. Who’s dressing you now? I hope she’s as sexy as she is tasteful.”
“Candice,” he said, grinning the old and familiar self-deprecating grin, but ending it with an uncharacteristic leer. “I’ve been fired from my job. Four months now. I’m living on savings.”
“Hold it,” Edward said. “That’s a bit crowded. Why not do a linear breakdown? You got a job. Where?”
“I ended up at Genetron in Enzyme Valley.”
“North Torrey Pines Road?”
“That’s the place. Infamous. And you’ll be hearing more very soon. They’re putting out common stock any second now. It’ll shoot off the board. They’ve broken through with MABs.”
“Biochips?”
He nodded. “They have some that work.”
“What?” Edward’s brows lifted sharply.
“Microscopic logic circuits. You inject them into the human body, they set up shop where they’re told and troubleshoot. With Dr. Michael Bernard’s approval.”
The angle of Edward’s brows steepened. “Jesus, Vergil. Bernard’s almost a saint. He’s had his picture on the cover of
“It’s supposed to be secret-stock, breakthrough, everything. I have my contacts inside the place, though. Ever heard of Hazel Overton?”
Edward shook his head. “Should I?”
“Probably not. I thought she hated my guts. Turns out she had grudging respect for me. She gave me a call two months back and asked if I wanted to front a paper for her on F-factors in
Edward whistled. “Make me rich, huh?”
“If that’s what you want. Or you can spend some time listening to me before rushing off to your broker.”
“Of course. So tell me more.”
Vergil hadn’t touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. “I got in on the ground floor about five years ago. With my medical school background and computer experience, I was a shoo-in for Enzyme Valley. I went up and down North Torrey Pines Road with my resumes, and I was Weed by Genetron.”
“That simple?”
“No.” Vergil picked at the cottage cheese with a fork, then laid the fork down. “I did some rearranging of the records. Credit records, school records, that sort of thing. Nobody’s caught on yet. I came in as hot stuff and I made my mark early with protein assemblies and the preliminary biochip research. Genetron has big money backers, and we were given as much as we needed. Four months and I was doing my own work, sharing a lab but allowed to do independent research. I made some breakthroughs.” He tossed his hand nonchalantly. “Then I went off on tangents. I kept on doing my regular work, but after hours…The management found out, and fired me. I managed to…save part of my experiments. But I haven’t exactly been cautious, or judicious. So now the experiment’s going on outside the lab.”
Edward had always regarded Vergil as ambitious and more than a trifle cracked. In their school years, Vergil’s relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Edward had long ago concluded that science, for Vergil, was like an unattainable woman, who suddenly opens her arms to him before he’s ready for mature love— leaving him afraid he’ll forever blow the chance, lose the prize, screw up royally. Apparently, he had. “Outside the lab? I don’t get you.”
“I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I’ll explain more.”
“You want a ten thousand dollar exam?”
“Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, PET, thermogram, everything.”
“I don’t know if I can get access to all that equipment, Vergil. Natural-source PET full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn’t pick a more expensive—”
Then ultrasound and NMR. That’s all you need.”
“I’m an obstetrician, Vergil, not a glamour-boy lab tech, OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you’re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you.”
Vergil leaned forward, almost putting his elbow into the pie, but swinging wide at the last instant by scant millimeters. The old Vergil would have hit it square. “Examine me closely, and you’ll…” He narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “Just examine me.”
“So I make an appointment for ultrasound and NMR. Who’s going to pay?”
“I have medical. I messed with the personnel files at Genetron before I left. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars and they’ll never check, never suspect And it has to be absolutely confidential.”
Edward shook his head. “You’re asking for a lot, Vergil.”
“Do you want to make medical history, or not?”
“Is this a joke?”
Vergil shook his head. “Not on you, roomie.”
Edward made the arrangements that afternoon, filling in the forms himself. From what he understood of hospital paperwork, so long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. He didn’t charge for his services. After all, Vergil had turned his piss blue. They were friends.
Edward stayed past his usual hours. He gave Gail a bare outline of what he was doing; she sighed the sigh of a doctor’s wife and told him she’d leave a late snack on the table for when he came home.
Vergil returned at ten P.M. and met Edward at the appointed place, on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein Wing. Edward sat on an orange plastic chair, reading a desk copy of
Edward signaled the night supervisor that this was his patient and conducted Vergil to the examination area, hand on his elbow. Neither spoke much. Vergil stripped and Edward arranged him on the paper-covered padded table. “Your ankles are swollen,” he said, feeling them. They were solid, not puffy. Healthy, but odd. “Hm,” Edward said pointedly, glancing at Vergil. Vergil raised his eyebrows and cocked his head; his “you ain’t seen nothing yet” look.
“Okay. I’m going to run several scans on you and combine the results in an imager. Ultrasound first” Edward ran paddles over Vergil’s still form, hitting those areas difficult for the bigger unit to reach. He then swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound diagnostic unit—the hum-hole, so-called by the nurses. After twelve separate sweeps, head to toe, he removed the table. Vergil was sweating slightly, his eyes closed.
