“How ... I mean, how do they expect me to take this over?”
“That’s your problem,” she responded evenly. “I’m not the one with the degrees from Harvard and MIT.”
Carson spent the rest of the day rereading the early experiments, staying away from the distracting convolutions of Burt’s lab notes. Toward the end of the day he began to feel more upbeat. There was a new recombinant DNA technique he had worked with at MIT that Burt hadn’t been aware of. Carson diagrammed the problem, breaking it down into its parts, then further breaking down those parts until it had been separated into irreducibles.
As the day drew to a close, Carson began to sketch out an experimental protocol of his own. There was, he realized, still a lot to work with. He stood up, stretched, and watched as de Vaca plugged her notebook into the network jack.
“Don’t forget to upload,” she said. “I’m sure Big Brother will want to check over your work tonight.”
“Thanks,” said Carson, scoffing inwardly at the thought that Scopes would waste time looking over his notes. Scopes and Burt had clearly been friends, but Carson was still just a grade-three technician from the Edison office. He uploaded the day’s data, stored the computer in its cubbyhole for the night, then followed de Vaca as she made the long slow trip out of the Fever Tank.
Back in the ready room, Carson had unbuckled his visor and was unzipping the lower part of his biohazard suit when he glanced over at his assistant. She had already stowed her suit and was shaking out her hair, and Carson was surprised to see not the chunky
She turned and caught his look.
“Keep your eyes to yourself,
She slung her handbag over her shoulder and strode out while the others in the ready room erupted into laughter.
The room was octagonal. Each of its eight walls rose ponderously toward a groined ceiling that hung fifty feet above, softly illuminated by invisible cove lighting. Seven walls were covered with enormous flat-panel computer screens, currently dark. The eighth wall contained a door, flush with the wall, small but extremely thick to accommodate the room’s external soundproofing. Although the room stood sixty stories above the Boston harbor, there were no windows and no views. The floor was laid in rare Tanzanian
The exterior of the door was made of a thick, banded metal alloy. Instead of a handle, there was an EyeDentify retinal scanner and a FingerMatrix hand geometry reader. Next to the door, beneath a sterilizing ultraviolet light, sat a row of foam slippers, their sizes imprinted in large numbers on the toes. Below an overhead camera that swiveled ceaselessly to and fro, a large sign read, SPEAK SOFTLY AT ALL TIMES PLEASE.
Beyond lay a long, dimly lit corridor leading to a security station and an elevator bank. On either side of the corridor, a series of closed doors led to the security offices, kitchens, infirmary, air-purifying electrostatic precipitators, and servants’ quarters necessary to fill the various requirements of the octagonal room’s occupant.
The door closest to the octagon was open. The room inside was paneled in cherry, with a marble fireplace, a parquet floor covered with a Persian rug, and several large Hudson River School paintings on the wall. A magnificent mahogany desk stood in the center of the room, its only electronic device an old dial telephone. A suited figure sat behind the desk, writing on a piece of paper.
Inside the huge octagonal room itself, a spotlight was recessed into the very point of the vaulted ceiling, and it dropped a pencil beam of pure white light down to the midpoint of the room. Centered in the pool of light was a battered sofa of 1970s styling. Its arms were dark with use and wifts of stuffing protruded from the threadbare nap. Silver duct tape sealed the front edge. As ugly and frayed as it was, the sofa had one essential quality: it was extremely comfortable.
Two cheap faux-antique end tables stood guard at either side of the sofa. A large telephone and several electronic devices in black brushed metal boxes stood on one of the end tables, and a video camera, affixed to one end, was pointed toward the sofa. The other end table was bare, but it bore the legacy of innumerable greasy pizza boxes and sticky Coke cans.
In front of the sofa sat a large worktable. In contrast to the other furniture, it was breathtakingly beautiful. The top was carved from bird’s-eye maple, polished and oiled to bring out its fractal perfection. The maple was surrounded by a border of lignum vitae, black and heavy, in which was inlaid a strip of oyster walnut in a complex geometric pattern. This pattern showed the
The rest of the vast room was clinically sterile and empty, the only exception being a large musical instrument that stood perched at the periphery of the circle of light. It was a six-octave, quadruple-string pianoforte, supposedly built for Beethoven in 1820 by the Hamburg firm of Otto Schachter. The shoulders and lyre of the piano’s rosewood sound box were ornately carved in a rococo scene of nymphs and water gods.
A figure in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and beaded Sioux Indian slippers sat hunched at the piano, head drooping, motionless fingers dead on the ivory keys. For several minutes, all was still. Then the profound silence was shattered with a massive diminished-seventh chord, sforzando, resolving to a melancholy C minor: the opening bars of Beethoven’s last piano sonata, Opus 111. The maestoso introduction echoed upward into the great vaulted space. The introduction evolved into the allegro con brio ed appassionato, the first motive notes filling the room with sound, drowning out the beep of an incoming video call. The movement continued, the slight figure hunched over the keyboard, his untidy hair shaking with the effort. The beep sounded again, unnoticed, and finally one massive wall screen sprang to life, revealing a mud-streaked, rain-spattered face.
The notes suddenly stopped, the sound of the piano dying away quickly. The figure rose with a curse, slamming the keyboard cover shut.
“Brent,” the face called. “Are you there?”
Scopes walked over to the battered couch, flounced down on it cross-legged, and dragged the computer keyboard into his lap. He typed some commands, then looked up at the vast image on the screen.
The mud-spattered face belonged to a man currently seated inside a Range Rover. Beyond the vehicle’s rain-streaked windows lay a green clearing, a fresh gash in the flank of the surrounding Cameroon jungle. The clearing was a sea of mud, churned into lunar shapes by boots and tires. Scarred tree trunks were pulled up along the edges of the clearing. A few feet from the Range Rover, several dozen cages made of pipe and hog wire were stacked into rickety piles. Furry hands and toes poked from the hog wire, and miserable childlike eyes peered out at the world.
“How you doing, Rod?” Scopes said wearily, turning to face the camera on the end table.
“The weather sucks.”
“Raining here too,” Scopes said.
“Yeah, but you haven’t seen rain until you’ve—”
“I’ve been waiting three days to hear from you, Falfa,” Scopes interrupted. “What the hell’s been going on?”
The face broke into an ingratiating smile. “We had problems getting gas for the trucks. I’ve had a whole village out in the jungle, at a dollar a day per person, for the last two weeks. They’re all rich now, and we’ve got fifty-six baby chimps.” He grinned and wiped his nose, which only served to smear more mud across his face. Or maybe it wasn’t mud.
Scopes looked away. “I want them in New Mexico in six weeks. With no more than a fifty-percent mortality rate.”
“Fifty percent! That’ll be tough,” Falfa said. “Usually—”
“Yo, Falfa!”
“Excuse me?”
“You think that’s tough? See what happens to Rodney P. Falfa if more corpses than live bodies arrive in New Mexico. Look at them, sitting out there in the goddamn rain.”
