Turpin bent down to look at it with him. “Problem?” he asked.
Emmanuel shrugged. “Functionally, no. But I’d like it to look better… more finished. I’m thinking that if we had metal half-rings we could set onto the bottom edges of the Mylar tent we could have a product with a nice square bottom.”
Turpin looked at it for a moment, then said, “That’d be nice, but your contract doesn’t depend on it being pretty. It only depends on the stazed cask standing up to the tests we’re doing next week.”
Emmanuel studied the man, “That won’t be a problem.” The tests consisted of things intended to prove the casks couldn’t be broken into. They would strike it with large blocks of concrete, attempting to damage it in situ or knock it loose from its foundation screws—making sure a terrorist couldn’t move a cask. They’d try to cut into the Stade with oxyfuel, plasma, and arc torches. He said, “Stade’s material testing results allow calculations that show that none of those tests will damage it.”
Turpin grinned and shrugged. “I know. But by law, it has to be done anyway. Then you guys get your money.”
Emmanuel nodded, “Yes, sir.”
Turpin studied him, “You must be immensely proud of your son.”
“Well, yes. Though I think he was very lucky his crazy theory worked. And that Mr. X heard about it and was able to make a device based on it.”
Art clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep telling yourself that. I don’t think much luck was involved.”
Emmanuel inclined his head. “You’re too kind.” He looked back over at the stazed cask, “Is there anything else you need us to do before we leave?”
“Nope. Tell Kaem we should have the tests done by the end of next week. Then we should be able to disburse the funds for this first cask. Once that’s done, I’m afraid our bean counters will want to try to negotiate a better price for the rest of the casks.”
“Bean counters?” Emmanuel asked, unfamiliar with the term.
“You didn’t grow up here did you.”
Emmanuel shook his head. “I was born in Tanzania.”
“It’s an Americanism. Meaning accountants and other kinds of financial people without whom we couldn’t do business, but still manage to resent.”
“Ah,” Emmanuel said with an understanding nod. “They’re everywhere. My wife’s the bean counter in our family.”
“Mine too, my friend. Mine too,” Turpin said. “Say hi to Kaem for me.” He turned and left.
As Emmanuel rode back to Charlottesville, he mused on how much respect people seemed to have for his son. They all seem to think he’s accomplished far more than he actually has.
Chapter Six
When Dr. Will Jonas arrived in the room assigned for their meeting, he was surprised to see Norm already in the room, an older man beside him. Norm introduced the older man as Gunnar Schmidt, Staze’s genius fabricator.
There was a large coffin-sized Stade sitting on a pair of tables. It had a laptop sitting on one end of it. He looked at it more carefully. The coffin looked like a piece of equipment made out of Stade, rather than simply being a Stade.
Indicating it, Jonas turned to Schmidt. “Did you make this… device?”
Schmidt nodded. “It’s a prototype for what we thought you might be able to use here in the hospital for stazing patients.”
Just then the door opened and a group of people started coming in. Jonas knew some of them were “pre-hospital” people, in charge of the EMTs and ambulances that provided care out in the field. There were a couple of emergency physicians, of whom Jonas knew the notoriously crotchety Morgan Warfield. The people in suits were likely administrators. They’d be the people responsible for coming up with the money to buy stazers if the medical people thought they’d be useful.
Jonas still didn’t see Seba so he turned to Norm Tibbets and quietly asked, “Where’s Mr. Seba?”
Tibbets smiled, “He’ll be along in a bit. He asked us to get started without him. We have the clips you asked for, of the chick and my dog Saturn being stazed and destazed. We thought we could show the clips, then explain the prototype. Kaem should be along by then.”
Nervous about starting without the star of the show, Jonas nonetheless cleared his throat and asked everyone to take their seats. “As you know…” he began, and launched into a brief description of stazing and how one of his patients had been stazed to await treatment for a currently untreatable cancer.
He finished up by telling the audience that Kaem Seba, the young man they’d all seen, either at his talk or on video, had been delayed, but that his team was going to show some video and give a brief demonstration of their prototype while they were waiting.
No one was surprised by the video of the chick being stazed and unstazed since they’d seen it in Kaem’s talk. When Norm showed them the video of Saturn being stazed, there were some exclamations, especially when he showed them the edited clip demonstrating that—when the segment during stasis had been removed—it looked like nothing happened to the dog.
When the video was finished, Morgan Warfield was frowning. He lifted his hand for attention and when Jonas indicated him, he said, “And this dog was okay afterward?”
Norman said, “He seems completely fine. He doesn’t seem to realize anything’s happened.” Norm went on to describe how Saturn had now spent a total of several weeks in stasis, essentially any time that Norm couldn’t be with him.
Warfield shook his head, “I find it
