produced. Lady Pringle had sworn it was the Duke, she would recognize him anywhere. The judge had asked to see the photo. He found it to be essentially a close-up of a man’s genitalia, though his companion’s face was clearly identifiable. Laura was giggling so helplessly that he felt sure she did not see him refill her glass. As he went on with how the judge had asked Lady Pringle how she could be so sure it was the Duke, he raised his glass and Laura imitated him unthinkingly. He let her swallow her wine before he told her Lady Pringle’s reply, which had so convulsed the court that the judge had had to order it cleared.
He sat back and watched her. Things were going splendidly. She had abandoned her affected flirtatious attitude and, momentarily, her refined accent.
“Oh, go on with you,” she said, her vowels sliding obliquely through a range of East Anglian diphthongs.
The waiter had pushed a trolley of sickeningly elaborate French pastries to their table. As he expected, she chose the creamiest and attacked it with the unabashed eagerness of a schoolgirl.
Over coffee she became earnest again, watching her vowels and pressing him about politics. She repeated the common newspaper cant about irresponsible corporations pushing questionable new products into the world without a thought for social impact. Peterson resigned himself to sitting through this standard lecture and then, without quite realizing it, found himself thinking aloud about matters he had shelved for a long time. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong,” he said suddenly. “The wrong turning came when we started going for the socially relevant research in the first place. We accepted the idea that science was like other areas, where you make a product and the whole thing can be run from the top down.”
“Well, surely it can,” Laura said. “If the right people are at the top—”
“There
“It seems to me what we have is
“Too much applied work without really understanding it, yes. Without pursuing the basics, you get a generation of technicians. That’s what we have now.”
“More checking to see the unforeseen side effects—”
“To see you must have vision,” he said earnestly. “I’m just beginning to catch on to that fact. All this talk of bloody ‘socially relevant’ work assumes a bureaucrat somewhere is the best judge of what’s useful. So now the problems are outstripping the can-do types, the folks with limited horizons, and, and…”
He stopped, puzzled with himself at this outburst. It had altered the carefully cultivated tone of the evening, perhaps fatally. Maybe spending the day with Renfrew had done it. For a moment there he had been arguing fervently against the very point of view that had brought him so rapidly to the top.
He took a long pull of coffee and chuckled warmly. “I rather got off the beam on that one, didn’t I? Must be the wine,” Properly played, the momentary outburst could be used to show that he was passionate about the world, involved, independent thinker, etc., all of which might well appeal. He set to work insuring that they did.
The moon was high above the trees. An owl swooped silently across the patch of sky above the clearing. Cautiously he slid his arm out from under her head and looked at his watch. Past midnight. Goddamn. He stood up and started dressing. She lay still, sprawled quite unself-consciously, legs flung wide as he had left her.
She was lying on his jacket. He stooped to retrieve it and in the moonlight saw tears on her cheeks. Oh, shit. Surely he wasn’t going to have to cope with that too.
“Better put your clothes on,” he said. “It’s getting late.”
She sat up and fumbled with her dress. “Ian,” she began in a small voice, “that’s never happened to me before.”
“Come on,” he said, not believing her. “You can’t tell me you were a virgin.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
He searched for her meaning. “You never—?”
“I—not with a man—not like that—I never had—” She stumbled over her words, trailing off, embarrassed.
So that was it. He didn’t help her out. He felt weary and impatient, unmoved by her implied compliment. It was a point of honor to satisfy them, no more. God knows she had taken long enough over it. Still, it had been a better job than that Japanese nymphomaniac in La Jolla, Kiefer’s wife. There was now an unpleasant twinge when he thought of her. He had done the usual—indeed, more. She had come again and again and seemed insatiable. There had been a kind of feverish clutching to her, a thing he had noticed in many women lately. But that was their problem, not his. He sighed and pushed away the memory.
He shook out his jacket, brushing away blades of grass. She was silent now, still fiddling with the tie on her dress, probably trying to make it into the same bow she’d left home with. He led the way from the clearing, empty of any further desire to touch her. When she slipped a hand into his he thought it polite to let it stay there; he would be coming to Cambridge again, after all. Absent-mindedly he scratched a midge bite on his neck that he’d collected while tussling in the grass. Tomorrow was going to be another long one. He flexed his shoulders. A cold ache had settled into the muscles at the base of his neck. Let’s see, there was the subcommittee meeting tomorrow, and some backup reading on the Sacred Cow War still sputtering along in India… He realized with a start that he was living slightly in the future these days, as an ingrained habit. At Renfrew’s he’d been distracted by thoughts of dinner and wine. At the restaurant he had watched Laura’s hair and thought how it might look fanned out across a crisp white pillow. Then, immediately after the act, his mind had drifted on to the next day and what he had to do. Christ, a donkey driven by the carrot.
He was faintly surprised when they emerged from the damp woods into the moonlight and he remembered he was still in Cambridge.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
GREGORY MARKHAM WAS SURPRISED WHEN IAN Peterson appeared in the laboratory, striding purposefully down the lanes of electronic gear. After the usual greeting Greg said, “I would have imagined you didn’t have much time these days for secondary efforts like this.”
Peterson looked around the bay. “I was in the neighborhood. I saw Renfrew a few days ago and have been busy since. Wanted to talk to you and see this new Wickham woman.”
“Oh, about that. I don’t see the necessity of my going Stateside right away. There’s—”
Peterson’s face hardened. “I’ve cleared your way with NSF and Brookhaven. I’ve done all I can from my end. I should think you’d no objection to running interference for Renfrew back there.”
“Well, I
“Good. I’ll expect you on the flight tomorrow, as planned.”
“I’ve got a lot of interesting theory to go over here, things Cathy brought—”
“Take it with you.”
Markham sighed. Peterson was not the easy-going breed of administrator popular in the US, open to suggestion even after a decision had been made. “Well, it will hold things up, but…”
“Where’s Wickham?”
“Ah, down that way. She came in yesterday and John’s still showing her around.”
A slim, rather bony woman approached. “Just finished the tour,” she said to Markham. “Pretty impressive. I haven’t met you, I think,” she continued, turning her large brown eyes to Peterson.
“No, but I know of you. Ian Peterson.”
“So you’re the guy who got me strong-armed out here.”
“More or less. You’re needed.”
“I was needed in Pasadena, too,” she said grimly. “You must’ve lit a fire under some big honcho upstairs.”
