Gordian thought for another minute, feeling the warm sunlight press against his face. Then he nodded to himself and pushed off the outcrop.
“Let me get back to you in a day or two, Len,” he said. “I’ll make a few calls and start that ball of yours rolling in the meantime.”
Pete Nimec opened his medicine cabinet, looked inside, frowned, shut it, studied his bristled cheeks in its mirrored door, sighed, bent to open the cabinet under the bathroom sink, reached in, foraged through it a minute, frowned, shut it, stood to examine his weekend scruff of beard again, sighed, and then reopened the medicine cabinet for his fourth sure-to-be-futile inspection of its variously sized compartments.
Nimec hated having to rush around, and never more than on Monday mornings. Especially when his rushing seemed to lead nowhere.
The knock on his bathroom door came just as his lips started to take yet another stymied downturn.
He tightened the belt on his robe.
“C’mon in.”
A moment later Christopher Caulfield stood looking at him from the doorway. A month from his twelfth birthday, all four feet and change of him combed, scrubbed, and dressed, he was eminently ready for school.
Nimec noticed the kid’s bright expression, then saw the cell phone in his outstretched hand.
“Hey,” he said, his latest frown interrupted in progress. “Where’d you dig that up?”
Chris continued to beam.
“You know mom’s old wooden box, or whatever it is, with the drawers?”
“The one near the front door.”
“Nope, her other one,” Chris said. “On that sort of table thing outside the living room.”
“Aaah,” Nimec said. “I owe you, skipper.”
“Like enough for a half hour up in the dojo later?”
“Like you finish your homework soon’s you come home and we make it an hour.” Nimec gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Linda getting anywhere with my clean dress shirts?”
“She found a white shirt that only stinks a little in the other bathroom.”
“Won’t do.”
“That’s what
Nimec scratched the stubble under his chin with deepening self-consciousness.
“No,” he said. “I must’ve looked everywhere.”
Chris motioned toward the sink cabinet. “Down there, too?”
“Everywhere.”
“Bad news.”
“I know.”
“We’re gonna be late, Pete.”
“Not if we rush we won’t.” That loathsome word.
Nimec reached for the shelf where he’d put his wristwatch before climbing into the shower… well, technically speaking, where he’d put the WristLink wearable microcomputer that did everything under the sun but find the basic necessities for getting him shaved, dressed, and out of the house in time to drive the kids to their respective schools before heading on to his office at UpLink San Jose, where Nimec presided over the company’s welfare as Chief of Global Security, a job he could hopefully carry out with greater success than his latest inexpert shot at solo parenting. This while Annie — Nimec’s bride of four months, and long-experienced mother of the poor children left in his bumbling care — was off in Houston making men and women into astronauts.
“This contraption says it’s a quarter to eight,” Nimec said, glancing at the WristLink as he buckled it on. “Still gives us fifteen minutes to get out of here.”
Chris checked his own watch.
“Pete, mine says it’s almost
“And mine’s synched to radio signals from the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which makes it official,” Nimec said. “Think yours can beat that?”
Chris looked at him.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “And I can beat you at karate.”
“Someday you might,” Nimec said. “Meanwhile, I need to call your mother.”
He took the cellular from Chris, flipped it open, held it up to his cheek.
A ring tone in his ear, and then Annie’s name appeared on his caller identification display… as he imagined would be true in the reverse.
“Hi, Pete.”
Nimec smiled. Hearing her gave him a lift. It also made him feel like a lovesick adolescent. She’d been gone four days, what was that? But to be fair with himself, it had been like this since they got back from their honeymoon. Three or four days a week, every week. The separations demanded by Annie’s unfinished job commitments weren’t your standard ingredients for newly wedded bliss.
“Annie, you at work?”
“I wish,” she said. “Stuck in traffic.”
“Where about?”
“Maybe a half mile from the Center,” she said, using NASA shorthand for the immense complex of research, operational, training, and administrative office facilities that constituted the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center between Houston and Galveston. “Routine maintenance. They’ve closed two lanes on the interstate.”
“Lousy timing.”
“Couldn’t be worse,” she said. “Talk about a screw-up, Pete. Orion Three launches in about a month…”
“… and we’ve got the shuttle crew in the last stage of intensive training. Full phase mission sims, a rendezvous and docking run-through this morning. So what happens? Some geniuses on the Texas Highways Board decide
“You’d think they’d have the sense to coordinate with LBJ,” Nimec said.
“You sure would… and I left the apartment forty minutes early to avoid this jam, if you can believe it.” Annie sighed. “Anyway, enough griping. Everything okay at home?”
“Yeah,” Nimec said. “Well, pretty much. Got a small problem. Or two. But if you’re driving…”
“More like staring at the butt end of a tanker truck,” she said. “What are ‘nonedible animal fat products,’ by the way?”
“No idea. Why?”
“Because the term’s so disgusting it fascinates me,” Annie said. “And because a sign on the truck says it’s carrying them and warns not to tailgate.”
“Really, Annie, this’ll wait until you get off the road… ”
“Come on, I’m hands-free with my phone,” she said. “What can’t you find this morning?”
“How’d you know—?”
“Pete, you have the same problem or two
Nimec cleared his throat.
“Fresh razor blades,” he said. “Been looking for them everywhere.”
“Did you try your bathroom closet?”
Nimec turned toward the closet door right behind him, raised his eyebrows in consternation.
“Well, no…”
“There should be a bunch on the middle shelf.”
