COSMOS magazine

Friday, June 20

Payback stood tensely behind sheltering branches, leaning on the baseball bat his father had given Wayne for his ninth birthday, lenses held to his eyes. Payback could remember how the old fart had made Wayne practice hitting the ball and had grunted scornfully when Wayne swung and missed.

"You ain't never gonna make the major leagues, son, that's for sure," the old son of a bitch had said. Later, Payback had come out and used the bat to break one of the windows in the old man's shop. When the prick had shown up swinging his long leather belt, Payback had ducked out and left Wayne to take the whipping. Poor dumb Wayne, never had any idea why he was being punished.

There was only one vehicle in the MTJ parking lot besides Drew Chang's, and it was not yet 7:45. Of course a large part of the place was still a mess, with clean-up work turning it into a trash heap of broken concrete and steel. It was a wonder any work could be done inside at all. But the damned papers said at least one of his bombs had failed to detonate. For three days Payback had watched the damaged but guarded MTJ Lab Building, using binoculars. Chang usually worked until at least 9:00 or 10:00, so there was a good chance this was the break Payback had been waiting for.

Friday, June 20

Drew gathered his loose papers from the console and turned to his laptop to make the final entry of the day into the log that recorded each step of his research. He had been so engrossed in his work he had forgotten about eating and drinking all day; his throat and mouth were parched. The air in the hallway still stank of floating dust and concrete particles. He walked to the Oasis dispenser, filled a paper cup, walked back to his chair. I should be going, he thought. Maureen's going to be really pissed if I don't show up. I'll just check the data printouts, then I'll go.

Friday, June 20

One of the two lighted windows in the MTJ lab building went dark. Payback's pulse raced as he watched the outer door, waiting to see who would come out. If it was Drew Chang, he would have to wait for another chance. Dr. Rutherford had always given him strict orders to be careful, not take any risk of getting caught, and that meant not trying to grab Chang if anyone else was around. But it won't be Drew Chang, he thought. Chang had been staying later than this.

A security guard passed in front of the door, speaking on a radio.

Friday, June 20

Out of the corner of his eye, Drew saw something move in the doorway and looked up from the computer printouts he had been reading.

"Oh hi, John. Calling it a night?"

"Yeah, I'm meeting Susan and a couple of friends for drinks. Care to join us?"

"Thanks, but I promised Maureen... oh shit! Do you have the time?" Drew glanced at his bare wrist.

"Eight-oh-three."

"Damn, I've gotta finish up here and get going."

John stood in the doorway for a moment longer as if waiting for Wayne to walk out with him, then shrugged. "See ya Monday."

"Yeah, have a good weekend." Drew barely glanced up from the printout. He read until the phone rang again. Caller ID showed Maureen, calling to make sure he'd left. She knows me so well, he thought with a rush of fondness. Rather than waste time answering the phone, he stuffed the printout into a drawer and walked out, locking the door behind him.

He nodded to the guard at the main door, left the building, entered his car, headed for home. At the exit from MTJ's main drive, a figure loomed out of the shadows. With unbelievable speed and brutality, the man smashed his side window into a rain of shattered fragments. Drew Chang cried out, but a rough hand had him by the hair, a knife jabbed at his throat. "Undo the fucking belt," a voice said. Terrified, he unclipped his seat belt. As the strip of fabric withdrew, the car-jacker had the door unlocked, wrenched open, and Drew fell into stinging gravel. All of this in a blur of panic. Then nothing.

Friday, June 20

It was nine-thirty in the evening before Paul remembered to check his voice mail and found a message from Roberta Treadwell, the third since Monday: "Seems as though we're doomed to play telephone tag forever. Please call me, home or office, any time night or day."

He hit Reply and she answered immediately.

"Dr. Gibson! I thought we were never going to hook up. Can you bear with me just a sec?" Through the speaker phone, he could hear running water. "I found a puppy abandoned on the highway. Poor little thing was covered with fleas." Roberta soothed the puppy. "Be still, just a minute longer. What shall I call you? Basil, I think... That's a good boy. Wasn't so bad, was it? No, get down, Sitka, play nice. Okay, Dr. Gibson, I'm with you. Thanks for waiting."

"No worries. Call me Paul, Dr. Treadwell. I'm very sorry about what happened to your facility."

"That's Roberta. We're dealing with it, Paul, not letting it stop us. Have to work around the mess. Luckily the most critical instruments were shock-mounted and came through okay. Paul, here's the thing. Drew Chang has been talking you up every chance he gets. He was excited about a memory boosting treatment you've been testing on mice, and last week he gave me a preliminary paper you'd both written on a synthetic vector."

"Yes, I've had some promising results." He cleared his throat. How much should I tell her? Be bold. "Actually, memory enhancement's just a side-effect."

"I'm impressed with what I've read. I'd like to discuss bringing you here to work at MTJ. If you're interested, maybe you could come down to San Antonio, meet everyone, take a look at what we're doing. Mess and all, I'm sure we could find you some space."

"I'm very interested." Was that too eager?

"Good. I don't know what my calendar is like for the next couple of weeks, but you pick a day and I'll try to work everything else around it."

He opened the Daytimer on his laptop. "June 26 would be good. Thursday."

"Around ten?"

"That would work."

"I look forward to meeting you, Paul."

"I'll see you then." He sat perfectly still for a fraction of a second, letting the reality of Roberta's invitation sink in, then flung his arms wide in a shouting gesture of triumph. News this good had to be shared. Jill, Jill. He'd seen her twice already this past week, when she brought Alex back to the lab and when they'd both come over to his apartment for supper. While Alex was absorbed in feeding the rats or looking at A Pictorial Atlas of the Solar System, Paul and Jill had managed some playfully passionate embraces and gropings.

"Hello?" Jill sounded tired.

"Hi, I hope you weren't asleep."

"Paul!" Less tired now, and happy. "No, but I've been reading some articles for CLE-continuing education credit, and I'll tell ya, they should sell these things as sleeping aids. How was your day?"

"Until a few minutes ago, uneventful. Remember me telling you about Roberta Treadwell and MTJ Labs?"

"Place that got blown up, where Drew works."

"She's invited me down to interview for a research position."

"Really, Paul? That's great!" The excitement in her voice was gratifying. "You'll be able to spend full time on your auxosome research."

"If I get it, yeah."

"You'll get it. When word goes out about your research, you'll be able to take your pick of positions. When're you going?"

"Thursday next. Gives me time to read up on the work everyone's doing there, so I can impress them with my instant intuitive grasp." He chuckled. "Hey, I don't want to keep you. I should let you finish your own work so you can have carefree fun tomorrow. We're still on for Lake Buchanan, aren't we?"

"Definitely."

"Maybe we can do rude things together while Alex takes his nap." Visions rolled through his head, Jill emerging nude from the water.

"Mmm, I should hope so."

"See ya at nine."

"Okay. Goodnight, Paul."

He was pondering the positive direction his life seemed to be taking when there was banging at the door.

"Paul, are you there? It's Lauren."

Oh shit! He could pretend not to be home, but Lauren might well park herself by the door and wait for him. He opened the door, tried to smile politely.

"Hello, Lauren. It's late."

"Paul, we have to talk." She pushed her way into the room. "You can't pack me off to the attic and forget about me. I deserve better than that. "

"We've talked, Lauren." Sighing, he sat down on the edge of a chair and motioned her to the sofa. "Judging by the number of hours you spent berating me for one failing or another-"

"I 'berated' you, as you call it, because I care about you. I want to improve our relationship by talking through things that bother me instead of holding them inside." She was a wise soul speaking patiently to a foolish teenager.

"Lauren, everything about me bothers you. You don't like the way I dress or the sort of car I drive, or my opinions of books and movies, or the sort of work I do. I'm curious, Lauren. What is it you do like about me?"

She shook her head sadly. "This is you all over, Paul, trying to turn this into an intellectual discussion. Get outside your head! Why are you afraid to talk about your feelings?"

He was tempted to tell her that all he really felt at the moment was an intense desire never to see her again. No. Unfair. For the sake of the pleasant moments they had enjoyed together, he owed it to her to hear her out. "I'm not afraid to talk about my feelings, Lauren. What I didn't enjoy was spending hours on end listening to your assessments of my faults and weaknesses."

"Sometimes we have to go through a period of discomfort in order to reach a higher level of emotional maturity. Did it ever occur to you that through my willingness to point out your weaknesses and work with you to correct them, I was offering you a priceless gift?"

"Actually, no." Good god, what would it be like to live inside that head?

"Well, think about it now, Paul. Any fool can sit simpering and telling you what a wonderful big strong man you are. But I was willing to do more than that. I was willing to be completely honest and forthright. Isn't insight worth more than empty smiles?" She leaned forward, gazed into his eyes, touched his arm with her pink porcelain fingertips.

"Probably. But it makes more sense for me to spend time with people who like me as I am."

"So, do I hear you saying you have no desire to improve yourself? You'd rather spend your time with people who have low standards? People who can't discriminate between the coarse and the refined? Your scientist buddies, I suppose."

He groaned inwardly. As always, it felt as though he and Lauren spoke different languages. When they first met he had been able to overlook this lack of verbal rapport, enraptured briefly by the perfect lines of her neck, the graceful way she moved her hands, the delicacy with which she pursed her lips. Now, her physical perfection left him unmoved; the thought of intimacy with her actually repulsed him. "I don't know," he said, his mind drifting to Jill. The up side of the communications gap with Lauren was that she needed no in-depth responses on his part. He shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden seat; his backside had gone numb. "Could I interest you in a glass of wine, Lauren?" He slouched to the kitchen and pulled a full bottle of cheap California Chablis from the fridge.

"That would be nice, thank you." She insisted on them clinking glasses. There was a refreshing moment of silence.

Recharging, he thought.

 

Paul glanced at the kitchen clock as he poured the last of the second bottle of wine: Just before two in the morning.

"I know you, Paul, better than you know yourself." She sipped at her wine with a tight little smile. "You're the kind of man who goes blindly through life and then wonders, at the end, why it all seems so meaningless when you look back on it."

Dear god. "Lauren, I'm really very tired, and I don't think we're getting anywhere. Let's call it a day." It was at least the fourth time he had made the suggestion.

"Funny how you always suddenly get tired when we get around to the psychological issues."

"We've been talking for almost four hours. I have to get up at 8:30 this morning."

"Oh! I had no idea it was so late." She upended her wine glass. "But now that you mention it I am a little sleepy. Would you mind terribly if I stay here tonight?"

"Okay." He went to get sheets and a blanket from the closet. By the time he got back to the living room Lauren had disappeared. With trepidation he pushed open the bedroom door. She was curled up in the middle of his bed, clothes strewn across the floor. Quietly, he closed the door and made himself a bed on the sofa.