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been too immersed in his work and was too innately trusting to give serious consideration to
the thought. After twelve years in the Navy, Corfe, having made his point, didn't argue with the
boss.
Although the initial fuss did eventually die down, it had never really gone away. Every now and
again some journalist would dig up one of the earlier articles and gnaw on it again like an old
bone, or a scientific editorial might make a passing reference when commenting on a newly
alleged hazard that had absolutely nothing in common. It was as if somebody, somewhere had
been keeping things at a simmer, waiting for . . . what? Now the latest signs were that it was all
about to build up again, just when the news was starting to go around that Neurodyne was
poised to clean up a market reckoned to be worth billions. Just coincidence? Corfe didn't know.
And the same restraints that had checked him before made him reluctant to go back to Eric,
harping the same tune all over again. Besides, this kind of thing really wasn't in his line of
expertise.
But a new person had recently appeared on the scene who might have better ideas on how to
handle this kind of situation. It was, after all, a legal matter at the bottom of it all, wasn't it? He
pondered for a few days on how to go about broaching the subject. Finally he called Kevin's
number.
Corfe's only regret in marrying the Navy was that the eventual divorce had left him without
any children of his own. But at thirty-five he still had time to put that right. In the meantime, he
was getting some good practice, having become something of a second father to Kevin when
Patricia died. It would have been as well in any case; teenagers with minds as active as Kevin's
needed two fathers.
"Hey, Kev, it's Doug. How's things?"
"Oh, hi, Doug. Fine. What's up?"
"Listen, do you have any plans for Friday?"
"I don't think so. Let me check with Taki. Do we " A blur of voices followed as Kevin talked
away from the phone. Then, "No, it looks okay. Taki's got something going on in Seattle,
anyhow."
"Is he at the house?"
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"No, I'm at his place. The call was rerouted. So, Doug, what did you have in mind for Friday?"
"Mack called. He's got a used outboard that sounds right for the boat twenty horsepower for
under two hundred dollars. How would you like to give me a hand mounting it?"
"Sure. Sounds great."
"Okay, I'll pick it up and be over at the house at, say, five-thirty. We'll make the cutout and
line it with fiberglass, and I'll come back in the morning when it's all dry to mount the motor.
Betcha we'll have it out on the water by lunch."
"In that case I'll plan on a late lunch. Okay, Doug. See you Friday at around five thirty."
It was an old fourteen-foot hull that Eric had picked up from a yard in Tacoma as an intended
renovation project to get into with the boys, and had put off repeatedly as other demands rolled
inward in their relentless tide. Kevin and Taki had scraped the bottom, stripped off what was
left of the paint, and recoated it to at least keep it together until some new initiative should
make itself known from the adult world. Since then, it had remained upturned by the end of the
dock behind the house, providing shade and shelter for a menagerie of things that rustled and
scurried on the ground below, and a grandstand from which to view the world for contemplative
gulls above.
Corfe stood over the stern, measuring and marking the cutout to be made in the transom.
Kevin, in jeans and a tracksuit top, sat on a crate, sorting out the items they would need from
the toolbox.
"We'll need that rasp with the wooden handle too," Corfe said, glancing across.
"Got it." Kevin turned over other items in the toolbox curiously and held up a two-handled
gadget with pivoted fingers and a serrated piece that looked like some kind of ratchet. "What's
this thing?"
"For autos a valve spring compressor. To take the tension off until you've got the keeper
in."
"Neat." Kevin picked up the container of polyester resin that Corfe had brought and studied
the instructions on the label.
"How are things with that lady lawyer who was at the labs?" Corfe asked, plugging the drill
into an extension cord from a power point set in a concrete post at the end of the dock.
"Pretty good from the sound of things. She's been here at the house a couple of times. Getting
to be one of the family already."
Corfe inclined his head to indicate the rocks and mounds at the bottom of the slope down from
the house. A stick with a red-and-yellow pennant marked the location of one of Kevin and
Taki's mec boxes. Another fluttered a few yards from it, blue and white. "Eric tells me she
gave Bug Park a try too. How'd she get on?"
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"She really got into it," Kevin said. "I mean right away like somebody who really wanted to
find out what it was all about. A lot different from just freaking out, like Taki's stupid sister."
Corfe handed Kevin the drill and indicated the places he had marked for the corner holes.
While Kevin was attending to those, Corfe unfolded the fiberglass cloth. "What would you say
about her as a lawyer?" he asked. "Does she seem like a good person to handle this scheme
that Ohira's talking about?"
Kevin shrugged. It struck him as an odd question. "I don't know, Doug. Evaluating lawyers
isn't my line." Corfe watched his face for just a fraction of a second too long before looking
back down at what he was doing. Kevin got the feeling that he was trying to work around to
something but not quite sure how to go about it. "What are you getting at?" Kevin asked.
Corfe seemed about to reply, but then sighed and shook his head. "I don't know if it's
something that I should be involving you in. . . ."
Kevin waited, decided on provocation as the best ploy, and grinned tauntingly. "Oh, I get it,
Doug," he drawled. "You fancy her, right? You want me to see if I can get you fixed up. Can't
say I blame you, though. . . ."
"Oh, come on. You know better than that." Corfe's voice was clipped, impatient.
"Okay, what is it, then?"
Corfe conceded with a throwing-away motion, but carried on working. "Ever since we set up
the firm, there have been things going on that I don't feel comfortable about. . . ." He screwed
up his face. "Hell, no. More than just not comfortable things that I'm damned suspicious
about. I've tried talking to your dad, but you know what it's like trying to get him to pay
attention to anything outside what he wants to be involved in. And it isn't something that I know
how to handle. I think it needs somebody like a lawyer."
"What kind of things?" Kevin asked, dropping the flippancy.
Corfe looked up. "Before Eric quit Microbotics, when they'd just developed their first line of
mecs, there was a big disagreement over which way to go with future interfacing. Eric was in
charge of research. It wasn't every day you get this kind of edge on the big guys like IBM, GE,
and the rest he thought they should play the higher stakes and go straight for DNC. But the
top management wanted to play safe and stick with what they already had."
Kevin nodded. And so Eric had left to go his own way, set up Neurodyne, and done it himself.
Kevin knew the story.
Corfe went on, "Now that Eric's got DNC working, Neurodyne looks set to cut those other
guys out in a big way from an area which so far they've practically had monopoly control over."
He waved toward the pennants with the shears that he was using. "Look at this thing that
Ohira is talking about a whole new market that nobody thought of before. You can bet that
won't be the only one either. . . . Well, I was with Microbotics too, don't forget. I've worked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]