Mount Dragon (20 page)

Carson quickly swung up on his horse. “Nobody talks to me that way,” he said.

“I'll talk to you any bloody way I like.” Nye began to slide the rifle out of its scabbard.

Carson jabbed his horse in the flank and surged forward. Nye, taken off guard, jerked the rifle free and tried to swing it around. Roscoe slammed into Muerto and threw the security director sideways in the saddle; at the same instant, Carson dropped his reins and grabbed the barrel of the rifle with both hands, yanking it out of Nye's grasp with a sharp downward tug.

Keeping an eye on Nye, Carson opened the breech and removed the magazine, tossing it into the sand. Then he extracted the wad of gum from his mouth and jammed it up into the chamber. He snapped the breech shut and winged the gun far down the hill.

“Don't ever unship a rifle in front of me again,” he said quietly.

Nye sat on his horse, breathing hard, his face red. He moved toward the rifle but Carson spun his horse, blocking him.

“For an Englishman, you're a rude son of a bitch,” Carson said.

“That's a three-thousand-dollar rifle,” Nye replied.

“All the more reason not to wave it in people's faces.” Carson nodded down the hill. “If you try to use that gun now, it'll misfire and blow off your little ponytail. By the time you've cleaned it, I'll be gone.”

There was a long silence. The late-afternoon sun refracted through Nye's eyes, giving them a strange dark gold color. Looking into those eyes, Carson saw that the fiery tints were not completely a trick of the sun; the man's eyes had a reddish cast, like the inward flames of a secret obsession.

Without another word Carson turned his horse and headed north at a brisk trot. After several minutes he stopped, looking back. Nye remained motionless on his mount, silhouetted against the rise, gazing after him.

“Watch your back, Carson!” came the distant voice. And Carson thought he heard a strange laugh drift toward him across the desert, before being whisked away by the wind.

The portable CD player sat on an outspread
Wall Street Journal
on a white table in the control room, exploded into twenty or thirty pieces. A figure wearing a dirty T-shirt was bent over it, the picture of concentration. The T-shirt's legend,
VISIT BEAUTIFUL SOVIET GEORGIA
, was proudly emblazoned over a picture of a grim, fortresslike government structure, the epitome of Stalinesque architecture.

De Vaca stood to one side of the immaculate control room, wondering if the T-shirt was a joke. “You said you've never fixed a CD player before,” she said nervously.

“
Da
,” the figure muttered without looking up.

“Well, then how do you…?” She let the sentence hang.

The figure muttered again, then popped a chip out of a circuit board, holding it up with a pair of plastic-coated tweezers. “Hmmmph,” he said, and tossed it carelessly on the newspaper. Working the tweezers again, he popped out a second chip.

“Maybe this wasn't such a good idea,” said de Vaca.

The figure eyed her over a pair of reading glasses fallen halfway down his nose. “But is not fixed yet,” he protested.

De Vaca shrugged, sorry she had ever brought the CD player to Pavel Vladimirovic. Though she'd been told he was some kind of mechanical genius, she'd seen no evidence of it so far. And the man had even admitted he had never even seen a CD player before, let alone fixed one.

Vladimirovic sighed heavily, dropped the second chip, and sat down heavily, pushing the glasses back up his nose.

“Is
broke
,” he announced.

“I know,” said de Vaca. “That's why I brought it to you.”

He nodded and indicated with his palm for her to sit in a chair.

“Can you fix it or not?” de Vaca said, still standing.

He nodded. “
Da
, don't worry! I can fix. Is problem with chip that controls laser diode.”

De Vaca took a seat. “Do you have a replacement?” she asked.

Vladimirovic nodded and rubbed his sweaty neck. Then he stood up, moved to a cabinet, and returned with a small box, green circuit boards peeping from its open top. “I put back together now,” he nodded

De Vaca watched while, in a burst of activity, he cannibalized parts from the box full of circuit boards. In less than five minutes he had assembled the player. He plugged it in, inserted the CD that de Vaca had brought, and waited. The sound of the B-52s came roaring out of the speakers.

“Aiee!” he cried, turning it off. “
Nekulturny
. What is that noise! Must still be broke.” He roared with laughter at his own joke.

“Thank you,” de Vaca said, real delight in her voice. “I use this just about every evening. I was afraid I'd have to spend the rest of my time here without music. How'd you do it?”

“Here, many extra pieces from the fail-safe mechanism,” Vladimirovic said. “I use one of those. Is nothing, very simple little machine. Not like this!” he gestured proudly at the rows of control panels, CRT screens and consoles.

“What do they all do?” de Vaca asked.

“Many things!” he cried, lumbering over to a wall of electronics. “Here, is control for laminar airflow. Air intake here, furnace is controlled by all these.” He waved his hand vaguely. “And then all these control cooldown.”

“Cooldown?”

“
Da
. You wouldn't want one-thousand-degree air going back in! Has to be cooled, the air.”

“Why not just suck in fresh air?”

“If suck in fresh air, must vent old air. No good. This is
closed
system. We are only laboratory in world with such system. Goes back to fail-safe mechanism of military days, shunt hot air to Level-5.”

“You mentioned that fail-safe system before,” de Vaca asked. “I don't remember hearing about it.”

“For stage-zero alert.”

“There is no stage-zero alert. Stage one is the worst-case scenario.”

“Back then, was stage-zero alert.” He shrugged. “Maybe terrorists in Level-5, maybe accident with total contamination. Inject one-thousand-degree air into Level-5, make complete sterilization. Not only sterilization. Blow place up real
kharasho
! Boom!”

“I see,” said de Vaca, a little uncertainly. “It can't go off by accident, this state-zero alert, can it?”

Pavel chuckled. “Impossible. When civilians took over, system was deactivated.” He waved his hand at a nearby computer terminal. “Only work if put back on line.”

“Good,” said de Vaca, relieved. “I wouldn't want to be fried alive because someone tripped over the wrong switch up here.”

“True,” Pavel rumbled. “It's hot enough outside without making more heat,
nyet? Zharka!
” He shook his head, eyes staring absently at the newspaper. Then he stiffened. He picked up the rump end of the
Journal
and stabbed his finger at it.

“You see this?” he asked.

“No,” said de Vaca. She glanced over at the columns of tiny numbers, thinking that he must have stolen the paper from the Mount Dragon library, which had subscriptions to a dozen or so newspapers and periodicals that were not available on-line. They were the only printed materials allowed on the site.

“GeneDyne stock down half point again! You know what this mean?”

De Vaca shook her head.

“We losing money!”

“Losing money?” de Vaca asked.

“
Da
! You own stock, I own stock, and this stock go down half point! I lose three hundred fifty dollars! What I could have done with that money!”

He buried his head in his hands.

“But isn't that to be expected?” de Vaca asked.

“Shto?”

“Doesn't the stock go up and down every day?”

“
Da
, every day! Last Monday I made six hundred dollars.”

“So what does it matter?”

“Makes even worse! Last Monday, six hundred dollars richer I was. Now it's all gone! Poof!” He spread his hands in despair.

De Vaca tried to keep from laughing. The man must watch the movement of the stock every day, feeling elated on the days it went up—thinking how he was going to spend the money—and horrified on the days it went down. It was the price of employee ownership: giving stock to people who had never invested before. And yet, she was sure overall he must have made a large profit on his employee plan. She hadn't checked since arriving at Mount Dragon, but she knew the GeneDyne stock had been soaring in recent months, and that they all were getting richer.

Vladimirovic shook his head again. “And in last few days, worse, much worse. Down many points!”

De Vaca frowned. “I didn't know that.”

“You not heard talk in canteen! It's that Boston professor, Levine. Always, he talking bad about GeneDyne, about Brent Scopes. Now he say something worse, I don't know what, and stock go down.” He muttered under his breath. “KGB would know what to do with such a man.”

He sighed deeply, then handed her the CD player.

“After hearing decadent counterrevolutionary music, I'm sorry I fixed it,” he said.

De Vaca laughed and said good-bye. She decided the T-shirt had to be a joke. After all, the man must have had top secret clearance to work at Mount Dragon in the old days. She'd have to search him out in the canteen some evening and get the whole story, she decided.

The first heat of summer lay like a sodden blanket over Harvard Yard. The leaves hung limply on the great oaks and chestnut trees, and cicadas droned in the shadows. As he walked, Levine slipped out of his threadbare jacket and slung it over his shoulder, inhaling the smell of freshly cut grass, the thick humidity in the air.

In the outer office, Ray was at his desk, idly picking at his teeth with a paper clip. He grunted at Levine's approach.

“You got visitors,” he said.

Levine stopped, frowned. “You mean, inside?” He nodded toward his closed office door.

“Didn't like the company out here,” Ray explained.

As Levine opened the door, Erwin Landsberg, the president of the university, turned toward him with a smile. He held out his hand.

“Charles, it's been a long time,” he said in his gravelly voice. “Much too long.” He indicated a second man in a gray suit. “This is Leonard Stafford, our new dean of faculty.”

Levine shook the limp hand that was offered, stealing a furtive glance around the office. He wondered how long the two had been there. His eyes landed on the laptop, open on one corner of the desk, telephone cord dangling from its side. Stupid, leaving it out like that. The call was due in just five minutes.

“It's warm in here,” said the president. “Charles, you should order an air conditioner from Central Services.”

“Air conditioners give me head colds. I like the heat.” Levine took a seat at his desk. “Now, what's this about?”

The two visitors sat down, the dean glancing around at the disorderly piles with distaste. “Well, Charles,” the president began. “We've come about the lawsuit.”

“Which one?”

The president looked pained. “We take these matters very seriously.” When Levine said nothing, he continued. “The GeneDyne suit, of course.”

“It's pure harassment,” Levine said. “It'll be dismissed.”

The dean of faculty leaned forward. “Dr. Levine, I'm afraid we don't share that view. This is not a frivolous suit. GeneDyne is alleging theft of trade secrets, electronic trespass, defamation and libel, and quite a bit else.”

The president nodded. “GeneDyne has made some serious accusations. Not so much about the foundation, but about your methods.
That's
what concerns me most.”

“What about my methods?”

“There's no need to get excited.” The president adjusted his cuffs. “You've been in hot water before, and we've always stuck by you. It hasn't always been easy, Charles. There are several trustees—very powerful trustees—who would much prefer if we'd left you outside for the vigilantes. But now, with the ethics of your methods being called into question…well, we have to protect the university. You know what's legal, and what isn't. Stay within those bounds. I know you understand.” The smile faded slightly. “And that's why I'm not going to warn you again.”