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  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 with those people, and I know how some of them operate. They're not the kind who'll just sit back and let something like this happen."

  Kevin paused from fitting a blade into the saw. "What do you think they'll do?"

  "Try to discredit the technology—by spreading scare stories, getting it bad press to frighten investors into pulling their money out and keep new ones away. That's what I'm pretty certain they tried before."

  "Before? You mean when my dad quit?"

  Corfe nodded. "It happens a lot more than you probably think. It didn't work then, but that doesn't mean they won't try again. Lots of stuff was printed and circulated around at the time. It's just waiting to be resurrected."

  Kevin thought for a moment. He knew that around the time that Eric left Microbotics there had been some controversy over alleged dangers of DNC, but he had been too young at the time to really follow it; and in the years since, life had been too full of other things. "You mean those stories that were going around about DNC screwing people up in the head? Way back. Is that what we're talking about?"

  Corfe nodded. "That's right."

  "I thought it was just one of those alarmist things that hack science writers with nothing better to do pick up. That's what Dad says."

  "I know he does. That's what he's always thought. I wanted him to get the thing out in the open and fight it, but he said it would die a natural death faster if we just left it alone. I think he was wrong. It never really went away, and I don't think it will until it's killed—dead in the water."

  "What actually happened?" Kevin asked.

  Corfe made the first cut in the transom, then switched the saw off to speak. "Right after Eric set up Neurodyne, stories started going around saying that the reason why Microbotics had decided against DNC wasn't that management had chickened out, but on account of unexpected side effects. But the stories weren't true. I was there, and I knew that the things they talked about hadn't figured in the debate at the time. They were concocted afterward."

  "What kind of things . . . for instance?"

  "Okay, I'll give you an example. One report that got a lot of press was about a couple of technicians who were supposed to have developed neural disorders through being involved in the early work at Microbotics. But I happened to know that one of those cases had always suffered from that condition. It ran in her family. The symptoms had been there before any work on DNC was ever started . . . but the reports didn't tell you that. And the other guy had a drug history. He'd kicked the habit by then, but he still had flashbacks. As far as I'm concerned, anything that ignores facts as basic as those is no different from plain lying."

  Corfe completed cutting out the piece and lifted it clear. Kevin picked up the container of resin and peered at the directions while he reflected on what Corfe had said. "Shall I pour some of this out?"

  "About a pint. But don't add any of the catalyst until I tell you."

  There was a short silence. Finally, Kevin said, "Did anyone else know about this? I mean, you can't have been the only one. Didn't anyone else try to point this out?"

  "Not openly. As far as the public knew, it all blew over and went away." Corfe gestured with his free hand. "After all, Neurodyne's here today. The funds didn't dry up. . . . Right at the last moment, something made them back off. And I think it had to do with Jack. Did you know much about him?"

  "Jack? You mean my stepmother's ex?"

  "Right: Jack Anastole."

  Kevin made a so-so face. "Not a lot, really. I guess they split up before she had anything to do with my life."

  "Jack was a lawyer too—in fact, he used to be the partner of Phil Garsten, who handles your family affairs now. Now Jack told Eric once—back when all this business was going on that I was telling you about—that he had proof there were people out to discredit the DNC concept. Said he could name the names, had it all documented—everything. That was enough to make even Eric sit up and take notice." Corfe finished smoothing the edges of the cutout and began lining it with the layers of fiberglass cloth that he had cut.

  "And?" Kevin prompted.

  "Suddenly, nothing. We thought Jack was putting a case together to expose the whole thing. But instead, he quit the partnership with Garsten, disappeared with a lot of money, and set up his own practice somewhere back east. That was when Eric decided that Jack never had anything, and that he—Eric—had better things to do than waste any more time on it."

  Kevin thought through the implications. Why the sudden, apparent truce? If Jack possessed evidence solid enough to deter whoever had been behind the campaign from pursuing it further, what had dissuaded him from using it? He voiced the obvious. "You're saying that Jack was bought off?"

  Corfe nodded. "I'm pretty sure of it. All the years he was there, as a potential threat, we never heard more about it. But the moment he isn't around any more to make trouble—" Corfe broke off and eyed Kevin uncertainly. "I assume you do know about that? . . ."

  "Yes, I heard about it." Two months before, Jack Anastole had been found dead in a hotel room in Seattle after a heart attack.

  Corfe nodded and went on, "The moment he's not around to make trouble any more, suddenly it looks as if the whole thing might be about to become news again. There's a piece in Science this month that asks if all direct neural work—in other words read ours, here at Neurodyne—ought to be put on hold until the risks have been officially checked out."

  Kevin felt genuine alarm for the first time. "You mean us? Somebody could be trying to get Dad shut down?"

  "Just so." Corfe nodded his head slowly and gave Kevin a somber look. "I think the people behind it now are the same ones who tried it before—becaus
e Eric has cracked DNC and he's about to run rings around them. And what we've seen so far is only on account of supposed concern over people who work at Neurodyne. Imagine how much more attention it'll get when the world finds out that Ohira wants to make it a public attraction."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Hey, pull up, pull up! Watch that power line."

  "I see it, Taki. What's the matter, don't you trust me all of a sudden? See—all perfectly under control."

  "Oh God, he's going under!"

  "Sometimes I think you pick up a bit of that neurosis from your sister."

  "There's a duck taking off. The noise has scared it. You'll never—"

  "Wheeeee! . . . Never what, Taki?"

  "Jeez! I don't care what you say—balance sensors or not, I still feel sick."

  "Look at this tree coming up. Wow, it's like a mountain. This is way better than Disney."

  Since they were too young to fly real airplanes, they had settled for the next best thing and fitted one of Kevin's models with onboard controls to override the radio-actuated system so that they could fly it as mecs. After some initial setbacks and a bit of trial and error, the experiment seemed to be working out just fine. And they didn't need cubic miles of space to contend with all the restrictions and legalities that that would have entailed. The inlet of water at the back of the house provided as much of a world as they could have wanted.

  "Take it up higher so we can switch places. It's about time I had a turn," Taki called via the intercom.

  "Okay. Let's follow the road and see what's going on around the neighborhood. Boy, wait till Ohira sees this!"

  Inside the house, Vanessa came into the front hall carrying a box containing a loaded slide carousel for her presentation at the neurophysiology seminar being held that weekend in Seattle, and in her other hand, a brown leather briefcase. She put the briefcase down beside the overnight suitcase, plastic bag containing books and files, and hanging bag already piled by the door, and the carousel box by the folders and several large envelopes stacked on the hall table. "Let's see," she said, checking over the items, "change of clothes for tonight, cosmetic bag, background files, journals . . . notes! I need my notes for the talk." She took the briefcase and went back to the den just as Harriet came down the back stairs with Vanessa's coat and purse.

  "You did say the blue coat?" Harriet checked as she paused on the bottom step to let Vanessa pass.

  "Yes, that's the one." Vanessa slipped it on, took the purse, and went into the den and over to the desk. Outside the doorway, Harriet's footsteps receded to the front of the house.

  "Is this all? Shall I take these things out to the car?" her voice called distantly.

  "Yes, please," Vanessa called back as she sorted through papers. "The stuff other than the bags can go on the back seat. It isn't locked. Be careful with the yellow box." Notes, references, prints of slides. Better take the papers by Christie and Rolands, too. . . .

  In the front hallway, Harriet picked up the suitcase and plastic carrier, tried taking the loose folders as well, but they didn't feel very safe. So she put everything down again and stuffed the folders into the carrier; and since there was still room to spare, she slipped the envelopes in as well. Along with them and not really noticing, she put into the carrier a folded black plastic bag, secured with a rubber band, that had also been on the hall table, and which Vanessa hadn't noticed either. That felt better. She picked up the items again, found that she could now manage the hanging bag as well, and hauled all of them out through the front door.

  A harsh roaring sound, rising in pitch to a whine and then falling again, made her look up as she began crossing to where Vanessa's Jaguar was parked. One of Kevin's model planes, red with yellow wings, fin, and tail surfaces, was circling above the open area at the end of the driveway. Taki was visiting and had been busy with Kevin in the workshop all day. The plane dived to pass low overhead, making Harriet flinch as she dropped the bags by the trunk, wondering for a moment if it was out of control and about to crash, but it climbed again and banked away over the garage. She looked around as she opened the rear door of the car to put the plastic carrier and the yellow box inside as Vanessa had said, but she was unable to spot where the boys were operating the plane from. Probably they were up at one of the windows, or hidden, chuckling, in the greenery somewhere. "Young monkeys," she muttered. "Always up to some kind of mischief."

  Vanessa came out of the house with the rest of her things and opened the trunk. Inside were a couple of boxes of assorted paraphernalia belonging to Kevin and Eric, but enough room for her bags. Harriet handed them to her, and she hoisted them in. If the stuff in the boxes was important they wouldn't have left them there, she decided, and closed the lid. For once, Eric didn't seem to have a particularly pressing schedule this weekend. In fact, he'd said he might show up at a barbecue that Hiroyuki was throwing for his countless relatives to show their assimilation into American culture. Vanessa was happy that she would be away. It meant she wouldn't have to make excuses.

  A noise like a motor boat that had been rising and falling grew louder, and Kevin's red-and-yellow KJ-3 swooped over a tree and disappeared around the side of the house.

  "It's the two rogues," Harriet said needlessly. "Don't ask me where they are, though. That thing has been buzzing around since I came out, but I still haven't been able to spot where they are. It looks as if they're having fun, though."

  "Yes," Vanessa agreed distantly. She paused as she was about to climb into the car and checked mentally for any last-minute things she might have forgotten. "If Eric does go over to Hiroyuki's tomorrow he'll probably take Kevin with him, so you might as well use the day for yourself," she told Harriet.

  "Thanks. There are a few things I need to catch up on."

  "If the washing machine man stops by before you go, there's a check for him tacked to the board in the kitchen."

  "Okay."

  "And I've marked a few things in the Dillards catalog that I'd like ordered."

  "Will do."

  Vanessa got into the car and closed the door, then lowered the window. "Oh, and if that woman calls again about wanting me at her sorority dinner or whatever it was, could you tell her it clashes with a prior commitment? I just don't have time or very much inclination for these sewing-evening get-togethers."

  "I'll take care of it. In fact, I've still got her number. I'll call her. It'll sound better that way."

  "Good." Vanessa agreed with a quick nod. "I'll probably be back sometime late on Sunday, then. If anything changes I'll let you know."

  "Fine. Have a good time." Harriet stood back while the Jaguar pulled away, then turned to walk back to the house.

  She had never been able to make up her mind about Vanessa—never quite knew if she admired her for taking on the burdens of filling the gap in Eric's and Kevin's lives, or resented her for not bringing more warmth and involvement. But then, she thought, who was she to criticize a professional contending with expectations and responsibilities that somebody like Harriet had no personal experience of and could know next to nothing about? Maybe a person like Eric needed intellectual companionship in the home as much as some husbands needed someone to criticize TV shows with and tell politics to over breakfast—although for what her opinion was worth, Harriet didn't see much evidence of intellectual companionship to a degree that she'd call stirring, in any case. Eric was always wrapped up in the lab, and Vanessa was always wrapped up in . . . well, Vanessa.

  But that was their business. Harriet's concern was more about Kevin. After her own two grew up and left home, she had missed the unique ingredient that having young people around, even with the mess, emotional penduluming, and perpetual impecuniousness kids bring to a home. So when she and Frank separated, she had answered an ad and moved in to manage the domestic scene when Kevin's mother died, before Eric moved to Olympia. Although she had never known Patricia, she pictured her, from the things Patricia had left behind and the way Eric and Kevin sometimes talked, as so
meone who would have gotten involved and messy when Kevin and Taki painted their boat, and been more curious about where they were flying the plane from.

  In fact, something like the lady lawyer in many ways, now that Harriet came to think of it. And she was a busy professional with responsibilities too, wasn't she? It would brighten up the place a lot, Harriet reflected as she went back inside through the front door, if just a little bit of Michelle would somehow rub off on Vanessa.

  Michelle was getting more used to the idea of a factory workshop small enough to sit on a tabletop. She stood with Eric in one of the production areas at the rear of the Neurodyne building, looking down through a magnifier into one of the glass-topped shoe boxes, where two fly-size mecs were working at a bench surrounded by tool racks and trays of parts. The technicians operating the mecs, helmeted and collared, were in coupler chairs nearby, talking intermittently to each other in the way that Michelle still found disconcerting. The object they were assembling was a scaled-down mec a tenth the size of themselves. Even through the magnifier, Michelle was unable to make out any detail. She found it almost unbearable to try and imagine the scale at which it was happening—the mental equivalent of eyestrain.

  "A misconception that many people have is that making things small automatically means being very precise," Eric commented. "In fact, it works the opposite way round. Suppose that your technology sets a limit on the tolerances that you can work to—a micrometer, say, which is forty millionths of an inch. Suppose that gives a snug fit between parts for a mechanism when it's built, let's say the size of a salt grain." Michelle nodded that she followed. He went on, "Now, if you make your mechanism ten times smaller, the same tolerances would result in a relative precision that's ten times sloppier. So it's not just a question of making everything smaller. You have to achieve correspondingly higher precision as well."