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  "You mean, all your reference standards have to be reestablished," Michelle said.

  "Exactly. You have to recreate the whole system of dimensional gauges, flatness gauges, machine lead-screws, and so on to produce a new regime of precision tooling. Your entire engineering practice has to be exported down to the reduced scale."

  Michelle watched him looking down into the compartment like some cosmic lord contemplating the strange realm that he had brought into being. She could understand why Corfe had abandoned his normal taciturnity to come and talk to her. The chances of seriously awakening Eric to the possibility of a criminal conspiracy directed against him would be about as remote as the far side of the moon.

  "I'm still amazed that you can have that kind of complexity on such a tiny scale at all," Michelle said. "It makes you wonder why we're as big as we are in the first place."

  Eric smiled without looking up. "Erwin Schrödinger asked the same thing."

  "Who's he?"

  "Was. One of the pioneer quantum physicists. He concluded that it has to be that way for a world that makes sense to be possible. The illusion of causality only takes over above a scale large enough to swamp out quantum weirdness. . . . But you're right. It still doesn't explain why we're as big as we are."

  "That was your field originally, wasn't it?" Michelle said. "Before you turned commercial and got into microengineering. You were more of a physicist to start with."

  Eric looked up and eyed her with mock severity through his gold-rimmed spectacles. "What's this? Have you been checking up on me?"

  "No. Just talking to Doug. He said you were excommunicated from the church for being a heretic, and that was why you got out of the academic scene."

  "Hmm."

  "What did he mean?"

  Eric didn't answer immediately, but moved away from the bench to glance briefly over the status display for the two operating couplers. "Every generation of scientists eventually becomes impervious to any ideas that challenge the ones they were raised on," he replied finally. "They stop being the impartial seekers after truth that they're supposed to—if they ever were in the first place—and turn into high priests defending the entrenched dogma."

  "So why didn't it happen to you?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I was born between generations—too late to be a bishop in the established church; too early to start my own. So I changed to a different religion and ended up at Microbotics." Eric grinned as the irony struck him, and swept an arm to take in the surroundings. "And now here I am, doing the same thing again. Maybe it's just in my nature." Michelle would have been curious to learn more, but Eric changed the subject. "Anyhow, I don't think that was what you wanted to talk about." He turned to her and waited. Michelle shifted her eyes to indicate the two technicians in the couplers and returned a questioning look. Eric nodded and led the way around a partition to an equipment bay where the sounds of motors and extractor fans soaked up their voices.

  "Back when you quit to set up on your own, there was this business about DNC having side effects," Michelle said. "I'm concerned about it."

  "My word, you are being thorough with your homework," Eric commented.

  "It's what I'm paid for. So what's the real story?"

  Eric made a dismissive gesture. "You just said it—that was years ago now."

  "Yes, but it never really went away, did it? And it could be coming back. Isn't there something in Science this month about a call for putting direct neural work on hold?"

  "You know about that too, eh?" Eric nodded and looked impressed.

  "I have to know the truth. If there are any grounds at all for suspicion about this technology, we can't risk using it in a project that would involve the general public."

  Eric drew a long breath and exhaled it sharply, as if determined to put this to rest finally. "The truth is that there was never a scrap of truth in it. There were some overactive imaginations at work, coupled with sensationalized journalism. That's always a bad combination. When you peel away the hype, it all boiled down to two cases of mental disturbance that turned out to have nothing to do with DNC."

  "Yes, Doug told me about those."

  "Then what else do you want me to add?"

  Michelle raised a conciliatory hand. "Well, no disrespect or anything, Eric, but one person's assurance isn't really enough in this kind of situation. I'd need to go through the records you have of exactly what was said at the time, and any references that pertain. Also, it would help if you could point me to other specialists in the field who could give an opinion."

  "Yes, yes," Eric said, nodding several times. "Of course you can have all that. . . ." He read the expression on her face that said there was more and let his eyebrows ask the question.

  "Do you really think that was all there was to it?" she said. "Or could those imaginations and those pieces of journalism have had a motive?"

  "Oh, I see. You have been talking to Doug, haven't you."

  "Just doing my job," Michelle reminded him.

  "Jealousy at Microbotics. Fear of being left behind. A scheme concocted to discredit the technology. . . ."

  "It wouldn't be the first time that something like that has happened," Michelle pointed out.

  "Practically anything you can name has happened, but that doesn't mean every piece of tabloid gossip is right," Eric countered.

  Michelle hesitated, wondering if it would be diplomatic to bring up the subject of Vanessa's previous husband just then. But Corfe had been particularly anxious to make known his suspicions regarding Jack Anastole's involvement. She could hardly get this close and shy away now. "Wasn't Jack supposed to have had documented proof?" she said finally.

  "Oh, you know about him too?"

  "He said he had evidence that something like that was going on—the names, everything."

  Eric flashed a humorless grin. "That's what he said. And for a while I took him seriously. But when the time came for him to produce it, it all suddenly evaporated. And so did he—but I suppose you know all that too."

  "Isn't it possible that he could have been bought off?" Michelle ventured.

  Eric showed both palms and made a face. "Anything's possible. But any scientist would be suspicious of a proposition contrived for no other reason than to explain away a lack of evidence. So should any lawyer." He looked at her challengingly, as if to say that as far as he was concerned that wrapped it all up. Michelle bit her lip.

  "Why would he make something like that up?" she persisted.

  "Who knows? Perhaps he didn't actually make it up—not consciously, anyway. More likely he had his suspicions, just like Doug, got all fired up to build a case around them—and wishful thinking did the rest, for a while. But by the time Jack came to see things more soberly, he'd implicated some influential people at Microbotics and elsewhere. When he realized there was nothing in it, he accepted a peace offer and made himself scarce until the dust settled."

  Michelle waited for a moment and then said neutrally, "Who's contriving explanations now?"

  Eric's head jerked up sharply. He could have reacted with pique, anger, or a curt denial. Michelle tensed inwardly. But instead, his face creased into a grin of admission that she found warming. "Okay, you've got me," he conceded. "So, I take it that you buy into this conspiracy theory of Doug's. But, then, we've already agreed that lawyers have to be suspicious of everything, haven't we?"

  As it applied just then, Eric's observation was even truer than he realized. As a result of the further research she had done and her subsequent reflections, suspicions had begun forming in Michelle's mind of possibilities a lot more serious than just a disinformation conspiracy—suspicions that she had so far not confided even to Corfe. She studied Eric's face, looking for a clue to whether this was the time to broach them. For clearly, Eric hadn't made the connection, any more than Corfe had.

  "Very much so," she agreed. "As you say, about everything."

  Eric caught her tone. "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "
It does seem . . ." Michelle reconsidered her words and began again, articulating slowly. "If there was . . . something, to what Jack was claiming, there are people who might construe what happened to him, when it did, an extremely fortuitous coincidence. . . . Wouldn't you agree?"

  Eric's mouth opened as he started to respond, then closed again. He frowned at her, as if replaying in his mind to be sure that he hadn't misheard, then screwed his face up incredulously. "You can't be saying that . . . No, this isn't you. It's Doug again, isn't it?"

  "No," Michelle said. "These are my own thoughts—based on what I've heard and read, what I know of how the world can be." Eric was still struggling to take in what she was saying. She went on, "Let's just assume for the moment that Doug is right about Jack being bought off when he went east, and look at things in that light. Three years later you've got DNC working. Everyone in the industry is saying that Neurodyne is on its way to the billion-dollar league. And what happens? All of a sudden Jack's back in town. Isn't it a pretty likely bet that he was here to renegotiate the price? But what it really said was he was going to be a security risk permanently." Eric was shaking his head; but Michelle was committed to seeing it through now and continued, "And then he's found dead in a hotel room, supposedly of a heart attack—forty-two years old, normal weight, swam and played tennis, no history of coronary complications, nothing in the family. If you were in Ohira's position, wouldn't you fire me if I weren't suspicious?"

  "Oh, I can't believe it. It's too preposterous." Eric snorted and waved the whole idea away. "This isn't Chicago a hundred years ago, for heaven's sake. Are you sure you don't watch too many movies? . . . If it didn't involve a recent tragedy, it would be a joke."

  Michelle stared back at him without smiling. "I very much hope I'm wrong," she said. "But until we can be certain of that, I'd say it's something you ought to think about. Anyone capable of going to extremes like that isn't going to stop at just creating some bad publicity for a piece of technology."

  The mec and the relay had been in a black plastic bag secured with a rubber band. Kevin searched behind the cushions of the couch in the living room that Taki had been sitting in earlier, then craned his neck over the top to peer down between the back and the wall. "Well, that's just great, Taki. I risk untold wrath and retribution to get it back for you. I guard it with my life for days. And now you've gone and lost it again in a couple of hours. What kind of appreciation is this for being the best friend you've ever had?"

  "Well, it's your fault for distracting me with all that stuff about game strategies." Taki stepped back from the table and looked back across the room to the door. "I went there to put the book down, and later I went out through the hall and back to the kitchen. . . . It'll be in the last place we look, you wait and see. Things always are."

  "Well, of course it'll be in the last place we look. Do you think we're gonna keep looking after we find it?"

  Taki wandered through to the front hall. "You don't think it could have gotten mixed up with all that stuff that your mom and Harriet were loading into the car, do you?" he said, looking around. Vanessa had been gone a couple of hours by now.

  "Harriet said she hadn't seen it," Kevin said, appearing in the doorway behind. It was her night off, and she had gone for the evening too. "Did you put it down out here?"

  "I can't remember."

  Batcat, the only other resident to be home just at the moment, uncurled on its favorite chair, stretched, sat back on its haunches, and blinked at Kevin several times. Not for the first time, Kevin got the uncanny feeling that the animal was telling him he was stupid. The cat straightened up, stretched again, and then jumped down off the chair. Kevin watched as it entered the piano room through the open doorway and crossed the floor toward the stairs leading down to the rear lab.

  "Taki, we're being stupid," Kevin said.

  "Oh, I see. It's I risk wrath and anger, but we are being stupid. How come?"

  "What's the obvious way to find out where a lost mec is?"

  Taki thought, shrugged. "Put an ad in the Lost Mecs section?"

  Kevin nodded in the direction the cat had disappeared in. "Go downstairs and activate it from a coupler, then look around and see where you are." Taki spread his hands. What more was there to say? He followed Kevin to the stairs, and they went down to the lab.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Kevin was enveloped in blackness. Although his attenuated sense of touch did not enable him to distinguish fine details of structure or texture, he felt himself confined and his movement restricted. It was about what he'd expected the inside of a folded black plastic bag to be like. And Taki said he'd wrapped the mec in another piece of plastic inside that.

  "Any luck?" Taki's voice said in his ear.

  "Well, I'm through, but mummified. Now I have to try and get out of this stuff."

  There seemed to be light of some sort coming from the outside. . . .

  "Is there—"

  "Shh."

  And the muffled sound of a voice—a woman's.

  "I'm not anywhere in this house, and that's for sure," Kevin said.

  "How could it not be in the house? That's crazy."

  "Well, either it got taken out by mom, or it got taken out by Harriet. Nobody else has been here, have they?"

  "Oh, okay. . . . I guess so."

  "Logic, Taki. Logic."

  Bending his body forward to create space in front of him, Kevin brought his arms together and gripped one of his claw hands with the other. He released the wrist catches, enabling the hand to come free, and clipped it into a receptacle in the mec's accessory belt. Feeling farther along, he located a blade attachment and secured it in the empty wrist socket. A couple of slow slicing motions through the inner wrappings, one vertical and one horizontal like a papal blessing from the Vatican balcony, gave him some working room. Then, cutting a layer at a time and using his claw hand to clear the way, he made an incision through the outer bag.

  The light was coming from somewhere on the floor. . . . No it wasn't—he was upside down. He could hear more clearly now, but the voice that was speaking was now a man's. Kevin pushed aside the curtains of waxy blanket, thrust his head and shoulders through, and twisted until he could view the world right side up.

  "There are plenty of places in Bellevue to eat," the man's voice was saying. "Or Trev could rustle up something here. Whatever you prefer."

  "Oh, let's go out somewhere. I could use some air and exercise after driving." The woman's voice again. It sounded like Vanessa's.

  A high, narrow canyon above opened to a yellow-brown sky. One side of the canyon was a smooth, maroon colored wall, most of it in shadow but the top part catching the light. The other side was dark and bumpy, curving toward the top like the wall of a cavern. Kevin had just recognized the maroon wall as a regular office file folder, when Taki's voice said, "I think you're in a plastic bag of folders and stuff. I saw it on the hall table." It meant that Taki had tuned in on the lab monitor.

  "I thought you said you didn't leave it in the hall," Kevin accused.

  "I said I didn't remember."

  The man's voice came again. "Let's get the business out of the way while we're here. I don't like discussing it in public places, anyway." His voice fell to a more suggestive tone. "Besides, that way, we can get more relaxed over dinner for later."

  "I've brought copies of the QA reports that I told you about. The figures for—" The voice that sounded like Vanessa's grew suddenly louder, but Kevin missed the rest as an enormous hand closed around the top of the maroon wall and lifted it away. For a moment the canyon mouth above yawned wider, bounded now by a green folder back from where the maroon one had been; then the green wall leaned and toppled, crushing down the plastic side opposite to transform the vertical canyon into a cave, and tipping over the package containing Kevin in the process. Now he was underneath the green folder, looking up toward the light over a hump formed by the bowed-over underside of the bag. He squirmed and kicked to extricate himself from t
he plastic, and then crawled up the hump. From the top, beyond the opening between the folder above and the sagging side of the bag below, he could see part of a room. Still keeping to a crawl on the swaying surface, he moved closer to the rim to take in more of the surroundings.

  Slight though it was, his weight was sufficient to make the edge of the plastic dip suddenly, taking him by surprise and spilling him out onto a surface of matted ropes covered in tangles of wiry fibers. The lip of the bag sprang back and hung above him, high and inaccessible.

  "Very clever," Taki's voice remarked. "Now how are you going to get back in?"

  "Shut up. If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."

  The woman was Vanessa, standing with her back to him and talking to someone that Kevin couldn't see. The room had a luxurious, expansive feel about it even from Kevin's diminutive perspective, with opulent furnishings and gold inlaid designs set into wood-panel walls—but just at that moment he wasn't of a mind to ponder on such details. He was out in the open below the plastic bag, which was resting on a bench seat covered in a coarse, hairlike fabric, its back buttressed by cushions, extending away like a long cliff to a padded arm. If Vanessa turned back to get something else from the bag now, she couldn't miss seeing him. He picked himself up from where he had tumbled, and scurried into a hollow between two of the cushions. Sure enough, Vanessa turned, and a huge arm came down, causing Kevin to pull back into the darkness of the hollow. She took the green folder and straightened up the bag, speaking over her shoulder to her companion at the same time.

  "I don't think he's going to change his mind about it, and we can't risk being too pushy. Honestly, I've made all the suggestions that I think would be prudent."

  Kevin had a glimpse of a man with yellow hair, wearing a red shirt, as Vanessa turned away again. "Then we'll have Phil go ahead and draw up a codicil. It's probably the safest way, anyhow. . . ."

  "It's your mom," Taki said illuminatingly.

  "No! Really? My God, it is! I'd never have guessed. How do you figure these things out, Taki?"