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CHAPTER SIX

Doug Corfe's experiences had left him with a generally pragmatic approach to life.

His background before working for Eric Heber at Microbotics had been Navy. After enlisting and going through the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes, Illinois, he had been selected for electronics school, graduated in the top five percentile, and spent two years as an electronics technician in attack submarines. That qualified him for the Navy's scientific education program, in which he did well enough to be sent to Cal Tech, where he got his electrical and electronics degree. He then received a commission as ensign, applied for flight training, and was sent to the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida. After a year's duty as a Navy Flight Officer based at San Diego, he transferred to carriers and left the service four years later having made full lieutenant.

His experiences said there was no such thing as a dysfunctional piece of equipment that couldn't be fixed, and few problems that would admit to no solution. It was just a question of looking hard enough. In dealings with people, he valued directness and simplicity. While there were exceptions, his inclination was to mistrust those who seemed unable or unwilling to put plainly what they had to say. Too often he had found obfuscation a sign that somebody just didn't know what they were talking about, or wasn't being honest about something.

It was not surprising, therefore, that he had taken well to working with Eric, who, heedless of the scientists vying for status in the fast-growing environment that Microbotics offered at the time, had shown no interest in campaigning for self-glorification but saved his energies for the work at hand instead. So when the schism developed over whether to go with conventional or DNC interfacing, it had been almost predictable that Eric would be the one to defy what eventually emerged as the consensus, and perfectly natural that Corfe would move with him when he left.

Things had been different with Vanessa, who seemed completely unprepared for the development, and Corfe could remember some acrimonious exchanges between her and Eric when Eric announced his intention to head off on his own. But they were married by then; and Eric could be astonishingly stubborn once he had made his mind up. Here Neurodyne was today, maybe a fledgling yet as corporations went, but after three years its feathers had sprouted. It was about to fly high. . . .

Provided, that was, that nothing happened to prevent the company from capitalizing on the unique technology that it now owned.

After all, DNC was a completely new way of connecting between things going on in people's heads and events in the world outside. It hooked straight into the brain, bypassing the normal buffering functions of the senses. Some people found that a pretty scary thought. While others, apparently, made it their business to ensure that as many people as possible stayed scared.

Corfe had suspected in the early days that hostile interests were at work, playing upon such fears to undermine confidence in the new company. He had tried alerting Eric, but Eric had 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?"

"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?"

"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 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—because 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."

 

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