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.