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.”