Garsten nodded. “That’s the way I figured it too. I didn’t bother you with it last night since you were . . .” he bunched his mouth and made a play of being delicate, “relaxing. But I talked to Martin this morning. I called him on the yacht about a half hour after you’d left.”
“And what does he think?”
“Oh, he agrees. The longer things drag out now, the more likely the ball of wax will come unglued. He wants us to get together at the Mansion to talk about it.”
“Who?”
“You and me. Andy. The guys. . . . Could you get away from here to make it there for lunch say?”
“You mean right now?”
“No, tomorrow.”
“I guess so—I’ll be clear by then. I’m not due back in Olympia until late, anyhow.” Vanessa looked at Garsten curiously. “What is Martin thinking? To bring the whole thing forward?”
Garsten nodded. “ASAP. Didn’t you say something about Eric going up to the mountains sometime soon?”
“The Barrow’s Pass resort—next weekend. . . . Could you have things ready by then?”
“There isn’t a lot left to do. One piece of paper to draw up and some details to file for the record. I assume there’s no problem with the equipment?”
Vanessa shook her head and remained expressionless. “None at all.”
“Well, that’s what Martin wants to go over tomorrow. We’re gonna get the show on the road.” Garsten drained the last of his coffee. “Have you had lunch?”
“Not yet.” Vanessa had planned on making do with just a light snack. Martin had promised somewhere exclusive for dinner that night. She would be staying on the yacht again, of course.
“Me neither,” Garsten said. “Come on, I’ll treat you—and it won’t even show up on your bill.” He set down his empty cup and looked around. “Do we need to go out someplace, or can you get something here? Do academics eat real food? Or is it all bean curd and processed fish brains? . . .”
CHAPTER TWELVE
It had begun as one of Taki’s crazy ideas.
Kevin lay hunched on his back. The rubber band fixed around both him and the wadded-up pack attached underneath held him compressed into a ball: chin tucked in, knees drawn up toward his head with his arms clasped around them. Or at least, the swiveling ball-and-socket joint that functioned as a chin, the piezoelectrically activated articulations that served as knees, and the linked multi-axial appendages that were his arms.
Greenery, water, and sky turned around him in a blur as Taki’s fingers, looking like hinged balloons the length of freight cars, fitted him into an inverted arch of dinosaur hide floating a mile above the ground. The kaleidoscope stabilized with Taki’s face filling his view against a backdrop of sky. The mouth opened and closed to say something that Kevin couldn’t hear.
“All set for launch?” Doug Corfe’s voice queried. Corfe was down by the water with Taki and Ray, the ferry captain, speaking via a portable phone link patched into Kevin’s audio.
“This is exciting,” Avril’s voice said on the same circuit. She was in another coupler up at the house with Kevin, slaved to the same mec for vision input only to share the ride. Eric was with them, handling things in the lab. Janna was there too, having to watch for the moment. Normally it would have been possible to slave both of the other couplers to Kevin’s, but one of them had developed a fault.
“We’re ready,” Kevin said.
Trees and sky whirled again. Then, for a moment, Kevin was looking up at the sky between the arms of an enormous horseshoe. Two rails, diverging above him into a wide V, yellow in the sunlight, elongated as Taki drew back the slingshot. . . .
“Three. . . . Two. . . . One. . . .” Corfe’s voice recited. “Liftoff!”
Kevin felt as if he had been hit from behind by a train, and then he was hurtling skyward past the treetops. Avril screamed.
He had tangled impressions of rocks and shore shrinking rapidly below. He could see the house, Harriet crossing the yard; a boat out near the far side of the inlet. Then he felt himself slowing toward the peak of the climb, and for a few moments hanging and turning like a miniature moon.