“What did you get?” she asked him instead.
“Some wood, a door, and some bits and pieces for a room he’s remodeling—hinges, screws, and stuff.” Kevin noticed Vanessa’s briefcase to one side, along with some folders and the slide carousel box that had been in the hallway on Friday. He didn’t see the plastic bag that had been aboard the yacht. Just to prove that she could read his mind, Vanessa said, “Oh yes, I found something when I got to the seminar that looked as if it might be yours—something electronic, wrapped in plastic. It must have got mixed up with my things when we were loading the car.”
“Oh yes.” Kevin did a good job of feigning surprise. “It’s Taki’s. He was looking for it on Friday.”
“I put it in one of those boxes of yours in the trunk of the Jaguar. Are you ever going to remove them?”
“Have you got the keys? I’ll get them now.”
“Oh, do it tomorrow sometime. Taki called, by the way. I told him you’d be back later. Can you call him back?”
“Sure. Was it about the relay?”
“Is that what it is? I don’t know. He didn’t say.” Vanessa’s eyes had strayed back to the screen and began scanning over what she had written. “Have you eaten? There are some cold cuts in the kitchen. Or there’s the last of a stew that Harriet made that needs finishing.”
“I had something with Doug in town . . . thanks. You, er, look busy. I’ll let you get on with it. Where’s Dad?”
“Downstairs, I’d presume. Yes, I do have a lot to do. Goodnight, in case I don’t see you again.”
” ‘Night.”
Kevin turned from the doorway and made his way down to the lab at the rear, trying to tell himself that this wasn’t really happening. He’d read somewhere about lucid dreaming, that was so real you couldn’t tell the difference from being awake—he’d even experienced it himself a couple of times. Sometimes he had “woken” up from such a state only to find out later that he wasn’t awake at all, and then gone through it again and ended up with no idea if he was really awake now, or what was going on. But if this was a dream, then so must everything else have been all the way back to thinking he’d been in a mec on Payne’s yacht. What yacht? Who was Payne? How did he know they existed? Neither of them had figured in his life before a few days ago, when everything had seemed so serene. Maybe they weren’t real, then, and life was still serene. And maybe the stories about DNC were true, and this was what it did to you inside your head. Probably just as likely.
Eric was hunched on a stool at one end of the large bench, studying some graphs in a molecular circuitry catalog and comparing numbers with the content of an e-mail item showing on a screen. He looked over as Kevin came in from the stairs. “Ah, so you’re back. What happened to Doug? Did he go straight on home?”
“Yes. He’s got some stuff to unload. He’ll pick up his car in the morning.”
Eric looked him over briefly through his spectacles. “So, did you have a good time?”
“Well, I guess it was . . . something different. We ate out too.”
“Fine. I talked to Patti Jukes just before I left. She told me about the mec that you were almost flying today. It sounds as if you’ve almost got it licked. That’s terrific.”
Suddenly everything seemed almost normal again. “A microprogrammed transmission is definitely the way to go,” Kevin said. “The trouble is it gives coarse control-tuning. I think we’re going to have to learn to fly. It doesn’t look like something that’ll precode easily into an algorithm.”
“Well, if gnat-size brains can get the hang of it, I’m sure you will too, in time. I’ve got some papers on insect simulations that you ought to read. One of them has a good section on wing dynamics that might help you get the microprogram right. I’ll dig them up tomorrow.”