“I’ve just been talking to my boss and his boss,” Aub informed him without preliminaries. His voice was seething. “So now I know what gives.”
“Hey, calm down, buddy,” Clifford answered. “What’s with all the bosses? Now you know what? What gives?”
Aub seemed to take a second or two to compose himself. His heavy breathing came through clearly on audio. Then he explained. “There was a zombie from Washington here too. They want me to take another job.”
Clifford sensed the connection immediately. His brow creased into a frown of suspicion. “What kind of job?” he asked.
“They didn’t come too clean with the specifics, but it was obvious they intend taking further—a lot further—the experiments that we set up to prove your theories. They want me to set up a team and head it . . . to manage the whole thing formally and more thoroughly.” He moistened his lips and asked: “Do you know anything about this yet . . . officially?”
“No way.”
“That’s what I thought. That’s just what I damn well thought.” Aub continued to glower while Clifford thought over what he had just said.
“Where is this going to take place?” Clifford asked at last.
Aub showed his hands and sighed. “Again, they wouldn’t say. But what I did gather was that there are going to be lots of people in on it . . . from all kinds of places. Not just experimental particle guys like me, but the works—mathematical guys, physics guys, cosmology guys . . . you name it. They’re getting a whole circus together.”
“I see . . .” Clifford murmured slowly.
“But do you, Brad . . . really?” Aub’s beard quivered with his indignation. “You can see what they’re doing—they’re setting up a whole high-power scientific team, on the quiet, to take your work apart and go through it. But they’re not even telling you it’s happening, let alone inviting you in on it. It’s plain piracy. Next thing, they’ll be setting up some stooge with his name in big lights all over as having started the whole business. You won’t buy their apples so they’re cutting you out.”
Clifford’s initial calm turned to a cold, creeping anger that climbed slowly up his spine until it filled his whole being. The picture that he had long suspected was now clear. Fighting to keep himself under control, he asked, “So, what’d you do—take the job?”
Aub shook his head firmly. “If I didn’t know what I know I probably would have—it would have sounded pretty interesting—but as things were, I wanted to check out the score with you one more time. They told me the whole thing was politically sensitive and all that junk and not to breathe a word about it, but what the hell? I’m damn glad I did check it out too. Right now I’m in the right mood to go straight back upstairs and tell ’em to upstick it ass-wise.”
Clifford was still in an ugly mood ten minutes later when, downstairs in the living-room, he recounted the conversation to Sarah.
“It’s the end,” he fumed, pacing from one side of the room to the other. “This time I’ve had it. First thing tomorrow I’m going straight in to see Edwards—and Jarrit too, if he’s around—and I’m gonna spell out to the two of ’em just what I know about their setup and their neat little plans and their . . . their bullshit! They can throw me out if they like, but just to see their faces will be worth it . . . just to see them scurrying for the woodwork.”
Sarah contemplated the ceiling stoically and drummed her fingertips lightly on the arm of her chair until the pounding of his footsteps had stopped. When she sensed that he was looking at her again she lowered her eyes to meet his and shook her head slowly from side to side, at the same time smiling with a mixture of despair and amusement.
“Now, Brad, you know you can’t do that,” she said. “Assuming, that is, you don’t go and have a coronary or burst a blood vessel first. It’s just not practical.”