The Cunningham Equations Read online

“They’re your dreams.” Gordon briefly put his hand in his pocket. He began flipping an Eisenhower dollar and catching it. The coin sparkled going up. Coming down it missed the edge of the cliff, spinning in silver twinkles like a firefly diving into the ocean. “To get rid of them,” Gordon said, “you have to let go.”

  Blaise ignored the hint. “What’s Hemmett’s problem? He climbed on me this morning about the project.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll get off you.” Snapping his fingers once, Gordon pointed. Dobie gave Blaise a plaintive look before sprinting across the grassy field. “Was it about your drinking?”

  Blaise didn’t say anything.

  “He’ll get over it. You round out the staff, that’s all that really matters to him. But you shouldn’t drink on the job.”

  “My mind is full of black marbles. Alcohol bleaches them.”

  “Battery acid won’t cure a bellyache.” Gordon pursed his lips in a thoughtful gesture. “There are greater worries, Blaise. You can’t handle drinking so it’s progressive.”

  “I don’t need a lecture.”

  “You’re drunk now.”

  “I’m not!”

  Gordon just stared at him.

  “Not really. Not like I’ll be later.” Blaise looked out to sea. The air over the cliffs was empty. Headlights flickered through pines and eucalyptus as glider pilots packed to go home.

  Gordon whistled for Dobie. “It’s getting late.”

  The dog came charging over the grass and skidded to a halt midway between Blaise and Gordon, looking from one to the other and panting with undisguised happiness.

  “Go along with Hemmett and he’ll leave you alone. Work it out, Blaise. Crack the code to the Tillies and you’ll be rich.”

  “I don’t care about being rich.”

  Gordon glanced at Blaise, an unfathomable expression on his face. “In time you’ll change your mind about that.”

  “I’ll see you . . . when I get back?”

  Bending to scratch Dobie’s ears, Gordon hid his face. “Dr. Hemmett has the techs cleaning out my lab tonight. I came by to get Dobie, didn’t I, boy?”

  The Doberman whined in response to his name.

  Dismay filled Blaise’s voice. “What’s happening?”

  “It’s a new project. That’s all.” Gordon studied Blaise in the fading light, his face an impassive white blur. “Did I tell you what Dobie did?”

  A breakthrough! And Gordon’s going to beat me to it! Blaise stared at Gordon. Gordon was like a father. Too much like Blaise’s father. He was a competitor.

  “No. ” The word used the last air in Blaise’s lungs. He struggled for control. Elan and his father’s word for it. His mother said panache, but they both meant a nineteenth-century gentleman with a stiff upper lip. For the Cunninghams the twentieth century had been a series of disappointments.

  Gordon seemed not to notice. “He was loose last week, like today, running squirrels. He caught one.”

  Blaise squinted into the last rays of the sun to see if Gordon was joking. “Dogs catch squirrels.”

  “Right. So Dobie thought awhile, then caught five more.”

  “I guess it was fun. He isn’t really an experiment anymore, is he? Dobie’s a pet.”

  Gordon stared at Blaise for a long moment, struck suddenly by some thought Blaise missed. “You like Dobie, don’t you?”

  “I guess so. I don’t know much about dogs. My parents . . .” Blaise shrugged. Gordon knew about his parents. Ascetic mathematicians with no room in their lives for the clutter of living. Dogs were clutter. Stop that thought. He was getting maudlin. Perhaps Gordon was right and he didn’t know how drunk he was. The threat of losing control had a sobering effect.

  “Would you like to mind Dobie for a while?”

  “Me?” Blaise had lost the drift of the conversation. “I don’t know how.”

  “Feed him what you eat . . .” Gordon looked closely at Blaise. “No. Feed him dog food. You might try some, it’s good for you. Give him water. No alcohol. Walk him twice a day or when he whines. You can do it. He’ll help.” Gordon pressed the leash into Blaise’s limp hand. Facing the pup, he spoke solemnly. “Go home with Blaise. Take care of him.”

  Dobie gave Gordon a look of numb betrayal. He looked at Blaise, who was abruptly reminded of a graffito some busybody had written on Nebuchadnezzar’s wall. Thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting. “I can’t do it, Gordon.”

  “Never say can’t.” Gordon seemed pleased with himself. “You’re pretty drunk, Blaise. Do you need a ride home?”

  “I’ll manage.” Blaise turned on his heel. He bumped Dobie and unconsciously patted the dog on the head. That was one more thing gentlemen didn’t do. They didn’t beg. Dobie whined once. Blaise looked down at the dog trotting obediently at the end of the leash. What had Gordon done? He turned the way Dobie pointed, but Gordon had disappeared in the evening gloom.

  The other cars were gone and his yellow VW bug sat in a solitary shadow. Dobie bounced into the passenger seat as if he’d occupied it all his canine life. Blaise waited at the lot gate while the security man pulled the chainlink-and-pipe barrier back on its wheels.

  He had to return Dobie to Gordon. He couldn’t take care of a dog. He clamped down on that thought. It was too close to admitting he couldn’t take care of himself. He switched on the headlights and the priest sprouted out of the ground, face dazzling white in the headlights.

  The gate was open, but Blaise didn’t move. The priest stood in silent vigil, near-invisible in his black suit and dog collar.

  Blaise’s parents had been Catholics. He remembered mass, priests looking at him the way this priest looked at him because he wasn’t a Catholic, because he was guilty—of something. Other protestors stood around the priest as Blaise drove past, but he didn’t really notice them.

  At home Blaise set the alarm for the San Francisco flight. While he drank half-and-half, which, in Blaise’s case was milk and whiskey, Dobie ate a cold can of soup and another of stew.

  “What am I supposed to do with you?” Blaise asked.

  If Dobie knew, he didn’t say.

  When one man speaking to a human intelligence thinks he knows what motivates that intelligence, he is indulging in wishful thinking . . .

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 2

  Esther Tazy shivered. Cold radiating from the three curved bayfront windows shaping her bedroom cupola had started goosebumps. She was stretching the early-morning kinks from her body, a daily ritual. The sight of San Francisco spread downhill from her bedroom windows, buildings bumping each other in disarray like tumbled blocks, invariably delighted her. The surrealistic cityscape was robbed of color and warmth by a gray overcast that gave weathered wood and cement the powdery silver sheen of aspen bark. Esther loved the view.

  A dog walker leading a Rottweiler paused in the street below Esther’s calisthenics to stare while moisture dribbled unnoticed down the collar of his tan trenchcoat. Esther smiled, running fingers softly up her naked body. The man blinked and tried to pretend he hadn’t looked as he urged his dog along.

  Turning from cold windows to her steam-heated bedroom, Esther put on a plum peignoir. She stroked silken ruffles, contrasting purple against the even white smoothness of her skin. The abrupt change in color pleased her. The robe made Esther exotically sexy. To Esther, being sexy was an end in itself, though she knew burlap would have made her equally ravishing. Not that the pig in her bed noticed.

  She yanked the covers away. “Get up, Doctor!” She said doke-tore, betraying Pannonian origins.

  Blaise Cunningham shivered and groped for the covers. His fine blondish hair had been bleached to invisibility by strong sunlight. He curled his sinewy body into a heat-conserving fetal ball. Esther considered leaving him to find his own way to work. But a strange man amid her personal things was out of the question. Besides, she needed his skill at the lab. She slapped hard on his naked buttocks. D
r. Cunningham snapped out straight, her palm print angry red on his rump.

  At the vanity mirror Esther slipped off the robe. She never tired of herself. Her waist had not thickened since puberty. Her pubic patch was the same silver mink as her shoulder-length hair. Her breasts were firm, hips wide. She swayed and her nipples hardened. A man watching did that to Esther.

  “Do we have to go?”

  Yes, Esther noted with satisfaction, he is watching. She glanced from the comers of her cat slant eyes. “Time and TIL wait for no man, Doke-tore.” She snapped the lime-green waistband of her panties, closing the discussion.

  Cunningham opened his mouth—perhaps to whine. This excited Esther. If he begged she could make him do other things. He was a Nobel Prize winner. That made him . . . different. At least to her. Among intellectuals, recognition could be a stronger goal than sex. Esther felt it in herself. That she used her body as a weapon did not mean she shared men’s weaknesses.

  Cunningham snapped his mouth shut, apparently sensing what Esther wanted. He dressed without comment.

  She waited for him to change his mind. Rejection was a bitter taste to start the day. She hid her pique by putting on the tight blue-and-white polyester uniform that showed her body to advantage. Time later to even the score.

  Dr. Cunningham watched for a moment, then shrugged and went into the kitchen where he guzzled orange juice out of a bottle from the oversized refrigerator. Leaning against the door again, he inventoried the contents: a little food, another orange juice carton, stacks of plastic trays for making round ice cubes. “What kind of parties do you give?” he called.

  “Get out of there, you son of a bitch!” Esther Tazy rocketed into the kitchen. The curious Hungarian lilt did not offset the rage in her voice.

  Cunningham thrust the orange juice at her as he stumbled backward out of the kitchen.

  Esther caught the carton, clutching it to her breast. She glared until he retreated to the pink alcove, confused, his attention directed outside. Gently Esther replaced the orange juice in the refrigerator. The soft plastic box that was going to change things was undisturbed. Releasing a longheld breath, she shut the refrigerator.

  Someday Esther would have her own Nobel Prize. Then there would be no more deferring to men and Dr. Cunningham would realize with regret how he had blundered.

  The thought of Cunningham punishing himself made Esther feel better. Absently pleasant, she collected purse and coat. If he didn’t understand, he deserved no better. While Dr. Cunningham groped his way down her dim-lit front stairwell, Esther opened the refrigerator and took her locket, one of many, from the ice cube tray. Hanging from the chain around his neck it lay invisible and icy between her breasts. But Esther was inured to this morning ritual, just as she no longer noticed the goosebumps in the alcove.

  Dr. Cunningham waited on the sidewalk beside her glass-red Mustang. The convertible was too cold for San Francisco because Esther insisted on driving with the top down. She joked about being too flaky to raise the top even in the rain. Men laughed and made passes. But Esther was stronger, smarter—the one who tailored her own life and accepted the cost. Men were weak.

  She nodded and Cunningham slid in. “I have to go back to La Jolla tonight,” he said tentatively, “but we could have dinner.”

  Now he hurt as she had last night. The politics of power generated a familiar heat between her thighs that Esther’s psychiatrist hedged around, saying she tied her ego gratification to her sexual self-image, using sex as a weapon. That was silly. She would have respected the shrink if he’d just said, You’re a nympho, and tried to lay her.

  “You drink too much, Doke-tore. Besides, I have work.” She examined him, green-hazel eyes confiding and calculating. “Soon your Dr. Hemmett will get the work he wants. I am fixing it at home.” She didn’t say Doke-tore Hemmett. Esther Tazy controlled her English as she did her life, manipulating her accent to hide insults and private revenge, enjoying the hurt in Cunningham’s eyes as he realized exactly what she was doing. “You see, Doke-tore, I am not just some dumb Hungarian broad who marries rich and stupid men.”

  “I never said you were, Esther.” Blaise Cunningham hudddled, looking sick. Esther’s driving did not make him feel better. When she hit the intersections the Mustang swooped like a DC-9 taking off from a short runway.

  “Yes, Munchkin.” She oozed benevolence like taffy around a dagger. “You go back where you come from, and you ask your Dr. Hemmett who is Esther Tazy.”

  “He just told me you needed some help.”

  Esther swooped the car with particular viciousness. “Maybe,” Esther said spitefully, “he doesn’t care who you are to tell you I will make GENRECT famous and a lot of money, too.”

  Blaise burrowed deeper into his misery.

  Down the peninsula the highway became smoother. Esther turned onto a driveway through a chainlink fence into a lot facing a low brick building. Behind the building was the ocean.

  A man in brown sackcloth, rope sandals, long black-gray beard, and a repent! sign blocked the way until a vaguely apologetic priest took his arm, urging him off the asphalt.

  Blaise stared. The priest, who seemed relatively young, had an angular familiarity. At least no older than Blaise. He was sure it was the same priest he had seen in the GENRECT parking lot the night Gordon had given him the dog.

  “Hee-pee!” Pronouncing the word properly would not carry the full weight of Esther’s contempt for men, stupid men, parading in medieval garb. All priests ranted about sin, which they confused with sex. Esther knew the difference. She needed no advice about either.

  “You haven’t told me what you’re doing for Dr. Hemmett.” Blaise stared at Esther with guileless blue eyes. She could not tell if he was making amends or prying.

  She said something in Magyar. The word lacked delicacy, but Esther was too mad at herself to remember her hard-learned facade in both languages. “I believe I talk too much, Doke-tore. Dr. Hemmett is our secret, you and I. You tell nobody my little secret and I tell no one yours.” She held a limp hand chin high with fingers dangling.

  Cunningham looked away. Esther knew the chink in the armor of his stupid male pride. The nagging feeling she had said too much hung on, but even a public announcement couldn’t change her future. Maybe complicate it, but Esther had self-confidence.

  Leaving Cunningham in the parking lot, she entered the laboratory knowing what she had done was clever—even brilliant. Success could not be denied her now, even if she must still keep it secret—for a while.

  Esther made her good mornings in the workroom. Her future lay with men, but a pleasant attitude toward women with whom she must deal made her path easier. She tried to remember how much she had told Cunningham. And if it mattered. Dr. Hemmett would see to Cunningham. If he didn’t, her boss at TIL would erupt in rage. His slyly concealed temper, which she knew about, would consume him. But he could do nothing.

  “We are a vengeful people,” she had warned Doke-tore Cunningham. But better she took her revenge on the filth who had promised her a position—who had not said the position would be on her back with her legs in the air. Poor Cunningham was safe. Esther fried bigger fish. She liked the English concept of frying enemies who, when she thought about it, had all been men.

  Despite acoustical tile, the din of women getting their morning start flooded the lab. Blue-and-white uniformed techs clanged their stools against the workbench, already in revolt against the antiseptic quiet. The laboratory was a long white shed dominated by a white plastic slab at table height. Lidded glass containers in neat rows, mixing vats of recombinant DNA, covered every inch of the central table. Along both side walls individual workstations were cluttered with optical and electron microscopes and specialized equipment. Pride surged. Esther was in charge—even though she still drew only a tech’s pay.

  She settled at a wall station with an electron microscope while the voices gradually diminished, replaced by muted clicks of glass against glass. A new lab assistant pla
ced a tray of prepared samples on her desk. Nice-looking boy: straight blond hair, thin German lips, and a sharp, hatchet nose. Silently he laid out specimens, each like a microscopic egg in its own coddling pan. Except they were vacuum-sealed and the electronic microscope wouldn’t coddle them.

  “Max?” Esther said.

  He looked up, startled.

  “Your name tag. It is Max.”

  Max blushed, which Esther supposed meant the women had been talking about her again. “I like you, Max. But you must go now. I have work.”

  Max stumbled against his specimen cart getting away. She could find him when she wanted. Max would be attentive. He was young.

  The scanning electron microscope felt warm to the touch as she set a specimen in the vacuum chamber, starting the first step in magnifying the DNA a half-million times. The scopes were timer-controlled to switch on before anyone except the security guards were in the building. Waiting for the vacuum to pump down, she centered the computer-enhanced image on the monitor, enlarging it to fill the screen.

  She added a mathematical map and identifiable coordinates specifying cell aspects. Slowly the green-glow image brightened to an RGB color enhancement as gaudy as NBC’s peacock.

  The new computer checked the samples against the mathematical model automatically. Not like when Esther first started looking at flickery ghosts in gray and white. She was pleased by the efficiency.

  Some matches were grotesquely wrong. Then she reentered data and alternate procedures based on the information she kept in neat Middle-European script on the notepad below the monitor. Patiently she expanded the model from experimental results.

  Max returned to stand silently behind Esther’s elbow.

  “Do you understand?” She hadn’t looked up from the monitor to speak; she felt the boy’s presence.

  “You’re programming recombinant DNA molecules to patch into the gene’s protein chain. Then the computer tests the changes.” Max grinned. “You’re good.”

  Esther removed the slide from the microscope’s vacuum chamber. “Damned good,” she said. “And better if electron microscopes didn’t kill my babies. Just once it would be nice to look at my babies without I kill them.”