The Cunningham Equations Read online

  “Yes. Damned good!” Max could sympathize with Esther’s frustration that all her samples were killed by the examination. That it was an untested gene that would live, one that might not be right, did not escape him.

  “You are a sweet boy, Max.”

  Esther’s face and neck were damp. Perfume clung to her body. When she swung around on the stool, practically touching him, Max quivered. The elation of working well coursed through Esther, exciting her. She put her hand on Max’s thigh. “We should see more of each other.”

  Max’s pale German face turned the color of used brick.

  The lab door opened, admitting a tall blond man with the perennial stoop of those who feel too skinny for their height. He started toward Esther’s workstation. Stopped, confused for a moment, then turned and left without a word. Max stared at the door. “Who was that?”

  Esther’s nostrils pinched. “Dr. Cunningham.” Her answer was automatic. “A computer expert with a Nobel Prize. He is here to look at the worms. He is nothing in bed.”

  “Nobel Prize?” Awe invaded Max’s voice. He failed to respond with the jealousy Esther tried to implant.

  Esther dreaded to think she sounded the same way as Max about Dr. Cunningham’s prize. She didn’t want Max to see she cared so she moved her hand higher on his thigh. “Tonight,” she said. One way or another she would cut Dr. Cunningham down to size, denying that she felt any envy of his achievement.

  But, of course, she did.

  Max blushed. Esther sent him on his way before going through the door Dr. Cunningham had taken.

  He stood in the corridor considering a Monet reproduction, as misplaced on the rust-red Italian tile walls as she was in this building.

  “Why do you not come in? We have work to do.”

  They were alone. The lab was practically self-running. Occasionally one of the investor-owners came on the premises. None understood the procedures. Besides, they had met with Dr. Cunningham the day before and been embarrassed that only Esther knew what she was doing. Her lips turned down at the reminder of how these stupid men used her.

  “I was afraid—” Blaise began. “Dr. Hemmett said to keep this between us.” He tried to wave his way through the mists and Esther smelled gin.

  “Don’t be a fool!” She led him back to the lab and the mainframe computer terminal where she spent an hour explaining the procedures used in genetically altering a jumping gene. Finally Esther brought up the existing program on the terminal. Dr. Cunningham had not changed expression throughout the recital and Esther’s annoyance began to slip out of control. Drunken moron didn’t seem to be listening. She stared at him. “I am told you talk to computers, Doke-tore. Do you talk to people?”

  “I’m listening.” He seemed confused by her sudden question.

  “You don’t seem to understand what I am telling you.”

  “You want to design a protein that will cleave to the structure you’ve evolved. You already have the chemical procedure to vacate a specific protein position in the DNA.” Esther stared. “Very good, Doctor.” She did not accent the title. “Can you do it?”

  “Of course.” Blaise looked at Esther Tazy, realizing this simple declaration changed the relationship between them. “It would be easier with my own computer. That’s the one I talk to. But I can write a patch on the existing program.” He sat at the keyboard. Esther had never seen anyone program directly in machine language without notes. As he typed Dr. Cunningham talked, prodding Esther for data. He could not be really concentrating. How could he keep track of that silent endless stream of ones and zeros? Esther’s fury grew as she considered the wasted time this drunken fantasy was costing. It had to be gibberish.

  She felt wrung out. “Why have you stopped?” Cunningham shrugged. “That’s it.”

  Esther stared. The screen was full of ones and zeros. “It is nothing.”

  “You want me to run it?”

  “Of course, Doke-tore.” Esther wondered if he had become too drunk to notice sarcasm.

  Dr. Cunningham glanced oddly at her before exiting from the machine’s core language to tap in the run command. Half a minute passed and nothing happened.

  “Drunken creep—” Esther’s mouth closed abruptly as the screen blossomed with words and symbols. An unfolded model of an extended protein molecule formed.

  “That’s it!” Esther said breathlessly. She recognized the linkages and began scribbling notes. She was sure that what Dr. Cunningham had done was right—and yet it was impossible.

  “Do you have it all?” He stared at her, his face twisted into a curious immobility.

  “Yes,” she said. “How did you do this?”

  “Carefully, Miss Tazy. Without preconceptions.”

  He is laughing at me because I talked down to him. Esther felt numb, realizing the doke-tore also was pointing out that whatever she accomplished, she somehow owed to him. “You think you’re so smart,” she grated. “You—maricon!” She had picked the Spanish for homosexual, but her error did not matter. Esther’s emotions were like water behind a dam. “Do they know, does Dr. Hemmett know what kind of useless drunken fool you really are, Doke-tore?” Esther clamped her lips shut. She breathed hoarsely, suddenly sick to her stomach. But she wouldn’t take one word back. He deserved it for being a smug, supercilious bastard.

  “Yes, Miss Tazy. He knows.”

  She looked into implacable blue eyes that showed nothing of the man behind them. Silence continued as his fingers ran a trill on the keyboard. The screen faded with majestic precision.

  “Can I use it for something else?” Esther had finally recovered her voice.

  “I doubt it.” Cunningham stepped away from the terminal.

  “Has-been! What do you know?”

  “Not much, Miss Tazy. Barely enough to erase the patch.”

  “Prick!” It grated from the depths of her fury-ridden soul.

  Dr. Cunningham didn’t even seem to be listening.

  Esther’s first scientific discovery had been that a beautiful woman is always in the shower when the doorbell rings.

  Grabbing a towel, sticking her feet in scuffs, she left the shower running and a trail of damp to the hall where a lever opened the door at the foot of the long, narrow stairway. The downpour must have been heavy because the man in the yellow raincoat was shedding more water than Esther.

  “Come up, Max!” Esther yelled down the long flight of stairs. She allowed the towel to unveil more than it should. She hummed on the way back to the shower. If it was raining outside, why delay? Better that she get Max in the mood early. She stepped into the shower and soaped herself again, hoping he would come into the bathroom, wishing she could have seen his face when she dropped the towel.

  Only it was so far away and so dark at the foot of the stairs that she barely saw his face in that yellow hood. Just the outline of a pale blur shadowed by almost-white hair. Her contact lenses were in their case on the bathroom sink, safe against going down the shower drain.

  Slowly Esther’s hand stopped the sensuous stroking of her soapy body. Max was blond. Blonder even than Dr. Cunningham, with hair the color of German butter.

  She stared through the pink shower curtain at the black shadow moving toward her.

  “Who are you?” Esther’s voice was squeaky. “Go away!”

  The shower curtain rattled back with a clang as the hooks jolted together.

  Esther started breathing again. “You!” Her voice was contemptuous. “Get out!”

  The man ignored Esther and stepped into the bathtub. Dirty water ran off his shoes and down the drain.

  The study of intelligence is not the study of brilliance. A spider born knowing how to spin a different web is brilliant. The spider that learns how to make a better web is intelligent.

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 3

  Shey circled him, standing too close. Cesco held the knife Blaise had “sold” for a coin worth one-thousandth of a dolla
r.

  “He thinks we accept him for the knife,” Cesco explained.

  The bigger boys’ smiles were knowing. “He has stolen more than all of us together,” Lupo said in Sicilian dialect. “We accept a Prince of Thieves.”

  His father’s face loomed large before Blaise’s ten-year-old eyes. “Learn to be better than us,” he said. He was sad, as if with regret for the future.

  Blaise awoke in the chair that faced the ocean, empty bottle still in his hand. The scene contrasted sharply with his memory of Esther Tazy’s chilly view of gray houses and curved glass windows stretching downhill through misty rain. Too bad about Esther. If he could have stopped drinking in time everything might have been different.

  Dobie’s enlarged face was nose to nose with him. Sensing Blaise’s waking, the dog whined before putting his front feet on the floor where he sat at attention. Blaise winnowed dream from reality. He’d had no prize then. Nor would the Sicilian boys have cared if he did. At first Dobie’s presence was jarring until Blaise recalled picking the dog up from the boarding kennels when he got in from San Francisco.

  The phone chirred, identifying what woke him.

  “Dr. Cunningham?” Dr. Hemmett’s voice betrayed him, he spoke too slowly when worried. Most people spoke too fast. “How was San Francisco?”

  “Rainy.”

  Hemmett took a moment to digest this. His silence lacked approval. “I meant, how did things go with Miss Tazy?”

  “I did what she wanted.” Blaise didn’t invite a request for details and Hemmett didn’t pursue them.

  “That may help. Her work is important to us. Very important. More successful than your work has been.” Hemmett coughed politely. “You didn’t tell anybody about Miss Tazy?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Umm, yes. Well, see me when you get to the lab.” Hemmett didn’t hang up, though. “You’re sure about Miss Tazy?”

  Blaise dropped the phone, pretending he hadn’t waited. Dobie whined, reminding him where reality lay.

  “Out?”

  The long, anxious droop of Dobie’s mouth turned up as if imitating a human. His eyes brightened and he scootted closer. Blaise unlatched the entrance to the back stairwell. Dobie rocketed downstairs through the open door into the yard. Suddenly nausea unbalanced Blaise. He clung to the door while his stomach pushed up his throat. Eyes closed, he took deep breaths, holding them as he bolted for the bathroom. Finally he groped back into the living room. Restricting what he could see helped, like a victim of mal de mer shutting out the sight of unwanted motion. He forced his eyes to stare at the mantel clock clicking each minute off with loud officiousness. He pressed a button on his watch for the day and date. Thursday!

  The shortcut from the parking lot cut through ankle-deep eucalyptus bark under the trees. Sweat poured by the time he reached the campus where he was supposed to be teaching. The dog glued himself to Blaise, determined not to lose again the man Gordon had turned him over to. At the sound of a door opening, Dobie had scrabbled back upstairs, exploding through the house and outside. He wouldn’t go back in. After frustrated minutes of trying to fool Dobie into staying home, Blaise surrendered and took him along.

  Heads turned as he entered the classroom. Students avoided his eyes. Blaise knew he looked the way he felt. Dobie lay at his feet as he took the podium.

  “Good morning. I’m delighted you could make it. I almost didn’t.” That got a titter. Blaise tried to smile. “Our subject is artificial intelligence. Timely, since with each passing year our race displays less of the natural kind.”

  Polite laughter greeted the obligatory unfunny joke. Sixteen workstations, fifteen students. He fiddled with the lectern and couldn’t remember the missing head. He’d forgotten his notes. And his seating chart.

  Concentrate! His body had gotten him to class. He willed his mind to accept responsibility.

  “I think this morning we might try personal approaches. Would anyone like to lead off?” Sweat formed in Blaise’s palms. He had never stalled before and he imagined they saw through him.

  The stares were uncomprehending.

  “You, I mean.” Blaise couldn’t breathe. His throat had closed. Even the growing urgency of his bladder was secondary.

  “What is intelligence? We’re not going to manufacture any until we define it.”

  Students stared. Blaise glanced down at his rumpled clothing. His blond beard prickled his cheeks.

  “Is intelligence the sole result of memory and the ability to use it consciously or subconsciously? Is it something mystical or spiritual? Is it better when the brain is bigger?”

  Is this insanity? The sound of his voice running hysterically shattered the last shards of Blaise’s confidence.

  They stared, not acknowledging a word he said.

  Blaise was getting lightheaded.

  A hand went up.

  Blaise nodded and a thin, dark-haired woman, her too-gaunt face causing her jawbones to protrude in a memorable way, said, “Whales, dolphins, and even domestic cattle have larger brains. If they’re intelligent why aren’t they exploiting us?”

  Blaise grinned. “Like cats?” He had never appreciated Miss Irigoyen before. Now he could have kissed her. He leaned on the lectern, concealing the agony of an unemptied bladder.

  Suddenly Miss Irigoyen stopped talking. The room was silent and he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. Eyes behind desks stared, waiting. Like the clock on the mantel, only this time there would be no end to it.

  “I. . . I hoped we could get a start like this,” Blaise said. He faltered, but the need not to fail was imperative. “I brought a surprise guest. Dobie!” The Pinscher pup scrambled upright in midyawn as if startled to be recognized.

  “As you are finding out, a gap exists between theory and application in this field. I’m giving you a chance to fill it. Can you discover”—Blaise glanced at the wall clock—“how intelligent this dog really is in twenty-eight minutes?”

  A young man wearing army fatigues stared at Blaise in dismay. “You mean him!”

  Blaise smiled.

  Miss Irigoyen, who had already displayed a practical turn of mind, rose further in Blaise’s esteem by asking “Does he bite?”

  “Take your questions to Dobie. Next week I want cogent papers explaining methodology and conclusions and, if you think to dodge the issue, this paper will be ten percent of term grades.” Blaise felt remarkably better. The class was no longer looking at him. Dobie pranced nervously, enjoying the attention.

  Blaise edged toward the door and the restroom down the hall.

  “Were you going somewhere, Dr. Cunningham?”

  The man in the classroom doorway wore a dark suit, gray hair, and thin, tight lips that lacked humor.

  “Dean Carden. I didn’t see you come in.”

  “Obviously. I received a report of an unauthorized dog in the building.”

  “A practical problem to keep the students thinking.” Saying to the dean what he foisted on the students seemed flat.

  Dean Carden watched the class milling around Dobie with varying degrees of confidence. “We have regulations concerning animals in the classroom.”

  “Dobie’s a class problem.”

  “Regulations covering all animals for all purposes. Were you going somewhere?”

  “For a drink of water.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Blaise stared at the dean, an unsettled feeling growing in his already queasy stomach.

  “The custodians reported beer cans and a vodka bottle in a trash receptacle.” The dean looked at Blaise. “In this hall.”

  Blaise shrugged the way Italian children had taught him. The shrug disclaimed knowledge, protested innocence.

  “I see. You do realize our insurance liability should that dog bite a student?”

  “Dobie loves people.” Blaise expected the dean wouldn’t like knowing Dobie was a lab animal undergoing brain alterations.

  “I wouldn’t leave the room with the dog and the s
tudents in it together, Dr. Cunningham.” The dean’s delivery was dry. “I want to talk with you soon. In my office.” He looked at Dobie again, as if he wanted to stay. But he had made his exit line. The door swung slowly closed behind him.

  Blaise turned to see what had struck the dean so suddenly. The classroom was quiet. Students stood like statues in particular patterns and Miss Irigoyen had her hand on Dobie’s neck. She lifted her hand and said, “Go.”

  Dobie streaked away, nails clicking on the wood floor as he wove his way around the students in an intricate pattern to come to a stop in front of a thin boy in a “here comes trouble” T-shirt. The boy handed Dobie a piece of sandwich.

  Dobie panted happily, thumping his docked stub of tail on the varnished floor before swaggering back to Miss Irigoyen with a hint of jauntiness.

  Students huddled again, Miss Irigoyen standing apart with her hand on Dobie’s head. They broke from the huddle to take statuelike positions in another pattern. Dobie seemed bored threading the human maze.

  “The maze idea is interesting,” Blaise said. “Whose is it?”

  “Johnson.” The thin boy with the bits of sandwich raised his hand at the sound of his name. Blaise remembered him sitting in the back without much to say. Apparently Johnson just wasn’t talkative.

  Students competed at telling Blaise how smart Dobie was when the hour warning stilled the clamor. They carried the discussion outside. Blaise edged toward the door.

  “Honestly, Professor. That was neat.”

  Petite, blond hair in a ponytail, dark-brown eyes that swallowed Blaise, she was failing the seminar.

  “Free discussion gets ideas out, Lucy. Of course they’re not always the ideas the teacher has in mind. But a bad idea is better than no idea at all.” He willed the girl to go away.

  The door swung closed behind the departing students. She leaned against Blaise. “I have a swell idea, Professor.” She used her hands to convey it. Blaise retreated.

  “What’s wrong, Professor—Blaise?”