He walked up to a pair of attractive young women who were standing beside the stone barbecue pit. One of the women was tall and blonde, a slimmer version of Bert with the same narrow nose and rounded forehead. The combination looked much better on her. The other was shorter, with high cheekbones and long dark hair that glistened in the twilight. “Ladies,” Bert said, “I’d like you to meet our new arrival from CERN. This is Roger Coulton. He’s already one of the leading theorists of his generation, and he’s just getting started. He’s a bachelor and a Brit: Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, and all that. But don’t worry, ladies. I’m told he likes girls, despite his education.”
Roger blinked.
“He works in my group at the SSC, and he’s absolutely brilliant. Had to be, or we wouldn’t have hired him. And if he doesn’t stay brilliant, we’ll kick his ass out. Right, Roger?”
“Of course,” Roger said smoothly and smiled, feeling an inner twinge of anxiety that Bert might know about the recent problem with his new approach. The women looked at him appraisingly, he noticed.
“Roger, this is my daughter, Virginia, and this is her best friend, Susan Elliott. They were roommates in college. Virginia teaches history at Brown, and she’s here for a short visit. Susan is a molecular biologist. She now works for a molecular bioengineering company in Dallas.”
As they shook hands, Roger, instinctively veering away from a potentially awkward entanglement with the boss’s daughter, smiled at Susan. “Molecular bioengineering,” he said, elevating his eyebrows. “What firm?”
“Not one you’d have heard of,” Susan said. “I work for the Mitocon Corporation. It’s a small start-up company put together five years ago with venture capital by some very sharp people from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I’ve been there for two years.”
Roger nodded. She had bright greenish-hazel eyes that flashed when she talked, and she was quite beautiful. “And before that?”
“I got my Ph.D. at Hopkins.With Marcel. Perez, and I did a postdoc at Stanford with Helmut Rohrlich. My specialty is the synthesis of neural proteins.”’
Roger revised his estimate of her age upward by five years. She must be almost his age, he decided. Out of the corner of his eye, Roger noticed that Bert and Virginia were moving off to join another group. He didn’t mind at all. “I really know very little about molecular biology,” he said, looking into the wide hazel eyes. “But I’d like very much to learn more about it.” He smiled.
9
ALICE LOOKED AROUND THE RENTED APARTMENT THAT had been her home in Tallahassee for the last three years. With her books, papers, and file cabinets moved to storage, three years of clutter disposed of, and newly cleaned curtains on the windows, it looked like a different place. Through the Florida State University housing office she had been able to sublet it to a visitor to the university for the two summer months she would be away in Texas.
She had never really liked this apartment. She hated the color of the tile in the bathroom, and the ceiling in the living room was cracked. Also, her furniture was showing serious signs of wear. Three years here was quite long enough. It occurred to her that when she returned from Waxahachie she should plan to move to a nicer apartment and buy new furniture.
She had come here, fled here, really, after Steve’s death. She had decided to quit her job with the Democrat and sell the house with its bittersweet memories and big mortgage payments. On her tight budget she hadn’t been able to afford the high-rent district, so she brought the remnants of her old life to this new home. She considered the years she had lived here. It had been a time of healing. There had been good times here, parties and friends, a lover once or twice…
She picked up the silver-framed picture of Steve shown roped to the rock wall of El Capitan and confidently waving. He’d been such a self-centered jerk sometimes… She sniffed, wrapped the picture in a pillowcase, and placed it carefully into the cardboard box from the liquor store that now held some of her possessions and memories. She sealed the box, carried it to her car, and slammed the lid of the trunk, perhaps a bit harder than necessary.
She suddenly felt good, released from a burden. She was, she decided, pleased to be shedding, for the moment, her frugal Tallahassee apartment and lifestyle, the shrunken fragments from the split chrysalis of a dormant creature that was about to spread its new wings and fly away.
Quitting her job at the Tallahassee Democrat and becoming a freelance writer had at first been very appealing. It released her from the burden of dealing with the bad assignments, the routine, the unforgiving deadlines, the jerks and the lechers at the Democrat, and also it offered the advantages of not being tied to a particular city, a particular job, of being able to live and work anywhere she wished, anywhere in the world. She had always liked to travel and had looked forward, in a year or so, to spending a season in London or Paris, a month writing on a Greek island or on the Costa Brava of Spain or in the South of France, or doing a few weeks of research in Hong Kong or Tahiti or Rio while she worked on a new book.
It hadn’t turned out that way. For the past three years she had been securely bound to Tallahassee by the realities of economics. Her equity in the house had not been large. It, along with Steve’s insurance money and the small income from her first books, had been barely enough to support her, even in this part of Florida, where the cost of living was among the lowest in the nation. She had been tied here as securely as if she had been under house arrest.
But now the economic equations were changing, and her writing career was finally taking off. A year ago the advance for Earthworms had been only $20,000, but the recent advance for Fire Ants, based on the first chapter and an outline, had been a promising $40,000. She was proud that she had half of it still in her savings account. Now Earthworms seemed sure to earn out its advance with another month of sales. Her agent, who up to now had been conservative but surprisingly accurate in his educated guesses, was predicting that in the coming year she would be getting more royalties from the unexpectedly large sales of Earthworms and the boosted sales of her previous books that were still in print. He was even suggesting that if Fire Ants was good enough when she turned it in, he might be able to negotiate a multibook contract for her next three books with a “mid-six-figure advance,” as they say in Publishers Weekly.
Alice was finally rising above the poverty level, and it felt damned good. Perhaps Waxahachie was not a Greek island, but it was a good start.
She checked the contents of her suitcases, still open on the floor. Everything she needed was packed. She made a final check of the closets. They were empty for the first time in three years. Deciding what to take in the car had been a watershed. What she didn’t think enough of to take, she didn’t need. She had stored some years’ accumulation of clothing. When she returned, she might donate the things to local charities. Her accountant had said that the donations might make a nice tax deduction to offset the taxes on her increased income, if her agent’s predictions came to pass, if the Fire Ants book she hadn’t written yet was good enough.
She would go to Waxahachie, she would write the book, and it would be a good one. The opportunity was there within her reach, and she would snatch it. She must.
She smiled, imagining a slim silvery lighter-than-air craft dropping ballast in preparation for free flight. She was ready to fly. She snapped her suitcases shut and carried them to the car.