Cramer mumbled behind Freddy’s hand. Freddy allowed him some space.
“Okay, okay,” rasped Cramer.
“Good,” said Freddy. He pressed the brown bottle between Cramer’s eyes and held the aerosol’s nipple up his nose.
“Who gave you this shit,” eh?”
Sir Derek burst into the small room off the library that had been converted into the most sophisticated communications center in the whole shire of Avon. The operator on duty, a ruddy-faced man named Trane, snapped to attention.
“Any word yet from Ramsanjawi?” barked Sir Derek.
“Not a peep, sir,” said Trane, removing his headset. “There’s been a rather lengthy discussion progressing. A female and a private detective in the United States. All very hush-hush stuff.”
“Goddamn him,” muttered Sir Derek. Then he said to Trane, “I want the transcript of the conversation as soon as you get it.”
“But, sir, I believe you have a houseguest on the way.”
“I know I have a houseguest on the way! I want that transcript!”
Sir Derek stormed out to the closest of the many balconies that protruded from the limestone manor house like the parapets of a medieval castle. The sun was just down. The Mendip Hills humped toward a darkening horizon. Sir Derek took a deep breath of the evening air, then coughed it into his hand.
Objectively, the project was progressing far better than expected. Even the most pessimistic of the Lancashire lads agreed that the superbug was retaining its viability despite the enormous levels of genetic complexity engrafted by Ramsanjawi. Success hinged on Ramsanjawi, and Sir Derek was confident that his reading of Ramsanjawi’s personality was accurate. The Indian’s obsession with achieving a sense of belonging in English society far outweighed any of the personal enmity that had developed between the two men. Still, Sir Derek worried. There was always the slim chance that Chakra would do the unpredictable.
The trees beneath the balcony suddenly brightened. Gravel crunched loudly as an automobile ground to a halt. The Rolls-Royce Corniche, bearing Sir Derek’s houseguest, had arrived.
Her named was Joanna Ames. She was a Latin instructor at Oxford, twelve years Sir Derek’s junior, and the longest running of the several affairs he managed to conduct concurrently. She had green eyes, long sandy-colored hair, and a body that remained tautly slim from jogging thirty miles each week. She also had a flair for the dramatic and a high tolerance for pain.
Joanna had not always been so compliant. In the late seventies, during her first term at Oxford, she became enamored with the smoothly arrogant Chakra Ramsanjawi. At the time, Ramsanjawi was a faculty celebrity. He was on the fast track to the chairmanship of the world-renowned biology department and was treated as a guru by the more avant-garde elements of the university community. But in addition to dispensing wisdom, he dispensed drugs. They were mild synthetic hallucinogens he cooked up from common lab materials, and were supposedly harmless. He did not use them himself and he did not sell them. They were too new to be illegal. Ramsanjawi maintained until the end that he never accepted a penny for any of his wares, a claim no one could disprove. He would just bring them on the weekend party circuit and offer them to whoever expressed a desire to perceive an alternate reality.
Sir Derek, who was living not far from Oxford, attended several of these parties. The university scene was a refreshing change from his job as an under secretary in the foreign office. Relations with his would-be brother Chakra were cordial, almost friendly. That changed the moment his eyes found Joanna.
Thinking back, he was not sure whether he wanted Joanna for herself or because she was in love with Chakra. Perhaps the reasons were inextricably bound. She liked Sir Derek. He was, in her words, “comedically cute.” But it soon became apparent to him that she never would take him seriously as long as Chakra was in the picture.
Sir Derek sent anonymous tips about an unnamed Oxford drug wizard to three Fleet Street tabloids. His avowed intent was to have Chakra plastered all over the gossip columns, thereby making him infinitely less desirable to the beautiful Ms. Ames. What actually happened was a full-blown sex-and-drugs inquiry that resulted in the expulsion of a score of students and the firing of a dozen faculty members, including Chakra.
Joanna was spared the sword even though she had indulged in more than one of Chakra’s concoctions. The price was to agree to succumb to Sir Derek’s unusual advances. By now, in the late 1990s, she had grown accustomed to his tastes. And his rewards.
Sir Derek leaned back against the pillows and admired the diamond choker Joanna wore around her neck. It sets off her other accoutrements quite nicely, he thought. She was naked except for the straps that bound her arms tightly behind her back.
“Will it be necessary to gag you?” he mused aloud.
“Please don’t,” said Joanna softly.
“I think I should.”
“Won’t you want to put something else in my mouth, instead?”
A fist thudded twice against the bedroom door. Joanna frowned and rolled onto her back. Sir Derek mouthed the words important business. He reached for a blanket and draped it over his bare legs and the hunched figure of Joanna huddled between them.
“Come in,” he called after clearing his throat.
Trane entered with a look of pained embarrassment on his face and a neatly bound sheaf of papers in his hands. He crossed the room with his eyes fixed somewhere on the farthest wall, handed Sir Derek the papers, and left at double speed.
Joanna wriggled beneath the blanket. Sir Derek pulled off the covers and gave her a sharp smack across her bare buttocks.
“You’ll have to be still for a while,” he said sternly. “Content yourself with thinking about what is to come.”
She made herself look frightened and rested her head against his scrawny thigh.
Sir Derek quickly scanned the transcript. For the first time ever, there were no genetic data embedded in the code. Toward the end, he unearthed a message: The research pace had slowed to a crawl, especially in the American/Canadian lab module. Ramsanjawi suspected that this new American scientist O’Donnell was to blame. Perhaps he was protecting data under the guise of performing related experiments.
There were obstacles, thought Sir Derek, there always were obstacles. All the great ones had encountered them: Arthur, Alfred, Drake, Cromwell, Churchill. The true measure of a man was how he met those obstacles. He knew that he would do whatever was necessary; he always had. But he was earthbound, separated by an insuperable three hundred miles from the stage upon which this drama would be played. He wondered whether Chakra would have the nerve.
In his frustration and anger he threw the transcript to the floor and grabbed a handful of Joanna’s dark hair.
“Now you’ll pay,” he whispered fiercely to her.
“Oh please,” she whispered back, knowing they were Sir Derek’s two favorite words.
29 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
MEMORANDUM
From: L. Renoir, M.D.
To: Cmdr. D. Tighe
Subject: Russell Cramer Date: 28 August 1998
My conclusion is that the patient is suffering from an advanced case of Orbital Dementia. The patient’s dedication to his work within the Mars Project induced him to conceal the early signs of personality breakdown.
The violent episode was most likely triggered by the scheduled arrival of the aerospace plane, which presented the patient with a means of returning to Earth outside the usual shuttle rotation. As demonstrated in studies of Antarctic “winterover” teams, the knowledge that escape from an isolated environment is possible forces the person to reexamine his reasons for being there. A conflict arises if the person cannot convince himself to remain.