CHAPTER 17

She might have grumbled all the way to Florida but on the flight back, Dee said nothing about it. This entire circus might have been a monumental waste of time, but it was a fun monumental waste of time. Somewhere, in the deepest recesses of her mind, she was actually glad she went. There had been an electric feeling in the air and everyone there felt like they were a part of something momentous. That was definitely the in place to be. Dee had never thought she would succumb to circus side show tricks but she had been wrong.

On her way back to Stockton she was wishing she was wrong about a lot of other things too. Now with it painfully obvious that there were more than a few people counting on her, she was of the mind that she was about to blow it. To call this pressure was like saying that Mount Everest was a little bump in the road. The more Dee played with the designs on her lap top, the more she was becoming convinced that this revolutionary new propulsion system was nothing more than a pipe dream.

How could that be? They had a working model! The probe ships used the same basic design! Why wouldn’t the damn thing work when you made it bigger? On that thought Dee snorted to herself, “almost reminds me of a certain man.”

By the time the airplane landed, Dee was no closer to a solution than she had been before she left for the cape. Now she had the added stress of knowing that the real world was back. When she got up in the morning it would be back to the plant and the impossible problems that had equally impossible dead lines. By the time she was back in the labs, Dee was right back to resenting the fact that her life’s work had been hijacked by a bunch of bureaucratic dolts that could never even get her taxes right, let alone comprehend physics!

As was normally the case, a lot of idle chatter ceased as Dee walked within earshot of her employees. People snapped to work and tried to pretend they had been doing it all along. As usual, Dee pretended not to notice. She sometimes wished that one of her people might actually just keep on talking about their home life or whatever it was they discussed. Why did they think she minded?

After having the results of the last days testing delivered, Dee quickly flipped through the results in eager anticipation of finding something that she had missed the last fifty thousand times they ran the exact same tests. The only new figures she saw came from tests that she had not ordered. She asked her assistant, “where did these come from?”

The guy rolled his eyes, “give you one guess.”

Dee was still too tired to get upset. She shoved the clipboards back to her assistant and then found Vitosk. He was in one of the clean rooms with a team of engineers that he had hand picked out of Dee’s staff. She had given Yurgani complete freedom of action here and even let him have some of her best people. She knew his type and usually the best way to get results out of them was just to let them run with it. Now that she had seen what he was actually working on, Dee was starting to think that her trip to Kazakhstan, not to mention risking her life, had been a waste of time.

There was no denying that the guy was brilliant. Dee could easily see that. The other thing that Dee could see, and not many people seemed to understand, was what being brilliant actually meant. Vitosk was heads and shoulders above everyone else in his field, that much was true. He knew a lot more about theoretical physics than Dee, she would admit that. You get him out of his field however, and he was just as lost as anyone else. Yurgani was not an engineer and Dee was. Vitosk had not been working on this project for the past decade, and Dee had.

That experience should not have been discounted. It meant that they should have been able to rule out all sorts of paths that she had already traveled and found to be dead ends. Vitosk seemingly ignored all of that and insisted on repeating many of the tests that Dee had long since done. She had yet to see a single result that came back any different from what she had found.

Since Vitosk had not been ordered to go on the little trip to Florida, and Dee even got the impression they were actually discouraging him, he had kept right on diligently hashing over old ground. Dee mused herself with the idea that it probably would not have made any difference had he gone. What was he doing in the clean room but wasting time?

When Vitosk was done Dee went promptly to the changing room that was just outside a series of airlocks. You had to go through several decontamination rooms to get in and out of this area. By the time Vitosk was through the last airlock he had the head cover, of his static free suit, off and was covered in sweat. The man’s gray hair was almost gone on top but he had plenty left in the back. At the moment it was all sticking to his skin and he was a ghastly sight.

Dee shook her head in resignation and just huffed out, “Doctor Vitosk.”

“Doctor Brewer,” he replied as he walked to his locker.

“Look,” she tilted her head down and massaged her forehead. Vitosk seemed not to notice as he slipped out of the white over garments and then found a towel. Dee just hoped that was as undressed as he would get while she was standing there.

She put her thoughts in order, “I think, you really don’t understand something here Doctor.”

After drying off his head he grabbed a small bag from the top of his locker and hung the towel over his shoulder, “that being Doctor?”

“Well,” the man was so literal sometimes! “Are you like completely ignoring all of the experience I have here?”

Vitosk smiled, “not at all Doctor Brewer. I would say that was anything but the case. Isn’t it obvious?”

Dee huffed back, “um, no? All you had to do in order to get the answers you’re looking for here is just check my notes.”

“You don’t seem to understand Doctor Brewer,” he stated as he eyed the shower stalls, “I’m trying to catch up with you and I don’t have much time to do it in.” He looked to the showers again and made a motion for her to leave, “now if you would, please? I do realize that you Americans seem to think we Europeans are immodest but I can assure you that I would never visit one of those beaches in France.”

By the time Dee was back in her office she had mumbled through a complete recitation of every swear word that she knew. It was only after she collapsed in her desk chair that she even paid her cousin any mind at all. Jess was quietly fixing himself a cup of coffee, in the corner of her office, like he was actually supposed to be there. Her first words to him were the obvious ones.

Jess answered by stating the equally obvious answer, “Uncle Isaac told me to come. We have a little business that needs to stay between family members. You catch my drift of course?”

Jess had always sounded eloquent. He could repeat a pro wrestlers tirade and make it sound like Shakespeare. Maybe that was why Uncle Isaac had made him the lawyer? It was certainly why old Isaac used him as the company point man. Jess was a good ‘face’ to put on.

As he sat down across from Dee, Jess crossed his legs and sipped at his coffee. He was quite expressive as he explained, “do you have any idea what it has cost us to get this Russian character you hired?”

That’s all Dee needed right now. She kept her answer short, to the point, and vague. Why not? Jess was going to go through his little spiel anyway.

So he did, “I’m afraid our government has made some deals with the Russians that Uncle Isaac is not all too pleased with. You do realize that has consumed most of my time over the past couple of months. I’ve been having to deal with their ambassador in Washington. I have, and quite fruitlessly, attempted to explain to him that our President has offered, the government of Russia, something that he does not own.”

With everything going on right now, why was it she had to be subjected to this? As far as Dee was concerned these were someone else’s problems. She had enough of her own. “I don’t really care Jess.”

“Yes,” Jess nodded thoughtfully. Then he came back with, “but Uncle Isaac does.”

The implication went unsaid. If Isaac cared then so did everybody else that worked for OK. This was not exactly news to Dee. She blew up on Jess after that, “so what’s he holding out for Jess? More money?”

Since Jess was used to her outbursts he paid it no mind. He simply leaned back in his chair and struck what could only be described as a reflective pose. Then he lightly answered, “to be honest with you Dee, I really don’t know what Isaac’s game is here. I just know that if he isn’t happy with the deal then I’m not happy. I get the feeling though…”

Dee cocked an eyebrow and studied her cousin. What was he thinking? “Ok spit it out before I beat it out of you Jess.”

“It’s just,” Jess was being very careful with his words. That was something he had never done with her before. “Dee, there is a lot more at stake here than just money. I’ve watched our uncle play these games since I can remember. He’s after something bigger here and what it is, I can only guess.”

As if he were afraid, Jess hesitated, seriously considered, and then cautiously stated, “my own opinion. It has to do with the anomaly.”

Dee waived the notion off as ridiculous, “oh that’s crap.”

“It may very well be,” Jess replied, “but is that really the question here? Dee, you’re the last person I need to remind that sometimes Isaac can be a bit irrational about certain things. If he believes something then the truth might as well not matter.”

The phone buzzed. Dee took the distraction with gusto. When she hung up she put her fists down on the desk and leaned on them. She could see Jess was waiting for an explanation. Dee was not as practiced as he was in the art of hiding emotions.

With a heavy heart felt sigh she stated, “the Japanese starship just left orbit.”