Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (16 page)

 
          
“Your
promise not to do so, not to upset the one-third balance,” Hudson replied.
“This arrangement is based on trust...

 
          
“You
have a funny way of showing it,
Mrs.
Duffield.”

           
“We feel a one-third split is best
for the company—neither of us gains a majority unless our ideas and proposals sufficiently
sway the other shareholders to side with one or the other,” Hudson went on. “Once
news hits the street that you’ve given up your stock options, the value of the
stock will soar.”

 
          
“So
what’s preventing you from selling your shares and cleaning up?”

 
          
“We
restrict the stock we own for one year,” Cheryl Duffield replied. “If either of
us wants out, we have to promise to offer it to the other shareholders first,
at a prenegotiated price. But that’s not what we’re doing this for. We
certainly don’t need the money, and we’re not stock speculators. We’re building
a future for ourselves and Kelsey by building a partnership with you and Helen
and the other talented folks you have here.”

 
          
“We’ll
work together, Jon,” Kelsey said. “It’s more fun that way.”

 
          
“Fun?
You think any of this is fun? Do you have any idea what we do around here, little
girl?”

 
          
“I’m
Kelsey,” she said, smiling at him. “We’ll make things, Jon and Helen. We’ll
make things other people have never dreamed of. Fantastic, unbelievable,
wonderful things. We’ll make people happy and make people’s lives better.”

 
          
“Are
you for real?” Helen Masters asked. “Do you have any idea what you’re getting
yourself into?”

 
          
Kelsey
Duffield walked over between Jon and Helen and took their hands into hers.
“We’re friends now, right?” she asked. “We’re going to be together and build
things so incredible, no one will believe it. Right?”

 
          
Neil
Hudson opened his briefcase and extracted several documents—including a check.
“Value of your stock at its thirty-nine-week average price per
share—exceedingly generous given the current stock price. You agree to sell the
seven percent back to the company at the same price, you give up your stock
options, and you agree to make Sierra Vistas Partners your partner. Dr.
Duffield comes on board as co-chief operating officer and co-chief engineer,
sharing responsibilities and privileges equally with Jon Masters. Dr. Helen
Masters stays on as president for one year, at which time there will be
elections for officers.”

           
Jon took the check, looked at all
the zeroes typed on it, then looked at the Duffields. “I... I have to think
about it.”

           
“Please, Jon?” Kelsey asked. “It’ll
be fun. I promise.” Jon hesitated, looking at Helen, then staring at nothing.
Kelsey smiled and said in a low voice, almost a whisper, “I’ll tell you about
the laser field, Jon. When I tell you, you’ll be
so
mad.”

 
          
“Mad?
Why?”

 
          
“Because
you already know how it works.”

 
          
“What
did you say?” Jon asked. “Know how what works? How can I know how it works if
I’ve never even heard of it before!”

 
          
“You
already know how it works, I’ll bet,” Kelsey said. “You just don’t believe it.
You keep on saying ‘no’ because you don’t believe it could be so simple. I’ll
tell you, Jon, and then we’ll build it, and then we’ll build other things
you’ve already thought about but don’t believe either. It’ll be fun.”

 
          
Jon
sat back in his chair, visibly deflated. That was the last word he had expected
to hear this morning: the word “fun.” He wanted so badly to tell this little
superbrained girl that he had already lost a friend, may have lost another
close friend, and several more friends were in serious danger. He wanted to
tell her that what happened to the company didn’t matter—it was what his
company was trying to do for the people of the United States and the world that
was important. But she was here, with her mother and CPA and her father’s
SumaTek money, ready to create alternate universes inside lasers and other such
fantasy gadgets. He wanted to tell her to just go away and let the adults get
back to work.

 
          
But
then Jon’s brain registered the feel of the check between his fingers, and he
thought of all those zeroes on it. He couldn’t do a thing if he went bankrupt
or if this cute little savant walked off with his company. Paul would still be
gone, Wendy would still be missing, and the others would still be in
trouble—except then they wouldn’t have any of Sky Masters’s technology to help
them.

           
“I need to tell you something,” Jon
said slowly. “I need to verify your security clearance, so I can’t tell you
everything, but I can tell you this: Your security clearance is not going to
prepare you for what you’ll learn. We do a lot of very interesting things here,
but it’s not what I would call ‘fun.’ In fact, I’d say most of it is downright
horrifying.”

 
          
“My
daughter doesn’t design talking dolls and little robot voice-controlled dogs
and dream about a life filled with roses and sunshine,” Cheryl said. She
reached over and stroked Kelsey’s hair and shoulders, smiling warmly at her.
“She designs laser weapons and dreams about stopping enemy airplanes with force
fields. No one ever told her what to do, what to focus on. She just did it.

 
          
“My
husband and I brought her up like any other young girl—at least, we tried to.
We dressed her in pink dresses and little black shoes and put ribbons in her
hair. We read Dr. Seuss and
Goodnight
Moon
and Harry Potter books to her.

 
          
“But
by the time she was one year old, at the same time other kids were just
starting to walk, she was reading the
Wall
Street Journal
and
Aviation Week
& Space Technology.
The first book she read wasn’t Nancy Drew or Power-puff
Girls at six years old—it was Drexler’s
Nanosystems:
Molecular Machinery
;
Manufacturing
,
and Computation
at
thirteen months.
The year after that,
she was one of the contributors to Drexler’s updated edition.”

 
          
Cheryl
paused, her eyes adopting a far-off look as if she was replaying all the many
moments, pleasant and otherwise, in her memory. “We knew we couldn’t treat her
like an ordinary child,” she went on. “By age six she was discussing weapons,
theories, devices, and formulas that were making advisers to presidents sweat
and four-star generals lick their lips. She’s been asked to teach
nanotechnology at Cornell’s Duffield Hall, the engineering research facility my
husband built—a nine-year-old professor of nanoengineering, teaching at her
father’s school. Do you think she’d be scared to learn how many persons a
plasma-yield war-head can kill, or that one of your NIRTSats can direct a
two-thousand-pound bomb to hit its target within six inches? She’s already
figured out how to build supercomputers the size of an amoeba and turn the Moon
into a photonic energy source that will supply the entire Earth with energy for
a millennium. She talks to herself about the energy requirements for
teleportation while she plays with Barbie dolls. At first I was worried about
her being taken seriously—now I’m worried about her talents going to waste or,
worse, falling into the wrong hands.”

 
          
Cheryl
looked up at Jon, then at Helen, and asked in a quiet voice, “Do you have
children?” They shook their heads. “All you want for them is the best,” she
went on. “You would give your own life to save theirs, sacrifice your own
happiness to ensure their happiness. But what do you do if what your child is
doing, the thing that makes her the happiest, might upset—or even destroy—your
world? Do you let her have that experience?”

 
          
Her
voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Sometimes when she’d fall off her bike or
trip on the stairs or come down with a fever, I’d pray that the accident or
illness would turn her back into a normal child,” she said sadly. “But, of
course, it never did—in fact, I think it made her even more intelligent, as if
the bacteria or viruses were millions of new brains talking to her, telling her
more and more of the secrets of the universe.

 
          
“But
you were a child genius too, Dr. Masters,” she said to Jon. “You understand
what Kelsey’s going through. You had parents that encouraged you to think
beyond your age, beyond the levels where others thought you should be. We chose
you because you’ve gone through what Kelsey is just starting to experience. I
think it was hard for you, breaking down all the institutional and bigotry
barriers, but you did it. You can be much more than a partner to Kelsey—you can
be a mentor, a guide. No one else in the United States can do that for her.
Only you.”

 
          
Cheryl
Duffield looked up at the Masterses, and the steel returned to her eyes and
voice. “She knows all about what you do, what you build, and whom you build
them for,” she said. “She wants to help you build the next two generations of
weapon systems, far better than you or I or anyone yet bom can imagine. Her
father and I said we’d help her do that, because in a way, that’s what parents
do for their kids. It’s not ballet or baseball, but parents are supposed to
help their kids follow their dreams. Right?”

 
          
Jon
looked at Kelsey. To his immense shock, while her mother was talking, Kelsey
had been writing out a long mathematical formula on a sheet of notepaper. When
she noticed Jon was looking at her, she held up the piece of paper for him. For
about the third or fourth time in that meeting, Jon’s mouth dropped open.

 
          
“It’s
not finished,” Kelsey said, smiling.

 
          
“I...
don’t... believe ... it.. .” Jon breathed, his eyes flitting across the symbols
and numbers. He pointed to one section, and his eyes narrowed, then widened,
then nearly bugged out. “I... you . .. this ...”

 
          
Kelsey
handed it over to Jon, and he accepted it as if she had just handed him a
thirty-pound bar of solid gold. “We’ll finish it together, okay, Dr. Masters?”
she said, her eyes twinkling.

 
          
“Jon.
Call me Jon,” he said, smiling, his voice cracking with the sheer enormity of
what he had just witnessed. Jon looked at the piece of paper, then at Kelsey,
then at her mother. “Do you realize what this is?”

 
          
“Of
course. It’s the future,” Cheryl said matter-of-factly, almost in a whisper.
She looked down at the conference table, then added, “God help us.”

ON THE
MEDITERRANEAN
SEA
,

TEN MILES NORTHWEST OF
 
MERSA
MATRUH
,
EGYPT
 
THAT SAME TIME

           
The crew of the Egyptian warship
El Arish
, an American- built Oliver
Hazard Perry-class guided missile frigate, treated the rescued members of the
S.S.
Catherine the
Great
as any other shipwreck survivors,
offering them water, blankets, strong hot tea, and
ful
—pita sandwiches stuffed with fava and black beans fried
together with meat, eggs, and onions. They were kept in the helicopter hangar
on the aft end of the ship, out of sight of most of the rest of the crew.
Several of the Night Stalkers received medical treatment for bums and shrapnel
wounds by the Egyptian ship’s corpsman.

 
          
David
Luger acted as the spokesman for the team when approached by the captain of the
frigate, Commander Raouf Farouk, while Patrick, Hal, and Chris stayed away from
the Egyptians in the center of the helicopter hangar, surrounded by commandos.
“We are grateful to you for helping us, Captain,” David said as the captain
approached. “You have saved our lives.”

 
          
“Afwan.
You are welcome,” Farouk said.
He looked at the men carefully. “And your name?”

 
          
“I’m
Merlin.”

 
          
“Your
full name, rank, and nationality?”