Legacy of a Mad Scientist (4 page)

"Not the way you say it," Ashley answered.

"The way I say it? What do you mean by that?"

"I mean I didn't punch him."

"I never said you did."

Ashley didn't answer, suspecting she would soon be
accused of
being difficult
.

"So what happened? You had nothing to do with it?"
Mrs. Rabier asked.

"I was reaching for Ted's bag..."

"Can't Ted pick up his own bag?"

Mrs. Rabier was a large woman. Ashley wondered how
she'd become a ballet teacher, but her advice was usually helpful.
This. however. felt intrusive.

"I was taught to be polite and help people. I guess
Steve was too, because when Ted dropped his bag, we both tried to
pick it up for him." Ashley smiled her, "
I'm faking and I want
you to know it
," smile.

"You were picking it up at the same time?"

"That's when we bumped heads," Ashley answered.

"I see. Why would they tell the story
differently?"

"I guess it would depend on who
They
are."

Mrs. Rabier was quiet for a moment.

"Is this what you wanted to ask me about?" Ashley
asked.

"No, it's not. Look Ashley, Becca is not going to
change. It's up to you. You are going to have to be the one who
tries something different. Or it is you, who is going to lose out
in the long run."

"Should I handle Becca more like Steven?" Ashley
smiled.

"Absolutely not. Becca doesn't want a fight, she
wants a friend."

"She doesn't have friends, she has conspirators. They
just take turns turning-on each other. They're snakes," Ashley
said.

"You know she's here three hours a day, practicing
three times harder than you do? Both of you could go pro in a few
years, but she'll never have half your talent."

Ashley's inner glee at using the theatre to warm up
could not have been more rewarding if it had been made of gold. Ash
did work hard. In fact, she worked her ass off. But to have the
others believe it came naturally provided both a source of pride
and even a bit of shame in the obvious deceit.

"How is this my problem?" she asked.

"It is your problem because you are going to meet a
lot more people just like her. You need to win her over. I don’t
mean her personally, but as a test case. Just so you can learn how
to do it, in case you need to someday."

Mrs. Rabier paused for a long moment then let out a
sigh.

"Let me tell you a story. This is the hardest lesson
I ever learned. When I was young, I had a teacher who had once been
a student at Wellstone Dance Academy. This was on the east coast,
where I grew up.

"The director, Miss Marks, was a hateful old crone.
Now they held an audition every year, and I was dying to get in,
until I met Director Marks."

Suddenly, Mrs. Rabier became a girl in Ashley's eyes.
Some internal change had softened her features, and Ash saw a real
person talking, not just an adult, playing a role. Ashley could see
that she, Alison, had been tall and graceful. She felt as if she'd
never met her before. Beneath the instructor mask, she was
charming.

"When I went for my audition, my instructor
downplayed the significance of Wellstone because of his negative
experience there, but I was desperate to get accepted. When I was
summoned in, (now this was part of her technique), Director Marks
was still criticizing the girl before me, and she was cruel.

"I don't know why, but I wasn't scared of her. I knew
I was good. Not as good as some of the girls I knew, but I’d been
blessed with height, and I was pretty. And I too, worked my ass
off.

Also, I think I wasn’t scared because my teacher
didn't think much of her. He was a clear-headed and disciplined
man, not emotional and yet he could still be enthusiastic. I don’t
know how, we were just children, but he treated us like adults, a
great instructor.

“Anyhow, I went through my routine, I did fine, but
it wasn't my best performance. I was kind of detached that morning.
You know, I remember, that was the first time I considered doing
something else with my life, something other than ballet.”

Alison smiled. "Director Marks gave me an offhand
compliment. I remember her hardly even watching. She'd been
preoccupied with one of her assistants, but I had done well. For
me, it was anticlimactic; I already had my epiphany. I wasn’t
attached to the outcome anymore. I ended up going to another school
and didn't even pursue dance right away. I just registered for the
basics my first year. The world felt so much larger, all of a
sudden. But that’s just my half of the story. This is the part that
is relevant to you.

"Another girl I knew, Jenny Erling, she did go to
Wellstone. Jenny was the nicest girl I'd ever met. Everyone who met
her liked her. No one ever had anything mean to say about her,
except that she was too nice.

"It took awhile, but Jenny broke this evil old woman,
just as you would a horse, it made the papers. This cruel lady
became a compassionate person. Director Marks recreated the way we
teach dance. To this very day, you are all following her program,
because she published it for free. No one had ever done anything
like that before. Back then all the programs required
non-disclosure agreements."

"What's that?" Ashley asked.

"You had to sign a contract that said if you ever
told anyone, or God forbid taught anyone what you learned at the
academy, you could be sued, or put in jail.

"So when Director Marks had a change of heart and
published her manifesto, it was a newsworthy event. She gave Jenny
Erling one hundred percent of the credit for changing her mind.

"This sort of thing may happen every day, but I've
never heard of it before. If it hadn't happened in ballet, in my
immediate circle, I might not have heard of it at all. But my point
is this; Rebecca is small potatoes. Someday, you may be up against
a Director Marks. And you won't be able to beat her with clever
observations. You'll have to befriend her.

"I knew I didn't have it in me. I gave up ballet
because I knew I didn’t have
that
in me. I didn’t know it
right away, but when all this hit the headlines, about two years
after my interview, well...

“I changed my major to education because of Jen's
example. I was more impressed with what she did than I ever was by
any dancer. A perfect pirouette is nothing compared to that. What
do you even call that?

"Anyhow, that’s what sets someone apart from the
crowd. That's what they mean when they say we're not all born with
the same gifts. Anyone can dance.”

“Does your friend still dance?”

“Oh yeah. She’s married now, goes by Jennifer
Klinefir. Her shows are sold out a year in advance.”

“I know who she is. She’s famous.”

“Well, it’s not for her dancing. It’s what she
represents. Director Marks was famous for her harsh severity. Jenny
changed that program forever. Director Marks retired a while ago,
but the dancers from Wellstone are better every year. Of course,
it’s all back to being secret again, but the published work is
still out there.”

"Why are you telling me this?" Ashley asked.

"It's unnatural to forgive someone small and petty,
like Rebecca, but life is about lifting each other up, and both of
you would be better for it."

Ashley blinked. "And Steven?" she asked.

"Don't worry about the boys. Most of them are a lost
cause, and the rest can take care of themselves."

"I want to live on an island," Ash said, looking at
her feet.

"Do you have one?" Alison asked.

"No."

"Then you have to work with people until you do."

After a pause, she asked, "Steve and his friends,
they were beating up Ted, weren't they?”

"Yes," Ashley answered.

"And if you hadn't stepped in; Ted might have ended
up bleeding?"

"Probably."

"That was pretty ballsy, breaking it up like
that."

Ash remained quiet.

"All's well that ends well." Alison smiled. "But try
to think about what I said. Becca is going to be here everyday.
Maybe you could practice in here, with the rest of them, instead of
in the theatre?”

Ashley looked up, frowning and frustrated to have her
secret so suddenly exposed.

“I know, it's a tough lesson, but all of life is
about this one lesson. Learn it soon. You can meet a Judith Marks
anywhere."

Ashley’s Journal, June 22, 2308, Monday
Afternoon

Mrs. Rabier told me she knows Jennifer Klinefir.
Seemed as if she’s been waiting years to tell that story. And she
gave me a lecture about frenemies like Rebecca Tavington.

Turn the other cheek, etcetera, etcetera.

Rebecca is a brat. She’s clumsy and arrogant, and I’m
not helping her. And Mrs. Rabier had the chance to go to Wellstone,
and she passed it up! What can I possibly learn from her?

I can’t believe I have a chance to go to their summer
program, and my dad is not letting me! He keeps saying next
summer.

I broke Steve Shepard’s nose this morning. He and his
buddies were picking on one of Geoff’s friends, three seventh
graders against a fourth grader. He got what he deserved.

Maybe Kung Fu Camp won’t be so bad, but I still don’t
want to go. My Dad is being a jerk about it.

It was the thought that did it. The concept consumed
him, drenched him in sweat and had driven him from his office. Fox
walked, going anywhere, almost running, sprinting. His mouth was
dry, breath coming in great gasps.

Where was he going? The garage!

Dr. Fox climbed into the transport, panicked. His
head pounded, each heartbeat shooting pain into his skull. He
strapped himself in as the cruiser lifted off from the rooftop of
the massive research facility.

Fox felt constrained, strapped into the chair, but if
he unbuckled the belt during liftoff, the alarms would be too much
to handle. He focused on relaxing his breathing. His heart rate
decreased. He relaxed the muscles of his face, his neck, shoulders
and hands. Fox swallowed.

The Project Epsilon buildings covered several square
miles, and provided everything necessary to sustain the thirty-five
thousand test subjects and four thousand scientists in residence.
Anchored low, they hovered only a dozen feet above the surface of
Saline Valley, between the Inyo Mountains in the west, and another
range called The Grandstand to the east.

The valley was actually a flat featureless expanse of
sand, a huge, dry lakebed; which also happened to be part of a
federal wilderness preserve. No twentieth century roads had even
been built here; the area was pristine.

Fox had worked in the western Mojave for most of his
professional career. With the advent of anti-gravity technology,
the Naval Air Weapons Station at China Lake had become Fox’s home
away from home. This latest project was tucked away in a highly
restricted no fly zone, a hundred and sixty miles from his family,
in Angel City.

Fox watched the facility shrinking in the distance
behind him. The vehicle displayed real-time updates regarding their
flight into Angel City. Compensating for fluctuations where the
magnetic current of high desert pushed up against the mountains,
the gravity drive hurled the armored luxury cruiser through the low
clouds. Unless Fox interrupted it, the daemon would keep them on
course and on schedule.

Dr. Fox settled back into the co-pilot’s seat. He
seldom took the pilot's chair unless he intended to fly the ship
himself. Usually he couldn't resist the competitive traffic
conditions closer to the city, but out here, drifting along the
wide lip of the desert, he was happy to enjoy the scenery and
relax. Fox let the ship's virtual pilot do its thing, while he
focused on letting the weight of his body be taken up by the
chair.

The attack that had driven him from the facility
seemed to have subsided. It was the thought, the concept.
Was it
alien? Was it from outside his mind?

Fox suspected it was possible to ignite, or rather
detonate, the terillium atom. Terillium was believed to be
bulletproof, fire proof and in all other ways indestructible. It
could be dissolved into other metals but only in a vacuum furnace
or forge.

Yet Fox knew, using the Micronix device, any
significant terillium deposit could be detonated with a single
thought. The yield only depended on the ability of the initiator to
sharpen his focus.

Fox terrified himself with the implications of the
concept. Charged with enough energy; the antigravity drive in any
transport would ignite an entire city structure. One detonation
would spread until it consumed every bit of alloy it could reach. A
city could be devastated in an instant. He feared the combustion
concepts had been shared among the prisoners who made up the test
subjects of the Epsilon project. If he were honest with himself,
he'd fled the facility.

The thought had troubled him before, but never with
such passion.
Epsilon was a lost cause. How could Washington
have done this to him? Did they realize what they were getting into
here? Catastrophe was inevitable.

Fox knew he must pack for what could be an indefinite
stay aboard the facility. If he couldn’t shut the project down
completely, he would have to try to stem the tide as long as
possible. He would have this one evening to say goodbye to his wife
and children. If things didn't improve aboard Epsilon, he didn't
know if he'd ever be home again.

Fox placed his hand over the pocket and felt the
rectangle. He closed his eyes and called up the operating menu. In
the upper right corner of his visual awareness, the activity gauges
displayed their readings. He had created the Micronix device over
twenty years ago; he had wanted to share its benefits with
everyone. Now it felt as if his charity had been his error. He had
given up the power of a god in order to share it with all mankind.
If men proved unworthy, he would be responsible.