God Project (2 page)

“You’ll lose him,” Phyllis Paine had told Sally over and over again. “A woman’s place is in the home, loving her
husband and her children. It’s not normal for a woman your age to work.”

“Then why did I go to college?” Sally had countered back in the days before she had given up arguing with her mother.

“Well, it wasn’t to major in mathematics! I’d always hoped you’d do something with your music. Music is good for a woman, particularly the piano. In my day, all women played the piano.”

It had gone on for years. Sally had finally stopped trying to explain to her mother that times had changed. She and Steve had agreed from the start that her career was every bit as important as his own. Her mother simply couldn’t understand, and never missed an opportunity to let Sally know that in her opinion—the only one that counted, of course—a woman’s place was in the home. “Maybe it’s all right for women to work down in New York, but in Eastbury, Massachusetts, it just doesn’t look right!”

And maybe, Sally reflected as she spotted the error in the program and began rewriting the flawed area, she’s right. Maybe we should have gone out to Phoenix last year, and gotten out of this stuffy little town. I could have found a job out there, probably a better one than I have here. But they hadn’t gone. They had agreed that since Sally was happy at the college, and Steve saw a glowing future for both of them in Eastbury’s burgeoning electronics industry, they should stay right where they were, and where they’d always been.

Until the last few years, Eastbury had been one of those towns in which the older people talked about how good things used to be, and the younger people wondered how they could get out. But then, five years ago, the great change had begun. A change in the tax structure had encouraged fledgling businesses to come to Eastbury. And it had worked. Buildings which had once housed shoe factories and textile mills, then lain empty and crumbling for decades, were bustling once again. People were working—no longer at slave wages on killing shifts, but with flexible hours and premium salaries,
creating the electronic miracles that were changing the face of the country.

Eastbury itself, of course, had not changed much. It was still a small town, its plain façade cheered only by a new civic center which was a clumsy attempt at using new money to create old buildings. What had resulted was a city hall that looked like a bank posing as a colonial mansion, and an elaborately landscaped “town square” entirely fenced in with wrought iron fancy-work. Still, Eastbury was a safe place, small enough so the Montgomerys knew almost everyone in town, yet large enough to support the college that employed Sally.

The tea was cold, and Sally glanced at the clock, only slightly surprised to see that she’d been working for more than an hour. But the program was done, and Sally was sure that tomorrow morning it would produce the desired printouts. Eastbury College would have a freshman class next year after all.

She meticulously straightened up the desk, readying it for the onslaught of telephone calls that greeted Steve every morning. Using his talents as a salesman in tandem with the contacts he had made growing up in Eastbury, Steve had turned the town into what he liked to refer to as his “private gold mine.” Mornings he often worked at home, and afternoons he spent either in his office or at the athletic club he had helped found, not out of any great interest in sports, but because he knew the executives of the new companies liked to work in what they called casual surroundings. Steve believed in giving people what they wanted. In turn, they usually gave him what he wanted, which was invariably a small piece of whatever action was about to take place. When asked what he did, Steve usually defined himself as an entrepreneur. In truth, he was a salesman who specialized in putting people together to the benefit of all concerned. Over the years, it had paid handsomely, not only for the Montgomerys, but for the whole town. It had been Steve who had convinced Inter-Technics to donate a main-frame computer to Eastbury that would tie all
the town’s small computers together, though Sally had never been convinced that it was one of his better ideas.

But now Steve was beginning to get bored. During the last few months he had begun to talk about the two of them going into business for themselves. Sally would become an independent consultant, and Steve would sell her services.

And mother will call him a pimp, Sally thought. She closed the roll-top desk and went into the kitchen. She was about to pour the untouched tea down the drain when she changed her mind and began reheating it. She wasn’t tired, and her work was done, and the children were asleep, and there were no distractions. Tonight would be a good time for her to think over Steve’s idea.

In many ways, it was appealing. The two of them would be working together—an idea she liked—but it also meant they would be together almost all the time. She wasn’t sure she liked that.

Was there such a thing as too much togetherness? She had a good marriage, and didn’t want to disturb it. Deep inside, she had a feeling that one of the reasons their marriage was so good was that both of them had interests beyond the marriage. Working together would end that. Suddenly their entire lives would be bound up in their marriage. That could be bad.

Sally poured herself a cup of the tea, still thinking about the possibilities. And then, in her head, she heard Steve’s voice, and saw his blue eyes smiling at her. “You’ll never know till you try, will you?” he was asking. Alone in the kitchen, Sally laughed softly and made up her mind. No, she said to herself, I won’t. And if it doesn’t work, we can always do something else. She finished the tea, put the cup in the sink, and went upstairs.

She was about to go into the bedroom when she paused, listening.

The house was silent, as it always was at that time of night. She listened for a moment, then went on into the bedroom and began undressing. The near-total darkness was broken only by the faint glow of a streetlight half a block away.

She slipped into bed next to Steve, and his arms came out to hold her. She snuggled in, resting her head on his shoulder, her fingers twining in the mat of blond hair that covered his chest.

She pressed herself closer to Steve and felt his arm tighten around her. She closed her eyes, ready to drift off to sleep, content in the knowledge that everything was as close to perfect as she could ever have wanted it, despite what her mother might think. It was, after all, her life, and not her mothers.

And then she was wide-awake again, her eyes open, her body suddenly rigid.

Had she heard something?

Maybe she should wake Steve.

No. Why wake Steve when she was already awake?

She slipped out of his arms and put on a robe. In the hall she stood still, listening carefully, trying to remember if she had locked the doors earlier.

She had.

She could remember it clearly. Right after Steve had gone up to bed, she had gone around the house, throwing the bolts, a habit she had developed during Steve’s time on the road, when she had been alone with Jason for so many nights. The habit had never been broken.

The silence gathered around her, and she could hear her heart beating in the darkness.

What was it?

If there was nothing, what was she afraid of?

She told herself she was being silly, and turned back to the bedroom.

Still, the feeling would not go away.

I’ll look in on the children, she decided.

She moved down the hall to Jason’s room and opened the door. He was in his bed, the covers twisted around his feet, one arm thrown over the teddy bear he still occasionally slept with. Sally gently freed the covers and tucked her son in. Jason moved in his sleep and turned over. In the dim glow from the window, he looked like a miniature version of his father, his blond hair tangled,
his little jaw square, with the same dimple in his chin that Sally had always thought made Steve look sexy. How many hearts are you going to break when you grow up? Sally wondered. She leaned over, and kissed Jason gently.

“Aw, Mom,” the little boy said.

Sally pretended to scowl at her son. “You were supposed to be asleep.”

“I was playin’ possum,” Jason replied. “Is something wrong?”

“Can’t a mother say good night anymore?” Sally asked.

“You’re always kissin’ me,” Jason complained.

Sally leaned down and kissed him again. “Be glad someone does. Not every kid is so lucky.” She straightened up and started out of the room. “And don’t kick the covers off. You’ll catch pneumonia.” She left Jason’s room, knowing he’d kick the covers off again in five minutes, and that he wouldn’t catch pneumonia. If Julie grew up as healthily as Jason had, she would be twice blessed. As she approached Julie’s room, she began trying to calculate the odds of raising two children without having to cope with any sicknesses. The odds, she decided, were too narrow to be worth thinking about.

She let herself into the room, and suddenly her sense of apprehension flooded back to her.

She crossed to the crib and looked down at Julie. The baby was as different from her brother as she was from Steve. Julie had Sally’s own almost-black hair, dark eyes, and even in her infancy the same delicate bone structure. She’s like a doll, Sally thought. A tiny little doll. In the dim light the baby’s skin was pale, nearly white, and Sally thought she looked cold, though the pink blanket was still tucked around her shoulders as Sally had left it earlier.

Sally frowned.

Julie was an active baby, never lying still for very long.

Apparently she hadn’t moved for more than an hour.

Sally reached down, and touched Julie’s face.

It was as cold as it looked.

As she picked up her tiny daughter, Sally Montgomery felt her life falling apart around her.

It wasn’t true.

It couldn’t be true.

There was nothing wrong with Julie.

She was cold. That’s all, just cold. All she had to do was cuddle the baby, and warm her, and everything would be all right again.

Sally Montgomery began screaming—a high, thin, piercing wail that shattered the night.

   Steve Montgomery stood in the doorway staring at his wife. “Sally? Sally, what’s wrong?” He moved forward tentatively, watching her as she stood near the window, rocking back and forth, muttering in a strangled voice to the tiny form in her arms. Then he was beside her, trying to take the baby out of her arms. Sally’s hold on the child tightened, and her eyes, wide and beseeching, found his.

“Call the hospital,” she whispered, her voice desperate. “Call now. She’s sick. Oh, Steve, she’s sick!”

Steve touched Julie’s icy flesh and his mind reeled. No! No, she can’t be. She just can’t be. He turned away and started out of the room, only to be stopped by Jason, who was standing just inside the door, his eyes wide and curious.

“What’s wrong?” the little boy asked, looking up at his father. Then he looked past Steve, toward his mother. “Did something happen to Julie?”

“She’s—she’s sick,” Steve said, desperately wanting to believe it. “She’s sick, and we have to call the doctor. Come on.”

Pulling Jason with him, Steve went into the next room and picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialing frantically. While he waited for someone to answer, he reached out and pulled his son to him, but Jason wriggled out of his father’s arms.

“Is she dead?” he asked. “Is Julie dead?”

Steve nodded mutely, and then the operator at Eastbury
Community Hospital came on the line. While he was ordering an ambulance for his daughter, he kept his eyes on his son, but after a moment Jason, his face impassive, turned and left the room.

Chapter 2

E
ASTBURY COMMUNITY HOSPITAL
, despite its name, was truly neither a hospital, nor a community service. It was, in actuality, a privately owned clinic. It had started, thirty years earlier, as the office of Dr. Arthur Wiseman. As his practice grew, Wiseman had begun to take on partners. Ten years before, with five other doctors, he had formed Eastbury Community Hospital, Inc., and built the clinic. Now there were seven doctors, all of them specialists, but none of them so specialized they could not function as general practitioners. In addition to the clinic, there was a tiny emergency room, an operating room, a ward, and a few private rooms. For Eastbury, the system worked well: each of the patients at Eastbury Community felt that he had several doctors, and each of the doctors always had six consultants on call. It was the hope of everyone that someday in the not-too-distant future, Eastbury Community would grow into a true hospital, though for the moment it was still a miniature.

In the operating room, Dr. Mark Malone—who, at the age of forty-two, was still not reconciled to the fact that he would forever be known as Young Dr. Malone—smiled down at the unconscious ten-year-old child on the table. A routine, if emergency, appendectomy. He
winked at the nurse who had assisted him, then expertly snipped a sample of tissue from the excised organ, and gave it to an aide.

“The usual tests,” he said. He glanced at the anesthetist, who nodded to him to indicate that everything was all right, then left the operating room and began washing up. He was staring disconsolately at the clock and wondering why so many appendixes chose to go bad in the wee hours of the morning, when he heard his name on the page.

“Dr. Malone, please. Dr. Malone.”

Wiping his hands, he picked up the phone. “Malone.”

“You’re wanted in the emergency room, Dr. Malone,” the voice of the operator informed him.

“Oh, Christ.” Malone wracked his brain, trying to remember who was supposed to be on call that night.

The operator answered his unasked question. “It’s—it’s one of your patients, Doctor.”

Malone’s frown deepened, but he only grunted into the phone and hung up. He slipped off his surgical gown, put on a white jacket, then started for the emergency room, already sure of what had happened.

The duty man would have handled the emergency. The call to him meant that one of his patients had died, and, since he was in the clinic, someone had decided he should break the news to the parents. He braced himself, preparing for the worst part of his job.