Out of Touch (35 page)

             
Lisa gave a quick smile and met Alak with wide-open eyes.

             
The Thai man nodded his head and stepped back.

              “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Lisa said.

             
“I was just leaving,” Alak answered softly, and Lisa stepped aside just enough to let him pass, though James thought their clothing brushed in the process.

             
James was silent for a moment, tapping his thumbs together, reining in annoyance, and Lisa timidly shut the door.

             
“I hope this wasn’t a bad time.”

             
“Well, actually—”James saw Lisa’s big childish eyes, “I can’t talk long. I have a lot of work to do.”

             
“I’ll be quick then. I just wanted to thank you for taking me out, and I hoped I could make dinner for you sometime?”

             
James clasped his hands together tightly and remained seated at his computer.

             
“It’s a very nice offer, Lisa. But Robert already invited me to dinner with your family once, and I just don’t think—“

             
“This is just me offering. I thought maybe I could cook for you at your place.”

             
“I don’t think that would work.”

             
“I could bring everything, even the cooking pans.”

             
“It’s not that, just, Lisa, you’re young, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” James really didn’t want to deal with this. He had to force his eyes down to the keyboard to keep from drifting back into the data on the computer screen. “You’re a very nice person, but—“

             
“You just want to be friends.”

             
James decided that was close enough. “I’m glad you understand.”

             
Lisa gave a weak smile as she drifted out the door. James felt his fingers begin to type, even as he felt guilty for making her sad. Still, it was better that she knew.

He sorted the Swiss sample for those with auditory delusions and those without. His hypothesis was that if some patients were experiencing partial telepathy, it would be most likely to show up as auditory delusions. But none of the sequences correlated with such symptoms, no matter how he grouped them. And he only had the one patient and her mother with the predecessor telepathy sequences. He still needed more data.

June 7, 2025 – Zurich, Switzerland

Back at the Zurich hotel where he’d met Nigel, James stood staring at the mask-like sculptures near the mezzanine elevators. The swirly green oval was about as he remembered, but the dark lump next to it refused to look like a face no matter how he squinted. James shifted foot to foot, then reversed the pattern. He wondered how Nigel was, if their interaction had caused the postdoc trouble. Then he thought of Heiss and went to the rail overlooking the lobby. He’d spent most of the day watching for his supposed collaborator, unable to focus on science until the required conversation was done.

Around three o’clock he spotted Heiss down below, wearing a midnight blue dress shirt that tucked surprisingly neatly into gray slacks. James first thought was that he now understood tailored shirts. Then he thought to wave. He seemed well within the man’s peripheral vision, but Heiss sauntered by as if he hadn’t noticed.

James trotted down the curved, showy front staircase as fast as he dared. His feet clip-clopped in rhythm, and he only had to reverse the pattern once. Heiss was nowhere to be found. James checked the nearby conference rooms and finally the poster area, but without luck. Was Heiss avoiding him? Or had he merely caught a convenient elevator? James wandered back down the hall wondering if he shouldn’t just give up. What was he likely to learn in casual conversation? Wouldn’t he just be calling attention to himself, attention from those within the conspiracies he wanted to avoid?

He sat though a lecture he should have enjoyed, ringing his hands and not learning a thing. The speaker’s words flew past him. His own attempts to plan for eventually meeting Heiss kept slipping beneath concerns about whether some plot was advancing around him and whether he truly wanted to find out.

Leaving the talk, he automatically scanned the halls for Heiss, then stopped short when he finally saw him. A few doors down, Heiss in his midnight blue was talking to a man in an even more adventurous amber, long sleeved shirt. Heiss had one hand on his hip, the other man dangled a jacket over his left shoulder. They looked like posed mannequins in a shop window, and James wondered how one overheard fashion critique could so greatly affect his observations. As far as James could tell, both men’s minds were silent.

Walking forward as casually as he could James said, “Heiss, good to see you. Do you have a minute?”

“Certainly.” Heiss raised one shoulder in a half shrug and the man in amber wandered off. Heiss took a step toward James and kept walking as they talked. James wondered where he was being led, or if movement was supposed to prevent eavesdropping. Or maybe it was just chance.

“Are you on your way somewhere?”

“A talk down there in five minutes, but how’s your investigation?”

Was it odd that he chose the word “investigation”?  “No luck so far with the cultures, though I’ve plenty more to try. I found some potential correlates when clustering by symptom. Have you tried that?”

“No. Clustering by what?

“Oh, different sensory modes of delusions, family correlations. Have you come across anything interesting in your analysis?”

“We’re still completing our double blind drug trials, but I’ll know more in a few weeks. What sort of correlates?”

“It’s all pretty tentative so far. Do you have any more detailed records on the subjects’ symptom presentations?”

“Afraid not, our privacy laws are pretty strict here.”

“Of course,” James detected condescension and realized he was making a fool of himself, and he wasn’t even learning anything. His hands lifted to tap against his legs but he redirected them into his pockets. He gave it one last try, “Anything new on the horizon?”

Heiss smiled in a way so sincerely patronizing that James wished he could erase the last few minutes and face Alak’s scorn instead. But he smiled as Heiss said, “Just the usual fun of working with nut-cases, one side of the desk or the other. Now if you’ll excuse me?”

James answered, “Certainly,” in pale imitation of the man in amber. Turning away, James almost laughed, because he was so relieved the conversation was over and because he’d realized his ivory shirt could literally be a paler version of amber.

His relief and amusement lasted all the way back to his room where he found a note, lying as before, just inside the door. He picked it up and fell back on the bed laughing aloud before the words even registered on his brain. It was all too much, the note, his attempts to gather covert information. Whatever happened, he was going back to his lab and rededicating himself to research. No more pressing Alak for answers, no more pressing other people for Alak. He rolled onto his stomach, letting his laughter subside to chuckles. There, with his eyes firmly pressed to a pillow, he realized he’d already read the new note. His brain was already grinding through diverse explanations for:

Be ready on July 28th.

June 3 - 16, 2025 – Bangkok, Thailand

             
Reggie stepped from the dazzling afternoon sunlight into the dim shop on the edge of the courtyard. With Sarah off to visit Chiang Mai, Reggie knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. He intended to inspect every jewelry store in Bangkok, and today he’d just about done it. Owlish old men had tried to hustle him and feline young women had asked about his girlfriend. Playing the smitten suitor was easy; escaping to look some more, a fitting challenge. At times, he’d been tempted to just buy a big diamond, knowing it would require the least explanation and wondering if deep down Sarah harbored such clichéd hopes. But his instincts kept drawing him back to this place.

             
The front window of the shop housed a riparian scene on mounds of deep green velvet. Cut glass baubles created a sparkling river; blown glass ornaments dangled above. Along the bank, gnarled metal sculptures of jungle animals, trees, and laborers drank the water or wandered about. To one side, resting atop the same velvet, lay little gold rings. Each ring was really several loops woven together to form a knot. But one ring had been left in pieces, to show that they were all truly puzzles.

             
Inside the dim shop, Reggie studied a sculpted metal tree trunk that formed the base of a lamp. He found a belt of chained metal where every link was a different shape. A young man, European, maybe German by his features, came out from the back.

             
“Can I help you?” The accent wasn’t quite German, maybe Polish?

             
The man’s fingers were smudged and his shoulders slightly hunched. “Are these your creations?” Reggie asked.

             
“Most of them,” his shoulders rose, his head cocked back.

             
“Did you make the puzzle rings?”

             
“Yes, all my own designs. Did you want to try one?”

             
Reggie drifted toward the window display. The one he liked best, a set of wavy lines like cumulus clouds, looked much too large on closer inspection. He hesitated, and the other man spoke.

             
“You like that one? It’s subtle, harder to unravel than it looks.”

             
“But I need something smaller, about the size of my pinky.”

             
“For a woman? I have more.” He ducked into the back and returned with a shoebox holding a couple dozen more rings. The artist picked through carelessly and presented a smaller ring with more wavelike horizontal lines. Reggie knew it was the right ring without checking the size.

             
“Could I take it apart and try the puzzle?”

             
“Take your time,” the Polish fellow smirked, pulling a chair up beside a glass display case and motioning for Reggie to have a seat.

             
Reggie sat and instantly had the ring in six pieces. How hard could a puzzle be with only six pieces?

             
Twenty minutes later, Reggie’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID and saw it was Phil. He stepped outside to take the call, leaving the ring still in pieces on the display.

             
“Hello?”

             
“We’ve got financing! Another ten or twenty mil wouldn’t hurt, but with Scott on our side, we might carry a vote of the shareholders.”

             
“You’re amazing.”

             
“Just following a damn good idea, which was yours.”

             
“Because I made a mistake.”

             
“Que sera sera.”

             
“Send me the figures by email?”

             
“You bet.”

             
Reggie walked back into the shop wishing he could propose to Sarah on the spot. Then he sat down to solve the puzzle. After another fifteen minutes he tried lining the pieces up to see which band held the lowest point and which one rose the highest. Ten minutes after that, triumph. The metalsmith polished it up and promised he could resize it if needed.

             
Reggie walked through the steaming streets as if there were springs in his shoes. His next stop was an upscale grocery store that catered to American émigrés.  He wanted fried chicken and corn on the cob for his idealized American picnic. But most of all he wanted a box of Cracker Jacks in which to deliver the ring.

              It was late afternoon when Reggie arrived back at the guesthouse, grocery bags swinging, ring still safely hidden in his front pocket. A note was tacked to the front glass door.

             
“We’re back early. Sarah got hurt. She’s in the main house. –Emma”

             
Reggie’s heart raced. They were supposed to be gone four more days. Would they all have come back for a sprained ankle or something small? Reggie took the time to put his groceries in the refrigerator and force several deep breaths. Then he made his way to the Johnson’s front door.

              The look on Aliana’s face as he entered the basement room was nearly enough to stop his heart. Sarah lay unconscious, in a bare room, on what looked like a high tech hospital bed. There were readouts at the top and a couple of tubes snaking out from beneath the covers on the far side. Between white sheets, Sarah looked like she was sleeping, though the top of her head was covered with medical gauze. Aliana sat holding her hand, hair in disarray, face red and rutted. When she looked at Reggie her eyes screamed of greater pain than he’d ever experienced. It was a look he’d seen before, on Sarah.