Out of Touch (9 page)

“If you want, we could write up a research agreement. Over coffee?”

Yes!
James heard it like a shout, and wondered if there were any other telepaths in the room who might notice. He ushered Nigel out and into the lobby coffee shop.

The shop only had windows on one wall, but there were plants scattered along two others, as if to imply the room had enough natural light. Each table had a bulb shaped vase with white flowers overshadowed by blocky, wooden salt and pepper shakers. James chose a table on a wall, far from other diners. He sat with his back to a large fern, leaving Nigel a seat by an azalea.

Nigel perched on his seat without looking around.
He’s a name; he’s sharp; and since it’s mostly my research, I might get to be first author. I wonder how I’ll mention that? This pseudomonas idea is brilliant. We could write that part up separately and I could be second author. If it works . . .

Nigel’s mind ran on to possible applications for techniques that, if they worked, would take years to test. But he was young, and he wasn’t blathering on out loud. James tried to remember when he’d last run with a new idea and imagined outlandish possibilities.

Last year he’d found an enzyme that could break the telepathy sequence, altering protein production to both disable telepathy and create mildly toxic byproducts.  There was a moment when he felt pumped with his own discovery, floating almost godlike with the power of what he knew. But then his fingers had tapped hard for weeks, on the keyboard or just letting off steam as he imagined possible vectors and designed adaptable counter-measures. Who could he tell? Only Alak, and that with misgivings. But he’d decided years ago that anything he discovered working alone in Thailand must be far enough behind China and the U.S. that it would only be valuable defensively.

Nigel was still noisily thinking about future immune applications when a tiny blond waitress leaned over their table. Nigel’s mind, without losing volume announced,
What amazing breasts!

James couldn’t help but look. The woman’s breasts were quite large, especially compared to the rest of her body, which was petite and tightly wrapped in a peach and turquoise polka-dotted, rather short waitress dress. The dress bothered James, and the waitress was not his type, too frail and angular. But with Nigel’s mind shouting out,
If I could touch those breasts, I bet they wouldn’t even fit in my hands
, James couldn’t help but think about touching and what it would be like to seduce the waitress hearing her every thought. That idea led quickly to high school memories that kept him safely away from such women.

He focused on the waitress who observed the direction of Nigel’s gaze and thought,
Little boy, I hope you’re the one leaving the tip,
as she asked, “Can I take your order?”

“Just coffee,” said James.

“Coffee,” said Nigel, managing to look up from the cleavage.

As the waitress walked away, James searched for and found the necessary Academie Suisse collaboration agreement. He turned his pilot so Nigel could see and asked, “The schizophrenia study is under your name?”

They talked details and Nigel’s thoughts quieted down. With only one serving of coffee they completed and submitted their request. James only half believed anything would come of it. But so long as Nigel kept his mind on science, James enjoyed talking to him, hearing both verbal and mental enthusiasm for his work.

“Your advisor must be somewhat supportive, to send you to this conference,” James said as they were leaving.

“Oh no, he was dead set against it. But I had my new poster ready, frequent flier miles banked, and the Acadamie grant that got me invited.”
So what could he do?
Nigel added in his thoughts.

What indeed,
thought James, and hoped their agreement wouldn’t get the kid in trouble.

              James scanned the offer again, noting how average it seemed. A brown clad courier had brought it to the lab door and waited in the bright, white hallway while James signed a receipt. It interrupted his day, but in a perfectly normal way.

Alone again in his lab, James sat forward on a hard chair, he centered the papers on the heavy blotter that lay centered on his metal desk. The terms looked standard, his patent lawyer could verify that. The money was good, but not amazing. The bipolar sequence they wanted exclusive rights to was significant, but not groundbreaking.

The courier’s delivery would have been just one more annoying interruption if some anonymous informant hadn’t warned him to expect it.

James tapped the offer papers back into their envelope. He set the envelope squarely atop his pile of new mail and sent Alak a brief email. Then he rattled around his lab, bouncing between his six private work spaces, each set of equipment its own shiny metal island in a sea of white and blue sound absorbing tiles. Running three state of the art computers at once, he tried a variety of new analysis routines against his bipolar data, but came up with no statistically significant results. Insufficient sample size. Not enough affected phenotypes.

James tapped his fingers hard against the counter, then swung back around to a computer and tapped his fingers equally hard while typing.

It was only an hour later when another courier, this one wearing teal, delivered the samples Nigel Radford had promised. James couldn’t believe his luck, couldn’t believe the deal went through.

He opened the box carefully, using no sharp objects, even
preserving the shipping labels. He saw the sample boxes he’d been promised and his fingers twitched, but he forced himself to read the enclosed letter first. As he’d suspected, Nigel had been pressured out of the collaboration, and yet, here were the promised samples.  The last paragraph of the letter explained:

“I hope to have a lab of my own soon, in which I will be able to honor my own commitments and conduct my research as I see fit. Based on my personal interpretation of the agreement we signed in Lucerne, I am sending you this set of samples. I think the mechanism you suggested for immune system correction is very promising, and I hope you will be able to pursue your ideas even if I cannot.”

James felt very old, because the letter sounded so young. Could Nigel really be that naïve? Did he think he’d have freedom in a lab of his own? Then James looked around his lab. He looked from left to right, and then from right to left. He looked at the box of samples and put the first one into the sequencer.

March 29, 2025 – Berkeley, USA

              Sarah had the urge to bolt and run as she turned onto the private drive. How had she agreed to introduce the Chens to her aunt? She glanced over her shoulder to make sure the others were still following. Lisa and Howard had flown into San Francisco, and Rob had driven them out to Berkeley. Sarah had driven Mei Mei from Sacramento. For some reason, they all wanted to be there to find out if Sarah’s aunt was like them, and they felt better arriving together. Sarah just wanted it to be over.  She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and felt underdressed next to Mei Mei’s tailored dress and jacket. Even taking strangers to meet her relatives, she felt like the unwanted guest at a party.

             
“I see the house,” said Mei Mei. “It’s just like in the book, a stone castle on a hill.”

             
Sarah’s excuse to her aunt for bringing the Chens was that Mei Mei was a great admirer of the architect William Jones. Aunt Jane’s house had been the last design completed by Jones before he died, and it featured prominently in a book Sarah had given Mei Mei to study. Perched on a large lot in the Berkeley Hills, the house stood like a modest medieval keep, complete with a tower and a stone wall surrounding the garden. In the wall were spy holes she’d peeked through as a child. Honeysuckle grew over the stones and along the heavy arch where the driveway ended. Later in the year, the air would be full of sweet honeysuckle and rose, but today it just smelled wet. The flagstone walk was slippery with last night’s rain. Sarah slouched like a country cousin on a required visit, but the Chens kept their heads high as they approached the heavy oak front door.

             
Sarah tapped the doorknocker, knowing it was useless to knock bare handed on the thick door. She stepped back a little and then felt warm, dry air as the door began to open. Her Aunt was wearing a cashmere cardigan over a calico dress, her face tan and wrinkled, framed by chestnut curls worn short.

             
“Hi, Aunt Jane.”

             
“Sarah.” Her aunt smiled tightly and pulled the door wide. Sarah stepped through and over to her aunt’s side, not wanting to let the warm air out while she made introductions. The Chens followed her in, but everyone still stood with the door open as Sarah named and gestured to each.

             
“We appreciate your letting us visit,” said Mei Mei, holding the book about William James as if it were a written invitation.

             
“Glad to have you. Come, make yourselves comfortable.”

             
Aunt Jane ushered them into the cathedral-style living room with its vaulted wood ceiling and huge picture window. “Here, Mei Mei. Take this seat by the fire, from here you see the details in the brickwork as well as the lay of the room and the window.”

             
Lisa came around behind her mother, and they made a show of examining the bricks while Robert plopped down on a couch and Howard pulled over a high-backed chair. Aunt Ruth settled into a rocking chair, completing a sort of circle as Lisa joined her brother on the couch. Sarah hovered near a metal chest, feeling that even if she sat on it she would be outside the conversation.

The fire burned in a fireplace the size of a walk-in closet. Sarah had never noticed the brickwork, but as a child, she’d been sure Santa could fit his whole sleigh through there. The Chens accepted Aunt Jane’s offer of herbal tea, and Sarah tagged along out of the room to help fetch it.

In the kitchen Aunt Jane asked, “Did these people know my sister?”

“Not really,” Sarah said, feeling useless as tea things were pulled from cupboards that defined three sides of the room. She picked up the teakettle, already boiling on the stove. “Mei Mei had met her many years ago, but I only got to know them when one of the cats went missing
before its adoption.”

Aunt Jane’s nostrils flared at the mention of the cats, but she picked up the tea tray without a word.

Back in the living room, Sarah was too nervous to sit, and she didn’t like her aunt’s tangy, sweet teas, so she hovered to one side by a built-in bookshelf. Picking up a hand sewn Roo toy she remembered from childhood and a small brass train, she fingered each item, then put them down differently, gradually shifting the arrangement of items on the shelf. The conversation became silent for too long, and Sarah knew her Aunt must be a teep.

A chill ran up her spine. It seemed to flow through her arms and freeze her hands, which held a carved figure of a woman weaving a rug. Her aunt gazed calmly around the room, as if pursuing polite conversation. Lisa was the only one who looked distressed, clutching her hands, arms tight to her side. Robert and Howard faced each other, and Mei Mei kept shifting her attention between Jane and the others.

Sarah had been preparing for this all week. Now she felt trapped outside, like her new friends and part of what made her special had been stolen. But this had been going on all her life, and she’d never known. She set down the little carving of the weaver.

“I need to use the bathroom,” she said and escaped down an arched stone hallway. She stopped just before the bathroom door and leaned with her back against the cold stones.

When Ashley appeared from the other direction it made Sarah jump. Her cousin’s hair was down, and not fully brushed. She wore a bulky turtleneck under a gunny sack dress. On her feet were boots that laced to the knee, but the laces were uneven and full of knots. As far as Sarah was concerned, Ashley’s unkempt personal appearance was the only evidence of her supposed schizophrenia, and it was nothing compared to some of the guys she’d met in the Peace Corps. Ashley’s eyes looked older and more wrinkled than Sarah’s own, but the face might almost have been hers, right down to the crease between the eyebrows.

“I know what’s going on in there,” Ashley said.

“Then you’re one too.”

“And you’re telekinetic. You hid it so well. Come, we need to get ice cream.”

“What?” Driving down the hill for ice cream was a long tradition with Sarah and her cousins, but not on chill days in April with puddles on the ground and black clouds still in the sky.

“Come on, you’re driving me into town. I’ll tell my mom as we leave. She hates having me here anyway.”

Sarah ended up in her car with Ashley, starting down the hill.

Ashley thrust her hands into her hair and said, “By the time we return, there will be government types in suits to gather you and your friends. If you go with them, they’ll own you for the rest of your life. They’ll test you, scan you, and sample your DNA. They’ll implant a GPS transmitter so they know your every move. Maybe they’ll only call you in now and then, but they’ll always be watching. You’ll become bait, just like my mother and all of us. She’s calling to report your friends right now, and she had to report you because they told her what you can do. It’s okay for us, we were raised to it, but I know your mother raised you free. I loved your mother. I always thought she was lucky not to know about her family, that it would have killed something in her. I know you think I’m crazy, and maybe it’s somewhat true. But that happened after they started saying it, after I started taking risks.”