Trial Run (4 page)

P
eople around here are so thoroughly into the good life I could scream.”

Trent sat across the wrought-iron table from perhaps the most amazing woman he had ever met. He did not know her name. He was careful not to stare directly at her. Even so, she filled his senses. She was angular in the manner of a long-distance runner, with copper hair streaked lighter in places. He assumed it was not color from a bottle. He had no evidence for such a postulation. But this woman did not appear the type to concern herself over alternate hair colors. Everything about her was direct, straight ahead, forward looking. She was turned slightly from him, as though she too was determined not to focus overmuch on Trent. Which made his peripheral inspection less intrusive.

She went on, “Two weeks ago, UCSB was ranked the nation's number one party school. But you already know that.”

“No. Sorry.”

She glanced over, a lightning bolt, there and gone. “You don't get out much, do you.”

“Hardly ever. Especially not since I started my doctorate two years ago.”

“Anyway, the business school dropped tools and put together a party to celebrate the honor. If they'd put half as much energy into their studies, we'd bump the grade curve forward a semester. I went because everybody else was going. The profs included. My school is very big on teamwork. I've never felt more out of place in my life.”

Trent didn't know what to say, so he remained silent. He knew she kept talking because she was nervous. He could feel her unease radiating like friction off a high-tension line. But there was nothing he could say or do to make things better. Certainly not tell her the truth. She would bolt. So he made himself as small as he could and waited.

“This place is exactly what I'm talking about, only more so.” She encircled the sports café where they sat with her forefinger. “You bring my classmates in here, they'd salivate like Pavlov's puppies. This is why they're in school. So they can exercise in a place that would look gaudy in Vegas.”

“So what are you doing here? I mean, why you're studying at UCSB.”

“I know what you mean.” She gave him another lightning glance. “I'm still not comfortable with your questions, Trent Major.”

“Of course. Sorry.”

The sports club was located in an upscale outdoor mall between the university and the closest business park. There were a number of these industrial islands rimming the Santa Barbara airport. They tended to attract high-tech groups that used the university's specialists as part-time consultants and the postgrads as researchers. Trent had hoped he could line up some work with one of them. But the professor supervising his dissertation had axed the idea straight out. Trent had initially thought the man was concerned about a business tainting results or encroaching on cutting-edge work. Now he knew better.

The sports club occupied its own building. The central atrium
was marble tiled. The café tables were separated by full-grown palms planted in wooden tubs. The ceiling towered eighty feet above them. A balcony ran around three sides and held the exercise machines. Hit music drifted down from overhead.

She and Trent had biked over from the campus. He had scarcely believed it when she had agreed to come with him. He had kept to the main roads and let her trail behind him. Trent knew where to come because he had cycled here straight from his apartment that morning. Finding the sports club exactly where his dream-image had shown was why he'd had the courage to meet this woman. Trent risked another glance. He had so many things he wanted to say, starting with asking her name.

She was dressed in standard student garb, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt worn over a dark tank top. The sweatshirt was a faded grey and draped down over pale blue tights. On her, the outfit looked regal. She asked, “So are you going to tell me why we're here?”

Trent pointed at the glass wall directly in front of them. On the other side were a trio of squash courts. “We need to speak to that man.”

“Which one?”

“The tall one with dark hair.”

“Who is he?”

“A corporate lawyer.”

She shot another look. “In case you missed the fact, I'm actually in the business school. Where there just happens to be several lawyers. People I know. And who know me.”

“No,” Trent replied. “It has to be this attorney.”

“Oh.” She crossed her arms. “Well, that clears up everything, doesn't it.”

“I know you have questions.”

“Oh, and that's supposed to make me feel better?”

“What you need to do is treat this like an experiment.”

“As in, I sit on a petri dish while you poke and prod? I don't think so.”

Trent liked that. He liked her spirit. He liked how she fought to keep
her nerves under control. He especially liked how she was willing to come over here with him.

“What are you grinning at?”

“When he comes off the court, go over and speak with him.”

“You're not coming with me?”

“No. You have to do this alone.”

“Why?”

Trent pressed against the table. He saw the flicker of alarm in her gaze. He forced himself back in his chair, keeping his distance, holding his voice to a calm that was itself a lie. “Do this one thing. Please. Go over and show him the paper and tell him what I've told you. If it goes like . . . He should agree to work with us on the spot.”

“What, a corporate attorney who's never seen me before will accept us as clients on the basis of a howdy-do?”

“Yes. And tell him that we're broke and he won't be paid until we are. He will agree to accept payment on a contingency basis.”

“That,” the woman said, “is impossible.”

“I know. But if it happens like I say, I'll tell you everything. And you'll believe me, precisely because it has happened. If it doesn't, well, I'm sorry for wasting your time, and I promise I'll never bother you again.”

She started to say something, but the squash court's glass door banged open. She eyeballed the man laughing his way toward the café's main counter. “What's his name?”

Trent's voice sounded strangled to his own ears. “I have no idea.”

He expected her to bolt then. She had every reason to. Instead, she flashed a grin as fleeting as her glances and rose to her feet. “That makes about as much sense as me standing here.”

Trent watched her approach the man and thought,
The lady has a fabulous
smile.

B
rett traveled to Rome nine days ago,” Charlie said to Dor Jen. “You offered him the chance to do some cutting-edge research. Work that Gabriella would never have approved.”

Elizabeth spoke for the first time. “Brett told me he was going glacier skiing.”

“Brett lied. He traveled down to see Dor Jen. Isn't that right.”

With slow, deliberate motions, Dor Jen set down her utensils and pushed her plate aside.

“I found this very interesting.” Charlie held to a very calm tone. “Brett's research has been very tightly focused. Isn't that right, Dor Jen.”

The Tibetan did not respond.

“His goal has always been the same, ever since he first met up with Gabriella. His aim has been to use these experiments to prove, once and for all, some of the most contentious issues related to human brain activities. Brett decided that if he could develop evidence that our experiments operate
beyond
time,
removed
from time, then he could
introduce our work as evidence that human consciousness can be separated from Newtonian physics. This would be worthy of a Nobel Prize. It would place his name in lights throughout the scientific world. Isn't that right, Dor Jen.”

The doctor stared at her hands resting on the scarred table and did not speak.

“What I couldn't understand, though, was how could Brett's work on the nature of time help you down in Rome? Then it hit me. You were working on something else entirely.”

Dor Jen said softly, “Everything I have told you is the truth.”

“Sure. Of course. But that's not the issue. You have
two
experiments running simultaneously, don't you. One related to the living, and the other to . . . what?”

From his place by the window, their key techie breathed a soft, “Whoa.”

“You wanted to look at the dying, didn't you. You wanted to examine the moment of final transition. But there were problems. Because how could you possibly know this moment in advance? So what do you do? Do you just sit and wait? You can't, can you. We all know there are finite boundaries for our experimental states. So if you are looking at pending death, you first have to identify the exact moment. Which would prove Brett's hypothesis. But if you move backward, then you can name the moment, but you are still breaking the bounds of time. Which was it to be?”

“Both,” Dor Jen murmured to the tabletop. “We wanted to try both directions.”

The entire room murmured. Charlie started to speak, but stopped when he saw Jorge turn to Elizabeth and mouth the words,
Tell him
. Elizabeth met his gaze and gave a minute shake of her head. Charlie did not press. Elizabeth was not someone who would ever give in to outside pressure. She would talk when she was ready, and not a moment before.

Charlie turned back to the Tibetan and said, “So you contacted
Brett. And he came down because he thought he could use your work as a proving ground for his own.”

She lifted her gaze and, in so doing, revealed the rising terror. “Did I do this to him?”

Charlie turned to Jorge, who was already shaking his head. “The instructions he gave me before he went comatose were simple in the extreme.”

These ongoing instructions remained part of the protocol Gabriella had laid out in the early days of their very first trials. One person, the monitor, was responsible for giving the ascender precise instructions. This was where Dor Jen's first disagreement arose. Gabriella used the monitors as a means of restricting. Do this and nothing more. Dor Jen and her team wanted to use the monitors as a means of
expanding
.

Dor Jen asked Jorge, “What did you tell Brett to do when he ascended that day?”

“Exactly what he wrote down. Go forward. Look at where he would be in two weeks. Try and leave himself a message, but only if it was safe. Come back. Finish. Nothing else.”

Charlie said, “I'm not bringing this up to make you feel guilty. I want you to see that it doesn't matter whether you move six hundred miles south or six thousand. We are all still connected. At the core, at the most basic level, we are all after the same thing. Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Dor Jen nodded slowly.

“Good.” Charlie rose from the table. “Now let's go see if we can bring this guy home.”

S
hane's first thought as she approached the counter was,
I
must
be
insane
.

Her second thought was,
Beefcake.

As in, the guy she was moving toward. Prime cut of filet. Tall. Early thirties. A model's legs. Great smile.

Then he had to turn toward her and give her that look.

His expression was the one handsome California guys had perfected. The look said it all. How he liked what he saw. But he had known better, and he probably would again, maybe even tonight. But if she was interested, hey, take a number, he might be able to fit her in.

Which was why Shane halted before him and spoke with the crisp clarity of a woman who had surgically removed all nerves. “My name is Shane Schearer.”

He set down his spritzer and said, “Shane, as in the cowboy hero?”

“My mother was from Deadwood. She loved Westerns more than just about anything.”

“Well, Shane, if that's a line, I'll buy a ticket to the whole show.”
He offered a long-fingered hand and a full-wattage smile. “Murray Feinne. My buddy here is Kevin Hanley.”

Even dressed in sports togs, the guy she faced was too polished for Santa Barbara. “Mr. Feinne, I'm here to discuss a business proposition.”

Murray Feinne's opponent was still struggling to regain his breath. Kevin Hanley coughed and wiped his face with a drenched towel and said, “Good. You do that, Ms. Schearer. Keep him from billing me for this hour. He's already gotten his pint of blood on the court.”

“You let me win, Kevin. As usual.” Murray's gaze was dark, his features saturnine. He was not even breathing hard. “I'm sorry, Ms. . . .”

“Schearer.”

“I don't generally interview new clients outside my office.”

“This won't keep.” Shane launched straight into her spiel. The words were clear enough. Before she rose from the table she'd been uncertain whether she could recall anything Trent had told her. But standing there, facing this tall, handsome lawyer and his sweating overweight opponent, she found herself basically reciting all that Trent had said. She might as well have read the stuff off a script.

What she didn't expect was the sweating guy's response. Kevin Hanley went from near-collapse to full alert. All in the time it took her to rewind on Trent's pitch.

Murray noticed his opponent's change as well. He asked, “You know about this?”

“Not the application to gaming. But interactive algorithms, sure. It's the new hot thing.” He pointed to where Trent sat watching them. “Is that your partner?”

She started to object to the term, then went with, “Yes.”

Murray asked, “Why doesn't he join us?”

“He's . . . shy.”

Murray snorted. But Kevin nodded, as though the description fit his expectations. “Why don't I go over and have a word.”

“Wait.” She reached into her purse and came out with Trent's sheet of paper. “This is his work.”

Murray said, “I'm not sure that's a good idea, Ms. Schearer.”

Kevin said, “Give it a break, Murray. What connection do I have with gamers? That is, other than having lost my two nephews to World of Warcraft.” Kevin snagged the sheet of paper. “I'll have a look at his work and see what the guy has to say for himself. Maybe save you some time.”

Murray watched him move away. Shane asked, “Hanley is a scientist?”

“Something like that.” He shifted his gaze back to her. “I am still not comfortable having such a conversation with a person I don't know under these circumstances, Ms. Schearer.”

She caught the note of disdain. That in and of itself would probably have been enough. But the waitress behind the counter chose that moment to glance at her. And smirk.

Shane gave them both a flinty smile and replied, “You're going to like this even less, Murray. My partner and I? We don't have a cent. You do this, you're going to have to wait for payday with the rest of us.”

The barrier slipped over Murray Feinne's gaze. She had seen other people in business who had that sort of polished power of denial. Usually they were much older, top-level execs in to give a guest lecture or pick up some honorary prize. They'd get hit on by some eager young student, and the veil would slip down. They would hand out the professional rejection that did not require volume to crush. Just as Murray was about to do.

But before he could form the words, Shane surprised them both by saying, “Tell you what, Murray. Let's go for the best of three at your own game. I win, you work with us.”

He showed surprise for the very first time. “You play squash?”

“That's the question, isn't it. Whether I can meet you on the court.”

He liked that. He tried not to show it. But she could tell. Murray glanced over to where his former opponent was heads down with Trent. Shane's mystery guy prodded the handwritten sheet and talked with more animation than Shane had seen before. Kevin frowned over the page and nodded in time to Trent's words. The two of them were totally lost to the world beyond their table.

Murray conceded, “It looks as though your partner may have the goods.”

“I'll have to bike back to my apartment for my equipment.”

“I don't have time for that. I'm sure the pro shop has something in your size.”

“Sorry, Murray. I'm just a poor grad student.”

Murray reached over and fished a credit card from his gym bag's side pocket. “I'm not that far removed from my own starving student days.”

Shane liked the guy's style. A lot. But she said, “I couldn't possibly.”

“My time is money, Ms. Schearer. It appears you're going to cost me one way or the other.” But the bite was lessened by his smile. “One thing we didn't discuss was what happens when you lose.”

“I like your optimism, Murray. Misplaced as it may be.”

“
When
you lose, Ms. Schearer.” He handed her his card. “You'll have dinner with me.”

She accepted the card and replied, “Isn't it a shame how you're going to have to miss that train.”

It had been a long time since new clothes had felt this good.

Murray Feinne held the squash court door open for her. Shane knew he wanted to check out the rear view, and to be honest, he almost deserved the favor. Seeing as how the package was dressed in his money.

Almost, but not quite.

“This is your court, Murray. After you.”

“Don't tell me you're captain of the university's squash team.”

“UCSB doesn't have one. And if they did, I wouldn't be interested.”

He took position on the right quadrant and slapped the ball to the front wall. “You played competition?”

“Never have.”

“You're telling me the truth?”

“Rule one in doing business. Never lie to your partners.”

He liked that one too. “I could name a few clients who missed that day at school.”

Murray took it easy. Lofting his shots, cutting her slack. Shane held back, giving him nothing. Just limbering up, stretching more than she needed to, flexing her back and legs, swinging through the ball.

When it came to sports played in a tight wooden room, Americans tended to go for handball and racquetball. Both of which were oriented toward American mentalities. Handball was brutal, smacking a small hard ball with nothing but a light glove for protection. Racquetball was a bruiser's sport, where body blows were common and the ball bounced enough for the player to anchor himself and fight to control their space. Squash, however, was a dancer's game. It required a lithe body and a long reach. Physical contact was forbidden. An increasing number of women were going in for squash, which had recently been shown to provide the strongest aerobics workout of any competitive sport.

No, she never had played competition squash. But she could have. Easily.

Growing up, Shane's passion had been gymnastics. The mats, the parallel bars, they were her very own private universe. One of the few mementos Shane kept from a fractured early life were the two silver medals from Junior Olympics. Won at age fourteen, the summer before her parents died in the crash and her world fell totally apart.

When she entered university as an undergrad, she had gone in for freshman gymnastics. But the fire had been extinguished. She was so totally detached she could stand at a distance and watch herself perform with the objectivity of a robot. Despite not having trained for almost four years, Shane had been good enough to make the team. But the passion required to reach the top ranks was absent. Her mother had been a gymnast of modest ability and had nurtured her daughter's talents from a very early age. Her mother had never been emotionally demonstrative. The closest Shane had ever felt to her had been in the gym. Her mom had never missed a trial, a competition, an event. Standing on the university's mats had brought back all the lost and
lonely days after the accident. Shane had stopped competing before the end of her freshman year and never looked back. Squash had been an afterthought, just a way to release the pent-up energy. And the rage.

Squash was an odd sort of game. The sport was far too intense to be constrained within a tight little wooden box, even one with a rear glass wall. The sport required reactions so swift the best players did not think out their movements at all. The responses went directly from eyes to limbs, bypassing the brain entirely. Shane loved that part of the sport, how thought was an impediment to good play. She loved the electric combination of frantic speed and lithe motions. Both were a gymnast's stock and trade.

Toward the end of their warm-up session, Murray lowered his strikes down to near the bottom rail, powering into the corners, forcing her to move out of her space on the left side of the court. Shane met his strokes but continued to hold back. She saw his smirk and knew the guy was already busy writing her off. A girl with some skill, but not enough force to offer any real competition.

“Okay,” she said, catching the ball. “I guess I'm ready.”

He spun the racket. Shane called the smooth side and won the serve. She knew she should give it a few points, lull him further. But that smirk of his brought it all back.

She moved to the serving box, turned, asked, “Ready?”

“Fire away.”

She showed him a smirk of her own. “You sure?”

He motioned at the front wall. “The clock is ticking, Ms. Schearer.”

She crouched, tossed the ball, and unleashed.

Early on she had learned to apply a standard gymnast's move, using her entire body as a catapult, twisting from the hips first, then swinging all her upper body, and finally whipping her arm around.

The ball did not fly so much as explode.

Murray did not even get his racket up in time.

Shane caught the ball on the rebound, said, “I believe that is my point.”