"In a way."
"You know, I got to thinkin' about that last week. 'I don't kill for money.' Real funny way of putting it."
"Think so?" Jack wasn't too comfortable with where this seemed to be going.
Sal stared at him a moment, then shrugged. "So whatta you got in mind? Some of the old meat-hook-and-cattle-prod thing?"
"Not exactly. I was—"
"A little amputation action, then. Wham! Both legs off at the knees. That'll cut him down to size—in more ways than one." He grinned. "Yeah. Everywhere he goes he's eyeballin' other guys' crotches."
Jeez, Jack thought.
"No, I was thinking about a different approach, maybe coming at him through what's important to him. Dragovic seems to like the limelight, to be seen with the glitterati, to get his picture in the paper with celebrities and—"
Sal slapped one hand on the desktop and pointed a rust-stained finger at Jack with the other. "Acid in the face! He'll be blind and ugly as shit! That's it! That's it! Oh, I like the way you think!"
Jack bit the insides of his cheeks. Maybe this wasn't going to work.
"Acid in the face is always an option," he said, "but it's sort of crude, don't you think? I'm looking for a move with just a tad more style. You mentioned a party this weekend. Where?"
"Out at his new place in the Hamptons. Not one party—two."
"That might be a place to start. Got the address?"
Sal reached for the phone. "No, but my caterer friend will know it. Thinking of torching his place during one of the parties?" Sal said as he punched in the numbers. "Maybe his face'll catch fire and melt. I could go for that."
"Arson is always an option," Jack said, keeping his voice steady.
Sal Vituolo was a shoo-in for Bloodthirstiest Customer of the Year. How was Jack going to come up with something short of death, dismemberment, or disfigurement that would satisfy him?
Maybe a look at Dragovic's new place would inspire him. But if he wanted to avoid the holiday weekend traffic, he'd have to go today.
9
"I call it Loki," Dr. Monnet said.
Nadia stood at his side as he sat at the console and manipulated the hologram of the molecule that floated before them. She'd wondered, feared that being alone with him, being this close, might trigger that old sexual excitement. Thank God, no. She was still in awe of him as a scientist, but that one afternoon seemed to have permanently purged the lust she'd felt.
She concentrated, squinting at the image, not because it was too small or out of focus but because she had never seen anything like it.
"Did you make it?"
"No. I found it."
"Where? On the moon?"
"Right here on earth, but please do not ask me to be more specific. At least not at this time."
Nadia accepted that. Before inserting a sample of this Loki molecule into the imager's sequencer, Dr. Monnet had sworn her to secrecy, insisting that nothing of what she was about to see was to leave this room. Looking at it now, she could see why. This was unique.
Nadia stared at the odd shape. The molecule looked like some sort of anabolic steroid that had collided with serotonin and then rolled around in an organic stew where it had picked up odd side chains in combinations unlike any she'd ever seen.
Something about that singular shape and the way it seemed to go against the laws of organic chemistry and molecular biology as she knew them disturbed her. She felt chilled and repelled… as if she were witnessing a crime.
She shook off the feeling. How silly. Molecules weren't right or wrong; they simply were. This one was unusual in a disorienting way, and that was all.
And yet…
"That can't be stable," she said.
Dr. Monnet glanced up at her. "It is… and it isn't."
She didn't see how it could be both. "Sorry?"
"It remains in this form for approximately four weeks—"
"Four weeks!" she blurted, then caught herself. "Excuse me, Dr. Monnet, but that structure doesn't look like it would last four nanoseconds."
"I agree. Nevertheless, it does last about twenty-nine days; then it spontaneously degrades to this."
He tapped a few keys and a second hologram took shape in the air a few inches to the right of the first. Nadia felt a trickle of relief when she saw it. This molecule had a much more natural structure. She felt oddly comforted to know that the aberration on the left assumed the more wholesome configuration on the right.
There I go again. Wholesome? Where did that come from? Since when do I assign moral values to chemical structures?
"What are its properties?" Nadia said.
"Animal studies are under way. It appears to work as an appetite suppressant."
"We can always use one of those. Any side effects?"
"None yet."
Nadia nodded, feeling a tingle of excitement. A true appetite suppressant with a low side-effect profile would be the equivalent of a license to print money.
"But don't load up on GEM stock yet," Dr. Monnet said, as if reading her mind.
"I won't." Looking at that molecule again… Nadia couldn't imagine herself allowing something like that into her system, no matter how thin it might make her.
"Because we have the stability problem to contend with. We can't exploit a product with a shelf life of twenty-nine days, no matter what its effects."
"I take it then that the degraded molecule is bio-inert?"
"Utterly. That's why I call the unstable form Loki."
"Wasn't he some sort of Norse god?"
"The god of deceit and discord," he said, nodding. "But Loki was also a shape shifter, able to assume another form at will."
"Ah. Now I get it. And I'm guessing that's my job: stabilizing the shape shifter."
Dr. Monnet swiveled in the chair and faced her. "Yes. It's an extremely important assignment, a problem we must—absolutely must—overcome. The future of this company hinges upon it."
Oh, don't tell me that, Nadia thought as she looked at him. "The future of the company… that's… quite a responsibility."
"I know. And I'm counting on you to handle it."
"But you have other products—"
"They all pale in comparison to this."
"You think this is doable?"
"I'm praying so. But there's something else you must know about this molecule. It… it changes in a manner unparalleled in science."
The intensity in his eyes, the way they bored into her, made Nadia uneasy.
"How so?"
Dr. Monnet licked his lips with a quick dart of his tongue. Could he be nervous?
"What I am going to tell you will sound impossible. But I assure you that I know through personal experience that it is true."
I don't believe this, Nadia thought. He actually looks unsure of himself.
He took a breath. "Once Loki changes to its inert state, any record of its former structure—whether digital, photographic, a plastic model, even human memory of it—changes as well."
Nadia blinked, thinking, Pardon me, Dr. Monnet, but what the hell?
"No offense, sir, but that's not possible."
"Exactly what I said the first time I witnessed its degradation. I knew it had changed, knew side chains were missing, but I couldn't remember which ones. No problem, I thought. It's in the computer, so I'll just call up the original structure from memory. But the molecule in memory looked exactly like the degraded molecule."
"How is that possible?"
He shrugged. "I didn't know, and I still don't know. But I figured it must have been a freak occurrence, So I procured another sample—"
"What's the source?"
A grimace. "That, I'm afraid, will have to remain classified for the time being. But after the change in the molecule and its records occurred a second time, I decided to take precautions. I made hard copy printouts of the original molecule and filed them away. When the next degradation occurred, I pulled them out and…" He paused and swallowed as if his mouth was dry. "They had changed. They all looked exactly like the degraded molecule."