She caught herself and made a sour face, sipped at her drink and tried to get her focus back. How could the newsman jeopardize her father’s work? He wasn’t even in the ballpark yet, much less acquainted with the details. She had come that close to telling him at dinner, maybe dropping hints that he could follow on his own, but Chelsea’s sense of honor had restrained her in the end.
She owed her father everything, for hanging in there when her mother left, not sending her to live with relatives as she had feared. Their time together had been limited, of course, considering his work, but that was only natural. She understood and held no grudge. His work was her work now, at least to some extent. They were together, and she would do nothing to betray his trust.
Chelsea considered warning him, but wasn’t sure what she would say. A journalist had bought her dinner and requested that she ask permission for a second interview. There was no crime, in that, no threat that she could see…but what if she was wrong?
She could report the meeting to her father, tell him everything. She would have to anyway if they were going to discuss the prospect of a Newstime article about his work. She had a sneaking hunch how that idea would be received, but asking wouldn’t hurt. He might even surprise her and agree to do the piece. It could turn out to be a feather in his cap.
Not that her father cared for public recognition.
There had been a time, admittedly, when he had fumed at criticism from his peers. She knew it still upset him when lesser intellects received huge grants and public honors for achievements Dr. Quentin Radcliff had surpassed a decade earlier. It galled him, watching plagiarists and sycophants presented to the world as innovators of the day, but there was nothing he could do about it, short of going public with his work. And that, as Chelsea knew too well, was something he was not prepared to do.
Sometimes she wondered at the secrecy. She understood the fear that “colleagues” might attempt to steal her father’s work and claim it for themselves. That risk was real enough in scientific circles, as in industry, the garment trade or any other field where new ideas could make a fortune overnight. Still, there were times when she was moved to wonder if her father didn’t take his passion for security to an extreme.
And then she thought, what of it? Who was she to question him, his motives or his understanding of a situation that was very possibly beyond her grasp? He knew the stakes involved if his discoveries were broadcast prematurely. It was not her place to think on his behalf, perhaps to jeopardize the labors of a lifetime in pursuit of crass publicity.
Still, she would ask…but not tonight. It was a subject that could wait until tomorrow, the journalist’s deadline notwithstanding. Chelsea had been taken with him, in a way, but his request was no emergency. He had not even talked the story over with his editor as yet.
Tomorrow was soon enough, she thought. Perhaps next week.
And in the meantime, she had work to do, a stack of files to read. Her normal days were filled with counseling the clients who approached her father for assistance in their efforts to conceive. She helped them deal with issues ranging from the pain of longterm infertility to the adjustments called for by the presence of a new child in their lives. Her father, rarely called upon her to examine any of his “special” girls, and while she knew about that aspect of his work—some of it, anyway—she understood that they were screened before acceptance to the program, so that nothing would go wrong.
There had been one occasion, going on three years ago, when one—named Jane—apparently attempted suicide with sleeping pills. Chelsea recalled the urgent summons in the middle of the night, her drive up to Ideal Maternity, where lights were burning late. The girl had been sedated, when she got there, obviously frightened. Chelsea’s father would not leave the two of them alone, insisting that he had to monitor his patient’s physical condition. There was talk of vague anxiety, the kind of thing young women often felt with first-time pregnancies, but nothing Chelsea could detect that should have triggered off a suicidal episode. There was no evidence the baby had been damaged, though you couldn’t always tell with chemicals, and Chelsea never saw the girl again. When she had asked her father once or twice thereafter, he said that Jane was doing fine. She marked her calendar to ask about the birth when it was due, and got her father’s reassurance that there were no complications in the case.
Somehow Jane kept haunting her.
She felt a burning pang of guilt, the very thought of questioning her father tantamount to treachery. He was a certified genius, well off the scale on any test you could name, a man who should have had procedures—even hospitals—named after him, by now. The time would come when he was recognized for his achievements, both at home and around the world.
Still, she was troubled by the thought that she should warn him. Remo Washington seemed harmless, but you never really knew about news types, the way their information could be twisted and misused, even the pieces that had started out with good intentions. There was no telling who had sent him here or put him up to all those pointed questions. She should let her father know.
Tomorrow.
There was no point in disturbing him tonight, she thought. His schedule put him at the boys’ home in the morning; she could always catch him there and brief him on her conversation with the journalist and let him decide what should be done.
It was the only way to go.
She stripped her clothes off, showered—trying not to think of Remo Washington, his hands and powerful :wrists while she was lathering her body—brushed her teeth and took a sedative to calm her nerves before she crawled in bed and killed the lights.
With any luck at all, thought Chelsea Radcliff, she might even get to sleep.
“I understand completely,” Morgan Lasser said. He listened for another moment, frowning at the mouthpiece of the telephone, but otherwise displaying no emotion whatsoever.
“Yes, of course,” he said at last. “I’ll see to it myself… In person, yes, that’s right… We’ll pull out all the stops…you know that. Doctor… Yes, indeed… I will… Good night.”
He cradled the receiver, fought an urge to slam it down with force enough to crack the plastic. Swiveling his high-backed chair toward Garrick Tilton, Lasser found his number two regarding him with nervous eyes.
“Sounds like he’s freaking out,” said Tilton.
“Let’s say he’s understandably concerned.”
“That’s what I meant to say.”
“We haven’t done too well for him so far,” Lasser stated.
“Morgan, I explained—”
“Of course. The problem with an explanation is, it always covers failure. If you were successful, if you did your job, no explanations would be necessary. Am I right?”
“I guess so.”
“What?”
“You’re right, okay? We blew it.”
“We?”
“Well, hey, the drones. I wasn’t even there, you. know?”
“Was that the problem, Garrick?”
“What? Hey, no, I didn’t mean—”
“Forget it. We’ve got more important things to think about right now.”
“Okay.” Relief was audible in Tilton’s voice. Smart bastard thinking he was off the hook.
Not even close.
“Do we have any kind of handle on what happened at Ideal?”
“Not really,” Tilton said. “The move was nice and clean to start with, and I left three of the drones behind to watch the place, just like you said.”
“Their orders?”
“Were verbatim what you told me,” Tilton said. “Hang out and keep a low profile. Take off if any Feds or uniforms showed up. If someone else stopped by, they were supposed to find out who he was, pin down his interest in the place.”