S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (56 page)

The dissertation proved that the idea worked very well in tissue cultures, but it remained to be tested in living organisms.

After Heather moved on, their advisor had tried for years to get another student to take it on. If Lyssa remembered correctly, one had, though only for a few short months while she rotated through the lab.

What the hell was her name?
Lyssa thought.
Betsy something or other.

She shook her head in frustration. It didn't matter.

After finding Heather's lab number in the on-line faculty directory at Dartmouth and dialing it in, Lyssa waited for the call to connect. When it finally did, she was taken directly to the professor's mailbox. “Heather? It's Lyssa Stemple. I don't know if you remember me. We were in the same graduate lab at Harvard. Anyway, I'd like to ask you something about the work you were doing back then. Please give me a call at your convenience.” She provided the number to her cell phone, then, slipping it into her pocket and feeling considerably better than when she'd first walked in that morning, she went to meet with Ramon to discuss the new work

Beth
, she thought, as she headed down the hallway to her husband's office.
Not Betsy.
The student's name had been Beth. And she'd been a real go-getter. She remembered that nobody had liked her. And why no one had cared at all when she went to work for someone else.

“Because she was a total bitch,” she muttered to herself.

 

By the time she pulled up at Veronica's apartment in Medford to pick Cassie up, Lyssa's dark mood had lightened somewhat, though she was still feeling very tense.

To say that the meeting with Ramon had not gone very well would be a stupendous understatement. While the discussion had started off well enough — he'd been properly contrite, acknowledging that he'd put her in an unfortunate bind the day before — he continued to excuse his actions by claiming that the Ames people had imposed upon him the strictest confidentiality and expediency.

“So much for control.”

“Oversight, yes. Control, no. It's their project.”

“I'm your wife
and
your business partner,” she told him, barely able to restrain her anger. “Nothing gives you the right to keep something like this from me. Nothing.”

But he was inflexible, refusing to adjust the Ames timeline or allow her to continue with the PGE project past the weekend.

The argument grew noisy, yet resolved nothing. And when Lyssa stormed out of his office a half hour later, she could tell from the discomfited looks on the faces of the other staff members that they had heard everything.

Professor Hicks's call later that afternoon had been the only bright spot of the day.

“Lyssa Stemple? I'm returning a call you made to my machine yesterday. You said we were in the same lab at Harvard, but I'm afraid I don't remember you.”

“It was White then,” Lyssa corrected. “My maiden name.”

“Of course, now I remember you! You were in the MD-PhD program, weren't you? Are you practicing medicine now?”

“Research, actually. Private sector. And you're a professor.”

“
Associate
professor. Still waiting for the old cronies here to give me their blessing and bump me up a rung on their silver ladder.” She laughed merrily.

They spent a good half hour reminiscing about the old lab and joking about their former advisor, gossiping about the people they'd both overlapped with and knew. Lyssa was soon laughing along at some of the more quirky memories they dredged up. She felt a sense of wistfulness for those carefree times and regretted that they hadn't had a chance to spend more time together. She sensed that she would've liked Heather.

Finally the lighthearted conversation dwindled and Lyssa explained the purpose of her call.

“I'd love for someone to take another look at that system again,” Heather happily exclaimed. “I always thought it had real potential for gene therapy.”

“Why haven't you?”

“My lab here has moved in a totally different direction. Someday, maybe, but it just doesn't fit in with what we're doing now.”

When Heather asked about her own work, Lyssa felt a twinge of embarrassment, suddenly aware of how mundane it all sounded to someone like Heather. It was the first time it had ever happened to her.

“You own your own lab,” Heather reassured her. “That's nothing to sneeze at. And I've always had a lot of respect for those who pursue applied research. And what you're doing, looking at ways to reduce global hunger and increase agricultural efficiencies, that's something which will benefit us all.”

That's what I keep reminding myself
, Lyssa thought.
But for Ramon it's just a means to an end. It's all about the money. It's always about the money
.

“I'll contact Jim Pearce, have him send you the whole lot,” Heather told her. “That's assuming those boxes are even still in the freezer. After all this time, who knows what might've happened to them. Give me your email and I'll send you copies of my notes.”

After hanging up, Lyssa sat at her desk, enjoying a moment of excitement and optimism.
This could work
, she told herself. But it didn't take long for the reality of her situation to bring her back down. Whether it worked or not, the PGE project was going to be mothballed in a week's time.

By the time she left that afternoon, she was back to feeling grumpy again.

* * *

Veronica — Ronnie — answered her door and, upon seeing Lyssa standing there, greeted her in her usual chirpy way. “Hey, Missus S! Cassie's just getting her things. Come on in!”

She threw open the screen door and just as quickly spun around and disappeared back into the house she shared with another girl and a boy, all of them college-aged.

The other girl's name was Jennifer Whatley, and the boy's was . . . .

Lyssa frowned and tried to find it inside her head.
Bart
, she thought. It was something like that. He was always strutting around like a peacock with a harem.

Lyssa wasn't exactly sure any of them actually attended school. Other than Cassie's nanny, she didn't know anything about the others. Veronica, she knew, was studying art, doing it piecemeal and also waitressing at night.

She stepped into the house with a sigh, the same panicked sense of the years slipping away from her that she always felt whenever she visited here. From the cinder block and bare wood shelves to the heavy scent of fried food and piles of clothing lying about, everything about the place screamed single, young, and carefree.

Could be worse
, she thought. There could be pot pipes lying about and illegal cigarettes, empty beer bottles and pizza boxes. But there was none of that. The trio of roommates might not have the best housekeeping habits, but she had to credit them with being sensitive to Cassie's young age. And they were always respectful to her and Ramon whenever one of them picked Cassie up.

Lyssa realized she was being hypocritical, mistrusting them because they didn't fit into her perception of what she imagined college kids must be like. When she was their age and attending Penn as an undergrad, she wasn't into partying and playing video games, either.

The house's male occupant, a young man whose name she always seemed to get wrong — Brett or Brent — stuck his head out from the kitchen doorway. “Hey, Missus S,” he said, parroting Ronnie's greeting.

He stepped out into the hall, shirtless and tanned, his skin glistening with sweat. Once more Lyssa became painfully aware of the difference in their ages. He was hairless from the sideburns down to the soft curls just north of his pants buckle, his muscles defined, the skin unblemished. The blond curls on his legs reminded her of peach fuzz, and she briefly wondered what it would be like to touch it. “Want some coffee? It's cold, but I can give it a zap? Hey, Missus S? Yo!”

Lyssa quickly shook her head, realizing she'd been staring. She turned awkwardly away. “I need to get Cassie home and feed her.” She cleared her throat, unsure of where to look now and opted to study the car keys in her hands.

“How's the Mister? I haven't seen him in a couple weeks.” Brett/Brent — or maybe it was Bert — was leaning against the door jamb. “He asked me a while back for help crunching some numbers he put together, but then nothing.”

“Numbers?”

“I write programs. He wanted a simple way to—” He stopped and waved his hand. “Never mind. It's no biggie.”

“Oh, he's been busy. Working.” She coughed and nodded. She couldn't seem to
stop
nodding. She forced herself to look at a scratch in the paint on the far wall instead. “He's working.”

Silence from the other end of the hall. Then the boy cleared his throat. “Cassie says you guys split up.”

Somehow, he'd whisked himself by her side. He was standing uncomfortably close to her. Inappropriately close.

When did he do that?

But her shock trebled when she realized he hadn't moved at all. She'd been the one to edge closer, and she hadn't even realized she had.

“I didn't know you knew about computers,” she stammered, stepping back. She could smell his skin, the sweat and sunlight on it. The freshly mown grass. It smelled nice, made her heady.

Stop it!

How long had it been since she felt even the slightest bit aroused in Ramon's presence?

I said stop it!

“You don't look . . . .”

“Smart enough?”

Lyssa took another step back, startled.

But he laughed easily. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He rubbed a hand over his chest, scratching shamelessly at the edge of his nipple. “That girl of yours, Cassie, she's a little trouper. She's dealing with it okay, don't you think?”

Lyssa smiled hesitantly and nodded, grateful at him for saying so, though knowing it was a lie. Cassie was having a terrible time adjusting, acting out, crying for attention.

And how much worse would it have been if Remy had lived?

“Here's Mom,” Ronnie said, joining them in the hallway. She slapped the boy's taut abdomen and said, “Put a shirt on, perv. Missus S doesn't want to see you like that.”

Yes, I do!

Stop it!

“Nor does Cassie.”

“I just came inside to get something to drink, V! I was hot.”

“So? Put on some clothes when we got company, Brad. Sorry about that, Missus S.”

Lyssa chuckled. It was
Brad
. Brad Brad Brad. She needed to remember that. How could she keep forgetting? “You ready?” she asked Cassie, feeling the tips of her ears burning.

Cassie nodded but avoided looking her in the eye.

“She didn't eat much for lunch,” Ronnie explained. “But she's been snacking for most of the day, little things, crackers and cheese and apple slices. She says she's worried about her rabbit and—”

“I was wondering if you'd consider spending the afternoons at the house,” Lyssa stammered. Her eyes flicked over at Brad. “After you pick her up from school, of course.”

Ronnie frowned. “Instead of here?”

Lyssa nodded.

She slapped Brad on the arm. “This is because of you!”

Lyssa shook her head. “No, it's not that. You guys are all great. I just . . . .” She paused, took a deep breath and asked Cassie to go wait out in the car. They watched her go, and when the front door shut behind her, Lyssa said, “It's just that I think it would be best for Cassie. She's been through a lot lately, and it'll do her some good to be at home where things are more, I don't know, familiar.”

Ronnie gave her a dubious look and opened her mouth. Lyssa waited for her to bring up that Cassie had been coming to Ronnie's for months and was probably more comfortable here, but she ended up simply shrugging. “Okay.”

“I'll pay you extra, for your trouble. I just think— I don't know.” She felt herself fluster. She didn't want them to see her lose control, which was quite possible after the week she'd been having.

“Naw, it's cool, Missus S—”

“Lyssa. You need to stop calling me Missus. It makes me feel old.”

“Aw, you're not old,” Bret chimed in.

Ronnie pushed him away, back into the kitchen and out of sight, then turned back. “I don't mind hanging at your house until you get home.”

* * *

They were stuck in the car at another construction zone.

“Cassie?”

Lyssa watched her daughter play act with her stuffed rabbit, petting its fur, whispering into its ear. The material on the top of its head had been rubbed away, leaving a rough bald spot discolored with dirt.

“Cassie, honey? Everything okay?”

“You said nothing is dead, as long as we love them in our heart.”

The words chilled Lyssa. “Honey, what's this about?”

Cassie pointed at the work crew a hundred feet ahead of them. “Who loves
them
?”

“I— I don't understand. What do you mean?”

“Somebody must really love them.”

Lyssa frowned. All of the implanted workers were prisoners, Death Row inmates with violent criminal histories. She remembered when the government first introduced them to the world, two or three years before:
Omegamen: A brand new kind of soldier, both fearsome and fearless!
She remembered being alarmed at the idea that the government could mandate any sort of invasive behavior-modification treatment, especially one involving the implantation of a computer chip into their brains which granted someone else the ability to control their actions, even if it was to direct them to more constructive purposes. What about their rights?

“These criminals didn't ask their victims if they wanted to be harmed,” the government reasoned. “These criminals stole from the public. They murdered and raped, abused, and trafficked. The moment they committed their villainous acts, they gave up their rights. We're giving them a chance to make reparations.”