“Spice,” he said, blinking at the curtains.

6

Vergil had spent weeks, it seemed, in just such offices as this: pastel earth-colored walls, gray steel desk surmounted by neat stacks of papers and in-out baskets, man or woman politely asking psychologically telling questions. This time it was a woman, zaftig and well-dressed, with a friendly, patient face. Before her on the desk was his employment record and the results of a psych profile test. He had long since learned how to take such tests: When they ask for a sketch, avoid drawing eyes or sharp, wedge-shaped objects; draw items of food or pictures of pretty women; always state one’s goals in sharp, practical terms, but with a touch of overreaching; exhibit imagination, but not wild imagination. She nodded over his papers and looked up at him.

“Your record is remarkable, Mr. Ulam.”

“Vergil, please.”

“Your academic background leaves a bit to be desired, but your work experience could more than make up for that. I suppose you know the questions we’ll ask next.”

He widened his eyes, all innocence.

“You’re a bit vague about what you could do for us, Vergil. I’d like to hear a little more about how you’d fit in with Codon Research.”

He glanced at his watch surreptitiously, not looking at the hour, but at the date. In a week there would be little or no hope of recovering his amplified lymphocytes. Really, this was his last chance.

“I’m fully qualified to perform all kinds of lab work, research or manufacturing. Codon Research has done very well with pharmaceuticals, and I’m interested in that, but I really believe I can help out with any biochip program you’re developing.”

The personnel manager’s eyes narrowed by the merest millimeter. Bullseye, he thought. Codon Research is going to jump into biochips.

“We aren’t working on biochips, Vergil. Still, your record in pharmaceutical-related work is impressive. You’ve done extensive culturing; looks to me like you’d be almost as valuable to a brewery as to us.” That was a watered-down version of an old joke among vat culturists. Vergil smiled.

“There is a problem, however,” she continued. “Your security rating from one source is very high, but your rating from Genetron, your last employer, is abysmal.”

“I’ve explained about the personality clash—”

“Yes, and we normally don’t pursue these matters. Our company is different from other companies, after all, and if a potential employee’s work record is otherwise good—as yours appears to be—we allow for such clashes. But I sometimes have to work on instinct, Vergil. And something’s not quite right here. You worked in Genetron’s biochip program.”

“Doing adjunct research.”

“Yes. Are you offering us the expertise you acquired at Genetron?” That was code for are you going to spill your former employer’s secrets?

“Yes, and no,” he said. “First of all, I wasn’t at the heart of the biochip program. I wasn’t privy to the hard secrets. I can, however, offer you the results of my own research. So technically, yes, since Genetron had a work-for-hire clause, I’m going to spill some secrets if you hire me. But they’ll be part and parcel of the work I did.” He hoped that shot landed in some middle ground. There was an outright lie in it—he knew virtually everything there was to know about Genetron’s biochips—but there was truth, also, since he felt the whole concept of biochips was obsolete, stillborn.

“Mm hmm.” She flipped back through his papers. “I’m going to be straight with you, Vergil. Maybe straighter than you’ve been with me. You’re a bit wizardly for us, and a loner, but we’d jump at the chance to hire you… if it weren’t for one thing. I’m a friend of Mr. Rothwild at Genetron. A very good friend. And he’s passed on some information to me that would otherwise be confidential. He didn’t name names, and he couldn’t possibly have known I would ever face you over this desk. But he told me someone at Genetron had broken a handful of NIH guidelines and recombined mammalian nuclear DNA. I strongly suspect you’re that individual.” She smiled pleasantly. “Are you?”

No one else had been fired or even let go at Genetron for over a year. He nodded.

“He was quite upset. He said you were brilliant, but that you’d be trouble for any company that employed you. And he said he threatened you with blacklisting. Now I know and he knows that such a threat doesn’t really mean much with today’s labor laws and the potential for litigation. But this time, just by accident, Codon Research knows more about you than we should know. I’m being up front with you, because there shouldn’t be any misunderstanding. I will deny saying any of these things if pressed. My real reason for not hiring you is your psychological profile. Your drawings are spaced too far apart and indicate an unwholesome predilection for self-isolation.” She handed back his records. “Fair enough?”

Vergil nodded. He took his records and stood up. “You don’t even know Rothwild,” he said. “This has happened to me six times.”

“Yes, well, Mr. Ulam, ours is a fledgling industry, barely fifteen years old. Companies still rely on each other when it comes to certain things. Cutthroat out front, and supportive behind the scenes. It’s been interesting talking with you, Mr. Ulam. Good day.”

He blinked in the sunshine outside the white concrete front of Codon Research. So much for recovery, he thought.

The whole experiment would soon fade away to nothing. Perhaps it was just as well.

7

He drove north through white-gold hills dotted with twisted oaks, past cerulean lakes deep and clear with the past winter’s rains. The summer had been mild so far, and even inland, the temperature hadn’t gone over ninety.

The Volvo hummed over the endless stretch of Highway 5 through fields given over to cotton, then through green nut groves. Vergil cut across 580 along the outskirts of Tracy, his mind almost blank, the driving a panacea against his worries. Forests of pylon-mounted propellers turned in harmony on both sides of the highway, each great swinging arm two thirds as wide as a football field.

He had never felt better in his life, and he was worried. He had not sneezed for two weeks, in the middle of a champion allergy season. The last time he had seen Candice, to tell her he was going to Livermore to visit his mother, she had commented on his skin color, which had changed from pallid to a healthy peach-pink, and his freedom from sniffles.

“You’re looking better each time I see you, Vergil,” she had said, smiling and kissing him. “Come back soon. I’ll miss you. And maybe we’ll find more spice.”

Looking better, feeling better—and no excuse for it. He wasn’t sentimental enough to believe that love cured all, even calling what he felt for Candice love. Was it?

Something else.

He didn’t like thinking about it, so he drove. After ten hours, he felt vaguely disappointed as he turned onto South Vasco Road and motored south. He hung a right on East Avenue and drove into downtown Livermore, a small California burg with old stone and brick buildings, old wooden farmhouses now surrounded by suburbs, shopping centers not unlike those in every other town in California… and just outside of town, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where, among many other researches, nuclear weapons were designed.

He stopped at Guinevere’s Pizza Parlor and forced himself to order a medium garbage pizza and a salad and Coke. As he sat down to wait in the pseudo-medieval dining area, he wondered idly whether the Livermore Labs had any facilities he could use. Who was the more Strangelovian—the weapons folks, or good ol’ Vergil I. Ulam?

The pizza arrived and he looked down on the cheese and condiments and greasy sausage. “You used to like this stuff,” he said under his breath. He picked at the pizza and finished the salad. That seemed to be enough. Leaving most of his meal on the table, he wiped his mouth, smiled at the young girl behind the cash register, and returned to his car.