Kendra stepped into the lab, her third new lab in a month. She was relieved to see her old computer, and further heartened to see that the lab bench was not the gleaming white that the bench at American Missile had been, but more resembled the ones at Stamford. It seemed that vampires had a better feel for ambiance than did industrial giants. On the far side of the bench was a second computer, and a short row of neatly arranged books.
“What do you think of it?” Alex asked.
Kendra continued her survey of the room. Books and most of her papers were neither heaped the way she preferred them nor organized, but stacked near the computer. “It’s a little too neat…”
She slid open the nearest top drawer and found protein bars. In a bottom drawer she found the tin candy box with a handful of electronic listening devices inside it. Kendra fought not to smile. It was nice to see old friends. “Your community has been to a lot of trouble. It would seem that you’ve raided both my lab at Stamford and the one at American Missile.”
Alex nodded. “The first was nearly empty and not much problem. The second was a worthy challenge.”
“I would like to thank the team that managed it.”
“Thomas and Regis went themselves.”
Kendra was surprised. “Why would either of them go?”
“Think about it from their perspective. Regis is over two-thousand-years-old, Thomas little more than one hundred--”
“So Regis has to prove that he’s still got it now and then,” Kendra interrupted.
“Something like that,” Alex agreed. He smiled.
Kendra liked the smile. It seemed to welcome her into the community more than anything else had. Reflexively she brushed aside the glimmer of a sense of belonging, and got down to business. Work came first. What would Phil Rosenburg say about that? The thought stopped Kendra. Phil must have been furious when she hadn’t shown up for her second counseling session. Almost certainly his anger increased every week because, having anticipated attempts to delete her appointments, Kendra had locked each one of them with a password when she’d hacked into his schedule--was it just weeks ago? It felt like a year.
“Hey,” Alex said.
Kendra looked at him.
“Where did you go?”
She didn’t answer him. She turned on her computer, and as it warmed up, she shuffled through the stacks of papers looking for her equation. She didn’t find it. “Okay. Shall we review the data?”
“I have some for you too.” Alex moved to the computer on the other side of the bench, and busied himself with it.
Kendra didn’t know why she was surprised. Of course the second computer was his. Evidently the pop psychology nonsense about first impressions being lasting was true--Alex would always be the Sheriff of Cambridge to her.
“How do old vampires, I mean the ones who have lived…ah, been around the longest,” she struggled not to offend him, “handle all the changes in each…I mean…as time goes on.”
Alex laughed. Kendra thought she might start to resent being the cause of his humor if it should continue. He must have seen some of her burgeoning resentment, because he hurried to explain. “I have never heard a human try so hard not to offend me. Thank you for that.
“I suppose that the many changes inevitable in a long existence are a cumulative cause of insanity in vampires. Many of us limit the effect of that particular consequence of time’s passing by living in relatively small communities. The irony of the crisis we face with American Missile is that the vast majority of vampire communities have not grown in the last century.” Alex studied his computer monitor, and punched a few keys.
“You said ‘the majority of vampire communities.’ That means that some communities have not controlled their populations?” asked Kendra.
“Okay,” Alex punched a button, and a printer that Kendra had not noticed clattered into life. He sprang out of his chair, gathered the freshly printed pages, and brought them to her. “See what you make of this, and may I look at your equation?”
The change of topic hadn’t fooled Kendra. What’s more she was not sure she should so easily show the heart of her work. The equation was open on her computer monitor. She stood in front of it and studied Alex’s expression. His eyes were fixed on hers. They seemed both fiercely intelligent and entirely trusting. Feeling a bit guilty about her own wariness, she nevertheless continued to block his view of her work while she scanned his.
Fascinating. He had not made some of the assumptions that had become, she realized suddenly, so central to her own work. His work was pages longer than her own, and no wonder. He’d undertaken the mathematical proof that time did not flow in one direction--surely not. What was the utility in that? Was he just treading mathematical water? She flipped ahead a few pages.
“You wonder why I bothered to--”
“Shh! Don’t tell me.” She held up a hand to stop him, but didn’t lift her eyes from the page. Ah, the proof lent a higher level of precision to the solution of the ‘when’ of a jump, and…yes, it looked like the landings, the ‘where’ of each jump, might be better controlled too. His work was solid. She pressed the print button on her keyboard, and smiled at him as the printer clattered to life again. “Enjoy,” was all she said.
Alex hurried to the printer, collected the two pages of Kendra’s equation, and sat on his side of the bench to read. Kendra heard him exclaim in surprise once, then groan with what she thought was envy. As she neared the middle of a thorough examination of his equation, he grunted with disbelief and sprang to the blackboard that took up the entire far wall of their lab. He wrote furiously, trying to disprove her proofs. Kendra smiled. He would never manage it.
In a moment, she grunted in disbelief herself, and rushed to her half of the blackboard before Alex could scribble on it. She drew a vertical line down the middle of the board just as Alex tried to write across it. He glared at her.
Kendra supposed that she should find the glare of a handsome, dark-haired vampire who was almost a foot taller than she intimidating, but she refused to back down. Instead she stood, arms akimbo, and said the first thing that came to mind.
“Cross the line and you’re dead meat.”
