“What could possibly keep two Crays buzzing for a week at almost maximum capacity with so little result?” Ben moaned as he paced up and down in the monitoring room. “With computer power like that, she should be orbiting Mars by now!”
He walked over to the monitor screen and pointed at Jayne still lying in her bed, Matthew sitting at his computer next to her as usual. “But look at her!” he said in exasperation. “If you and that other nurse didn’t move her about each day, she’d still be in the same position she was on the first day!”
“She is in the same position she was on the first day,” Julia Connors pointed out as she sat casually by the monitor, her legs crossed. She was dressed in a nurse’s uniform and waved a pencil about idly in her hand. “If you ask me she’s as dead as a door nail, but not yet as stiff.”
“I didn’t ask you!” Ben snapped at her. Then he smiled and leaned over her, adding, “But if this does all go wrong, I’ll make sure everyone knows who picked the subject for our field trial!”
Julia threw the pencil down and stood up. “You’re not pinning this on me, Benjamin!” she said in a raised voice, pushing him back. “I’ve put too many years in for the Corporation to lose it all now just because one of your fancy ideas is going down the toilet!”
Ben moved away, spreading his arms wide in an expression of detachment. “It’s no use complaining to me, Julia dear,” he said. “You know what Grant’s like. He won’t just flush me, he’ll flush the whole kit and caboodle. Me, you, Rawlston, Matthew in there, even this whole office, we’ll all disappear overnight, never to be seen again. It’s happened before. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about what happened in Santa Monica?”
Julia stared at him. She had heard. The Corporation’s offices in Santa Monica had been three times as big as the one here in Manchester. The Managing Director had put his faith in a venture that failed, and had reported this disaster at the following board meeting at the Corporation’s headquarters in Hackensack, New Jersey. He had never returned from that meeting. It was said that he had ‘left the company’, and overnight, half his staff had ‘left the company’ with him. None of them, or their families, had ever been seen again.
Julia had no wish to ‘leave the company’. “Why don’t you go in there and talk to him?” she said in a much calmer voice.
“Yes, why not?” Ben said with a sigh. “Since I’m paying for it all, the least Matthew can do is explain to me why nothing’s happening.”
“And don’t forget to remind him that he only has three weeks left,” Julia said as Ben reached for the door.
Ben nodded and left.
Julia sat down again at the nurses’ station. She turned the volume up on the monitor and waited.
When Julia had gone to see Ben when she got back with Jayne Middleton’s body, and he had asked her to keep a close watch on Matthew and his subject during the field trial, she had known why, of course. The Corporation had already spent a large amount of money on Matthew’s research, and if there were no results to show for it at the end, things would get extremely messy. Sam was very good, and all that, but when it came to anything messy, he was too officious, too correct. And the last thing you wanted when things were getting messy was someone who was like that. No, when things got messy, it was always Julia’s job to sort it out. And this would need a lot of sorting out if another Santa Monica was to be avoided.
Well, that was fine with her, it was what she was good at. Extremely good at, in fact. But she had never imagined after her meeting with Ben that she would end up wet nursing the living dead in there. She had spent hours each night working her butt off looking after sleeping beauty, and she hadn’t enjoyed it one bit. No, definitely not. So, if the field trial was about to come to a premature end, there would be no one more pleased than her. Her only hope was that it was going to be as messy as possible, because this was one clean up operation she was really going to enjoy.
Julia watched the monitor intently as the door finally opened and Benjamin Watkins appeared. This she had to see. She heard the two men exchange a brief greeting together, and smiled when Ben then plunged straight in, asking Matthew why nothing at all was happening. That’s the way, she thought, lead him into it nice and gently, then hit him with a baseball-bat.