Twice. “Why?”
“For what purpose? How will this polymer be better for that purpose than anything that already exists? What about it will make it worth going through this lengthy and expensive process? Will it make something stronger, lighter, more durable?”
She took a step back, staring at him. “Is that all you care about, whether it will make money somehow?”
Idealism, Ian thought with a sigh. It was the most wearing thing about children.
“What I care about,” he said, “are things that will make lives easier, better, safer, and even give hope where there is none. Spending months to design a polymer we have no use for is a waste of effort, intelligence and, yes, money. But most of all it’s a waste of the most valuable, finite resource you have, and that’s time.”
Her expression turned troubled. “Haven’t you ever wanted to invent something just to see if you could?”
He was glad now he’d been gentle about it. “Yes. And I have. But eventually you come to realize the truth of the old saying about the scientists who got so wrapped up in the fact that they could, they forgot to question whether they should.”
“Yeah. Right.”
She turned and walked away, and he wondered if he’d inadvertently accomplished his goal of keeping her out of his way. Even if she wasn’t the leak, it was best to find out now. If the simple rejection of an idea could stop her, she wasn’t cut out for this.
Still, he hadn’t liked smashing her hopes. And it was still bothering him when he got into Samantha’s car that evening.
“Rough day?” she asked, discerning his mood so quickly it startled him.
“Sort of. I had to rein in my assistant today, and she wasn’t happy.”
“Rein her in? Was she messing something up?”
He settled into the seat and fastened the seat belt—something he didn’t always do when he drove by himself but that Samantha demanded before she would even turn the key—before he answered her.
“No, she just wanted to take off on a project that was a bit…misguided.”
“Misguided?”
“With no real purpose. And somewhat self-indulgent. But she’s young, so I tried to cut her some slack.”
Samantha smiled at that. “You say that like you’re ancient.”
“Sometimes I feel that way,” he admitted. “Her methodology is good, she’s got the ‘how’ down pat. I hated to see one simple question take all the wind out of her sails.”
She studied him for a moment. “You asked her…why?”
He was startled anew, but realized a perceptive woman like Samantha could have figured it out from his own words.
“Yes.” His mouth quirked. “I told her not to feel too badly. A very wise real professor once said, ‘Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question How?, but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question Why?”’
“And how many eons ago was that?”
“Recently. Erwin Chargaff of Columbia, 1969.”
Samantha chuckled, but it somehow didn’t sting. He knew he tended to older trivia, and she was too perceptive not to have noticed. Her next words proved it.
“Only you, Ian, could consider that recent. Do you have any quotes from this quarter century?” she asked as she started the car.
“Sure.” He thought a moment as she negotiated the parking lot. She glanced at him as they waited for cross traffic, and he grinned and said “‘It’s hard to be religious when certain people haven’t been struck by lightning.’ Calvin and Hobbes.”
She burst out laughing this time, and it pleased him more than he wanted to admit.
“If you’d told her that instead, it probably would have gotten through,” she said. “How angry was she?”
“Not angry, really,” he said, thinking back to Rebecca’s reaction. “More…unhappy, I think.”
She seemed to consider her next words carefully before saying, “How unhappy?”
It hit him in that moment—what hadn’t before but should have. He must have been too preoccupied with how to let her down easy. But he should have thought of it. Should have wondered if Rebecca was—and perhaps had been for a while—unhappy enough to do something foolish.
If she felt unappreciated enough to sell out Redstone.
“How’s it going?”
Sam finished her last bite of salad, then raised her gaze to the man who looked enough like her to be her brother. The first time she and her partner, Rand, had come face-to-face, it had been an eerie sort of shock for them both. Later they laughed when they discovered they had both started checking the family history to make sure there were no unclaimed siblings floating about. Since her parents were dead, she couldn’t be absolutely positive, but Rand’s parents were alive and well and had been somewhat insulted by his questions. That is, until he’d brought Sam home to meet them. Two jaws had dropped, and all was forgiven.
“Fine,” she answered his question. “He’s not a tough job.”
“I’ve heard he doesn’t do much, outside of work.”
“Doesn’t seem to.”
Rand had called this meeting to give her the final sale papers on the house, in case she should need them. It never ceased to amaze her how fast the Redstone name and horsepower got things done, even government paperwork.
They were at the restaurant where she’d met Josh when she’d started this assignment. She had grabbed the chance at a decent meal; this job was making her rethink the wisdom of never having learned to cook. Rand, as usual, was drinking a soda, while she sipped at a surprisingly good lemonade.
“Is he as odd a duck as they say?” Rand asked.
Sam felt strangely defensive. “I haven’t seen him do anything particularly odd. Yes, he thinks differently, but that’s good, not odd.”
Rand raised a brow at her.
“Like this morning,” she said, “we heard a story on the car radio about some firefighters who were killed in a forest fire. The report said they made it into their fire shelters, that it was breathing the superheated air as the fire burned over them that killed them. So Ian immediately began thinking about developing some device small enough to carry that would give them just enough breathable air to survive a burn over.”
“I see what you mean,” Rand conceded. “And if Josh is right about him, he’ll probably do it, eventually. Although St. John says the Safe Transit Project is his only focus right now.”
She nodded.
He paused before saying, “It’s Ian, now, is it?”
She grimaced at him. “Well I can hardly call him Gamble to his face, now can I?”
“Sorry,” Rand said, with a grin that belied the words. “Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”
“So what’s up back home?” she asked, not caring if her subject change was obvious. “I feel like I’m totally out of the loop.”
“You heard Draven got McClaren out?”
“Josh told me,” she confirmed.
“So his record is still perfect.”
“Was there any doubt?”
Rand shrugged. “You never know.”
That was a truth anyone on the Redstone security team soon learned, Sam thought later as she drove out of the restaurant parking lot. In an empire as varied as the