The God Patent by Ransom Stephens Read Free Book Online Page B

laughing. Creation Energy wasn’t just related to Evangelical Word University, it was wholly owned and operated right there in the Department of Earthly Science.
    Dodge asked about investment opportunities, and she gave him the phone number of the chief financial officer, a guy named Blair Keene. He thanked her but then, instead of hanging up, cultivated her as an informant. The first step was to ask her about the weather. She went on a long boring trek along the lines of“if you don’t like the weather ’roun’ here, jus’ wait ten minutes.” Then he got her talking about family and found out she had a son who was some kind of modern cowboy on a ranch between San Antonio and Austin.
    Dodge liked the idea of hiring some muscle in the neighborhood, so he told her a lie about being interested in buying a West Texas ranch. He said that he needed a consultant and asked if her son might help. Dodge tried not to chuckle as she gave him her son’s contact information; his name was Dale Watson.
    Since the cards were hot, he went with the direct approach. Seeing as he was “investing down there,” he told her that he’d need some information periodically. She took the hint literally and spewed university gossip covering rumors from the chancellor to the janitor. It took a good hour, but he learned that she was Foster Reed’s secretary—Dodge skimmed his notes to double-check the name of Ryan McNear’s old pal. He managed to resist laughing at that tidbit.
    When she finally let him off the phone, he contacted her son, Dale, found out where he lived, asked some irrelevant questions, and sent him fifty bucks to establish that he was on the payroll. A phone call to an old associate in Houston returned more information on the chief financial officer, Blair Keene: a trial attorney who dumped money into right-wing Christian causes and was well connected in local government, especially high-tech regulation—i.e., the patent office.
    Monitoring the company website turned out to be the easiest way to watch their progress. When something changed he’d call Mabel, flirt with her a little, listen, take notes, and then, after hanging up, send her a fifty.
    His plan required two simple steps: wait until Creation Energy had attracted enough investment that it would be worthwhile to sue, and cultivate Ryan’s sense of greed and injustice to afrothy anger. Dodge rubbed his hands together, yearning for the day that Ryan would storm into his office demanding that they “sue the bastards.”

T he excitement of escaping arrest in Texas, then zipping across the country and landing in Northern California’s wine country, left a reality hangover. Ryan was farther from his son than ever, and as hard as he tried to deny it, he even caught himself missing Tammi—the poison he’d fallen for in his weakest moment.
    With the sun rising over the valley, Ryan booted up his tired old PC and put the kettle on. He was stirring sugar into a cup of tea when Nutter House awoke to the sound of Katarina’s stereo. Ryan combed through Internet job sites and listened to Katarina yelling at her mother. He had the same feeling he got on long airplane flights. Right after sitting down and buckling in, he’d wonder about the people sitting next to him, energized by the knowledge that they’d be friends by the end of the flight.
    He polished off his second cup of tea, scrawled the addresses of some nearby tech companies onto a pad of paper, and headed for the door. As he started down the stairs, Katarina slid down the wide smooth banister behind him and almost bowled him over. In one seamless motion she descended the stairs, jumped out the door, and hopped onto her skateboard.
    Ryan spent the day stuttering in front of impatient human resources officers. He had no answer to the first question they asked: Why have you been out of high tech for three years? Whenhe got back to Nutter House, he surrendered to the desire to call home, what he thought of as home,