The God Wave by Patrick Hemstreet Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t see her getting worked up over something as stupid as a man.
    While Sara kept her private life to herself, the same could not be said for her opinions. Those she spread liberally, almost joyfully, like in those old experiments in which DDT was sprayed over swimming pools full of smiling children. A lot of those opinions were reserved for the male-dominated industry in which she worked. She had bumped up against the glass ceiling so manytimes it had given her a thicker skull, and she refused to even entertain ideas that she might not be as good as the boys, which she’d been hearing all her life, starting with her father. It was this constant battle that made her hard. But it also made her better.
    Tim—or Troll, as he preferred to be called—was in his twenties. The guy was such an archetypal computer-gaming nerd that he made Dice and Eugene both look like high school jocks. He had that pale, damp mushroom complexion one associated with dimly lit computer grottos and game arcades. It went with his riot of thick, unevenly cut hair. His watery, colorless eyes reminded Matt of photos he’d seen in Nat Geo of bush babies or whatever those little big-eyed buggers were called. Troll spoke in monosyllables except when describing his latest creations or nattering about computer code with Dice or Eugene—or insulting someone. Even then most of what came out of his mouth was incomprehensible to half the listeners half the time.
    And then there was Mike Yenotov. A meat-and-potatoes construction engineer in his early forties, he was straight up, straightforward, blunt, and quietly, mulishly stubborn. What he didn’t understand he filed away with a blink of his brown eyes and a shrug that Matt took to mean, “I don’t get it. I don’t need to get it. If I need to get it, someone will just have to stop and explain it to me . . . and if they condescend to me, I’ll leave—after punching them in the mouth.” Mike was practical and knowledgeable about his craft—what he didn’t know about heavy machinery could probably fit on the head of a very small pin—but seemingly little else.
    Then there was Minerva. If Chuck thought he was being clever about sneaking her around like a pet mouse in his pocket to hide her continued involvement from his business partner, he was fooling himself. Matt knew Mini was still coming in after hours (if there really was such a thing in a place like this) and workingwith the interface. He let it happen as a way of throwing Chuck a bone after blackballing most of his list of applications. What made Chuck happy made Matt’s life easier. He also wasn’t sure how effectively a no would work on Mini. One, could he bring himself to say it to her face? Two, would she understand what no meant anyway? Naturally she would not get as much time on the equipment as the three official subjects, not by a long shot. But if it was enough time to make Chuck content, that would be all that was necessary.
    In the event that Chuck demanded she have greater access (requested, rather, because it was hard to imagine Chuck Brenton demanding anything), Matt was prepared to offer her an official place in the program, but he had no intention of doing that voluntarily . . . and only as a last resort. Time with Becky was at a premium—they had only the one unit until Dice’s team could assemble another—and Matt was determined not to waste any time on what he viewed as a frivolous pursuit.
    Seeing Chuck enter the lab through the main doors below, Matt left the observation gallery and hurried down the stairs.
    Leaving Chuck to steer the sessions alone was a bad idea.
    THERE’S AN OLD APHORISM ABOUT being happy as a clam. Chuck had no idea what clams had to be happy about, only that they lacked the neural mechanisms to be unhappy about anything. Nonetheless, he was, he decided, happy as that proverbial clam when he rolled into the lab on the first