The Select by F. Paul Wilson Read Free Book Online

knew. Obviously she disapproved of him and his
style. So what else was new? Plenty of people disapproved of him.
He liked it when uptight people disapproved of him. He reveled in it. So why
did her little put down bother him?
    And why the hell was he racking his
brain now for a way to mollify her?
    Matt, ever the peacemaker, said, "Tim
doesn't trust politicians."
    "Senator Whitney isn't a politician.
He heads a foundation."
    "The fact that everybody still calls
him Senator Whitney says something," Tim said. "I hear he spends
most of his time lobbying his old cronies at the Senate. Once a
politician, always a politician." Tim raised his orange juice glass
in Whitney's direction. "But if he's going to foot the bill for med
school for me, he's a prince."
    Another cool look from Quinn. This was
going nowhere. He took his empty plate and stood up.
    "Seconds anyone?"
    *
    Tim chewed the eraser on the back end
of his #2 pencil as he considered question number 200.
    The test was a bitch.
    A lot like the MCAT only worse. The
biology questions were off the wall. The chemistry questions were
even tougher. This baby was out to separate the men from the boys,
not to mention the women from the girls.
    Tim glanced around. About twenty-five
of the hopefuls had been seated in this classroom, the rest were
scattered through the class building. Nothing special here. Green
chalk board across the front of the room, gray tile floor, overhead
fluorescents, a pair of TV monitors suspended from the ceiling, and
one-piece desks. Only the life-size skeleton hanging in the rear
corner offered any clue that the room was on a medical school
campus. In the seat to his left, Quinn's brow was furrowed in
concentration as her foot beat a soft, nervous tattoo on the floor.
To his right, Matt was hunched over his exam booklet, scribbling
figures on his scratch sheets. All around Tim, nervous people
trying to score for their future.
    He could almost hear them
sweat.
    Not that Tim was taking this lightly
himself. His folks could manage to send him to med school, but it
wouldn't be pocket change like for Matt's family—not even close.
They'd have to make some sacrifices, maybe get a home equity loan,
but they'd find a way to come up with it. And gladly. Still, it
would make things a hell of a lot easier for them if Tim got
accepted here.
    But taking pressure off his family was
only part of why he was sweating this exam. A small part. The big
part was being free. Making it into The Ingraham would be a sort of
declaration of independence. No more checks for dad to write for
tuition, room, and board. For the first time Tim would be one
hundred percent self-sufficient. He'd feel like a man. That would
be great.
    But question 200 was
strange.
    It asked for the first
corollary of the Kleederman equation. No problem there. Tim knew
the answer. Trouble was, he couldn't figure out how he knew it.
    Usually he could simply picture the
book, page, and paragraph where he'd read about any given subject.
It just came to him, as naturally and easily as breathing. He
remembered how as a kid he used to wow the grown-ups at family
gatherings. Someone would hand him a driver license, he'd glance at
it, hand it back, then reel off every letter and number on it. Next
he'd do a page from a magazine, and then go to his grand finale: a
page from the phone book. They thought he was a genius, but Tim
came to understand that his ability had nothing to do with
intelligence—it was simply the way his brain worked.
    But what about now? Johann
Kleederman—Tim could see before him a page from U.S. News & World Report , an
article on Kleederman and his foundation. Born in Switzerland in
1935, where he and his wealthy parents weathered World War Two.
Johann took over the reins of the family pharmaceutical company
after his father's death in 1960, and immediately began a rapid
extension into the U.S. market. He set up his Foundation in 1968,
and became a pioneer of managed health care during the