The Texas Twist Read online

  Again Fabrice emitted an audible scoff. Nick glanced at her sidelong. He turned to de Havilland. “Why don’t you tell us how the whole thing works, Doc?” Nick tapped his own temple. “Keep it simple for us slow kids in back.”

  “Very well.” He said to Fabrice, “Bonbon, try to keep up.”

  “Please don’t call me bonbon.”

  “Would you prefer…” he paused to let the word roll out, “tart?” Fabrice seethed, but said nothing. De Havilland gestured to the lasers. “These,” he said, “are light-emission heaters. They excite the target alloy sequentially. Both the alloy and the sequence are my proprietary formulas. Essentially what I’m doing is sculpting amorphous metal on a molecular level, creating a shaped electrical imbalance.” Two keystrokes. The lasers dropped down to a deeper hum, almost a thrum. “What we have now,” said de Havilland with a sudden and unexpected gloss of pride, “is a supersaturated energy source. Think of the potential stored here as water behind a dam. Once something breaks the dam, all that power comes pouring out.”

  “More than the lasers put in?” asked Fabrice, well, tartly.

  “And what,” asked de Havilland, not at all appreciating her tone, “would be the point of building a closed energy system if it weren’t net plus?” He turned to Holton. “Do you pay her a lot? You’re not getting good value.”

  “He’s getting great value,” Fabrice said, “and I’ll tell you why. Because you slipped ‘closed energy system’ by us like it’s an assumption that doesn’t need testing. If the system’s not closed, if it’s drawing energy from elsewhere—”

  “—then it’s a so-called ‘perpetual motion machine’ and I am a charlatan, is that it?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Look here—” He was perhaps on the point of uttering “bonbon,” but as he saw Fabrice actually ball her fist, he refrained. “—madam, you are free to inspect this lab, the apparatus, isolate any part of the process you wish. You won’t find an outside energy source because there is none. I know you won’t be satisfied until you snoop around, so please, be my guest.”

  Fabrice sniffed. She circled the lab bench, closely examining all its components. Dropping to her knees, she checked underneath, looking for, but apparently not finding, hidden electrical leads. She cast a jaundiced eye on the cooling units, the lasers, and, finally, the glass cube. “There’s energy coming in here, of course,” she mused, “to power the electromagnets. But even accounting for that.…” Her voice trailed off. She took a beat, then suddenly demanded, “What breaks the dam?”

  De Havilland shot her a smug smile. “I thought you’d never ask.” He crossed to a tiny, burnished aluminum box. “Think of this as an atomic autoclave,” he said. “It sterilizes atoms.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Holton, enthralled.

  “It halts the orbits of electrons.” De Havilland opened the box and withdrew a vial full of translucent goo. “So when this gets in contact with that,” he pointed to the ingot, “all these electrons,” indicating the vial once more, “they’re set free. They go in there and go nuts, according to the template laid out by the lasers. So that’s a shaped charge, and you understand about shaped charges from atomic bombs, where if the explosives aren’t aimed correctly at the plutonium, the whole thing won’t go boom.” He walked them back to the glass box, tilted the vial, and let a dribble of goo slide down. “You have to go slow,” he said with a wink, “otherwise, boom. But if you do it right…” A dash of goo hit the cold metal block. It sizzled and disappeared, and the lights in the lab grew noticeably brighter. “…one of these will power a house.” He looked at Holton. “With your investment I can build dozens, prove the concept, move to manufacturing, and get us both very, very rich.” He hesitated, then with great effort and forced bonhomie, extended his hand. “So what do you say, ‘partner’? Shall we do business?”

  Holton ran his tongue over his dry lips.

  Said Fabrice, “Are you kidding me?”

  Nick strode quickly to her side and whispered harshly, “Don’t queer this.”

  But she brushed him aside. “Come on, Sterling, this is ten ways wrong. I shouldn’t even have to explain it. Let’s go.”

  She steered Holton toward the door. De Havilland moved to block her. “You’re standing in the way of science,” he growled.

  “Yeah, and commerce,” added Nick. He backed away slowly until he reached the desk.

  “All I’m standing in the way of,” said Fabrice, “is bullshit. ‘Too much juice go boom,’ for Pete’s sake. Step aside. We’re leaving.” She tried to push past de Havilland, but he chested her, and that fully flipped her anger switch. “Fine,” she said, abruptly plucking the vial from his hand. “Let’s find out how much juice go boom.” She strode to the metal mass and held the vial out over it.

  “Don’t!” cried de Havilland. “It’s toxic!”

  But it was too late. Fabrice dumped the full vial on the core. A gout of flame shot straight up amid a billowing cloud of gray-green smoke. “Get out!” shouted de Havilland. He scrambled for a fire extinguisher. Holton suddenly remembered his cash and turned back for it. Anticipating this natural move, Nick was waiting for him, and from across the room flipped Holton the case.

  Well, a case.

  De Havilland spewed foam onto the blaze, but the smoke just billowed higher. “Oh, that’s not good,” croaked the scientist. He suddenly coughed and collapsed to the floor, clawing frantically at his throat. “Run, you idiots! Run!” Holton gawked. Nick grabbed Holton, threw open the door, and dragged him from the office. Fabrice ran after them, and the three sprinted back through the basement, up the stairs, and out into the damp January afternoon. Holton’s heart raced.

  “Let’s go!” shouted Nick, beeping his truck open as he ran.

  Fabrice, though, paused and looked back at the building. “Serves the bastard right,” she muttered grimly. Just then she saw a figure sprinting out the front door of the building with no sign of a limp at all. “Son of a bitch! Nick!”

  Nick looked up to see de Havilland jump into a sports car and speed off. He got in the Staccato and fired it up. Fabrice pushed past Holton, and the case came flying out of his hands. “Wait here!” she ordered. “Call the police!”

  Holton tried to tell her that the case had slid under the truck, but she was already in the cab. Nick stomped on the gas. Holton watched, gobsmacked, as the thundering Chinese hardware shot away.

  Then he looked down. Turns out those clamshell cases aren’t that strong after all. Nor, after all, do stacks of filleted paperback books look much like Big Bens once you get them out into the light.

  And behind the wheel of the sports car, Olivier de Havilland —otherwise known as Radar Hoverlander—looked not much the worse for all the colored water vapor he’d inhaled. He glanced at the clamshell twin he’d thrown onto the seat beside him. All those hundreds.

  All those pretty, heavy hundreds.

  The Zizzles

  When Sarah told them about it later, she said that it happened like this.…

  On the steps of a medical center in downtown Austin, a young mother named Sarah Crandall stood crying, her frizzy brown hair hanging limp along her cheeks as the tears streamed down. Her son, ten-year-old Jonah, reached for her hand. He wanted to comfort her so badly, but when he touched her, the pain came: electric shocks at his finger-tips, followed by searing pins and needles over the back of his hand, up his arm, and across his chest, then sharp darts straight into his heart. In this little battle between love and pain, pain won. Jonah pulled his hand back, ashamed. Sarah looked down and suffered for her son. She knew the word for what he was experiencing, dysesthesia, but she couldn’t imagine his anguish, his sense of touch so brutally hijacked and bent to his torment in agonizing patches of skin fire or the razor-blade rasp of even the softest cloth against his skin. How do you live in a world where soft doesn’t exist? Where hugs don’t exist? How is that fair to a ten-year-old?

  But the zizzles, as Jonah called
them, wasn’t the word on Sarah’s mind. The new one was the one she carried out of the medical center: prions.

  Now, at last, she knew the enemy’s name.

  Folded protein, she thought. What’s a folded protein? What does it look like? A taco? A towel? Why is a misfolded one bad? She couldn’t wrap her unschooled mind around the science—a baffling maze of amyloids, fibrils, and spongiform encephalopathy—but she easily understood prions as tiny PAC-MANs munching countless infinitesimal holes in Jonah’s brain. The image was inadequate, but it didn’t matter. The holes were killing her son. What else did anyone need to know? She reached down to rub his head, but refrained. Lately even that had become intolerable to him. The doctors said it would get worse. Then, worse still, it would stop. That’s when they’d know. That’s when the brain would lose its war.

  She fought to stop her tears. Can the waterworks, sister, she told herself. Be strong for your son. She pulled herself together, straightening up, wiping her eyes, and smoothing the pleats of her yellow blouse. As she pushed her hair off her face, she looked back up at the medical center behind her, all soaring steel and grand glass panels. So much science in there, so little help.

  That’s what they mean by incurable.

  “Come on, buddy boy,” she said as brightly as she could manage, “let’s go home.”

  They started down the steps of the plaza. Jonah took them two at a time. He seemed to have recovered his mood. Dysesthesia ebbed and flowed, Sarah knew, and thank God for the ebbs. Though lately it seemed to be flowing higher, faster. Were the holes getting that much bigger? Were the prions that hungry? She fought back the thought—No waterworks!—as she called out to her son, “Be careful, Jonah, those steps are steep. You don’t want to trip and—” she caught herself. What? Hit his head? The idea was almost funny, considering everything. She smiled in spite of herself.

  Sarah noticed a man at the bottom of the stairs. She saw immediately how sad he seemed, and how used to the sadness he looked.

  But he brightened when he saw Jonah come clumping down the steps, taking the last five of them in a giant leap. “Stuck the landing!” cried the man when Jonah touched down. This amused Sarah, until he added, “Good job, Jonah!”

  She raced to the bottom of the stairs and demanded, “How did you know my son’s name?”

  “Well, I must have just heard you use it.…” he said. Sarah felt foolish for a moment, until he added with a shy smile, “Sarah Crandall.”

  “Wait, you know my name? No one said that.”

  “I know. I’ll explain in a moment.” He offered his hand. “I’m Adam Ames.” She shook it because that’s the polite thing to do.

  Ames turned to Jonah. “I’m not gonna shake your hand, little man. I know how much that would hurt.” Sarah gasped. Ames turned back to her and looked her in the eye. She saw the sadness return. “What does he call it?” Ames asked.

  “Wh-what?”

  “His condition. Has he given it a name?”

  “The…zizzles.”

  Ames nodded his empathy. “Zizzles. That makes sense. Mine called it the creepy-crawlies.”

  “Yours?”

  “My Dylan. That was at first. Later he just—” Ames cut himself off. “I’m getting ahead of myself,” he said. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” A nod to Jonah. “Some juice?”

  His Dylan? “Will you tell me how you know me?”

  “Of course,” said the handsome and somehow innately charming man. “I want to tell you.” He touched the back of her hand with his palm. “Believe me, it’s worth sitting down for. We’ll just go across the street.”

  Sarah looked at Jonah. “What do you say, buddy? Want some juice?”

  Jonah seemed to give the question more consideration than it deserved, as if his brain were slow to process his thoughts. “I like juice,” he said at last. “Juice is good.”

  They went to a Java Man opposite the medical center. Sarah and Jonah waited at a patio table while Adam got drinks. As he walked back toward them with two Latte Sapiens and a Caveberry Supreme, Sarah gave him the quick once-over. She judged him to be perhaps thirty years old. Some muscles. No gut. Sandy blond hair in an un-self-conscious Super Cuts cut. Smooth face, strong chin. Straight teeth. Good vibe. Vibe was important to Sarah.

  She thought his vibe was okay.

  He caught her staring at him and again essayed his shy smile. “Are you checking me out?” he asked indulgently, like they were old friends who had already been through everything together. Sarah thought it was a strange way of being, yet somehow comfortable—and comforting. “It’s all right,” Ames assured her. “I’d check me out, too. Who wouldn’t? Some total stranger seems to know your name? That’s worth checking out for sure.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “Please, let’s start with that.”

  “Of course.” Ames sat down. He toyed with the lid of his cup. It took him a while to speak. He seemed nervous, unsure of where or how to begin. “I have a friend, a nurse,” he said at last. “She told me about you. About your son and his…situation.”

  Jonah disappeared into the soothing music of his iPod, which he usually did when grownups started to talk. The last thing he needed was more doctory gab. Sarah regarded Ames with the appropriate circumspection of a mother looking after her child’s interest. “This nurse,” she asked, “she told you we had an appointment today?”

  Ames nodded. “So I loitered out there to meet you, to see how it went.”

  “Why is that of interest to you?”

  “My son had what yours has.”

  “I thought he might from what you said. I’m so sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry for you.” His eyes rose to the façade of the medical complex across the street. “I know how hopeless those offices are. All bad news and no real answers. When I heard about your son, I just had to reach out.”

  “Well, I appreciate your sympathy.”

  Adam fixed her with a firm gaze. “I’m not here to offer sympathy, Sarah. I’m here to offer hope.”

  “I could use some hope.”

  “I know you could.” He sighed to the depth of his soul. “I could’ve used some, too.” With that he told his story.

  He said he’d been a divorced dad with sole custody, doing his best, getting along, raising a decent son. There were women in the picture again at last, one he even thought he might marry. Then, two years ago, it all came unspooled. It started with small complaints: phantom rashes, tingling fingers, clothing that chafed. The doctors thought Dylan had an allergy. It wasn’t an allergy. It grew to thrashing nights when even his bed sheets burred his skin and cheated his sleep. They thought it was psychosomatic. It wasn’t psychosomatic. It was a neurodegenerative brain disease. Not Creutzfeldt-Jakob or mad cow, but closer to them than to measles. And rarer. So much rarer. Adam uttered a name, Karn’s Syndrome, and Sarah shuddered. The very mention of it made her blood run cold. She could see that it had the same effect on him, and although it was misery that connected them, she drew odd solace at being in the company of, at least, someone who knew how she felt.

  “Do you live here in Texas?” she asked.

  “New England,” he said. “But I’ve been all over the world with this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When they told me Dylan had Karn’s, I thought, ‘Okay, let’s give him drugs. Let’s get this over with.’ But you know as well as anybody that there are no drugs, no ‘over with.’” Sarah nodded. “I thought that was impossible. I thought modern medicine studied everything, cured everything. I thought there must be some way to fix it.” Again he brought his eyes to hers, and this time she saw fierceness there. “And you know what? There could be, if someone would just damn look. But Karn’s is too rare. There’s no money in curing it. Have you heard what they call it?” Sarah shook her head. “An orphan disease. I find that ironic, don’t you?”

  Sarah said nothing, but her heart went out to Ames. She spontaneously reached out and patted his hand.

  �
�We got six months,” said Adam quietly. “I don’t count the last two. By then he was on machines, and—” Sarah blanched. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean—” She thought he was going to cry. It wouldn’t have been unmanly, just rue for the pain he’d provoked, pain they both could well understand. There was an awkward pause, which he finally filled with, “Of course my lady friend left. I don’t blame her. What I was going through, she didn’t need to be burdened with that.” Sarah found that attitude admirably compassionate. She hadn’t been nearly so charitable toward Jonah’s absentee dad, who in all of this had proven as useful as a chocolate teapot.

  “Plus, I wasn’t at my best,” Adam continued. “I was angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “At medicine. God. Angry at me. I was vile. No fun to be around.”

  Sarah sighed. “I can relate.”

  His voice softened. It almost caressed her. “I really wish you couldn’t,” he said. “Anyway, in the end I was just drained, you know? Numb. I might have stayed that way forever. I wanted to. But then I got a phone call.” He scratched his left eyebrow. “This was about a month after the funeral. It was a Swiss pathologist. He’d been trying to get in touch with me. He’d heard about Dylan and had a promising therapy he wanted to try. But of course he was too late.

  “A thing you’ll learn about me,” said Adam, “I’m like a dog with a bone sometimes. Stubborn. When you call a boy untreatable, when you condemn him like that…no. No, that I can’t accept. I understood that Dylan was gone, but I had to know if he could’ve been saved. I can’t explain it. I just had to know. So I went to see this man. And I learned the truth about orphan drugs.”

  “Which is what?” asked Sarah.

  “Okay, in civilized places, let’s say here, Europe, a few other spots, sometimes there actually is help for orphans. Radically reduced testing-pool parameters.” He saw that he almost lost her on that one, so he backed up a bit. “With most diseases, when they do clinical trials, there’s lots of subjects to test on. But with Karn’s…we’re not statistically significant. So how do you test? Well, you test fewer people and hope for the best. You also fast-track approval for some of these drugs, and give the developers extended patents or market monopolies, incentive to do the research. But here’s the thing. Only big pharma scores. They’re in bed with the FDA or its overseas counterparts. The little guy never has a chance, especially if the little guy is studying something as rare as Karn’s.