The Clan of the Cats

IV

James Bedford looked at the cover of the folder and frowned. Project latifrons. “It might excite some of them,” he thought, “but it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I took over. After all, what measure of charisma has an oversized, long-horned bison got, compared to a sabertooth cat or a weasellike creodont the size of a black bear? Hell, the Poles brought back the aurochs close to eighty years ago and the South Africans rebred themselves quaggas nearly five years back.”

He sighed, leaned back in his chair, extended and crossed his legs, then closed his eyes, thinking. “I happen to know for a fact that Pearson’s group in Alabama are getting all sorts of funding on their mammoth replication project. That’s the kind of thing that grips the imagination, dammit! Why in hell can’t I get the hard facts of life and funding across to Stekowski and Singh, to Harel and Marberg and the rest, why can’t I?

“What we need are the kinds of projects they talked about when they first conned me into this operation, something that will grip the imaginations of the folks I have to impress. A ton or so of shaggy-haired moo-cow is just not in that category, unfortunately, and there is a fast-approaching limit to the amounts of my own bread I can plow into this without serious trouble.

“Furthermore, with the length of a bison’s gestation period. it will be years before we can come up with anything worth showing or shouting about. But that ass Harel seems to be about as fond of predators of any kind as he is of bleeding piles, the Republican Party or inherited wealth. Hell, I guess it’s fitting: a vegetarian who specializes in Bovidae. But he would be a whole lot easier to take, to work with, if he wasn’t so damned arrogant, so critical of everyone else and so bloody sanctimonious about the fact that he doesn’t eat meat.

“The longer I think on it, the more I’m coming to the certainty that this pack of multi-degreed con artists suckered me into this outfit for the sole purpose of milking me and my connections bone-dry. Executive director, huh? Ha! I have less real authority here than most of the hired help. The only time I’m made to feel at all important is when fresh inputs of money are needed.”

Sitting up, Bedford switched on the voicewriter, made certain that the paper supply was adequate, refilled his mug with hot coffee then began to speak.

“I’m just back from my latest fund-raising trip, which was a near-bust. Magori Hara, in Tokyo, avers that in the photos, the new calf looks most like the outcome of a Scottish Highland cow and a Tibetan yak than like any kind of bison, and I tend to agree.

“Uncle Taylor, in Washington, was raving over the progress of the Steakley Foundation, in Texas. Despite the failure of their glyptodont project, they have produced a capybara that weighs over two hundred kilos, he says, and replicated creodont types twice or more the size of the biggest living wolverine. He reminded me that Project Patriofelis was basically my idea and pointedly stated that he thought I should go back to where I was appreciated as something other than a money tree. He won’t get us any more funding unless we come up with something a bit more colorful than Pleistocene bison, though.

“The New York types were cool, but polite, of course, and very evasive. Nor can I say that I blame them. This latifrons thing is at best lackluster, when compared to Alabama’s mammoths and the great things the Steakley Foundation is accomplishing.

“In the replication-funding circles of Chicago and L.A., most of the interest seems to be in the O’Toole thing that’s going down in Australia now. Their southern branch already is well on the way to a giant short-faced kangaroo plus a Pleistoceine giant wombat that they say will be bigger than a tapir, almost rhino-sized. As if that weren’t enough, their northern branch, in cooperation with the Indonesians, are going great guns on an accelerated-growth project designed to replicate the Megalania, a half-ton Komodo dragon.

“The only place I got any money was right in the lap, almost, of my previous affiliation. McLeod, in Fort Worth, gave me six million, though he made it abundantly clear that it was the last of his money we’d see unless we embarked on a more promising project.

“I knew better than to even try Houston or Atlanta, eyebrow-deep as they both are in Alabamian mammoths. And all you can hear in any part of Florida is the six or seven accelerated-growth projects set to produce ten-meter alligators and caimans for the leather trade; they’ve already got a few twenty-footers, I saw some of them last year. Grim. Jaws nearly a meter mid a half long. If only the accelerated growth processes worked on mammals as well as they do on reptiles… .

“Now, I have to go in, call a staff conference and break the bad news to Dr. Stekowski and the rest of his jolly crew that, with very strict budgeting, we might have a year of life left here, unless the damned dumb latifrons thing is shoved onto a back burner and we start in cooking up some project with more popular appeal. I’m going to strongly recommend one more time that we take advantage of the pair of snow leopards we’ve been offered, acquire such other Felidae as we can get quickly and cheaply, then get at it at flank speed, while still we have the wherewithal to operate at all. A donnybrook with Dr. Harel is dead certain, and this time around I just may deck the son of a bitch, for I have little to lose, here and now. This place is doomed unless it changes fast, and the Steakley folks are itching to have me back, anyway, Uncle Taylor says.”

Bedford pressed the buttons for “Print,” “Separate” and then “Laminate.” When the machine had disgorged the completed page, he inserted it in his ongoing binder of personal files, then switched off the machine and made ready to leave his sanctum sanctorum for the main building of the complex. Dr. Harel and certain others never ceased to twit him about keeping private records in addition to those filed in the computers, but he liked things he could if necessary read and check back on without the power required for activating said computer or one of its outlets.

“So that the sly, conniving sonofabitch could spy on me, pry into my notes the way he does into everyone else’s around here, that’s the real but unstated reason Harel wants me to give over my voicewriter records. No less than three times I’ve come back from trips to find that earnest attempts had been made to pick or force the locks on this office and the private storage room, down here on this level.

“Why, oh, why won’t Stekowski and Singh and Marberg back me in getting rid of Harel, forcing him to resign, get out? They clearly have little use for the bastard, either. All I can figure is that he has something on them, collectively or individually. There can be no other reason why such accomplished professionals would just supinely let the arrogant ass walk all over them the way he does. Then again, maybe it’s just the fact that he’s pushy, openly aggressive, and none of the rest of them are … well, not so much so, so overtly so, anyway.”

At the top of the steep concrete stairs, Bedford opened a plain steel-sheathed door and entered a short corridor. He reflected that no matter how much Harel might bitch about the primitiveness and isolation of the place, they could have done far worse in obtaining—for what amounted to almost nothing—the lease to the facility and the surrounding land.

It had first been built in the fifties or early sixties to house some super-hush-hush project of the federal government—one large and three small chambers cut out of the living rock of the plateau, with only the stair head, what was now the corridor in which he stood and a broad, stubby masonry tower aboveground, all of these spaces at one time filled with equipment of some nature, the traces of it still remaining.

When the army or air force or whoever had moved out in the seventies or eighties, then the state had moved in and erected a tall tower of steel to straddle the one of masonry and provide a firewatch facility. A succession of earth tremors had finally brought that metal tower down, and by the time Bedford first bad been shown it, the plateau and all had been deserted, though sealed and fenced and with a plethora of no-trespassing signs bearing impressive warnings.

Of course, it was state land and could not be sold; however, a thirty-year lease had come very cheaply and the state had even replaced and strengthened the access road, which had been rendered impassable in the last, strongest of the earth tremors.

What had passed into Bedford’s group’s possession had been only the nucleus of the present facility, however—the underground rooms (the largest of which the state had turned into a garage, with a ramped entrance), alcoves filled with lockers at the foot and head of the stairs, the present hallway (which then had been the entrance foyer) and the two tiny chambers within the short, squat masonry tower; the plateau had been bounded at its edges with an eight-foot Cyclone fence topped with razor wire, there had been a concrete helipad with wiry grass growing up between its joints, and the wreck of the downed fire tower stretched its length of rusting metal just where it had fallen some years before. Off to one side, now all overgrown with many years’ worth of vines and weeds. had been a long, sprawling jumble of never-used bricks which had been trucked in by the federal owners just before they had abandoned the site for good, their presence forming an enduring example of the boondoggle and lack of foresigbt of the long-ago administration of President James Earl Carter, to James Bedford’s way of thinking.

After he had brought in a seismic expert to examine the land and give the professional opinion that it was no more geologically unstable than any other part of the range, the preceding ruinous jolts having been at most a fluke and most unlikely to recur within hundreds of years, after the access road had been rendered once more sound and usable, after he had obtained detailed plans of the newly completed Steakley facility, he had contacted one of the family-owned businesses: a general construction contractor.

By the time Stekowski, Singh, Harel and the others actually saw the plateau—having flown from their temporary location in Colorado to the nearest airport and coptered from there—the crash-scheduled project was nearing completion. The only one of the group who had not seemed pleased was Dr. Harel. The big, burly man had snorted and sneered, jabbing and pounding on objects with his blackthorn walking stick for emphasis until the gangling, slow-to-anger engineer and the tough, feisty construction superintendent had seemed on the point of physical assault. In times since, Bedford had often reflected that it might have been best for all concerned had he allowed—nay, encouraged—the two to beat Dr. Harel into a state of bloody insensibility; such an experience might have taken out of the man a measure of the pigheaded arrogance and the dogged insistence on the constant having of his own way no matter the cost, which would have saved Bedford not a little trouble and the project a good deal of money in the time since.

Based on the preliminary plans that had been formulated during the courses of his series of conferences with the group of scientists, Bedford had had the onetime garage level enlarged and enclosed, then had solicited the advice of experts on the housing of big cats and fitted the space out in accordance with their years of experience and ideas.

But on the very first full conference after they had begun to actually occupy the premises, Dr. Harel had rudely dashed Bedford’s planning in that direction. “Why in the world did you not consult with me before you wasted our money in such a way, Mr. Bedford? I could have told you that there will not be, will never be, any scrap of research done here into reproduction or replication of any stripe of dirty, bloodthirsty predator beast. No, it has been decided by us scientists that we will undertake to replicate the Bison latifrons of the North American Pleistocene.”

Only by painful exercise of will had Bedford bitten down a hot reply that day. To the burly, shaggy, bearish, overbearing man he had said, coolly, “For your information, Dr. Harel, the actual funds pledged this project have not yet come through. Therefore, all of the cost incurred at this site and during my fund-raising travels I have paid out of my own pocket.”

“Now, that is true, selfless generosity, my boy.” Stekowski had spoken feelingly. “Of course, when the funding materializes, you will certainly be repaid every last penny, and—”

“Do not presume to speak for the group, you old fool,” snarled Harel, subjecting Stekowski to a glare hot enough to melt basalt. “We have agreed that only I now own that power here, you may recall. Besides”—he turned to Bedford with a cold, hostile smile—“wealthy as the Bedfords are with monies ground out of generations of poor working-class laborers, I am certain that whatever sums he has here expended are to him as pocket change would be to such as us.”

For the umpteenth time, James Bedford mentally castigated himself. “I should’ve bashed the bastard there and then, that very day, hour and minute, then resigned and gone back to the Steakley Foundation. But, of course, I didn’t, I took it. I took it for the sake of Stekowski and Singh and those others I had come to know and like before that damned opinionated Harel suddenly appeared on the scene and bulled and bullied his way to where he was virtual dictator of the project.

“But now … ? Hell, if the project doesn’t change course and that damned quickly, there won’t be any more funding, and that means that there’ll be no project. Odd—sometimes something in the back of my mind tells me that that’s just what Harel wants, too, that that’s precisely where he’s been heading all along, for whatever cryptic reason.”

He frowned. “And that’s just what’s so crazy about this notion of mine, too: Harel’s no big, well-known name in this field—why, I’d never even heard of him, I don’t think; if this project does go down the drain, he’ll be out in the cold, too, and with far less chance to snag a position elsewhere than people of the professional renown and stature of Stekowski or Singh or some of the others. So what could possibly be his reason for wanting to sink this venture? Creeping insanity? No, he rants and raves and swings his damned cane and, sometimes, throws things at people, but I’m dead certain that he does so fully rationally, for purposes of shock and the intimidation effect on his erstwhile colleagues; he’s a thoroughgoing bully and behaves like one.

“Could he be deliberately putting us on the skids to benefit a supposedly former employer’s project? It doesn’t seem likely. Dr. Stekowski says Harel was last connected with the dwarf fauna thing that Britain, Israel and Greece are collaborating in on Cyprus and Crete—hippopotami, elephants, that sort of thing—and God knows Stekowski’s original felid project could’ve posed no slightest threat to them or their goals. Oh, sure, there could’ve been dwarf forms of smilodon and the related types, but none have ever been found in fossil form. Indeed, the closest thing to a dwarf of this kind was just recently pried out of a glacier in the Canadian Rockies—a strange beast, looking much like the Homotherium, but smaller, more lightly built, and with digitigrade rather than plantigrade hind feet, Panthera feethami, they’re calling it. Dr. Stekowski told me, away back when before the advent of Harel, that he had access to some genetic material from this find. It was this that he was basing the original project on.

“The Canadians tried replication, of course. Hell, that project may still be going on. But they’ve never reported much success, and Drs. Stekowski and Singh think they know why; their ideas make more sense than anything else I’ve heard about it all.

“Apparently disregarding the size of the find and certain other factors, they’ve been trying for a full-fledged, oversized, classic sabertooth cat, big as or larger than an African lion, and a damned hefty lion, at that.

“Dr. Stekowski says that as this beast was found in a montane glacier, we can safely infer that it resided and hunted and bred in mountains which—as the body showed certain cold-weather adaptations—were probably as cold as or colder than they are at the present time. He goes on to say that mountain-living species seldom become really large, as compared to their lowland cousins. The find was about as big as a largish leopard, though, somewhat heavier than a true leopard, more the build of a jaguar or an undersize, gracile lion.

“Therefore, his idea sounded like a good one, one that had a more than just fair chance of working, of producing replication of the Panthera feethami, or at least something halfway between true replication and mere reproduction. And I was not the only one impressed, either, not by a long shot; I was able to round up some really good, very sizable funding from hither and yon, on the basis of his ideas, his and Dr. Singh’s.

“Dammit, it would still work! It must work, and soon, or I’ll be back down in Texas, out a fat chunk of my own money, and all the others here will be preparing résumés … and all thanks to one loutish ass of a hector brattishly insistent upon always having his own way.”

He found the conference room empty, of course, but took his place at one end of the table and keyed the intercom to reach all work and housing areas of the complex before saying, “This is James Bedford. Would Drs. Stekowski, Singh, Marberg, Baronian and Harel please join me in the conference room as soon as possible. An urgent matter must be discussed immediately.”

Ruth Marberg was the first to arrive. Seeing her puttering about the coffeemaker in her stained lab coat, slacks and stout brogans, with her mostly grey hair pulled back in a tight bun at the back of her head, Bedford thought of the razor-keen intellect and the sometimes frightening degrees of efficiency that her grandmotherly, usually placid demeanor masked.

The coffee started, and she came to take her usual place at the table and after looking hard at Bedford, shook her head. “Jimmy. Jimmy, you’re still not taking proper care of yourself. I can see and so too could anyone with even one quarter of a functioning eye, too. You press yourself too hard, you don’t rest enough, sleep enough, eat enough. Certainly, this project is of importance, but it is not so earthshaking as you should break your health over it.”

When he opened his mouth to reply, she raised a stained, work-roughened hand and went on, “I know, I know, as Beanbreath Harel is always telling me. I am only a ‘mere veterinarian,’ not a most exalted medical doctor. But Jimmy, homo sapiens sapiens is just another animal, you know, and flesh and blood and bone are still and always flesh and blood and bone and resistant to only just so much deliberate abuse and overusage.

“If you won’t sleep and rest more, at least eat more. Come to my rooms, upstairs, eh? Despite old Beanbreath and Clifton Singh and their efforts at enforced conversion to vegetarianism, I still make and treat myself to chicken soup and cabbage rolls and even—dare I to breathe such predation?—the occasional steak or chop or piece of liver. Landislas sometimes joins me, and Zeppy Baronian used to, before Harel and Singh started working on her mind full-time. Do come up and dine with me, Jimmy. I promise to not try to seduce you to anything but my cooking.”

At that moment, the door opened again to admit a balding but quite distinguished-looking man of roughly the same age as Ruth Marberg. He limped a bit; his progress to his chair was assisted by another woman, younger than Ruth, with wavy blue-black hair, light-olive complexion and a figure trim and attractive for all its wide hips and full breasts.

Both Bedford and Dr. Marberg arose, and while she moved down the room toward the older man, Bedford asked, “What in the world happened, Dr. Stekowski? Did you fall? Are you badly hurt? Should I call for a chopper to get you down to a hospital?”

The grey-haired man held up a slightly trembling hand, but spoke in a strong voice. “No, no, James, I’m all right, really, I just twisted my ankle … I think. I’m ill accustomed to running over rough ground, I fear.” He smiled wanly, paused, then added, “It might’ve been much worse, of course. Dr. Baronian, here, really and truly saved my life out there. You all must promise to help shield her from the wrath of Dr. Harel.”

“Well, what in hell did happen, Dr. Stekowski?” demanded Bedford. “And why is Dr. Baronian going to be in need of protection from Dr. Harel?”

“Because he’s certain to be somewhat less than happy when he finds out that I put down one of his precious Russian wisents,” replied Dr. Baronian, matter-of-factly. “But I had no option. It was either kill that cow or watch her kill Dr. Stekowski.”

Bedford reflected that be had thought he had heard, despite the thick soundproofing layers of the complex walls, the sound of a gunshot, but he had of course just assumed it to be one of the state hunters in the forest below the plateau clearing out excess elk.

“You mean to try to tell me, Doctor, that you put paid to a full-grown wisent cow with a single shot? You must admit it’s hard to believe—they take a lot of killing. Where did you come by a rifle, anyway?”

Zepur Baronian smiled. “My rifle is up in my room, where I was myself when I heard the commotion down below. I’ve never loaded and fired so quickly, I don’t believe. But then I was granted a perfect target; the cow was coming at Dr. Stekowski, head lowered, so all I had to do was place my shot precisely where the spine joined the skull. And I did just that—my father taught me well.”

“Look,” said Bedford, “how did this all come about? The last I saw, as I came in here today, those wisents were fenced into the far-western enclosure. How the hell did one manage to get out? Have they learned to open the gate? I doubt that even one of them could knock down any of that fencing, not with every single post sunk and cemented the way they are.”

Stekowski sighed and shook his head, the fluorescents glinting on his scalp. “It was all my fault, I’m afraid. There were many other things I would’ve been better off doing, but I was curious to take a look at the calves, so I took one of the runabouts, the three-wheeler, and drove out to the far enclosure. I know, I know, I should’ve taken one of the silent, electric ones, but the gauges on both of them indicate that they needed recharging and I just did not want to wait for them to charge and—”

“Well, why the hell weren’t they, or at least one of them, charged?” demanded Bedford. “Have their batteries gone bad on us?”

“Most unlikely,” answered Ruth Marberg. “It was all the fault of our dear Führer. He can never be bothered with cleaning up after himself or even going to the vast trouble of plugging in the recharger plug after he’s used those ATVs, That’s what he uses all of us Untermenschen around here for.”

“Now, Ruth, dear,” Stekowski gently rebuked. “that is not at all fair.”

“No, Landislas,” she snapped testily, “but it’s all true, nonetheless. That despicable, detestable man considers all of us to be nothing more or less than his personal servants, his lackeys, his … his Spucknapfen, his Knechten! I have endured much of him, far more than ever I would have but that you seemed to wish that he—rather than you or our Jimmy, here, as would have been more of a rightness—rule in all things. But now that his misbehavior has nearly cost your life … your so very precious life …”

“Ruth, Ruth,” said Stekowski placatingly, “it truly was my own fault, not that of Dr. Harel, really.”

Dr. Marberg’s face reddened and she opened her mouth to retort, but Bedford spoke first. “Hey, hey, let’s talk this out later, huh? I still want to know just what happened out there, how that wisent cow got loose and why Dr. Baronian had to put her down.”

“So,” said Stekowski, “I drove out and let myself into the far enclosure with the three cows and the two calves. The older of the calves, the bull calf, has started to graze already and his horn buds are quite pronounced. But I guess I got too close to them to please the cows, for they began to get most protective of the calves and to make threatening movements in my direction, so I decided to leave them in peace. Followed at a distance by that biggest cow, the barren one, I drove back to the gate, unlatched it and drove through, then closed it and, I thought, latched it again. But I must’ve not done it properly, for I had but just driven some few yards in this direction, it seemed, when I heard it swing back open and heard that big cow bellow, then start to gallop after me.

“It was then that I set the machine to maximum speed and made for the complex. I was within only a few yards of the side parking lot when the engine sputtered a few times, then ceased to function, and before I could even think of what to do next, the cow was upon me, had charged the machine from the side and knocked it over. I was shaken up a bit, of course, but the cage had held and I was not hurt, really. Not so with the machine, however; something in the rear compartment had commenced to spark and to smoke, and so, though I knew that if I remained in the cage I would most likely be safe from the loose cow, I decided to try to run the few yards to the parking lot, thinking that if all else failed, then I could clamber into the bed of Juan’s truck for refuge.

“But I had only run a short way when I twisted my ankle, fell and could not again arise. The cow, which had trotted off a distance after having knocked the three-wheeler over, had apparently seen me emerge and was in pursuit. It seemed that I could actually feel her hot breath upon me. I was terrified. Then came that booming rifle crack and the cow fell in her tracks as if she had been poleaxed.

“Dr. Baronian had but just helped me into the building when we heard your summons to meet you here. You were away a long while, this time. Did you experience some difficulty, perhaps?”

“More than just some difficulty, Dr. Stekowski,” sighed Bedford, then asked, “But where’s His Highness, Dr. Harel, pray tell? I’d not like having to go through all this twice.”

“Probably still in converse with his Russian buddy,” replied Zepur Baronian. “He wheeled the videophone into his office about an hour or so back and double-locked the door.”

Redford felt the heat as his face and neck suffused with his boiling blood. His voice came out under tight control. “Harel has been on a satellite hookup to Russia for over an hour, this time? At one hundred and fifteen dollars and fifty-five cents per minute? He doesn’t hear very well, does he? Well, I’ll bring this to a screeching halt. You folks wait here. I’ll be back.”

From the window of the corridor, he saw the still, shaggy mound of the wisent carcass near the edge of the side parking lot. The black buzzards were already circling lower and lower over it. On a sudden impulse, he deliberately bypassed the door to Harel’s office and made his way all the way back, to the shop area. There he found the two men for whom he was searching.

Juan Vivás stood, meticulously wiping clean, then racking each tool in its proper place, while Joe Skywalker scattered compound chips on the concrete floor to absorb spilled fluids. Joe was the first to see Bedford enter the workplace, and he straightened with a warm smile—white teeth flashing against his dark, scarred face.

“Good to see you back again, Mr. Bedford, sir, Me and Juan, we just this minute finished fixing up that snowblower, and while we was at it, we tuned up the engine of the tractor, too. Won’t be no trouble now this winter coming like it was last spring.”

The squat, broad man turned from the tool rack. Since his own, dark face was considerably broader, so too was his smile. “¡Jefe! Bienvenido! Do you hunger? Please to allow me the time to wash and I will prepare whatever you may wish, but …” A doleful look came over his features then, and he went on to say, sadly, “No meat is to be found, alas—fresh, frozen, freeze-dried nor even tinned. Of a night last week, the two so-distinguished and muy loco doctors, they searched my kitchen and the larders and even went into the cold place and cast everything of meat over the side of the mesa. Then they forbade me or Joe or anyone else to ever bring up any meat or fowl of any kind again, saying that did we so do our jobs would be the cost.”

“Forget anything that Harel and Singh said, Juan, Joe,” said Bedford. “Remember, you two work for me, not for them. But that aside for the moment, I’m glad the tractor is back in shape. There’s a freshly killed wisent cow lying out by the side lot; she got out and attacked Dr. Stekowski, and Dr. Baronian shot her from her room window, upstairs. I want you two to take the tractor, drag the carcass to where you can work easiest and then skin, clean, and butcher it. You ever dress out a full-grown buffalo, Joe?”

Looking from beneath his brows with a slight smile, the man replied, “Not legally, Mr. Bedford. License for buffalo hunting in these parts costs more’n I used to make in a month, most times. But, yessir, I have been at a few buffaloes, over the years. Good eating. ’Specially the tongues and the livers and the hump ribs.”

“Fine.” Bedford nodded. “When you two get the carcass butchered and hung to age in the coldhouse, Juan can come back to the kitchen and slice the liver and make up a big meal of it fried with lots of onions, mashed potatoes, gravy, the works. Cook enough for Drs. Stekowski, Marberg and me, possibly Dr. Baronian, and you two, of course. We can have the tongue tomorrow, then start on the hump ribs. Okay?”

Showing every gold inlay in a grin that seemed to stretch literally from ear to ear, Juan nodded, “It will most assuredly be done, Jefe.”

“Uhh, Mr. Bedford, sir …” Joe Skywalker asked, diffidently. “Uhh, please sir, do you want the robe and the head and all?”

Bedford chuckled. “Hardly, Joe. If you do, you take them with my blessings, unless Juan fancies some or all of them, in which case you two will just have to draw straws or cards or roll dice for them, I guess. Now get to it, you two, before those buzzards get to it first.”

Proceeding back up the hallway from the shop areas, Bedford halted before the door of Hazel’s office, rattled the knob, then knocked. When there was no whisper of a response, he rapped harder, at last pounding with the side of his clenched fist at the firmly locked portal, while shouting at it, “Damn you, Dr. Harel, get off that phone.”

After waiting a few more moments in silence, he nodded grimly to himself and spun on his heel to stride purposefully back up the hallway, past the conference room, to the entry foyer. From a box set in the wall, he took a key and unlocked the door marked “KEEP OUT! HIGH VOLTAGE! DANGER!”

Once within the ground-floor room at the base of the brick tower, Bedford knew exactly what to pull, exactly where it was located on the wall. He had been there when it was first installed and had asked lots of questions of the installers; now he was very glad he had done so.

Relocking the door behind him, he went back to the conference room to await the now-certain arrival of Dr. Harel.

Nor did they have long to wait. Bedford had but just filled a cup with fresh coffee and sugared and stirred it when the door crashed open and an obviously thoroughly enraged Dr. Harel stomped in, blackthorn stick in hand.

“Mr. Bedford,” he snapped peremptorily, “that videophone is defective. You must obtain us a new one, immediately. I was in the midst of a most important conversation with Dr. Piotr Ivanov, in Beloretsk. Suddenly, poof, the screen was black and no sound, nor would the stupid American-Japanese abortion respond to any more commands. Order a Russian-made videophone this time; true, they are not so smooth and sleek and fancy, but they are always and completely reliable. Well, do you hear my orders, Mr. Bedford?”

“Perfectly, Dr. Harel. I doubt not but that you were heard as far away as Boise,” James Bedford replied, shoving aside his cup and arising from his chair. “But as for ordering any new v-phone, much less one of those cast-iron clunkers the Russians turn out, it will not be necessary, not necessary at all. By the way, just how long did you and your Russian friend chat this time?”

Harel sneered and sniffed. “That information is none of your affair, Mr. Bedford; you own no need to know it.”

“On the contrary, Dr. Harel,” snapped Bedford, “at one hundred and fifteen dollars and fifty-five cents the minute for that kind of hookup to that part of the world at this time of day on a v-phone, it is very much my business to know just how much your irresponsible long-windedness has cost us this time around. After all, it is I who am trying desperately to keep this project afloat financially, and with damn-all cooperation from you. sir. I’m told you’d been on that phone for at least an hour—over nine thousand dollars’ worth, including taxes, Dr. Harel!—and after you refused to respond to my knocks on your office door, I simply went into tile tower and disconnected the v-phone cable. Furthermore, the next time I catch you in such a wastrel act of selfishness, I’ll do it again! We are going to be on a very tight budget here for the next year or so, thanks to your dumb, lackluster latifrons project. The only way I could beg any money at all was to promise that we’d drop the ongoing project and start something with more appeal.”

“Such as … ?” grated Harel, his big hand gripping the stick as if it were a sword, gripping it so hard that his knuckles shone out white as new-fallen snow. “Or need I ask at all, Mr. Bedford?”

“Such as,” answered Bedford with not a little satisfaction in the words, “a project aimed at replication of Panthera feethami or something similar to it, Dr. Harel. I can get real, large-scale funding if we work on such a project for the next year and I can take out tangible proof of a reasonable amount of progress on it.”

His broad, big-featured face become a livid purple, his thick lips skinned back to show his large teeth, Harel swept his stick up above his head and brought its length crashing down on the table, roaring, “Never! Do you hear me? Never! Never will anyone here do such a thing! No flesh-eater of any description will be replicated or reproduced in my project here!” He punctuated each short shout with yet another slamming of the length of his stick on the tabletop.

Coolly. Bedford said, when Harel had paused for breath, “When you’ve finished this tantrum, Dr. Harel, we can then perhaps carry on a civilized and reasonably civil discussion, eh? For there are no available options, you see; no one will fund Project Latifrons any further. I gave at least one tug to every possibility and no approach produced anything, the—”

“Tantrum?” growled Harel. “I’ll show you who is your master for good and all, you impudent capitalist pig!” So saying. he whirled the stick of dense, tough wood up above his head yet again, but this time it was clearly not aimed at the table.

That blow never fell, however. Thinking, “Goddammit, enough is enough! No way is that fat fucker going to beat me with that cane,” Bedford gave the threatening man his left fist with all his force behind it squarely in the solar plexus.

With a wheezing grunt, Harel doubled, gasping. The raised stick dropped from his fingers and both hands sought the place that hurt, covered it.

Fists cocked and ready, should more force be needed, Bedford half crouched on the balls of his feet. Stekowski just sat and stared, looking as stunned as Harel; the old man had paled, and although his lips moved, no sound emerged from them. Between them, Ruth Marberg and Zepur Baronian took Harel’s elbows and got him into a chair, the elder woman then picking up the blackthorn stick and tucking it out of sight behind the coffee console.

Gradually, the adrenaline began to drain from Bedford and he was able to ask in almost-normal tones, “Where the hell is Dr. Singh, anyway?”

Dr. Baronian shrugged. “Probably in his quarters, upstairs, meditating. He turns everything off when he meditates, the intercom, included. Want me to see if I can find him, Jim?”

He nodded. “Yes, if you would be so kind. I’d really like to have us all in here when I tell the full story of this last trip and lay out what we are going to have to do to survive, to get as much as one more dollar of funding.”

They all sat down to wait for Drs. Singh and Baronian to come. Bedford stirred absently at his cooling coffee and kept a wary eye on the big man, who had begun to breathe more easily. Bedford sensed that unlike many bullies, there was beneath all the bluster and the histrionics a potential for real and dangerous violence.

(“If only I had known there and then just how right my intuition concerning Dr. Harel truly was,” he later was to record in his journal, “how different things might have been for us all. Who was it who said that ‘if only’ are the saddest words in the English language? They are.”)