Read Online Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn - Free Book Online

degrade those hormones may be attacking it. If so, we’ll need to isolate which one the culprit is and put something else in the mixture to suppress it. You think that’ll keep you busy for a while?”
    â€œQuite a good while, I think,” Somerset said. “Thanks a lot, Matt—appreciate it muchly.”
    â€œGlad to help. You find anything interesting, let me know—by writing it up and putting it on my desk.”
    â€œHint received and understood. Talk to you later.”
    â€œMuch later. Good-bye.”
    Hanging up, Jarvis glanced out the window once more to make sure Colin was still in sight before heading outside. Walking around the corner of the cabin, he managed to duck as a seed pod came sailing through the air. It rounded the edge and he heard it drop to the ground.
    â€œI can’t make it go round the house,” Colin complained as Jarvis came up.
    â€œWell, that’s because you can’t see it after it goes around the corner,” Jarvis told him, sitting down beside the boy. “In order to teek something you have to be able to either see it or touch it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWell …” It was a good question, actually, one nobody had ever figured out a satisfactory answer to. “It’s just the way things are, I guess.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know. Tell you what—why don’t we see if you can figure out a way to do it.” He glanced around. “Would you teek a seed pod over here, please?”
    â€œOkay.” From above them came the snich of a green stem being broken, and Jarvis looked up as a pod drifted down. “Why do the branches go around?” Colin asked.
    Jarvis reached out to catch the pod as Colin, shifting his attention to the spiral limb arrangement of the conetree, lost control of it. “A lot of plants have leaves that spiral up a stem like that,” he explained. “The conetree just takes the process a bit farther and does it with branches, too.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œProbably to let all the leaves get as much sunlight as possible. You see—on that conetree, over there—see how the branches get shorter as you go up? That keeps the upper branches from shading the lower ones and lets all the leaves get sunlight.’
    â€œWhy do they need sunlight?”
    â€œIt’s one of the things they eat,” Jarvis said briefly. He’d fallen into this trap with Colin already twice in the past two days. The boy wasn’t interested in answers nearly as much as he was in keeping the string of questions going as long as possible. “Here, let’s do an experiment, okay?” he suggested, holding up the pod.
    â€œWhat’s a ’speriment?”
    â€œA way to keep little boys quiet,” Jarvis said, tapping him lightly on the nose with the pod.
    Colin giggled and Jarvis moved the pod thirty centimeters away, holding it horizontally by one end at the level of the boy’s eyes. “Wiggle the pod a little, would you? Just a little ,” he added hastily as the pod nearly spun out of his hand.
    The amplitude decreased until it was a barely detectable quiver. Colin was being a little silly, Jarvis knew, but he could live with that. “All right. Now I want you to look at the pod very carefully so that you know exactly where it is,” he instructed the boy. “Then close your eyes and try to teek it without looking. Okay? Okay, close your eyes.”
    Colin did so, and the pod’s vibration abruptly ceased. “Keep trying,” he said soothingly as Colin’s features twisted up with concentration. Someday, Jarvis told himself, he would get around to studying exactly why direct visual, tactile, or kinesthetic feedback was required for teekay to function. Someday when Ramsden runs out of projects for me to do, he thought sardonically.
    Thoughts of Ramsden and the university made him frown. Somerset, for all his perpetual