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Authors: Robert J. Sawyer
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another elevator had arrived. One of her neighbors would be in the corridor within a second. Mary fumbled the key into the lock, the whistle dangling, and quickly entered her dark apartment.
She hit the switch, the lights came on, and she turned around and closed the door, cranking over the lever that caused the deadbolt to clunk into place.
Mary removed her shoes and passed through the living room, with its peach-colored walls, noting, but not caring, that the red eye on the answering machine was winking at her. She entered her bedroom and took off her clothes—clothes that she knew she would throw out, clothes that she could never wear again, clothes that could never come clean no matter how many times they were washed. She then entered the en suite bathroom, but didn’t turn on the light in there; she made do with the illumination spilling in from the Tiffany lamps on her night tables. She climbed into the shower and, in the semidarkness, she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin felt raw, and then she got out her heavy flannel pajamas—the ones she saved for the coldest winter nights, the ones that covered her most completely—and she put them on, and she crawled into bed, hugging herself and shivering and crying some more and finally, finally, finally, after hours of trying, falling into a fitful sleep punctuated by dreams of being chased and dreams of fighting and dreams of being cut with knives.
* * *
Reuben Montego had never met his ultimate boss, the president of Inco, and the doctor was actually surprised to find he had a listed number. With considerable trepidation, Reuben called him.
Reuben was proud of his employer. Inco had started, like so many Canadian companies, as a subsidiary of an American firm: in 1916, it had been created as the Canadian arm of the International Nickel Company, a New Jersey mining concern. But twelve years later, in 1928, the Canadian subsidiary became the parent company through an exchange of shares.
Inco’s principal mining operations were in and around the meteor crater here in Sudbury where, 1.8 billion years ago, an asteroid between one and three kilometers wide had slammed into the ground at fifteen klicks per second.
Inco’s fortunes rose and fell along with the worldwide demand for nickel; the company provided a third of the world’s supply. But during it all, Inco really did strive to be a good corporate citizen. And when Herbert Chen of the University of California had proposed, in 1984, that the depth of Inco’s Creighton Mine, its low natural radioactivity, and the availability of large amounts of heavy water stockpiled for use in Canada’s CANDU reactors, made Sudbury the ideal location for the world’s most advanced neutrino detector, Inco had enthusiastically agreed to make the site available for free, and to do the additional excavation for the ten-story-tall detector chamber, and the 1,200-meter drift leading to it, at cost.
And although the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory was a joint project of five Canadian universities, two American ones, Oxford, and America’s Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, and Brookhaven National Laboratories, any trespassing charges against this Neanderthal, this Ponter, would have to be laid by the site’s owner. And that was Inco.
“Hello, sir,” Reuben said, when the president answered the phone. “Please forgive me for disturbing you at home. This is Reuben Montego. I’m the site doc—”
“I know who you are,” said the cultured, deep voice.
That flustered Reuben, but he pressed on. “Sir, I’d like you to call the RCMP and tell them that Inco is not going to press any charges against the man found inside the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve managed to convince the hospital not to discharge the man. Massive heavy-water ingestion can be fatal, according to the Material Safety Data Sheet. It upsets the osmotic pressure across cell boundaries. Now, the man
She hit the switch, the lights came on, and she turned around and closed the door, cranking over the lever that caused the deadbolt to clunk into place.
Mary removed her shoes and passed through the living room, with its peach-colored walls, noting, but not caring, that the red eye on the answering machine was winking at her. She entered her bedroom and took off her clothes—clothes that she knew she would throw out, clothes that she could never wear again, clothes that could never come clean no matter how many times they were washed. She then entered the en suite bathroom, but didn’t turn on the light in there; she made do with the illumination spilling in from the Tiffany lamps on her night tables. She climbed into the shower and, in the semidarkness, she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until her skin felt raw, and then she got out her heavy flannel pajamas—the ones she saved for the coldest winter nights, the ones that covered her most completely—and she put them on, and she crawled into bed, hugging herself and shivering and crying some more and finally, finally, finally, after hours of trying, falling into a fitful sleep punctuated by dreams of being chased and dreams of fighting and dreams of being cut with knives.
* * *
Reuben Montego had never met his ultimate boss, the president of Inco, and the doctor was actually surprised to find he had a listed number. With considerable trepidation, Reuben called him.
Reuben was proud of his employer. Inco had started, like so many Canadian companies, as a subsidiary of an American firm: in 1916, it had been created as the Canadian arm of the International Nickel Company, a New Jersey mining concern. But twelve years later, in 1928, the Canadian subsidiary became the parent company through an exchange of shares.
Inco’s principal mining operations were in and around the meteor crater here in Sudbury where, 1.8 billion years ago, an asteroid between one and three kilometers wide had slammed into the ground at fifteen klicks per second.
Inco’s fortunes rose and fell along with the worldwide demand for nickel; the company provided a third of the world’s supply. But during it all, Inco really did strive to be a good corporate citizen. And when Herbert Chen of the University of California had proposed, in 1984, that the depth of Inco’s Creighton Mine, its low natural radioactivity, and the availability of large amounts of heavy water stockpiled for use in Canada’s CANDU reactors, made Sudbury the ideal location for the world’s most advanced neutrino detector, Inco had enthusiastically agreed to make the site available for free, and to do the additional excavation for the ten-story-tall detector chamber, and the 1,200-meter drift leading to it, at cost.
And although the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory was a joint project of five Canadian universities, two American ones, Oxford, and America’s Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, and Brookhaven National Laboratories, any trespassing charges against this Neanderthal, this Ponter, would have to be laid by the site’s owner. And that was Inco.
“Hello, sir,” Reuben said, when the president answered the phone. “Please forgive me for disturbing you at home. This is Reuben Montego. I’m the site doc—”
“I know who you are,” said the cultured, deep voice.
That flustered Reuben, but he pressed on. “Sir, I’d like you to call the RCMP and tell them that Inco is not going to press any charges against the man found inside the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve managed to convince the hospital not to discharge the man. Massive heavy-water ingestion can be fatal, according to the Material Safety Data Sheet. It upsets the osmotic pressure across cell boundaries. Now, the man
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