Read Online The Far Side by Gina Marie Wylie - Free Book Online Page A

short.  Kris was eighteen.  He knew Andie wasn’t far from her birthday, but he wasn’t good with birthdays.
    Kit nodded.  “Yes, sir.  She’s going to be hard to stop.  I checked with her school.  She could leave today and not affect her grades.  You try to shut her out of her life’s dream and she’ll leave and never look back.”
    Oliver sat still, running scenarios in his head.  There were the wildly optimistic ones, where Kris listened to reason.  At least the reason he favored.  He wasn’t stupid -- he had never been stupid.  Andie had always brought out Kris’ adventurous streak and he’d long ago accepted it.  He’d made sure she hadn’t tried anything truly dangerous, made sure Kris’ teachers were as good as they came -- and then crossed his fingers.
    “I assume then, that you have a proposal?”
    “Yes, sir.  I have a number of friends who I knew at Caltech.  Most of them, sir, are grad students now and make -- well, you’d be shocked.  Slave wages, sir.”
    “Slave wages?”
    “Yes, sir.  Graduate assistants are serfs... there is no other word for it.  They are paid ten or twelve thousand a year, although they usually get free tuition and fees.  Sometimes, not often, they get free books.
    “Sir, you could afford to double or triple their pay.  They are some of the smartest people on the planet.   Right now, they are having to ‘pay their dues.’”
    “There’s a reason professions do that,” Oliver said evenly.
    “Sure, right.  Like Einstein, right?  Oh no!  He worked as a patent clerk to afford to do his research!  There were a lot of other researchers, sir, who’ve taken other paths.  Yes, there is value in ‘paying your dues.’  But I submit to you, experience is experience, and that most people would be better gaining that experience on the cutting edge, than grading a professor’s test papers, proctoring his exams and teaching lab sessions.”
    “Getting back to my daughter -- where does she fit in this?”
    “You get her the best help money can buy, sir.  Advisors of every sort.  Get her to promise to listen to the advisors before she rushes through one of those doors.”
    “You want her to do this?  Explore?”
    “Sir, that’s what I want to do.  To be honest, sir, I was tempted to go to them and plead to be included in any way I could be, and offer to be an adult shill.  Andie, from what I’ve overheard, has a pile of folding green in her name.”
    “Her father is a lottery winner.  He cares about money about the way you or I care about hand towels in a public restroom.  We use what we need, and don’t think about it if we use the last one.  Still, Andie is intelligent and had him put some money by for her.”
    “It was my impression that we are talking in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
    “Millions, as I recall.  At least two.”
    “Sir, those girls can only be stopped at this point by killing them.  And I’m speaking literally.  They are legally of age and Andie could go to a court tomorrow, it sounds like, and become emancipated.  You might slow them down a bit, sir, but you’d have to get physical to stop them.”
    “You mean appealing to sweet reason won’t work?” Oliver laughed.
    “I think it comes down to a definition of terms, sir.”
    “So, I get some researchers to help with the work.  Advisors to prepare them for what they might find.  And let her go?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    He looked at Kit critically for a few moments. “Clearly, you didn’t have to tell me about any of this.  I knew nothing of it, and I don’t think they’ll be very forthcoming, will they?”
    “No, sir, they wouldn’t be.”  Kit swallowed.  “Sir, this is my ass out there, too.  There are going to be a lot of different pressures, and a good many of them will be out of my league, much less those two girls.  You, sir, are the heaviest hitter I know.
    “I’m no different than they are, sir.  Even if we find this door