Dead End Read Free

Parnell.
    â€˜There’s one soon. You’ll find it interesting.’
    â€˜I am finding this conversation interesting,’ said Parnell, directly. ‘Interesting as well as confusing.’
    â€˜Did you know that years ago tyre manufacturers perfected a tyre that never wears out: if they were fitted to cars and trucks they’d last the lifetime of the vehicle.’
    â€˜No, I didn’t know that,’ encouraged Parnell, who did, but wanted the analogy expanded.
    â€˜Planned obsolescence,’ declared Benn.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Parnell.
    â€˜I think you’re right,’ declared Benn, on another tangent. ‘I think there could be work we could do together.’
    â€˜There can’t be any doubt: we’re virtually the left and right hand, each having to know what the other’s doing and how we can each realistically decide how to complement the other, towards a successful development.’ He’d gone straight from Cambridge University into the rarefied atmosphere of pure medical research, Parnell reminded himself. But he wasn’t in any rarefied atmosphere any longer. He was in the real, hard-headed commercial world now. How difficult would the adjustment be?
    *     *     *
    â€˜Hi!’
    Parnell looked up from Science Today , beside his unseen, stabbed-at lunch, to the dark-haired girl smiling down upon him. ‘Hi.’
    â€˜This seat taken?’
    â€˜Help yourself.’ He stood politely, taking her tray as she unloaded the sandwich and a pickle, the same choice he’d made. He saw there were several alternative empty tables throughout the commissary.
    â€˜My name’s Rebecca.’
    â€˜I know,’ said Parnell. The ID tag hanging from her neck chain matched the nameplate on her white laboratory coat, both reading ‘Rebecca Lang.’
    â€˜And I know that you’re Richard Parnell,’ she said, reading his identification.
    â€˜Name badges, one of the great American innovations,’ acknowledged Parnell. He closed the journal.
    â€˜You don’t have to do that – stop reading, I mean.’
    â€˜Of course I do.’ He sliced his sandwich, salt beef on rye, more easily to eat.
    â€˜Now I feel uncomfortable.’ She bit into her sandwich without cutting it.
    â€˜No, you don’t.’
    She smiled again, her teeth a tribute to attentive dentistry and teenage torture. Confident that she didn’t need any more facial help, Rebecca wore only a light lipstick, pale pink like her nail colouring. ‘All right, so I don’t. Want to know a secret?’
    â€˜Sure.’ Parnell heard his own word and thought it sounded American. An early resolution was that he wouldn’t let himself relapse into any idiom. It was one of several preconceptions.
    She nodded generally around the restaurant. ‘It was a bet, who got to talk to you first.’
    â€˜Talk to me first!’
    â€˜The mysterious and famous foreigner publicly known for his work on the genome project!’
    â€˜And you won?’
    â€˜I’m here talking to you, so I guess I did.’
    â€˜I’m English, which is hardly mysterious. And a lot of people are known for what they did on the genome project. It was an international effort, involving many people.’
    Rebecca nodded to the closed magazine. ‘It’s you everyone wrote about.’
    â€˜What’s your prize?’ Parnell wished he could go back to Science Today .
    â€˜Who knows?’ It wasn’t a coquettish remark.
    â€˜What section are you in?’ If he had to talk, it might as well be professional.
    â€˜Back of the bus stuff, co-ordinating and cross-referencing overseas research with what we’re doing here, where it’s applicable. Flagging up stuff that might be worthwhile our pursuing further, concentrating upon.’
    â€˜I’d say that makes you a pretty important person, too.’
    She