Steamed Read Free

where my office was located. “Right down to the hat. I wonder if he has one of those long whips he could wrap around his waist.”
    “He should totally get one. . . .”
    “Hey, Jack.” I entered the first in a connected set of rooms that were our research labs, unloading hat, satchel, and newspaper onto my desk. A tall man with curly black hair emerged from the far room. “You’re late.”
    “Had a late night.” I slumped into the chair behind my desk and pulled out my laptop.
    “Foundry?” Brian, the graduate student who was interning for a year, plopped down on the corner of his desk.
    “Yep. Airship Pirates were playing last night.”
    “Airship . . .” His face screwed up in thought for a few seconds. “Oh, that goth band?”
    “Part steampunk, part goth, part industrial.” I frowned as the e-mail started loading into my in-box. “You should go sometime.”
    “Like I have time to go hang out at the Foundry? You may, but I have work to do.” He nodded toward the clean room behind him. “If I don’t get those dots set today, I’ll be out of an internship. Speaking of that—Dr. Elton’s been asking for you. He says that latest version of the quantum gate you sent him refuses to reverse, and could you fix it by noon so he has a working model to show Sawyer.”
    “It’s on my list of things to do today,” I murmured.
    “Feeley called and said if you don’t get that budget to him by the end of today, he’ll sauté your balls in garlic and wine sauce.”
    I made a face. I hated dealing with the yearly budget.
    “Oh, and a woman was here to see you.”
    “A woman?” I looked up in surprise. “Who?”
    Brian shrugged and picked up one of the small canisters of liquid helium we use to cool down the computer equipment. “Didn’t say. Said she’d be back, though.”
    “I wonder who it could be.” I racked my brain for any female acquaintance who would be willing to brave the geekified air of Nordic Tech.
    “Someone you met last night?” Brian offered as he headed for the clean room.
    “Doubt it. I went with a couple of Friends last night.”
    He paused at the door, his eyebrows raised. “You went with Quakers? To see a goth band? Isn’t that like a sin or something?”
    “Of course it’s not a sin,” I said, giving him a quick frown. “It’s not like they decapitated a bat.”
    “Yeah, but Quakers ! At a goth concert! It’s just so wrong!”
    “Hardly. I’ve been a part of the church my whole life, and I assure you, there’s nothing anywhere in the Bible that says goth concerts are on the forbidden list,” I answered, quickly scanning an e-mail from the CEO, Jeff Sawyer.
    “I know you’re one and all, but you’re kind of like Quaker Lite, aren’t you? I mean, you drink, and you swear better than my old man, and he was in the merchant marines. You go out with women. And you were in the army. I thought that was, like, totally anti-Quaker.”
    “Many of us are conscientious objectors, but still manage to be useful in ways that don’t compromise our beliefs.”
    “That’s right. Karin at reception said you did research in the army in lieu of seeing action in the Middle East. High-tech stuff, huh? Spy technology and all that?”
    I looked up and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.”
    His jaw dropped a smidgen.
    “You don’t see the irony of that statement, do you?” I asked, unable to keep from smiling.
    “Well, I see the irony in you threatening to kill me when I’m the only intern you’ve got,” he answered quickly, edging closer to the door.
    “Tempting as it is to explain, we both have work to do. If you expect to get those quantum dots down before the afternoon, we’ll have to forgo a discussion of my personal philosophy for another time.”
    He glanced at the clock, uttered an expletive, and bolted into the changing area for the clean room beyond, where we did the bulk of our construction on the quantum computer we