The Golden Fleece Read Free Page B

really do think I’d have more incentives and more opportunities—and I’m not just talking about salary and equipment—working in your industry, Mr. Jarndyke. That’s why I was so pleased to hear from you, and why I’m so grateful to your spies. That’s not bullshit—it’s the truth.”
     
    Jarndyke’s eyes looked him up and down, and Adrian felt that every physical symptom of his youth and innocence was being interrogated, skeptically. He knew that he didn’t really look the part. He didn’t look like an Argonaut of science, let alone the possessor of a superpower. He knew full well that, in terms of Yorkshire parlance, he probably looked like “a bit of a pansy”—but every word he’d said really was true, and he hoped that he’d said enough to make Jason Jarndyke doubt the evidence of his own unpolished eyes, and the blunt common sense that guided them.
     
    “So,” Jason Jarndyke said, eventually, “you’re telling me that, given time you can make me the authentic Golden Fleece.” He didn’t smile ironically, as Professor Clark would undoubtedly have done. “Not just golden, but magical.”
     
    “You could put it like that,” Adrian conceded. “At least, I can try.”
     
    “Then I really don’t have any alternative but to hire you, do I?” the businessman said, casually. “And not merely to hire you, but to let you go your own mysterious way. Okay—I’ll play. There are three conditions, though.”
     
    “No problem,” Adrian assured him, but added, for form’s sake: “What are they?”
     
    “One: you move to headquarters, in Airedale. I need you working in my lab, behind my security-wall, under my beady eye. No telecommuting, no gallivanting, no loose talk. We live in an era of intense industrial espionage, and I’m in a highly competitive business. Two: you’d better deliver on your promises, Son, because I don’t like to be disappointed, and I really hate it if I find out that someone’s been bullshitting me, because it hurts my pride. Once you sign on to work with me, one way or another, you won’t ever work for anyone else.”
     
    Adrian had already nodded twice, having expected nothing less, and was poised to nod again when everything changed. “Three,” said, Jason Jarndyke, in exactly the same tone, “you keep your fucking hands off my wife.”
     
    Shocked to the core, Adrian blinked hard several times, and forgot to nod.
     
    Then Jarndyke grinned, broadly, and said: “I knew I could throw you off your stride, you cocky little sod. Just winding you up, Son—except, of course, that if you were to violate that particular condition, I’d have to kill you. There are firing offences, and there are shooting offenses.” He was still beaming, as if to make it obvious that it was a joke—a Yorkshire joke, orientated to a peculiar sense of humor, but a joke nevertheless—but there was something false in the smile, as if there were some secret behind it that Jason Jarndyke was nursing carefully.
     
    Adrian didn’t think that mattered. He felt that he had coped with that aspect of his inadequacies very well, this far, and didn’t expect any significant problems in future, even with regard to the kind of Medea that Dante Gabriel Rossetti might have invested with all kinds of subtle charms, imperceptible to the common eye.
     
    “I’m sure I can comply with all your requirements,” Adrian said, all too conscious of how frail his voice sounded, all of a sudden. But then, he’d never claimed to have perfect pitch— merely command over a visual spectrum more complete than Isaac Newton had ever been able to see.
     
    “Good,” said Jarndyke, extending his meaty hand to be shaken. “We have a deal. Enough of piddling billions—let’s make me a real fortune.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Relocation from London to Jarndyke’s estate, in the Aire valley between Bingley and Shipley, was easy enough and almost painless. Adrian didn’t really have anyone to say goodbye to