Watermind by M. M. Buckner Page A

a few minutes later, climbing into CJ’s Rover. Soon, they were bowling up Highway 61, clinging to their seat belts as the Rover hydroplaned through standing water. CJ was driving over ninety miles an hour.
    â€œRoman sent me your credentials.” Yue had to raise her voice above the din of rain. “You’re hardly qualified for this project, despite who your father may have been. But, like all of Roman’s young protégées, you’re pretty.”
    CJ glared at the woman, speechless and red. The windshield wipers scraped frantic arcs across the wet glass.
    â€œLighten up, Yue. We just got here.” Peter Vaarveen sprawled in the back seat, using his wet zipper bag for a pillow. He looked about thirty, but his hair was so pale, it gleamed almost white. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes looked bleached. He spoke in the clipped nasally accent of Long Island, New York. “At least Reilly’s ABD. That’s something.”
    ABD. All But Dissertation. Yes, that was something. CJ clawed the steering wheel. Those three letters plunged her back into the caustic atmosphere of grad school. The posturing, the backbiting, the corrosive political angling for grant money. Her shoulders knotted, recalling the intense pressure that, every year, drove MIT students to leap from campus towers.
    True, she had finished her coursework. All she lacked for the PhD was one groundbreaking experiment and the book-length documentation to explain it—her dissertation—two years’ work if she pushed hard. She’d been working on chemical desalinization of ocean water, a cheap new process . . .
    But that was her father’s world. And Harry died.
    She braked hard and skidded onto the turnoff toward the Quimicron plant, spraying the fence with mud.
    â€œYee-ha.” Peter Vaarveen slid across the backseat. “I’m awake now.”
    Later in the lab, Peter rubbed sleep from his white-lashed eyes and made fresh coffee while Li Qin Yue frowned at CJ’s test results. The Chinese woman seemed all skin and bones, and her sallow, age-freckled skin puckered in bags under her eyes. There was nothing soft or lovely about her, yet her ramrod posture spoke dignity. “There’s nothing in this analysis but polluted water.”
    â€œRight,” CJ said.
    â€œThis couldn’t have created the effects you described.”
    â€œRight.” CJ clenched her teeth.
    â€œWho collected this sample? None of this has been properly done. We’ll have to start at the beginning.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œPeter, are you awake? I need new samples. See if you can find your way to the site. You know the control procedures. And take the illustrious Ms. Reilly with you. I can’t train a novice today.”
    â€œAren’t we in a jolly mood.” Peter zipped open his bag and lifted out a rack of empty sample bottles, each labeled and dated. He signaled to CJ. “Lead on, oh illustrious one.”
    As they left, he winked at CJ and smirked. “The Queen Bitch rules.”
    CJ’s hands balled into fists. “I’ll show her who’s qualified.”
    Peter gave CJ a quick sideways perusal, and his thick glasses magnified his eyes like pale blue fish in an aquarium. “Is that how you dress for field work?”
    C.J. touched her skirt self-consciously. Under his black raincoat, Peter wore old jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers stained with red clay. Why had she donned this ridiculous skirt? “I thought—” She reddened. “Give me ten minutes to change.”
    â€œChrist,” Peter muttered in his New York twang. “Amateurs.”
Seethe
    Â 
    Friday, March 11
    11:00 AM
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    Li Qin Yue worked alone in the lab. Shoulders tight, vertebrae creaking, she reviewed the curious list of techno-trash Carolyn Reilly had recorded in the sample. Some of the notes were in Roman’s handwriting. She twisted one foot round and round, making her ankle