Watermind by M. M. Buckner Page B

bones pop. Outside, the rain clouds tore apart in sudden brief bursts ofsun, and luminous shafts roved over the sodden earth like spotlights. But Yue didn’t notice.
    The data did not surprise her. Americans threw everything in their rivers. She pecked scathing notes into her Pocket PC. She herself had been raised in Taipei, an island nation that knew the value of hoarding and husbanding. On her Pocket PC screen, the cross-hatched scars from her aggressive stylus mirrored the crosshatched worry lines on her brow.
    While the sample fluid seethed in its jar, her mind lingered four states away in Miami, where she’d been formulating a new composite jet fuel. Hack work, she called it. Demeaning. Slutty. Once upon a time, she had revered the elegance of the Periodic Table. It was the alphabet of the
Tao
, the All That Is, or so she had gushed in an undergraduate essay. But now she whored her knowledge to churn out saleable products. She did it for Roman Sacony.
    â€œSemiconductors, diagnostic chips, benzene rings.” She read Reilly’s list, and her stylus scratched noisily. Behind her, unseen bubbles formed in the jar and migrated upward. “Bipolar transistors, disintegrated circuits, polysilicon conductors, a working logic gate . . . Working?” She shook her head. “Not likely, Ms. Reilly.”
    Thinking of the Reilly nymph made her teeth itch. She picked up the jar and shook its milky contents. Her distorted image frowned back from the curved glass.
    Li Qin viewed herself as skinny and plain. She didn’t try to be charming. Life had gone sour, so she didn’t see any benefit in playing sweet. She knew Peter called her the Queen Bitch. The only reason anyone tolerated her, she thought, was for her brains. In her life, three men had loved her, but she hadn’t noticed them. The only man Li Qin had ever noticed was Roman Sacony.
    She slapped the jar down hard on the counter and turned away, failing to notice its sudden fluorescence of frost.
Smear
    Â 
    Friday, March 11
    11:19 AM
    Â 
    As CJ’s Rover caromed over the curb and barreled into the Roach’s flooded parking lot, she silently railed at herself. Idiot! You always do that. Like you’re back in school, turning yourself inside out to please asshole teachers. You don’t need the approval of those pretentious geeks. She stomped the Rover’s brake and skidded through a deep puddle of rainwater. When she ground to a stop in wet gravel, she sat clawing the wheel and stewing.
    â€œHarry, get out of my head,” she whispered.
    Thirty minutes later, dressed in coveralls and waders, she and Peter Vaarveen were picking their way through the muck of Devil’s Swamp. The rain had stopped, and as the sun warmed the earth, humidity settled on every stem and leaf like a residue of oil. In addition to the coveralls, goggles, and hip boots, Peter insisted that they both wear respirators. Worse, he had duct-taped their rubber gloves to their sleeves for added protection. Apparently, he viewed the great outdoors as a death zone. His voice rattled through the respirator as he delineated their sampling procedures.
    CJ knew the drill. She’d done more than enough field-work at MIT, and she hated being lectured by this sarcastic twit. She walked fast through the spongy bog, trying to outdistance him. Peter never got in a hurry over anything. Still, with his long legs and handheld GPS, he had no trouble keeping up.
    The area around the pond had been trampled to raw mud by Rory’s work crew. Stands of green tupelo and palmetto lay chopped and shredded, stumps uprooted, pepper vines slashed. Even the insects had been sprayed. The long comma-shaped pond lay exposed to full sun.
    Sweat trickled under CJ’s goggles and ran in her eyes.In her hot coverall, she barely listened at first to Peter’s languid instructions. He explained how his sterile collection bottles had been treated with a preservative to maintain