Shock

THIRTEEN

EARLIER IN THE DAY, JOANNA had developed more respect for data-entry-level office workers. Now she had significantly more respect for thieves. She couldn't imagine doing anything like what she was currently doing for a living. Deborah had talked her into returning to the server room with a compelling argument and plan that seemed to have worked. Joanna had been in the server room now for almost twenty-two minutes and no one had bothered her. Her biggest enemy had been herself.

The immobilizing panic she'd felt on the first visit had come back with a vengeance the moment she'd come through the outer server-room door and had let up only enough to allow her to function, although not all that efficiently. The worst part of the whole episode had been the agonizing wait for the brute-force cracking software to come up with a password to unlock the server keyboard. While it ran, Joanna had been reduced to a pathetic, quivering mass of anxiety beset with intermittent jolts of fear from constantly hearing noises that were either innocuous or completely fabricated by her overwrought brain. She was actually surprised at herself. It had been her misconception that she would been a cool person under the kind of stress she was experiencing.

Once she'd gotten into the system, her terror had been ameliorated a degree just from the mere fact of doing something rather than just watching. The main trouble had then become her tremor. It had made operating the mouse and the keyboard difficult.

As she had progressed, Joanna had silently thanked Randy Porter. The man had made her job significantly easier by not hiding what she was searching for too deeply within subfolders. From the very first window Joanna had brought up, she found a server drive named Data D that sounded promising. Opening that drive presented her with an array of folders conveniently named. One of them was called Donor. Right-clicking on the folder and selecting Properties, she saw that access was extremely limited. In fact, besides Randy as the network administrator, only Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson were authorized entry.

Confident she'd found the correct file, Joanna went through the process of adding herself as a user. That required merely typing in her user account designation plus her office domain. Just as she was about to click the Add button she heard a door open somewhere in the distance that caused her heart to leap in her chest and a new batch of perspiration pop out on her forehead.

For several seconds Joanna was unable to move or even breath as she strained to hear the telltale sounds of footsteps in the server-room corridor. But she didn't. Still she expected someone was behind her. Slowly she turned. A modicum of relief coursed through her veins when she saw an empty server-room doorway. Standing up and taking a few steps back, she looked down the server-room corridor to the outer door. It was closed.

"I've got to get out of here," Joanna moaned. Quickly she returned to the keyboard and, with a trembling hand, clicked to add herself to the donor file access list.

As rapidly as she was able Joanna went back through the windows she'd progressively opened to return the server monitor to its desk top and ultimately to its password demand. She snatched up her purse and was about to flee when she remembered the cracking software still in the CD drive. Shaking worse than ever now that she was within seconds of success, she managed to get the CD out and in her bag. Finally she was able to leave.

She closed the server-room door and then ran the few steps to the outer door. Unfortunately there was no way to anticipate if it was a good time to emerge into the main corridor or not. It all depended on who happened to be out there. She just had to take a chance and hope for the best. In one motion she opened the door and stepped out, pulling the door closed behind her. Trying not to panic, she avoided looking up and down the corridor but rather went immediately to the water fountain. It wasn't that she was thirsty although her mouth was certainly dry. She just wanted something to do rather than look like a thief making her escape.

Joanna straightened up. It had been encouraging while drinking not to have heard any voices, and now that she looked it seemed she'd selected a particularly opportune moment to emerge. It was one of the few times Joanna had seen the corridor completely deserted.

Eager to see if she had been successful and also to take a quick look inside the folder even if Deborah was not with her, Joanna hurried back to her cubicle in administration. Since it was the middle of the lunch hour, the administration area was all but deserted, which was fine with Joanna. She dashed into her cubicle, tossed her purse on the desk, and sat down. She unlocked her workstation. With dexterity somewhat improved above what she'd had to deal with in the server room, Joanna quickly mapped a network drive to the donor folder. As she clicked for the command to take effect, she held her breath.

"Yes!" Joanna hissed loudly through clenched teeth. She was into the folder's directory. She felt like cheering, but held herself back, and it was a good thing.

"Yes, what?" a voice asked. It was halfway between a demand and a question. "What's going on?"

Feeling an iota of the same terror of discovery she'd experienced in the server room, Joanna raised her eyes and looked up and to the right. As she'd feared she would when she'd first heard the voice, she found herself gazing up into Gale Overlook's pinched face.

"What'd you do, win the lottery?" Gale asked. She had a way of speaking that made anything she said seem derogatory.

Joanna swallowed. She had another cruel instantaneous realization. Although she considered herself reasonably witty and as capable of repartee as any of her friends, feeling anxious and guilty, which she did at that moment, caused her mind to go blank. Instead of words, a kind of stuttering emerged from her mouth.

"What'd ya have on your screen?" Gale asked, becoming even more interested in the light of Joanna's apparent distress. Gale bobbed her head around trying to see the screen through the reflected glare.

Although Joanna was momentarily speechless, she did have the presence of mind to close the computer window, bringing her screen back to its desktop.

"Were you on the Net?" Gale asked accusingly.

"Yes,' Joanna said, finally finding her voice. "I was checking some stocks to see what they're doing."

"Christine's not going to like that," Gale said. "She frowns on people going on the Net for personal reasons during working hours."

"Thank you for telling me,' Joanna said. She stood, smiled stiffly, grabbed her purse, and left.

Joanna walked swiftly. Anger at herself for acting so suspiciously and irritation at Gale Overlook for being such a meddler had the beneficial effect of focusing her rampant anxieties. As she headed toward the dining room, she actually began to feel better. By the time she got to the fire door leading into the tower portion of the building, she had recovered enough even to feel mildly hungry.

Hesitating on the dining room's threshold, Joanna scanned the room for Deborah. It was significantly more crowded than the day before, when Helen Masterson had brought her and Deborah. Joanna's eyes stumbled onto Spencer Wingate. Quickly she moved them away. She was not in the mood to make eye contact with the man. She saw Paul Saunders and Sheila Donaldson at another table and looked away equally quickly. Then she saw Deborah sitting at a table for two with Randy Porter. They appeared deep in conversation.

Joanna made her way over to Deborah, attempting to keep her face away from Sheila Donaldson as much as possible. It wasn't until Joanna was standing at the table side before Deborah was au-are of her and looked up.

"Hello, Prudence, dear!" Deborah said lightly. "You remember Randy Porter, I'm sure."

Randy smiled shyly and shook hands but didn't stand. Joanna wasn't surprised. She'd long since become accustomed to the fact that a lot of men raised above the Mason-Dixon Line had little schooling in the social graces.

"Randy and I have been having an interesting discussion," Deborah said. "I didn't know the world of computer games was so intriguing. It seems we've been missing something, big time. Am I right, Randy?"

"Absolutely," Randy said. He leaned back with a self-satisfied smile.

"Well, listen, Randy," Deborah said. "I tell you what! I'll come by your workstation later and you can show me Unreal Tournament. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good to me," Randy said. He was rocking forward and backward slightly as if constantly agreeing with himself.

"I'm glad to have had this opportunity to talk with you, Randy," Deborah added. "It was fun." She nodded and grinned, hoping Randy would take the hint. But he didn't.

"I have a couple extra joysticks in my car," Randy said. "I can have you ladies set up to play in no time at all."

"I'm sure we'd appreciate that," Deborah said, losing patience. "But right now Prudence and I have some things we'd like to talk about."

"Hey, that's okay by me," Randy said. But he didn't budge.

"We'd like a little privacy," Deborah added.

"Oh!" Randy said. He looked back and forth between the two women as if confused, but then finally got the message. He then fumbled with his napkin before standing. "I'll see you guys around."

"Right!" Deborah said.

Randy left and Joanna took his seat.

"He's not well trained in his social cues," Joanna commented.

Deborah gave a short, mocking laugh. "And you probably believe you had the worst part of the deal going in the server room."

"Was it that bad?"

"He's a total computer nerd," Deborah complained. "He couldn't talk about anything else. Absolutely nothing! But that's water over the dam." She cleared her throat, leaned forward, and in an excited but lowered voice, asked: "Well, what happened? Did you do it or what?"

Joanna leaned forward as well. Their faces were only inches apart. "It's done."

"Fantastic! Congratulations! So what did you learn?"

"Nothing yet," Joanna said. "Other than I checked from my workstation, and what I did in the server room worked. I was into the proper folder. I even saw your name in the directory."

"So why didn't you learn anything?"

"Because my nosy neighbor interrupted me," Joanna said. "She's like a jack-in-the-box whenever I say or do anything out of the ordinary. I thought she'd be at lunch when I got back there, but unfortunately I was wrong."

One of the Nicaraguan waitresses came over and Joanna ordered a soup and salad. The food choice was Deborah's suggestion. She said it would be the fastest.

"I can't wait for us to get back to your workstation," Deborah said once the waitress had left. "I'm really psyched about all this. And strangely enough, at this point I'm as interested in finding out about the research around here as I am about our eggs."

"That's going to be a problem," Joanna said. "First of all we have to worry about my nosy neighbor. I think it might be best if we wait until she leaves her cubicle before we go back into the donor folder."

"Then let's do it over in the lab," Deborah said. "There're a lot of available workstations that will be private enough. We won't have to worry about someone looking over our shoulders."

"We can't use a workstation in the lab," Joanna said. "The access I created is via the office domain only."

"Good grief!" Deborah remarked. "Why does this all have to be so complicated? But, all right! So we use yours. But I think we should just ignore your neighbor. Hell, I can stand between her and the screen. As soon as you've eaten, let's go and do it."

"There's another problem," Joanna said. "The only access I created is into the donor folder. There were other folders in the same drive, such as Research Protocols and Research Results, but I didn't give myself access to them."

"Why the hell not?" Deborah questioned. She furrowed her brows.

"Because I was too afraid to take any more time," Joanna said.

"Oh! For chrissake!" Deborah complained. "I don't believe this! You were right there with the files staring you in the face. How could you pass it up?" Deborah shook her head in irritated amazement.

"You don't understand how nervous I was," Joanna said. "I'm lucky I was able to do anything in that room."

"How much more time would it have taken?" Deborah questioned.

"Not long," Joanna admitted. "But I'm telling you I was terrified. It's been a hard lesson, but I've learned that I'm lousy at committing felonies. You understand what we are doing is a felony, don't you?"

"I suppose," Deborah said absently. She was clearly disappointed.

"If worse comes to worst, and we are caught," Joanna said, "at least if we can prove we were just after information about our own eggs, I think we'd be treated leniently. But we certainly wouldn't be if we were caught breaking into their research protocols no matter what the rationalization."

"Alright, maybe you have a point," Deborah said. "Anyway, I've another plan. Give me the Wingate blue card!"

"Why?" Joanna asked. She eyed her roommate questioningly. She knew Deborah could be impulsive.

Before Deborah could respond Joanna's food arrived. The waitress served it and left. Deborah leaned forward again and told Joanna the story of her search for the eggs' origin by investigating the dumbwaiter shaft. She told about finding the blank, highly polished, stainless-steel door, completely out of place in the decrepit, antiquated basement kitchen. When she was finished she said simply: "I want to see what's behind that door."

Joanna finished chewing her mouthful of salad and swallowed. She gazed at Deborah with exasperation. "I'm not going to give you the Wingate card!"

"What?" Deborah blurted.

Joanna shushed her before looking around to see if Deborah's outburst had attracted any undo attention. Luckily it hadn't.

"I'm not going to give you the Wingate card," Joanna repeated in almost a whisper. "We're here to find out about our eggs. That has been the goal from the beginning. No matter how compelling you believe finding out what they're doing around here is, we can't afford to put what we're here for in jeopardy. If that door down in the basement has a card swipe like the server-room door and you go in there, there's a good chance someone is going to be alerted just like with the server room. And if that happens my intuition tells me that we'll be in deep trouble."

Deborah returned Joanna's stare irritably, but as the seconds ticked by her expression softened as did her indignation. Although she didn't like to hear it, what Joanna was saying had the ring of truth. Still Deborah felt frustrated. A few minutes earlier she had thought she had two equally promising avenues of approach to what she thought was an important mystery. Her intuition was loudly proclaiming that at best, the Wingate Clinic was involved in ethically questionable research, and at worst it was breaking the law.

As a biologist who was aware of many of the biomedical issues of the day, Deborah knew that fertility clinics like the Wingate operated in a medical arena without oversight. In fact, the desperate clients of such clinics frequently begged them to try untested procedures. In such an environment no patients minded being proverbial guinea pigs, and they blithely dismissed possible negative consequences for themselves or society in general as long as there was the slightest possibility of producing a child. Such patients also tended to put their doctors on a pedestal that encouraged the doctors to believe, in a kind of intellectual conceit, that ethics and even laws did not apply to them.

"I'm sorry I didn't do more," Joanna said. "I suppose I let you down. I wish I hadn't been such a basket case in the server room. But I did the best I could under the circumstances."

"Of course you did," Deborah said. Now she felt guilty about having gotten upset at Joanna who actually had accomplished a rather heroic task. For all of Deborah's bluster, she sincerely questioned if she'd have been able to do what Joanna had done even if she had the computer know-how. Entertaining Randy had been an nuisance, not a stressful challenge.

"What we should really be discussing is where we should access the donor folder," Joanna said, taking another bite of her lunch.

"Explain!" Deborah said.

"I'd really be more comfortable doing it from home tonight via the modem," Joanna said. "It would be safer, but there are problems."

"Such as?"

"If our download of a secure file is detected, they could trace it back to our computer through our Internet provider."

"Not good," Deborah said.

"There's also the chance that if we wait, my access could be discovered and eliminated before we take advantage of it."

"Now you tell me," Deborah complained. "This I wasn't aware of. What are the chances of it happening?"

"Probably not terribly high," Joanna admitted. "Randy would have to have some reason to look for it."

"Sounds like we have to do it here," Deborah said.

"I agree," Joanna said. "Sometime later this afternoon. But I think we should plan on leaving immediately afterward. If Randy detects the download and figures out it is coming from within the network, he'll find the pathway. Then it wouldn't take him long to trace it to Prudence Heatherly's workstation."

"Which means we have to be long gone," Deborah said. "All right, I get the picture! Now, are you finished eating?"

Joanna looked down at her half-eaten soup and salad. "Are you in a rush?"

"I can't say I'm in a rush," Deborah said, "but the entire time I've been here, including the half an hour or so with my new friend Randy, the security chief has been staring at me."

Joanna started to turn around but Deborah quickly reached out and gripped her wrist. "Don't look!"

"Why not?"

"I don't know exactly" Deborah admitted. "But he gives me the creeps, and I'd rather not even acknowledge that I've noticed he's been looking at me. For all I know it's this damned dress again. What was a lark initially has become a pain in the ass."

"How do you know it is the security chief?"

"I don't know for certain," Deborah admitted. "But it stands to reason. Remember yesterday when we were trying to get in and the trucks were in the way? It wasn't until he came out and ordered the uniformed guy to let them in that the Mexican standoff was resolved. When we drove in he was standing next to Spencer. Do you remember him?"

"Not really," Joanna admitted. "Remember, my attention was taken by Spencer at the moment, when I had the distorted idea he reminded me of my father."

Deborah chuckled. "Distorted is right! But we're getting away from the issue. What about your food? You haven't taken a bite for the last five minutes."

Joanna tossed her napkin onto the table and stood up. "I'm ready! Let's go."

EXCEPT FOR FREQUENTING THE DINING ROOM, KURT HERMANN seldom went into the Wingate Clinic proper. He preferred to remain in the gatehouse, or on the extensive grounds, or in his apartment in the staff village. The problem was, he knew some things went on in the clinic that he did not countenance, but thanks to his military training he could compartmentalize his thinking. By not going into the clinic, it was like out of sight out of mind, and he just didn't think about it.

But there were occasions when entering the main part of the clinic was required, and his current preoccupation with Georgina Marks was one of them. Using his contacts and the few facts from her employment application form plus the registration of the car she drove, he'd put out requests for information about her. What had come back so far was confusing if not intriguing. He had originally intended to approach her in the dining room during lunch, but he had changed his mind. It had been obvious that she'd set her talons on the adolescent computer fellow with whom she'd arrived, and the last thing Kurt wanted to weather was a rejection from the kind of person she was.

Then the situation had abruptly changed. Georgina's girlfriend had shown up, and from afar it appeared as if the computer whiz had been summarily canned. Kurt needed to know why.

"He's not in his cubicle?" Christine Parham, the office manager, asked.

Kurt looked away for a moment to keep from lashing out in response to such an inane question. He'd just finished telling the woman that Randy Porter was not at his desk. Slowly Kurt returned his glaring eyes to Christine's. He didn't have to respond.

"Would you like me to page him?" Christine asked.

Kurt merely nodded. For him, the less said the better. He had a counterproductive penchant for telling people what he thought of them when irritated and Georgina Marks had him irritated.

Christine put in the call. While she waited for a response, she asked Kurt if security was having computer problems. Kurt shook his head and checked his watch. He'd give this mission another five minutes. If Randy Porter had not been found by then, he'd leave instructions for the twerp to come to the gatehouse. Kurt didn't want to be away from his office for too long. With the number of feelers he had out about Georgina Marks and the calls he expected in return, he wanted to be available to take them in person.

"Nice weather we're having," Christine commented. Kurt didn't respond, but she was saved from having to come up with any more small talk by her phone's insistent jangle. It was Randy, who reported that he was working on someone's computer in accounting but could come by immediately if needed. Christine told him the chief of security was there to see him so he'd better come right over.

"I'll meet him at his desk," Kurt said before Christine had hung up. She relayed the message.

Kurt wended his way to the network administrator's cubbyhole. He sat in the second chair and gazed around contemptuously at the science fiction artwork gracing the cubicle's walls. He took in the joystick foolishly pushed behind the monitor as if to hide it.

Kurt thought the kid could use a few months of boot camp, which is what he thought of all young people who'd not experienced it.

"Hello there, Mr. Hermann," Randy said breezily as he swooped into the room. His insouciant attitude around people like Kurt belied a wariness like a dog around an unpredictably cruel master. "Is something amiss with one of the security computers?" He threw himself into his desk chair as if it were a skateboard, requiring him to grab onto the edge of the desk to keep from rolling into the wall.

"The computers are fine," Kurt said. "I'm here to talk to you about your lunch date."

"Georgina Marks?"

Kurt looked away for a moment, like he'd done recently with Christine. He ruminated why everybody had to answer his questions with essentially the same question. It was maddening.

"What do you want to know about her?" Randy asked brightly.

"Did she come on to you strong?"

Randy wagged his head. "So so," he said. "More so in the beginning. I mean, she initiated the conversation."

"Did she proposition you?"

"What do you mean?"

Kurt looked away again briefly. It was trying talking to most of the staff, particularly Randy Porter, who looked and acted like he was still in high school." 'Did she proposition you' means: Did she offer sex for money or services?"

Randy had had the distinct impression that the security chief was a weird dude, but this question out of the blue took the cake. He didn't know what to say since he sensed the man was angry and wound up tight like a piano wire tuned to high C.

"Would you mind answering the question!" Kurt growled.

"Why would she be offering me sex?" Randy managed.

Kurt looked away yet again. Another question generating a question, which unhappily reminded him of the compulsory chats with a psychiatrist he'd been ordered to have prior to leaving the army. Taking a breath, he then repeated his question slowly and threateningly.

"No!" Randy barked. Then he lowered his voice. "Sex didn't come up. We were talking about computer games. Why would she bring up sex?"

"Because sex is what that type of woman does."

"She's a biologist," Randy said defensively.

"It is a strange way for a biologist to dress," Kurt said mockingly. "Do any of the other biologists look like her?" At this point in his investigation Kurt wasn't sure Georgina was a biologist or that her name was Georgina, but he did not mention his suspicions. He didn't want them getting back to the woman and alerting her until he'd finished his inquiries. It was his current belief that she was at the Wingate for some ulterior motive, and dressed as provocatively as she was, prostitution was high on his list. After all, it had been his original assessment, and she'd already apparently scored with Spencer Wingate the same day she'd met him at the gate.

"I liked the way she was dressed," Randy said.

"Yes, I bet you did," Kurt snapped. "But why did you leave so abruptly this afternoon? Were you turned off for some reason? Is that when she asked you if you were interested in a trick?"

"No!" Randy protested. "I'm telling you, sex wasn't involved. We'd had a nice conversation, but she wanted me to leave. Her friend had appeared, and they wanted to talk, so I left."

Kurt stared at the skinny computer kid. From Kurt's interrogation experience, he sensed the fellow was telling him the truth. The problem was that what Randy was saying didn't jibe with any of Kurt's current beliefs about this new employee. She was becoming more of a mystery rather than less of one.

"There is something I'd like to talk to you about," Randy said, eager to get the conversation away from Georgina Marks. He went on to tell Kurt about the strange episode involving Dr. Wingate and the server room.

Kurt nodded as he absorbed the information. He didn't know what to make of it nor what to do about it. For the last several years he'd answered to Paul Saunders, not Spencer Wingate. As a military man, he loathed situations with a blurred hierarchy.

"Let me know if it happens again," Kurt said. "And let me know if you have any more interaction with Georgina Marks, or her friend for that matter. And it goes without saying that you're to keep this conversation just between you and me. Do I make myself clear?"

Randy nodded immediately.

Kurt stood up and without another word walked out of Randy's cubicle.

DEBORAH GAVE UP TRYING TO WORK WITH HER MIND churning, it was impossible to concentrate, and since she and Joanna would soon be departing the scene, it was a sham anyway. She'd been waiting over an hour for Joanna's call to say that her nosy cubicle neighbor was gone, clearing the way for them to access the donor file, but it had never come. Apparently the neighbor wasn't going anyplace soon.

Deborah drummed her fingers on the counter top. She'd never been particularly patient and this unnecessary waiting was pushing her beyond her limit.

"Screw it,' she said suddenly under her breath. She pushed back from the microscope, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. She'd kowtowed to Joanna's apprehensions and paranoia about her neighbor long enough. After all, what did it matter? As soon as they got the information, they were out of there. Besides, as Deborah had suggested, she could block the screen with her body so the neighbor couldn't see anyway.

Avoiding looking in the direction of the few lab people she'd met, Deborah headed out into the hall once again as if she were on her way to the ladies' room. A few minutes later she slipped into Joanna's cubicle. Joanna was dutifully working.

Without sound Deborah mouthed the question, "Which direction is Gale Overlook?"

Joanna pointed to the partition to the right.

Deborah stepped over to it and looked over. It was a cubicle the mirror image of Joanna's. Interestingly enough it was not occupied.

"There's no one here!" Deborah reported.

Adopting a questioning expression, Joanna looked as well. "Well, I'll be darn," she said. "She was here two minutes ago."

"How convenient," Deborah said. She rubbed her palms together excitedly. "How about doing your sorcery right this minute. Let's get the information about our progeny and fly the coop."

Joanna stepped over to the opening of her cubicle and looked in both directions. Satisfied, she came back and sat down at her keyboard. Hesitantly she looked up at Deborah.

"I'll keep a lookout," Deborah assured her. Then she added, "And after all this effort, this better be good."

With a few rapid keystrokes and clicks of the mouse Joanna pulled up the first page of the directory for the donor file. There amongst other names at the beginning of the alphabet was Deborah Cochrane.

"Let's do you first," Joanna said.

"Fine by me," Deborah said.

Joanna clicked on Deborah's name and her file popped up. Both women read over the material which included background and baseline medical information. At the bottom of the page was an underlined, boldfaced notation that she'd adamantly insisted on local anesthesia for the retrieval.

"They certainly took that anesthesia question seriously," Deborah said.

"Have you finished with this page?" Joanna questioned.

"Yeah, let's get on to the good stuff!"

Joanna clicked to the next and what turned out to be the final page. At the top was the notation NUMBER OF EGGS RETRIEVED. Next to it was a zero.

"What the hell?" Deborah questioned. "This suggests they didn't get any eggs from me at all."

"But they told you they had," Joanna said.

"Of course they did," Deborah said.

"This is strange," Joanna said. "Let's check my file." She returned to the directory and scrolled through until she got to the M's. Finding her name, she clicked on it. For the next thirty seconds they read through the material, which was similar to what they'd read for Deborah on her first page. But on the next page they were in for a larger surprise than the one caused by Deborah's zero eggs. In Joanna's file it said that 378 had been retrieved.

"I don't know what to make of this," Joanna said. "They told me they'd gotten five or six, not hundreds."

"What's after each egg?" Deborah asked. The type was too small to read.

Joanna enlarged the view. After each egg was a client's name along with the date of an embryo transfer. After that was Paul Saunders's name, followed by a brief description of the outcome.

"According to this, each one of your eggs went to a different recipient," Deborah said. "Even that's strange. I thought each patient would get multiple eggs, if they were available, to maximize the chances of implantation."

"That was my understanding as well,' Joanna said. "I don't know what to make of all this. I mean, not only are there too many eggs, but none of them was successful." With her finger she ran down the long list where there was either a notation about implantation failure or a miscarriage date.

"Wait! There's one that was successful," Deborah said. She reached out and pointed. It was egg thirty-seven. A birth date of September 14, 2000, was indicated. It was followed by the name of the mother, an address, a telephone number, and the notation it was a healthy male.

"Well, at least there was one," Joanna said with relief.

"Here's another one," Deborah said. "Egg forty-eight with a birth date October 1, 2000. It was also a healthy male."

"Okay, two," Joanna said. She was encouraged until both she and Deborah had gone through the entire list. Out of the 378, there were only two other positives, egg 220 and egg 241 both having been implanted that January. Each of these was followed by the notation that the pregnancies were progressing normally.

"How could they have implanted this so recently?" Joanna asked.

"I suppose it means they're using frozen eggs," Deborah said.

Joanna leaned back and looked up at Deborah. "This is hardly what I expected."

"You can say that again," Deborah responded.

"If this is correct, that's a success rate around one in a hundred. That doesn't speak well for my eggs."

"There's no way they got almost four hundred eggs from you. This has to be some kind of research fabrication for God knows what reason. Almost four hundred eggs is about as many as you'll produce during your whole life!"

"You think this is all made up?"

"That would have to be my guess," Deborah said. "Weird things are going on here, as we both know. In that light, a bit of data falsification wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Hell, it happens in the best of institutions much less in an isolated place like this. But I'll tell you: Now that we're confronted with this mishmash, I'm even more disappointed we can't get into their research files."

Joanna turned around to the keyboard and started typing.

"What are you doing now?" Deborah questioned.

"I'm going to print the file out," Joanna said. "Then we're going to take it and leave. I'm crushed with these results."

"You're crushed!" Deborah said. "They have me down for no eggs whatsoever. At least they thought enough of you to attribute some live kids."

Joanna glanced up at Deborah. As she suspected, her roommate was smiling. Joanna had to give her credit. Thanks to her mischievous personality, she could find humor in most any circumstance. For her part, Joanna was not amused at all.

"One thing I do notice,' Deborah said. "With each egg entry of yours, the sperm donor is not mentioned."

"I would assume it was the woman's husband," Joanna said. She finished setting up the printing command and clicked on the Print button. "Now that's going to take a few minutes with the size of the file. If there's anything you want to do, do it now, because once we have the file, I want to leave."

"I'm ready now," Deborah said.

"WHAT A DAY," RANDY LAMENTED. HE WAS THANKFUL TO have gotten rid of Kurt Hermann but disgruntled he'd had to have such a weird conversation in the first place. The man was like a caged tiger with his quiet demeanor and the slow way he moved and spoke. Randy shook himself as if having had a wave of nausea just remembering talking with him.

Randy was on his way back from fixing the workstation in accounting which he'd had to put on hold when he'd been called to have the chat with the security chief. It was going on two in the afternoon, and he was looking forward to getting back to his cubicle. Putting up with Kurt hadn't been the worst part of the day: that was reserved for having lost to SCREAMER, and Randy was aching for a rematch.

Arriving in his cubicle, Randy went through his usual trick to see if Christine was around. He was glad to see she wasn't, which was typical for that time in the afternoon when she had her department-head meetings. That meant he could allow a little more sound. Sitting down, he pulled his joystick from behind the monitor. Next he typed in his password to unlock his keyboard. The moment he did so, he saw the same pesky prompt flashing in the lower right-hand corner of his computer desktop that had been responsible for his death that morning. Somebody had been in the server room again!

With angry strokes, Randy brought up the appropriate window. Sure enough, the door had been opened at 12:02 P.M. and left open until 12:28 P.M., which meant that whoever had gone in there had remained for twenty-six minutes. Randy knew that a visit of twenty-six minutes was not like someone popping in for a peek, and it bothered him considerably. In twenty-six minutes someone could cause a lot of trouble indeed.

Next Randy called up the appropriate folder to see who it had been. He was shocked to find that once again it had been Dr. Spencer Wingate! Randy sat back and stared at the founder's name while trying to decide what to do. He'd told Kurt about the first incident, but the security chief had hardly seemed impressed although he had asked to be informed if it happened again.

Randy tipped forward again. He decided he'd call the security chief but only after seeing if he could find anything in the system that had been changed. What first came to mind was a change in user levels. With rapid strokes and movement of the mouse, he accessed his Active Directory. After only a few minutes he had the answer. Dr. Wingate had added Prudence Heatherly to the access list for the Donor folder in the server's data drive.

Randy tipped back in his seat again. He asked himself why the founder of the clinic would add the name of a new employee to a secure file that even Dr. Wingate didn't have access to. It didn't make a lot of sense unless Prudence Heatherly was working for him in some undercover capacity.

"This is unreal," Randy said. In a way, he was enjoying himself. It was something like a computer game where he was trying to figure out his opponent's strategy. It wasn't as exciting as Unreal Tournament, but then again, little was. He sat and pondered for a number of minutes.

Without coming up with a plausible explanation, Randy reached for the phone. He wasn't looking forward to talking with Kurt again, but at least it was by phone, not in person. He also decided to tell the man just the facts and none of his supposition. While he dialed the extension he noted the time. It was two o'clock on the button.