| |
The next morning a FedEx truck delivered overnight packages for three soldiers. One of them was the Colonel’s second in command.
“I swear, Colonel, I didn’t contact the Broker!”
“I believe you,” said the Colonel. “The Broker’s playing games with us. This is screwy. He’s flaunting the packages. He’s got his own name on the return address. He wants us to see what’s in them.”
“Could they be bombs?”
“Nah, that’s not the kind of game he plays. Besides, he knows we’d kill him if he did that. Worse, FedEx would blacklist him. No, he’s smart. He’s up to something clever. Let’s see what’s in the boxes.”
They opened them.
“Three bottles of prescription pills. Transperidone. And Dorothy Anderson’s name on the prescription.” The Colonel had one of his men ask Professor Anderson to please join them.
When she arrived, the Colonel showed her the pills. “These look familiar, Professor?”
She looked at the bottles. Then opened them and looked at the pills. “Yes, this is the medication I’ve been taking for years. The dosage looks right. My body’s adapted to it over the years, so I’m up to 10 milligrams a day now. But I don’t need any more, thanks. I brought plenty with me in my garbage bag.”
The Colonel said, “May I have that back, please? Thanks. It may not be safe. I’ll have a couple of my men run these over to a pharmacy to see what’s in them.”
The men came back in the early evening. “It took a lot of money to get them to analyze the stuff. Turns out it’s not hard, but they were busy. They’ve got a kit that runs simple and quick tests, pH, and a couple of reactions, and compares them with known drugs and stuff. And they compared it to known Transperidone, too.”
“I’m all ears,” said the Colonel.
One of the men put a sheaf of lab result printouts in front of the Colonel. “The first bottle appears to be real Transperidone, though they can’t guarantee it without a lot more tests. The second appears to be sugar pills. The third appears to be a mild rat poison, though not very dangerous to humans.”
“Well that’s interesting,” said the Colonel. “The Broker is sending a pretty clear message. He’s telling us he may have already had someone swap the pills. And we can’t prove he didn’t. He wants us to not trust the pills she has. He wants Professor Anderson to stop taking her medication.” He turned to Dorothy, “Professor, what happens if you stop taking your pills?”
She thought for a bit, then said, “Probably nothing. I’m not cured. And I need to talk with my psychiatrist. But I’ve been feeling a lot better since you kidnapped me. Though, God knows, I should be feeling more paranoid. But I’m not. I’m surrounded by strangers but I’m feeling more relaxed than I have in years.” She paused thoughtfully, then continued.
“But that’s not the interesting question. The interesting question is: What does the Broker think will happen if I stop taking my pills?”
They were all quiet for a bit. Then one team leader said, “He probably thinks you’ll get more paranoid.”
Another said, “Makes sense. But why would he want that?”
Again they all paused to think. Then the first team leader said, “To make you harder to keep here. To force you to go to a mental hospital. Maybe he thinks he can access you more easily there.”
Dorothy nodded. Then said, “You’re on to something. But that’s not all of it. His clients want to break up the research team, the four of us, me, Benny, Bodin, and Dalton. Together we’re a threat if someone else hires us or partners with us as a team. Break us up and we’re no threat. Break us up and we can be hired individually by others. And it gives others more time to develop their own teams to compete. Antigravity begins with wave mechanics. And I’m the only one who knows how to do the wave mechanics. Break me and they break the team. My illness is the weak link in the team.”
The Colonel looked at her with respect verging on awe. But all he said was, “That makes a lot of sense.”
Dorothy met the Colonel’s gaze briefly, then looked down at her hands. She blushed. Her heart pounded. Tears welled in her eyes. She said, “I’m scared. Not paranoid. Scared. There’s a difference. People are depending on me. The research team is depending on me. That’s new and it scares me. I want to be strong. But I don’t know how. I don’t think I’ve ever been scared like this.”
The Colonel said, “We can help.”
Dorothy looked at him again, briefly, then back at her hands. “How? I don’t know how to help myself.”
A junior lieutenant read from his tablet, “It says here that withdrawal symptoms from Transperidone are mild. You could probably stop taking it. Then the Broker would have no leverage.”
No one sounds more confident, for less reason, than a junior lieutenant. If he had read the next paragraph, he would have found that withdrawal was minimal if the dose was low, if it had been taken for a brief period, and if the dosage was tapered off gradually, not cold turkey. Dorothy had acclimated to a very high dose over many years.
Dorothy said, “That’s good news. Maybe I should quit.”
The half-life of Transperidone in the body is 20 hours. Dorothy had just started a time bomb ticking. This is why senior sergeants are usually assigned to oversee junior lieutenants. Unfortunately, there were no senior sergeants at the table.