The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [92]
Van would be back in Washington by nightfall. He would be forced to tell Jeb that his KH-13 misadventure had gone bust with the Space Force at Cheyenne Mountain. He’d wasted his time, wasted valuable resources . . . To make up for it, he’d have to work twice as hard on the Virginia summit, really dig deep into the rabbit hat . . . Van looked at himself in the mirror, leaning close to take it in without his glasses. He had been a damned fool.
He tiptoed away as Ted cooed and burbled. He silently fetched his backpack from the foot of Dottie’s bed. He returned to the bathroom with the jet-black SWAT knife.
He couldn’t fly back to Washington with this throat-cutting pigsticker. Airport security would go nuts over it. But he’d bought it. It was his. It was stupid to not find some kind of use for it.
Van grabbed a thick mess of beard and had at it. The knife went through his bristles like they were cotton candy.
Six minutes later Van was looking at his bare face while Ted happily sucked on and spat a loose fistful of his beard. The SWAT knife was beyond razor-sharp. It had taken his beard off like a laser. He had thin little paper-cut nicks here and there. No wonder Hickok swore by this knife. Hickok knew his stuff about SWAT weapons. The knife was a jewel.
Van hadn’t shaved his beard in years. His damp, sleek rubbery face had the pale, surprised look of a shaved head.
Next morning Dottie stared at him in astonishment. “Oh, honey,” she shrieked, “Oh, look at you! Oh, honey bear, you look so young!”
This wasn’t the response he’d expected. “Young”? His plan was to lose the goofy hacker beard and look more like a serious Washington professional. “Young”? What about his nose? His nose had grown three sizes overnight.
Dottie was experimentally kissing parts of his face that had not been kissed in ages. Bare skin reacted in startled pleasure.
“Oh, honey, you look so handsome this way. You look so clean. Look at Daddy, Teddie!”
Worn out by his 3:00 A.M. adventures, Ted was fast asleep.
“You like it?” Van said.
“It’s different . . . Of course I like it. I married you, didn’t I? Change is good sometimes.”
“I don’t know what they’ll make of this, back at my work.”
“Honey . . .” Dottie paused. “If you only knew what your face looks like, when you talk about your work now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Derek, those people are torturing you. It just hurts me so much. I don’t like these people in Washington. I don’t like this administration, I don’t like this stupid War on Terror . . . I can’t even bear to read the newspapers now. They’re not our kind of people.”
“Now what?” Van said. “What do you mean?”
“Honey, you don’t have to go back to them. You know? You don’t have to go back to the war, honey. You can stay right here and live with me. Derek, you hate that kind of work. Security work is ugly, dirty work. Sweetheart, maybe I didn’t say this before but . . . things are going really well for me up here. In most campuses, the astronomy people are looking at those awful new budget problems. Nobody’s ever seen it that bad . . . But up here, I have only one problem. I have no Derek Vandeveer.”
“Huh,” said Van. “Wow.”
“We won’t have those huge amounts of money anymore, like we did when you were VP. But that only got us in trouble anyway. Derek, you would do great up here. They’ll let you use all the network hardware. You can do all those cool, fun computer-science things you really wanted to do. Like, you can finish your paper on Ramsey theorems. No boss and no schedules, honey. You would be so happy.”
“Do I look so sad to you now?”
“Honey, it is written all over your face! I can see your face now. I haven’t seen you without a beard in, what, four years? You cut it for my mother’s funeral.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Van. “That’s right.”
Dottie wiped at her eyes. “People don’t have to choose to have bad lives that we hate. You’re such a wonderful person, Derek. You’re a