by Melody Clark
“Oh, he’d grown gentler in his golden years,” Tad said. “I’ll give you that. But he’d grown weaker and less capable of battle. Civility was his sole defense. Don’t get me started on what he did to you. He deprived me of the simple joy of harassing you for decades. And you never witnessed how he treated our grandmother. Do you know how many times I saw him bash Dad across the face for absolutely nothing? Can you imagine what that did to Dad’s dignity?”
“I don’t have to imagine,” Eddie said, smiling sadly. “That was one of Wendell’s preferred methods of retaliation.”
“He might have taken the higher road in recent years, but they were a nasty piece of work, both of them.” Tad rubbed at his neck with a weary precision. “Anyway, I made his passing relatively painless. I gave a bell to the meat lorry. They’ll call for him. He’ll be cremated. Everything nice and neat and expedient, as he preferred.”
“Whose life is a bubble, and in length a span,” Eddie murmured quietly, massaging a hand across his forehead.
“Sir Thomas Browne? You surprise me, Edward!” Tad said, leaning over a little to reconsider his brother. “I hear the old man parked a load on top of you before he shuffled off. Handling it or must I seek some form of ataraxic? Nothing pharmaceutical due to your recovery, but I could always bash you on the head and knock you out. As a physician, I would be duty bound to not enjoy it.”
“I’ll handle it without assist, thanks,” Eddie laughed wryly, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I feel about it yet.”
“Well, why not shock hell out of your stomach and actually eat something? That’s my prescription as your attending physician. It might make you somewhat less cadaverous, too.”
“Look how your prescriptions worked out for your last patient,” Edward said.
“Utterly unfair – and perfectly on-point. How dare you be as witty as me?”
“As witty as I?”
“Bite me, Septic.”
“Shut up, Toad.”
Andrew’s shadow entered the doorway and then slipped inside the room, coming to stand between the other men in their chairs. “I can’t believe the old tosspot is really gone. He’s loomed over my life for so long, it’s hard to imagine it without him.”
“Oh, bosh, it is not,” Tad said, grimacing in reply.
“Don’t tell me how I feel. To me, it is!” Andrew said.
“Well, it isn’t for me. In fact, I only feel badly that I don’t feel badly at all. You two may be prepping to rend fake garments and gnash faux teeth, but I’d be happily dossing on the rose divan if I didn’t have to officiate over his death so they may drag away his rotting carcass. You don’t see Dad mewling about and wringing his hands, do you?”
Andrew nodded toward the hall. “As soon as you told him about Granddad, he went to call his solicitor. The old man wanted his will read the morning following his death.”
“The old bastard must have wanted to get some nyah nyahs in before they put the burners to him,” Tad said.
“I think I’ll miss him,” Andrew said.
Thaddeus shook his head. “I think you’re daft.”
“I think you’re rude and wretched,” Andrew replied, sticking out his tongue.
“I think I’m going to ground you both if you don’t stop it,” Eddie said, as the doorbell sounded throughout the house.
Tad winced in the doorbell’s direction as he dragged himself out of his chair. “The old sod must have goosed them from perdition,” he said, as he led the three of them out of the library and into the great room.
Edward and Andrew watched as Tad welcomed the men into the house. While Tad signed something on a clipboard, three mortuary men moved the mortal remains of John Croftdon out of his room and across the hall toward the front door. They all drifted after the gurney as if compelled by some unseen force, to see this journey through as far as they could.
Edward had become moored to the Croftdon shore, but every once in a while the tide would rise and he would drift away. The distance would increase the wide-angled turbulence of the rope, further complicating his perspective.
Watching the body of John Croftdon slipped quietly into a mortuary van gave Eddie one such moment – made him feel yet again like an outsider pressed against the glass. He had barely known the man. And yet he had influenced his life as much as any other.
As the lorry waited at the gate, Eddie wondered at the fact it only been months ago that he had stood there with Ken and Arvo, while he nearly shivered in terror at the prospect of walking inside to meet the Croftdons. So much had happened. So much had been said. So much had been discovered.
“I’m here,” Thomas said, as he stepped out onto the porch to join the rest.
“Ready?” Tad asked.
“Ready,” Thomas replied to Tad, adding, “thank you, son, for handling all that. Thank you, all of you, for helping.”
“All part of our service package,” Tad replied drily, signaling the lorry to back out of the drive into their private road. They all watched in silence as the vehicle drove away.
“Goodbye, Dad,” Thomas said softly.
Feeling awkward, Edward stared up at the odd lens effect spanning trees, created by an early darkness cast against clouds. Rain had blackened the sky and weighted the air all around them. Edward backed up stealthily against the door, relieved to feel the door behind him open a little with the pressure, as it hadn’t entirely closed.
Thomas, as if sensing Edward’s escape, turned in his direction. “And thank you, Eddie.”
Edward thought over the possible reasons for his father’s comment. “You mean for calling him Granddad? That was nothing. If it gave him peace –”
“That, but not just that,” Thomas said. “My solicitor tells me you returned the paperwork regarding your last name. He said I would have to ask you for your choice, but he felt certain I’d be happy with the decision.”
Edward realized he was now being watched by everyone. “Well, I’d have told everyone before now, but with everything going on –”
“It made a resplendent day out of a fairly dark one,” Thomas said, smiling up toward the rain that quickly misted his face. The smile faded quickly. “I’m sorry about – what Dad told you –”
Edward shook his head, refusing the thought. “Nothing surprises me where Wendell is concerned.”
Thomas looked around toward the older house in the distance. “So, how does that SAGE2 contraption of yours work exactly?”
“Well, it’s a very complex apparatus,” Edward said, “based on a stem-cell like architecture that simulates –”
“Stop, please,” Thomas said, “never mind any of that. I’ll never understand it. How about a demonstration? We can do that experiment we were discussing.”
Edward looked over at Andrew who mirrored his surprise. “Are you certain about that?”
“Why not?” Thomas asked.
“All right, but it would have to be a controlled study. We’d have to have multiple objects,” Eddie said.
“Not just the bracelet, in other words?” Andrew asked.
“Not the bracelet at all, in fact, in the beginning,” Eddie said. “Just random objects at first. I can’t know what they are. But Dad can be the selector. We can gradually phase into more defined objects for narrow focus.”
“Whatever you wish, I’m game,” Thomas said. “Shall we say first thing in the morning?”
“Not to fast,” Tad said. “We have Granddad’s Last Will and Bobbins Toss to suffer through in the morning.”
Thomas smiled at Edward. “Oddly enough, I forgot about that. Okay, second thing in the morning.”
Chapter Seven
The SAGE2 experiment was not the second thing on the docket that morning, just as the reading of the Last Will and Testament of John Andrew Croftdon had not come first. Fate arrived like a wrecking ball, crashing into their more mundane plans, with the percussive power of
things that felt meant to be.
Edward felt himself pulled up by the shoulder out of sleep, his father appearing like a shadow against the window’s bright rush of morning. Eddie coughed sleep from his voice and blinked steadily through fleeing phosphenes and shadow lights and faded bits of dreams.
“What’s happened?” Eddie asked, blinking steadily to clear his vision.
“A miniature armageddon, I’m afraid,” Thomas said, with what might have been the understatement of his life. “We’ve had another fire at a minor European property. And Andrew said something about our having a computer attack.”
In that instant, Edward’s phone rang out. He grabbed at it, squinted at the screen and quickly realized the horses were off and the odds were growing.
The text read: Are we having fun, former adopted son?
“The son of a bitch,” Edward muttered to himself, reaching for his robe to hurl himself into battle.
Andrew met him in the hallway as they both walked toward the library. He handed off a cup of coffee to Edward. “Looks like he’s saturating us with external communications requests,” Andrew said. “Forged sender, empty packets.”
“You’re joking. A denial of service attack?” Eddie said, squinting in disbelief.
Andrew nodded. “How Y2K, eh?”
Eddie shook his head. “He must really be hurting for talent if he’s resorting to this shit. I should have overprovisioned us by now. It’s not going to help us at this point, but it would have given us some wiggle room early on.”
“I started adding filters to drop packets and timeout connections –”
“This is too ballsy an attack for that,” Eddie said, dropping down at his laptop and setting aside his coffee. His hands communicated easily with the keys. “I’m pointing us over at Olympus Mons scrubbing center. It’ll filter the malicious packets. That will get us back online. We can address the weaknesses that left us vulnerable at a later time.”
Tad overshadowed them from the library door. “But war is a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at,” he said.
“Wendell is the one at war,” Andrew said.
“If he’s at war, then so are we,” Thomas replied. “He’s burned two buildings now and attacked the foundation of our enterprise. But thank God we have Eddie.”
“I’m afraid I’ve only triggered all this by being here,” Eddie said, shaking his head. “Leaving isn’t going to secure your safety though. He knows I’m on your side.”
Thomas smiled brightly. “Just so that you know you’re on our side?”
“Of course I know it,” Eddie said, his brow furrowing with concern. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did, and I do, son,” Thomas said softly. “I just wanted to hear it from you.”
“It’s that communications thingy we were discussing, Edward,” Tad said, rising to stand between the two men. “Where you speak words and we interpret them.”
“Well, since you’ve forced your way into the communications matter, my lad,” Thomas told Thaddeus, “you can further it by going to the great room and summoning our solicitor to the library.”
“Why?” Tad asked.
“Because this all brings up an important matter we have to address about the corporate chain of authority now that Dad is dead.” Thomas nodded toward the hall. “While you’re at it, ask James to join us.”
Malcolm Powder looked like a basic lawyer, Eddie supposed – the same kind of focused distraction, a constant juggler with props made of air. As he rushed into the room, Powder hugged to his chest a hurried document accumulation compressed into a folder. He unsealed the legal document in his hands and quickly dealt out the articles inside it across the library table like a bad hand of cards.
“This is my eldest son, Edward,” Thomas said to Powder. “I believe you two have communicated.”
“Yes, hello, glad to finally meet you,” Powder said, acknowledging Eddie with a nod toward him. “I wish I came better prepared for this. This is very sudden.”
“Because of some ongoing events, it would be best to do the full Will reading informally at a later time,” Thomas said. “The actual chain of authority within Croftdon must be established rather hastily. If that is allowable.”
The solicitor shrugged. “Your father is passed, Thomas. You are the sole executor. We will go by your wishes in this. I will later, of course, give all the heirs copies of the civil document. The corporate codicil applies only to you, Thomas, and to your oldest. Thomas, you inherit your father’s role as head of the board of directors. Edward, as oldest, you are appointed CEO, in your father’s footsteps.”
“Wait,” Edward said, “there is some misunderstanding. I’m biologically the oldest, but I wasn’t raised here. It really should be Tad who inherits that post.”
“I am a doctor!” Tad sniped from nearby. “Don’t you dare aim that scepter at me. Can you see me in a suit at board meetings? It would be cudgels at thirty paces.”
“Then Andrew should be next,” Edward said.
“I’m tech head,” Andrew replied with a smile. “But we both know you’re better. And we have always needed a better tech head in the CEO’s place. Dad is brilliant with business, but he relied too much on my input for the technical end of things. You’re older, wiser. It’s only right that it’s you.”
“I was hyped on drugs – that’s how I was better,” Eddie said.
“But you’ve said yourself than you and I working together are as good,” Andrew said, smiling. “You’re the older brother, you take the higher berth.”
“Then what about James –” Edward said.
“Dad only let me have a car last year, Eddie!” James said, laughing. “Me as CEO is not gonna wash.”
“Definitely not,” Thomas said.
“The Will is very clear,” Powder said, preparing to read the words as if they unwound from a tightly wrapped hank of yarn around a narrow ring. “And for the business, the iteration of that instruction is simplest of all. Everything in the business is to be run jointly by John’s surviving son, Thomas, and his oldest child, Edward. Thomas as head of the board and Edward as CEO.”
“And what you don’t know yet, Edward,” Thomas added, “is that is always how Dad’s Will has read. It was not changed recently. If you had any doubts about my father’s trust in you, I can certainly understand them. But they should be erased with this.”
“Oh, please,” Tad hissed in reply, “he was covering his wrinkled old fundament and you know it. Eddie could have sued him to Brittany and back.”
“Always around to elucidate a touching moment, Tad,” Thomas said, grinning at his second born. He finally turned back toward Powder. “Thank you, Malcolm. You may go on with your day now.”
Powder nodded curtly toward all of them in the room. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, slipping away from the room as quickly and artlessly as he’d entered.
Eddie slowly shook his head. “I’m genuinely stunned.”
“Why? It’s only how it should be, son,” Thomas said. “Family is family. There are no conditions to be met.”
Edward laughed to himself. “That’s not my experience. Wendell Bakunin has never done anything unconditional. Everything came with a kickback.”
“I’m not Wendell,” Thomas said. “I’m your father. And I want to act like one.”
Eddie smiled. “I appreciate that.”
Andrew came around the far table, toting SAGE2 with him. “How long you reckon before we’re back up?”
“As long as it takes to propagate. An hour maybe,” Edward said.
“Then we have some time before anything can be done. We’re not busy. Why don’t we drag Dad along and test the new theory?” Andrew asked.
“Dad’s probably tired,” Eddie said.
Thomas shook his head. “No, I’m not. I’m game.”
Andrew grinned in challenge. “Unless Eddie
is scared?”
“Damn it,” Edward shot back, “I have to do it now.”
Andrew nodded. “Yes, I know.”
Don’t ask a question unless you want to hear the answer, or so the old saying went.
Don’t ask a question if you don’t already know the answer, Wendell had rephrased it to him too many times in the past.
“In other words, mold your knowledge around your ignorance?” he had inquired once – only once – and had never, ever asked again.
It had always resonated with a strange foreboding at the heart of him, as if the answer might not be what he wanted to hear. But wasn’t that the essence of all quests? If you could entirely predict the answer, why bother asking the question? Did we want an answer to all such questions?
