Читать книгу Sweet Talking Money - Harry Bingham - Страница 23

The final stage was the laboratory. Kati took a quick inventory of the place where she’d spent so many hours.

‘This PC,’ she said. ‘And this.’

She placed her hand on a domed chamber about four feet in diameter. It was built of white metal, had a control panel at the side, and a number of leads connecting it to the computer.

‘And this would be … ?’

‘The correct term for this would be the White Blood Cell Immune Modulation and Reprogramming Facility.’ Kati stroked the domed surface with affectionate familiarity. ‘But since it’s where blood cells come to learn how to be better blood cells, we usually just call it the Schoolroom.’

Watched anxiously by Kati every step of the way, Bryn hefted the Schoolroom to the truck.

‘No, not on the crates. It needs cushioning. Don’t just drop it. Gently. There.’

Kati settled some old blankets under the Schoolroom and all around it, till it was swaddled like a baby on New Year’s Eve, peering up at them like a giant white eye.

‘D’you want to feed it?’ he asked. ‘Get it some treats for the journey?’

Kati looked at him, her face still clear and pretty after an exhausting night. ‘Don’t joke,’ she said. ‘The Schoolroom is your future now. You’d better take care of it.’

The comment shot home like a crossbow bolt. The Schoolroom is your future now … Was he really going to throw in one of the most lucrative careers open to a human being, in favour of … what? Some twenty-something scientist who did good things for rats, whom he’d met properly little more than twelve hours before, who’d had her paper rejected by a top American medical journal, who’d been accused of cheating and was unable to clear her name?

‘I must be mad,’ he said, settling the blankets more closely round the big white dome. ‘Mad as they come.’