Corrupting Dr. Nice Read Online Free Page A

like you, so devoted to knowledge, and nothing else. It's been the most positive experience of my life." He was getting choked up; he ducked his head and stepped onto the Gödel stage.
    "The apatosaurus!" Marks said, while Bill shouted the same words in his mind. It created a disconcerting stereo effect.
    Owen turned sheepishly. He picked up the case. Through the case's sound baffles, he heard Wilma hiss.
    =Moron,= Bill said.
    "Sorry," said Owen to Marks.
    "Please take the strictest care, my boy," his colleague said. "This is the fourth time we've tried to ship a viable sauroid. You know what happened the first three times."
    Owen considered the contretemps at the Stonehenge station. "I remember."
    He stepped onto the time stage, were made infinitely dense, shot out of the universe and returned via wormhole to the next stage, identical, thirty million years up the line. This was merely another research outpost, minimally staffed, and Owen didn't even step off the stage before being sent up the line another twenty million years. He wouldn't stop until he reached a historical period. He fell into the nausea-generating disorientation of repeated shot and return. Each leap forward involved a translation over light years of distance to compensate for the changed position of the earth, and the longer the leap the greater the uncertainties of residual position and momentum. As a result he swayed like a man on the deck of a tossing sailboat.
    Owen concentrated on his plans for his arrival. First he'd check to see that Wilma had managed without serious damage. There would be a lot of reports to make at the university. But eventually he'd have to steel himself for a visit home. He'd have to confront his father, who wanted Owen to keep Wilma at his College of Advanced Thought. It was hard enough for him to be taken seriously as a scientist without having to associate with that circus. And his mother would organize a round of parties and visits to the relatives as a ruse to introduce him to someone's eligible daughter. In the aftermath of his affair with Fiona it was not something he looked forward to.
    Owen's parents had converted the family to the New Victorianism when Owen was ten, and at thirteen sent him off to boarding school in Denton, New Hampshire. His father's idea of initiating Owen into sexuality was interactive erotic VR: get a sexual education without compromising your health or reputation. At school, Owen didn't date. The other preppies chased the townies with single-minded attention. Owen disapproved of his classmates' casual treatment of the working class girls, at the same time he envied their unselfconsciousness. They were not shy about wanting to sleep with girls, about the lies they told to do so, or about having contempt for the girls afterward. Perhaps when, awash in hormones, they told some girl they were in love, they believed it. Certainly Owen was awash in the same hormones. But he did little about it.
    His first sexual experience was with one of these girls, Dahli Brown. She dated Owen's roommate, Adam Coverdale, whose father was the mayor of Hartford. Adam never ceased telling Owen about his sexual exploits with Dahli, but was sickeningly attentive, in a completely phony way, when he met her at a basketball game or virching party. Owen felt sorry for her. Yet he envied Adam.
    One Saturday night Owen was standing outside the Town Mall when Adam screeched up in his Reagan and dumped Dahli on the sidewalk. Her eye makeup was smeared black but she acted like nothing was wrong. Owen called a cab and took her home. On the way she assessed Adam's character flaws with breathtaking accuracy, and then when they got to her house she took Owen in and seduced him. The next day she was back at Adam's arms, and she treated Owen as if nothing had happened.
    He thought of her often after that, with longing, regret, rage, and confusion. Was Dahli using Adam, or was he using her? Owen could never figure women out. He still