Enigma Read Online Free Page B

was not enough. He wanted her approval. It had always meant more than the honors and awards he had accumulated with seeming ease, even though it came infrequently and in measured doses. Her blessing would smooth the difficult path ahead. It would give him the reassurance that she thought,this, too, was within his reach.
    What he got was two days of silence, and then a visitor.
    Coming home from his first meeting with the engineering project team to which he had been assigned, he found her waiting for him outside his student flat. They hugged, more out of ritual than warmth of feeling. Her presence made him suddenly anxious, but he was too busy trying to read her mood to realize that he was telegraphing his own emotions.
    She cast a jaundiced eye at the inside of the flat, which was bland where it was not cluttered, but said nothing.
    “Still settling in,” he volunteered.
    She nodded absently, examining the netlink. “A 400 series? That’s a ten-year-old model.”
    “It does everything I need it to.”
    “I suppose,” she said, continuing her inspection. “I’ve been walking around the Institute. It seems more like a warehouse than a school. How many students are here?”
    “About twelve hundred.”
    “Twelve hundred! They can’t be very selective.”
    “It’s very competitive.”
    “Oh, I’m sure, but on what level?” she said, settling in a chair. “Merritt, would you explain why you didn’t come talk with me before doing this?”
    “It wasn’t a hard decision. I didn’t have any doubts that this is what I want.”
    “After I got your message, I went up to Georgetown to talk with Director Stowell. He told me that the door is open for you to return.”
    Thackery nodded. “I know. I didn’t think it was necessary. It was his idea.”
    “He also told me that you’ve already damaged your reputation among the faculty just by doing this, that you’ve raised questions about your ability to take the pressure. He said that if you let as little as three months go by before you return, it’ll be next to impossible for you to regain your former academic standing.”
    Aware of Andra’s mastery of the leading question, Thackery wished he could hear Stowell’s version of the conversation. “That’s sounds about right,” he said lamely.
    “You’re very sanguine about it.”
    “Andra—you don’t seem to understand. I don’t expect to go back.”
    “You don’t seem to understand that you have to go back.”
    “I know this isn’t what you were expecting from me—”
    “Merritt, I know what the cost of taking time out is. I took time out to give you life. I was thirty-one, right in the middle of my career. My column was getting good placement in all three newsnets. I had good relationships not only with my peers, but with Council insiders. I took two years out, and I never caught up.”
    “But they held your job open—” She shook her head. “The rest of the world doesn’t hold still. I was on track to become chief policy interpreter for the whole North American zone. I never got there, because of the time I took out for you. I don’t regret it—you’re the best thing I’ve ever done. But if you let this opportunity slip away, you’re not only making what you’ve done pointless, you make what I did pointless, too.”
    Never much for conflict, Thackery’s stomach had begun to chum. “I haven’t lowered my standards, just changed my goal.”
    “Do you really think that? Do you really think that your future here compares in any way with the future you can still have in Government Service? Director Stowell agrees with me that you have the potential to go all the way to the Council itself.”
    “But, Andra—that’s your script for my life, not mine. That’s not what I want.”
    “A script? Is that the way you think of it? Then what kind of role did I write for myself? I kept you at home until you were ten. How many mothers waited that long to put their children in full-time childcare?