"Ally, Dr. Van der Vliet... I don't know how much I should tell you, but he's a miracle worker." He paused and looked down at his scotch. One thing about him was definitely different, she thought. There was a lot less bravado and swagger. "The thing is, what he's doing is so powerful. I'm not sure which worries me most--that it's not true, that it's just some placebo effect, or that it is true. When I think about the implications . . ." His voice trailed off again. "Go on." She could tell he was dead serious. "It's not something I'm sure I should talk about." He reached over and touched her hand. "But it's working, I swear. He's doing things that shouldn't even be possible." Uh-huh, she thought, pulling her hand away. "Grant, please tell me exactly what you think he could do for Mom." She wasn't sure she should be having this conversation. "You want her to go out to the Dorian Institute, right? Where he does his 'research.' And I take it that's where you want me to go too." "It's in northern Jersey, about an hour's drive from the city, maybe not even if traffic's light. But I'd only want Mom to go if you say it's okay. I'm not trying to do anything behind your back." She breathed a long sigh, trying to clear her brain. Every other word he uttered was probably part of some hustle. But what was it? "Why don't we start at the beginning, Grant? I read his CV, and believe me I've got a lot of questions. For starters, how did he convince Winston Bartlett to bankroll him?" She took another sip of her tequila, then set it down. "You're his flunky now, so you should be able to answer that question." "You read the materials I left?" "Just finished them." "Then you know he lost his federal funding at Stanford a few years back, when he was at a critical stage of his research using stem cells. That's when he came to the Man and persuaded him to put up the money to help him take everything private. The only way Bartlett would play ball was if he could buy the Gerex Corporation and get three-quarter interest in all the patents. Van de Vliet kept the other quarter, but now they're both hoping to sell off forty-nine percent to a big pharmaceutical company. Not American. I can't tell you any more than that." "Congratulations," she said. "Sounds like your job is secure." "Yeah, right." That twitch of nonchalance he had when something really mattered--even as a child he would attempt (and fail) trying not to gloat over some personal success. It was moments like this when she realized she'd missed seeing him and talking to him. When you cut a family member off from you, you also cut yourself off from them. After all, he was her closest blood kin, even though he was an unreconstructed shit. At some level she wished she could get past the bitterness she felt toward him. Could it be he really had changed?