But beyond all else, his heart ached, and at the same time thrilled in anticipation, at the prospects of using his new fringe, perchance to reach her.
"Dr. Lovesigh," interrupted the man holding the phone and on whose lap Dr. Lovesigh glumly sat reflecting. "Excellent news. Fingle found him!"
Chickbrow's enthusiasm was quickly sensed and conveyed. And all hell broke loose for Lovesigh. He did two somersaults, land jarringly on a hard floor, climb up an exposed conduit, fling himself across space and swing breezily and single-handedly hanging on a fluorescent light fixture.
"Quick!" Lovesigh cried, fighting for possession of the chimps speech centers and its incongruous mouth, "sho-ho-w him a banana."
"Here, Champ--," coaxed David Chickbrow, Managing Director of Mite Industries Special Projects Division, and procreator of the professor's most recent misadventure. "Banana, boy!"
Champ plummeted down, all of five meters, waded to the other and climbed back on the lap. Chickbrow could not help but witness the chimp's eyes glow with some sort of delight. He wasn't at all surprised.
"Tha-ha-nk you."
Granted that his host this time was benign and an exceptionally stocked subject of high technology implants that provided him with a consortium of new, and some fascinating even, abilities to toy with: telekinesis, libraries of memory, marginal speech and detection of telepathic waves, a vastly improved biochip synergistic processor, and more. Dr. Lovesigh, nevertheless, hard as he tried could not cope with or have any control upon the beast's strange feral moods and bizarre, sometimes extraordinary and uncannily, 'human' reactions and appetites. No one possibly could, whether inside or outside the beast. Who wants another person under his skin, and for who knows how long.
"Low tones, Chickbrow, ple-he-ase," he managed to say between bites, chews and gulps. The chimp ate humbly stealing quietly glimpses at his bearer.
Fingle came again the next week, hoping to make more sense out of things.
"Abe," the President lit his cigar, "you'll be doing it for the World Confederation. There's nobody out there with your experience involving these four 'somewhat' idiosyncratic but basically benign gentlemen. It's their brilliance we're seeking, not their temperament. Just don't get personally involved. And you'll see things clearer."
Fingle took out his handkerchief and brought it to his forehead. He is sober and all there today, Fingle thought relieved. "Three, Mr. President. The fourth is still a chimpanzee."
He had as much as he could take, with all three. He had already sent in his resignation from what he called 'the animal farm' when the President himself asked to see him this second time.
"How unfortunate. Nothing could be done with Dr. Lovesigh yet?"
It turned out to be a very short session. Simply Xenon's Chief Executive had not accepted his resignation. Also Fingle had never seen the man in such complete candor and disquiet.
"All hope is lost without him, Mr. Fingle."
Fingle's handkerchief automatically covered his nose. "There persist difficulties in that area as well, Mr. President." Awesome ones, he said silently.
President Marcus closed his eyes and expelled a deep sigh.
"I didn't mean it to sound so final, sir," said Fingle, and blotted his forehead with a fresh, dry handkerchief. "We got the body from Dr. Bludrose, and purged the Omega of the convict's reckless soft-brain backup. The cause of our problems all along." Still, something nagged at the back of Fingle's mind.
The man across from him shook and nodded his silver locks, silently, his face riddled and grave.
"Tomorrow we'll be transferring Dr. Lovesigh from the chimpanzee to the new body."
"Is it safe--I mean going through the Omega again?"
What threats had Xenon expelled to drive the man to such a state of despondency? "Bludrose has eradicated all trace of the soft-brain program--the cubed I had shown you, Mr. President," Fingle repeated, to get the man to relax.
Fingle had paid for that cube in blood and raw pain. But he wasn't the only one. Seeing Lovesigh ricochet from light fixture to light fixture as Champ took his daily morning exercises--well, it's not easy for an acrophobic.
A rosy, broad grin produced and accentuated what very few people knew to exist on Fingle's otherwise straight, pinkish face. An adorably charming dimple.
"Want to mete out some of the joke, Mr. Fingle. Or is it privy?"
"Not at all, Mr. President," Fingle said. "Dr. Lovesigh's and the chimp's genes simply don't seem to mix so well."
"The new body should be safer. Less violent."
"...lobotomy...Inherent violent mental attitudes." Just then, Chickbrow's words of a few months ago struck Fingle like a blow from a mallet. Abruptly, the grin faded and the dimple evaporated.
Fingle's face turned utterly solemn. He weighed how much longer Lovesigh could remain inside the monkey against the proclivity of mal-traits--as those possibly dormant in the awaiting convict's body.
"Safer, Mr. President?" he said, feeling his stomach sink.
Mite Industries Special Projects tracking sector resembled a hybrid of the Wall Street Exchange at peak hour and, what used to be, the Strategic Air Command at drill-time.
Chickbrow left the vault door behind. An orchestration of whines and clicks commenced when electronic locks and hydraulic tumblers secured it.
NASA was never like this.
"Obsessed clowns."
He felt entombed within Tutankhamen's Pyramid.
Several familiar faces scurried by, hardly aware of his presence. Paranoia in their eyes.
Knitted brows straightened and the frown lines on his forehead smoothed out. His stride quickened. On the way to the complex center he unbuttoned his collar.
The place reeked of sweat and souring coffee.
The double, glass doors whooshed shut when he crossed the threshold and entered the glazed island, cutting off the noise asunder.
"What's up?"
"Sorry to get you up," Jeremy said, his back to him, his eyes darting over three monitors. "We got a winner here." He shot a glance at a digital read-out then back to the monitors.
Chickbrow propped himself against one of the modules.
Mike Stromberg's raspy voice groaned next to him. "Take a look." He handed him a pad and scooted to his console.
Chickbrow pinched his ear. "Give me relative course shift."
"Twenty-eight degrees, eight minutes..."
"Just rough stuff, Mike."
"...and accelerating."
"What's pulling our little mascot?" Chickbrow's black- looked into Jeremy's light-blue eyes.
"Gravity." Jeremy tried to remain calm. He knew better than to antagonize that falcon gaze. Something about that look gave Jeremy the spooky feeling that he was on trial for his life. The feeling may have been incited by his boss's rather gaunt face, his spearing fixed look and withdrawn smile. Still...Jeremy had been with him all through the five years, attending him as if Chickbrow's edict was a mark on Jeremy's performance. Jeremy weighed painstakingly before he spoke again. "Came out of the jump to reconnoiter..." eye pressure, "...as per standard procedure..." An acrid burning scalded his empty stomach, "...and got locked in a gravity well."
"Try rocketing loose?"
"We'd waste precious fuel--"
"More precious than risking the project?" The lean man walked to a stack of print-outs.
Nothing. Nothing recorded but interstellar vacuum.
As if reading his thoughts Mike returned, "Vacuum doesn't have an attraction field," for an instant their eyes locked, the voice went flat, "equal to a mammoth sun."
Mike Stromberg, short and stocky, got up and headed for the door. It was time to make his rounds a hA Quality of Grace: Part Sevens q q Dating o Cunt a Online Nude hA Quality of Grace: Part Sevenp y y Sex Dating b Man Porn