“Here we are,” Jill said lightly. She opened the door.

The rubber curtain sucked toward them as they pushed through. Nate was seated at the long table with his computer. He looked up at them casually. “Oh, hey, Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Grover.” Was Jill the only one who could see that he was breathing hard?

Chalmers squinted at him, confused by the hair. “Um… Good morning, uh…”

“Nate Andros.”

“Ah! Yes, of course, Mr. Andros.”

Jill couldn’t believe what she was seeing—or rather, not seeing. The middle of the room was entirely bare except for the subject table. On top of it was one of their old charts that Nate had taken down from the wall. It was laid flat, pencils on top of it as though in recent use. The white board (and the grid) was covered up by another of the huge charts. On the folding table where the mice had been there was only their old coffeepot, dying a slow death. The radio equipment was gone; the subjects were nowhere to be seen. Jill was caught in a surprised smile when she saw several of the platters of fruit near Nate on the equipment table, as though they were for eating. She lifted her eyes to Nate, who was sipping a cup of coffee and looking doggedly at his computer screen. His collarbone rose and fell and his nostrils flared as he tried to catch his breath without being obvious about it. He looked up. Their eyes met.

“What on earth are you doing down here, Jill?” Chalmers sounded perplexed. Grover was stalking the room’s perimeters like a drug-sniffing dog at an airport.

Jill waved an unsteady hand at the charts. “We needed room to spread out. You know how tiny my office is.”

“Well, this is a ridiculous waste of space!”

“No one was using this room, Dick. It was full of old junk. We cleaned it ourselves.”

“It’s still a waste! I’m sure there’s someone who could put it to better use.”

Grover had reached the equipment table. He looked over the top of it, paused where the transmitter had been, looking at the oh, so vacant tabletop. Jill watched him, wondering if there were dust outlines there. She glanced at Nate. He looked worried, too.

“Dr. Grover, how’s it hanging?” he asked.

Grover ignored Nate utterly. His face was a blank. He moved toward Jill and Chalmers at the door.

“Well, Chuck?” Chalmers asked.

Grover fingered the rubber curtain. “What about all this insulation?” He looked up toward the ceiling, pulled the rubber curtain toward her. “Jill? Could you explain why you’d need all this if you’re doodling equations? This looks like sound insulation to me—for radio waves, perhaps?”

“Radio waves!” She huffed, as if this were the silliest thing she’d ever heard. “No, of course not. It was here when we moved in.” She couldn’t meet Grover’s eyes, so she looked at Chalmers instead. She tried to act normal, but “normal” for her meant hardly any facial expression at all and that didn’t seem quite right. She smiled.

“Really? That can be verified, you know. Who had the room before you?”

“I just said; it was empty.”

“Ah! Still. Someone would know. A janitor. Acquisitions.”

She could have socked good old Chuck. He was right. The acquisition of the insulation could easily be traced to her, but she couldn’t back down now. She bit her lips.

Grover turned to Chalmers, his face hard. “You must see this is bullshit, Dick.”

Chalmers grunted. “Jill, I want a full—and I mean full—report of everything you’ve done for the past six months, and I want it on my desk by Friday.”

“But that’s only two days!”

“Five P.M. Friday. And I think you should consider the kind of unproductivity your reclusiveness provokes. Really, this is untenable! From now on I want everyone in the department to know clearly what you’re doing, even if they don’t care. And that goes double for Chuck. When someone in my department makes a commitment to a fellow faculty member, I expect her to keep it.”

Chalmers put a hand on Grover’s arm supportively. “Let’s go, Chuck.”

They left, but not before Grover shot her a venomous look, a look that said, I know you’re lying, bitch.

Jill locked the door behind them and collapsed into a chair. She hid her face in her hands. “Oh god! What an asshole!”

“Are you okay?”

“I think we survived. Thank god for you, Nate. How’d you do it? Where is everything?”

Nate didn’t look relieved. His dark eyes were full of concern. “There’s a storage closet across the hall. Jill, this is not good. They’re going to find out sooner or later and Chalmers is going to be pissed. I really don’t get what you’re afraid of. This is great work. Brilliant, actually.”

Jill couldn’t help feeling a rush of pleasure at the compliment. And he was absolutely right. She’d just outright lied to her department head. She felt sick about it for a moment, a swimmy light-headedness like she was looking over the edge of a precipice. She could visualize getting fired, being thrown out of university life forever.

But surely all would be forgiven if she pulled this off. It would be so huge they’d have no choice. And she could explain to Chalmers about Ansel, about Chuck’s blackmail, about how she’d wanted to be sure before she spoke out. He might understand.

She still had her eye on the prize.

She smoothed her wool slacks. “You’re right, Nate. It’s time to start writing our first major article. We can include everything we’ve done so far. By the time we’re done, the negative one pulse tests should be finished, too.”

“And you want this by Friday?”

“God, no! We might be ready by January, if we bust tail through the holidays.”

“But Chalmers said he wanted it by Friday.”

Jill rattled her fingertips on her collarbone. Yes, he’d been very clear on that. “Damn it,” she muttered. “I’ll have to waste at least two precious days.”

“You’re going to write a bogus report.” Nate sounded really upset. He moved his hand to touch her knee but withdrew it under her frowning gaze. It was a gesture of concern, and she realized it at the same instant she realized why he withdrew it. She’d been looking downward and frowning, and she wanted to say, No, I was just frowning about the situation, not at you. But what would that mean? That she was asking him to touch her knee? And then would he feel like he had to? And would it be awkward because the moment had passed?

She avoided the issue by standing up. “It’s all in the timing, Nate,” she heard herself say, and she sounded so frighteningly like her father that she had a startling moment of self-doubt.

But it was only a moment. January wasn’t all that far away, she reasoned. And with Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Chalmers would be too busy to worry about her. It was ideal, really, because while everyone was absorbed in turkey and caroling, she’d have extra time to get her ducks in a row. It was, as her father might say, an advantage, and even a small advantage could matter if you were smart enough to utilize it just right. And even if Chalmers never would forgive her for lying now, for submitting a phony report, she wouldn’t need Udub after she’d published, not with Harvard and Oxford knocking. But Chalmers would forgive her—look at Chuck: he was an asshole and they kissed his shorts-wearing butt because he was valuable. That’s the way things were in the fast lane, and if you couldn’t play hardball you’d just get crushed by the people who could.

“We’ll have to rush the negative one pulse work a little is all. We’ll take a few more days’ worth of observations at fifty percent, then bump it up to seventy-five. We really ought to have more time, but…”

Nate rose slowly to his feet, his face grim. “Jill, we need to talk.”