Mike & Karen Ch. 18

"Yes, but everyone- uhn!- everyone else might clue in."

"They've gotta know sooner or later," Alex panted, pulling her back tighter against himself with each thrust of his hips. It wouldn't be long for either of them now. "If they don't already."

"God, Alex!" Alexa keened, straining, and feeling his cock swell inside her. "Give it to me!"

Alex thrust as deep inside her as he could, grunting and releasing a gush of his sperm as his hips jackhammered against her ass. Alexa moaned, shuddering and cumming, her pussy gripping him fiendishly. They writhed against each other, lost in bliss until she sagged back against him.

"Another room down," she breathed finally, wiping the sweat from her forehead. "How many thousand to go?"

"Even I lose track of how many rooms this place has," he chuckled, reaching up and cupping her large breasts, massaging them and making her purr. "Pretty sure even mom's forgotten, and that only dad knows."

Alexa massaged her clit, her gooey pussylips, and his cock while she floated back down to earth from her orgasm. "Kinda funny, when you consider that she's-"

The doors at the other end of the greenhouse opened, and at least two people came in, talking. Still mostly naked, Alexa threw herself into the storage space beneath the plant beds she'd been bracing herself against. She was almost gone before Alex had even realized she was moving. She was fast when she panicked. It reminded him of the hotel bedroom in Gatineau last summer, when his mother had almost caught them.

He clambered in after her, remembering to grab the clothes they had shed and curling up next to her. As quietly as he could, he shut the sliding door and they waited, still having no idea who had entered. He reached over and clasped her hand, and even in the dark, he swore he could see her blue eyes looking at him.

"The greenhouses, they are divided into many sections," they heard Marie Jezequel, the new botanist and gardener for the estate, explain to someone. To Alexa's continentally-trained ear, she clearly had a Breton accent. "In this one, they are keeping the plants that require the greatest heat and humidity, many of them tropical."

"I was about to say, it is a tad warm in here," they heard David the senior landscaper reply. "I somehow doubt many of these items will be making it into the gardens outside."

"If they do, it will only be for specific events, so we will need to make sure they are primed to survive, yes?" she reasoned.

"The heat reminds me of back home," Tunde said. "Although it is really only this humid around the Cape." He had grown up in South Africa, just after Apartheid has ended, and his parents had sent him to Canada to get away from the turmoil.

"They apparently grow fruits and vegetables from all over in some of these greenhouses," Marie mentioned, her voice getting closer. "It is never a bad thing to have your own produce to eat."

"I noticed one of the greenhouses had quite a bit of reflective Mylar in its windows," Dave said, his voice implying something. "Are we responsible for that greenhouse as well?"

"Only if you can be trusted with it," she answered plainly. "They have over five hundred healthy, licensed plants, the produce of which are donated free of charge to compassion clinics."

"Well, I'm not a user, so I'm okay with helping out," Dave grunted.

"And I may be an occasional user, but I too can be trusted," Tunde added.

"Excellent, because I will no doubt need help; too much exposure to the strong smell can give me a headache," Marie announced. "Questions about this room, messieurs?"

There was a pause before Dave spoke. "Looks like someone's handprint on the moisture of the window. Two of 'em, in fact. Someone's been in here recently."

"And?"

"Well, why did they have their hands on the window like that?"

Alex felt Alexa squeeze his hand as they waited quietly.

"The owners can no doubt do as they wish, and avail themselves of these facilities in any manner they so choose," she said firmly. "It is our job to make sure that things work and look ship-shape, no matter what they might do."

"Gonna be weird having to peek into a room to make sure I'm not interrupting anything," Dave mused.

"You will get used to it," she replied. "What would you do in any event?"

"If I see Mrs. DeBourne naked and then Mr. DeBourne sees me seeing her naked?" Tunde asked. "Pray to my ancestors and run."

"Say a prayer for me too, because I'll be running right beside you," Dave chuckled.

"Not if I pray for them to trip you," Tunde pointed out. "I must only outrun you, after all."

"Mais arrête," Marie said, an amused sigh in her voice. "We must work closely, since it is my job to grow the plants that you two must display to perfection. I am glad you both know bonsai, because I will need your patience. Let us go, I want to show you the roses now, they are the crown jewel of these collections."

Alex and Alexa waited until they heard the greenhouse door close, and then waited almost another full minute. He quietly slid the door of the storage space they were in open and peered around carefully. Convinced it was safe, he clambered out and then helped Alexa through the aperture and to her feet.

"Here I was worried about getting splinters in my ass hiding in there, but the space was lined with padding. Lucky me, hm?" she sighed.

Alex smiled. "Knowing mom, she probably had it put in there in case she ever had to hide to avoid getting caught misbehaving with some boy or girl when she was younger. True, dad wouldn't fit in there, but it could be a precaution from decades ago."

The blonde goddess considered and nodded. "That makes sense, when you consider how good my big sissy is at math and playing the odds..."

***

St. George Campus, 1987...

The lecture hall was full of people, members of the Sciences faculty, and their students. Everyone was in attendance to hear the decision of Dean Marks and the advisory board about the distribution of funds, and precious lab time. Theoretical had had it easy in recent years, being handed the lion's share of funds and lab time while coasting on its reputation as the cool kid of the sciences. They dealt most often with the direct applications of quantum mechanics, and in fact it was often them who made the proposals about how such things worked.

It often seemed like it was just the jobs of the other disciplines to check and make sure they weren't full of shit.

Not this year, Karen thought as she sat in her chair next to several other students from Mathematical, the branch that in times past had always seemed to sit on the edge of everyone's consciousness, their only purpose being to crunch numbers. Who needed lab time for that? No, this year will be different.

She looked around and noticed that off in one corner, several members of Theoretical was sitting together, and seemed extremely subdued, even glum. She couldn't blame them, and maybe even felt a little bad for them. But she indeed remembered hearing Gergo shoot his mouth off one night in a lounge, when he thought nobody else could hear him, announcing to several other members of his discipline that Theoretical was the natural, leading scientific field, and should be giving the most funding by default, the other departments didn't matter. They'd all laughed.

Except DeBourne, who hadn't been there. It was hard to imagine him putting up with that sort of braggadocio nonsense. She espied him now, standing near the back of the room and leaning against the wall, his arms folded in front of himself.

He seemed... dull-eyed.

I did what I had to do, she thought to herself, realizing that she regretted none of it, except its necessity. Our project this year is great and deserves every bit as much consideration. But the bias had to be removed.

Maybe there would be a way to make it up to him after?

Once everyone was settled in, Dean Marks began to address everyone. "It was a good semester, and all the departments did great work. Several projects are being shared with other institutions, such as Stanford, Caltech, Oxford, and MIT."

Karen nodded, knowing for a fact that her work was good enough to be shared with and admired by any of those institutions.

"That being said, it is with no small awe that I can announce that this year's winner, who gets first cut of funds and lab time, will be Theoretical, with their incredible treatise on Compactification in Calabi-Yau Manifolds in Four Dimensions."

Those listening on were stunned, and Karen not least. She blinked in astonishment before looking over at the students and professors from Theoretical, sitting in a little group. They all seemed shocked and were whispering to one another. Clearly, they had no idea this was going to happen.

She flicked her head to looked at DeBourne, who was still at the back of the room. He'd hung his head and seemed to sigh heavily, his eyes closed.

Karen looked back at the front of the room, where Dean Marks and several members of the committee were sitting, talking amongst themselves. She was tempted to storm down and loudly berate them for this enormous abuse of trust and position but was also not about to make a scene. It was possible nobody would remember the bias scandal, but everyone would certainly remember her railing on about it.

Calmly, she turned to the other members of her discipline, all of whom seemed overwhelmed and even heartbroken, and told them she was going to go down and discuss matters with the dean. She got up and calmly walked over to the tables where the committee members were seated and nodded to them. Because it was Karen Gordon who had come up, they all stopped talking and acknowledged her.

"I hate to say it, Miss Gordon, because it was a tough decision," Dean Marks said, tapping his finger on the pile of various submissions. "It was Math or Theoretical this year, and they beat you out by a micrometer."

"I'll admit to small surprise," to said evenly, taking in everyone's gaze with her own. "I was under the impression that they had missed the submission deadline."

"Nope," Marks said, tapping one particular submission held together with clipping rings. "It came in pretty much at the buzzer."

"Is it that good?" she asked pointedly.

"I hate to say it, since I hate giving DeBourne credit for anything, but it's stunning," Marks muttered, making several of the other committee members chuckle. The dean's loathing for the titan student was almost legendary. "It's nothing short of revolutionary."

"May I see it?" she asked.

Marks handed her the submission. It had to be almost three hundred pages. She began leafing through it, her expression betraying nothing, but her mind was whirling. She flipped through one page after another, looking for the flaws and being forced to come to a very unwelcome conclusion.

The math had been corrected and was absolutely flawless. These theorems were indeed groundbreaking.

"It is impressive," she mused, nodding. "And it can be applied to fields virtually immediately."

"I think that was the deciding factor, Miss Gordon," said another committee member, a woman whom Karen considered to be fair and unbiased. "Your work on quantum cryptography is no less elegant, and no less of a revolution, but it is meant for computers that are, if we are lucky, two decades away, more likely three. It's visionary, but oddly enough, theoretical, because we don't have computers to apply it to yet."

"We may have given the grand prize, so to speak, to Theoretical," Marks added, looking at her. "But I will tell you now, Miss Gordon, that your work is nothing short of stunning, and we live in constant terror of losing you to Oxford or MIT."

"I am not going anywhere, sir," she assured them. "This is a world-class university, with world-class scientific facilities, and I will do my damnedest to make sure it gets the recognition it deserves. Witness, if you will, the submission from Mathematical."

They all laughed and agreed with her, singing her praises. She was only half-listening as she turned to look over at Theoretical- the students and professors were all still there, seated and talking amongst themselves in a tight group, seemingly excited. But one person was absent. She looked around the room.

Michael DeBourne was nowhere to be seen.

***

Mike shuffled toward the exits from the building, feeling incredibly weary. Now that business was over, he could-

"DeBourne..."

He came to a halt and sighed, just standing still. He felt her coming up behind and then she was in front of him, looking up into his face. Her golden-amber eyes never ceased to unnerve him, with the raw intellect they displayed. They were enchanting and terrifying to him.

Karen felt like she was gazing up at a colossus, like the giant bronze statue Talos from Greek mythology. DeBourne simply stared down at her, his laser-blue eyes boring through her, stripping away defenses and artifice, and leaving her exposed. It terrified and thrilled her in ways it would take years to admit to. She stood her ground now, determined to get her answers.

"How?" she asked.

"How what?" he asked in return. He knew exactly what she was asking, but he was tired and grumpy enough that he was going to make her say it. She'd survive.

"You managed to correct that entire theorem, from back to front, and then front to back, weeding out the bad math and replacing it with working equations," she stated. "In that length of time? How?"

He shrugged tiredly. "I don't rightly know, Gordon. But I did, because I had to."

Karen started to have a clear picture of what had happened. When he had retreated to his room, he wasn't sulking- he had holed himself up with the completely mangled and aborted theory and rebuilt it from the ground up. Everyone had been worried sick, but he was playing endless tracks of Seventies rock in order to mask any sound of the intense work he was doing.

"But... your whole team, even with your professors, couldn't have done that in the length of time you had left," she almost protested. "Even so, how did you do it? I'm better at the math than you are."

"No, you're faster at the math than I am, which is terrifying to think about, because I am damned fast," he said firmly, his expression bordering on weary irritation. "You pushed me to my absolute limit, Gordon. I haven't slept for days, and nothing except desperation saw me through. To think that you almost whimsically deconstructed all that math from a theory you hadn't even fully seen, that's jaw-dropping. It took everything I had to correct that paper and submit it at the wire. Marks was less than pleased."

Karen closed her eyes for a moment, thinking about what he was saying. When she opened them, her expression was neutral, but her voice conveyed endless depths of meaning.

"I am saying this because I am hoping it will help me continue to grow in the future," she began, still looking up at him. "But you genuinely outdid me this time, DeBourne. You were the superior mind in this round. And I do not begrudge you that, because it will help keep me striving. I want complacency to be your department's flaw, not mine."

Mike sighed and shook his head. "Maybe this time I got you, Gordon, but I'm not your superior. I sat at my desk and worked for days straight, giving myself the headache from Hell, and staring at equations until my eyes were bleeding. I have never been pushed so hard in my life. I shouldn't be surprised that you were its impetus."

Exhausted as he felt, he smiled at her wearily. "But for the record, I now, more than ever, understand the desperation that drove you to do what you did, Gordon. And I think you were right. I almost feel bad for winning."

"Well, there's no need to lie," she muttered, trying to scowl and finding she couldn't quite. "I just... we'd been overlooked because of bias too many times, and enough was enough. Extreme measures were required."

"I can identify," he said, nodding. "And I am sorry that I was not hearing that plight, Gordon. If I had, I would have found a way to help quash the phenomenon. I'd just as soon see our disciplines not competing at all, but working together. It would be more efficient. And it'd be nice to have you as an ally instead of a competitor."

"And I am genuinely sorry as well, DeBourne," she said honestly. "Maybe, just maybe, if you and I approach the Dean and his flunkies, we can make then rethink the current arrangement and begin finding more progressive interdisciplinary ways to do this."

"That would make me happy," he agreed. "I'd love to find ways to work that quantum cryptography of yours into my projects. That submission of yours was nothing short of amazing. I was stunned by how sublime the numbers were."

"You read it?" she asked, feeling her cheeks get warm.

"Of course," he replied. "Best thing I've read in ages, and that's including the M.Y.T.H. Inc. series by Robert Asprin."

"I don't know what that is, but thanks," Karen murmured, trying not to blush and play with her hair. "Still, I have quite a few valuable lessons coming out of this. First, never trust Janet, Mona, and Red with secrets meant to be kept from you, they're useless. And secondly, it's nice to know I have a true peer on campus. It makes me feel like I'm part of an elite club, and not just an outsider."

She looked up at him now, almost grimacing. "You look like death, man. You need to sleep for a week. I'll make sure I tell my three 'confidantes' that you're well, and that you just need to hibernate for a bit. They've been worried."

"And you?"

She gave him an unimpressed look. "I am not the worrying type to begin with, and you are seemingly indestructible, so there was nothing to worry about. Shall I let you go, O victor?"

"One question first, Gordon," he said as he straightened up. Gods, he was tall!

"Ask away, Atlas."

"How many original versions of that thesis of yours are there?" he queried.

"Two," she answered. "One we gave to the committee, and the other I kept for myself."

"Could you possibly snatch back the one you gave the committee and replace it with a copy?" he asked. "Because I would really like to have an original, especially if you would sign it for me."

This time, Karen didn't even try to keep from blushing.

***

Blackwell Manor, the present...

"How are you liking your time here so far, Miss Prospero?" asked Karen as she walked along the hallway next to one of their new employees. "I hope it's been pleasant for you?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am," the younger woman said, nodding. They were both carrying small boxes containing décor for the vestibules on the staff level, and they would be arranged in the next day or so. Work around the property continued apace, with the most effort put into everyone's sleeping quarters and rooms related to their duties, for obvious reasons. "So much different than anywhere else I've worked before now."

"Well, you worked for the Duncolms before us, so one would hope that was the case," replied the mistress of the manor. "Believe me, you are not the first person to stop working for them for harassment reasons, and I doubt you will be the last. But I am sorry it happened to you, Miss Prospero."

"No worries, ma'am. I'm here now, and this is great. My co-workers are great, my job is fantastic, and I get amazing vibes from my employers, so what's not to appreciate?" Valentina almost gushed. Karen already enjoyed her simple enthusiasm.

"Do you have any questions you would like to ask?" queried Karen. "About what you have seen or observed so far? It's okay to ask."

Valentina stopped for a moment and pursed her lips as she struggled to figure out how to ask something. "You sure?"