“Yes, yes, Tiffany, I know, but time had to be found somewhere. Forrest is in complete accord with the decision, and I really don’t see what I can be expected to do about it.”

Apparently, neither did she. She made a disgusted motion with her hand and folded her arms. “The hell with it,” she muttered and subsided, defeated.

Dr. Haddon cleared his throat. “Now, if no one has further objections, I should like to discuss a few related matters to make sure there is no misunderstanding.” He paused. “Are there any objections?”

Jerry Baroff dipped his chin and passed the back of his hand over his mouth to hide a yawn. Tiffany stared morosely at the floor, no doubt framing the rebuttals and counterstatements she wished she’d made. Arlo Gerber, turtlelike and opaque, offered a convincing impression of a man giving his attention to some unpleasant digestive happening. Whether from malice or constitutional deficiency, Dr. Haddon’s audience appeared to have sunk into impenetrability.

Abruptly, Dr. Haddon suffered one of his increasingly frequent sinkings of the heart. The thought of ending his long career-he who had worked alongside Aldred and James- with this sorry crew as his companions in the pursuit of knowledge weighed heavily on his aging shoulders. Just look at them. What was going on in those closed and brutish minds?

Was anything?

Chapter Three

How did people like Clifford Haddon get that way, Arlo Gerber asked himself as Haddon prattled away. So full of themselves, so in love with their own voices, so certain that any remark that came to their lips would fall on ears eager to catch every shimmering phrase. Haddon didn’t converse, he delivered speeches, self-indulgent and meandering, thickly interlarded with previously worked-out gems of wit. Comments and questions were brushed aside as so many bothersome obstructions to the grand narrative flow.