Nightstalkers by Bob Mayer Page A

man’s game, and now that he was in his forties, it wasn’t as though his synapses were going to fire more rapidly and come up with a brilliant new theory. He’d seen it in those older than him. It had been a gentle, almost unnoticed slide from original brilliance to his single decent, well-paying idea—now gently fading into the past—to his eventual harrumphing for or against whatever the topic was depending on who was paying him and how much he stood to lose intellectually. Physics was like acting or novel writing or any other venture where one stepped into it with youthful verve and high expectations, but only a handful became Tom Hanks or Hemingway or Einstein.
    Winslow found it amusing that so few understood that blinding ambition was the necessary ingredient of any intelligence or talent. He had the ambition, and as he pushed open the buildingdoor into the stifling heat of summer and the almost empty parking lot, he thought it was ironic that Ivar, his most talented student, had no ambition at all. It was the reason so many successful scientists stole the work of their lessers. Someone had to do something with it. A mind was a terrible thing to waste.
    He walked to his car, the sweat already ruining another good shirt, and thought of Darwin, who’d read Wallace’s letters about evolution; while they shared many theories, Darwin was the one who ran with the big one. How many people knew who Wallace was? Darwin had had the ambition while Wallace had been content to merely be mentioned by the greater man.
    Winslow’s wife, Lilith, had a Serbian grandmother who’d filled her head with tales of Tesla and how Edison had screwed him over, and how even Einstein’s wife, well-educated in her own right and ahead of her time, had lost out on her contributions to her husband. Winslow wasn’t sure he bought into the latter part, but the fact that Lilith was raised with the concept that stealing was an integral part of science made them a good pair in the ambition area. She just didn’t realize he wasn’t Tesla. Poor Tesla, whose better concept for alternating current had been relegated to the electric chair instead of home lighting, due to the manipulations of Edison, who had some of his assistants “accidently” kill animals with AC current to show its “danger” and secretly lobbied to get AC in the electric chair. It wasn’t surprising that no one wanted to turn on a light that shared the same current that Sing Sing used to turn off someone’s lights.
    Winslow smiled. He had to remember that for the dinner party. He pulled his cell phone out and hit the record button so he wouldn’t forget: “No one wants to turn on a light that shares the same current that Sing Sing uses to turn out someone’s lights.”
    Talking into the phone was why he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. It was only as he clicked the record app off that he heard the voice right behind him and almost jumped out of his shoes.
    “I’ve been everywhere but the electric chair and seen everything but the wind.”
    Winslow spun about, the phone held out as if there were some app that could protect you from a stranger sneaking up on you in the dark.
    “Who are you? What are you talking about?”
    The man wore a hat, his face in darkness. There was an implied threat in the way he stood, in just the way he breathed. “Something from my old life. It’s a Nada Yada.”
    “A what?”
    The man gestured with his hand and there was clearly something metallic in it. “Just unlock all the doors and get in the car, Doctor Winslow.”
    Winslow hesitated, considering his options. Swing his briefcase? Run? Scream?
    He pressed the unlock button on his car key as he looked anxiously about at the tall smokestacks poking up above all the lab buildings so they could vent the by-products of various procedures. A distant blue light indicated where you could press an alert for campus police. Very distant. Too distant. Maybe this stranger only wanted the