Fatal Reaction

begging for,” Stephen said as soon as I stepped into the room.
    “You’ve been pleading for them ever since you moved into the building,” I ventured uncertainly. Normally I would have expected that the power company’s coming through would be considered good news. Azor had been suffering through brownouts and starved for electricity for months, but everything about the two men’s demeanor spelled catastrophe. “When are they going to do it?” I asked, uneasily.
    “Commonwealth Edison has informed us they are shutting off our power this Friday at five P.M. and working on the installation over the weekend,” reported Carl. He sounded sick.
    “When will they turn it back on?”
    “They say six A.M. Monday,” said Stephen.
    “But that’s the day Takisawa is set to arrive here at Azor,” I protested. “I assume you’ve already asked them to push the work ahead by a day or two....”
    Carl nodded miserably indicating that he had and to no avail.
    “Then what about rescheduling Takisawa?” I asked, wondering how many things could go wrong before it could be safely concluded that the deal was jinxed.
    “We’re having cash-flow problems as it is,” snapped Stephen. “We can’t afford any more delays.”
    “How will the power shutdown affect the work in the labs?”
    “Virology will be hardest hit, of course,” responded Carl. “The air handlers on the sixth floor completely exchange the atmosphere every six minutes. It will take several days to get that system back up and running after it’s been shut down. I’m also not sure how many of the experimental animals will have to be moved to other quarters.” I wondered where you’d find someone willing to take on a couple hundred rodents for the weekend but didn’t say anything.
    “Hematology, of course, will just be happy for the day off.”
    “What about the ZK-501 project?” I asked, thinking about all of Dave Borland’s work in the cold rooms and what Lou Remminger had said about crystals having to be grown under ideal conditions.
    “I figure we’ll shut down the computers and bring in a diesel-powered refrigeration unit. Our tissue and reagent inventories, which aren’t quite so sensitive, will be fine if we just turn the temperature down in the cold rooms as far as it will go and tape the rooms shut. Theoretically they’ll hold below freezing until the juice comes back up on Monday morning.”
    “And if they don’t get the power back up in time?” I asked.
    “In that case I suggest we all show up bright and early with mops and flashlights,” replied Stephen, without the slightest trace of humor.
    * * *
    By the time I finally sat down at Danny’s desk I felt as though I’d already lived through a year’s worth of catastrophe and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. With a heavy heart I turned around and checked the fax machine for the transmissions that had arrived from Takisawa overnight.
    Instead of slowing things down, the time difference between Chicago and Tokyo had a weirdly accelerating effect. Fifteen hours ahead of us, the Japanese business day ended as mine began. This meant I’d spend the day crafting our response to their most recent fax which I’d transmit to them at the end of the day. With the time difference they’d receive it just as they were arriving for work. Thus the faxes shot back and forth, communications hurtling forward much faster than if Takisawa were across the street.
    I read through the various communications intently. There were requests for details about their proposed itinerary and politely worded inquiries as to when they would be receiving the financial information they had thus far requested. All the faxes were still personally addressed to Danny. Stephen had yet to settle on a strategy for breaking the news of Danny’s death to Takisawa.
    The last fax in the pile was the shortest, but I still had to read it through twice. Its contents were so disturbing that they got me on my feet and propelled me down the hall to Stephen’s office. The door was closed, but I didn’t even bother to knock.
    “We have to tell Takisawa about Danny,” I said.
    “I’ll have to get back to you,” Stephen said quickly to whomever he was talking to on the phone. Once he had hung up the receiver I handed him the fax.
    “It’s marked personal to Danny,” I told him.
    Stephen read it quickly. It was a short personal note from Takisawa’s son-in-law, Hiroshi, saying that he would be traveling to New York