CHAPTER ONE THE AWARD NIGHT
Chloe Harcourt had been told three separate times not to slouch.
The first had been from her mother before they left home.
The second had been from her father in the car.
The third came now, without a word, when Camille Delacroix-Harcourt reached across the small round table and pressed two fingers lightly between Chloe’s shoulder blades.
Chloe straightened.
“For the record,” she muttered, “I wasn’t slouching.”
Camille gave her a look.
Chloe held herself upright for another five seconds, then leaned towards her father.
“Was I slouching?”
Dr Owen Harcourt took a thoughtful sip of wine.
“Dangerous question.”
“Dad.”
“I’ve been married to your mother for seventeen years. I know a trap when I see one.”
Across the table, Camille smiled sweetly.
“Good answer.”
Chloe rolled her eyes and looked back towards the stage.
The Oakhaven Civic Hall had been transformed for the annual Victorian Science and Innovation Awards, although transformed was probably generous. Someone had dimmed the lights, covered the tables in white cloth, added far too many small glass candles and placed enormous screens on either side of the stage.
It still looked like a civic hall.
Just one wearing a suit.
Around them sat scientists, engineers, university representatives, government officials and enough people in expensive jackets to make Chloe suddenly conscious of the fact that her dress had come from a shop at Oakhaven Central.
She tugged at one sleeve.
Camille noticed.
“Stop.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re picking at it.”
“It’s itchy.”
“You said you liked it.”
“I liked it when I tried it on for four minutes.”
Owen leaned towards her.
“Scientific error. Insufficient testing period.”
Chloe snorted.
Camille looked between them.
“You two are impossible.”
“You married one of us,” Chloe said.
“And produced the other,” Owen added.
Camille sighed.
“Clearly my greatest failures have been peer review.”
Chloe grinned.
That was better.
Formal events always made her feel as though she had somehow wandered into somebody else’s life.
Her parents fitted here.
They knew people.
They stopped every few metres to speak to someone from a university, a government department, another research institute or some company Chloe had vaguely heard mentioned over dinner.
Her mother could move from talking about butterfly scale structures to discussing funding allocations without missing a beat.
Her father seemed to know half the room and annoy most of them affectionately.
Chloe mostly smiled when introduced and tried not to forget names before the person had finished shaking her hand.
She recognised more people from Meridian than she expected.
Some worked with her parents in Research.
Others belonged to Development.
There was a difference.
A very important difference, apparently.
Chloe had grown up hearing about it.
Research asked questions.
Development turned the answers into things people could sell.
That was Owen’s version.
Jonathan Mantiss’s version was that Research spent ten years discovering something obvious and Development had to make it useful.
Her father’s response usually involved language Camille objected to at the dinner table.
Tonight, Jonathan had the stronger argument.
His name filled both enormous screens beside the stage.
DR JONATHAN MANTISS
MERIDIAN INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
Below it appeared a photograph of something that looked like a curved black panel.
HARDENED CARAPACE SHIELDING
Chloe leaned towards her father.
“That’s it?”
Owen looked offended on Jonathan’s behalf.
“That is years of work.”
“It looks like a bit of plastic.”
“It is a very advanced bit of plastic.”
Camille glanced at him.
“Owen.”
“What?”
“You know perfectly well it isn’t plastic.”
“I’m simplifying for the youth.”
“The youth is sixteen.”
Chloe raised her hand slightly.
“The youth still thinks it looks like plastic.”
From somewhere behind them came a familiar voice.
“I can have both of you removed.”
Chloe twisted in her chair.
Jonathan Mantiss stood behind Owen with one hand resting on the back of the empty seat beside him.
He looked annoyingly comfortable in a dinner jacket.
Jonathan was one of those adults Chloe had known for so long that she had no memory of meeting him. He existed in childhood photographs, birthday barbecues, Christmas gatherings and stories from before she was born.
He and Owen had known each other since high school.
Which, according to Chloe, made them both ancient.
Jonathan was in his mid-forties, a little taller than Owen, with dark hair beginning to show grey near the temples and the perpetually alert expression of someone whose mind had already moved on to the next conversation before everyone else had finished the current one.
Tonight he looked more polished than usual.
Usually Chloe saw him at Meridian with sleeves rolled up and an access card clipped somewhere to his clothes.
Jonathan pointed at the screen.
“Advanced composite biological architecture.”
Owen nodded gravely.
“Plastic.”
Jonathan pulled out the empty chair.
“I hope your daughter puts you in a home.”
“I’m counting on her being rich enough to afford a good one.”
“That seems optimistic.”
Chloe smiled.
Jonathan looked towards her.
“Still time to choose a lucrative career, Chloe.”
“Oh no.”
“You haven’t even heard the offer.”
“You’re going to tell me to become a scientist.”
“A Development scientist.”
Owen made a noise of disgust.
Jonathan ignored him.
“Better budgets. Better toys. Occasionally we produce something people actually use.”
“Still didn’t thank the cicadas,” Owen said.
Jonathan paused.
“I heard that.”
Owen took another drink.
“Did you thank them?”
Jonathan looked at him.
“Did they file the patent?”
Chloe laughed.
Camille shook her head.
“You realise both of you are supposed to represent Meridian tonight.”
“We do,” Jonathan said. “He represents the part that complains about funding.”
“And he represents the part that steals our work and puts a logo on it,” Owen replied.
“Translates.”
“Steals.”
“Translates.”
Camille looked at Chloe.
“This has been going on for approximately twenty-eight years.”
“Thirty,” Jonathan corrected.
Owen frowned.
“Jesus.”
Jonathan seemed momentarily disturbed by the number.
“That can’t be right.”
“It is,” Camille said.
Chloe smiled at the expression on both men’s faces.
“You’re old.”
“Thank you, Chloe,” Jonathan said.
“Any time.”
An event coordinator appeared near the stage and waved discreetly towards Jonathan.
His expression shifted.
Only slightly.
But Chloe noticed.
For all the jokes and casual confidence, he was nervous.
Jonathan checked his jacket.
“Apparently I’m required.”
Owen reached up and caught his wrist briefly before he moved away.
“Hey.”
Jonathan looked down.
Owen’s teasing expression had disappeared.
“You earned it.”
For a second Jonathan said nothing.
Then he gave a small nod.
“Thanks.”
He looked at Camille.
She smiled.
“Go.”
Jonathan turned towards the stage.
Chloe watched him weave through the tables as applause began to rise around the room.
A photograph appeared on the screens.
Not of the finished panel this time.
An insect.
Dark-bodied, segmented and ugly enough that Chloe recognised it immediately from growing up around her parents.
“Beetle?” she whispered.
Owen nodded.
“Diabolical ironclad beetle.”
“That’s seriously its name?”
“Phloeodes diabolicus.”
Chloe looked at him.
“I liked the first one better.”
On stage, the presenter began explaining Jonathan’s work.
The diabolical ironclad beetle possessed an extraordinarily strong exoskeleton capable of surviving crushing forces that would destroy most insects.
Jonathan’s Development team had studied the way its body handled pressure.
Not just hardness.
Structure.
Interlocking sections.
Layers that could shift microscopically under stress.
Damage distributed through the material instead of travelling through a single fracture.
Chloe found herself listening.
The finished shielding was lighter than conventional alternatives and could absorb enormous impact without catastrophically failing.
Prototype applications were already being tested for rescue helmets, industrial protection, emergency-service equipment and lightweight structural panels.
A new development contract would expand those trials.
Jonathan walked onto the stage to applause.
Owen clapped hard enough to be obnoxious.
Camille joined him.
Chloe did too.
Jonathan shook hands, accepted the award and moved towards the microphone.
He waited for the room to quiet.
“I had a speech.”
Owen whispered, “God help us.”
Camille elbowed him.
Jonathan glanced down at the award in his hand.
“Unfortunately, I made the mistake of sitting near Owen Harcourt before coming up here, so any remaining confidence has been professionally dismantled.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the room.
Owen lifted his glass.
Jonathan pointed towards him.
“That man has spent the better part of three decades reminding me that Development would have nothing to develop without Research.”
Owen nodded enthusiastically.
“Correct.”
More laughter.
Jonathan smiled.
“And because tonight is being recorded, I would like it formally documented that Research is occasionally useful.”
Owen put a hand to his chest.
Chloe laughed with everyone else.
Then Jonathan became more serious.
“The natural world has been solving engineering problems for hundreds of millions of years.”
The beetle returned to the screens behind him.
“We tend to look at an insect this size and see something insignificant.”
Jonathan held two fingers a few centimetres apart.
“Small. Common. Easy to overlook.”
He lowered his hand.
“But evolution doesn’t care whether something impresses us.”
The image shifted to magnified structures inside the beetle’s exoskeleton.
“It cares whether it works.”
Chloe glanced at her father.
Owen had stopped joking.
He was watching his friend with obvious pride.
Jonathan continued.
“Our team didn’t invent the architecture behind Hardened Carapace Shielding. Nature did that.”
Owen raised his eyebrows at Chloe as if to say See?
Jonathan must have spotted him.
“And yes, Owen, the cicadas will be appropriately thanked in the expanded publication.”
The room laughed again.
Owen leaned towards Chloe.
“Victory.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Jonathan finished by thanking his team, Meridian, the researchers whose work had fed into the project and the organisations funding its next stage.
When he stepped away from the microphone, the applause was louder than before.
Chloe watched him return to the table several minutes later with the award tucked under one arm.
Owen immediately reached for it.
Jonathan moved it away.
“No.”
“I just want to see it.”
“You’ll drop it.”
“I handle live insects for a living.”
“Exactly.”
Owen looked offended.
Camille held out her hand.
Jonathan gave the award to her without hesitation.
“See?” Owen said. “That’s hurtful.”
“Camille is responsible.”
“She married me.”
Jonathan considered that.
“Fair criticism.”
Chloe leaned over to look at the award.
His name was engraved beneath the event logo.
It was heavier than it looked.
Camille passed it to her.
Chloe turned it carefully in her hands.
“Congratulations.”
Jonathan’s smile softened.
“Thank you.”
She handed it back.
“So now you’re famous?”
“Tragically.”
“Do famous scientists get rich?”
Owen laughed.
Jonathan stared at her.
“No.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Chloe,” Camille said.
“No, I think she has identified a structural flaw in the industry,” Jonathan replied.
Dinner arrived.
Conversation moved away from awards and towards food, Meridian gossip and whether Owen had actually remembered to submit something Camille had asked him to submit three days earlier.
He hadn’t.
Chloe listened without really listening.
Her attention wandered towards the stage, then around the room.
Scientists.
Engineers.
Researchers.
People who apparently knew exactly what they were doing with their lives.
Or at least dressed as though they did.
She wondered whether her parents had always known.
Probably.
Owen had stories about insects from when he was a kid.
Camille had grown up fascinated by butterflies and moths.
Jonathan had apparently been pulling apart radios and building things before he was old enough to drive.
Chloe had...
Nothing.
Not nothing exactly.
She liked things.
Movies.
Music.
Photography when she could be bothered.
She liked biology more than she admitted, mostly because refusing to like biology in the Harcourt house would have required actual effort.
She wasn’t bad at school.
She wasn’t brilliant either.
Not like them.
The thought had been bothering her increasingly whenever teachers mentioned Year Twelve, university applications or careers.
Everyone seemed determined to ask sixteen-year-olds what they intended to do with the next fifty years.
Jonathan caught her staring into space.
“Deep thoughts?”
Chloe looked up.
“No.”
“Terrible liar.”
“Runs in the family.”
Owen pointed at her with his fork.
“Careful.”
Jonathan leaned back.
“So?”
“So what?”
“What are you doing after school?”
Chloe groaned.
“There it is.”
Camille smiled.
“You did walk into that one.”
“I don’t know.”
Jonathan nodded once.
Not disappointed.
Not amused.
Just listening.
Chloe shrugged.
“Everyone keeps asking.”
“People are unimaginative.”
“My careers teacher says I should start narrowing things down.”
“Your careers teacher probably has a poster with arrows on it.”
Chloe smiled despite herself.
“She does.”
Jonathan nodded knowingly.
“Thought so.”
Owen joined in.
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“Or this year,” Camille added.
Chloe looked between them.
“You both knew.”
Owen frowned.
“Knew what?”
“What you wanted to do.”
He thought about it.
“I knew what interested me.”
“That isn’t the same thing,” Camille said.
Owen nodded.
“True.”
Jonathan turned his glass slowly between his fingers.
“And even when you think you know, you’ll probably be wrong.”
Chloe looked at him.
“You were?”
“Frequently.”
Owen snorted.
Jonathan ignored him.
“You don’t need a job title yet, Chloe.”
For once there was no joke in his voice.
“Work out what keeps pulling your attention back. That’s usually a better place to start.”
Chloe considered that.
“What if nothing does?”
“Something will.”
“How do you know?”
Jonathan looked towards the stage where images of his project still rotated silently across one of the screens.
“I didn’t know I cared about biological materials until I found something that annoyed me enough to keep thinking about it.”
“What annoyed you?”
“Nature being better at engineering than us.”
Owen grinned.
“It still is.”
Jonathan pointed at him.
“And people like that.”
Chloe laughed.
The conversation shifted again.
But Jonathan’s answer stayed with her.
Work out what keeps pulling your attention back.
She wasn’t sure she had anything like that.
Not yet.
Later, when the speeches finally ended and people began drifting towards the exits, Chloe followed her parents through the crowded foyer.
Owen was carrying Jonathan’s award because Jonathan had been stopped by three different people before reaching the door.
“You said he’d drop it,” Chloe reminded him.
“I have been entrusted.”
“You stole it.”
“Semantics.”
Camille slipped her coat on.
“You’re giving it back before we leave.”
“He’ll know where to find me.”
“He works in the same building.”
“Exactly.”
Outside, Oakhaven was cold.
The city lights reflected off damp streets from an earlier shower, and traffic moved steadily along the riverfront beyond the civic precinct.
Chloe breathed in deeply.
Fresh air.
Finally.
Her parents stopped near the steps while Owen checked his phone.
Camille slipped an arm around Chloe’s shoulders.
“Tired?”
“A bit.”
“Did you have a terrible evening?”
Chloe considered pretending.
“No.”
Camille smiled.
“Careful. Your father might start bringing you to these regularly.”
“Absolutely not.”
Owen looked up.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Jonathan emerged through the doors behind them.
“Thief.”
Owen immediately held the award away.
“You abandoned it.”
“I was talking to the Minister.”
“Excuses.”
Jonathan took it back.
Then he looked at Chloe.
“Still undecided?”
She groaned.
“Leave me alone.”
He laughed.
“Goodnight, Chloe.”
“Night, Jonathan.”
He turned towards Owen and Camille.
“Monday?”
“Tomorrow,” Owen said.
Jonathan stared at him.
Owen smiled.
“You’re demonstrating the shielding prototype for emergency services.”
Jonathan closed his eyes briefly.
“Right.”
“Famous scientist.”
“I hate all of you.”
Camille kissed Jonathan lightly on the cheek.
“Congratulations again.”
“Thank you.”
Owen clapped him on the shoulder.
For a moment the two men stood together under the civic hall lights—old friends who had apparently spent most of their lives arguing about insects and what humans could learn from them.
Then Jonathan headed towards the car park.
Chloe followed her parents in the opposite direction.
She looked back once.
Jonathan was still carrying the award under one arm.
The screen inside the foyer remained visible through the glass doors.
HARDENED CARAPACE SHIELDING.
A technology inspired by something tiny.
Something most people would never look at twice.
Chloe shoved her hands into her coat pockets and followed her parents towards the car.
She still had no idea what she wanted to become.
For tonight, she decided, sixteen was probably young enough not to know.
