Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life Read Online Free PDF

hand, had the math skills but preferred the tidy columns of figures in an accounting ledger to the slippery numbers of strain coefficients and cohesion factors. He was a financial genius, John supposed, but he wouldn’t know anything about refractory brick or why it was so dangerous. Neither would Leonard, for that matter.
    At least there was some hope with his third child, Callista. She had started as an architect, doodling pretty houses full of Frank Lloyd Wright angles, had quickly grown bored with that, and transferred into architectural engineering. Callie might have smelled a rat at St. Brigid’s, but she happened to be in Dubai at the time.
    All of which still didn’t explain this hundred-forty-megabuck mistake. When Antigone Wells and her team had uncovered the whole sorry story of the crumbling brick, they had offered Praxis Engineering & Construction a settlement. Leonard had turned it down flat. He’d argued, behind closed doors, among the family, that computer glitches like that were simply acts of God. No one’s fault and in no way negligence. Hey, the paperwork had all checked out. The Chisholm order said “clean quartz gravel with 4% recycled construction materials.” The Yucca waybills all said “clean quartz gravel with 4% recycled construction materials.” The two samples they’d taken at the batch plant—by some law of unholy averages—showed “clean quartz gravel with fractional red brick and crushed concrete.” So how was anyone to know there was contaminated firebrick all over the site? Leonard hadn’t just argued against settling; he’d made it a test of his leadership, his place in the company. And John Praxis had let his first-born son have his way.
    In Leonard’s defense, and before twenty-twenty hindsight kicked in, it hadn’t been much of a settlement. When you added up all the clauses and stipulations, St. Brigid’s was asking for $1.55 on the dollar—which amounted to excess of damages plus court costs. It was an offer that gloated, that screamed, “We’ve got you nailed, sucker!” And, as the PE&C attorneys had argued, to pay it would amount to an admission of professional negligence—which might make it harder for them to go after the subcontractors.
    Now they were all going take a big dump. Praxis had seen it in the jury’s eyes as they looked at those slowly repeating pictures. There was just no acceptable explanation for what had happened. And when this case with St. Brigid’s was finished, and PE&C had lost, there would be more trials. The insurance bond wouldn’t cover the costs and damages, so PE&C in turn would have to sue the suppliers and their computer contractors. Praxis figured the whole thing would end up costing the company somewhere north of three hundred megabucks—or more like $3.33 on the dollar. And that was before the inflation clock kicked in.
    Oh well, it was only money. … Richard was going to have to give up buying Ferraris for a while. Leonard would have to sell one of his vacation homes and make do without the pretty, twenty-something, live-in housekeeper who came with it. And John himself? He was going home to his lovely wife and have a good, stiff drink.

2. The Heart Stops Beating …
    “The Thunderbolt”—as John Praxis would later describe it—struck on the sixth green of the Cliffs course. It was only nine holes, the shortest of the Olympic Club’s three golf courses, but the fairways offered sudden, surprising views of the Pacific Ocean. The selection of the Cliffs that morning was part of a strategy, because it allowed someone to comment that the magnificent view must stretch all the way to China.
    Ever since he got out of bed, Praxis had been feeling tired and cranky. If it had been merely his choice, he would have stayed home with Adele and read a book or something. But he and his son Richard were scheduled to entertain the visiting Chinese Minister of Transportation, whose entourage included the president of Shanghai’s