Chapter 14

The report of the DNA analysis arrived in Bob's mailbox on March twentieth. It was purely coincidental that Della Hanson's expose' about Bob and Kendra came out in The Rocky Mountain Gazette on the same day. It was titled: "Are The Morals On Campus At Compton Eroding?" Accompanying the story was a somewhat out of focus photograph of Kendra. It was taken with a long lens, and caught her while she was walking to class. Her roughly fourteen weeks pregnant belly was obvious.

In her article, Ms. Hanson adopted a distinctly conservative view, bemoaning the loss of moral fiber in America in general and using the story of a local situation she called "The Cheerleader and the Professor" as an example. Her editor had refused to let her name names, primarily because the attorneys for the paper - which the publisher did contact before giving Hanson the OK - recommended against it. A professor getting a cheerleader pregnant was not, after all, illegal.

And that was Della's whole point. It wasn't illegal.

But it should be. At least in her opinion. She wore out her thesaurus coming up with adjectives to support her point. It was immoral, dishonorable, unprincipled, licentious, destructive, nefarious, and just plain wicked. These two depraved academics, whose identities were shrouded in secrecy because of ill-thought privacy laws, were bad role models. She sounded the call for Americans in general, and Coloradans specifically, to come to their senses and bring back morality to higher education.

It did cause some controversy. Of course everyone who read the story wanted to know who these two "sheltered" people were. Quite honestly, though, those people were relatively few in number. That's because the story was on page three of the "Community News" section of the paper. Most folks didn't get that deep into the paper.

What made the difference was when the DJ of the local pop music station read Ms. Hanson's text on his show. He thought it was funny, and assumed his listeners would too. His female counterpart played along and promised she'd start keeping her legs firmly crossed in the future. There were a few laughs and they played some music.

A stringer for the Associated Press happened to be listening that day and sent in a report, classifying it as "human interest".

When the AP sent it on out, millions of people heard the story of how morals in Colorado were on the decline. It caused the same kind of interest as when Kansas decided to tank evolution in schools, and replace it with Intelligent Design, under the auspices of "Teaching the controversy".

Quite suddenly (to Kansas's sigh of relief), Colorado was on the hot seat for, among other things, trying to quash freedom, legislate morality, and half a dozen other things that were all based on conclusions people jumped to.

Naturally, everybody wanted to know who had caused all this ruckus.

The phone lines of the Rocky Mountain Gazette were flooded. It all got passed on to Della, who promptly passed the buck and identified Mrs. Meredith Bellingham as her source.

Bob, meanwhile, blissfully unaware of the brewing storm, read through the DNA report and, after waiting impatiently for an hour and a half for Kendra to get to work, spent twenty minutes celebrating with her. He was too impatient to take her home and, once again, used the desk. It was perfect for their celebratory fuck, because now that her tummy bulged, he could stand up with her ankles on his shoulders and the height of the desk lined his prick up perfectly to penetrate her.

Had they known about the hurricane of attention that was about to blow into their lives, they might have reflected on the irony of what they were doing while that hurricane built strength.

Once Bob was temporarily sated - and he made it clear his satisfaction was only temporary - Kendra read the report herself.

It said, basically, that three separate DNA varieties were identified in the manuscript, coming from hemp, flax, and Linum usitatissimum fibers which, based on the physical appearance of the fibers, came from linen cloth. Two of the additional fragment samples supplied had DNA markers that matched the hemp and flax fibers found in the manuscript. One fragment had DNA that was matched to the Linum usitatissium fibers in the manuscript. The other four fragments were either excluded, or inconclusive. Combined, the report calculated a 81% probability that the three fragments came from the manuscript.

The supporting documents attached to the report explained in very technical detail how the examinations were done. It was admitted that this was a relatively new usage of DNA analysis, but it was also reasoned that 81% was almost astonishingly high, considering the age of the material being examined and the damage to the DNA strands in the wood and cloth fibers caused when they were exposed to harsh chemicals during the paper making process.

But the connection between a writing desk Marlowe was reputed to have used, and the manuscript itself, was now firm.

At last, a story could be told which had both anecdotal and scientific evidence to firmly establish the provenance of the manuscript. And it could be claimed to be Marlowe's previously unknown work.

Bob would have finally started writing his paper ... but the shit storm hit first.

Bob found out about it when Lindsey called him.

"You poor bastard," said the man.

"What are you talking about?" asked Bob.

"Surely you jest," said Lindsey.

"Surely I do not," said Bob. "I'm busy. Get to the point."

"You really don't know," said Lindsey.

Bob yelled at him.

"Okay, okay. Calm down. I thought you might have seen it in the paper."

"Seen what?" Bob screamed.

"Kendra's picture," said Lindsey. "And the story about how you knocked her up."

"What?!"

"I'll be right over. I can't believe you haven't heard about this already. You made the national news, my friend."

Kendra, meanwhile, was learning about it from her peers. They were already aware she was expecting, of course. She was showing in almost everything she wore. But she'd consistently remained silent about how she got that way, or who else was involved.

Now the cat was out of the bag. Most of them thought it was hilarious. A few were more curious about why she chose Bob to have that kind of relationship with.

Oddly, not a single person doubted that Professor McFeeley was actually the father. Such is the power of suggestion by the media.

Lindsey had just finished educating Bob on recent events when the door slammed open and Dean Charles stomped in. He pointed a trembling finger at Bob.

"You're on sabbatical, mister! Immediately. As of right now!"

"I'm not fired?" Bob was still shaken by what Lindsey had told him.

"No!" Charles frowned. "Maybe. Fuck! I don't really fucking know. Not yet, anyway. I thought so at first. I've never seen a man actually spitting mad before. He was yelling all kinds of things."

"No need to get vulgar about it," said Bob, who hid a smile.

"President Bellingham has instructed me that you will be placed on sabbatical leave immediately. You'll have to be replaced, of course, and we'll need your office for that, but we've taken the liberty of hiring a mover to get all this..." He waved a hand around the room. "stuff ... to wherever you're going to finish your work. They should be here tomorrow."

"So he still wants me to write the paper," said Bob.

"Of course he does!" groaned Charles. "And one other thing. He has asked me to ask you please, not to speak with the press."

"No problem," said Bob. "Full salary?"

"Of course," said Charles, tersely. "But I'm telling you right now. This had better all be worth it."

"By the way," said Bob, picking up the DNA report. "Just to keep you in the loop, I got the DNA report. It has everything in it we hoped it would."

"We got a copy too," said Charles. "I couldn't make head nor tail of it."

"Trust me," said Bob. "It's gold."

"Then please go mine that gold. And please hurry. We expect to be descended upon by the horde of locusts that is the media, any day now. We'd like it if your office was empty when that happened."

"You going to tell them you canned me?" asked Bob.

"We're going to tell them you're on sabbatical and unavailable for comment," said Charles, patiently.

"Okay," said Bob.

"Good," said Charles, and he whirled and left as abruptly as he'd arrived.

He was home when Kendra arrived. She'd been walked home by half a dozen well-wishers.

"Have you heard?" she asked, eyes wide as she stood in the doorway.

"I'm already on sabbatical," he said. "They're cleaning out my office tomorrow. We both need to be there to supervise the packing of the Eldridge papers. I wouldn't put it past them to try to pull a fast one and steal them."

"Why would they do that?" she asked.

"I don't know. Hold them hostage? Or maybe just to fuck with me?"

"You're getting cynical," she said.

"When the wife of the president of the university dimes you out for being in love, life can get kind of cynical," he said.

"Awww, poor baby. Want me to make you some lasagna?"

"Darling, right now I don't think I could get it up if you weren't pregnant and were begging me to get you that way," he sighed.

She opened her shirt to reveal her bare breasts and swollen belly. Her areolas were already darkening, due to the pregnancy, and her nipples had turned a darker shade, almost purple.

"You sure?" she teased.

He blinked, and then licked his lips.

"Well ... maybe," he said.

Bob was again lying perpendicular to Kendra, who lay relaxed on her back. Both were naked, and his head rested lightly on her swollen belly. His latest contribution of semen still oozed from her satisfied pussy.

"Things are moving too quickly," he sighed.

"What does it mean that you're on sabbatical?" she asked.

"It means I don't have to teach classes or go to work," he said. "After tomorrow I won't have any place to go to work to!"

"Can we work from here?" she asked.

"We're going to have to, for you to finish the semester and graduate," he said.

"I can't go back to classes," she said. "At least not for a while. It was crazy today. Somehow my cell phone number got out. I must have gotten ten calls asking for an interview until I finally just turned my phone off."

"All this over something so normal as giving birth," he said, wonder in his voice.

"We could probably divert attention from that if you talk about the manuscript," she suggested.

"No way," he said. "I'm still not jumping the gun."

"But it isn't jumping the gun any more ... is it? I mean all the data is there."

"Yes, but how it is presented is just as important as the quality of the material," he said. "This paper will get a lot of scrutiny, especially now."

She was quiet for a while, and then she spoke softly.

"I might know a place we could go."

"Where?"

"My uncle has a ranch in Montana," she said.

"Would that be Uncle Rick?" he asked, feeling a twinge of jealousy.

"Yes."

"How do you think he'll feel when you show up in your condition, with the man who got you that way?"

"Actually, I think he'll be okay with it," she said.

"What about his wife?" asked Bob.

"She doesn't know about me. Not about what we did." She frowned. "Unless he told her."