Dante's Equation Part 21

Nate sank into the chair in front of the treacherous machine and played with the mouse. "Dunno. I can call the computer department, see if they'd have a log." "Call them." "f.u.c.k it," Nate said coldly. "I'll go over there." He put on his motorcycle jacket with stiff jerks and left.

He'd barely made it out the door when Talcott felt a wave of nausea hit her. She grabbed the closest waste can and held it between her knees, panting. Hot tears stung her eyes.

Someone had gotten,stolen,her work.Her work. Had he gotten enough to put it all together? To publishher work, claim it as his own? Or just enough to get her fired? Of all the questions she asked herself, there was one that never occurred to her, and that waswho did it . She knew d.a.m.ned well who. Chuck Grover.

Now the sense of pressure, of urgency, grabbed her as never before. It seemed to merge with her nausea. She retched weakly, but nothing came up; she'd had nothing but water for days. She looked up at the white board, at the data, breathing in deep shaky breaths. With less than a week running the negative one pulse at 75 percent power, they only had a 35 percent differential between the control group and the lab subjects. Thirty-five percent. She needed at least 50. She needed it to end.

She went over to the transmitter and put the power up to 90 percent. She locked the lab, put a note on the door.

Nate, take some time off. Don't go back in the lab. That's an order. Jill

9.4. Calder Farris

GAKONA, ALASKA.

When Dr. Serin was paged and went to his office to answer it, Calder followed. And when Serin covered the receiver and said softly, "Someone from the University of Was.h.i.+ngton," Calder hit the speaker b.u.t.ton, ignoring the resentful daggers thrown his way.

"Uh . . . h.e.l.lo?" The man on the other end paused in his spiel when he heard his voice echo.

Calder motioned to Serin.

"Go ahead, Dr. Grover," Serin said.

"Call me Chuck." The man on the phone went on to explain that he'd heard about the call that had been placed to HAARP from the University of Was.h.i.+ngton and that he had an idea who had done it. It was, in fact, his partner. The basis of her research was work done on his quantum computer, for which reason he was a fundamental part, actually co-author- "That's very interesting," Serin interrupted. "So what's this partner of yours doing exactly?"

Calder sat on the edge of Serin's desk, ready at any moment to pick up the receiver if that became necessary.

"She's doing research with particle waves. The equation she crunched on Quey had to do with particle wave mechanics."

Grover sounded suspiciously like he was reading. Calder's expression showed nothing, but his blood pressure had just headed for the north pole and, mentally, he already had his hand around the caller's throat. Ansel had been working on wave mechanics.

"She put the equation together, but, you know, it would have been impossible to crunch on a conventional computer, but with Quey . . ."

Nearly endless detail about the value of quantum computing. Calder took it all in, expressionless. He

was patient. Oh, yes. Patient as a snake outside the burrow of a mouse. It was Serin who began to fidget. "Is she just running equations or what? Because I got the impression the caller was doing something with wavetransmission. I'm confused."

"You'd be surprised," Grover said enigmatically. "Actually, I'd like you to take a look at some stuff. I've been pretty focused on Quey lately, and I haven't had time to stay as on top of this as I'd like. I'd love to get your opinion on our work."

"Well, I'm kind of busy myself,Chuck ." Serin had an academic's loathing of reviewing anyone else's material. Calder rapped Serin hard on the noggin to get his attention. He nodded a strong affirmative.

"Steve?" Grover asked. "It is Steve, isn't it? The man at the switchboard said-" "Uh . . . hold on." Serin put Grover on hold and ran the situation through his little gray cells. He rubbed his pate, eyeing Calder with sullen resentment.

"This isn't anything," he said. "I told you before, and I don't have time to go over a bunch of-" "Youdon't have to go over anything." Serin frowned, but he did as he was told-typical candya.s.s. He put Grover back on. "Uh, Chuck, go ahead and e-mail it to me." "You got a big limit on your E-mail? 'Cause I have about twenty meg." "Uh-we're on theDARPA net, Chuck." "Oh. Right. I'll send it then. You have a fax? I've got some pages, too; I don't wanna scan 'em." Calder nodded. "S-sure." Serin gave the fax number and his E-mail address. "Okay. I'll send it now. Call me back ASAP, okay?" "Will do." Grover hung up. Calder stood, stretched his legs. "Bring up your E-mail," he commanded. Whatever restraint he'd displayed in the past few days was gone.

Serin blinked up at him. "Well,yeah, " as if he hadn't had to be asked, particularly not in a tone like that. He brought it up. The fax machine on the table behind him buzzed. Calder stepped behind Serin's chair and yanked it out, forcing the scientist to stand or fall. He stood.

Calder put a hand on his shoulder. "Okay, Dr. Serin. Time to go." Serin gaped wordlessly, going apoplectic. That narrow fem face wanted so badly to protest, wantedso badly to . But the fax behind him was printing and Calder didn't have time to let him work it out. He placed a widely splayed hand on Serin's chest and pushed lightly, but ever so painfully, with his fingertips. He let the demon creep into his voice.

"Get. Out."

Serin left the room.

Calder Farris locked the door and sat down at the desk, waiting for the new E-mail. The fax machine went on and on. He glanced at the pages but didn't get into them. Mostly scribbles, notes. It would take time to review them. Ading informed him that he had 1 unread E-mail. It was from cgrover at the University of Was.h.i.+ngton. He opened it, saved the attached executable to his hard drive, ran it.

A minute later he was looking at the one-minus-one.

Although not all suffering in human life is wholly evil, a great deal of it is, and the ultimate source of all evil is the biological capacity for suffering. The biological capacity for suffering, in turn, exists because it has evolved. It has evolved because it often served an adaptive function . . . It was adaptive because it contributed to the reproductive success of its possessors. Because it contributed to the reproductive success of its possessors, it was favored by natural selection.

-Timothy Anders,The Evolution of Evil, 1994 All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons.

-Saint Augustine, fifth century

10.1. Calder Farris

SEATTLE.

The parking garage was vast. The light, at 7:00P .M., was flat, ugly, and artificial. Chuck Grover had parked on floor C. Most of the cars in faculty parking were gone, leaving a s.p.a.ce next to his BMW convertible for a large sedan to slip in and wait.

Grover was just getting into his car when a hand fell on his shoulder. He jumped.

"Dr. Grover?" Calder removed his sungla.s.ses. "Lieutenant Calder Farris, United States Marines. We'd like to talk to you."

Grover seemed reluctant to look away from Calder's eyes, the way a man might fear turning his back on a hooded and hissing cobra. But he did tear them away, took in Calder's military uniform and that of Ed Hinkle, hulking behind him. For a moment Grover looked confused; then a self-congratulatory smugness crept over his face. "This about Quey, right?"

Calder held up a zip disk. On the label was written "wavesim.exe."

"No, Dr. Grover, it's not."

It took twenty minutes to shake Grover down. Unlike a lot of geeks, he had a healthy and realistic fear of authority (a drug bust way back when, Calder guessed). But even so, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was cagey. He tried to probe to see how interested the government was and what was in it for him. Calder got tired of it, sensed a snow job a mile high, and began to turn the screws. Grover crumbled like blue cheese.

To be honest, and he was leveling now, he knew absolutely nothing about the simulator. He'd been hoping Serin could tellhim . He told a story about a Dr. Jill Talcott and how she'd promised him she'd share her work with him if he (a bunch of s.h.i.+t Calder didn't care about), but then she reneged and kept it all under wraps. She was a loner, a hermit. n.o.body liked her. n.o.body had the first clue what she was doing.n.o.body.

Calder might not have believed him, might have made sure with what Hinkle referred to as some "serious work," if he hadn't already expected Grover to be clueless from that enigmatic phone call to Alaska. So, like a fisherman being careful to remove his hook before throwing back a fish too small to eat, Calder spun a brief cover story involving HAARP confidentiality and a missing-doc.u.ments investigation.

But the whole thing, the whole pointless, s.h.i.+tty thing, took thirty minutes. Thirty minutes were lost, all because some marijuana-smoking, self-serving geek would not give Dr. Talcott's name over the phone. It was thirty minutes Calder would deeply regret.

The sedan nudged out a car trying to park in a s.p.a.ce on Forty-fifth Street, across from the campus. Calder smiled tightly as Grover tried to make his excuses and slip away. He gripped the physicist's elbow.

"No, I'd like you to escort me to Dr. Talcott's lab."

"It's in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Smith Hall. If you go-"

"I appreciate your help, Dr. Grover."

They crossed the street. The rain had finally let up, but it was colder than a witch's t.i.t, and the cement walkways were turning icy. They pa.s.sed bundled students.Might as well be in Alaska, thought Calder. It wasn't supposed to be like this in Seattle, was it? But he forgot the cold as he walked at Grover's side because he was close now. He could smell it. Close to the Big One, close to congratulations and recognition and a promotion or three or four. Close to being Maj. Calder Farris or, h.e.l.l, even general, a man personally responsible for his country's continued superiority and invulnerability to the chaotic hordes, maybe for the next several hundred years. Close, after all this time.

They rounded a corner at the library and faced a quad lined with buildings. After a few faltering steps, Grover stopped and stared, perplexed. Calder followed his gaze. At first he took it for a plume of steam from a heating duct. Then he saw it was smoke. It was coming from the bas.e.m.e.nt windows of a Gothic brick-and-cement building. A few students pa.s.sing in front of it looked at it curiously, but no one seemed unduly alarmed.

Then the ground thudded beneath his feet. There was a cacophony in his ears and a force slammed against his chest. It was like hitting a concrete wall in a car, only he hadn't been moving-the wall had come tohim. All three of them went down, Grover flying backward into Ed Hinkle and Calder slamming onto slick pavement. He must have blacked out momentarily. The next thing he was conscious of was a ringing in his ears and then, coming m.u.f.fled through that, distant sirens.

He lifted his head, wobbling, and saw the brick building in front of them blackened from the ground up, flames rising to the upper levels. The bas.e.m.e.nt had just exploded.

Calder's reactions were a tiny bit slow. It took him a moment to grasp the significant point here. Then he grabbed the lapels of Grover's coat, noting dully that his hands were scratched and bleeding. He shook the physicist until his yellow teeth rattled. He shouted, and his voice came from very, very far away.

"Where's Talcott's lab?"

Grover pointed-to the conflagration.

10.2. Aharon Handalman

JERUSALEM.

Aharon Handalman did not watch television. He did not even allow it in the house. Yet it just so happened that lately he had varied his route to work. Instead of seeking out the most ancient pathways, he had, once or twice, cut straight from the Jaffa gate to the temple wall, downHashhalshelet, where the modern world was no stranger.

And if he stopped, on his way to and from work, at a little corner store that had television sets in the window? If he watched the news for a few minutes at a time? Was that such a crime? He didn't know what he was looking for. They say, "He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he'll know it when he sees it," and this was the case. When he walked up to the store this morning, it was there on the screens, all twenty of them. CNN international news, Hebrew edition. A newswoman's voice was being piped from inside the store. To her right was an imposed video of a burning building. The heading said: "Seattle, Was.h.i.+ngton." The video was replaced by a photograph of a slight, intelligent-looking woman. Underneath the photograph was a name: Dr. Jill Talcott.

Aharon stared at the name for a moment, feeling he had seen it somewhere.

". . . so far missing. The fire is believed to have started in the physicist's lab, where Dr. Talcott was conducting experiments of an unspecified nature. Police . . ." Aharon turned and began running toward home. *** When he arrived, Hannah was just getting up. She stood in the hallway in her robe as he opened the door.

"Aharon?"

He hesitated, the enormity of what he was doing striking him for the first time. He gulped a breath.

"Hannah . . . if I had to go to America . . . We have some savings. Half of that is yours, Hannah." She studied him, her pretty face serious. "This has to do with Kobinski?" He nodded. "What about your work, your cla.s.ses?" His cla.s.ses? The thought gave Aharon pause. He had been "talked to" twice more by Dean Horowitz. But what could he do? Horowitz would do what he had to do, Aharon also. "Tell them . . . there was a family emergency." He colored at how easily the lie came. She said nothing. "It's only for a day or two." She gave him a measured look, long and sad. It was a look he would carry with him to America and far beyond. It said,And maybe you'll never come back at all. And maybe you've already been gone so long this is only a formality . "I'll pack your bag." She headed for their room.

Hannah put the sleepy children in the car and drove him to the airport. When he got out he kissed each of the little ones on the head. Devorah asked, "Where are you going, Papa?" and he said, "I have some business. I'll be back soon." Yehuda turned his head away when Aharon kissed him. Hannah managed both worry and coldness as she hugged Aharon good-bye. She took a paper from her pocket and pressed it on him.

"Samuel got this through a chat room for survivors. The address and phone number are there."

Aharon took it, frowning, and put it in a pocket for later. He stood, awkwardly, knowing he should say something more, much, much more, but not knowing where to start. "You've tried so hard to shut me out, Aharon," Hannah said. "So I guess I have no right to know where you're going." "I never shut you out." "I hope you can find something that will let you put all this behind you." He did not like what he saw in her face. He patted her arm rea.s.suringly. "I'm going to Seattle, Hannah. Why wouldn't I tell you? And it will only be for a few days. You're my wife, the mother of my children. You don't have to worry." She pecked him on the cheek and drove away. Aharon opened the note. Hannah had found Anatoli Nikiel.

10.3. Jill Talcott

SEATTLE.

There was a loud battering in her head that Jill took for just another new and fun-filled phase of her ma.s.sive headache. She had been so sick all night. Now she was in a place that wasn't so very bad. The pain was still there, but she felt detached, as though it were happening to someone else, as though she were in a cage and there was a tiger prowling around outside, but he couldn't get in. She floated in this s.p.a.ce, slept. She thought the phone might have rung, several times. She could ignore that, but the battering noise disturbed her. And it gradually dawned on her that someone was calling her name.

Nate.

She managed to get her head off the pillow and look at the clock. It was almost ten. She'd slept in. Lifting her head was a major effort and she would have gone back to sleep, but the banging continued. She wanted to tell him to knock it the h.e.l.l off, but she'd have to get to the door first.

Her feet perhaps. .h.i.t the floor by the bed. She couldn't feel them and she wasn't quite sure. She stumbled forward. When she finally pulled the front door open, Nate was on the doorstep, his face wild.

"My G.o.d! I saw your car and I hoped . . . ! Christ!"

He a.s.saulted her, black leather arms wrapping her in a child's hug. He squeezed and it felt like she was a tube of toothpaste-all the blood rushed from her middle to her head, making the dull pain scream.

"S-stop!"she gasped, pus.h.i.+ng him away. She lurched to the couch and collapsed there. He came and knelt beside her, provoking a dim, heart-thudding memory of that day their positions were reversed.

"You're burning up!" he claimed, though she barely felt his hand on her head. "Oh my G.o.d. You turned it up, didn't you?" She didn't answer. "You didn't call in sick today. Everyone thinks you were in the lab." " 'sonly ten o'clock," she said crankily. Then she recalled that when she'd opened the door it had been night. Ten o'clock at night? She must have gone to bed leaving all the lights burning. She'd slept through an entire day. "Jill . . ." The look on his face was scaring her. "What?" He turned on the TV, flipped to the local news.

". . . terrible scene. The explosion occurred at approximately seven o'clock this evening. Fortunately, no cla.s.ses were in session at the time."

Despite the sense of floating detachment and her pounding headache, this brought Jill to as much consciousness as she was capable of.

"Nate?"

"Smith Hall."

"No."

Tears were on his face. "There was a ma.s.sive explosion."

"The police will not comment, but sources at the university have estimated that there were at least twenty to thirty people in the building."

"OhmiG.o.d." It was too much to grasp-that she might have been in there, that those poor peoplewere in there, that her lab was gone.

"I was at the restaurant," Nate panted, his cheeks wet. "I came over as soon as I heard. We always do the control group here in the afternoons, so I hoped . . ."