Fountain Society

Chapter 1

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FOUNTAIN SOCIETY.

by Wes Craven.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

As a first-time novelist I needed all the help I could get, and there are many people without whom this book would not have been written. I thank them all from the bottom of my heart: Jeff Fenner, Tom Baum, Richard Marcus, Leslie King, and David Baden, for being there with me in the trenches; Ellen Geiger, who supported this project, and me as a novelist, when the story was a notion and I was untested; Bliss Holland, for introducing me to Ellen; Marianne Maddalena. who endured my absences from our film work and never flagged in the friendship; Laurie Bernstein for all the hard work and support; Dr. Judy Swerling, who kept me reasonably sane; John Power, Larry Angen, Andrea Eastman, Robert Newman, and Sam Fischer, all for being smarter and tougher than I am and with such grace; Michael Korda, for your faith in me; my friends, who didn"t laugh; my family and my kids, Jonathan and Jessica, who give me my beginnings and ends. And most of all, Comelia, for bringing me hot tea and love until I finished. 1 DETENTION COMPLEXHAIFA The cell held fifteen men. It was ten by twelve and stank of sweat, filth and fear. The only amenity offered was a hole in the center of the concrete floor which served as a toilet. The cell contained, so far as Rashid al-a.s.sad had been able to gather, three Lebanese commandos who kept to themselves and were dreaded even more than their jailers. One of their number had been beaten badly during capture and was raving with fever and gangrene. This kept the others in a murderous mood. There were also six nondescript Palestinians, none known to Rashid. From what he surmised they were nothing more than workmen, drivers or ex-army thieves, the usual Shiite dregs. They gave true Palestinian fighters a bad name, screaming under torture, wetting themselves and having nothing of importance to disclose when they quickly broke. He despised them. The four Syrians were probably spies of one sort or another, more than likely industrial. He ignored them. There was Rashid himself proud to be a Shi"ite Muslim and a Hezbollah guerrilla. Not once had he uttered a sound, although they had removed everything on him that could be pulled off with a pair of pliers. And then there was this tall blond pig of a Russian over in the corner This Russian was not to be known, Rashid understood. He was the Only other professional there, and he was unapproachable. Someone had tried to f.u.c.k him the first night, and the Russian had killed the idiot before he could even open his mouth in protest. The corpse had been removed two days later, when the smell reached the guards two floors above. In that very guard room Lieutenant Joram Ben Ami, watch commander of the intelligence unit at Haifa, was reading a message from his superior in Jerusalem at that very moment. The call they had both been expecting had been received from Washington at 12:45 P.M. local time, 1:45 A.M. in Washington, which was considered a good sign. It meant that the CIA was transmitting when scrambled telephone messages were least likely to attract attention. The business to which the call referred had been in process long enough to be in danger of random slipups, leaks to the press, unwanted attention from whistle-blowers and bleeding-heart congressmen, but the process had remained secret, and so the Israelis and the Americans were able to continue providing mutual benefit for each other. Ben Ami had been given the order to prepare two more units. That would make a total of ten prisoners shipped to the U.S. over the past six months, in return for which the Israeli air force would receive another five air-to-air Sparrow missiles. An excellent trade, in Ben Ami"s opinion. He chose Rashid al-a.s.sad, the Hezbollah guerrilla, as the first. Rashid was the motherless a.s.shole suspected of bombing a bus of Jewish settlers in downtown Haifa six weeks ago. The only unfortunate thing was that he was to be shipped untouched. The second unit was stipulated by Ben Ami"s commander-it was to be the Russian caught spying for Iraq. He needed to be processed slightly, so Ben Ami relayed the orders to his best team. An ordinary claw hammer was used, both because it was what was on hand, and because they all hated Scud-selling Russians. His teeth came out with surprising difficulty. Just before dawn, an unmarked American C-120 touched down on the airstrip outside the detention complex. Half a dozen long crates were fork-lifted out of the hold, and the two prisoners, heavily drugged and in handcuffs, were taken aboard by CIA operatives. The plane rose again, and the deal was done. Twenty hours later, thousands of miles away from this airstrip and from each other, Rashid al-a.s.sad and his Russian companion would be in the hands of an organization so secret not even the CIA spooks who acted as their handlers knew its purpose. Neither man would survive his arrival for more than a few days.

ST. MAURICE, SWITZERLAND.

Nearing o.r.g.a.s.m, Elizabeth was having strange thoughts about being caught up in The Wizard of Oz. She was in Dorothy"s house, and the twister was sweeping around her, rattling the shutters and roaring in her ears. Wood splintered and she was lifted into the air. Then at last she wasn"t thinking at all. All week long she had been obsessing about this afternoon, listing in one column all the reasons for showing up, in the other all the reasons for breaking the relationship off. The problem was, the same items kept popping up in both columns. At least, for the moment, she was free of her most haunting preoccupation-that she would never see Hans Brinkman again. She arched her back and surrendered to the storm. She heard his cry of release, then despite his best efforts, his heart no longer seemed in it. He fell away, and a moment later he was throwing open the hotel window. He took in several deep breaths of frigid Alpine air. She tried to catch her own breath.

He turned and smiled that perfect smile, then got back into bed with her, pulled the covers over them both and kissed her. "That was wonderful," she said.

"But you didn"t..." He made a gesture.

"No, but my watch stopped," she said lightly, returning his smile. "Really, Hans, don"t worry about it." He rolled out of bed just as quickly as he had gotten in, and gave a sigh. "I"m a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d, aren"t I?" "You are, yes, but that"s my problem."

She tried to make it light, too, but it didn"t feel that way inside. She couldn"t help asking herself what all these Sat.u.r.days had amounted to, when all was said and done. Granted, he was rich and handsome, but she had been with handsome, powerful men before and hadn"t felt a tenth of what she felt with Hans, or for him. The others had been devoted to her, had lavished gifts on her-but not Hans. Attention, yes, in unpredictable bursts, but for the most part his days were spent in the world of global finance and his evenings devoted to his marriage, with all of the social life that went with it. Places she did not know and was not invited to. In fact she was, she knew, a complete secret from the rest of his life and the people in it. She did not exist in his world. Only here, in these rooms, for a few hours a month. It was not enough, even though she had allowed it to become everything she really cared about; she knew it had to end, sooner or later. And recently, she reluctantly felt it should be sooner than later. As Hans dressed she watched him from under the covers, like a biologist studying a baffling animal from a blind. Hans Brinkman was thirty-five, ten years older than she, golden-haired, eyes flecked with green and brown. Like pools in Alpine streams, Elizabeth had thought when she first saw them-cool, and full of hidden life. The afternoon sun glinted off his finely muscled body, his shock of thick blond hair. That last climax had been his third, yet he seemed unaffected. He was an athlete even in bed, she realized, and they were locked in some sort of contest she was probably fated to lose. She was halfway down a h.e.l.lish black diamond trail when she had first spotted him-a flash of color shooting by on skis in the brilliant Swiss sunlight. "On your left!" And then a blur.

This caught her attention in a hurry, since it was usually her pa.s.sing the few who dared this sheer face. But there was something else, too. A feeling that she knew him, or needed to, and it was so strong that it was downright eerie. Had she glimpsed a boyish grin in that streamlined, racing figure? No, just a wicked grin-she was sure of it! On full auto, Elizabeth shot out in a breathstopping arc off an ice shelf she had always wisely avoided before. Halffalling, half-flying fifty yards down slope in the air, she managed to land upright only by a combination of grit, skill and pure luck. But she was ahead of him, and she meant to keep it that way-pointing her skis straight down-hill and tucking into the egg. But it wasn"t that simple. What followed was a race that went from high-end sport to thrill-seeking to giddy terror as the two traded places in a cascade of dare and double dare. They were neck and neck again in the final stretch, a straight, precipitous chute that rejoined the regular slope at its end. And it was at the moment when they had reached that juncture-with the wind tearing at her face and her heart pounding-that a s...o...b..arder on the main slope wiped out directly in her challenger"s path. Elizabeth realized in an instant that unless she gave way, the man beside her would choose to slain into this kid like a ton of bricks at ninety miles an hour. She braked hard, and with a cry of glee the man shot over to her track and was gone without a backward glance. She should have known then.

Later, at the lodge, he sought her out and offered to buy her a drink. She found herself saying yes, and after they had finished playing jet-set geography, trying in vain to determine where they"d met before, he paid her his first compliment: "We"re both crazy, you know," he said. She laughed and nodded. "You a professional?" she asked, and meant it. He smiled broadly, clearly flattered that she would think so. "Finance."

She raised her eyebrows, actually amazed. "You might as well have told me you were a scientist," she laughed. "I almost was," he said matter-of-factly. Then he seemed lost in thought for a moment, as if he were genuinely fascinated by something he had just glimpsed internally. Then he turned back to her, completely present again. "When I studied physics I never did anything dangerous. Not till I got into high finance. Now that"s where it"s worth putting your neck on the line. Like you do. You in money?" She blinked. In money? What an odd expression. "I"m not that smart."

"Yeah, right. What"s your IQ, about 140?" She looked at him, realizing she had no idea. "Really, I"m good at this," he pursued, intrigued. "Never wrong. SATs what, about 1500?" "Never took the SATs," she admitted.

"No college? I"m shocked,"

"Does that make me a dumb blonde in your book?" He leaned toward her, frowning. "Elizabeth, you know why men call blondes dumb?" he asked, with a boyish solemnity she found hard to resist. "No."

"Because beautiful blondes make them feel dumb because they can"t express what they feel when they"re faced with a beautiful woman. There was some truth to that, she thought, and it was endearing of him to say so. But it was also completely disingenuous. Looking back now, as she snuggled deeper into the bed and remembered that meeting from a safe distance, she knew beyond a doubt that if Hans Brinkman doubted his abilities in any area, she had never seen the slightest hint. No, the only weakness he had ever displayed since she had known him was an inability to remain close to her long enough for her to take his presence for granted. G.o.d, she would love to have that luxury. But instead, there was only the elusive thrill of the unbroken charger-no knight-just the stunning white horse. She had fallen for that mythical energy and had fallen hard to be sure-and now here she was, a year later in the fluorescent glare of reality, blond model in a black book, hotel plaything of an investment banker who barely had time for her. How predictable was that?

She pulled the sheets around her and wondered. Was she afraid to let him go, or just afraid of him? The answer, she suspected ruefully, was both. And that fear, bordering at times on the voluptuous, made Hans all the more intriguing. The fact was that Elizabeth liked risk-yearned for the taste and challenge of it. And deep inside she was even convinced that on the other side of such places and situations lay the reality she so desired. From the slopes of Switzerland to the runways of Paris, she had found everything she treasured most by threading pa.s.sageways of fear to the other side. Everything she treasured, including Hans. But this infatuation with her fear had, on one horrendous occasion, nearly cost Elizabeth her looks and her livelihood, not to mention her life, so she also developed a healthy sense of caution. At this moment, with anxiety and hunger and blind antic.i.p.ation all swirling around her, she found herself watching Hans Brinkman with increasing objectivity. You can walk away from this, she was thinking. Put it all behind you, girl! She saw him smile, as though he were reading her thoughts. "What are you brooding about, Elizabeth?" he asked. She stiffened slightly. The faintly patronizing way he always used her full name-why hadn"t that gotten under her skin before? "I was thinking back to when we met," she said. "Ruing the day," he teased, and before she could agree, "I lied to you, you know." She looked at him, suddenly afraid. He grinned. "Well, not an outright lie, a lie of omission. I didn"t tell you I"d been stalking you. By now breathing was difficult. "Stalking me?" "I"d seen your picture in Allureremember that little reading room at the ski lodge? And when I looked up, there you were in the lobby. It was like magic. As if we were fated to be together. Or as if we"d already met before." "In another life," she said, trying for flippancy. But it had come out like a statement of fact, and it scared her even more. It sounded so right, even though she had not even thought before saying it. That feeling of deja vu. "Something like that, yes. It threw me. I was almost afraid to approach you-I don"t know why, it never happened before. So I thought, well, I"ll impress her on the slopes, then we"ll have something to talk about." "It worked," she said carefully "You impressed me, too," he said almost fondly. He touched her hair. "You aren"t starting to regret it, are you?" he asked, and suddenly there was a sadness in his voice that completely unnerved her. "No!"

He smiled again. Was he happy now? Or was he seeing right through her, amused as only a true cynic can be? She raged at herself in frustration. I am regretting it. Come on, Lizzy, in the animal kingdom-which is where Hans definitely lives-a smile is just another show of teeth. "We remind me of that Cole Porter song," he said amiably. "What"s it called?" "I don"t know any Cole Porter songs," she lied. She knew exactly the one he was thinking of. "Too hot not to cool down,"" he sang off-key. "That what you"re afraid of? The Angel"s Curse?" She looked at him. She knew he would say what it was and he did. "It"s a corollary of the Rule of Blondes: men think they"re not good enough for you, so they act accordingly. They disappear, or f.u.c.k it up, and hurt you. That"s what"s always happened, right?" "Whereas you know you"re good enough?" she countered, not caring to answer that one. What on earth was he leading up to? "I know," he said, his voice dropping into a gentler register. "We were meant to be together." She took a deep breath. Whether he had meant to or not, he was giving her an opening she could not ignore. "Then why aren"t we?" she heard herself ask. "Are you afraid to upset your home life?" It was the first time she had alluded to his wife, even indirectly. She felt a spasm of regret as she saw his face cloud over, but she pressed on. "I think we should talk about it," she said, steeling herself for what he might say. And then, when he said nothing, she said, "I"m not really sure I want to go on like this," He nodded, looking idly toward the window, the distant mountains. "You know, I"m not sure I do either." Elizabeth"s chest constricted. It was bad enough to consider being the dumper. To be the dumpee was terrifying. "She"s gone off me," he said darkly. "She finds meeasily distracted. My mind is too much on my work, she says. Not that I blame her. Lately we travel in our separate ruts-our life seems to work better that way." He shrugged. "Listen, I really don"t want to talk about Yvette. Not today." He glanced at his watch. "Then when?"

He ignored her question. "And yes, I hate hotels, too," he said, reading her mind. "Then my place. I could use some home-court advantage." "No. I don"t want to endanger you.. ."

She looked at him. "Endanger me?"

"The less Yvette knows...." he said, his eyes veiled again. He left the phrase hanging. "Next time we"ll talk. We"ll have it all out. I promise." Abruptly, he resumed dressing, while Elizabeth tried to sort out her emotions. She watched his body disappear into his charcoal suit until he was just a wealthy chic businessman again. She tried to control her breathing but couldn"t. With real despair she realized that she was still head over heels in love. "Sat.u.r.day, Elizabeth," he said, already at the door and blowing her a gentle kiss. "Same time, okay?" He was gone before she had answered, softly, irresolutely, with dismay, "Sat.u.r.day, yes." She heard him run to the elevator, heard it whir as it descended. Pulling the sheet around her, suddenly she felt chilled to the bone. She curled into a ball and pulled the duvet over her head until she was hidden in protective darkness. 2 WHITE SANDS, NEW MEXICO-DELTA RANGE.

Peter Jance, seventy-six years old and feeling every minute of it, scrambled up the long grade of scrub and hard sand he and his crew had dubbed Mons Venus. His once thick golden hair was a brittle gray mane now, but he was still handsome in a hawk-faced way and, on this project at least, his mind was miles ahead of everyone. As usual, that put him in a h.e.l.l of a fix. Only a few fellow geniuses conceded that what he was working on was feasible. The rest of the scientific community thought he was out of his mind. And maybe they"re right, Peter said to himself, squinting into the distance. It was easy to feel trepidation and self-doubt today, if he had been capable of either. The sun beat down on the sand and mesquite like a blacksmith"s hammer, and all around him people were cursing the heat. Instead, Peter found himself glorying in it. Like a penitent celebrating the lash, he mused, though it scarcely diminished his love for the landscape. White Sands Missile Range occupied 3,200 square miles of New Mexico desert, an area as big as Rhode Island, Delaware and the District of Columbia combined, and was now his to play in, a paradise of rolling gra.s.slands, sand dunes and lava flows heaving into foothills and ragged canyons. He loved its life-bighorn sheep, p.r.o.nghorns, mountain lions. There were golden eagles and horned lizards, rattlesnakes, kangaroo rats and tarantulas. Coyotes, bobcats and foxes hunted here at night; mule deer, roadrunners, giant centipedes and wind scorpions were to be found during the day. Even introduced species like African oryx, a fivehundred-pound antelope from the Kalahari region, flourished here by the thousands. This was one of the little-mentioned perks of working on a supersecret, low access base: few people got in, and nature thrived. Except for the part of nature that worked for the U.S. Army. That part inspired less awe, and not a little regret. The soldiers.

d.a.m.n, his gut hurt. Was it his guilt talking or the illness? Or were they now hopelessly intertwined? You made this bed, he thought, so now you lie in it. So what if the enemy troops hadn"t been his idea? When the notion had first come up, three months ago, he had argued against including live subjects, to the point at which Colonel Oscar Henderson, the bean counter in charge of funding this project, pushed the issue to the level of a deal breaker. There were several ways to interpret Henderson"s stubbornness: as a sign that he had lost faith in Peter"s vision, doubted his abilities, even his loyalty; or merely as a desire to p.i.s.s on Peter"s project so it would have his scent. Power has to be arbitrary, as Peter had come to realize-otherwise it"s just sound policy. A lifetime of struggling to maintain his vision while being accused of biting the hand that fed him had driven home that truth. His wife, Beatrice, on the other hand, leaned toward the theory of the loyalty test to explain Henderson"s insistence on live subjects. They had spent a week debating the issue, Peter arguing that it tainted all of them and was unnecessary. Beatrice, of course, called him a pompano-their pet word for a pompous a.s.s-and as usual, she was right. After all, he could turn around and walk back down the hill, couldn"t he? Call Henderson"s bluff? And was he going to? No. As a matter of fact, the result of his wife"s chastis.e.m.e.nt was to make him more determined than ever to see this project through to the end. All the concerns he had voiced to Beatrice-just so much ritual self-doubtwere merely an attempt to quiet the churning in his gut by flattering his conscience. With the result being, of course, that his symptoms were flaring up more painfully than ever. The pills he was taking put his inner ear on gimbals, and now, plodding skyward through the sand, he had to pee again, despite the fact he"d done so five minutes before leaving the bunker. "Dr. Jance? Maybe we could slow down a little bit?" Peter glanced back down the hill. His support team were slogging behind him as best as they could, and one of them, Alex Davies, had apparently decided to take on the job of their spokesman. Peter smiled. Only Alex, in all the world, had the familiarity to suggest he slow down. Peter had known him since he was a kid, and Alex was banking on that. He was a decent kid, despite his pestering. Peter suspected that he might even have a conscience, which was unusual among scientists in this generation. It made Peter like him for it and-come to think of it-for his lack of qualms about speaking up. Despite their constant, collective p.i.s.sing and moaning, no one else on his team had voiced a serious complaint about any part of this enormously difficult and demanding project on which they labored like indentured servants. Of course, Peter reflected now, he had looked for just such a gung ho, unquestioning quality during the screening process. Wild-card geniuses scrounged from universities all over the United States, this team const.i.tuted the best and the brightest scientists working in weapons development today. Wet behind the ears, yes, and in Alex"s case somewhat unpredictable, but who else was willing to put in outrageous hours for peanuts just for the opportunity to work with Peter Jance? Cap Chu, his accelerator specialist, he had shanghaied from MIT. Cap was a secondgeneration Chinese-American from Oakland, whose unchanging uniform was a Raiders T-shirt and cutoff Levi"s, and whose unconscious tendency to mimic his boss"s speech patterns often made Peter want to laugh aloud. But in tens years or less, Cap Chu was a shoo-in to write the book on particle weaponry for the next century-and as Beatrice put it, the kid was a steal. Hank Flannagan, pausing to light a Marlboro, was another diamond in the rough. Flannagan understood the weapons applications of fusion the way angry boys understand a rock"s applications to a picture window. His form of relaxation was stretching out on his dirt bike at sixty miles an hour while he sailed through the pucker bush, or jumping ravines so wide fellow riders braked and covered their eyes in horror. Peter, no stranger to physical risk, encouraged him in this hobby. Flannagan returned from these forays not only unscathed, but bristling with solutions to some of the most challenging mathematical problems the team confronted. The woman among them, just now hooking her arm through Alex Davies"s, was Rosemarie Wiener. The fact that Peter was funding a project to achieve an unprecedented kill factor didn"t bother her one bit. She was herself a protean thinker in the tactical applications of microwave and ultrasound beams and an avid fan of sophisticated military mayhem. The correlation between raw force and long term survival was not lost on her. She had been raised on a kibbutz and took s.h.i.t from no oneexcept maybe Alex Davies, with whom, at this moment, she was flirting hard, the sound of her delighted laughter rising sharply through the shimmering heat. Peter wondered if it was l.u.s.t or political instinct. With this generation it was hard to tell. Certainly if there was one among these nascent whiz kids headed for real power, it was Alex Davies, so even if Rosemarie was only networking, she had chosen well. Alex was the grand-son of Dr. Frederick Wolfe, a scientist spearheading his own top secret project for the Army, both at other bases and here at White Sands. If Alex himself was something of a catch on his own merits, as a future father-in-law Frederick Wolfe made the kid an all-time trophy. Anyone near Wolfe moved up quickly, and this particular project, code-named Fountain, was legendary on the base, both for the deferment and funding it received and for the cachet it gave to all who Were a.s.sociated with it. As to what exactly the Fountain Project was, it was a mystery. It was Wrapped in secrecy so extreme that even Peter, who warily counted Wolfe among his oldest friends, could only guess at what it might be all about. To make things even more intriguing, Peter"s own wife Beatrice was employed by Wolfe as a neurobiologist on the Fountain Project. But she, too, was kept on a need-to-know basis-at least judging by what she disclosed to Peter. Her specialty was spinal regeneration, so Peter speculated that maybe it had something to do with trying to cure battle injuries to that stem of stems. But that was only one possibility. Beatrice swore only Wolfe knew the big picture, but Peter found that hard to swallow, considering the ranks of bra.s.s coming in and out of Wolfe"s compound. Clearly Wolfe and his Fountain Project were the darlings of someone bigperhaps even the Commander in Chief-and that meant its purpose was not only known in detail by some, but considered important. Hugely important, judging from the amount of funding Wolfe seemed to enjoy. Good luck to him. Peter was never one to begrudge a friend"s good fortune. Besides, the fact was the two had known each other since their twenties, and often shared test ranges and personnel--even, as in this case, family members. Wolfe had given Beatrice a position of power within the Fountain Project, and Peter had agreed to take Alex aboard in return. Peter gave the kid the room he needed to be his own quirky self, while Wolfe had a.s.signed Beatrice to a lab in the Caribbean. On their end, it was an arrangement that permitted the couple to remain close, but not so close they would tear each other"s heads off from propinquity, which was what they tended to do when they worked on the same project. This was a great boon to Peter, for he and Beatrice needed each other desperately, and thrived on distant proximity of just the right kind. Too close to each other and they were miserable; too far apart and they were lost. "Hey, Uncle Peter? Are we there yet?" Saying it with just the right tone of irony and fondness, the kid somehow got away with it. Alex Davies was a wild card, to be sure, but one Peter was glad he"d drawn. Any regrets Peter had personally harbored about having the kid more or less foisted upon him had vanished within a week of the young man"s arrival. For one thing, Alex knew the base"s labyrinthine cl.u.s.ter of Cray supercomputers like the back of his hand. That knowledge allowed Peter to throw dozens of theorems, algorithms and mathematical models at this project each week, rather than once a year through the usual channels. For that alone, Alex was a G.o.dsend. So the fact that Alex got a little cheeky from time to time was of little import. In his own quirky way, Alex Davies was vital to the project"s chance for survival and also for its eventual success. Ignoring the twisting pain in his stomach, Peter kept walking at the same killer pace he had set at the bottom of the hill. Despite his illness, he had more energy than most men half his age. Six feet tall, with no suggestion of a stoop, he had spent his youth and much of his middle age accepting every physical challenge he could find. He had bicycled through Nepal when it was known only to National Geographic photographers, trekked halfway across Borneo surveying for an oil company. He had run marathons all over the East Coast just for the h.e.l.l of it-and until just recently, he played squash with a ferocity that appalled his opponents. Not that he"d worked at any of it very hard. His first love, his obsession, in fact, was physics, the source of all the challenges that truly mattered. It just happened that he was gifted with one of those almost freakishly athletic bodies, capable, it seemed for many years, of anything he asked of it. It had given him a lifetime of pleasures and mobility and, most important, had afforded a superb platform for his brain, bathing it in rich, super-oxygenated blood, allowing its undisputed genius to run at full throttle for six decades. Until the pancreatic cancer.

Yes, too bad about that, wasn"t it? In the game of cellular roulette, he had come up double zero. Not that he"d expected to go to his grave intact-that much of an optimist he wasn"t. Still, coming out of nowhere as it had, and in the midst of the most important work of his life, the cancer had felt like an undeserved punishment. It was playing hob with his body at the moment, an infuriating distraction to the workings of his mind. Come on, Jance, he berated himself, clamping his teeth against the pain, stop feeling sorry for yourself. He struggled to focus on the business at hand, the hundreds of tasks needing completion before he could begin his countdown. He a.s.sailed his own disease by reimagining it. If it was some ravening beast tearing him from within, he"d see it as something without imagination or charisma-the pain in his entrails nothing but a dark ham- lives of a few animals that would have died anyway, not even his own life. It was the work that mattered. And success. He watched intently, ignoring the black spiral of pain that was working its way through his gut again, as his team fanned out, checking tethers and adjusting telemetry devices. It was zero minus fifty minutes, and time was racing through his fingers like quarks through an accelerometer. His n.o.bel Prize, his international awards, the laboratory that bore his name at MIT-none of it mattered now, if it ever had. Beyond the acclaim, beyond the misgivings, there was only the idea, moved toward reality through painstaking research and development that had gone on seemingly forever until this approaching moment. In just fifty minutes, the instant when everything might come to fruition would arrive. And in that instant, the idea could become substance. If it happened, he knew, the realization of that idea would dominate military thought for the foreseeable future. But the time factor-the necessity for those hours, months and years of cerebration and calculation and fiddling and trying and trying again-made everything one great race against the very limitation of a man"s life span. Stupidly small budgets, arbitrary deadlines, the ignorant carping of the Army bra.s.s had all conspired to undermine his work, his dream, his place in the history of science. Experiments that could have worked brilliantly if they had been adequately funded were rushed headlong from the drawing board into the field and discarded forever if they failed just once. The process was nothing short of insane, and it had all come down to this: if this day"s trial shot didn"t work, he and his research would be worthless and the last decade of his life would be declared an utter waste. The pain clawed at his belly. Inwardly, he snarled back at it. You"re here, he swore to himself. You"re going through with it, and your doubts be d.a.m.ned. He turned around and p.i.s.sed against a yucca, ignoring the burn. Somewhere behind him a sheep was bleating as if its throat were cut. Perkins was right. Time to get going or they would all be dead from the heat.

SOUTHERN ACCESS ROAD, WHITE SANDS.

Ten miles south of where Peter was working, the desert flattened until it was a griddle spreading as far as the eye could see, bleached sand blinding and barren to the horizon of the Tularosa Basin. This desolate moonscape was bisected by a single two-rut track, and on this a dust-blasted Range Rover heaved, roiling a plume that stretched a half-mile behind it into the blistered air. Inside the Range Rover were Peter"s wife, Dr. Beatrice Jance, and Dr. Frederick Wolfe, who was doing the driving. Wolfe was in his early seventies, gaunt and pale, with hair like steel wool, thick eyelids and a mouth turned down darkly with an expression of perpetual disdain. His surgeon"s fingers were long and large-knuckled; the huge dome of his skull was dotted with liver spots the size of quarters. He had the air of a man who expects the best while he listens for the worst, and whose slightest disapproval had the force of a curse. Nosferatu was the nickname given him by one brash young geneticist who had been employed by him for just a week. That man soon found himself teaching high school biology in Mexico. Better to be feared than loved, as Machiavelli, one of Wolfe"s few heroes, advised. Better still to love oneself so completely, so faithfully, that the question never mattered. And, in fact, that was the way it worked for Wolfe. Scientists from all over the world had flocked to the side of this implacable genius, whose experiments in biogenetics were so bold and far-reaching that no one but he could grasp their complete significance. And with Machiavellian dexterity Wolfe pitted these scientists against each other, ego to ambition, in such a way that he got the best of their work and kept his secrets to himself and his inner circle. Virtually no one he had asked to join him had refused; no one who had come aboard had quit him voluntarily. Beatrice Jance was no exception.

As he maneuvered the Range Rover across the desert sands, Wolfe Watched her from the corner of his eye. Beatrice was still magnificent-her glorious ash-blond hair had long since turned a blazing white, and there were fresh wrinkles pursing her broad pale mouth, but her athletic grace was intact, the soft gray eyes still remarkably energetic. But she hadn"t returned his smiles, not once in the last thirty minutes. No, of course, her thoughts would all be of Peter. She looked over at Wolfe, catching him looking, and smiled as he looked away, What that smile meant, though, Wolfe was d.a.m.ned if he knew. "If I swallow much more dust," she shouted over the noise of the wind, "I"ll pa.s.s a brick." Wolfe winced faintly, Her offhand coa.r.s.eness when she wanted to be vulgar was jarring. It was the same with Peter. The problem with these two was, no matter how far apart they were in the course of their work, they were always somehow together. It baffled him, really, and irritated him as well. There was such a thing as being too close. They fed on each other"s doubts and anxieties, in his view, especially now with Peter"s illness looming over all of them. Touching, how they"d tried to keep Peter"s cancer a secret from him, the one man on whom nothing was ever lost, and the one man who could actually do something about it. "Fortunate for both of us we"ve arrived," Wolfe said, pulling himself back to the here and now. He produced an ID from his pocket and braked the Range Rover at a weed-choked fence. A man appeared and scrutinized the credentials. Wolfe eyed him with Olympian impatience. "Obviously, you"re new.

The guard, wiry and humorless, ignored Wolfe"s withering glance. From somewhere inside his civilian vest came the crackle of a walkie-talkie. He ignored that, too, until he had finished inspecting Wolfe"s ID.

"Six-month rotation," he finally said, and flashed his own ID. Wolfe waved it away. "How was D.C., Dr. Wolfe?" "Benighted and besotted," Wolfe muttered. "As always." The guard flicked an uneasy eye toward Wolfe"s pa.s.senger. "Beatrice," sighed Wolfe, "Mr. Greenhorn wants your credentials, too." Beatrice dug into her battered leather satchel, pulling out paperbacks, a scientific calculator, a Spinhaler, a tube of sun block-every-thing but her papers. "Dr. Beatrice Jance," she said, as if that explained everything. The guard stiffened brightly.

"Wife of Dr. Peter Jance?"

She smiled, not threatened. "And he is married to me as well." "No kidding. Sorry." The guard stepped back, star struck, and saluted. "You both have a nice day now," he added, pulling out his walkie-talkie to announce them. Wolfe saw Beatrice blink as she glimpsed the automatic weapon slung vertically under his vest. He put the Range Rover in drive, and within moments, guard and shack and razor-wire hurricane fence disappeared in the dust. "Everyone seems to know Peter," Beatrice declared, still shouting over the wind. Wolfe looked at her impa.s.sively, Was this an instance of simple wifely pride, or was she trying to put a dent in his vanity? "Any kid admires an adult who likes to blow things up," he said. "That"s probably it," she returned.

Her tone was level, no hint of irony or regret. As faithful to the cause as she is beautiful, concluded Wolfe. Feeling as empty as a used-up pack of cigarettes, he put the pedal to the floor.

Two miles deeper into the desert, Wolfe and Beatrice arrived at the compound of corrals, pens and living quarters Wolfe had called his second home for the past five years. The Fountain Compound, whose low-lying sprawl and air of bland guardedness suggested a prison for white-collar felons, was actually an unlisted unit of the Army"s Battlefield Environment Directorate, or BED, one of the many Army research laboratories sprinkled across White Sands. The Army had begun its residency at White Sands in 1946. In the early years, its Signal Corps had supplied radar and communications support for the American conversion of captured German V-2 rockets at the dawn of the U.S. s.p.a.ce program. Now its projects ranged far from rocketry, to weapons systems research and on into biological and chemical means of warfare that were beyond the wildest dreams of even Hitler"s architects of death.

WHITE SANDS, DELTA RANGE.

Fifteen minutes after leaving the animals tethered on the hill, Dr. Peter Jance and his support team were a quarter mile away on a ma.s.s of steel, ceramic and exotic materials that cost the U.S. government and its taxpayers more per ounce than gold. Dubbed The Hammer, the whole apparatus weighed one ton, which was about a hundred tons lighter than anything else that had been cooked up during the ill-fated Star Wars period, and that lightness translated into its supreme feasibility as a military weapon. The Hammer, in essence, was the most advanced Directed HighEnergy Weapon system ever conceived, and singly the product of Peter Jance"s unique vision. That vision, and the knowledge that informed it, had their roots in the Manhattan Project, where Peter had begun his scientific career, in 1943, as a twenty-one-year-old mathematician; Einstein himself had announced that Peter was the only scientist at Los Alamos who had caught an error in his calculations. They had exploded the first thermonuclear device just thirty miles north on this very testing ground, at a site called Trinity, and a month later had seen two j.a.panese cities atomized by their device.

Then, after the war, there were the years of building the Tevatron Collider, a behemoth at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab in Illinois. The world"s most powerful particle accelerator, the TC shot protons against antiprotons at collision energies of 1.8 trillion electron-volts. Peter had proved that atoms were not merely protons and electrons whirling around a nucleus-he had helped throw open the doors of a "particle zoo" of gluons, mesons and mysterious atomic dust particles called quarks, while the rest of science scrambled to catch up. But it was during the Reagan administration that Peter had finally come into his own, without the interference that had dogged him after Hiroshima. He proposed and developed everything from rail guns to ultrasound weapons that could melt the eyes and inner ears of any soldier within their range. The problems now were technical, not bureaucraticquestions of size and power requirements. All of the devices were huge, enormously costly, and consumed electricity like Manhattan in July, One shot from these weapons was all you got-it took six to eight hours before they were ready to fire again. None were useful for actual combat. Until the Hammer.

This weapon prototype promised to be efficient and lethal at the same time. Peter had achieved phenomenal miniaturization by restructuring all of its hardware and algorithms in nanotechnology. There were gears in the weapon that could fit in the gut of a gnat, circuits visible only via electron microscopes, lenses formed from half a dozen atoms. And even more brilliantly, he had arrived at a wonderfully low power consumption by giving it uplink capability to a top secret satellite. It was the satellite that supplied the ma.s.sive energy stream needed, harvesting it directly from the solar wind by means of huge panels. If it worked there would be twenty-four such satellites in s.p.a.ce within four years, all geostationary, at least two accessible by ground control no matter where in the world it was located. With a thousand of these ground units in place, no rogue state or resurgent tyranny could stand up to the weapon"s lethal force and the Army knew it. If it worked. If he could just stabilize the d.a.m.n thing. A directed energy weapon like this didn"t shoot bullets or sh.e.l.ls, it shot particle beams. These were produced by accelerating negative ions to monstrous velocities, then stripping away their extra electron at the last nanosecond-creating a 30million-watt, 5-million-ampere beam of lithium ions that delivered 100 trillion watts per square centimeter directly to the target. Because of all that power, the Hammer was a little temperamental. But it had marvelous potential for clean lethality. Until recently Peter had loved it like a proud father. And if it works, I"ll love it again, he thought ruefully, and stifled a reflexive groan-the pain in his belly seemed to be increasing with every tick of the clock. Peter gave the apparatus one last look, closed the access panel, and turned to Alex Davies, who was eyeing his every move with an unfathomable gaze. Had Alex caught a whiff of his uncertainty? If so, what in the h.e.l.l was there to do about it? "Let"s go to the bunker," he said.

Blockhouse A, a full mile from the device and twice as far from the target animals, was a dark concrete pillbox, with firing control room walls ten feet thick. The roof, a full twenty-seven feet of reinforced concrete, had been designed in the 1940s to withstand the impact of a large rocket, such as a V-2, falling from an alt.i.tude of one hundred miles at a speed of two thousand miles per hour. The bunker, whose dank air had all the homely a.s.surance of a mausoleum, had been used for the Manhattan Project in 1945. Its flaking concrete was layered with graffiti, most of it written by young physicists who were now household names. If you"re not part of the solution, Feynman had written in the 1960s, you"re part of the precipitate. And a favorite of Peter"s, from Einstein himself, written by some unknown hand, Relatively speaking, when does Munich stop at this train? A klaxon sounded.

The last observers were crowding in, including Peter"s Army shadow, Colonel Henderson-Heartless Henderson to his friends as well as to his enemies, in which latter category Peter found himself almost by default. Henderson was a large-muscled, close-shaven man in his fifties. His teeth were invariably clamped around an unlit H. Upmann Corona Major, and he had humorless dark eyes that were perpetually narrowed, as though scanning a column of figures that didn"t add up. Right now, he was gesturing at the monitor that showed the hillside of target animals, spinning out a scenario for a half dozen visiting bra.s.s. Peter sat biding his time. "What we have here," Henderson intoned, "is an a.s.sault line of three hundred enemy troops-for argument"s sake, Iraqis. They"re about to sweep down and engulf an American outpost cut off from all support. Isn"t that right, Dr. Jance?" "It"s your movie," said Peter, without enthusiasm. Where the devil was Beatrice? "And over here," continued Henderson, moving to the next monitor, where the weapon glowed darkly in the blazing desert light. "Here we have the Hammer. Cast of thousands, cost in billions- which oughta buy us a feel-good ending, don"t you think, Doctor?" Peter avoided Henderson"s look of baleful skepticism and shot a glance at the door-someone was entering. At the sight of Frederick Wolfe, Peter"s heart did a little dance of disappointment. "Glad you could make it, Freddy," he said. "Wouldn"t have missed it for the world," said Wolfe magisterially, lowering his long frame into a chair that had been reserved for him. He nodded toward Alex, who at his grandfather"s entrance had shifted casually to a corner of the bunker. "You sure you want Alex here, though? I"ve seen keyboards blow up at his touch." Wolfe laughed alone, drawing pained looks from the other crew members. His habit of teasing Alex was unsettling to the rest of the crew, who universally liked the kid. Peter watched Wolfe give Alex a pat on the head, and then forgot about them as the door opened again and he saw the face he"d been longing to see-for years, it seemed suddenly, though in fact he and Beatrice had only been apart for a month. He held out his hand, and Beatrice squeezed it, tilting her face up to his for the lightest of kisses. "Thought I"d have to go without you," he said. "Never," she said, instantly appraising his anxiety and giving him the look she"d given him so many times before: You"re wonderful no matter what happens. His heart soared, and the pain in his stomach subsided. "We had a pleasant surprise at the Fountain Compound," she said with a smile. "A little breakthrough." "And it"s good?" he asked politely. Over the last year or so, consumed with his own experiments and occasional misgivings, he had lost track of the direction his wife"s research was taking. "It"s not bad. How are you feeling?"

"Better," he lied. "Much better."

"Peter?"

"I am. Not a spasm all day." He kissed her again. Every good marriage, he was fond of saying, was based on fear. In his case, not the fear of losing Beatrice"s love, which was unthinkable, but the fear of causing her worry or pain. "What did you see?" he asked. "One of the sheep?" "A pig."

"And it was promising?"

"Very. Listen, we"ll talk later. I don"t want to upstage you," she said. As if I could, was the sweet unstated message in her clear gray eyes. He felt a lump in his throat. If ever the phrase "for better or worse had concrete representation, it was in Beatrice"s unflinching devotion to him and to his work. Fifty years they"d been married. As Peter sometimes quipped, for a couple who were both intensely engaged in scientific research, that alone should have rated them a plaque at the foot of their street. And whereas Peter"s achievements had already been granted four pages in the Britannica, Beatrice"s brilliance in neurobiology was known only to the inner circles of her own specialty. Peter ran his own project; Beatrice worked in anonymity for Frederick Wolfe. Not once-it never ceased to amaze him-had she ever complained. "Break a leg," she said, and kissed him again. "All right, cut it out, you two," said Wolfe from behind them. He flashed a jagged smile. "Time to save the world for democracy," Peter gave his crew the once-over. They were ready and focused. "Uplink with the bird is achieved and locked," said Cap Chu, his Peter-like lilt echoing dully off the concrete. "We are zero minus thirty seconds and counting." The place fell silent.

Peter scanned the instruments. Everything appeared on track. He wished deeply that he felt the same about his own systems-now the pain was lancing up from his gut and, at ten seconds, he definitely felt the room spinning, saw his hand going out to Beatrice. Then the weapon fired.

The sound of the pulse was audible even through ten feet of reinforced concrete-a deep, electrical throb that peaked with a thunderous clap of energy The on-range video screens burned to white. That"s all right, thought Peter, as Beatrice"s nails dug into his palm. That"s to be expected, he said to himself, and Beatrice relaxed her grip. What was unexpected was the explosion that followed-a sharp, brutal blow against the bunker that sent all of them reeling. Every red light on the panels flashed, everything that wasn"t nailed down toppled, and the blast wave that arrived a heartbeat later slapped clothing against flesh and left ears ringing. "No one move until we have an all-clear!" shouted Chu, as he clawed his way back up to the control panel. The monitors were coming back up, and the multi-angled view of the target hillside they offered was the most eerie sight imaginable. Each station that had been occupied by an animal was now the site of a bonfire of tissue, bone and hair. There was nothing in sight that resembled life, not anywhere. Oscar Henderson let out a bellow of delight. "You see that? G.o.d Almighty."

Fighting for breath, Peter struggled to his feet. There were ragged cheers and feeble backslaps among a few of the bra.s.s, but for the most part an awed hush had descended on the bunker. n.o.body had expected a force like that. "Holy s.h.i.t," Alex Davies was whispering-over and over, like a mantra. Beatrice, stunned into silence like the others, now stared at her husband, a nameless anxiety rising in her throat. Peter"s face was ashen. "Peter?"

"I"m fine." He walked up to the monitor and surveyed the mayhem at ground zero. Cap Chu peered at him uncertainly, shaking his head. "What was that audible explosion, Dr. Jance? I thought this was supposed to be a stealth kind of thing, no?" Peter took a deep, painful breath. He knew without looking. "We had a camera on the weapon, didn"t we?" Chu nodded and punched the switch.

There was nothing but snow on the screen. "What?" said Colonel Henderson, as Peter bulled past him for the door. Outside, the temperature had shot up from its normal desert, blast-furnace intensity to something primal and terrifying. On the target hill, the fires were guttering out, hundreds of black plumes drifting into a single dark stratum. Peter forced himself to look where the weapon had been. There was a crater of twisted metal and intense flame. Nothing more. He turned and saw Henderson puffing up toward him. "Well," Peter muttered gruffly, "we might be able to sell it to the Polish army, Aim it at your enemy and blow your own head off." "But you"re close, dammit!" Henderson said with huge enthusiasm. "I mean, look at the targets." He stared raptly at a smoking hillside that moments before had been teeming with animals. "You know what went wrong?"

"The weapon exploded," said Peter.

Henderson was doggedly upbeat. "But you do know why?" "Yes, I know why," said Peter angrily. "Because we rushed. Because we didn"t test adequately, Because if we had pushed forward the deadline as we should have, it would have put us three million over budget. You refused. I thought we might get lucky. I guess not." Henderson looked at the smoking pit where the weapon had stood. "We have another one where that came from, don"t we?" "Halfbuilt. Funding was stopped by your office, I believe." Henderson"s thickfeatured face twisted into a grin. "That was before you atomized a full division at a kilometer and a half." He threw a large arm around Peter"s bony shoulder. "If you think you"ve got an idea how to fix it, then by G.o.d you"ll start up again on that second unit tomorrow morning." "Only one problem with that," said Peter. "We"re broke." "I"ll see to it you get your money, don"t worry. All it takes is a phone call." Chuckling happily to himself, Henderson strode away, pa.s.sing Beatrice, who was standing in the bunker doorway, "You oughta be d.a.m.n proud of your hubby," Henderson told her as he went in. "Oh, I am," said Beatrice, and gamely held out her arms to her husband, smiling as if Peter had just run a touchdown. She said something, and Peter tried his d.a.m.nedest to hear what it was, but everything was being sucked into a black vortex deep inside his head, and the rushing sound drowned out every single word. The next moment he fell as if pole-axed. 3 ST. MAURICE, SWITZERLAND.

"Lizzy, I don"t like seeing you like this. And I can"t believe it"s not affecting your work." "The agency"s happy-n.o.body"s complaining," said Elizabeth, staring out over the water as the fall breeze riffled its surface. Winter was in the offing, and the poplars that framed the view of Lake Geneva had wrapped themselves in blood reds and rich gold-parchment like leaves lofted over the table of the sidewalk cafe" where Elizabeth Parker and Annie Rodino sat having a late lunch. "I do like your hair though," said Annie. "Do you? It"s sort of betwixt." She dabbed at it obligingly. It was longer than it had been in months, and slowly recovering its natural blond color after a Lancomemandated foray into piano-key black. Had Hans ever seen her with black hair? She couldn"t remember- all she could think of was the fact that she hadn"t heard from him in two weeks, but had been having a weird feeling all afternoon that he was going to call and apologize. But he hadn"t. "This guy"s bad for you," Annie declared. She was four inches shorter than Elizabeth and ten pounds heavier, with curly auburn hair, freckles and plump little hands that were constantly in motion, Elizabeth nodded. "I know. Except sometimes I think he"s the best thing that ever happened. too." "You are not thinking straight."

"Granted," said Elizabeth tactfully. She knew Annie, her closest friend, liked to think of her as the vulnerable one and tortured one. show you. You"re making excuses for him, and you deserve so much more. You"re a wonderful, bright, attractive, generous human being-" "Easy, my bulls.h.i.t meter is redlining."

"You are. You"ve got an old soul and you"re letting it be corrupted." Elizabeth made a face. "This New Age streak in you sets my teeth on edge. If I have a choice here, I"ll take your psychobabble over this stuff." "I"ll take that as a sign I"ve touched the truth," Annie said happily. "I think you"ve lived beforeyou were born wise. That"s why this Hans thing doesn"t make any sense, even to you." Elizabeth threw up her hands in exasperation. "Okay, if you insist on talking gobbledygook, then if I"m an old soul, so is Hans, okay? It"s probably why we connected. Great s.e.x and old soul hood-a match made in heaven." "You"re crazy.

Elizabeth grinned, perfectly willing at the moment to accept that appraisal. "Isn"t love supposed to be a little crazy? "A little. Let"s say you"re on the t.i.tanic and you have a gin and tonic in your hand. The ice in the drink is a little. The ice in the iceberg coming at you dead ahead is not a little. See the difference?" Elizabeth said nothing. Then a cell phone rang out at the table. Both women reached for their bags. "It"s mine," said Elizabeth, adding hopefully, "it"s Hans." She flipped open her cellular. Right away she could hear he was in his car-and he was apologizing profusely, before she could get a word in. "I"ve been h.e.l.lishly busy," he was saying. "Next week, I promise. We"ll go up in the Learjet again. You loved that. Or out to the pistol range. "No," said Elizabeth, with a look at Annie, who was giving her the sternest of looks. "What do you mean, no?"

"I"m not going to see you again," said Elizabeth. Delighted, Annie pumped her fist in the air. "What do you mean?"

"I don"t know what I mean." It was the truth-she had spoken without thinking, and what had come out had sounded horribly final and wrong. "You"re worried about me. Don"t be."

But in saying this, his words had just the opposite effect of what he intended. She immediately found herself worried big-time, wondering what it was he was worried about. "It"s Yvette," he said, before she could ask aloud. "What about Yvette?"

"I think maybe she"s having me followed. Hey, if you"re listening in," he said loudly, "I"m on to you people." And then he added, quickly, "I"m kidding, Elizabeth." "Are you? It didn"t sound like it."

"I didn"t mean to burden you with this. It"s just stupid paranoia." She felt a chill sweep through her, and she found herself saying, "Hans, I think I"m the burden here. Take care, okay?" "Elizabeth? I am sorry.

"Goodbye, Hans," she said, and snapped the phone shut. Annie touched her hand, almost shyly, almost as if she didn"t really mean for Elizabeth to have gone through with it. "You okay?"

Elizabeth nodded. She looked around as her heart sank. The crowd at the cafe" had thinned. It was near dusk and a mist was rising from the lake. Gulls and ducks splashed in for landings near moored boats and the last ferry was tying up at the quay. All at once Elizabeth wanted to be home. "You did the right thing," said Annie.

"I know," she lied.

"You keep telling yourself that, okay?"

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"I promise," said Elizabeth. For the moment, she meant it and believed it. Fiercely. How long her resolve would last, though-years, months or minutesshe hadn"t the faintest idea.

WHITE SANDS-THE FOUNTAIN COMPOUND.

Outside the faceless sprawl of government buildings, a layer of snow lay on the mesquite bushes. The guards were zipping up their parkas and hunkering closer to the fires dancing out of the empty fifty-five... gallon drums scattered around the perimeter. There was more security today than the Fountain Compound had ever seen, and more vehicles-Humvees, Avis and Hertz four-wheel-drives, even a mud encrusted Lincoln Town Car, as well as an Army Cobra helicopter, its plexigla.s.s blister shrouded in protective canvas. Inside the largest Fountain building, in the largest of the briefing rooms, Frederick Wolfe was holding court in lab whites, his spidery silhouette drifting in the twilight of flickering video images. Before him sat a half-dozen scientists of high rank and even higher clearance, and as many military officers, none of whom, save for Oscar Henderson, was in uniform. "As we all know," Wolfe was saying, in a voice so calm, so devoid of emotion that it sent a chill through the room, "nothing can be achieved without the ability to reunify a severed spinal column. That"s always been the barrier, impenetrable, unscalable. That"s square one of what we need to accomplishreversal of a complete transection of the human spine." He directed his laser-pointer toward a high-resolution video screen, which showed an anesthetized white rat in clinical close-up. A quick incision laid open its shaved back, revealing the spine from tail to shoulders. Surgical scissors slipped beneath the white thread of nerve and bone, and the spine was unceremoniously snipped in two. Several of the men, including the battlehardened, flinched audibly. Henderson"s deep-set eyes lit up in antic.i.p.ation. Nearby, Beatrice Jance watched from the shadows, every muscle frozen. She neither looked away nor winced, despite the pitiful spurt of blood and fluid. In her five decades as a neuroscientist, she had seen far worse. What shone in Beatrice"s eyes was different from the visiting officers" revulsion or Henderson"s unseemly rapture. It was of such preternatural intensity that under more ordinary circ.u.mstances and in a lighted room it would have turned every head. But no one was looking at Beatrice; all eyes were on the screen. "Admittedly, our methods were crude at first," Wolfe went on. "But the fact is that any attempt at reconnection until quite recently was both crude and in vain.

He gestured toward his grandson, Alex, seated at a bank of cornputers and image generators linked to the screen. Alex punched his keyboard and the picture switched to a microscopic shot of the severed spine, the cut end tipped toward the camera. "Even a small mammal"s spine is composed of an immensely delicate and complicated network of bone, fluid, membrane and nerve bundles. Worse, once cut, the spine tends to self-destruct around the breach, compounding the problem. It"s as if nature is programmed to finish the job and put the individual down permanently, to save an unnecessary burden on the species." The observers watched-each according to his own threshold of queasiness-while a series of shots showed increasingly complex attempts to rejoin the severed ends of various lab animals" spines. It was a wretched parade of suture and wire splices that invariably rendered the creatures twitching and incapacitated. Henderson"s eves never left the monitors. Something big was in the air, and he was waiting for It with unabashed attention. "But then," announced Wolfe, pausing for effect, "we had a breakthrough. Building on work begun in Sweden at the Karolinska Inst.i.tute, we were able to remove a full quarter inch from the spines of our rats, then use nerve fibers from their chests to bridge the gap." "Why nerves from the chest?" one of the officers asked, in a voice so faint Henderson had to repeat the question. "Any place but from the spine, actually, would have worked as well," replied Wolfe. "It"s just that the chest fibers were longer. The essential point is, only" spinal nerve fibers selfdestruct when injured. Those from other parts of the body tend to grow back. For instance. If an arm is cleanly severed, it can be sewn back on and the nerves will regenerate. But until we postulated it," he went on, letting his eyes Come to rest on Beatrice, "no one had dreamed of using nonspinal nerve fibers to rebind a severed spine. When we tried it, we found the fibers did indeed bridge the cut in the spine. Not always, and not perfectly, but they definitely did so with a remarkable amount of regularity, and for the first time in medical history we were getting movement from animals in their hindquarters after their spines had been severed. Alex?" Alex punched more keys.

"Subsequently we moved up to rabbits," said Wolfe, "hoping the larger operating areas would make our attempts easier... A murmur of disappointment rose from the front row. The screen was showing only a procession of dead animals. "All ended up nonviable," said Wolfe, relishing the emotional effect his chalk-talk, carefully planned and even more carefully rehea.r.s.ed, was having on these military yahoos. "The increased complexity of their neurology actually worked against us." Henderson noisily cleared his throat. "If you can"t do a b.l.o.o.d.y rabbit, how can you expect us to fund a project that-" He broke off, silenced by Wolfe"s pointing finger, indicating the screen. There was something new there now. One rabbit had finally managed to struggle to its feet. The hapless creature wasn"t really hopping, but it wasn"t dragging itself either. It sort of lumbered, like a little furry Frankenstein. "Eventually, after much trial and error," Wolfe continued, his voice rising just perceptibly, "we finally were successful in these more complex animals, to the extent that there was not only a lack of mortality but partial recovery as well." He smiled thinly. "We don"t usually name our animals, but we called this one Duracell." From the labcoats, predictably, came a small burst of laughter, but Henderson didn"t crack a smile, and the rest of the bra.s.s followed his lead. "Obviously;" said Wolfe, somewhat hurriedly, "we had to move on to something even more complex." At this, Alex keyed his control panel and the screen bloomed with the sight of the lively pig Beatrice had witnessed trying to make its escape. There was a lariat around its neck now held by the grinning wrangler, Perkins. "We found working on larger animals brought us a certain advantage," Wolfe declared. "Despite the fact that the spinal architecture of pigs is an order of magnitude m

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