The Quiet Pools

CHAPTER 21 —GAA— “…the greater good…”

The murder of Malena Graham was news that would not wait for morning, and so it was a short night for many in the Project family.

Hiroko Sasaki, on Takara to receive a deficiency report from the supervisory circle and tour the nearly completed Memphis, went directly from her suite to the transportation office to arrange a shuttle home.

Still wearing his striped pajamas, Edgar Donovan settled in his office node and began calling contacts in the media, even as he monitored the first fragmentary reports on Newstime and the black traffic on the private corporate net.

A shattered Thomas Tidwell, receiving special handling from Houston corpsec, shed his Thomas Grimes persona and fled to the quiet security of Halfwhistle by means of a corporate screamer.

Sleepy-eyed morale counselors and group dynamicists, huddled in a Building H conference room, debated whether to hold the pioneers over until the shock had been absorbed or to empty Noonerville early.

An unlucky senior facilitator headed for Virginia with an insurance check and the vain hope of shaping the Graham family’s public posture.

And Mikhail Dryke, heart-weary and discouraged, came back to Houston from Prainha, feeling as though it were a pilgrimage of futility. Too late, again too late. In the two hours and forty minutes between the flash alert and Dryke’s Celestron touching down on the complex’s runway, both the primary and secondary reasons for that journey had evaporated.

The first, of locating Graham’s killer, disappeared when Rangers from the Beaumont post forced down a Ford Firefly a few kilometers short of the Louisiana border, arresting one Evan Eric Silverman. The second, of determining whether Silverman had known Graham’s status, vanished when he confessed—no, boasted—in his first interview that he had killed a colonist, calling Malena a “traitor” and himself a “martyr.”

On hearing the latter, Dryke’s fury was matched only by his feeling of impotence. It had been obvious for months that the pioneers were at risk from the more radical Homeworlders—if not, then why were their identities and movements so conscientiously concealed? Dryke had urged repeatedly that the training centers be made closed campuses. But he had been overruled by assorted management types, Sasaki included, for reasons which had nothing to do with security.

Better to make it unnecessary for them to leave than to forbid them, he was told. Better that they see the center as a refuge, not a prison—their fellows as friends, not inmates. Better that they choose to turn their back on a world that they’ve decided for themselves is unfriendly. Better for morale. Better for solidarity. Better for everyone.

Except Malena Graham.

By midmorning, when Dryke reached the Beaumont post, it was already clear that so far as Allied Transcon was concerned, the murder of Malena Graham was a public relations disaster.

Here was the grieving family standing in front of their home, a sobbing Mother Caroline declaring, “Our girl was stolen from us. We never wanted her to go,” and Father Jack bitterly denouncing Allied Transcon for negligence—as if Graham had been some sort of teenage overnight camper.

Here were the world media, suddenly interested in the “tensions” between Allied and the Houston community, broadcasting inflammatory interviews with Diaspora opponents, complete with footage of the compound fences, patrol boats, and watch towers. And here was clean-faced clear-spoken Evan Silverman, being interviewed from his cell by a grimly earnest Julian Minor. Dryke sat in his vehicle in the post parking lot and watched on the skylink for as long as he could stand.

“What do you mean, don’t cry for Malena Graham?” Minor asked. “This is a young woman, her life in front of her, a courageous physically challenged twenty-year-old. And you dragged her off to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and beat her to death.”

“I don’t think I want you as my defense attorney, Julian,” said a relaxed Silverman. “The truth is that Malena Graham was a thief and a traitor. She was a Memphis colonist, a partner in a quadrillion-dollar hijacking of the Earth’s treasuries. She shares in the blame for every sin and excess committed by Allied Transcon over the last three decades.”

“So you murdered her as a revolutionary statement.”

“I executed a criminal for her crimes.”

“Will that be your defense?”

“The courts are controlled by Allied’s bedmates. They won’t allow the truth to clutter up their rush to judgment. Which is why I’m talking to you.”

“But I’ve talked to you before, haven’t I?” asked Minor.

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you Jeremiah?”

Dryke sat forward, riveted.

“No,” said Silverman.

“You talk like the man who calls himself Jeremiah,” pressed Minor.

“Jeremiah is the prophet,” Silverman said, frowning slightly. “It shouldn’t be a surprise if you hear the same words from his disciple.”

“Is that what you call yourself? A disciple? Is this political or religious?”

“I’ll let you apply the labels as you choose,” Silverman said with a shrug.

“But you’re trying to say that what you did is part of something bigger.”

“It is.”

“Were you under orders to murder Malena Graham?”

“Execute,” corrected Silverman. “My hands are Jeremiah’s hands. I do his work.”

“Not any longer.”

“There are ten thousand for Tau Ceti—ten thousand minus one. There are ten billion Homeworlders standing for the Earth. How can they think that they’re safe from us? In that ten billion there are ten times ten times ten thousand who will gladly do what I’ve done.”

“The cost—”

“We are many, and they are few. In a war of attrition, one of us for one of them is a victory. We’ll cheerfully pay that price until the last of the ten thousand is gone.”

Julian Minor was scoffing with his eyes. “Do you seriously think that you can announce a plan for this kind of mass murder and still expect to carry it out?”

“Jeremiah’s soldiers are everywhere,” said Evan Silverman with easy confidence, looking directly into the camera. “There’s no place our enemies can go that we can’t reach them.”

Dryke had seen enough. “Log it for me. Kill the screen,” he said, and the skylink went dark. But he did not move to leave the flyer.

For, listening to the interview, Dryke had finally understood the weight of discouragement that had settled on him that morning, that had taken him under as he sat on the edge of his bed, the fading images of a disturbing dream cross-channeled with the jarring sounds and images of the flash alert.

Now the dream came back. The siege had gone on forever. Each morning he walked the ramparts, reviewing the defenses and looking out at the broad grassy meadows where the enemy’s campaign tents stood and campfires burned. Each morning Dryke found a post or two abandoned, a familiar face or two among the enemy, dead allies reborn as adversaries.

Then came a morning when he woke to find himself the last bowman on the ramparts. That was the morning the assault began in earnest—uncounted enemies attacking the fortress at a thousand points. And the last archer knew full well as he nocked his first arrow that neither will nor heart nor skill would count enough to carry the day.

Writ the chronicler on the day he died, Too few on the ramparts, too many outside—

Inside the post, Dryke was stopped at a security gatelock, then escorted to a Captain Norwood’s office. He knocked on the door, then pushed it open.

The office was no more than half a dozen paces in any dimension. At one end, a man in a brown uniform sat behind a small boomerang desk, beneath a Scale 3 wallscreen. “Captain Norwood,” Dryke said. “I’m Mikhail Dryke, Allied Transcon.”

“You’re late,” Norwood said curtly, pushing back his posture chair and rising. He gestured past where Dryke was standing. “I understand you know Lieutenant Alvarez.”

Stunned, Dryke turned to follow Norwood’s gesture. A woman with a vaguely familiar face was seated there on a cushion couch.

“Mr. Dryke,” said Eilise Alvarez. “I was just telling Captain Norwood about your personal contribution to the Martinez case.”

A dozen replies passed in review of Dryke’s wary censor before he finally spoke. “Then I’ll have to make a point of telling him my side of it sometime,” he said, looking back to Norwood. “I’m a bit confused. How are the Houston Transit Police involved in this?”

Norwood settled in his chair. “Lieutenant Alvarez is representing a special operations unit working on controlling civil unrest aimed at Allied Transcon and its personnel.”

“We’re also seeking transfer of the prisoner to our jurisdiction on commencement-of-crime.”

“Which probably won’t be granted,” Norwood said, nodding. “Anyway, you both asked for briefings on the Graham case, so I thought I’d spare myself the repetition. I assume you don’t object?”

“No,” said Alvarez.

“No objection,” said Dryke. He gave Alvarez a sideways glance as he took the free chair along the far wall.

“Fine.” Norwood glanced down at the desktop, which had the muted gleam of a flat tank display. “Recorders on if you’ve got them. Victim, Malena Christine Graham of Great Bridge, Virginia, age twenty. Oh, and she was a crip, restricted to an airchair. According to witnesses, she was picked up by Evan Eric Silverman, twenty-eight, of Houston, at a bar called Magpie’s on Old Spanish Trail about ten forty-five last night.”

“Twenty December,” Alvarez said quietly for the benefit of her recorder.

“Silverman took the girl to a field about three kilometers west of Magnolia, off State Route 1488, where he stripped her and beat her with a dragon’s tail. That’s a club with a pattern of razor edges embedded in the top third. Illegal as a weapon. Silverman had a license for his—apparently he’s a juggler. Cause of death: You’ve got your pick until the coroner wraps up. Most likely the head injuries killed her before she bled to death. Time of death is twelve twenty-one a.m. That’s the twenty-first,” he added. “You want to see the evidence tape?”

“Yes,” said Dryke.

“Is there any point?” asked Alvarez.

Norwood opened his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “Not for me to say. I don’t know what you’re after.”

“All right,” said Alvarez. “Show it.”

The assault had been savagely cruel, and the body was grossly disfigured. It was the same kind of mindless violence he had seen in the incident at the observation platform, but turned up one notch from brutality to butchery. Looking at the evidence video, Dryke could not even tell if the young victim had been attractive.

“Jesus. Did he do all that?”

“Not quite. When they found her, the fire ants were having their fill. It’s a mercy she was dead.” Norwood shook his head. “At least I hope she was dead.”

When the recording ended, the lights came up. Alvarez was pale, but when Dryke raised an eyebrow in her direction, she shot a withering look back.

“That’s about it at this point,” said Norwood, who had never turned to watch the wallscreen. “Nothing I didn’t have to release to the media, really. Frankly, I’m still not clear on what you’re after. There’s not much here to finesse.”

“What about this ‘Jeremiah’s hands’ business?” asked Dryke.

“He has been talking a lot, that’s a fact,” said Norwood. “You obviously caught his spotlight performances. I can’t let any of his private showings leave the building, but I could set you up with a screen somewhere. Are you interested?”

“Yes. If you could arrange that when we’re done, I’d appreciate it,” Dryke said.

“What else is there to do?”

All that was left was all that there had ever really been—the quest for Jeremiah. “Silverman’s home,” Dryke said.

“Being searched and inventoried now.”

“What about his comlogs, his library, his personals? There could be important information in them—information that could finally give us a chance to take apart the Homeworld network. I have access to technical experts who can disarm any security traps Silverman might have left.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Shrugging, Dryke said, “Mutual cooperation—our expertise in exchange for access to whatever’s dug out.”

Norwood frowned and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t see what standing you have to ask for access to criminal evidence. And we have our own hackers and crackers.”

“If Silverman really is working with Jeremiah, I promise you, you’ll need more than a password engine and a wipe mask to get into his file library,” warned Dryke.

“We’re not amateurs, Mr. Dryke. We do this all the time,” Norwood said with evident annoyance. “And again, I don’t see how I can justify making you a partner in our investigation.”

“Can I inject something here?” asked Alvarez.

“Go ahead,” said Norwood.

“I’m looking at a work load of seventy-one open property crimes against Allied facilities—which may or may not involve Jeremiah or members of the Homeworld movement. Total damage and losses runs about fourteen million dollars,” said Alvarez. “Will that earn me a look at Silverman’s personals?”

“Yah,” said Norwood. “We’ll work with you on that.”

“Then you may as well let Mr. Dryke have it as well. We’ve got a co-op agreement with corporate security, and they’ll see anything we see.”

Norwood cocked his head and pursed his lips. “All right, Mr. Dryke,” he said finally. “Bring on your experts.”

“I’ll go make the call.”

“Wait,” said Norwood, turning to face his wallscreen. “V-mail, forward till acknowledged: Norwood to Unit Six. We’re going to get an outside assist on Silverman’s personals. Let’s keep our hands off all data storage media and devices until then. Catalog in place. End.”

“Sending, sir,” said the comsole’s voice.

Reaching out to his left, Norwood touched several desktop sensors, and a list of files came up on the screen. “Unlock fourteen through twenty-two, one viewing, sequenced, then re-lock.”

“Done, sir.”

Finally, Norwood turned back toward the others and rose from his chair. “Okay. You can call from here,” he said, making his way toward the door. “When you’re done, ask for file fourteen.”

“We didn’t mean to chase you out—” Alvarez began.

“You didn’t. I’m due in the tank to testify in another case.” He squinted toward Dryke. “Let me know when you can have your people here.”

“I will. Thank you, Captain.”

As the door closed, Dryke thumbed off his recorder and turned to Alvarez wearing an openly puzzled expression. “What’s going on?”

“I want Silverman’s personals,” she said. “I don’t want blank logs and a brainwashed AIP. Your texperts are insurance.”

“That’s not what I mean. There’s no co-op agreement between us. Or am I missing something?”

“There is now,” she said. “Unless you don’t want it.”

“I’ll take it. But I still don’t understand. You can’t have forgotten about Brian White since you told Norwood about it half an hour ago.”

“I only told him how I knew you,” she said. “I didn’t tell him what I thought of your ethics. And I won’t, unless you try to see Silverman.”

Dryke looked at her wonderingly. “Stand still. I can’t track a moving target.”

“This one’s different than the last one,” Alvarez said quietly. “White was petty stuff, a classic bad boy. We know how to handle his kind. But Silverman’s a hard-wired freakoid. And he scares the pee out of me.”

“He’s in lockup. Norwood’s not going to let him walk.”

“Not that kind of scared. But how many more are out there?” she asked. “You’ve got fifteen hundred employees in the compound and three thousand more outside for the next Silverman to pick from. There’s no way that you can lock them all up safely out of reach.”

“I know,” said Dryke.

She shook her head. “I don’t know how to get inside Silverman’s mind. I don’t even know if I want to.”

“You don’t want to,” said Dryke grimly.

“Is he crazy? Cerebral function deficiency?”

“Was Hitler crazy?” Dryke asked rhetorically. “I don’t know. I’ll bet he doesn’t come up CFD. He’s worse. A bad combination of hate and intelligence.”

“And calculated viciousness.”

“That’s what you get when you put those two together,” said Dryke. He gestured at the screen. “Are you ready?”

“I suppose.”

Dryke nodded. “File fourteen, display,” he said, thumbing his recorder to on.

Larger than life, Evan Eric Silverman sat calmly in the back of the Ranger cruiser, talking to the officers in the front seats.

“This is just the beginning,” he was saying. “Number one. Somebody keep score. We’re going to stop them. We’re going to push them right to the edge—”

It was midnight in Prainha, 4 a.m. in Northumberland, and 1 p.m. the previous day on Takara and Memphis, orbiting high above the mid-Pacific. But technology and the wishes of Hiroko Sasaki had erased the differences that night. The four people waiting with Sasaki in her garden meeting room were all sharing the same moment with the five skylinked to the gathering, all waiting on the same report.

“We are ready, Mr. Dryke,” said Sasaki, consulting the digital slate resting on her lap. “You may begin.”

“Thank you, Director,” said Dryke from the tank in Houston. “I won’t belabor this. We got into Evan Silverman’s library about seven hours ago. The only defenses in his system were commercial repellents, which were taken down without damage to the files. About four hours ago, the Texas State Police handed over image copies of all the libraries, including Silverman’s contact logs. We’ve parsed them six ways to November, and there’s no evidence he was working with anyone else or at anyone’s direction.”

“Let me be certain I understand,” said Sasaki. “There is no evidence of Mr. Silverman having contact with any person or organization on our Homeworld watch lists.”

“That’s correct.”

“There is no evidence of any communication or contact with Jeremiah.”

“That’s correct. Understand, though, that no evidence means just that. The files could have been purged before Silverman went out that night—a good wipe utility wouldn’t have left us anything.”

“Was there an AIP which could be questioned?” Sasaki said each letter individually, eschewing the acronym.

“No. Silverman lived alone.”

“Do you have any conclusions?”

Dryke frowned. “One thing we did find in the library was a clip file on Jeremiah—all of his pirate speeches, coverage of the tank truck gag here a few months back, and the like. I’m inclined to think that anyone who would take the trouble to wipe out damning evidence would probably get rid of the merely suspicious as well. So I expect that the reason we didn’t find anything was that there wasn’t anything to find. We’ll run the files for embedded code, of course, before we close the book.”

“It is your judgment, then, that Mr. Silverman acted alone, and on his own initiative.”

“Yes. Based on what I’ve seen today.”

“There has been speculation by the media that Mr. Silverman may in fact be Jeremiah,” said Sasaki. “Is there any reason to give this speculation credence?”

Dryke snorted. “Julian Minor is an idiot. No. None at all.”

“One final question: Do we know for certain that Mr. Silverman knew Ms. Graham’s involvement with the Project?”

“He knew,” said Dryke.

“Are you basing that on his word alone?”

“No. On the fact that he was boasting about it when the Rangers picked him up. If he didn’t know before he left the bar with the woman, then she either told him or gave herself away somehow.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dryke, on behalf of the committee,” said Sasaki. “I know that this has been a long day for you. If you will allow me, I would like to close one other matter. Has there been any change in the status of the open gateway at the Munich operation?”

“No change,” said Dryke dourly. “There’ve been a fistful of attempted penetrations, but all amateurs. It looks like the big fish saw the hook.”

“I am told by Mr. Reid that it is through the exercise of discretion that they live to become ‘big fish,’ ” said Sasaki. “Please have the gateway closed and the operation terminated. The staff will require the navigation package to be available when they begin reporting after the New Year, and any further delays in its installation will endanger that.”

“Yes, Director.”

“We will contact you in the morning if we have further questions—please notify me immediately if there are new developments.”

“Of course.”

Sasaki touched her slate, and the Houston link was broken. There was a prolonged silence, more subdued than respectful, in the garden room in Prainha.

“Mr. Tidwell,” said Sasaki at last, frowning. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” came the reply, ferried across the Atlantic by the sky-link. “Yes, I am.”

“Do you have anything to add?”

Tidwell’s eyes were dull, and the words came slowly. “I was fond of Miss Graham. I deeply—regret—her death. That said, I do not see what I can contribute to this discussion.”

One of the men across from Sasaki stirred. “Can I ask what he was doing in Houston in the first place?”

“Mr. Tidwell?” asked Sasaki. “Did you hear that?”

“I had—made a judgment—that in order to truly know the colonists, I would have to share their lives—their experience.” He paused. “I meant to leave in three days, when the class was released.”

“Does sharing their lives include dating twenty-year-old girls?” The question came from a woman sitting to Sasaki’s left.

“I am satisfied that Mr. Tidwell’s involvement in these horrible events is tangential and entirely incidental. Further, that his involvement with Miss Graham was consistent with the purposes he named,” said Sasaki, her tone a sharp rebuke. “I have asked for his observations because he is in a position to speak to the present atmosphere in Houston, and for no other reason.”

The woman lowered her eyes and was silent.

“While in Houston, I saw a marked and growing polarization,” said Tidwell, stepping into the empty space. “Lines of allegiance have hardened. You hear bitter words on both sides, little communication between them. Emotions have outdistanced reason in too many minds. I am forced to say that I am not surprised that this happened. It was an undeclared war. No longer.”

“Can you plot the curve?” asked the woman.

“Pardon me?”

“How long will the Houston operation be sustainable?” she asked. “Will we be able to move three more classes through by March?”

“I see,” said Tidwell. “I am not well versed in the business of prediction.”

“Noted,” Sasaki said. “I would appreciate your assessment, all the same.”

Tidwell loosed an uncomfortable sigh. “The undeclared war was fought, I might argue, by gentleman’s rules. If Evan Silverman presages a new group of players who recognize no rules, it seems to me that it will be a near thing. There are wolves at the door.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” said Sasaki. “You may leave us now.”

“May I ask a question of my own?”

“Of course.”

“Why is Malena Graham so important? I was told today that twenty-nine people attached to the Project have died in accidents and other incidents this year, including three colonists. At least six of those deaths were murders. I am not aware that the committee was convened on the occasion of each or any of those cases. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re not more concerned about my involvement than you’ve admitted.”

Sasaki briefly showed a tired smile. “You have answered your own question, Thomas. Malena Graham is so important because she demonstrates that the rules have changed. She is the first colonist killed simply because she was a colonist.”

“But what does that mean to you?” Tidwell said. “I half believe that you’ve been watching for it to happen.”

“We have been watching for certain signs,” said Sasaki. “Some time ago, the sociometric unit prepared a study of the rising curve of opposition to the Diaspora. It contained a multi-stranded prediction, specifying several checkpoints and watershed events. Malena’s murder and your assessment of the situation in Houston both fit the projection.”

“Why was this study kept from me?” asked Tidwell.

Sasaki showed a flash of annoyance. “As you said yourself, your province is the past, not the future. It was not kept from you. It was simply not relevant to your work.”

“I would like to have made that judgment myself,” said Tidwell, somewhat chastened. “In any case, I now understand your concern.”

“Our concern is long-standing.” She gestured with her right hand, her simple metal bracelet gleaming. “To date, all is as predicted—the changing political and social climate, the drop in options and acceptances, and now the violence.”

Tidwell’s expression was a troubled one. “What lies at the end of the curve? What does this mean for Knossos?”

Sasaki was slow to respond, and it seemed to those in the room with her at Prainha that it was less for lack of an answer than for her reluctance to voice it.

“I suppose that circumstance has now made the study relevant to your office,” she said at last. “If the projection continues to hold, we will never build Knossos.”

“What!”

“Or Mohenjo-Daro, or Teotihuacán,” Sasaki continued. “The Diaspora will end with Memphis. That, Mr. Tidwell, is why Malena Graham is so important.”

“Then I will hope that fortune-telling is a less exact science than history,” Tidwell said. “Good night, Director.”

“May I ask him one more question?” It was the woman to Sasaki’s right.

Sasaki gestured her assent.

“This boy you were talking to that night—the archie you left Malena for. Did you learn anything from him?”

Eyes haunted, Tidwell slowly shook his head. “That cuts the deepest,” he said. “There was nothing he could tell me, because he didn’t know himself.”

When Tidwell was gone, there was an uneasy silence in the garden room. Sasaki rose wordlessly and crossed the room to the dispenser for a cup of Japanese tea. One of the men stood at the window-wall at the far end of the room, looking out at the lights of the spaceport.

“That’s it, then,” he said finally. “We’ve crossed a threshold.”

No one spoke.

“I’m surprised you told Dr. Tidwell as much as you did,” said the woman when Sasaki rejoined them.

“It was time for him to know.”

“But not the whole story.”

“He is my barometer,” she said. “He now knows as much as he needs.”

“I don’t think you should have soft-pedaled it,” said the man at the window, returning to his chair. “The truth is, we’ll be lucky if they don’t find a way to stop Memphis.”

“I can’t accept that,” said Matt Reid, skylinked from Takara. “We can’t just sit still and let them come get us.”

“The study makes clear that we can only hasten our decline by matching their tactics,” said Sasaki. “We have seen already, in the Singapore incident, that we are judged by stricter standards.”

“Maybe I’m the only one here,” said the supervisor, “but I don’t take the study as gospel. I’m not seeing any of this up here. And I hate like hell to hear this kind of negativism on the committee.”

“Takara is a special population,” said the woman. “It will reach there last.”

“I don’t see why we can’t fight this,” the supervisor persisted. “And I’d put finding some way to silence this Silverman at the top of the list. It shouldn’t be too hard to find someone willing to go head-hunting.”

“No,” Sasaki said forcefully. “It is already too late for that. Mr. Silverman made his statement with his hands. His words are merely echoes, and you cannot silence an echo.”

“So we’re going to do nothing,” said the supervisor, disgusted.

“We will do what we planned to do, three years ago,” said Sasaki. “We prepared for a contingency no one wanted to believe in. Mr. Marshall”—she nodded toward the man by the window—“said that we would laugh at ourselves for fools the day that Knossos sailed. Is there anyone on the committee who truly believes we will see that day?”

She looked at each of them in turn. No one spoke.

“I accept the inevitability of the inevitable, the reality of the real,” she said. “But this is no surrender. Memphis must sail. We cannot allow the success of the Diaspora to depend on a single ship.”

“Is there any better news from Ur?” asked the woman.

Sasaki shook her head. “The trouble continues. There is no danger to the ship at present, and apparently little danger any more that they will turn back. But the new governor holds out little hope for a return to normalcy.”

Marshall shook his head. “If he can’t deliver, then we may have picked the wrong boy to overthrow Milton.”

“The truth is that there is little we can do from here to influence events onUr,” said Sasaki. “The threat of a communications embargo is rather a feeble lever. Our focus must be on that which we can control—the future of Memphis.”

“Are you putting Contingency Zero in effect?” asked Marshall.

“Yes. As of this meeting. Your individual responsibilities are contained in locked files which were transferred to your private libraries earlier this evening. The key is ‘Lights out.’ ” She smiled wryly at Marshall. “That was your phrase, as I recall.”

“Last one on the planet, turn out the lights,” Marshall said. “Yes. That was me.”

Sasaki continued, “When you review your files, keep in mind that the first priority will be to establish a firm timetable for the move—”

The slate on Sasaki’s lap suddenly began to chirp insistently. At the same time, the skylink displays blanked to white, and the black-bordered box of a flash alert appeared in the center of each. In the center of the box appeared C. Gustav Feist, site director for the Munich center. His face was flushed, and his hands slashed the air as he spoke.

“Director Sasaki,” he said hoarsely. “Where is Dryke? He won’t answer his page. Where is he?”

“He’s gone to bed, I presume. He may be off-net. What is happening, Mr. Feist?”

Feist’s eyes were pleading with the committee. “The gateway was closed, just as he instructed. Closed! Not thirty minutes. The com staff swears to it. None too soon, I thought. Now this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You haven’t been told?” Feist looked away from his camera as he listened to someone off-screen. “Gott in Himmel. It’s still going on.”

“What’s going on?” Marshall demanded.

“It must be Jeremiah,” Feist said agitatedly. “There’s a virus in the engineering network, tearing up the development systems. We can’t freeze it, we can’t kill it, and it won’t let us shut down. I’ve got to go. We’re being brain-burned, Director. Brain-burned while we’re talking.”