Special Feature: FIREBIRD, by Tony Rothman [Part 2 of 3]

The world is moving towards alternative energy. Two giant laboratories, one in France, one in Texas, are engaged in a contest to give mankind a limitless source of energy-fusion, the energy source of stars. In France, the European Union is constructing the colossal ITER project. At CFRC, the Controlled Fusion Research Center near Austin, a scientists have constructed a machine they call Prometheus to challenge ITER. When the director of the Austin lab attempts to achieve fusion on the day of Prometheus’ dedication, a near-fatal accident ensues, and in an instant the rivalry between ITER and CFRC becomes a race to change the future of the world. But was it an accident, or sabotage?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Machuzak’s wrist and handset when off simultaneously, as well as the laboratory’s emergency warning system. An instant later, Abbuhl was on the air, paging him.

“Mac, sir, you’d better get down to the neutral-beam area. Fast.”

Machuzak clicked off, not entirely understanding what had hit him; he grabbed T.J. by the arm and ran.

“It’s happened, hasn’t it?” she managed.

“I don’t know, but when Fred Abbuhl sounds like that, it isn’t good.”

They sprinted at full speed out of the courtyard, across the asphalt and to the pentagon. With a yank, they picked up Slava, who stood rubbernecking in the crowd already gathering by the test cell entrance, and shoved their way inside.

“Where’s Abbuhl?” Machuzak shouted.

He got no coherent response. “Downstairs,” someone finally answered and the three clambered downward, still pushing their way past equipment and onlookers, all of an unearthly pallor under the sodium lights. Siren wails growing louder each second gave Machuzak an intense sense of déjà vu. With half the lab in tow they reached the neutral-beam supply area and the surge room, what was left of it. Abbuhl stood in front of the door, which had been blown outward, as if a bomb had gone off in a ship’s hull. The inside was a tangled mess and a confusion of smells. Two technicians sat on the concrete floor nearby, bleeding; one lay stretched out, badly mangled and unmoving.

Lipman.

Machuzak knelt beside the tech’s body and put his hand on the bloody chest. “No!” he roared in futile defiance. “No!” Abbuhl and D’Abro pulled him to his feet.

“Sir…”

Machuzak shook them loose, breathing hard, and walked over to Faberman, one of the survivors, who lay against one of the huge girders supporting Prometheus above. “Are you, okay, George?” he asked, kneeling again. Faberman admitted that he’d felt better. “What happened, can you tell me?”

The tech nodded. “The schedule’s tight, you know…” Yeah, Machuzak knew. Come on, George, don’t faint on me now. “The sulfur hexafluoride in the switches was low, so we refilled them this morning. Just now we were checking the ignitrons. Suddenly there was this explosion…”

Nathaniel stood up. Sulfur hexafluoride? Explosion. What? Sulfur hexafluoride is an inert gas. This wasn’t even the same surge room where Cyrus the Great had touched lightning. Instantly, everything became clear. It was one of those moments you live for as a scientist, when you see a problem clean through, when the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place. Machuzak cursed. Why hadn’t he seen it before? “Where’s the SF6 bottle?”

Faberman pointed to a nearby alcove. The bottle was one of many, the usual gray, labeled sulfur hexafluoride. “Does anybody have a balloon?” Nathaniel asked. “A plastic bag? Something?” His eyes surveyed the crowd. After a few moments, someone produced a condom. Machuzak filled it, tied it off, put a match to it. With a loud pop, it exploded, a miniature Hindenburg. Every face in the crowd was etched with the same astonishment.

“Sulfur hexafluoride, my ass.”

“But Mac, sir,” said Fred, as the astonishment transformed into perplexity. “Flammable gas bottles have left-hand threads.”

“Yeah.”

Nathaniel told Abbuhl to deal with the emergency people but refer any questions to him. Grabbing Slava and T.J., he led them away from the pentagon, but not before he and T.J. loaded the bottle on its dolly into the freight elevator. And not before she turned to Abbuhl and said, with ringing authority, “Nobody, I repeat, nobody, enters this area. Nobody touches those cylinders. If anybody tries,” she looks Fred straight in the eyes, “shoot him.”

When they were barricaded in the MTF, Nathaniel glanced from one to the other, lasers beaming from his own pupils… Did they understand?

“Looks like your gas theory was correct, brother,” Slava said, putting a cigarette to his mouth. “After all.”

“Yeah, wrong gas.”

“Huh?” said T.J., struggling to keep up.

“Deuterium,” Nathaniel explained. “Chemically it’s just hydrogen. Explosive. The lab’s full of it.” He waved his arm over his own space. “For the taking. No one keeps track of it.”

“Whoa,” T.J. insisted, silencing her phone. “This wasn’t a second strike?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “Almost certainly not.”

“Then what the hell happened?”

“What happened, three weeks ago, is that during the demonstration, someone had a deuterium bottle venting gas into the surge room. By cutting the busbar in half, the saboteur created a spark gap. He was hoping that at a high enough voltage he’d get a spark and blow the neutral-beam supply to bits. This was no sophomoric prank to stop a demo. He was trying to spike the machine.”

“Clever idea,” said Slava. “You must admit.”

Always the scientist’s appreciation for the technically sweet. Machuzak did not find himself filled with admiration.

Why didn’t it work? the detective wanted to know.

“As I recall, we got a fault light before the highest tap, just before going to half a million volts. I don’t know, maybe he was counting on a spark at the highest voltage. The gap itself knocked out the protection circuitry, so it must have caused a component to fry in time. The saboteur defeated himself.

“No quite,” Slava remarked, contemplating his unlit cigarette.

Machuzak nodded. “Krieg-Zuber—you, me—we did get dizzy, not from nitrogen or sulfur hexafluoride, but from hydrogen.”

“Why’d it blow today?”

“You heard Faberman. The techs refilled the high-voltage switches with this insulating gas, sulfur hexafluoride—what they thought was sulfur hexafluoride. Then they started testing the ignitrons, those giant crowbars that short the circuit in an emergency. Ignitrons have real spark gaps in them and when they fire, they truly fire. The saboteur got his spark all right, just a few weeks late.” The switches, as usual, were leaky.

D’Abro was shaking her head sadly as the lab phone began to ring. “There’s no way I could have pieced all this together.”

Machuzak sympathized; the admission must be hard for the young woman. “T.J., no one expected you to. Anyway, it took an explosion to bring me to my senses.”

T.J. now returned the favor. “You expected to get all that?”

“If I’d thought of deuterium, Lipman would be alive.”

“Doc,” T.J. stretched out her hand, “nobody can live with standards like that.”

“Nat Edward’ich,” Slava put in, “she is correct. Your intuition was amazing. I salute you. But there was no way to have seen everything.”

Nathaniel breathed deeply and silenced all the ringing phones. “Okay. Maybe we at least have a decent clue—a deuterium bottle.”

“They’ll be some prints for sure, if not dozens, and I thought you said deuterium is all over the lab.”

“You heard Fred. Flammable gas bottles get left-hand threads. Someone filled an SF6 bottle with deuterium—”

“—or merely relabeled a deuterium bottle as SF6. That’s what I would do.”

T.J. glanced sharply at the Russian.

“Christ, what then? Try to trace a discarded deuterium label? It’s been thrown away weeks ago.”

“Doc,” said T.J., putting her hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “We got big problems. One of which is that this explosion’s blown our cover sky high. Another of which is that you now got a murder on your hands.”

After a pause during which the truth sank in, Machuzak nodded grimly. Lipman’s death was the worst and they couldn’t avoid a public investigation. By now everyone at CFRC realized that no accident was responsible. Everyone in the world realized it. “Well, we’ve been complaining that covert ops has shackled us. We bite the bullet. Tomorrow morning I hold a press conference.”

Archangelsky scowled. Yes, he’d also questioned their strategy, but now he had second thoughts about his second thoughts. “Nat, don’t be hasty. Maybe there is yet—”

“Yaroslav Borisovich, fifty or a hundred people down there saw sulfur hexafluoride explode in a condom.”

“Beware of what you wish for—”

“Brat, put a steamship in it.”

D’Abro was half out the door with the dolly. “I’ll be back. I’m impounding this bottle.”

Slava recognized defeat and threw his cigarette in the trash. “Well, if that is so, let’s turn out the lights and throw the grenade.”

They switched off the lights.

TWENTY-FIVE

The auditorium was overflowing. People crowded the aisles and spilled out into the lobby, where the oversized closed-circuit displays had been switched on. Latecomers hung over the stage apron and pressed against the big doors, which as they had been since the deadline ax fell, remained closed.

Machuzak scanned the room filled with familiar, unknown faces. Security guards, technicians, engineers, scientists. Leonard and Theresa sat in the first row, Leonard frozen at the aisle in his wheelchair, Theresa holding up a few tentative fingers. Nathaniel hadn’t seen her since their strange dinner a few weeks earlier and he’d scheduled this press conference without seeking Leonard’s approval. Slava’s wife, Nastya, had shown up and threw a friendly, forlorn glance Machuzak’s way before sitting down with her occasional husband. Mercedes, Lise. Garrett himself, having flown in from Fort Worth, marched down the aisle as he waved his hat to the cameras. The flash of phones was continuous, the clashing ringtones. It had been like this all morning, every channel, every station, every website, every minute.

When at last the time came, Machuzak waved the crowd silent and squinted against the lights. “For any of you who don’t know, my name is Nathaniel Machuzak, acting director of CFRC. This is lieutenant T.J. D’Abro of the Austin Sheriff’s Department.” T.J. had reluctantly requested and received dispensation to continue the investigation, and they decided to call her by her rank. No longer in a security guard uniform, she nodded to the audience. “As you know, about three weeks ago Cyrus Krieg-Zuber, the lab’s deputy director, was seriously injured in what appeared to be an accident. Early the next morning one of our technicians, Andy Lipman, uncovered evidence that someone had tried to sabotage Prometheus, CFRC’s large tokamak. Since then, Lieutenant D’Abro and I have been conducting an investigation in an attempt to find out exactly what happened and who was behind it. In order not to cause further alarm, or to tip off the saboteur, we decided on secrecy.” Machuzak let pass that Leonard Rasmussen had insisted on it. “Unfortunately, before we were able to apprehend the culprit, yesterday’s explosion took place. You all know about it. There is no point in trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Apart from killing a valued technician and injuring two others, the blast has shown conclusively that sabotage was involved.”

A murmur rippled from one end of the hall to the other.

When the noise abated, Nathaniel described his theory about how the explosion took place. It was a vast relief to get it off his chest, to empty himself of all the accumulating poisons. No, self-censorship remains at work. He withholds mention of dragons and mummies, not only because of what the press will do with it, but because uncovering Dragonmaster’s identity, as implausible as it sounds, may be their best hope now. Nathaniel also attempts to peer into the near future and fails miserably. If the deadline seemed unattainable before, at this moment it appears unimaginable.

“Do you have any suspects?” asks a reporter across the link from Shanghai.

“We have evidence,” Machuzak answers vaguely. “Certainly the detailed knowledge of the power system indicates that a member of this lab was involved, perhaps someone in this room.” The wave of awakening that runs through the crowd is audible. “Unfortunately, after yesterday’s events the saboteur will be even more difficult to apprehend.” He elides mention of ITER moles.

“What about terrorists, Dr. Machuzak? Isn’t CFRC high on the terrorist hit list? Won’t all of south Austin become uninhabitable if CFRC is hit?”

It is a worried local jumping to her feet, shouting, agitation as genuine as it is extreme. For a moment Machuzak stares at her, perplexed, remaining amazed at how often he has heard the preposterous claim. He tries his standard answer: “My guess is that terrorists would sooner target the nearest Taco Bell and do us all some good.” The joke garners a few laughs. “Look, CFRC is a civilian lab. There’s nothing here a terrorist would want. Terrorists train their sights on human targets, train stations, office buildings, not machines.”

“What about the tritium?” a talking head from Mumbai objects sharply. “Can it not be used in bombs?”

Here we are again, always. Nathaniel suppresses a sigh. “The amount of tritium you need to make a bomb is classified. I don’t know it exactly myself, but you’d have to steal a good fraction of CFRC’s inventory to produce a tactical weapon. In any case, the tritium supply is secure. Yesterday’s blast caused no radiation leakage.” There, he’d said it.

“But do you think a terrorist attack is possible, Dr. Machuzak? Possibly a Middle Eastern country that wants to prevent the development of fusion?”

Great minds do think alike. “I’d say this: The Middle East has been going nuclear for some time. And why should Middle Eastern terrorists destroy the fusion program, when our own government has destroyed it for them?” The political quip is obvious, but it at least garners black chuckles from some quarters of the auditorium. “In any case,” Nathaniel adds, “why CFRC and not ITER?” He should perhaps not be giving anyone any ideas.

At that T.J. stands and interrupts. “Sir, we are exploring all leads. I do not think we should be more specific. And I’d like y’all to remember that this is not the result of any carelessness of neglect on the part of CFRC. What’s more, yesterday’s explosion was planned to have gone off weeks ago. Since then there haven’t been any others, so we have no reason to think this is part of a prolonged campaign.” Machuzak and T.J. exchange forced smiles at the lie. “Please do not panic.”

Nathaniel is glad she has said it, not him, although the admonition will certainly have the opposite effect. Only at this moment does he sense realize the fear they are discharging over the entire laboratory.

* * * *

For the better part of an hour the pair were besieged. Machuzak answered the questions over and again, drew diagrams of the surge room. He explained neutral beams and spelled tokamak. “Do you investigate cold fusion?” “No, we do not.” “Why not?”

When it was over the two looked at each other, breathed.

“Well, the good news is that more people know what fusion means today,” said Slava, approaching the stage.

Nathaniel pushed his way toward Rasmussen but was intercepted by Richard Garrett, whose imposing form was also making its way down the aisle. “Son, I admire your guts. That couldn’t have been easy.” Easier than he thought. Telling the truth generally is. “Leonard, did you know about this?”

Rasmussen looked truly terrible. “I knew there was trouble,” he said from his wheelchair.

Nathaniel still hadn’t told Leonard everything. “Are you going to pull out?” he asked Garrett point-blank.

“Nope, I’m behind you until this is over, if you still think you can do it, show that son of a bitch Moravec that he, she, whatever isn’t the only energy honcho in the Republic of Texas.”

“The damage wasn’t too extensive. We can carry out the repairs in parallel with the cooldown. If nothing else happens we shouldn’t be set back.”

“Go to it,” said The Chairman.

“Take a hike, old boy,” said an unmistakable voice behind Nathaniel just as he extended his hand to Garrett.

Machuzak swiveled to see Cyrus Krieg-Zuber, who’d entered the auditorium and now, mobbed by reporters, was announcing that today he felt fit enough to take back the reins. For an instant, Cyrus the Great’s presence confounded Nathaniel, then: “Sorry, old boy, I’m director.”

Both turned toward Garrett, who nodded sternly. “Sorry, Dr. Krieg-Zuber, that’s the way it is. When they found you in that surge room, you were as dead as a can of corned beef, and when they carried you out, you were in about the same shape as a centipede with sciatica, so enjoy your rest. If you don’t, I’ll bar you from the lab.”

Stunned, Krieg-Zuber raised a finger at Machuzak, but for the first time that Nathaniel could remember, he found no words. Then he stormed out of the auditorium.

Slava whistled. “‘I perceive you now, beginning of high and turbulent days.’”

“You’ve said that before,” answered Machuzak.

The Russian shrugged. “Look on the bright side. Now the saboteur is trapped with the rest of us. No one will dare resign after this. Even take vacation.”

Da, from this moment on they were all prisoners.

TWENTY-SIX

Evening had fallen by the time Machuzak reached his home on the lower slopes of West Lake Hills. The house had become foreign to him, a mere crash pad, hardly even a life preserver in a sea without shore. His kitchen resembled an earthquake zone, counter and table strewn with empty cereal boxes, a refrigerator that had been cleared of everything but archaeological odors. He glanced at the Kandinsky clock on the living room wall. Usually it was with a momentary disbelief before he crashed onto his bed, awoke, threw on the nearest clothes, hopped into the jeep.

Tonight he was home earlier. After the press conference he had escaped the lab alone, not wanting to talk to anyone. He‘d gazed into his cloudy crystal ball and could not be cheered by what he perceived. Would ITER relent as its rival collapsed? Hah. Nathaniel glumly searched for something to eat, tossed out a shriveled apple. This entire series of unintended consequences was of their own making. His water was off too; was this a scheduled outage?

He flipped on the television, eight channels simultaneously. The local stations ran nonstop with the press conference; it played very high on the national news and even got twenty-three seconds on the BBC. As he watched, several of the newscasts cut to the Austin office of Senator Roy Whitman, where the white-haired politician addressed the cameras.

He’d received a leaked copy of the preliminary accident report, which T.J. and Lipman had just finished before the explosion, and named it “pure whitewash.” That it was, Nathaniel sighed. Yesterday’s disaster was due to a cover-up by the acting director and unless the laboratory didn’t expedite a proper inquiry, he’d call for a congressional investigation.

Nathaniel felt his mouth go dry. “Big Bad Roy,” as he styled himself, was a leader in the fight for Texas autonomy. To this day he opposed all energy and environmental legislation, figuring the Republic would soon enough make its own rules. But he was the powerful head of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Energy and Water Subcommittee, which oversees fusion, and almost from the day Leonard had founded CFRC, he’d proclaimed the lab’s work fraudulent. Otherwise, Machuzak knew little about Whitman, except that he could cause a lot of trouble; he just had.

Nathaniel ran his tongue over his lips. Who could have leaked the report and how? Machuzak was on his feet when his handset went off. “A couple weeks late, Cassandra, but not bad.” Archangelsky. “Have you seen Whitman?”

Da, Machuzak confirmed and signed off. Aye, on that first night he’d vaguely predicted to Slava that a week wouldn’t pass before the politicians jumped in. He sat for moments, resolving that until Whitman stopped barking and began biting, the proper tactic was to ignore him.

The doorbell rang then, he shouted, “Come in!” and Theresa Rasmussen entered to find him before the wall screen. The senator was still on the air, claiming that “taxpayers must be protected from footing the bill for a pie-in-the-sky project that has no chance of providing any benefit to our citizens.” Like the space station Whitman voted for way back then, Nathaniel thought.

“Oh, he is an evil man!” Theresa exclaimed, catching sight of the image before her. “He’s just a plain, lying idiot. When you meet these people at banquets, you tell yourself that their platitudes and homilies are merely for public consumption. Then you meet them in private and discover that they talk on the inside the same way as they do on the outside. That is Whitman, outside through and through.”

Nathaniel was momentarily taken aback at Theresa’s vehemence, and surprised to discover that she had encountered him at any number of official functions. On reflection, he realized he’d been naïve.

“How I dislike that man,” she went on, almost to herself. “He enjoys power. It positively oozes from him. I’d like to make him pay.”

Nathaniel knew then that he might have found a powerful ally in Theresa Rasmussen, but he had no idea why she had appeared at his door.

“I’m sorry, Mac,” she said, only now remembering to greet him, “I was on my way home from shopping and saw your car. I didn’t say anything today after the conference. I think I was overwhelmed. What you must be going through… How about some wine? I have a bottle in the car.” Nathaniel nodded absently and Theresa went to fetch it.

Holding out the bottle for an opener, she asked, “Is this our final defeat, Nathaniel, the end of Prometheus?” She spoke as if ASSET belonged to her. But then, Theresa had always been part of the lab.

“I haven’t raised the flag,” he said, putting a determined face on it, “but what happened yesterday…and now Cyrus…”

“Don’t worry about the big oaf,” Theresa said. “We’ll take care of him.”

“Theresa, the oaf has trashed my career once already. How’s Leonard taking things?”

Theresa stared down into her wineglass almost as if it weren’t there. Abruptly coming to, she cupped it in both hands and took a deep gulp. “Not well, Nathaniel. How would you take seeing your life’s work being destroyed before your eyes? He is a strong man, but…he can’t… This will make the end…” Suddenly, Theresa lifted her eyes to Nathaniel and threw herself into his arms, kissing him passionately on the lips and face.

At first he responded reflexively, then with intent. They moved almost clumsily into the living room, practically tripping over the coffee table and falling onto the couch. Theresa would not be delayed and soon her fingers had unfastened his shirt and were running greedily over his bare chest. Neither would she wait for him to undress her; she bared herself for him, tossing her shirt and bra to the floor. His hand was to her breast and his lips to her stiffening nipple. They managed to get off the rest of their clothes, she laughing, and he felt the gooseflesh of her buttocks above him, and before there was time to consider she’d slipped him inside her and groaned.

They went at it with abandon, but when they were done and she lay atop him, the guilt arrived quickly. “Theresa, what have we done?” Nathaniel asked.

“Shh,” she replied, putting a finger over his lips. “Consider it a gift to me. I needed it… It’s been a long time. Leonard would thank you. You don’t need to become my lover…umm, maybe occasionally.” She smiled, almost wickedly.

Stroking her flank, Nathaniel remained surprised at what had just taken place. He’d always viewed Theresa as a patrician educated back East in a series of those unaffordable girls’ schools and colleges. He could only imagine with difficulty that those women had sex at all.

“Come now,” she said slyly, arching her neck, “what do you think we think of all day, locked up in those unaffordable girls’ schools?” She lay her head on his chest, and he saw her contemplating a lone African mask on his wall. “Tell me,” he said, once again he realizing how little he knew about Theresa Rasmussen, “why did a young upper-class chick go to Africa?”

“Penance, I think,” she answered, looking inward. “I felt so removed from the world, from reality almost… I needed to help, do something… I didn’t get very far rebelling, did I?” She chuckled throatily, with self-deprecation. “I remember the songs of the black neighborhoods around Cape Town. There was such poverty and violence, but also a sense of motion, of something worth struggling for. That’s what I miss here. I see no sense of the greater good, just slow fragmentation. Whatever happened to the idea of a covenant, Nathaniel?”

He couldn’t answer. He’d read about it once. The Republic of Texas was for sure no place to find a covenant, but now for the first time Nathaniel saw Theresa as one of them. Of CFRC, certainly, but he meant as one of the small group of globetrotters, cosmopolites who paste no flags on suitcase or car bumper. That group whose nation consists only of the best they find anywhere, the best of culture, the best minds, the deepest souls. Machuzak was unashamed to pledge his loyalty to the fraternity of the dispossessed. He’d have none other. No scientist would. Theresa as well.

When the urge to separate overcame intimacy, Mrs. Rasmussen got up and dressed. She again told Nathaniel not to worry, that she’d never force herself upon him, that this was a gift. For him too, he replied. It was largely, mostly, for Leonard that he’d undertaken this impossible task. At this moment a stronger determination gripped him. He hoped it was not guilt, but he surely owed it to Leonard now. Theresa kissed him lightly on the lips and stepped into the evening.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The first protestors showed up at dawn. Three or four locals, a family it seemed, were lounging on lawn chairs outside the main gate, but they carried no placards and voiced no demands. As Machuzak passed, he couldn’t determine whether their intent was to keep people out or radiation in. “May I help you?” he called out.

“Nope,” was the response. “Just keeping an eye on things.”

“Good—I need all the help I can get,” Nathaniel answered, but by afternoon they were gone.

Joking had stopped at the guard booth. The security staff, after years faced with a job, opened trunks and inspected undercarriages, and did not exempt the acting director. D’Abro herself was up early, briefing guards on suspicious behavior, and Machuzak watched them grill an industry rep until tempers flared.

As he tore the day’s page from the deadline calendar, Nathaniel saw that someone had drawn a dagger thrust into Bill Balustradi’s forehead. He checked in briefly at his office; the single door open at this hour closed quietly as he passed. Five abrupt resignations flaunted Slava’s optimistic prediction. At the pentagon, techs averted their eyes and, though first shift was well manned, he felt as if he were walking the streets of a west Texas ghost town. For a few minutes he watched the crew work silently on the surge room repairs and scrub the floor of bloodstains. Back in the control room he found Abbuhl and glanced at the magnet temperature gauges. They stood at 200 Kelvins now, hardly colder than a winter’s day. Nathaniel asked Fred about the vessel bake.

It had begun. That meant they’d pumped the toroid itself down to less than a billionth of an atmosphere. “There’s a lot of junk comin off the walls, Mac, sir,” Abbuhl told him without expression. “You’re going to have to give us a week or two.” He went on to report that they were also conditioning the neutral beams and rf power supplies, checking insulation problems…the normal start-up activities, but the engineer’s empty voice betrayed none of his signature laid-back humor or engagement.

“Fred,” Machuzak said, “don’t fold on me. If I can’t count on you, we may as well throw in the towel now, let ITER do it.”

“Would that be so bad, Mac, sir? At least Balard doesn’t have a saboteur runnin loose.” Abbuhl paused, finally offering a rueful smile. “Well, this is Alamo country, isn’t it? At least because of that misguided demo, Herr Doktor Professor, all the systems are in pretty good shape.”

This afternoon he’d begin testing the motor-generators, the 700-ton flywheels that powered their experiments. Those dumb pieces of steel, built for a hydroelectric plant, had performed flawlessly for a decade and Fred saw no reason that they couldn’t perform for a decade more, if the lab existed.

“Fred, I’m firing up the ignition meetings again, or we’ll have a machine and nothing more.”

His chief stared at him with an expression that would have passed for ironic had it not been so filled with trepidation.

“In an hour.” He slapped Fred on the back and made his way upstairs through echoic corridors.

* * * *

With the division heads gathered before him in the ASSET conference room, Machuzak announced that the bakeout and cooldown were proceeding with only minor glitches and that barring unforeseen difficulties experiments could begin in two weeks. Not a person at the table reacted to the good news and as Nathaniel surveyed the blank, downturned expressions before him, he perceived that Abbuhl’s mood had been upbeat. He reported that today ITER had announced a ten-second low-power burn—a mere warm-up—but his chiefs hardly stirred.

“What is the point?” Hasschler asked finally, rhetorically. “We cannot beat them in…our circumstances.”

“I know how you are all feeling,” Nathaniel replied. “One of our colleagues has been killed, a saboteur lurks among us, the lab will shut down, ITER will win. But remember, we have five months and a week to create a star on Earth. Imagine! Look your colleagues in the eyes, get the gloom out of your systems… Let us try to create a star.”

Still, the uncomfortable, shifting silence continued until Nathaniel moved toward the door, at which Hasschler spoke up gruffly. “Crespi has made an interesting proposal…” It was a start, but from the way Hasschler wiped his bald crown as he attempted to explain Crespi’s idea, Nathaniel knew that it was also no more than a disguised shot in the dark.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“We have, of course, the usual parameters, but—”

“—the usual parameters will not get us ignition, will they?” said Toshifume Matsushima, entering the room with Yaroslav Archangelsky behind him. “Thank you for your wisdom, Mac, the other day,” Toshi said, bowing at the waist toward Nathaniel. “You have cleared my eyes.”

Machuzak did not know whether his courtyard speech or the explosion had turned Toshi around, but he breathed a quantum more easily, seeing that Matsushima had finally decided to put his mind to work.

All eyes were on the Japanese Korean. “Gentlemen, ladies,” he said, “from what I have heard, these meetings have taken on the aspect of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet—strife and stagnation. As is clear to everyone at this unfortunate laboratory, our kairos is rapidly diminishing, and if we wish to take our place among the immortals, we shall have to create fusion, not fission.”

Pretty words were too much for Kettering, today, now. “For God’s sake!” he shouted, “I’m sick and tired of hearing about fucking kairos. What’s kairos got to do with this ignition campaign?”

Matsushima smiled. “This is indeed your problem, Tom. To an anteater everything is an ant; to a soldier, everything is a campaign. What we require is a new mode of thought.”

Hasschler was falling back into his previous humor, if indeed he had left it. Again he wiped his head with his bare hand. “Talk is cheap. We are entering new territory. What concrete ideas do you have to contribute, Toshifume?”

“If we were entering old territory,” Toshi responded, “we would be there, not here.”

“This isn’t science, this is bullshit,” snarled Diana through clenched teeth, pointing at Toshi and Machuzak.

An instant later everyone in the room was roaring. Nathaniel yanked the CO2 extinguisher from the wall, aimed the nozzle toward the ceiling and pulled the trigger. “Halt!” he shouted superfluously, for the carbon dioxide cloud filling the room had already sent everyone scrambling into the corridor. He followed. “Toshi, I want you to talk over Crespi’s idea with Thaddeus, unless you have any of your own.”

As they coughed and cursed in the hallway, Richard Garrett appeared and told Nathaniel he was taking up residence at the lab “for the greater good.” Machuzak stared at him quizzically before he continued on, past a lonely water cooler.

* * * *

With their cover blown, T.J. lost no time in getting down to taking elimination DNA samples from anyone who could have been in the power area immediately before the accident. She spent two mornings swabbing the techs she’d interviewed, but the only DNA certain to match the samples she’d already collected was Lipman’s. He’d probably been the last one in the area the night before the incident, and he wouldn’t talk, ever. No, there were two other certainties: Laurel and Hardy.

The atmosphere hovering over the cafeteria would have better suited Death Valley, and T.J. soon began to retreat to the new office they’d given her, where like everyone else she sealed herself tight. When the knock came it startled her. She put down her sandwich, got to her feet, hesitantly opened the door and saw Cyrus Krieg-Zuber.

“Mademoiselle D’Abro,” he said, wedging in, closing the door behind him. “You are in need of my services.” She didn’t reply; he didn’t wait but rather inspected the bare office, a spare room devoid of ornament, only eventually bringing his eyes around. “With the crisis mounting, it would serve everyone’s interests to have the investigation concluded as soon as possible, would it not?”

Krieg-Zuber’s intense gaze seemed to be focused behind her in a way that, as at their first meeting, left her unnerved. “That goes without saying, Dr. Krieg-Zuber,” she answered at last.

“How far have you gotten?” the sinewy man asked.

T.J. didn’t see the harm in revealing public knowledge and told him about her interviews with the techs and the elimination samples. “I don’t think they’re involved,” she said, then ventured a little further. “My theory is that whoever carried out our little act of sabotage is working for Balard.”

“Your instincts are good. Follow them.”

His reply, made with a smile as he lifted with curiosity the single ornament from her monitor, a red garter with a holstered six-shooter from Billy Bob’s, surprised her and she decided to probe further. “I’ve been checking traffic between here and Cadarache and can’t pinpoint anyone communicating directly with Balard.” To be sure, in the past days she’d ransacked four years of captured messages and installed an alert to trigger on Balard’s name; now she was being beeped dozens of times a day.

“Mademoiselle,” Krieg-Zuber said, rubbing his scar, “only an idiot would communicate with him through the laboratory server. Why have you wasted your time? The lesson of Osama bin Laden is one of low-tech.” Mac or Slava had said much the same, T.J. recalled. “As I have told you, there are other archives. Here.” He dropped a memory ring on her desk and before she could thank him the strange man was gone.

T.J. plugged the ring into her computer, found dozens of video files. Opening them at random, it quickly became apparent that they’d been recorded by Krieg-Zuber himself. Why he’d given them to her, she couldn’t fathom, but she now started from the beginning, having no idea what they contained, or omitted. Soon she stumbled across Krieg-Zuber and Machuzak arguing in the deputy director’s office.

“Mac, we’re canceling your experiment,” Cyrus Krieg-Zuber said.

“You’re joking,” Nathaniel answered. “It’s the best work I’ve ever done.”

“And it has nothing to do with building a reactor.”

Krieg-Zuber then said in his most affected accent, “You’re too good to let go, docteur, so we’re giving you a couple of options…” The deputy director, standing stolidly before Nathaniel with crossed arms, assured him that casualties were high, that virtually everything was canceled except ASSET. They now had a mission. One was to show the world that ITER was not the only game in town.

“You’ll crush the light out of this lab with your Mission,” T.J. watched Nathaniel tell him in not-quite-lifelike 3-D.

“Don’t take it so hard,” Krieg-Zuber responded, “old boy. What did the general say about Vietnam? ‘Our mission is to drop ten bombs in the same hole.’”

At that Nathaniel stormed out of the office.

T.J. called in Machuzak and replayed the scene. She was only momentarily taken aback when he did no more than sigh, “I’m hardly surprised that the fucker bugged his own office,” and nod. “Yeah, I remember this. It was a year after ANFRL became CRFC. It was still possible to do research here, and I was continuing my project from Princeton.”

“What was it?”

“Well,” Machuzak talked readily enough, “I’d abandoned my boyhood dreams to create a unified field theory, but I hadn’t given up my determination to learn something about plasmas, and I’d been making progress with a novel idea about plasma heating. The thing was, I’d finally reached the moment when intuition kicked in and I was able to outmaneuver the damned gas. I didn’t need equations or computers. I saw. That’s the moment you live for as a scientist. Enlightenment, Toshi’d call it.”

“It must have been hard,” T.J. said with genuine sympathy.

“Very.”

“What did you do?”

“Ended up working on ASSET with everyone else, until a few years ago when The Terminator assigned me to the MTF.”

D’Abro looked up at him. “Why d’ya figure Krieg-Zuber gave me these here archives?”

“Why do you think?” With that he glanced at his wrist, saw a message from Kettering—“tritium shipment from Savannah River scheduled to arrive within hour”—and excused himself.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Kettering was waiting for him at tritium operation’s loading dock, pentagon four. The delivery truck was already backing in, but Machuzak’s eyes were riveted elsewhere: on two guards, armored and carrying automatic weapons, standing before the vault entrance.

“Compliments of the Republic of Texas,” Kettering said. “Thirty seconds after your press conference, the governor went fucking nuts about tritium being stolen.”

“Who authorized this?” Machuzak exclaimed angrily.

“Your inspector lady, who else? If you ask me it’s a good idea, with all the rumors flyin around. Show the public we mean business.”

Rumors were right. The local media speculation about tritium’s value to terrorists has been ceaseless, and at this moment real and robotic reporters are running in his direction to watch the fateful delivery. Machuzak momentarily stares in disbelief, then decides to enlist his unwanted militia. “Keep them back,” he orders. “They are not authorized.”

Kettering has already shifted his attention to the federals accompanying the shipment. He counts the aluminum UC-609s, signs the bill of lading. As the guards keep the scrum of journalists at bay, Machuzak helps with the offloading and glances at the surveillance cameras. This is the one place at CFRC where security is exactly what imagination demands. Peering from every direction are radiation monitors and at the other end of the cameras’ optic nerve sits a guard posted twenty-four hours a day.

Ignoring the shouts from the press about infiltrators and safety, Kettering steps before a camera at the vault entrance, requests authorization to enter, signs in. After getting an okay from the duty officer, he presses his thumb against the fingerprint reader—this one has always functioned. The heavy door, plastered with a dozen variants of Secure Area, swings open with a slight whoosh and they step into the negative-pressure zone, designed to contain tritium like an Ebola virus at the Centers for Disease Control.

The reporters think they are invited and Machuzak must order the guardsmen to keep them at bay while the delivery crew transfers the UC-609s onto the freight elevator. Each of these oil drums lined with space-age padding contains an LP-18, a smaller bottle containing eighteen liters of tritium at negative pressure. Two flights down a second airlock, more surveillance cameras, further warnings.

Machuzak halts at this second door, deciding there is no need for him to proceed further. He is satisfied that sufficient tritium has arrived to carry forward the beginnings of an ignition campaign and goes above to tell the journalists to get the hell out of here.

* * * *

That evening, T.J. walked into Machuzak’s office, where he was speaking with Archangelsky, without a word plugged the flash ring into his computer and stepped back. Before anything happened, Machuzak ordered the computer to pause and turned to D’Abro. “Did you request those guardsmen?”

“I didn’t request anything, Doc. The governor phoned this morning, as freaked as a whore in church, and I agreed to his request. The blogosphere has gone ballistic with tritium. Everybody’s waitin for somethin to happen. Think about it.” She commanded “play” and the video recommenced. This time it was a furious Machuzak confronting a Cyrus Krieg-Zuber, who stood surrounded by trophies and stroking his chin. Nathaniel nodded soberly, watched.

“You’ve been pocket-vetoing papers!” shouted Machuzak. “You intercept them, they disappear, then what—they come out with your name on them? How dare you!”

“Don’t exaggerate, docteur. Nothing’s come out with anybody’s name on it, but we can’t have CFRC scientists wasting time with research irrelevant to the Mission.”

“You’re to decide that?”

“Yes.”

“If this isn’t illegal, it should be. This is blatant thievery. You’ve never had an idea in your life and you’re stealing them.”

Krieg-Zuber’s face momentarily flushed, then the retort: “Worthless hack! Don’t flatter yourself that your ideas are worth stealing, old boy. This conversation has ended.”

Back in the office Machuzak nodded again. He well remembered the scene from four years ago. That skirmish he’d won. He reported Zuber’s scheme to Rasmussen and Leonard had immediately ordered it scrubbed. Watching the show, Slava’s reaction was similar to Mac’s the previous day. “Eb tvoiu mat’,” he muttered. “Richard Nixon had nothing on us.”

“Yeah,” said T.J., “I’m beginning to understand why you and Cyrus the Great weren’t exactly bed buddies, but if you’re surprised that administrators keep an eye on their subordinates, you’ve been living in an alternate universe.” She opened another file.

The time line had jumped to about three weeks before the recent commissioning. Machuzak and the deputy director were in the midst of a heated argument. “What is all this about?” Nathaniel watched himself shout. Krieg-Zuber feigned ignorance. “Why the secrecy?” Machuzak pressed. “Why are we checking out the turbine? We won’t be ready to use it for three or four years—if ever.”

The deputy brusquely reminded Machuzak to “do as he was told.” They needed to put on a show. If necessary they’d explain to the public how a turbine worked. Even now, The Terminator’s patronizing tone struck Nathaniel as calculated to enrage; he’d raised the art of condescension to a new level entirely.

“Do as I’m told?” Machuzak fell for the bait. “This is a scientific laboratory—sorry—” he raised his hand—“this was a scientific laboratory.”

“Perhaps you’d be happier at ITER,” Krieg-Zuber responded.

Nathaniel didn’t respond. Instead he said with steel, “I want to know what the hell’s going on. It’s fucking nuts. The guys are already exhausted.”

Watching the replay, Machuzak was amazed that he hadn’t seen through the whole bloody deception then and there and that Krieg-Zuber had managed to keep his true intentions under wraps. As he now saw his earlier self storm out of the office, T.J. said, “Doc, I asked you to tell me what you weren’t tellin me. I’m askin you again, for your own sake.”

Archangelsky, appearing as if he were about to vomit, wasn’t paying attention, but having had a moment Machuzak answered more calmly, “T.J., you just saw me have an argument with The Terminator. I’ve never hidden how I felt about what he was doing to CFRC.”

“You defected to ITER?”

As on the earlier occasion Machuzak didn’t respond, but at this moment the image of Duke Lorenzo at his doomed ball was bright. “Why don’t you ask Krieg-Zuber what you’re not seeing?”

“I intend to. Look Doc, I know there’s nothin conclusive here, but somehow you missed telling me that you and Cy were at each other’s throats. Now, I’ve been goin through these here videos. Lots of hours. It’ll take a while, but given that the only forensics we got puts you and Slava down in that surge room, I’d start bein more careful, Doc. I gotta make you understand, this is capital sabotage now—whoever spiked your machine is lookin at a murder charge, period.”

“What about the deuterium bottle?”

“It’s safe,” T.J. replied, “at the police lab. But the prints on that bottle are yours and a couple of technicians, one of whom is dead.”

“T.J.!” Machuzak erupted. “You and a hundred other people saw me with my hands all over that bottle, filling a condom with deuterium.”

“What do else do you fill your condoms with?” she cracked, but her voice didn’t reveal mirth enough to put either of them at ease.

“Bedbug, do you suspect me of being Balard’s mole and the dragon at the same time?”

They were staring hard. “Doc, I don’t see any reason to believe that those two people are the same and I don’t pretend to know yet how this all this is gonna fit together. I’m just actin like a good little scientist—followin the evidence. You don’t hold it against me, as I recall.”

Both of them paused, painfully aware that their relationship was fast mutating beyond their control. “No, I don’t,” Nathaniel said finally. And neither would he be careful, because he had nothing to fear, from her or anyone.

Slava’s handset pinged then, alerting him to a new broadcast by Big Bad Roy Whitman. They switched the monitor to a webcast of St. Cecilia’s talk show. What could he be on about? Nothing whatsoever had happened since his volley two days ago.

That was precisely what irked the senator. St. Cecilia pointed out that, despite recent events, the Prometheus experiment seemed to be proceeding on schedule.

Whitman, dressed in a fringed buckskin jacket, scoffed at the thought. “There’s no chance that their endeavor can succeed,” he countered. “Those fusion people have been promising to deliver the goods for seventy years now, and despite two hundred billion dollars of investment, they ain’t one day closer now than they were then.”

The figure Whitman had just quoted was ten times more than the federal government had ever put into fusion. Nathaniel wasn’t so much staggered by the politicians’ innumeracy but that they got away with it; he looked down to see himself clenching a fist.

“What they say they’re trying to do is frankly impossible and what they’re in fact doin is duping the public. They know they can’t reach this so-called ignition in five months. And since I last spoke, they’ve made no progress on their investigation either. Cecilia, let me tell you, I will institute a congressional inquiry. We can’t let these people get away with their crimes and I don’t mind telling you, as far as I’m concerned CFRC should be shut down.”

“How much progress does the svoloch’ want in two days?” Archangelsky hissed at the monitor.

Nathaniel was perched on the windowsill with his hand on chin, watching Whitman intently. “He’s afraid we’re going to succeed.”

“Doesn’t sound it to me,” Archangelsky objected.

T.J. didn’t hear it either. “Why’s he so out to get you, Doc?”

Climbing down from his perch, Nathaniel shook his head. “I don’t know. Whitman goes back before my time, but even a couple years ago he was saying things so harebrained I could only guess he was a complete idiot or completely evil. ‘If the Earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis getting colder?’” Without another word Machuzak called St. Cecilia’s studio. Hearing his name, the screener put him through immediately.

“Everything you’ve said in the last five minutes, senator,” Machuzak said on the air, “is complete bullshit,” and he proceeded to tell the listening audience why.

Nonplussed for only an instant, the senator became suddenly affable and replied that he would be glad to discuss the matter with Dr. Machuzak in private.

Any time, any place.

And so it was scheduled then and there: Colt versus tokamak, high noon, tomorrow, the Federal Building.

When he’d hung up, Nathaniel breathed deeply. Watching him, D’Abro was taken aback; she hadn’t seen before such a look on his face. Fortitude, purpose, she wasn’t sure what to call it, but he seemed to have grown several inches. “I don’t know what he’s up to, or why, but when Big Science and politics tangle, science always loses, and as I have the misfortune to be acting director, it’s my duty to get him off our backs. After tomorrow he will be.” A pause and then: “How am I going to do that?”

Without a blink D’Abro answered, “I’d tell him to visit Durham Cathedral.” She walked up to Nathaniel’s bulletin board, unpinned the photo and handed it to him.

He looked at it, at her, while she gazed at him with far more sympathy than she had in the past half hour, and at the same time cast at him the most challenging expression she’d yet sent his way, an expression he took to proclaim, “We may be on different sides now and you may think I’m crazier than a locoed bedbug, but our orbits intersect in more ways than you, Dr. Machuzak, have imagined.” He replied with a soft nod, which satisfied her, for they both knew it was a moment she would find difficult to surpass.

TWENTY-NINE

The Cathedral of the Church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin is probably the masterpiece of Anglo-Norman architecture and dominates the old English town of Durham. From its position on the hill, the river and entire countryside are visible. Durham Cathedral was begun in 1093 and not wholly completed for four hundred years. Work on the more elaborate York Ministry began when Durham had already assumed recognizable form and took two centuries to complete. The foundation for Notre Dame du Paris was laid in 1163 and the nave and towers were completed a mere ninety years later, but the chapels and other embellishments took a further century to consummate. Notre Dame at Chartres was begun in 1145, almost entirely destroyed by fire fifty years later, and rebuilt almost from top to bottom in less than three decades, which maybe says something about progress.

Looking back on these works the most incomprehensible thing is the mentality of the people who produced them. I do not wonder at the great shafts of light ascending to heaven. I stand there, illumined, and ask what sort of person would devote his entire life to constructing an edifice he would never see completed.

* * * *

The question runs through the life of fusioneers; it has run through my mind more than once in the weeks since the accursed accident, and surely now as I crawl up I-35 to meet Senator Roy Whitman. During fugitive moments, it has pleased me to compare fusioneers with cathedral builders. I have liked to believe we are doing something beyond ourselves, something noble, something for the greater glory, but in the harsh light of the before-noon, I see that the comparison is not wholly flattering. The reality is that when the fusion programs began in the 1950s, the pioneers had no inkling how difficult the task would be. The trailblazers may have been working for the greater glory, but they were no fools. No one planned to sacrifice his career for an unattainable goal.

The long truth dawned slowly. Mayhap it was exactly this self-delusion that led to the persistent, overly optimistic predictions from the fusion community, from as far back as the 1940s when the Brits prematurely patented a fusion device. Rosy claims that have haunted fusioneers through tokamaks, stellarators and the rest, and that politicians throw into our faces even now. It was not for nothing that Lyman Spitzer named the original classified US fusion program Project Matterhorn, a steep climb.

Since those legendary times fusion has become the most international of endeavors, but we have not been able to cleanse ourselves of our sins. Nor have we been able to convince the public that NASA holds no monopoly on great adventures, that performing somersaults in a space station is not science and that science is not glory.

Only politicians and project leaders have failed to learn the distinction, that science is the wrong arena for glory hounds. With 150 names trailing the title of each paper coming out of CFRC, Krieg-Zuber once remarked that that worked out to two-thirds of a percent glory per author. Glory drippings, he called them in his standard fashion. But even those glory drippings are collective. In that we are like the cathedral builders.

Anonymous.

Aye, off to Hollywood or Washington, ye glory seekers. Not for you the realm of science. Nature is the ultimate equal-opportunity employer, offering her fruit to anyone with enough insight to pluck them from her branches. “If you don’t do something,” Slava has always maintained, “somebody else will and in the same words.” Slava is right. Why do we keep at it? The money’s not great, the glory nonexistent. The curiosity is good.

For all my misgivings, I have not lost my belief that there is something noble in the endeavor to harness the energy source of stars. Whether we are in fusion for glory or money or mere curiosity, it remains a good deed. Ours is not a galaxian visit to realms far from human concerns.

The Earth is a finite place and the presumption that what is best for humans is best, that we know best, is dangerous beyond words. If we are to accept stewardship, let it be with reluctance and the greatest humility. That would be an achievement in this tattered federation of the perpetual present, where history began moments ago, where the future has been infinitely distant and humility is never considered a virtue. Would that we could learn at least this from the cathedral builders.

* * * *

Having carried out the miracle of parking, Nathaniel sat for a few minutes on a hard stone bench amid potted trees on the Federal Building plaza, intending to still himself, but the sterile plaza, where two solitary souls sat immersed in their screens, served only to oppress him and he went round to the far side, stared at the Great Seal of the United States and opened the door. Passing through the detector, he received a visitor’s badge and decided he’d hardly left CFRC. “God has favored our undertaking,” he said to the guard as he was patted down and took the elevator up. The guard stared after him suspiciously.

Whitman’s office, like Moravec’s, was much as he might have expected, lined with intimations of power and wealth: walnut, mahogany, the heaviness of law, brass fixtures and sports trophies, a shaft of sunlight cast onto the massive desk. Nathaniel’s adversary was of the same proportions: nearly as tall as himself but no lanky scientist. Before him stood a man certain of his weight, with a broad, fleshy face, complexion still ruddy though he was fifteen years his senior, or twenty. Despite the three-piece suit, Nathaniel wouldn’t fancy meeting him in a boxing ring. They shook hands consciously, coldly, staring.

“The famous Dr. Machuzak—please sit, why don’t you.”

Nathaniel ignored the regretful remark, which he’d heard more than once in the past days, and accepted the chair proffered, a chair designed to make visitors want to leave.

The senator also took up his position behind the desk, picked up, tapped an unlit cigar on an ashtray. “Dr. Machuzak, I don’t appreciate being called a liar on the air, although I gotta admit I admire your directness. You’re obviously not a politician.”

“That’s tautological.” He didn’t think Whitman got it and didn’t pause either. He was resolved that this man would cease to be a distraction. “Senator, I’m not here to apologize. We have a genuine crisis down at CFRC and the last thing we need is your unjustified attacks. I came to tell you to lay off. Stop interfering. Period.”

Whitman snorted, surprised at the belligerence of the scientist facing him, but tough arenas were nothing new to him. “Dr. Machuzak,” he said, turning on the same honed affability he had displayed yesterday on the air, “take my advice—don’t run for office. Why should I lay off? Everything I said on St. Cecilia’s show was true—”

Machuzak merely burst out laughing. “You began by claiming that the amount of money fusion research receives is ten times larger than in reality. You’ve obviously confused fusion with the space station. ASSET and ITER, the largest fusion projects ever attempted, have cost more like ten billion apiece, and the US government ain’t payin. I remind you, Senator, that CFRC has been run by a private consortium for a decade now.”

“Dr. Machuzak, I am the chairman of the Senate’s Energy and Water Subcommittee and have an obligatory interest in what goes on in your lab. You know as well as I do that CFRC is a public-private consortium and continues to receive eighty million a year from the government—”

“More like ten, Senator, but who’s counting?” Theresa had been right: Whitman was a plain, lying idiot. “And when you say there’s been no progress in fusion, get real. The first tokamaks produced a thousandth of a watt of power, not even in the same league as a Christmas tree lightbulb. Now we routinely produce fifty megawatts, fifty billion times more. Most people would call that progress. Sixty years ago we held a plasma for twenty milliseconds; now we can hold it an hour at a time.”

“Not at that demo you didn’t,” Whitman inserted the knife cleanly.

… and only at low densities, Machuzak conceded. Forced to reconnoiter, he feared he had not understood exactly what he’d intended to accomplish at this showdown, or adequately prepared his mind. “Prometheus was not ready, is not ready, I admit it. But soon we’ll achieve ignition. Will you then claim there’s been no progress?” Internally he winced. I pray that we reach ignition. We will achieve ignition. If we survive.

His opponent plainly detected his weakness and didn’t need to consider his words long. “Dr. Machuzak,” Whitman said, leaning back regally in his chair, “you people have been saying ‘soon’ since Adam and Eve. Funny how ‘soon’ always turns out to be the next generation.”

As money gets shorter, horizons get longer, Nathaniel thought, even as he reluctantly conceded the truth in the ancient charge. “You know,” he said, “Durham Cathedral in England took four hundred years to build. What if it had been halted at the towers?”

Now Whitman merely laughed, crossing his arms high on his chest; an amateur faced him. “Machuzak, a cathedral is only a cathedral once it’s finished. The fact remains that there is no evidence your scheme is going to work, and even if it does, that it will be economical. I’ve seen the studies—you’re talking about a twenty-, thirty-billion-dollar plant. Who’s gonna fork over that kinda money on a long shot? That Moravec character has apparently seen the light by imposing the deadline.”

Again Nathaniel had to yield to truth in Whitman’s remarks. Even if they could make the damn thing work, they didn’t yet know how to make it cheap. This duel wasn’t going well. “You know Moravec?” was the only thing he could think of to say.

The offhand question brought a derisive shake of the head and an unguarded answer. “Of course not. Bandits like him have caused a lot of problems for the fossil fuel industry, lobbying for unattainable emission standards—it’s all to line their own pockets, of course, sons of bitches.”

“Unattainable by Texas,” Nathaniel said caustically. “Texas is by far the leading CO2 emitter because of people like you.” It must have been Whitman whom Moravec, with hardly less vehemence, had referred to as a reactionary politician. He preferred the strange GlobeTex CEO.

“Ya know,” the senator continued, confident now of mopping the floor with this lightweight intellectual who held the pointy-headed delusion that his opinion counted, “you liberals are all extremists.” He got to his feet, began pacing. “Those studies you always cite have more holes in them than Swiss cheese. Hockey sticks…” Now the senator waved his cigar in big aerial loops around his head. “You know, the EPA is unconstitutional—they have no right to regulate anything, yet alone CO2, which isn’t a pollutant. What’s wrong with global warming anyway? I’ve visited Greenland. The folks there rejoice at it, believe me they do. You remember that ice storm we had a few years ago—freezing rain, airports shut down for days, me having to scrape the ice off my windshield in the damned cold. I welcome global warming, Machuzak, I do welcome it. By God, Texas will be a republic again, and we’ll have beaten the feds…”

Machuzak listened to Whitman rant in amazement. There was a grain of truth in what he said. Much of what the public thought it knew about climate science was simply wrong, but for all that, the danger this politician fails to understand is not that science can predict the future, but that it can’t.

Nathaniel knew that Whitman was backed by Big Oil, that if Texas seceded, it would become far easier to build new plants. As he watched his antagonist pace, he could only guess that independence was somehow behind the senator’s hostility to their endeavor, but Machuzak in his haste hadn’t checked. Damn, if only he’d readied himself for this confrontation…

“No, Machuzak, you haven’t convinced me of a thing. The money the government spends on your lab is money down a rathole and I’m gonna do my best to see it put to better use. In fact…” Whitman regarded his cigar, placed it once more in the ashtray “… if Texas is going to invest in fusion, I personally feel that laser fusion is more sensible than your tomahawks.”

Nathaniel cocked his head. “You’re talking about NIF?”

The senator nodded somberly.

“That’s a defense program.”

“In part. But they achieved ignition years ago and will mop you up in the race for a commercial plant.”

For a moment Nathaniel stared at Whitman in true puzzlement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore had gone online years ago. NIF blasted rice-grain-sized pellets of frozen deuterium and tritium with 200 multi-trillion-watt lasers, imploding the capsules, triggering fusion. The original idea behind NIF was to create miniature hydrogen bombs so that the government didn’t need to test real ones. Some exciting science concerning matter at ultrahigh densities had come out of the facility, but after the initial hoopla many of its results became strangely classified. Personally, Machuzak considered NIF one of science’s great boondoggles, but the true swindle was calling it a prototype for a commercial reactor. NIF did produce more energy in one of its pulses than it consumed—what they hyped as ignition—but they’d never managed more than one or two shots a day, each a billionth of a second long. To call this a prototype for commercial fusion was weapons-grade horseshit.

“Senator,” Nathaniel answered, gimlet eyed, “laser fusion is for Star Wars enthusiasts. Better you should shut them down.”

Whitman remained unimpressed. “Dr. Machuzak, I remind you that France and other countries have opened similar facilities, so your opinions are far from universally shared. However, as aspects of such programs are still classified, I am not at liberty to discuss it with you.”

Naturally. The senator moved toward the door, letting his visitor know in no uncertain terms that the interview was terminated. Nathaniel rose, understanding that he had accomplished absolutely nothing except to increase Whitman’s enmity for the lab—and the fault was entirely his own.

Abruptly Machuzak said in a tone that was closer to a command than an invitation: “I’d like you to visit CFRC in two weeks.” He should have begun here.

“The cook’s tour?”

“The real tour. I intend that experiments should be under way.”

“Already? Well, I don’t relish the thought of being blown to bits.” Strange, Nathaniel thought, I’ve heard that phrase before. “But all right.” As he ushered the physicist out of his office, with his arm across his shoulder, Whitman said, “You have more guts than I expected, Machuzak. I like that, boy.” Without waiting for a response, the politician went on unperturbed. “One more thing: you people should look into this cold-fusion business again. I’m sure you academy types are missing something. That I would support. It’d sure save a lot of taxpayer money.”

Well, Fermilab did get funds by claiming they could build quark bombs, and UT’s old Relativity Center was started with navy grants for antigravity research. “Do you know, Senator,” Nathaniel said, “you can get substantially more energy out of fusion if you use helium-three as a fuel instead of tritium, and it’s nonradioactive.”

“Then for God’s sake why don’t you people try it?”

“It’s only available on the moon.”

Machuzak walked out then, stopping at the secretary’s desk, vowing to himself that someday he’d take this senator down.

THIRTY

Shaking from his performance, once back at the lab Machuzak headed directly to the pentagon, where he found Abbuhl in the test cell. The magnet temperature stood at 120 absolute, on schedule, but the bakeout had stalled: The damned electric heater that forced hot, high-pressure helium gas through coils wrapping the doughnut to bake it and drive out impurities, had blown a filament. Fred assured him it would be repaired immediately. The coils themselves, thank God, hadn’t sprung a leak. That would have sunk them without trace.

“Fred, we’ve got to get a first plasma in two weeks—”

“Mac, we’re on schedule but—”

“Fred—”

Fred saluted and Machuzak left, punching both balloons of Munch’s Scream.

* * * *

Even as Machuzak exited the tokamak bay, Archangelsky was summoning him to the lake. He found the Russian sitting beneath the fountain while he got an approximate geographic fix for an IP. “Cadarache!” Slava hissed. “Fucker.” Machuzak looked on, puzzled, as his colleague entered the site that had alerted him, Fusion World.

“Fusion World?” Machuzak wrinkled his nose.

Indeed, the place was a theme park, all glittering and brightly lit against an evening sky, with a giant tokamak taking the place of Cinderella’s castle. Passing through the gate, Archangelsky was greeted by an antique DeLorean, which glided up to him and raised its gull-wing doors. He entered as bidden, not failing to notice the “Mr. Fusion” reactor protruding from the trunk. As the door closed over him and he was swept into the sky, a silken female voice began to explain the basics of fusion.

“Many visitors want to know,” she said, “the principles of the Mr. Fusion reactor on the DeLorean. This is a cold-fusion reactor, not a conventional hot fusion reactor, which is the subject of research at laboratories worldwide.”

Forcing himself not to retch, Slava asked severely who she was, but like all customer-service representatives his disembodied guide was preprogrammed. The chirpy voice merely kept on while the car zoomed through the mountain-sized device, pointing out key features of a reactor. A short time later the car deposited Archangelsky back at the gate. At his feet lay the same chess queen with the shot-glass crown they’d seen before and next to it a little dragon—no, a fish. Then the whole place abruptly dissolved into a fireworks display.

“These messages are breadcrumbs,” Machuzak said as Archangelsky vainly attempted to log on again. “One of your friends from that damned tournament is trying to tell us something. Have you remembered who shot the video?”

Slava shook his head. There was a limit to memory. “Good site,” he finally said. “Designer knew what he was talking about. We should copy it. Guide pointed out the power supply; it’s been hit. Maybe a hint.”

“Could be coincidence. What else?”

“Cold fusion. She talked about cold fusion.”

“What fucking good did that ever do anybody?” Machuzak said, stymied. He told Archangelsky to meet him at the MTF in two hours and departed.

* * * *

At sunset, just before he was about to depart for Site Alpha, T.J. rapped on Slava’s door and found him at his terminal. He told her about Fusion World.

“Cadarache again?” she sighed. “Jesus. The Austin Cyber Crime Unit has finally gone beyond porn, and I might be able to twist some arms over there. I already contacted the FBI. As I expected…nada. To enlist the French…” She sighed again, feeling as stuck as ever, but Slava had already turned his attention back to the screen, slowly stroking his beard at what he saw there.

“What’s that?” T.J. asked, peering over his shoulder at a simulation of brightly colored vortexes and spiraling paisleys that resembled tadpoles swimming in a whirlwind.

“This is what I do for a living when I’m not chasing cyber dragons or having my car blown up.” The simulation was, in fact, what to Archangelsky a plasma looked like, a fluid chasing the magnetic field lines inside a tokamak. “In case I haven’t told you, I design magnetic fields. We are going to need creative designs soon, I think.”

“You can change those huge magnets in Prometheus?”

“Not magnets themselves, but we can play with the fields. Maybe I should say computer plays with fields. Our models have gone beyond human intuition. This disturbs me; it leaves soul hungry and is always dangerous.”

T.J. knew if she pursued the provocation he would leave her behind. “Why don’t you wear your wedding ring, Slava?” she asked, plunking herself down on the edge of his desk.

“How many women do you know who would put up with this?” he pointed ruefully to the monitor. “Nastya and I need space, that’s all… How many couples live in same area code these days? If 24/7 work week didn’t put end to age of love-conquers-all, gasoline price did. What do you want, T.J.? Your expression tells me this is not social call.” He peered at her with those beady eyes that never failed to startle her.

“Mac wants to see us at the MTF,” she said, glancing at her wrist.

“No,” Slava shook his head. “What do you want?”

For a moment her gaze rested on an icon of the Mother of God, which Slava had hung on his office wall. As she regarded it, the tender expression of the Virgin enveloping the Child and all who gazed on it seemed so alien to what she knew of this physicist that she found herself speechless.

“Well, Slava,” she began, “all the techs downstairs are cleared. Their inspection sheets back them up, meanin they can show me where they were repairing this gizmo or replacing that one. Ya know, DNA doesn’t lie, and sooner or later you gotta start listenin. The only DNA I’ve got is you, Mac and Lipman, and I’ve never rightly understood what you PhDs were doin down in engineering country—”

“Klop—”

“Who’s Klop?”

“Russian for bedbug. Klop, we’ve told you what there is to tell. We were staffed short, pulling triple shifts. Lipman asked for our help. Nat Edward’ich and my badges are good for all areas; check the files. That’s all. You’ve seen how things are around here.”

“After the fact, yeah.” Without a further word she inserted her ring into the nearest port of Archangelsky’s computer. Suddenly Slava, facing the camera, was arguing with Krieg-Zuber, present only in voice.

“He shot this with phone?” asked Archangelsky, scarcely raising an eyebrow.

Slava’s utter resignation slightly surprised T.J. She nodded, brushed back her hair, glanced at her playlist.

Krieg-Zuber is telling Slava to stop wasting his time with some idea of Matsushima’s connected to that thing called a mirror device.

“Contract says I work twenty percent on anything I want. Keeps brain alive. Working nonstop on tokamak keeps brain dead.”

“Your contract is going to change, old chum. We can’t waste resources anymore on dead-ends.”

Slava starts, angers, peers at the camera with that anarchist expression already familiar to D’Abro. “You know mirror machines are more stable than tokamaks, have higher betas. If Toshi’s idea is correct, no need for doughnuts. Pfft. This is dead end? For tokamaks, yes.”

“Dr. Archangelsky, you have a choice: one hundred percent of your efforts to the Mission, or one hundred percent of your time to searching for a new job.”

“I’ll speak to Rasmussen about this.”

After a flicker, the video jumps to the director’s office and this time Archangelsky did register surprise. “He bugged Leonard’s office too?”

The detective nodded slowly; Slava searched for any sign of profound disgust on her face, but all he could make out was a shallow resignation. In the video two men are now visible, captured by a ceiling camera.

“Krieg-Zuber has threatened to eliminate me unless I give up work on other projects,” Slava heard himself say.

“I’m sorry, Slava,” Leonard Rasmussen apologizes contritely. The director appeared to be in good health, as he should be according to the time stamp of a year ago. “Cyrus is correct. I have held this lab together by force of will alone and we can no longer afford the luxury of exploring secondary avenues. Toshi’s idea is a long shot anyway, hardly worth your effort. We need you for the Big Push, Slava.” Leonard clenched his fist. “ASSET will achieve ignition before ITER or I’ll die trying.”

“And what will you do with Toshi?” Archangelsky watched himself anger. “You can stop such a man from thinking his own thoughts? Hah. He would sooner leave lab than sell out own ideas.”

“Then he will leave the lab! Of what use is he to me? I will not allow Matsushima to threaten our great endeavor, do you hear?”

Both men recoil in surprise at the outburst and for a moment stare silently at one another. T.J. could not but recollect Matsushima’s own outburst the other day.

“Perhaps you should consider working elsewhere,” Rasmussen says at last. The sun streaming through the windows of the octagon sparkles off Leonard’s desk and the daruma doll on the shelf.

“Pravda.” Slava storms out of the office and the show ends.

Yaroslav Borisovich turned to D’Abro. “So, like Nat said, you have seen argument. What does this prove other than we work in Gulag?”

“Not much,” T.J. allowed. “But like I keep sayin to Nat: be careful, Slava.”

Archangelsky, in full Rasputin mode, threw at D’Abro a visage she wasn’t likely to forget and growled through his teeth, but otherwise made no protest.

“Let’s get over to the MTF,” she said.

* * * *

Machuzak was waiting, but before he uttered a word, Slava waved him silent and nodded to D’Abro, who’d brought a palm-sized bug detector from her car. “What’s going on?” Nathaniel wanted to know. “The investigation is public now.”

“Too public,” Archangelsky spat as they climbed over everything, sweeping the lab for listening devices and cameras. “Edward’ich, things were worse than we thought, fucking Stalinists.” He said not a word more until he and Machuzak had rigged up a noisy spark generator from parts on the lab bench.

When Machuzak heard Slava’s report he found himself far angrier at D’Abro than at Krieg-Zuber. “Who are you after, T.J.?” His gaze was adamantine.

“I’m after the man trying to destroy your program,” she answered sullenly, sadly, but she didn’t capitulate and rolled another video.

Once more it was Machuzak speaking to Krieg-Zuber, this time about three years ago. “We’re taking you off ASSET,” Krieg-Zuber said to Machuzak. “You have a choice: leave or become division head at the MTF.”

“You’re exiling me with Toshi, banishing troublesome rivals?”

“You’re perpetually griping that we’ve neglected materials research for decades. Take it or leave it.”

Machuzak took it and worked hard at it, but it wasn’t good enough. Without pause, T.J. played another scene stamped only six months ago. Once again the scene is The Terminator’s office. “I’ve decided to close down the MTF. Time for you to pack.”

Nathaniel saw himself before Krieg-Zuber shaking, and an expression of absolute disgust written across his face.

“On second thought,” Cyrus went on, abruptly nonchalant, “I shall merely incorporate the MFT into another division. We might require your services for the upcoming ASSET dedication. Consider yourself put on notice.”

Machuzak hardly had time to react before the scene jumped again, this time only days after the dispute over the secrecy of the dedication that D’Abro had already shown him.

“Old boy,” the affect at once returned, “I’m shutting down the MTF in three weeks. You’re history, Machuzak.” Even recorded, the snap of his fingers jarred.

The Nathaniel in this playback, though, managed to possess himself. “You’re bluffing,” he said coldly. “You been making noises for a year. What good is your reactor if you don’t know what to build it of? You know as well as I do it’s the last hurdle to creating a commercial machine.”

“Docteur, materials research is as sexy as my ass and I’ve put up with your virulent insubordination long enough. I shall speak to Rasmussen the moment we’ve commissioned ASSET.”

“Speak to him. He’ll tell you you’re all ass.”

The monitor went blank.

T.J., facing Machuzak, asked bluntly why Zuber hadn’t closed down the MTF.

The answer was as evident as Machuzak’s expression: “He died, alas not permanently.” They stared at each other without flinching until Nathaniel said, “D’Abro, you’ve become hypnotized by video hearsay. Who knows how these videos were edited?”

“Krieg-Zuber swears they’re not and he’s opened his entire archives without subpoena. Doc, I’ve been warnin you to watch out. I’m givin you real good advice: watch out.” Although she didn’t add “please,” the petition in her voice was unmistakable.

“Some partnership,” Machuzak muttered after a moment during which both of them retreated. At last she asked why he wanted to see them here.

He scratched his head as if he’d forgotten, glanced nervously over his shoulder in a way that saddened her. When he turned back, the anger had disappeared from his face, the entreaty from hers, but he could not put aside the strange bond that had formed between them. “I saw Whitman today and got him to agree to visit the lab with Moravec. I want Prometheus ready.”

T.J. was certain Machuzak had derailed. “That’s it? You didn’t knock Whitman out of the picture?”

“No, I blew it. The only thing left is to convince him that we’re not the charlatans he claims—and that’s not going to be easy. He’s dumb but not as dumb as I thought.” There was one other thing. “I want to learn why the senator has it in for CFRC.”

“What’s that have to do with me?” T.J. retorted, mystified, frustrated, even as the little flame on the physicist’s test cylinder distracted her. “I’ve got an investigation to run.”

“You do, and I’ve got a lab to save.”

THIRTY-ONE

But how? A month after he’d taken the job, Machuzak had no idea how to disperse the intangible haze, neither autumn mist nor smog, that now shrouded the final descent into the valley. Outside the main gate the family was gone, but a larger group of locals had taken its place, brandishing posters for Nuclear Free America, Save the Environment, Solar People. Nathaniel couldn’t be certain whether this was protest or advertising. Along the drive, over the big sign proclaiming the number of accident-free man-hours, someone had spray-painted the number of sabotage-free hours. Not many. Nathaniel called maintenance.

Below Bill Balustradi’s photo inside the lobby, a small tangle of action heroes charged about blindly, colliding with one another. Machuzak puckered his lips, tore off the top calendar page and descended to the control room where he found Abbuhl. Without hesitation he pressed again whether they’d be ready for first plasma by the time Moravec and Whitman arrived.

“Mac,” Fred turned around. The engineer’s lined face and drooping eyelids immediately told Machuzak that he’d been at it round the clock, in violation of the two-shift rule. “Don’t try what Krieg-Zuber tried,” he said wearily.

“I said first plasma, not ignition.”

Abbuhl only stared blankly at Machuzak’s testy response, as if nothing was computing. “Mac, have you seen today’s ITER release? Balard just completed a thirty-second low-power burn—and we haven’t even started. They’re thumbin their noses at us, sir.”

About to reprimand the chief for his safety infraction, Nathaniel’s attention was suddenly caught by a temperature display. The magnets had fallen below 77 degrees absolute, nitrogen’s boiling point. The giant niobium-tin coils were getting seriously chilly. Civil war might well break out in the 60 degrees that remained before they became superconducting, and everyone could die of exhaustion in the further 14 degrees before they reached operating temperatures, but Machuzak did not reprimand Abbuhl. Instead he stared with a faint feeling of amazement.

After two weeks of pumping, the torus itself stood below a ten-billionth of an atmosphere. The task ahead of Fred was to get rid of ninety percent of what remained. Machuzak heard in his mind the puttering of the troglodyte roughing pumps, larger versions of the mechanical jobs in his lab or a high school chem class. They’d begun the process, then—

The test-cell hotline cut off his thoughts. “Fred, we’ve got a problem.” Faberman, back on the job. “One of the fan blades has broken,” he said, referring to the turbomoleculars.

“It was about time this happened,” replied Abbuhl with a resignation as heavy as it was undisguised. The tech couldn’t be sure what exactly had occurred. Operating in what beginners consider high-vacuum, turbomolecular pumps remove air molecule by molecule, spinning at fifty thousand rpms. Even a small leak sometimes proves too much for the delicate fans and a blade shatters. This late in the pumpdown…?

“Call France,” said Abbuhl. “Get one overnighted and take this one to the airport.” As Faberman signed off, the chief turned again to Machuzak. “We’ll have it fixed by tomorrow evening, Herr Doktor Director,” he exhaled, and it seemed his entire chest collapsed.

Nathaniel laid his hand on the engineer’s shoulder. “Fred,” he replied, “organize a basketball game for this afternoon, then take the rest of the day off.”

* * * *

It was time to find Mercedes. Machuzak headed to the MTF but didn’t see her anywhere. With trepidation he checked his mail: three more resignations. At this moment he could not force himself to check the ITER website. On YouTube, dozens of videos proclaiming a government conspiracy to cover up cold fusion. At last sensing another presence, Nathaniel walked through the adjoining lab into the cavernous, decaying accelerator room and circled around the linear accelerator there.

“How are you, Mercedes?” he said, finding Ramirez at a workstation.

She practically jumped at the sight of him and knocked over the styrofoam cup of coffee on the desk. “Damn!” she exclaimed, removing her earbuds as Machuzak moved to help her mop up.

“Sorry, Nathaniel, you surprised me. I haven’t seen you for weeks.”

“Yeah, I’ve been scarce. You look better than last time. Are you getting any work done?”

Mercedes nodded wanly and brushed back her hair but suddenly protested with a shrill edge, “What’s the point? I’d be wasting less time looking for another job…” Not for the first time Machuzak was struck by how dark her skin was, nearly as brown as one of Gauguin’s natives. In truth, he might well have been regarding a work of art, for any friendship between them had receded into the still past and the person before him now was in every sense a stranger. “I’ve been a little on edge,” she grudgingly backtracked, “I guess like everybody else around here. It’s scary, not knowing what’s going to happen…”

“One thing that’s going to happen is that in less than two weeks Whitman and Moravec are coming to visit—”

“What for?” she cut him off as shrilly as before. “They plan to get killed?”

“No, the motherfuckers want to show their audiences that they’re reasonable men. Will this be in running order?” He pointed with his thumb to the accelerator. “Can you show them something?”

Mercedes nodded. “Nothing much can go wrong with this thing. I could irradiate them, I suppose.”

“Don’t tempt me,” said Nathaniel and turned to leave. For a moment he regarded the machine, a big white cylinder nearly forty meters long. He could hardly look at it without flinching. The accelerator was the main reason the MTF cost millions a year to run and was the locus of all of Krieg-Zuber’s threats. Threats or no, it produced neutrons, the deadliest particle, and for that reason it was important.

The Terminator well knew that what to make a reactor out of so that it wouldn’t literally collapse after twenty years of neutron bombardment was probably the most serious hurdle between the now and commercial fusion. As the scene D’Abro had sprung on him yesterday made too clear, Zuber also knew that solving it wouldn’t make anyone’s name; that is why he viewed the MTF with such contempt. Nathaniel’s problem was another. On the hierarchy of romance, the materials’ challenge occupies the lowest rung; for that reason he’d balked at becoming its division head. As for Mercedes…well, she probably wouldn’t find much else.

“Come to the barbeque this afternoon,” he said to her, then phoned Lise to organize one. “In fact,” he told the secretary, “schedule one every week.”

* * * *

This pall’s enough to choke on, thought T.J. along the main drive. She didn’t like the look of those protestors, no way. Even the armadillos scampering across the road seemed sullen, sluggish, and yes, someone had painted radiation hazard symbols on their armor. She wasn’t amused.

In the lobby she cast her eye at the shrine of action heroes, which she took to be the gods lab personnel expected to save CFRC. About to tear off the day’s sheet from the calendar, she saw that Mac had beaten her. She wondered how long it would be his privilege and felt sick. God, what was springing up between them? He’d said it: they had a job to do. Science goes where it goes; investigations go where they go. Why couldn’t he just level with her? Again she glanced at the figures at her feet. Dang, even for her this was a little weird.

She was surprised to find Cyrus Krieg-Zuber waiting at this early hour outside her office. Wishing him good morning, she unlocked the door and stepped in. He followed without invitation, glancing around the naked space, at the red garter adorning her monitor, the single flower vase now adding a solitary cheer. “I should give you a poster, mademoiselle,” he said in his low voice. “Cheer the place up…”

“What can I do for you, Dr. Krieg-Zuber?” she replied without answering.

The deputy closed the door behind him. “I understand you have found my archives helpful. You are making progress?”

T.J. glanced at the tough, angular figure before her. “Some,” she said after a pause long enough to reveal her uncertainty. “Patience is the name of this game, Dr. Krieg-Zuber.” Lord, give me more. “I’ve seen a lot of videos of Machuzak and Archangelsky duking it out with you, behavin as if they’re ready to defect to the enemy, but nothing that points conclusively to ITER, despite my instincts.”

“As I told you,” Krieg-Zuber offered, “only a fool would use the CFRC server for such communications.”

T.J.’s claustrophobia was increasing, but Krieg-Zuber appeared entertained, with himself or her as he rearranged one of the flowers in the vase. “What would you do?” she asked finally.

“Mademoiselle, please,” he replied with an expression dividing contempt and amusement, “if I were Balard’s mole, I’d attempt some nonstandard method of communication…and in that case I’d be an even bigger fool. Detective D’Abro, you know as well as I do that communications taking place on company property, on company time are subject to scrutiny…” Here Zuber began to pensively stroke the scar on his cheek. “A few weeks before the dedication I became aware of some shortwave transmissions—absurdly low frequency by today’s standards, but effective for long-distance communication and difficult to pinpoint. The signals seemed to be coming and going from the lab at irregular intervals.”

“How were you aware of them?” T.J. peered at him skeptically.

“Miss D’Abro, until recently I was in charge of information security—”

“I’ve been meanin to ask,” interrupted T.J., “doesn’t the deputy director have more important things to worry about, like running the lab?”

Krieg-Zuber abruptly broke off stroking his scar and exploded. “Nothing is more important than security, mademoiselle, nothing!” In an instant he’d calmed down and now fixed on her a stare of benevolent surprise. “And I would be shamefully slipshod in my duties if I failed to monitor all frequencies. Any fool can do it with a store-bought scanner. I captured several transmissions, although the messages were of course encrypted. I have not yet attempted to break the code, but, but if the parties haven’t been serious enough to use one-time pads, the messages can be cracked. I am certain ITER is involved.”

“Just how are you certain, sir?” T.J. replied, conscious that Krieg-Zuber’s story had riveted her.

“Each transmission is prefixed by ‘The Way Forward’ or ‘The Way Backward’ in an artificial voice. Obviously the parties are being careless, assuming no one would be interested enough to listen in.”

She and the docs had done their best to keep everyone at CFRC ignorant of their search for Dragonmaster, but with Krieg-Zuber’s fastidiousness in such matters, T.J. could no longer be certain he was in the dark. With the prospect of a second strike, the FBI’s lack of interest and Machuzak’s preoccupation with ignition… T.J. clenched her teeth. She’d see an end to this.

Rising, D’Abro faced the deputy straight on. “Dr. Krieg-Zuber, I’m not uninformed of your background,” she said with a glance at a pile of folders on her desk. “You came to ANFRL from Advanced Cryotech and have had super-deluxe CIA corporate training. You think we’re all amateurs next to you. You may also believe I was born yesterday or couldn’t hit a bull’s ass with a banjo, but, sir, I’m well aware of your antipathy toward Dr. Machuzak and have no doubt you’d like to see this investigation go in a certain direction—”

“No, no,” he held up his hands in protest, “you misunderstand completely, young lady. I’m merely interested in getting to the truth of the matter. How can I be blamed if that fool decides to jeopardize the entire Mission with amateurish undercover tactics?”

“That was my call.”

“My sincerest apologies, Detective,” he bowed. “But understand, you and I are on the same team.”

“Dr. Krieg-Zuber,” T.J. said, peering at him, “since you are presently inactive, I’d ask you to decode those messages. Let me know when you have something.”

“It would be my pleasure, mademoiselle.”

THIRTY-TWO

Surveying the gang of squabblers and potential mutineers gathered around the conference table, it remained beyond hope that they could pull off the miracle required of them, but to Machuzak’s astonishment everyone was present, including Toshi and Slava. More remarkably, no one was arguing. “In a week we have visitors coming,” he said. “This you know. If we haven’t lost the chance already, it will certainly be our last opportunity to convince Moravec and Whitman that CFRC scientists have some idea of what they’re doing. Can we show them that Prometheus can hold a fire?”

All eyes turned toward Abbuhl. “I’d say that’s a possibility, Sir Director.” Fred didn’t look much better for the sleep Machuzak had ordered him to get a few days ago. “The vessel bake is nearly complete, so far so good. We’re running tests on the neutral beams and rf systems and getting ready for coil energization tests. The cooldown is nearly finished. With luck, in a couple days we’ll be at operating temperatures…with luck…”

Nathaniel thanked him, then gave them the bad news: “I’m sure you’ve seen today’s report from ITER. Their numbers are going up and it looks like they’ll attempt breakeven within a week or two.” Breakeven, at which you get as much energy out of the plasma as you put in. “What do you thi—?”

“Let’s go for it,” Kettering now jumped in. “Kick their butts.”

Hasschler appeared undecided; it depended on the mood of the neutral beams.

“Mac,” said Fred, “don’t try it on opening day. It’s too risky.”

“You’re right. Somethin nice and easy. Maybe a mega-amp at five Teslas—”

“DT,” said Kettering. “Fuck DD.”

Nathaniel did not respond. “The rest of you guys”—he bore down on Hasschler and Matsushima “—had better be generating ideas, because you’re on stage next.”

“We have been generating ideas, Nathaniel,” replied Toshi, “but as the wise man said, to die for an idea is to place a high value on conjecture.”

* * * *

An hour later, Slava’s wrist was again summoning him to Fusion World. This time he crossed himself, alerted D’Abro and waited without making another move until she and Nat were dashing into his office from opposite directions. The trace dead-ended at the same region in southern France.

When Slava entered the site, the plaza before the Cinderella tokamak was jumping with 3-D animations of the inventions of Nikola Tesla. Lightning bolts smash into the ground from his famous Long Island tower. Tesla coils send Frankenstein sparks climbing into the air; the face of the inventor hovers on giant helium balloons over everything, while the whole show is accompanied by an ear-shattering rock beat: “Into this world came a man out of time…”

“At least Dragonmaster has a sense of humor,” Machuzak remarked to Slava alone, utterly perplexed. No longer trusting that the detective held the slightest trust in them, this morning he refused to acknowledge her presence.

“Nice track,” D’Abro observed.

“He is nutcase,” Slava said to Nathaniel.

Attempting to make sense of what they were seeing, Nathaniel ticked off some of Tesla’s achievements: “He was into wireless energy transmission, early radio pioneer. Teslite legions credit him with atomic energy, nuclear fusion, cold fusion, not to mention the twentieth century.”

“Like you said,” Archangelsky nodded, “Dragonmaster has sense of humor.”

As if to confirm Nat’s words, the DeLorean pulled up then, no guide, and as Slava hopped in a voice reminded the passenger that the car’s cold fusion power source was made possible by the visionary work of Nikola Tesla. “Definitely has a thing about cold fusion.”

Today the car didn’t provide a fly-through of the giant tokamak but instead passed over a rocky, barren cove overlooking the sea. There was little to catch the eye except a few radio antennas and a small concrete obelisk.

“Where the hell is that?” asked T.J.

“Poldhu, Cornwall,” Slava answered, face growing ashen. “Site of Marconi’s first transatlantic radio transmission.”

“And how do you know?” she swiveled on him; her disbelief showed.

“Was radio amateur as kid. Without shortwave, was hard to learn anything in Russia. I still keep transceiver.” He pointed to a cabinet.

Archangelsky waited for D’Abro’s reply, but to his surprise her only response was a tightly clenched jaw as the tour ended with a fireworks display that created the shot-glass crowned queen and a fish.

“He’s your friend, Slava,” said Mac. “Find him.”

“Damnit!” Archangelsky slammed his fist on the desk. “How many times have I told you, I contacted everyone in video. Klop, if you’re so fucking sure Dragonmaster is coming through ITER server, talk to their system admin.”

“I have. It’s not their machine. Just nearby. I’ve put in a request to the French police.” T.J. hoped that she’d concealed her outright lie. It was an ITER server, but Dragonmaster had slipped up by coming through it. The ITER administrator had immediately cooperated and the trace led to—Austin.

After a long, uncomfortable moment passed, Slava muttered, “Better an anthropologist to trace this guy than a hacker. Useless pud-puller.”

Nathaniel glanced at the blank screen, at the wall clock. “Slava, I’m moving ahead.” Without a word to D’Abro he left the room.

* * * *

Just before five he was receiving a report on the motor-generator tests when D’Abro, Richard Garrett in tow, cornered him and dragged him to Slava‘s office. Her bearing was even more distant than it had been in the morning, and several degrees angrier than when she’d sprung the last video on him. Once again she plugged her ring directly into Slava’s computer without uttering a word.

The image quality was not nearly so good as in the previous surprises. The picture jittered with noise; sound poor, perspective odd—as if it had been shot from the top of Slava’s desk. According to the time stamp, the scene took place only weeks ago, during the run-up to the demo. Archangelsky was checking his office, lifting up the icon on his wall. Eventually he sat down opposite Machuzak. Exactly how angry he was, was difficult to determine, but no one would bet that he was sober.

“Nat Edward’ich,” Archangelsky heard himself say as he filled two shot glasses with vodka, “Balard has offered me job at ITER. I will accept.”

“You will?” Machuzak makes his reply with evident surprise, peering over the tumbler he holds in his hand. “How can you, Slava?”

“What can I do here? Program is a mess. The Terminator blocks everything besides ASSET, reduces me to programmer, then engineer. Balard is bastard, for sure, but one bastard is better than two or three. He suggests maybe I can stay in Austin but work for him.”

“H–he’d pay you for ITER code development?”

Archangelsky nods. “He would annex CFRC. Anschluss.” Slava slams his fist on the desk and for a moment the image goes missing. “Balard always claims idea was his when he was grad student and Leonard appropriated it. Let’s organize coup, overthrow regime.”

“Hmm, h—how would we do that?” asks Machuzak, now showing the effects of the substance in hand.

“This requires planning, but you know, lab needs a spanner thrown into the works.”

After a pause, during which he wryly consults the alcohol, Nathaniel answers, “I agree.” He sets down the glass and the scene goes black for a second and final time.

“How was this shot?” Machuzak demanded angrily, once he’d recovered from his stupefaction.

“Do you deny that it took place?” T.J. insisted, dismissing the question.

“How was it shot?” Machuzak repeated.

Slava was beside himself. “I thought I knew all tricks… I was even sweeping office for bugs—” Suddenly, he faced D’Abro with a finger practically at her nose. “This was smart dust, wasn’t it? Synthesized image?”

With reluctance T.J. nodded.

Slava ran his fingers across his desktop, ornamental ashtray, as if wiping them clean of disgust. Fangs fully bared, his visage belonged to a wolf.

“What do you expect?” T.J. said defensively with anger and sadness warring for her face. “Two seditious employees, you think your superiors aren’t watching? Admit it, this don’t look none too good.”

Machuzak snarled. “Only The Terminator could have come up with this…”

Garrett, who’d remained silent ’til that moment, raised his hands. “Now y’all calm down. I saw two disgruntled scientists blowin off steam during a rough patch, that’s all. Anybody can see they’re joking…can’t you?” Machuzak didn’t like the question mark at the end of The Chairman’s sentence, or the squint of his brow. “I suggest a twenty-four-hour cooling-off period. Agreed?”

D’Abro was gone.

The Chairman put his arms around the two scientists’ shoulders. “Boys, the situation here is obviously worse than I thought. I can’t believe you two were up to anything other than sharpenin your horns, but if you were, I’m askin you to confess—now.”

“I’m wanted in the test cell,” Machuzak said, also making for the door. “By the way, Richard, don’t forget, Moravec and Whitman are showing up in a week.”

* * * *

By the time the days ran their course, Fred Abbuhl appeared, if possible, more exhausted than Machuzak had ever seen him, barely able to stand. Indeed, excusing himself, he took a seat at one of the computer stations, next to a pot of coffee. Nathaniel withheld reprimand because, despite everything, his astonishment today surpassed even that of a week ago. The cryopumps had completed the evacuation faultlessly as air molecules dutifully wandered onto their liquid-helium cooled panels to stick there like frost to a windowpane: the pressure inside Prometheus stood at a hundred-billionth of an atmosphere.

As if to ridicule Cochran’s warnings, the liquid helium factory had also kept up its end of the bargain and the magnets rested at operating temperature, 4.2 degrees above absolute zero. Fred’s team was putting the coils through their paces, but remarkably all systems seemed go: this morning, the magnets were superconducting at 15 Teslas, which made them—except for bench-top jobs the Dutch used to levitate frogs—along with ITER’s the most powerful on Earth. Moments ago, the techs had begun the machine-area scrub. They’d clean every nook and cranny of metal or debris, and not for nothing: they had no intention of allowing an ultrahigh magnetic field turn a forgotten wrench into a rocket-propelled grenade.

What had they overlooked? Machuzak clearly saw he was asking for trouble, that a visit was the perfect opportunity… But if they’d overlooked nothing, if they’d been meant to overlook nothing, Moravec and Whitman could watch a first plasma. “Fred,” Nathaniel said as he had on the other occasion, “get some sleep. That’s an order. We’re just beginning.”

THIRTY-THREE

A strange welcoming committee gathered outside the main building to meet two black limos and one orange and white with horns, which were converging by the lake. More than the visit had forced Machuzak to run his tongue over his lips as he passed through the outer gate. Overnight, the number of protestors had quadrupled to one hundred and a dozen National Guardsmen stood poised, weapons ready, to keep the troublemakers at bay. Worse, media vans parked at the fence told him that word of the visit had leaked. Worse yet, as Nathaniel drove between the opposing forces, he sensed that the antagonists were itching for a fight; he waved cheerfully.

Now he stood in a Western vest with Archangelsky to his right, whose blue sports jacket, lanyard and beard put him in full punk-tsarist mode. To his left, Toshi immaculately suited in a high-collar Maoist jacket and Theresa, who insisted on joining them, promising a surprise, effervescent in a shimmering gray-green skirt and blouse. Leonard lolled in his wheelchair beside the curb.

The decision to exclude T.J. sat hard. He couldn’t blame her for doing her job; he could blame her for not seeing where a scientist’s duty lay. And as long as she hadn’t arrested him the call was his. While the fountain’s spray caressed them, Machuzak discerned the expectant quiet in the old westerns before the gunfight, the deeper shadows, the glint off the windows, the crunch of gravel under the boots. The hairs on his arm stood too, though he thought that had more to do with the distant clouds heralding the onset of Austin’s wet season. He was wary of gunfights after his showdown with Whitman. Today he had no hope of eliminating the senator, son of snake pus. Today he’d devote to reconnaissance and hope that the experience of a functioning laboratory would cause Big Bad Roy and Moravec to relent.

As the chauffeurs discharged their passengers, Whitman emerged in his buckskin carrying no less than an Alamo-vintage musket. But the cornball stunt paled next to the two bodyguards armed with pistols and Uzis who climbed out ahead of him and closed ranks. The confrontation had begun.

“Sorry, Senator,” Nathaniel said, “I won’t have weapons on the premises.”

Leaning on his musket, Whitman measured the physicist facing him. “Dr. Machuzak, I’m risking my life coming here and have no intention of being taken down by a terrorist or those folks at the gate. Either my men come or I leave.”

Despite the banality of the senator’s words and his own better judgment, Nathaniel saw little choice. Moravec’s trick was craftier but no less TV-ready: one of the CEO’s pleasant faces appeared on the screen of a remote and expendable bot, which now unholstered a pistol from beneath its jacket and handed it to the chauffeur.

Atmosphere corroded, Theresa and Slava forced on smiles and handed out the traditional personalized hard hats, which Moravec politely declined. Leonard wished the guests a pleasant tour and departed, while Garrett attempted damage repair by trading Aggie jokes with Whitman. When The Chairman asked the visitors whether they’d ever met, both said no, and shook hands so mechanically that Nathaniel all but laughed.

* * * *

The sky growled as long black trails became visible against the horizon. Nathaniel ushered everyone onto a van, which hummed over to Site Alpha. While the senator’s heavies scanned the drive for loose saboteurs and protestors, the wandering eye of Moravec’s avatar showed that, even remotely, the CEO could not fully armor herself against the laboratory’s scale. That had been a small part of the plan.

The bodyguards swept into the Materials Test Facility as if expecting to be met by automatic-weapons fire. Mercedes, who’d been waiting but never for this, caught her breath, shot her hands into the air and cast a frozen, terrified glance at Machuzak. Only once he reassured her that all was well, did she manage to stagger the few steps to her test stand.

“T–the Materials Test Facility,” she told them, plainly quaking as Theresa and Nathaniel distributed coffee, “is dedicated to one of the most basic challenges in building a commercial reactor: what, uh, do you build it of?” Pulling herself together with difficulty, she reminded everyone of the ultrahigh magnetic fields Prometheus required, fields that attempted to twist iron into corkscrews, and so you needed to construct the machine out of nonmagnetic materials. “The old tokamaks were built from stainless steel, nonmagnetic but soft and heavy, whereas Prometheus is constructed of superalloys and titanium, stronger and lighter.” Ramirez’s disquiet at this moment understandably went beyond her usual high-strung behavior, but even so, as she droned on with a bloodless face, she reminded Nathaniel of one of those department-store mannequins from a 1950s display kitchen and he wondered whether she was aiding the cause.

“The problem with stainless, and to a lesser extent titanium, is that they, uh, absorb neutrons.” At the n-word, Mercedes flinched visibly, then reluctantly confessed that after twenty years of bombarding itself with neutrons, a fusion reactor would become so radioactive you’d have to bury it.

“Like that place in Russia… Chernobyl,” the senator snorted, his first comment. It didn’t help. “If a reactor’s so dangerous, why build it at all?”

Mercedes swallowed and Slava jumped in. “Dirigible is dangerous too, if you build it out of wrong stuff.”

“Yes,” continued Mercedes, recovering as Whitman shot an unfriendly bolt at the Russian. “This is why we’re developing activationless materials.” She ushered everyone into the accelerator bay, which is large enough to convince visitors that the scientists are up to something. The accelerator, she explained, lit to ghoulish green under the fluorescents, slammed deuterium nuclei into a target of frozen tritium.

“Like NIF,” Whitman said, a quantum more brightly.

“Uh, something like that.”

“Tell me,” the senator suddenly asked, smiling brightly, “can you find God with this machine?”

Ramirez involuntarily freezes again, totally flummoxed, utterly immobile.

“No,” Nathaniel answers the senator with humor and derision, “for that you need a much bigger machine.”

“I knew we should have built the Supercollider,” Whitman says.

Slava leans over. “You idiot,” he whispers into Machuzak’s ear. “You should have asked for funding.”

Mercedes, spooked into her full zombie persona, now continued as if the interruption never occurred, explaining that on the one hand neutrons are necessary because they carry off most of the energy of fusion reactions, but on the other they are dangerous, because by slamming into the machine, they cause it to become radioactive and weaken the superstructure. “At the MTF,” she said, handing a Geiger counter to Moravec, “we investigate low-activation materials: vanadium, silicon carbide, chromium-titanium alloys…” The counter rattled obscenely as the avatar passed it over a steel sample lying on the benchtop, then dropped to a rare click on the vanadium. Whitman stole a glance at his watch.

Leading the group back to the adjacent lab, where Jerry Wilson on his back like a car mechanic fiddled beneath a great steel clam several meters across, Mercedes droned on. “The public is understandably afraid of radiation, but of greater concern to us here is that after several decades of neutron bombardment, the reactor’s superstructure will collapse under its own weight.”

At once the scene loops in Machuzak’s mind: Krieg-Zuber threatening to shut down the MTF; he, Machuzak, arguing that unless this problem is solved, the proceeding decades of effort will have been in vain.

“Nature is a challenging mistress,” Mercedes said and went on to explain that materials which don’t weaken under neutron bombardment aren’t the best for holding a vacuum or resisting the heat of the plasma. “A commercial reactor will be subjecting its inner walls to an amount of heat approaching that radiated by our sun over every square meter.” Rapping on the big chamber, she explained that in this experiment they bombarded various materials with sunlike plasmas to see how they stood up.

The only reaction was from the bodyguards, who nervously scratched their weapons and convinced Nathaniel that he was witnessing a lifeless laboratory. Finally, Whitman interrupted, asking whether all this had any practical applications.

Without a blush Theresa ticked off the list: microcircuitry etching; waste disposal; the coating of materials, like chrome on car fenders, long a billion-dollar industry. Advanced welding systems. Rocket engines.

Once Machuzak got over his surprise, he realized that Theresa, if anyone, would have been well rehearsed in such matters.

“Chrome on car fenders,” remarked Whitman. “That I can understand.”

Moravec was less impressed. “Those spin-offs can be accomplished directly, without building enormously complicated reactors.”

As they departed the water-stained MTF, Mercedes threw at Machuzak a glance of pure hatred. Absorbing it, he leaned over to Theresa and said, “This isn’t going well.” She shrugged off his concern, reminding him that the morning was young, but outside, just as they rounded the building, a slew of journalists ambushed them.

“Two can play this game, boy,” said Whitman as he waved on the reporters.

“Senator,” one of them asks, eyeing his goons, “aren’t you worried about your safety here today?”

“Of course I’m concerned,” he smiled broadly, patting his musket. “As you see I’ve brought protection. Nevertheless, it’s my duty to see that taxpayer money is spent properly, and so despite the substantial risk I have come today to CFRC to assess the situation. But Texas—” he brandishes Ol’ Betsy above his head—“is prepared!”

The bastard knows who he’s playing for, Machuzak fumes with unconcealed admiration, and it ain’t us. Simultaneously, Archangelsky makes a move for an imaginary pistol, then shrugs empty-handed at the reporters.

“How do you assess the situation?” the journalist follows up, ignoring the Russian clown.

“I see no advantage to fusion,” Whitman replies. “By the time it is a reality, we can have built a hundred nuclear reactors and exploited every drop of shale and offshore oil.”

“Exactly,” interrupts Moravec, for nearly the first time saying anything at all, “every drop.”

The reporters turn to Moravec’s avatar as the morphing assemblage rocks toward the van. “You don’t agree with the senator, sir?”

“No,” he emphatically replies from afar. “The senator should ask how many lives have been lost to respiratory disease due to his perpetual war against federal regulations. Personally, however, I am not convinced that fusion is possible, yet alone economical. I wish it were—”

“Then why have you imposed the deadline on CFRC?” A bot from the Statesman site shoves her ring mic into the other bot’s face.

“My company’s direction is solar and wind. As for fusion, you might agree that a century is a long time line for an investment.” The exec sounds so reasonable, so irreproachable, that no one watching this show will doubt her good intentions. Even to Machuzak she, it is convincing. “The size of the investment for fusion is certainly colossal.” Moravec seems genuinely embarrassed, even remotely, by the attention. “The ITER project with all its overruns is costing twenty billion euros.”

“Yes,” Whitman jumps in, intending that the CEO should not grab the spotlight, “and for all that money it won’t even produce any energy.”

Machuzak won’t let that nonsense go by. “ITER is a scientific experiment, not a commercial reactor. It’s not meant to produce net energy.”

Theresa had remained virtually silent since the start of this, but the creases around her eyes showed that she was following the exchange intently. Seeing an opening, she suddenly invaded Whitman’s space and faced the crowd. “You must not believe the senator’s feigned disinterest, people. His brother Thomas ran the Office of Energy Research at the DOE several decades ago and together they have been trying to kill fusion ever since.”

Machuzak himself started, hard. The Office of Energy Research at the Department of Energy—now the Office of Science—oversaw energy research at the major US laboratories. He hadn’t known Whitman had a brother who’d been director there, let alone one who opposed fusion. Several decades ago Nathaniel was in college. What do college kids know? What is Theresa going for?

“Mrs. Rasmussen,” the senator said, unable to conceal an umbrage that penetrated his buckskin, “it’s true that my brother was at the DOE. What of it? As director of the Office of Energy Research he had many assessments to make.”

“Of course he did,” Theresa returned with a stiletto smile, “and wasn’t one of those assessments to divert fifty million dollars away from the magnetic fusion program?”

Leaning on his musket Whitman scratched his chin in an attempt to look as much like Fess Parker as possible. “I have a dim recollection of him making proper use of discretionary funds, but perhaps you should ask him, Mrs. Rasmussen, not me.” He beamed broadly.

Suddenly they seemed to be poised on the verge of open hostilities, but with Whitman’s final remark the brakes were switched back on. Theresa herself climbed into the van and they drove back toward the pentagon and tritium ops, media caravan in tow.

THIRTY-FOUR

Kettering greeted the entourage at pentagon unit four. By now a light sprinkling descended from the gloomy sky, but neither the drizzle nor Whitman’s bodyguards nor the too-tempting opportunity for a saboteur prevented the journalists from pressing the senator on Theresa’s allegations.

Big Bad Roy’s demeanor, rifle tenderly cradled, remained placid. “Folks, if a government appropriation doesn’t get spent in one place, well, it just goes back into the pot and surfaces somewhere else.”

“Like in harbor dredging,” Theresa finished. “That’s what my husband originally thought happened and he protested to Congress. But isn’t it true, Senator, that your brother in fact diverted the money to the Star Wars program?”

“Why, that’s preposterous, Theresa!” Whitman retorted with the stage anger of politicians, “and I didn’t come here to discuss my brother’s ancient history.”

“Why did you come?” Theresa asked, but the senator refused to respond.

The exchange riveted Nathaniel. The magnetic fusion program was on the civilian side of the DOE, Star Wars on the military side. If Theresa was right, the other Whitman’s action had been blatantly illegal. At this moment Nathaniel truly wished Theresa had prepared him for her surprise. He also understood that visiting the sins of one brother on the other was a dangerous tactic.

“Wasn’t your brother forced to resign his position as a result of this misappropriation of funds?” Theresa went on without flinching.

Nathaniel did another double take but had no time to consider, for Whitman answered. “Theresa, after five long years he just wanted to spend more time with his family—nothing more mysterious than that.”

Despite the senator’s smooth defense, Theresa had apparently accomplished what she’d intended. Reporters huddled around her, asking for information. Despite the long history etched on her face, she pleaded ignorance and suggested only, “Why don’t you find out why Whitman’s brother resigned as director of the Office of Energy Research, and see if it was a result of family values.”

Nathaniel grabbed her arm and took her aside. “Theresa,” he whispered, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“So do I,” she answered with a smile less confident than her speeches, “so do I.”

Moravec, with Toshi by him, could not hide her amusement. “‘In battle, confrontation is done directly, victory is gained by surprise,’” she chuckled.

“‘Therefore those skilled in the unorthodox are as infinite as heaven and earth,’” completed Toshi.

The bot rotated to the physicist with curiosity. “I see you are a dangerous man, Dr. Matsushima,” it said. “Dr. Machuzak also recognized Sun Tzu. Is the Art of War a favorite of physicists?”

“Nathaniel has learned a few things from me,” answered Toshi.

As he stood at the door to tritium ops, Machuzak’s only objective at this minute was to get the show back on track. “Today we plan to produce a first plasma—our first shot since the dedication, to convince you that we’ve recovered. The experiment will require tritium and I thought we’d show you how it’s prepared.”

“Is there any danger of radioactivity?” Whitman asked, suddenly as cautious as a scared eight-year-old.

“None.” Nathaniel crossed himself.

“Why not then?” the senator said with an uneasy glance around. Moravec displayed no worries.

Nathaniel motioned for Kettering to lead them down, but the National Guardsmen at the vault entrance diverted everyone’s attention and one of the reporters called out, asking the reason for their presence.

“Just security,” replied Nathaniel as he followed Kettering.

The reporters and Whitman’s bodyguards all pressed forward, but Machuzak held up his hands. “Sorry, no tourists allowed in the tritium vault.”

One of the media people called out, wanting to know what he was hiding. “Has tritium been stolen?”

“Nothing has been stolen. You have not been cleared ahead of time for entry into the vault. End of story. You can wait here. That goes for you too.” Nathaniel faced Whitman’s guards.

When the muscle didn’t retreat, Kettering stepped up to them and said, “Micro model, nice piece. Three hundred fifty meters per second muzzle velocity. You want to release enough tritium to kill everybody on this site? Stand down.” At his nod, the militiamen interposed themselves between the VIPs and the others, all arguments ceased. The guests turned toward the entrance to the River Styx. Whitman handed over his musket to his men.

“The tritium we have down there wouldn’t kill anybody,” Machuzak whispered to the tritium chief.

“They don’t know that,” Kettering returned.

Clearing his fingerprint, the chief leads the group past the security cameras, through the door and into the negative pressure area, then follows the steps downward into the realm of Hades. No one chuckles or dies of a heart attack at the No Pacemakers advisory, and the radiation warnings silence everyone completely. But as they enter the vault, the atmosphere instantly changes. The area is brightly lit and the tritium handlers, some of whom resemble bikers and a few of whom do sport leather, gather round to greet the visitors. The shock and awe of the guests is extreme. They expected men in white lab coats or something.

While Bill Balustradi’s merry visage says, “Hi gang!” from every closed-circuit monitor, a couple of the guys request autographs from the senator and Quintanilla drapes his Harley jacket over Moravec’s avatar. Once more in his element, Whitman whisks out his cigar, but Markowitz, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Groucho, snatches the stogie from his fingers, holds it up to one of the radiation monitors and pockets it. “No chewing in radiologically controlled areas,” he scolds. In fact, the radiation level in the vault is less than the Austin background.

Truly, the tritium handlers are a little different than everyone else at the lab. They cheerfully recount their stories about the weekly urinalyses and joke about the times they’ve experienced a “direct uptake,” officialese for being doused by tritiated water—what the hell? “Nothing is more fun than a real ‘line break,’” they tell their visitors, a genuine cleanup operation requiring moon suits and all.

Fusioneers do have a different take on radioactivity than the public, thinks Nathaniel, grateful for the reporters’ absence. The problem isn’t that tritium is radioactive; the problem is that tritium’s a bitch. It’s light, flammable, it combines with everything—water above all. That’s when you’ve got to watch it.

“The body doesn’t distinguish H2O and T2O,” Kettering is telling the guests. “But hey, if you swallow tritium, the best treatment is beer.”

“Beer?” Moravec remotely exclaims in spite of himself.

“Affirmative. You know the effects of beer.”

With the guys posing with Whitman’s cigar in front of their Miss Fusion calendar, Kettering turns to a glove box and connects one of the LP-18 bottles to a mass spectrometer for assaying. Pure tritium, close.

Despite all the clowning, Machuzak inadvertently gulps, suddenly realizing that he doesn’t know a single one of the handlers. What better place, time…? What has he done?

“When we need to pump tritium into Prometheus,” Kettering continues, “we heat these beds of depleted uranium, onto which the tritium has been adsorbed, releasing the gas.” He points out the uranium beds inside the glass-walled box, but they’re hidden within an extraordinary maze of plumbing that, like everything else at CFRC, must seem the creation of Rube Goldberg gone mad. In fact, the whole tritium ops section is an import from the old weapons labs.

“Ready when you are Mac,” Kettering says, “and thanks for staying the course—sir.” He snaps to attention and salutes, Machuzak merely acknowledges with a dumb nod and follows him down the corridor. “It’s pretty routine,” the chief goes on, leading everyone to the recycling plant, which reclaims the tritium after it leaves the tokamak contaminated with all the garbage from the machine walls. Along the loop molecular sieves remove the tritiated water. “It’s basically kitty litter,” he says, though surely no one believes him. “We store it in steel barrels.” Beer kegs, actually.

When all is said and done the recycling plant, towering over them by several stories, glittering with lights and gauges, is a distillery. Put the mess in one end, each component of the contaminated gas comes off at its own boiling point, tritium itself at about 25 degrees absolute. Repeat the process until you’re left with the pure thing.

“Generally,” Kettering remarks, staring Moravec’s bot in the screen with his invariable pugnacity, “the recycling works so well that we rarely need to import tritium from Savannah River. But we have a fucking deadline to beat.”

Moravec takes the hit without response. Everyone is eager to climb from this somber subterranean realm, but Slava, who’s been examining the recycling plant, turns to Kettering and asks, “Can you make vodka with this?”

“Let’s turn the machine on,” says Machuzak and they ascend.

THIRTY-FIVE

Outside heavy droplets were by now splattering irregularly on the asphalt and concrete, while thunder snarled in the distance. The reporters lay in wait and the first question to split the air was, redundantly, “Has any tritium been stolen?”

A ring shoved in her bot’s face, Moravec had little choice but to reply. “This is hardly for me to say. The security down there is impressive, but the entire operation seems unduly complicated. Nature perhaps does not believe in fusion on Earth.”

Slava, two steps away, overhears. “A century ago,” he answers, “computer would have seemed unimaginable. If there is one percent chance of supplying world with energy for millions of years, is not endeavor worth undertaking?”

Moravec isn’t buying. “The age of fusion has passed, I am afraid. With solar and wind power here to stay, it’s increasingly difficult to see why fusion is necessary.”

“Y’all know,” muses Slava, scratching his head, “where I come from the sun don’t shine half the year. That’s a might lotta batteries, and solar’s never gotten as cheap as advertised.”

During the general laughter Whitman sees his opportunity, asserting that Texas would do better on its own and that the private sector handles these things better than any government.

“Like the way the private sector handled health care and finances.” Theresa is visibly angered by the senator’s insistence on an imaginary past and she throws in a few government failures “like the Manhattan Project and the Internet” for good measure. “But you may be right, Senator: if Texas manages to become an autonomous Wild West, it will flourish until the big neighbor surrounding it declares war.”

Watching the show unfold before a global audience, Nathaniel can’t but admire Theresa’s refusal to kowtow before the politician, but he senses that her antipathy goes well beyond theatre. She did say she despised him. By some miracle, though, this movable kitchen debate hasn’t exploded and Whitman’s reply is simply to cradle his rifle and put his arm around Theresa’s shoulder.

“Theresa,” he says with a practiced chuckle, “you really should consider running for office.” With the others, Nathaniel looks on with amazement, certain only that they are neither winning friends nor destroying enemies.

* * * *

At that moment T.J. appeared, jogging up to Nathaniel, as if she’d dressed specially for the occasion. “Doc,” she said, smiling radiantly in a black dress suit, “you wouldn’t want me to miss this, would you?”

Nathaniel raised his finger, swallowed his tongue and waved the entourage toward the test cell. He only pointed out pentagon five, housing the radio-frequency supplies, nothing more than a hundred-megawatt radio station that provides Prometheus its microwave heating through the large microwave conduits running overhead.

As he prepared to lead the crowd into the central hub, the door unexpectedly swung open. Instantly Whitman’s bodyguard’s pistols are out; the senator himself hoists his musket. With hands raised high above his head one of the techs, Joe Johnson, is glancing in every direction, terrified. Joe’s a big black guy—a very big black guy—and his dreadlocks stream loose and unfettered through the slits he’s cut into his hard-hat liner. This morning he’s made matters worse by wearing an African dashiki.

Normally Nathaniel would have cracked up, but today he quickly interposes himself between tech and goons, pushing down their firearms with his forefingers. “Where the hell do you think you are?” his voice lies between a growl and a shout. Turning to the tech he says with full exasperation, “Joe Johnson, meet Senator Roy Whitman.”

Whitman, flummoxed, must apologize live. “I guess I can’t count on your vote next time around,” he concedes weakly, lowering Ol’ Betsy.

Joe merely walks off shaking his head.

* * * *

Experiments about to begin, the test cell is off limits and Fred Abbuhl escorts everyone to the visitors’ gallery. Nathaniel offers a silent thanks to Prometheus. At the sight of the device, all arguments subside as the inevitable quiet descends, the familiar sign that the guests are failing to cope with sensory overload. Before them stands a machine much different from the one he pulled D’Abro from on her first night on the job.

The bay is clean, the donut and magnets invisible, enclosed in the great vacuum flask. They are able to make out microwave guides feeding ASSET from pentagon five, diagnostic lasers and spectrometers sprouting from every crevice, conduits from the cryoplant, a few of the neutral beam accelerators, each several stories tall and covered with so much cabling that they conjure up the monster from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

When one of those beam boxes was delivered on a tremendous lowboy, Fred recounts, the driver got his route mixed up, collided with a bridge spanning an interstate and—took out the bridge. The beam box remained intact. The neutral beams had been delivered from Japan; all the specialists here had retired or been RIFed and no one knew how to build them.

“This is the usual course of technology,” interjects Toshi with a shrug, one of his few comments. “Who knows nowadays how to cut a quill pen?”

Nathaniel doesn’t quite catch the point, but Whitman goes for it. “Is that bad, Professor?”

“Your predecessors at Independence Hall, Senator, understood the value of pausing for thought.”

The exchange goes unnoticed, for everyone else is staring at the huge deadline calendar, big as a movie screen, that Fred’s crew has hung on the test cell’s east wall. Six weeks are X-ed out and a mushroom cloud rises above day zero, but Moravec merely purses her lips on-screen, and Nathaniel can’t read any more into it.

* * * *

Fred accompanied the group past techs stationed at strategic locations and through the dank three-hundred-meter tunnel to the control room. “I’ve wanted to say, Mac,” he offered, “thanks for getting us this far. You’ve done a good job.”

Before Nathaniel could do more than smile, a tech overtook the group at the entrance to the control room and asked, “Is this Moravec?”

More or less, Nathaniel nodded.

“Put it to work. We’ve got a deadline.”

There was no trace of humor in the command, none, and it didn’t escape the media. “Dr. Machuzak, wouldn’t it be wise to advise your employees not to insult your visitors?”

Angered, Machuzak snarls, “This is a scientific laboratory, where people traditionally think for themselves, not the bloody marines.” He swivels on Whitman with a raised finger. “Leave your thugs outside.” This time the senator retreats, handing over his weapon to his men and posting them at the control room doors.

Inside, a KXAN reporter wants to know whether, having seen Prometheus, Moravec has changed its mind.

“To the contrary,” the CEO responds. “In fact, it seems inconceivable to me that such a monstrous…contraption could actually work.”

“There’s still oil,” quips Whitman, “and we still can’t live without it.”

The remarks sets Moravec off and right there, brightly lit amid the decades of terminals and displays, the two launch into a heated argument, fossil versus bio, North Pole oil versus Dakota wind, animated stogie against swiveling screen, flailing buckskin contra suited plastic.

The two loathe each other, Nathaniel observes once more as accusations of “doomsayer” and “dinosaur” fill the air, but when he interposes himself again between the combatants, it is Moravec, not Whitman, to whom he turns with a determined expression. “We’re now going to show you that our contraption can work… Thad, take the helm.”

Hasschler is onstage. He nods to Larissa Davidson, the chief operating engineer and, as on that other day, the countdown abruptly begins.

“Sixty seconds to current ramp-up,” she announces.

As the digital clock on the wall begins ticking down, Machuzak explains, “Ladies, gentlemen, except for the start-up tests we’ve been conducting, this is the first time we’ve run the machine since the dedication. You’re now going to witness our first plasma, a genuine shot, no tricks.”

“Is there any danger?” Whitman suddenly asks again.

“Not if you keep your hands to yourself,” Machuzak replies and the senator immediately goes stiff, arms clamped to his side.

“Preparing for DT injection and current ramp-up.”

Machuzak attempts to direct their attention to the big screen, but it is now T.J. who interrupts. “Doc, y’all really gotta get with it.” Abruptly she links her handset to the COE’s system and at once the hammering pulsations of a synthesized music track are accompanying the countdown and have set the audience in motion. “See?” she says, jiving. “Now it’s real.”

The clock hits zero.

“Beginning current ramp-up.”

They hear the crack. As on the earlier occasion, the speakers pipe in the tremendous metallic wrenching from the test cell. T.J. involuntarily flinches, stops snapping her fingers and grips his arm; he does not remove her hand. Everyone—Slava, Theresa, Toshi—is transfixed by the glow on the monitor, the bright red glow, which this morning persists.

After about ten seconds, when Larissa announces, “Three hundred thousand volts, one mega-amp,” Thad says, “Let’s leave it there,” and the burn ends.

“What just happened?” Moravec asks, bewildered.

The diagnostic teams are already turning to the shot analysis, but Machuzak knows the answer. “Nothing happened. We just created a low-density plasma in the machine and held it for ten seconds, without problems.”

“This isn’t fusion though, is it?” the CEO replies skeptically.

“No, this was just a test, but it was a successful test of our contraption.”

At that instant Abbuhl steps up to Nathaniel. “Mac, this just came in from ITER. Ten minutes ago they achieved breakeven.” He hands Machuzak the printout.

“What exactly is breakeven?” Moravec wants to know.

“The point where the plasma gives you as much energy out as you’re using to heat it. Jules César Balard isn’t wasting time.”

“Let’s go for it,” Kettering shouts from beyond a row of consoles. “Now.”

Machuzak firmly shakes his head. “No. Let’s have lunch.”

THIRTY-SIX

As they gained the cafeteria, Machuzak walked up to the traveling light display that had been installed above the cowboys in the big mural to broadcast safety messages: Every finger plays an important part. Protect yours… Bill Balustradi says have a great day… He stooped, pulled the plug to the applause of those gathered for lunch and made his announcement:

“Today we achieved a first plasma in Prometheus. The machine functioned perfectly.” Another round of applause and some cheering greeted him until he gave them the news from ITER.

“Let’s catch them!” came the instant shouts from several quarters of the mezzanine amid hissing and booing.

“We have a different race,” he said, raising his hands for quiet. “Let us concentrate on that, and the rest will follow.”

Moravec’s avatar, whose head turned owl-like as it surveyed the faces in the cafeteria, swiveled to Toshi. “Your director seems amazingly calm, considering. Everybody here will be dying to beat ITER.”

“As ITER will be dying to beat us,” Toshi replied. “Let us hope that neither side takes those words literally.”

“It may increase your chances of beating the deadline.”

Moravec’s remark lay somewhere between a statement and a question, but Matsushima shook his head. “Nathaniel is correct. Too much fervor and the saboteur could easily defeat us, not by homemade bombs but by slipshod ideas. Here is how it could go: We are making progress toward your deadline when a team member puts forth an outrageous proposal allowing us to leapfrog ahead of ITER. By then everyone is so panicked that we foolishly attempt it and bring about complete catastrophe. We lose the race, miss your deadline and you shut us down.”

“What do you think it would take to ensure that such a scenario plays out?”

Toshi only shrugged noncommittally. “A guarantee to support more promising roads to fusion might be looked on favorably by some.”

“Hmm,” replied Moravec, “that would be a substantial risk for an investor.”

“Less risky than a tokamak. On the other hand, given that there is not one chance in a thousand that we can beat the deadline imposed by Jinghiz Khan the Merciless, it is perhaps an unnecessary prec—”

The conversation went no further. Two nearby lightning flashes, followed in quick succession by a pair of deafening thunderclaps so percussive that stomachs shook and glasses toppled, caused Matsushima to duck. Nearby, as the lights blinked, Machuzak stiffened, nearly dove for cover under the nearest table, while others did. But the thunder didn’t abate and the roaring continued, an uninterrupted bellow that only slowly revealed itself to be something else, the roar of an earthquake or an avalanche. There are no mountains at CFRC and no earthquakes in Texas.

Machuzak ran to the edge of the mezzanine, from where he could see the pentagon. A huge mushroom cloud was climbing high into the dark sky. “My God,” he whispered, first walking, then running down the stairs into the courtyard.

The journalists were at once after him, D’Abro and Whitman’s guards as well. “Is it an atomic bomb, Dr. Machuzak?” one of the reporters shouted.

“If it were an atomic bomb,” he replied with a sudden, purposeful calm, “you wouldn’t be asking the question—and I wouldn’t be answering it.” For a moment he paused, gazing up at the cloud that must have now risen to five hundred meters. No, this was some gas venting. It hit him then—helium, from pentagon three. God, that was bad enough.

Nathaniel sprinted across the asphalt past the test cell and on to the helium factory. Cochran stood inside amidst the giant storage dewars, gesticulating wildly and shouting to her techs above the ear-shattering whine of the compressors. Machuzak couldn’t hear a word and took her aside.

“What’s happened?” he shouted into her ear.

“It was the lightning strikes,” she said. “We lost primary and emergency power. The gauges were going nuts. We were about to regenerate the cryopanels in the beam boxes with a little helium, but somehow liters got in there.”

“Liters!” Machuzak shouted in disbelief.

“It boiled off and completely overwhelmed the pumps—”

“Diana if those pressure disks rupture—”

“I know, I know. Emergency power is back on. It looks like the sensors caught it in time and vented the main dewar. Boy, did they.” She glanced upward.

Machuzak motioned her after him and they rushed up the access ladder to the roof. The cloud above their heads was already dissipating, but the exhaust vent had been built to point downward and the roof was—frozen solid.

“Jesus,” the two breathed simultaneously. “We’ll have to replace the whole roof.”

T.J. had followed them by seconds, annoyed at having to make the climb in her dress suit, but now saw what they saw. “Do you know what caused this?”

“Helium, very cold helium.”

“I mean the failure.”

The lightning strikes, Diana told her.

“Are you certain?”

Cochran and Machuzak turned toward each other. No, they were not.

When they’d climbed down again and gotten away from the noise, D’Abro asked for an explanation. “We often inject a little helium into the neutral beams,” Machuzak answered. “As it boils, it cleans the hydrogen frost off the cryopanels. Somehow liters got in there and when helium boils it expands seven hundred times. I guess with the power failure the pumps weren’t functioning and the pressure completely overwhelmed them. If the emergency pressure disks on the beam boxes blow, the atmosphere rushes in and the whole system needs to be repaired, purged and pumped down again. Luckily the power came on and the sensors vented the main dewar, relieving the pressure.”

“So is this a freak accident or…?” D’Abro asked, shaking her head.

Machuzak had hardly been thinking that far, and without answering turned to Cochran for her opinion. She also remained silent for a long time, at last shaking her head. “I’ve never seen anything like this. We hadn’t actually injected the helium when the lightning hit.”

“Could even a lightning strike cause several liters of helium to get into the beams?”

“I don’t see how. But then somebody would have had to override the programmable logic control.”

Machuzak breathed heavily, faced D’Abro. “You see how easy it is to torpedo one of these systems. If it’s deliberate our man has gotten more sophisticated—we can’t even tell whether it is sabotage.”

Fred was struggling to keep the press at bay nearby, but there was nothing for it. Machuzak told the journalists simply that they weren’t certain yet what caused the event. Immediately they asked again about atomic bombs and whether radiation was leaked. “No, just helium gas,” Nathaniel assured them. Helium was vital to cool the magnets and without it Prometheus couldn’t function.

Machuzak and D’Abro walked silently back to the main lobby where the dignitaries were waiting. Whitman, in a manner that attempted to mask his evident fear, huffed, “Well, Dr. Machuzak, I told you I was risking my life coming this morning. Are we quite safe?”

“There is no danger,” Machuzak replied sullenly, wishing the politician would dissolve.

“Well, then, I think we’ve had sufficient excitement for one day.”

Machuzak only watched as Whitman motioned for his men to follow him. A few steps on, the senator’s phone rang. He answered, said he was busy and disappeared out the laboratory door and into his limo. Nathaniel stood rooted to the spot. It was the same ringtone that he’d heard in Moravec’s office, the Nisi Dominus from the Monteverdi Vespers.

“I need to see you and Slava,” D’Abro said soberly. “Meet me in the conference room in thirty minutes.”

* * * *

It didn’t happen like that. From his handset Slava was monitoring five or six of the news broadcasts originating at the lab and watched to his horror as over the course of three minutes news of the helium venting went viral. But helium has become confused with tritium and the protestors at the gate, having survived the thunderstorm, are convinced that tritium has been leaked into the atmosphere. At that moment—a call from the guard booth. “Dr. Machuzak, you’d better get out to the main gate.”

He arrives, Theresa at his heels, to find a near riot, half the protestors running for their lives, the other half attempting to storm the lab. As he sensed earlier, the National Guard is in no mood for games and rifles are aimed.

Nathaniel wades in, interposing himself between the militia and the civilians. “Don’t antagonize them!” he shouts, pushing aside one of the rifles, even as he holds back a struggling student. “Shout ‘More pay to the Guard!’”

The kid, who Nathaniel recognizes as the same one from the day of the dedication, stares at him as if he’s out of his mind.

“You’ve just had a nuclear accident at this place,” the kid texts, even now refusing to talk. “You can see the cloud!”

“Must be a mighty small one,” he says, nearly repeating himself. “We’re all still here.” Indeed, and at this instant he recollects his vow to explain tritium to the kid. “Look, why don’t you come in and see what’s going on. I’m not afraid, see?” He moves toward the gate.

As on dedication day, there is uncertainty, hesitation, then a few brave souls step forward. The guardsmen resist until Machuzak orders them to stand down, at which the crowd begins to stream through and he leads them across the field to the MTF, into his lab.

There they are, sitting on the floor, the benches, the lab tables, standing, overflowing into the adjoining rooms. He doesn’t know their names. There are tie-dyed and “Save the Whales” shirts, mostly adorning college-age bodies, but others are older, gray hair tied in ponytails, lanyards with lapis and silver brooches, faces creased by the southwestern wind and sun. The press is persistently underfoot until Machuzak orders them to leave. They don’t, but they too stand down.

“So,” he says, “I’m Nathaniel Machuzak, acting director of the lab. Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind.”

The ensuing silence persists long enough that he begins to think this wasn’t such a good idea, but finally one of the older women spits with her voice focused into a nasty spear, “No nukes in Austin.”

“Fair enough,” he answers, feeling impaled by her hostility. “Does that mean you think this is a nuclear plant?”

She seems uncertain. “Well, we don’t want any radiation around.” Gaining with that a dose of bravery she adds, “And we don’t want no bombs either.”

Nathaniel explains patiently that they don’t build bombs here. He says it with the matter-of-factness that comes with the knowledge that theirs is a perpetual action to be waged.

“The place ain’t classified?” someone interjects loudly.

“Nope, never has been.”

“Damn!” the fellow exclaims, snapping his fingers in disappointment.

Nathaniel tells them a little about fusion and plasmas, to which he gets the usual “blood plasma” response. They are welcome to have a look at Prometheus. It becomes clear that they aren’t so much hostile as afraid. Rightly so.

They talk about the tritium safeguards and how the other fuel, deuterium, other than that it can explode, poses no threat. “You see this big cylinder,” Nathaniel introduces them to his test stand, “and you see this little flame here?” He locates a flint and strikes a fire. “People sometimes worry that we’re releasing deuterium into the atmosphere, so I burn off the excess to make heavy water.” It occurs to him that he has a sample on hand and he grabs the small flask from the cabinet next to his desk. “It’s perfectly harmless,” he says, unstoppering it, and he empties the flask in a single drought. Heavy water tastes pretty terrible, worse than distilled water, and he makes a wry face.

A few laugh, but one of the students isn’t satisfied. “Fusion is centralized power. You’re just increasing industry’s hold over everybody. You should be advocating solar, decentralization, not centralization.” He gets a round of applause. Nathaniel nods. A law of nature: every time you mention fusion, somebody else mentions solar.

“Actually, I’m in favor of insulation… Um, look, some of us who work at CFRC believe in fusion; after all that’s why we work here. But I doubt you’d find anybody at the lab who’s against solar. Look at all the panels on the roofs. We are scientists. We believe our experiments and calculations more than this month’s political flavor. Solar is good, but it’s not so cheap and to provide the entire country with electricity, you’d have to cover four or five Rhode Islands with panels. Well, Rhode Island’s smaller than the King Ranch.” A few more laughs. “Anyway, why don’t you take one of those electric vans over to the main site and somebody will show you around. Then if you have any questions you are welcome to come back and argue. I apologize for the guardsmen. They got a little excited.”

Long before he finished, Richard Garrett, Slava and T.J. had arrived, wedging themselves in with the rest. When the crowd had departed, Garrett said, “You handled that about as well as can be imagined, son.” He grasped Nathaniel’s hand warmly. “Congratulations.”

Nathaniel only managed a long sigh. Theresa glanced at him with undisguised pride, but as T.J. looked at him, her eyes came close to filling with tears. “Doc, we have an appointment at the ASSET conference room.” She motioned to Slava and Garrett as well. “Let’s go.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

During the drive over to the administration building in D’Abro’s car no one spoke. Machuzak was still attempting to make sense of everything that had taken place this morning. At the ASSET conference room, he and Slava ran their eyes over Chen the armadillo, the safety posters and the rest, but nothing penetrated except that Cyrus Krieg-Zuber and Mercedes Ramirez faced them from the conference table. Zuber could not disguise the satisfaction written on his face.

D’Abro motioned for Machuzak, Archangelsky and Garrett to sit, while she took her place at table’s head. “Docs, we’ve got a big problem,” she begins without prologue, lingering on Archangelsky. “Slava, you told me you keep a shortwave transceiver in your office.”

“That is true,” Archangelsky replied cautiously, distantly, already vaguely feeling ambushed. The entire day had been one of attempted ambushes.

At his response, Garrett exhaled unhappily and fingered the rim of his Stetson, which he held in his hand.

“Dr. Krieg-Zuber has intercepted a series of shortwave transmissions to and from the lab using an obsolete code called, hmm…”

“The Baudot code,” Krieg-Zuber finished with a twitch as Archangelsky now hurled a sharp, furious glance at him. “The original five-unit telegraph code. It hasn’t been used in a century, and so it took some time to recognize and decrypt. The only additional encryption, carelessly, was that it was in Russian.”

“Slava,” T.J. asked, “have you had shortwave communication with ITER?”

“I have.”

“Why shortwave, Slava?”

Archangelsky drilled into Krieg-Zuber with a fiery eye. “Why not? When it becomes clear this bastard monitors every keystroke, every breath taken at laboratory, what recourse do we have?”

“If one has nothing to hide,” Zuber fairly hissed as he stroked his chin, “of what need is there to protect oneself?”

“What need!” Slava erupts, addressing D’Abro but pointing his finger at The Terminator like an Old Testament prophet. “To this maniac, every conversation is plot, every accident sabotage. You think we are robots? How can one exist in place like this?”

D’Abro does not directly react, instead slides a sheaf of printouts across the table to the Russian. The others watch the blood drain from his face.

Garrett takes the papers from his hands and reads aloud: “Slava, Balard has authorized me to tell you that with your original work on plasma transport you could be of great benefit to ITER. He says it may be even more advantageous if you remained off-site. What do you think? Dima, for Balard.’”

“Do you have his reply to this?” Garrett asks of T.J., leafing through the printouts, but she shakes her head. “Do you, Dr. Archangelsky?”

Slava, doubly dazed now, manages a denial. “Most ITER work done at off-site labs; permanent staff at Cadarache actually small. But rivalry between ITER and ASSET is so great that to work here for them might be spying. I don’t like dictators. My friend Dima has shortwave and sent me that. I told him no way. If Krieg-Zuber is intercepting transmissions, why doesn’t he have reply?”

“What’s this mean?” Garrett furrows his brow. “‘Situation here is untenable. Deputy director needs to go or I do. I would slice him and his program without a knife.’”

T.J. again sees the words scribbled on Balard’s desk while Slava swivels to Machuzak in disgust. “Brat, I tell you it’s time to get out of this business.” He stands and puts it directly to Krieg-Zuber. “Who the hell do you think you are, goddamned KGB?” And with a turn of his head to The Chairman, “I don’t have words for this except that this laboratory has been turned into political prison. This man makes me want to vomit. I resign.”

Garrett, startled and alarmed, jerks his head. “Hold on a minute, Dr. Archangelsky,” he urges, patting the air with his hands. “Just calm down and tell us what that message meant.”

“Meant exactly what it says. Either Krieg-Zuber resigns or I quit. Now I quit.”

Krieg-Zuber, having sat through the entire exchange unperturbed, now says fiercely, “Dr. Archangelsky, whether you resign is of no concern to me, but if you were planning to slice me or the program without a knife, you’ll answer serious charges.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Slava shouts, incredulous. “‘Slice without a knife’ is Russian expression, ‘bez nozhá zarézal.’ Just means to fuck somebody over. You fucking idiot.” He spits out the words at Cy, forcing his face so close to his that Zuber nearly falls backward.

“Why did I find those words in Balard’s office, Slava,” D’Abro interrupts with more calm, “on his desk?”

“Maybe he thought they were cute. Dima must have told him.” This is all too much on top of the before-noon and Archangelsky, in no way placated, is waving his arms in front of the ASSET letters. “Why don’t you ask Balard?”

“I may do that,” D’Abro responds without pity.

Recovered, Krieg-Zuber nods to Mercedes, who proceeds to tell them in a manner little different from the tour she gave hours ago how two nights before the dedication she was working late in the MTF and overheard a conversation among Machuzak, Archangelsky and Lipman. Curious, she came unnoticed to the door of Machuzak’s lab and, alarmed by what she heard, recorded it with her phone. As she drops each word, she fixes her eyes to the table, not so much as glancing at Machuzak. D’Abro plays back the scene.

“The guys have had it,” said Lipman, standing near the workbench. “The Terminator won’t say a word about what’s going on, but everybody’s ready to blow the place sky high.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Machuzak chuckled from his desk.

“Shouldn’t be difficult.” This from Lipman again. “We got enough hazmats on-site to do the job.

Slava, pacing back and forth between the other two: “All we need is a spark. End of our problems and beginning of bright future for mankind.”

Nathaniel visibly disagreed. “No, beginning of reign of terror. Zuber would—”

“—Maybe we can get rid of him too.”

The playback ends while Machuzak and Archangelsky stare speechless at Mercedes, but she holds her fingers interlocked and gaze riveted to the table.

“Isn’t this scenario precisely what transpired, old boy?” Krieg-Zuber asks with dripping satisfaction.

“Are you crazy?” Nathaniel fully shouts. This has gone beyond belief. Luckily, Archangelsky’s grilling has given him a few minutes to collect his wits. “What evidence,” he growls, “do you have that we were even down there?” Too late he perceives his slip.

“You know we have the evidence, Doc,” T.J. says quietly. “We’ve had it from the beginning.”

Machuzak jaw goes slack and he can find no instant response. The lights are very harsh.

“We also know from the access records,” Krieg-Zuber adds, “that Lipman was certainly the last person in the power area the night before the incident, after midnight. We also know that you rarely work so late, weren’t assigned third shift, yet you showed up just before twelve. Very strange. Especially as your name is missing from the access sheets.”

“Anybody’s missing who isn’t there.”

“But you were there. The GPS log from your vehicle,” Krieg-Zuber answers with absolute control, “was captured at 11:47 p.m.”

Machuzak is on his feet. “You cocksucking motherfucker!” he slams his fist on the table, knocking over coffee cups and startling everyone.

Despite himself, Zuber is taken aback by the figure leaning into his face and he clenches the table with his good hand. “It’s clear what happened. Lipman strangely doesn’t report a busbar having been sawed in half the very night before the event—”

“He didn’t inspect it the night before and it was camouflaged to make certain it wouldn’t be detected!”

“You tailgated on Lipman’s badge and set the trap then—”

“I resent that you son of a bitch!” Machuzak shouts at the top of his lungs, tilting into Zuber’s face.

Archangelsky spits simultaneously, “Yebyona mat’! This fucker is totally nonlinear, chaotic.”

“Shout all you wish,” says Cyrus, crossing his arms, one with difficulty, across his chest. “The fact remains that you were there.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel hisses, “and Lipman plants a deuterium bottle next to the surge room that three weeks later kills him.”

“Accidents happen, conveniently. We also know you didn’t stay long enough, old boy, to help out with anything. According to your GPS log you departed at… 12:37.”

“You—!” Machuzak pushes aside the chairs and grabs Zuber by the knot of his tie. For a moment it seems he will strangle the deputy director, until D’Abro and Garrett forcefully wrestle him away.

“I’ll have you on assault, Machuzak,” Krieg-Zuber sputters, loosening his tie with one hand in an attempt to breathe.

But Machuzak isn’t done and again moves toward him. “And you’ll try to pin what happened today on us too, huh?” he snarls as The Chairman inserts his own bulk between the two.

“We shall discover that the two are linked.”

Garrett is now himself angering while he holds the two at arm’s length. “Do you have anything else?” he demands of Zuber.

“Your days are over,” Cyrus says to Machuzak, raising his good arm.

“If you have nothing more, will the three of you excuse us?”

The deputy director, whose left arm still appears paralyzed, and Mercedes, who yet refuses to meet Machuzak’s eyes, leave the room.

* * * *

A moment, two, passed in silence; Garrett motioned for everyone to sit. “How bad is this, Lieutenant D’Abro?”

She slowly ran her tongue over her lips. “Some of that evidence would probably be inadmissible in court, and there might still be exculpatory evidence buried in Cy’s files, but in terms of figurin out what happened here, it looks pretty convincing.”

“Convincing?” Machuzak cannot believe his ears. “This is all some nutso conspiracy manufactured by The Terminator, which you’ve bought into.”

“Nutso? Conspiracy? We got your prints all over the place, we got your DNA, we know you were down there in the right time frame and we’ve got videos and radio transmissions—for Christ’s sake—showing that you’ve been acting like a bunch of anarchists. Exactly.”

“We never did a thing,” Machuzak protested.

T.J. slammed the flat of her hand on the table. She’ll have none of it. “Damnit, Mac, you didn’t tell me any of this. Why?”

What is there that he can say? “We knew how it would look. I hoped we would have gotten to the bottom of it by now.”

“Looks to me like we have.”

Her blue eyes are drilling him, but Machuzak resolutely shakes his head. “We were just trying to do our jobs.”

The Chairman put an end to the duel. “Mac, whatever happens from this point on, you’ve become too much of a liability to remain acting director. We’re a week or two short of two months, but I’m askin you to step down.”

“Fine,” Machuzak stood again. “Who do you have to replace me?”

The Chairman fingered the rim of his Stetson. “I don’t see that there’s much choice but to put Dr. Krieg-Zuber back in charge. He maintains he’s fit.”

Machuzak nearly threw up. “Richard,” he glanced at the clock as he moved to the door, “remember the moment when you destroyed the lab.”

Slava also stared at Garrett in revulsion. “I say again: I resign.”

“Not so fast, Docs,” T.J. moved to block the exit.

Nathaniel asked whether she was arresting them.

“Not yet, but don’t leave town. I keep tellin ya—this is murder. Slava, I’m gonna need to see your laptop.”

“Get a warrant,” he replied and walked out. Garrett also slowly picked up his hat and T.J. and Nathaniel were left alone.

“I know you won’t believe me, but I’m sorry about this, Mac, I truly am.” Her searching eyes told him she was telling the truth. “But you should have leveled with me from the start.”

He returned her gaze sadly, wearily. “I just told you why we didn’t say anything, and I’ll tell you two other things now. One: I don’t like having my life x-rayed by people who have it in their heads that if they’ve got the gadgets, they’ve got the obligation. Two: we’ve got a conspiracy on our hands, just not the one you thought.”

T.J. blinked and asked what he could possibly mean.

He told her about the ringtone on Whitman’s phone. “It was the Nisi Dominus from the Monteverdi Vespers—the same ringtone I heard at Moravec’s office.”

D’Abro wrinkled her nose, not in an amused way. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I may be too quiet for my own good, and wrong about a lot of things, but my musical memory is as reliable as DNA. Those two characters claimed they never met and they obviously despise each other. But they’re connected.”

“You want me to put this Nisi Dom—whatever—a ringtone against everything we’ve got against you?” she flailed her arms angrily.

“That’s exactly what I want you to do,” he said and with a glance at the armadillo exited the conference room.

THIRTY-EIGHT

When Machuzak got up and headed south with the dawn, he could find no reason for doing so except force of habit, and that hardly convinced him. He was dismayed but hardly surprised by a crowd of protestors and the National Guardsmen facing off again at the gate. “Let them in,” he said without expecting, or getting, a response, surprised nevertheless that the guards allowed him to pass. His badge operated the gate and the door to the MTF, but the pentagon units refused him entry. Death by deactivation.

He put up with frisking at the guard booth, not needing to ask where the order originated. The main lobby door was unlocked, but he tried his badge anyway and it functioned; someone, though, had already torn yesterday’s date from the calendar. He bounded upstairs to see other guardsmen posted outside Krieg-Zuber’s office. Past the atrium and the sweet scent of flowers, he knocked at the octagon, but it was too much to expect that Leonard Rasmussen would be at his desk this early, if at all.

Nathaniel descended slowly to his own office, where a ringing telephone met him. His only words were “No comment” and when the ringing became ceaseless he unplugged the phone. After sitting motionless for the better part of an hour, he walked to Archangelsky’s office to find the Russian contemplating the books he was removing from the shelves.

“Don’t do it, Slava,” Machuzak said.

Slava continued to pack his books into a cardboard box, glancing at each one for a moment, perhaps recollecting what he had learned from it, or the course he had used it in as a young man, before he sealed it away. “Nat Edward’ich,” he said without turning, “it’s no use. You should be packing too.”

“We’ve got an ignition deadline, remember?”

“Edward’ich,” Borisovich went on, refusing to look at him, “we are soon to be arrested. The ignition deadline is theirs, not ours.”

“We have a saboteur to catch.”

“I hope he blows the place sky high.”

“For me, stay.”

Archangelsky’s unruly locks swayed as he shook his head. “People like us did science for joy of it, for those rare moments of truth. You know what I mean. There is no joy here anymore—and no truth.”

“What will you do?”

From behind, Machuzak could see only the shrug of his shoulders. “Maybe I go to work for Balard. They want mole, now they’ve got one.” Slava moved toward the wall and gently took down the icon of the Mother of God and lay it atop the box. Only then did he face Nathaniel and offer his hand. “Good luck, Nat, you know where to find me.” Slava’s beard made it difficult to say, but Nathaniel thought he saw a tear rolling down his friend’s cheek. Archangelsky switched off the light and walked out.

* * * *

Machuzak secluded himself in the MTF. The morning was not gone before an announcement came around that Krieg-Zuber had resumed his duties as acting director, that Mercedes Ramirez had been appointed deputy director. Nathaniel smiled faintly. No further explanation for her behavior required. The websites were full of yesterday’s gallimaufry at CFRC and it hit hard to see his own headshot inserted above the shoulder of local newscasters. Thirty minutes later Krieg-Zuber’s first memorandum appeared: according to the best intelligence the saboteurs had been apprehended and the ignition campaign could now move forward with calm and assurance. Another five minutes and a second edict: the weekly barbeques instituted by the previous acting director were heretofore canceled, all work-related computers were to be physically disconnected from the Internet and access to social networking sites was, as of now, permanently disabled.

A few media were following up on Theresa’s suggestion to investigate Whitman, but interest peaked by afternoon and, as Big Bad Roy himself made clear on his site, the apparent second act of sabotage served only to ratchet up his determination to terminate the lab. Moravec also issued a press release saying that yesterday’s events had convinced him that canceling CFRC’s contract had been right. The saboteur had accomplished his mission, Nathaniel conceded. We are finally, absolutely alone.

While Nathaniel contemplated the state of affairs, someone knocked on the door. His call “Come in!” went unanswered. Eventually he swiveled around to see D’Abro leaning with her elbow on the doorframe, biting her nail. She appeared nervous, or trying to find the proper balance between civility and distance. For her thoughts, Machuzak would have given far more than a penny.

He spoke first. “Are you taking me in?”

To her, he seemed grave rather than angry, at least not as angry as he should have been. “If I had my druthers, Doc, I would, but the folks downtown will decide when there’s enough evidence. In the meantime, let me give you a piece of advice.” D’Abro, with her signature distraction, had begun to wander around the lab, inspecting the plumbing, microwave conduits, most of all the deuterium bottles lined up against the wall. “You might not believe me, but most crimes ain’t solved by fingerprints or by DNA. People get guilty consciences, twenty, thirty years after the crime, they start talkin, braggin, confessin… If they would just keep to their silly stories, as idiotic as they are, there’s nothin the law can do to touch them. That’s my advice.”

“Have you heard me confessing? Detective, whatever you are this week,” he motioned for her to sit, “you’ve been violating the first commandment of science: ‘Thou shalt not love thine own theories too much.’ You’ve caught me and Slava grousing about Krieg-Zuber—”

“That’s putting a new spin on euphemism,” she interrupted, leaning against the workbench but continuing to stand.

“—and you’ve ignored everything else. You know how Slava hates Balard. Why would he become his mole?”

D’Abro momentarily glanced around the space with which she had become so familiar over the past months. “Maybe Slava’s a good actor, maybe he hates Balard less than he hated Krieg-Zuber. It’s hard to know people, Doc, even friends.” She leveled her eyes.

He met them. “Yeah, Detective, and so maybe you’ve neglected the possibility that Slava and I had nothing to do with the sabotage and that we’ve just pissed Balard off so much that he intends to run us into the ground.”

“Whaddya got to prove it?”

“A ringtone.”

D’Abro merely scoffed. “How many people could have that ringtone?”

Machuzak returned an equally dismissive scoff. “My guess would be three. The Nisi Dominus from the Monteverdi Vespers can’t exactly be topping the charts.”

“I don’t have time—”

“In science you explore all leads, Detective.”

“No you don’t,” she shook her head decisively, picking up a piece of metal stock that could have served for a busbar. “You follow your nose, you said so yourself. You learn what’s promising and what isn’t. Same where I come from.”

“All right, then,” Machuzak asked abruptly, “what was in that deuterium bottle you impounded?”

Surprised by the question, D’Abro squinted and replied, “Deuterium, just like you said it would be.”

The scientist frowned. “Your lab rats downtown must have run it through a mass spectrometer. What else is in it?”

Not much of anything, as far as she knew. They’d only given her a verbal report.

“Get the cracking charts, will you, and let’s see what was in that bottle.”

T.J. still showed herself to be puzzled.

“The devil is in the details,” Machuzak said and for a moment the two ceased speaking. “What did you want here, Detective?” he said finally. “Today?”

“A wrench and a regulator would do,” she answered.

Now it was the physicist’s turn to be puzzled. He pointed to an oversized crescent wrench lying on a tool cart amid the clutter and a spare regulator on the bench.

“Where do you keep the empties?” the detective said, picking them up.

It took a moment before Nathaniel realized what she was after and he pointed to a collection of half a dozen deuterium bottles strapped together like a bundle of hay against the wall. Above them a hand-scrawled sign read “Empties.”

D’Abro walked over, fit the regulator stem to each bottle in turn, trying to tighten it. After a few minutes she reaches one that won’t go. She fiddles with it a few times to be sure, stops and looked at Machuzak. “Right-hand thread.”

“So?”

It was hardly a reaction. “Do you remember how after the explosion Abbuhl said he couldn’t understand how deuterium got into a sulfur hexafluoride bottle because flammable gases get left-hand threads? It sort of passed me by, with everything else… Just this morning it popped back into my head.”

“Yeah.” Machuzak did remember. “Slava said it would be easier to swap the label. The bottles look the same.”

“They sure do.” D’Abro pointed the wrench at the bottle. “I’m willin to bet that this here is a sulfur hexafluoride bottle.”

At once Machuzak exploded. “Why on Earth would I bring it to my own lab?”

“Inventory. I did a little checking.” T.J. was flipping the wrench in her hand. “Things are loose around here but not that loose. Procurement likes to keep track of who has how many bottles and where. Take one outta the lab, gotta bring one back. Make sure it’s empty, send it out to be refilled. End of evidence.”

Machuzak made an expression far deeper than a scowl. “Nobody pays any attention to that sort of thing. That would be the dumbest—”

“The way you guys have been behavin hasn’t been the smartest… Anyway”—she stopped flipping the wrench and laid it back on the cart—“I’m gonna impound this bottle. Sulfur hexafluoride is a very heavy gas. Maybe there’s a pinch left.”

“Why don’t you just breathe it,” he suggested. “If you end up sounding like King Kong, it’s sulfur hexafluoride.”

She declined the invitation, handed Machuzak a pair of gloves and asked his help in loading the bottle onto a dolly. Grudgingly he obliged and they took it out to her car. “As I said, Doc, don’t leave town. If this sulfur hexafluoride checks out, I am gonna call the DA’s office about seeing you charged with criminal mischief, that’s willful destruction of property, and if I can get it, capital sabotage—which, as I’ve said, includes murder.” She stepped into the car and looked up at him with a half-angry, half-resigned expression. “And what was that, Nisi Dom by Monte… Monte—”

“Nisi Dominus by Monteverdi, Claudio Greenmountain,” Machuzak answered and slammed the door shut.

THIRTY-NINE

Machuzak stood for a long time in the parking lot after the detective drove off. Inside the MTF he remained immobilized, incapable of thought, and checked mail. During his five-minute absence Krieg-Zuber had issued a new memorandum: the staff will immediately prepare for crisis-response simulations, including terrorist attacks, cyber warfare and budgetary exigencies. As late as he is mad, Nathaniel blinked at the descending cloak of unreality, but the staff posted no protest videos.

He tuned in distractedly to the control-cast, now accompanied by a music track. Despite his removal, experiments were proceeding and Hasschler’s team had coaxed a twenty-second low-power burn out of Prometheus. Machuzak felt nothing at all, not even the ache of exclusion, only a distant recognition that Thad was carrying on. In the coming days Hasschler would shoot for breakeven, to show ITER that they had a contest on their hands. Good, Machuzak supposed. Abruptly he decided to go home.

This time he ignored the increased numbers of protestors at the gate and continued north. A few minutes later he felt the first onslaughts of panic, the rush of adrenaline and shallow heaving that short-circuits everything else. But as the dread threatened to overwhelm him, a call came through from Archangelsky who wanted to meet at Town Lake. The familiar voice brought him round and he breathed. Thatch your mind.

* * * *

By the time he found Slava sitting with a tablet on a bench at river’s edge, Machuzak was beginning to feel that he might still be alive. The Russian didn’t notice his state and only pointed to the screen of his computer where another invitation to Fusion World beckoned. Archangelsky had already traced the address to the Cadarache region. “I still don’t think location is important. He has been trying to confuse us.”

“And doing a good job,” Nathaniel replied, yet agitated by the other crisis.

The next few minutes passed quickly. Once again, Slava was invited to a tour of the Cinderella tokamak; the DeLorean’s electronic guide pointed out some of the main features of the machine, which were highlighted by starbursts in the form of smiley faces.

“Wait,” said Slava. “Look here. The power area and helium factory are highlighted—they’ve already been hit.” He couldn’t remember what had been lit up on the previous tours.

The news confirmed that what happened yesterday was no lightning strike but a perfectly disguised sabotage. Nathaniel got to his feet, focused now but scratching his head. “His first messages were vague warnings. Now, he’s showing us what’s already happened. His crystal ball is cloudy.”

“The helium balloons last time were warnings? Hmm, perhaps you are right—he lacks perfect information.”

In short order the tour ended—no more smileys—and the site faded, as before the familiar dragon and a fish resting at Slava’s feet. This time there was also suspended in air a little glass bottle with some electrodes protruding from it.

“Shit,” was Nathaniel’s only reaction. He walked to the water and hurled a stone into it. After a moment, Slava put the computer aside and joined Machuzak. Kneeling, he put his hand into the river.

“Nat Edward’ich, why should we worry about this? I have resigned; you are no longer director. D’Abro intends to arrest us both. What’s in this for us?”

Picking up another stone, Machuzak hefted and skipped it. “How about self-preservation, brat?” Now he turned fully to the Russian. “Less than two hours ago, D’Abro threatened to charge me—and that means you—with murder. You want to stay out of prison, let’s find out what’s going on. That’s our profession, isn’t it?”

“We’re already in prison.” Borisovich’s reply was sullen.

For a moment Machuzak gazed distractedly across the river to Austin’s downtown, which felt tawdrier with each passing year, and then he shrugged, panic now fully evaporated. “Anyway, what else will you do with your free time?”

“Good point,” Slava chuckled and stood. “Wait a minute,” he suddenly exclaimed. “I still have the video, don’t I?” He walked over to the bench and picked up his computer. “Where did I put that thing…? I should have thought of this before—D’Abro should have thought of it right away.”

Confused, Machuzak merely watched as Archangelsky downloaded some freeware. “What are you doing?” he asked.

The Russian didn’t reply, only crossed his fingers and stared intently at the screen while he ran the app. Seconds passed, then: “Yes!” Slava breathed and clenched his fist in a small victory. “Vot.” Machuzak followed the outstretched finger to a number in the upper right corner of the video shot in Cadarache.

“Digital watermark. We’re lucky video wasn’t too old or too altered. We still don’t know who shot this but we now know exactly what camera did. Canon. All we have to do is trace it.”

We must turn this information over to D’Abro, Machuzak told him, but Slava shook his head. “The women intends to charge us with murder, brat. Let her figure it out. She has copy and I still have friends in Moscow.” Then and there he created an account on a tiny public network and sent an encrypted email to Moscow, asking his friend to learn where this camera had been sold.

* * * *

The half-moon was already bright when Nathaniel appeared unannounced at the Rasmussens’ door. Theresa called out sharply, telling whoever it was to let himself in. Nathaniel did, quietly, searching for her. As he passed the rec room he caught sight of her in a clay-streaked smock, angrily pummeling a standing nude into formlessness. Only after he’d stood watching for an eternity did she become aware of his presence and her electric start revealed pain and relief.

“Mac,” Theresa said, sniffling. She wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek. “It’s good to see you.” She sounded as unhappy as she did truthful. “Let me wash up.” Vanishing into a bathroom, Theresa emerged clean and smiling a few moments later and picked up a wineglass that stood by what remained of her sculpture.

Nathaniel was undeceived by the mask of cheer. “What’s wrong?” he said and put his own concerns aside.

Theresa attempted to wave him off, saying she was just so up and down with Leonard’s health. “Some days I almost think he might recover, some days it’s worse… I don’t know what to do…” She laughed aloud at some distant, surfacing memory. After the instant it took for a quizzical expression to pass across her face, Theresa collapsed without warning on Nathaniel’s shoulder and said, “Oh, Mac, sometimes I want to put a bullet in my brain.”

Neither of them had spoken of their encounter of several weeks’ past since it had taken place, but it now seemed beside the point. Seeing her state, Nathaniel understood he had come to no purpose. Within a moment, though, Theresa had pulled herself together, led him by the hand into the kitchen and held out a glass. “Forgive me, Mac, you should be crying on my shoulder. I heard what happened yesterday with Cy.”

“D’Abro said she might charge me with murder,” Nathaniel said simply. “And Slava.”

The words forced a gasp of horror from Theresa. Her hands went to her face and she only slowly perceived that Nathaniel was far calmer than she was.

“Don’t worry. I don’t think she wants to, I doubt she has the evidence…”

As she peered at him, Theresa’s curiosity was overt. “How can you take it so well? I’d be hysterical.” She managed a faint smile and took a gulp.

“I had my five minutes of panic this afternoon; now it’s time to deal with the problem.” His own fate was not paramount. “Krieg-Zuber will kill the lab,” he said. “I need to speak to Leonard.”

Theresa led him into the study, where Leonard was watching television. He looked noticeably better today than yesterday. “Leonard,” Nathaniel said, “if you want this ignition campaign to have any chance of success, force Garrett to correct his fatal mistake. He must remove Krieg-Zuber from power, immediately.”

“Nathaniel, I can’t,” Leonard replied, with an acute irritation that penetrated the pain of his expression. “I… I’ve abdicated the throne, you know that. Garrett is in charge. Period.”

Machuzak insisted, knelt by the wheelchair. “Tell him you’ll lead the ignition campaign and he’ll relent.”

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel,” Leonard replied, both angry and near tears, “sorrier than you know.”

Machuzak had no understanding of this, but Leonard’s tone was final, and he saw that nothing more would be gotten out of the great man on that front.

“Dear, what can you tell us about Thomas Whitman’s resignation from the DOE?” Theresa asked abruptly.

The change of subject caught both men off guard and Rasmussen didn’t immediately react, but after an instant true wrath spread across his features. “Those two bastards… You know, when the lab was still ANFRL, a review team came to visit. Thomas Whitman stacked it with fat laser-fusion cats to ensure that our funds would be cut and siphoned in their direction. I screamed bloody murder to DOE and the collusion was so obvious that the DOE chief ordered an investigation. A new review panel was appointed and I saved the lab.”

“Is that why Thomas resigned?” Nathaniel asked, surprised at the history.

“That was something else,” Leonard replied sharply, “after Thomas diverted fifty million dollars away from magnetic fusion. I lobbied like hell to get it back, but Senator Roy, the devil incarnate, blocked my efforts and Congress supposedly reallocated the funds. What we might have done…”

Leonard had confirmed Theresa’s accusation of yesterday, but Nathaniel wanted to know how Thomas Whitman could divert so much money.

“Discretionary funds,” Leonard answered. “He could do anything he wanted.”

“Even divert money to the military side of DOE?” Nathaniel pressed.

“They said it went to harbor dredging,” snapped Leonard. “It’s part of the same budget pool. Thomas soon stepped down and I never found out exactly what happened.”

It seemed that Theresa had dangerously overshot in her allegation, but then she interrupted. “Darling, what do you know about a company called Exosystems?” Nathaniel snapped his head toward her and Leonard revealed only puzzlement. “An out-of-work reporter from the old Statesman phoned me today and said that the Whitmans once owned the company, but that they sold it well before Thomas became director of Energy Research.”

Leonard pleaded ignorance. “It could be. What happened was always shrouded by closed congressional testimony. I don’t know anything about it.”

Theresa and Nathaniel glanced at each other and, seeing Leonard was tired, bid him good evening.

* * * *

In the kitchen, Nathaniel expressed surprise at the existence of Exosystems and found it odd that Leonard knew nothing about them.

“He doesn’t know everything,” Theresa shrugged, “and he doesn’t tell me everything he knows. And if it all happened under wraps…” She offered Nathaniel another glass, which he declined with a wave of his hand. “There’s virtually nothing about it online, either. The company hasn’t existed for decades.”

“If it’s not on Google, it never happened… Theresa,” Nathaniel said, clasping her by the shoulders, “Slava and I are in big trouble, but the lab is in worse trouble. I need you to investigate this Exosystems. That’s your assignment.”

“Willingly accepted, sir,” she smiled. “I’ll work with the freelancer. We’ll do our best.”

Theresa led him to the front door with her arm around his waist. There, she kissed him on the lips, the kiss of a lover, but graciously permitted him to depart.

FORTY

With his usual slowness, Nathaniel suspected his presence at CFRC was not required when he saw that several Greenpeace members and Scientologists had swelled the ranks at the gate only to be outnumbered by a new contingent of National Guardsmen. When the sentry at the booth gaped at him as if he were a dead man walking, his suspicions hardened, though he managed a friendly gesture for the fellow to raise his jaw. By the time he perceived that CFRC had overnight been turned into an armed camp, where the rooftop of the main building bulged with sandbags and bristled with rifle barrels, his fears had crystallized. Bill Balustradi alone offered a smile, despite the dagger stuck through his head. Anyone he encountered, all strangers now, gawked uncomfortably for an instant, turned away, gawked again. More than one colleague growled for him to leave. When even Lise recoiled at the sight of him, he felt compelled to remind her that he hadn’t been charged and she burst into tears.

Obstinacy rising, he attempted to visit the control room, where two guardsmen barred his entry. “I have every right to be here,” he protested, but they refused to allow him to pass until Abbuhl intervened. He instantly regretted his decision. Larissa, the COE on duty, baldly picked up the phone to call security. Cochran ignored him, or pretended to, and Abbuhl could do no more than plead desperately with his hands. Martyrdom was not cause enough to prolong the visit. “You should automate this,” he said, flipping a small deadline calendar on the COE’s console and walked out.

* * * *

Very well, the MTF would serve as leper colony. Strangely, it struck him, he hadn’t woken up last night in a cold sweat. As yesterday’s panic fell away, he felt increasingly unburdened, enveloped by the same aura of tranquility he heard in Schubert’s last works, though he hoped the outcome would not be equally fatal. Nevertheless, his duty now was to see his way through this bog. The moment of grace and opportunity was at hand.

Machuzak did not know exactly what he intended. He checked Monteverdi ringtones online, not finding what he sought. He spent some time sitting, thinking, before he switched on the control-cast. Instantly he recognized that in the two days since first plasma, the control room’s aspect had drastically changed. Virtually every division head was on hand; the neutral-beam and rf control areas full of people, bags of chips and soda cans stacked up for the long haul. Technicians darted in and out, phones rang ceaselessly. For the first time in nearly two months, the number of scientists vied with the rest. Spectroscopists and other diagnosticians sat at some of the centuries of terminals filling the room. Today the displays indicated that a genuine scientific experiment might be under way. To call what was taking place an experiment didn’t put exactly the right spin on it, Nathaniel, everyone, understood. To a trendy music track they were entering the final battle for their lives.

Bald Hasschler stood on the captain’s deck, arms akimbo, giving orders in his crusty style, while Krieg-Zuber, dealing with his bad arm, made notations on an electronic pad and ordered one of the techs to lose the potato chips.

Over the next few hours Machuzak intermittently tuned in while he prowled about his own space. DT shots proceeded all morning, ten or twenty seconds long, each result informing the team when they had taken a step toward ignition and when they had stepped backward. The machine was behaving and within a few days they ought to achieve breakeven, a fabled benchmark forty years ago, but one that should be child’s play for Prometheus. The question remains: what happens in the territory beyond?

Suddenly, commotion envelopes the room, fault lights begin blinking everywhere and Machuzak stands, riveted. A few minutes streak by when Faberman dashes in, announcing that Fluorinert is spilling onto the floor of pentagon five, the microwave heating facility. No one needs to tell Nathaniel what thought is coursing through the mind of every person in the room. He yet has no idea of how the “accident” of two days ago could have been engineered. He knows only that another act of sabotage is now superfluous.

Even as Faberman makes his announcement, Zuber’s face is reddening. The tech attempts to assure him that it is no more than a routine leak of coolant for the megawatt radio tubes employed in the rf heating system. Cleaning it up is nothing a refrigerator repairman couldn’t handle. Faberman’s words reassure everyone within earshot, except Zuber, who has gone so far ultraviolet that he rips off his tie. Machuzak recollects some years ago the epidemic of Chinese students poisoning themselves with the stuff to prevent their deportation.

A moment later the division heads’ phones went off with a message, “This is not a drill. Report to the director immediately.” Perplexed, the chiefs, most already present, gather round Krieg-Zuber. “What plans do you have for investigating this accident?” he barks to Fournier, head of rf heating, and he doesn’t wait out Fournier’s stuttering reply. “You will begin investigating at once, per our new procedures, which we will rehearse in exactly one minute upstairs. This accident reeks of intent.” Fournier manages to point out that the saboteurs have been apprehended, at which Krieg-Zuber starts, answering, “We can never rule out copycat incidents.” Suddenly: “Are those webcams on? The entire world is witness to your incompetence! Our opponents are able to capitalize on every mistake, every accident, every piece of data posted!”

“Scientific data is posted, by long and honorable tradition,” Matsushima reminds him.

“This is not a scientific experiment, Dr. Matsushima, this is the final crusade for the salvation of the human race! Those webcams will be turned off!”

A few seconds later the scene goes dark.

* * * *

The following morning the webcams were again broadcasting, although as he watched from home, Machuzak wondered whether Krieg-Zuber knew it. Overnight the betting had begun. On one of the control room’s big whiteboards, crew members had scrawled possible outcomes with the odds being offered. Beating the deadline ran at 750 to 1 against, beating only ITER 10 to 1. Machuzak could not understand it would be possible to win against ITER without beating Moravec. The only favorable odds being offered were 1 to 1 on Moravec’s assassination.

Toward noon, Abbuhl entered the control room and suggested cleaning the cryopumps. Krieg-Zuber again turned crimson and swiveled around a full 360 degrees before he objected. “Damnit, Monsieur Abbuhl, the machine is behaving, and I expect breakeven tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Abbuhl replied, “but those pumps are getting pretty dirty. I recommend we regenerate them.”

Krieg-Zuber remained intransigent and by day’s end the cryopumps failed and had to be cleaned anyway. Breakeven was not achieved the next day.

* * * *

Machuzak’s pulse hardly rose a notch when toward the end of the week D’Abro appeared at the MTF with a warrant for his arrest.

“That was a sulfur hexafluoride bottle,” she said, entering his lab, “and your prints are on it—nobody else’s. I’m sorry, Doc.” Her tone left no room for interpretation.

“Don’t be,” he answered, dead calm, “but I’m not budging.”

D’Abro regarded him with a newfound professional incomprehension. “Resisting arrest is a criminal offense, Dr. Machuzak,” she replied levelly. “I can charge you with that too.”

“Before you do,” he nodded pensively, “did you bring the cracking charts for the deuterium bottle, like I asked?” He regarded the lieutenant, who with shimmering hair and designer suit had lost none of her flamboyance. A few weeks ago he would have given himself over to fantasy at the sight of her, and for one night at least, she’d curled her arms tenderly around his neck. Today he would have settled for a kind word lofted across the abyss between them.

D’Abro did hesitate. “I don’t know, Nat, your analytical mind should appreciate my dilemma. If you’re the man I’m after, you’ll do everything to lead me astray. On the other hand, if you didn’t do it, I could use your help, because this report doesn’t say anything to me or anyone else downtown. Like you predicted, there was more than deuterium in that bottle.”

“Trust me,” was Machuzak’s only reply as he stretched out his hand.

With perceptible indecision she finally turned over the printouts. They weren’t cracking charts, exactly, but at least a summary of lab results.

“As I thought,” he said—one glance was enough. “Silicon carbide.”

“Huh?” she asked, taking a step forward to look over his shoulder.

“Your report lists silicon and carbon impurities in the deuterium bottle,” he tapped the paper with his fingertips. “They come from silicon carbide, one of the materials we test at the MTF–”

“—which means it came from this lab,” D’Abro said with a pained, saddened glance around the room. “You’re hangin yourself, Doc.”

“Maybe.” He got up from the desk and motioned her over to the familiar test stand. She accommodated his request, keeping a distance. “The MTF consists of three adjoining labs, plus the big accelerator room. We all do experiments on the same substances, share equipment and deuterium bottles. You remember the little flame I rigged up to placate the environmentalists?” D’Abro nodded as Machuzak pointed to it on the exhaust side of the test cell. “It means that virtually all the deuterium I use is burned to heavy water.”

The detective motioned for him to demonstrate and he was not unprepared. The pumps were already chugging and he needed only to connect a deuterium tank to the input nozzle, light the flame and turn on the equipment. After some minutes the two observed drops of heavy water slithering down the glass distillation tube into the hose, which ran, covered by a metal strip, along the floor and through a hole in the wall. He took her to the window, where she could see the water dripping onto a patch of withered grass outside. This was how it worked.

“That’s what I do with my deuterium,” he told D’Abro. “So how did traces of silicon and carbon get into that bottle?”

The detective shakes her head, not seeing the answer, but there is no way she can.

“Let’s try an experiment,” he smiles. D’Abro follows cautiously as he walks next door to Mercedes’ laboratory. There’s no danger of finding Ramirez here; she cleared out last week with her rise to power and hadn’t set foot in the place since. Her experimental setup is much like his own, except that Mercedes usually recycled deuterium. With a glance around her lab, Nathaniel wheels over a fresh deuterium tank, connects it to the input and an empty to the output. He finds a silicon carbide target on Mercedes’ workbench, nothing more than a flat, slick black square the size of his hand, and mounts it on the clamps inside her test cell. Now he flicks on the pumps. The familiar clacking, pitch ever rising as the air is evacuated. When the pressure is low enough, he starts the diffusion pumps.

During the near hour that goes by while they wait, D’Abro’s only remark is, “I will get to the bottom of this, Mac.”

“So will I.” Machuzak meets her gaze head-on and the conversation ends.

At last, he lets in a stream of deuterium and switches on the high voltage, which strips the gas of its electrons and slams the deuterium nuclei into the target.

Allowing the experiment to run for ten minutes or so, he fills the empty bottle from the test cylinder, disconnects it and wheels it over to the mass spectrometer in his lab. Before long he has a cracking chart. Deuterium with trace abundances of silicon and carbon.

D’Abro objects that the abundances are significantly lower than the crime lab report, but Machuzak only shrugs. “The concentration will depend on how long we run the experiment and the number of times the deuterium is recycled. First try and we’re within a factor of ten. Exact matches are rare in science, DNA notwithstanding. You see the principle. Mercedes recycles deuterium; I don’t.”

D’Abro stared at the physicist sullenly, fiercely. Her reluctance to accept his argument was written all over her face, but he did not particularly care. “Why do you think Ramirez could be involved in this?” she asked skeptically.

“I don’t know,” Machuzak conceded. “According to rumor she’s been having an affair with Krieg-Zuber—” At that D’Abro raised her eyebrows. “Oh, I see you haven’t heard that one. Mercedes doesn’t like me very much and she does like power. At least she’d like a better job. She’s no way a terrific physicist but she is good with computers.”

“Was she down in the power area?”

“Everybody lent a hand during the run-up to the dedication. She didn’t usually work there, but then again, neither did I.”

D’Abro rose. Flicking the arrest warrant sharply against her hand she said, “You’ve bought yourself a little time, Doc, that’s all. I’m gonna double check the access records, but I don’t recollect any prints matching hers, so don’t get excited.”

As she turned to go, Machuzak asked her, “Did you trace that ringtone?”

T.J. only scoffed and vanished.

FORTY-ONE

It was nothing more than a vague hunch—she still didn’t understand the intricacies of the enormously complex systems that had surrounded her for two months now—but T.J. decided to ask. She sought out Diana Cochran at her outpost office in the helium factory, pentagon three. “As I understand it,” T.J. said, having announced herself, “y’all are convinced last week’s accident was sabotage.”

Cochran leaned back from her monitor. “Yeah, someone injected liters of helium into the beam boxes and when it evaporated—!” She produced an explosion with her hands. “Liters! Usually it’s—” she made the other gesture, the universal “an itty-bitty bit.” “We’re lucky the sensors caught it before it ruptured the pressure plates.”

For a moment D’Abro regarded the cryo chief, who with her bobbed blond hair and athletic build struck her as the kind of woman she once encountered at swim meets. “How do you control the amount of helium you put into those neutral beams?” she asked.

“The operator uses a programmable logic control circuit. Used to be manual switches.”

T.J. asked if she could watch it done, and Cochran obliged, donning a head mirror and demonstrating the point-and-click system that guided the helium flow. “Who’s got access?”

“Only a few of us,” Cochran replied, “me and two operators.”

“Could someone have hacked the system?”

The engineer tilted her head. Krieg-Zuber, losing not a second, had ordered them to investigate that possibility, but with experiments under way, they hadn’t gotten to it yet. “The system’s pretty secure, but if someone stole a username and password, they could do anything.” Without saying more, Cochran brought up the log file for the past days and ran her finger down the list of IP addresses. “These guys are our operators…wait.” She hesitated halfway down the screen. “This looks wrong… And it was exactly at the time of the accident, to the minute.” At once Cochran determined that the address was local, as it must have been for the saboteur to know precisely the moment to strike. “Machuzak and Archangelsky…” she whispered to the detective.

D’Abro peered at Cochran with curiosity, puckered her lips, reflected. At length: “Would have been a good trick, given that a hundred people saw them in the cafeteria arguin with Senator Whitman when lightnin struck.”

Cochran disagreed sharply. “Once you were in the system you’d program it and push the damn button on your phone at the right moment like a roadside bomb.” She demonstrated with her thumb.

“You don’t like those two much, do you?” T.J. said. It was not a question.

A pugnacious expression crept across the cryo-chief’s face. “Those two? CFRC isn’t some do-what-you-feel-like university department. It’s a dedicated lab. That pair hates anybody who tries to get the job done. At least with Krieg-Zuber at the helm we stand a chance. Nah, Archangelsky and Machuzak, they act like some prep school snots, thinkin they’re better than the rest of us. I wouldn’t put it past them to have sabotaged Prometheus, just so ITER could win; they’re socialists, you know…”

“Remember, ma’am, hot words lead to cold slabs,” T.J. saluted and left, having gotten the picture.

* * * *

It was time to call on Mercedes. D’Abro found the physicist in her new third-floor office with a splendid view of the administration building’s central atrium. “Nice digs,” she said, appraising the ample space. “Mind if I sit down?”

Mercedes cocked her head, revealing a small surprise at the lieutenant’s appearance. She followed this with a “Please do” of equal disinterest and, almost as an afterthought, rose slightly to shake D’Abro’s hand. They hadn’t yet been officially introduced. “How may I help, Detective?”

T.J. got down to it and asked how she suddenly became assistant director of CFRC. A quizzical expression passed across Mercedes’ face and she pinched her nose, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that anyone might question her good fortune. She replied simply that Krieg-Zuber had made the offer.

“Do you have any prior administrative experience? I don’t see any in your file.” T.J. paged through the tablet in her hand, then leaned over to examine a pretty Talavera vase on Ramirez’s desk. The physicist had already begun to decorate the office with Mexican earthenware and folk items, which appeared incongruous at CFRC.

“No, I guess I haven’t,” Ramirez admitted, “but with the crisis the options were limited.” She smiled faintly.

“The thing is, it happened within hours after Krieg-Zuber was appointed acting director, which means, I’d think—wouldn’t you—that you folks discussed it ahead of time, no?”

Ramirez’s annoyance showed plainly in her expression and in her voice. “Yes, well I suppose we did. What of it?”

D’Abro shrugged. “Just seems a little odd, that’s all, like you planned it. Tell me,” she went on without pause, “why’d you record that conversation between Machuzak, Archangelsky and Lipman?”

“I explained that the other day,” Ramirez answered with a ragged edge. She really had become annoyed, quickly too. “I was working late, overheard them and decided it was important, so I recorded it.”

“Do you always record important conversations?”

“There’s no law against it!” The woman had abruptly passed beyond annoyance and her voice was ugly. “And they were talking about sabotage—if not worse.”

T.J. got to her feet, began to examine a gray-and-blue weaving that hung on the wall. She was starting to understand why Mac didn’t like Mercedes very much. “You never joked about doin in your boss?”

“They were plotting,” Ramirez dug in. “You heard them.”

“Tell me, the access records show you were down in the power area three, four days before the dedication. That’s a long ways from the MTF. What were you doin there, on foreign territory, Dr. Ramirez?”

The physicist’s exasperation at the question reminded D’Abro of Machuzak’s own. “I was helping out,” she said, “like everybody else…with some inspections. I… I helped replace some old capacitors. Surely, Detective, you can’t think…” She suddenly frowned with the utmost contempt and forced herself not to laugh.

“Is it true you’ve been having an affair with Krieg-Zuber?” D’Abro asked abruptly.

Mercedes Ramirez froze in her place. Then: “How dare you bring my personal life into this!” She fully exploded.

Again T.J. merely shrugged. “Well, you’ve accused a couple guys of sabotage, maybe worse. That’s pretty personal, wouldn’t you say?”

At once Ramirez was on her feet. “Detective, I haven’t accused anyone of anything—”

“Neither have I,” D’Abro answered, smiling sweetly.

“I offered a tape—”

“In exchange for what, Dr. Ramirez? This office?” D’Abro glanced toward the ceiling and spread her hands. “You’d sell your soul for an office?”

“I resent that, Detective.” There couldn’t be any doubt; a very unpleasant expression contorted the new assistant director’s face.

“Excuse me, ma’am, I guess it is brighter than the MTF.”

Ramirez now leaned over her desk, almost into D’Abro’s nose. “Lieutenant, you’ve gone way too far,” she snarled. “Machuzak got himself into his fix. For five years I was stuck in that dungeon and he never batted an eye—”

“Ah—”

At that moment Krieg-Zuber himself appeared at the door asking about all the commotion. In the time Ramirez hurled a ferocious glance at D’Abro, then at Krieg-Zuber, T.J. said, “We were discussing why you appointed Dr. Ramirez as acting assistant director, or would that be deputy acting director?”

“As you know,” he replied sternly, “the lab faces a crisis. Dr. Ramirez expressed interest in the job. She is very talented with computers.” He nodded in Mercedes’ direction.

“You were about to close down the MTF and offered her a parachute, is that it?”

“Fortuitously, young lady.”

“Win-win, I guess. But with a thousand people at this lab—minus a few recently—you picked somebody with no background in running such a joint. What was the deal? A tape? Why’s it important that she knows computers?”

“Your question has been answered,” Krieg-Zuber replied. “There is nothing more to say about it.”

Ramirez glanced at Zuber in a way that T.J. couldn’t read and then, having regained a quantum of composure, interrupted with a steel voice, “Lieutenant, unless you have some concrete evidence to connect me with these crimes, I’ll ask you to stop fishing and leave.”

T.J. yielded. To be sure, she had no forensics of any kind on Ramirez, and the woman apparently had never worked at ITER or had had any contact with Balard. “I’ve traced the deuterium bottle to the MTF,” she did reveal, “and that includes your lab.” D’Abro opened the door. “Oh, one other thing, given that you’re so handy with computers, I’d like to have a look at yours.”

“There’s nothing in them of any possible relevance,” Mercedes stammered. “I…it’s private.”

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?” T.J. really couldn’t understand this private-life stuff. Promising to get a warrant, she left Mercedes petrified and staring and ran after Krieg-Zuber, who had already disappeared.

* * * *

T.J. glimpsed the deputy vanishing into the elevator and only caught sight of him again on the ground floor as he crossed the central atrium. He was walking fast, so fast that she needed to sprint to intercept him in that sun-dappled space, infused with the perfume of flowers. The man who reminded her of an arrow was in no good mood, and not only because of the scene moments ago. As she overtook him, he was cursing aloud that the fools under him hadn’t attained breakeven. “They’re dragging their feet intentionally, mutineers.” ASSET was weeks behind ITER. “The pygmies have no sense of history,” Krieg-Zuber smoldered, putting his finger under his collar.

“The director is listening, mademoiselle, for a moment,” he paused in midstride and swiveled around when he sensed T.J.’s presence. “How do you expect him to concentrate on life and death with you dogging his heels?”

T.J. abruptly sat down on a rock beside one of the pools into which water cascaded over a miniature fall, for a moment swishing her hand in the water and disturbing the fish, for a further moment shielding her eyes against the sun as she glanced up at the executive offices peering down on them. “I’m still tryin to understand why you made Dr. Ramirez assistant director. Yeah, imagine she’d jump at the chance to get out of that MTF cave, especially in that you were about to shut it down. But you were within an inch of axing Machuzak, why not her?”

“That was explained upstairs,” Krieg-Zuber snapped, but he did stop in his tracks.

T.J. liked this spot, the only place in the immense, claustrophobic lab of steel and electricity where she felt outdoors. She stood, took into her hand a cluster of bird-beaked flowers of a brilliant sea green, brought them to her nose, inhaled. “What is this called? A jade vine? I’m not very good with flowers, you know. Why’d you accept her application? The recording?”

“Are you saying, Lieutenant, that she, or I, manufactured evidence?” Krieg-Zuber peered at her with his unblinking, disdainful blue eyes. Then he merely scoffed.

“No, the crime lab tells me the recording’s pristine. That was the deal, wasn’t it? The eavesdrop for the position. Sure got Machuzak out of the way—Bam!”—D’Abro struck her hands together—“and got you the directorship, cleeen as a whistle.”

Krieg-Zuber, peering, stroked his scar, then to T.J.’s great surprise pulled a banana from a nearby tree and offered it to her. Too shocked to do otherwise, she accepted the fruit and began peeling it. “The directorship was Krieg-Zuber’s, by contract and by right, Mademoiselle D’Abro, and he will not apologize for fighting for it. Do you know, young lady, his boyhood dream was to become a champion yachtsman and sail the world without a care. He was an accomplished sailor and won a number of races. ‘I could have danced all night…’” Without warning Krieg-Zuber took T.J.’s arms and led her in the first steps of a waltz, then abruptly sat himself at the atrium’s grand piano and attempted to play the famous tune. With the banana in her hand, D’Abro was speechless.

But when his bad arm betrayed him, he slammed down the keyboard cover and cried, an abyssal injury, “The sacrifices I have made for the Mission! I would sell my soul to achieve fusion, Ms. D’Abro… No one wants it but they shall have it!” He pounded with his fist and stood.

Flummoxed, T.J. chewed slowly on the banana, swallowed. “A man in your condition should take it easy, sir,” she said at last, “but I’m still confused. Ramirez made the recording before the event. Seems a mite convenient, and that deuterium bottle could have come from her lab.” Krieg-Zuber leveled those eyes. “Oh, you didn’t know. We traced it to the MTF.”

“Machuzak. It fits with everything.”

“Hmm, probably, but I’ve also heard that the two of you were having an affair. True?”

She put a cute question mark on it, as if she were intending to post it on Facebook, and Krieg-Zuber did a double take, scoffed. “You are not serious!”

T.J. admitted the information might be inaccurate. “But I’ve also learned that Mercedes met Balard in the Real World last year and asked him for a job.” The Real World’s cooperation was finally proving interesting in that respect, but T.J. hadn’t yet found anything to suggest that Balard had offered her a position in return for services to be rendered. That’s why she wanted Ramirez’s computer.

Hearing this, Krieg-Zuber shot at her a look which attempted to hide the wound of betrayal; whether the injury was personal or professional proved impossible to say. “And this adds up to what, young lady?” he at last said, already moving in the direction of the control room.

“Not much,” T.J. admitted. “Not much.”

* * * *

Late. Very late. Returning home exhausted, T.J. showered, peered at herself in the mirror, didn’t much like the lined face staring back at her, modeled a scarf around her neck, which didn’t improve matters, plunked herself on the living room couch butt naked except for the scarf. For a while she felt herself all over, but it gave her little pleasure, and soon she found herself mindlessly surfing the big screen.

She glanced over at the books stacked on the floor and remembered reading somewhere that when scientists are confronted with facts that don’t fit their theories, their first reaction is to ignore them, and this goes on for a long time, until somebody rubs their noses in it. Sounds like law enforcement. Part of her felt terrible about what she was doing to Machuzak but he sure hadn’t made it easy for himself, dumbass scientist; it’s almost like he wanted it this way. Maybe she did. Sigh. Some office romance this is turning out to be. T.J. cast around on the Web for some self-help along those lines and, finding none, downloaded what she thought was the Greenmountain tune Mac had been insisting on. Pretty cute, she thought before falling asleep on the couch.

FORTY-TWO

The deadline calendar stood at 125 days and the control room was buzzing. Abbuhl’s team had regenerated the cryopanels without incident; Prometheus once again was a functioning machine.

Watching from his lookout, Machuzak saw from the number of runs posted on the big screen that they’d been working all night. Hasschler slumped over a small table on the captain’s deck surrounded by styrofoam coffee cups; he’d been at it three shifts running.

The violation of regulations wasn’t what had turned Krieg-Zuber’s face scarlet. He strode purposefully into the control room and announced from the deck, “Whoever turned those webcams back on is undermining the Mission and has forced me to implement drastic measures. Iris scanners will be installed at the control room entrance, and the unauthorized shall not escape detection.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Abbuhl interrupted in his most laid-back drawl, one greatly amplified by his weariness. “I turned the webcams on. It’s important for us to be in constant communication with our colleagues around the lab. More important, I’d say, is that Austin folks and Big Bad Roy should know what’s goin on here. We’re sproutin National Guardsmen, more protestors are showin up every day. You want a riot—turn this place into a weapons lab and by God you’ll have a riot. Now, if you’re insistin on punishment, take my resignation. To hell with this race.”

Bravo, Fred, Machuzak applauded. In his slow Southern way, Abbuhl has floored Krieg-Zuber. The Terminator couldn’t doubt that if Abbuhl went, the show was over. He crossed his arms as of old, but with difficulty, blinked in disbelief, but could find nothing to say other than, “The blameless must protect themselves, this you fail to comprehend” as he abandoned the control room.

Ari Socarides of Hasschler’s team was urging Thad to get some sleep, but the chief had other ideas. He gulped down a cold cup of coffee and announced that it’s time to go for breakeven. In the old days, magnets gobbled up so much power that the machines never produced as much energy as they consumed, but superconducting magnets had made the task easier and the accounting more scrupulous.

Despite the risk, Machuzak found himself delighted at the spontaneity of it. Creativity is usually the last thing to make the tight schedule on a big machine. But as t-minus sixty seconds approaches, Fournier breaks away from a frantic huddling for a conference on the deck with Hasschler. At length Hasschler turns to Matsushima, standing beside him. Machuzak zooms in on Toshi, who shrugs listlessly at Fournier’s suggestion. Whatever they’ve decided seems a go, and Thad gives the nod. The parameters are programmed in at the various consoles, Larissa says, “Okay, everybody ready to rock and roll?” and suddenly, without further ado, the countdown begins.

“Sixty…fifty-nine…fifty-eight…”

Not fifteen seconds later one of the diagnosticians interrupts the electronic voice and loud clicking of the digital clock. “Local bet! Local bet!” he shouts and a few bucks exchange hands in a far corner of the room.

“Ten…nine…eight…” At almost the same instant, the door opens and D’Abro wedges herself into the room to stand among the rest. She is smiling at her contribution, the music, but the sight of her suddenly amplifies Machuzak’s pain of absence. There is nothing for it and he can only watch with the others.

“Four…three…two…one…zero…”

The current begins its ramp-up. The neutral-beams are injecting their high-energy deuterium and tritium nuclei into the tokamak, providing the fuel while heating the plasma. The radio-frequency drives add their muscle. Within as many seconds, five mega-amps of current are circulating in Prometheus and the magnets are happily producing four-Tesla fields. The tokamak’s interior is all bright and red, which lasts for about five seconds more, then it goes dark.

By the time the shot ran its course, real-time data was flashing on the diagnostic monitors and Hasschler had his result: 45 megawatts of fusion power. But the rf and nb heating systems required 50. At least nothing crapped out. After a quick consultation with the diagnosticians, Hasschler called another huddle and fifteen minutes later decided to try again with higher magnet current.

They start over.

To eyes worldwide looking in, the scene remains unchanged: the countdown, the electronic voice, the onset of the pulse followed by that high-pitched screeching piped in from the test cell. The music.

This time when the results are in: 53 megawatts.

Immediately cheers go up throughout the room and five scientists simultaneously grapple with one of the champagne bottles set aside for ignition. Krieg-Zuber, rushing in at the last second, blinks in shock or disbelief and turns red, but refrains from action or comment. Machuzak himself makes a fist. “Yes,” he breathes. They’d achieved breakeven. The benchmark was meaningless in terms of a commercial reactor. At the close of the twentieth century, the Joint European Torus in England had grazed breakeven and AUSTOR regularly surpassed it a few years later, but Machuzak could not deny the satisfaction that this week two reactors had for ten full seconds produced more energy by fusion than was required to run them.

Before the champagne had stopped foaming, Krieg-Zuber dictated a press release to Mercedes announcing the achievement under his direction. Moments later an email addressed to “our friends at CFRC” came back from Balard, congratulating the team on “having achieved what we at ITER accomplished a week ago.”

* * * *

“You have failed to heed me,” Krieg-Zuber said to Hasschler on the captain’s deck. “Balard is lurking, and the foolish shall repent.”

Even as he cocked his head at the strange words, Hasschler recognized the truth in them and tuned into ITER’s own webcast. The numbers on their big screen are clearly visible as they ready a high-field shot to soothing background music. Thad won’t stand for it and calls for an even higher power shot to jump ahead. This time, five seconds into the run, the fault lights begin blinking. All action grinds to a halt, every handset comes alive.

Hasschler, completely losing his aristocratic cool, pounds the rail on the deck and shouts, “Fuck!” Others make similar gestures at their stations.

So, pulses have begun to race, thinks Machuzak. Krieg-Zuber is stomping about as he tries to determine what went wrong. Tebrill, an operating engineer, waves his hand in frustration. “No, I don’t know what the hell happened!” at which The Terminator blinks and grasps his collar. A few minutes later, one of the techs announces that there has been a big short circuit in Prometheus and some cables have vaporized. It will take several hours to fix. The chips and salsa are opened, the boots go up, the grim jokes begin.

Not for long. Soon one of the scientists complains that his terminal has locked up, that his network connections are totally frozen. Before long, nothing whatsoever is functioning and every scientist in the room is throwing up his hands, cursing. At once everything comes back online. Shortly afterward Mercedes Ramirez appears, announcing that all systems are in order. Zuber takes the horn: new cyber-attack protection software had just been tested; vigilance must be seamless and perpetual. Machuzak knows it is going to be a long day.

FORTY-THREE

In the bunker two unshaven beam operators engaged in a chess match as the machine was being readied for the next shot, and the rest of the team milled around while it waited for experiments to resume. A tritium guy picks up a guitar and begins twanging “Big Science Blues.”

“Break for basketball!” Krieg-Zuber announces unexpectedly. So impossible is it to believe what they’ve just heard that not a single person budges. “That’s an order! Go! From now on, basketball, volleyball, every day at two o’clock sharp!”

Eventually, a few of the technicians headed apprehensively for the door, but when The Terminator made no effort to stop them, the room cleared out quickly. For a week, precisely at two o’clock, Ramirez or Krieg-Zuber appeared and the control room shut down for an hour. The webcams also went down but before the first afternoon’s blackout, a snippet of audio leaked through from an off-stage conversation.

“How can I trust you!?” Machuzak heard Krieg-Zuber shout to Mercedes. “Communicating with Balard! You have committed high treason!”

Thinking that this didn’t sound like a lovers’ quarrel, Nathaniel listened to Mercedes retort, “You have no one else to trust, Cyrus.”

That was all before she exclaimed, “The cams are on!” and the empty control room went dark.

Nevertheless, for the next days progress was made with a series of shots above breakeven. At the end of the week, Zuber entered the control room just as everyone was exiting for the afternoon game. “Where are you going?” he demanded. It was time for the break, they told him. “Who authorized you to leave?”

“You did,” said Abbuhl, “in case you’ve forgotten.”

Hearing the exchange, the beam operators who preferred chess to basketball broke off their match. “No!” Krieg-Zuber told them, “continue. Play nonstop while Balard closes in on immortality. Have you seen today’s ITER release? A Q of two, do you hear! A Q of two! They approach a burning plasma! And you sit here playing chess! Forgive me. Organize a competition to take your feeble minds off our great task. Do it now, a competition!”

The two operators stared at each other, jaws wide, and at Krieg-Zuber, whose neck muscles had assumed the outlines of steel cable. The fellows attempted to return to their stations while Hasschler judiciously called for a new shot, but The Terminator prevented them. “Have you heard me?” he shouted. “Forget the ignition campaign. Play basketball! Play chess!” Then and there he launched into a macabre jig and with a wild swipe of his good arm knocked the board and all its pieces to the floor.

Silence shrouded the entire control room, each person glancing uneasily at the next. Even a very nervous Mercedes warned that he should calm down, for his own health. “Nothing can get in the way!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, staring. Then, suddenly, swiveling full circle as if to address himself, a double, he said, “Excuse me, that was uncalled for. My apologies.” He picked up a chip from the bag on the console, dipped it in the jar of salsa that had survived and bit into it with a loud crunch. He straightened his jacket and exited.

* * * *

Hours later Fred Abbuhl discovered Machuzak wandering through the MTF. “Mac, you’ve got to do something,” he said, describing what had taken place. “We’ll never make it through another month, yet alone to ignition, with that guy in charge.”

“What would you have me do, Fred?” Machuzak responded, raising his eyes from the folder in his hand. “He got you to breakeven, didn’t he?” Machuzak handed Abbuhl a hard copy of the ITER press release, which had triggered today’s scene: a Q of two. Fusionese’s most common term, Q, was going to be heard a lot more often in the coming weeks. Q represented the ratio of the energy a plasma produces to the energy needed to heat it. Breakeven—a Q of one. Ignition—Q approaches infinity. Between one and infinity lies reality: a commercial reactor might settle for thirty. ITER and ASSET were hoping for ten. Five was the magic number. At Q equals five, the theorists foretold, a plasma should begin to heat itself; it should burn. No one had ever achieved a burning plasma before. At Q equals five France or Texas would declare victory.

Abbuhl tossed away the press release. “The question is, what’s going to burn first, the plasma or us?”

“Fred, in less than a week I will be arrested.”

“Herr Doktor Director,” the chief engineer remained adamant, “unless The Terminator has a heart attack we’ve got to organize a counter-coup. That nutcase didn’t hesitate to topple you with any means at his disposal. Fight back, Mac, sir. Even if you are guilty as charged,” Abbuhl smiled faintly, “I’d still prefer you at the helm.”

“Let me think about it,” answered Machuzak.

* * * *

The following afternoon he met Theresa at the Laguna Gloria museum with its feel of a Mediterranean villa and canopy of trees, porticos, bells, suspended chimes and moss. “Theresa,” he said at once, “you’ve got to become director of the lab.”

Caught by surprise, she threw a bewildered look at him. “I thought you wanted to hear about Whitman.”

“Later.” He grasped her arm as they began walking through the dried leaves of the largely barren sculpture garden. Only at this moment did Machuzak realize that autumn, such as autumn is in Texas, had crept up unnoticed. He smelled the good air, breathed. “We’ve got to overthrow Krieg-Zuber if this campaign is going to have any chance of success.” He related what had occurred yesterday.

“I… I’m not a physicist,” she objected.

Neither were some others, despite their PhDs. “You know the lab, the people respect you. Let them pursue their desperate business and you deal with the press. In three months it will be over. Leonard will advise you. I’ll help…if I can.”

Theresa’s demeanor told him that she was not persuaded and she revealed that she’d been getting up three or four times a night, reading until four in the morning. When that failed to put her to sleep she’d try a pill, two…

This wasn’t good, and with the alcohol…

“Do you think I’m capable?”

“Yes.” He clasped her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “That which doesn’t kill you… What have you discovered?”

“Tamasin Ara—he’s the out-of-work reporter—he knows his way around obscure archives and the Congressional Record. The Whitmans did own a company called Exosystems, but they sold it so Thomas could become director of Energy Research and avoid a conflict of interest.”

“I thought he said they’d sold it much earlier.”

“That’s what the Whitmans told everybody, but it seems to have been a result of the confirmation hearings. Now it is forgotten.”

“Leonard never heard of it.”

Theresa shrugged, kicking the leaves. She’d already said it: Leonard didn’t know everything.

What did the company do, Machuzak asked, and who did the Whitmans sell it to?

“We’re working.” Theresa had climbed onto a solitary sculpture, a concrete-and-iron piece reminiscent of a sundial, one that pivoted with a squeak and was overgrown with weeds. “Mac,” she said from the perch, “I’d like to plan a memorial for Leonard.”

“He’s still alive,” Nathaniel answered, puzzled by the turn of conversation. “You said he might pull through… There’s still hope.” Nathaniel vaguely realized he was spouting the usual platitudes but saw no need to press home the matter.

“I want it to be some sort of living memorial…” Theresa went on as if not having heard. “‘Forward!’ should be the slogan. Not ‘Backward!’…” She jumped down, wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, though it wasn’t cold. “We can’t turn our backs to the future. Did the Huns know their millennium would be lost? Somehow we must succeed, you must succeed, Nathaniel. It is our kairos. Do it for Leonard.”

Theresa appeared to have forgotten that he was no longer director. “It is largely for Leonard that I undertook the task,” Machuzak acknowledged, perhaps to himself for the first time. “Theresa, snatch up the baton. Speak to Garrett. Convince him. Success would be the greatest tribute to Leonard.”

They sat down by river’s edge and a few moments later were kissing each other passionately. They shucked off their clothes and made love in the secluded spot, amidst swaying reeds. It was convulsive, desperate lovemaking, she avoiding his lips, he kissing her sides, with every kiss she squirming—delight, fear, he could hardly say. As his tongue went between her thighs she flinched and produced a guttural noise; her command, he thought, to enter. The animal sounds continued, but there was a frantic anger in them both, an anger enveloped by the other nervousness of being discovered. It was soon over. They did not afford themselves the luxury of lying in the reeds long, tangled, sweated and uneasy, and they quickly pulled themselves together. They watched the boats, the water skiers, the ducks. As always in the recent past, it seemed to belong to a walled-off world and because they could not touch it, they sat only for a few moments and departed.

FORTY-FOUR

Twenty-four hours later Richard Garrett received Theresa Rasmussen and Cyrus Krieg-Zuber in the office he’d commandeered and without ceremony said, “Dr. Krieg-Zuber, I’m relieving you as acting director. I don’t like the way things have been going around here.”

Krieg-Zuber’s first reaction was to bore unblinkingly into Garrett with his laser orbs, then dismiss the news as a perverse joke. When Garrett assured him it was not, Zuber slammed the flat of his hand on the table around which they were seated and shot up. “I demand a hearing before the board.”

The only response was a gimlet eye from Garrett, which said, “You’re looking at it.” To eliminate misunderstanding The Chairman became explicit: “It was my mistake to have appointed you and as of this moment I am correcting that mistake.”

“I remind you, old boy,” Krieg-Zuber protested, sweeping his finger before Garrett’s nose, “that under my leadership this morning we achieved a glorious Q of two. We are closing in on ITER. Think—!”

“A Q of two, whatever that means, will be your epitaph, Dr. Krieg-Zuber. I hope for your sake it doesn’t refer to an intelligence quotient.”

Turning to the door, then swiveling full around again, Krieg-Zuber was breathing hard as he looked down at the seated man. “You are making a grave error, a fatal error, and if you persist this laboratory shall reap the whirlwind.”

“Are you threatening me?” The Chairman returned a gaze reinforced by offense. “He who sleeps best is on his guard. I know your motto, Mr. Terminator, but I’m tired of your apocalypses and they’re going to cease, now.”

“You’ll regret it, money bags.”

“Mr. Krieg-Zuber, I’m half a second from barrin you from the premises. Now, if you don’t want that to happen, shut up, leave the room and take a well-deserved rest.”

Once Krieg-Zuber, after a moment of stasis had blinked in disbelief and departed, Garrett allowed himself to deflate and turned to Theresa, advising her to get rid of him altogether.

She demurred, saying that Leonard had spoken highly of Krieg-Zuber’s administrative talents and that she’d find something for him, but when she proposed that Nathaniel Machuzak be made assistant director, The Chairman put his foot down at once.

“That is not a good move, Theresa.”

“I need a scientific advisor,” she said. “Otherwise I can’t do this job.”

“Theresa, one thing I’ve learned around here,” Garrett answered, “is that ridin herd on scientists is like tryin to catch a greased pig. You’ll have plenty of advisors, not a single advisee. You want to lean on Machuzak in private, well that’s between you and him, but your job is to inspire this lab for the next hundred and ten days and to be its face to the outside world.”

“I intend to start broadcasting tonight, Mr. Chairman. Wish me luck.”

He shook her hand.

* * * *

Because his badge no longer functioned, Slava parked outside the main gate, within sight of the pin oak where several dozen protestors gathered in the daily ritual, ducked behind a tree and hopped the fence. He walked the kilometer to Site Alpha without interference and found Nat and Toshi at the MTF. Machuzak did not conceal his surprise at seeing him, but Archangelsky refused to say a word until they were outside.

“Moscow friends traced camera,” he said simply.

Machuzak waited.

“It was bought in Seoul, six years ago.”

Little else needed to be said, but Machuzak said it: “KBSI,” the Korean Basic Science Institute, home of Korea’s fusion program. Toshi asked for an explanation and they recounted from beginning to end their fruitless hunt for Dragonmaster. Matsushima asked if he could see the mysterious dragon and fish emblems and Archangelsky obliged, bringing up a Fusion World Web page, which he’d captured.

Toshi shrugged. “This is obvious: the Dragon Carp from Korean mythology. You must know it: The carp freed by the fisherman has struggled upstream for a thousand years, jumps over the royal gates and becomes a dragon, so Koreans consider him a symbol of bravery and perseverance, not to mention wealth… Of course craving for wealth ruins the foolish… Your Dragonmaster is obviously Korean and trying to help. Why didn’t you ask me sooner?”

Machuzak and Archangelsky glanced at each other and sighed.

* * * *

At high noon T.J. D’Abro appeared at the MTF with more than one warrant in hand. “Where’s Archangelsky, Doc?” she said severely. “Looks like he’s cleared out from his house. I’ve seized the computer there. I want his laptop. You must know where he is.”

Machuzak broke off from the work he was doing on the test chamber. “No, I don’t. Why do you want his laptop?”

“That server in Cadarache was at ITER,” she frowned, revealing what she’d known for some weeks. Machuzak granted her a raised eyebrow. “Their system administrator has been cooperating with me and we’ve traced an address to Archangelsky’s computer.” She omitted the assistance she’d received from the Austin Cyber Crimes Unit, which had briefly put aside child molesters. “Slava’s Dragonmaster. Which means you’re in on it, Mac.”

Nathaniel shook his head, nothing more.

“Damnit!” D’Abro pounded her fist in anger on the workbench next to her. “I warned you guys not to skip town. Where is he, Doc?”

Machuzak shook his head again. “What about Mercedes?”

T.J. glanced down at the clutter, the shining bits of metal. “She surrendered her laptop and has wiped a lot of files, but we’ve subpoenaed her backups and recovered a lot. Six months ago she asked Balard for a job; he declined. She’s a climber for sure, but that’s not illegal and so far I have nothin else on her. Which means you’re under arrest.” She looked up at him, bit her lip, said, “Sorry, I didn’t want this to happen.”

Machuzak’s only response was “Cuff me.”

The detective obliged.

TO BE CONTINUED