Dante's Equation Part 20

He sat back, stroking his beard. "At the university, I can find someone in physics. Maybe they'll recognize it. Some kind of scientific term? Roman numerals? Dates?"

"Maybe," said Binyamin. "But it could be a name."

I became obsessed with good and evil. When we act or speak or even think, we create energy. In the brain, synapses fire; in speech, we create sound waves; with physical action the impact on matter is even more obvious.

I wondered: Could the energy of these events, in and of itself, be positive or negative, good or evil? Does a hateful thought have a different kind of energy than a benevolent one? Are there laws that govern such energy? How far can evil go-how strong is it at its limit? Does "good" travel at the speed of light?

-Yosef Kobinski,The Book of Torment, 1943

9.1. Calder Farris

HAARPFACILITY GAKONA, ALASKA.

Calder had been in Alaska for four days. They'd been running the HAARP facility through frequency tests when the birds fell, so he'd had them run those same frequency tests again-and again and again, much to the perturbation of Dr. Serin. Calder was delaying their research, Serin said; ten Ph.D.'s were sitting on their hands. f.u.c.king whining little s.h.i.t. Calder gave him a look, said,"This has priority,"and nothing more. Serin wasn't stupid. He started to be curious about what Calder was looking for. Calder responded, or didn't respond, to all of it with the same steady chill.

So they ran the tests. And nothing happened.

Serin asked Calder, "What are you looking for? What's all this about?"

Calder said, "Standard procedure."

Serin reminded Calder a lot of the scientists who worked for the DoD. Over the years, he'd developed a particular hatred for the type-liberal science geeks who worked for the government but were so G.o.dd.a.m.n privileged they forgot who held the silver spoon in their mouths. Sure, Serin was happy to lap up the money Uncle Sam offered, the free housing, early retirement, and great benefits. But when he got home at night, he'd have dinner parties with his liberal geek friends where he'd make fun of the military personnel who ran the facility. He'd make a big deal of the fact that HAARP was not, technically, a weapon. As if he didn't owe every single one of his privileges, not to mention his life and that of his entire liberal geek family, to the A-bomb. At the very least, he'd be speaking Russian and scribbling math equations for fifty cents an hour if that bad boy had not come along when it had. And then there were the stealth bombs and smart bombs and all the other things that kept the man hip deep in opera tickets and Nordstrom's instead of wallowing in a third-world h.e.l.lhole like the other 80 percent of the world's population who had the sole misfortune of being born in a country without bad-a.s.s technology.

But . . . Serin was not Calder's problem. The man had no clue what had caused those birds to drop from the sky, and he couldn't reproduce it.

Since the death of Dr. Henry Ansel, Calder had gathered every sc.r.a.p of information he could find, had interviewed Ansel's colleagues at the University of Tennessee and talked to his students. He'd picked up some tidbits, pieces of a puzzle that still had no definite shape in Calder's mind. What he did know with certainty was that Ansel had been working on something that was extremely relevant to Calder and that he'd been closed-lipped about it.

Except, perhaps, with the dean of his physics department. The man had knownsomething. But he'd denied it, and he'd been a little too well connected for Calder to sit on him. Though he reserved it as an option for a future date.

The thing that Ansel and Avery had agreed upon was that matter equals waves and that therefore, ergo, and consequently it followed that waves of some specific type, intensity, structure, et cetera, et cetera,ought to be able to affect matter. The trick was: what kind of waves? Calder had gone through boatloads of doc.u.mentation, old journal articles, anything he could find on experiments conducted with waves, but so far he'd not found the red marker: physical matter majorly screwed up by wave transmission.

Until the birds. The autopsies showed nothing.Nothing. The birds hadn't died of poisoning or radiation, diabetes or depression. It was as if suddenly, in mid-flight, their impulse for life, some vital spark in their brain, had simply been turned off. Crash and burn.

Calder's biggest fear-and it was coming true-was that it had been a fluke, some rare conflux of random factors he'd never be able to trace, not without knowing . . . something.

Had Ansel known? Had he held the power of life and death in his hands? If he hadn't, he'd killed himself for no good reason, and Calder found that extremely unlikely. Serin sure as s.h.i.t didn't know. But according to Serin, there was someone else out there who might.

On Thursday, Calder asked, "Did you ever hear back from the University of Washington? About that phone call you had from a Dr. Alkin?"

"Not yet," Serin replied, with zero interest. "I told you it's nothing. I don't know why I even remembered it except the person had been asking about unusual effects of our wave transmission and the birds reminded me-"

"Maybe you should call them back."

Serin gave him an exasperated look. "I spoke to the department head. He would have called if he'd learned anything."

Calder removed his gla.s.ses and fixed Serin with those cold blue eyes.

"I'll call him now," Serin said.

9.2. Denton Wyle

UPSTATENEWYORK.

Denton sat watching the yeshiva from a group of tangled honeysuckle bushes behind the building. In the woods. In the dark. With the freaking maple trees. Schwartz had made a bad mistake. Denton Wyle no longer had anything to lose.

He might have bartered with the rabbi, if he'd had the Kroll ma.n.u.script. But Denton didn't have the Kroll ma.n.u.script. It had beenstolen right out of his hands. Then there were those two thugs who'd taken a copy of every other sc.r.a.p of material he'd had in his hotel room in Stuttgart-without asking, despite his furious protest. So Schwartz had everything Denton had anyway. So it was Schwartz, really, who'd chosen this path. Denton was not responsible. Furious, yes, petrified, yes, but not responsible.

The lights in the large dining room were on. He saw the boys filing in at last. He waited until they were all seated, until the blessing had been said. Then he made his way through the woods to the front door.

He remembered seeing a coat closet in the foyer on his first visit to the yeshiva. He hoped it might serve his purposes. He tried the main door: open. He smiled nervously to himself. As he thought, the place was not guarded. Schwartz might be the head of some secret Jewish cult, but he'd never expect trouble here, on his home turf. Not with this elaborate facade he'd created, this innocent "boys' school" act. Huh-uh.

The foyer, as Denton slipped inside, was dimly lit and empty. It was tempting to go to the library now-it was just down the hall, and no one was around. But he needed time, plenty of time. He opened the closet door and scoped it out. It was long and deep. The back was nested with boxes. It couldn'tbe more ideal; luck was smiling on Denton Wyle. He made his way through the coats, nudged a place among the cartons, hidden from view. His watch had a lighted face and he read it: 6:30.

He slept a little. By midnight he could no longer wait. His legs were cramped and he had to pee, plus the dark was getting to him. He was starting to imagine Schwartz (in the chef outfit, his butcher knife raised) creeping toward the closet door. With a bit more haste than was called for, Denton worked his way out of the boxes and into the foyer.

The foyer was dark but not nearly as dark as the closet. He listened, heart pounding, for distant chanting from some underground temple, like something fromIndiana Jones . The school was completely silent. Freed from the constricted s.p.a.ce, his limbs tingled from disuse and his nerves threatened to fail him. He could still back out. It wasn't too late to run. But . . . no. It would be simple and painless, and no one would ever know it had been him.

He wanted itso badly !

The library doors were closed, but they weren't locked. He slipped inside and shut himself in.

Where was it? He was sure Schwartz had a complete or nearly complete copy ofThe Book of Torment. Denton had pictured the whole thing in a drawer, bound in blue ribbon, somewhere in this library. Or it might be on a shelf in a place of honor, like a trophy. And he, Denton, would help himself. Of course he would take it. Schwartz would never be able to prove it was him. It could be any student, for example, or one of the cult members stealing it for his own nefarious purposes. Why not? Schwartz would have other copies, just as Denton had had copies of what had been taken in Stuttgart. t.i.t for tat. Tat for t.i.t. I tawght I taw a t.i.tty tat.

Denton giggled hysterically. He turned on his flashlight and swung it around the room.

Most of the bookshelves he could dismiss out of hand. They were full of standard-looking texts, and Kobinski's work would not be in such lowly company. The long library tables were clean and shone in the beam of his flashlight. He was surprised to find that the library was different than he'd remembered it-smaller. The area he thought he'd remembered the men standing in was not some secret niche, as it turned out, or any kind of niche at all. On that side of the room there was only another long table by the window. Denton scanned the walls and furniture nearby.

There was an old-fashioned writing desk, the kind that had a fold-down lid. It was huge, as such things went. Dozens of drawers, small and large, surrounded the lid. Denton knew in his gut that if the Kobinski material was in the library, that was where it would be. He began to search the drawers, pausing every few moments to listen, head lifted, ears perked. He could picture Schwartz (in slippers and house robe now), silently approaching down the hall, gliding like Nosferatu. No, he wouldn't think about that.

He wanted that moment, that exquisite moment, of laying his fingers on the ma.n.u.script. He wanted to get the h.e.l.l out of here. The thought of being in his car, on the freeway to New York, with the ma.n.u.script in the pa.s.senger seat, made him continue no matter how badly he was quaking.

In the drawers he found: paper, ink, pens, twine, rubber bands, Post-its, staples, a Hebrew-English pocket dictionary. In one small drawer he found several pairs of long, flat-p.r.o.nged tweezers and a magnifying gla.s.s. He did not find the ma.n.u.script or any fragments thereof.

He searched twice, growing more frantic and feeling a leaden knowing descend. When he was done, he wiped his face. There was sweat on his brow and Denton Wyle never sweated. He was sweating now all right, because he knew where it was. He knew exactly where! It was inside the desk, under that lid. And the closed lid's most prominent feature was a large, ornate keyhole.

That, of course, didn't mean it was locked.

But it is! You know it is, because that'sjust freaking like him!

Denton put the flashlight down on a nearby shelf, beam pointed toward the desk, and tried the lid, pulling wherever he could grasp with gloved fingers. Yup. It was locked.

"c.r.a.p!"

He was on the verge of losing it. He tried to slow his breathing using a technique he'd learned from his psychoa.n.a.lyst. Slow inhale, one-two-three-four, exhale in aha ha ha ha pattern, jerking his lungs like fish on a line. Repeat. Again. Repeat. Again.

Now. Key. Where would the key be kept? Schwartz's office at best, on the man himself at worst. Denton knew where the office was, though it meant possible exposure. Still, the school was asleep, right? And he would be very,very careful. He turned off his flashlight, tucked it into his belt, and went back into the hall.

The door to Schwartz's office was easy to recognize. It was at the end of the hall and had a sunken curved arch. It was closed. It was locked.

Denton pounded the stone wall impotently, sobbing under his breath. There was no point in breaking inhere . The key might not even beinthe office, and the whole point of the key was to avoid breaking into something. Why the h.e.l.l were they b.u.t.toned down so tight? Didn't that paranoid b.a.s.t.a.r.d trust his own people?

"Of course not," Denton said hatefully. "Not that megalomaniac."

None of this got him anywhere. Even while he indulged in a momentary pity party, in his gut he knew what he had to do. He would have to break the d.a.m.n desk. No choice. It wouldn't be easy. It wouldn't be quiet. He'd need tools. He hadn't brought a crowbar or anything, hadn't wanted to admit to himself that it might come to that.

In the hall he listened. It was absolutely quiet and dark. He went back to the coat closet.

Predictably, he did not find a crowbar in there, or even a screwdriver. What he did find was a ma.s.sive old umbrella, of the kind built before World War Two. It was large, with a narrow tip, and it looked like a steamroller couldn't bend it.

Umbrella in hand like Mary-freaking-Poppins, Denton crept back to the library. He checked his watch: 12:45.

He began to work at the desk lid. By 1:00 he had pushed, pried, and prodded enough of a gap in the wood near the lock to fully insert the umbrella's tip. He knew what came next. He paused, shaking out his aching hands and doing theha-ha breath again, rolled his neck, considered strategy. Strategy, however, was not his thing.

He inserted the umbrella into the divot and pulled back hard. For a long suspended moment, nothing happened. Then he felt something give, ever so slightly, and with an enormouscrack the desk lid opened about an inch and then stopped. Denton grabbed his flashlight and examined it quickly. The wood that held the lock had splintered but not completely. He shoved the flashlight between his legs and rammed the umbrella in deeper, pulled back with all his might. There was another groaning, splintery sound and the desk lid flew open. Denton went reeling. The flashlight slipped from between his thighs and rolled away. He dived after it. The noise from the breakage was still loud in his ears, but he thought he heard other sounds as well, footsteps upstairs. Frantic, he trained the light on the open desk.

There were loose papers in Hebrew, a few books, and a large black binder. He flipped the binder open. Inside, he recognized Xerox copies of Kobinski pages. There were several hundred pages in there. He grabbed the binder and ran for the library doors.

Now there were definite footsteps overhead, at least two sets, and deep voices. He sprinted down the hall and into the foyer, seeing no one, heart tripping like a jackhammer. He hit the front doors at full tilt, only realizing now that they might be locked. He had a flash of himself banging at the doors while Schwartz entered the foyer with his clan of side-locked, black-garbed cultists, all of them stumbling toward him, arms out in front of them, eyes gla.s.sy, like a bunch of Jewish zombies and . . .

But the doors were inst.i.tutional doors, with a large horizontal push bar at waist level. As he hit the bar, the heavy door swung open and the night air was on his face. He barely had time to feel relief when an alarm bell blared. He fled across the wide driveway, across the lawn, onto the main road. He opted for the trees, sure they were right behind him. He crashed through the woods, heading north toward his parked car. He hazarded a glance back.

Lights were blazing from one downstairs window and-now-the lights in the foyer went on. But no one was after him, not yet.

Denton ran. He had done it!He had the ma.n.u.script!

9.3. Jill Talcott

SEATTLE.

THE NEGATIVE ONE PULSE, 75 PERCENT POWER.

Jill Talcott was home with the flu. She'd been up twice in the night vomiting. Between heaves, she'd thought about Nate's warning. They were at 75 percent power on the negative one pulse. Was it making her ill? But no, a lot of people were down with the flu-most of the people in their department. It didn't necessarily mean anything.

She had planned to call the lab, let Nate know she wasn't coming in, but she had finally fallen asleep around seven. The phone jarred her awake an hour later.

"h.e.l.lo?" she answered groggily.

"Are you okay?"

Nate's voice. With her head raised off the pillow to answer the phone, Jill felt a wave of dizziness that nearly undid her. "Flu. I was going to call-"

"Oh G.o.d."

" 's all right."

"No, it's not. Someone broke into the lab." Jill dragged on a pair of sweats and drove over to the university. She was feeling a little better by the time she got there, if only because she was so panicked that it distracted her from what her body was feeling. When she got to the bas.e.m.e.nt, Nate was busy on the computer. Her eyes swept around the room but didn't see any signs of disturbance.

"The door," he said grimly. He followed her back out into the hall and they examined the dead bolt together. They'd had it installed when they first moved down here-it had been bright and shiny new. Now there were scratch marks on the surface of it, near the key slot, and there were heavy marks, too, on the wooden doorjamb, where the dead bolt went in. "Are you sure they actually got in?" "Stuff's been moved around." "Show me." Back in the room, Jill turned the lock behind her, feeling violated. Nate went to his chair. "I had a bunch of papers near my keyboard. Someone moved them into a stack. I think there might be some missing."

"What! What's missing? What was in them?" "Just my notes. I'm not sure." He rubbed his forehead with two fingers. The circles under his eyes were grape-colored. She realized he was muddled and that p.i.s.sed her off.

"Nate! This is important!"

"I'm not sure what pages!"

"Well, what else did they get?" She looked around the room anxiously and went over to their lab

subjects. It didn't appear as though any of the cages or specimens had been touched. The white board was intact, but the sight of it, the realization that someone-and she thought she knew who-knewall that, hadseen it . . .

"And maybe stuff on the computer," Nate said dourly. "The computer!" She stomped over to the machine. "I think the papers were moved around so that they could get at the keyboard." "Nate!"

His face darkened with anger. "How exactly is thismy fault?" She moved around the desk and looked at the screen. It was running Windows, and right at the bottom of the shortcut list was the little happy-face icon Nate used for their wave simulator. She moaned. "Someone could have gotten thesim? Doesn't it have all the Quey data in it? And the differential routine, the one that discovered the one-minus-one wave?" Nate clenched his jaw. "Yes." "Could they have copied the program?" "The directory's too big to fit on disk, but they could have downloaded it to the university network and copied it anywhere they liked."

"d.a.m.n it!" Talcott smacked the keyboard in frustration. For a moment she had an urge to beat it senseless, which was really inane, since it was already senseless. When they'd first moved down here Nate had insisted on hooking the computer up to the campus net, said it would make it easy to transfer files between the lab and their office. And she'd thought him resourceful!

"You didn't even have a Windows pa.s.sword on that thing!"

"No one's ever in here but you and me." He looked guilty and angry about being made to feel guilty. Jill sank into a chair. She had to think. The thief had possibly gotten the sim and some of Nate's papers. What else? Her notes for the article and her journals were all in her briefcase. She'd gotten paranoid enough to keep them with her at all times, so that was all right. But the Excel data had been on this computer and possibly other things, too, like the early statistics Nate had acc.u.mulated.

"What about the equation?" she asked, her tongue thick. "Was my equation on the computer?" Nate thought about it, then shook his head. "No." "Not in the sim? Isn't it in the sim? I thought-" "No.The sim just uses two sets of data-the Quey results and the carbon atom data. This computer can't even crunch your equation, remember?"

Yes, that was true, and it gave her some relief. She was pretty sure her equation was in her briefcase and nowhere else. She'd been very careful not to throw it around. It was far too precious for that. "You'resureit wasn't in your papers?" she said carefully. "Yes.I'm sure."Well, that was something. "Is there any way to find out if someonedid move the sim from this computer over the net?"