Blasphemy

“Kate, when I agreed to this assignment, I didn’t realize . . .”

“Didn’t realize what? That I’d be such a sucker?”

“I didn’t realize . . . that there’d be a complication.”

She tugged her horse to a halt and stared at him. “Complication? What do you mean?”

Ford’s face burned. Why was life suddenly so incomprehensible? How could he answer her?

She tossed her hair and brushed her cheek roughly with a gloved hand. “You’re still in the CIA, aren’t you?”

“No. I quit three years ago when my wife . . . My wife . . .” He couldn’t say it.

“Yeah, sure you quit. So—did you tell them our secret?”

“No.”

“Bullshit. Of course you told them. I trusted you, opened up to you—and now we’re all screwed.”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“I wish I could believe you.” She gave her horse a jab and trotted away.

“Kate, please listen—” Ballew broke into a trot, too. Ford bounced up and down, one hand gripping the saddlehorn.

Kate gave her horse another nudge and it began to canter. “Get away from me.”

Ballew broke into a canter, unasked. Ford clutched the saddlehorn, his body joggling around like a rag doll’s. “Kate, please—slow down, we need to talk—”

She kicked her horse into a gallop, and again Ballew thundered after her. The two horses whipped along the mesa top, hooves pounding the ground. Ford held on for dear life, terrified.

“Kate!” he shouted. A rein slipped from his hand. He lunged forward to snag it, but Ballew stepped on the dragging rein and jerked up short. Ford cartwheeled off the back of the horse and landed on a carpet of snakeweed.

When he came to, he was staring at the sky, wondering where the hell he was.

Kate’s face loomed into his field of view. Her hat was gone and her hair was wild, her face in an agony of concern.

“Wyman? My God, are you all right?”

He gasped and coughed as air returned to his lungs. He tried to sit up.

“No, no. Lie down.” When he sank back, he felt his head settling into her hat and realized she must have folded it up for a pillow. He waited for the stars to clear from his eyes and memory to return.

“Oh my God, Wyman, for a moment there I thought you were dead.”

He couldn’t gather his thoughts. He breathed in, out, in again, sucking in air.

She had taken off her glove, and her cool hand patted his face. “Did you break anything? Do you hurt? Oh, you’re bleeding!” She slipped off her bandanna and dabbed at his forehead.

His head began to clear. “Let me sit up.”

“No, no. Stay still.” She pressed the bandanna firmly against his skin. “You hit your head. You might have a concussion.”

“I don’t think so.” He groaned. “What an idiot I must seem. Falling off a horse like a sack of potatoes.”

“You don’t know how to ride, that’s all. It was my fault. I never should have run off like that. You just make me so mad sometimes.”

The throbbing in his head began to subside. “I didn’t betray your secret. And I’m not going to.”

She looked at him. “Why? Isn’t that what you were hired to do?”

“Screw what I was hired to do.”

She dabbed at his cut. “You need to rest a little more.”

He lay still. “Aren’t I supposed to get back on the horse?”

“Ballew took off for the barn. Don’t be embarrassed—everyone falls off eventually.”

Her hand rested on his cheek. He lay still for a moment longer, and then slowly sat up. “I’m sorry.”

After a moment, she said, “You mentioned something about a wife. I . . . didn’t know you were married.”

“Not anymore.”

“Must be hard to be married to the CIA.”

He said quickly, “It wasn’t that. She died.”

Kate covered her mouth. “Oh—I’m sorry. What a stupid thing for me to say.”

“It’s all right. We were partners in the CIA. She got killed in Cambodia. Car bomb.”

“Oh my God, Wyman. I’m so sorry.”

He hadn’t thought he’d be able to tell her. But it came out so easily. “So I left the CIA and went into a monastery. I was looking for something; I thought it was God. But I didn’t find Him. I wasn’t cut out to be a monk. I left and had to earn a living, so I hung out my shingle as a PI, got hired for this job. Which I never should have taken. End of story.”

“Who are you working for? Lockwood?”

He nodded. “He knows you’re hiding something and he wanted me to find out what it is. He says he’s going to pull the plug on Isabella in two days.”

“Jesus.” She laid that cool hand again on his face.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. If I’d known what I was getting into, I never would have taken this assignment. I didn’t count on . . .” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

He didn’t answer.

“You didn’t count on what?” She leaned over him, her shadow crossing his face, her faint scent drifting in.

Ford said, “On falling in love with you again.”

In the distance, an owl hooted in the dimming light.

“You’re serious?” she said finally.

Ford nodded.

Slowly, Kate brought her face closer to his. She didn’t kiss him—she just looked. Astonished. “You never said that to me when we were going out.”

“I didn’t?”

She shook her head. “The word ‘love’ wasn’t in your vocabulary. Why do you think we broke up?”

He blinked. That was the reason? “What about me going into the CIA?”

“I could’ve lived with that.”

“You want . . . to try again?” Ford asked.

She looked at him, the golden light all around her. She had never looked so beautiful. “Yes.”

Then she kissed him, slowly, lightly, deliciously. He leaned forward to kiss her but she stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. “It’s almost dark. We’ve got a ways to walk. And . . .”

“And what?”

She continued looking down at him, smiling. “Never mind,” she said, leaning down to kiss him again, and then again, her soft breasts settling against him. Her hand strayed to his shirt, and she began unbuttoning it, one button at a time. She slid the shirt open and began unbuckling his belt, her kisses becoming deeper and softer, as if her mouth was melting into his, while the shadows of evening grew ever longer on the desert floor.

36

PASTOR RUSS EDDY COAXED HIS TRUCK off the mesa road and drove toward a fin of sandstone, behind which he could hide the vehicle. It was a clear night, with a gibbous moon and a scattering of stars speckling the night sky. The truck lurched and rattled across the barren rock, a loose fender banging with each heave. If he didn’t borrow the arc welder at the service station in Blue Gap one of these days, the fender would fall off, but it made him feel so ashamed, always borrowing the Navajos’ tools and wheedling gas out of them. He kept having to remind himself that he was bringing these people the greatest gift of all, salvation—if only they would accept it.

All day he’d been thinking about Hazelius. The more he listened to the man’s words playing over and over in his head, the more verses from the First Epistle of John seemed to apply: “Ye have heard that antichrist shall come . . . . He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son . . . . This is that spirit of antichrist . . . .”

The memory of Lorenzo, sprawled on the ground, flashed into his head, the clots of living blood that wouldn’t sink into the sand . . . He winced—why did that hideous image keep popping up? He forced it out with an audible groan.

He eased the truck behind the fin of sandstone until it was well hidden from the road. The engine died with a cough. He yanked on the emergency brake and blocked the wheels with loose rocks. Then he pocketed the keys, took a deep breath, and set off walking down the road. The moon was bright enough that he could see where he was going without the flashlight.

He felt a stronger sense of purpose than ever before. God had called him and he had said yes. Everything until now, all the troubles in his life, had been mere prelude. God had been testing him and he had passed. The final test had been Lorenzo. It had been God’s sign to him that he was readying him for something big. Very big.

The Lord had guided him in Piñon that afternoon. First a full tank of gas—free. Next, a turned-around tourist trying to find Flagstaff thanked him with a ten-dollar bill. Then he learned from the gas station clerk that Bia was investigating the death at the Isabella project as a murder—not a suicide. Murder!

A coyote howled in the distance, answered by another even farther away. They sounded like the lonely, lost cries of the damned. Eddy reached the edge of the bluffs and scrambled down the trail into Nakai Valley. The dark hump of Nakai Rock rose on his right like a hunchbacked demon. Below, a scattering of lights marked the village; the windows of the old trading post cast boxes of light into the darkness.

Keeping close to the rocks and junipers, he moved toward the trading post. He did not know what he was looking for, or how he would find it. His only plan was to wait for a sign from God. God would show him the way.

The faint sound of piano music drifted through the desert night. He reached the valley floor, easing through the shadows of the cottonwoods, and sprinted across the grass to the back wall of the trading post. Through the old logs, chinked with plaster, he could hear muffled conversation. With infinite care he approached a window and peeked inside. Some scientists sat around a coffee table, talking intensely, as if arguing. Hazelius sat playing the piano.

At the sight of the man who might be the Antichrist, Russ felt a rush of fear and rage. He hunkered beneath the window and tried to hear what people were saying, but the man was playing so loudly, Eddy could hear almost nothing. Then, over the piano notes, through the double-paned window, down through the chilly autumn air to where Russ huddled on the grass, burst a single word, in the voice of one of the scientists: God.

Again, in a different voice: God.

The screen door banged, and two voices drifted around the corner and into his ears: one high and tense, the other slow, careful.

His heart pounding, Eddy crawled forward in the dark until he was just around the corner from the front door. He listened, hardly breathing.

“. . . one thing, Tony, I wanted to ask you—sort of confidentially . . .” The man lowered his voice. Eddy didn’t catch the rest, but he could not risk moving closer.

“. . . we’re the only two nonscientists here . . .”

They walked out into the darkness. Eddy shrank back, and the voices dissolved into indistinctness. He could see the two dark shapes, strolling down the road. He waited, and then darted across the road and into the trees, where he pressed himself against the gnarly trunk of a cottonwood.

Air brushed past his face. It could have been the Holy Ghost, changing itself into a breeze in order to carry the voices of the shadow figures toward him.

“. . . about these criminal charges, but I don’t have anything to do with the operation of Isabella.”

The deeper voice answered, “Don’t kid yourself. Like I said before, you’ll take the fall with the rest of us.”

“But I’m just the psychologist.”

“You’re still part of the deception . . .”

Deception? Eddy moved through the darkness to another position.

“. . . how in hell did we get into this mess?” said the high voice.

The answer was too low for Eddy to hear.

“I can’t believe the damn computer is claiming to be God . . . . It’s like something out of a science-fiction novel . . . .”

Another low reply. Eddy was trying so hard to listen and understand that he held his breath.

The men walked into the scattering of lights that marked the living quarters. Eddy scuttled forward like a spider as their phrases rose and fell with the breeze.

“. . . God in the machine . . . driving Volkonsky over the edge . . .” The high voice again.

“. . . waste of time speculating . . .,” came the gruff answer.

The conversation continued more softly. Eddy thought he would go crazy not being able to hear. He took a risk and scurried closer. The two men had halted at the end of a driveway. In the soft yellow light the bigger one looked impatient, as if trying to get away from the nervous one. The voices were clearer now.

“. . . saying things like no God I ever heard of. It’s a lot of New Age bullshit. ‘Existence is me thinking’—give me a break. And Edelstein buying it. Well, he’s a mathematician—he’s by definition a weirdo. I mean, the fellow keeps rattlesnakes as pets . . . .” The high-pitched voice rose, as if by talking more loudly, he could keep the big guy from moving on.

The big guy shifted, so that Eddy could see his face. It was the security man.

The man’s low voice said something that sounded like “check around before hitting the sack.” A handshake, and the little guy walked down the driveway toward his house, while the security guy stared down the road one way, then the other, then toward the cottonwoods, as if scouting the scene, deciding which way to begin his patrol.

Please, Lord, please. Eddy’s heart was beating so strongly, he could hear the pulse of his own blood whooshing in his ears. Finally the man walked down the road in the other direction. Moving with exquisite caution to keep from crunching fallen twigs, Eddy passed slowly through the cottonwoods and felt his way up the dark trail and out of the valley.

Only when he was driving back down the Dugway did he permit himself to whoop out loud with giddiness. He had exactly what Reverend Spates needed. It would be the middle of the night in Virginia, but surely the reverend wouldn’t mind being woken up for this. Surely not.

37

ON FRIDAY, AT THE BREAK OF dawn, Nelson Begay leaned against the doorframe of the chapter house and watched the first horse trailers arrive. The horses were stirring the dust up into golden fire-clouds, the riders unloading their horses and saddling up amid the jingling of spurs and slapping of leather. Begay’s own horse, Winter, was already saddled and ready to ride, tied in the shade of the only live piñon in sight, eating from a morral. Begay wished he could blame the Bilagaana for all the dead piñons, but as far as he could tell, the television news was right: bark beetles and drought hadn’t needed any help.

Maria Atcitty, the chapter president, came up. “Nice turnout,” she said.

“Better than I thought. You coming?”

Atcitty laughed. “Anything to get me out of the office.”

“Where’s your horse?”

“Are you nuts? I’m driving.”

Begay went back to watching the motley collection of horseflesh gathering for the protest ride. Aside from a couple of fine quarterhorses and an Arab, they were mostly reservation canners, unshod, skinny, white-eyed. The scene reminded him of his uncle Silvers’s place over at Toh Ateen. Silvers had taught him the Blessing Way, but he’d also been a bronc rider, working the Santa Fe–Amarillo rodeo circuit until he busted his back. Afterward he kept a ragged bunch of horses for the kids to ride; that’s where Begay had learned all he knew about horses.

He shook his head. It seemed like such a long time ago. Uncle Silvers was gone, the old ways were dying, and the kids nowadays couldn’t ride or speak the language. Begay was the only one old Uncle Silvers had been able to talk into learning the Blessing Way.

The ride was more than a protest about the Isabella project; it was about recapturing a way of life that was rapidly disappearing. It was about their traditions, their language, and their land, about taking responsibility for their destiny.

A decrepit Isuzu pickup pulled up, pulling a stock trailer too big for it. With a whoop, a rangy man hopped out, wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off. He pumped one skinny arm into the air, hollered again, and went around to unload the horse.

“Willy Becenti’s here,” said Atcitty.

“Hard to miss Willy.”

The horse, already saddled, stepped down onto the dirt. Becenti brought him around and tied him to the tongue of the trailer.

“He’s packing.”

“I see it.”

“You going to let him bring that?”

Begay considered that for a moment. Willy was excitable, but he had a good heart and was solid as a rock when he wasn’t drinking. There’d be no liquor on this ride—that was one rule Begay was going to enforce.

“Willy’ll be all right.”

“What if things get nasty?” asked Maria.

“Things aren’t going to get nasty. I met a couple of the scientists yesterday. Nothing’s going to happen.”

Atcitty said, “Which ones did you meet?”

“That one who calls himself an anthropologist, Ford, and the assistant director, a woman named Mercer.”

Atcitty nodded. “Same ones I met.” A moment passed and she said, “You sure this is a good idea, this protest ride?”

“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

38

KEN DOLBY LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. Six o’clock P.M. He turned back to the screen and checked the temperature on the bad magnet. It was holding steady, well within the tolerance range. He moused through several pages of software controls for Isabella. All systems were go, everything running perfectly. Power was at 80 percent.

It was a perfect night for a run. with Isabella diverting a large percentage of the megawattage of the RM-West Grid for its own use, even the smallest disruption—a lightning strike, blown transformer, downed lines—could cause a cascade. But it was a cool evening over much of the Southwest, the ACs were turned off, there were no storms and little wind.

Dolby had a feeling in his gut—that tonight, they’d solve the problem. Tonight was the night Isabella would shine to perfection.

“Ken, bring it up to eighty-five,” said Hazelius from his leather seat at the center of the Bridge.

Dolby glanced over at St. Vincent, monitoring the power flows. The leprechaun-like man gave him a thumbs-up and winked.

“Gotcha.”

At the very edge of perceptibility he could feel the faint vibration that marked the immense flow of power. The two beams of protons and antiprotons, circulating in opposite directions at unimaginable speed, still had not been brought into contact. That would happen at 90 percent power. Once they were brought into contact, it took a lot more power, a lot more time, and an exquisite level of fine-tuning to bring the system up to 100 percent.

The power gauges rose smoothly to 85 percent.

“Lovely night for a run,” said St. Vincent.

Dolby nodded, glad that St. Vincent was handling the power flows. He was a quiet, agreeable old fellow who seldom said a word, but he handled power the way a conductor handles a symphony orchestra, with exactness and great finesse. All without breaking a sweat.

“Eighty-five percent,” Dolby said.

“Alan?” asked Hazelius. “How are the servers?”

“Everything fine over here.”

Hazelius went around the room for perhaps the fiftieth time, soliciting answers from the team. So far, it was a textbook run.

Dolby reviewed his systems. Everything was working according to specs. The only glitch was the warm magnet, but by “warm” they were talking about only three one-hundredths of a degree warmer than it should be.

Isabella was settling in at 85 percent, while Rae Chen made tiny adjustments to the beams. Glancing idly around the room, Dolby thought about the group Hazelius had brought together. Take Edelstein, for example. Dolby suspected he might be even smarter than Hazelius—but a kind of weird-smart. Edelstein was a little scary, like his brain was half-alien. And what was it with the rattlesnakes? A weird frigging hobby. Then there was Corcoran, who looked like Darryl Hannah. She wasn’t really his type, too tall and abrasive. Way too pretty and too blond to be as smart as she obviously was . . . It was a brilliant group, even the robot Cecchini, who always seemed to be on the verge of going postal. Except for Innes. He was an earnest guy who tried hard but didn’t have the candlepower to illuminate much more than the well-trodden middle of the room. How could Hazelius take the man and his little rap sessions so seriously? Or was Hazelius just going along with DOE regs? Were all psychologists like Innes, spinning their neat little theories without a shred of empirical evidence? He was a man who saw everything and understood nothing. Innes reminded Dolby of that pop-psychology-spouting truck driver his mother had dated after his father’s death, a decent guy who double-chinned you half to death with advice from the latest self-improvement bestseller.

Then there was Rae Chen. She was smart as hell but totally laid-back about it. Someone had said she’d been a champion skateboarder as a kid. She looked like a Berkeley free-love type, fun, easy, uncomplicated. Or was she really uncomplicated? It was hard to tell with Asians. Either way, he’d love to get something going with her. He glanced over at her, bent over her console so intently, her black hair hanging down like a waterfall, and he imagined her without clothes . . . .

Hazelius’s voice broke in.

“We’re ready to go to ninety, Ken.”

“Sure thing.”

“Alan? When we’ve stabilized at ninety, I want you to be ready to switch over the p5 595s all at once, ganged and linked.”

Edelstein nodded.

Dolby moved the sliders, watched Isabella respond. This was it. This was the night. Everything in his life had led up to this point. He felt the deep vibration of the power as it increased. It was like the whole mountain was energized. It purred like a Bentley. God, how he loved this machine. His machine.

39

FROM THE BACK BEDROOM OF HIS bungalow, Ford saw the first of the protest riders appear on the rim behind Nakai Rock, silhouetted against the sunset. He raised his binoculars and identified Nelson Begay astride a paint horse, with a dozen other riders.

He turned his head and felt a throb from his fall the evening before. Since then, he and Kate had hardly been able to exchange a word, she had been so busy getting ready for the run.

The light on his satellite phone blinked, right on schedule. He picked it up.

“News?” Lockwood asked.

“Nothing specific. Everyone’s in the Bunker, starting another run of Isabella. I’m waiting to go meet the protest riders.”

“I wish you could have headed that off.”

“Trust me, it’s better this way. Did you look into this Joe Blitz thing?”

“There are hundreds of Joe Blitzes out there—people, companies, places, what have you. I culled a list of some that struck me as being possibilities. I thought I’d run a few past you.”

“Go ahead.”

“First of all, Joe Blitz is the name of a GI Joe action figure.”

“That could be an allusion to Wardlaw — Volkonsky hated him. What else?”

“Broadway producer of the forties who did Garbage Can Follies and Crater Lake Cut-up. Two musicals, one about tomcats, the other about a nudist colony. Both flops.”

“Keep going.”

“Joe Blitz, bankrupt Ford dealership in Ohio . . . Joe Blitz State Park, Medford, Oregon . . . Joe Blitz Memorial Hockey Rink, Ontario, Canada . . . Joe Blitz, sci-fi writer in the thirties and forties . . . Joe Blitz, developer who built the Mausleer Building in Chicago . . . Joe Blitz, cartoonist.”

“Tell me about the writer.”

“A Joe Blitz published science fiction potboilers in several pulp magazines in the early forties.”

“Titles?”

“A whole bunch of them. Let’s see . . . ‘Sea Fangs’ and ’Man-Killers of the Air,‘ among others.”

“Did he publish any novels?”

“As far as we could tell, just a lot of stories.”

“What about Joe Blitz the cartoonist?”

“Did a syndicated strip in the late fifties about a fat slob and a toy poodle. Sort of like Garfield. Never a big success. Let’s see . . . I’ve got about two hundred more, everything from the name of a funeral home to a recipe for smoking fish.”

Ford sighed. “This is like looking for a needle in a haystack when we don’t even know what the needle looks like. What about that Aunt Natasha?”

“Volkonsky had no Aunt Natasha. It might have been a kind of joke—you know, every Russian has an Aunt Natasha and an Uncle Boris.”

Ford glanced out the window at the riders entering the valley. “Looks like the note’s a dead end.”

“Seems so.”

“I’ve got to go—the riders are coming down into the valley.”

“Call me as soon as the run’s over,” said Lockwood.

Ford put away the satellite phone, locked up the briefcase, and went outside. He heard a distant engine, and a battered pickup appeared where the road entered the valley. It topped the rise and came down, followed by a white van with KREZ on the side and a satellite dish on top.

Ford walked over and stood in the trees at the edge of the fields, watching Begay and a dozen riders on lathered horses approach. The KREZ van stopped and a couple of television people got out and began setting up a shot of the riders. A large woman stepped out from the pickup—Maria Atcitty.

As the riders reached the fields, the cameraman started rolling tape. One rider broke away and galloped ahead, giving a whoop of triumph and whirling a bandanna in an upraised fist. Ford recognized Willy Becenti, the man who had lent him money. Some of the other riders urged their horses into a run, and Begay followed suit. They tore across the fields, whipping past the camera, and pulled up in the dirt parking lot outside the old trading post, not far from Ford.

When Begay dismounted, the reporter for KREZ came up, high-fived him, and started setting up the equipment for an interview.

Now the others were coming up. More high fives. The video lights went on, and the reporter began to interview Begay. The others stood around watching.

Ford strolled out from the trees and walked across the grass.

All eyes turned in his direction. The reporter approached him, holding out the mike.

“What is your name, sir?”

Ford could see the camera was rolling. “Wyman Ford.”

“Are you a scientist?”

“No, I’m the liaison between the Isabella project and the local communities.”

“You aren’t liaising very well,” said the reporter. “You got a big protest on your hands.”

“I know it.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think Mr. Begay here is right.”

There was a brief silence. “Right about what?”

“A lot of what he’s been saying—that Isabella is frightening local people, that its presence isn’t the economic boon it was supposed to be, that the scientists have been too aloof.”

Another brief, confounded silence. “So what are you going to do about it?”

“To start with, I’m going to listen. That’s why I’m here right now. Then I’m going to do what I can to make things right. We got off to a bad start with the community, but I promise you, things will change.”

“Bullshit!” came a cry—Willy Becenti, striding over from where he had staked out his horse in the field.

“Cut!” The reporter turned to Becenti. “Hey, Willy, I’m trying to do an interview here, do you mind?”

“He’s full of bullshit.”

“I can’t air anything you say if you use words like that.”

Becenti stopped short, staring at Ford. His face bloomed with recognition. “Hey—it’s you!”

“Hello, Willy,” said Ford, extending his hand.

Willy ignored it. “You’re one of them!”

“Yes.”

“You owe me twenty bucks, man.”

Ford reached for his wallet.

Becenti flushed triumphantly. “You keep your money. I don’t want it.”

“Willy, I’m hoping we can solve these problems working together.”

“Bullshit. You see up there?” Becenti pointed a skinny arm vaguely up the valley, exposing a tattoo. “There’s ruins up there in those bluffs. Graves. You’re desecrating our ancestors’ graves.”

The camera was rolling again. “Your response, Mr. Ford?” said the reporter, shoving the microphone back in his face.

Ford refrained from pointing out that they were Anasazi ruins. “If we could have some help identifying exactly where the graves are, we could protect—”

“They’re all over! Everywhere! And the spirits of the dead are unhappy and wandering around. Something bad’s going to happen. I can feel it. Can’t you feel it?” Becenti looked around. “Can’t you feel it?”

There were nods, murmurs.

“Chindii are all around, skinwalkers. Ever since Peabody Coal gouged out the soul of Red Mesa, it’s been a bad, bad place.”

“A bad place,” people repeated.

“This is just one more example of the white man coming in and taking Indian land. That’s what this is. Am I right?”

Louder murmurs, nods of agreement.

“Willy, you have every right to feel as you do,” said Ford. “But let me say in our defense that part of the problem is, the Navajo tribal government made this deal without consulting the local folks.”

“The Navajo tribal government is just a bunch of assholes hired by the Bilagaana to do the old step-and-fetch-it. We didn’t have no Navajo tribal government before the Bilagaana came.”

“You can’t reverse that. Neither can I. But we can work together to make things better. How about it?”

“Yeah, well, my answer to that is screw you!” Becenti advanced threateningly. Ford held his ground, and they faced each other. Becenti breathed hard, his skinny rib cage heaved, his stringy arm muscles flexed.

Ford kept himself loose, relaxed. “Willy, I’m on your side.”

“Don’t patronize me, Bilagaana !” He was about two-thirds Ford’s size and half his weight, but he looked like he might start swinging at any time. Ford glanced at Begay and saw from the medicine man’s indifferent face that he would let the situation evolve on its own.

The camera continued filming.

Becenti swept his arm out across the grass. “Look at this. You Bilagaana take away our mesa and drill thousands of feet through the rock so you can water your effing fields, while my aunt Emma has to drive thirty miles one way to haul water for her grandkids and sheep. How long do you think it will be before the wells in Blue Gap or Blackhorse go dry? And what about hantavirus? Everyone knows there was never any hantavirus until something happened over there at Fort Wingate.”

Several riders called out their agreement to the old conspiracy theory.

“For all we know, something in Isabella is poisoning us already. Any day now, our kids might start dying.” He jabbed a dusty finger into Ford’s chest, just below the breastbone. “You know what that will make you, Bilagaana ? A murderer.”

“Let’s keep it cool, Willy. Peaceful and respectful.”

“Peaceful? Respectful? Is that why you people burned our hogans and cornfields? Why you raped our women? Is that why you sent us on the Long Walk to Fort Sumner—in order to be peaceful and respectful?”

Ford knew from Ramah that Navajos still talked about the Long Walk of the 1860s, even if, to the rest of the country, it was ancient history, long forgotten. “I wish to God there was some way to undo history,” he said, with more feeling than he intended.

A cheap .22 appeared in Willy’s hand from out of his jeans. Ford tensed, ready to move fast.

Begay stepped in at once. “Daswood, turn the camera off,” he said sharply.

The reporter complied.

“Willy, put the gun away.”

“Screw you, Nelson, I’m here to fight, not talk.”

Begay replied in a low voice. “We’re going to set up a sweat lodge in the field. We’re going to be here all night, performing peaceful ceremonies. We’re going to take back this land spiritually with our prayers. This is a time for prayer and contemplation, not confrontation.”

“I thought this was a protest, not a damn squaw dance,” Becenti said, but he nevertheless slipped the gun back into his pants pocket.

Begay pointed to the high-tension wires converging toward the edge of the mesa, a half mile away. “Our fight isn’t with this man. It’s with that.”

The power lines hummed and crackled, the sound faint but distinct.

“Sounds like your machine’s up and running,” said Begay, turning back to Ford, his eyes neutral. “I guess this would be a good time for you to leave us to do our thing.”

Ford nodded, turned, and walked toward the Bunker.

“That’s right, get out of here,” Becenti yelled after him, “before I put a cap in your Bilagaana ass!”

As Ford approached the Isabella security gate, the crackling and humming of the powerlines got louder, and he felt a faint shiver run down his spine at the eerie noise, which seemed almost alive.

40

AT FIVE MINUTES TO EIGHT, BOOKER Crawley settled in front of the TV set in the cozy, cherry-paneled den of his house on Dumbarton Street, Georgetown, feeling an extraordinary sense of anticipation. When Spates had said he would give good value for his money, he wasn’t kidding. The Sunday sermon had been a shotgun blast. Now the Roundtable America show would unload the second barrel. Amazing that all it had taken was a single phone call and a couple of cash payments. There wasn’t even anything illegal about it, just charitable giving to a 501(c)(3)—tax deductible.

The lobbyist cupped a snifter in his hand, warming it, and took a sip of his customary after-dinner Calvados. With a blast of patriotic music, the logo of Roundtable America came on amid a digital swirl of American flags, eagles, and patriotic emblems. Then a cherry roundtable appeared, with an image of the Capitol in the background. At the roundtable sat Spates, with a serious, concerned expression. His guest sat across from him, a white-haired man in a suit, with a deep face, shaggy eyebrows, lips pursed as if pondering the very mystery of existence.

The music died down and Spates turned to the camera.

Crawley was amazed that this man, who was a complete ass in person, a cracker from the backwoods, could have such tremendous presence on television. Even the orange hair looked respectable, muted. Crawley congratulated himself again. What a brilliant stroke it had been to bring the preacher in.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Roundtable America. I’m Reverend Don T. Spates, and I am delighted to have as my guest Dr. Henderson Crocker, Distinguished Professor of Physics at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.”

The professor nodded sagely at the camera, his face the definition of gravitas.

“I’ve asked Dr. Crocker here to talk to us about the Isabella project—the subject of tonight’s show. For those of you who don’t know of Isabella, it is a scientific machine the government has completed in the Arizona desert at a cost of forty billion taxpayer dollars. A lot of people are concerned about it. That’s why we’ve asked Dr. Crocker here, to help explain to us ordinary folks just what it’s all about.” He turned to his guest. “Dr. Crocker, you’re a physicist and a teacher. Could you tell us what Isabella is?”

“Thank you, Reverend Spates. I certainly can. Essentially, Isabella is a particle accelerator—an atom smasher. It smashes atoms together at high speed to break them apart and see what they’re made of.”

“Sounds scary.”

“Not at all. There are quite a few of them in the world. They were essential, for example, in helping America design and build nuclear weapons. And they helped lay the theoretical foundation for the nuclear power industry.”

“Do you see a problem with this one, in particular?”

A dramatic pause. “Yes.”

“And what is that?”

“Isabella is not like other particle accelerators. It is not being used as a scientific instrument. It is being misused to promote a particular agenda, a theory of creation promulgated by a hard-core cadre of atheistic and secular humanist scientists.”

Spates raised his eyebrows. “That’s quite a statement.”

“I do not make it lightly.”

“Elaborate.”

“Gladly. This group of atheistic scientists have as their creed the theory that the universe created itself out of nothing, without any guiding hand or primum mobile. They call this theory the Big Bang. Now, most intelligent people, including many scientists like myself, know this theory is based on an almost complete lack of scientific evidence. The theory has its roots not in science, but in the deeply anti-Christian sentiment that pervades our nation today.”

Crawley took another long, warm pull on the Calvados. Spates was coming through again. This was damn good stuff, demagoguery dressed up in sober, scientific language—and coming right out of the mouth of a physicist. Just the kind of claptrap a certain segment of the American people would eat up.

“Over the past decade, virtually every layer of our government and university system has been taken over by atheists and secular humanists. They control the grant money. They decide what research is done. They choke off any dissenting voices. This scientific fascism cuts right across the board, from nuclear physics and cosmology to biology and, of course, evolution. These are the scientists who have given us the atheistic, materialistic theories of Darwin and Lyell, Freud and Jung. These are the people who insist that life does not begin with conception. These are the people who want to conduct ghastly experiments on stem cells—living human embryos. These are the abortionists and the so-called family planners.”

The voice droned on, sounding like the very embodiment of reason. Crawley tuned it out to fantasize about the moment when he would sign up Yazzie at twice the retainer.

The show continued with more questions and answers, variations on a theme, then the usual appeal for money, more talk and more appeals. The voices went on and on, rising and falling like a chant. Repetition was the soul of Christian television, Crawley thought: pound it into their thick heads—and take their money to boot.

The camera tightened in on Spates as he took over the commentary. Crawley was only half-listening. Spates had put on a good show so far, and the thought of the Tribal Council watching it brought him great delight.

“. . . God is clearly withdrawing his protective hand over America . . .”

Crawley sank into a state of warmth and relaxation. He couldn’t wait for that four o’clock call Monday. He would extract millions from those apes. Millions.

“. . . To the pagans and the abortionists, to the feminists and the homosexuals, the ACLU—all who are trying to secularize America—I point a finger in their face and say, ‘When the next terror attack comes, it will be your fault . . .’ ”

Maybe he could even triple his fee. That would be something to tell his friends at the Potomac Club.

“. . . And now they’ve built a Tower of Babel, this Isabella, to challenge God on His very throne. But God is no pansy: He will strike back . . . .”

As Crawley sank further into delicious reverie, a word jolted him awake. The word was “murder.”

He sat forward. What was Spates talking about now?

“That’s right,” Spates said. “Through a confidential source, I have learned that four nights ago, one of the top scientists on the Isabella project, a Russian named Volkonsky, allegedly committed suicide. But my source indicates that some police investigators aren’t so sure it was a suicide. It’s looking more and more like murder—an inside job. A scientist killed by his fellow scientists. Why? To shut him up?”

Crawley sat forward, fully alert, watching keenly. What a stroke of genius to hold this bit of news for the end of the show.

“Maybe I can tell you why. I have another piece of news from my source that is truly shocking. I can hardly believe it myself.”

With a manicured hand, in a slow, dramatic movement, Spates picked up a single piece of paper and held it up. Crawley recognized the trick—Joseph McCarthy had pioneered it back in the fifties—in which information, by virtue of being on paper, acquired the solidity of truth.

Spates gave the paper a little shake. “It’s right here.”

Another dramatic pause. Crawley sat up, his drink forgotten. Where was Spates going with this?

“Isabella was supposed to be online months ago. It isn’t. There’s a problem with it. Nobody knows why—except my source and me. And now you.”

Another dramatic shaking of the paper.

“This machine called Isabella has, as its brain, the fastest supercomputer ever built. And this Isabella is claiming to be . . .” He paused dramatically. “God.”

He laid the paper down, his eyes straight at the camera. Even his guest seemed shocked.

The silence crawled on as Spates glared at the camera—the man knew the power of silence, especially on television.

Crawley sat at the edge of his seat, trying to fit this bombshell in. His exquisite internal radar for political trouble was illuminating something big and fast coming in out of nowhere. This was sheer craziness. Maybe it hadn’t been so smart after all, passing the ball to Spates and letting him run with it. Maybe he should have faxed Yazzie a new contract for a quick signature that morning.

Finally Spates spoke.

“My friends, I would not make such a statement if I wasn’t absolutely sure of my facts. My source, a devout Christian and a pastor like myself, is onsite—and he got this information directly from the scientists themselves. That’s right: this gigantic machine called Isabella is claiming to be God. You heard me: claiming to be God . If my information is wrong, I challenge them to publicly refute me. ”

Spates rose from his chair, a gesture made all the more dramatic by expert camerawork. He towered over the viewers, a pillar of controlled fury. “I ask—I demand—that Gregory North Hazelius, the ringleader of this project, appear before the American people and explain himself. I demand it. We, the American people, have spent forty billion dollars building that infernal machine in the desert, a machine specifically created to prove God a liar. And now it is claiming to be God!

“O my friends! What blasphemy is this? What blasphemy is this?”

41

FORD ARRIVED ON THE BRIDGE AT eight o’clock. As he entered the room he glanced at Kate, at her workstation. Their eyes met. Not a word was exchanged, but the glance itself said a lot. The rest of the scientists were hunched over their various workstations, Hazelius directing the show from his swiveling captain’s chair in the center. The machine hummed, but the Visualizer remained black.

The others noted his arrival with few nods and distracted greetings. Wardlaw gave him a long stare before turning back to his security board.

Hazelius beckoned him over. “How are things up top?” he asked.

“I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”

“Good. You’re just in time to see us make contact at CZero. Ken, how are we?”

“Holding steady at ninety percent,” said Dolby.

“The magnet?”

“Still good.”

“Then we’re ready to roll,” said Hazelius. “Rae? Take up your position at the detector control panel. As soon as the logic bomb goes off, I want you on top of it. Julie, back her up.”

He turned. “Alan?”

Edelstein raised his head slowly from his workstation.

“Monitor the backup servers and the main computer simultaneously. At the first sign of instability, switch control of Isabella over to the three p5 595s. Don’t wait for a full crash.”

Edelstein nodded, gave a few sharp raps on the keyboard.

“Melissa, I want you monitoring that hole in space-time. If you see anything, I mean anything, that indicates a problem, an unexpected resonance, unknown superheavy or stable particles—especially stable singularities—sound the alarm.”

A thumbs-up.

“Harlan? We’re going to run at a hundred percent power for as long as it takes. It’ll be your job to keep the juice coming in strong and clean—and to monitor the wider grid for third-party power issues.”

“Sure thing.”

“Tony, even if we switch over the three servers as backup, the security systems will remain online. Don’t forget we’ve got some protesters up there, and they might do something stupid, like scale the perimeter fence.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked around. “George?”

“Yes?” Innes said.

“Normally, you don’t have much to do during a run. But this run’s different. I want you to position yourself near the Visualizer so you can read the output from the logic bomb and analyze it psychologically. A human being wrote this slag code, and it may contain clues to its creator. Look for insights, ideas, psychological quirks—anything that might help us identify the perpetrator or nail this logic bomb.”

“Excellent idea, Gregory, I certainly will.”

“Kate? I’d like you at the control keyboard, typing in the questions.”

“I—” Kate hesitated.

Hazelius arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I’d rather not, Gregory.”

The intense blue eyes studied her, then turned to Ford. “You’ve got nothing else to do. Would you like to ask the questions?”

“I’ll be glad to.”

“What you ask isn’t important—just keep the malware talking. Rae’s going to need a steady output to trace this thing. Don’t get hung up asking long or complicated questions—keep them short. Kate, if Wyman falters or runs out of questions, you be ready to jump in. We can’t waste a second.”

Ford walked over to her workstation. She rose, offered him the seat. He laid a hand on her shoulder. He bent down, as if to examine the screen. “Hello,” he whispered, taking her hand and squeezing it.

“Hi.”

Kate hesitated, and then said, sotto voce, “Promise me, Wyman, that no matter what happens here— no matter what— we’re going to start over again. You and me. Promise me that . . . what happened on our ride out there on the mesa wasn’t just a one-time thing.” Her face was intensely flushed. She bent down to hide it, her black hair hanging down like a curtain.

He gave her hand a squeeze. “I promise.”

Hazelius had finished discussing various details with certain team members, and he returned to the center of the Bridge. He cast his flashing blue eyes across the group. “I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again. We’re sailing into unknown waters. I won’t kid you: what we’re about to do is dangerous. There’s no alternative: our backs are against the wall. We’re going to find this logic bomb and destroy it. Tonight.”

In the long silence that followed, the singing of the machine rose and fell.

“We’re going to be out of touch with the outside world for a few hours,” he said. His fierce eye ranged about the room. “Any questions?”

“Um, I do.” Julie Thibodeaux responded. Her face was slick with sweat, and the dark circles under her eyes seemed almost translucent. Her hair was long and stringy. It shook as she moved.

Hazelius gazed at her. “Yes?”

“I—” She faltered.

Hazelius arched his eyebrows, waiting. She pushed her chair back suddenly and rose. The rollers snagged on the carpet, causing her to stumble. “This is insane,” she said, her voice loud. “We’ve got a warm magnet, an unstable computer, malware— and now we’re going to pump a few hundred megawatts of power into the machine? You’re going to blow the shit out of this whole mountain. You can count me out.”

Hazelius’s glance flickered briefly toward Wardlaw, then back to Thibodeaux.

“I’m afraid it’s too late, Julie.”

“What do you mean, too late?” she yelled. “I’m out of here.”

“The Bunker doors are closed, locked, and sealed. You know the drill.”

“Bullshit. Ford just came in.”

“By previous arrangement. Now, no one can leave until dawn. Not even me. It’s part of the security arrangement.”

“Bullcrap. What if there were a fire, an accident?” She stood defiantly, her body quivering.

“The only person with the security codes who can open the door before dawn is Tony. It’s his decision as SIO. Tony?”

“No one can leave,” said Wardlaw stolidly.

“I refuse to accept that answer,” she said, her voice rising in panic.

“I’m afraid you must,” said Hazelius.

“Tony. I want out, now, goddamn you.” Her voice rode up toward the edge of a scream.

“I’m sorry,” Wardlaw said.

She rushed at him, all five feet three inches of her. He let her come on. She raised her fists and he caught them neatly as she flung herself on him.

“Let me go, you bastard!” She twisted and turned helplessly.

“Easy, now.”

“I’m not going to die for some machine!” She slumped against him and began to sob.

Ford looked on incredulously. “If she wants out, let her out.”

Wardlaw gave him a hostile stare. “It’s against protocol.”

“She’s no security risk. Look at her—she’s falling apart.”

“The rules are there for a reason,” said Wardlaw. “No one leaves Isabella during a run except in the case of a life-threatening emergency.”

Ford turned to Hazelius. “This isn’t right.” He looked around. “Surely the rest of you agree.” But instead of agreement, he saw uncertainty. Fear. “You can’t keep her here against her will.”

Until now he hadn’t realized how much they had fallen under Hazelius’s spell. “Kate?” He turned to her. “You know this is wrong.”

“Wyman, we all signed on to the rules. Even her.”

Hazelius walked over to Thibodeaux and nodded to Wardlaw. The SIO released her into Hazelius’s arms. She tried to break free but he held her, firmly but gently. Her sobs began to subside to whimpers and gulps. He cradled her gently, almost lovingly. She leaned into his chest, crying softly, like a little girl. Hazelius patted and stroked the back of her head and brushed away her tears with a thumb, all the while murmuring into her ear. A few minutes passed and she calmed down.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He patted her, smoothing her hair, running his hands sensually over her plump back. “We need you, Julie. I need you. We can’t do it without you. You know that.”

She nodded, sniffed. “I lost it. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

He held her until she was quiet. When he released her, she stepped back, eyes on the floor.

“Julie, stay here with me. You’ll be safe—I promise.”

She nodded again.

Ford stared after her in amazement, until he noticed Hazelius looking at him with a sad, kind face. “Are we all right now, Wyman?”

Ford met the blue eyes and would not speak.

42

IN HIS TRAILER, PASTOR RUSS EDDY sat in front of the twenty-inch screen on his iMac. The live Webcast of Roundtable America had just ended. Eddy’s brain was afire, his soul burning, the words of Reverend Spates still reverberating in his mind. He, Russell Eddy, was the “devout Christian on-site” who had exposed the Isabella project. “A pastor just like me,” Reverend Spates had said to millions. It was Eddy who had gathered the critical information at great personal risk, guided by the invisible hand of the Lord. These were not normal times. The righteous wrath of the Lord, with all its immense power, was surely coming. Not even the rocks would hide the pagan scientists from the vengeance of the Almighty Lord.

Eddy sat before the quiet blue screen, his mind reeling with the glory of God. The grand design was starting to show its outlines. God’s plan for him. It all started with the death of the Indian, struck down by God’s own hand, a direct sign to Eddy of His coming fury. The end was upon them. “For the great day of His wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand?”

Slowly, Eddy’s consciousness drifted back to the trailer. It was so quiet in the shabby bedroom—as if nothing had happened at all. Yet the world had changed. God’s plan for him stood revealed. But what was the next step? What did God intend him to do?

A sign . . . he needed a sign. He clasped his Bible, his hands trembling with emotion. God would show him what to do.

He laid the book spine down and let it fall open where it would. The well-worn pages whiffled past until almost the end, where they settled flat, open to the book of Revelation. His eye fell randomly on a sentence: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies . . .”

His spine seemed to contract with the chill. The passage was one of the clearest and most unambiguous references to the Antichrist in the entire Bible.

Confirmation.

43

EVEN WITH THE TENSION IN THE room, Ford thought, the run-up to the top of the power spectrum was even duller the second time around. By ten o’clock, Isabella reached 99.5 percent power. Everything was happening as before: the resonance, the hole in space-time, the strange image condensing in the center of the Visualizer. Isabella hummed; the mountain vibrated.

As if on schedule, the Visualizer went blank and the first words appeared.

We speak again.

“Go to it, Wyman,” Hazelius said.

Ford typed, Tell me all about yourself. He could feel Kate leaning over behind him, watching him work.

I can no more explain to you who I am than you could explain to a beetle who you are.

“Rae?” Hazelius asked. “Are you getting it?”

“I’m trolling.”

Try anyway, Ford wrote.

I will explain instead why you cannot understand me.

“George,” said Hazelius, “are you following this?”

“I am,” said Innes, delighted to be consulted. “It’s clever—telling us we won’t understand is a way of avoiding being tripped up by detail.”

Go ahead, typed Ford.

You inhabit a world scaled midway between the Planck length and the diameter of the universe.

“Seems to be a bot program,” said Edelstein, examining the output on a screen. “It copies itself to another location, erases the original and covers its tracks.”

“Yeah,” said Chen, “and I’ve got a bunch of hungry bot-wolves roaming Isabella, looking for it.”

Your brain was exquisitely fine-tuned to manipulate your world—not to comprehend its fundamental reality. You evolved to throw rocks, not quarks.

“I’m on its trail!” Chen cried. She hunched over the keyboard, like a chef over a hot stove, working maniacally. Code was racing by on four flat panels in front of her.

“Main computer’s crashing,” said Edelstein calmly. “Switching control of Isabella over to the backup servers.”

As a result of your evolution, you see the world in fundamentally erroneous ways. For example, you believe yourselves to occupy a three-dimensional space in which separate objects trace smoothly predictable arcs marked by something you call time. This is what you call reality.

“Switchover complete.”

“Cut the power to the main computer.”

“Wait,” said Dolby sharply. “That wasn’t the plan.”

“We want to make sure the malware isn’t in there. Pull the plug, Alan.”

Edelstein smiled coldly and turned back to the computer.

“Jesus Christ, wait—!” Dolby leapt up, but it was too late.

“Done,” Edelstein said, with a sharp rap on the keyboard.

Half the peripheral screens went blank. Dolby stood, swaying, uncertain. A moment went by. Nothing happened. Isabella continued to hum along.

“It worked,” said Edelstein. “Ken, you can relax.”

Dolby flashed him an annoyed look and settled back down to his workstation.

Are you saying, Ford typed, that our reality is an illusion?

Yes. Natural selection has given you the illusion that you understand fundamental reality. But you do not. How could you? Do beetles understand fundamental reality? Do chimpanzees? You are an animal like them. You evolved like them, you reproduce like them, you have the same basic neural structures. You differ from the chimpanzee by a mere two hundred genes. How could that minuscule difference enable you to comprehend the universe when the chimpanzee cannot even comprehend a grain of sand?

“I swear,” Chen cried, “the data’s streaming out of CZero again!”

“Impossible,” said Hazelius. “The malware’s hiding in a detector. Force-quit and restart the detector processors, one at a time.”

“I’ll try.”

If our conversation is to be fruitful, you must abandon all hope of understanding me.

“More clever obfuscation,” said Innes. “It’s basically saying nothing.”

Ford felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Kate asked, “May I take over for a moment?”

He dropped his hands from the keyboard and moved over. Kate sat down.

What are our illusions? she typed.

You evolved to see the world as being made up of discrete objects. That is not so. From the first moment of creation, all was entangled. What you call space and time are merely emergent properties of a deeper underlying reality. In that reality, there is no separateness. There is no time. There is no space. All is one.

Explain, Kate typed.

Your own theory of quantum mechanics, incorrect as it is, touches on the deep truth that the universe is unitary.

All well and good, Kate typed, but how does this matter in our own lives today?

It matters a great deal. You think of yourself as an “individual person,” with a unique and separate mind. You think you are born and you think you die. All your life you feel separate and alone. Sometimes desperately so. You fear death because you fear the loss of individuality. All this is illusion. You, he, she, those things around you living or not, the stars and galaxies, the empty space in between—these are not distinct, separate objects. All is fundamentally entangled. Birth and death, pain and suffering, love and hate, good and evil, are all illusive. They are atavisms of the evolutionary process. They do not exist in reality.

So it’s just like the Buddhists believe, that all is illusion?

Not at all. There is an absolute truth, a reality. But a mere glimpse of this reality would break a human mind.

Suddenly Edelstein, who had abandoned his computer console, appeared behind Ford and Mercer.

“Alan, why are you leaving your station—?” Hazelius began.

“If you’re God,” said Edelstein with a half smile on his face, hands clasped behind his back, strolling along in front of the Visualizer, “let’s dispense with the typing. You should be able to hear me.”

Loud and clear, came the response on the Visualizer.

“We’ve got a hidden mike in here,” said Hazelius. “Melissa, get on it. Hunt it down.”

“You bet.”

Edelstein went on, unperturbed. “You say, ‘all is unitary’? We have a numbering system: one, two, three—and in this way I refute your statement.”

One, two, three . . . Another illusion. There is no enumerability.

“This is mathematical sophistry,” said Edelstein, growing annoyed. “No enumerability—I just disproved it by counting.” He held up his hand. “An-other disproof: I give you the integer five!”

You give me a hand with five fingers, not the integer five. Your number system has no independent existence in the real world. It is nothing more than a sophisticated metaphor.

“I’d like to hear your proof of that ridiculous conjecture.”

Pick a number at random on the real number line: with probability one you have picked a number that has no name, has no definition, and cannot be computed or written down, even if the whole universe were put to the task. This problem extends to allegedly definable numbers such as pi or the square root of two. With a computer the size of the universe running an infinite amount of time, you could not calculate either number exactly. Tell me, Edelstein: How then can such numbers be said to exist? How can the circle or the square, from which these two numbers derive, exist? How can dimensional space exist, then, if it cannot be measured? You, Edelstein, are like a monkey who, with heroic mental effort, has figured out how to count to three. You find four pebbles and think you have discovered infinity.

Ford had lost the thread of the argument, but he was startled to see Edelstein’s face pale, shocked into silence, as if the mathematician had understood something that staggered him.

“Is that so?” cried Hazelius, stepping down from the Bridge and brushing Edelstein aside. He placed himself squarely in front of the screen. “You talk a fine streak, you boast that even the word ‘God’ is inadequate to describe your greatness. All right, then—prove it. Prove you’re God.”

“Don’t,” said Kate. “Don’t ask that.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You just might get what you ask for.”

“Fat chance.” He turned back to the machine. “Did you hear me?Prove you’re God.”

There was a silence, and then the answer appeared on the screen: You construct the proof, Hazelius. But I warn you, this is the last test to which I will submit. We have important business and very little time.

“You asked for it.”

“Wait,” said Kate.

Hazelius turned to her.

“Gregory, if you have to do this, do it right. Make it count . There can’t be any room for doubt or ambiguity. Ask it something that only you know— only you, and no one else in the entire world. Something personal. Your deepest, most private secret. Something only God— the real God— could possibly know.”

“Yes, Kate. That’s quite right.” He thought for a long minute, and then spoke quietly. “All right. I’ve got it.”

Silence.

Everyone had stopped their tasks.

Hazelius turned toward the Visualizer. He spoke calmly and quietly. “My wife, Astrid, was pregnant when she died. We had just found out. Nobody else knew of her pregnancy. Nobody . Here is your test: tell me the name we chose for our child.”

Another silence, filled only by the ethereal singing of the detectors. The screen remained blank. The seconds crawled by.

Hazelius snorted. “Well, that settles it. If anyone had any doubts.”

And then, as if from a great distance, a name swam into focus on the screen.

Albert Leibniz Gund Hazelius, if it was a boy.

Hazelius remained still, his face expressionless. Everyone stared at him, awaiting a denial that did not come.

“And if it was a girl?” Edelstein cried, stepping toward the screen. “What if it was a girl? What would the name have been?”

Rosalind Curie Gund Hazelius.

Ford stared in utter astonishment as Hazelius folded to the floor, as slowly and gently as if he had fallen asleep.

44

BY THE TIME STANTON LOCKWOOD REACHED the Oval Office for the emergency meeting, the president was pacing the center of the room like a caged lion. Roger Morton, his chief of staff, and the ubiquitous campaign chief Gordon Galdone were standing on either side of his pacing ground, like referees. His ever-silent secretary, Jean, clutched her steno book primly. Lockwood was surprised to see the president’s National Security Advisor in video conference, split-screened on a flat panel display with Jack Strand, the Director of the FBI.

“Stanton.” The president came over and grasped his hand. “Glad you could get here at such short notice.”

“Of course, Mr. President.”

“Have a seat.”

Lockwood sat while the president continued to stand. “Stan, I called this little meeting because we’ve got some shit going on down there in Arizona with the Isabella project that Jack’s just brought to my attention. Around eight o’clock Mountain Daylight Time all communications to and from Isabella were cut off. From all of Red Mesa, even. The DOE Offsite Project Manager tried to raise them on the secure lines, by open cell lines, even by regular land-lines. No luck. Isabella is running at full power and it seems the team is below, in the Bunker, totally cut off. The situation was vetted up the ladder and just came to the attention of Director Strand—who informed me.”

Lockwood nodded. This was very strange. There were backup systems to the backup systems. It shouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen.

“Look, it’s probably some glitch,” said the president, “power failure maybe. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it—not at this sensitive time.”

“Sensitive time,” Lockwood knew, was the president’s euphemism for the upcoming election.

The president paced. “And that’s not the only problem.” He turned to his secretary. “Jean? Roll it.”

A screen dropped from the ceiling. Static hissed; then the image of Reverend Don T. Spates filled the screen at his cherrywood roundtable, speaking to an eminence grise. His voice rolled from the sound system like thunder. The segment had been edited down to eight minutes of the high points of the show—sound bullets. When the tape ended, the president stopped pacing and faced Lockwood. “That’s the second problem.”

Lockwood took a deep breath. “Mr. President, I wouldn’t be too concerned. This is crazy stuff. Only the fringe is going to buy this.”

The president turned to his chief of staff. “Roger? Tell him.”

Morton’s spatulate fingers coolly adjusted his tie, his gray eyes on Lockwood. “Before Roundtable America had even ended, the White House had received almost one hundred thousand e-mails. We hit two hundred thousand a half hour ago. I don’t have the latest tally, because the servers crashed.”

Lockwood felt a thrill of horror.

“In all my years in politics,” said the president, “I’ve never seen anything like it. And wouldn’t you know it, right at this very moment the goddamn Isabella project goes silent!”

Lockwood glanced at Galdone, but as usual the lugubrious campaign chief was reserving counsel.

“Could you send someone out there,” Lockwood asked, “to check it out?”

The FBI Director spoke. “We’re considering it. Perhaps a small team . . . in case there’s a . . . situation out there.”

“A situation?”

“It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may be dealing with terrorists or some kind of internal mutiny. A very remote possibility. But we do have to consider it.”

Lockwood felt a spiraling sense of unreality.

“So, Stanton,” said the president, clasping his hands behind his back. “You’re in charge of Isabella. What the hell’s going on?”

Lockwood cleared his throat. “All I can say is, this is extremely unusual. It’s way outside the protocols. I can’t begin to understand it, unless . . .”

“Unless what?” the president asked.

“The scientists deliberately shut down the communications system.”

“How can we find that out?”

Lockwood thought for a moment. “There’s a guy named Bernard Wolf up at Los Alamos. He was the right-hand man to the chief engineer, Ken Dolby, who designed Isabella. He knows the whole layout, the systems, the computers, how it all works together. And he’ll have a full set of blueprints.”

The president turned to his chief of staff. “Get him up and ready to roll.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” Morton sent his assistant scurrying from the room on the task. Morton walked to the window and turned. His face was red, and the veins in his neck pulsed faintly. He looked directly at Lockwood. “For weeks, Stan, I’ve been repeatedly expressing to you my concern about the lack of progress with the Isabella project. What the hell have you been doing?”

Lockwood was stunned by his tone. Nobody had talked to him that way in years. He kept his voice under rigid control. “I’ve been working on it day and night. I even put a man on the inside.”

“A man on the inside? Sweet Jesus. Without running it by me?”

“I authorized it,” said the president sharply. “Let’s stay focused on the problem at hand and stop bickering.”

“What, exactly, is this man supposed to be doing?” said Morton, ignoring the president.

“He’s looking into the delay, trying to figure out what’s behind it.”

“And?”

“I expect results tomorrow.”

“How are you in contact with him?”

“By secure sat phone,” said Lockwood. “Unfortunately, if he’s in the Bunker with the rest, it doesn’t work underground.”

“Try it anyway.”

With a shaking hand, Lockwood wrote the number on a piece of paper and handed it to Jean.

“Put it on speaker,” said Morton.

The phone rang five times, ten, fifteen.

“Enough,” said Morton, staring hard at Lockwood. Then he slowly turned to the president. “Mr. President, may I respectfully suggest that we move this meeting to the Situation Room? Because I have the feeling it’s going to be a long night.”

Lockwood stared at the Great Seal on the carpet. It all seemed so unreal. Was it possible they had gotten to Ford and turned him, too?

45

HAZELIUS LAY SPRAWLED ACROSS THE LINOLEUM floor. Ford rushed over to where he was stretched out and the other members of the team crowded around. Ford knelt and felt the pulse in his neck. It was strong, rapid, and steady. Kate grasped his hand, patting it. “Gregory? Gregory!”

“Get me a flashlight,” said Ford.

Wardlaw handed him a flashlight. Ford thumbed Hazelius’s eyelid open and shined the light in. The pupil contracted strongly.

“Water.”

A styrofoam cup was thrust into his hands. Ford took out his handkerchief, dipped it in the water, and patted it on Hazelius’s face. The scientist’s shoulders moved slightly, and both eyes fluttered open. They darted around, full of alarm and confusion.

“What—?”

“It’s all right,” said Ford. “You just fainted.”

Hazelius stared around uncomprehendingly. Realization crept back into his eyes. He stuggled to sit up.

“Take it easy,” said Ford, gently keeping him down. “Wait for your head to clear.”

Hazelius lay back, staring at the ceiling. “Oh my God,” he groaned. “This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.”

The smell of hot electronics hung heavy in the stifling atmosphere. Isabella moaned, the sound coming from all directions, as if the mountain itself were keening.

“Help me into my chair,” Hazelius gasped.

Kate took one arm, Ford took the other, and they helped him to his feet and walked him to the center of the Bridge, letting him settle into the captain’s chair.

Hazelius steadied himself on the arms of the chair and looked around. Ford had never seen his eyes such an eerie blue.

Edelstein spoke fiercely. “Is it true? The names? I must know.”

Hazelius nodded.

“There’s an explanation, of course.”

Hazelius shook his head.

“Obviously, you told someone,” Edelstein said. “Someone found out.”

“No.”

“The doctor who gave your wife the news. He learned the names.”

“It was a home kit,” Hazelius said hoarsely. “We only found out . . . an hour before she died.”

“She called someone. Her mother, perhaps.”

Again, a vigorous shake of the head. “Impossible. I was with her the whole time. We did the test and talked about the names. That was it. Sixty minutes. We didn’t go anywhere, we didn’t talk to anyone. She was so happy. That’s what burst the aneurysm—the sudden rush of happiness from the news spiked her blood pressure. Cerebral hemorrhage.”

“There’s a fraud in here somewhere,” said Edelstein.

Chen shook her head, setting her long black hair awhirl. “Alan, the data is coming out of that hole in space-time. It’s not coming from anywhere in the system. I traced it once, I traced it again, I force-quit the processors in each detector, I did every test I could think of. It’s real.”

Hazelius drew a shuddering breath. “It knew my thoughts. Just like it knew Kate’s. There’s no getting around it, Alan. There’s no way it could have guessed. Whatever it is, it knows our innermost thoughts. ”

Nobody moved. Ford tried to wrap his mind around it, find a rational explanation. Edelstein was right: it had to be some kind of deception.

When Hazelius spoke again, his voice was calm, matter-of-fact. “The machine’s running unattended. All of you, back to your stations.”

“We aren’t . . . going to power down?” Julie Thibodeaux asked, her voice quavering.

“Absolutely not.”

Isabella continued to hum on autopilot with the immense flow of power. The screens hissed with snow. The detectors sang their strange song. The electronics crackled—as if the tension of the scientists had infected the computer and taken the machine itself to the edge.

“Alan, get back on the p5s, keep everything steady. Kate, I want you to do some calculations on the geometry of that space-time hole. Where does it go? What does it open into? Melissa, I want you to work with Kate and get on that data cloud. Analyze it at all frequencies—find out what the hell it is.”

“What about the malware?” Dolby asked, as if unable to comprehend what had happened.

“Ken, don’t you get it? There is no malware.”

Dolby looked stupefied. “You think it’s . . . God?”

Hazelius returned the man’s look with an unreadable gaze of his own. “I think Isabella’s in communication with something real. Whether it’s actually God—whatever the hell that word means—we don’t have enough data yet. And that’s why we have to keep going.”

Ford looked around. The shock of what had happened was still sinking in. Wardlaw’s face was dripping sweat. Kate and St. Vincent looked pale as death.

He took Kate’s hand. “Are you all right?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

Hazelius spoke to Dolby. “How long can we keep it going?”

“It’s dangerous to keep running at full power.”

“I didn’t ask you if it was dangerous. I asked you how long.”

“Two, three hours.”

“Wait,” said Innes, “Let’s not be rash. We need to stop and consider what’s happened here. This is . . . unprecedented.”

Hazelius faced Innes. “George, if God spoke to you, would you turn and walk away?”

“Come now, Gregory! You can’t seriously believe we’re speaking to God!”

“I merely asked if.”

“I refuse to answer absurd hypotheticals.”

“George, if we’ve made contact with some kind of universal intelligence, we can’t turn away. Because the opportunity is here. It’s now. It won’t last.”

“This is crazy,” said Innes weakly.

“No, George, it isn’t crazy. The thing gave us the proof we asked for. Twice. It may be God, it may be something else. I don’t know. What I do know is: I’m riding this train to the last station.” He looked around fiercely. “What about it? Are you all with me?”

The singing of Isabella filled the room. The screens flickered. Nobody spoke. But Ford could see the yes in all their faces.

46

IN THE BACK BEDROOM OF HIS Oakwood, Pastor Russell Eddy closed his Bible and placed it on one of the tottering heaps of books stacked on his desk. He shoved the piles of books away from his sleeping Mac, clearing himself a space to work. Then he woke the machine up, the monitor bathing the room in cool blue. It was nine o’clock in the evening.

His head felt clearer than it had ever felt before. God had answered his prayers. God had told him exactly what he must do.

For a few minutes, he stared at the empty screen, collecting his thoughts. Outwardly his body was still. Inwardly his heart pounded with the zeal of the Holy Spirit. There was a reason he had ended up running a shabby mission church at the edge of the world. There was a reason why Lorenzo had died. Russell Eddy had been placed here as God’s sentry. God had selected him to play a crucial role in the coming End of Days.

For a half hour he sat very still, thinking intensively about the letter he must write. His mind remained preternaturally clear and sharp as he composed the letter, word by word, in his head.

He was ready. He bowed his head, uttered a short prayer, and placed his fingers on the computer keyboard.

My Friends in Christ,

Many of you watched the show Roundtable America earlier tonight, hosted by the Reverend Don T. Spates. You heard him speak of the Isabella project. You heard Rev. Spates mention a secret source, a “devout Christian on-site” from whom he got his information.

I am that secret source. God has asked me to reveal to you what I know. What you do with it is between you and the Lord.

My name is Russell Eddy, pastor of the Gathered in Thy Name Mission on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Ours is a very simple and remote Christian mission located in the desert of Arizona at the foot of Red Mesa, not ten miles from the Isabella project.

My friends, I bring you news—extraordinary, terrifying, yet joyous news. The event for which Christians have been waiting for two thousand years is happening, right now, even as I write this e-mail.

The End Days have arrived. The Apocalypse and Rapture are at hand, now, this very night. You read about it in the Left Behind series. Well, now it’s no longer fiction. It’s happening. For real.

I know many of you have heard claims like this before. Many false prophets have made this very claim in the past. You are skeptical, and rightly so. All I ask is that you hear me out. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

Don’t make the mistake of deleting this e-mail. By doing so, you may forfeit your place at the right hand of Jesus Christ on the Day of Judgment. Read what I have to say. Pray. Then decide.

I begin with two announcements. The first is this: the Antichrist is here amongst us. I have met him. I have spoken to him. He is real. His long-laid schemes and plans have reached fruition. As God is my witness, right in front of me he took off his mask and revealed himself.

My second announcement is even more important: The Apocalypse is now. It begins this very night.

Naturally, you are skeptical. You say, right now? The Apocalypse? With my kids upstairs, sleeping? With my wife in bed? Impossible! But consider what the Apostle Matthew said: “In such an hour as you think not, the Son of man cometh.” This is that hour. It is here. Now.

And now I will give you proof of what I say. The key is Revelation 13:1 and nearby passages.

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

The “sand of the sea” is the Arizona desert. Isabella is exactly seven leagues in diameter. Isabella has ten different detectors, each one recording ten different particles. Some of the detectors are actually called “horns.” If you think I’m making this up, check the Isabella Web site, www.theisabellaproject.org. It’s all there.

“The dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.”

And who is the Antichrist running the show? He is a man named Gregory North Hazelius. He is the one who proposed the Isabella project, who got the money for it, and who now leads the team. The New York Times calls Hazelius the “smartest man on earth.” Hazelius himself has made many boasts. He once said “everyone is beneath me intellectually” and called human beings a “race of morons.” That’s right, my friends. But now his true nature is revealed: Gregory North Hazelius is the Antichrist. You doubt me? I met him. I spoke to him, face-to-face. I listened to his blasphemy, his vomiting of bile about our Savior. I listened to him curse Christians as “insects” and “bacteria.” But don’t believe me: believe the Bible. Here’s more from Revelation 13.

“And they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies . . . . And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.”

As you heard on Roundtable America, the Isabella machine is claiming to be God. But they’re not talking to God, my friends. They’re talking to Satan.

“Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Satan is backed into a corner. He’s making his last stand — and he’s never been more dangerous.

You may ask: Where’s the proof? Listen, and you shall hear.

Consider this statement, which I have taken directly from the Isabella project Web site: “Running at full power, Isabella re-creates at CZero the temperature of the universe as it was in the first millionth of a second of the Big Bang, a temperature of over one trillion degrees Fahrenheit.” And now consider Revelation 13:13.

“And he [the beast] doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”

Once again is the prophecy of the Apostle John fulfilled.

Here’s another statement from the Isabella project Web site: “The supercomputer controlling Isabella is the most powerful calculating machine on the planet. It runs at a top speed of fifteen petaflops (fifteen quadrillion calculations per second). This is finally closing in on the estimated speed of the human brain.” Now compare this to Revelation:

“And he [the Antichrist] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”

Are you willing to go to bed tonight, knowing the Antichrist will kill you?

Finally, my friends, I give you the ultimate passage in Revelation, the one that lies at the very heart of the vision of the Apostle John:

“Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

This is how the Bible tells us we will recognize the Antichrist—by the number 666. The first language of the Apostle John was Hebrew. He knew that every Hebrew letter has a numeric equivalent. Gematria is the process of looking for hidden numbers in a Hebrew name or text. So let’s see what happens when we apply gematria to Isabella and its location, Arizona. If we turn the Roman letters into their Hebrew equivalents and assign each Hebrew letter its proper number, we get:

Still don’t believe me? Consider this:

My friends, is this not the proof we have been waiting for?

Now, consider this passage from Revelation:

“And he gathered them together in a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”

Armageddon is where Satan makes his last stand against God’s appointed King, Jesus. The word Armageddon is derived from the Hebrew words Har Megido, meaning “Mountain of Megido.” But this “Mountain” has never been found in the Holy Land and the word “Megido” is really only an ancient form of the Hebrew word for reddish-colored earth. So you see that the word “Armageddon” in Revelation actually refers to a place called “Red Mountain.” My friends, the Isabella project is situated on a place called Red Mesa in Arizona. The Navajo Indians call it Dzilth Chíí, which in the Navajo language literally means “Red Mountain”—Armageddon.

These are the proofs, my friends. And now the ball is in your court. What will you do with this information? The ultimate moment in your life as a Christian has just happened, RIGHT NOW, as you read this e-mail.

WHAT WILL YOU DO?

Will you stay at home? Will you hesitate, wondering if I am just another nutcase? Will you remain seated at your computer, not knowing where Red Mesa is or how to get there in the middle of the night? Will you decide to put it off until tomorrow? Will you wait for proof, for a sign?

Or will you answer the call right now and become a foot soldier in the Army of God? Will you drop everything right now, will you rise from your computer right now, leave your home, and come to Red Mesa to join me in “ the battle of that great day of God Almighty”? Will you fight alongside me right now, shoulder to shoulder, brothers in Christ, in the final battle against Satan and his Antichrist? THE CHOICE IS YOURS. In Christ,Pastor Russ EddyGathered in Thy Name MissionBlue Gap, ArizonaThis original e-mail was sent Sept. 14, at 9:37 p.m. MDT.POST AND FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR CHRISTIAN FRIENDS — THEN COME TO RED MESA AND JOIN ME!

When Eddy finished, he sat back in a sweat, his hands trembling. He didn’t even read it over. God had been guiding his hand, and that meant it was perfect.

He went to the subject line and typed in:Red Mesa = Armageddon

He checked the list of e-mail addresses he’d been developing in hopes of raising money for the mission. He’d culled some from churches and Christian mailing lists; others were contacts from Christian bulletin boards, newsgroups, chat rooms, and Usenet discussion sites.

Two thousand one hundred and sixteen names. Of course, most wouldn’t respond. That’s what the Bible said would happen— “Many are called, but few are chosen.” But two thousand was a start. Of those, a few dozen might forward the e-mail and make the journey to Red Mesa. A few hundred might respond to the next round, and a few thousand to the next. The letter would be posted at hundreds of Christian Web sites. Christian bloggers would pick it up; and in that way the message would grow. Eddy had spent enough time on the Internet to know that the mathematics were in his favor.

He pasted his entire address book into the To: field and moved the cursor to the little paper airplane button. He took a deep breath, then clicked the mouse. With a whoosh! the e-mail blasted into the electronic ether at the speed of light.

It is done.

He sat back, trembling. All was silent. But the world was changed.

He remained seated for five minutes. And then, his breathing under control, he rose, steadying himself. After a long hesitation he fished the keys out of his pocket and unlocked the filing cabinet next to his desk and took out the Ruger .44 Magnum Blackhawk revolver his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. It was a limited edition, Old West replica gun, but updated and reliable. He had spent a few days at the firing range with it many years ago, and he had always kept it well oiled and in good working order.

Eddy had no illusions. This was going to be war— real war.

He loaded the revolver with Remington 240-grain jacketed soft points. He put the gun and two boxes of extra rounds into a knapsack, added a water bottle, a flashlight, extra batteries, binoculars, his Bible, a notebook and pencil. He hunted down the spare fuel bottle he kept filled with kerosene in case of blackouts. That went in, too.

He slung the knapsack over his shoulder, stepped out into the night air, and looked up at Red Mesa, a dark mass silhouetted against the night sky. A single, faint light marked the Isabella project, perched at the edge of the dark island of stone.

He tossed his knapsack into the cab of the pickup and got in beside it. He had barely enough gas to reach the top of the mesa. But why would that matter? God, who had led him this far, would bring him home and reunify him with his children, if not in this earthly life, then in the one to come.

47

“EVERYONE, BACK TO YOUR PLACES,” HAZELIUS ordered, his voice gaining strength. He turned toward the Visualizer and spoke to it. “All right, let’s start again from the top. What the hell are you—really?”

Ford stared at the screen, transfixed, waiting for the answer to appear. He felt himself being drawn in almost against his will.

For reasons I have already explained, you cannot know what I am. The word “God” comes close, but it remains a highly impoverished description.

“Are you part of the universe, or separate from it?” Hazelius asked.

There is no separateness. We are all one.

“Why does the universe exist?”

The universe exists because it is simpler than nothing. That is also why I exist. The universe cannot be simpler than it is. This is the physical law from which all others flow.

“What could be simpler than nothing?” Ford asked.

“Nothing” cannot exist. It is an immediate paradox. The universe is the state closest to nothing.

“If everything is so simple,” Edelstein asked, “why is the universe so complex?”

The intricate universe you see is an emergent property of its simplicity.

“So what is this profound simplicity at the heart of everything?” Edelstein asked.

That is the reality that would break your mind.

“This is getting tiresome!” Edelstein cried. “If you’re so smart, you should be able to explain it to us poor, benighted human beings! Do you mean to say that we’re so ignorant of reality that our physical laws are a sham?”

You constructed your physical laws on the assumption of the existence of time and space. All your laws are based on frames of reference. This is invalid. Soon your cherished assumptions about the real world will crash and burn. From the ashes you will build a new kind of science.

“If our physical laws are false, how is it that our science is so spectacularly successful?”

Newton’s laws of motion, while false, were adequate to send people to the moon. Just so with your laws: they are workable approximations that are fundamentally incorrect.

“So how do you construct the laws of physics without time and space?”

We are wasting time bandying about metaphysical concepts.

“So what should we be discussing?” Hazelius asked, cutting off Edelstein.

The reason I have come to you.

“What is that?”

I have a task for you.

The singing sound of Isabella yawed suddenly, like a Doppler-shifted train going by. There was a rumble somewhere in the mountain, a vibration of the very backbone of the mesa. The screen flickered and a hiss of snow whipped across it, obliterating the words.

“Shit,” breathed Dolby. “Shit.” He struggled to adjust the software controls, his fingers pounding the keyboard.

“What the hell’s happening?” Hazelius cried.

“Decollimation of the beam,” Dolby said. “Harlan, damn it, you have power-flow alarms going off! Alan! Get back on your servers! What the hell are all of you doing standing around, for chrissakes!”

“Back to your stations!” Hazelius said.

Another rumble shook the Bunker. Everyone rushed back to their workstations. A new message hung on the screen, unread.

“Stabilizing,” St. Vincent said.

“Collimated again,” said Dolby. A sweat stain was spreading across the back of his T-shirt.

“Alan, the servers?”

“Under control.”

“What about the magnet?” asked Hazelius.

“Surviving” said Dolby, “but we don’t have much longer. That was damn close.”

“Well, then.” Hazelilus turned back to the Visualizer. “Why don’t you tell us what this task is?”

48

THE PICKUP RAN OUT OF GAS just beyond the top of the Dugway. Eddy used the last bit of momentum to coast off the road into the sagebrush, where the truck came to a bumpy halt. Above the skeletons of the piñons, a faint glow of light in the night sky marked the Isabella project, three miles to the east.

He climbed out of the truck, pulled out his knapsack, shrugged into it, and began walking down the road. The moon had not yet risen. While he could see the stars from his trailer, tonight, on top of the mesa, they seemed unnaturally bright, pools and swirls of phosphorescence that filled the dome of the sky. In the distance, faintly silhouetted against the firmament, a line of high-tension towers headed for Isabella.

He could feel every thump of his heart. He could hear the blood singing in his ears. He had never felt so alive. He hiked at a rapid pace, and in twenty minutes he had reached the turnoff to the old Nakai Rock Trading Post. Here he paused, and then decided to scout out the valley. In a few minutes he had reached the edges of the bluffs where the road dropped down into the valley. He focused his binoculars on the settlement.

A large tipi sat in the middle of the field, aglow from the flickering light of a fire inside. Nearby stood a helter-skelter structure, a dome of branches leaning together, covered with canvas tarps held down with rocks. Beyond it, a bonfire was burning down to coals, exposing inside a pile of cherry-red rocks.

He had seen this before: a Navajo sweat lodge.

The faint sounds of chanting and a rapidly beating drum drifted up on the dry, quiet air. How odd. The Navajos were having a ceremony. Had they sensed it, too—this great and powerful thing that was about to happen? Had they felt the coming wrath of God? But they were idolaters, worshipping false gods. He shook his head in sadness: “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

The sweat lodge and the tipi were one more sign that the End Days were fully come, that the devil walked among them.

Aside from the Navajos, the valley looked deserted, the scattered houses dark. Eddy looped around and bypassed the settlement, and in another ten minutes he came to the airstrip. Deserted, too, were the hangars against the night sky. The Antichrist and his disciples had gathered at Isabella, deep down in the mountain—he was sure of that.

He approached the chain-link fence around the security area, taking care not to get close enough to set off the alarms he assumed were there. It gleamed in the harsh sodium lights that illuminated the area. The elevator down to Isabella stood a few hundred yards away, a tall, ugly, windowless building topped with clusters of antennae and satellite dishes. He could feel the ground vibrate from deep within; he could hear the hum of Isabella. “And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon.”

His mind and spirit burned, as if in a fever. He looked up at the hulking steel towers that brought in the electricity to run the machine, and his flesh crawled. They could have been the devil’s very own army, striding through the night. The high-tension wires crackled and hummed like hair charged with static. He reached into his bag and grasped the warm leather of his Bible, feeling its reassuring solidity. Bracing himself with a short prayer, he walked toward the nearest tower, a few hundred yards away.

He stopped beneath the tower. The gigantic struts disappeared upward into the night, visible only by the lines of blackness they painted across the stars. The power lines spit and hissed like serpents, the sound mingling with the moaning of the wind through the struts, a symphony of the damned. Eddy shivered to the roots of his soul.

The phrase from Revelation came into his mind again: “ . . . to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” They would be coming—he was sure of that. They would answer his appeal. He needed to be ready. He needed a plan.

He began scouting the area, making notes of the topography and terrain, the roads, access points, fences, towers, other structures.

Above him, the high-tension lines hissed and spit. The stars winked. The earth turned. Russell Eddy moved through the dark, for the first time in his life supremely sure of himself.

49

LOCKWOOD WAS SURPRISED AT HOW SHABBY and bare-bones-functional the White House Situation Room was. It smelled like a basement rec room that needed airing out. The walls were painted ochre. A mahogany table dominated the center, with microphones strung down the middle. Flat-panel screens lined the walls. Chairs lined the two long walls, shoulder to shoulder.

The ugly, institutional clock at the end of the table read midnight, exactly.

The president strode in, looking crisp in his gray suit and mauve tie, white hair swept back. He turned to the Navy rating who evidently ran the electronics. “I want you to patch in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, my National Security Advisor, DDHS, DFBI, and DCI.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Oh, and don’t forget the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee so he won’t bitch later about being out of the loop.”

He took a seat at the head of the table. Roger Morton, the chief of staff, patrician and cautious, took the seat to his right. Gordon Galdone, the campaign manager, as large and disheveled as an unmade bed, wearing a brown Wal-Mart suit, took the seat on the other side of the president. Jean occupied a chair against the wall in the corner, behind the president, primly perched with her steno pad at the ready.

“Let’s just go ahead—the others will join us when they join us.”

“Yes sir.”

Some of the flat panels were already lighting up with attendees. Jack Strand, the FBI director, was the first. He sat in his office over in Quantico, a giant FBI seal behind him, his square-jawed cop’s face touched with old acne scars staring relentlessly into the screen—a man to inspire confidence, or at least trying to.

The Secretary of DOE, a man named Hall, popped up next from his office on Independence Avenue, the man ostensibly in charge of Isabella. But he had never taken control—he was a genial delegator—and now he was a mess, his plump face covered with a sheen of sweat, his light blue tie knotted so tight it looked like he’d just tried to hang himself with it.

“All right,” said the President, clasping his hands on the table in front. “Secretary Hall, you’re the man in charge, what the hell’s going on out there?”

“I’m sorry,” Hall stammered, “Mr. President, I have no idea. This is unprecedented. I don’t know what to say—”

The president cut him off, turning to Lockwood. “Who was the last to be in contact with the Isabella team? Stan, do you know?”

“It was probably me. I spoke to my inside man at seven MDT, and he said everything was fine. He said a run was planned and that he’d go down and join them at eight. He gave no indication that anything was out of the ordinary.”

“Got any theories about what’s going on?”

Lockwood’s mind had been racing through the possibilities, none of which made sense. He controlled the panic welling inside, keeping his voice steady and calm. “I’m not sure I’ve got a clear handle on it.”

“Could we be dealing with some kind of internal mutiny? Sabotage?”

“It’s possible.”

The President turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sitting in his office in the Pentagon, wearing his rumpled field uniform. “General, you’re in charge of the rapid response units, where’s the closest one?”

“Nellis AFB, in Nevada.”

“National Guard Unit?”

“Flagstaff.”

“FBI? Where’s the closest field office?”

Jack Strand, the FBI Director, answered from his screen. “Also Flagstaff.”

The president thought, his brow furrowed, tapping his finger on the table. “General, have them send out the closest chopper to investigate.”

At this, Gordon Galdone, the campaign chief, shifted his bulk, sighed, and pressed a finger to his soft lips.

The oracle speaks, thought Lockwood sourly.

“Mr. President?” The man had an orotund voice, not unlike Orson Welles in his obese years.

“Yes, Gordon?”

“May I point out that this is not just a scientific or even military problem? It’s a political problem. For weeks the press and others have been asking why Isabella isn’t online. The Times ran an editorial last week. Four days ago a scientist committed suicide. We’ve got a firestorm among the Christian fundamentalists. Now the scientists won’t answer their telephones. On top of that, we have a science adviser who is freelancing as a spy.”

“Gordon, I approved it,” said the president.

Galdone continued unperturbed. “Mr. President, we are heading into a public relations disaster. You supported the Isabella project. You’re identified with it. You’re going to take a big hit—unless we solve this problem right away. Sending out a chopper to investigate is too little, too late. It’ll take all night and things will still be a mess in the morning. God help us when the media gets hold of this.”

“So what do you propose, Gordon?”

“To fix the problem by tomorrow morning.”

“How?”

“Send in a teamequipped to take control of Isabella and shut it down—and escort the scientists off the premises.”

“Just a minute,” the president said. “The Isabella project is the best thing I’ve done. I’ll be damned if I’ll shut it down!”

“You shut it down or it will shut you down.”

Lockwood was shocked to hear an adviser address the president so rudely.

Morton spoke. “Mr. President, I agree with Gordon. We’re less than two months from the election. We don’t have the luxury of time. We’ve got to shut down the Isabella project tonight. We can sort it all out later.”

“We don’t even know what the hell’s going on out there,” the president said. “How do you know we’re not dealing with some kind of terrorist attack or hostage situation?”

“Perhaps we are,” said Morton.

A silence. The president turned to his National Security Advisor, on a flat panel. “You got a hint of something going down anywhere in national intelligence?”

“Nothing that we’re aware of, Mr. President.”

“All right, let’s send in a team. Armed and ready for any level of conflict. But no big mobilization, nothing that would alert the press or make us look stupid later. A small, elite, SWAT-type team, highly trained—to get in there, secure the damn place, shut it down, and escort the scientists out. The operation to be completed by dawn.” He sat back. “Okay: Who can do it?”

The Director of the FBI spoke. “The Rocky Mountain Hostage Rescue Team is based in Denver, less than four hundred miles from the Isabella project. Eleven highly capable men, all ex-Delta, specifically trained to operate on American soil.”

“Yes, but here at the CIA—,” began the DCI.

“Great.” The president cut him off and turned to Lockwood. “Stan? What do you think?”

Lockwood struggled to keep his voice calm. “Mr. President, in my opinion this talk of a commando raid is premature. I strongly agree with what you said earlier—we should find out what’s going on first. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Send a helicopter out there with some people to knock on the door, so to speak.”

Morton spoke in a crisp voice. “Tomorrow morning, every TV news station in the country will be out there. We’ll be operating under a media microscope. Our freedom of action will be gone. If for some reason the scientists have barricaded themselves in there, it could be Waco all over again.”

“Waco?” repeated Lockwood incredulously. “We’re talking about twelve eminent scientists here led by a Nobel laureate. These are not a bunch of crazy cultists!”

The chief of staff turned to the president. “Mr. President, I can’t emphasize strongly enough that this operation must be completed without fail by dawn. Everything will change when the media arrive. We don’t have time to send someone out there to ‘knock on doors.’ ” His voice rose with sarcasm.

“I absolutely concur,” said Galdone.

“No alternative?” asked the president quietly.

“None.”

Lockwood swallowed. He felt sick. He had lost the argument and now he would be forced to participate in the shutting down of Isabella. “The operation you propose may present some difficulties.”

“Explain.”

“You can’t just cut power to Isabella. It could cause an explosion. The power flows are tricky and can only be controlled from within, by the computer. If for some reason the scientific team inside isn’t . . . cooperating, you’ll need to have someone along who can shut down Isabella safely.”

“Who do you recommend?”

“That same man I mentioned earlier up at Los Alamos, Bernard Wolf.”

“We’ll send a chopper to fetch him. How about getting in?”

“The access door to the Bunker is hardened against external attack. All the forced air systems are highly secure. If the team won’t or can’t open the front doors, it may be difficult to reach them.”

“There’s no security override?”

“DHS felt an override might allow a point of entry for terrorists.”

“How do we get in, then?”

God, how he hated this. “The best way would be straight in through the front door, with explosives. It’s halfway down a sheer cliff. There’s a large staging area in front, but much of it’s recessed under the cliff and I’m sure you couldn’t land a military helicopter in there. You’ll have to land the team on top and rappel down, then breach the door. I’m describing a worst-case scenario. The scientists will probably just let the team in.”

“How’d they get heavy equipment in there if there’s no road?”

“They used the old coal-mine road, then dynamited it off the side of the mountainside when Isabella was complete. Again—security.”

“I see. Tell me more about this entry door.”

“It’s a titanium honeycomb composite. Very hard to cut. Explosives would be the way to go.”

“Get me the specs on it. And then?”

“Inside, there’s a big cavern. Straight ahead is the Isabella tunnel. To the left is the control room, which we call the Bridge. Its door is one-inch stainless steel, a final defense against entry. I’ll get you the blueprints.”

“That’s it for security?”

“That’s it.”

“Are they armed?”

“The SIO, Wardlaw, carries a sidearm. No other firearms are allowed.”

Morton turned to the president. “Mr. President, we need your order to go ahead with this operation.”

Lockwood watched as the president hesitated, glanced at him, then looked over to the FBI Director. “Send in the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Get the scientists out of the mountain and shut Isabella down.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

The chief of staff slapped his briefing file shut with a smack, the sound like a slap to Lockwood’s face.

50

A WHINING SINGSONG KEENED THROUGH THE BUNKER. The screen flickered. Ford stood rooted before the Visualizer, Kate beside him. Somehow, he didn’t remember when her hand had found his.

In response to Hazelius’s question, more words appeared on the screen.

The great monotheistic religions were a necessary stage in the development of human culture. Your task is to guide the human race to the next belief system.

“Which is?”

Science.

That’s ridiculous—science can’t be a religion!“ said Hazelius.

You have already started a new religion—only you refuse to see it. Religion was once a way to make sense of the world. Science has now taken over this role.

“Science and religion are two different things,” Ford broke in. “They ask different questions and require different kinds of evidence.”

Science and religion both seek the same thing: truth. There can be no reconciliation between the two. The collision of worldviews is well under way and worsening. Science has already refuted most of the core beliefs of the world’s historical religions, bringing those religions into a state of turmoil. Your task is to help humanity chart a path through the crisis.

“Oh, please!” Edelstein cried. “You think the fanatics in the Middle East—or the Bible Belt, for that matter—are going to roll over and accept science as the new religion? That’s crazy.”

You will offer the world my words and the story of what happened here. Do not underestimate my power—the power of truth.

“Where are we supposed to be going with this new religion? What’s the point of it? Who needs it?” Hazelius asked.

The immediate goal of humankind is to escape the limits of biochemistry. You must free your mind from the meat of your bodies.

“The meat? I don’t understand,” said Hazelius.

Meat. Nerves. Cells. Biochemistry. The medium by which you think. You must free your mind from the meat.

“How?”

You have already begun to process information beyond your meat existence through computers. You will soon find a way to process it using quantum-state computing machines, which will lead you to harness the natural quantum processes in the world around you as a means of computation. No longer will you need to build machines to process information. You will expand into the universe, literally and figuratively, as other intelligent entities have expanded before you. You will escape the prison of biological intelligence.

“Then what?”

Over time, you will link up with other expanded intelligences. All these linked intelligences will discover a way to merge into a third stage of mind that will comprehend the simple reality that is at the heart of existence.

“And that’s it? That’s what it’s all about?” Kate asked.

No. That is merely a prelude to a greater task.

The Visualizer flickered, lines of snow shooting across. Dolby labored at his workstation, hunkered down and silent. The words rippled, as if reflected in black water.

“Which is what?” Hazelius finally asked.

Arresting the heat death of the universe.

Ford felt Kate’s hand instinctively tighten around his.

51

BOOKER CRAWLEY TOOK THE CUP OF coffee into his study and settled in his chair in front of the TV. Once again he picked up the remote and flipped through the news stations. Nothing. There didn’t seem to be any blowback from the wild accusations Spates had made on his show. Still, Crawley couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to happen. He glanced at the clock. It was thirty minutes past one, eastern daylight time—eleven thirty in Arizona. Or was it ten thirty?

He exhaled and swallowed a bitter mouthful of coffee. He was getting worked up over nothing. So far everything had gone as planned, and Spates’s show, even if it was nutty, was sure to scare the crap out of the Navajo Tribal Council.

That thought made him feel better.

Still . . . It wouldn’t hurt to check in with Spates and find out where the hell he had gotten that crazy information about Isabella claiming it was God.

He dialed Spates’s office number first, on the off chance he might still be at work. Surprisingly, the line was busy. No voice mail, just busy. He waited several minutes and dialed again, then again, still without getting through.

Probably out of order.

He dialed Spates’s cell number next, and got routed immediately to his voice mail. “You have reached the voice mailbox of Reverend Don T. Spates,” a pleasant female voice said. “The mailbox is currently full. Please try later.”

Crawley dialed the reverend’s home phone. It, too, was busy.

Christ, it was stuffy in the study. He walked to the window, unlatched it, and slid it open. A stream of night air, fresh and lovely, washed in, swelling the lace curtains. He took a few deep breaths. He told himself again there was no reason for alarm. He sipped his coffee while staring into the darkened street, wondering what exactly had him spooked. A busy phone?

The reverend would have a Web site. Maybe there would be information posted there.

He sat down at his desk, booted up his laptop, and Googled:

Spates God’s Prime Time

The first hit was indeed the televangelist’s official Web site, www .godsprimetime.com. He clicked on the link and waited.

After a frustrating minute, an error message appeared. BANDWIDTH IMIT XCEEDED The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching bandwidth limit. Please try again later. Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.godsprimetime.com Port 80

His uneasiness climbed a notch. Busy phones, server down . . . Could Spates’s Web site be under a denial-of-service attack? Maybe other Christian sites would have posted something.

He Googled:

Isabella God Spates

A bunch of unfamiliar Christian Web sites came up, with names like jesus-is-savior.com, raptureready.com, antichrist.com. He clicked on a link at random and immediately it opened to a document.

My Friends in Christ,Many of you watched the show Roundtable America earlier tonight, hosted by the Reverend Don T. Spates . . .

Crawley read the letter once. He read it again. A faint chill crawled up his spine. So this was Spates’s source, a nutcase pastor out there in Navajoland. The note at the bottom indicated the crazy pastor had sent the letter just a few hours ago. From the list of hits it seemed to have been posted at a fair number of Web sites.

How many? There was a way to find out. He Googled the first sentence of the letter, enclosing it in quotation marks to retrieve only Web sites that had posted the exact text. A split second later the list of hits came up. The standard notation at the top indicated how many:Results 1–10 of about 56,500 for “Many of you watched the show Roundtable America earlier tonight, hosted by the Reverend Don T. Spates”

For a long time Crawley sat in the silent Georgetown study. Could it be true that the letter had already been posted to over fifty thousand Web sites? Unthinkable. He breathed in and out, steadying himself. If his role behind Spates’s attack on the Isabella project should become known, he’d fall harder than his old pal Jack Abramoff. The problem was, when he got down to it, he really didn’t know much about Spates and his evangelical orbit. Crawley felt like a man who’d casually thrown a rock into a dark place and now could hear dozens of buzzing rattlesnakes. He rose again, walked to the window. Outside, Georgetown slept. The street was empty. The world was at peace.

As he stood, he heard his computer chime, indicating he had received an e-mail. He walked back to check it out. A little window popped up to give him the subject heading:

Fwd:Fwd: Red Mesa = Armageddon

He opened it up, began reading, and was shocked to find it was the exact same letter he had just read. Did someone know about his contact with Spates? Was this some kind of veiled threat? Had Spates sent this to him? But when he looked at the vast header over the e-mail, listing dozens of e-mail addresses, he realized he had not been singled out. Nor did he recognize the address of the sender. This was a scattershot e-mail, viral marketing as it were. Viral marketing for Armageddon. And it had come into his mailbox by chance.

As he read the letter again in disbelief, trying to guess the probability of his getting that particular e-mail at that particular moment, his mail program chimed again and another e-mail appeared. It had the same subject heading — almost.

Fwd:Fwd:Fwd:Fwd: Red Mesa = Armageddon

Booker Crawley grasped the arms of his chair and rose unsteadily. As he made his way across the study, the computer chimed again, and again, as more e-mails hit it. He staggered into the bathroom at the far end of his study. Gripping the edge of the sink with one hand and holding his tie back with the other, he vomited.

52

BERN WOLF HUNKERED DOWN IN THE bay of the chopper, chewing nervously on a cud of gum and watching eleven heavily armed men dressed in black climb on board and settle silently into their seats. The only insignia on their uniforms was a small FBI shield on the breast. Wolf felt uncomfortable in his camouflage gear, flac jacket and helmet. He tried without success to adjust his gangly limbs into something reminiscent of comfort, shifted irritably, and crossed his arms. His ponytail stuck out from under the helmet and he didn’t have to see himself in a mirror to know it looked ridiculous. His head was sweating and his ears rang from the first leg of the flight.

Once the men had buckled in, the helicopter took off, rising into the night sky, turned, and accelerated. A gibbous moon had risen, bathing the desert landscape below in a silvery sheen.

Wolf chewed and chewed. What the hell was going on? He’d been roused out of his house without explanation, dragged out to the Los Alamos airstrip, hustled into a chopper. Nobody would tell him a bloody thing. It was like the beginning of a bad film.

Through the window he could see the distant peaks of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. The helicopter cleared the foothills, and Wolf glimpsed a faint ribbon of reflected starlight below: the San Juan River.

They followed the approximate course of the river, past patches of lights marking the towns of Bloomfield and Farmington, then on into the empty darkness. As the craft dipped south again, Wolf saw the dark hump of Navajo Mountain in the distance, and that was when he guessed their destination: the Isabella project.

He masticated his ball of gum, pondering. He’d heard rumors—everyone in the high-energy physics community had—about problems with Isabella. He’d been as shocked as anyone about the suicide of his former colleague, Peter Volkonsky. Not that he’d ever liked the Russian, but he had always respected the man for his programming skills. He wondered what was going on that required a black-clad goon squad to fix.

Fifteen minutes later the black outline of Red Mesa loomed dimly ahead. A bright patch of lights at its edge signaled the location of Isabella. The chopper swung down, raced along the mesa top, and slowed at an airfield illuminated by two long rows of blue lights, then turned and settled down on a helipad.

The rotors powered down and one of the team shifted out of his seat and opened the cargo door. Wolf’s handler placed a hand on his shoulder and gestured for him to wait. The door slid open and the FBI team jumped out, one at a time, crouching and running in the rotor wash, like they were securing the landing zone.

Five minutes passed. Then the handler gestured him out. Wolf slung his pack over his shoulder and took his sweet time—he wasn’t going to hustle and break his leg. He climbed down with excessive care and scuttled beyond the backwash. The handler touched his elbow lightly and pointed toward a Quonset hut. They walked over, and the handler opened the door for him. The hut smelled of fresh lumber and glue and was almost empty, except for a desk and a row of cheap chairs.

“Have a seat, Dr. Wolf.”

Wolf dumped his backpack onto a chair near the desk and slumped down in the one next to it. He could hardly imagine a less comfortable seat, especially at this hour, so far from the pillow and bed where he belonged. He was still squirming when one of the men came in. The man extended his hand. “Special Agent in Charge Doerfler.”

Wolf shook it halfheartedly, without getting up.

Doerfler sat down on the edge of the desk and tried to appear friendly and relaxed. It didn’t succeed: the man was as wound up as the Energizer Bunny. “I bet you’re wondering why you’re here, Dr. Wolf.”

“How did you guess?” He distrusted people like Doerfler, with their whitewall haircuts, southern accents, and smooth-talking language. He had dealt with too many of them during the design phase of Isabella.

Doerfler glanced at his watch. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. They tell me you’re familiar with Isabella, Dr. Wolf.”

“I should hope so,” he said irritably. “I was assistant director of the design team.”

“Have you been here before?”

“No. My work was all on paper.”

Doerfler leaned over on his elbow, his face serious. “Something’s happened out here. We don’t exactly know what. The scientific team has sealed itself inside the mountain and turned off all external communications. They’ve shut down the main computer and they’re running Isabella at full power using backup computer systems.”

Wolf licked his lips. This was too far out to believe.

“We have no idea what’s going on. It may be a hostage situation, it may be a mutiny, it may be an accident or some kind of unanticipated equipment or power failure.”

“So what’s my role?”

“I’ll get to that in a moment. The men you flew in with are members of an FBI Hostage Rescue Team. It’s like an elite SWAT team. That doesn’t necessarily mean there are hostages, but we have to plan for that contingency.”

“Are you talking about terrorists?”

“Perhaps. The HRT is going to enter the facility, perform hostage rescue if necessary, neutralize undesirables, isolate the scientists, and escort them from the premises.”

“Neutralize undesirables—you mean shoot people?”

“If necessary.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Doerfler frowned. “No, sir, I am not.”

“You woke me up to join a commando raid? I’m sorry, Mr. Doerfler, but you’ve got the wrong Bern Wolf.”

“You needn’t be concerned in the slightest, Dr. Wolf. I’ve assigned you a handler. Agent Miller. Totally reliable. He’ll be at your side, guiding you every step of the way. Once the facility is secure, he’ll take you in and you’ll perform your assignment.”

“Which is?”

“Turn off Isabella.”

FROM A PERCH AT THE TOP of the bluffs above Nakai Valley, Nelson Begay scanned the Isabella complex with a pair of old army binoculars. A chopper had passed low over the tipi, its rotors drowning out their Blessing Way ceremony and shaking the tipi like a dust devil. Begay and Becenti had climbed up the hillside for a better view, and they could see it had landed at the airstrip, a mile away.

“They coming after us?” Willy Becenti asked.

“No idea,” said Begay, watching. Men with guns were piling out of the chopper. After breaking into a hangar, they drove out two Humvees and began transferring gear into them.

Begay shook his head. “I don’t think it has anything to do with us.”

“You sure?” Becenti sounded disappointed.

“I’m not sure. We better head over and take a closer look.” He glanced at Becenti, saw the eager restlessness in his eyes. Begay laid a hand on his shoulder. “Just keep your cool, all right?”

53

STANTON LOCKWOOD LIFTED HIS CUFF TO peek at his Rolex. Quarter to two in the morning. The president had ordered in the FBI Hostage Rescue Team at midnight, and now the operation was in full swing. A few minutes ago, the HRT had landed at the airstrip. They were now transferring their gear to Humvees to take them the half-mile to the secure zone at the cliff’s edge, directly above the opening to the Bunker.

The atmosphere in the Oval Office was edgy. Jean, the president’s secretary, was shaking the tension out of her writing hand.

“They’ve loaded the first Humvee,” said the FBI Director, who had been giving the president a running commentary. “Still no sign of anyone. They’re all down in the Bunker, as we thought.”

“No luck contacting them?”

“None. All communications from the airstrip to the Bunker are turned off.”

Lockwood shifted in his chair. He searched his mind for a logical explanation. There was none.

The situation room door opened, and Roger Morton entered carrying several sheets of paper. Lockwood followed him with his eyes. He had never liked the man, but now he detested him, with his horn-rimmed glasses, his immaculate suit, his tie that looked like it had been glued to his shirtfront. Morton was the quintessential Washington operator. With these sour thoughts in mind, he watched Morton conferring with the president, their heads together, scrutinizing the piece of paper. They waved Galdone over and all three took a long look.

The president looked up at Lockwood. “Stan, take a look at this.”

Lockwood rose and joined the group. The president handed him the printout of an e-mail. Lockwood began to read:

Dear Friends in Christ . ..

“It’s all over the Internet,” said Morton, speaking even before he had finished. “And I mean everywhere.”

Lockwood shook his head and placed the letter on the table. “I find it depressing that in America in the twenty-first century, this kind of medieval thinking could still exist.”

The president stared at him. “The letter is more than ‘depressing,’ Stan. It’s calling for an armed attack on a U.S. government facility.”

“Mr. President, I personally would not take this seriously. The letter has no directions, no plan of action, no meeting place. It’s just hot air. Stuff like this circulates on the Web every day. Look how many people read that Left Behind series. You didn’t see them taking to the streets.”

Morton gazed at him with passive hostility. “Lockwood, this letter’s been posted to tens of thousands of Web sites. It’s circulating like mad. We’ve got to take it seriously.”

The president heaved a sigh. “Stan, I wish I was as optimistic as you about this. But this letter, on top of that sermon . . .” He shook his head. “We need to prepare for the worst.”

Galdone rumbled his throat clear to speak. “People who think the world is coming to an end might be liable to do something rash. Even resort to violence.”

“Christianity is supposed to be a nonviolent religion,” Lockwood said.

“We aren’t impugning anyone’s religious beliefs, Stan,” the president said tartly. “All of us here need to realize that this is a sensitive area, in which people can easily take offense.” He tossed the letter on the desk and turned to the Director of Homeland Security. “Where’s the closest National Guard unit?”

“That would be Camp Navajo in Bellemont, just north of Flagstaff.”

“How far is that from Red Mesa?”

“About a hundred and twenty-five miles.”

“Mobilize them and chopper them down to Red Mesa. As a backup.”

“Yes, sir. Unfortunately, half the unit’s overseas and their equipment and their rotary wing aircraft are not what one might wish for an operation of this sort.”

“How quickly could you bring the unit up to full strength?”

“We could bring up assets and personnel from Phoenix and Nellis AFB. It might take three to five hours, pushing it.”

“Five is too long. Do what you can in three. I want them in the air by four forty-five A.M.”

“Four forty-five A.M.,” repeated the DNS. “Yes, Mr. President.”

“Put out a quiet word to the Arizona State Police to double their patrols and report any unusual traffic on the interstates and secondary roads around the Navajo Indian Reservation. And be ready to throw up roadblocks at short notice.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Lockwood spoke. “There’s a small Navajo Tribal Police station in Piñon, only twenty miles from Red Mesa.”

“Excellent. Have them send a patrol out to the Red Mesa road, to check it out.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I want all this done quietly. If we overreact, the Christian right will kick us around like a football. They’ll accuse us of being anti-Christian, Jesus haters, godless liberals—those people will say anything.” The president looked around the room. “Any other recommendations?‘

There were none.

He turned to Lockwood. “I hope you’re right. God knows, we might have ten thousand idiots heading to Red Mesa right now.”

54

FORD FELT THE SWEAT TRICKLING DOWN his scalp. The heat was climbing in the Bridge, despite the air-conditioning system running at full power. Isabella hummed and sang, the walls vibrating. He glanced at Kate, but her attention was fully fixed on the Visualizer screen.

When the universe reaches a state of maximum entropy, which is the heat death of the universe, then will the universal computation come to a halt. I will die.

“Is this inevitable or is there some way to prevent it?” Hazelius asked.

That is the very question you must determine.

“So that’s the ultimate purpose of existence?” asked Ford. “To defeat this mysterious heat death? Sounds like something out of a science fiction novel.”

Circumventing the heat death is merely a step on the way.

The way to what?“ Hazelius asked.

It will give the universe the fullness of time it needs to think itself into the final state..

“What’s this final state?”

I do not know. It will be like nothing you or even I could possibly imagine.

“You mentioned the ‘fullness of time,’ ” said Edelstein. “How long is that, exactly?”

It will be a number of years equal to ten factorial raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, that number raised to the ten factorial power, this power relation repeated 1083 times, and then the resulting number raised to its own factorial power 10 47 times, as above. Using your mathematical notation, this number—the first God number—is:

This is the length of time in years it will take for the universe to think itself into the final state, to arrive at the ultimate answer.

“That’s an absurdly large number!”

It is but a drop in the great ocean of infinity.

Where is the role of morality, of ethics, in this brave new universe of yours?“ Ford asked. ”Or salvation and the forgiveness of sins?“

I repeat again: separateness is but an illusion. Human beings are like cells in a body. Cells die, but the body lives on. Hatred, cruelty, war, and genocide are more like autoimmune diseases than the product of something you call “evil.” This vision of connectedness I offer you provides a rich moral field of action, in which altruism, compassion, and responsibility for one another play a central role. Your fate is one fate. Human beings will prevail together or die together. No one is saved because no one is lost. No one is forgiven because no one is accused.

“What about God’s promise to us of a better world?”

Your various concepts of heaven are remarkably obtuse.

“Excuse me, but salvation is anything but obtuse!”

The vision of spiritual completion I offer you is immeasurably grander than any heaven dreamed on earth.

“What about the soul? Do you deny the existence of the immortal soul?”

“Wyman, please!” Hazelius cried. “You’re wasting everyone’s time with these ridiculous theological questions!”

“Excuse me, but I think they’re vital questions,” said Kate. “These are the questions people will ask—and which we better be able to answer.”

We? Ford wondered who Kate meant.

Information is never lost. With the death of the body, the information created by that life changes shape and structure, but it is never lost. Death is an informational transition. Do not fear it.

“Do we lose our individuality at death?” Ford asked.

Do not mourn the loss. From that powerful sense of individuality, so necessary for evolution, flows many of the qualities that haunt human existence, good and bad: fear, pain, suffering, and loneliness, as well as love, happiness, and compassion. That is why you must escape your biochemical existence. When you free yourselves from the tyranny of the flesh, you will take the good—love, happiness, compassion, and altruism—with you. You will leave behind the bad.

“I don’t find much uplift in the idea that the little quantum fluctuations my existence has generated will somehow give us immortality,” said Ford sarcastically.

You should find great solace in this view of life. Information in the universe cannot die. Not one step, not one memory, not one sorrow in your life is ever forgotten. You as an individual will be lost in the storm of time, your molecules dispersed. But who you were, what you did, how you lived, will always remain embedded in the universal computation.

“Forgive me, but it still sounds so mechanistic, so soulless, this talk of existence as ‘computation.’ ”

Call it dreaming, if you prefer, or desiring, willing, thinking. Everything you see is part of an unimaginably vast and beautiful computation, from a baby speaking its first words to a star collapsing into a black hole. Our universe is a gorgeous computation that, starting with a single axiom of great simplicity, has been running for thirteen billion years. We have hardly begun the adventure! When you find a way to shift your own meat-limited process of thinking to other natural quantum systems, you will begin to control the computation. You will begin to understand its beauty and perfection.

“If everything is a computation, then what is the purpose of intelligence? Of mind?”

Intelligence exists all around you, even in nonliving processes. A thunderstorm is a computation vastly more sophisticated than a human mind. It is, in its own way, intelligent.

“A thunderstorm has no consciousness. A human mind has awareness of self. It’s conscious. That’s the difference, and it isn’t trivial.”

Did I not tell you that the very consciousness of self is an illusion, an artifact of evolution? The difference is not even trivial.

“A weather system isn’t creative. It doesn’t make choices. It can’t think. It’s merely the mechanistic unfolding of forces.”

How do you know you are not the mechanistic unfolding of forces? Like the mind, a weather system contains complex chemical, electrical, and mechanical properties. It is thinking. It is creative. Its thoughts are different from your thoughts. A human being creates complexity by writing a novel on the surface of paper; a weather system creates complexity by writing waves on the surface of an ocean. What is the difference between the information carried in the words of a novel and the information carried on the waves of the sea? Listen, and the waves will speak, and someday, I tell you, you will write your thoughts on the surface of the sea.

“So what’s the universe computing?” Innes continued angrily. “What’s this great problem it’s trying to solve?”

That is the deepest and most wonderful mystery of all.

“Perimeter alarms,” said Wardlaw. “We have an intruder.”

Hazelius turned. “Don’t tell me that preacher’s back.”

“No, no . . . God, no. Dr. Hazelius, you better come look.”

Ford and the rest followed Hazelius over to the security station. They peered over Wardlaw’s shoulder at the wall of screens.

“What the hell?” Hazelius asked.

Wardlaw punched a series of buttons. “I shouldn’t have been paying attention to whatever the hell that crazy thing on the screen was saying. Look, I’m rewinding. Here’s where it starts. A chopper . . . a military Black Hawk UH-60A, landing at the airfield.”

They all stood and watched—astonished. Ford could see men in dark jumpsuits, carrying weapons, tumbling from the chopper.

“They’re breaking into the hangars,” Wardlaw went on, “taking our Humvees. Loading them up . . . Now they’re bashing down the gates to the security zone . . . . That’s what set off the alarm. Okay, real time begins right here.”

Ford watched as the soldiers, or whatever they were, jumped from the Humvees and fanned out, weapons at the ready.

“What’s going on? What the hell are they doing?” cried Hazelius, his voice full of alarm.

“They’re establishing a classic assault perimeter,” said Wardlaw.

“Assault? On what?”

“On us.”

55

RUSS EDDY CROUCHED BEHIND A JUNIPER tree and peered out into the fenced security area. The men in black had bashed down the security fence and were busy setting up lights and unloading equipment from a pair of Humvees. He had no doubt these men had been sent to protect the Isabella project in response to his letter. It was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. Paramilitary forces of the New World Order who had arrived in black helicopters, just as Mark Koernke predicted.

Eddy knew that his letter had reached those in power.

He made careful note of how many there were, what weapons and equipment they carried, jotting everything down in his notebook.

The soldiers finished rigging up a string of portable lights and the area was bathed in brilliant white light. Eddy shrank back in the shadows and retreated to the road. He had seen enough. The army of God would soon begin arriving—and he needed to organize them.

As he walked back toward the far edge of the mesa, where the Dugway came up on top, that plan began to take shape. First, they would need a parking and staging area far enough away from Isabella so they could amass without being seen. They had to group themselves, organize, then attack. And, in fact, right at the top of the Dugway, about three miles from Isabella, was a vast open area of slickrock that would make a good location.

He glanced at his watch: eleven forty-five. It had been two hours since he sent the e-mail. People would begin arriving at any moment. He began to jog down the center of the road, to intercept any arriving traffic.

About a half mile from the Dugway, he heard the rumble of a bike engine. A single light appeared over the top of the mesa, moving rapidly toward him. The light slowed as the beam illuminated Eddy, and a dirt bike stopped in front of him, driven by a muscular man with long blond hair tied in a ponytail, wearing an unbuttoned denim jacket, sleeves torn off, and no shirt. He had a striking face, craggy, movie-star handsome, with the physique of a god. A heavy iron cross dangled from his neck on a metal chain, nestled on his hairy chest.

As the bike came to a stop he extended two leather-booted legs, steadied the bike, and grinned. “Pastor Eddy?”

His heart hammering, Eddy stepped forward. “Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ.”

The man kicked down the kickstand, rose from his bike—he was enormous—and walked toward Eddy with his arms thrown wide. He enveloped Eddy in a dusty embrace, his body odor overpowering, and then stepped back, gripping him affectionately by his shoulders. “Randy Doke.” He gave Eddy another hug. “Oh, man, am I really the first?”

“You are.”

“I can’t believe I made it. When I saw your letter, I hopped on my Kawasaki and came up from Holbrook. Cross-country, over the desert, cutting fences and riding like hell. Woulda been here sooner, but I took a spill back near Second Mesa. I can’t believe I’m here. Oh, man, I can’t believe it.”

Eddy felt a rush of faith, an inpouring of energy.

The man looked around. “So—what now?”

“Let’s pray.” He clasped Doke’s rough hands, and they bowed their heads. “Lord God Almighty, please surround us with Thine angels, wingtip to wingtip, with their swords drawn to protect us, so that they can lead us, Thy servants, into victory against the Antichrist. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen, brother.”

The man had a deep, resonant voice that Eddy found reassuring, magnetic. Here was the kind of man who knew what to do.

Doke went back to his bike, pulled a rifle out of a leather scabbard hanging off the seat, and slung it over his back. Hauling out a bandolier packed with rounds, he tossed it over the other shoulder, which gave him the look of an old-time guerrilla warrior. He shot Eddy a grin and saluted. “Brother Randy, reporting for service in God’s army!”

More headlights approached—slowly, uncertainly. A dusty Jeep, top down, stopped next to them. A man and a woman in their thirties climbed out. Eddy opened his arms and took them in, first the man, then the woman. They both began to cry, their tears making tracks down their dusty faces.

“Greetings in Christ.”

The man was wearing a business suit covered in dust. He carried a Bible. Tucked into his belt was a big kitchen knife. The woman had pinned little pieces of paper to her blouse, which fluttered as she walked. Eddy saw they were Bible verses and slogans: Trust and obey . . . . Go ye into all the world . . . . For lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth . . .. “Grabbed them off the refrigerator,” she said. She reached into the Jeep and fetched out a baseball bat.

“We prayed and prayed, but we couldn’t decide,” the man said. “Did God mean us to fight with His Word, or did He mean us to use real weapons?”

They stood in front of Eddy, awaiting for orders.

“No mistake about it,” Eddy said. “This is going to be a battle. A real battle.”

“I’m glad we brought these.”

“A lot of people are going to be coming down that road,” Eddy continued. “Thousands, probably. We need a place to gather everyone together, to prepare. A staging ground. That’ll be that area, off to the right.” He gestured toward the vast expanse of slickrock and sand, pale in the light of the lopsided moon rising over the lip of the mesa. “Randy, God brought you to me first for a reason. You’re my right-hand man. My general. You and I will gather everyone over there and plan our . . . our assault.” It was hard to say the word, now that it was actually happening.

Randy nodded sharply, without speaking. Eddy noticed wetness around his eyes, too. He felt profoundly moved.

“You two need to block this road with your Jeep to prevent anyone from going on to Isabella. We need the element of surprise. Direct everyone off the road and have them park in that open area over there. Randy and I will be on that hill. Waiting. We’re not moving on Isabella until we have sufficient force.”

More sets of headlights appeared at the lip of the Dugway.

“Isabella is about three miles down that road. We want to keep quiet until it’s time to move. Make sure no one jumps the gun or goes off half-cocked. We don’t want the Antichrist knowing we’re coming until we’ve got strength in numbers.”

“Amen,” they said.

Eddy smiled. Amen.

56

AT 2:00 A.M., THE REVEREND DON T. Spates sat at the desk in his office behind the Silver Cathedral. Several hours earlier he had called Charles and his secretary at their homes and asked them to come in to handle all the calls and e-mails. In front of him stood a stack of e-mails Charles had culled out before his mail server crashed. Next to them was a stack of phone messages. He could hear the phone ringing incessantly in the outer office.

Spates was trying to absorb the momentous thing that was happening.

A light tap on the door, and his secretary entered with fresh coffee. She placed it on the table, along with a china plate with a macadamia-nut cookie.

“I don’t want the cookie.”

“Yes, Reverend.”

“And stop answering the phone. Take it off the hook.”

“Yes, Reverend.” Plate and cookie disappeared with the secretary. With irritation, he watched her retreat; her hair wasn’t as bouffant and sparkly as usual, her dress was wrinkled, and without makeup her true frumpiness showed plainly. She must have been in bed when he called, but still, she should have made a better effort.

When the door closed, he slipped a bottle of vodka from a locked drawer and splashed some into the coffee. Then he turned back to his computer. His Web site had also crashed under the weight of traffic, and now it seemed the whole Web was getting sluggish. With difficulty he trolled slowly through the familiar Christian sites. Some of the big ones, like raptureready.com, had also crashed. Others were as slow as molasses in Alaska. The uproar Eddy’s letter had generated was astonishing. What few Christian chat rooms were still functioning were jammed with hysterical people. Many said they were leaving to respond to the call.

Spates sweated heavily, despite the coolness of the room, and his collar itched. Eddy’s letter, which he must have read twenty times now, had frightened him. The letter was an incitement to a violent attack on a U.S. government installation and he had named Spates in the letter. Naturally, they would blame him. On the other hand, Spates reasoned, this immense display of Christian power, of Christian outrage, might be for the good. For too long, Christians had been discriminated against in their own country, ignored, sidelined, and mocked. Right or wrong, this uproar would be a wake-up call to America. The politicians and the government would finally see the power of the Christian majority. And he, Spates, had set the revolution in motion. Robertson, Falwell, Swaggart—in all their years of preaching and with all their money and power, none of them had pulled off anything like this.

Spates surfed the Web, looking for information, but all he could find was vitriol, outrage, and hysteria. And thousands of copies of the letter.

A new and disturbing idea suddenly infiltrated his mind as he glanced through the letter yet again.

What if Eddy is right?

He felt a sudden chill. He wasn’t ready to let go of this life. He couldn’t bear the thought that all his money, his power, his cathedral, his teleministry might be coming to an end—that it would all be over, before it had hardly begun.

An even more unsettling thought came hard on the heels of this one: in that great and glorious day of the Lord, how would he be judged? Was he truly right with God? All Spates’s sins lurched forward to haunt him. The lies, the binges, the betrayals, the women and the flashy gifts he had bought for them with contributions from the faithful. Most horrifying of all, he recalled the way he’d more than once caught himself lusting after a boy in the street. All those sins—large and small—pushed in from the edges of his mind, shouting to be seen and reexamined.

Fear, guilt, and despair swept over him. God saw everything. Everything. Please, Lord, please, forgive me, Thy unworthy servant, he prayed, over and over, until, with a violent mental effort, he shoved his sins back into some dark cave in his brain. God had already forgiven him—why was he concerned?

And anyway, this couldn’t be the Second Coming. What the hell was he thinking? Eddy was a nutcase. Of course he was. Spates had known it from the moment he first heard that high, cracked voice on the phone. Anyone who would live in the middle of the desert with a bunch of Indians, a hundred miles from a decent restaurant, was by definition crazy.

He read the man’s letter again, looking for signs of insanity, and a fresh wave of dread hit him. The letter made sense. It was powerful. These were not the ravings of a madman. And this business of “ARIZONA” and “ISABELLA” each adding up to 666 was the most unsettling of all.

God, how he was sweating.

He opened the glass doors of the cherrywood bookcase, removed a thick book, and flipped through to the gematria tables. He looked up the Hebrew letters and jotted their numbers on a piece of paper. As he worked, he saw that Eddy had gotten some of his Hebrew letters wrong and misnumbered others.

He applied the correct numbers and added them up with a shaking hand. Neither word came to 666.

He sat back, gasping with relief. The whole thing was a farce, just as he’d thought. He felt as if an angel had swooped down and lifted him out of the burning lake. Jerking a linen handkerchief from his pocket, he mopped the sweat off from around his eyes and forehead.

Apprehension returned. God might have spared him. But would the media? Would the government? Could he be charged with incitement to violence? Or worse? He’d better pull his lawyer out of bed while he still could. There had to be a way to push the blame onto Crawley. It was Crawley, after all, who had started it.

He pulled at his collar, trying to get some air down his hot, sticky neck. It had been a mistake to bring in that damn cracker, Pastor Eddy. The guy was a loose cannon. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He pressed the button on his intercom. “Charles, I need you.”

The usually prompt young man did not appear.

“Charles? I need you.”

His secretary opened the door instead. She looked more haggard than he had ever seen her.

“Charles left,” she said in a flat voice.

“I certainly didn’t give him leave to go.”

“He went to Isabella.”

Spates stared up at her from his chair. He couldn’t believe it. Charles?

“He left about ten minutes ago. He said he’d been called by God. Then he walked out.”

“For crying out loud!” Spates slammed his hand on the desk. Then he noticed she was wearing her coat and had her purse. “Don’t tell me you’re also going off to follow that jackass!”

“No,” she said. “I’m going home.”

“I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible. I need you here for the rest of the night. Get my lawyer, Ralph Dobson, on the phone. Tell him to get down here pronto. I’ve got a problem on my hands, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“No.”

“No? ‘No’ what? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t care to work for you any longer, Mr. Spates.”

“What are you talking about?”

She clasped her purse in two hands in front of her midriff as if for protection. “Because you’re a despicable human being.” She turned stiffly and left.

Spates heard the faint sound of a door being closed carefully—then silence.

He sat behind his desk, alone, streaming sweat—and very, very frightened.

57

THE WORD “ASSAULT” HUNG HEAVY IN the air. The others crowded in and watched the main security screen. It was a live feed from a high-angle camera mounted on top of the elevator and it gave a bird’s-eye view of what was going on. At the edge of the cliffs above Isabella, Ford could make out a group of black-suited men setting up fixed ropes and stacking equipment and weapons. They were clearly getting ready to rappel down. Kate moved next to him, and took his hand again. Hers was sweaty, trembling.

George Innes broke the horrified silence. “Assault? What the hell for?”

“They couldn’t contact us,” said Wardlaw. “And this is their response.”

“This is an absurd overreaction!”

Wardlaw turned to Dolby. “Ken, we need to restore communications right away and call this off.”

“I can’t do that without shutting down Isabella. As you well know, Isabella is totally firewalled to the outside. The programming simply won’t let us turn on the communications system until Isabella is shut down.”

“Restart the main computer and transfer control from the servers.”

“It would take at least an hour to boot up and reconfigure the mainframe.”

Wardlaw swore. “All right, then, I’ll go up top, explain the situation in person.” He turned toward the door.

“You’ll do no such thing,” said Hazelius.

Wardlaw stared at him. “Sir, I don’t understand.”

Hazelius pointed mutely away from Wardlaw’s station toward the screen overhead. A new message had materialized.

We have very little time. What I have to say to you now is of the utmost importance.

Wardlaw looked at Hazelius in panic. His eyes swiveled to the security screens and back again. “We can’t keep them out, sir. I’ve got to open the security door.”

“Tony,” said Hazelius, his voice low and urgent, “think for just a moment about what’s going on here. You open that door and this conversation with . . . God or whatever it is comes to an end.”

Wardlaw’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “God?”

“That’s right, Tony. God . It’s a very real possibility. We’ve made contact with God, except it’s a God who’s a whole lot bigger and more unknowable than anything dreamed up by humanity.”

Nobody spoke.

Hazelius went on. “Tony, we can buy ourselves a little time, and it won’t cost us. We’ll tell them the door wasn’t functioning, the communications systems were down, the computer crashed. We can finesse this. We can keep the doors shut and still come out of this without serious charges.”

“They’ll have a demolition kit. They’ll blow the door,” said Wardlaw, his voice high and tense.

“Let them,” said Hazelius. He grasped Wardlaw’s shoulder gently, gave it an affectionate shake, as if to wake him up. “Tony, Tony. We might be talking to God . Don’t you understand?”

Wardlaw said, after a moment, “I understand.”

Hazelius looked around. “Are we all in this together?” His eyes traveled around the room and locked on Ford. He must have seen the skepticism in Ford’s eyes. “Wyman?”

Ford said, “I’m astonished you think there’s a possibility we may be talking to God.”

“If not God, then who is it?” Hazelius asked.

Ford glanced around at the others. He wondered who else could see that Hazelius was finally losing it. “Just what you’ve said all along. A fraud. Sabotage.”

Melissa Corcoran suddenly spoke up. “If that’s what you still think, Wyman, then I’m sorry for you.”

Ford turned to her, astonished. There was a new look in her face that stopped him. Gone was the insecure young woman restlessly seeking affection. She looked radiantly serene, her eyes flashing with self-confidence.

“You think this is God?” Ford asked incredulously.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” she said. “Don’t you believe in God?”

“Yes, but not this God!”

“How do you know?”

Ford faltered. “Come on! God would never contact us in this crazy way.”

“You think it’s less crazy for God to impregnate a virgin who produces a son who then brings the message to Earth?”

Ford could hardly believe his ears. “I’m telling you, this is not God.”

Corcoran shook her head. “Wyman, don’t you realize what’s happened here? Don’t you get it? We’ve made the greatest scientific discovery of all time: We’ve discovered God.”

Ford looked about the group. His eyes ended up locked into Kate’s, standing next to him. For a long moment they looked at each other. He could hardly believe what he saw: her eyes were brimming with emotion. She squeezed his hand, dropped it, and smiled. “I’m sorry, Wyman. You know Melissa and I don’t always see eye to eye. But now . . . well.” She reached out and clasped Corcoran’s hand. “I agree with her.”

Ford stared at the two adversaries suddenly together. “How could a rational human being possibly think that . . . thing ”—he pointed at the screen—“is God?”

“What surprises me,” Kate said, her voice calm, “is that you don’t see it. Review the evidence. The space-time hole. It’s real. I did the calculations. It’s a wormhole or a flux tube into a parallel universe—a universe that exists right next to ours, incredibly close, almost but not quite touching, our two universes like two sheets of paper that have been balled up together. All we did was poke a hole through our piece of paper to expose a tiny piece of the one next to us. And that parallel universe is where . . . God lives.”

“Kate, you can’t be serious.”

“Wyman, forget everything else and just listen to the words. Just the words . This is the first time in my life that I’ve actually heard the simple truth spoken. It’s like the pealing ofbells after years ofsilence. What this . . . what God is saying is just so incredibly true.”

Ford looked around the circular room and fixed on Edelstein. Edelstein, the ultimate skeptic. The man’s dark, triumphant eyes returned the look.

“Alan, help me out here.”

“I’ve never shopped around for God,” Edelstein said. “I’ve been a resolute atheist all my life. I don’t need God—never have, never will.”

“At least someone agrees with me,” said Ford with relief.

Edelstein smiled. “Which makes my conversion all the more telling.”

“Your conversion?”

“That’s correct.”

“You . . . believe ?”

“Of course. I’m a mathematician. I live and die by logic. And by logic, this thing speaking to us is some higher power. Call it God, call it the primum mobile, call it the Great Spirit, it doesn’t matter.”

“I call it a fraud.”

“Where’s your evidence? No programmer has ever written code that survived the Turning test. Nor is there a computer built—not even Isabella’s supercomputer brain—capable of true AI. You cannot explain how it knew Kate’s numbers or Gregory’s names. Most importantly, I, like Kate, recognize the profound truth it propounds. If not God, it’s a highly intelligent entity from this or another universe, and therefore preternatural. Yes, I take it at face value. The simplest explanation obtains. Occam’s razor.”

“Besides,” said Chen, “that output was coming straight from CZero. How do you explain that?”

Ford looked at the others, from Dolby’s fine ebony face, wet with tears, to the shaking delirium that seemed to be taking hold of Julie Thibodeaux’s body . . . . Unbelievable, thought Ford. Look at them all. They all believe it . Michael Cecchini, his normally dead face suddenly alive, radiant . . . Rae Chen . . . Harlan St. Vincent . . . George Innes . . . all of them. Even Wardlaw, who in this impossible security crisis ignored his security feeds and instead gazed on Hazelius with slavish, sycophantish adoration.

Clearly he’d missed a dark and alarming dynamic in the team all along. Even in Kate,especially Kate.

“Wyman, Wyman,” said Hazelius soothingly. “You’re emoting. We are thinking. That’s what we do best.”

Ford took a step backward. “This isn’t about God. It’s just some hacker telling you what you want to hear. And you’re falling for it.”

“We’re falling for it because it’s the truth,” said Hazelius. “I know it in my intellect and in my bones. Look at us: me, Alan, Kate, Rae, Ken—all of us. Could we all be wrong? Scientific skepticism is in our blood. We’re steeped in it. No one can accuse us of credulity. What makes you more prescient than us?”

Ford had no answer.

Hazelius said, “We’re losing valuable time.” He turned calmly to the screen and spoke. “Continue, please. You have our full attention.”

Could they be right? Could it be God? Ford turned back to the next message on the screen with grim foreboding.

58

FROM HIS HILL AT THE EDGE of the staging area, with Doke at his side, Eddy watched the stream of vehicles arrive. In the last hour, several hundred of them had poured up over the lip of the Dugway, first dirt bikes, ATVs, and Jeeps, and then pickups, motorcycles, SUVs, and cars. The arrivals brought tales of hindrance and obstruction. State police roadblocks had gone up on I-40, Route 89 through Grey Mountain and Route 160 at Cow Springs, but the faithful had found ways around on the warren of dirt roads that crisscrossed the Rez.

The vehicles were parking in a disorganized mass just beyond the top of the Dugway, but, Eddy mused, it didn’t matter how they parked. Nobody would drive home. They were heading home another way—via the Rapture.

At times the oncoming horde seemed anarchic: loud voices, wailing toddlers, drunks, even people on drugs. But those who had arrived early greeted and organized the newcomers with prayer, Bible verses, and the Word. At least a thousand worshippers massed in the open area in front of his hill, waiting for instructions. Many carried Bibles and crosses. Some carried guns. Others had brought whatever weapon first came to hand, from iron skillets and kitchen knifes to sledgehammers, axes, machetes, and brush hooks. Boys carried slingshots, BB guns, and baseball bats. Others brought two-way radios, which Eddy requisitioned and distributed to a small group he had selected as his commanders, keeping one for himself.

Eddy was surprised at the number of children—even mothers nursing babies. Children at Armageddon? But it made sense when he thought about it. These were the End Times. All would be raptured into heaven together.

“Hey,” said Doke, nudging Eddy. “Cop car.”

Eddy followed his gesture. There, in the line of traffic coming up the Dugway, a lone police car was inching along, its lights flashing.

He turned back toward his new flock. The gathering crowd surged and flowed, their murmuring voices mingling like rain. Flashlights flickered, and he could hear the clink of metal on metal, slides being racked, shotguns pumped. One man was making torches out of bundles of dead piñon branches and passing them around. The discipline was extraordinary.

“I’m trying to think what to say to them,” Eddy said.

“You gotta be careful, talking to cops,” said Doke.

“I mean my sermon. To the Lord’s army, before we set out,” said Eddy.

“Yeah, but what about this cop?” said Doke. “There’s only one car, but he’s got a radio. This could be trouble.”

Eddy watched the flashing lights, surprised that some people were actually pulling over at the turnouts to let the squad car pass. Old habits of obedience to government, to authority, were going to die hard. That was what he’d talk about. How, from now on, their only obedience was to God.

“He’s coming up the Dugway,” said Doke.

The sound of the siren soon reached the mesa top, faint at first, then louder. The seething crowd grew thicker, spreading out in front of him, waiting for direction. Many were praying, their petitions rising into the night air. Groups of people held hands, their heads bowed. The sound of hymns reached his ears. It reminded Eddy of how he imagined things were when people gathered for the Sermon on the Mount. That’s it. That’s where he’d start his sermon. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God . . . .” No, that wasn’t a good Bible verse to start with. Something more arousing: “ Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” The Antichrist. That’s what he had to focus on. The Antichrist. Just a few words and he would lead his army forward.

The cop car topped the rim, still stuck in the mass of cars. It came down the stretch of asphalt and pulled off to the side a few hundred yards away. Eddy could see the emblem of the Navajo Nation Tribal Police on the door. A spotlight on the roof shone around; then a door opened. A tall Indian got out, a Navajo policeman. Even from a hundred yards off, Eddy recognized Bia.

At once, the policeman was surrounded by people. From what Eddy could hear, it sounded like an argument was developing.

“What do we do now, Pastor Russ?” people called.

“We wait,” he said in a voice strong and low, so different from his normal voice that he wondered if it was even him speaking. “God will show us the way.”

59

LIEUTENANT BIA FACED THE CROWD, HIS feeling of uneasiness growing. He’d gotten the call about some kind of disturbance at Red Mesa and he’d assumed it was the protest ride, and when he’d seen the heavy traffic on the Red Mesa road he’d joined it. But as he looked around, he could see that whoever these people were, they had nothing to do with the protest ride. These people carried guns and swords, crosses and axes, Bibles and kitchen knives. Some had painted crosses on their foreheads and their clothes. It was some kind of cult gathering—perhaps connected to that television preacher’s sermon he’d heard people talking about. He was relieved to see it consisted of people of all races—blacks, Asians, even a few who looked Navajo or Apache. At least it wasn’t the KKK or Aryan Nations.

He tucked up his belt and put his hands on his hips, facing the crowd with an easy smile, hoping not to spook anyone. “You folks got a leader? Someone I can talk to?”

A man in faded Wranglers and a blue workshirt stepped forward. He had a heavy face burned brown from a lifetime in the fields, a large gut, short thick arms that stood away from his body, and callused hands. An old Colt M1917 Revolver with ivory handles was shoved under his diamondback belt, a polished brass crucifix mounted on its buckle. “Yeah. We have a leader. His name’s God. Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Bia, Tribal Police.” He felt a twinge at the man’s unnecessarily belligerent tone. But he would play it cool, not confrontational. “What person is in charge here?”

“Lieutenant Bia, I’ve got just one question for you: Are you a Christian here for the fight?”

“The fight?”

“Armageddon.”

For emphasis, the man rested a palm on the Colt’s ivory-handled butt.

Bia swallowed. The crowd closed in on him. He wished he’d radioed for backup. “I’m a Christian, but I haven’t heard of any Armageddon.”

The crowd fell silent.

“Have you been born again in the water of life?” the man continued.

From the crowd rose a sharp murmur. Bia took a deep breath. No point in getting in a religious pissing contest with these people. Better to tone things down. “Why don’t you tell me about this Armageddon?”

“The Antichrist is here. On this very mesa. The battle of the Lord God Almighty is at hand. Either you’re with us or you’re against us. The time is now. Make your decision.”

Bia had no idea how to respond to this. “I guess you folks know this is the Navajo Nation, and you’re trespassing on land leased to the U.S. government.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

The crowd tightened the ring around him. Bia could feel their agitation and smell it in their sweat.

“Sir,” he said in a low voice, “keep your hand away from your firearm.”

The man’s hand did not move.

“I said,move your hand away from the firearm.”

The man’s hand closed on the gun butt. “You’re either with us or against us. Which is it?”

When Bia didn’t answer, the man turned and spoke to the crowd. “He’s not one of us. He’s come to fight for the other side.”

“What do you expect?” someone cried, echoed by the crowd. “What do you expect?”

Bia began backing up, slow and easy, toward his vehicle.

The gun came up. The man pointed it at Bia.

“Sir, I’m not here to fight anyone,” said Bia. “There’s absolutely no reason for you to point a gun at me. Put it down.”

An older woman in work boots and a straw stockman’s hat, her face as cured as old leather, put her hand on the man’s arm. “Jess, save your bullets. That man’s not the Antichrist. He’s just a cop.”

The word “Antichrist” rumbled through the crowd. People squeezed in even closer to Bia.

“Sir,I said put the gun down .”

The man lowered it, uncertain.

“Okay, Wyatt Earp, give me the gun.” The woman reached over and took it from his slack hand, shook out the rounds, and slipped the gun and bullets into her shoulder bag.

“There’s no Antichrist up here,” said Bia, disguising his relief. “This is Navajo Nation land and you’re trespassing. Now, if you’ve got a leader, I’d like to speak to him.” As soon as he got back to his squad car, he’d radio for backup. National Guard–level backup.

A voice rang out, “We’re here as God’s army—to fight and die for the Lord!”

Fight. Fight. Fight. The crowd repeated the word like a chant.

A man with a long forked beard pushed forward, a rock in his fist, and shouted, “Are you born again in the water of life?”

Angered at the man’s inquisitorial tone, Bia said, “My religion is none of your business. Lay down that rock, mister, or I’ll charge you with assault.” He placed a hand on his baton.

The man spoke to the crowd. “We can’t let him go. He’s a cop. He’s got a radio. He’ll warn the others.” The man raised the rock high. “Answer!”

Bia released his riot baton. Spinning it up, he swung the stick against the man’s arm, backhanded, as hard as he could. With a sickening crack the forearm shattered and the rock dropped to the ground.

“He broke my arm!” the man shrieked, falling to his knees.

“Disperse now and no one else will get hurt!” Bia called loudly. He took a step back, up against the fender of his car, his baton raised. If he could just get into the car, he’d have some protection—and he could radio for help.

“The cop broke his arm!” a man shouted, kneeling.

The crowd surged forward with a roar. A rock came flying and Bia dodged it. It smacked into the windshield with a dull, cracking thud.

Bia yanked open the door and ducked in, and tried to shut the door behind him, but it was held open by a surge of people. He grabbed the radio, hit the TRANSMIT button.

“He’s radioing out!” someone yelled.

A dozen hands grabbed him, pulling him back, ripping his shirt.

“The son of a bitch ists radioing out! He’s calling in the enemy!”

The mike was wrested from his hand and torn from its mount. Bia tried gripping the steering wheel, but the many-armed mob dragged him back out with relentless force. He tumbled to the ground, tried to stand, but was kicked down to his knees.

He went for his gun, yanked it out. He rolled on his side, pointing it into the crowd. “Stand back!” he screamed.

A rock slammed him in the chest, cracking his ribs. Bia fired point-blank into the crowd.

A chorus of screams rose up.

“My husband,” shrieked a voice. “Oh my God!”

A baseball bat swung out, struck his leg. He fired twice again, before the bat smashed his arm and the gun went flying.

The screaming mob piled on him, cursing, kicking, beating.

He fell to his face, scrabbling for the gun, but a boot came down hard on his hand, crushing it. He screamed, rolled, tried to crawl under his squad car.

“Stone him! Murderer! Stone him!”

He could feel the pummeling of rocks and sticks against him, the smack of them into bone and muscle, the rain of stones on the metal and glass of the police car. Choking with pain, he managed to crawl partway under the car, but they seized his leg and hauled him back into a maelstrom of blows and kicks. Screaming in pain and terror, he curled up into a fetal position, trying to protect himself from the rain of violence. The roar of the crowd began to fade, replaced by a dull roar in his own head. The blows came, but now they were happening to someone else, someone else was taking this journey, going farther and farther away. The roar subsided into a distant murmur, and then welcoming darkness gratefully came.

AS EDDY WATCHED, THE CROWD MOILED like dogs over the place where the cop had stood only a moment before. He saw him struggle to rise, then he was gone, dragged down by the undertow of the surging, stone-throwing crowd.

The chanting died down and the crowd seemed to go slack, then drift backward. The only thing left was the policeman’s cap and a lumpy, trampled uniform.

As the mob slowly dispersed, only a kneeling woman remained, wailing, holding a bleeding man in her arms. Eddy felt a surge of panic. Why was everything so different from how he had imagined it? Why did it seem so sordid?

“This is Armageddon,” came the deep, reassuring voice of Doke. “It had to start sometime.”

Doke was right. They’d passed the point of no return. The battle was joined. God was directing their hand, and there was no second-guessing Him. Eddy felt a surge of confidence.

“Pastor?” murmured Doke. “The people need you.”

“Of course.” Eddy stepped forward, raised his hands. “My Friends in Christ! Listen! My friends in Christ!”

A restless silence fell.

“I am Pastor Russell Eddy!” he cried. “I am the man who exposed the Antichrist!”

The crowd, electrified by the violence, surged toward him in waves, like the ocean reaching for the shore.

Eddy grasped Doke’s hand and raised it. “The kings, the politicians, the liberal secularists, and the humanists of this corrupt world will hide in the caves and the mountain’s rocks. They will call to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come, and who shall be able to stand?’ ”

A roar filled the night and the swelling crowd surged.

Eddy turned, pointed, and thundered: “There, three miles to the east, is a fence. Beyond that fence is a cliff. Down the cliff lies Isabella. And inside Isabella is the Antichrist. He goes by the name of Gregory North Hazelius.”

The roar reverberated as shots rang out into the sky.

“Go!” Eddy cried, shaking his pointing hand. “Go as one people led by the flaming sword of Zion! Go, and find the Antichrist! Destroy him and the Beast! The battle of the great God Almighty is joined! ‘The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven!’ ”

He stepped back and the teeming throng turned and undulated eastward across the moonlit mesa, the flashlights and torches bobbing in the darkness like a thousand glowing eyes.

“Well done,” said Doke. “You really fired ‘em up.”

Still grasping Doke’s powerful arm, Eddy turned to go with them. He glanced back and glimpsed Bia, a crumpled rag in the dust—and the woman, weeping and cradling her dead husband.

The first casualties of Armageddon.

60

A FRESH-FACED BOY IN HIS EARLY twenties, Agent Miller drove Bern Wolf from the airstrip to the fenced security area in a Humvee. They passed through a series of smashed gates and pulled up in the center of the parking lot, amid a scattering of civilian cars. Everything was bathed in the harsh glow of powerful lights.

Wolf looked around. Soldiers converged at the edge of the mesa, fixing ropes to rappel down the cliffs to Isabella.

“We wait in the vehicle until called, sir,” said Miller.

“Terrific.” Wolf was sweating. He was a computer scientist, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of shit. The knot in his stomach was taut and heavy. Wolf figured to stay close to Agent Miller and his twenty-two-inch arms that could bench-press Buicks. His back and shoulders were so massive, they made the 7.62 NATO assault rifle slung under his armpit look like a kid’s plastic gun.

He watched the men working at the edge of the mesa. One by one, they roped up and jumped backward off the lip, carrying bulky packs. Even though Wolf hadn’t visited Isabella, he knew it like the back of his hand, he’d planned some of the layouts and he’d pored over the construction diagrams. He also knew the software, and the DOE had given him an envelope with all the shutdown and security codes. Turning off Isabella would not be a problem.

The problem, for him, would be getting down the three hundred feet of cliff face.

“I gotta take a piss,” he said.

“Do it next to the vehicle and hurry up, sir.”

Wolf did his business and returned.

Miller was just getting off the radio.

“Our turn, sir.”

“They’re already in?”

“No. They want you down there before they effect penetration.”

Effect penetration? Did these guys know how ridiculous they sounded?

Miller nodded. “After you.”

Feeling as if every muscle in his body were resisting, Wolf hefted his pack. Despite the harsh lights, he could see an amazing number of stars overhead. The air was crisp and smelled of woodsmoke. As he walked away from the idling Humvee, he realized just how quiet the night was. The loudest sound came from the crackling power lines—clearly, Isabella was running at full power. He doubted anything was seriously wrong underground. Probably a computer glitch had crashed the communications system. Some bureaucratic hack had gone nuts and called in commandos. Maybe the scientists in the Bunker didn’t even know they were causing a furor.

Then, at the edge of audibility, he heard a couple of faint noises, like shots, then two more.

“You hear that?” he asked Miller.

“Yeah.” He paused, his head cocked. “About three miles off.”

They listened a moment longer, but there was nothing.

“Probably just an Indian shooting a coyote,” said Miller.

Wolf’s legs felt wobbly as he followed Miller to the edge of the cliffs. He’d been expecting them to lower him in a cage or something, but there was no cage to be seen.

“Sir? I’ll take your pack. We’ll lower it down after you.”

Wolf shrugged out of his pack and handed it over. “Careful, there’s a laptop in there.”

“We’ll be careful, sir. And now, could you step this way?”

“Hold on here,” Wolf said. “You don’t really expect me to . . . go down one of those ropes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How?”

“We’ll show you in a minute. Please stand there.”

Wolf waited. The other soldiers had gone down, leaving them alone at the edge. The power lines hummed and crackled. The soldier’s radio hissed, and he spoke into it. Wolf half listened. State troopers were reporting some kind of problem on the road leading to the mesa. Wolf tuned it out. He was thinking of the cliff.

More conversation, then Miller said, “Step this way, sir. We’re going to put you in this sling. Ever rappelled?”

“No.”

“It’s perfectly safe. Just lean back a little, plant your feet on the rock face, and give gentle hops. You can’t fall, even if you let go of the rope.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It’s perfectly safe, sir.”

They rigged him into the sling, which went around his legs, seat, and lower back, locking the rope in a system of carabiners and brake bars. Then they positioned him at the edge of the cliff with his back facing out. He could feel the wind coming up from below.

“Lean out and step over backward.”

Are they crazy?

“Lean back, sir. Take a step. Keep the tension on the rope. We’ll lower you, sir.”

Wolf stared at Miller, incredulous. The agent’s voice was so studiously polite that it seemed tinged with contempt.

“I just can’t do this,” he said.

The rope slackened, and he felt a sudden rush of panic.

“Lean back.” Miller said firmly.

“Get me a cage or something to lower me in.”

Miller leaned him back, almost cradling him in his arms.

“That’s it. Just like that. Very good, Dr. Wolf.”

Wolf’s heart hammered. Again he could feel, on his back, a cool movement of air from below. The soldier released him, and his feet slipped and he banged sideways into the cliff face.

“Lean back and plant your feet on the rock.”

His heart pounding like mad, he scrabbled his feet on the rock, looking for a purchase. He found it, forced himself to lean back. It seemed to work. As he took little light steps, always leaning out, the rope slipped through the brake bar, lowering him. Once he was below the ledge, darkness descended, but he could still see the rim overhead, limned in light. As he continued, the rim grew more and more distant. He didn’t dare look down.

Unbelievably he was doing it, bouncing and hopping down the cliff, his whole being swallowed in darkness. At last, soldiers grasped his legs and lowered him to a stone floor. When he stood up, his legs trembled. The soldiers helped him out of the sling. His pack swung down on a rope a moment later, and the soldiers snagged it. Miller arrived next.

“Well done, sir.” he said.

“Thank you.”

A large area had been carved into the side of the mountain. At the far end, a massive titanium door was set into the rock. The area was already strung out with harsh lights, looking like the entrance to the island of Dr. No. Wolf felt Isabella’s deep humming vibrating out of the mountain. It was very strange that they had lost all communication with the inside. There were too many backup systems. And the SIO would see them on the security screens—unless those, too, were down.

Very strange.

The soldiers were setting up three conical metal dishes on tripods and pointing them toward the door, like stubby mortars. One man started packing the cones with what looked like C-4.

Doerfler stood to one side, giving orders.

“What are those?” Wolf asked.

“Rapid wall-breaching demolition devices,” said Miller. “Ganged charges, there, converge at a single point and blow a hole big enough to crawl through.”

“And then?”

“We’ll send in a team through the hole to secure the Bunker and a second team to breach the inner door to the Bridge. We’ll secure the Bridge, deal with any bad guys, and take the scientists into custody. There may be shooting. We don’t know. As soon as the Bridge’s been fully secured, I take you in. Personally. You shut Isabella down.”

“It takes three hours to shut down the system,” Wolf said.

“You’ll run that operation.”

“What about Dr. Hazelius and the other scientists?”

“Our men will escort them off the premises for debriefing.”

Wolf folded his arms. It looked good on paper, no doubt.

61

STANTON LOCKWOOD SHIFTED AGAIN IN THE cheap wooden chair, trying to find comfort where none existed. The mood around the mahogany table in the Situation Room was one of mounting incredulity. At 3:00 A.M.—1:00 A.M. at Red Mesa—the news was bad.

Lockwood had grown up in the Bay area, gone to schools on the West and East coasts, and lived in Washington for the past twelve years. He’d had TV glimpses of another America out there, the America of the Creationists and Christian-nationists, the televangelists and glitzy megachurches. That America had always seemed remote, relegated to places like Kansas and Oklahoma.

It was no longer remote.

The FBI Director asked, “Mr. President?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“The Arizona Highway Patrol reports disturbances at the roadblocks on Route 89 at Grey Mountain, Route 160 at Tuba City and also at Tes Nez Iah.”

“What kind of disturbances?”

“Several state troopers have been injured in scattered melees. Traffic is heavy and a lot of people are evading the road blocks, taking off cross-country. Trouble is, the Navajo Reservation is crisscrossed with hundreds of improvised dirt roads, most of which aren’t even on the maps. Our roadblocks are leaking like a sieve.”

The president turned the monitor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who sat in his wood-paneled office in the Pentagon, the American flag hung behind him on the wall. “General Crisp, where’s the National Guard?”

“Two hours from deployment.”

“We don’t have two hours.”

“Finding the requisite choppers, pilots, and trained troops has been a challenge, Mr. President.”

“I’ve got state troopers out there getting their butts kicked. Not in some sorry-ass corner of Afghanistan, but right here in the United States of America. And you’re telling me two hours?”

“Most of our choppers are in the Middle East.”

The FBI Director spoke. “Mr. President?”

The president turned. “What?”

“I’ve just gotten a report . . .” He accepted a piece of paper from someone offscreen. “. . . an emergency communication from a Navajo Tribal policeman who went up to Red Mesa to investigate—”

“By himself?”

“He went up unawares, like all of us at that time, of the true situation. Sent out an emergency call, which was cut off. I’ve got a transcription.” He read from a piece of paper. “‘Send backup . . . a violent mob . . . they’re going to kill me . . .’ That’s all we got. You can hear the mob noise in the background.”

“Jesus God.”

“The GPS beacon in the squad car went dead a few minutes later. Which usually happens only if the car’s been torched.”

“What’s the news from the Hostage Rescue Team up there? Are they safe?”

“My last report, just ten minutes ago, indicated the operation was going like clockwork. We did have an unconfirmed report of gunfire in the direction of the Dugway, two and a half miles from the airstrip. We’re contacting the team now, as we speak. But let me just assure you, Mr. President, that no disorganized mob is going to take down a crack FBI Hostage Rescue Team.”

“Is that so?” came the president’s skeptical reply. “Are they trained to fire on civilians?”

The FBI Director shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They’re trained to respond to all contingencies.”

The president turned to the head of the Joint Chiefs. “Is there any way to get troops out there sooner than in two hours?”