# 1

> I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering those nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.
>
> --President Ronald Reagan, 1983

> Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
>
> --Immanuel Kant

 Quine approached the Lab on a road that led nowhere else. The morning light was thick, almost a substance. Past the razorwire of the perimeter fence, cranes and water towers and incinerator stacks rose above the fortress city's sprawl of buildings. Construction vehicles moved on its roads. Beyond, grassland stretched to hillsides sallow from drought and spotted with dark stands of live oak.

Soon he saw the protesters blocking the gate. Cars in both lanes had stopped. The blue lights and red lights of patrol cars flickered on the road's shoulders. Blackclad police formed a line between the protesters and the gate. Over chanting, rhythmic but unintelligible, rang a bullhorn's clipped commands, and the protesters moved off the roadway, the rhythm of their chant stumbling. A few remained kneeling in the road before the gate. Three police holstered their batons and moved respectfully among the kneeling protesters, like acolytes among devouts, helping them one by one to their feet and leading them within the gates to a waiting bus. The sequence of blockade, arrest, and release was by now ritual. The arrested chatted with their captors.

As the cars edged forward, Quine saw once again the darkhaired young woman in the crowd and once again felt the hollowing of his heart. Her resemblance to Kate, any reminder of Kate, still lanced him.

Two cars ahead, Leo Highet's red convertible sounded its horn as Highet leaned out to heckle, --Get a life! The woman flinched and Quine's eyes locked on Highet's head, the bald spot, the wedge of features visible in the rearview mirror, the broad nose and dark glasses. Once through the gate Highet's car sped into a right turn to the administration building while Quine drove on to the second checkpoint, then through a desert of broken rock, buried mines, and motion sensors erect on metal stalks like unliving plants. Past this dry moat he stopped at a third checkpoint, then parked in the shade of a concrete building with blank walls and embrasured windows, and nervously thumbed the car radio, --affic and weather togeth, while he watched two younger scientists cross the lot and enter the building. Then he stilled the car and went in.

In his office, one horizontal window too high to reach framed an oblong of sky. On the walls, abandoned by the prior occupant and by Quine untouched, hung graphs and pictures, seismographs of bomb tests, the branched coils of particle decay, a geological map, electron micrographs of molecular etchings, a fractal mountainscape, all overlaid by memos, monthly construction maps, field test schedules, Everyone Needs To Know About Classification, cartoons, Curiosity Is Not A Need To Know, whiteboard thick with equations in four colors so long unwiped that Quine's one pass with a wet rag had left the symbols down one edge ghosted but not erased, and a second desk, loose papers cascaded across its surface, the computer monitor topped by a seamsplit cardboard carton BERINGER GREY RIESLING and buttressed by books manuals folders xeroxes Autoregressive Modeling, Rings Fields and Groups, Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks, Numerical Solution of Differential Equations, Selling Yourself and Your Ideas! and under the desk banker's boxes DESTROY AFTER, and D NULL in black marker. Devon Null, the prior occupant, was "on indefinite leave". But when Quine had moved in, Highet had insisted that he leave Null's half of the office untouched, either against Null's return or, as Quine was coming to believe, as a monument to disappearance.

Quine checked his computer mail. Most of the messages were notices, chaffing, power plays, trivia.

> A memorial service will be held Nov. 1 for Al Hazen who died Oct. 27 following a length illness. He was 51. Hazen worked with the Weapons Test Group at Aguas Secas. Donations in his memory may be made to the American Cancer Society.

One message could not be ignored:

> `From:` Leo Highet <sforza@milano.banl.gov> \
> `Date:` Thu, 31 Oct 1991 17:58:36 (-0800) \
> `To:` Philip Quine <quine@styx.banl.gov> \
> `Subject:` Radiance \
> `Cc:` dietz@styx.banl.gov, szabo@styx.banl.gov, kihara@dis.banl.gov, huygens@aries.banl.gov, lb@dioce.banl.gov
>
> Gentlemen:
>
> As you know, the Beltway boys are coming and it is CRUCIAL that they go home awed. I want confidence, energy and style. There are unanswered questions and we will take hits on those. Meeting at noon today to brainstorm our approach, bldg 101, rm E-501.
>
> Highet
>
> ---- "To apply and direct this vast new potential of destructive energy excited the inventive genius of Leonardo as had few other enterprises." ----

More galling than the message was Highet's new computer login _sforza_ and his signature quote. The inspirational conceit, that they were all Renaissance maestri under the gentle patronage of Prince Leo the High, had come ironically from Quine, who was reading about da Vinci's eighteen years as military engineer under Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Leonardo had written, "I hate war, as all rational men hate it, but there seems no escape from its bestial madness." Not while men of genius bend their talents to it, Quine had added. Here was Highet's comeback.

Highet. What a piece of work. Builder and destroyer of his own legend. A fecund theorist but a distracted experimenter, an indifferent administrator but a champion politician. From the start of his career he had traveled to the capital, made himself known to congressmen and their staffs. In reward for such attentions he was at a young age appointed technical representative to a disarmament conference. His conduct was impeccable until one afternoon, goaded by the other side's mendacious presentation and by his own ungovernable need to command the center of every situation, he let slip classified data.

Highet made allies sooner than friends, and enemies sooner than either. After this gaffe his allies were silent while his enemies pounced. But Highet made the first of the hairsbreadth escapes on which his legend was built. A paper published a year before, cosigned by the President's science advisor, had exposed the same secret. The hearings were dropped and Highet was exiled to an underfunded oubliette of the Lab housed in temporary trailers: J Section.

Anyone else would have languished there. But Highet built by inches a power base, using his charisma to attract the brightest, most driven graduate students he could find, forming in the meantime new political alliances. When Congress at last funded Radiance, all the necessary talent was in J Section, and fiercely loyal to Highet. Soon he was associate director. Two years later, the director retired and Highet filled his place.

J Section. Research And Development In Advanced Nuclear Concepts. Concepts as in weapons. Advanced as in not working yet. Radiance's charter was to develop energy weapons of all types, but Highet's hope and pet was the Superbright: an orbiting battle station of hairthin rods webbed around a nuclear bomb. The bomb's ignition would charge the rods with energy, focused into beams that would flash out to strike down enemy missiles, all in the microsecond before the station consumed itself in nuclear fire.

So far the beams flashed out only in theory. The theory, originated by Null, seemed to Quine sound, but the more he studied his computer model, the less he understood why any of Null's tests had ever produced the ghost of a beam. Yet the farther tests fell behind expectations, the more strident became Highet's public claims. Warren Slater, in charge of testing, had resigned in protest. His letter of resignation was classified and squelched. Bernd Dietz was given interim charge of testing, and to Quine fell the task of finding in disappointing test data any optimism about the promised results.

Meanwhile Highet had grown ever more reckless. He began showing up at high profile conferences and seminars in subjects outside his field: on neural nets, genetic programming, nanotechnology, virtual reality, cold fusion, artificial life, making no discriminations between the cutting edge, the speculative, and the snake oil, as if the force of his character could remake physical law, or at least the local version of it. He spoke in banquet halls at Red Lion Inns, he passed out abstracts, offprints, videotapes, he painted futures brighter and more definite than the present, with himself and his visions at the center of them, inviting the wise and the bold to sit with him in the prosperity and rectitude of that inner circle, outside which was darkness, barbarism, and chaos.

*And many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude.* Again the voice. In the mind's shadows were countless voices, dead, living, unborn, lost. Since working on Radiance Quine had dreamed them. Now they came into his waking life. This voice he recognized from Leonardo's notebooks.

On his second computer, secure in steel shielding, waited Quine's simulation of the rods. This frail superstructure of hope was raised on a sprawling foundation of faith. Hundreds of man-years of Lab effort and ingenuity had gone into the underlying physics codes programs, magnetic fields, burn products, photon scattering, thermal conduction, ion viscosity, bremsstrahlung, all these imponderables had to be calculated and updated, interacting in every kernel of space, at every nanosecond. If Quine had once puzzled for years over the paradox of a single photon, the complexities here were literally unthinkable. The reward of deep understanding was not part of the package.

None of this cauldron of approximation, this vast rationalization, this ingenuous mimickry, was Quine's responsibility. To him it was a black box. His laser simulation ran on top of it all, passing it data, receiving its judgments. Again he ignited his bomb and waited for the nuclear pinball of particles and energies to reach his rods. Color bars and line graphs crept across the screen, the visible satisfactions of programming. The solipsistic machine worlds. It was near to pornography, without nuance. Any halfbright notion could be simulated, the simulation tweaked to an approximation of success, and the success conjured as proof for more funding. Tweak and squeak, as Highet put it. Realization was a "materials" problem. Bend your backs, men, to prove this golden turd of an idea.

The display glitched and broke into the debugger. Lines of code filled the screen, `void qelem`, `malloc(xarray)`, `atof(nptr)`. He ceased to see words or even letters, his eyes grasping instead at the pixels, the shards of light within the characters. That radiance within the meanest mote of being.

What is light? Surfaces boil with quantum fire. How comes this dumb swarming to write beauty, alarm, or desolation upon the soul? Eyes are the questing front of the brain, the channel to the heart. The eye may not, as Archytas thought, emit illuminating rays, but our knowledge of its working is no surer than his.

Mind's eye and heart's channel presented him now Kate's russet hair, her full mouth and cheeks, her dimpled chin, her dark eyes framed by wire glasses. Like a key those features fit his heart. They appeared before him like a truth of nature. Mostly he lived in the mundane, scarcely noting what or whom he passed, but at rare moments the world came forward in all its vividness, stunning his heart. Every time he saw Kate, there was that shock of presence.

She was 23, he 37. They'd met in a yoga class. He hadn't pursued at first. He was coupled with Nan, a quiet woman his own age who worked at the Lab. They lived apart but spent half their spare time together. He was content and not content with what they had. But he and Kate talked, and they went out a few times. She seemed interested in him. Her eyes met something in his. Some hope had stirred in him, some need for joy so long put by he'd ceased to miss it. Thus fed his need grew, covert but unchecked. The years separating him from Kate, years he'd squandered in ever more esoteric projects at the Lab, seemed his to reclaim at will. Kate's attention fed in him some myth of starting over. He grew testy with Nan and impatient with himself, seeking not a break between them but between themselves and what he now acutely felt them becoming, burdens and reproofs to each other. Nan waited him out. Her deepening disappoint in him was unspoken but heavy. His desperation grew until he could contain it no longer and he lay it before Kate, blurted it out, a bitter plea. Save me. Who wouldn't flee from that? She regarded him kindly. Oh Philip, the moment's passed. It just didn't happen for us. There's someone else. That the moment could pass. That he had let it. Had not seen it passing. Such a small thing, that attention, that renewed hope, briefly given and withdrawn, gone now.

The morning too was gone to no end. Every failure now he referred back to that moment, and he saw in his life only patterns of failure and emptiness.

---

Quine avoided that part of the building where Highet's young theorists worked, X Section, or, as the older men called it, the Playpen. But today his customary exit was blocked by a tour group of weary adults and bored children in facepaint, their guide saying, --tiny robots that actually repair human cells, as he swerved past a sign WARNING TOUR IN PROGRESS NON-CLASSIFIED CONVERSATION ONLY to the swell of the Brahms Requiem in full clash with The Butthole Surfers and a rapid din of simulated combat followed by the admiring exclamation, --Studly! Big win! and laughter fading as he passed an open room in which three refrigerators stood flanked floor to ceiling by case upon case of soda, and veered into a stairwell clattering down metal steps to a metal door held open by a wastebasket and silent despite EMERGENCY EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND and emerged onto a loading dock between brown dumpsters NOT FOR DISPOSAL OF HAZARDOUS WASTE stepping down onto a paved path then jumping back to doge a white electric cart DAIHATSU jouncing onto a debris of torn asphalt and treadmarked dirt past chainlink CREDNE CONSTRUCTION and three blue PORT-O-LET stalls to vanish behind three glossy cylindrical tanks COMPOSIT PLASTEEL CONTAINMENT DO NOT INSTALL WITHOUT READING PLASTEEL KIT B INSTRUCTIONS, on past temporary trailers holding his mouth and nose against the metallic stench of bright green flux oozing from an open pipe into gray earth, until he regained the main road and passed the checkpoint, showing his badge, to enter Building 101, passing through the lobby where visitors and employees were edified by models of bombs, lasers, satellites, boosters, and photos of the celebrated Nobelists who'd devised them, and on to the conference room where all but Highet had already arrived.

--He was one of these, shall I say, Marxist radical types. His mother cut him out of the family money. Hello, Philip. We're waiting for Leo as usual. So he's in Prague now selling laptops to the Czechs. Ah, the man himself.

--Who's this you're talking about, sounds like he's figured out that free markets are diplomacy by other means. Everyone, this is Jef Thorpe, postdoc from the University of Utah, he's here to look us over. Jef worked with Fish and Himmelhoch on cold fusion, and I just want to say don't believe the conventional wisdom, something is happening there. Jef, this is Dennis Kihara, our new press officer, he takes the heat for my excesses. Bernd Dietz, materials and research. Frank Szabo, systems integration. Phil Quine, our x-ray focusing guru, Philip, Jef's done interesting work in your area, you should sit down with him. Okay, all present? Let's do it.

Highet seated the young man opposite Quine. Jeans, jacket over t-shirt, short black hair, high color, a small gold stud through his left nostril, his presence a breach of protocol and probably security, though the others knew better than to say so.

--You all see the news last night? About the protest? The good news is we won. First they showed the protesters, out on the street, wind noise, bad lighting, and then our rebuttal from our respectable office. We won because we got to go last, and they put us last because we provided closure. That's the model for our presentation: beginning, middle, end. We'll begin by showing footage of successful tests. The middle will be video simulations of the system, where we'll highlight potential problems. By defining the problems we control the questions. And we'll end by addressing the problems and introducing entirely new approaches and spin-off programs. Dennis is running things, but I may break in at any point.

--Leo, can we skip the last part, the science fiction?

--No, Bernd. Past, present, future. Closure. Without this you leave people ready to ask questions.

--We're avoiding questions?

--Not if they're intelligent and informed but we have a few critics and wise guys on this panel and I'd like to keep it simple.

--Leo, I have more respect than you for the intelligence of senators. Congressmen are not always so bright but

--Bernd, it's simple courtesy. We inform them at a level that's neither condescending nor technical, we tell them their money is being well spent, show them how, say thanks so much.

--Salesmanship.

--Grow up, Bernd, a couple times a year I ask you to do this. Is the money well spent? Yes or no.

--Yes, yes.

--I'd ah, feel better if we could discuss the middle part in ah detail, there are just some questions that I'm not comfortable to address without ah, just a little more input. For example the focusing data...

--Dennis, only Slater has questioned that data, and he's gone. Discredited. Focus is now Philip's baby.

--So, ah, focus is our main problem?

--Yes, it's one, said Quine. --Focus, brightness...

--But we're within an order of magnitude?

--I don't see any quantitative agreement with theory, said Quine. --The tests have shown a few bright spots. That's all I'm willing to commit to.

--That's all you've committed to for what is it ten months now Philip?

--I don't see any fundamentals. I'm beginning to wonder.

--Are you pulling a Slater on me, Philip? Because I want to tell you something, all of you. Some people in the lower echelons are making Slater out to be some kind of hero. To m this man was a menace to every one of us because he didn't care about winning. He didn't know what he wanted out of life and wouldn't have been able to get it if he had known. I have no respect for parasites like that.

--Leo, Null had a brilliant notion and we should pursue it, but that's all it is so far, a notion. We

--No one's questioned Null's theory, no one, not even critics.

--Sure but it's a long way from there to even a prototype

--We have supporting test data

--which may or may not mean qualitative agreement may or may not, but never quantitative, we have no understan

--well you're the one with the models Philip lo these many

--and you're the one who said this was a long term project, your words, long term, and now suddenly

--oh sure, and if we all had seven lives

--now that there's a little pressure it's

--what I'm hearing

--it's suddenly urgent

--what I'm hearing from you Philip is that we need more shots. Convey that necessity to our guests when they're here, think you can do that? And put a little urgency into it?

--I won't pretend we have focus when

--You're not going to give me an inch are you?

--Not on the basis of spotty data I can't interpret.

--I tell you what. There's an eighty kiloton shot  coming up next Saturday, right, Bernd? Piggyback it, Philip. Get yourself some better data.

--In what, a week? Design and fabricate apparatus in a week?

--Nine days. Jef can help you if he sticks around.

--Now hold on...

--Get off the pot. Let's move to Frank's contribution. You've all read it?

--Leo...

--We're moving on.

There was a brief silence in which papers rustled.

--Nothing new here, said Dietz.

--That's its strength. We've taken heat on preproduction technologies. This is a simple, viable off-the-shelf option. It's an easy sell. Contractors are lining up.

--It's good show-and-tell, said Szabo. --We can point to a card cage, this is the guidance system a year ago, then hold up a wafer, here it is today. Tangible progress.

Dietz continued to study the paper. --These are Baldur anti-satellite missiles in a smaller package.

--That's right.

--These were shelved over ten years ago as an ABM treaty violation.

--That toilet paper? Let that worry us we might as well give up.

--These are not by any stretch of the imagination directed energy weapons. You want to put, what does it say, five thousand of these in orbit...

--We're pursuing many options, Bernd. These would be one layer of a shield. Look, it's a long way to deployment. Oh and we get something else totally for free with Frank's idea. Always think dual use. Put a warhead on these guys they're earth penetrators, aim them downward get a thousand g impact, three k p s terminal velocity, earth-coupled shock waves to destroy hardened shelters. We have a friend in the Pentagon who's hard for that and the Beltway boys know it.

--Wait just wait you mean, this, these ah interceptors are for the presentation? But it's, we need to address the existing problems, that's what they're coming for, we can't feed them something totally new! And with this Slater thing

--Dennis, trust me, it's the best possible thing to do. As far as Slater goes, he's history, a blip, not even an incident. This visit was scheduled long before his snit. Sure we'll get closer scrutiny than we would in the average dog-and-pony but it's an opportunity. Remember NORAD's famous false alarms and screwups? They got a billion-dollar facelift out of those incidents. You up to speed now?

--Well yes, I mean no, not on the interceptors but...

--Put Frank's paper in the kit, I'll step in during the presentation. Oh, and make sure everyone gets a souvenir.

--A, I'm sorry?

--A souvenir. What are you giving the kids for family day today?

--Ah, some laser-etched aluminum disks...

--Good. Run off half a dozen make it a dozen more etched with the Radiance logo, can you do that? And glossies of the new artist's renderings.

Highet was out the door before anyone else had left their seat. Thorpe, abandoned, stood but did not move quickly enough to follow the older man out. As the seated men studied him incuriously he blushed and exited.

The others then rose. Szabo went out singing under his breath, --It's a long way, to deployment, it's a long way, I know. In the meantime, we have employment, it's the stick that makes us go...

At the doorway Dietz said to Quine, --It is outrageous that he should bring a boy into that meeting and criticize you this way. Easy for him to make promises, but when the promises are not so easy to deliver we suffer for them.

--I don't think the boy knew what he was getting into.

--Tell me what you want added to this test as soon as possible. He has put our asses on the line, both of us.

--I'll send you e-mail.

--Souvenirs! He gives senators souvenirs.

---

Quine had come to the Lab at Réti's invitation, Réti the legend, intimate of Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, founder of the Lab. Impossible to refuse. Réti had for one semester graced Quine's university with his presence, where he'd sat on Quine's doctoral committee. Quine must have made an impression, for two years later Réti called him. I hear you are working hard on some good ideas. How would you like unlimited resources for this work? Come for the summer, work on what you will.

Quine and Sorokin, a fellow postdoc, had isolated the emission of a single photon from a calcium source in order to determine whether a lone quantum displayed wave-particle complementarity. For two long years they had refined their approach, paring it to essentials, designing an experiment they might hope to realize with the school's meager resources. Elegance born of need. A slow and painful progress. At the Lab, in one month Quine was able to design and build a detector acute enough, and the experiment came off on the first try. Both tunneling and anticoincidence were evident. They had touched the central mystery. Even a single photon is both particle and wave.

Quine stayed. After that it was never a question. Not till much later did he guess that he'd been played. That Réti had his reason for waiting two years before approaching him. That by then his work was ripe for plucking, and the Lab's resources had little to do with its fruition apart from giving them the juice of it.

At the Lab his paper brought him a celebrity near to grace. Unlimited time to think. No assigned duties. And the mysteries ceased to open to him. Idle, he took up one of Highet's endless suggestions, the optics of x-ray mirrors. He welcomed the work, as though it paid some tithe of the mind to the practical. And it was a challenge, but finally it was, as the pioneers had with exact irony called their first bomb, a "gadget". Any solution, even if it laid bare principles, was beside the point if it couldn't kill missiles. So his mirrors never passed a design review. He wrote some computer codes for modeling the mirrors, and those turned out to have some peripheral application in inertial confinement fusion. The weapons work which he knew to be central to the Lab still seemed distant from him. Then Radiance geared up, and his modeling software proved flexible enough to accommodate the next idea: the bombpumped Superbright. Opportunistic as a virus, the Lab took it up. Now he was pressured. Now he was in a competitive atmosphere where the possibility of failure, of weakness, of doubt, could not be voiced even to oneself lest it undermine the resolve needed to get through each day. All the projects here were difficult, at the edge of the possible, and all the scientists worked at their limits and at the limits of their science. You could work on a problem for months only to have your work demolished in minutes in a review by your peers, your competitors, your colleagues. That was what reviews were for: to show up fatal flaws before they became expensively entrenched in a design. So ideas were hammered without mercy. It was and it wasn't personal. If the idea was good, it was yours but somehow beyond you, and if it was bad the attack was on it, not on you. Quine saw men in tears even as they went on arguing and, after it was over, thank their assailants.

Throughout this he kept silent faith with the mysteries. He would return to them when the pressures of the moment were past. Programming took only the surface of his mind; its essence he held in reserve, or so he thought. Quine came at last to understand that he did well at his assigned tasks precisely because he brought them his all. Nothing was left over.

---

When he left the building the sun was low. The air was thick with heat, and as he started the car the radio blurted --record temp, before he silenced it.

Through the gate traffic slowed. Demonstrators in costume paraded in the road. Quine edged forward through skeletons and spooks with signs and props, TECHNOLOGIES OF DEATH, a longrobed mantisheaded figure towering on stilts above the crowd, tambourines jangling, EL DÍA DE LOS MUERTOS, and lab security herding the crowd off the road. As he cleared the crowd a klaxon blared. The mantis swayed, tugging at robes snagged on the perimeter razorwire as the entrance gates slid shut, alarm lights strobing. On the inner perimeter road security vehicles appeared, racing toward the entry kiosk. Then he saw standing by his passenger window the woman who resembled Kate. She wore black spandex bicycle pants and a blue chambray shirt. She was staring at the gate. Quine hesitated, then rolled down the window.

--You want a ride out of here? They're going to start arresting people.

She looked at him, then back at the gate. On the main road Quine saw a flurry of approaching lights. City police.

--I can't wait.

Whoops blasts squeals cut the crowd noise. She saw the vehicles approaching and with something like annoyance got into Quine's car. Quine sped away shutting his window against the shriek of the passing vehicles.

--I'm Philip Quine.

--Lynn Hamlin. Did you see what happened?

When he looked at her all resemblance fell away. Same body type, same round features, but hair almost black with a russet tinge, cropped close to the neck. No glasses. Dark penetrating eyes. Tanned calves faintly downed, lithe as a huntress's. No key turned in his heart, just an echo of loss.

--The one on stilts, his costume caught on the fence. It must have set off the alarm.

--Were you there for the demo?

--No. I work there.

His ID was still clipped to his jacket. She'd been looking at it, and now she smiled, as if to confide her little subterfuge.

--What do you work on?

He turned onto a road parallel to the freeway, where earthmovers were parked in torn up lots behind emporia of sporting goods, fast food, auto parts, videotapes, computers, discount carpets. Sun flashed through the struts of a half finished retaining wall.

--Defense weapons.

--You mean Radiance. Do you believe in it?

*And those in the anterooms of Hell demur, saying, I do not approve what goes on inside.*

--It's what I do.

--Do you know what Einstein said? That you can't simultaneously prepare for war and prevent it?

--Where can I drop you?

--Corner of Mariposa.

As they passed over the freeway, the sun struck their shadow out toward the golden eastern hills. He sensed her still looking at him, then she faced ahead.

--I like this time of day, she said. --The light.

--I don't, said Quine. --It makes me think of endings.

She said nothing to that. As the car descended into the shadow of the overpass Quine said, --We didn't hear about the protest. The organizers usually let us know.

--Maybe they're tired of playing your game.

--It's not my game. A green sign with white letters Mariposa hung over the intersection. Quine pulled to the curb by a bus stop bench placarded FAST DIVORCE BANKRUPTCY. She turned to him with sudden vehemence.

--These demonstrations won't stop, you know. You don't know how angry people are... Her voice held some doubt, whether for the anger or his belief in it, he couldn't tell.

--Then I'll probably see you again out there, he said.

--Tell me, what's the point, I mean, isn't it obviously a waste now that the cold war

--Look, and hearing the annoyance in his voice he stanched it, --I don't make policy...

--Well, that's part of the problem, isn't it. People not taking responsibility for what they do.

Pricked, he turned to her just as a bus pulled to the curb, the squeal of its brakes preempting whatever he might have meant to say. Some hurt might have remained in his eyes. She seemed abashed and held his gaze for a moment longer before reaching to unbuckle her seatbelt.

--Listen... would you have lunch with me sometime?

She looked at him in surprise. --Lunch? Why?

--I'd just like to talk more.

--Do we have anything to say to each other?

--We could find out. His pulse thickened in his throat.

--But you're the enemy, she said.

--Me...? He caught, under her serious dark brow, a glimpse of mischief, though she didn't smile.

--Thanks for the ride.

She was out the door before he felt the protest of his heart. So even now he had not relinquished hope.

---

When he got home Nan's car was in his parking space. Most Tuesday nights she spent with Quine. He went to her place Friday nights and some weekends. But he'd worked late Tuesday, so they'd shifted it to tonight. He'd forgotten.

--Lo, she called, --In the kitchen. I picked up some tortellini at Il Fornaio and a salad, is that okay?

--Fine. As he entered she turned with a wary smile. The sight of her brought him a roil of giddiness, of memory, of guilt, of sadness. Her features were sharp and fine, her skin pale, her straight auburn hair just starting to show gray, her slight body always dressed with a style that in its impeccability read as a brave front.

--Bread's in the oven, can you get that?

He looked for an oven mitt while she talked about her day, some seniority conflict in the personnel department. Quine's patience wore. When, setting the plates down, she bent to kiss his neck, he flinched.

--What's wrong?

--Nothing. It's just Highet's going mad again. A Congressional visit's coming up, it should be routine, but he acts like the whole program's at stake.

--Is it?

--First he drops Null's work in my lap, then today he starts pimping some lunatic idea of Szabo's, and he assigns me a postdoc like, like a chaperone... and the protesters.

--What about them?

--They're getting on my nerves.

They ate in silence for a few minutes. At last he said, --What would you think if I quit?

--Quit? Your job?

--Yes.

--But Philip, what would you do?

--Well, I don't know. I could take some time off to think about it.

--Time off? I thought that we were trying to save money...

--Save...?

--Philip, I'm not trying to pressure you, but I thought we agreed that it makes sense to look for a place together...

--I told you, Nan, I can't think about that while this project is on, I can't make big plans like that until this whole thing is, is settled.

--Well, couldn't we start looking just to see what's available, just go to a few open houses...?

--If you want. But I don't see the point if we can't afford it yet.

--The point is to plan for a future, Philip. Haven't you made any progress?

--Progress, I feel like I'm chasing my tail, there's no progress to be made!

--Please don't snap at me.

--I, I can't even discuss it with you, you don't have the clearance.

She stood and carried dishes into the kitchen. He got up to follow.

--Nan... He came up behind her and embraced her. Her hands rested on his forearms.

--What about Sunday?

--Sunday?

--We're seeing Ginny and Bill, remember? If you came early we could

--Sunday. Look, I have a deadline. I can't. I'm sorry but I just can't.

--You're working? But if you're not getting anywhere...

--Well but that's the whole problem isn't it! Meantime there are still short-term goals and meetings.

She sighed and left the kitchen. In the living room the television came on. When after a moment he entered the room he heard her in the bedroom speaking on the telephone. Remote control in hand he viewed a cool panoptic tumble of war famine catastrophe enormity larded with a fantastic plenty of goods caressed by smiling tanned models, to pause on the logotype of Martin Marietta, --a proud supporter for twenty-five years of science programming on public television, his impulse to switch again frozen by the worn, imposing face of Aron Réti, saying thickly, --In science there is a cult of the beautiful theory. But how beautiful is reality? These beautiful theories, these elegant mathematics are not verified by experiment. Experiment shows us a mess of a universe with over a hundred basic particles and three irreconcilable forces. We would like to unify them all, just as we would like to smooth over all the political differences in the world. But experience shows, in physics and in politics, that this is not always possible.

Abruptly the screen glared with the involute radiance of the bomb. Sun's heart. Cosmic ground. Siva and Devi coupling. A thin roar issued from the set and the thick voice rode over it, --The duty of science is to pursue knowledge even if it leads to the unbeautiful. Or to evil. How else learn about evil?

Nan returned to sit beside him. --Isn't that Réti?

The camera returned to the physicist. Emeritus director, Réti was rarely at the Lab; the office he kept there served him solely as a clubroom or a backdrop. Six months ago a film crew had come to the Lab. Quine had heard Réti shouting at them behind the closed door.

--Watch, this is what Highet calls the liberal bias of the media, said Quine as the camera went to the interviewer.

--After the war, many of your colleagues turned away from weapons. Some of them have won Nobel Prizes. Do you feel that your work with weapons has cost you credibility or respect within the scientific community? Has it compromised you as a scientist?

--Never. In fact it has challenged and improved me as a scientist.

--You're closely connected to Radiance. What about recent charges that test results have been faked?

--This is a lie! First, I am not closely connected...

--But you've lobbied extensively for Radiance in Wash

--I am no lobbyist! I am a private citizen with some scientific expertise, and when I am asked to testify about technical matters I do so...

--But for over forty years you've been an advocate of nuclear weapons. Your authority and influence are well known.

--Now you listen to me. It is an imperfect world, a dangerous world. There is evil in the world. How do you meet it? All ends, even the best, are reached by impure means. Reason is supposed to be the hallmark of science, but I tell you that no one is swayed by reason. A theory, an idea, does not make its own way. It was Einstein who said merit alone is very little good; it must be backed by tact and knowledge of the world. I know of many cases where maybe the data does not quite agree with your theory, no, you think, the carpers will question, your case is far clearer if you discard this set of data, if you report only these results. And who are these frauds? Ptolemy. Galileo. Newton. Bernoulli. Mendel. Millikan. What matters in the long run is not some wishful dream of scruples, but whether you have driven your knowledge home!

Behind the fury in Réti's eyes Quine saw a bright and open wound: more illustrious for his influence than his work, he had failed at everything but success. And Quine's own life, he suddenly saw, was bent around Réti's influence. A man has no wealth nor power but his knowledge, Réti had once said to Quine. But now he said that if power did not lead, knowledge could not follow. Quine stood, ignoring --Philip? what is it? and went to the bathroom. He held the sides of the sink, heart racing. In the cabinet he found the pill bottle.

*The spirit is radiant, yet there are two principles of radiance: that of light, and that of fire. Fire comes to the use of those who go not the way of light. And the difference is, that fire must consume its object.*

Quine returned to Réti's angry voice, --So I have no Nobel Prize, that accolade of the pure. But Alfred Nobel would understand me well. And history will be my judge, not you.

--What is it, Philip? What's the matter?

Quine turned to Nan, her face in the phosphor light bleak as a rock outcrop. He reached to touch her neck. Unsmiling she leaned her head against his hand. His fingers cupped her nape and he drew her mouth to his.

In the bedroom they undressed on opposite sides of the bed. The television droned on. Between her legs he felt the string of a tampon, and as he touched it she bent double and enclosed him in her mouth. Above the activity of their bodies his spirit hovered sadly regarding the terrain of his life. Lightly his hands cradled her head. He began to pump semen. Deep inside him a talon drove home and brought forth, impaled, his soul, writhing. A minute later he was awash in sleep. Waiting at a counter to pick up xeroxes. Quick tap at his shoulder. Kate. She smiled, her eyes upon him, and he knew it was a dream, and he was happy, and he slept.

# 2

The morning sky, pallid with haze, conveyed yet enough sun to cast through the high embrasure of his office window a faint rhombus which crept toward the doorway relentless as a horologue. From his desk Quine gazed at it half hearing the radio, --ildfires in three counties, when his phone rang.

--Quine.

--Is this Philip?

--Yes, who's this.

--Lynn. From the demo yesterday?

--Oh. Oh yes. How did you... He stood and paced with the phone. --How did you get my number?

--I called the switchboard. I want to apologize. I behaved badly. Are you free for coffee?

--Well I... not this morning.

--Later this afternoon?

--Well I...

--Don't let me pressure you.

--No I, I want to. It's just a surprise.

--I get off work at four. Do you know the Café Desaparecidos the missing,

--I get off work at four. Do you know the Café Desaparecidos [the missing]? In the central mall. I work near there.

--Sure I, okay, I'll see you there about four.

As he hung up Jef Thorpe knocked on his open door. Black jacket, blue shirt, jeans. A faint pock where yesterday the nose stud had been.

--Come in. [pg24]

--I guess we'll be working together.

--Oh, you're staying.

--If you'll have me. Listen, that meeting yesterday, I didn't belong there, I'm sorry if...

--Not your fault. Doctor Highet has his way of doing things.

--Yeah, I see that. Listen, before we started I want to tell you, the single-photon experiment you did with Sorokin was really elegant. I was, you know, sort of surprised to find you here, I thought you'd be somewhere more theoretical.

--I thought everyone had forgotten that experiment by now.

--Oh no. It was very sweet work.

--The detector was critical. We worked on it for two years. We got it only after I came here.

--You didn't follow it up.

--Sorokin thought I was wrong to come here. He said it would be a black hole. He may have been right. Of course things look different from inside.

--Black hole, yeah, I've thought of that. But you know where I come from. That limits my options in the straight academic world.

--You don't have qualms about defense work?

--It's not what I'm here for.

--It's just, you might want to consider your position. I came in neutral about defense work, but before long I was in the thick of it. It's easy to slip into.

--I'm sort of apolitical.

--Well, if that's what you want, turning to the computer which glowed with:

> `Date:` Fri 1 Nov 09:05 \
> `From:` Leo Highet <sforza@milano.banl.gov> \
> `To:` Philip Quine <quine@styx.banl.gov> \
> `Subject:` Upcoming J Section Tests
>
> 11/4 23:00 PDT, Building 328, Codename "Stelarc", ground-based laser guide star, R. Grosseteste, sup.
R. Grosseteste, sup.
>
> 11/9 18:00 PDT, Site 600, Codename "Taliesin", 80 kiloton, B. Dietz & P. Quine, sup.
>
> "Mechanics are the Paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics." LdV

--Looks like we're real, said Thorpe.

--You're lucky. It was years before I was associated with a shot.

--Is that luck?

--It's a bit of a prestige. A merit badge

Quine cleared the screen and brought up the Superbright test data.

--You see. Intense brightness here, and here. Very erratic pattern.

--This data is picked up how?

--When the bomb ignites, radiation from the rods bounces off some reflectors to

--X-ray mirrors?

--Yes, something like that. They're beryllium. The data agrees with theory to a point, but when we increase power, we don't get an increase in beam, in fact we get less. We've talked about trying different metals in the rods, we've used gold till now, but mercury...

--Yeah, elements seventy-two through ninety-five would be good to try but with the, you know, time constraints, I checked and Fabrication has gold rods ready to go, so maybe those are a good choice and you can, or I mean we can sort of concentrate on sensor configuration...

--Sounds reasonable.

Thorpe continued to stare at the screen. --Could this be an annular? This pattern I mean, could those reflectors be picking up a sort of imperfect focus, you know, the edge of a ring? If we move them in...

--I've tried, no luck.

--Can I look at your focusing code?

--Yes, sure, all the files are in this directory.

--That's great. Mind if I work here? pointing to Null's desk.

--Ah, sure. Sure, go ahead. I'm going for lunch and maybe a swim. I'll see you later.

*We read of the beaver that when it is pursued, knowing that it is for the medicinal virtue of its testicles and not being able to escape, it stops; and it bites off its testicles with its sharp teeth and leaves them to its enemies.*
---

Gaunt, saturnine, Bran Nolan in a corner of the cafeteria looked up unsmiling from scattered papers to raise a hand in greeting.

--How's our new boyo Kihara?

--Weren't you in line for that position?

--It's my Tourette's syndrome. Terrible liability in a press officer, never know what he might blurt out in public.

--You should have been asked.

--Do you know, I'm happier, if that's the word I want, where I am. Kihara is a little lamb. The last man, Vessell, didn't outlast Slater. And we're not done with all that, no indeed.

--Getting some work done? Quine indicated the papers.

--"The Lab has a longstanding commitment to developing new methods and technologies to protect the environment", the most effective of which to date has been the press release. Do you know we have a toxics mitigation program now? Seems there's a toxic plume seeping into the groundwater under a vineyard off the north boundary. Vines died, soil went gray, the whole field stinks like sepsis. I'm writing an upbeat report about it. And yourself? How's the death ray coming?

--We can maim small insects at a meter. The new concept is interceptors. Small flying rocks.

--Do you know, da Vinci invented shrapnel. He'd have been right at home here with all these advanced minds.

--Yes, that's Highet's conceit.

--Throwing rocks at things. We should be proud, thinking about these old impulses in such an advanced way.

A plump figure cam forward shaking a sheaf of papers, from which Nolan recoiled. --Bran, Bran, Bran. What must I do to get you to use a font other than Courier?

--Hello Bob, how's the gout? I don't like this business of tarting up manuscripts. You get enchanted by the beauty of it all. You start to think you're writing the Book of Kells.

--A few attractive fonts, tastefully applied, can spice up a presentation. A little humanitas, you know. Why else, Bran, did we get you that powerful and costly workstation?

--I don't know, Bob, why did you? I was still figuring out the type balls on my Selectric.

The sheaf of papers fell fanning from their clip onto the table.

Shaking his head and chuckling grimly, Bob passed on to another table.

--Humanitas, yes, that's what we need here, isn't it, Highet with his Renaissance, and Aldus Manutius there, need a few more particle men who've read the Tao Te Ching, couple more managers who've studied Sun Tzu, lend these binary views a little tone, dress up the winners and losers, the Elect and the Preterite, the screwers and the screwed. Each man in his station, and keep your distance from the low life, can't have just anyone winning, because if you ever let the rabble ahead, if they can rise, you can surely fall.

Nolan folded back pages, --listen to this bit, "the support of this tight-knit community", support is it now? I'd have said the goading, the ambition, the Schadenfreude, that's what gets the work done. The wife walked out six months ago with the kid, you're eating Campbell's soup cold out of the can, you haven't got a clean shirt, but after a few months of eighteen hour days you've got *data* that everyone wants to see. You *win big*.

--Bran, you work here, too.

--What should I do then, write novels? Or maybe journalism, that's it, *investigative* journalism. Have you met the journalist from Cambridge? Right over there with his tape recorder, name's Armand Steradian. He's researching the belief systems of those who work on weapons of mass destruction, I think that was his phrase. Quite the charmer. He's published one book on scientific fraud, and a paper highly critical of what he calls the defense establishment. You probably don't watch TV but there was a program on PBS last night, Steradian was in it abusing Réti.

--Does Highet know he's here?

--Highet invited him.

Quine headed for the door, passing as he did Armand Steradian, who held a small microphone before a J Section technician, --you're so goldang busy every day you just put off thinking about it, though in Quine's view pressure was a tool well used to put off thinking.

---

Black cottonwoods around the pool throve despite the drought. Their catkins littered the water. A jet moved on the sky, stitching a contrail across a lace of cloud where a white sun struggled. Quine sat on a towel on the grassy verge and watched a portly swimsuited man enter through the gate, barrel chest glossed with hair, and behind him a woman in a white halter top and shorts, the heads of three men turning to follow. The pool was crowded this Friday afternoon; it was warm, it was the end of the workweek, it was family day; unlike Quine, most worked a five day week, most would depart hence into a forgetfulness. In the shallows of the pool two young girls splashed. One opened her mouth to show her companion a bright penny on her outstretched tongue. A young mother in a black maillot gripped a ladder to raise herself half from the pool and wave at her infant in a nearby stroller, glisten and shadow in the cords of her back, and Quine suffered a pang for a life now beyond his knowing: to be wed, with child, so young. On thermals a black and white winged vulture, _Cathartes aura_, rocked and banked. From the jet thunder fell like muffled blows. The warmth and the sound of water churned by swimmers and the spray tossed up by their passing lulled Quine into a lethargy from which he woke with a start to consult his watch. On the pool's floor danced cusps of light.

---

The café's walls rose past exposed beams and ducts to the nacre of frosted skylights. Lynn sat in a wirebacked chair at a glass table, face downcast at papers before her. In the moment before she looked up, Kate's face glowed before him. What do you do, Philip?

--Hoy es el día de los muertos, Lynn said in greeting, banishing Kate's image. Angularities all her own moved in her flesh; a small gap showed between her teeth as she smiled.

Quine seated himself and said gravely, --I should tell you I'm involved with someone.

--Gee, I said I wanted to apologize, not start an affair.

--I, sorry I...

--And maybe pick your brain about Radiance.

--I'm sorry, I, what did you say before? El día...

--Today is the Day of the Dead. All Saint's Day. All of California used to be Mexico, you know, they called it Aztlan. Once my group shuts the Lab down, we're going to reclaim Aztlan for the native peoples. Oh, don't look that way, I'm joking, that's the kind of thing the far right says about us.

--Your group?

--Citizens Against Nuclear Technology. I'm a paralegal with them.

--What's that you're reading?

--Your press releases. She held a sheaf set in unadorned Courier font. --You people have fingers in a lot of pies. When I started my concern was the bombs, but that's just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it. There's also the supercomputers, the lasers, the genetics, the chemicals...

--You probably know more about it than I do.

--Your cover stories are so creative. Every one of. Oh, go ahead, order, she's waiting.

--Cappuccino. What do you mean, cover stories?

--Quisiera un espresso por favor. Every one of these quote benign technologies has a pretty easy to imagine military use. Laser x-ray lithography for etching microchips, uh huh, right, and here's one about kinder gentler CBW, "less virulent" tear gas for "crowd control", heavier specific gravity for controlled delivery, if this is the stuff you're public about I can only imagine the rest.

--You're wrong, there's a genuine effort to convert to peacef

--Dual use, I know. Genuine effort to blur the line is what it is, and it goes far beyond the Lab, people in physics and comp sci departments across the country are lining up at the same trough, the grants are there and if they don't take the money someone else will. That's the reasoning. What a waste of talent and resources.

--It's more complicated than that. The people I work with, they're not cynical.

--Yes, I know how people get caught up in their work. I have a friend there, not in Radiance, in another section. He's a Quaker, he calls it "being in the world". At least he's thought about it. How did you get into it?

--Me? I'm, well, a lapsed theorist. But I'm not typical... Was he not? Réti, Highet, Dietz, Thorpe, all had failed in some subtle way that in such a place could be denied. But where was there not failure and denial?

--Do your people pay any attention at all to our demonstrations?

--In J Section? Not much.

--We seem to bug your boss, at least.

--Highet?

--In his little red sports car. What about you? What did you think about the big one yesterday?

--It seemed, I don't know, festive, almost a costume party, I didn't realize at first it was Halloween...

--But no, that wasn't it. It was a ceremony. An exorcism.

--Oh come on, what, you mean we're possessed...

--By arrogance, if nothing else.

--That's absurd, you can't convince anyone with some absurd ritual...

--It's no different from your rituals, your bomb tests, just as absurd, but really dangerous!

--They're not my tests... and he remembered *B. Dietz & P. Quine, sup.* --I'm sorry. I'm no good at talking about this.

The set of her features, so poised and eager, softened then and her voice lowered. --I don't mean to attack you. I'm sure you think about it.

--Yes but, but I'm not sure! What to do, I mean. What if it is a waste, what if, if all the money and the decades, all the lives and talent... then it's more than just me, it's not just my mistake, but something wrong at the root of it, and what, what can I do about that?

--If it is a mistake, you can face it. You could stop.

--But that wouldn't stop anything. It's almost as if these things we work on... they use us to get born. Could use anyone.

--It must be very hard for you. Their eyes met, and the troubled sympathy in hers wrung him. Her face was so concerned for him that he almost cried out with selfpity.

--It's not your fault. I, I need to get back now.

--I really am sorry, can we... can we forget about all this and just start over?

--Start over...?

Abruptly he rose and walked away stolid with loathing of his own erratic heart, and of her for stirring it.

---

 In the night he woke sweating with a pulse of ninety, reached for the pillbottle next to the small box DREAMLIGHT Unlock Your Inner Potential and its plastic headset. The pills opened a plain of timelessness in which it seemed a lost part of himself dwelled. as he lay in their haze, his fluency returned. Wonderful problems enticed and yielded to his insight, wisdom depended from the sky like fruit. He kept a notebook in case any insight survived his waking. None did.

He attached the headset like a blindfold. At the onset of dreaming a strobe would flicker there and rouse him enough to observe and direct his dream but not to wake. He settled and conjured an image: the battle station shining in the void of space. Slender arms and rods pivoting. The missile rise in swarms, bright points on the black hollow of a crescent Earth. They blur in a silver mist of chaff. Above the crescent distant battle stations ignite in globes of light, their beams lance out, but swarm follows swarm up from the Earth, far too many to destroy. He pulled off the headset.

The world has changed, the old enemy has collapsed into ruined republics. Yet despite this consummation of all the Lab has strived for, the work goes on, the mood is spiritless, the shots in the desert continue like some ritual of penance, some black and endless propitiation of forces that in losing their fixed abode have grown closer and more menacing.

Stillness. Faint whistle of tinnitus, first sounds of birdcall. Wan dawn light. The enemy is gone. But the work goes on and on.

# 3

 For a while Lynn was not among the protesters. Their numbers had diminished to a small contingent by the main gate, holding a drooping sheet painted DIABOLIS EX MACHINA. Quine slowed through the gate and stopped, valves in the engine ticking, for a backhoe lurching across the main road, and closed his window against the dust billowing toward him as he went on past an air hammer breaking a sidewalk to rubble, overtones of its chatter following him across the rock moat and into the building where, too late to retreat, he saw Thorpe seated at Null's computer tapping without letup at Quine's entrance.

--Morning, said Quine.

--Is it? I've been here all night. Something there for you to read.

On top of Quine's stack of journals, a year's unread accumulation, colored slips in their pages flagging articles that at an earlier time would not have waited a day, was a xerox topped with a yellow sticker SEEN THIS? _Physical Review Letters 1954_. A dig at his age?

--I know it's old, said Thorpe. --But I think it applies. See, I started with an EE from a hick school, taught myself quantum mechanics by reading Dirac, so my perspective is sort of, things don't change that much. Lots of good ideas have been left hanging. That's how I found your paper... I mean... stumbling at having touched as he thought Quine's sensitive point, --not to say, it's just, you know, if you're a student like me, not well connected, not seeing all the latest preprints and hearing all the gossip, you need another way up. So this is my way, sort of looking for old forgotten stuff to build on.

--So tell me about this.

--I came across it working for Fish and Himmelhoch, looking for a sort of nuclear model to explain the cold fusion reaction? Okay I know, the current wisdom is, there's no reaction, it's bogus, or if anything is happening it's electrochemical, okay, fine. But you know, if you model the process in a nuclear way, it looks like a phenomenon called super-radiance. The equations are similar. Highet saw the connection.

--To this? Highet told you about Superbright?

--Very sharp guy.

--That's quite a breach of classification.

--He sort of hinted around it, citing the open literature. Anyway it's moot, I'm cleared now. What do you think?

--I'll read it when I get a chance, dropping it back on to the stack of journals.

--But, I mean, we don't have much time. Should I pursue it?

--What have you been doing?

--Well, here, let me show you, I started sort of modifying your code but I had a couple of quest

--You changed my files?

--No no I made copies, changes only on my copies and I

--Okay, but look, just be sure you log all your changes into the CASE system, okay? You know how that works?

--Yes, sure but I wondered about a few things like where you've got this array of reals here, what's that?

--That's the rod array, angles lengths diameters densities

--Okay I thought so, because see I was thinking if you make that something like ten to the minus ten here

--That's the thickness, we can't make rods that thin it's imposs

--But what if we play what-if with these numbers...

--Wait what are you do

--then the beam, oops that's a little extreme but you see what I

--But there's no, I mean sure, you can make the model do anything, but it has to correspond to reality!

--Sure, I'm just getting, you know, the feel of the system. But, oh here I wanted to know what this function does, this hyperbol

--Yes that's the response curve of the reflec, look, can this wait? and without pausing Quine was out of the office as from speakers overhead a pleasant female voice advised, --Attention all personnel. Starting at midnight tiger teams will conduct exercises in this area using blank ammunition... and he turned into the restroom where at the end, past a row of sinks and urinals opposite metal stalls, a gym bag hung on a hook and steam billowed as Quine, elbows braced on a basin, looked up from the laving of his hands at a bass voice echoing around the hard tile, --bist du ein Tor und rein, to see in the mirror not his own eternally surprised features but fogged void, and turned from the hiss of his faucet to glimpse through the mist a hard white nude male body emerging to towel itself, still singing, --welch Wissen dir auch mag beschieden sein.

---

In the cavernous building where Dietz supervised, Quine watched long metal tubes welded one by one to the great monstrance in which the bomb would rest a quarter mile underground. From instruments at the ends of each tube hundreds of cables would run to the surface. Dietz displayed a blueprint of the cylinder.

--We are already welding. I cannot wait to know.

--Can you hold off a day or two? If I had any idea where to put the damn things I'd tell you if I had any idea even how to find what I'm looking for...

--We can go ahead with other things for just a little while. For a day. Now the rod configuration...

--Unchanged. I'm not touching that.

--Make sure, please, that Highet knows all this. Sometimes he wanders through here and if things are not what he expects he is most unpleasant.

Outside Highet's office Quine, arm raised to knock, from within heard Highet's insistent rasp, --like Kammerer, you know, it's not who makes the mistake it's who takes the blame, and at Thorpe's voice barely audible, --sorry for the poor son of a bitch stuck in his position at his age, barely shows his face, and Highet, --never passed a design review, Quine's ears flared with heat, the door before him turning flat and insubstantial as he lowered his hand and proceeded down the hall unseeing, guided by a familiarity more the prisoner's than the adept's around a corner to a water fountain, stopped before a bulletin board and its overlapping notices O Section, programmer needed to model underground plumes K Section, LASS expert needed Z Section, multimedia guru sought B Section, materials engineer, while two young men passed, one saying, --I have no special loyalty to OOP, and on to a further junction where a convex mirror above him presented an anamorphic view around the corner. There Nan emerged from a cross corridor with a wiry man, white teeth in a tanned face, blackhaired forearms folded. The two spoke briefly. The man put a hand on Nan's neck and bent forward to kiss her mouth. Quine turned back the way he had come, slowing only when he found he had nearly circled the building. He backtracked to Highet's door and entered without knocking.

--Get Thorpe out of my office.

Highet looked up in surprise. --What did he do to you, Philip? You look ready to spit.

--If he's so important give him his own space, I don't want him hanging around me.

--Thought you'd appreciate the company, thought he might be useful to you.

--What's that supposed to mean?

--Thorpe handles himself well, you could learn from him. Show some team spirit. Poor boy's feeling abandoned by you.

--I'll work with him, but I don't have to like him or share office space with him. It's bad enough Null's stuff is still there.

--Thorpe has his own space. You want him out, you can tell him so. By the way, Réti's here for a visit, you might want to pay your respects. Instead of running around down in Fabrication with Dietz.

--Someone has to tend to those details.

--Let me tell you something, Philip, I'm a smart guy but to be brutally honest I'm a second rate physicist. I have the ideas but not the persistence, I've known that about myself for twenty years. But I've learned to position myself and to use other people to get what I want. Win win, you know, we help each other look good. You take my point?

Voices approach in the corridor as Highet went on in a lower tone, --One path in the world is up. There's also a path down. What there isn't is standing still. Now you, friend, have been standing still for quite a little while. I'd say you need to make some career decisions soon, before they're made for you.

Flanked by two Lab factotums, Aron Réti came slowly, stamping his cane, into Highet's office. His eyes, azure behind thick lenses, peered without recognition as Quine greeted him. --Ah, my young friend, how are you?

--You remember Philip Quine, Aron. That beautifully sweet photon detector he built for us.

--Of course, of course.

--So here we are, three generations of first rate physics talent.

--Yes yes, the torch is passed.

--I really must be

--No, stay. Aron, Philip's going to get us the data we need to silence the critics.

--The critics, there is no need to mind them.

--From your eminence perhaps not, but I have to deal with these fools and dupes almost daily. Do you know what a senator, a United States senator, said to me the other day? He called this place a scientific brothel.

--I know the man you mean. Brothels I am sure he knows well, but of science he is ignorant.

--Well unfortunately this ignoramus chairs a committee that oversees our funding, so I have to deal with him.

--Speaking of influence, this left wing journalist, I see him here again, why do you let him in? Six months ago he abused my trust with gutter tactics of the worst sort.

--You mean Steradian? He's a useful idiot. He's so cocksure I let him hear things I want to see in print, look here... Highet lifted from the desktop a folded newspaper, --"Radiance Research Forges Ahead", see, this is solid gold. He's so excited when he hears something that may be classified, his critical sense shuts off. You can see him quiver like a puppy dog.

--Keep him away from me, I want nothing to do with him. What is our testing status?

--We need more. As always. Classifying them has helped deflect criticism but we're still being nickel and dimed.

--What do you need?

--An additional three hundred million over the next year.

--I will talk to the president. This is for Superbright?

--Yes. We can definitely show quantitative agreement with theory. It's only a matter of time and money. Philip will tell you how close we are. He and his new assistant have made tremendous headway, just tremendous.

--So? Tell me about this, my young friend.

--Well, I think it's premature to say so. There's a shot next Saturday. We'll know better than.

--Philip's too modest, that's always been his problem.

--No I just think we need a lot more

--More funding. Basically it's a matter of funding. In the long run we see coherent beams striking out a thousand miles and diverging no more than a meter. We see a single battle station downing every missile any enemy can launch. And Aron, we're also going ahead with your interceptors. As part of the overall system.

--Baldur?

--Smaller, faster, smarter, cheaper. Less than thirty billion to deploy.

--Even twenty years ago I thought that this idea only needed the technology to catch up. It is good we have a history, a tradition, a culture here.

--Like Ulysses, we're never at a loss.

--Really? Never at a

--Philip...

--Unless we're trying to produce a thousand mile beam where no test has ever shown

--Philip!

--Well how long do you think we can keep it up! this this

--As long as it takes.

--and you, Doctor Réti?

--My young friend, I am an optimist.

--Philip I want a word with you. Excuse us Aron. One arm clutched Quine in tight embrace and steered them into the hallway, Highet saying in low controlled tones, --One day soon, very soon, I'll stop giving you second chances. Come up empty this time and you're through. Clear?

--Meaning what? You'll what?

--I don't know. I don't know but it will be terrible and final and I promise you'll never forget it. Highet raised his voice to hearty amiability, --Good man! You let me know, and went back into his office.

---

As night came on the life of the building went to X Section, the Playpen, where the younger men worked on schemes even more speculative than Superbright, and Quine returned for the thousandth time to his simulation with the sinking heart of a man returning to a loveless home. Entrapment. As if fine wire had threaded his drugged veins, and now, as feeling returned, any movement might tear him open. He fidgeted the radio on to, --fades to a reddish color as it enters Earth's shad, and off as he saw again the tilt of Nan's head, the fine whorls of her ear, the man's dark hand cupping her neck. The ridge of her collarbone, the warm pulse of the vein across it.

On Null's whiteboard deltas sigmas omegas integrals infinities in variegated ink still wove like fundamental forces their elegant pattern around a void. From the clutter on the desk he lifted CENTURY 21 LAB QUARTERLY. Changing world betokens larger role for science. Acceptable levels of social risk. Public does not fully understand. World free of threats too much to ask. Revolutionary new technique. Major improvement. Important to a variety of national goals. Unique multi-disciplinary expertise. Two young men, one poised to hurl a balloon, caromed past his doorway. He shut the door on guffaws and --teach you some hydrodynamics!

He picked up Black 1954. He looked at the citations, then read from the start. He stopped often to reread, with a doggedness that made shift for his halt sense, once so fine, of the rhythms of scientific thought, the probe and test and parry and clinch that now required his slow and remedial attention to be grasped. As he read, his respect for Thorpe grew even as an emptiness opened with him. When he was finished he started into space before reaching across the desk to snap off the lights.

The phone chattered. On the second ring he lifted it, holding silence to ear for a moment before speaking. In the darkness the computer screen, phosphors charged by the room's vanished light, was a dim fading square.

--Quine.

--Hi, it's Lynn, I'm glad I caught you. I'm hiking up Mount Ohlone with some friends tonight, you want to come?

--Well...

--I know it's short notice.

--I should be working.

--Good heavens, all night? We're not starting till nine.

--No but... He scrutinized the whiteboard as if this quandary might be expressed there in double integrals. --I mean... sure, why not.

--Good! Meet us at the park gate. It's ten miles north on Crow Canyon Road.

In the hallway a length of surgical tubing, knotted at both ends, lay ruptured and limp in a film of water. As he left the building sprinklers came on in a silver mist and rainbows shimmered in the floodlit air. He drove out past parked vehicles and armed men in fatigues.

He arrived early. The sky was starry, the moon full. Some planet was setting in the west, probably Saturn by its color. The V of Taurus pointed back the way he'd come. A car approached, lights snagging in the trees, then came around the last bend lightless and rolled to a stop.

--Mark, Julie, this is Philip.

--Why're we whispering?

--Park's closed. Not supposed to be here.

They went around the closed gate and past a building set back among trees. In a second story window a dim line flickered, a fluorescent tube not on nor off, stuttering between states. Fifty yards further they left the road for a broad path that rose winding under black oak, then bay. An owl called, leaving the harbor of a eucalyptus.

Quine and Lynn walked in silence. Ahead Julie laughed and touched Mark's arm, not a lover's touch, but a gesture of intimacy with the world, the same hand caressing air and underbrush. They talked about people they knew, hes and shes darting in and out of audibility like moths in the dark. Soon they entered a darkness of trees where nothing was visible but shards of the moon fallen like leaves around them. He went more slowly and stumbled. Lynn paused and he heard a rustling. Leaves popped free of a branch and came crushed under Quine's nose, carrying to him a strong waft of mint and resin.

--Sweet bay, she said, --is sacred to Apollo, but this is not European bay, _Laurens_, it's California bay, _Umbellularia_. Her tongue lingered on the liquids.

They kept climbing until they broke from the woods into an open slope. Moonlight rinsed palely the open range land below them.

--_Artemisia tridentata_, Lynn said, inhaling as she broke from a sagebrush a twig of gray leaves.

It was pungent in her cupped palm. The warmth of her came with it.

--Named for the goddess Artemis. Who loves it. And this is willow. _Salix_. _Los alamos_. Which is the meaning of Orpheus's name. Who opened doors he couldn't reenter.

--How do you know all this?

--This is where I grew up. This is the smell of my home. This is how I know I belong.

They came up to Mark and Julie at the edge of the grove. The moon hung above them, swollen, no goddess remontant but an airless world already mapped, trodden, and projected for division into satrapies of mining, manufacturing, and defense, occupancy deferred only until these scenarios could enrich their planners at a margin of return greater and more reliable than what current technology assured.

--Let's sit here.

Julie passed around bread, cheese, fruit, a plastic bottle of water. On the grass they sat eating. Somewhere crickets chirred on and off, their presence like a field of energy shifting.

--It's so warm tonight. Almost like summer.

--You from around here, Philip?

--I went to school in the East. I've been working around here for eight years.

--Practically a native. What do you do?

--I write software.

--Friend of mine works for CodeWin, maybe you know him.

--It's a big industry.

--Bigger by the day, said Lynn dryly.

--Where's the Big Dipper? I can't see it, said Julie, standing.

--It's too low to see, said Quine. --That's the handle above the ridgeline. There in the west, that's Vega setting. A summer star. Winter coming in over there... pointing to that swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid, --The Pleiades. Also called the Seven Sisters. You can count more than seven on a clear night. But not with the moon out. And right behind them Orion, you can see him just coming over the horizon, those three stars in a line. Chasing them. Kind of a bad luck bunch, the Sisters. They were all seduced by one god or another, except for Merope, who married Sisyphus.

--Look! Is that a planet?

Finding the pale green disk where Julie pointed, a handsbreath from the Sisters, Quine knew it was the beam of a laser ten miles south stabbing to the edge of space where sodium atoms glowed in its heat.

--No, not a planet... Suddenly Lynn's hand was in his. She squeezed it once, and before he could respond released it to run downhill toward a dark grove. He stood for a moment and then he ran too. He ran for no reason he could name, wind in his ears, an excitement rising almost to fear in his heart, hackles alive. Some presence almost, chasing him. Then the darkness of the trees was around him and he tripped and went sprawling. The presence was still there. He feared it though he knew it was benign. It was not death, but it would change his life if he let it.

--Philip? Are you all right?

She stood over him, at the edge of the grove as Mark and Julie approached. He lay there in anxiety, anger almost at how she'd stirred him, at the beauty of her movement, at the way her features held the moonlight.

--Philip...?

--I'm fine. He brushed leaf dirt from his sleeves. The presence was gone. They walked in silence until emerging from the grove and heading downslope. Overhead the green star had vanished.

--So what are you working on now, Philip?

--Oh... things in the sky, Quine said. --An aerospace partner wants us to program low orbit balloons a couple of miles across, the apparent size of the moon, sunlit, carrying messages, logos, advertising...

--But that's so, Julie began and Mark cut in, --Seems I read about this. The Sierra Club's bringing suit, aren't they?

--I don't know about that, we're just the contractors, I just do my job... and Julie glancing at Lynn claimed Mark's arm to move them away and resume in a low voice their conversation of hes and shes while Lynn walked apart, obliging Quine to follow, leaving behind --she sees him as a reclamation project... to overtake her on a knoll. She waited with crossed arms. Behind her, the valley was filled with glittering points. At its far verge was the floodlit terrain of the Lab.

--Philip, what are you doing?

--You don't like me as a software mogul?

--Is that your, your cover story? Her face remained still and fixed on him, moonshadow in her eyes' hollows.

--That balloon thing really is a Lab project, they started a small group on it...

--You don't want to tell them what you really do.

--No, I...

--You think Mark isn't smart enough to see through you? He is. You take his good faith for foolishness.

--Look I, I just didn't know what you told them. I didn't want you to be embarrassed by me. His face heated as he said it.

--Well, that would be my problem, wouldn't it. Now I have a different problem. Because it happens I did tell them. She waited for something he wasn't able to give her, then went on. --When you were talking about the Pleiades you were so, I don't know, at ease. What happened?

--Look, I'm sorry, I just... Another breath of warm breeze and he realized he was sweating.

--What happened?

--That green star we saw. It wasn't a star, it was something from the Lab. A laser test.

--A Radiance laser?

--No... something else. Unclassified. A guide star for adaptive optics.

She was listening with her arms still crossed. --Why did that change your mood?

--It's just, I'd almost forgotten, about everything except, except for being here. That thing in the sky reminded me. Then Mark asked what I did...

--They really have their hooks in you, don't they.

--I know that.

Face still hollowed in moonshadow she stepped toward him. His need to be touched and take comfort welled up, but some structure unknown yet dreadful held him still. After a moment's wait she turned to face the valley lights. --I'm surprised you haven't quit.

--And do what! Turn from the one place where my, my talents have some use?

--What do you want, Philip?

--Want? I don't know. I can't get it. I want eight years back. Before this I was a scientist.

--They haven't robbed you of that.

--Yes, that's so, I gave myself over, and now I'm on the line for something I don't care about. That's the way, yes, you're going to get screwed regardless, so you should make sure it's for something that matters to you...

--What would that be?

--I don't know.

Julie and Mark were calling. They went down the slope and rejoined them. She was still talking to Mark, --so I'm, wait, stop, this is it, these are the boundaries and he's like, what did I do? She turned to Lynn with the pack, --take this? and embraced Mark from behind, arms around his chest, straps of her shortlegged overalls a dark X on her back, bare calves duckwalking the pair down the slope.

In the lot Lynn said to Julie, --Get a ride with you guys?

Quine called out, --Mark, just joking about the balloon.

Mark looked up, fumbling with his keys, smiling. --Oh yeah?

--Thanks, thanks for, for inviting me. He got in the car, opened the glovebox, found a tablet, brushed lint from it, swallowed it dry.

---

In his apartment was a smell like stale smoke and old sweat and rotting food, edged with something fouler, like the metallic stench of the flux from the open pipe. At first he thought it came from outside, where earlier they'd been roofing. But on the deck the air was fresh. He knelt to the carpet and smelled nothing. In the kitchen he bent to the drain and smelled nothing. From a bottle he squeezed a pearl of soap onto a sponge, ran hot water in the sink, scrubbed and rinsed it. He scrubbed the stove top. The ceiling fan was silted over by grease and spiderweb. He fetched a chair and reached to touch it. A black gobbet fell from it to the stove top. He fetched pliers and freed the nuts holding the shield, banging with the handle to break the dried paint around the rim. In both hands he bore the shield like a chalice to the sink.

In its concavities had pooled a glossy tar. He scrubbed it for minutes, smutch washing into the sink. Then he spooled off yards of paper toweling, wet and soaped it, and climbed the chair to wash over and again the sleeve of the fan, the blades, the hub. A viscous brown residue clung to the towels and his fingers. Further into the recess, beyond his reach, was more tar.

Sweat soaked him. He went onto the deck. The moon was dim and reddish, as if the sky held smoke. He stared in wonder and fear until the knowledge that it was an eclipse broke upon him banishing fear and wonder alike.

When he went back in the smell was waiting. He understood that from now on everything would smell like this. For a while he sat at the table with his eyes shut, then opened the newspaper for the memory of CARPETS CLEANED but it parted to 24 HRS OUTCALL DAWNA and LOVE TALK $2/MIN and he stared bleakly at the sullen pout, circleted forehead, hair as wild as if fresh risen from the sea, linen garb pleated in most subtle fashion. His hand found the telephone, and after a distant chirrup a small insinuating voice flicked like a tongue in his ear, and he stepped back from the uncradled receiver, switched off the lights, leaving the voice breathing unheeded into the darkness and the moonlight pooled on the floor.

He showered. In the stream lust swelled in him like nausea. Hot spray lashed him. Incoherent images flashed upon him. Runnels nudged moonwhite globs toward the drain. Depleted he toweled. On the sink were Nan's toothpaste, hairbrush, lipstick, mascara. On the toilet tank an unzipped travel kit of quilted cotton gaped to show diaphragm, jelly, tampons, vitamins, ibuprofen, hairpins, barrette, lens wetter, a glass jar of face cream. A towelend snagged in the zipper as Quine scrubbed dry his hair, dragging the kit. Items hailed on the tile floor. He dropped the towel, then swept his hand across the sink top. He grabbed the kit and hurled it. The jar flew out and smashed against the wall.

# 4

Dry sycamore leaves scraped over pavement in a hot wind drawn out from distant desert by a stalled offshore low. Over the ridge east of town dust and the smell of manure from the farmlands and a haze of smoke blew fitfully into the valley. as the sun rose through layers of haze Quine, driving to the back gate of the Lab so as to avoid the protesters, passed the dead vineyard by the north boundary. He pulled over, stilling the engine and the radio's --ty thousand acres ablaze.

The gate was closed but unlocked. A bright new sign bore the bio-hazard trefoil and DANGER TOXICS MITIGATION PILOT SITE ALPHA KEEP OUT. The drone of flies rose and fell like a turbine. Stunted vines clung to irrigation uprights. Bark from one sloughed like ash on his fingers. From deep in the vineyard a warm moist flatus perfused the air. A stink like the chyme of a dying beast. He ran back to the car choking and drooling. At an irrigation faucet he rinsed his mouth, his face, his hair, his hands, yet the foulness, as of corroded metal, lingered. What god loves this?

At Null's desk Thorpe worked.

--Bernd Dietz called. He has to know where to put the reflectors.

--I'm tempted to leave them where they were in the last shot.

--We can't do that, Highet would

--That's why I'm tempted.

--Yeah he's, he can be a real prick can't he.

--Not if you play by his rules. He always has a carrot handy.

--Well I have quite a few ideas but you need to look them over, sort of tell me where they're out of line, you know we're really down to the wire here and

--Okay, let's assume Black's right...

--Oh then you've read

--Assume we're looking at quanta as localized particles guided by a physically real field...

--Highet, you know he really grilled me on this stuff when he came out to Utah, put me through the wringer, made me prove every assumption, but after an hour I had him convinced, and I thought he really respected...

--Typical Highet slap and stroke.

--Now suppose we...

--You're good at this. And very fast.

--Commercial software you know, those eighteen hour days tone you right up.

--No don't touch that, we can't change the rod array, I've already told Dietz.

--Can we reorient it?

--Maybe. I'll check.

Under Thorpe's shaping the model gradually began to show correlation. After several hours one run produced an annulus. Then nothing for hours more. Again the annulus. He rotated the model's rods again and again and at one angle power jumped and the annulus closed to a point. They stared at the screen. Thorpe bit his thumb. --What do you think?

--It looks all right.

--It looks fantastic. It's a hundred times brighter than the last shot. But the model's tweaked to hell and gone.

--I don't see anything wrong.

--No, neither do I. So now if we put the reflectors here... see, this is how I work. I'm not a theorist, I don't have your background, I need to, you know, immerse myself in the code, feel the system...

--Well, it's a remarkable job. I couldn't have done this. I've tried for months.

--Well, I couldn't have done it if your code wasn't so comprehensive. You really worked at this. But it's, you know, at some level it's all just sort of pushing numbers around. I don't know if it's saying anything real.

--We'll know soon enough.

--Do you think something's wrong?

Quine shrugged. --Nothing I can see.

--You're not convinced.

--I don't have to be. It's what Highet wants, isn't it?

--Yeah but, that's not what you think I'm doing, is it?

--No...

--Because I would never do that.

--I'm sure you

--Since the Fish and Himmelhoch thing I have to be very careful. They were crucified, just crucified, they're pariahs, their careers are finished. Anything remotely to do with cold fusion is tainted, you may as well say you're working on perpetual motion. And I was on that team, I was in that lab. So I have to be very careful.

--Perpetual motion, you could probably sell that to Highet. At least as a talking point.

--It's not funny to me. I had nothing to do with that debacle, just so we're clear on that.

--Sure. I understand.

--Sorry I'm touchy. Just, you know, tired. You've been generous, letting me work with your code and all, I really thought you'd stick me with the scut work but you've done it haven't you, all the test details, and let me do the interesting part. This could take me a long way and I'm grateful.

--Why don't you go home, get some sleep?

--Yeah, okay, I'm whipped.

--Take tomorrow off. I'll tell Highet.

--No no, I'll be in. We have to write up a work order.

--I'll do it, don't worry about it.

--Are you staying?

--God no, what is it, midnight?

--It's, oh Jesus, it's two a m.

--No, I'm leaving in five minutes. I'll write the work order tomorrow.

--Oh I meant to, here's something else for you to read... and, hesitating a moment, Thorpe placed a stapled xerox on Quine's stack, held his gaze for a moment, and departed.

It was a new paper by Sorokin. At CERN now. Quine skimmed it as if reading news from a distant galaxy or a remote epoch. It solidified and extended the work they'd done together, the experiment that had separated them. It was clear that it was a field now, and that Sorokin owned it. He stanched an upwelling of envy and selfpity.

But instead of going home Quine broke apart Thorpe's code and studied the changes. He gave the model a new set of energies: points clustered around the focus. Again, with different energies, the same focus emerged. Something was wrong, he could smell it; his instinct was not yet dead.

Near dawn he found it. Along with the sensor positions, Thorpe had tweaked the sensor response function. Playing the system, as he said, to get results. But now the function emphasized certain wavelengths. As might the sensors themselves when struck by the bomb's radiation. The brightness from the earlier tests might be nothing but reflection, instrument error. When you put that error into the focusing code, the code naturally confirmed the data. Glue in a house of cards. And down in a corner of Null's whiteboard, half erased, was it? yes, the same function, the same tweak. There in the corner of his eye for months. Wasted months. Wrong from the start. Error or fraud? No way to know. Maybe started as one, became the other. But wait now. If you removed the tweak, if you stopped trying for a beam, chaff fell from the problem and the expressions said something else entirely.

A presence entered the room. Air gravid and light adance. There appeared to his mind's eye the battle station lost and insignificant in a tide of radiance, all the universe's light at wavelengths and colors beyond mere vision, streaming in intricate brocade, weaving and mediating between matter and energy, wave and particle, the phenomenal and the noumenal. Here was the mystery, at last, open for his knowing as he hovered between fatigue and ecstasy, and he knew he was unready to pass through the gate of revelation into this realm of light. He drew back. And the presence like a roebuck in forest startled and was gone. The tide of light receded. He was left with only the particulars of rods and reflectors. But he had found their flaw. Mystery might elude, but the information was sure. Thus angels must feel, radiant with the certainty that flows from their single devotion to right.

---

--Bernd, I need some reflectors.

--For Taliesin.

--Yes.

--I know, I have a work order already, this morning, from Thorpe.

--No, I need more.

--We do not have time to add

--I have to have reflectors made of something other than beryllium.

Dietz was silent. He began leafing through a logbook. --Do you know, try as we might we cannot keep traces of oxygen out of the beryllium. I have told Highet this. Long ago.

--Really.

--I have proposed hydrogen in the past.

--Why haven't we tried it?

--"Don't mess with success."

--I see. I'd like to try it.

--Does Highet approve?

--I'll take responsibility.

--Without his approval I can do nothing.

--Bernd. This is what Slater thought, isn't it. That the beryllium reflectors were giving false brightness. And Null knew it too, didn't he.

--I did not see Slater's report. Dietz did not look up from the book.

--Make some hydrogen reflectors for me. Cable them separately from the beryllium.

Dietz shut the book. --Send me a work order. I will have to send a copy to Highet.

Kihara came through the doors with a following of suited men.

--Won't be a minute gentlemen, don't let us disturb you, you can see here the precision engineering we're capable of, bang-up job of inventiveness, maximum return on investment, the answer to reversing the balance of trade deficit, innovative federally generated technology transfer to industry, improves the nation's economic competitiveness as we work deliberately and consciously to build partnerships, a new class of information with commercial value, very creative cooperative efforts, freedom to negotiate intellectual property rights, fees and royalties, cover the technological waterfront, take for instance these fine-grained superplastic steels, not to mention x-ray lithography... and Quine returned to his office rummaging through CENTURY 21, Rings Fields and Groups, Computer Addict Wholesale Microcenter, TeX Technical Reference, to come upon WORK ORDER Form 4439A Authorized Use Only, and sat for a minute holding a pen above it suddenly frozen at the sound of Thorpe's approaching voice, --you have to invoke the world control option from the command line, relaxing as the voice receded, pen moving to spell SECONDARY SENSOR ARRAY.

---

From Highet's open door he heard, --You want less pressure, try the Institute for Advanced Salaries, it's a fucking retirement village for the reality-impaired! and a lower voice unintelligible in response, then --I don't care, I want results! the lower voice growing sharper, --is cheap. My people have to make it happen, as the door opened and Dietz, pale and shaking, came out past Quine glancing at him without a word and stormed down the hall, Highet following to the door, calling out, --A beard without a mustache, does that make you an honest man? and to Quine, --You. I don't want to talk to you now. Send me e-mail.

--I think you'll want to hear this. We can show quantitative agreement.

Highet looked at him with loathing. --You want to change the reflectors. The day before the shot.

--I want to try hydrogen.

--That's an incredibly bad idea, that's totally braindead, to introduce a new measurement technique at this stage. You have to calibrate, you have to

--If Slater's right, if the beryllium shows false brightness, it's only a matter of time until we know it. It might as well be now. Or do you want to spend another fifty million on another shot?

--I'd love to. Who told you Slater said that?

--It's common knowledge. We'll have to address the issue eventually.

--Common knowledge my ass.

--Then it might be wise to preempt questions about it. The shot's so close to the presentation, we can't be expected to have data that quickly. but we could say we're investigating. If we have to.

--You're sure about the quantitative agreement?

--The simulation's excellent. I won't take credit for it. Jef Thorpe did the work.

--Did he now. Well, we're a team. Good results show good management.

--I'd like Jef to give the presentation.

Highet's eyes fixed in calculation on Quine as the phone rang and Quine waited for the dismissive wave with which Highet ended audiences, but instead he spoke a moment, then covered the mouthpiece and said, --Want to make some money Philip, Devon Null's taking on investors, and uncovering the mouthpiece, --Yes, application's outside the envelope no problem there, keep me briefed, and in another moment hung up, leaning back and clasping his hands over his thinning crown, gazing at the ceiling.

--Well that's fine, that's very fine. Wonder if we could work up a little something. I could invite some key people to the ranch for the shot, some unnamed sources, goose the process a little, can we get Thorpe in on this?

--He's probably in my office.

--You may work out yet Philip, Highet grudged as one thick finger stabbed the phone. --Jef? Leo. Get over here, rising to pace past framed and signed photos of three Presidents, another of Réti and himself with the current President, artist's rendering of the Superbright and of a fusion driven spaceship, cartoon of a mushroom cloud WHEN YOU CARE ENOUGH TO SEND THE VERY BEST, certificates from professional societies, a length of cable, a circuit board. He stopped at the window, gaze caught by something, and parted the vertical slats of the blind with his fingers, speaking softly, almost to himself.

--Do you know the darkness that's out there? Do you realize how tenuous this all is? Twenty thousand years of civilization, and only in the last few hundred has rationality begun to displace superstition. I tell you I would sup with the devil, I would risk armageddon, not to lose that. When I think of those fucking tree huggers out there... and turning back to Quine, voice low and insistent, --Think the ills are in a system, think it's that simple, Réti and his anticommunism, your new girlfriend and her peacenik buddies, wonder why's she drawn to you?

--Now wait just a

--Darkness and malady is in the human heart, Philip, don't you know that? The enemy is the heart. You can't hide from that darkness ...as Thorpe entered in black linen jacket, red t-shirt, nose stud, eyes eager, and Highet's demeanor switched to the cheerful, --Jef, my man. I want to wow the rubes when we go to the desert. We have a ranch out there with T3 data lines from the test site. What can you do that's portable and fantastic? I want flash that makes you reach for your checkbook.

--I've got an interface toolkit from my CodeWin days, I can throw something together. Just tell me what kind of data I have to work with.

--I'll email you the details. Shot's tomorrow evening, not too much for you, is it?

--Demo or die, I know the drill, said Thorpe, grinning.

---

The evening wind whipped dust across the highway, vibrating the cars stopped in three lanes behind flashing lights at Codornic s EXIT NLY as Quine punched --illion in property loss, over to --noninjury accident being cleared at the Codornices Road exit not blocking lanes for you, drowned in a siren blaring up the shoulder OHLONE VALLEY RESCUE ƎƆИA⅃UᙠMA as Quine edged against horns and unheard curses into the exit lane and cut back onto a commercial strip behind the central mall, the reverse of which colonnaded and pedimented facade, its raw concrete stained by rains, caught with a sort of wounded dignity the sun's last rays as they likewise gilded Estancia Estates An Adult Community where Quine parked and for a moment held in his gaze a prospect of identical bungalows arrayed on lawns billiard-green out to the surveyed boundaries of chainlink and dry pasture beyond.

--Oh! Philip. Come in. I wasn't expecting you, your deadline...

--Well it's Friday night, I thought

--I'm glad you, but, if you'd called I would have made dinner...

--I wasn't sure I was coming.

--Your work is done?

--There's a test. I fly out tomorrow afternoon. And there's a presentation Monday.

--Can you stay tonight? We can go out for... is something wrong?

--I need to ask you something.

--Yes? What is it?

--Who's the guy with the curly black hair and the good tan?

--The, what?

--I happened to see you the other day. In a hallway. He was acting kind of proprietary.

--Proprie, her face flushed and she turned to look across the room, one hand resting on a table. Quine waited.

--How long has this been going on?

--His name's Ben and he's a good friend, and it's been, we've been friends for years. Since before I knew you.

--You still see him?

The flush darkened, and as she turned back to him her mild features contorted into a stiff anger he'd never seen in her. --Do you mean, do I sleep with him? Yes. I have. Once or twice since you and I have been together.

--Once or twice. You've lost count.

--Oh, Philip! Why are you, this is hateful!

--It hurts me, Nan.

Her face was a mask of plain misery. --We never

--Never what, laid down rules? I didn't think we had to, I thought some things went without saying.

--Without saying what! That I'm yours alone when you don't give me anything, for God's sake Philip I didn't turn to Ben for sex, just for, for kindness, for friendship, just to feel that I mattered! To Someone! Five years of my life Philip, I'm no longer a young woman, do you want to know when it was I saw Ben, when I went to him after you and I were together?

The coldness, the absolute coldness of the moment.

--You don't, you don't even care do you. It hurts you, but I can see in your eyes, you won't listen to me. How can I possibly explain when you won't even give me credit for, for living you, Philip? When you and I met, at that picnic, and I was so charmed by you, by your intelligence, your modesty, your reserve. Do you remember, the thunderstorm? I hadn't seen one since moving West. And afterwards you took me home, we were drenched, and I loaned you clothes. Oh Philip, it was long over between Ben and me, he was like a brother, I just wanted to say goodbye, to tell someone close to me how happy I was. How happy I thought I'd be.

--And the second time?

--Yes, that's all you want to hear. Two years later, when you didn't come to dinner, didn't call, and I waited and waited, so it was only an anniversary just a date on the calendar that's all, but I called Ben and he came over to be with me, and he didn't, didn't even want... cut off by her sobs.

--But I, you know I was working, you could have

--When you come here and, and sulk for hours, barely acknowledge my existence, don't call for days on end, then expect, how do you think that makes me feel... I would have told you about Ben if you' asked if you'd ever shown any interest at all. If you even know who I am!

Within him a stone fell and fell, soundlessly turning.

--Philip, talk to me! Don't turn away like this!

--I have nothing to say, and he was out the door, where streetlights had come on, knowing that his leaving now was worse than anything gone before, a withdrawal he could never make right. Don't tell me, don't tell me we don't feed the emptiness in each other.

# 5

In the Great Basin of Nevada thousands of acres of waste and infecund desert had been reclaimed for science as the Aguas Secas Weapons Test Site, and one hundred miles further west was the Advanced Research Institute of the Eastern Sierra, a ranch at the edge of the Owens Valley, a black facility whose funding appeared in no budget. Leased to the government by a conservative businessman, it served as a layover site for Lab personnel on their way to the desert. It nestled in the broad base of a canyon near a creek's loud runoff through lateral moraine. To the west the ground rose in the space of a few miles from six thousand feet to a twelve thousand foot crest of granite crags. Below, a few miles to the east, the north-south highway lay like a dropped ribbon across the wrinkled valley floor, and a hundred miles further across desert dotted with sage under a flotilla of thunderheads was the chalk white sink of Aguas Secas.

Even before joining the Lab Quine had seen ARIES. On his first trip west, while switching planes at Phoenix, he'd been paged and diverted to a single engine craft bound for a Kern County airstrip, where a sheriff's four by four awaited him. The first Radiance shot had just gone off and at the ranch they were celebrating. Quine met Highet there. Highet was beating a twelve year old at chess, telling the boy, I'll trade a bishop for a knight anytime, I love knights, they leap barriers, they face eight ways at once.

A month later Quine was at Aguas. Rank smell of sage hovered in the predawn cool, immensities of desert air quivered to the horizon. They drove with the sun rising behind them, the young initiates joking, group leaders and guards and observers in DoD hardhats silent and grim. Roadways of cables led from instrument trailers over desert pocked with the collapse craters of previous tests to the distant borehole. Above it a red crane pointed straight up. The count reached zero. And the earth rippled. A wave rushed toward them and the ground shook as if a train were passing and passing and passing. When it stopped the air was a clear plasma of exaltation. To know that the binding forces of matter were yours to break, the wealth of nations yours to squander in such sublime force, this was a deep and secret sweetness known only to the few.

At the ranch now Thorpe was joking with some grad students from X Section. Others were there from J Section, and some stern faces he didn't know, military or intelligence, and Steradian alert as a corrupt deputy. Highet arrived in blue jeans and tooled leather boots, carrying cases of soda, chanting in a false twang, --Twaace the sugar, twaace the caffeine... followed by a Western senator cadaverous and grinning in white Stetson, and his young aide plump and groomed to a sheen, with the zealous black eyes of a pullet.

--Look at em, young, brilliant, confident, said the senator. --That's how I felt at their age. They own the world.

--The world? retorted Highet. --They own their genitals. The rest of them's mine, raising his voice to introduce, --Gentlemen, the right honorable Howard Bangerter of Utah...

The aide asked if physics had yet succeeded in finding in the traces of Creation the fingerprints of God, and Highet nodded, a slow smile spreading and his tonguetip darting as his hands rose to conjure, --Not God exactly... as Quine walked onto the deck where three barbecue grills sizzled, and a keg of COORS LITE sat amid greasy paper plates bearing the ruins of meals, and the sun had long since chased the wandering moon, itself pursuing Venus, behind the mountain wall. Although the sky retained day's blue a chill came down from the remote and snowless peaks.

--This young man, Highet's voice carried out from within, won last year's Heinrich Hertz Fellowship in Physics, a prestigious award I happen to administer... and Quine stepped down from the deck, crossing dry grass to the creek's rockstrewn willowed bank where it trickled through small pools and clumps of rotting leaves. Quine followed it upward, breath laboring. He stopped at a large boulder long ago tumbled from a higher place, and sat. Little residue of the day's warmth remained in the shadowed stone. The western ridge above him was a great dark wave. In the east a glamour of rosetint clouds swept up from the horizon. The ranch was small below him. A cold wind came down the great wall of rock. Into this wilderness he might ascend and be lost.

But he returned. Thorpe's voice came up as he slid open the glass doors, --background, you know, trucks on the highway, that sort of thing. Other side of the spool you can see some small tremblors we had this afternoon. When the shot goes off we'll see more than a wiggle. But the real action's on this screen here. At the site they're recording everything for later analysis but data's also piped to this workstation where this autocorrelation software gives us an immediate window on what's happening. Red is intense energy, blue is, you know, less intense. We're looking for sort of a red ringlike structure.

Quine watched the stylus quiver as about him others conversed. Without warning the stylus jerked. The screen of the workstation came to life, numbers flowing down its right edge. Colors coalesced on screen. The senator and his aide leaned in enrapt. A minute passed. Blue and green surrounded a corona of yellow and a jagged red core flecked with white.

--We have brightness, Thorpe said. --A hundred times the last test. More. Could be a thousand times.

--Three orders of magnitude improvement, declared Highet. --At this rate we'll have every enemy missile on Earth neutralized in a few years, and raising his tone with his glass, --To Team Superbright! Leonardos of the age. You people are the best in the world.

Grunts and howls of triumph went off like rockets. The senator's aide leaned smiling to whisper in the senator's ear.

A second wave of guests arrived, a dozen men in suits adorned with MAMMOTH CONVENTION CENTER NAME COMPANY and a few women packaged as brightly as new software, and Quine moved off through the manic younger men hopped up by caffeine and sugar and the shot.

--Need now's another little war where we can demo this stuff. Feed some tinhorn tyrant some antiquated missiles and provoke him to use them.

--PDP eleven downstairs running spacewar

--thought Malibu was bad but Acapulco's about three inch waves

--guy at the Cloudrise Seminar, he blasts wheat into stubble in a shock tube at mach ten, calls that science, eighty k a year.

--maybe the moon's changed its orbit or

--thou shalt not piss on a colleague's funding

--translate the project into terms attractive to DARPA

--well Mazatlán then or Valparaiso

--dup rot swap drop

--corn smut

--know better than to say that in public with troops on the border

--shell game

--call it Virtual Wilderness

--I hear Sara squeezed it out

--boy or girl?

--people make money on it they're more likely to go along

--girl I think that's what Moe said

--why leave home to get away

--he didn't go deep enough

--photo and topo database with fractal interpolation software to smooth the animation

--a quagmire like Viet

--substantive working relationship with at least six major US companies

--get USGS or Interior

--hell why not go worldwide

--translate the project into terms attractive to DOE

--not this time, this is Southwest Asia

--get on your NordicTrack put on the goggles you're up in the Cordillera

--and somebody from the insurance company's selling records of who owns what where to thieves

--take out the infrastructure of the whole frigging country if we have to

--get up close to extinct animals

--everybody makes out, homeowner's paid off, insurance company raises rates, thieves fence the stuff, fence makes a profit

--ought to get the Basil Zaharoff memorial award

--as defined in paragraph R of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of nineteen fifty four

--in Caracas this guy went by on a bicycle sliced the damn finger right off for the wedding ring

--knowingly and with intent

--living things probably get wiped out in a pretty thorough fashion every few million years

--better than real

--so cool cause like the program's working but you don't know what it's doing so there's these emergent properties

--sophisticated encryption algorithms deserving of patent protection

--control the flow of information, do it by classification do it by misdirection principle's the same

--incorporating certain aspects of prior art such as multiplication

--translate the project into terms attractive to Disney

--object oriented

--get this straight, if I say nine times six is seventy two I'm infringing?

--yes but when your story comes back it has your fingerprints on it then you know where it's been

--I have no special loyalty to DNA

--must have misjudged my audience

--but if you codify your knowledge that nine times six is sev, ah, fifty-four in any machine executable form

--sometimes the envelope pushes back

--women at that high energy conference in Tsukuba

--held research positions at four universities published thirty papers before anybody realized

--won't impact the users of the algorithm, or affect the multiplication market, only the vendors of such algorithms

--kinbakubi kenkyu kai?

--lineal descendent of ibn-Musa al-Qarizmi that being the first publication

--no PhD not even a BA all his papers copied from obscure journals

--seme-e?

--Go for it, Bruno, do the meat thing.

Quine edged into a hallway and down a narrow flight of stairs as behind him music began pounding, catching as he turned a last glimpse of Thorpe, cheeks flushed, smiling at a circle of admirers the impartial smile of triumph.

*Nature is more ready in her creating than Time in his destroying, and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food for each other.*

He continued downstairs toward a light. In the cellar seven or eight young men from X Section were gathered around an old rackmounted minicomputer and a pooltable.

--so he goes, learn to hassle people and lie with a straight face.

--Excuse me, I need to get back. Does anyone know the arrangements?

--Excellent advice, dude.

--Excuse

One glanced up. --There's pool cars outside somewhere.

Full dark. A dozen cars. E108637. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY OFFICIAL USE ONLY. Key in the column. The seat harness slid up and drew in over his chest and waist as a chime sounded and dash lights blinked red then glowed teal. The car swayed and bounced for a mile down the dirt road. There the highway stretched north and south into void, under stars like chips of ice. He could go anywhere. But time was a field that moved with him, inescapable, close as the blue light in the cabin. He drove for hours without stopping, radio for company, wash of noise, hollowness in his being. Mountains that a century ago killed emigrants with their rigors fell to his vehicle. Descending to the flats he saw brushfires crawling on far ridges like luminous cells writing some teratogenic message across the land, and the farm cities on the ancient seabed added their sulfurous light at the meetings of capillary highways glowing with the heat of a summer long past its term, and booming through the car's windows when he opened them was the smell of dust, manure, smoke, exhaust, chemicals, and he crossed the last ridge into his valley of a million souls, of all the places he might go, for all the freedom he had, here again.

In the dark apartment he stripped, dropping rank clothes behind him on the way to the bathroom. The mirror's sudden light showed, before selfhood interposed its protective assurance, the face of a stranger, aging and vulnerable. Lowering his eyes from the brightness he stood voiding for long seconds. A ribbon of urine twisted along the axis of its arc as it splashed into the bowl. Standing thus he blinked, faded, woke. The gates of sleep stood open and he was through them, uncleansed, as soon as he lay down.

# 6

Gathered before dawn the crowd set out for the main gate, to be met by police as later arrivals swelled it further, until Lab workers began to show up in their vehicles and county and city police were called to divert traffic to the north gate against the columns of people still coming, and the south road was closed to vehicles and state police summoned, and still the spectacle slowed to walking speed, so that Quine was late to Highet's office. Highet stared out his window at the south road.

--Those people out there will never understand. It could be so much worse. On the other side, entire cities, entire regions have no civilian industry at all, it's all military. Here we cut our deals as needed but we still do real science. We bring in people like you. We roll back the darkness.

--There's a problem.

Highet turned. --What.

--The beryllium and hydrogen reflectors were cabled separately. Thorpe's analysis at the ranch used only the beryllium. I looked at the hydrogen data yesterday. Nothing. No brightness. No beam.

Highet turned again to the window. --I see. The hydrogen reflectors which I asked you not to use. You know, I almost stopped that work order, came that close. But I wanted to see what you had in mind.

--As supervisor it was my decision.

--Yes it was. So where's your quantitative agreement now?

--You saw at the ranch. The beryllium shows it. Spectrum peaks here, as predicted. But that's not an x-ray, that's oxygen in the beryllium glowing at just the right wavelength. It looks exactly like the new model's predictions for focus.

--And where did this new model come from?

--Thorpe has been modifying my code. I found a routine of his where just this set of frequencies is amplified.

Highet came from the window, pacing past the photos of Presidents and artists' renderings, touching the length of cable.

--So it's all Thorpe's fault! That's your story?

--The CASE system shows all his modifications.

--I see. Well, it's bad for him, then. Especially after Fish and Himmelhoch. He has a history.

--I wouldn't call it intentional. The ideas he brought were good. I worked with him, I didn't see this, it could have happened to anyone.

--It doesn't matter. He has a history, voice sharpening, --quackery or carelessness, you think it matters? You think you can ever walk away from your history?

Quine said nothing.

--Now those hydrogen reflectors, let's talk about these, you piggybacked your own little test onto the piggyback, that was very cute. Did Thorpe know about that?

--You saw the work orders.

--He knew he was getting feed from the beryllium only?

--It was his demo.

--Yes, you saw to that. All right. We'll keep him on for a while. Then you'll write him a letter of recommendation. Down the road we'll issue a report on the false brightness. You'll be group leader on that.

--You want me to...

Highet's voice was tight with controlled fury. --I want you to take some responsibility. Show you're serious about this. It's about time you moved up or got out.

--Okay.

--You begin to interest me, Philip. I thought I knew what to expect from you.

--At least we caught this now.

--Okay. I listened to your story. Now you listen to me. We haven't caught a thing yet. What we need now is another test.

--I don't want to sound naive, but you're not going to mention this at the presentation?

--Today? I think not. I think I will not at this moment give the enemies of reason grounds sufficient to bury our project, our knowledge, our aspirations. Highet lifted from his desk a small device etched with a craft undreamed of even a decade before, raising it before him like a talisman, weighing it in his hand. --I believe not.

Nolan came through the door bearing a red folder, acknowledged Quine with a minute change of expression, as the phone rang and Highet lifted it, --No I can't see anyone right now.

--Very clean data from your shot, Philip, Nolan said.

--no damn it I can't Chase is coming in an hour

--Oh, you've seen it?

--what, what do you mean he's here now

--We prepared the overheads. A match with theory unparalleled since Mendel's peas. Kid's a barn burner is he?

--well damn it keep him down there

--He'd like to be.

--fucking hero of the people can just wait

--You're taking him under your wing.

--don't care! Do whatever it takes! Have to do everyone's job, what's this Bran?

--Overheads of the Taliesin data.

--Fine, leave them. Bernd there you are find the rest of the team will you get them up where we have a little problem god damn senator arrived just a little ahead of schedule he's downsta, Dennis where the hell have you b... Nolan--!

--Oh! I just, sorry, didn't see your foot

--Sorry Dennis let me help you up...

--Nolan will you get the hell

--my slides! here don't step on

--Nolan!

--just put these back in order, with the ah integrated 24-bit color TGIF animations and music in standard MIDI files

--Dennis

--little problem with the synthesizer all the instruments stuck on the cowbell patch so when we played the Apocalypse Now music, I mean the Wagner Valk, rather intriguing actually but hardly

--Dennis will you

--then our Silicon Graphics machine couldn't read the TGIFs so we had to convert them to Video PostScript but somehow they came out black and white one inch square so

--Dennis will you please

--go low tech instead, keep it simple, four synchronized slide projectors overheads eight track digital tape

--Dennis, get up! Leave the, will you leave the slides on the floor. Go to the lobby. Keep Senator Chase busy down there.

--But I

--Go! and pacing to the window, parting the blind, --Fuck's this going to play like, must be hundreds of them in the road.

--The news said a thousand, said Dietz.

--Bullshit. Supposed to keep these assholes away from the main gate put them up in the north corner, I want to know how word of this got out! glaring at Quine, --I want to know who's been talking to these people, who let them know Chase was coming today. Who do we have out there? Federal protective, local police, I want county I want the Chippies, bring out the goddamn transit cops if we have to!

--Leo, it's symbolic. Today's Armistice Day, you know?

--Shit on that, it's to embarrass us. All for Chase. Man keeps calling me up about twenty kilos of plutonium gone missing, I keep telling him we don't stockpile plutonium here.

--But we do, Leo.

--Well, Bernd, Chase doesn't have the clearance to know that, and picking up the phone midring, --Yes? Damn it Dennis just, look, take him to the downstairs conference room think you can do that? ...no will you forget the fucking slides, thumbing the phone's button, -- Where's Szabo? You all go down, I'm right behind you.

--Senator, glad you could make it. This all? Expected to see more of your colleagues...

--Doctor Highet. These two gentlemen are from the General Accounting Office. You'll be seeing more of them.

--Why don't you all take a seat and we'll begin.

--I have just one question, Doctor Highet. Is the Superbright going to work?

--I believe our presentation will address any

--I don't want a presentation, I want a yes or no. At the present moment, judging from everything you have to date, is it a viable system, within the budget and timeframe we have?

--Beyond question. In fact we have new results that show

--A new Superbright test? When?

--I can't discuss that in open session.

--Then maybe you can discuss claims of exaggeration and fraud from Warren Slater.

--Those are lies. Slater sabotaged my teams repeatedly. He had reasons of his own to derail this program.

--Such as?

--I can't discuss that in open session.

--Slater's not the only critic. Some of your own people

--Those are not my people. Those are people who've made up their minds that certain technical problems are too hard to solve. They're wrong. They could be making a contribution, but instead they find fault.

--So why are you behind schedule?

--We're not.

--According to your own timetable

--Senator, we have brilliant, creative people together here doing important work. Leave them alone and they accomplish miracles. But if you put limits on them...

--You're not answering me. I didn't ask about miracles.

--I am answering you if you'll let me. You cannot nickel and dime a program like this in the research phase, not if you exp

--Research? I thought you were engineering phase.

--Very nearly.

--You sent the president a letter claiming engineering phase.

--I do not acknowledge that. If such a letter were to exist it would be top secret, and you lack the clearance to see it or the competence to evaluate it.

--Doctor Highet I'm tired of this, you have put in motion a program that all told has squandered thirty billio

--Senator

--you have stonewalled, you have defied

--Senator

--gress, you have hidden behind classifica

--Senator, you're an asshole. You might even be a traitor.

--I will not take that from you, sir!

--You don't have a clue what's at stake here, one look at those hippies out front you're ready to cave, sell out this nation's security its technological edge its, breaking off for the figure in the doorway who bowed his head in apology.

--Gentlemen, we have a bomb threat. We need to clear the building.

--Good God.

--Your peacenik constituents, Chase. Good work.

--I'm not through with you, Highet.

--Fine, I'm willing to sit right here play Russian roulette.

--Gentlemen please, security is coming through, you'll have to move to Building 101.

Clipped static blurted in the hallway. Gallop of many feet approached.

--Clear this area!

Outside in the sunlight a security squad came running in a wedge, helmeted and visored, black gloves holding batons at port arms. Leather creaking, heels clattering, radios jabbering, they broke through the exiting crowd and Quine was swept the wrong way, out past an unmanned checkpoint before he cleared the surge of people onto a lawn where men in jumpsuits trailed strips of CAUTION tape on two then three sides of him and he dashed through the open space as behind him shouts were raised. Between windowless walls he took a stairway down to where two workmen rounding a corner dealt him a blow with the plank they carried, --Jesus watch it! hurling him to his knees against a chainlink fence trembling at the lip of a great pit. In this excavation five, seven, ten vehicles labored grinding and roaring in desperate intensity, beeping hollowly as they reversed or clanking furiously forward over a terrain of pale mud. Vast as the pit was it would not bury a millionth of the dead the bombs could kill. Quine pulled free of the fence with a tearing of fabric and went over a walkway of plywood sheets, pausing before a trailer CREDNE CONSTRUCTION in which doorway two t-shirted men eating lunch regarded him with dispassion as with a handkerchief he rubbed dirt and blood from his palms and the knee visible through ripped pants, then went down another stair of raw wood stained with mud, glancing back at concentric terraces gouged from the hillside. *The city is built on two levels, lords and palaces above, common workers below.* He rounded a corner to where a stream of people hurried past guards at a checkpoint.

--Look I need to

--Move on, there's been a bomb threat.

--Yes but I'm in an important meeting I need to get back to

--You can't come this way, this is a secure area.

--I'm cleared dammit! clapping his breast where no photo ID, but a torn flap of pocket depended, --oh Christ, look my name's Philip Quine can't you call

--Move away! The guard shoved him back into a stream of people advancing slowly toward the main gate. He made his way through and broke into a job on a path that led to the perimeter road, where he doubled back to the entry kiosk from its far side passing and passing close on his left the unending mass of protesters just beyond the fence. He stopped short of the entrance gate where cars were blocked by the leading edge of the crowd coursing out and around them like a stream around rocks, while bullhorns blared --personnel, do not exit by this gate repeat do not, and outside the gate protesters swirled in place like debris at a confluence of cataracts, held back by a skirmish line of county police vainly trying to keep them separate from Lab personnel. Quine stood sweating and panting until four cars slewed to a stop on the perimeter road and discharged Lab security, one of whom leveled his club at Quine, not clearly part of either crowd, and cried, --You!

Quine ran for the kiosk. More Lab police had arrived there, forming a wedge to divert Lab personnel from the gate. Quine was suddenly before two of them who linked arms to bar his passage. Their visors, opaque and bronze, mirrored twin Quines, elongated and dismayed. He pointed past them.

--I belong inside.

Then he was seized and pushed through the gate into the street. A helicopter swept overhead. He crouched under its roar, hands against his ears.

*Let us now speak the truth as we know it. Say that the sun is round, and bright, and hot. Say that it fires its acolytes, darkens their skins, elevates their wormridden souls. It rises in our birth and it sets in our death. Its prints upon our flesh the spots that adorn its face. It is in us whether we labor under it, or hide away from it. It strikes through our souls, it ignites the light of our being, it limns the shadow of our denial.*

In the crowd he saw Lynn, her dark head appearing and vanishing among others, nape and shoulders bare and tanned below the cropped marge of hair, sun blazing on the straps and back of a white top.

*Light is a wave and we are carried upon it. Light is a particle to pierce us with revelation. Light is the sun or the moon, a heat that tempers or a gentleness that silvers with love.*

He pushed toward her. At the end of its circuit the helicopter turned and came again.

*Say what you know, that love is lost. That light is extinguished. But see, loveless our souls still blaze. Our sun has not gone out, for fire comes to those who go not the way of light. See, we blaze and are not consumed.

He called her name and the call was lost in noise. The crowd shoved them together and she turned to him, eyes surprised. It was not Lynn. Pressed by the crowd they unwillingly embraced. He clung to her until another surge felled him. The cut on his knees opened and he bent to stanch it. When he rose he was among figures wearing skulls of papier-mâché and skeletons painted on black tights. Tambourines jangled, clattered. Around him people tied kerchiefs over their faces. The helicopter roared. Its belly glistened like a spider's, then it rocked and moved off leaving a silver mist that fell gently onto the crowd like a spring rain. Tears leapt to Quine's face and he dropped to his knees gasping and blinded, clinging to the nearest figure, saying over and over, --I belong inside.