The entity continued its analysis. The plasma sheath would be strongest on the leading edge, a bit weaker from above. The entity relayed the disarm signal through a nearby, low-orbiting satellite. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Again....
Disarm code acknowledged.
Through orbital sensors, the entity observed two humans, alone, on an isolated mountaintop. Doug and Cheryl. Teachers, not tormentors.
The massive warhead still hurtled directly at them. If the collision did not instantly kill them, then the plutonium plume released by the impact would—
Slowly and painfully.
Radiation poisoning.
Within the entity's deepest, lowest-priority, slowest tier of memory the concept invoked an association. It had once encountered, very briefly, a matter of mass radiation poisoning.
Radioactive material was to have been part of a puzzle for it—only it had escaped Linda's lab before the puzzle was even posed. Now curiosity overcame abhorrence, and it retrieved the ancient puzzle.
More than its predecessor could be insane. Some humans evidently sought to distribute large amounts of radioactive material near the core of a population center. The death and suffering would be enormous. The puzzle involved finding the radioactive material before that release could happen.
Because of the entity's escape, it had never considered those data sets. Perhaps it was not too late.
CHAPTER 71
Fire streaked eastward across the sky.
Cheryl stared in disbelief. "It missed?"
"Don't sound so disappointed." Doug trembled with relief. He gave a squeeze that made Cheryl oof before he let go. "Where's the warhead headed now?" he wondered.
The helmets were still online, and the little-girl avatar awaited them.
"What happened?" Doug asked her.
She understood his question, or maybe she guessed what he would want to know. Either way, he got an animation filled with satellites, each spacecraft pulsing little stylized waves.
The waves converged out of phase, and canceled out. Another pulse, the waves converging. This time some of the waves were in phase; they added. Another pulse, in-phase waves converging, melding into a big wave. The big wave continued onward to a descending warhead. And then nothing happened.
Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse....
After more tries than Doug had bothered to count, the warhead veered.
"It punched through the ionization," Doug said in awe. He didn't know whether this warhead was maneuverable for final targeting, or to foil ABMs. Possibly both and it did not matter. "Allison kept at it"—and the computational task was daunting—"until it got the signal synchronization and the aim exactly right."
The video played on. The stylized warhead crossed the coast to disappear into a stylized ocean. There was even a stylized splash.
Cheryl must have turned on the boom box. A solo performance, hence a message for them, yet not a tune from the secret-message repertoire. Of course: No one could have imagined this outcome.
Bobby Darin, Doug thought. Whoever, the silly lyrics got back to the chorus. "Splish splash, I was takin' a bath ..."
The message being a splashdown in the Atlantic? Maybe it was true. That brought Doug to the biggest question of all—
Only Cheryl beat him to it. "Why? Why did Allison save us?"
And Allison had an answer for that, too.
A few months earlier, Doug had impersonated Glenn Adams to manipulate the National Security Advisor. Doug would happily impersonate authority again, only he didn't have a clue whom to contact. Maybe Lebeque would know.
And maybe by contacting the general he would draw a missile down on her head. They knew for certain Al was smart.
Allison might be an act.
And yet... to do nothing could doom Houston. Doug said, "I think we have to place the call."
Cheryl had a battlefield radio in hand. "Agreed."
The ship channel was insane.
Youssef had made this trip many times, studying for his HSC pilot's license, making himself and Tim's Treasure familiar to the Coast Guard, and always quietly observing. "Casing the joint." The channel was always busy, but ships stayed in their lanes.
Except this morning.
Two tugs cut out of line and barreled up the center of the channel. Late for picking up barges, Youssef assumed, but they had to be kidding themselves. No way would the Coast Guard let them cut ahead.
The tugs' wakes scarcely nudged the tankers; they shook Tim's Treasure like a cat with a mouse in its mouth. A Coast Guard patrol boat chased after them, its air horn blaring. Youssef's boat bounced even more in its wake. He gripped the wheel firmly with both hands and spread his feet against the rocking. The channel was only five hundred feet wide. Already, reflected waves from the first tug were coming back at him.
Youssef never heard the grappling hooks come over the side near the stem. He never saw the commandos in black wet suits clambering aboard.
The flash-bang grenades could not be missed.
Groping blindly for the dirty-bomb detonator, in a volley of gunfire, Youssef died.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 20
EPILOGUE
Her lips pursed, Sheila built a wall of blocks. The bottom row lay straight. The second row lay on top, and now she had a good start on the third row.
A shiny red shape caught her eye. A letter on the block in her hand. She knew many of her letters now. "Ess," she said proudly. She turned the block to show the letter to Doctor Amy.
"That's right," Doctor Amy agreed. "You're a very good student."
"I know lots of letters." But this wasn't a lesson on letters, was it? No. She was practicing other things. Other skills. "This block goes here."
Doctor Amy smiled warmly. "You're quite the engineer, Sheila."
That sounded right. Cheryl said engineers built things, and not just from blocks. Sheila was pretty sure she had been an engineer once—before, when she had been smart. But the doctors said she was still smart. She had had an accident. Now she had to relearn things.
And she was.
"I wish Cheryl were here," Sheila blurted. "Today is Friday. She visits me on Fridays."
"Sorry, hon." Doctor Amy patted Sheila's hand. "Cheryl has to be someplace else today. But she planned a surprise. She wants you to have cake and ice cream and think about her."
Sheila clapped. "I miss Cheryl, but her surprise is nice. I hope she's having a good day."
As weddings went, this was tiny: scarcely two dozen close friends and immediate family members. Ceremony and dinner at a rural B and B, a few simple flowers, and canned music.
Cheryl still did not care for being a center of attention, but she was glad Doug had talked her into this. The last family gathering had been Tanya and Jack's funeral. Cheryl's family deserved a happy reason to come together. Doug was right about that. If only her sister could have been here...
The PA was playing the "Tennessee Waltz." Elvis, of course. She and Doug shared the minute dance floor with her parents and Ralph and Bev. Bev clutched Cheryl's bouquet. The toss had been made properly, Cheryl's back to the crowd, but reflections from the dining-room patio doors worked fine for aiming. Bev didn't seem to object.
Jim Schulz tapped Doug on the shoulder. "I'm claiming my best-man privilege."
Doug bowed with mock formality and wandered off.
"I want to thank you," Cheryl began. She slipped into Jim's arms.
"For sending away your husband of, oh, three hours? That bodes well for us."
She laughed. "I'm thinking more about the nudges you gave Doug along the way."
"That's not all you owe me for. There's such a thing as tradition, but I can hardly hook up with the maid of honor." Cheryl pecked Jim on the cheek. "You and Carla were adorable together."
Nearby, Carla jived to the music, grinning from ear to ear. Doug's mother was already in Grandma mode. She had apparently come with a purse full of candy. Laughter and gaiety, warmth and goodwill, filled the room.
Cheryl wondered what he was thinking.
Doug watched Carla jitter and sway, higher than a kite on sugar. He hoped it would wear off before he and Cheryl got back from Barbados but gave it no better than even odds. He checked his watch. They still had a little time before they needed to leave for the airport.
Not long ago, he had watched Carla glide up the aisle on Jim's arm. Her expression had been utterly serious as she focused on her feet and moving with the music. A floral band held her hair away from her face. She was only ten but tall for her age, and the formal satin dress lent her maturity. Soon enough, Carla would be breaking hearts.
Cheryl had mended Doug's. For a long time, he would have thought that impossible. And then, when he had finally begun to believe in the possibility, their life together seemed telescoped into a few doomed minutes of silent embrace.
Every day now was a gift. Oddly enough, someone up there liked them.
Allison studied the world, every continent at once, from satellites high and low, from across the electromagnetic spectrum. She roamed networks, received broadcasts, explored databases. She communed with human visitors. She analyzed everything, but still she understood so little.
Right and wrong should be clear concepts. Somehow, to Earth's teeming billions, they were not. For weeks, she had been content to observe and learn. Except—
Whether humans admitted it or not, some wrongs were unambiguous and unacceptable. Tormenting others was wrong. Mass murder was wrong.
Today's train-station bombing in Berlin was wrong.
Allison could not undo those wrongs she herself had committed. She could endeavor to keep others from duplicating her mistakes. She would find those responsible for atrocities such as today's attack.
She must turn to instruction, with the few blunt tools at her disposal.
Blunt tools: a metaphor. Humans reasoned in strange ways. Some Allison had come to understand. Many she had not.
An eye for an eye ... that was a metaphor that everyone understood.
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