# 1

Quine approached the Labs on a road that led nowhere else. The 
morning light was thick, corpuscular. Behind 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 the roads. Beyond, grassland stretched to hillsides yellow 
from drought and spotted with dark stands of live oak.

Soon he saw the protesters blocking the gate. Cars in both lanes were 
stopped. Blue lights and red lights flickered atop patrol cars 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 fell back from 
the roadway to the shoulders, the rhythm of their chant stumbling. A 
few remained kneeling before the gate. Three police holstered their 
batons and moved respectfully among them, 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. Past 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 on metal stalks like unliving plants. Past this moat 
he stopped at a third checkpoint, then parked in the shade of a 
concrete building with its blank walls and horizontal slits of 
embrasured windows, nervously thumbing the car radio --traffic and 
weather together, 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 high horizontal window framed a blank oblong of 
sky. On the walls, left by the prior occupant and by Quine untouched, 
hung 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, Technology Is What Sets Man Apart, and 
nearby a 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 eradicated, 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 Site 600. Donations in his memory may be made 
to the American Cancer Society.

One message could not be ignored:

> `Date:` Thu 31 Oct 12:10 EST \
> `From:` Leo Highet <sforza@milano> \
> `To:` Philip Quine <quine@styx> \
> `Subject:` Radiance \
> `Cc:` dietz@styx, szabo@styx, kihara@dis, huygens@aries, lb@dioce
>
> 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 210.
>
> _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 log-in 
_sforza_ and his closing quote. This 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 response.

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. Most Lab 
scientists considered themselves above the funding process, but 
Highet tracked it as carefully as any experiment. From the start of 
his career he had traveled often to the capital, made himself known 
and available 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 occupy the center of every situation, he 
let slip classified data.

Highet made allies sooner than friends, and enemies sooner than 
either. His allies were silent while his enemies leapt to break him. 
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 Labs 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.

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 round a nuclear bomb. The bomb's fireball 
would excite the rods, focusing its energy into beams that would 
flash out to strike down enemy missiles, all in the microsecond 
before the station consumed itself.

So far the beams flashed out only in theory. The theory, originated 
by Null, seemed to Quine sound, but the more he studied the computer 
model, the less he understood why Null's last test had produced even 
the ghost of a beam. No subsequent tests had shown it. Yet the 
farther tests fell behind expectations, the more strident became 
Highet's public claims. Warren Slater, in charge of testing, at last 
resigned in protest. His letter of resignation was classified and 
squelched. Bernd Dietz had taken interim charge of testing, and to 
Quine had fallen the task of finding in disappointing test data any 
optimism about the promised results.

With the showpiece of his career vulnerable, Highet had grown more 
reckless than ever. He began showing up at high profile, high tech 
conferences and seminars, 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. 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. Quine recognized 
the line from Leonardo's _Notebooks_. In the mind's shadows were 
countless voices, dead, living, unborn. Since working on Radiance he 
had dreamed them. Now they irrupted into his waking life.

On his second computer, secure in steel shielding, waited Quine's 
simulation of the rods. Abstract figures gyred in bright colors on 
the screen. The bland satisfactions of programming. The 
self-contained machine worlds. It was near to pornography, gaudy and 
without nuance. Any halfbright notion could be simulated, the 
simulation tweaked to success, and the success conjured as proof for 
funding. Realization was, as Highet might put it, a "materials" 
problem, an exercise left to minions. 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), an arcane pidgin halfway to madness. He ceased 
to see the words, his eye grasping instead the pixels, the shards of 
contained light the characters comprised.

What is light? The great mystery. Surfaces boil with quantum fire. 
How comes this dumb swarming to write beauty, alarm, or desolation on 
our souls? Eyes are the questing front of the brain, and channel to 
the heart. The eye may not, as Archytas thought, emit illuminating 
rays, but our modern understanding is no surer.

Mind's eye and heart's channel presented him now Kate's russet hair, 
full mouth and cheeks, dimpled chin, dark eyes framed by wire 
glasses. Like a key those features fit his heart. Her flexed shoulder 
blades under a leotard's scooped back. In a yoga class they'd met. 
Flirting, lunch, a few dates. She was twenty-three, he thirty-four. 
Hence his reticence, and paradoxically his faith that the years 
between them were his to reclaim at will. Her attention augured it. 
But when at last he bared his need for joy and hope, so long put by, 
it came 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. Almost two years since and still it pained. His hand sought 
his carotid artery. Sixteen in ten seconds: ninety-six. Everything 
now cause for alarm: gas pains, headaches, shortness of breath, 
specks in his vision. The blue pills with their excised triangle. Not 
at work. Certainly not with a meeting.

The morning was gone to no end. Since failing with Kate he seemed to 
fail at everything, and he saw in all 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 dodge 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 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 in which for the edification of visitors and the 
inspiration of employees were displayed 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 
arrived.

--He was one of these, shall I say, Marxist radical types. He was so 
radical 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 laptop 
computers 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 everything you read in _Nature_, 
something's happening there, someday we'll look into it ourselves. 
Jef, Aron Kihara, our new press officer, 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 talk to him. All present? 
Let's do it.

Highet seated the young man opposite Quine, jeans, dark jacket over 
T-shirt, 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? We won. We won 
because we got to go last. First the protesters, out on the street, 
wind noise, harsh lighting, then our rebuttal from our respectable 
office. They put us last because we provided closure. So that's our 
model for the presentation: beginning, middle, end. Begin with our 
successes, footage of tests. Middle: video simulation, highlighting 
potential problems. By defining the problems we control the 
questions. End with entirely new approaches and spinoffs. Aron's 
running the show, 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 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 assure 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 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...

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

--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. 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 me 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, now suddenly

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

--now 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?

--I won't pretend there's focus

--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 next Saturday. 
That's your baby, Bernd? Philip, piggyback it. 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 pre-production 
technologies. This is a simple, viable off-the-shelf option, an 
element of the overall system. It's an easy sell. Contractors are 
lining up.

--It's also 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.

--Close enough.

--These were shelved over ten years ago as a violation of the ASAT 
treaty.

--That toilet paper? Let that worry us we might as well pack it in.

--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 an 
overall shield. 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 destroy hardened shelters. We have a friend 
in the Pentagon who's hard for that and the Beltway boys know it.

--Wait just, 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

--Aron, 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 he had his snit. Sure we'll get closer 
scrutiny than we would in the average dog-and-pony but call it an 
opportunity. Remember NORAD's well-publicized false alarms and 
screwups, they got a billion-dollar facelift out of it. You up to 
speed now?

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

--Just put Frank's paper in the kit, I'll step in. 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, --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 Labs at Réti's invitation, Réti, the legend, 
intimate of Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, founder of the Labs. 
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. They'd refined 
their approach for two years, paring it to essentials, designing an 
experiment they had a hope of realizing with the school's meager 
resources. Elegance born of need. In one month at the Labs Quine 
designed and built a detector acute enough. 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 there was never a question of it. Not till 
much later did he guess that he'd been played. That Réti had waited 
two years before approaching him for a reason. 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.

His paper brought him a celebrity almost grace. Unlimited time to 
think. No assigned duties. And the mysteries ceased to open to him. 
Idle, he took on a Lab problem, quantum optics of X-ray mirrors. He 
welcomed the work, as though it paid some tithe of mind to the 
practical. And it was interesting science, but finally it was, as the 
pioneers had with exact irony called their first bomb, a "gadget". A 
solution that laid bare first principles was useless if it couldn't 
kill missiles. So his mirrors never passed a design review, but he 
was left alone to fiddle with quantum optics for telescopes and such. 
Then Radiance geared up, and his modeling software proved flexible 
enough to accommodate the next idea: the bombpumped Superbright. 
Opportunistic as a virus, the Labs exploited any evident skill. And 
so he was out of quantum optics and into weapons modeling. He became 
busy. Still 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 capital he held in reserve. But 
Quine could feign reserve, even to himself, while reserving nothing, 
and he came at last to understand that he did well at programming 
precisely because he brought his all to it. Nothing was left over.

---

When he left the building the sun was low. The air was warm, 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 mantis-headed 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. 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.

--Lynn. Did you see what happened?

When he looked at her all resemblance to Kate fell away. Same body 
type, same round features, but hair almost black with just a russet 
tinge, cropped close to the neck. No glasses. Dark penetrating eyes. 
Tanned calves darkly downed, lithe as a huntress's. No key turned in 
his heart, just a faint 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 had been looking at it, 
and now she smiled slightly.

--What do you work on?

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

--Defensive weapons. Where can I take you?

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

*And those in the anterooms of Hell demur, saying, I do not approve 
of 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 take you.

--Drop me at the corner of Mariposa.

--We didn't hear about the evening 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.

--But isn't it a waste now that the cold war

--Look, and hearing annoyance in his voice he immediately stanched 
it, --even if I, it's classified and I work, I only work on a small 
part of it, I don't even know...

--These demonstrations won't stop, you know. Until you do. You don't 
know how angry people are.

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

--You will.

She unbuckled her seatbelt. Suddenly he wanted to know her.

--Would you have lunch with me some day?

She looked at him incredulously. --Lunch? With you? But why?

--Because I'd like to talk to you.

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

--Maybe not. But if even you and I can't talk, what hope...

--You're the enemy. Her eyes fixed on him.

--Oh well if you feel that way

--I do!

--Then there's nothing, squeal of brakes obscuring his words as a bus 
pulled to the curb ahead of him. She was out the door before he felt 
the protest of his heart. So even now he had not relinquished some 
forlorn hope of starting over.

When he reached home Nan's car was in the lot. Most Tuesday nights 
she spent here at Quine's. 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.

Nan worked in another section of the Labs, handling personnel files. 
He had met her after failing with Kate. He had never told her about 
that. She was so unlike Kate. 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.

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

--Fine.

--Some bread in the oven, can you get that?

She chattered about her day, a seniority conflict in her department. 
Quine's patience wore. When, setting the plates down, she bent to 
kiss his neck, he stiffened and pulled away.

--What's wrong?

--Highet's going mad again. A Congressional visit's coming up, it 
should be routine, but he acts like the 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 assigns me a postdoc like, like 
some kind of chaperone... and the protesters.

--What about them?

--They're getting on my nerves.

--Have you made any progress?

--No I haven't made any progress. There's no progress to be made!

--Please don't snap at me, Philip.

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

She carried dishes into the kitchen without speaking.

--Look, I have an insane deadline. I won't be able to see you for a 
week or so.

--We're seeing Ginny and Bill on Sunday, I thought.

--I can't. I'm sorry I just can't.

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 Horatiu 
Réti, saying, --There is now a cult of the beautiful theory. But how 
beautiful is reality? These so-called 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 blanked then cleared to the involute radiance of 
the bomb. Sun's heart. Cosmic ground. Siva and Devi coupling. A thin 
roar issued from the set and the waspish voice rode over it, --The 
duty of science is to pursue knowledge even if it leads to the 
unbeautiful. Or to the evil. How else learn about evil?

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

The camera returned to the physicist facing an interviewer. Quine 
remembered. Though emeritus director, Réti was rarely at the Labs; 
the office he kept there served him solely as a clubroom or a set. 
Six months ago a film crew had come to the Labs. He had heard Réti 
shouting 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.

--Many of your colleagues turned away from weapons design for ethical 
reasons. Some of them, your schoolmates, your collaborators, have won 
Nobel Prizes. Do you ever feel that your work with weapons has cost 
you credibility or respect within the scientific community? Has it 
compromised you as a scientist?

--Never.

--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...

--You've lobbied extensively for the system in Washington.

--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.

--You listen to me. It is an imperfect world, a dangerous world, even 
an evil world. All ends, even the best, are reached by impure means. 
Reason is supposed to be the hallmark of science, but 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, 
maybe the data does not quite agree with your theory, no, the carpers 
will question, your case is 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 your scruples, but whether you have driven 
your knowledge home!

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 saw behind the fury in Réti's eyes a bright and 
open wound: more illustrious for his influence than his work, Réti 
had failed at everything but success. And Quine's life, he suddenly 
saw, was bent to Réti's influence. Quine stood up, ignoring --Philip 
what is it? and went to the bathroom. He clutched 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 swallowed the pills and his nausea subside as he returned and 
sat, to Réti's angry voice, --So I have no Nobel Prize, that 
accolade of *pure* science. But Alfred Nobel would understand me 
well. Yes, I have the ear of presidents. And history will be my 
judge, not you.

--What is it? 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 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 activities 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 his high window a faint rhombus which crept along the wall 
toward the doorway relentless as a horologe. 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 yes. How did you...

--I behaved badly. I'd like to apologize. Are you free for coffee?

--Well, not this morning, I...

--Later this afternoon?

--Well I

--I can get off work at four. Do you know the Café Desaparecidos? In 
the central mall. I work near there, I don't have a car.

--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.

--I guess we'll be working together.

--You're staying.

--Never a question of that. Listen, that meeting yesterday, I didn't 
belong there, I'm sorry if...

--Not your fault. As you see, Dr. Highet has his way of doing things.

--Yeah. Before we start I want to tell you, the single-photon 
experiment you did with Sorokin was really elegant. I was 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 and 
couldn't get the resolution we needed. We got it only after I came 
here, they could mill the beryllium to micrometer tolerances.

--You didn't follow it up.

Sorokin had said, you don't leave an infant like this to fend for 
itself. But Sorokin had always been inflexible. He had refused even 
to visit the Labs during the experiment.

--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 any qualms about defense work?

--What's this, a background check?

--No, I just, you might want to consider your position while you can. 
I came in neutral about defense work, and before long I was in the 
thick of it. It's especially easy to slip into it from nuclear 
science.

--I'll keep that in mind. I'm kind of apolitical.

--Let me show you what I have, turning to the computer which glowed 
with:

> `Date:` Fri 1 Nov 09:05 \
> `From:` Leo Highet <sforza@milano> \
> `To:` Philip Quine <quine@styx> \
> `Subject:` Upcoming J Section Tests
>
> 11/4 23:00 PDT, Building 328, Codename "Stelarc", groundbased laser 
guide star, 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 directly associated with a 
shot.

--Is that luck?

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

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

--You see. Intense brightness here, and here. Very erratic pattern. 
Agrees with the theory to a point, but when we increase power, we 
don't get the expected increase in beam, we get less in fact. 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 our time constraints I checked with Fabrication, they have 
gold rods ready to go, maybe we should stick with those and put our 
efforts into sensor configuration, keep it simple, don't you think?

--Sounds reasonable.

Thorpe continued to stare at the screen. --Could this be an annulus? 
This pattern I mean, could the sensors be picking up an imperfect 
focus, 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 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?

--Well enough. Weren't you in line for that position?

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

--Seems 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, a kid. The last man, Vessell, didn't outlast 
Slater. And we're not through with all that, no indeed.

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

--"The Labs have 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 some chemical seeped into the 
ground water 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. years ago Réti had some 
hare-brained flying rock scheme, these things never die, just get 
recyc

--Bran, Bran, Bran. What must I do to get you to use a font other 
than Courier? Nolan pulled back from the sheaf of papers brandished 
in one plump hand beneath his nose.

--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 so. A little humanitas, you know. Why else, Bran, did we 
get you that powerful and costly workstation?

--Jeez, Bob, I don't know, why did you? I'm 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 withdrew.

--Humanitas, yes, that's what we need, 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. Keep your distance from the Preterite, can't 
have just anyone winning, because if you let the rabble win, if they 
can rise, you can surely fall.

Nolan folded back pages, --Listen to this lovely 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. Look around you, these are people without lives, the wife 
walked out six months ago with the kid, they're eating Campbell's 
soup cold out of the can, they haven't got a clean shirt, but after a 
few months of eighteen-hour days they've got *data* that everyone 
wants to see. They *win big*.

--Bran, you keep working here.

--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 Andrew 
Steradian. He's researching the belief systems of those who work on 
weapons of mass destruction, I think 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 an antinuclear program on PBS 
last night, Steradian was in it abusing Réti.

--Does Highet know all this?

--Highet invited him.

Quine headed for the door, passing as he did Andrew Steradian, 
holding a small microphone before a J Section technician, saying, 
--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. Catkins 
littered the water. A jet moved in the sky, stitching a contrail 
across the thin lace of cloud drifting eastward through which a hot 
sun struggled to assert itself. Quine sat on a towel on the grassy 
verge and watched a portly bearded swimsuited man enter through the 
gate, barrel chest glossed with sunbleached 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; 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 blackwinged bird, _Cathartes 
aura_, rocked and banked. Jet's 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.

---

When he parked at the town's central mall the high cloud had passed 
and the sky was pale blue overhead and scum brown near its horizons. 
Quine walked sweating between pastel columns under a pediment that 
alluded to no place or time between smoked glass doors into an atrium 
so chill and disjunct it might have been another planet. Outside 
methane and ammonia storms might blow. Shops, granite benches, low 
fountains, and climbing plants ringed a pool in which stood a steel 
sculpture of crippled symmetry, as if a Platonic solid had ruptured.

The cafe's high walls rose past exposed beams and ducts to the nacre 
of frosted skylights. Lynn sat at a glass table in a wireframe chair, 
face downcast at papers before her. In the moment before she looked 
up, Kate's face glowed before him. In this cafe they'd first talked. 
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.

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

--I, sorry I...

--And maybe pick your brain about Radiance.

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

--The Day of the Dead. All Saints' Day. All this used to be Mexico, 
you know, they called it Aztlan. Once my law firm shuts you people 
down, we're going to reclaim all of Aztlan for the native peoples. 
Don't look that way, I'm joking, that's the kind of thing the far 
right says about us.

--You're a lawyer?

--Paralegal.

--What's that you're reading?

--Your press releases. She held a sheaf set in unadorned Courier 
font. --God you people have fingers in a lot of pies. When I started 
my concern was the bombs, but now I find out about the 
supercomputers, the lasers, the genetics, the chemicals, it's a 
separate world in there, isn't it.

--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?

--I'll have an espresso, please. Every one of these quote benign 
technologies has a pretty easy-to-imagine military use. Laser X-ray 
lithography for etching microchips, uh huh, 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 one can only imagine the rest.

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

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

--It's more complicated. I won't defend it, but the people I work 
with, they're not cynical, not

--Oh, 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". I can respect that, at least he's thought 
about it. How did you get into it?

--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 get to your boss, at least.

--You mean Highet?

--In his little red sports car. What about you? What did you think 
about yesterday's?

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

--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 supersti

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

--Not my tests, and he remembered *Dietz, Quine, sup.* --I'm no good 
talking about this.

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

--But I'm not sure! Because what if it is a waste, the billions and 
decades and lives and talents, then it's not just me, not just my 
mistake, but something wrong at the root...

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

--But there's never any stopping. It's almost as if these things we 
work on... they use us to get born. Could use anyone.

--I'm sorry Philip...

--No it's not your fault. I just, I need to get back. Her face was so 
concerned that he almost cried out with self-pity. He abruptly 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 
pill-bottle next to the small box DREAMLIGHT Unlock Your Inner 
Potential and its plastic headset. The pills opened a plain of 
timelessness and haze in which it seemed a lost part of himself 
dwelled. All then was fine. As he lay gazing at the grainy darkness 
of the ceiling his fluency returned, wonderful problems enticed and 
yielded to his insight, wisdom depended from the sky like fruit. As 
he began to drowse he roused himself to attach the headset like a 
blindfold around his temples. When he dreamed, a red strobe in the 
headset, sensing his eye movements, flickered and roused him enough 
to observe but not to wake.

The battle station shines in the void of space. Arms pivot as targets 
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 stations ignite in globes of light and their beams lance out, 
too many to destroy, and the dream begins again with different 
stations, Mylar skin of mirrors rippling, missiles coming on as 
earth-based beams strike up and the mirrors twitch to focus...

The world has changed, the enemy has collapsed into ruined republics. 
Yet despite this consummation of all the Labs has worked for, the 
work goes on unabated, the mood is spiritless, the shots in the 
desert continue, as though it is some ritual of penance, some black 
and endless propitiation of forces that by losing their fixed abode 
have gained in menace. Now effort must redouble to keep those forces 
from finding a new abode, from tenanting, aye, the Labs.

Vertigo of waking. Tearing of Velcro as the headset falls free. Wan 
dawn light. Stillness, faint whistle of tinnitus, first sounds of 
birdcall. And he realizes this dream is true. The enemy is gone. And 
the work does go on, and on.

# 3

In the next days Lynn was not among the protesters. Their numbers had 
diminished to a small group in daily vigil by the main gate holding a 
drooping sheet painted DIABOLIS EX MACHINA. Quine in his machine 
slowed through the gate and stopped, valves in the engine ticking, 
for a backhoe lurching across the main road to a dirt track that 
wound behind a building, and closed his window against the dust 
billowing toward him as he went on past an air hammer chiseling 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 rapidly without letup at 
Quine's entrance.

--Morning, said Quine.

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

Atop 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 joke? 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, things don't change that much. Lots of 
ideas have been left hanging. That's how I, I mean, stumbling in 
embarrassment at having carelessly touched as he thought Quine's 
sensitive point, --not to say, it's just if you're a student like me, 
not well connected, not seeing the latest preprints and hearing all 
the gossip, you need another way up. This is my way, 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 
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, fine. But you can model the process 
in a nuclear way, the phenomenon's called superradiance. The 
equations are quite similar. Highet saw the connection.

--To this? Highet told you about Superbright?

--Very sharp guy.

--That's quite a breach of classification.

--He kind of hinted around, 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 atop 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 modifying your code but I 
had a couple of quest

--You've changed my files?

--No no I made copies, all changes made to my copies and I was just 
wondering about a few things like here where you've got this array of 
reals here, what's that?

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

--Okay, 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 if we play what-if with these numbers...

--Wait what are you

--then the beam, oop 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!

--I'm just getting 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 sensors we're using, it... 
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 far end, past a row of sinks and 
urinals opposite metal stalls, a gym bag hung on a hook with a towel 
and steam billowed forth in a pelting rush of noise and Quine, elbows 
braced on a basin, looked up sharply from the laving of his hands at 
a bass voice echoing against the hard tile, --_bist du ein Thor und 
rein_, to see in the mirror but not his own eternally surprised 
features but fogged void, turning from the hiss of his faucet to 
glimpse through dispersing 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, a quarter mile underground, would rest. From sensors 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...

--All right, we can go ahead with other things for just a little 
while. 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, 
studying a bulletin board and its overlapping notices O Section, 
programmer needed to model underground plumes, K Section, LASS expert 
needed, Z Section, multimedia guru, 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 black-haired man in a blue knit 
shirt, his biceps and forearms hard and tanned. 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. Highet was alone.

--Get Thorpe out of my office.

--What's your problem now, Philip?

--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 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 for twenty years. But I have learned 
to position myself and to use other people to get what I want. Win 
win, you know, we help each other look good.

Voices approached 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, Horatiu 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, Horatiu. 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. Horatiu, 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 calls 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 from the excitement.

--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.

--What isn't?

--Excuse me, Leo about that agreement we're

--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 Friday. 
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.

--That is excellent, I can tell the Preside

--But

--Horatiu, 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. That's dirt cheap.

--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.

--Oh, is that so, 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, Dr. Réti?

--My young friend, I am an optimist.

--Philip, I want a word. Excuse us Horatiu. 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.

---

With the darkening of the sky 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 theory 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 the Earth's shad, and off as he saw again the tilt of Nan's 
head, the man's 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 LABS 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 
multidisciplinary expertise. Two young men, one poised to hurl 
something, caromed past his doorway. He shut the door on guffaws and 
--teach you some hydrodynamics!

Paper atop his stack, 1954, by Black. He turned to the citations, 
then read from the start, stopping often to reread with a doggedness 
that made shift for his halt sense, once so fine, of the rhythms of 
thought and confirmation, their probe and test and parry and clinch 
that now required his slow and remedial attention to be seized. As he 
read, his respect for Thorpe grew even as an emptiness opened within 
him. When he was finished he stared 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 hiking up Mount Ohlone with some friends 
tonight, want to come?

--Well...

--I know it's short notice.

--No I mean sure, why not.

--Good! Meet us at the park gate about nine. 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 was early. The sky was starry. Seldom was he this far from the 
valley's lights. Orion, Taurus, Canis Major. Eyes reaching into 
interstellar void. Where in this blackness is the seed of love? of 
meaning? Or is corruption inherent in Being itself, wrong at the root?

A car approached, lights snagging in the trees, then came around the 
last bend lightless, and rolled to a stop.

--Mark, Jackie, this is Philip. Why're we whispering?

--Park's closed.

They went round 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 farther 
they left the road for a broad path that rose winding under black 
oak, then bay. An owl called.

Ahead Jackie 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 softly about the people they knew, hes and 
shes darting in and out of audibility like moths in the dark. Next to 
him Lynn pulled at a low branch. Leaves popped free and she crushed 
them 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 climbed until they broke from the woods onto an open slope. A 
path through long dry grass led to another dark grove. The moon, not 
yet risen, rinsed palely the eastern sky. The valley to the south was 
filled with glittering points. At its verge was the floodlit terrain 
of the Labs.

--And this is _Artemisia tridentata_, Lynn said, inhaling as she 
broke from a sagebrush a twig of gray leaves. --Smell it. I wonder 
what god loves this.

--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.

--Look! Jackie called, --a green star! Is that a planet? and finding 
the pale disk straight up in the Ra, a handbreath from Mars near the 
Sisters, Quine knew it was no star, but the beam of a laser ten miles 
south stabbing sixty miles to the edge of space where sodium atoms 
glowed in its heat, and he said to Lynn, --not a planet, but some 
miracle of strange device, and she laughed before dropping the 
pungent twig and running to the next grove, and he ran after, the 
path dipping as seductively as the sweet hollow at the base of the 
spine, until he tripped and went sprawling, heart thudding, hackles 
alive. What was he outrunning? A presence, almost, was in the grove. 
He feared it though it was benign. It was not death, but it would 
change his life if he allowed it.

Three figures stood before him laughing. --You okay? and a flash of 
shame, not for his fall but for the falseness of his position before 
these children. The errors of his life were irrevocably; as yet 
theirs were not. He had wanted to borrow the grave of their youth, 
that was the shame. Mark held out his hand. Quine grasped it and was 
pulled to his feet and followed them out of the grove.

Jackie opened a backpack and brought out bread, cheese, fruit, a 
plastic bottle of water. On the grass they sat eating. The ridgeline 
was hard black against the sky and pieces of the rising moon glinted 
in the trees.

--You from around here, Philip?

--From the East. Isn't everyone? I've been here five years.

--Practically a native. What do you do?

--Computers. I write software for Taliesin Systems.

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

--It's a big industry.

--Getting bigger by the day, said Lynn dryly.

--Ah, look, look at the moon. It cleared the ridge, swollen, no 
goddess remontant but an airless world already mapped, trodden, and 
projected for division into satrapies of mining, manufacturing, and 
defense, occupancy lapsed only until those scenarios could enrich 
their planners at a margin of return greater and more reliable than 
what current technology assured.

--We're contracting with an aerospace company, Quine went on, to 
control low-orbit balloons a couple of miles across, apparent size of 
the moon, sunlit, carrying messages.

--Messages?

--Commercial messages, logos. Advertising.

--But that's, Jackie began and Mark cut in, --Didn't I read about 
this, the Sierra Club's bringing suit...

--Maybe so, we're just the contractors, I don't really know, and 
Jackie glancing at Lynn seemed to lose interest, resuming with Mark 
in a low voice their conversation of hes and shes while Lynn walked 
away, obliging Quine to follow at a distance, leaving behind --she 
doesn't see you as a friend she sees you as more and that's scary, to 
overtake her on a knoll where she faced the valley lights with 
crossed arms.

--Philip, these are my friends. Don't lie to them.

--I was trying it on. That's a Lab phrase. You don't like me as a 
software mogul?

--You do this a lot? Jerk people around?

--No, it's... look it's just a bad habit. Defensive. Sometimes you 
have to, there, to advance your goals, lying's almost a game, see if 
the other guy's smart enough to catch it.

--And Mark wasn't smart enough for you. You take his good faith for 
foolishness.

--No, it's...

--I'm trying to understand you. You repay friendship with falsehood?

--It's... you don't know what's happening there, what I'm up against 
right now...

--Tell me, then.

--I can't.

--They really have their hooks in you.

--I know that.

--Can't you quit?

--And do what! Turn from the one place where my, my talents have 
meaning, from everything that defines me?

--What do you want, Philip?

--Want? I want five years back. Before them 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...

--But you, I don't believe this, you don't engage with people, you 
stand off, you get angry and defensive when they think they don't 
approve, and then you think you're screwed?

--Lynn...

--I don't know what to say, I really don't. I understand if you're 
bitter, but not flaunting it, this almost pride in it...

--Pride! ...I have an insoluble problem, data that's no good 
fraudulent predictions a Congressional visit next week a few days to 
vindicate what isn't, and I'm talking a walk in the moonlight because 
I don't know what to do! Not pride that's desperation...

--It's that bad? Face hidden 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 
stepped back.

They returned to where Jackie was packing the picnic, still talking 
to Mark, --so I'm going wait, stop, this is it, these are the 
boundaries and he's like, what did I do? She handed the pack to Lynn, 
--take this? and embraced Mark from Behind, her whiteclad 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 Jackie, --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 for inviting me. He got in the car, opened the glovebox, 
found a tablet, felt the excised triangle, brushed lint from it, 
swallowed it dry.

---

In the apartment was a smell. It was like stale smoke and rotting 
food, edged with something fouler, like the metallic stench of the 
bright green 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 slowly 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. Farther 
into the recess, beyond his reach, was more tar.

Sweat soaked him. He went onto the deck. The moon was dim, its 
fullness lurid, as if behind 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, under a shiny black 
cloak 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 sharply back from 
the uncradled receiver, switched off the lights, leaving the voice 
breathing unheeded into the darkness and the reddish moonlight pooled 
on the floor.

He showered. In the stream lust swelled in him like nausea. Joylessly 
he seized its nexus. Hot spray lashed him. Incoherent images and 
broken geometries 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 a travel 
kit of quilted cotton gaped, displaying diaphragm, jelly, tampons, 
vitamins, ibuprofen, hairpins, barrette, lens wetter, a glass jar of 
face cream. A towelend snagged the open zipper as Quine scrubbed dry 
his hair. Items hailed on the tiled 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 west 
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 pollution Quine, driving to the back gate of the Labs 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 under a bright new sign bearing the 
biohazard trefoil and DANGER TOXICS MITIGATION PILOT SITE ALPHA KEEP 
OUT. The drone of flies rose and fell like a turbine. Inside the gate 
the flies abated. A stubble of dry vines clung to irrigation 
uprights. Underfoot a chromegreen film glazed cracked gray silt. Bark 
from a withered vine sloughed like white ash on his fingers. Then 
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 a roadside 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 sensors. Today.

--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 can be a 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, 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.

--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. They ate dinner in the cafeteria, not speaking, then 
returned to work. Thorpe coded for an hour, then ran the model. The 
annulus. He rotated the rods; 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's data. But the model's tweaked to hell and gone.

--I don't see anything wrong.

--No... so we would put the sensors here... see, this is how I work. 
I'm not a theorist, I don't have your background, I need the machine, 
to 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.

--But the thing is, at some level it's all just pushing numbers 
around. I don't know if the code is 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 Fish and Himmelhoch I have to be very careful. They were 
crucified, just crucified, they're pariahs, their careers are 
finished. Anything 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.

--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.

--I'm sorry I'm touchy. Just 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 won't 
forget it.

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

--Yeah, I'm whipped.

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

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

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

--Are you staying longer?

--God no, what is it, midnight?

--Two.

--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 atop Quine's 
stack, held his gaze, and departed.

It was a new paper by Sorokin. At a prestigious school now. Tenured. 
Quine skimmed it as if reading news from a distant galaxy or 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 the welling of envy and 
self-pity. Good for Sorokin.

But instead of going home Quine broke apart Thorpe's code and studied 
the changes closely. 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; oh yes, his 
instinct was not yet dead.