Death Match

by Lincoln Child

Con­tents

To Veronica

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many peo­ple lent their ex­per­tise to the writ­ing of this book. I’d like to thank my friend and ed­itor at Dou­ble­day, Ja­son Kauf­man, for his as­sis­tance in count­less ways, large and small. Thanks al­so to his col­leagues, Jen­ny Choi and Rachel Pace.

Ken­neth Fre­undlich, Ph.D., pro­vid­ed in­valu­able in­sight in­to psy­cho­log­ical test­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion. Thanks al­so to Lee Suc­kno, M.D., Antony Cifel­li, M.D., Tra­ian Parvules­cu, M.D., and Daniel DaSil­va, Ph.D., for their med­ical and psy­cho­log­ical ex­per­tise. Cezar Baula and Chris Buck helped with chem­ical and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal de­tails. Once again, my cousin Greg Tear was both a vi­tal sound­ing board and a fount of ideas. And on­go­ing thanks to Spe­cial Agent Dou­glas Margi­ni for his as­sis­tance with law en­force­ment as­pects of the book.

A spe­cial thanks to Dou­glas Pre­ston for his sup­port and en­cour­age­ment through­out the writ­ing of this book, and for sup­ply­ing a cru­cial chap­ter.

I’d al­so like to thank Bruce Swan­son, Mark Mendel, and Jim Jenk­ins, for their guid­ance and friend­ship.

Last, I want to thank those with­out whom my nov­els could nev­er ex­ist: my wife, Luchie; my daugh­ter, Veron­ica; my par­ents, Bill and Nan­cy; and my sib­lings, Doug and Cyn­thia.

It goes with­out say­ing that the char­ac­ters, cor­po­ra­tions, events, lo­cales, en­ti­ties, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, psy­cho­log­ical ap­pa­ra­tus, gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies, com­put­ing de­vices, and the rest of the clay out of which this nov­el was fash­ioned are all fic­ti­tious, or are used fic­ti­tious­ly. The Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed of this book—though it may ex­ist some day—is at present a caprice of my imag­ina­tion.

ONE

It was the first time Mau­reen Bow­man had ev­er heard the ba­by cry.

She hadn’t no­ticed right away. In fact, it had tak­en five, per­haps ten min­utes to reg­is­ter. She’d al­most fin­ished with the break­fast dish­es when she stopped to lis­ten, suds drip­ping from her yel­low-​gloved hands. No mis­take: cry­ing, and from the di­rec­tion of the Thor­pe house.

Mau­reen rinsed the last dish, wrapped the damp tow­el around it, and turned it over thought­ful­ly in her hands. Nor­mal­ly, the cry of a ba­by would go un­no­ticed in her neigh­bor­hood. It was one of those sub­ur­ban sounds, like the tin­kle of the ice cream truck or the bark of a dog, that passed just be­neath the radar of con­scious per­cep­tion.

So why had she no­ticed? She dropped the plate in­to the dry­ing rack.

Be­cause the Thor­pe ba­by nev­er cried. In the balmy sum­mer days, with the win­dows thrown wide, she’d of­ten heard it coo­ing, gur­gling, laugh­ing. Some­times, she’d heard the in­fant vo­cal­iz­ing to the sounds of clas­si­cal mu­sic, her voice min­gling in the breeze with the scent of piñon pines.

Mau­reen wiped her hands on the tow­el, fold­ed it care­ful­ly, then glanced up from the counter. But it was Septem­ber now; the first day it re­al­ly felt like au­tumn. In the dis­tance, the pur­ple flanks of the San Fran­cis­co peaks were wreathed in snow. She could see them, through a win­dow shut tight against the chill.

She shrugged, turned, and walked away from the sink. All ba­bies cried, soon­er or lat­er; you’d wor­ry if they didn’t. Be­sides, it was none of her busi­ness; she had plen­ty of things to take care of with­out mess­ing in her neigh­bors’ lives. It was Fri­day, al­ways the bus­iest day of the week. Choir re­hearsal for her­self, bal­let for Court­ney, karate for Ja­son. And it was Ja­son’s birth­day; he’d de­mand­ed beef fon­due and choco­late cake. That meant an­oth­er trip to the new su­per­mar­ket on Route 66. With a sigh, Mau­reen pulled a list from be­neath a re­frig­er­ator mag­net, grabbed a pen­cil from the phone stand, and be­gan scrawl­ing items.

Then she stopped. With the win­dows all closed, the Thor­pe ba­by must re­al­ly be crank­ing if she could hear . . .

Mau­reen forced the thought from her mind. The in­fant girl had barked her shin or some­thing. Maybe she was be­com­ing col­icky, it wasn’t too late for that. In any case, the Thor­pes were adults; they could deal with it. The Thor­pes could deal with any­thing.

This last thought had a bit­ter un­der­tone, and Mau­reen was quick to re­mind her­self this was un­fair. The Thor­pes had dif­fer­ent in­ter­ests, ran in dif­fer­ent cir­cles; that was all.

Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe had moved to Flagstaff just over a year be­fore. In a neigh­bor­hood full of emp­ty nesters and re­tirees, they stood out as a young, at­trac­tive cou­ple, and Mau­reen had been quick to in­vite them to din­ner. They’d been charm­ing guests, friend­ly and wit­ty and very po­lite. The con­ver­sa­tion had been easy, un­forced. But the in­vi­ta­tion had nev­er been re­turned. Lind­say Thor­pe was in her third trimester at the time; Mau­reen liked to be­lieve that was the rea­son. And now, with a new ba­by, back full-​time at work . . . it was all per­fect­ly un­der­stand­able.

She walked slow­ly across the kitchen, past the break­fast ta­ble, to the slid­ing glass door. From here, she had a bet­ter view of the Thor­pes’. They’d been home the night be­fore, she knew; she’d seen Lewis’s car driv­ing past around din­ner­time. But now, as she peered out, all seemed qui­et.

Ex­cept for the ba­by. God, the lit­tle thing had leather lungs . . .

Mau­reen stepped clos­er to the glass, cran­ing her neck. That’s when she saw the Thor­pes’ cars. Both of them, twin Au­di A8s, the black one Lewis’s and the sil­ver one Lind­say’s, parked in the breeze­way.

Both home, on a Fri­day? This was se­ri­ous­ly weird. Mau­reen pressed her nose up against the glass.

Then she stepped back. Now lis­ten, you’re be­ing ex­act­ly the kind of nosy neigh­bor you promised you’d nev­er be. There could be any num­ber of ex­pla­na­tions. The lit­tle girl was sick, the par­ents were home to tend to her. Maybe grand­par­ents were ar­riv­ing. Or they were get­ting ready to go on va­ca­tion. Or . . .

The child’s cries had be­gun to take on a hoarse, ragged qual­ity. And now, with­out think­ing, Mau­reen put her hand on the glass door and slid it open.

Wait, I can’t just go over there. It’ll be noth­ing. I’ll em­bar­rass them, make my­self look like a fool.

She looked over at the counter. The night be­fore, she’d baked an enor­mous quan­ti­ty of toll­house cook­ies for Ja­son’s birth­day. She’d bring some of those over; that was a rea­son­able, neigh­bor­ly thing to do.

Quick­ly, she grabbed a pa­per plate—thought bet­ter of it—re­placed it with a piece of her good chi­na, ar­ranged a dozen cook­ies on it, and cov­ered them with plas­tic wrap. She scooped up the plate, made for the door.

Then she hes­itat­ed. Lind­say, she re­mem­bered, was a gourmet chef. A few Sat­ur­days be­fore, when they’d met at their mail­box­es, the wom­an had apol­ogized for be­ing un­able to chat be­cause she had a burnt-​al­mond ganache boil­ing on the stove. What would they think of a home­ly plate of toll­house cook­ies?

You’re think­ing about this way, way too much. Just go on over there.

What was it, ex­act­ly, she found so in­tim­idat­ing about the Thor­pes? The fact they didn’t seem to need her friend­ship? They were well ed­ucat­ed, but Mau­reen had her own cum laude de­gree in En­glish. They had lots of mon­ey, but so did half the neigh­bor­hood. Maybe it was how per­fect they seemed to­geth­er, how ide­al­ly suit­ed to each oth­er. It was al­most un­can­ny. That one time they’d come over, Mau­reen had no­ticed how they un­con­scious­ly held hands; how they fre­quent­ly com­plet­ed each oth­er’s sen­tences; how they’d shared count­less glances that, though brief, seemed preg­nant with mean­ing. “Dis­gust­ing­ly hap­py” was how Mau­reen’s hus­band termed them, but Mau­reen didn’t think it dis­gust­ing at all. In fact, she’d found her­self feel­ing en­vi­ous.

Steady­ing her grip on the plate of cook­ies, she walked to the door, pulled back the screen, and stepped out­side.

It was a beau­ti­ful, crisp morn­ing, the smell of cedar strong in the thin air. Birds were pip­ing in the branch­es over­head, and from down the hill, in the di­rec­tion of town, she could hear the mourn­ful call of the South­west Chief as it pulled in­to the train sta­tion.

Out here, the cry­ing was much loud­er.

Mau­reen strode pur­pose­ful­ly across the lawn of col­ored la­va and stepped over the bor­der of rail­road ties. This was the first time she’d ac­tu­al­ly set foot on the Thor­pes’ prop­er­ty. It felt strange, some­how. The back­yard was en­closed, but be­tween the boards of the fence she could make out the Japanese gar­den Lewis had told them about. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by Japanese cul­ture, and had trans­lat­ed sev­er­al of the great haiku po­ets; he’d men­tioned some names Mau­reen had nev­er heard of. What she could see of the gar­den looked tran­quil. Serene. At din­ner that night, Lewis had told a sto­ry about the Zen mas­ter who’d asked an ap­pren­tice to tidy his gar­den. The ap­pren­tice had spent all day at it, re­mov­ing ev­ery last fall­en leaf, sweep­ing and pol­ish­ing the stone paths un­til they gleamed, rak­ing the sand in­to reg­ular lines. At last, the Zen mas­ter had emerged to scru­ti­nize the work. “Per­fect?” the ap­pren­tice asked as he dis­played the metic­ulous gar­den. But the mas­ter shook his head. Then he gath­ered up a hand­ful of peb­bles and scat­tered them across the spot­less sand. “Now it is per­fect,” he replied. Mau­reen re­mem­bered how Lewis’s eyes had sparkled with amuse­ment as he told the sto­ry.

She hur­ried for­ward, the cry­ing strong in her ears.

Ahead was the Thor­pes’ kitchen door. Mau­reen stepped up to it, care­ful­ly ar­ranged a bright smile on her face, and pulled open the screen. She be­gan to knock, but with the pres­sure of her first rap the door swung in­ward.

She took a step.

“Hel­lo?” she said. “Lind­say? Lewis?”

Here, in the house, the wail­ing was al­most phys­ical­ly painful. She hadn’t known an in­fant could cry so loud. Wher­ev­er the par­ents were, they cer­tain­ly couldn’t hear her over the ba­by. How could they be ig­nor­ing it? Was it pos­si­ble they were show­er­ing? Or en­gaged in some kinky sex act? Abrupt­ly, she felt self-​con­scious, and glanced around. The kitchen was beau­ti­ful: pro­fes­sion­al-​grade ap­pli­ances, glossy black coun­ters. But it was emp­ty.

The kitchen led di­rect­ly in­to a break­fast nook, gild­ed by morn­ing light. And there was the child: up ahead, in the arch­way be­tween the break­fast nook and some oth­er space that, from what she could see, looked like a liv­ing room. The in­fant was strapped tight­ly in­to her high chair, fac­ing the liv­ing room. The lit­tle face was mot­tled from cry­ing, and the cheeks were stained with mu­cus and tears.

Mau­reen rushed for­ward. “Oh, you poor thing.” Bal­anc­ing the cook­ies awk­ward­ly, she fished for a tis­sue, cleaned the child’s face. “There, there.”

But the cry­ing did not ease. The ba­by was pound­ing her lit­tle fists, star­ing fixed­ly ahead, in­con­solable.

It took quite some time to wipe the red face clean, and by the time she was done Mau­reen’s ears were ring­ing with the noise. It wasn’t un­til she was push­ing the tis­sue back in­to the pock­et of her jeans that she thought to fol­low the child’s line of sight in­to the liv­ing room.

And when she did, the cry of the child, the crash of chi­na as she dropped the cook­ies, were in­stant­ly drowned by the sound of her screams.

TWO

Christo­pher Lash stepped out of the cab and in­to the tu­mult of Madi­son Av­enue. It had been half a year since he was last in New York, and those months seemed to have soft­ened him. He hadn’t missed the acrid diesel plumes belch­ing from ser­ried rows of bus­es; he’d for­got­ten the un­pleas­ant­ly burnt aro­ma of the side­walk pret­zel stands. The throngs of passers­by, bark­ing in­to cell phones; the blat of horns; the an­gry in­ter­play of cars and trucks—it all re­mind­ed him of the fran­tic, sense­less ac­tiv­ity of an ant colony, ex­posed from be­neath a rock.

Tak­ing a firm grip on his leather satchel, he stepped on­to the side­walk and in­sert­ed him­self deft­ly in­to the crowds. It had been a long time, too, since he’d car­ried the satchel, and it felt for­eign and un­com­fort­able in his hand.

He crossed Fifty-​sev­enth Street, let­ting him­self be car­ried along by the riv­er of hu­man­ity, and head­ed south. An­oth­er block, and the crowds eased some­what. He crossed Fifty-​sixth, then slid in­to an emp­ty door­way, where he could pause a mo­ment with­out be­ing jos­tled. Plac­ing his satchel care­ful­ly be­tween his shoes, he gazed up­ward.

Across the street, a rect­an­gu­lar tow­er rose in­to the sky. There was no num­ber, or cor­po­rate let­ter­ing, to be­tray what lay with­in. They were ren­dered un­nec­es­sary by the lo­go that—thanks to count­less high-​pro­file news re­ports—had re­cent­ly be­come al­most as fa­mil­iar an Amer­ican icon as the gold­en arch­es: the sleek, elon­gat­ed in­fin­ity sym­bol that hov­ered just above the build­ing’s en­trance. The tow­er rose to a set­back, halfway up its mas­sive flank; high­er, dec­ora­tive lat­tice­work ran around the struc­ture like a rib­bon, set­ting off the top few floors. But this sim­plic­ity was de­cep­tive. The tow­er’s skin had a rich­ness, a sense of depth, al­most like the paint­work on the most ex­pen­sive of cars. Re­cent ar­chi­tec­tural text­books called the build­ing “ob­sid­ian,” but that wasn’t quite cor­rect: it had a warm, pel­lu­cid glow that seemed al­most drawn from its en­vi­ron­ment, leav­ing the sur­round­ing build­ings cold and col­or­less by com­par­ison.

Drop­ping his gaze from the fa­cade, he fished in­to the pock­et of his suit jack­et and pulled out a piece of busi­ness sta­tionery. At the top, “Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed” was em­bossed in el­egant type be­side the in­fin­ity lo­go; “de­liv­er by couri­er” was stamped at the bot­tom. He reread the brief mes­sage be­low.

Dear Dr. Lash:

I en­joyed speak­ing with you to­day, and I’m glad you could come on such short no­tice. We’ll ex­pect you Mon­day at 10:30 a.m. Please give the en­closed card to one of the se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel in the lob­by.

Sin­cere­ly,

Ed­win Mauch­ly

Di­rec­tor, Fa­cil­ita­tion Ser­vices

The let­ter yield­ed up no more in­for­ma­tion than it had the oth­er times he’d read it, and Lash re­turned it to his pock­et.

He wait­ed for the light to change, then picked up his satchel and made his way across the street. The tow­er was set back ex­trav­agant­ly from the side­walk, cre­at­ing a wel­com­ing oa­sis. There was a foun­tain here: mar­ble satyrs and nymphs dis­port­ing them­selves around a bent, an­cient fig­ure. Lash peered cu­ri­ous­ly through the cur­tain of mist at the fig­ure. It seemed a strange cen­ter­piece for a foun­tain: no mat­ter how he stared, he could not quite de­ter­mine whether it was male or fe­male.

Be­yond the foun­tain, the re­volv­ing doors were kept in con­stant mo­tion. Lash stopped again, ob­serv­ing this traf­fic in­tent­ly. Al­most ev­ery­one was en­ter­ing, not leav­ing. But it was al­most ten-​thir­ty, so it couldn’t be em­ploy­ees he was see­ing. No, they must all be clients; or, more like­ly, would-​be clients.

The lob­by was large and high-​ceilinged, and he paused again just in­side. Al­though the sur­faces were of pink mar­ble, in­di­rect light­ing lent the space an un­usu­al warmth. There was an in­for­ma­tion desk in its cen­ter, of the same ob­sid­ian as the build­ing’s ex­te­ri­or. Along the right wall, be­yond a se­cu­ri­ty check­point, lay a long bank of el­eva­tors. New ar­rivals con­tin­ued to stream by him. They were a re­mark­ably het­ero­ge­neous crowd: all ages, races, heights, builds. They looked hope­ful, ea­ger, per­haps a lit­tle ap­pre­hen­sive. The ex­cite­ment in the air was pal­pa­ble. Some head­ed to­ward the far end of the lob­by, where twin es­ca­la­tors climbed to­ward a wide, arched pas­sage. CAN­DI­DATE PRO­CESS­ING was en­graved above the pas­sage in dis­creet gold let­ter­ing. Oth­ers were mov­ing to­ward a set of doors be­low the es­ca­la­tors marked AP­PLI­CA­TIONS. And still oth­ers had grav­itat­ed to the left side of the lob­by, where Lash caught the flick­er of myr­iad move­ments. Cu­ri­ous, he drift­ed clos­er.

Across a wide swath of the left wall, floor to ceil­ing, large flatscreen plas­ma dis­plays had been set edge to edge in a huge ma­trix. On each screen was the head shot of a dif­fer­ent per­son, talk­ing to the cam­era: men and wom­en, old and young. The faces were so dif­fer­ent from each oth­er that, for a mo­ment, Lash sensed but could not place the com­mon­al­ity they shared. Then he re­al­ized: ev­ery face was smil­ing, al­most serene.

Lash joined the crowd who had as­sem­bled, mute and star­ing, be­fore the wall of faces. As he did so, he be­came aware of count­less voic­es, ap­par­ent­ly com­ing from speak­ers hid­den among the screens. Yet through some trick of sound pro­jec­tion, he found it easy to iso­late in­di­vid­ual voic­es in three-​di­men­sion­al space, to match them with faces on the screens. It com­plete­ly turned my life around, a pret­ty young wom­an on one of the screens was say­ing, seem­ing to speak di­rect­ly to him. If it wasn’t for Eden, I don’t know what I would’ve done, a man on an­oth­er told him, smil­ing al­most con­fi­den­tial­ly, as if im­part­ing a se­cret. It’s made all the dif­fer­ence. On yet an­oth­er screen, a blond man with pale blue eyes and a bril­liant smile said, It’s the best thing I’ve ev­er done. Pe­ri­od. End of sto­ry.

As he lis­tened, Lash be­came aware of an­oth­er voice: low, just on the edge of au­di­bil­ity, lit­tle more than a whis­per. It was not com­ing from any of the screens, but seem­ing­ly from all around. He paused to lis­ten.

Tech­nol­ogy, the voice was say­ing. To­day, it’s used to make our lives eas­ier, longer, more com­fort­able. But what if tech­nol­ogy could do some­thing even more pro­found? What if it could bring com­ple­tion, bring ut­ter ful­fill­ment?

Imag­ine com­put­er tech­nol­ogy so ad­vanced it could re­con­struct—vir­tu­al­ly—your own per­son­al­ity, the essence of what makes you unique: your hopes, de­sires, dreams. The in­most needs that not even you may be aware of. Imag­ine a dig­ital in­fras­truc­ture so ro­bust it could con­tain this per­son­al­ity con­struct of yours—with its count­less unique facets and char­ac­ter­is­tics—along with those of many, many oth­er peo­ple. Imag­ine an ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence so pro­found it could com­pare your con­struct with these mul­ti­tudes of oth­ers, and—in an hour, a day, a week—find that one per­son, that sole in­di­vid­ual, that is your per­fect match. Your ide­al soul­mate, unique­ly fit­ted by per­son­al­ity, back­ground, in­ter­ests, count­less oth­er bench­marks to be your oth­er half. To make your life com­plete. Not just two peo­ple who hap­pen to share a few in­ter­ests. But a match where one per­son com­ple­ments the oth­er in ways so pro­found, so sub­tle, it could nev­er be imag­ined or an­tic­ipat­ed.

Lash con­tin­ued to watch the end­less sea of faces be­fore him while lis­ten­ing to the dis­em­bod­ied, sonorous voice.

No blind dates, it went on. No sin­gles par­ties, where your choice is lim­it­ed to a hand­ful of ran­dom meet­ings. No evenings wast­ed on in­com­pat­ibil­ity. Rather, a pro­pri­etary sys­tem of pro­found so­phis­ti­ca­tion. This sys­tem is now. And the com­pa­ny is Eden.

The ser­vice is not cheap. But if there is even the slight­est dis­sat­is­fac­tion, Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed of­fers a full re­fund, guar­an­teed for life. Yet out of the many, many thou­sands of cou­ples Eden has brought to­geth­er, not one has re­quest­ed a re­fund. Be­cause these peo­ple—like those on the screens be­fore you—have learned there is no price that can be put on hap­pi­ness.

With a start, Lash looked away from the screens and down at his watch. He was five min­utes late for his ap­point­ment.

Walk­ing across the lob­by, Lash drew out a card and hand­ed it to one of the uni­formed guards. He was giv­en a signed pass and cheer­ful­ly di­rect­ed to­ward the bank of el­eva­tors.

Thir­ty-​two sto­ries above, Lash stepped in­to a small but el­egant re­cep­tion area. The tones were neu­tral, and there was the faintest rush of in­dus­tri­al pink noise. There were no signs, di­rec­to­ries, for­mal guides of any kind: just one desk of pol­ished blond wood, an at­trac­tive wom­an in a busi­ness suit be­hind it.

“Dr. Lash?” she asked with an en­gag­ing smile.

“Yes.”

“Good morn­ing. May I see your driv­er’s li­cense, please?”

This re­quest was so strange that Lash did not think to ques­tion it. In­stead, he pulled out his wal­let and fished for his li­cense.

“Thank you.” The wom­an held it briefly over some scan­ning ap­pa­ra­tus. Then she hand­ed it back with an­oth­er bright smile, rose from her chair, and mo­tioned him to­ward a door in the far wall of the re­cep­tion area.

They passed down a long cor­ri­dor, sim­ilar in decor to the room they’d just left. Lash no­ticed many doors, all un­la­beled, all closed. The wom­an stopped be­fore one of them.

“In here, please,” she said.

As the door closed be­hind him, Lash looked around at a well-​ap­point­ed room. A desk of dark wood sat up­on a dense car­pet. Sev­er­al paint­ings hung on the walls, beau­ti­ful­ly framed. Be­hind the desk, a man now rose to greet him, smooth­ing his brown suit as he did so. Lash shook the prof­fered hand, typ­ing the man from old habit as he did so. He looked to be in his late thir­ties: fair­ly short, dark com­plex­ion, dark hair, dark eyes, mus­cu­lar but not stocky. Swim­mer, per­haps, or ten­nis play­er. His bear­ing spoke of some­one self-​con­fi­dent, con­sid­ered; a man who would be slow to act but, when act­ing, do so de­ci­sive­ly.

“Dr. Lash,” the man said, re­turn­ing his gaze. “I’m Ed­win Mauch­ly. Thanks for com­ing.”

“Sor­ry I’m late.”

“Not at all. Take a seat, please.”

Lash sat down in the lone leather chair that faced the desk while Mauch­ly turned to­ward a com­put­er mon­itor. He typed for a mo­ment, then stopped. “Give me just a minute here, please. It’s been four years since I gave an en­trance in­ter­view, and the screens have changed.”

“Is that what this is?”

“Of course not. But there’s some sim­ilar ini­tial pro­cess­ing to be done.” He typed again. “Here we are. The ad­dress of your Stam­ford of­fice is 315 Front Street, Suite 2?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you could just fill out this in­for­ma­tion for me, please.”

Lash scanned the white card that was slid across the desk: date of birth, so­cial se­cu­ri­ty num­ber, half a dozen oth­er mun­dane de­tails. He took a pen from his pock­et and be­gan jot­ting on the form.

“You used to give en­trance in­ter­views?” he said as he wrote.

“I helped de­sign the pro­cess, as an em­ploy­ee of Phar­mGen. That was ear­ly on, be­fore Eden be­came an in­de­pen­dent com­pa­ny.”

“What’s it like?”

“What is what like, Dr. Lash?”

“Work­ing here.” He slid the card back. “You’d think it would be mag­ic. Lis­ten­ing to all those tes­ti­mo­ni­als in the lob­by, any­way.”

Mauch­ly glanced at the card. “I don’t blame you for be­ing skep­ti­cal.” He had a face that man­aged to look both can­did and ret­icent at the same time. “Two peo­ple’s feel­ings for each oth­er, what can tech­nol­ogy do about that? But ask any of our em­ploy­ees. They see it work, time af­ter time, ev­ery time. Yes, I guess mag­ic is as good a word for it as any.”

On the far side of the desk, a tele­phone rang. “Mauch­ly,” the man said, tuck­ing the phone be­neath his chin. “Very well. Good-​bye.” He re­placed the phone, then rose. “He’s ready for you, Dr. Lash.”

He? Lash thought to him­self as he picked up his satchel. He fol­lowed Mauch­ly back out in­to the cor­ri­dor, to an in­ter­sec­tion, then in­to a wider, plush­ly ap­point­ed hall­way that end­ed in a set of bril­liant­ly pol­ished doors. Reach­ing them, Mauch­ly paused, then knocked.

“Come in,” came a voice from be­yond.

Mauch­ly opened the door. “I’ll speak with you again short­ly, Dr. Lash,” he said, mo­tion­ing him in­side.

Lash stepped for­ward, then stopped again as the door clicked closed. Be­fore him stood a long, semi­cir­cu­lar ta­ble of dark wood. Across it sat a lone man, tall and deeply tanned. He smiled, nod­ded. Lash nod­ded back. And then, with a sud­den shock of recog­ni­tion, he re­al­ized the man was none oth­er than John Lelyveld, chair­man of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed.

Wait­ing for him.

THREE

The chair­man of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed rose from his seat. He smiled, and his face broke in­to kind­ly, al­most grand­fa­ther­ly lines. “Dr. Lash. Thank you so much for com­ing. Please, take a seat.” And he mo­tioned to­ward the long ta­ble.

Lash took a seat across from Lelyveld.

“Did you drive in from Con­necti­cut?”

“Yes.”

“How was the traf­fic?”

“I was parked on the Cross Bronx about half an hour. Oth­er­wise, okay.”

The chair­man shook his head. “That road is a dis­grace. I have a week­end place not far from you my­self, in Roway­ton. These days I usu­al­ly take a he­li­copter. One of the perks.” He chuck­led, then opened a leather port­fo­lio that lay be­side him. “Just a few for­mal­ities be­fore we get start­ed.” He took out a sheaf of sta­pled pages and passed it across the desk. It was fol­lowed by a gold pen. “Would you mind sign­ing this, please?”

Lash looked at the top page. It was a nondis­clo­sure agree­ment. He flipped quick­ly through the pages, found the sig­na­ture line, signed.

“And this.”

Lash took the sec­ond prof­fered doc­ument. It ap­peared to be some kind of guar­an­tee of con­fi­den­tial­ity. He turned to the back page, signed.

“And this, if you please.”

This time, Lash sim­ply signed with­out both­er­ing to re­view the ver­biage.

“Thank you. I do apol­ogize, I hope you un­der­stand.” Lelyveld re­turned the sheets to the leather port­fo­lio. Then he placed his el­bows on the desk, rest­ing his chin on tent­ed fin­gers. “Dr. Lash, you un­der­stand the na­ture of our ser­vice, I be­lieve?”

Lash nod­ded. There were few who didn’t: the sto­ry of how Eden had grown, over just a hand­ful of years, from a re­search project of bril­liant com­put­er sci­en­tist Richard Sil­ver to one of the high­est-​pro­file cor­po­ra­tions in Amer­ica was a fa­vorite of fi­nan­cial news ser­vices.

“Then you prob­ably won’t be sur­prised when I say that Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed has fun­da­men­tal­ly im­proved the lives of, at last count, nine hun­dred and twen­ty-​four thou­sand peo­ple.”

“No.”

“Al­most half a mil­lion cou­ples, with thou­sands more added each day. And with the open­ing of satel­lite of­fices in Bev­er­ly Hills, Chica­go, and Mi­ami, we’ve dra­mat­ical­ly in­creased our ser­vice range and our pool of po­ten­tial can­di­dates.”

Lash nod­ded again.

“Our fee is steep—$25,000 per ap­pli­cant—but we have nev­er yet been asked for a re­fund.”

“So I un­der­stand.”

“Good. But it’s im­por­tant you al­so un­der­stand our ser­vice does not end on the day we bring a cou­ple to­geth­er. There is a manda­to­ry fol­low-​up ses­sion with one of our coun­selors, sched­uled three months lat­er. And af­ter six months, cou­ples are re­quest­ed to join en­counter groups with oth­er Eden cou­ples. We care­ful­ly mon­itor our client base—not on­ly for their ben­efit, but to im­prove our ser­vice, as well.”

Lelyveld leaned slight­ly to­ward Lash, as if to im­part a se­cret across the mas­sive ta­ble. “What I’m about to tell you is con­fi­den­tial and trade se­cret to Eden. In our pro­mo­tion­al ma­te­ri­al, we speak of pro­vid­ing a per­fect match. The ide­al union be­tween two peo­ple. Our com­put­er in­tel­li­gence com­pares rough­ly one mil­lion vari­ables from each of our clients to those of oth­er clients, look­ing for a match. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

“I’m speak­ing in gross sim­pli­fi­ca­tions here. The ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence al­go­rithms are the re­sult of Richard Sil­ver’s on­go­ing work, as well as count­less man-​hours spent re­search­ing the be­hav­ioral and psy­cho­log­ical fac­tors. But in short, our sci­en­tists have de­ter­mined a spe­cif­ic thresh­old of match­ing vari­ables nec­es­sary to de­clare a fit be­tween two can­di­dates.” He shift­ed in his chair. “Dr. Lash, if you com­pared these mil­lion fac­tors in an av­er­age hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ple, how close­ly do you think that cou­ple would match each oth­er?”

Lash thought. “Eighty, maybe eighty-​five per­cent?”

“That’s a very good guess, but I’m afraid it’s way off. Our stud­ies have shown the av­er­age hap­pi­ly mar­ried Amer­ican cou­ple match­es in the range of on­ly thir­ty-​five per­cent.”

Lash shook his head.

“You see, peo­ple tend to be se­duced by su­per­fi­cial im­pres­sions, or phys­ical at­trac­tions that by them­selves will be prac­ti­cal­ly mean­ing­less in a few years. To­day’s re­la­tion­ship ser­vices and so-​called In­ter­net dat­ing sites—with their crude met­rics and sim­plis­tic ques­tion­naires—ac­tu­al­ly en­cour­age this. We, on the oth­er hand, use a hy­brid com­put­er to find two ide­al part­ners: peo­ple for whom a mil­lion per­son­al traits are in synch.” He paused. “Not to delve too deeply in­to pro­pri­etary mat­ters, but there are vary­ing de­grees of per­fec­tion. Our staff has de­ter­mined a spe­cif­ic per­cent­age—let’s just say it’s over nine­ty-​five—that guar­an­tees an ide­al match.”

“I see.”

“The fact re­mains, Dr. Lash—and for­give me if I re­mind you of the con­fi­den­tial­ity of this in­for­ma­tion—that dur­ing the three years Eden has been of­fer­ing this ser­vice, there have in fact been a small num­ber of unique­ly per­fect match­es. Match­es in which all one hun­dred per­cent of the vari­ables be­tween two peo­ple have been in synch.”

“One hun­dred per­cent?”

“A unique­ly per­fect match. Of course, we don’t in­form our clients as to the pre­cise ex­act­ness of their match. But over the life­time of our ser­vice, there have been six such sta­tis­ti­cal­ly per­fect match­es. ‘Su­per­cou­ples,’ as they’re re­ferred to in-​house.”

So far, Lelyveld’s voice has been mea­sured, as­sured. But now he seemed to hes­itate slight­ly. The grand­fa­ther­ly smile re­mained on his face, but an un­der­tone of sad­ness, even pain, was in­tro­duced. “I’ve told you that we do post-​mon­itor­ing of all our clients . . . Dr. Lash, I’m afraid there’s no pleas­ant way to say this. Last week, one of our six unique­ly per­fect cou­ples—” he hes­itat­ed, then went on “—com­mit­ted dou­ble sui­cide.”

“Sui­cide?” Lash echoed.

The chair­man glanced down, con­sult­ed some notes. “In Flagstaff, Ari­zona. Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe. The de­tails are rather, ah, un­usu­al. They left a note.” He looked up again. “Can you un­der­stand now why we’ve re­quest­ed your ser­vices?”

Lash was still di­gest­ing this. “Per­haps you could spell it out.”

“You’re a psy­chol­ogist spe­cial­iz­ing in fam­ily re­la­tion­ships, par­tic­ular­ly mar­ital re­la­tion­ships. The book you pub­lished last year, Con­gru­en­cy, was a re­mark­able study on the sub­ject.”

“I wish more book buy­ers had felt that way.”

“The peer re­views were all quite en­thu­si­as­tic. In any case, in ad­di­tion to be­ing ut­ter­ly per­fect for each oth­er, the Thor­pes were both in­tel­li­gent, ca­pa­ble, well adapt­ed, hap­py. Clear­ly, some tragedy must have be­fall­en this cou­ple af­ter their mar­riage. Per­haps a med­ical prob­lem of some sort; per­haps the death of a loved one. Maybe it had to do with fi­nan­cial is­sues.” He paused. “We need to know what changed in the dy­nam­ic of their lives, and why they took such an ex­treme ac­tion as a re­sult. If by some re­mote chance there’s a la­tent psy­cho­log­ical ten­den­cy op­er­at­ing here, we should know so we can pre­screen for it in the fu­ture.”

“You’ve got a team of in-​house men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, right?” Lash asked. “Why not use one of them?”

“Two rea­sons. First, we want an im­par­tial per­son to look in­to the mat­ter. And sec­ond, none of our staff has your par­tic­ular cre­den­tials.”

“Which cre­den­tials do you mean?”

Lelyveld smiled pa­ter­nal­ly. “I’m re­fer­ring to your pri­or oc­cu­pa­tion. Be­fore you went in­to pri­vate prac­tice, I mean. Foren­sic psy­chol­ogist with the FBI, part of the Be­hav­ioral Sci­ence team op­er­at­ing out of Quan­ti­co.”

“How did you know about that?”

“Dr. Lash, please. As a for­mer spe­cial agent, you no doubt re­tain be­hind-​the-​scenes ac­cess to places, peo­ple, in­for­ma­tion. You could un­der­take such an in­ves­ti­ga­tion with great dis­cre­tion. Were we to in­ves­ti­gate our­selves, or re­quest of­fi­cial as­sis­tance, there might be ques­tions. And there is no point in caus­ing our clients—past, present, and fu­ture—un­nec­es­sary con­cern.”

Lash shift­ed in his chair. “There was a rea­son I left Quan­ti­co for pri­vate prac­tice.”

“There’s a news­pa­per ac­count of the tragedy in your dossier. I’m very sor­ry. So it doesn’t sur­prise me you’re not ea­ger to leave the com­fort of that prac­tice, even tem­porar­ily.” The chair­man opened the leather port­fo­lio, re­moved an en­ve­lope. “Hence the amount of the en­closed.”

Lash took the en­ve­lope and opened it. In­side was a check for $100,000.

“That should cov­er your time, trav­el, and ex­pens­es. If more is need­ed, let us know. Take your time, Dr. Lash. Thor­ough­ness, and a sub­tle ap­proach, are what’s re­quired here. The more we know, the more ef­fec­tive we can make our ser­vice in the fu­ture.”

The chair­man paused a mo­ment be­fore speak­ing again. “There is one oth­er pos­si­bil­ity, how­ev­er re­mote. And that is one of the Thor­pes was un­sta­ble, had a pri­or his­to­ry of men­tal prob­lems they were some­how able to con­ceal from our eval­ua­tion. This is high­ly, high­ly un­like­ly. How­ev­er, if you are un­able to find an an­swer over the course of their mar­ried life, you may have to look in­to their past as well.”

Lelyveld closed the port­fo­lio with an air of fi­nal­ity. “Ed Mauch­ly will be your pri­ma­ry point of con­tact for this in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He’s put to­geth­er a few things to get you start­ed. We can’t re­lease our own files on the cou­ple, of course, but they wouldn’t be of much in­ter­est to you any­way. The an­swer to this rid­dle lies in the pri­vate lives of Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe.”

The man fell silent again, and for a mo­ment Lash won­dered if the meet­ing was over. But then Lelyveld spoke again, his voice qui­eter now, more in­ti­mate. The smile had fad­ed. “We have a very spe­cial feel­ing for all of our clients, Dr. Lash. But to be hon­est, we feel par­tic­ular­ly strong­ly about our per­fect cou­ples. When­ev­er a new su­per­cou­ple is found, word rip­ples through­out the com­pa­ny, de­spite our best at­tempts to keep it pri­vate. They’re very rare. So I’m sure you can un­der­stand how painful and dif­fi­cult this news was to me, es­pe­cial­ly since the Thor­pes were our very first such cou­ple. Luck­ily their deaths were kept out of the pa­pers, so our em­ploy­ees have so far been spared the sad news. I’d be per­son­al­ly grate­ful for any light you can shed on what, pre­cise­ly, went wrong in their lives.”

When Lelyveld stood and ex­tend­ed his hand, the smile re­turned, on­ly now it was wist­ful.

FOUR

Twen­ty-​four hours lat­er, Lash stood in his liv­ing room, sip­ping cof­fee and gaz­ing out the bay win­dow. On the far side of the glass lay Com­po Beach, a long, nar­row com­ma of sand al­most de­void of waders and walk­ers this week­day morn­ing. The tourists and sum­mer renters had left weeks be­fore, but this was the first time in a month he’d tak­en the time to re­al­ly look out the win­dow. He was struck by the rel­ative empti­ness of the beach. It was a clear, bright morn­ing: across the sound, he could make out the low green line of Long Is­land. A tanker was pass­ing, a silent ghost head­ing for the open At­lantic.

Men­tal­ly, he went over again the prepa­ra­tions he’d made. His reg­ular pri­vate ther­apy and coun­sel­ing ses­sions had been can­celled for one week. Dr. Kline would cov­er for the groups. It had all been re­mark­ably easy.

He yawned, took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee, and caught sight of him­self in a mir­ror. De­cid­ing what to wear had been a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult. Lash had al­ways dis­liked field­work, and his up­com­ing ap­point­ment felt a lit­tle too much like old times. But he re­mind­ed him­self it would speed things up enor­mous­ly. Peo­ple didn’t just de­vi­ate in­to aber­rant be­hav­ior, es­pe­cial­ly some­thing as ex­ot­ic as dou­ble sui­cide. Some­thing must have hap­pened in the two years since the Thor­pes got mar­ried. And it wouldn’t be sub­tle: some mi­nor life up­heaval, say, or a drift to­ward se­ri­ous de­pres­sion. It would be mas­sive, ob­vi­ous in hind­sight to those who’d been around them. He might, in fact, un­der­stand what went wrong in their lives by the end of the day. With luck, he could have the case study writ­ten up to­mor­row. It would be the quick­est $100,000 he’d ev­er earned.

Turn­ing from the win­dow, he let his eyes roam over the room’s fea­tures: a ba­by grand, book­case, couch. Lack of fur­ni­ture made the room ap­pear larg­er than it was. The house had a spare, or­dered clean­li­ness he’d cul­ti­vat­ed in the years since he’d moved in. The sim­plic­ity had be­come part of his per­son­al ar­mor. God knew the lives of his pa­tients were com­pli­cat­ed enough.

Lash glanced once more at his re­flec­tion, de­cid­ed he looked the part, and went out the front door. He looked around, cursed good-​na­tured­ly when he no­ticed that the de­liv­ery man had for­got­ten to leave the Times in his drive­way, then head­ed for his car.

An hour’s worth of wrestling with I-95 traf­fic brought him to New Lon­don and the low sil­ver arch of the Gold Star Memo­ri­al Bridge. Ex­it­ing the free­way, he made his way to­ward the riv­er and found park­ing on a side street. He thumbed once more through a sheaf of pa­pers on the pas­sen­ger’s seat. There were black-​and-​white head shots of the cou­ple, a few print­ed sheets of bi­ograph­ical in­for­ma­tion. Mauch­ly had giv­en him pre­cious lit­tle da­ta on the Thor­pes: ad­dress, dates of birth, names and lo­ca­tions of ben­efi­cia­ries. But it, along with a few tele­phone calls, had been enough.

Al­ready, Lash felt a stab of re­morse for the small de­cep­tion he was about to per­pe­trate. He re­mind­ed him­self it might well yield in­sight that would prove crit­ical to his in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In the back­seat was his leather satchel, well padded now with blank sheets of pa­per. He grabbed it, ex­it­ed the car, and—af­ter a fi­nal self-​in­spec­tion in the front wind­shield—start­ed to­ward the Thames.

State Street lay doz­ing be­neath a mel­low au­tumn sun. At its foot, be­yond the fortresslike bulk of the Old Union rail­road sta­tion, the har­bor glit­tered. Lash walked down the hill, stop­ping where State Street ran in­to Wa­ter. There was an old ho­tel here, a Sec­ond Em­pire with a hulk­ing mansard roof, that had re­cent­ly been con­vert­ed in­to restau­rants. In the clos­est win­dow he made out a sign for The Roast­ery. A pub­lic lo­ca­tion, near the wa­ter, had seemed best. It had a low threat-​fac­tor. Lunch had seemed in­ap­pro­pri­ate, un­der the cir­cum­stances. Be­sides, re­cent in­pa­tient stud­ies at Johns Hop­kins showed that griev­ing peo­ple were more re­spon­sive to ex­ter­nal stim­uli dur­ing the morn­ing hours. Mid­morn­ing cof­fee seemed ide­al. It would be calm, con­ducive to talk. Lash glanced at his watch. Ten-​twen­ty, on the dot.

In­side, The Roast­ery was all he’d hoped for: high tin ceil­ings, beige walls, a low hum of con­ver­sa­tion. The de­li­cious fra­grance of fresh­ly ground cof­fee hung in the air. He’d ar­rived ear­ly to make sure he got a suit­able ta­ble, and he chose a large round one in a cor­ner near the front win­dows. He took the seat fac­ing the cor­ner; it was im­por­tant for the sub­ject to feel in con­trol of the sit­ua­tion.

He’d bare­ly had time to place the satchel on the ta­ble and ar­range him­self when he heard foot­steps ap­proach­ing. “Mr. Berg­er?” came a voice.

Lash turned around. “Yes. You’re Mr. Tor­vald?”

The man had thick, iron-​gray hair and the leath­ery sun­burnt skin of a man fond of the wa­ter. His fad­ed blue eyes still bore the dark cir­cles of heart­break. Yet his re­sem­blance to the pic­ture Lash had just viewed in his car was re­mark­able. Old­er, mas­cu­line, short­er hair; oth­er­wise, it could have been Lind­say Thor­pe, re­turned from the dead.

Out of long habit, Lash be­trayed no ex­pres­sion. “Please, take a seat.”

Tor­vald set­tled him­self in­to the cor­ner chair. He looked briefly around the restau­rant, with­out in­ter­est, then set­tled his gaze on Lash.

“Al­low me to con­vey my deep­est con­do­lences. And thank you very much for com­ing.”

Tor­vald grunt­ed.

“I re­al­ize that this must be a very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od for you. I’ll try to make this short—”

“No, no, it’s all right.” Tor­vald’s voice was very deep, and he spoke in short, stac­ca­to sen­tences.

A wait­ress ap­proached their ta­ble, of­fered them menus.

“I don’t think we’ll need those,” Tor­vald said. “Cof­fee, black, no sug­ar.”

“Same for me, please.”

The wom­an nod­ded, swirled, and left them in peace. She was at­trac­tive, but Lash no­ticed Tor­vald did not even glance at her de­part­ing form.

“You’re an in­sur­ance read­jus­tor,” Tor­vald said.

“I’m an an­alyst for a con­sult­ing firm em­ployed by Amer­ican Life.” One of the first pieces of in­for­ma­tion Lash sought out on the Thor­pes had been their in­sur­ance poli­cies. Three mil­lion dol­lars each, payable to their on­ly daugh­ter. As he’d an­tic­ipat­ed, it was a quick and rel­ative­ly easy way to get neu­tral ac­cess to the clos­est rel­atives. He’d gone to the trou­ble of hav­ing pho­ny busi­ness cards print­ed up, but Tor­vald didn’t ask to see one. De­spite his ob­vi­ous pain, the man re­tained a ha­bit­ual air of gruff com­mand, as if he was used to hav­ing or­ders quick­ly obeyed. A naval cap­tain, per­haps, or a cor­po­rate ex­ec­utive; Lash had not dug deep in­to the fam­ily back­ground. Cor­po­rate ex­ec­utive seemed more like­ly, though: giv­en the amount Eden charged for its ser­vice, it was like­ly dad­dy had helped bankroll Lind­say Thor­pe.

Lash cleared his throat, put on his best sym­pa­thet­ic man­ner. “If you wouldn’t mind an­swer­ing just a few ques­tions, it would be very help­ful to us. If you find any of them ob­jec­tion­able, or if you feel it nec­es­sary to stop for a while, I’ll cer­tain­ly un­der­stand.”

The wait­ress re­turned. Lash took a sip of his cof­fee, then opened the satchel and pulled out a le­gal pad. “How close were you to your daugh­ter as she was grow­ing up, Mr. Tor­vald?” he be­gan.

“Ex­treme­ly.”

“And af­ter she left home?”

“We spoke ev­ery day.”

“Over­all, how would you char­ac­ter­ize her phys­ical health?”

“Ex­cel­lent.”

“Did she take any med­ica­tions on a reg­ular ba­sis?”

“Vi­ta­min sup­ple­ments. A mild an­ti­his­tamine. That’s about it.”

“What was the an­ti­his­tamine for?”

“Der­matographia.”

Lash nod­ded, made a no­ta­tion. A skin con­di­tion that caused itch­iness: his next-​door neigh­bor had it. Com­plete­ly be­nign. “Any un­usu­al or se­ri­ous dis­eases or child­hood ill­ness­es?”

“No, none. And this would all be in the ap­pli­ca­tions she orig­inal­ly filled out with Amer­ican Life.”

“I un­der­stand that, Mr. Tor­vald. I’m sim­ply try­ing to es­tab­lish some in­de­pen­dent frame of ref­er­ence. Did she have any liv­ing sib­lings?”

“Lind­say was an on­ly child.”

“Was she a good stu­dent?”

“Grad­uat­ed magna cum laude from Brown. Got her mas­ter’s in eco­nomics from Stan­ford.”

“Would you call her shy? Out­go­ing?”

“Strangers might think her qui­et. But Lind­say al­ways had more friends than she need­ed. She was the kind of girl who had many ac­quain­tances, but was very choosy about her friends.”

Lash took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee. “How long had your daugh­ter been mar­ried, Mr. Tor­vald?”

“Just over two years.”

“And how would you char­ac­ter­ize the mar­riage?”

“They were the hap­pi­est cou­ple I’ve ev­er seen, bar none.”

“Can you tell me about the hus­band, Lewis Thor­pe?”

“In­tel­li­gent, friend­ly, hon­est. Wit­ty. Lots of in­ter­ests.”

“Did your daugh­ter ev­er men­tion any prob­lems be­tween her­self and her hus­band?”

“You mean, fights?”

Lash nod­ded. “That, or oth­er things. Dif­fer­ences of opin­ion. Con­flict­ing wish­es. In­com­pat­ibil­ities.”

“Nev­er.”

Lash took an­oth­er sip. He no­ticed Tor­vald had not touched his own cup.

“Nev­er?” He al­lowed the slight­est hint of in­creduli­ty to en­ter his voice.

Tor­vald rose to the bait. “Nev­er. Look, Mr.—”

“Berg­er.”

“Mr. Berg­er, my daugh­ter was . . .” For the first time, Tor­vald seemed to hes­itate. “My daugh­ter was a client of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed. You’ve heard of them?”

“Cer­tain­ly.”

“Then you’ll know what I’m get­ting at. I was skep­ti­cal at first. It seemed like an aw­ful lot of mon­ey for some com­put­er cy­cles, a sta­tis­ti­cal roll of the dice. But Lind­say was firm.” Tor­vald leaned for­ward slight­ly. “You have to un­der­stand, she wasn’t like oth­er girls. She knew what she want­ed. She was nev­er one to set­tle for sec­ond best. She’d had her share of boyfriends, some of them re­al­ly nice boys. But she seemed to get rest­less, the re­la­tion­ships didn’t last.”

The man sat back abrupt­ly. It was by far the longest state­ment he’d made so far. Lash made a no­ta­tion, en­cour­ag­ing­ly, care­ful not to meet Tor­vald’s eyes. “And?”

“And it was dif­fer­ent with Lewis. I could tell from the very first time she men­tioned his name. They hit it off from the first date.”

Lash looked up just as a faint smile of rem­inis­cence crossed the old man’s face. For a mo­ment the sunken eyes bright­ened, the tense jaw re­laxed. “They met for Sun­day brunch, then some­how end­ed up Rollerblad­ing.” He shook his head at the mem­ory. “I don’t know whose crazy idea that was, nei­ther of them had ev­er tried it. Maybe it was Eden’s sug­ges­tion. Any­way, with­in a month, they were en­gaged. And it just seemed to get bet­ter. Like I said, I’ve nev­er seen a hap­pi­er cou­ple. They kept dis­cov­er­ing new things. About the world. About each oth­er.”

As quick­ly as it had come, the light left Tor­vald’s face. He pushed his cof­fee cup away.

“What about Lind­say’s daugh­ter? What kind of an im­pact did she have on their life?”

Tor­vald fixed him with a sud­den gaze. “She com­plet­ed it, Mr. Berg­er.”

Lash made an­oth­er no­ta­tion, a re­al one this time. The in­ter­view was not pro­gress­ing quite as he’d ex­pect­ed. And the way the man pushed away his cup made Lash think he might be lim­it­ed to just a few more ques­tions.

“To the best of your knowl­edge, have there been any re­cent set­backs in the life of your daugh­ter or her hus­band?”

“No.”

“No un­ex­pect­ed dif­fi­cul­ties? No prob­lems?”

Tor­vald stirred rest­less­ly. “Un­less you call the ap­proval of Lewis’s grant and the ar­rival of a beau­ti­ful ba­by girl prob­lems.”

“When was the last time you saw your daugh­ter, Mr. Tor­vald?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Lash took a sip of his cof­fee to con­ceal his sur­prise. “Where was this, may I ask?”

“At their house in Flagstaff. I was on my way back from a yacht race in the Gulf of Mex­ico.”

“And how would you char­ac­ter­ize the house­hold?”

“I would char­ac­ter­ize it as per­fect.”

Lash scrib­bled an­oth­er note. “You no­ticed noth­ing dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous vis­its? No ap­petite loss or gain, per­haps? Changes in sleep pat­terns? Lack of en­er­gy? Loss of in­ter­est in hob­bies or per­son­al pur­suits?”

“There was no af­fec­tive dis­or­der, if that’s what you’re get­ting at.”

Lash paused in his scrib­bling. “Are you a clin­ician, Mr. Tor­vald?”

“No. But be­fore her death, my wife was an oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­apist. I know the signs of de­pres­sion when I see them.”

Lash put the le­gal pad to one side. “We’re just try­ing to get a grasp of the sit­ua­tion, sir.”

Sud­den­ly, the old­er man leaned to­ward Lash, bring­ing their faces very close. “Grasp? Lis­ten. I don’t know what you or your firm hope to learn from this. But I think I’ve an­swered enough ques­tions. And the fact is there’s not a damn thing to grasp. There is no an­swer. Lind­say wasn’t sui­ci­dal. Nei­ther was Lewis. They had ev­ery­thing to live for, ev­ery­thing.”

Lash sat silent­ly. This was not just grief he was see­ing. This was need: a des­per­ate need to un­der­stand what could not pos­si­bly be un­der­stood.

“I’ll tell you one thing more,” Tor­vald said, his face still close to Lash’s, speak­ing low and fast now. “I loved my wife. I think we had just about as good a re­la­tion­ship as a mar­ried cou­ple could ev­er hope to have. But I’d have cut off my right arm with­out a thought if that could’ve made us as hap­py as my daugh­ter and Lewis were to­geth­er.”

And with that, the man pushed back, rose from the ta­ble, and left the restau­rant.

FIVE

Flagstaff, Ari­zona. Two days lat­er.

The car­port was al­ready tak­en up by two Au­di A8s, so Lash left his rent­ed Tau­rus at the curb and start­ed up the flag­stone walk. Brown pine nee­dles crunched un­der­foot. 407 Coop­er Drive was an at­trac­tive bun­ga­low with a broad low roof and fenced back­yard. Be­yond the fence the hill­side fell away, re­veal­ing a panora­ma of down­town, faint­ly blurred by morn­ing mist. Be­hind and to the north rose the pur­ple-​and-​brown bulk of the San Fran­cis­co Peaks.

Reach­ing the front door, Lash tucked sev­er­al large en­velopes un­der one arm and sound­ed his pock­et for the key. He fished it out, white ev­idence tag dan­gling from its chain. The chief of the Phoenix field of­fice had been a class­mate in the drab gray dorms of Quan­ti­co and fel­low-​suf­fer­er on the ob­sta­cle cours­es of the Yel­low Brick Road, and owed him sev­er­al fa­vors. Lash had turned one of them in for the key to the Thor­pes’ house.

He glanced up, notic­ing the se­cu­ri­ty cam­era bolt­ed be­neath the eaves. It had been in­stalled by the pre­vi­ous own­er of the house and was de­ac­ti­vat­ed for the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Since the house would go on the mar­ket once the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was of­fi­cial­ly closed, the sys­tem re­mained off.

Lash looked down again, fit­ted the key to the door, and un­locked it with a twist of his hand.

In­side, the house had that pe­cu­liar watch­ful, lis­ten­ing qual­ity he found in homes that had seen un­nat­ural death. The front door opened di­rect­ly on­to the liv­ing room, where the bod­ies had been found. Lash walked for­ward slow­ly, look­ing around, not­ing the lo­ca­tion and qual­ity of the fur­ni­ture. There was a but­ter­nut-​col­ored leather so­fa with match­ing arm­chairs, an an­tique ar­moire, an ex­pen­sive-​look­ing flatscreen tele­vi­sion: clear­ly, the Thor­pes weren’t hard up for cash. Two beau­ti­ful silk rugs had been ar­ranged over the wall-​to-​wall car­pet­ing. One still bore pow­der traces from the med­ical ex­am­in­er’s team. This un­ex­pect­ed sight stirred mem­ories of the last crime scene he’d wit­nessed, and he moved quick­ly on­ward.

Be­yond the liv­ing room, a hall­way ran the width of the house. To his right was a din­ing room and kitchen; to his left, what looked like a cou­ple of bed­rooms. Lash dropped his en­velopes on the so­fa and walked down as far as the kitchen. It was as well ap­point­ed as the liv­ing room. There was an­oth­er door here, with a view of the nar­row side yard and the neigh­bor­ing house.

Lash moved back up the hall­way in the di­rec­tion of the bed­rooms. There was a nurs­ery, all blue taffe­ta and lace; a mas­ter bed­room, its night ta­bles lit­tered with a typ­ical as­sort­ment of pa­per­back nov­els, medicine bot­tles, and tele­vi­sion re­motes; and a third room, which was ap­par­ent­ly a guest room dou­bling as a study. He paused at this last room, look­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly. Japanese wood­block prints of thinnest rice pa­per dec­orat­ed the walls. On a desk sat sev­er­al framed pho­tographs: Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe, arm in arm in front of a pago­da; the Thor­pes again, stand­ing on what looked like the Champs-​Elysées. In each pho­to, the cou­ple was smil­ing. He’d seen smiles like that be­fore, rarely: sim­ple, un­feigned, undi­lut­ed hap­pi­ness.

He moved to the far wall, which was com­plete­ly tak­en up by book­shelves. The Thor­pes had been eclec­tic, vo­ra­cious read­ers. Two up­per shelves were com­plete­ly tak­en up with text­books in vary­ing de­grees of de­crepi­tude; an­oth­er with trade jour­nals. Be­low these were sev­er­al shelves of fic­tion.

One shelf in par­tic­ular caught Lash’s eye. The books here seemed to be giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment, book­end­ed by stat­ues of car­ven jade. He glanced over the ti­tles: Zen and the Art of Archery, Ad­vanced Japanese, Two Hun­dred Po­ems of the Ear­ly T’Ang. The shelf above it was emp­ty ex­cept for an un­framed pic­ture of Lind­say Thor­pe rid­ing a mer­ry-​go-​round, sur­round­ed by chil­dren, laugh­ing as she stretched her arm to­ward the cam­era. He picked it up. On the back had been scrawled, in a mas­cu­line hand:

I wish I were close

To you as the wet skirt of

A salt girl to her body.

I think of you al­ways.

He care­ful­ly re­placed the pho­to, ex­it­ed the study, and re­turned to the liv­ing room.

Out­side, the morn­ing mist was quick­ly burn­ing off, and slant­ed bars of sun­light now lay across the silk rugs. Lash moved to the leather so­fa, pushed the en­velopes aside, and sat down. He’d done this many times be­fore, as an agent with the In­ves­tiga­tive Sup­port Unit: gone through a house, try­ing to get a feel for the pathol­ogy of its oc­cu­pants. But that had been very dif­fer­ent. He’d been do­ing crim­inal per­son­al­ity pro­files for NCACP, study­ing the per­son­al hells of mass mur­der­ers, se­ri­al rapists, “blitz” at­tack­ers, so­ciopaths. Peo­ple, and hous­es, who had ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing in com­mon with the Thor­pes.

He’d come here in search of clues to what had gone wrong. Over the last three days, he had per­formed what clin­icians re­ferred to as a psy­cho­log­ical au­top­sy, con­duct­ing dis­creet in­ter­views with fam­ily mem­bers, friends, doc­tors, even a min­is­ter. And what had at first seemed like an easy case for­mu­la­tion quick­ly turned oth­er­wise. There were none of the stres­sors, the risk fac­tors, nor­mal­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with sui­cide. No his­to­ry of pri­or at­tempts. No his­to­ry of psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders. Noth­ing that should have trig­gered one, let alone two, sui­cides. On the con­trary, the Thor­pes had ev­ery­thing to live for. And yet, in this very room, they had writ­ten a note, tied dry clean­ing bags around their heads, em­braced on the car­pet, and as­phyx­iat­ed them­selves in front of their in­fant girl.

Lash pulled one of the two en­velopes to­ward him, ripped it open with the edge of a fin­ger, and dumped the con­tents on­to the couch: doc­umen­tary ev­idence com­piled by the Flagstaff po­lice. There was a thin pack­et of glossy pho­tographs held to­geth­er with a clip, and he leafed through them—scene-​of-​crime pho­tos of the hus­band and wife, to­geth­er in death, rigid on the beau­ti­ful car­pet. He put down the eight-​by-​tens and picked up a pho­to­copy of the sui­cide note. It read sim­ply, “Please look af­ter our daugh­ter.”

A thick­er doc­ument lay near­by: the of­fi­cial po­lice in­ci­dent re­port. Lash turned its pages slow­ly. Nei­ther hus­band nor wife had left the house since the night be­fore their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered. The tapes of the ex­ter­nal se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras re­vealed no­body else had come to the house in the in­ter­im. The silent alarm was trig­gered on­ly by a cu­ri­ous neigh­bor the next morn­ing. At the back of the re­port was a tran­script of an in­ter­view with this neigh­bor.

OF­FI­CIAL TRAN­SCRIPT

PROP­ER­TY OF FLAGSTAFF PO­LICE DE­PART­MENT

Dock­et:    AR-27

Case No.:     04B-2190

OIC:      Det. Michael Guier­rez

Int. Of­fi­cer:  Sgt. Theodore White

Subj:     Bow­man, Mau­reen A.

Date / Time:  9/17/04 14:22

=============================

EZ-​Scrip Tran­scrip­tion Fol­lows

=============================

IO Please make your­self com­fort­able. My name is Sergeant White, and I’ll be con­duct­ing the in­ter­view. If you would please state your name for the record.

S  Mau­reen Bow­man.

IO Your ad­dress, Ms. Bow­man?

S  I live at 409 Coop­er Drive.

IO How long have you known Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe?

S  Since they moved in­to the neigh­bor­hood. Not all that long, a year and a half, maybe.

IO Did you see much of them?

S  Not re­al­ly. They were very busy, what with the new ba­by and all.

IO Did they have many reg­ular vis­itors?

S  None that I no­ticed. There were some peo­ple from the lab that Lewis was friend­ly with. I think they came over for a cou­ple of din­ner par­ties. Af­ter the ba­by was born, the grand­par­ents vis­it­ed a cou­ple of times. Things like that.

IO And how did the Thor­pes seem?

S  How do you mean?

IO As neigh­bors, as a cou­ple. How did they seem?

S  They were al­ways very pleas­ant.

IO Did you ev­er ob­serve any prob­lems? Ar­gu­ments, raised voic­es, any­thing of the sort?

S  No, nev­er.

IO Were they ev­er in any kind of dif­fi­cul­ty that you were aware of? Mon­ey, for ex­am­ple?

S  No, not that I know. We nev­er re­al­ly spent that much time to­geth­er, as I said. They were al­ways very pleas­ant, very hap­py. I don’t think I’ve ev­er seen a cou­ple hap­pi­er.

IO What, pre­cise­ly, made you go over to the Thor­pe res­idence this morn­ing?

S  The ba­by.

IO I’m sor­ry?

S  The ba­by. She was cry­ing, wouldn’t stop. The ba­by had nev­er cried be­fore. I thought maybe some­thing was wrong.

IO De­scribe, for the tape, what you found, please.

S  I—I went in the kitchen door. The ba­by was there.

IO In the kitchen?

S  No, in the hall­way. The hall­way lead­ing from the din­ing room.

IO Ms. Bow­man, please de­scribe ev­ery­thing you saw and heard. In de­tail, please.

S  Okay. I could see the ba­by, ahead, past the kitchen. She was scream­ing, her face was red. There weren’t any lights on, but it was a bright morn­ing, I could see ev­ery­thing clear­ly. There was some kind of opera play­ing.

IO Play­ing where?

S  On the stereo. But the ba­by was cry­ing so loud­ly. I could bare­ly think. I moved ahead to com­fort her. That’s when the liv­ing room came in­to view. That’s when I saw . . . oh, God . . .

[TRAN­SCRIPT PAUS­ES]

IO Take as long as you need, Ms. Bow­man. You’ll find tis­sue to your right, on the ta­ble, there.

Lash put the tran­script aside. He didn’t need to read any more: he knew ex­act­ly what it was Mau­reen Bow­man saw.

I don’t think I’ve ev­er seen a cou­ple hap­pi­er. It was just about the same thing, word for word, Lind­say Thor­pe’s fa­ther had told him, with those hol­low, haunt­ed eyes, at the restau­rant in New Lon­don. The same thing ev­ery­body had told him since.

What had gone wrong with this cou­ple? What had hap­pened?

Lash’s ex­pe­ri­ence with pathol­ogy had two very dis­tinct pe­ri­ods: first as a foren­sic psy­chol­ogist with the FBI, study­ing vi­olence af­ter the fact; and then lat­er, as a spe­cial­ist in pri­vate prac­tice, work­ing with peo­ple to make sure vi­olence nev­er be­came a nec­es­sary op­tion. He had worked very hard to keep the two worlds sep­arate. Yet here in this house he felt them draw­ing to­geth­er.

He dropped his gaze to the oth­er en­ve­lope: the one im­print­ed Prop­er­ty of Eden Inc. Pro­pri­etary and Con­fi­den­tial. He un­wound the seal­ing thread, opened the flap. In­side were two un­la­beled video­tapes. Lash slid them out, bal­anced one in each hand for a mo­ment. Then he rose and walked to the tele­vi­sion con­sole. He turned it on, in­sert­ed one of the tapes.

A date re­solved on the black screen, fol­lowed by a long scroll of num­bers. And then a face ap­peared sud­den­ly, larg­er than life: brown hair, pen­etrat­ing hazel eyes, hand­some. It was Lewis Thor­pe, and he was smil­ing.

The first step in any ap­pli­ca­tion to Eden was to sit be­fore a cam­era and an­swer two ques­tions. Be­sides the scant bi­ograph­ical in­for­ma­tion, these ini­tial tapes of the Thor­pes were the on­ly ma­te­ri­al Mauch­ly had sup­plied him with.

Lash turned his at­ten­tion to the tape. He had watched it and its mate sev­er­al times be­fore. Here in the Thor­pes’ own house he would watch them one last time, in hopes the sur­round­ings would some­how ren­der up the con­nec­tion that so far had elud­ed him. It seemed a vain hope, but he was run­ning out of op­tions—and spend­ing a lot more time—than he had ev­er in­tend­ed.

“Why are you here?” an off-​cam­era voice was ask­ing.

Lewis Thor­pe had a frank, dis­arm­ing smile. “I’m here be­cause some­thing is miss­ing in my life,” he said sim­ply.

“De­scribe one thing you did this morn­ing,” the off-​cam­era voice said. “And why you think we should know about it.”

Lewis thought for just a mo­ment. “I fin­ished trans­lat­ing a par­tic­ular­ly dif­fi­cult haiku,” he said. He wait­ed, as if for a re­sponse. When none came, he went on. “I’ve been trans­lat­ing the work of Bash–o, the Japanese po­et. Peo­ple al­ways think trans­lat­ing haiku must be easy, but in fact it’s re­al­ly, re­al­ly hard. It’s so dense, yet so sim­ple. How do you cap­ture that wealth of mean­ing?” He shrugged at the cam­era. “It’s some­thing I start­ed do­ing in grad school. I’d tak­en a lot of Japanese cours­es, and I was re­al­ly tak­en with Bash–o’s book, Nar­row Road to the In­te­ri­or. It’s the sto­ry of this jour­ney he took through Japan’s north­ern in­te­ri­or four hun­dred years ago. But, of course, it’s al­so about his own . . . Any­way, it’s a short work, laced with haiku. There was one in par­tic­ular, a fa­mous one, that I strug­gled with, kept putting off. This morn­ing, on the taxi com­ing here, I fi­nal­ly fin­ished it. Sounds fun­ny, doesn’t it, since it’s on­ly, what, nine words long?” He stopped.

It was hard to rec­on­cile the hand­some face with that oth­er one, shown in the po­lice pho­tos: the yawn­ing mouth, the wide un­see­ing eyes, the dark lolling tongue.

Sud­den fade to black. Lash with­drew the tape, slot­ted in the oth­er.

An­oth­er scrib­ble of num­bers. Then Lind­say Thor­pe ap­peared on the mon­itor, thin and blonde and deeply tanned. She looked a tri­fle more ner­vous than Lewis had. She licked her lips, traced an er­rant hair away from her eyes with a fin­ger.

“Why are you here?” the off-​cam­era voice asked again.

Lind­say paused for a mo­ment, looked away. “Be­cause I know I can do bet­ter,” she replied af­ter a mo­ment.

“De­scribe one thing you did this morn­ing. And why you think we should know about it.”

Lind­say looked back at the cam­era. And now she smiled too, dis­play­ing per­fect, gleam­ing teeth. “That one’s eas­ier. I took the plunge, bought my round-​trip tick­et to Lucerne. There’s this spe­cial tour group tak­ing a one-​week hike through the Alps. It’s kind of ex­pen­sive, seemed like a bit of an ex­trav­agance, es­pe­cial­ly on top of the fee for . . .” Her smile turned a lit­tle shy. “Any­way, I fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed I was worth it. I re­cent­ly end­ed this re­la­tion­ship that just hadn’t been work­ing out, and I want­ed to get away, maybe get a lit­tle per­spec­tive on things.” She laughed. “So I put the tick­et on my Visa this morn­ing. Non­re­fund­able. I leave the first of next month.”

The tape end­ed. Lash re­moved it and shut off the play­er.

Five months af­ter these in­ter­views, the Thor­pes were mar­ried. They moved here not long af­ter. The most per­fect cou­ple any­one could re­mem­ber.

Lash dropped the tapes in­to the en­ve­lope and start­ed for the door. As he opened it he paused to turn back, ask­ing once again for an an­swer. When the house re­mained silent, he shut and locked the door care­ful­ly be­hind him.

SIX

Cruis­ing at thir­ty-​five thou­sand feet on his way back to New York, Lash in­sert­ed his cred­it card in­to the seat­back slot, plucked the air-​to-​ground phone from its hand­set, and stared at it a mo­ment. What does an ex­pert do when some­thing makes no sense? he thought. Sim­ple. You ask an­oth­er ex­pert.

His first call was to di­rec­to­ry in­for­ma­tion; the sec­ond to a num­ber in Put­nam Coun­ty, New York.

“Weisen­baum Cen­ter,” came a clipped, ef­fi­cient voice.

“Dr. Good­kind, please.”

“Who may I say is call­ing?”

“Christo­pher Lash.”

“Just a minute.”

Among pri­vate psy­chol­ogists, the Nor­man J. Weisen­baum Cen­ter for Biomed­ical Re­search was both revered and en­vied for the qual­ity of its neu­ro­chem­ical stud­ies. As Lash wait­ed through ethe­re­al, New Age mu­sic, he tried to pic­ture the cen­ter in his mind. He knew it was lo­cat­ed on the Hud­son Riv­er about forty-​five min­utes north of Man­hat­tan. No doubt beau­ti­ful, with im­pec­ca­ble ar­chi­tec­ture: the cen­ter was a dar­ling of both hos­pi­tals and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and was lav­ish­ly fund­ed.

“Chris!” came Good­kind’s cheery voice. “I can’t be­lieve it. I haven’t heard from you in, what, six years?”

“Must be that long.”

“How are you en­joy­ing pri­vate prac­tice?”

“The hours are bet­ter.”

“I’ll bet. I al­ways won­dered when you’d give up rid­ing with the cav­al­ry, set­tle down in some nice, lu­cra­tive town. You’re prac­tic­ing in Fair­field, right?”

“Stam­ford.”

“Yes, of course. Close to Green­wich, South­port, New Canaan. All full of rich, dys­func­tion­al cou­ples, no doubt. Ex­cel­lent choice.” Old U. Penn class­mates like Good­kind had been di­vid­ed in their opin­ions on Lash join­ing the FBI. Some seemed en­vi­ous. Oth­ers shook their heads, un­able to com­pre­hend why he’d will­ing­ly take on such a stress­ful, phys­ical­ly de­mand­ing, po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous job when his doc­tor­ate en­ti­tled him to some­thing a lot cushi­er. When he did leave the FBI, he’d been care­ful to let them be­lieve greed was the mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor—rather than the tragedy that so abrupt­ly end­ed both his law en­force­ment ca­reer and his mar­riage.

“You hear much from Shirley?” Good­kind asked.

“Nope.”

“Shame you two split up. It didn’t have to do with, what, that Ed­mund Wyre busi­ness, did it? I read about that in the pa­per.”

Lash was care­ful to keep his voice from be­tray­ing the pain that, even three years lat­er, men­tion of that name could evoke. “No, noth­ing like that.”

“Hor­ri­ble. Hor­ri­ble. Must’ve been rough on you.”

“Wasn’t easy.” Lash be­gan to feel sor­ry he’d called. How could he have for­got­ten Good­kind’s cu­rios­ity, his love of pry­ing in­to the per­son­al af­fairs of oth­ers?

“I picked up that book of yours,” Good­kind said. “Con­gru­en­cy. Ex­cel­lent stuff, though of course you were writ­ing for the un­washed.”

“I want­ed to sell more than a dozen copies.”

“And?”

“Sold two dozen, at least.”

Good­kind laughed.

“I read your re­cent ar­ti­cle, too,” Lash went on. “In the Amer­ican Jour­nal of Neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy. ‘Cog­ni­tive Reap­praisal and Agen­er­ative Sui­cide.’ Nice­ly ar­gued.”

“One thing about my po­si­tion here at the cen­ter is I can spe­cial­ize in the re­search of my choice.”

“I was al­so in­ter­est­ed in some of your oth­er re­cent pa­pers. ‘Re­up­take In­hibitors and El­der Sui­cide,’ for ex­am­ple.”

“Re­al­ly?” Good­kind sound­ed sur­prised. “I had no idea you were keep­ing such close tabs.”

“I in­fer from the ar­ti­cles that, in ad­di­tion to the lab re­search, you’ve in­ter­viewed quite a num­ber of sui­cide at­tempters?”

“Well, I haven’t had a chance to talk with too many sui­cide com­pleters.” Good­kind chuck­led at his lit­tle joke.

“In­clud­ing sur­vivors of dou­ble sui­cides?”

“Of course.”

“Then there’s some­thing I’m look­ing in­to that might in­ter­est you. In fact, I could use your ad­vice. These friends of a pa­tient of mine, a cou­ple. Com­mit­ted dou­ble sui­cide re­cent­ly.”

“Suc­cess­ful­ly?”

“There are some un­usu­al as­pects to the pathol­ogy.”

“Such as?”

Lash pre­tend­ed to hes­itate. “Well, what if we turned it around, and you spec­ulat­ed—based on your re­search, of course—what the mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tors might have been. Per­form a psy­cho­log­ical au­top­sy on the cou­ple. I’ll fill in the blanks.”

There was a brief si­lence. “Sure, why not. What were their ages?”

“Ear­ly thir­ties.”

“Em­ploy­ment his­to­ry?”

“Sta­ble.”

“Psy­chi­atric his­to­ry? Mood dis­or­ders?”

“None known.”

“Sui­ci­dal ideation?”

“No.”

“His­to­ry of pri­or at­tempts?”

“None.”

“Sub­stance abuse?”

“The au­top­sy bloods were clean.”

An­oth­er pause. “Is this a joke?”

“No. Go on, please.”

“The cou­ple’s re­la­tion­ship?”

“Warm and lov­ing, by all ac­counts.”

“Ma­jor loss­es of any kind?”

“No.”

“Fam­ily his­to­ry?”

“Neg­ative for de­pres­sion, schizophre­nia, any men­tal ill­ness, in fact.”

“Any oth­er life stres­sors? Sig­nif­icant changes?”

“No.”

“Any health is­sues?”

“Both re­ceived glow­ing phys­icals with­in the last six months.”

“Any­thing I should know? Any­thing at all?”

Lash paused. “They’d re­cent­ly had a child.”

“And?”

“Nor­mal and healthy in ev­ery way.”

There was a long si­lence. Then, Lash heard laugh­ter over the line. “This is a joke, right? Be­cause these aren’t dou­ble sui­cides you’re de­scrib­ing. This is Cap­tain Amer­ica and Won­der Wom­an.”

“Is that your con­sid­ered opin­ion?”

Good­kind’s laugh slow­ly died. “Yes.”

“Roger, you’ve got a unique per­spec­tive on sui­cide. You’re a bio­chemist. You not on­ly talk to sui­cide at­tempters, you study their mo­ti­va­tion on a molec­ular lev­el.” Lash shift­ed in his seat. “Is there any com­mon­al­ity among peo­ple that might pre­dis­pose them—no mat­ter how hap­py they ap­pear—to sui­cide?”

“You mean, like a sui­cide gene? I wish it were that easy. There’s re­search that’s shown some genes may—may—code for de­pres­sive ten­den­cies. Just as there are genes that code for heavy eat­ing, sex­ual pref­er­ences, eye or hair col­or. But pre­dict­ing sui­cide? If you’re a bet­ting man, stay away from that one. You’ve got two deeply de­pressed peo­ple. Why does one com­mit sui­cide and an­oth­er doesn’t? In the end there’s no way to pre­dict. Why did Mi­ami Beach po­lice re­port a rash of sui­cides last month, while Min­neapo­lis had a his­toric dip? Why did Poland have a dra­mat­ical­ly high rate of sui­cide in the year 2000? Sor­ry, pal. When you get right down to it, it’s just a roll of the dice.”

Lash in­gest­ed this. “A roll of the dice.”

“Take it from an ex­pert, Chris. And you can quote me on that.”

SEVEN

Af­ter the dry high-​al­ti­tude air of Flagstaff, New York City felt damp and mis­er­able. Lash wore a heavy rain­coat as he ap­proached the re­cep­tion desk in Eden’s lob­by for the sec­ond time in five days.

“Christo­pher Lash to see Ed­win Mauch­ly,” he told a tall, thin man be­hind the counter.

The man tapped a few keys. “Do you have an ap­point­ment, sir?” he asked with a smile.

“I left him a mes­sage. He’ll be ex­pect­ing me.”

“One mo­ment, please.”

As he wait­ed, Lash turned to gaze around him. There was some­thing dif­fer­ent about the lob­by to­day, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then he re­al­ized there was no line of prospec­tive ap­pli­cants this morn­ing. The twin es­ca­la­tors lead­ing to Ap­pli­ca­tion Pro­cess­ing were emp­ty. In­stead, a small­er flow of traf­fic was head­ed for the se­cu­ri­ty check­point. They were all cou­ples, many hand in hand. Un­like the anx­ious, hope­ful faces he’d seen his last vis­it, these peo­ple were smil­ing, laugh­ing, chat­ter­ing loud­ly. Af­ter show­ing lam­inat­ed cards at the check­point, the cou­ples moved on to a large set of doors and van­ished out of sight.

“Dr. Lash?” the man at the desk said.

Lash turned back. “Yes?”

“Mr. Mauch­ly is wait­ing for you.” The man slid a small ivory pass­card em­bla­zoned with Eden’s in­fin­ity lo­go across the desk. “Please show this at the el­eva­tor sta­tion. Have a pleas­ant day.”

When the el­eva­tor doors opened on­to the thir­ty-​sec­ond floor, Mauch­ly was wait­ing. He nod­ded to Lash, then led the way down the cor­ri­dor to his of­fice.

Di­rec­tor of Fa­cil­ita­tion Ser­vices, Lash re­called as he fol­lowed Mauch­ly. What­ev­er the hell is that? Aloud, he asked: “Why all the hap­py faces?”

“Sor­ry?”

“Down­stairs, in the lob­by. Ev­ery­body was grin­ning as if they’d won the lot­tery or some­thing.”

“Ah. To­day is class re­union.”

“Class re­union?”

“That’s our term for it. Part of our client con­tract calls for a manda­to­ry six-​month reval­ua­tion of the cou­ples we’ve brought to­geth­er. They re­turn for a day of one-​on-​one ses­sions, en­counter groups, the like. For the most part, quite in­for­mal. Our re­searchers find the back-​end da­ta help­ful in re­fin­ing the se­lec­tion pro­cess. And it al­lows us to watch for any signs of in­com­pat­ibil­ity, warn­ing sig­nals, be­tween cou­ples.”

“Seen any?”

“None to date.” Mauch­ly opened the door, ush­ered Lash in­side. If he was cu­ri­ous, it did not show in his dark eyes. “Would you care for any re­fresh­ment?”

“No thanks.” Lash slipped his satchel from his arm and took the in­di­cat­ed chair.

Mauch­ly sat down be­hind his desk. “We didn’t ex­pect to hear from you so soon.”

“That’s be­cause there’s not much to tell.”

Mauch­ly raised his eye­brows.

Lash leaned over, un­fas­tened his satchel, and pulled out a doc­ument. He straight­ened its edges, then placed it on the desk.

“What is that, Dr. Lash?” Mauch­ly asked.

“My re­port.”

Mauch­ly made no move to pick it up. “Per­haps you could sum­ma­rize it for me.”

Lash took a deep breath. “There are no in­di­ca­tors for sui­cide in ei­ther Lewis or Lind­say Thor­pe. None at all.”

Mauch­ly fold­ed one mus­cu­lar arm over the oth­er, wait­ed.

“I’ve spo­ken to fam­ily, friends, doc­tors. I’ve ex­am­ined their cred­it his­to­ries, fi­nan­cial records, em­ploy­ment sta­tus. I’ve called in fa­vors from fed­er­al and lo­cal law en­force­ment. This was as func­tion­al, sta­ble a cou­ple—a fam­ily—as you’ll ev­er find. They could have been poster chil­dren for that wall of hap­py faces down in your lob­by.”

“I see.” Mauch­ly’s lips pursed in­to what might have been a frown. “Per­haps there were pri­or in­di­ca­tors that—”

“I looked there, too. I checked school records, in­ter­viewed teach­ers, spoke with for­mer class­mates. Noth­ing. And no psy­chi­atric his­to­ry, ei­ther. In fact, the on­ly hos­pi­tal vis­it was by Lewis, who broke a leg ski­ing in As­pen eight years ago.”

“Then what is your pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion?”

“Peo­ple don’t just com­mit sui­cide for no rea­son. Es­pe­cial­ly dou­ble sui­cide. There’s some­thing miss­ing here.”

“Are you im­ply­ing—”

“I’m not im­ply­ing any­thing. The po­lice re­port reads sui­cide. What I mean is, I don’t have enough in­for­ma­tion to form an opin­ion on why they did what they did.”

Mauch­ly glanced at the re­port. “It ap­pears you’ve done a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“What I need is in this build­ing. Your eval­ua­tions of the Thor­pes might give me the psy­cho­log­ical da­ta I need.”

“You must know that’s out of the ques­tion. Our da­ta is con­fi­den­tial. Trade se­crets are in­volved.”

“I’ve al­ready signed a nondis­clo­sure agree­ment.”

“Dr. Lash, it’s not my call to make. Be­sides, it’s un­like­ly you’d find any­thing in our test re­sults you have not al­ready found on your own.”

“Per­haps. Per­haps not. That’s why I’ve al­so pre­pared this.” Lash with­drew a small en­ve­lope and placed it atop the sheaf of pa­pers.

Mauch­ly cocked his head in­quir­ing­ly.

“It’s a break­down of my ex­pens­es. Time billed at my usu­al con­sul­ta­tion rate of $300 an hour. I didn’t charge over­time. Air­plane tick­ets, ho­tel rooms, rental cars, meals, it’s all there. Just a shade over $14,000. If you’ll ini­tial the amount, I’ll write you out a check for the bal­ance.”

“What bal­ance would that be?”

“The rest of the hun­dred thou­sand you gave me.”

Mauch­ly reached for the en­ve­lope, with­drew the fold­ed sheet in­side. “I’m not sure I un­der­stand.”

“It’s quite sim­ple. With­out more in­for­ma­tion from you, there’s noth­ing I can say ex­cept Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe were just as per­fect a cou­ple as your com­put­er thought they were. I didn’t earn a hun­dred thou­sand to tell you that.”

Mauch­ly stud­ied the pa­per for a mo­ment. Then he re­placed it in the en­ve­lope and put it back on the ta­ble. “Dr. Lash, would you ex­cuse me for just a mo­ment?”

“Of course.”

Mauch­ly stood and, with a po­lite nod, left the room, clos­ing the door be­hind him.

It was per­haps ten min­utes be­fore Lash heard the door open again. He turned to see Mauch­ly stand­ing in the cor­ri­dor.

“This way, if you please,” he said.

Mauch­ly led Lash to a new el­eva­tor. It de­scend­ed briefly, then opened on­to a fea­ture­less cor­ri­dor. The walls, floor, and ceil­ing were all paint­ed the same shade of pale vi­olet. Mauch­ly led the way down the cor­ri­dor, then stopped to open a door the same col­or as the walls and ceil­ing. He ges­tured Lash to en­ter first.

The space be­yond was long and dim­ly lit. From a nar­row floor, the walls an­gled out­ward at a forty-​five-​de­gree an­gle to waist lev­el, where they be­came abrupt­ly ver­ti­cal. It felt to Lash like star­ing down a fun­nel.

“What kind of place is this?” he asked, walk­ing for­ward.

Mauch­ly closed the door and pressed a but­ton on a near­by con­trol pan­el.

There was a low whirring noise, and Lash took an in­vol­un­tary step to­ward the cen­ter. On both sides, a dark cur­tain drew back along the an­gled walls at his feet. And now Lash re­al­ized that they were not walls at all, but win­dows, look­ing down in­to two large rooms: one to his left, the oth­er to his right. They were stand­ing on a cat­walk, sus­pend­ed above and be­tween the two iden­ti­cal rooms: con­fer­ence rooms con­tain­ing large, oval ta­bles. Per­haps a dozen peo­ple were seat­ed around each. There was no sound but Lash could see from their ges­tures they were talk­ing an­imat­ed­ly.

“What the hell—” he be­gan.

Mauch­ly gave a dry laugh. Yel­low light from the con­fer­ence rooms lit his face from be­low, giv­ing his smile a dis­con­cert­ing cast. “Lis­ten,” he said, press­ing an­oth­er but­ton.

The room was sud­den­ly filled with a ba­bel of voic­es. Mauch­ly turned to the pan­el, ad­just­ed a knob, and the vol­ume de­creased.

Lash re­al­ized he was hear­ing the con­ver­sa­tions of the peo­ple in the room be­low. An­oth­er mo­ment and he re­al­ized they were all cou­ples who had been brought to­geth­er by Eden. They were jok­ing, shar­ing rem­inis­cences about the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I’ve told sev­en, maybe eight friends about it,” a man was say­ing. He was in his ear­ly for­ties, black, wear­ing a dark suit. A wom­an was sit­ting close be­side him, head rest­ing on his shoul­der. “Three have al­ready ap­plied. A cou­ple more are sav­ing up. One of them’s even think­ing of turn­ing in his Saab for a used Hon­da to raise the fee. That’s des­per­ation.”

“We haven’t told any­body,” said a young wom­an across the ta­ble. “We like keep­ing it a se­cret.”

“It’s a blast,” her hus­band added. “Peo­ple are al­ways telling us how great we are for each oth­er. Just last night a cou­ple of the guys cor­nered me at the gym. They com­plained their wives were all bitch­es, won­dered how I was lucky enough to find the last nice girl on Long Is­land.” He laughed. “How could I tell them Eden brought us to­geth­er? It’s too much fun tak­ing the cred­it my­self.”

This brought a burst of as­sent­ing laugh­ter from the group.

Mauch­ly reached for the di­al again, and the laugh­ter fad­ed out. “Dr. Lash, I be­lieve you feel I’m be­ing in­ten­tion­al­ly coy about all this. That is not the case. It’s not that we don’t trust you. It’s sim­ply that se­cre­cy is the on­ly way to pro­tect our ser­vice. There are any num­ber of would-​be com­peti­tors who will do what­ev­er it takes to ob­tain our test­ing tech­niques, our eval­ua­tion al­go­rithms, any­thing. And re­mem­ber, the se­cre­cy is not just for us.” He ges­tured to­ward the oth­er room be­low them, turned an­oth­er knob.

“. . . if I’d known just what was in store for me, I don’t know if I’d have had the co­jones to take that eval,” a tall, ath­let­ic-​look­ing man in a crew­neck sweater was say­ing. “It was a bru­tal day. But now that it’s sev­en months be­hind me, I know it was the best thing I ev­er did.”

“I went to a typ­ical on­line dat­ing ser­vice once, a cou­ple of years back,” an­oth­er added. “Couldn’t have been more un­like Eden. Crude. Low-​tech. They on­ly asked a few ques­tions. And guess what the first one was: Are you in­ter­est­ed in a ca­su­al or a se­ri­ous re­la­tion­ship? Can you be­lieve it? I was so in­sult­ed I walked out the door right then!”

“I’ll be pay­ing off the loan for years,” said a wom­an. “But I’d have paid twice as much. It’s like they say on that wall in the lob­by. What price can you put on hap­pi­ness?”

“Any­body here ev­er fight?” some­body else asked.

“We dis­agree,” a sil­ver-​haired wom­an at the far end re­spond­ed. “Wouldn’t be hu­man if we didn’t. But it just helps us learn more about each oth­er, re­spect each oth­er’s needs.”

Mauch­ly turned off the sound again. “You see? It’s for them, as well. Eden pro­vides a ser­vice no­body’s ev­er dreamed of be­fore. We can’t take any chance, no mat­ter how small, of com­pro­mis­ing that ser­vice.” He paused. “Now lis­ten. I’m bring­ing in some­one you can talk to, ask a few ques­tions. But you must un­der­stand, Dr. Lash: he doesn’t know. Morale at Eden is ex­cep­tion­al­ly high. Peo­ple are very proud of the ser­vice they pro­vide. We can­not un­der­mine that, even with an un­re­lat­ed tragedy. Un­der­stood?”

Lash nod­ded.

As if on cue, a door opened at the far end of the room and a fig­ure in a white lab coat stepped for­ward.

“Pe­ter, there you are,” Mauch­ly said. “Come and meet Christo­pher Lash. He’s do­ing some ran­dom fol­low-​up checks on a few of our clients. For sta­tis­ti­cal pur­pos­es.”

The man came for­ward with a shy smile. He was lit­tle more than a youth, re­al­ly. There was an abun­dance of car­rot-​col­ored hair above his fore­head that bobbed slight­ly as he shook Lash’s hand.

“This is Pe­ter Hap­wood. He’s the eval­ua­tion en­gi­neer that did the one-​on-​one with the Thor­pes when they came back for their class re­union.” Mauch­ly turned to Hap­wood. “Do you re­mem­ber Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe?”

Hap­wood nod­ded. “The su­per­cou­ple.”

“Yes. The su­per­cou­ple.” Mauch­ly turned his hand to­ward Lash, palm ex­tend­ed, as if invit­ing ques­tions.

“In the one-​on-​one with the Thor­pes,” Lash asked the young en­gi­neer, “did any­thing stand out in par­tic­ular?”

“No, noth­ing. Not that I can re­mem­ber.”

“How did they seem?”

“They seemed hap­py, like ev­ery­body else on their re­turn in­ter­view.”

“How many cou­ples have you in­ter­viewed? On their six-​month re­turn, I mean?”

Hap­wood thought a mo­ment. “A thou­sand. Maybe twelve hun­dred.”

“And they’ve all been hap­py?”

“With­out ex­cep­tion. Af­ter all this time, it still seems un­can­ny.” Hap­wood shot a quick look at Mauch­ly, as if won­der­ing whether he’d said some­thing in­ap­pro­pri­ate.

“Did the Thor­pes say any­thing about their lives since meet­ing each oth­er?”

“Let me think. No. Yes. They’d re­cent­ly moved to Flagstaff, Ari­zona. I re­mem­ber Mr. Thor­pe say­ing he was hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble with the al­ti­tude—he was a jog­ger, as I re­call—but they both loved the area.”

“Any­thing else come up in the ques­tions?”

“Not re­al­ly. I just went through the stan­dard ques­tion set. Noth­ing got flagged.”

“What stan­dard set is that?”

“Well, we start with the mood-​set­ting items, just to es­tab­lish a com­fort lev­el, by—”

“I don’t think such specifics are nec­es­sary,” Mauch­ly said. “Any oth­er ques­tions?”

Lash felt the op­por­tu­ni­ty slip­ping away from him. And yet there were no oth­er ques­tions left. “You don’t re­call any­thing they said, or men­tioned, out of the or­di­nary? Any­thing at all?”

“No,” Hap­wood replied. “Sor­ry.”

Lash’s shoul­ders sagged. “Thanks.”

Mauch­ly nod­ded at Hap­wood, who head­ed for the far door. Halfway there, he stopped.

“She hat­ed opera,” he said.

Lash looked at him. “What?”

“Ms. Thor­pe. When they came in­to the con­sul­ta­tion room, she apol­ogized for be­ing late. On the way here, she re­fused to take the first cab they hailed be­cause the driv­er was blar­ing opera from his ra­dio. She said she couldn’t stand it. Took them ten min­utes to find an­oth­er.” He shook his head at the mem­ory. “They were laugh­ing about it.”

He nod­ded to Lash, then Mauch­ly, and left the room.

Mauch­ly turned, spec­tral in the glow of the rooms be­low, and raised a bulky mani­la en­ve­lope. “The re­sults of the Thor­pes’ inkblot tests, ad­min­is­tered dur­ing their eval­ua­tions. It’s the on­ly test we give that isn’t pro­pri­etary, that’s why I am able to share it.”

“Big of you.” Frus­tra­tion gave an edge to Lash’s voice he didn’t in­tend.

Mauch­ly re­gard­ed him mild­ly. “You must un­der­stand, Dr. Lash. Our in­ter­est in what hap­pened to the Thor­pes is as a case study on­ly. This is a trag­ic event, one that’s es­pe­cial­ly painful to us be­cause a su­per­cou­ple was in­volved. But it’s an iso­lat­ed oc­cur­rence.” He hand­ed the fold­er to Lash. “Look these over at your con­ve­nience. It’s our hope you’ll con­tin­ue to in­ves­ti­gate, search for any per­son­al­ity is­sues we should keep in mind for fu­ture eval­ua­tions. But if you still want to quit the job, we’ll ac­cept the brief you’ve al­ready pre­pared. In any case, the mon­ey is yours to keep.” He ges­tured to­ward the door. “And now, with your per­mis­sion, I’ll see you back to the lob­by.”

EIGHT

The af­ter­noon shad­ows were length­en­ing when Lash pulled in­to the Green­wich Audubon Cen­ter, parked, and start­ed down the wood-​chipped path lead­ing to Mead Lake. He had the place to him­self: the school groups had left hours be­fore, and the week­end bird­ers and na­ture pho­tog­ra­phers wouldn’t gath­er un­til the week­end. The damp­ness of the morn­ing had giv­en way to limpid sun­light. Around him, open wood­lands melt­ed away in­to fast­ness­es of green and brown. The air was heavy with the scent of moss. As he walked, the traf­fic on Riversville Road grew fainter. With­in min­utes, it was re­placed en­tire­ly by bird­song.

He had left the of­fices of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed in­tend­ing to drive straight back to his Stam­ford of­fice. The week he’d al­lowed for this as­sign­ment was up, and he now had to de­cide what, if any­thing, was to be done about next week’s ar­range­ments. But halfway home he’d found him­self leav­ing the New Eng­land Thruway and driv­ing, al­most aim­less­ly, through the shady lanes of Darien, Sil­ver­mine, New Canaan, the stomp­ing grounds of his youth. The Thor­pes’ inkblot tests lay, un­touched, in an en­ve­lope on the pas­sen­ger seat. He’d driv­en on, let­ting the car de­cide where to go. And it end­ed up here, at the na­ture pre­serve.

It seemed as good a place as any.

Ahead of him the path­way forked, lead­ing to a se­ries of bird blinds over­look­ing the lake. Lash se­lect­ed one at ran­dom, climbed the short lad­der in­to the box­like struc­ture. In­side it was warm and dark. A long hor­izon­tal slit at the rear of­fered a clan­des­tine view of the lake. Lash peered out at the wa­ter­birds, duck­ing and bob­bing, obliv­ious to his pres­ence. Then he took a seat on the wood­en bench and placed the bulky mani­la en­ve­lope be­side him.

He did not open it right away. In­stead, he reached in­to a jack­et pock­et and pulled out a tiny vol­ume: Nar­row Road to the In­te­ri­or, by Mat­suo Bash–o. He’d seen copies for sale on the counter of a Star­bucks in Sky Har­bor In­ter­na­tion­al, and the co­in­ci­dence seemed too great not to pick one up. He thumbed through the trans­la­tor’s in­tro­duc­tion, found the open­ing lines.

The moon and sun are eter­nal trav­el­ers. Even the years wan­der on. A life­time adrift in a boat, or in old age lead­ing a tired horse in­to the years, ev­ery day is a jour­ney, and the jour­ney it­self is home.

He put the book aside. What had Lewis Thor­pe said about the po­et­ry of Bash–o: so dense, yet so sim­ple? Some­thing like that.

Lash had many pro­fes­sion­al rules, but the pre­em­inent one was Keep your dis­tance from your pa­tients. It was a rule he’d learned the hard way, pro­fil­ing at the FBI. So why had he al­lowed him­self to be­come so fas­ci­nat­ed with Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe? Was it sim­ply the mys­ti­fy­ing na­ture of their deaths? Or was there some spe­cial al­lure in the per­fec­tion of their mar­riage? Be­cause by ev­ery ac­count he’d been able to ob­tain, their mar­riage had, in fact, been per­fect—right up to the mo­ment they put dry- clean­ing bags over their heads, em­braced, and slow­ly lost con­scious­ness in front of their in­fant daugh­ter.

Nor­mal­ly, Lash did not per­mit per­son­al in­tro­spec­tion. It led nowhere, dulled his ob­jec­tiv­ity. But he de­cid­ed to al­low him­self an­oth­er ob­ser­va­tion. He had not cho­sen this place at ran­dom, af­ter all. This sanc­tu­ary, this path­way—and, in fact, this very blind—had been the spot where, three years be­fore, Shirley said she nev­er want­ed to see him again.

Ev­ery day is a jour­ney, and the jour­ney it­self is home. Lash won­dered what kind of a jour­ney the Thor­pes had em­barked on. Or for that mat­ter, what kind of a jour­ney he him­self was un­der­tak­ing to dis­cov­er their se­cret. It was a jour­ney his bet­ter judg­ment told him to re­sist even as his feet led him far­ther down the path.

He passed his hand weari­ly across his eyes, reached for the bulky en­ve­lope, and tore it open with a tug of his in­dex fin­ger.

In­side were just over a hun­dred sheets of pa­per: the re­sults of Lewis and Lind­say Thor­pe’s inkblot tests, ad­min­is­tered by Eden dur­ing their ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess.

As a high school stu­dent, Lash had been fas­ci­nat­ed by inkblots; by the idea that see­ing ob­jects in ran­dom smudges could say some­thing about you. It wasn’t un­til grad­uate school, when he stud­ied test ad­min­is­tra­tion—and took the test him­self, as all psych stu­dents were re­quired to do—that he re­al­ized how pro­found a tool of psy­chodi­ag­no­sis it could be. Inkblots were known as “pro­jec­tive” tests be­cause—un­like high­ly struc­tured, ob­jec­tive writ­ten tests like the WAIS or MMPI—the con­cept of right and wrong was am­bigu­ous. Look­ing for im­ages in an inkblot re­quired bring­ing deep­er, com­plex ar­eas of per­son­al­ity to bear.

Eden used the Hirschfeldt test, a choice Lash whole­heart­ed­ly ap­proved. Though in­di­rect­ly based on Exn­er’s re­fine­ment of the orig­inal Rorschach, the Hirschfeldt test had sev­er­al ad­van­tages. There were on­ly ten Rorschach inkblots, and these were kept se­cret by psy­chol­ogists: it would be easy for a per­son to mem­orize the “right” re­spons­es to such a small num­ber of blots. Each ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Hirschfeldt test, on the oth­er hand, drew from a cat­alogue of five hun­dred cat­alogued blots—far too many to mem­orize. Thir­ty blots were shown, rather than ten, gen­er­at­ing a deep­er re­sponse pool from the sub­ject. Un­like the Rorschach, where half of the inkblots were in col­or, all of the blots in the Hirschfeldt test were black and white; its sup­port­ers thought col­or to be an unim­por­tant dis­trac­tion.

Lind­say Thor­pe’s test re­sults came first. Lash paused a mo­ment to imag­ine her in the ex­am­ina­tion room. It would be qui­et, com­fort­able, free of dis­trac­tion. The test ad­min­is­tra­tor would be sit­ting slight­ly be­hind her; face-​to-​face ex­am­ina­tions were to be avoid­ed. Lind­say Thor­pe would not see the inkblots un­til the mo­ment the ex­am­in­er laid them up­on the ta­ble be­fore her.

The ground rules of the test were as guard­ed as the blots them­selves. Any ques­tion she asked would be met with a pre­for­mu­lat­ed re­sponse. Lind­say would not know that ev­ery­thing she said about the blots, rel­evant or not, would be writ­ten down and scored. She would not know that her re­spons­es were be­ing timed with a silent watch: the quick­er her re­spons­es, the bet­ter. She would not know that she was sup­posed to see more than one thing in each card; see­ing on­ly one was sug­ges­tive of neu­ro­sis. And she wouldn’t know that—though the test ad­min­is­tra­tor would de­ny it if asked—each card did in fact have a “nor­mal” re­sponse. If you saw some­thing orig­inal, and could jus­ti­fy it, you’d get points for cre­ativ­ity. But see­ing some­thing no­body else saw in an inkblot usu­al­ly im­plied psy­chosis.

Lash turned to the first blot. Be­low it, the ad­min­is­tra­tor had record­ed Lind­say’s re­spons­es ver­ba­tim.

There were two steps to view­ing each card: a free-​as­so­ci­ation phase, where the sub­ject stat­ed his or her first im­pres­sions of the card, and an in­quiry phase, where the ex­am­in­er would ask the sub­ject to jus­ti­fy their im­pres­sions. Lash no­ticed, from the ar­row marked on the third free as­so­ci­ation, that Lind­say had on her own vo­li­tion turned the card up­side down and kept it that way. That was a sign of in­de­pen­dent think­ing: if you asked whether you could turn the card over, you got a low­er score. Lash rec­og­nized this blot, and Lind­say had hit most of the typ­ical re­spons­es: a mask, a bat. No doubt the ex­am­in­er would have not­ed Lind­say’s ref­er­ence to the dev­il, an ex­tra­ne­ous re­mark that would need to be scored.

The next sheet in the pile was the ex­am­in­er’s scor­ing sheet for this first card:

Lash quick­ly re­viewed the way Lind­say’s four re­spons­es had been typed and scored. The ex­am­in­er had done a thor­ough job. De­spite the years since he’d last ad­min­is­tered a Hirschfeldt test, the ar­cane codes came back to him: B stood for a re­sponse en­com­pass­ing the whole blot; D for a re­sponse to a com­mon­ly not­ed de­tail. Hu­man and an­imal forms, anato­my, na­ture, and the rest were all not­ed. In all four re­spons­es, Lind­say’s form fac­tors had been marked OK: a good sign. She saw more im­ages in the white spaces than usu­al, but not enough to cause any con­cern. In the “spe­cials” cat­ego­ry—where ex­am­in­ers list­ed de­viant ver­bal­iza­tions and oth­er no-​nos—Lind­say re­ceived on­ly one mark, MOR, for mor­bid con­tent: no doubt for her char­ac­ter­iza­tion of the im­age as a “dev­il mask” and “scary.”

He moved on to the sec­ond blot:

Again, the ex­am­in­er had care­ful­ly list­ed Lind­say’s re­spons­es.

Again, Lash rec­og­nized this blot. Lind­say Thor­pe’s re­spons­es were all with­in nor­mal.

Lash looked back idly at the blot. Sud­den­ly, he stiff­ened. Com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed­ly, a se­ries of as­so­ci­ations flashed through his own mind as he stared: a quick­ly spread­ing sea of red across a white car­pet; a drip­ping kitchen knife; the grin­ning mask of Ed­mund Wyre, hand­cuffed and in leg irons, as he was ar­raigned be­fore a sea of shocked faces.

God damn Roger Good­kind and his cu­rios­ity, Lash thought as he put the blot quick­ly aside.

He leafed brusque­ly through the oth­er twen­ty-​eight blots, find­ing noth­ing out of the or­di­nary. Lind­say was char­ac­ter­ized as a well-​ad­just­ed, in­tel­li­gent, cre­ative, rather am­bi­tious per­son. He knew this al­ready. The faint hope that had again stirred with­in him be­gan to fade.

There was still one more item to ex­am­ine. He turned to the struc­tural sum­ma­ry page, where all Lind­say Thor­pe’s scores were put through a se­ries of ra­tios, fre­quen­cy anal­yses, and oth­er al­ge­bra­ic con­vo­lu­tions to de­ter­mine par­tic­ular per­son­al­ity traits. One of these sets of traits was known as “spe­cial in­di­ca­tions,” and it was to this Lash turned his at­ten­tion.

The spe­cial in­di­ca­tions were red flags. If more than a set num­ber of re­spons­es fell un­der a spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tor—SZ for schizophre­nia, for ex­am­ple—it was flagged pos­itive. One of the spe­cial in­di­ca­tions, S-​Clus­ter, mea­sured sui­cide po­ten­tial.

Lind­say Thor­pe’s S-​Clus­ter showed neg­ative; in fact, she was cod­ed as dis­play­ing ze­ro out of eight pos­si­ble sui­cide in­di­ca­tors.

With a sigh, Lash put Lind­say’s re­sults aside and picked up her hus­band’s.

He had just fin­ished as­cer­tain­ing that Lewis Thor­pe’s sui­cide clus­ter was as low as Lind­say’s when a beep sound­ed from his jack­et pock­et. Lash drew out his cell phone. “Yes?”

“Dr. Lash? It’s Ed­win Mauch­ly.”

Lash felt mild sur­prise. He didn’t give out his cell num­ber to any­body, and he cer­tain­ly didn’t re­call giv­ing it to Eden.

“Where are you right now?” Mauch­ly’s voice sound­ed dif­fer­ent: clipped, brusque.

“Green­wich. Why?”

“It’s hap­pened again.”

“What’s hap­pened?”

“There’s been an­oth­er one. An­oth­er dou­ble-​sui­cide at­tempt. A su­per­cou­ple.”

“What?” Sur­prise van­ished be­neath a wave of dis­be­lief.

“The cou­ple’s name is Wilner. Larch­mont res­idents. They’re en route to South­ern Westch­ester now. From your lo­ca­tion, you should be able to make it in—” there was a brief pause “—fif­teen min­utes. I wouldn’t waste any time.”

And the line went dead.

NINE

South­ern Westch­ester Coun­ty Med­ical Cen­ter was a clus­ter of brick build­ings on the out­skirts of Rye, just over the New York bor­der. As Lash screeched in­to the am­bu­lance en­trance, he could see that the ER was un­usu­al­ly qui­et. Just two ve­hi­cles sat to­geth­er in the shad­ows be­yond the glass ad­mit­ting doors. One was an am­bu­lance; the oth­er a long, low, hearse-​like ve­hi­cle bear­ing the seal of the coun­ty med­ical ex­am­in­er. The rear doors of the am­bu­lance were open, and as Lash trot­ted across the black­top he glanced to­ward it. An EMS tech­ni­cian was at work with a buck­et and san­itiz­er, swab­bing the in­te­ri­or. Even from twen­ty yards Lash caught the cop­pery tang of blood.

The smell brought him up short, and he glanced hes­itant­ly up at the build­ing’s dark-​red bulk. He had not been in­side an emer­gen­cy room in three years. Then, re­call­ing the ur­gen­cy in Mauch­ly’s voice, he forced him­self for­ward once again.

The wait­ing area seemed sub­dued. Half a dozen peo­ple sat in plas­tic chairs, star­ing va­cant­ly at walls or fill­ing out forms. A small knot of po­lice­men stood in one cor­ner, talk­ing among them­selves in low tones. Quick­ly, Lash head­ed for the door marked SQUAD ROOM, opened it, felt along the wall for the but­ton that opened the au­to­mat­ic doors in­to the emer­gen­cy room.

The doors whis­pered open on­to a far dif­fer­ent scene. Sev­er­al or­der­lies were at work, scram­bling with equip­ment trays. A nurse walked by, liters of blood clutched in her arms. An­oth­er fol­lowed with a crash cart. Three EMS tech­ni­cians were stand­ing at the nurs­es’ sta­tion, not speak­ing. They looked dazed. Two were still wear­ing pale-​green gloves heav­ily smeared with blood.

Lash scanned the area for a fa­mil­iar face. Al­most in­stant­ly he spot­ted the chief res­ident, Al­fred Chen, walk­ing to­ward him. Nor­mal­ly, Chen moved with the slow, state­ly grace of a prophet, a smile on his Bud­dha-​like face. Tonight, Chen was mov­ing quick­ly, and the smile was gone.

The res­ident’s eyes were on a met­al clip­board in his hands, and he didn’t both­er look­ing up at Lash. As Chen passed, Lash stuck out an arm. “Al­fred. How’s it go­ing?”

Chen stared blankly for a mo­ment. “Oh. Chris. Hi.” The smile made a brief ap­pear­ance. “Could be bet­ter. Lis­ten, I—”

“I’m here to see the Wilner cou­ple.”

Chen looked sur­prised. “That’s where I’m head­ed. Fol­low me.”

Lash swung in be­side the res­ident.

“Are they pa­tients of yours?” Chen asked.

“Prospec­tive.”

“How’d you hear about it so fast? They just got here five min­utes ago.”

“What hap­pened?”

“Sui­cide pact, ac­cord­ing to po­lice. Pret­ty thor­ough job of it, too. Ra­di­al vein, opened length­wise from wrist to fore­arm.”

“In the bath?”

“That’s the strange part. They were found in bed to­geth­er. Ful­ly clothed.”

Lash felt the mus­cles of his jaw tight­en. “Who found them?”

“Blood came through the ceil­ing of the con­do be­low theirs, and the own­er called the po­lice. They must have been there for hours.”

“What’s their con­di­tion?”

“John Wilner bled out,” Chen puffed. “Dead on the scene. His wife is alive, but just bare­ly.”

“Any kids?”

“No.” Chen glanced down at the sheet. “But Karen Wilner is five months preg­nant.”

Ahead, the nurse with the crash cart dis­ap­peared be­hind a drawn cur­tain. Chen fol­lowed, Lash at his heels.

The space be­yond was so crowd­ed that at first Lash could not see the bed. Some­where, an EKG was bleat­ing out a dan­ger­ous­ly fast pulse. There was a tor­rent of voic­es, talk­ing over each oth­er, calm but ur­gent.

“Heart­beat’s at 120, out of si­nus tach,” a wom­an said.

“Sys­tolic’s at 70.”

An alarm sound­ed abrupt­ly, adding its drone to the ba­bel.

“Hang more plas­ma!” This voice was loud­er, more in­sis­tent.

Lash slipped along be­hind the blue-​garbed fig­ures, back against the cur­tain, work­ing to­ward the head of the bed. As he squeezed in­to po­si­tion be­tween two racks of di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment, Karen Wilner fi­nal­ly be­came vis­ible.

She was like al­abaster, so pale Lash could see an in­cred­ible trac­ery of starved veins around her neck, across her breasts, down the sweep of her arms. Her blouse and bra had been cut away, and her tor­so swabbed clean, but she was still wear­ing a skirt and it was here the white­ness end­ed. The fab­ric was soaked through with blood. Twin IVs, turned wide open, were notched in­to her in­ner el­bows: one of plas­ma, the oth­er of saline. Be­low these, tourni­quets were placed around her fore­arms, and doc­tors were at work, try­ing to su­ture the ru­ined veins.

“We’ve got va­sospasm,” said a nurse, one hand to the pa­tient’s fore­head. Karen Wilner’s eyes re­mained closed, and she did not re­spond to the pres­sure of the nurse’s hand.

Lash slipped in clos­er, knelt down be­side the mo­tion­less face.

“Ms. Wilner,” he mur­mured. “Why? Why did you do it?”

“What are you do­ing?” the nurse de­mand­ed. “Who is this guy?”

The bleat of the EKG ma­chine had slowed to a lazy, ir­reg­ular rhythm. “Brady­car­dia!” a voice called. “Pres­sure’s down to 45 over 20.”

Lash drew clos­er. “Karen,” he said, more ur­gent­ly. “I need to know why. Please.”

“Christo­pher, move away,” Dr. Chen warned from the far side of the bed.

The wom­an’s eyes flut­tered open; closed; opened again. They were dry and even paler than her skin.

“Karen,” Lash re­peat­ed, plac­ing a hand on her shoul­der. It felt like mar­ble.

“Make it stop,” she said, the words more breath than voice.

“Make what stop?” Lash said.

“That sound,” the wom­an replied, al­most in­audi­bly. “That sound in my head.”

Her eyes slipped closed again, and her head lolled to one side.

“We’re los­ing her!” a nurse cried.

“What sound?” Lash said, bend­ing clos­er. “Karen, what sound?”

He felt a hand land on his shoul­der, pull him back. “Away from the bed, mis­ter,” said an or­der­ly. His eyes glit­tered black above the white gauze of his mask.

Lash re­treat­ed be­tween the racks of equip­ment. The EKG was now dron­ing a high, in­ces­sant note. The nurse scram­bled for­ward with the crash cart.

“Charged?” asked Dr. Chen as he took the pad­dles.

“One hun­dred joules.”

“Back!” called Chen.

Lash watched Karen Wilner’s body stiff­en as elec­tric­ity coursed through it. The driplines hang­ing from the IV racks whip­sawed vi­olent­ly back and forth.

“Again!” Chen cried, pad­dles raised in the air. For a mo­ment, his gaze met Lash’s own. Brief as it was, the glance said ev­ery­thing.

With one fi­nal, search­ing look at Karen Wilner, Lash turned and left the emer­gen­cy bay.

TEN

This time, when Ed­win Mauch­ly ush­ered Lash in­to the Eden board­room, the ta­ble was full. Lash rec­og­nized some of the faces: Harold Per­rin, ex-​chair­man of the Fed­er­al Re­serve Board; Car­oline Long of the Long Foun­da­tion. Oth­ers were un­fa­mil­iar. But it was clear the en­tire board of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed was as­sem­bled be­fore him. The on­ly per­son miss­ing was the com­pa­ny’s reclu­sive founder, Richard Sil­ver: al­though the man had rarely been pho­tographed in re­cent years, it was clear none of the faces as­sem­bled here be­longed to him. Some looked at Lash with cu­rios­ity; oth­ers with grave con­cern; still oth­ers with an ex­pres­sion that was prob­ably hope.

John Lelyveld sat in the same chair he’d oc­cu­pied at the first meet­ing. “Dr. Lash.” And he waved at the sole va­cant seat. Mauch­ly qui­et­ly closed the door to the board­room and stood be­fore it, arms be­hind his back.

The chair­man turned to a wom­an at his right. “Stop the tran­scrip­tion, if you please, Ms. French.” Then he looked back at Lash. “Would you care for any­thing? Cof­fee, tea?”

“Cof­fee, thanks.” Lash stud­ied Lelyveld’s face as the man made brisk in­tro­duc­tions. The benev­olent, al­most grand­fa­ther­ly man­ner of the pri­or meet­ing was gone. Now the Eden chair­man seemed for­mal, pre­oc­cu­pied, a lit­tle dis­tant. This is no longer a co­in­ci­dence, Lash thought, and he knows it. Di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, Eden was in­volved.

The cof­fee ar­rived and Lash ac­cept­ed it grate­ful­ly: there had been no time for sleep the night be­fore.

“Dr. Lash,” Lelyveld said. “I think ev­ery­one would be more com­fort­able if we got straight to the mat­ter at hand. I re­al­ize you haven’t had much time, but I won­der if you could bring us up to speed on any­thing you’ve learned, and whether—” he paused to glance around the ta­ble “—whether there’s any ex­pla­na­tion.”

Lash sipped his cof­fee. “I’ve spo­ken with the coro­ner and lo­cal law en­force­ment. On the face of it, ev­ery­thing still points to the orig­inal con­clu­sion of dou­ble sui­cide.”

Lelyveld frowned. Sev­er­al chairs away, a man who’d been in­tro­duced as Gre­go­ry Mi­nor, ex­ec­utive vice pres­ident, moved rest­less­ly in his seat. He was younger than Lelyveld, black-​haired, with an in­tel­li­gent, pen­etrat­ing gaze. “What about the Wilners them­selves?” he asked. “Any in­di­ca­tions to ex­plain this?”

“None. It’s just like the Thor­pes. The Wilners had ev­ery­thing go­ing for them. I talked to an emer­gen­cy room in­tern who knew the cou­ple. They had great jobs: John an in­vest­ment banker, Karen a uni­ver­si­ty li­brar­ian. She was preg­nant with their first child. No his­to­ry of de­pres­sion or any­thing else. No ap­par­ent fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, no fam­ily tragedies of any kind. The au­top­sy bloods were clean. It will take a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion to be cer­tain, but there seems no ev­idence to in­di­cate sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies.”

“Ex­cept the bod­ies,” Mi­nor said.

“The eval­ua­tor at their class re­union here made a sim­ilar re­port. They seemed just as hap­py as the rest of the cou­ples.” Lelyveld glanced at Lash. “You used the phrase ‘on the face of it.’ Care to elab­orate?”

Lash took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee. “It’s ob­vi­ous the sui­cides in Flagstaff and Larch­mont are re­lat­ed. We’re not deal­ing with co­in­ci­dence. And so we need to treat these in­ci­dents as what, at Quan­ti­co, we termed ‘equiv­ocal death.’ ”

“Equiv­ocal death?” Car­oline Long sat to his right, her blond hair al­most col­or­less in the ar­ti­fi­cial light. “Ex­plain, please.”

“It’s a type of anal­ysis the Bu­reau pi­oneered twen­ty years ago. We know the vic­tims, we know how they died, but we don’t yet know the man­ner of death. In this case, dou­ble sui­cide, sui­cide-​homi­cide—or homi­cide.”

“Homi­cide?” said Mi­nor. “Just a minute. You said the po­lice are treat­ing these deaths as sui­cides.”

“I know.”

“And ev­ery­thing you’ve ob­served agrees with that find­ing.”

“That’s cor­rect. I men­tion equiv­ocal death be­cause what we have is an enig­ma. Ev­ery phys­ical sign points to sui­cide. But ev­ery psy­cho­log­ical sign points away from it. So we can’t close our minds to any pos­si­bil­ity.”

He looked around the ta­ble. When no­body spoke, he went on.

“What are those pos­si­bil­ities? If we’re deal­ing with homi­cide, then it has to be some­body who knew both cou­ples. A re­ject­ed suit­or, per­haps? Or some­body who was re­ject­ed as an Eden client by your win­now­ing pro­cess and now holds a grudge?”

“Im­pos­si­ble,” Mi­nor said. “Our records are kept un­der the most strin­gent se­cu­ri­ty. No re­ject­ed ap­pli­cant knows the iden­ti­ties or ad­dress­es of our clients.”

“They could have met in the lob­by, the day they both ap­plied. Or one of the cou­ples could have bragged about their ex­pe­ri­ence at Eden to the wrong per­son.”

Lelyveld shook his head slow­ly. “I don’t think so. Our se­cu­ri­ty and con­fi­den­tial­ity pro­ce­dures be­gin the mo­ment some­body steps in­to the build­ing. They’re trans­par­ent for the most part, but they would fore­stall the kind of ca­su­al in­ter­ac­tion you de­scribe. As for the oth­er, we cau­tion our cou­ples against any boast­ful­ness. It’s one of the things we mon­itor at the class re­unions. And both the Thor­pes and the Wilners were dis­creet about how they met.”

Lash drained his cof­fee. “All right, then. Back to sui­cide. Maybe there’s some­thing in­her­ent­ly wrong with the make­up of a su­per­cou­ple. Some psy­chopathol­ogy in the re­la­tion­ship, but very deep and sub­tle, some­thing that wouldn’t show up in the usu­al screen­ings at your—what do you call them?—class re­unions.”

“That’s non­sense,” said Mi­nor.

“Non­sense?” Lash raised his eye­brows. “Na­ture ab­hors per­fec­tion, Mr. Mi­nor. Show me a rose with­out at least a mi­nor blem­ish. Pure gold is so soft as to be un­work­able, use­less. On­ly frac­tals are per­fect, and even they are fun­da­men­tal­ly asym­met­ri­cal.”

“I think what Greg means is that, even if such a thing were pos­si­ble, we would have learned about it,” Lelyveld said. “Our psy­cho­log­ical as­sets run ex­treme­ly deep. Such a phe­nomenon would have been picked up in our eval­ua­tions.”

“It’s just a the­ory. In any case, homi­cide or sui­cide, Eden is the key. It’s the one thing, the on­ly thing, these cou­ples have in com­mon. So I need to un­der­stand the pro­cess bet­ter. I want to see what the Thor­pes saw, what the Wilners saw, as your clients. I want to know just how they were se­lect­ed as per­fect cou­ples. And I’ll need ac­cess—un­re­strict­ed ac­cess—to their files.”

This time, Gre­go­ry Mi­nor rose to his feet. “That’s out of the ques­tion!” He turned to Lelyveld. “You know I’ve had reser­va­tions from the first, John. Bring­ing in some­body from the out­side is dan­ger­ous, desta­bi­liz­ing. It was one thing when we were deal­ing with an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent, some­thing that af­fect­ed us tan­gen­tial­ly. But with what hap­pened last night—well, the se­cu­ri­ty risk is too great.”

“It’s too late,” Car­oline Long replied. “The risk goes be­yond com­pa­ny se­crets now. You of all peo­ple, Gre­go­ry, should un­der­stand that.”

“Then for­get se­cu­ri­ty for the mo­ment. It just doesn’t make sense bring­ing some­body like Lash in­side the Wall. You read his jack­et, that messy busi­ness just be­fore he left the FBI. We have a hun­dred psy­chol­ogists on staff al­ready, all with im­pec­ca­ble cre­den­tials. Think of the time and ef­fort it would take to get him up to speed. And for what? No­body knows why these peo­ple died. Who’s to say there’s rea­son to think it will hap­pen again?”

“You want to take that chance?” Lash re­tort­ed an­gri­ly. “Be­cause there’s one thing I can tell you with ab­so­lute cer­tain­ty. You’ve caught a huge break. These two dou­ble sui­cides hap­pened on dif­fer­ent coasts. And in the case of the Wilners par­tic­ular­ly, so close to home, you’ve man­aged to keep things low key, out of the press. So no­body’s picked up on the co­in­ci­dence. But if a third cou­ple de­cides to go out the same way, there won’t be a chance in hell of keep­ing your pre­cious com­pa­ny out of the news.”

He sat back, breath­ing heav­ily. He raised his cof­fee cup, re­mem­bered it was emp­ty, set it back down again.

“I fear Dr. Lash is right,” Lelyveld said, his voice soft. “We must un­der­stand what’s go­ing on and put a stop to it, one way or an­oth­er—not just for the sake of the Thor­pes and the Wilners, but for Eden as well.” He glanced at Mi­nor. “Greg, I think Dr. Lash’s ob­jec­tiv­ity here is an as­set rather than a li­abil­ity. He may not yet un­der­stand the pro­cess, but he comes to it with a fresh eye. Of the dozen can­di­dates we con­sid­ered, he has the best qual­ifi­ca­tions. We al­ready have his con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ment on file. I say we put bring­ing him in­side to a vote.” He took a sip from a glass of wa­ter by his el­bow, then raised his hand in­to the si­lence.

Slow­ly, an­oth­er hand went up; then an­oth­er, and an­oth­er. Soon, all hands had been raised ex­cept those of Gre­go­ry Mi­nor and an­oth­er man in a dark suit be­side him.

“The mo­tion is passed,” Lelyveld said. “Dr. Lash, Ed­win here will get the pro­cess start­ed for you.”

Lash stood up.

But Lelyveld wasn’t through. “You’re be­ing giv­en un­prece­dent­ed ac­cess to Eden’s in­ner work­ings. You’ve re­quest­ed—and been grant­ed—a chance to do what no­body with your knowl­edge has done be­fore: ex­pe­ri­ence the pro­cess as an ac­tu­al ap­pli­cant. You’d do well to re­mem­ber the old say­ing Be care­ful what you wish for.”

Lash nod­ded, turned away.

“And Dr. Lash?” Lelyveld’s voice came again.

Lash turned back to face the chair­man.

“Work quick­ly. Quick­ly.”

As Mauch­ly opened the door, Lash heard Lelyveld say, “You may re­sume tran­scrib­ing the min­utes of the meet­ing, Ms. French.”

ELEVEN

Kevin Con­nel­ly walked across the broad black­top lot of the Stone­ham Cor­po­rate Cen­ter, mak­ing for his car. It was a Mer­cedes S-​class, low-​slung and sil­ver, and Con­nel­ly was care­ful to park it far from oth­er ve­hi­cles: it was worth the ex­tra walk to avoid dings and scratch­es.

He un­locked the door, opened it, and slid on­to the black leather. Con­nel­ly loved fine cars, and ev­ery­thing about the Mer­cedes—the sol­id thunk of the door, the cradling sen­sa­tion of the seat, the low throb of the en­gine—gave him plea­sure. The AMG per­for­mance pack­age had been worth ev­ery pen­ny of the twen­ty grand it added to the stick­er price. There had been a time, not so long ago, when the drive home it­self would have been the high­light of his evening.

That time was gone.

Con­nel­ly eased across the lot and slid on­to the feed­er road for Route 128, men­tal­ly plot­ting his route home. He’d stop by Burling­ton Wine Mer­chants for a bot­tle of Per­ri­er-​Jou­et, then vis­it the ad­join­ing florist for a bou­quet. Fuch­sias this week, he de­cid­ed; she wouldn’t be ex­pect­ing fuch­sias. Flow­ers and cham­pagne had be­come a sta­ple of his Sat­ur­day evenings with Lynn: the on­ly mys­tery, she liked to joke, was the col­or of ros­es he’d bring home.

If some­one had told him, just a few years be­fore, what a dif­fer­ence Lynn would make in his life, he would have scoffed. He had an ex­cit­ing and chal­leng­ing job as CIO for a soft­ware de­vel­op­ment com­pa­ny; he had plen­ty of friends and more than enough in­ter­ests to oc­cu­py his free time; he made a lot of mon­ey and nev­er had prob­lems meet­ing wom­en. And yet, on some al­most sub­con­scious lev­el, he must have known some­thing was miss­ing. Oth­er­wise he would nev­er have vis­it­ed Eden in the first place. But even af­ter en­dur­ing the gru­el­ing eval­ua­tion, even af­ter shelling out the $25,000 fee, he’d had no inkling of how Lynn would make his life com­plete. It was as if he’d been blind all his life, nev­er un­der­stand­ing what he’d been miss­ing un­til the gift of sight was sud­den­ly grant­ed.

He pulled on­to the free­way and merged with the week­end traf­fic, en­joy­ing the ef­fort­less ac­cel­er­ation of the big en­gine. The strange thing, he re­mem­bered, was how he’d felt that night of their first meet­ing. For the first fif­teen min­utes, maybe even more, he’d thought it was a huge mis­take; that some­how Eden had blun­dered, maybe mixed up his name with some­body else’s. He’d been warned in his ex­it in­ter­view this was a com­mon ini­tial re­ac­tion, but that made no dif­fer­ence: he’d spent the first part of the date look­ing across the restau­rant ta­ble at a wom­an who looked noth­ing like what he ex­pect­ed, won­der­ing how quick­ly he could get back the twen­ty-​five grand he’d dropped on the crazy scheme.

But then, some­thing had hap­pened. Even now, no mat­ter how many times he and Lynn had joked about it in the months that fol­lowed, he couldn’t ar­tic­ulate just what it was. It had crept up on him. Over the course of the din­ner he’d dis­cov­ered—of­ten in ways he could nev­er have ex­pect­ed—in­ter­ests, tastes, likes and dis­likes they shared. Even more in­trigu­ing were ar­eas where they dif­fered. It was as if, some­how, each filled gaps in the oth­er. He’d al­ways been weak in for­eign lan­guages; she was flu­ent in French as well as Span­ish, and ex­plained to him why lan­guage im­mer­sion was more nat­ural than mem­oriz­ing a text­book. She’d spent the sec­ond half of the din­ner speak­ing on­ly in French, and by the time his crème brûlée ar­rived he mar­veled at how much he was man­ag­ing to un­der­stand. On their sec­ond date, he learned Lynn was afraid to fly; as a pri­vate pi­lot, he ex­plained how to cope with fear of fly­ing and of­fered to take her up for de­sen­si­ti­za­tion flights in the Cess­na he co-​owned.

He shift­ed lanes, smil­ing to him­self. These were crude ex­am­ples, and he knew it. Truth was, the way their per­son­al­ities com­ple­ment­ed each oth­er’s was prob­ably too sub­tle and mul­ti­faceted to de­tail. He could on­ly com­pare it to the oth­er wom­en he’d known. The re­al dif­fer­ence, the fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ence, was that he’d known her close to two years—and yet he was as ex­cit­ed now at the prospect of see­ing her as he’d been in the first flush of new love.

He wasn’t per­fect; far from it. Eden’s psy­cho­log­ical screen­ing had made his own faults all too clear. He tend­ed to be im­pa­tient. He was rather ar­ro­gant. And so on. But some­how, Lynn can­celed these things out. He’d learned from her qui­et self-​as­sur­ance, her pa­tience. And she had learned from him, as well. When they’d first met, she was qui­et, a lit­tle re­served. But she’d loos­ened up a lot. She was still qui­et at times—the last cou­ple of days, for ex­am­ple—but it had grown so sub­tle that no­body but he would have no­ticed.

Al­though he’d nev­er have ad­mit­ted it to any­body, the thing he’d been most wor­ried about, go­ing in­to Eden, was the sex. He was old enough, and he’d had enough re­la­tion­ships, for bed­room marathons to be less im­por­tant to him than they once were. He was by no means a Vi­agra can­di­date, but he found he now had to feel deeply about a wom­an be­fore he could re­al­ly re­spond. This had been an is­sue in his pri­or re­la­tion­ship: the wom­an had been fif­teen years his ju­nior, and her sex­ual hunger, which as a young stud he would have found de­sir­able, had been a lit­tle in­tim­idat­ing.

It proved a non-​is­sue with Lynn. She’d been so pa­tient and so lov­ing—and her body was so won­der­ful­ly sen­si­tive to his touch—that the sex was the best of his life. And, like ev­ery­thing else about the mar­riage, it on­ly seemed to get bet­ter with time. He felt an elec­tric tick­le of lust as he thought about their up­com­ing an­niver­sary. They were go­ing to spend it at Ni­agara-​on-​the-​Lake, in Cana­da, where their hon­ey­moon had been. Just a few more days, Con­nel­ly thought as he slowed for his ex­it. If there was any­thing on Lynn’s mind, the spray of the Maid of the Mist would soon drive it far, far away.

TWELVE

At 8:55 Sun­day morn­ing, Christo­pher Lash pushed through a re­volv­ing door and en­tered the lob­by of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed, sur­round­ed by dozens of oth­er hope­ful clients. It was a crisp, sun­ny au­tumn day, and the pink gran­ite walls blazed with light. To­day he’d left the satchel at home. In fact, oth­er than his wal­let and his car keys, the on­ly thing in Lash’s pock­ets was a card Mauch­ly had giv­en him at their last meet­ing read­ing sim­ply: Can­di­date Pro­cess­ing, 9 a.m. Sun­day.

As he walked to­ward the es­ca­la­tor, Lash men­tal­ly re­viewed the test prepa­ra­tions he’d been coached on at the Acade­my, over a decade ago. Get a good night’s sleep. Eat a break­fast high in carbs and low in sug­ar. No al­co­hol or drugs. Don’t pan­ic.

Three out of four, he thought. He was tired, and de­spite the mam­moth Star­bucks espres­so he’d had on the drive in, he found him­self crav­ing an­oth­er. And though he was far from pan­icked, he was aware of feel­ing un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly ner­vous. That’s okay, he re­mind­ed him­self: a lit­tle ten­sion kept you alert. But he kept re­call­ing what the man said at the class re­union he’d ob­served: If I’d known just what was in store for me, I don’t know if I’d have had the co­jones to take that eval­ua­tion. It was a bru­tal day.

He put this aside as he ap­proached the es­ca­la­tor. Amaz­ing to think that de­mand for Eden’s ser­vices was so great it had to pro­cess its ap­pli­cants sev­en days a week. He stepped on, look­ing cu­ri­ous­ly at the peo­ple as­cend­ing the twin es­ca­la­tor to his left. What had been go­ing through Lewis Thor­pe’s head when he rode this same es­ca­la­tor? Or John Wilner’s? Were they ex­cit­ed? Ner­vous? Scared?

As he watched, he saw two peo­ple on the ad­join­ing es­ca­la­tor—a mid­dle-​aged man and a young wom­an, a few rid­ers apart—ex­change a brief glance. The man nod­ded al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly at the wom­an, then looked away. Lash thought of what the chair­man had said: se­cu­ri­ty was sub­tle but ev­er-​present. Were some of these would-​be ap­pli­cants re­al­ly Eden op­er­atives?

Reach­ing the top of the es­ca­la­tor, Lash passed be­neath the wide arch­way and en­tered a pas­sage dec­orat­ed with cheery pro­mo­tion­al posters. Faint par­al­lel lines had been etched in­to the floor, cre­at­ing a se­ries of wide lanes lead­ing down the pas­sage. They had the ef­fect of mak­ing the ap­pli­cants—of their own ac­cord, or through sub­tle or­ches­tra­tion—spread apart and walk side by side. Ahead, each lane ter­mi­nat­ed in a door. A tech­ni­cian in a white coat stood be­fore each. Lash could see the per­son at the end of his lane was a tall, slen­der man of about thir­ty.

As Lash ap­proached, the man nod­ded and opened the door be­hind him. “Step in­side, please,” he said. Lash glanced around and no­ticed at­ten­dants at the oth­er doors do­ing the same. He stepped through his door­way.

Ahead lay an­oth­er hall­way, very nar­row, un­re­lieved­ly white. The man closed the door, then led the way down the fea­ture­less hall. Af­ter the airy lob­by and the wide ap­proach cor­ri­dor, this space felt claus­tro­pho­bic. Lash fol­lowed the man down the pas­sage un­til it opened in­to a small, square room. It was as white as the hall­way. Its on­ly fea­tures were six iden­ti­cal doors set in­to the sur­round­ing walls. In­stead of a han­dle, each door had a small white card read­er bolt­ed to its face. One door in the far wall had a plac­ard des­ig­nat­ing it a uni­sex bath­room.

The man turned to­ward him. “Dr. Lash,” he said. “I’m Robert Vo­gel. Wel­come to your Eden eval­ua­tion.”

“Thanks,” said Lash, shak­ing the prof­fered hand.

“How are you feel­ing?”

“Fine, thanks.”

“We’ve got a long day ahead of us. If at any time you have ques­tions or con­cerns, I’ll do my best to ad­dress them.”

Lash nod­ded as the man slipped a hand in­to his lab coat and pulled out a palm­top com­put­er. He plucked a sty­lus from its groove and be­gan scrawl­ing on the pad. Af­ter a mo­ment, he frowned.

“What is it?” Lash asked quick­ly.

“Noth­ing. It’s just—” the man seemed sur­prised. “It’s just that you’re show­ing up as pre-​ap­proved for the eval­ua­tion. I’ve nev­er seen that be­fore. You had no ini­tial screen­ing?”

“No, I didn’t. If it’s a prob­lem—”

“Oh, no. Ev­ery­thing else checks out.” The man re­cov­ered quick­ly. “You do un­der­stand, of course, that you won’t be for­mal­ly ac­cept­ed as a can­di­date un­til af­ter to­day’s eval­ua­tion?”

“Yes.”

“And that if you are not ac­cept­ed, your ap­pli­ca­tion fee of $1,000 is non­re­fund­able?”

“Yes.” There had been no ap­pli­ca­tion fee, of course, but the man didn’t have to know ev­ery­thing. Lash was re­lieved: clear­ly, Vo­gel didn’t know his re­al pur­pose in be­ing here. Lash had told Mauch­ly em­phat­ical­ly that he want­ed to be treat­ed as a re­al can­di­date, see ev­ery­thing the Thor­pes and the Wilners had seen.

“Any ques­tions be­fore we be­gin?” When Lash shook his head, Vo­gel drew a card from around his neck, strung on a long black cord. Lash looked at it cu­ri­ous­ly: it was pewter-​col­ored, with an iri­des­cence that did not com­plete­ly hide the gold-​green of mi­cro­pro­cess­ing in­side. Eden’s in­fin­ity lo­go was em­bossed on one side. Vo­gel ran the card through the read­er by the near­est door, and it sprang open with a click.

The room be­yond seemed lit­tle wider than the hall­way. There was a dig­ital cam­era on a tri­pod in­side, and a paint­ed X on the floor be­yond the cam­era.

“Please stand on the cross and look at the lens. I’m go­ing to ask you two ques­tions. An­swer them as com­plete­ly and as truth­ful­ly as you can.” And Vo­gel took up po­si­tion be­hind the cam­era. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, a tiny red light glowed on its up­per hous­ing.

“Why are you here?” Vo­gel asked.

Lash hes­itat­ed for just a mo­ment, re­mem­ber­ing the tapes he’d watched in the Flagstaff house. If I’m go­ing to do this at all, he thought, I should do it right. And that meant hon­esty, avoid­ing easy or cyn­ical an­swers.

“I’m here be­cause I’m search­ing for some­thing,” he replied. “For an an­swer.”

“De­scribe one thing you did this morn­ing, and why you think we should know about it.”

Lash thought. “I caused a traf­fic jam.”

Vo­gel said noth­ing, and Lash went on.

“I was on I-95, com­ing in­to the city. I’ve got an E-​ZPass unit for the wind­shield so I don’t have to pay cash at the tun­nels and toll roads. I get to the bridge lead­ing in­to Man­hat­tan. It took a lit­tle time, be­cause one of the three lanes at the toll plaza was down. The read­er scans my card. But for some rea­son, the wood­en gate doesn’t lift. I sit for a minute un­til an at­ten­dant comes. She tells me my E-​ZPass is in­valid. That it was re­voked. But that’s not the case, I’m ful­ly paid up. The thing had worked fine half a dozen times just this week. Clear­ly their sys­tem was messed up. But she in­sists I pay the six dol­lars to get across the bridge in cash. I say no, I want her to fix the er­ror. Mean­while, now there’s on­ly one good lane on­to the bridge. The line be­hind me is grow­ing longer. Peo­ple are honk­ing. She in­sists. I stick to my guns. A cop takes no­tice, starts to walk over. Fi­nal­ly she calls me an un­pleas­ant name, opens the gate man­ual­ly, and lets me through. I give her my most en­dear­ing smile as I pass.”

He stopped, won­der­ing why this of all things had come to mind. Then he re­al­ized it was, in fact, in char­ac­ter. If he’d been here for him­self, for re­al, he’d have said some­thing equal­ly mun­dane. It wasn’t like him to cough up a teary-​eyed sto­ry about how he’d em­barked on a quest for the wom­an of his dreams.

“I guess I men­tion this be­cause it re­minds me of my fa­ther,” Lash went on. “He was very com­bat­ive over the lit­tle things, as if it was a per­son­al grudge match be­tween him and life. Maybe I’m more like him than I re­al­ized.”

He fell silent, and af­ter a mo­ment the red light went out.

“Thank you, Dr. Lash,” Vo­gel said. He stepped away from the cam­era. “And now, if you’d fol­low me, please?”

They re­turned to the small cen­tral hall­way, and Vo­gel swiped his card through the read­er of the ad­join­ing door. The room be­yond was larg­er than the first. It con­tained a chair and a desk, on which sat a small Lu­cite cube hold­ing sharp­ened pen­cils. Once again, the room was un­re­lieved­ly white. The ceil­ing was en­tire­ly cov­ered in squares of frost­ed plas­tic. All these lit­tle rooms, iden­ti­cal in col­or and lack of dec­ora­tion, each be­ing used for a sin­gle pur­pose: they seemed to Lash al­most like a gen­teel ver­sion of an in­ter­ro­ga­tion suite.

Vo­gel mo­tioned Lash to sit down. “Our tests run on a clock, but on­ly to make sure that you com­plete the nec­es­sary bat­tery by the end of the day. You have one hour, and I think you’ll find it plen­ty of time. There are no right or wrong an­swers. If you have any ques­tions, I’ll be just out­side.” He laid a large white en­ve­lope on the desk, then left the room, clos­ing the door qui­et­ly be­hind him.

There was no clock, so Lash re­moved his watch and laid it on the ta­ble. He picked up the en­ve­lope, up­end­ed it in­to his hand. In­side was a thin test man­ual and a blank score sheet:

Lash scanned the ques­tions quick­ly. He rec­og­nized its ba­sic struc­ture: it was an ob­jec­tive per­son­al­ity test, the kind made fa­mous by the Min­neso­ta Mul­ti­pha­sic Per­son­al­ity In­ven­to­ry. It seemed an odd choice for Eden; be­cause such tests were pri­mar­ily used as psy­cho­an­alyt­ical di­ag­nos­tics, they ar­ranged per­son­al­ity in­to a se­ries of scales, rather than fer­ret­ing out par­tic­ular likes and dis­likes. This seemed an un­usu­al­ly long test, too: while the MMPI-2 con­sist­ed of 567 ques­tions, this test had pre­cise­ly one thou­sand. Lash de­cid­ed this was prob­ably due to au­then­ti­ca­tion fac­tors: such tests al­ways in­clud­ed a num­ber of re­dun­dant ques­tions to make sure that the sub­ject was an­swer­ing con­sis­tent­ly. Eden was be­ing ex­tra-​cau­tious.

He be­came aware of the tick­ing of his watch. With a sigh, he took one of the pen­cils from the Lu­cite cube and turned to the first ques­tion.

1. I en­joy watch­ing large pa­rades.

Lash did, so he shad­ed in the o in the “agree” col­umn.

2. I some­times hear voic­es oth­er peo­ple claim not to hear.

A smok­ing gun if ev­er he’d seen one. No right or wrong an­swers—yeah, sure. If he an­swered in the pos­itive, the rank­ing on his schizophre­nia scale would in­crease. He shad­ed in the “strong­ly dis­agree” o.

3. I nev­er lose my tem­per.

Lash rec­og­nized this ques­tion type by its use of the word “nev­er.” All per­son­al­ity tests con­tained so-​called va­lid­ity scales: ques­tions that could in­di­cate whether the test-​tak­er was ly­ing, or ex­ag­ger­at­ing, or fak­ing some­thing like brav­ery (for po­lice de­part­ment ap­pli­cants) or men­tal ill­ness (for dis­abil­ity com­pen­sa­tion). Lash knew that if you claimed too of­ten nev­er to feel fear, nev­er to have told a fib, nev­er to be moody, your lie scale would be­come el­evat­ed and your test thrown out as in­valid. He shad­ed in the “dis­agree” o.

4. Most peo­ple tell me I’m an out­go­ing per­son.

This ques­tion skewed to­ward the ex­tro­vert/in­tro­vert scale. In such tests, ex­tro­ver­sion was looked up­on as a fa­vor­able trait. But Lash pre­ferred his pri­va­cy. He again shad­ed the “dis­agree” oval.

The pen­cil point snapped and he cursed un­der his breath. Five min­utes had al­ready passed. If he was go­ing to do this, he’d have to take the test like a typ­ical per­son, fill­ing in the an­swers in­stinc­tive­ly rather than an­alyz­ing each one. He reached for a fresh pen­cil and reap­plied him­self to the task.

By ten o’clock, he had com­plet­ed the bat­tery of ques­tions and been giv­en a five-​minute break. Then Vo­gel seat­ed him again at the desk, left for a mo­ment, and re­turned with an­oth­er white en­ve­lope and the cof­fee Lash had re­quest­ed: de­caf­feinat­ed, the on­ly kind of­fered. Lash opened the new en­ve­lope and found it con­tained a bat­tery of cog­ni­tive in­tel­li­gence tests: ver­bal com­pre­hen­sion; vi­su­al-​spa­tial; a mem­ory bat­tery. Once again, the tests were longer and more thor­ough than he’d ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore, and by the time he was done it was near­ly eleven.

An­oth­er five-​minute break; an­oth­er cup of de­caf­feinat­ed cof­fee; and a third white en­ve­lope. Rub­bing his eyes bleari­ly, Lash opened it and pulled out the sta­pled pam­phlet with­in. This time, the test con­sist­ed of a long set of in­com­plete sen­tences:

I wish my fa­ther _________________________________

My sec­ond fa­vorite food is _______________________

My great­est mis­take was __________________________

I feel that chil­dren are __________________________

I’d like it if oth­er peo­ple _____________________

I be­lieve that mu­tu­al or­gasm _______________________

I feel that red wine _______________________________

I would be com­plete­ly hap­py if on­ly _______________

Some ar­eas of my body are very ___________________

Moun­tain hik­ing in spring is _______________________

The book with the great­est in­flu­ence on me was ____

Here they were at last: the per­son­al, in­ti­mate ques­tions that had been no­tice­ably lack­ing from the first test. Once again, Lash guessed there were close to a thou­sand. As he scanned the un­fin­ished sen­tences, his in­stincts—both pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al—warned him to be disin­gen­uous. But he re­mind­ed him­self half-​mea­sures would not work here: if he was to ful­ly un­der­stand the pro­cess, he had to ex­pe­ri­ence it with the kind of com­mit­ment that the Wilners and the Thor­pes had made. He took a fresh pen­cil, con­sid­ered the first sen­tence, then com­plet­ed it:

I wish my fa­ther had tak­en the time to praise me more of­ten.

It was al­most twelve-​thir­ty by the time he filled in the last sen­tence, and Lash felt the be­gin­nings of a headache creep­ing along his tem­ples and be­hind his eyes. Vo­gel came in with a long, nar­row sheet in his hand, and for a ter­ri­ble mo­ment Lash thought an­oth­er test was com­ing. In­stead, it was a lunch menu. Al­though he felt lit­tle ap­petite, he du­ti­ful­ly made his choic­es and hand­ed it back to Vo­gel. The man sug­gest­ed Lash take a bath­room break, then stepped out of the room, leav­ing the door open.

By the time Lash re­turned, Vo­gel had brought in a fold­ing chair and placed it per­pen­dic­ular to his own. Where the cube of pen­cils had been was now an ob­long box of black card­board.

“How are you feel­ing, Dr. Lash?” Vo­gel asked as he sat in the fold­ing chair.

Lash passed a hand across his eyes. “Sand­bagged.”

A smile flit­ted briefly across Vo­gel’s face. “It seems gru­el­ing, I know. But our stud­ies have shown that a sin­gle, in­ten­sive day of eval­ua­tion yields the best re­sults. Please sit.” He opened the box, re­veal­ing a stack of large cards face down.

The mo­ment he saw a small num­ber print­ed on the top card, Lash knew what lay ahead. He’d been so en­grossed in the first three tests he’d al­most for­got­ten about what he him­self had ex­am­ined in the blind just a few days be­fore.

“We’re now go­ing to do an inkblot test, known as the Hirschfeldt. Are you fa­mil­iar with it?”

“More or less.”

“I see.” Vo­gel drew out a blank con­trol sheet from the box, made a no­ta­tion. “Let’s be­gin. I’ll show you the inkblots, one by one, and you tell me what they look like.” He lift­ed the first card from the box, turned it over, and placed it on the ta­ble, fac­ing Lash. “What might this be?”

Lash looked at the pic­ture, try­ing to emp­ty his mind of pri­or as­so­ci­ations—es­pe­cial­ly the ter­ri­ble im­ages that had jumped un­bid­den in­to his mind back at the Audubon Cen­ter. “I see a bird,” he said. “Up at the top. It’s like a raven, the white part is its beak. And the whole card looks like a war­rior, Japanese, a nin­ja or samu­rai. With two swords in scab­bards—you can see them stick­ing out there, left and right, point­ed down­wards.”

Vo­gel scrib­bled on the con­trol sheet, tak­ing down—Lash knew—his re­marks ver­ba­tim. “Very good,” he said af­ter a mo­ment. “Let’s go on to the next one. What might this be?”

Lash worked his way through the cards, fight­ing a grow­ing weari­ness, try­ing al­ways to make the re­spons­es his own rather than what he knew to be com­mon replies. By one o’clock, Vo­gel had fin­ished both the re­sponse and in­quiry phas­es of the test, and Lash’s headache had grown worse. As he watched Vo­gel put the cards away, he found him­self won­der­ing about all the oth­er ap­pli­cants who had streamed in­to the build­ing this morn­ing: were they all squir­reled away some­where on this floor, in their own lit­tle test­ing suites? Had Lewis Thor­pe felt as ex­haust­ed as he him­self did now, as tired of star­ing at the blank white walls?

“You must be hun­gry, Dr. Lash,” Vo­gel said as he closed the box. “Come on. Your lunch is wait­ing.”

Though he felt no hun­gri­er now than be­fore the inkblots, Lash fol­lowed him across the small cen­tral space to one of the doors in the far wall. Vo­gel swiped his card through the read­er, and the door sprang open to re­veal yet an­oth­er white room. This, how­ev­er, had prints on three of its walls. They were sim­ple, well-​framed pho­tographs of forests and sea­coasts, bereft of peo­ple or wildlife, yet Lash’s gaze rest­ed hun­gri­ly on them af­ter the ster­ile empti­ness of the morn­ing.

His lunch was laid out on a crisp linen table­cloth: cold poached salmon with dill sauce, wild rice, a sour­dough roll, and cof­fee—de­caf­feinat­ed, of course. As he ate, Lash felt his ap­petite re­turn and the headache re­cede. Vo­gel, who had left him to dine in peace, re­turned twen­ty min­utes lat­er.

“What next?” Lash asked, dab­bing at his mouth with a nap­kin. He held out lit­tle hope his ques­tion would be an­swered, but Vo­gel sur­prised him.

“Just two more items,” Vo­gel said. “The phys­ical ex­am­ina­tion and the psy­cho­log­ical in­ter­view. If you’ve fin­ished, we can pro­ceed im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Lash laid the nap­kin aside and rose, think­ing back again to what the man in the class re­union had said about his own day of test­ing. So far it had been tir­ing, even en­er­vat­ing, but noth­ing worse. A phys­ical ex­am he could han­dle. And he’d giv­en enough psy­cho­log­ical in­ter­views to know what to ex­pect.

“Lead on,” he said.

Vo­gel ush­ered Lash back out in­to the cen­tral space and point­ed at one of the two blank doors not yet opened. Vo­gel swiped his card through the read­er, then be­gan scratch­ing some­thing in­to his palm de­vice with the plas­tic sty­lus. “You may pro­ceed, Dr. Lash. Please re­move your clothes and put on the hos­pi­tal gown you’ll find in­side. You can hang your things on the door hook.”

Lash en­tered the new room, closed the door, and looked around as he be­gan un­dress­ing. It was an ex­am­ina­tion room, small but re­mark­ably well equipped for its size. Un­like the pre­vi­ous rooms, there were plen­ty of items here, but most were of a kind Lash would have pre­ferred not to see: probes, curette and sy­ringe pack­ets, ster­ile pads. A faint smell of an­ti­sep­tic hung in the air.

Lash had no soon­er donned the gown be­fore the door opened again and a man stepped in. He was short and dark-​com­plex­ioned, with thin­ning hair and a bot­tle-​brush mous­tache. A stetho­scope hung from the side pock­et of his white coat.

“Let’s see,” he said, ex­am­in­ing a fold­er in his hand. “Dr. Lash. Med­ical doc­tor, by chance?”

“No. Doc­tor­ate in psy­chol­ogy.”

“Very good, very good,” the doc­tor said, putting the fold­er aside and pulling on a pair of la­tex gloves. “Now just re­lax, Dr. Lash. This shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“An hour?” Lash said, but fell silent when he saw the doc­tor pok­ing his fin­ger in­to a jar of petroleum jel­ly. Maybe $100,000 isn’t such an out­ra­geous fee, af­ter all, he thought to him­self.

The doc­tor’s es­ti­mate proved cor­rect. Over the next six­ty min­utes, Lash en­dured a more com­pre­hen­sive and painstak­ing phys­ical ex­am­ina­tion than he’d ev­er thought pos­si­ble. EKG and EEG; echocar­dio­gram; sam­ples of urine, stool, mu­cus mem­branes, and the ep­ithe­lial lin­ing of his mouth; an ex­ten­sive back­ground med­ical his­to­ry of both him­self and two gen­er­ations of fore­bears; checks of re­flex­es and vi­sion; neu­ro­log­ical test­ing and fine mo­tor con­trol; an ex­haus­tive der­ma­to­log­ical ex­am­ina­tion. There was even a point when the doc­tor gave him a glass beaker and, leav­ing the room, asked for a sam­ple of Lash’s ejac­ulate. As the door closed, Lash stared at the tube—chill in his fin­gers—and felt a sense of un­re­al­ity creep over him. Makes sense, a small voice said in his head. In­fer­til­ity or im­po­tence would be an im­por­tant con­cern.

Some time lat­er, he told the doc­tor he could come in again, and the ex­am­ina­tion re­sumed.

“Just the blood work now,” the doc­tor said at last, ar­rang­ing a tray con­tain­ing at least two dozen small glass tubes, cur­rent­ly emp­ty. “Please lean back on the ex­am­in­ing ta­ble.”

Lash did so, clos­ing his eyes as he felt a rub­ber tube tight­en­ing above his el­bow. There was a cold swab of Be­ta­dine, a brief prob­ing fin­ger­tip, then the sting of a nee­dle slid­ing home.

“Make a fist, please,” the doc­tor said. Lash did so, wait­ing sto­ical­ly while at least half a pint of blood was drawn. At last, he felt the ten­sion of the rub­ber re­lease. The doc­tor slipped out the nee­dle and ap­plied a small ban­dage in one smooth mo­tion. Then he helped Lash in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion. “How do you feel?”

“I’m okay.”

“Very well. You may pro­ceed to the next room.”

“But my clothes—”

“They’ll be wait­ing here for you at the close of the in­ter­view.”

Lash blinked, di­gest­ing this a mo­ment. And then he turned away, to­ward the cen­tral cu­bi­cle.

Vo­gel was there, once again scrib­bling some­thing on his dig­ital de­vice. He looked up as Lash emerged from the ex­am­ina­tion room. The nor­mal­ly un­flap­pable face now held an ex­pres­sion Lash couldn’t quite read.

“Dr. Lash,” Vo­gel said as he slipped the de­vice back in­to his lab coat. “This way, if you please.” But Lash need­ed lit­tle guid­ance: there was on­ly one door in the suite that had not yet been opened, and he could guess where the fi­nal in­ter­view would take place.

When he turned to­ward it, he found the door al­ready ajar. And the room be­yond was un­like any of the oth­ers he had seen that day.

THIRTEEN

Lash hes­itat­ed in the door­way. Ahead lay a room al­most as small as the oth­ers, sim­ply fur­nished: a chair in the cen­ter with un­usu­al­ly long arm­rests; a met­al cab­inet be­side it; a ta­ble with a lap­top near the rear wall. But Lash’s at­ten­tion was drawn im­me­di­ate­ly to the leads that snaked away from the chair to the lap­top. He’d sat in on enough in­ter­ro­ga­tions to rec­og­nize the set­up as a lie de­tec­tor.

A man was seat­ed be­hind the ta­ble, read­ing from a fold­er. See­ing Lash, he stood and came around the ta­ble. He was tall and ca­dav­er­ous­ly thin, his head cov­ered with iron-​gray hair, close­ly cropped. “Thank you, Robert,” the man said to the hov­er­ing Vo­gel. Then he closed the door and word­less­ly mo­tioned Lash to­ward the cen­ter chair.

Lash com­plied, feel­ing dis­be­lief as the man at­tached clips to his fin­ger­tips, fit­ted a blood pres­sure cuff to his wrist.

The man moved out of Lash’s vi­sion for a mo­ment. When he re­turned, he was hold­ing a red cap in one hand. A long, rain­bow-​hued rib­bon ca­ble was af­fixed to one side. Dozens of clear plas­tic discs, each about the size of a dime, had been sewn in­to the cloth. Two dozen, to be ex­act, Lash thought grim­ly. He rec­og­nized it as a “red cap,” adult head­gear for the Quan­ti­ta­tive EEG test, or QEEG, which mon­itored the fre­quen­cies of brain ac­tiv­ity. It was usu­al­ly used for neu­ro­log­ical dis­or­ders, dis­so­ci­ation, head trau­ma, and so forth.

This was not like any psych in­ter­view he had ev­er heard of.

The man in­ject­ed con­duct­ing gel in­to each of the twen­ty-​four elec­trodes, at­tached the cap to Lash’s head, and fit­ted ground leads to each of his ears. Then he re­turned to the ta­ble and at­tached the rib­bon ca­ble to the lap­top. Lash watched, the cap on his head feel­ing un­com­fort­ably snug.

The man sat down and be­gan typ­ing. He peered at the screen, typed again. He had not shak­en Lash’s hand or ac­knowl­edged him in any way.

Lash wait­ed, numb, feel­ing ex­posed and undig­ni­fied in his hos­pi­tal gown. He knew from ex­pe­ri­ence that, at heart, psych eval­ua­tions were of­ten bat­tles of wit be­tween shrink and pa­tient. One was try­ing to learn things that, many times, the oth­er did not want to have known. Per­haps this was just some unique form of that game. He re­mained silent, wait­ing, try­ing to clear the fa­tigue from his head.

The man shift­ed his gaze from the lap­top to the fold­er on his desk. Then, at long last, he lift­ed his head and looked Lash di­rect­ly in the eyes.

“Dr. Lash,” he said. “I’m Dr. Al­ic­to, your se­nior eval­ua­tor.”

Lash re­mained silent.

“As se­nior eval­ua­tor, I’m privy to a lit­tle more back­ground in­for­ma­tion than Mr. Vo­gel. In­for­ma­tion, for ex­am­ple, that would in­di­cate your pri­or job no doubt fa­mil­iar­ized you with a lie de­tec­tor test.”

Lash nod­ded.

“In that case we’ll dis­pense with the usu­al busi­ness of demon­strat­ing its ef­fec­tive­ness. And are you al­so fa­mil­iar with the neu­ro­feed­back de­vice I’ve placed on your head?”

Lash nod­ded again.

“As a clin­ician, you’re prob­ably cu­ri­ous about its use in this en­vi­ron­ment. You know lie de­tec­tors on­ly mea­sure heart rate, blood pres­sure, mus­cle ten­sion, and so forth. We’ve found the fac­tor-​an­alyzed da­ta from the QEEG an ex­cel­lent com­ple­ment. It al­lows us to go far be­yond the nor­mal ‘yes’ and ‘no’ re­spons­es of a lie de­tec­tor.”

“I see.”

“Please keep your arms mo­tion­less on the arm­rests and your back straight. I’m go­ing to ask some base­line ques­tions. An­swer on­ly yes or no. Is your name Christo­pher Lash?”

“Yes.”

“Do you cur­rent­ly re­side at 17 Ship Bot­tom Road?”

“Yes.”

“Are you thir­ty-​nine years old?”

“Yes.”

“Now I’m go­ing to show you a play­ing card. What­ev­er col­or it is, red or blue, I want you to tell me the op­po­site col­or. Un­der­stand?”

“Yes.”

Al­ic­to picked up a deck of cards, with­drew a red card, held it up. “What col­or is this card?”

“Blue.”

“Thank you.” Al­ic­to put the deck away. “Now then. Have you com­plet­ed to­day’s tests in as hon­est and com­plete a man­ner as pos­si­ble?”

The man was look­ing at him with a quizzi­cal, al­most du­bi­ous ex­pres­sion. “Of course,” Lash said.

Al­ic­to looked back down at the fold­er, let the si­lence build a mo­ment. “Why are you here, Dr. Lash?”

“I should think that would be ob­vi­ous.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, it’s not ob­vi­ous at all.” Al­ic­to flipped over some pages in the fold­er. “You see, I’ve nev­er done an eval­ua­tion on a psy­chol­ogist be­fore. For some rea­son, they nev­er be­come Eden can­di­dates. In­ternists, car­di­ol­ogists, anes­the­si­ol­ogists by the truck­load. But nev­er psy­chol­ogists or psy­chother­apists. I have a the­ory about that. But in any case, I’ve been go­ing over your test re­sults of the morn­ing, par­tic­ular­ly the per­son­al­ity in­ven­to­ry.” He raised a scor­ing sheet, giv­ing Lash the mer­est glimpse:

“It’s in­trigu­ing, to say the least.” Al­ic­to re­placed the sheet in the fold­er.

Nor­mal­ly, psy­cho­me­tric eval­ua­tors would not re­veal in­for­ma­tion like this to sub­jects. Lash won­dered why Al­ic­to was treat­ing him in an al­most cav­alier way. “If you want to know more about my taste in movies, or if I pre­fer cognac to whisky, you should be con­cen­trat­ing on the pref­er­ence test.”

Al­ic­to glanced at him. “See, that’s an­oth­er thing,” he said. “Most can­di­dates are co­op­er­ative, ea­ger to help, can­did. Sar­cas­tic re­spons­es are most un­usu­al and, frankly, a mat­ter of con­cern.”

An­noy­ance be­gan bub­bling up through the haze of weari­ness. “In oth­er words, you in­tim­idate your can­di­dates and they act like syco­phants in re­turn. I can see how that would be grat­ify­ing to one’s ego. Par­tic­ular­ly if that ego had been in­ad­equate­ly nur­tured in ear­li­er life.”

A flash of some­thing—ir­ri­ta­tion, or per­haps sus­pi­cion—flick­ered in Al­ic­to’s eyes. As quick­ly as it had come, it was gone again.

“You seem an­gry,” he said. “What is it about my ques­tions that makes you an­gry?”

It oc­curred to Lash this very line of ques­tion­ing could al­ready be pro­vid­ing the re­spons­es Al­ic­to was search­ing for. He fought back his an­noy­ance. “Look,” he said in as rea­son­able a tone as he could muster. “It’s hard to feel co­op­er­ative when strapped to a lie de­tec­tor, wear­ing noth­ing but a biofeed­back cap and a hos­pi­tal gown.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, most can­di­dates ap­pre­ci­ate the lie de­tec­tor, once they’ve got­ten over the ini­tial sur­prise. They find it re­as­sur­ing to know that any part­ner they are matched with has been as hon­est as they’ve been.”

Al­ic­to’s calm voice added to the un­re­al­ity of the sit­ua­tion. Lash’s anger fad­ed and grog­gi­ness again took its place. “Why don’t we get on with the eval­ua­tion?” he asked.

“What makes you think all this isn’t part of the eval­ua­tion, Dr. Lash? I’m eval­uat­ing you as a com­plete per­son in re­al time, not as the face­less body that com­plet­ed those tests this morn­ing. But very well, back to the per­son­al­ity in­ven­to­ry. While your scales for false­hood and me­di­an re­sponse are good, your re­me­di­al skews ab­nor­mal­ly high.”

Lash re­mained silent.

“As you know, that im­plies you are lim­it­ing dis­clo­sure of neg­ative in­for­ma­tion about your­self: try­ing to make a good im­pres­sion, or try­ing to min­imize per­son­al prob­lems.”

Lash wait­ed, curs­ing him­self for com­plet­ing the tests can­did­ly.

“Some of your clin­ical scales are most un­usu­al for an Eden can­di­date. For ex­am­ple, your so­cial in­tro­ver­sion scale is high, as is your in­di­vid­ual con­trol scale. Tak­en to­geth­er, these in­di­cate a lon­er per­son­al­ity; some­one who has per­haps had bad ex­pe­ri­ences in re­la­tion­ships. Such a per­son would not be mo­ti­vat­ed to take such a com­plete—and ex­pen­sive—step as com­ing to us.” He glanced up from the fold­er. “Un­der­stand, Dr. Lash, that I would not usu­al­ly share such tech­ni­cal de­tails with a can­di­date. But your be­ing a fel­low psy­chol­ogist . . . well, it’s a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

A unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to watch me squirm, Lash thought.

“Such items alone would be of con­cern to me as an Eden eval­ua­tor. But there are al­so el­ements of the test—may I be frank here?—that re­veal dis­tinct pathonomon­ic signs. Red flags, if you will.” An­oth­er turn­ing of pages. “For ex­am­ple, your amoral­ity and self-​alien­ation scales are un­usu­al­ly high. Your de­pres­sion scale, though not ex­act­ly high, is well above modal. Your vul­ner­abil­ity scale—that is, your de­gree of sen­si­tive­ness to sur­round­ing events—is al­so high, de­spite your in­di­vid­ual con­trol scale: an anoma­ly I can’t im­me­di­ate­ly ex­plain. This all seems like a dan­ger­ous cock­tail, Dr. Lash. Some­thing I would urge you to have looked at and, if nec­es­sary, treat­ed in a clin­ical set­ting.”

Al­ic­to closed the fold­er with an air of fi­nal­ity and turned to the lap­top. “Just a few more ques­tions, Dr. Lash. I promise you this won’t take long.”

Lash nod­ded. Weari­ness threat­ened to en­gulf him.

“How long have you been in pri­vate prac­tice?”

“Al­most three years.”

“And your spe­cial­ty?”

“Fam­ily re­la­tion­ships. Mar­ital re­la­tion­ships.”

“And your own mar­ital sta­tus?”

“I’m sin­gle.”

“Wid­owed?”

“No. Di­vorced. As you know.”

“Just an­oth­er con­trol ques­tion for the lie de­tec­tor. Your heart­beat is ac­cel­er­at­ing, Dr. Lash. I would ad­vise you to breathe slow­ly. When were you di­vorced?”

“Three years ago.”

“What was that like for you?”

“I was mar­ried. Now I’m not.”

“And you left the FBI for pri­vate prac­tice around the same time.” Al­ic­to looked up from the screen. “It would seem that quite an in­ter­est­ing nexus of events took place three years ago: a di­vorce, a high­ly dra­mat­ic ca­reer change. Would you care to elab­orate on why the di­vorce took place?”

Lash felt him­self tense. Does he know about Wyre? Is he just bait­ing me? Aloud, he an­swered, “No.”

“Why is it so dif­fi­cult for you to talk about?”

“I just don’t see the rel­evance.”

“No rel­evance? For a po­ten­tial client?”

“I’m here about my fu­ture, not my past.”

“One is shaped by the oth­er. But very well. Let’s stay in the past a lit­tle longer. Elab­orate a lit­tle on what you did for the FBI, if you please.”

“I was with the In­ves­tiga­tive Sup­port unit out of Quan­ti­co. I ex­am­ined mur­der scenes, drew up psy­cho­log­ical au­top­sies of the vic­tim and un­sub—the per­pe­tra­tor. I’d look for com­mon­al­ities be­tween them, look for cause, draw up a pro­file of the killer and co­or­di­nate with NCAVC.”

“How did you feel about do­ing that kind of work?”

“It was chal­leng­ing.”

“And were you good at your job?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you leave?”

It seemed an ef­fort just to blink. “I grew tired of try­ing to fig­ure out what had gone wrong with peo­ple af­ter they were dead. I thought I could be more use­ful help­ing them when they were still alive.”

“Un­der­stand­able. And, no doubt, you saw some ter­ri­ble things.”

Lash nod­ded.

“But they didn’t af­fect you?”

“Of course they af­fect­ed me.”

“What kind of a toll, ex­act­ly, did they take on you?”

“Toll?” Lash shrugged.

“So they didn’t dis­turb you in any patho­log­ical way. They ran off your back, so to speak. They didn’t af­fect your work or your­self.”

Lash nod­ded again.

“Could you an­swer aloud, please, Dr. Lash?”

“No, they did not.”

“I ask be­cause I’ve read a few stud­ies on agent burnout. Some­times, when peo­ple see ter­ri­ble things, they don’t ad­dress them as they should. In­stead, they bury them, try to ig­nore them. And, in time, they come to live in a con­stant state of dark­ness. It’s not their fault: it’s the cul­ture of the work­place. Show­ing pity, weak­ness, is frowned up­on.”

Lash said noth­ing. Al­ic­to glanced over at the lap­top screen, made a no­ta­tion on the fold­er. He paused, glanc­ing over the sheets. Then he raised his head again.

“Was there any par­tic­ular as­sign­ment in your pri­or job that pre­cip­itat­ed your de­ci­sion to leave? Some un­usu­al­ly un­pleas­ant case, say? Some er­ror or lapse of judg­ment on your part? Some­thing, maybe, that spilled over in­to your pri­vate life?”

De­spite the weari­ness, this ques­tion sent an elec­tric twinge through Lash. So he does know, af­ter all. He glanced quick­ly at Al­ic­to, who was re­gard­ing him in­tent­ly.

“No.”

“I’m sor­ry?”

“I said, no.”

“I see.” Al­ic­to glanced at the screen again, made an­oth­er no­ta­tion. Then he leaned back from the lap­top. “That con­cludes the in­ter­view, Dr. Lash,” he said, com­ing around the ta­ble and re­mov­ing the cap and the fin­ger clips. “Thank you for your pa­tience.”

Lash stood up. The world rocked slight­ly and he stead­ied him­self on the chair.

“Are you get­ting enough sleep?” Al­ic­to asked. “Be­cause I’ve ob­served you seem to be more than usu­al­ly tired.”

“I’m fine.”

But Al­ic­to was still look­ing at him close­ly, with what—now that the in­ter­view was con­clud­ed—seemed to be gen­uine con­cern. “You know, sleep­less­ness can be com­mon in cas­es of—”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

Al­ic­to nod­ded slow­ly. Then he turned away, raised his hand to­ward the door.

“What now?” Lash asked.

“You can put on your clothes. Vo­gel will see you out.”

Lash could hard­ly be­lieve his luck. Af­ter what had gone be­fore, he was sure the psy­cho­log­ical in­ter­view would take hours. Most lie de­tec­tor tests were pro­tract­ed af­fairs, the same ques­tions re­peat­ed over and over in slight­ly al­tered form. But this had tak­en just thir­ty min­utes. “You mean, I’m done?”

“Yes, you’re done.” And the way Al­ic­to said it made Lash hes­itate.

“I’m very sor­ry,” said Al­ic­to. “But in light of the re­sults I’m go­ing to have to rec­om­mend against your can­di­da­cy.”

Lash stared.

“There’s no point de­lay­ing the bad news. I hope you’ll un­der­stand. We have to al­ways look at the big pic­ture, what’s best for our clients as a whole, rather than the feel­ings of a sin­gle can­di­date. It’s dif­fi­cult. We’ll pro­vide you with some ex­it lit­er­ature. Can­di­dates who are de­clined of­ten find read­ing it helps get over any feel­ings of re­jec­tion they might nat­ural­ly have. I’m sure Vo­gel ex­plained the ini­tial fee is non­re­fund­able, but there will be no fur­ther charges. Take care, Dr. Lash—and bear in mind what I said about the red flags.”

And—for the first and last time—Al­ic­to of­fered his hand.

FOURTEEN

Al­though it is three in the morn­ing, the bed­room is bathed in mer­ci­less light. The two win­dows fac­ing the deck of the pool house are rect­an­gles of un­re­lieved black. The light seems so bright the en­tire room is re­duced to a harsh ge­om­etry of right an­gles: the bed, the night ta­ble, the dress­er. The light sucks col­or from the room: the wood­en ve­neer of the dress­er, the pais­ley com­forter, the bro­ken mir­rors, are bleached to the col­or of bone. All that re­mains is the red cov­er­ing the walls.

There is very lit­tle blood on the vic­tim; re­mark­ably lit­tle, un­der the cir­cum­stances. She lies naked on the car­pet like a porce­lain doll, alone be­neath a cir­cle of sodi­um va­por lights. Fin­gers and toes, care­ful­ly cut away at the first joint, are ar­ranged like a ha­lo around the head of the corpse.

There is a mur­mur of back­ground voic­es, the low susurra­tion of a crime scene be­ing worked:

“Anal probe reads 83.9 de­grees. Dead ap­prox­imate­ly six hours. Lack of rig­or’s com­men­su­rate with this es­ti­mate.”

“Got any la­tents?”

“La­tents is all we got.”

“Se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem is cen­tral sta­tion, but the line was cut at the house foun­da­tion. Like with the Watkins girl.”

“Any en­trance or egress yet?”

“The squad’s work­ing it.”

Cap­tain Harold Mas­ter­ton, tall and heav­ily built, breaks away from a knot of Pough­keep­sie po­lice and walks across the room, care­ful­ly cir­cling the bank of lights, hands in his pock­ets.

“Lash, you’re not look­ing so hot.”

“I’m fine.”

“So what do you know?”

“I’m still as­sess­ing. There are con­tra­dic­to­ry el­ements here, things that don’t make sense in the con­text.”

“Fuck the con­text. You’ve got enough sup­port per­son­nel crunch­ing num­bers back in Quan­ti­co to man a foot­ball team.”

“You’ve got the par­tial pro­file al­ready.”

“The par­tial pro­file didn’t stop him from killing a sec­ond time.”

“I iden­ti­fy them. I don’t catch them. That’s your job.”

“Then give me enough to find him, for Christ’s sake. He’s writ­ten his damn au­to­bi­og­ra­phy twice now. He bled out two wom­en just to get enough ink. There it is, right in front of our noses. He’s hand­ing him­self to you on a fuck­ing plate. So when are you go­ing to hand him to me? Or is he go­ing to have to write it a third time?”

And Mas­ter­ton ges­tured to­ward the wall, which was cov­ered in neat­ly drawn block let­ters, crim­son and re­cent­ly dried, an end­less litany of des­per­ate words: I WANT TO BE CAUGHT. DONT LET ME KEEP CUT­TING THEM. I DONT LIKE IT. THE SAINTS TELL ME TO CUT THEM BUT I DO NOT WANT TO BE­LIEVE . . .

 

Lash rose from his bed and went to the door, opened it, and walked to­ward the liv­ing room. The cur­tains of the pic­ture win­dow were thrown wide. Be­yond, moon­light daubed the creamy break­ers with a pale blue phos­pho­res­cence. The fur­ni­ture was il­lu­mi­nat­ed with the half-​light of a Magritte paint­ing. He sat down on the leather couch and hunched for­ward, arms rest­ing on his knees, gaze still on the sea.

Ear­li­er, as Vo­gel had di­rect­ed him through a se­ries of non­de­script hall­ways and out a side door on­to Fifty-​fifth Street, he had been aware pri­mar­ily of rage. He had walked in a red fog to his park­ing garage, con­duct­ing gel still dry­ing on his scalp, throw­ing away the ex­it lit­er­ature Vo­gel apolo­get­ical­ly pressed in­to his hands. But as the evening wore on—as he’d eat­en a light sup­per; checked his phone mes­sages; con­ferred with Kline, the psy­chol­ogist who was cov­er­ing his prac­tice—the anger ebbed, leav­ing an empti­ness in its place. And when at last he could put off go­ing to bed no longer, the empti­ness be­gan to give way to some­thing else again.

And as he sat star­ing out at the sea, Dr. Al­ic­to’s words came back yet again. You saw some ter­ri­ble things. But they ran off your back. They didn’t af­fect your work or your­self.

Lash closed his eyes, un­able to shake the lin­ger­ing sense of dis­be­lief. Go­ing in­to Eden that morn­ing, he had an­tic­ipat­ed a great many things. But the one thing he had not an­tic­ipat­ed was re­jec­tion. True, he’d gone through it sim­ply as an ex­er­cise: the monochro­mat­ic Vo­gel; the an­noy­ing, faint­ly alarm­ing Dr. Al­ic­to—they had not known the re­al rea­son he was there. But that didn’t ease his fail­ure. And now he’d come away from the pro­cess, not with clear­er in­sight in­to the Wilners or the Thor­pes, but with Dr. Al­ic­to’s low, mel­liflu­ous voice buzzing in his head.

Some­times, peo­ple don’t ad­dress the ter­ri­ble things they see. They bury them in a deep place. And they come to live in a con­stant state of dark­ness . . .

Dur­ing his years of an­alyz­ing and treat­ing oth­ers, Lash had care­ful­ly ab­stained from di­rect­ing that same search­ing light up­on him­self: from think­ing about what drove him for­ward or held him back; about his mo­ti­va­tions, good or bad. And yet now, here in the dark, those were the on­ly thoughts com­ing in­to his head.

Was there any par­tic­ular as­sign­ment in your pri­or job that pre­cip­itat­ed your de­ci­sion to leave? Some er­ror or lapse of judg­ment on your part? Some­thing that spilled over in­to your pri­vate life?

Lash stood up and made his way down the hall to his bath­room. He flicked on the light, opened the cup­board be­neath the sink, and knelt down. There, un­der the ex­tra bot­tles of sham­poo and the blis­ter-​packs of ra­zor blades, was a child’s shoe box. He reached for it, re­moved the cov­er. The lit­tle box was half full of small white tablets: Sec­onal, ap­pro­pri­at­ed for him by a sym­pa­thet­ic fel­low-​agent years be­fore, dur­ing a raid on a mon­ey laun­der­er’s town­house. When he’d moved to this house, he’d meant to flush them down the toi­let. Some­how, he nev­er had. And the sleep­ing pills had sat there, in­hab­it­ing the dark space be­neath the sink, al­most for­got­ten. They were three years old, but Lash was fair­ly cer­tain they hadn’t ex­pired. He grabbed a hand­ful, held them in his palm, stared at them.

And then he dropped them back in­to the box and re­placed it in­side the cup­board. That would re­turn him to the bad days, to the months just be­fore—and just af­ter—he left the Bu­reau. It was a place he did not ev­er want to re­vis­it.

He rose and washed his hands, rais­ing his face to the mir­ror as he did so.

Since he’d moved here, gone in­to pri­vate prac­tice, sleep had re­turned. He could give up this case to­mor­row, get back to his reg­ular round of con­sul­ta­tions. He could sleep well again.

And yet, some­how, he knew he could not do that. Be­cause even now, as he looked in the mir­ror, he could see the ghost­ly out­line of Lewis Thor­pe, look­ing back at him through the wash of video­tape: al­ways, al­ways, ask­ing the same ques­tion . . .

. . . Why?

Lash dried his hands. Then he went back to his bed­room, lay down again, and wait­ed—not for sleep, be­cause sleep would not be com­ing—but sim­ply for the morn­ing.

FIFTEEN

The next morn­ing, when Lash stepped out of the el­eva­tor on­to the thir­ty-​sec­ond floor, Mauch­ly was wait­ing for him.

“This way, please,” he said. “What have you learned about the Wilner cou­ple?”

Not one for small talk, thought Lash. “Over the week­end, I man­aged to speak to their doc­tor, Karen Wilner’s broth­er, John Wilner’s moth­er, and a col­lege friend who’d spent a week with them last month. It’s the same sto­ry as the Thor­pes. The cou­ple was al­most too hap­py, if such a thing is pos­si­ble. The friend said the one dis­agree­ment she’d wit­nessed had been mi­nor—about which movie they should see that night—and it dis­solved in­to laugh­ter with­in a minute.”

“No in­di­ca­tions for sui­cide?”

“None.”

“Hmm.” Mauch­ly steered Lash through an open door and in­to a room where a work­er in a white coat wait­ed be­hind a counter. Mauch­ly reached for a sta­pled doc­ument on the counter, hand­ed it to Lash. “Sign this, please.”

Lash leafed through the long doc­ument. “Don’t tell me this is an­oth­er con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ment. I’ve signed more than one of these al­ready.”

“That was when you were privy on­ly to gen­er­al knowl­edge. Things have changed. This doc­ument just spells out in greater de­tail the ex­tent of the puni­tive dam­ages, civ­il and crim­inal li­abil­ities, and the like.”

Lash dropped the doc­ument on­to the counter. “Not very re­as­sur­ing.”

“You must un­der­stand, Mr. Lash. You are the first non-​em­ploy­ee to be giv­en ac­cess to the most sen­si­tive de­tails of our op­er­ation.”

Lash sighed, took the prof­fered pen, and signed his name in two places in­di­cat­ed by yel­low flags. “I’d hate to see the kind of screen­ing your em­ploy­ees have to go through.”

“It’s much more strin­gent than the CIA’s. But our pay scales and ben­efits are unique­ly high.”

Lash hand­ed the doc­ument to Mauch­ly, who passed it to the man be­hind the desk. “What wrist do you wear your watch on, Dr. Lash?”

“What? Oh, the left one.”

“Then would you please ex­tend your right arm?”

Lash did so, and was sur­prised when the work­er be­hind the desk slipped a sil­ver band around his right wrist, tight­en­ing it with what looked like a minia­ture band wrench.

“What the hell?” Lash jerked his arm away.

“Strict­ly a se­cu­ri­ty pre­cau­tion.” Mauch­ly raised his own right wrist, dis­play­ing an iden­ti­cal bracelet. “It’s cod­ed with your unique iden­ti­fi­er. While you wear that, scan­ners can track your move­ments any­where in­side the build­ing.”

Lash ro­tat­ed the thing around his wrist. It was tight, but not un­com­fort­ably so.

“Don’t wor­ry, it will be cut off when your work here is com­plete.”

“Cut off?”

Mauch­ly, who so rarely smiled, smiled faint­ly now. “If it was easy to re­move, what would be the point? We’ve tried to make it as un­ob­jec­tion­able as pos­si­ble.”

Lash glanced again at the smooth, nar­row bracelet. Al­though he dis­liked jew­el­ry—he’d even re­fused to wear a ring dur­ing his mar­riage—he had to ad­mit the dis­creet-​look­ing sil­ver band was vague­ly at­trac­tive. Es­pe­cial­ly for a man­acle.

“Shall we?” Mauch­ly said, ush­er­ing Lash back in­to the hall and lead­ing him to a dif­fer­ent bank of el­eva­tors.

“Where are we go­ing?” Lash said as the el­eva­tor be­gan to de­scend.

“Where you re­quest­ed. Fol­low­ing the Thor­pes and the Wilners. We’re go­ing in­side the Wall.”

SIXTEEN

For a mo­ment, Lash sim­ply stared at Mauch­ly. The chair­man’s words came back to him: You’re be­ing giv­en un­prece­dent­ed ac­cess to Eden’s in­ner work­ings. You’ve re­quest­ed—and been grant­ed—a chance to do what no­body with your knowl­edge has done be­fore.

“In­side the Wall,” he said. “I heard that same ex­pres­sion used in the emer­gen­cy board meet­ing.”

“It’s quite lit­er­al. This tow­er is ac­tu­al­ly made up of three sep­arate build­ings. Not on­ly for se­cu­ri­ty, but for safe­ty—in an emer­gen­cy, the three struc­tures can be com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed by se­cu­ri­ty plates.”

Lash nod­ded.

“The front sec­tion of the Eden tow­er is what our clients see: the test­ing suites, break­out ar­eas, screen­ing rooms, con­fer­ence halls, and the like. The rear struc­ture is where the re­al work goes on. Phys­ical­ly, it’s larg­er. There are six en­trance check­points. We’re head­ed for Check­point IV.”

“You men­tioned three build­ings.”

“Yes. Atop the in­ner tow­er is the pent­house. Dr. Sil­ver’s pri­vate quar­ters.”

Lash glanced at Mauch­ly with new in­ter­est. So lit­tle was pub­licly known about the se­cre­tive founder of Eden, the bril­liant com­put­er sci­en­tist be­hind its tech­nol­ogy, that sim­ply hear­ing he lived here—that there was a good chance he was close at hand—seemed a rev­ela­tion. Lash found him­self won­der­ing what kind of a per­son Sil­ver was. An ec­cen­tric, Howard Hugh­es fig­ure, ema­ci­at­ed and ad­dict­ed? A despot­ic Nero? A cold, cal­cu­lat­ing arch-​ty­coon? Some­how, the mere lack of in­for­ma­tion served to in­crease his cu­rios­ity.

The el­eva­tor doors slid back to re­veal a wider cor­ri­dor. Lash could see that it end­ed in what looked like a wall of glass. A large Ro­man num­ber IV glowed above it. Peo­ple were queued be­fore the glass wall, al­most all of them wear­ing white lab coats.

“Most of the check­points are on the low­est lev­els of the build­ing,” Mauch­ly said as they joined the end of the line. “Makes ac­cess eas­ier at the start and the close of the work­ing day.”

As the line shuf­fled slow­ly for­ward, Lash got a bet­ter look at what lay be­yond the glass: a short hexag­onal cor­ri­dor, like a hor­izon­tal hon­ey­comb, bright­ly lit, with an­oth­er glass wall at the far end. As he watched, the near wall slid open; the per­son at the head of the line walked through; and the wall slid closed again.

“You didn’t bring along any me­chan­ical de­vices, did you?” Mauch­ly asked. “Voice recorder, PDA, any­thing like that?”

“I left ev­ery­thing at home, as you re­quest­ed.”

“Good. Just fol­low my lead. Once the guard has ver­ified your bracelet, just walk slow­ly through the check­point.”

They had reached the head of the line. Two guards wear­ing beige-​col­ored jump­suits flanked the glass. Ev­ery­thing—the guards, the check­points, the bracelet, all the fa­nat­ical bag­gage of se­cu­ri­ty—seemed out of scale. But then, Lash re­called what the com­pa­ny’s rev­enue had been the pri­or year. And Mauch­ly’s words: Se­cre­cy is the on­ly way to pro­tect our ser­vice. There are any num­ber of would-​be com­peti­tors who will do what­ev­er it takes to ob­tain our test­ing tech­niques, our eval­ua­tion al­go­rithms, any­thing.

As Lash watched, Mauch­ly held his left hand be­neath a scan­ner set in­to the wall. A blue light shone on­to his skin, and the bracelet flashed. With a faint hiss, the glass wall slid away and Mauch­ly walked in­to the bril­liant space be­yond. The near wall closed, then the far wall opened. Once Mauch­ly was through the cham­ber and both doors had shut, the guards mo­tioned Lash for­ward.

He held his bracelet be­neath the scan­ner, felt his wrist grow warm un­der its beam. The glass wall slid back and he moved in­to the cham­ber.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the wall whis­pered back in­to place be­hind him. The light in­side the check­point cham­ber was so bright, and it re­flect­ed so bril­liant­ly off the white sur­faces, that Lash was on­ly dim­ly aware there was more to this hon­ey­comb cham­ber than bare walls. As he walked for­ward, he was aware of shapes pro­trud­ing from the walls, paint­ed the same white as their sur­round­ings and hard to make out. There was a faint hum­ming noise, like the purr of a dis­tant gen­er­ator. This was more than a cor­ri­dor—it was a con­duit link­ing two sep­arate tow­ers.

Then the glass wall at the far end slid open and he stepped out. There was a lone guard here, who nod­ded at Lash as he emerged. Lash nod­ded back, look­ing around cu­ri­ous­ly. “In­side the Wall” did not look par­tic­ular­ly dif­fer­ent from the Eden he had al­ready seen. There were a va­ri­ety of signs: Tele­pho­ny A–E, On­line Surveil­lance, Ad­vanced Da­ta Syn­the­sis. Peo­ple moved along the cor­ri­dors, talk­ing in low voic­es.

Mauch­ly stood to one side, wait­ing. As the in­ner glass wall slid shut be­hind Lash, he stepped for­ward.

“What was all that about?” Lash nod­ded at the cham­ber he’d just passed through.

“It’s a scan­ning cor­ri­dor. Just to make sure you’re not bring­ing any­thing in or out. The in­stru­ments, soft­ware, in­for­ma­tion, ev­ery­thing on the in­side must stay in­side.”

“Ev­ery­thing?”

“Ev­ery­thing ex­cept a few tight­ly con­trolled datas­treams.”

“But all the re­al pro­cess­ing takes place here, on the in­side. Right? There must be an out­ra­geous amount of num­ber-​crunch­ing go­ing on.”

“More than you could ev­er imag­ine.” Mauch­ly point­ed at a large pan­el, set low in­to one wall. “Da­ta con­duits like this link all the ar­eas in­side the Wall. They’re ba­si­cal­ly wiring trunks that con­nect ev­ery in­ter­nal sys­tem to all the oth­ers.”

Mauch­ly stepped to one side and ges­tured to­ward a fig­ure Lash had not no­ticed be­fore. “This is Tara Sta­ple­ton, our chief se­cu­ri­ty tech­ni­cian. She’ll be your ad­vi­sor while you’re in­side.”

The wom­an stepped for­ward. “Dr. Lash,” she said in low, qui­et voice, ex­tend­ing her hand.

Lash took it. Sta­ple­ton was a tall brunette with se­ri­ous eyes who, he de­cid­ed, couldn’t yet have reached thir­ty.

“Our first stop is this way,” Mauch­ly said as they start­ed down one of the wide cor­ri­dors. “Tara has just been briefed on ex­act­ly why you’re here. But of course no­body else knows. Your cov­er sto­ry’s that you’re prepar­ing an ef­fi­cien­cy re­port for the board’s five-​year plan. I think you’ll be sur­prised at just how ded­icat­ed, and mo­ti­vat­ed, our peo­ple are.”

Lash glanced at Tara Sta­ple­ton. “Is that true?”

She nod­ded. “We have all the best equip­ment. We have a pro­pri­etary tech­nol­ogy far be­yond any­thing else. What oth­er job lets you make such a dif­fer­ence in oth­er peo­ple’s lives?” De­spite the en­thu­si­as­tic words, the de­liv­ery seemed rote, with­out nu­ance, as if her mind was else­where.

“Re­mem­ber those class re­unions I had you lis­ten in on?” Mauch­ly asked. “Ev­ery­one on staff is re­quired to wit­ness them twice a year. It helps re­mind us of what we’re work­ing for.”

They had ar­rived at a set of dou­ble doors la­beled DA­TA GATH­ER­ING–IN­TER­NET–GALLERY. Mauch­ly placed his bracelet be­neath the scan­ner and the doors slid back. He mo­tioned Lash ahead.

Lash found him­self on a bal­cony above a room busy as the trad­ing floor of the New York Stock Ex­change. Ex­cept that, while the Stock Ex­change al­ways seemed to Lash like bare­ly con­tained chaos, the huge space be­low had the pre­cise, calm flow of a bee­hive. Peo­ple sat at desks, star­ing at com­put­er screens, while oth­ers gath­ered at da­ta cen­ters, point­ing up at mon­itors or speak­ing in­to tele­phones. Over­size video­screens cov­ered the walls, show­ing feeds from Reuters and oth­er wire ser­vices, CNN, lo­cal and for­eign news­casts.

“This is one of our da­ta-​gath­er­ing cen­ters,” Mauch­ly said. “There are sev­er­al oth­er re­search and surveil­lance sub­sec­tions in the build­ing, all sim­ilar to this one.”

“It seems like an aw­ful­ly big op­er­ation,” Lash mur­mured as he gazed at the ac­tiv­ity be­low.

“We tell our clients their sin­gle day of test­ing is the most im­por­tant stage in the match­ing pro­cess, but ac­tu­al­ly it’s just a small part. Fol­low­ing the eval­ua­tion, we mon­itor all as­pects of an ap­pli­cant’s be­hav­ior pat­terns. It can take a few days, or a month, de­pend­ing on the width of the datas­tream we get back. Lifestyle pref­er­ences, taste in clothes and en­ter­tain­ment, spend­ing habits: ev­ery­thing is tracked. For ex­am­ple, this cen­ter tracks an ap­pli­cant’s In­ter­net use. We mon­itor what sites are vis­it­ed, how they’re moused, then we in­te­grate the click­stream da­ta with the oth­er in­for­ma­tion we’re gath­er­ing.”

Lash looked at him. “How is that pos­si­ble?”

“We have agree­ments with the ma­jor cred­it agen­cies, tele­phone and ISP providers, ca­ble and satel­lite TV, and the like. They al­low us to mon­itor their band­width. And we in turn pro­vide them with cer­tain met­rics—gen­er­al­ized, of course—for spot­ting trends. And we have our own surveil­lance spe­cial­ists on board, of course. The om­nipres­ence of com­put­ers in dai­ly life is part of what makes our busi­ness pos­si­ble, Dr. Lash.”

“Makes me al­most afraid to touch mine,” Lash said.

“All mon­itor­ing is trans­par­ent. Our clients have no idea their Web surf­ing, cred­it card charges, and phone records are be­ing tracked. It gives us a far more com­plete pic­ture than we could gath­er any oth­er way. It’s one of the things that sep­arates us from the oth­er, far more prim­itive so­cial-​net­work­ing ser­vices that have sprung up in our wake. And need­less to say, the da­ta we gath­er re­mains with­in these walls. That’s an­oth­er rea­son why we seem so se­cre­tive to you, Dr. Lash: our first man­date is to en­sure our clients’ pri­va­cy.”

He waved his hand at the ac­tiv­ity be­low. “Once the Thor­pes com­plet­ed their per­son­al eval­ua­tions, their datafiles would have been dis­tribut­ed to cen­ters like this for mon­itor­ing. It would have been the same for the Wilners. Or you, for that mat­ter, had you been se­lect­ed as a can­di­date.”

Here, Mauch­ly paused. “By the way, I’m sor­ry about that. I’ve read the ex­it re­ports of Vo­gel and Al­ic­to.”

“Your Dr. Al­ic­to seemed to have a per­son­al grudge against me.”

“No doubt it seemed that way. The se­nior ex­am­in­er does have some lee­way in how he con­ducts an in­ter­view. Al­ic­to is one of our best ex­am­in­ers, but he’s al­so one of the most un­ortho­dox. In any case, it was not a re­al eval­ua­tion in the sense that you were a can­di­date. I hope that lessens the sting some­what.”

“Let’s move on.” Lash felt vague­ly un­com­fort­able about hav­ing his less-​than-​stel­lar per­for­mance an­alyzed be­fore Tara Sta­ple­ton.

Mauch­ly ush­ered Lash out of the gallery and down the long, pale-​hued cor­ri­dor, stop­ping at last be­fore a heavy steel door marked by a bio­haz­ard sym­bol and the la­bel RA­DI­OL­OGY AND GE­NET­ICS III. Once again, Mauch­ly opened the door with his se­cu­ri­ty bracelet. Be­yond was a large room full of gray-​paint­ed lock­ers. “Blue­suits” for biomed­ical and haz­mat du­ty hung from met­al dol­lies. The far wall of the room was made of clear Plex­iglas, and its sealed en­trance por­tal sport­ed sev­er­al warn­ings. Clean-​Room En­vi­ron­ment Be­yond, read one; Ster­ile Cloth­ing and Pro­ce­dures MANDA­TO­RY. Thank You For Your Co­op­er­ation.

Lash walked up to the glass and looked through cu­ri­ous­ly. He could see gloved and suit­ed fig­ures bend­ing over a va­ri­ety of com­plex equip­ment.

“That looks like a DNA se­quencer,” he said, point­ing at a par­tic­ular­ly large con­sole in a far cor­ner.

Mauch­ly came up be­side him. “It is.”

“What’s it do­ing here?”

“Part of our ge­net­ics anal­ysis.”

“I don’t see what ge­net­ics has to do with a ser­vice like yours.”

“Many things, ac­tu­al­ly. It’s one of Eden’s most sen­si­tive ar­eas of re­search.”

Lash wait­ed ex­pec­tant­ly, let­ting the si­lence length­en. At last, Mauch­ly sighed.

“As you know, our ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess isn’t lim­it­ed to psy­cho­log­ical eval­ua­tions. Dur­ing the ini­tial phys­ical, any can­di­dates who present with sig­nif­icant phys­ical prob­lems, or ap­pear to be at high risk for fu­ture prob­lems, are dis­qual­ified.”

“Seems harsh.”

“Not at all. Would you care to meet your per­fect mate, on­ly to have her die a year lat­er? In any case, af­ter the phys­ical, the can­di­date’s blood is fur­ther screened—here and at oth­er labs in­side the Wall—for a va­ri­ety of ge­net­ic dis­or­ders. Any­body with a ge­net­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion for Alzheimer’s, cys­tic fi­bro­sis, Hunt­ing­ton’s chorea, and such are al­so dis­qual­ified.”

“Je­sus. Do you tell them why?”

“Not di­rect­ly, no—it might at­tract at­ten­tion to our trade se­crets. Be­sides, re­jec­tion can be trau­ma­tiz­ing enough. Why com­pound it with anx­iety over some­thing that might not de­vel­op for years—if at all—and that’s un­treat­able in any case?”

Why, in­deed? Lash thought.

“But that’s just the be­gin­ning. Our most im­por­tant use of ge­net­ics comes in the match­ing pro­cess it­self.”

Lash looked from Mauch­ly, to the lab work­ers mov­ing busi­ly be­yond the Plex­iglas wall, and back to Mauch­ly again.

“You’re no doubt more fa­mil­iar with evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­ogy than I am,” Mauch­ly said. “In par­tic­ular, the con­cept of gene spread­ing.”

Lash nod­ded. “The de­sire to send your genes on to fu­ture gen­er­ations un­der the best pos­si­ble con­di­tions. A fun­da­men­tal im­pulse.”

“Pre­cise­ly. And the ‘best pos­si­ble con­di­tions’ usu­al­ly means a high de­gree of ge­net­ic vari­abil­ity. What a tech­ni­cian might call an in­crease of het­erozy­gos­ity. It helps en­sure strong, healthy proge­ny. If one mate is blood type A, with a rel­ative­ly high sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to cholera, and the oth­er mate is blood type B, with a height­ened sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to ty­phus, their child—with blood type AB—is like­ly to have a high re­sis­tance to both dis­eases.”

“But what does this have to do with what’s go­ing on in there?”

“We keep very close tabs on the lat­est re­search in molec­ular bi­ol­ogy. And we’re cur­rent­ly mon­itor­ing sev­er­al dozen genes that in­flu­ence the choice of an ide­al mate.”

Lash shook his head. “You sur­prise me.”

“I’m no ex­pert, Dr. Lash. But I can of­fer one ex­am­ple: HLA.”

“I’m not fa­mil­iar with it.”

“Hu­man leuko­cyte anti­gen. In an­imals it’s known as MHC. It’s a large gene that lives on the long arm of chro­mo­some 6, and af­fects body odor pref­er­ences. Stud­ies have shown that peo­ple are most at­tract­ed to mates whose HLA hap­lo­types were least like their own.”

“Guess I should be read­ing Na­ture more care­ful­ly. Won­der how they demon­strat­ed that?”

“Well, in one test, they asked a con­trol group to sniff the armpits of T-​shirts worn by the op­po­site sex, and to rank them in or­der of at­trac­tive­ness. And the scents the group uni­ver­sal­ly pre­ferred were of peo­ple whose geno­types were most dif­fer­ent from their own.”

“You’re kid­ding.”

“No, I’m not. An­imals al­so dis­play this pref­er­ence for mat­ing with part­ners whose MHC genes are op­po­site their own. Mice, for ex­am­ple, make the de­ter­mi­na­tion by sniff­ing the urine of po­ten­tial mates.”

This was greet­ed by a brief si­lence.

“Per­son­al­ly, I pre­fer the T-​shirt,” Tara said.

It was the first time in sev­er­al min­utes that she’d spo­ken, and Lash turned to look at her. But she wasn’t smil­ing, and he was un­cer­tain whether she’d meant it as a joke.

Mauch­ly shrugged. “In any case, the ge­net­ic pref­er­ences of the Wilners and the Thor­pes would be pooled with the oth­er in­for­ma­tion we’d gath­ered on them: mon­itor­ing da­ta, test re­sults, the rest.”

Lash stared at the gowned work­ers on the far side of the glass. “This is amaz­ing. And I’ll want to see those test re­sults in due time. But the re­al ques­tion is how, ex­act­ly, did the two cou­ples get to­geth­er?”

“That’s our next stop.” And Mauch­ly led the way back in­to the hall­way.

A con­fus­ing jour­ney through in­ter­sect­ing cor­ri­dors; an­oth­er brief as­cent in an el­eva­tor; and then Lash found him­self be­fore an­oth­er set of doors la­beled sim­ply: PROV­ING CHAM­BER.

“What is this place?” Lash asked.

“The Tank,” Mauch­ly replied. “Af­ter you, please.”

Lash stepped in­to a room that was large, but whose low ceil­ing and in­di­rect light gave it a strange­ly in­ti­mate at­mo­sphere. The walls to the left and right were cov­ered with var­ious dis­plays and in­stru­men­ta­tion. But Lash’s at­ten­tion was drawn to the rear wall, which was com­plete­ly dom­inat­ed by what seemed some kind of aquar­ium. He paused.

“Go ahead,” Mauch­ly said. “Take a look.”

As Lash drew clos­er, he re­al­ized he was look­ing at a vast translu­cent cube, set in­to the wall of the cham­ber. A hand­ful of tech­ni­cians stood be­fore it, some scrib­bling notes in­to palm­top com­put­ers, oth­ers sim­ply ob­serv­ing. In­side the cube, in­nu­mer­able ghost­ly ap­pari­tions moved rest­less­ly back and forth, col­ors shift­ing, flar­ing briefly when col­lid­ing with oth­er ap­pari­tions, then dim­ming once again. The faint light, the pale translu­cence of the en­ti­ties with­in, gave the cube an il­lu­sion of great depth.

“You un­der­stand why we call it the Tank,” Mauch­ly said.

Lash nod­ded ab­sent­ly. It was an aquar­ium, of sorts: an elec­trome­chan­ical aquar­ium. And yet “Tank” seemed too pro­sa­ic a name for some­thing with such an oth­er­world­ly beau­ty.

“What is this?” Lash asked in a low voice.

“This is a graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the ac­tu­al match­ing pro­cess, oc­cur­ring in re­al time. It pro­vides us with vi­su­al cues that would be much hard­er to an­alyze if we were scan­ning through, say, reams of pa­per print­outs. Each of those ob­jects you see mov­ing with­in the Tank is an avatar.”

“Avatar?”

“The per­son­al­ity con­structs of our ap­pli­cants. De­rived from their eval­ua­tions and our surveil­lance da­ta. But Tara can ex­plain it bet­ter than I.”

So far, Tara had stayed in the back­ground. Now, she came for­ward. “We’ve tak­en the con­cept of da­ta min­ing and an­alyt­ics and stood it on its head. Once the mon­itor­ing pe­ri­od is over, our com­put­ers take the raw ap­pli­cant da­ta—half a ter­abyte of in­for­ma­tion—and cre­ate the con­struct we call the avatar. It’s then placed in an ar­ti­fi­cial en­vi­ron­ment and al­lowed to in­ter­act with the oth­er avatars.”

Lash’s gaze was still locked on the Tank. “In­ter­act,” he re­peat­ed.

“It’s eas­iest to think of them as ex­treme­ly dense pack­ets of da­ta, giv­en ar­ti­fi­cial life and set free in vir­tu­al space.”

It was strange, al­most un­nerv­ing: to think that each of these count­less gos­samer-​like specters, flit­ting back and forth in the void be­fore him, rep­re­sent­ed a com­plete and unique per­son­al­ity: hopes and needs, de­sires and dreams, moods and pro­cliv­ities, man­ifest­ed as da­ta mov­ing through a ma­trix of sil­icon. Lash looked back at Tara. Her eyes shone pale blue in the re­flect­ed light, and strange shad­ows moved across her face. A far­away look had come over her. She, too, seemed mes­mer­ized by the sight.

“It’s beau­ti­ful,” he said. “But bizarre.”

Abrupt­ly, the far­away look left her eyes. “Bizarre? It’s bril­liant. The avatars con­tain far too much da­ta to be com­pared by con­ven­tion­al com­put­ing al­go­rithms. Our so­lu­tion was to give them ar­ti­fi­cial life, let them make the com­par­isons on their own. They’re in­sert­ed in­to the vir­tu­al space, and then ex­cit­ed, much in the way atoms can be. This prompts the avatars to move and in­ter­act. We call these in­ter­ac­tions ‘con­tacts.’ If the two avatars have al­ready in­ter­sect­ed in the Tank, it’s a stale con­tact. But if this is the first en­counter be­tween two avatars, it’s a ‘fresh con­tact.’ Each fresh con­tact re­leas­es a huge burst of da­ta, which ba­si­cal­ly de­tails the points of com­mon­al­ity be­tween the two.”

“So what we’re look­ing at right now are all of Eden’s cur­rent ap­pli­cants.”

“That’s cor­rect.”

“How many are there?”

“It varies, but at any one time there could be up to ten thou­sand avatars. More are added con­stant­ly. There could be al­most any­body in there. Pres­idents, rock stars, po­ets. The on­ly peo­ple . . .” she hes­itat­ed. “The on­ly peo­ple not al­lowed are Eden per­son­nel.”

“Why’s that?”

Tara’s re­ply did not ad­dress this ques­tion. “It takes ap­prox­imate­ly eigh­teen hours for any one avatar to make con­tact with all the oth­ers in the Tank. We call that a cy­cle. Thou­sands up­on thou­sands of avatars in­ter­sect­ing with ev­ery oth­er, re­leas­ing a mas­sive tor­rent of da­ta—you can imag­ine the kind of com­put­ing horse­pow­er re­quired to parse the da­ta.”

Lash nod­ded. There was a low beep­ing be­hind him, and he turned to see Mauch­ly rais­ing a cell phone to his ear.

“Any­way,” Tara went on, “when a match is de­ter­mined, the two avatars are re­moved from the Tank. Nine times out of ten, a match is made with­in the first cy­cle. If there is no match, the avatar is re­tained in the Tank for an­oth­er cy­cle, then an­oth­er. If an avatar hasn’t found a match with­in five cy­cles, it’s re­moved and the can­di­date’s ap­pli­ca­tion is void­ed. But that’s on­ly hap­pened half a dozen times.”

Half a dozen times, Lash thought to him­self. He glanced over at Mauch­ly, but he was still on the phone.

“But un­der nor­mal cir­cum­stances, you could take one of these avatars, put it back in the Tank a year from now, and an­oth­er match would be found. A dif­fer­ent match. Right?”

“That’s a sen­si­tive is­sue. Our clients are told that a per­fect match has been found for them. And it’s true. But that isn’t to say we couldn’t find an equal­ly per­fect match for them to­mor­row, or next month. Ex­cept in the case of the su­per­cou­ples, of course—those re­al­ly are per­fect. But we don’t tell our clients about de­grees of per­fec­tion, be­cause that might en­cour­age win­dow shop­ping. Once we’ve found a match, that’s it. End of sto­ry. Their avatars are re­moved from the Tank.”

“And then?”

“The two can­di­dates are no­ti­fied of the match. A meet­ing is set up.” As she said this, her ex­pres­sion once again grew dis­tant.

Lash turned to the Tank, star­ing at the thou­sands of avatars glid­ing back and forth with­in, weight­less and alien. “You men­tioned the need for com­put­ing horse­pow­er,” he mur­mured. “That seems an un­der­state­ment. I didn’t know any com­put­er could han­dle such a job.”

“Fun­ny you should say that.” It was Mauch­ly speak­ing this time, slip­ping the phone back in­to his jack­et pock­et. “Be­cause there’s one per­son in this build­ing who knows more than any­one else about that. And he’s just asked to make your ac­quain­tance.”

SEVENTEEN

Five min­utes brought them to a sky lob­by: a two-​sto­ry space on the thir­ti­eth floor, sur­round­ed by banks of el­eva­tors. One end opened on­to an em­ploy­ee cafe­te­ria, and Lash could see work­ers clus­tered around dozens of ta­bles, talk­ing and eat­ing.

“We have ten cafe­te­rias here on the in­side,” Mauch­ly said. “We dis­cour­age peo­ple from leav­ing the build­ing for lunch or din­ner, and the ex­cel­lent free food helps.”

“Lunch or din­ner?”

“Or break­fast, for that mat­ter. We’ve got tech­ni­cians work­ing shifts round the clock, es­pe­cial­ly in the da­ta-​gath­er­ing sec­tions.” Mauch­ly made for an el­eva­tor at the end of the near­est bank. It was set apart from the oth­ers, and a guard in a beige jump­suit was post­ed be­fore it. When the guard saw them ap­proach, he stepped aside.

Mauch­ly turned to Tara. “You’ve got the lat­est code. Go ahead.” And he in­di­cat­ed a key­pad be­side the el­eva­tors.

“Where are we head­ed?” Tara asked.

“The pent­house.”

There was a quick in­take of breath, quick­ly checked. Tara punched in a code and, a mo­ment lat­er, the doors opened.

As he stepped in­side the el­eva­tor, Lash sensed some­thing was dif­fer­ent. It wasn’t the walls, which had the same glossy wood grain as the oth­ers in the build­ing; it wasn’t the car­pet­ing, or the light­ing, or the safe­ty rail­ing. Sud­den­ly he re­al­ized what it was. There was no pin­hole se­cu­ri­ty cam­era in this car. And there were on­ly three but­tons on the in­stru­ment pan­el, all un­marked. Mauch­ly pressed the top­most but­ton, placed his bracelet be­neath the scan­ner.

The el­eva­tor rose for what seemed for­ev­er. At last it opened on­to a bril­liant­ly lit room. But this was not the ar­ti­fi­cial light Lash had seen else­where in Eden: this was sun­light, stream­ing in from win­dows that filled three of the four walls. He stepped for­ward on­to a sump­tu­ous blue car­pet, look­ing around in won­der. Through the wall of glass, the dense cityscape of mid-​Man­hat­tan lay be­neath a cloud­less sky. To his left, and right—at what seemed great dis­tances—oth­er win­dows af­ford­ed un­bro­ken vis­tas of Long Is­land and New Jer­sey. In­stead of the flu­ores­cent light­ing pan­els of the floors be­low, beau­ti­ful cut-​glass fix­tures hung from the ceil­ing, un­nec­es­sary in this ex­plo­sion of day­light.

Lash re­mem­bered see­ing, from street lev­el, the fig­ured grille that set off the tow­er’s top­most floors. And he re­called Mauch­ly’s words: The tow­er is made up of three sep­arate build­ings. Atop the in­ner tow­er is the pent­house. This aerie that crowned the cor­po­rate tow­er could on­ly be one thing: the lair of its reclu­sive founder, Richard Sil­ver.

Ex­cept for the el­eva­tor door, the en­tire fourth wall was cov­ered in rich ma­hogany book­cas­es. But they were not the leather-​bound vol­umes one would ex­pect in such a set­ting; there were cheap sci­ence fic­tion pa­per­backs, yel­low­ing and bro­ken-​backed; tech­ni­cal jour­nals, clear­ly well thumbed; over­size man­uals for com­put­er op­er­at­ing sys­tems and lan­guages.

Tara Sta­ple­ton had walked across the wide floor and was star­ing at some­thing be­fore one of the win­dows. As his eyes grew used to the light, Lash be­came aware that dozens of ob­jects—some large, some small—were ar­ranged in front of the huge plates of glass. He stepped for­ward him­self, cu­ri­ous, stop­ping be­fore a con­trap­tion al­most the size of a tele­phone booth. Ris­ing from its wood­en base was a com­plex ar­chi­tec­ture of ro­tors, stacked hor­izon­tal­ly on spars of met­al. Be­hind the ro­tors was a com­plex nest­ing of wheels, rods, and levers.

He moved to the next win­dow, where what looked like the met­al guts of some gi­ant’s mu­sic box lay on a wood­en stand. Be­side it was a mon­strous de­vice: a cross be­tween an an­cient print­ing press and a grand­fa­ther clock. A large met­al crank was vis­ible on one side, and its face was cov­ered with flat, pol­ished met­al discs of all sizes. Large spools of pa­per sat on a wood­en tray be­tween its legs.

Mauch­ly seemed to have dis­ap­peared, but an­oth­er man was ap­proach­ing them from across the room: tall, youth­ful-​look­ing, with a vast mop of red hair ris­ing from a square fore­head. He was smil­ing, and his wa­tery blue eyes peered out through thin sil­ver frames with a friend­ly sparkle. He wore a trop­ical shirt over a pair of worn jeans. Though Lash had nev­er seen the man be­fore, he in­stant­ly rec­og­nized him: Richard Sil­ver, the ge­nius be­hind both Eden and the com­put­er that made it pos­si­ble.

“You must be Dr. Lash,” the man said, ex­tend­ing his hand. “I’m Richard Sil­ver.”

“Call me Christo­pher,” Lash said.

Sil­ver turned to­ward Tara, who had turned word­less­ly at the man’s ap­proach. “And you’re Tara Sta­ple­ton? Ed­win’s told me great things about you.”

“It’s an hon­or to meet you, Dr. Sil­ver,” she replied.

Lash lis­tened to this ex­change in sur­prise. She’s the chief se­cu­ri­ty tech. But she’s nev­er met him be­fore.

Sil­ver turned back to Lash. “Your name rings a bell, Christo­pher, but I can’t quite place it.”

Lash said noth­ing, and af­ter a mo­ment, Sil­ver shrugged. “Ah, well. Per­haps it will re­turn to me. In any case, I’m cu­ri­ous about your the­oret­ical ori­en­ta­tion. Giv­en your pri­or job, I’d guess you be­long to the cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral school?”

This was the last thing Lash ex­pect­ed to hear. “More or less. I’m eclec­tic, I like to pick and choose from oth­er schools as well.”

“I see. Such as be­hav­ioral? Hu­man­ist?”

“More the for­mer than the lat­ter, Dr. Sil­ver.”

“It’s Richard, please.” Sil­ver smiled again. “You’re right to pick and choose. Cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral psy­chol­ogy has al­ways been fas­ci­nat­ing to me be­cause it lends it­self to in­for­ma­tion pro­cess­ing. But on the oth­er hand, strict be­hav­ior­ists feel all be­hav­ior is learned. Right?”

Lash nod­ded, sur­prised. Sil­ver did not fit his im­age of what a bril­liant recluse should look like.

“You’ve got a re­mark­able col­lec­tion here,” he said.

“My lit­tle mu­se­um. These de­vices are my one weak­ness. Such as that beau­ty you were just ex­am­in­ing: Kelvin’s Tide Pre­dic­tor. It could pre­dict the high and low tides for any fu­ture date. And note the pa­per drums at its base: per­haps the first in­stance of hard­copy out­put. Or how about the de­vice on the stand be­side it? Built more than three hun­dred and fifty years ago, but it can still do all the arith­metic, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion, di­vi­sion of to­day’s cal­cu­la­tors. It’s fash­ioned around some­thing called the Leib­niz Wheel, which went on to jump­start the adding ma­chine in­dus­try.”

Sil­ver walked along the wall of glass, point­ing out var­ious ma­chines and ex­plain­ing their his­tor­ical im­por­tance with rel­ish. He asked Tara to walk with him, and as they pro­ceed­ed he praised her work, asked if she was hap­py with her po­si­tion at the com­pa­ny. De­spite the short ac­quain­tance, Lash found him­self warm­ing to the man: he seemed friend­ly, free of ar­ro­gance.

Sil­ver stopped be­fore the huge de­vice Lash first no­ticed. “This,” he said al­most rev­er­ent­ly, “is Bab­bage’s An­alyt­ical En­gine. His most am­bi­tious work, left in­com­plete at his death. It’s the pre­cur­sor to the Mark I, Colos­sus, ENI­AC, all the re­al­ly im­por­tant com­put­ers.” And he stroked its steel sides with some­thing like af­fec­tion.

All of the an­cient ar­ti­facts, perched as they were be­fore stag­ger­ing vis­tas of mid­town Man­hat­tan, were still re­mark­ably out of place in this el­egant room. Then abrupt­ly, Lash un­der­stood. “They’re all think­ing ma­chines,” he said. “At­tempts at cre­at­ing de­vices to do the men­tal com­pu­ta­tions of hu­mans.”

Sil­ver nod­ded. “Ex­act­ly. Some of them—” he waved at the An­alyt­ical En­gine “—keep me hum­ble. Oth­ers—” he ges­tured across the room, where a much more mod­ern 128K Mac­in­tosh sat on a mar­ble plinth “—give me hope. And still oth­ers keep me hon­est.” And he point­ed to­ward a large wood­en box with a chess­board set in­to its front.

“What’s that?” Tara asked.

“That’s a chess-​play­ing com­put­er, built in France dur­ing the late Re­nais­sance. Turned out the ‘com­put­er’ was re­al­ly just a pint-​sized chess whiz who squeezed him­self in­side the ma­chine and di­rect­ed its move­ments. But come, let’s sit down.” And he led the way to a low ta­ble sur­round­ed by leather chairs. It was lit­tered with pe­ri­od­icals: the Times, the Wall Street Jour­nal, is­sues of Com­put­er­world and the Jour­nal of Ad­vanced Psy­chocom­put­ing.

As they sat, Sil­ver’s smile seemed to fal­ter. “It’s great to make your ac­quain­tance, Christo­pher. But I wish the cir­cum­stances were more pleas­ant.”

He sat for­ward, head slight­ly bowed, hands clasped to­geth­er. “This has come as an aw­ful shock. To the board, and to me per­son­al­ly.” And when Sil­ver looked up, Lash saw an­guish in his eyes. It’s rough, he thought. The com­pa­ny this man formed, its good works, put in­to mor­tal dan­ger.

“When I think of those cou­ples, the Thor­pes, the Wilners . . . well, words fail me. It’s in­com­pre­hen­si­ble.”

Then Lash re­al­ized he’d been wrong. Sil­ver wasn’t think­ing about the com­pa­ny: he was think­ing about the four dead peo­ple, and the cru­el irony that had sud­den­ly end­ed their lives.

“You have to un­der­stand, Christo­pher,” Sil­ver said, look­ing down again at the ta­ble. “What we do here goes be­yond a ser­vice. It’s a re­spon­si­bil­ity, like the re­spon­si­bil­ity a sur­geon feels when he ap­proach­es a pa­tient on the op­er­at­ing ta­ble. Ex­cept for us, the re­spon­si­bil­ity goes on the rest of their lives. They’ve en­trust­ed their fu­ture hap­pi­ness to us. That’s some­thing that nev­er oc­curred to me when I first had the idea-​germ for Eden. So now it’s our du­ty to learn what hap­pened, whether . . . whether or not we had any role in the tragedy.”

Once again, Lash felt sur­prise. This was a frank­ness he had not seen from any­body on the Eden board save per­haps the chair­man, Lelyveld.

“I re­al­ize the Wilner deaths took place just days ago. But have you learned any­thing use­ful?” Sil­ver looked up with an al­most plead­ing ex­pres­sion in his eyes.

“It’s as I told Mauch­ly. There are ab­so­lute­ly no in­di­ca­tions for sui­cide in the months lead­ing up to their deaths.”

Sil­ver held his gaze briefly, then looked away. For a ridicu­lous mo­ment, Lash feared the com­put­er ge­nius would burst in­to tears.

“I hope to be go­ing over Eden’s own psych eval­ua­tions of the cou­ples short­ly,” Lash said quick­ly, as if to re­as­sure Sil­ver. “Per­haps I’ll know more then.”

“I want all of the re­sources of Eden put be­hind this,” Sil­ver replied. “Tell Ed­win I said so. If there’s any­thing I or Liza can do, please let me know.”

Liza? Lash thought a lit­tle vague­ly. You mean, Tara? Tara Sta­ple­ton?

“Do you have any the­ories?” Sil­ver asked in a qui­et voice.

Lash hes­itat­ed. He didn’t want to bring up any more bad news. “They’re on­ly the­ories at this point. But un­less there’s some un­known emo­tion­al or phys­io­log­ical agent at work here, the signs are point­ing in­creas­ing­ly at homi­cide.”

“Homi­cide?” Sil­ver echoed sharply. “How is that pos­si­ble?”

“As I said, so far I’m on­ly work­ing the the­ories. There’s a small chance some­body on the in­side is in­volved: one of your em­ploy­ees, or ex-​em­ploy­ees. But it’s far more like­ly the sus­pect is some­body re­ject­ed by your se­lec­tion pro­cess.”

An odd look came over Sil­ver’s face: the look of a child who has just been re­buked for some­thing he didn’t do. It was a look of hurt in­no­cence.

“I can’t be­lieve it,” he mur­mured. “Our se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols are so strin­gent. Tara here can ver­ify that. I’ve been as­sured—” He broke off.

“Like I said, so far it’s just a the­ory.”

An­oth­er si­lence set­tled over the ta­ble; this one longer than the first. Then Sil­ver stood up.

“I’m sor­ry,” he said. “I guess I’ve been keep­ing you from more im­por­tant things.” And as he ex­tend­ed his hand, some of his smile’s warmth re­turned.

From out of nowhere, Mauch­ly reap­peared. He ush­ered both Tara and Lash to­ward the el­eva­tor.

“Christo­pher?” came Sil­ver’s voice. And Lash turned to see Sil­ver stand­ing by the An­alyt­ical En­gine.

“Yes, sir?”

“Thank you for com­ing up. It’s re­as­sur­ing, know­ing you’re as­sist­ing us. I’m sure we’ll be meet­ing again, soon.”

And as the el­eva­tor door slid open, Sil­ver turned away, his face thought­ful, his hand once again stroking, al­most ab­sent­ly, the met­al flank of the an­cient com­put­er.

EIGHTEEN

By the time Lash pulled in­to his drive­way it was al­most sev­en-​thir­ty, and the cur­tain of night was drop­ping over the Con­necti­cut coast­line. He turned off the en­gine and sat for a mo­ment, lis­ten­ing to the tick of cool­ing met­al. Then he stepped out and walked weari­ly to the house. He felt drained, as if the sheer vol­ume of tech­no­log­ical mar­vels he’d seen to­day had tem­porar­ily dulled his ca­pac­ity for won­der.

The house smelled of the lin­ger­ing smoke from a Sun­day fire. Lash turned on the lights and made his way back to the small of­fice that ad­joined his bed­room, the weight of the bracelet on his wrist still strange. He picked up the phone and di­aled; dis­cov­ered there were fif­teen wait­ing mes­sages; then sat down, steel­ing him­self for the task of plow­ing through them.

It took sur­pris­ing­ly lit­tle time. Four had been tele­mar­keters and six oth­ers were sim­ply hang-​ups. There was, in fact, on­ly one mes­sage that had to be dealt with right away. He reached for his ad­dress book, then di­aled the home num­ber of Os­car Kline, the cov­er­ing psy­chol­ogist.

“It’s Kline,” came the clipped voice.

“Os­car, this is Christo­pher.”

“Hey, Chris. How’s it go­ing?”

“It’s go­ing.”

“Ev­ery­thing all right? You sound tired.”

“I am tired.”

“I’ll bet you were up all night, work­ing on this re­search project you’re be­ing so se­cre­tive about.”

“Some­thing like that.”

“Why both­er? I mean, you don’t need the fame—not af­ter that book of yours. And you don’t need the mon­ey, God knows you live like a monk in that West­port clois­ter.”

“It’s hard to drop some­thing like this once you’ve got­ten in­volved. You know how these things are.”

“Well, there’s one good rea­son I can think of. Your prac­tice. Af­ter all, this isn’t Au­gust, pa­tients ex­pect us to be around. You miss one ses­sion, fine. But two? Peo­ple get rest­less. There were a cou­ple of loud­mouths in group to­day, trou­ble­mak­ers.”

“Let me guess. Stin­son.”

“Yes, Stin­son. And Brahms, too. You miss an­oth­er, it’s go­ing to get se­ri­ous.”

“I know. I’m try­ing hard to get this wrapped up be­fore that hap­pens.”

“Good. Be­cause oth­er­wise I’m go­ing to have to off-​load some of them on­to Coop­er. And that wouldn’t be a pret­ty sight.”

“You’re right, it wouldn’t. I’ll be in touch, Os­car. Thanks for ev­ery­thing.”

As Lash hung up and be­gan to walk away, the phone rang again. He turned back, picked it up. “Hel­lo?”

With a sharp click, the line went dead.

Lash turned away again, yawn­ing, forc­ing him­self to think about din­ner. He walked in­to the kitchen and opened the re­frig­er­ator, in hope some meal might put it­self to­geth­er. Noth­ing did. And with his brain shut­ting down, Lash opt­ed for the eas­iest so­lu­tion: he’d phone the Chi­nese place on the Post Road.

As he reached for the phone, it rang again.

He picked it up. “Hel­lo?”

This time, there was a lis­ten­ing si­lence on the line.

“Hel­lo?”

An­oth­er click as the line went dead.

Lash slow­ly re­placed the phone, then stared at it, think­ing. He’d been so wrapped up in the events at Eden he hadn’t no­ticed all the lit­tle an­noy­ances that were once again creep­ing back in­to his life. Or per­haps he had no­ticed them, but sim­ply hadn’t want­ed to ad­dress them. His news­pa­per, miss­ing three days out of four. The mail, miss­ing from his mail­box. The re­peat­ed hang-​ups, eight to­day alone.

He knew ex­act­ly what this meant, and he knew what had to be done to stop it.

The prospect filled him with gloom.

 

The drive to East Nor­walk took less than ten min­utes. Lash had made it on­ly once be­fore, but he knew Nor­walk well, and the land­marks were fa­mil­iar. The area he found him­self in was what civic lead­ers eu­phemisti­cal­ly called a neigh­bor­hood in tran­si­tion: close by the new Mar­itime Cen­ter, but al­so near enough to the poor­est sec­tions to re­quire bars on the doors and win­dows.

Lash pulled over to the curb and dou­ble-​checked the ad­dress: 9148 Jef­fer­son. The house looked like all those that sur­round­ed it: Crafts­man-​style; small, just two rooms over two; stuc­co front with a de­tached garage in the rear. This par­tic­ular lawn might be less tend­ed than those around it, but all the hous­es shared a cer­tain shab­bi­ness un­der the piti­less glare of the street­light.

He stared at the house. This could be han­dled in one of two ways: with com­pas­sion, or with firm­ness. Mary En­glish had not re­spond­ed well to com­pas­sion. He’d been com­pas­sion­ate with her last year, dur­ing the mar­ital ther­apy ses­sions with her hus­band. Mary had seized up­on that com­pas­sion, fix­at­ed up­on him. She had de­vel­oped an in­fat­ua­tion, an ob­ses­sion, that iron­ical­ly led to her di­vorce: the very thing Lash had been try­ing to fore­stall. It had al­so led to a pro­tract­ed stalk­ing—tele­phone hang-​ups, mail miss­ing or thumbed through, tear­ful late-​night am­bush­es out­side his of­fice—that had tak­en a re­strain­ing or­der to stop.

Lash sat a mo­ment longer, prepar­ing him­self. Then he opened the door, came around the car, and walked to­ward the house.

The sound of the door­bell echoed hol­low­ly through the rooms be­yond. As the chimes died away, si­lence briefly re­turned. Then, the tread of feet de­scend­ing stairs. The out­side light came on, and the eye­hole cov­er was scraped away. A mo­ment lat­er, the thud of the dead­bolt; the barred door pulled back; and there was Mary En­glish, blink­ing out in­to the glow of the street­light.

She was still wear­ing her work clothes, but she had clear­ly been in­ter­rupt­ed in wash­ing up: her lip­stick was gone, but the mas­cara re­mained. Al­though it had been on­ly a year since the last ther­apy ses­sion with her hus­band, she now looked far old­er than her forty years—there were hol­lows be­neath her eyes the make­up couldn’t hide, and a trac­ery of fine lines ran away from the cor­ners of her mouth. Her eyes went wide with recog­ni­tion, and in them Lash read a com­plex mix of emo­tions: sur­prise, plea­sure, hope, fear.

“Dr. Lash!” she said a lit­tle breath­less­ly. “I—I can’t be­lieve you’re here. What is it?”

Lash took a deep breath. “I think you know what it is, Mary.”

“No, I don’t know. What’s hap­pened? Do you want to come in? Have a cup of cof­fee?” And she held the door open for him.

Lash re­mained in the door­way, try­ing to keep his voice cool, his face ex­pres­sion­less. “Mary, please. This will on­ly make it worse.”

She looked at him, un­com­pre­hend­ing.

For a mo­ment, Lash hes­itat­ed. Then he re­mem­bered how it had been the first time he’d con­front­ed her, on this same stoop, and he forced him­self on.

“De­nial won’t help, Mary. You’ve been ha­rass­ing me again—phon­ing my house, tam­per­ing with my mail. I want you to stop it, please, and stop it now.”

Mary did not speak. But as she looked at him, she seemed to age even more. Her eyes slow­ly fell away from his, and her shoul­ders slumped.

“I can’t deal with this again, Mary. Not right now. So I want you to agree to stop this be­fore it es­ca­lates again. I want you to say you’ll stop this, say it to my face. Please, don’t force my hand.”

At this, she looked up again, her eyes glit­ter­ing with sud­den anger.

“Is this some kind of cru­el joke?” she spat at him. “Look at me. Look at my house. There’s bare­ly a stick of fur­ni­ture in it. I’ve lost cus­tody of my child. It’s a strug­gle just to see him al­ter­nate week­ends. Oh, God . . .”

As quick­ly as it had come, the anger re­ced­ed. Tears traced mud­dy lines of mas­cara. “I’ve com­plied with the judge. I’ve done ev­ery­thing you asked.”

“Then why is my mail miss­ing again, Mary? Why all the hang-​up calls?”

“You think that’s me? Do you think I could bring my­self to do that, af­ter all that’s hap­pened . . . af­ter what your judge did to my life, to my—” Fur­ther words were choked off by a sob.

Lash hes­itat­ed, not quite sure what to say. The anger, the sad­ness, seemed gen­uine. But then again, bor­der­lines like Mary En­glish did feel anger, mis­ery, de­pres­sion. It was just mis­di­rect­ed. And they were very good at dis­sem­bling, at twist­ing things back on you, mak­ing you, not them, the guilty par­ty . . .

“How could you come here like this, hurt me this way?” she sobbed. “You’re a psy­chol­ogist, you’re sup­posed to help peo­ple . . .”

Lash stood in the door­way, silent and in­creas­ing­ly un­cer­tain, wait­ing for the emo­tions to play them­selves out.

The sobs ceased. And a mo­ment lat­er, her shoul­ders straight­ened.

“How could I pos­si­bly have ev­er been at­tract­ed to you?” she asked in a qui­et voice. “Back then, you struck me as a man who cared, who had it all to­geth­er. A man with a lit­tle sense of mys­tery.” She brusque­ly wiped away a tear. “But you know what I de­cid­ed, ly­ing here awake at night, alone, in my emp­ty house? Your mys­tery is the mys­tery of a man who’s got noth­ing in­side. A man who’s got noth­ing of him­self to give.”

She reached be­hind her, fum­bled with a box of tis­sues on the hall ta­ble, cursed when she found it emp­ty. “Get out of here,” she said qui­et­ly, with­out meet­ing his gaze. “Get out of here, please. Leave me be.”

Lash stared at her. By old habit, half a dozen clin­ical replies came to mind. But sort­ing through them, none seemed ap­pro­pri­ate. So he sim­ply nod­ded and turned away.

He start­ed the car, did a U-​turn, re­traced his route down the street. But be­fore he got to the cor­ner, he pulled over to the curb and stopped. In the rearview mir­ror, he could see that the front light of 9148 Jef­fer­son had al­ready been ex­tin­guished.

What had Richard Sil­ver said, in that vast room float­ing six­ty sto­ries above Man­hat­tan? It’s re­as­sur­ing, know­ing you’re as­sist­ing us. Here, star­ing out in­to the dark, Lash felt no such re­as­sur­ance.

NINETEEN

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, as he walked from a Man­hat­tan park­ing garage, Lash stopped out­side a mag­azine shop, set in­to the base of a vast apart­ment house and drowned in the shade of the fac­ing build­ings. He stepped in­side, his eye quick­ly scan­ning the head­lines of lo­cal and na­tion­al news­pa­pers: the Kansas City Star, the Dal­las Morn­ing News, the Prov­idence Jour­nal, the Wash­ing­ton Post. He breathed a small sigh of re­lief on find­ing no sto­ries de­tail­ing dou­ble sui­cides among hap­pi­ly mar­ried cou­ples. Leav­ing the shop, he turned right on Madi­son Av­enue, head­ing for the Eden build­ing. Now I know how Louis XVI must have felt, he thought; get­ting up each morn­ing un­der the shad­ow of the axe, nev­er know­ing if this was to be the day of ul­ti­mate rev­ela­tion.

Though he re­mained tired, he felt a lit­tle bet­ter about the night be­fore. Bor­der­lines like Mary En­glish were ex­cel­lent liars, ac­tors in their own way. He’d done the right thing. He’d have to keep a close eye for fu­ture signs of stalk­ing, just in case.

He ar­rived in the lob­by a lit­tle ear­ly but Tara Sta­ple­ton was al­ready there wait­ing for him. She was wear­ing a dark skirt and sweater, with­out jew­el­ry of any kind. She smiled briefly, and they ex­changed a few pleas­antries about the weath­er, but she seemed as re­mote as she had the day be­fore.

Lead­ing him past the se­cu­ri­ty perime­ter and down a wide un­marked cor­ri­dor, Tara in­struct­ed him in crisp sen­tences on the fin­er points of get­ting in and out of the in­ner tow­er. Al­though there were two en­trance por­tals at Check­point I, the morn­ing crush of em­ploy­ees meant a five-​minute wait. Tara spoke very lit­tle, so Lash lis­tened dis­creet­ly to the con­ver­sa­tions go­ing on around him. There was ex­cit­ed chat­ter about a memo that had cir­cu­lat­ed re­cent­ly, re­port­ing client ap­pli­ca­tions were up thir­ty per­cent. There was re­mark­ably lit­tle talk about last night’s ball game or how the morn­ing com­mute had gone. It was as Mauch­ly said: these peo­ple gen­uine­ly loved what they did.

Once past the check­point, Tara showed Lash to an of­fice re­served for him on the six­teenth floor. The door had no key, but was opened by a bracelet scan­ner. The of­fice was win­dow­less, but pleas­ant­ly bright and large, with a desk and ta­ble, a large emp­ty book­case, and a com­put­er, al­so sport­ing a scan­ner. The on­ly oth­er fea­ture was a small pan­el, set low in one wall, al­low­ing ac­cess to the in­ner tow­er’s om­nipresent da­ta con­duit.

“I’ve ar­ranged to have all the re­sults for the Thor­pes and Wilners brought to you,” she said. “We’ll have the da­ta ter­mi­nal on­line for you this morn­ing, and I’ll show you how to ac­cess records as need­ed. You’ll need to scan your bracelet be­fore you can log on. Here’s my ex­ten­sion and cell num­ber if you need to reach me.” She placed a card on the ta­ble. “I’ll come back for you at lunch.”

Lash pock­et­ed the card. “Thanks. Where can I find cof­fee around here?”

“There’s a staff cafe­te­ria down the hall. The bath­room’s that way, too. Is there any­thing else?”

Lash dropped his leather satchel on one of the chairs. “Could I have a white­board, please?”

“I’ll have one sent in.” With a nod, she turned grace­ful­ly and left the room.

For a mo­ment, Lash stared thought­ful­ly at the space where she’d stood. Then he stowed his satchel in­side one of the desk draw­ers and made his way to the cafe­te­ria, where a Ju­noesque wom­an be­hind the counter cheer­ful­ly brought him a large espres­so. He took it grate­ful­ly, sipped, found it ex­cel­lent.

No soon­er had he re­turned to his of­fice and made him­self com­fort­able than a tech­ni­cian knocked on the open door. “Dr. Lash?”

“Yes?”

The man wheeled in what looked like a black ev­idence lock­er, set on a steel cart. “Here are the doc­uments you re­quest­ed. When you’ve fin­ished your ex­am­ina­tion, call the num­ber stamped on the car­tons and some­one will pick them up.”

Lash lift­ed the heavy lock­er and placed it on the ta­ble. It was sealed with white tape that read HIGH­LY CON­FI­DEN­TIAL AND PRO­PRI­ETARY—NOT TO LEAVE EDEN IN­TER­NAL.

He closed the door to the of­fice. Then he slit the tape and snapped open the lid. In­side were four large ac­cor­dion files, each bear­ing a name and a num­ber:

Each was sealed with white tape and bore an iden­ti­cal la­bel:

EDEN CON­FI­DEN­TIAL MA­TE­RI­AL

IN­TER­NAL USE ON­LY

L-3 AU­THO­RIZA­TION RE­QUIRED

NOTE: HARD­COPY WITH­IN. DIG­ITAL ME­DIA AL­SO AVAIL­ABLE.

USE REQ­UI­SI­TION AT-4849

Lash reached for Lewis Thor­pe’s file. Then he hes­itat­ed: no, he’d leave Lewis Thor­pe for last. In­stead, he opened Lind­say Thor­pe’s file and up­end­ed it on­to the ta­ble. A flood of pa­per streamed out, much of it test­ing sheets and re­sult forms, but al­so a thick spi­ral-​bound pack­et that made lit­tle sense:

COD­ING SHEET FOL­LOWS

Note: Sum­ma­riza­tion on­ly

head­er

=====

tele­pho­ny met­rics—quan­ti­za­tion

as­sem­bly pe­ri­od: 27 Aug 02/09 Sep 02

datas­tream: nom­inal

ho­mog­eniza­tion: op­ti­mal—

da­ta lo­ca­tion (hard): 2342400494234

first ac­cess sec­tor 3024-a

com­part­men­tal­iza­tion al­go­rithm set

chief op­er­ator: Pawar, Gup­ta

scrub chief: Ko­rn­gold, Ster­ling

da­ta gath­er­ing su­per­vi­sor: Rose, Lawrence

hex­adec­imal source fol­lows

It ap­peared to be some kind of ma­chine-​code sum­ma­ry of Lind­say’s tele­phone habits dur­ing her surveil­lance pe­ri­od. Read­able or un­read­able, it wasn’t the da­ta he was in­ter­est­ed in. Lash put this aside and picked up the test forms. They looked pre­cise­ly like the tests he had tak­en just days be­fore; the sight sent a fresh surge of mor­ti­fi­ca­tion through him. He sipped his espres­so, rif­fled through the pages, glanc­ing at the lit­tle black cir­cles Lind­say Thor­pe had filled in so in­dus­tri­ous­ly. Her an­swers seemed to fall with­in nor­mal ranges, and a quick glance at the scor­ing sheets con­firmed this. His eye fell at last on the se­nior eval­ua­tor’s re­port.

Lind­say Tor­vald shows all signs of be­ing well-​ad­just­ed so­cial­ly, with a nor­ma­tive per­son­al­ity pro­file. Ap­pear­ance, de­meanor, be­hav­ior dur­ing and be­tween the tests was with­in nor­mal lim­its. At­ten­tion span, speech ar­tic­ula­tion, com­pre­hen­sion, and ver­bal skills were all with­in the top 10th per­centile. Tests showed lit­tle ab­nor­mal scat­ter or skew, and va­lid­ity scales were high across the board: the ap­pli­cant seemed ex­cep­tion­al­ly can­did and forthright. The pro­jec­tive inkblot test in­di­cat­ed cre­ativ­ity and a vivid imag­ina­tion with on­ly slight mor­bid­ity fac­tors. The per­son­al­ity pro­file showed slight ten­den­cies to­ward in­tro­ver­sion but well with­in ac­cept­able lev­els, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the strong in­di­ca­tors for self-​con­fi­dence. The in­tel­li­gence bat­tery was al­so strong, par­tic­ular­ly in the ar­eas of ver­bal com­pre­hen­sion and mem­ory; com­pu­ta­tion skills were weak­er, but still the over­all score gives the ap­pli­cant a Full Scale IQ of 138 (mod­ified WAIS-​III).

In short, all quan­tifi­able met­rics sug­gest Ms. Tor­vald would make an ex­cel­lent can­di­date for Eden.

R. J. Stead­man, Ph.D.

Au­gust 21, 2002

There was move­ment in the cor­ri­dor out­side his door; a tech­ni­cian wheeled a white­board in­to his of­fice. Lash thanked him, watched him leave. Then he put the re­port aside and reached for the test­ing forms once again.

By noon, he had stud­ied the test re­sults for three of the ap­pli­cants. No smok­ing guns, no signs of in­cip­ient pathol­ogy. Across the board, the signs of de­pres­sion, the sui­cide in­dex­es, were ex­treme­ly low. Lash re­placed the stacks of pa­per in­to their re­spec­tive fold­ers; stood; stretched; then went down to the cafe­te­ria for an­oth­er espres­so.

He walked back to his tem­po­rary of­fice more slow­ly than he had left it. There was on­ly one fold­er left: Lewis Thor­pe’s. Thor­pe, who spe­cial­ized in in­ver­te­brate bi­ol­ogy and en­joyed trans­lat­ing the po­et­ry of Bash–o. Lash had spent sev­er­al nights reread­ing Nar­row Road to the In­te­ri­or, putting him­self in Lewis’s shoes, try­ing to feel what he’d felt in the test­ing suite, in that sun-​filled Flagstaff liv­ing room where he had died un­der the gaze of his own in­fant child.

Ea­ger­ly—yet a lit­tle war­ily—Lash broke open the seal on the fourth fold­er.

It took less than half an hour to re­al­ize that what he most feared was, in fact, true. Lewis Thor­pe’s test re­sults showed him to be as nor­mal and well ad­just­ed as the rest. They showed an in­tel­li­gent, imag­ina­tive, am­bi­tious man with a healthy self-​re­gard. No in­di­ca­tors for de­pres­sion or sui­cide.

Lash slumped back in his chair and let the se­nior eval­ua­tor’s re­port fall from his hands. The tests he’d fought so hard to get brought him no clos­er to an an­swer.

There was a knock at his door, and he looked up to see Tara Sta­ple­ton lean­ing in, her long, in­tent face framed by thick auburn hair.

“Lunch?” she asked.

Lash gath­ered Lewis Thor­pe’s pa­pers to­geth­er and stuffed them back in­to the fold­er. “Sure.”

Al­ready, the cafe­te­ria down the hall felt like an old friend. It was bright and al­most fes­tive, and more crowd­ed now than it had been on his two ear­li­er vis­its. He fell in line at the buf­fet rail, helped him­self to an­oth­er espres­so and a sand­wich, then fol­lowed Tara to an emp­ty ta­ble near the rear wall. She’d tak­en on­ly a cup of soup and some tea, and as Lash watched she tore open a pack­et of ar­ti­fi­cial sweet­en­er and poured it in­to the cup. Her re­served, pre­oc­cu­pied si­lence re­mained. But right now, that seemed all right: he wasn’t ea­ger to field a lot of ques­tions about how his in­ves­ti­ga­tion was go­ing.

“How long have you worked at Eden?” he asked af­ter a mo­ment.

“Three years. Since just af­ter its found­ing.”

“And it’s as great a place to work as Mauch­ly says?”

“It al­ways has been.”

Lash wait­ed as she stirred her soup, a lit­tle un­cer­tain what she meant by this. “Tell me about Sil­ver.”

“How do you mean.”

“Well, what’s he like? He wasn’t at all what I ex­pect­ed.”

“Me, nei­ther.”

“I take it this was the first time you’ve met him face to face.”

“I saw him once be­fore, at the first an­niver­sary cel­ebra­tion. He’s a very pri­vate per­son. Nev­er leaves his pent­house, as far as any­body knows. Com­mu­ni­cates by cell or video­phone. It’s just him up there. Him and Liza.”

Liza. Sil­ver had men­tioned that name, too. At the time, Lash had thought it a slip of the tongue. “Liza?”

“The com­put­er. His life’s work. What makes Eden pos­si­ble. Liza’s his one true love. Kind of iron­ic, re­al­ly, giv­en the na­ture of our busi­ness. He does most of his com­mu­ni­cat­ing to the board and the staff through Mauch­ly.”

Lash was sur­prised. “Re­al­ly?”

“Mauch­ly’s his right-​hand man.”

Lash no­ticed that some­body was look­ing at him from across the cafe­te­ria. The youth­ful face, the bright thatch of hair, seemed fa­mil­iar. Then he re­al­ized who it was: Pe­ter Hap­wood, the eval­ua­tion en­gi­neer Mauch­ly had in­tro­duced him to the day of the class re­unions. Hap­wood smiled, waved. Lash waved back.

He re­turned his at­ten­tion to Tara, who was once again stir­ring her soup. “Tell me more about Liza,” he said.

“It’s a hy­brid su­per­com­put­er. Noth­ing else like it in the world.”

“Why?”

“It’s the on­ly large com­put­er built en­tire­ly around a core of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.”

“And how did Sil­ver come to build it?”

Tara took a sip of tea. “You hear ru­mors. Sto­ries, re­al­ly. I don’t know ex­act­ly how true any of them are. Some peo­ple say Sil­ver had a lone­ly, trau­mat­ic child­hood. Oth­ers say he was cod­dled, do­ing dif­fer­en­tial equa­tions at the age of eight. He’s nev­er talked about it on record. All any­body knows for sure is, by the time he got to col­lege, he was do­ing pi­oneer­ing work in AI. Bril­liant, ge­nius-​lev­el stuff. His grad­uate work cen­tered around a com­put­er that could learn for it­self. He gave it a per­son­al­ity, made its prob­lem-​solv­ing al­go­rithms more and more so­phis­ti­cat­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, he proved a com­put­er that can teach it­self could solve prob­lems far more dif­fi­cult than any hand-​cod­ed com­put­er. Lat­er, to fi­nance fur­ther re­search, he farmed out Liza’s pro­cess­ing cy­cles to places like the Jet Propul­sion Lab­ora­to­ry, the Hu­man Genome Project.”

“And then he had his brain­storm. Eden, with Liza as the com­pu­ta­tion­al core. And the rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.” Lash took a sip of cof­fee. “So what’s Liza like to work with?”

There was a pause. “We nev­er get near the core rou­tines or in­tel­li­gence. Liza’s phys­ical plant is in the pent­house, and on­ly Sil­ver has ac­cess. Ev­ery­body else—sci­en­tists, tech­ni­cians, even the com­put­er pro­gram­mers—us­es the cor­po­rate com­put­er grid and Liza’s da­ta ab­strac­tion lay­er.”

“Liza’s what?”

“A shell that cre­ates vir­tu­al ma­chines with­in the com­put­er’s mem­ory space.” Tara paused again. More and more paus­es were creep­ing in­to her sen­tences. Then, abrupt­ly, she stood up.

“I’m sor­ry,” she said. “Could we talk about this some oth­er time? I have to go.”

And with­out an­oth­er word she turned and left the cafe­te­ria.

TWENTY

When Mauch­ly walked in­to the of­fice around four, Lash was stand­ing be­fore his white­board. The man moved so silent­ly Lash didn’t no­tice him un­til he was by his side.

“Christ!” Lash jumped, drop­ping his mark­er.

“Sor­ry. Should have knocked.” Mauch­ly glanced at the bul­letin board. “Race, age, type, per­son­al­ity, em­ploy­ment, ge­ograph­ics, vic­tims. What’s this?”

“I’m try­ing to type the killer. As­sem­ble a pro­file.”

Mauch­ly turned his placid gaze on Lash. “We still don’t know there’s a killer.”

“I’ve gone over all your records. There’s noth­ing psy­cho­log­ical­ly wrong with the Thor­pes or the Wilners, ze­ro clin­ical ev­idence of sui­cide. It would be a waste of time to ex­plore that av­enue fur­ther. And you heard what Lelyveld said in the board­room: we don’t have time.”

“But there’s no signs of mur­der, ei­ther. The Thor­pes’ se­cu­ri­ty cam­era, for one thing. It didn’t show any­body en­ter­ing or leav­ing the house.”

“It’s a lot eas­ier to cov­er up a mur­der than to cov­er up a sui­cide. Se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras can be in­ter­fered with. Alarms can be by­passed.”

Mauch­ly thought about this. Then he looked back at the writ­ing on the board. “How do you know the killer is in his late twen­ties or ear­ly thir­ties?”

“I don’t. That’s the base­line for se­ri­al killers. We have to start with the pat­tern, and re­fine from there.”

“And how about this: that he’s ei­ther well em­ployed or has ac­cess to mon­ey?”

“He killed peo­ple on op­po­site coasts with­in a week of each oth­er. That’s not the modus operan­di of a drifter or a hitch­hik­er: their killing pat­terns chart er­rat­ical­ly across short dis­tances.”

“I see. And this?” Mauch­ly point­ed to the scrawled words, TYPE: UN­KNOWN.

“That’s the trou­bling part. Usu­al­ly, we type se­ri­al killers as or­ga­nized or dis­or­ga­nized. Or­ga­nized killers con­trol their crime scenes and their vic­tims. They’re smart, so­cial­ly ac­cept­able, sex­ual­ly com­pe­tent. They tar­get strangers, hide their corpses. On the oth­er hand, dis­or­ga­nized killers know their vic­tims, act sud­den­ly and spon­ta­neous­ly, feel lit­tle or no stress dur­ing the crime, have few work skills, leave the vic­tim at the scene of the crime.”

“And?”

“Well, if some­one mur­dered the Thor­pes and the Wilners, he ex­hibits traits of both the or­ga­nized and dis­or­ga­nized killer. There’s no co­in­ci­dence here: he’d have to know the vic­tims. Yet he left them at the scene, like a dis­or­ga­nized killer. But again, the scene isn’t in the least bit slop­py. Such in­con­sis­ten­cies are ex­treme­ly rare.”

“How rare?”

“I nev­er came across a se­ri­al killer like it.”

Ex­cept once, came the voice in his head. He quick­ly pushed the voice far away.

“If we can get a fix on this guy,” Lash went on, “we can com­pare it against crim­inal records. Look for a match. Mean­while, have you thought about keep­ing a sharp eye on the oth­er four su­per­cou­ples?”

“We can’t do a close surveil­lance for ob­vi­ous rea­sons. And we can’t pro­vide ad­equate pro­tec­tion un­til we know ex­act­ly what’s go­ing on. But yes, we’re al­ready get­ting teams in place.”

“Where are the rest lo­cat­ed?”

“All across the coun­try. The clos­est cou­ple, the Con­nellys, live north of Boston. I’ll have Tara get you brief re­ports on all of them.”

Lash nod­ded slow­ly. “You re­al­ly think she’s the right per­son for me to work with?”

“Why do you ask?”

“She doesn’t seem to like me. Or else she’s deal­ing with some is­sues that are dis­tract­ing her.”

“Tara’s go­ing through a hard time. But she’s the best we have. Not on­ly is she chief se­cu­ri­ty tech—which gives her ac­cess to ev­ery sys­tem—but she’s unique in hav­ing worked both the se­cu­ri­ty and com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing sides of the com­pa­ny.”

“If she gets with the pro­gram.”

Mauch­ly’s cell phone went off, and he quick­ly raised it. “Mauch­ly.” A pause. “Yes, of course, sir. Right away.”

He re­placed the cell phone. “That was Sil­ver. He wants to see us, and right now.”

TWENTY-ONE

The day had grown dark and over­cast, and the el­eva­tor doors opened on­to a view far dif­fer­ent than Lash had wit­nessed the day be­fore. On­ly a hand­ful of the cut-​glass ceil­ing fix­tures threw small pools of light across the vast room. Be­yond the win­dows lay a gray storm­scape of skyscrap­ers. The mu­se­um-​like col­lec­tion of think­ing ma­chines lay be­fore them, hulk­ing ob­jects set against a low­er­ing sky.

Richard Sil­ver was stand­ing by the bank of win­dows, hands clasped be­hind his back. At the el­eva­tor’s chime he turned.

“Christo­pher,” he said, shak­ing Lash’s hand. “Nice to see you again. Some­thing to drink?”

“Cof­fee would be nice.”

“I’ll get it,” said Mauch­ly, mov­ing to­ward a wet bar set in­to one of the book­cas­es.

Sil­ver mo­tioned Lash to the same ta­ble they’d sat at the day be­fore. The mag­azines and news­pa­pers were gone. Sil­ver wait­ed for Lash to sit, then took a chair across from him. He was wear­ing cor­duroys and a black cash­mere sweater, sleeves pulled up his fore­arms.

“I’ve thought a lot about what you told me yes­ter­day,” he said. “About these deaths not be­ing sui­cide. I didn’t want to be­lieve it. But I think you were right.”

“I don’t see any oth­er pos­si­bil­ity.”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I meant what you said about Eden be­ing in­volved, ei­ther way.” Sil­ver looked past Lash, his ex­pres­sion trou­bled. “I’ve been too wrapped up in my own projects, here in my ivory tow­er. I’ve al­ways been more fas­ci­nat­ed by pure sci­ence than ap­plied sci­ence. Try­ing to build a ma­chine that can think, learn, solve prob­lems on its own: that’s where my heart’s al­ways been. Ex­act­ly what prob­lems in­ter­est­ed me less than the ca­pa­bil­ity of solv­ing them. It wasn’t un­til the idea for Eden came along that I grew per­son­al­ly in­volved. Fi­nal­ly, a task to which Liza was wor­thy: hu­man hap­pi­ness. Even so, I’ve kept re­moved from the day-​to-​day pro­cess. And I see now this was a mis­take.”

Sil­ver stopped, his gaze fo­cused again on Lash. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this.”

“Peo­ple tell me I’ve got a face that in­spires con­fi­dences.”

Sil­ver laughed qui­et­ly. “Any­way, I fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed that, if I’ve been un­in­volved in the past, there was some­thing I could do. Now.”

“What’s that?”

Mauch­ly re­turned, cof­fee in hand, and Sil­ver stood. “If you’ll come with me?”

He led the way to a far cor­ner, where the glass win­dows that ran around three sides of the room met the book­cas­es of the fourth. Here, Sil­ver’s col­lec­tion of com­put­ing ma­chines ap­peared to run to the mu­si­cal: a Farfisa Com­bo; a Mel­lotron; and a mod­ular Moog syn­the­siz­er, all patch cords and low-​pass fil­ters.

Sil­ver turned to him. “You said the killer was most like­ly a re­ject­ed Eden can­di­date.”

“That’s what the pro­file sug­gests. Per­haps a schizoid per­son­al­ity that couldn’t ac­cept re­jec­tion. There’s a small­er chance the killer dropped out of the pro­gram af­ter ac­cep­tance. Or was one of those clients not matched with­in your five-​cy­cle win­dow.”

Sil­ver nod­ded. “I in­struct­ed Liza to parse all ac­ces­si­ble ap­pli­cant da­ta, look­ing for anoma­lies.”

“Anoma­lies?”

“It’s a lit­tle hard to ex­plain. Imag­ine cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al topol­ogy in three di­men­sions, then pop­ulat­ing it with ap­pli­cant da­ta. Com­press the da­ta, com­pare it. It’s al­most like the avatar match­ing Liza does ev­ery day, done in re­verse. See, our ap­pli­cants have al­ready been psy­cho­log­ical­ly vet­ted; they should all skew to tight­ly bound­ed norms. I was look­ing for ap­pli­cants whose be­hav­ior, per­son­al­ity, lie out­side those norms.”

“De­viants,” Lash said.

“Yes,” Sil­ver looked pained. “Or peo­ple whose be­hav­ior pat­terns were out of sync with their eval­ua­tions.”

“How did you do this so quick­ly?”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I didn’t. I in­struct­ed Liza on the na­ture of the prob­lem, and she de­vel­oped the method­ol­ogy on her own.”

“Us­ing the da­ta from ap­pli­cant test­ing?”

“Not on­ly that. Liza al­so called on da­ta trails left by re­ject­ed ap­pli­cants and vol­un­tary dropouts in the months or years since their orig­inal ap­pli­ca­tions.”

Lash was shocked. “You mean, da­ta gath­ered af­ter they weren’t po­ten­tial clients any­more? How is such a thing pos­si­ble?”

“It’s called ac­tiv­ity mon­itor­ing. It’s prac­ticed by many large cor­po­ra­tions. The gov­ern­ment does it, too. We’re just a few years ahead of ev­ery­body else. Mauch­ly’s prob­ably shown you some of its el­emen­tary us­es al­ready.” Sil­ver smoothed the front of his sweater. “In any case, Liza flagged three names.”

“Flagged? As in, al­ready?”

Sil­ver nod­ded.

“But there must have been a tremen­dous amount of da­ta—”

“Ap­prox­imate­ly half a mil­lion petabytes. It would have tak­en a Cray a year to parse. Liza com­plet­ed it in hours.” And he ges­tured at some­thing near the wall.

Lash stared with fresh amaze­ment at some­thing he’d as­sumed was an­oth­er an­tique from Sil­ver’s col­lec­tion. A stan­dard com­put­er key­board sat on a small ta­ble, be­fore an old-​fash­ioned monochrome VDT ter­mi­nal. A print­er stood to one side.

“This is it?” Lash said in­cred­ulous­ly. “This is Liza?”

“What did you ex­pect?”

“I didn’t ex­pect this.”

“Liza her­self, or her com­pu­ta­tion­al plant, oc­cu­pies the floors di­rect­ly be­low us. But why make an in­ter­face more com­pli­cat­ed than it has to be? You’d be sur­prised how much I can ac­com­plish with just this.”

Lash thought about the com­put­ing feat Liza had just com­plet­ed. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Sil­ver hes­itat­ed. “Christo­pher, you’d men­tioned an­oth­er pos­si­bil­ity. That the killer was some­body on our own staff. So I al­so in­struct­ed Liza to search for any­thing un­usu­al, in­ter­nal­ly.” His ex­pres­sion grew tight, as if in phys­ical pain. “She flagged one name.”

Sil­ver turned to the small ta­ble, picked up two sheets of fold­ed pa­per, and pressed them in­to Lash’s hand.

“Good luck—if that is in­deed the right word.”

Lash nod­ded, turned to go.

“Christo­pher? One oth­er thing.”

Lash glanced back.

“I know you un­der­stand why I gave this Liza’s high­est pri­or­ity.”

“I do. And thanks.”

He let Mauch­ly lead the way to the el­eva­tor, con­sid­er­ing Sil­ver’s last words. The same thought had al­so been run­ning through his own head. The Thor­pe cou­ple had died on a Fri­day, eleven days be­fore. The Wilners had died the fol­low­ing Fri­day. Se­ri­al killers liked con­sis­ten­cy and pat­tern.

They had three days.

TWENTY-TWO

Four names,” Mauch­ly said.

He was star­ing at the ta­ble in Lash’s of­fice. The two sheets of pa­per Sil­ver pro­vid­ed lay on it, un­fold­ed.

“Any idea why Liza flagged these four in par­tic­ular?” Tara asked from across the ta­ble.

Mauch­ly picked up the sheet on which a sin­gle name had been print­ed. “Gary Han­der­ling. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“He’s part of the scrub crew,” Tara said.

“The what?” said Lash.

“Da­ta scrub. They’re in charge of da­ta stor­age and se­cu­ri­ty.”

Mauch­ly glanced at her. “You’ve start­ed the in­ter­nal trace on him?”

“It should be com­plet­ed with­in twelve hours.”

“High­est de­gree of con­fi­den­tial­ity?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’d bet­ter get start­ed on the three clients.” Mauch­ly picked up the oth­er sheet. “I’ll have Rum­son in Se­lec­tive Gath­er­ing do com­plete workups.”

“What’ll you tell him?” Tara asked.

“That we’re run­ning some ran­dom pro­to­typ­ing on a few ob­so­letes. Just an­oth­er sys­tem test.”

Ob­so­letes, Lash thought to him­self. Eden-​speak for dis­qual­ified can­di­dates. Guess that makes me an ob­so­lete, too.

“Dr. Lash, we should have the re­sults back by mid­morn­ing to­mor­row. We’ll meet then, run them by your pro­file.” Mauch­ly checked his watch. “It’s al­most five. Why don’t you two head home. We’ve got a long day to­mor­row. Tara, if you wouldn’t mind tak­ing Dr. Lash through the check­point, make sure he doesn’t get lost on the way out?”

 

By the time they pushed through the re­volv­ing doors on­to the street, it was quar­ter past five. Lash stopped at the foun­tain to but­ton his coat. The clam­or of Man­hat­tan, al­most for­got­ten in the hushed spaces of the Eden tow­er, re­assert­ed it­self with a vengeance.

“I don’t see how any­one could get used to that,” Lash said. “Go­ing through those check­points, I mean.”

“You can get used to any­thing,” Tara replied, sling­ing a satchel over one shoul­der. “See you to­mor­row.”

“Hold on a minute!” Lash trot­ted to keep up with her. “Where are you go­ing?”

“Grand Cen­tral. I live in New Rochelle.”

“Re­al­ly? I live in West­port. Let me drop you off.”

“That’s okay, thanks.”

“Then let me buy you a drink be­fore you head home.”

Tara stopped and looked at him. “Why?”

“Why not? It’s a thing cowork­ers do some­times. In civ­ilized coun­tries, I mean.”

Tara hes­itat­ed.

“Hu­mor me.”

She nod­ded. “Okay. But let’s go to Se­bas­tian’s. I don’t want to catch any­thing lat­er than the 6:02.”

 

Se­bas­tian’s was a sprawl of white-​cov­ered ta­bles on the up­per lev­el of Grand Cen­tral, over­look­ing the main pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal. The cav­ernous space had been com­plete­ly re­stored in re­cent years, and was more beau­ti­ful than Lash ev­er re­mem­bered see­ing it: creamy walls ris­ing to a ceil­ing of groined vaults, green span­drels, and con­stel­la­tions of glit­ter­ing mo­sa­ic. The voic­es of count­less com­muters, the squawk of the dis­patch loud­speak­er call­ing out ar­rivals and de­par­tures, min­gled to­geth­er in an odd­ly pleas­ing patch­work of back­ground noise.

The two were shown to a small ta­ble perched di­rect­ly in front of the rail­ing. With­in mo­ments, a wait­er bus­tled up. “What can I get you?” he asked.

“I’ll have a Bom­bay mar­ti­ni, very dry, with a twist,” Tara said.

“A vod­ka Gib­son, please.” Lash watched the wait­er thread his way back through the ta­bles, then turned to Tara. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For not or­der­ing one of those hor­ri­ble mar­ti­nis du jour. Some­body I was din­ing with the oth­er week or­dered an ap­ple mar­ti­ni. Ap­ple. What an abom­ina­tion.”

Tara shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Lash looked over the rail­ing at the streams of com­muters. Tara was silent, twist­ing a cock­tail nap­kin be­tween the fin­gers of one hand. He looked back at her. Hazy light slant­ed down, catch­ing the gen­tle curve of her auburn hair. Her eyes, framed by per­fect high cheek­bones, looked se­ri­ous.

“Want to tell me what’s up?” he asked.

“Up with what?”

“With you.”

She wrapped the nap­kin around one fin­ger, twist­ed it tight. “I agreed to a drink, not a psy­chi­atric ses­sion.”

“I’m not a psy­chi­atrist. Just a guy try­ing to get a job done, with your help. On­ly you don’t seem too ea­ger to help.”

She glanced up at him for a minute, then re­turned her at­ten­tion to the nap­kin.

“You seem pre­oc­cu­pied. Dis­in­ter­est­ed. That doesn’t bode well for our work­ing re­la­tion­ship.”

“Our tem­po­rary work­ing re­la­tion­ship.”

“Ex­act­ly. And the bet­ter we work to­geth­er, the more tem­po­rary it will be.”

She dropped the nap­kin on the ta­ble. “You’re wrong. I’m not dis­in­ter­est­ed. It’s been—a rough cou­ple of days for me.”

“Then why don’t you tell me about it?”

Tara sighed, her gaze wan­der­ing to­ward the soar­ing vault over­head.

“I’m buy­ing. It’s the least you can do.”

Their drinks ar­rived, and they sipped a mo­ment in si­lence.

“Okay,” Tara said. “No rea­son you shouldn’t know, I guess.” She took an­oth­er sip. “I didn’t learn about any of this un­til yes­ter­day, when Mauch­ly called to tell me I’d be your li­ai­son while you were in­side the Wall. That’s when he told me about the prob­lem.”

Lash re­mained silent, lis­ten­ing.

“The on­ly thing is, just this Sat­ur­day, I got the nod from Eden.”

“The nod?”

“That’s what we call get­ting no­ti­fi­ca­tion your match has been found.”

“Your match? You mean that you . . .” He stopped.

“Yeah. I’d been a can­di­date.”

Lash stared at her. “I thought Eden em­ploy­ees weren’t al­lowed to be can­di­dates.”

“That’s al­ways been the pol­icy. But a few months ago they start­ed a pi­lot pro­gram to phase in em­ploy­ee ap­pli­cants, based on mer­it and se­nior­ity. In a pool with oth­er Eden em­ploy­ees, not the gen­er­al pool.”

Lash sipped his drink. “I’m not sure I see why the pol­icy was need­ed in the first place.”

“The staff shrinks rec­om­mend­ed it from day one. They called it the ‘Oz ef­fect.’”

“As in, pay no at­ten­tion to the man be­hind the cur­tain?”

“Ex­act­ly. They thought em­ploy­ees wouldn’t make de­sir­able can­di­dates. See, we know too much of what goes on, how things go on, be­hind the scenes. They thought we’d be cyn­ical.” Then she leaned to­ward him sud­den­ly, an in­ten­si­ty in her face he hadn’t seen be­fore. “But you have no idea what it’s like, day af­ter day. Bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er. Sit­ting in the dark be­hind one-​way glass, watch­ing cou­ples at class re­unions talk about how won­der­ful ev­ery­thing had be­come. How Eden changed their lives, com­plet­ed their lives. I mean, if you’ve al­ready got some­one and you’re hap­py, maybe you can ra­tio­nal­ize. But if you don’t . . .” She let the sen­tence hang in the air, un­fin­ished.

“You’re right,” Lash said. “I don’t have any idea what it’s like.”

“I car­ried that let­ter around with me all week­end. I must have read it a hun­dred times. Matt Bolan, in our bio­chem­istry sec­tion, was the match. I’ve nev­er met him, but I’d heard the name. They’d made a din­ner reser­va­tion for us this com­ing Fri­day. One If By Land, Two If By Sea.”

“In the Vil­lage. Beau­ti­ful place.”

“Es­pe­cial­ly this time of year.” For a mo­ment, Tara’s ex­pres­sion bright­ened. Then it cloud­ed again. “Then, first thing yes­ter­day, I get the call from Mauch­ly. He tells me about the su­per­cou­ples, the dou­ble sui­cides. Would I be kind enough to shep­herd you around.”

“And?”

“And right be­fore I meet you, I send an email to the Ap­pli­ca­tions Com­mit­tee with­draw­ing my name as a can­di­date.”

“What?”

Tara’s eyes blazed. “How was I sup­posed to go ahead, know­ing what I know? And worse, what I don’t know?”

“What are you say­ing? That the ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess is flawed?”

“I don’t know what I’m say­ing!” she cried. Frus­tra­tion brought an edge to her voice. “Can’t you see? The pro­cess can’t be flawed, I work with it ev­ery day, I see it per­form mir­acles over and over. But then, what hap­pened to those two cou­ples?”

As quick­ly as it came, the vi­olent emo­tion dis­si­pat­ed. Tara sank back. “Any­way, how can I go for­ward now? If Eden is about any­thing, it’s about life­time com­mit­ment to a re­la­tion­ship. Can I be­gin such a re­la­tion­ship with a se­cret I can nev­er re­veal?”

The ques­tion hung in the air. Tara lift­ed her drink.

“There you have it,” she said with a dry laugh. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Hap­py now?”

“I feel any­thing but hap­py.”

“Just please don’t bring it up again. I’ll be fine.”

The wait­er reap­peared. “An­oth­er round?”

“Not for me,” Lash said. The cock­tail might have been a mis­take: tired as he was, he’d prob­ably fall asleep at the wheel halfway home.

“Me nei­ther,” Tara said. “I’ve got to catch my train.”

“Just the check, please,” Lash told the wait­er.

Tara watched the man re­cede to­ward the bar, then looked back at Lash. “All right. Your turn. I heard you tell Dr. Sil­ver that your ori­en­ta­tion was cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral.”

“That was your first time in the pent­house, too. You nev­er told me what you thought of the place.”

“We’re talk­ing about you now, not me.”

“As you wish.” The wait­er re­turned with the check; Lash fum­bled for his wal­let, dropped a cred­it card on­to the leather fold­er. “Cog­ni­tive be­hav­ioral, that’s cor­rect.”

Tara wait­ed un­til the wait­er had scooped away the bill. “I must have dozed off dur­ing our psych ori­en­ta­tions. What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t fo­cus on un­con­scious con­flicts, on whether some­body got enough hugs from his moth­er at age two. I fo­cus on what a per­son’s think­ing, what his rule­set is.”

“Rule­set?”

“Ev­ery­body lives by a set of in­ter­nal rules, whether they know it or not. You un­der­stand enough of a per­son’s rules, you can un­der­stand, pre­dict, their be­hav­ior.”

“Pre­dict. I as­sume that’s what you did for the FBI.”

Lash fin­ished off his drink. “Some­thing like that.”

“And if this—this turns out to be the work of a killer, will you be able to pre­dict what he’ll do next?”

“Hope­ful­ly. But the pro­file is ex­treme­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry. Any­way, maybe that won’t be nec­es­sary. We’ll know to­mor­row morn­ing.” As he spoke, Lash be­came aware of the wait­er stand­ing at his el­bow.

“Yes?” Lash said.

“I’m sor­ry, sir,” the wait­er said. “But this card has been de­clined.”

“What? Run it again, please.”

“I al­ready ran it twice, sir.”

“That’s im­pos­si­ble, I just sent in a check last week . . .” Lash opened his wal­let. It was as he feared: he was on­ly car­ry­ing one cred­it card. He sound­ed his pock­et for cash and found two dol­lars. Half asleep and for­got to go to the damn ATM, he thought.

He re­placed his wal­let and looked sheep­ish­ly at Tara. “Would you mind pick­ing this up?” he asked.

She looked at him.

“I’ll pay you back to­mor­row.”

And then, sud­den­ly, her blank ex­pres­sion dis­solved in­to a grin. “For­get it,” she said, drop­ping a twen­ty on the ta­ble. “It’s worth it just to see that smug psy­cho­an­alyz­ing look wiped off your face.” And then she laughed: briefly, but loud enough to turn heads halfway to the en­trance of Se­bas­tian’s.

TWENTY-THREE

By the time Lash broached the Eden lob­by Wednes­day morn­ing, thread­ed the com­plex net­work of se­cu­ri­ty, and gained the six­teenth floor, it was al­most nine-​thir­ty. He walked down the pale vi­olet cor­ri­dor, by­pass­ing his dark­ened of­fice and head­ing di­rect­ly to the cafe­te­ria.

“A jum­bo espres­so, right?” asked Mar­guerite, the counter wom­an who seemed to know ev­ery­one’s needs be­fore they did.

“Mar­guerite, your espres­so is the best in the tri-​state area. I was dream­ing about it the whole drive in.”

“Sug­ar, the amount of caf­feine you in­gest, they could put a set of wheels on you and you’d drive your­self.”

Lash sipped, sipped again. The hot liq­uid warmed his tired limbs and ac­cel­er­at­ed his heart. He smiled at Mar­guerite, then made his way back down the cor­ri­dor.

He’d been slow to rise, feel­ing a lethar­gy that had lit­tle to do with weari­ness. The des­per­ate ur­gen­cy of their search seemed, iron­ical­ly, to have a re­tard­ing ef­fect on him. All his for­mer field ex­pe­ri­ence told him this wasn’t the way to work the case. You didn’t sit in an of­fice, por­ing over com­put­er tran­scripts. Sure, they were help­ful enough in clas­si­fi­ca­tion and pro­fil­ing. But when you were hunt­ing a sus­pect­ed killer who might be about to strike again, you pound­ed the pave­ment, hunt­ed up leads, talked to fam­ily and eye­wit­ness­es. Sit­ting in a skyscrap­er, far from bod­ies and mur­der sites, gath­er­ing da­ta, seemed like lu­na­cy.

Yet Eden’s un­matched abil­ity to gath­er da­ta was all they had.

Reach­ing his of­fice, Lash saw through the door pane that one en­tire wall was now hid­den be­hind stacks of ev­idence lock­ers. He bare­ly had time to step in­side and place his cup on the desk be­fore Mauch­ly en­tered, Tara Sta­ple­ton at his side.

“Ah, there you are, Dr. Lash,” Mauch­ly said. “As you can see, the gath­er­ing pro­cess fin­ished ear­li­er than ex­pect­ed.”

Tara smiled at Lash. As she moved to the ter­mi­nal and scanned her bracelet, Mauch­ly closed the door and low­ered the blinds. “Let’s be­gin with the three ob­so­letes.”

“What if we don’t find our killer?”

“Then we’ll move on to the Eden em­ploy­ee, Han­der­ling. Though that seems a re­mote pos­si­bil­ity.”

“What­ev­er you say.” Lash was high­ly skilled at read­ing peo­ple, but Mauch­ly re­mained an enig­ma. His seemed a monochrome per­son­al­ity, un­bur­dened by mood or even emo­tion.

“Let’s get start­ed,” Tara said. For the first time, she had a brisk, ea­ger air about her. The prospect that filled him with las­si­tude seemed to give her en­er­gy.

They took seats around the ta­ble. Lash sipped his cof­fee while Mauch­ly broke open the first of three sum­ma­ry fold­ers, put the con­tents on the desk.

“Grant Atchi­son,” Mauch­ly said, read­ing from the top sheet. “Com­plet­ed ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion Ju­ly 21, 2003. Age twen­ty-​three, male Cau­casian, grad­uat­ed Rut­gers with a bach­elor in eco­nomics, re­sid­ing at 3143 Auburn Street, Perth Am­boy, New Jer­sey.”

“Is that his own home, or his par­ents’?” Lash asked.

Tara had tak­en up a few of the sheets and was rif­fling through them. “Par­ents.”

“So far, so good.”

“Em­ployed at a chem­ical dye plant in Lin­den.” Mauch­ly turned over a sheet. “Passed our ini­tial screen­ing, came in for ap­pli­cant eval­ua­tion in Au­gust. Was re­ject­ed by the se­nior eval­ua­tor, Dr. Al­ic­to.”

Lash wait­ed for Mauch­ly to glance up at him. But the man’s eyes re­mained on the sum­ma­ry sheets.

“Rea­son?” Tara asked.

“A lot of false an­swers on the tests, for one thing. Va­lid­ity scales were way off base­line.” Mauch­ly read from the sheet. “‘Dif­fi­cul­ties with im­pulse con­trol, emo­tion­al tur­bu­lence, an­he­do­nia.’ It goes on.”

“He was in Ari­zona dur­ing the week the Thor­pes died,” Tara said.

“How do you know that?” Lash asked.

“Any of half a dozen ways. Guy buys an e-​tick­et, gets en­tered in­to the air­line database. Pays for it with a cred­it card, gets in­to the cred­it card database. Rents a car in Phoenix, gets in­to the car rental database.” She shrugged as if it was com­mon knowl­edge.

“Yes, but here’s a prob­lem.” Mauch­ly was look­ing at the last page of the sum­ma­ry. “There are re­ports here of a re­cent med­ical con­di­tion: bloods sent to En­zy­mat­ics for a workup, there’s traf­fic on the in­sur­ance car­ri­ers net­work.” He glanced at Tara. “Care to dig a lit­tle deep­er?”

“Sure thing.” Tara walked over to the ter­mi­nal be­hind Lash’s desk and be­gan to type. “The guy was ad­mit­ted to Mid­dle­sex Coun­ty Hos­pi­tal two and a half weeks ago. Re­nal prob­lems. Had to re­move a kid­ney.”

“Length of stay?”

More typ­ing. “He’s still there. Com­pli­ca­tions from surgery.”

Lash lis­tened to this in­ter­change in grow­ing dis­be­lief.

“So much for Mr. Atchi­son.” Mauch­ly gath­ered the pa­pers, re­turned them to the fold­er, then laid it aside and broke the seal on an­oth­er. “The sec­ond ob­so­lete’s name is Kather­ine Bar­row. Com­plet­ed ap­pli­ca­tion De­cem­ber 20, 2003. Age forty-​six, fe­male, Cau­casian, high school equiv­alen­cy de­gree, re­sides in York, Penn­syl­va­nia. Re­li­gion filled out as ‘druid.’ Owns a shop called Fem­inine Mag­ic in Lan­cast­er Coun­ty. Ap­par­ent­ly sells can­dles, in­cense, herbal reme­dies.”

“What does her eval­ua­tion say?” Tara asked as she re­turned to the ta­ble.

“Nev­er made it that far. There was a se­cu­ri­ty in­ci­dent af­ter fil­ing the ini­tial ap­pli­ca­tion. Lin­gered in the lob­by, tried to ap­proach sev­er­al male ap­pli­cants. There was an in­ter­ven­tion, and she be­came dis­or­der­ly.”

“Tut-​tut,” said Tara.

Mauch­ly leafed through the sum­ma­ry. “Cred­it card vouch­ers and ho­tel records place her in Se­dona, Ari­zona, when the Thor­pes were killed. She was at­tend­ing a sem­inar on crys­tals.” He put down the sum­ma­ry, looked at Lash. “How com­mon are fe­male se­ri­al killers?”

“More com­mon than peo­ple think. Dorothea Puente killed as many as nine of the lodgers in her board­ing house dur­ing the late eight­ies. Mary Ann Cot­ton left a trail of dead hus­bands and chil­dren be­hind her. Over nine­ty per­cent are white. They’re fre­quent­ly health-​care providers or oth­er ‘black wid­ows’ that have been qui­et­ly killing for decades. Age forty-​six would fit the pat­tern. Does she have any fam­ily?”

Mauch­ly looked down at the gath­ered sheets. “No.”

“Look for signs of an iso­lat­ed ex­is­tence, no crim­inal record, pos­si­ble abuse as a wife or harsh dis­ci­pline as a child.”

“Nev­er mar­ried,” Mauch­ly went on. “Runs the shop by her­self—I see no re­ports of any em­ploy­ees in the De­part­ment of La­bor database. No crim­inal record.”

Lash, watch­ing, could on­ly shake his head. He’d al­ready seen—first­hand—the in­cred­ible vol­ume of da­ta Eden as­sem­bled on its clients. And yet this abil­ity to peer so deeply in­to the life of some­body who’d been sum­mar­ily re­ject­ed years be­fore was un­set­tling.

“Looks like we might have strike two,” Tara an­nounced. “There may be no crim­inal record, but there’s a med­ical his­to­ry here of sub­stance abuse. She’s been in and out of detox the last six months.” She picked up some ad­di­tion­al sheets, re­turned to the com­put­er. “Bar­row checked her­self in­to a re­hab clin­ic out­side of New Hope ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing.”

“The Wilners died Fri­day night,” Mauch­ly said. “York’s on­ly a two-​hour drive from Larch­mont.”

Tara was typ­ing again. “Up­on ad­mit­tance, she was found to have near-​tox­ic lev­els of fen­tanyl in her sys­tem. The ad­mit­ting clin­ician said she’d passed out in the guest lot of the clin­ic, been asleep for hours.”

“No­body could com­mit two mur­ders with a blood­stream full of fen­tanyl,” Lash said.

Tara sighed.

For a mo­ment, no­body spoke. Then Mauch­ly put the pa­pers aside and broke open the third and last fold­er.

“James Al­bert Groesch,” he be­gan. “Age thir­ty-​one, male Cau­casian, no re­li­gious af­fil­ia­tion, dropped out of vo­ca­tion­al col­lege af­ter two years. Re­sides in Mas­sape­qua, New York. Postal em­ploy­ee. Passed ini­tial screen­ing. Re­turned for ap­pli­cant eval­ua­tion, failed by the se­nior eval­ua­tor.”

“Rea­son?” Lash asked.

“Alarm­ing test re­sults. The per­son­al­ity in­ven­to­ry showed de­fec­tive so­cial­iza­tion, am­biva­lence to close re­la­tion­ships, po­ten­tial sex­ual mal­ad­just­ment, in­cip­ient misog­yn­ic ten­den­cies.”

“Misog­yny? Why would such a per­son want what Eden has to of­fer?”

“You tell me, Dr. Lash. Not ev­ery­body comes to us with healthy rea­sons. That’s one of the things our eval­ua­tions screen out.” Mauch­ly scanned the re­port. “The eval­ua­tor states that, up­on learn­ing of be­ing de­clined, Groesch grew threat­en­ing. He made an­gry state­ments about Eden, about—let’s see here—‘pho­ny per­fec­tion,’ ‘ar­ti­fi­cial hap­pi­ness.’ He im­plied it was all a gov­ern­ment plot, re­cruit­ing wom­en to spy on men, in­fil­trate their house­holds. Se­cu­ri­ty was called and the em­ploy­ee who’d vet­ted Groesch’s ini­tial screen­ing was dis­ci­plined.”

“Groesch was hik­ing in the Grand Canyon pri­or to the death of the Thor­pes,” Tara said, ex­am­in­ing the overview. “Spent two nights at Phan­tom Ranch. Flew from Flagstaff to Phoenix, then back to La Guardia, the day af­ter their bod­ies were dis­cov­ered.”

So all three had been in or around Flagstaff at the time of the deaths, Lash thought. No doubt one of the fil­ters Liza had used in as­sem­bling the list.

“There’s some­thing else,” Tara said. “Groesch’s eval­ua­tion took place on Au­gust 2, 2002.”

“And?” said Lash.

“That was al­so the day of Karen Wilner’s eval­ua­tion.”

A chill set­tled over the room.

“De­fec­tive so­cial­iza­tion,” Lash mur­mured. “Sex­ual mal­ad­just­ment.”

He turned to­ward Mauch­ly. “Any­thing else there? Any­thing that says this couldn’t be our boy?”

Mauch­ly looked back at the overview. He scanned it briefly, then passed it to Tara. She turned over the pages, shook her head.

A brief but elec­tric tin­gle surged through Lash. The weari­ness he’d felt was gone. There was a col­or pho­to­graph of Groesch ly­ing among the pa­pers, and he picked it up. A burly man with close-​cropped blond hair and a huge han­dle­bar mous­tache glared back at him.

“Let’s break out the picks and ax­es,” Tara said. “Time for some da­ta min­ing.”

Word­less­ly, Mauch­ly stood and walked to­ward the far wall, where the ev­idence lock­ers were stacked. He brought three to the ta­ble, un­sealed the first. In­side, Lash saw cred­it card state­ments; tele­phone records; tran­scripts of what looked like In­ter­net URLs.

“Tara, would you con­tact the CCTV group and co­or­di­nate?” Mauch­ly asked. “Have them start run­ning recog­ni­tion al­go­rithms in Mas­sape­qua, Larch­mont, Flagstaff. And see who’s satel­lite li­ai­son to­day. Have them spin up their archives, just in case.”

“Sure thing.” Tara stood, picked up the tele­phone.

Mauch­ly reached in­to the open lock­er, pulled out two enor­mous stacks of pa­pers, and be­gan leaf­ing through them. “It ap­pears Mr. Groesch made nu­mer­ous calls to his moth­er in the weeks lead­ing up to the four deaths. We’ll have to pin­point any calls he made on the two days in ques­tion—that could prove in­struc­tive. Hmm. He al­so joined sev­er­al prim­itive In­ter­net match­mak­ing ser­vices over the last cou­ple of months. In each case, he seems to have filled out the forms dif­fer­ent­ly, ly­ing about his age, place of res­idence, in­ter­ests. He al­so seems to have vis­it­ed some rather un­usu­al web­sites late­ly: a site that de­scribes how to make poi­sons, an­oth­er spe­cial­iz­ing in graph­ic pho­tographs of mur­ders and sui­cides.” He glanced up. “Does this fit with your pro­file, Dr. Lash?”

It was over­whelm­ing, the lev­el of de­tail Eden seemed able to pull ef­fort­less­ly out of the air. “How are you able to do all this?” Lash asked.

Mauch­ly looked up at him again. “All what?”

“As­sem­ble all this in­for­ma­tion. I mean, these peo­ple didn’t even be­come your clients.”

Mauch­ly’s lips thinned briefly in what might have been a smile. “Dr. Lash, bring­ing two peo­ple to­geth­er in per­fect uni­ty is on­ly half our busi­ness. The oth­er half is, shall we say, in­for­ma­tion­al aware­ness. With­out the lat­ter, we could nev­er do the for­mer.”

“I know. But I’ve nev­er seen any­thing close to it, even at the Bu­reau. It’s al­most as if you can re­con­struct peo­ple’s en­tire lives.”

“Peo­ple think their dai­ly ac­tiv­ities are in­vis­ible,” Tara said. “Not so. Ev­ery time you surf the Web, soft­ware cook­ies track where you’ve been, ev­ery click of your mouse while you were there. Ev­ery email you send goes through a dozen hosts be­fore reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion. Spend a day in any large city, and your im­age is cap­tured by hun­dreds of closed-​cir­cuit tele­vi­sion sys­tems. All that’s lack­ing is an in­fras­truc­ture ro­bust enough to gath­er it all. That’s where we come in. We share our in­for­ma­tion with com­mer­cial database providers, se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment agen­cies, ISP ven­dors, junk-​mail dis­trib­utors, and—”

“Junk mail?” Lash said in sur­prise.

“Junk mail out­fits have some of the most so­phis­ti­cat­ed da­ta al­go­rithms around. It isn’t the un­tar­get­ed bulk peo­ple think. Same with tele­mar­keters. Any­way, all this da­ta on you is col­lect­ed and stored. Stored for­ev­er. Our prob­lem isn’t get­ting enough da­ta: we usu­al­ly gath­er too much.”

“It’s like Big Broth­er.”

“Per­haps it seems that way,” said Mauch­ly. “But with our help, hun­dreds of thou­sands of clients have found hap­pi­ness. And now we might al­so stop a mur­der­er.”

There was a knock on the door; Tara rose from the key­board to open it. A man in a lab coat hand­ed her an ivory-​col­ored fold­er. Tara thanked him, closed the door, and opened the fold­er. She stared at the con­tents a minute.

“Shit,” she said un­der her breath.

“What is it?” Mauch­ly asked.

She hand­ed him the fold­er word­less­ly. Mauch­ly glanced at it a minute. Then he turned to Lash.

“Our team ran a fa­cial recog­ni­tion search through our archive of surveil­lance im­ages,” he said. “We al­ready knew Groesch was around Flagstaff when the Thor­pes died, so Tara lim­it­ed the search to his where­abouts the night of the Wilners’ deaths. The search picked up these im­ages.”

He hand­ed some pho­tographs to Lash. “Here he is, at an ATM at 3:12 p.m. And here again, run­ning a traf­fic light at 4:05. And again, buy­ing cigarettes at a liquor store at 4:49. Again at 5:45, shop­ping for jeans.”

Lash looked at the pho­tos. They were glossy eight-​by-​tens, sim­ilar to the SOC ev­idence pho­tos he’d seen at the Bu­reau. The res­olu­tion was re­mark­ably good, and there was no mis­tak­ing the blond man with the han­dle­bar mous­tache for any­body but James Groesch.

He hand­ed back the pic­tures with mount­ing ex­cite­ment. “Go on.”

Mauch­ly point­ed to a stamped la­bel on the out­side of the fold­er: MAS­SAPE­QUA, IN­NER RING, 9/24/04.

As quick­ly as it had come, the ex­cite­ment died away. “So he was in Mas­sape­qua while the Wilners bled out in Larch­mont,” Lash said.

Mauch­ly nod­ded.

Lash heaved a sigh. He glanced at the clock: it was just ten-​thir­ty.

“What now?” he asked.

But he al­ready knew the an­swer. Now came their last po­ten­tial sus­pect. Gary Han­der­ling. Eden’s own.

TWENTY-FOUR

It shouldn’t take long to clear Han­der­ling,” Mauch­ly said. “Our back­ground checks and psych bat­ter­ies for prospec­tive em­ploy­ees are even more ex­haus­tive than for clients. I’m a lit­tle sur­prised Liza even flagged him.” The air of dis­ap­point­ment in the of­fice was al­most pal­pa­ble.

“What’s the pro­ce­dure?” Lash asked. He sipped his espres­so, found it cold, drained it any­way.

“We have pas­sive mon­itor­ing de­vices in ev­ery work­sta­tion and cu­bi­cle. Keystroke log­gers, so forth. It’s no se­cret, they’re more a pre­ven­tive mea­sure than any­thing.” Mauch­ly opened a dif­fer­ent file: a thin mani­la fold­er con­tain­ing on­ly a few sheets. “Gary Joseph Han­der­ling. Thir­ty-​three years old. For­mer­ly em­ployed as da­ta tech­ni­cian for a Pough­keep­sie bank. Cur­rent­ly re­sides in Yonkers. Di­vorced, no chil­dren. Back­ground check turned up noth­ing ex­cept some vis­its to his high school guid­ance coun­selor af­ter break­ing up with his first girl­friend.”

Tara chuck­led.

“Passed his psych eval­ua­tion with­in the nom­inal bench­marks. Scored high on his lead­er­ship and op­por­tunis­tic scales. Hired by Eden in June of 2001 and put on a re­volv­ing in­tern­ship. Worked six months in Sys­tems Sup­port. Trans­ferred to Da­ta Gath­er­ing in Jan­uary 2002. Fin­ished his in­tern­ship by mov­ing to Da­ta Scrub­bing in Au­gust. Giv­en good marks on all per­for­mance re­views. Sin­gled out for his high lev­el of mo­ti­va­tion and his in­ter­est in learn­ing more about the com­pa­ny.”

A damn Ea­gle Scout, thought Lash.

“Be­came head of his scrub crew last Febru­ary. El­igi­ble for pro­mo­tion out of Da­ta Scrub­bing, but seems hap­py in his po­si­tion.” Mauch­ly raised his eyes to­ward Lash. “Fit any pro­file you know of?” His voice was tinged with a whis­per of irony.

Lash felt de­feat­ed. “Not re­al­ly. Some so­ciopaths are re­mark­ably good at hid­ing in plain sight. Look at Ted Bundy. The guy’s age, race, mar­ital sta­tus jibe with an or­ga­nized se­ri­al killer. But the con­sis­tent em­ploy­ment his­to­ry goes against the pro­file. Then again, noth­ing about these deaths is stan­dard.” He thought a mo­ment. “Is he up to date on his car pay­ments and cred­it cards? Or­ga­nized se­ri­al killers can be ob­ses­sive about not miss­ing pay­ments, not stick­ing out.”

Mauch­ly looked back at the fold­er. “Tara, can you check the cred­it agen­cies, cross-​check with the DMV records?”

“Sure. What’s his SSN?”

“200-66-2984.”

“Just a mo­ment.” Tara tapped at the keys. “Ev­ery­thing spic-​and-​span. No late charges on any cards, go­ing back eigh­teen months. Car pay­ments up to date.”

Mauch­ly nod­ded.

“Pret­ty de­cent driv­ing record, too. On­ly two points on his li­cense.”

“How’d he get those?” Lash asked, more out of habit than any re­al cu­rios­ity.

“Speed­ing tick­et, prob­ably. Let me check WICAPS.”

The room fell silent save for the pat­ter of keystrokes.

“Yup,” Tara said af­ter a mo­ment. “Ex­ces­sive speed in a res­iden­tial zone. Re­cent, too: Septem­ber 24.”

“Septem­ber 24,” Lash re­peat­ed. “That was the day—”

But Tara in­ter­rupt­ed. “The lo­ca­tion was Larch­mont.”

Larch­mont.

“That was the day the Wilners died,” Lash fin­ished.

For a sec­ond, the of­fice was still as the three ex­changed glances. Then Mauch­ly spoke.

“Tara,” he said in a very qui­et voice. “Can you se­cure this ter­mi­nal? I don’t want any­body look­ing over our shoul­der.”

Tara turned back to the key­board, typed a se­ries of com­mands. “You’ve got it.”

“Let’s start with his cred­it card records,” Mauch­ly said. “See if he’s been any­where in­ter­est­ing in the last month.” His voice re­mained slow, al­most sleepy.

“In­ter­fac­ing with In­sti­fax now.” More typ­ing. “He’s been a busy lit­tle boy. Lots of restau­rant bills, most­ly in the city and low­er Westch­ester. Strange: a cou­ple of mo­tel charges, too. One in Pel­ham, an­oth­er in New Rochelle.” She looked up. “Why would he be pay­ing for mo­tel rooms fif­teen min­utes from his apart­ment?”

“Keep go­ing,” Mauch­ly said.

“Here’s a re­cent plane tick­et: Air North­ern. Car rental of just over a hun­dred bucks. An­oth­er lodg­ing charge for one Dew Drop Inne. And here’s an Am­trak charge, too. And what looks like an ad­vance ho­tel reser­va­tion for this com­ing week­end.”

“Where?”

“Just a minute. Burlingame, Mas­sachusetts.”

“Get on­to Easy­Trak. Let’s check out those tick­ets.”

“On it.” Tara paused, wait­ing for her screen to re­fresh. “The plane tick­et was a round trip to Phoenix. Leav­ing La Guardia Septem­ber 15, re­turn­ing Septem­ber 17.”

“The Thor­pes died on Septem­ber 17,” Mauch­ly said. “You men­tioned a Dew Drop Inne. Where’s that lo­cat­ed?”

The stac­ca­to ham­mer of keys. “Flagstaff, Ari­zona.”

Lash felt an elec­tric tin­gle.

Slow­ly, al­most ca­su­al­ly, Mauch­ly stood up and came around the ta­ble. “Can you bring up the keystroke logs for Han­der­ling’s ter­mi­nal over, say, the past three weeks?”

Lash found him­self stand­ing and, like Mauch­ly, ap­proach­ing the screen.

“Here we are,” Tara said. Lash saw a tor­rent of da­ta scroll up the screen: ev­ery keystroke Han­der­ling’s typed over the last fif­teen busi­ness days.

“Run it through the snif­fer.” Mauch­ly glanced at Lash. “We’ll pass it through an in­tel­li­gent fil­ter, look for any­thing he typed that seems sus­pi­cious.”

“The way the gov­ern­ment combs email and phone calls, look­ing for ter­ror­ists?”

“They li­cense the tech­nol­ogy from us.”

“Noth­ing out of place,” Tara said af­ter a mo­ment. “Snif­fer comes up clean.”

“What job did you say this guy has?” Lash asked.

“Da­ta Scrub han­dles the se­cure archiv­ing of client da­ta, post-​pro­cess­ing.”

“Post-​pro­cess­ing. You mean, once a match is made.”

“That’s cor­rect.”

“And you said he has a lead­er­ship po­si­tion. Could that give him ac­cess to sen­si­tive, per­son­al da­ta?”

“We slice client da­ta across sev­er­al scrub teams to min­imize such ac­cess. It’s the­oret­ical­ly pos­si­ble. But if he’d been snoop­ing around, it would have shown up in his keystroke logs.”

“Could he have ac­cessed the da­ta from a dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nal?”

“Ter­mi­nals are cod­ed by iden­ti­ty bracelet. If he’d used a dif­fer­ent ter­mi­nal, we’d know about it.”

The room fell silent. Mauch­ly stared at the screen, arms fold­ed across his chest.

“Tara,” he said. “Run fre­quen­cy anal­ysis against the keystrokes. See if he de­vi­at­ed from his nor­mal work at any time.”

“Give me a minute.” The screen re­freshed, and a se­ries of par­al­lel columns ap­peared: dates, times, ob­scure acronyms mean­ing­less to Lash.

“Noth­ing stands out,” Tara said af­ter a mo­ment. “It all seems rou­tine.”

Lash found him­self hold­ing his breath. Was it go­ing to hap­pen again: would they find them­selves at the thresh­old of a break­through, on­ly to reach an­oth­er dead end?

“If any­thing, too rou­tine,” Tara added.

“How so?” Mauch­ly asked.

“Well, look at this. Each day, from pre­cise­ly 2:30 to 2:45, the ex­act same com­mands are re­peat­ed.”

“What’s un­usu­al about that? It could be some dai­ly ac­tiv­ity, like fresh­en­ing an archive.”

“Even those vary a lit­tle: new datasets, dif­fer­ent back­up lo­ca­tions. But here, even the vol­ume names are the same.”

Mauch­ly peered at the screen for a long mo­ment. “You’re right. For fif­teen min­utes each day, the keystrokes are pre­cise­ly iden­ti­cal.”

“And they’re typed at pre­cise­ly the same time each day.” Tara point­ed at the screen. “Down to the sec­ond. How like­ly is that?”

“So what’s it mean?” Lash asked.

Mauch­ly glanced at him. “Our em­ploy­ees know their work is mon­itored. Han­der­ling knows that if he tried any­thing ob­vi­ous—like dis­abling the keystroke log­ger, for in­stance—he’d come un­der im­me­di­ate at­ten­tion. Looks like he’s found a way to throw up a smoke­screen, per­haps run a macro of in­nocu­ous com­mands while he’s ac­tu­al­ly do­ing some­thing else.”

“He may have found a vul­ner­abil­ity in the sys­tem,” said Tara. “Some loop­hole or flaw he’s ex­ploit­ing.”

“So is there some way we can see what he was re­al­ly up to dur­ing those fif­teen min­utes?” Lash asked.

“No,” said Mauch­ly.

“Yes,” said Tara.

They looked at her.

“Maybe. We al­so use video cam­eras to take screen cap­tures of all man­age­ment ter­mi­nals, right? They’re in­fre­quent, and ran­dom. But maybe we’ll get lucky.”

She typed a fresh flur­ry of com­mands, then paused. “Looks like there’s been on­ly one re­cent screen cap­ture from Han­der­ling’s ter­mi­nal dur­ing that fif­teen-​minute block. On Septem­ber 13.”

“Can you print it out, please?” Mauch­ly asked.

She moused a few com­mands and the print­er on the desk be­gan to hum. Mauch­ly grabbed the sheet as it fed out and they looked at the blurred im­age:

EDEN—PRO­PRI­ETARY AND CON­FI­DEN­TIAL

RE­SULTS OF SQL QUERY AGAINST DATASET A$4719

OP­ER­ATOR: UN­KNOWN

TIME: 14:38:02.98 SEPT 13 04

CPU CY­CLES: 23054

END QUERY

“Oh, Je­sus,” Tara breathed.

“Those oth­er names,” Lash said. “Su­per­cou­ples?”

Mauch­ly nod­ded. “All six to date.”

But Lash bare­ly heard him. His mind was rac­ing now. Se­ri­al killers are crea­tures of habit . . .

Star­ing at the list, he re­mem­bered some­thing—some­thing chill­ing.

“You men­tioned an Am­trak tick­et,” he said to Tara. “And an ad­vance mo­tel reser­va­tion?”

Tara’s eyes sud­den­ly widened. She turned back to the key­board.

“A reser­va­tion on the Acela to Boston. This com­ing Fri­day morn­ing.”

“And the mo­tel lo­ca­tion?”

“Burlingame, Mas­sachusetts.”

Mauch­ly stepped away from the ter­mi­nal. The dis­pas­sion­ate de­meanor was gone. “Tara, I want you to get a record of Han­der­ling’s phone calls. Both from his desk and his apart­ment. Will you do that?”

Tara nod­ded, picked up the phone.

“Thank you.” Mauch­ly start­ed for the door, turned back. “Now, Dr. Lash, you’ll have to ex­cuse me. There are sev­er­al things I need to do.”

TWENTY-FIVE

In many ways, the scene was like the oth­ers: the room in dis­ar­ray, the mir­rors bro­ken, the bed­room cur­tains swept back as if invit­ing the night to wit­ness the out­rage. And yet in oth­ers it was very, very dif­fer­ent. The wom­an lay in an em­bar­rass­ment of blood, flow­ing from the ru­ined body in a ter­ri­ble coro­na. And in the mer­ci­less glare of the crime lights the walls shone white, naked, de­void of any scrawled mes­sages.

Cap­tain Mas­ter­ton glanced up from the corpse. His face had the pinched look of a cop un­der pres­sure from all di­rec­tions.

“I was won­der­ing when you’d get here, Lash. Say hel­lo to vic­tim num­ber three. He­len Mar­tin, aged thir­ty-​two.”

Mas­ter­ton kept star­ing at him. He seemed about to make an­oth­er bit­ing com­ment on the thin­ness of Lash’s pro­file. But he mere­ly shook his head in dis­gust.

“Christ, Lash, you’re like a zom­bie. Ev­ery time I see you, you look a lit­tle worse.”

“We’ll go in­to that some oth­er time. How long has she been dead?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Any in­di­ca­tion of rape? Vagi­nal pen­etra­tion?”

“The ME’s on his way, but there doesn’t ap­pear to be any. No signs of a bur­glary gone wrong, ei­ther. Just like the oth­ers. But we caught a bit of a break this time. A neigh­bor called in the com­mo­tion. No de­scrip­tion of a ve­hi­cle, but we’ve al­ready got cars sta­tioned at ma­jor in­ter­sec­tions, free­way on-​ramps. Maybe we’ll catch a break.”

The crime scene was still so fresh the lo­cal cops were just be­gin­ning to work it: snap­ping pho­tos, dust­ing for prints, chalk­ing the body. He stood there, star­ing down at the body. There it was again: that mad­den­ing sense that ev­ery­thing was out of place. It was like a jig­saw puz­zle with the wrong pic­tures past­ed on­to the pieces. It didn’t fit, and even when it did it didn’t look right. He knew, be­cause he’d been putting it to­geth­er and tak­ing it apart in his mind, over and over and over, for days. It was like a fire burn­ing in his head, con­sum­ing all his thoughts, de­vour­ing his sleep.

The body was bru­tal­ized in what was clear­ly a blitz at­tack. That was the hall­mark of a so­cial­ly de­fec­tive killer. And yet the house was se­clud­ed, back­ing up on woods, pri­vate: this was no crime of op­por­tu­ni­ty, no blitz at­tack. And then there were the bro­ken mir­rors, which nor­mal­ly in­di­cat­ed a killer’s dis­com­fort with cre­at­ing such a scene. But such killers al­so cov­ered their vic­tims, hid their faces: this wom­an was naked, her limbs ar­ranged with a ghast­ly provoca­tive­ness. And yet again this crime was not about sex. It was not about rob­bery. And this time, there was not even the rit­ual ha­lo of sev­ered toes and fin­ger­tips to lend a com­pul­sive taint to the mur­der.

To build a pro­file, you had to get in­to the head of the mur­der­er, ask ques­tions. What had hap­pened in this room? Why did it hap­pen this par­tic­ular way? Even mass-​mur­der­ers had their twist­ed log­ic. But there was no log­ic here, no foun­da­tion on which to build an un­der­stand­ing.

His eyes trav­eled over the walls of the bed­room. In the pre­vi­ous two mur­ders, they had been cov­ered with ram­bling, half-​co­her­ent rants: a bloody mélange of con­tra­dic­tion.

This time, the walls were blank.

Why?

His eyes stopped on the big pic­ture win­dow fac­ing the woods be­hind the house. As be­fore, the blinds were thrown wide, re­veal­ing a pane of black that re­flect­ed the sodi­um lights back at him. It was hard to be sure in the painful glare, but he thought he could make out faint smudges on the glass, black up­on black.

“Mas­ter­ton. Can you di­rect those lights away from the win­dow?”

The ME had just ar­rived, and the cap­tain had moved across the room to con­fer with him. He looked over.

“What was that, Lash?”

“Those lights there, by the win­dow. Turn them this way.”

Mas­ter­ton shrugged, spoke to Ahearn, his sec­ond in com­mand.

As the glare of the light hit him, the win­dow fell in­to shad­ow. He stepped for­ward, Mas­ter­ton fol­low­ing now. High up on the glass, a few large words were scrawled in bloody fin­ger-​paint:

I’ve got what I need now. Thank you.

“Oh, shit,” he mur­mured.

“He’s done,” Mas­ter­ton said, com­ing up, De­tec­tive Ahearn at his shoul­der. “Thank God, Lash. It’s fin­ished.”

“No,” he replied. “No, it’s not. It’s just be­gin­ning . . .”

 

Lash sat up in bed, wide awake, wait­ing for the mem­ories to fade. He glanced at the clock: half past one. He stood up, then hes­itat­ed, sink­ing back to the side of the bed.

Four nights in a row, with per­haps as many hours of sleep to show for all of them. He couldn’t af­ford to show up at Eden semi­con­scious; not to­mor­row, he couldn’t.

He rose again and—with­out giv­ing him­self a chance to re­con­sid­er—went to the bath­room, pulled out the box of Sec­onal, grabbed a small hand­ful, and washed them down with a mouth­ful of wa­ter. Then he re­turned to bed, ar­ranged the cov­ers care­ful­ly, and grad­ual­ly slipped in­to dark dreams.

 

It was the sound of church bells that woke him; the bells of his wed­ding, peal­ing from the dust-​bleached mis­sion of Carmel-​by-​the-​Sea. And yet the bells were too loud some­how, and they went on and on, re­fus­ing to stop.

Lash forced his eyes open, re­al­ized it was the tele­phone. When he sat up, the room reeled. Clos­ing his eyes, he lay back once again, feel­ing blind­ly for the phone.

“Yes,” he said, voice thick.

“Dr. Christo­pher Lash?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Ken Trot­wood from New Olympia Sav­ings and Loan.”

Lash forced his eyes open again, glanced at the clock. “Do you know what time—”

“I know it’s ear­ly, Dr. Lash. I’m very sor­ry. But we haven’t been able to reach you any oth­er way. You haven’t re­spond­ed to our let­ters or calls.”

“What are you talk­ing about?”

“It’s about the mort­gage on your house, which we hold. You’re be­hind in your pay­ments, Dr. Lash, and we must in­sist on im­me­di­ate pay­ment, with penal­ty in­ter­est.”

Lash fought to think clear­ly. “You’ve made some kind of mis­take.”

“It doesn’t ap­pear so. The res­idence in ques­tion is num­ber 17 Ship Bot­tom Road, West­port, Con­necti­cut.”

“That’s my ad­dress, but—”

“Ac­cord­ing to my screen, sir, we’ve sent three let­ters and tried to call you half a dozen times. With­out suc­cess.”

“This is crazy. I haven’t got­ten any no­tices. Be­sides, my mort­gage pay­ment is au­to­mat­ical­ly de­duct­ed from my bank ac­count.”

“Then per­haps there’s been some kind of prob­lem at your bank. Be­cause our records show you’re more than five months delin­quent. And it’s my job to in­form you that if pay­ment is not made im­me­di­ate­ly, we’ll be forced to—”

“No need for threats. I’ll look in­to it im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“Thank you, sir. Good morn­ing.”

And the line went dead.

Good morn­ing. As Lash sank back weari­ly, his eyes strayed to­ward the win­dow, where the faintest glim­mers of pre-​dawn glow had be­gun to tem­per the un­equiv­ocal black­ness of night.

TWENTY-SIX

What’s this guy sup­posed to have done?” asked the fed­er­al agent sit­ting be­hind the wheel.

“Un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion for four pos­si­ble homi­cides,” Lash replied.

Rain drummed on the roof and ran down the win­dows in heavy streams. He drained his cof­fee cup, con­sid­ered duck­ing in­to the near­by deli for an­oth­er, looked at his watch and de­cid­ed against it. Ten af­ter five al­ready, and hu­man re­la­tions records in­di­cat­ed Gary Han­der­ling al­most al­ways left work prompt­ly.

He looked down at the glossy pho­to­graph of Han­der­ling on the seat be­side him, tak­en that morn­ing by a closed-​cir­cuit cam­era at Check­point I. Then he gazed across Madi­son Av­enue to­ward the Eden tow­er. Han­der­ling wouldn’t be hard to spot: tall and lanky, save for a soft­en­ing around the bel­ly, with thin­ning blond hair and a yel­low wind­break­er that stood out in a crowd. Even if Lash missed him, one of the oth­er teams was sure to spot him.

Lash’s gaze re­turned to the pho­to. Han­der­ling didn’t look like a se­ri­al killer. But then again, so few of them did.

The front pas­sen­ger door opened and a heavy­set man in a drip­ping blue suit climbed in. When he turned to glance in­to the rear of the car, the scent of Old Spice reached Lash ahead of the face. He’d known an­oth­er Fed was go­ing to ride with them, but he was sur­prised to rec­og­nize John Coven, a fel­low agent he’d worked with on a few ear­ly cas­es.

“Lash?” Coven said, look­ing equal­ly sur­prised. “That you?”

Lash nod­ded. “How you keep­ing, John?”

“Can’t com­plain, I guess. Still tread­ing wa­ter as a GS-13. An­oth­er five years and I’ll be down in Marathon, fish­ing for tar­pon in­stead of scum­bags.”

“Nice.” Like many oth­er agents, Coven was ob­sessed with the count­down to re­tire­ment and a gov­ern­ment pen­sion.

Coven looked at Lash cu­ri­ous­ly. “I heard you were off the Job. In the pri­vate sec­tor, mak­ing a mint for your­self.”

Coven knew Lash had left the FBI, of course; and he would al­so know the rea­son. He was just show­ing tact.

“I am,” Lash replied. “This is a tem­po­rary thing. Moon­light­ing for some se­ri­ous change.”

Coven nod­ded.

“Isn’t this kind of an un­usu­al TDY for you?” Lash asked, po­lite­ly re­vers­ing the line of in­quiry.

Coven shrugged. “Not any­more. These days, it’s al­pha­bet soup. What with all the shake­ups and re­or­ga­ni­za­tions, ev­ery­body’s in bed with ev­ery­body else. You nev­er know who you’ll be work­ing with: DEA, CIA, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, lo­cal law en­force­ment, Girl Scouts.”

Yes, but not a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion, Lash thought. Us­ing the FBI for hired mus­cle was some­thing new in his ex­pe­ri­ence.

“On­ly thing strange was that this came down from the chief’s of­fice,” Coven said. “Didn’t go through the nor­mal chan­nels.”

Lash nod­ded. He re­mem­bered Mauch­ly’s words: We share our in­for­ma­tion with se­lect­ed gov­ern­ment agen­cies. Ap­par­ent­ly, the co­op­er­ation went both ways.

He had seen very lit­tle of ei­ther Mauch­ly or Tara Sta­ple­ton all day. He’d ar­rived late, be­ing forced to spend the bet­ter part of the morn­ing un­tan­gling a huge­ly com­plex web of red tape, bank forms, cred­it agen­cy re­ports, and bu­reau­crat­ic mix-​ups to cor­rect his mort­gage state­ment and re­store var­ious cred­it cards. Mauch­ly had stopped by his of­fice just be­fore lunch with a large pack­et un­der his arm. Han­der­ling, he said, had picked up his train tick­et for the fol­low­ing evening. A phone call he’d made from his desk that morn­ing in­di­cat­ed he was meet­ing a wom­an af­ter work. Surveil­lance was be­ing ar­ranged, and Mauch­ly want­ed Lash to take part. The night be­fore, he’d gen­tly re­buffed Lash’s urg­ings that they con­tact the po­lice with­out de­lay. “He’s not an im­me­di­ate dan­ger,” Mauch­ly had said. “We need to gath­er more ev­idence. Don’t wor­ry, he’s be­ing care­ful­ly watched.”

He’d dropped the pack­et—Han­der­ling’s job ap­pli­ca­tion, em­ploy­ee eval­ua­tion, pri­or his­to­ry—on Lash’s desk. “See if this fits your pro­file,” he said. “If it does, please put to­geth­er a brief char­ac­ter anal­ysis for us. That could prove very use­ful.”

And so Lash had spent the af­ter­noon go­ing over Han­der­ling’s records. The man was clever: with hind­sight, Lash could see sub­tle ev­idence he’d care­ful­ly coached him­self on psych tests. Ques­tions meant to raise red flags had all been an­swered neu­tral­ly. The va­lid­ity scales were ac­cept­ably low across all tests, in fact equal­ly low, im­ply­ing Han­der­ling rec­og­nized which ques­tions were test­ing for fak­ery and an­swered them all the same way.

Such in­tel­li­gence and plan­ning were ear­marks of the or­ga­nized killer. And in fact Han­der­ling would be noth­ing else if he was pos­ing as a mod­el Eden em­ploy­ee. The dis­or­ga­nized el­ements in the killings, Lash de­cid­ed, were ex­plained by the unique na­ture of the vic­tims. It was clear the six su­per­cou­ples to date were al­most cult fig­ures with­in Eden. But in some­body with feel­ings of in­ad­equa­cy or anger—some­body who’d had an abu­sive moth­er, say, or bad luck in per­son­al re­la­tion­ships—they might be­come touch­stones for jeal­ousy, even the act­ing-​out of mis­di­rect­ed rage.

It wasn’t that Han­der­ling knew the Thor­pes and the Wilners, so much as that he knew of them, through his po­si­tion at Eden. And that was very in­ter­est­ing in­deed. It meant a new sub­di­vi­sion of se­ri­al killer, not pre­vi­ous­ly iden­ti­fied: a byprod­uct of the in­for­ma­tion age, a killer who trolled databas­es to find ide­al vic­tims. It would make a hell of an ar­ti­cle in the Amer­ican Jour­nal of Neu­ropsy­chi­atry: an ar­ti­cle that would curl the toes of his old friend Roger Good­kind.

The squawk of a ra­dio came from the front seat. “Unit 709. In po­si­tion.”

Coven picked up the ra­dio, hold­ing it low so it would not be vis­ible out­side the car. “Roger.” He turned to­ward Lash. “We didn’t get much of a brief­ing. What’s the set­up, ex­act­ly?”

“This guy Han­der­ling’s sup­posed to meet a wom­an af­ter work. Be­yond that, we don’t know much.”

“How’s he trav­el­ing?”

“Un­known. Could be foot, sub­way, bus, what­ev­er. And—” Lash stopped sud­den­ly. “There he is. Com­ing out the re­volv­ing door now.”

Coven switched on the ra­dio. “This is 707. All units, be ad­vised sus­pect is ex­it­ing the build­ing. White male, about six foot two, wear­ing a yel­low wind­break­er. Stand by.”

Han­der­ling stopped to gaze up and down Madi­son Av­enue. His wind­break­er flexed as he raised a large um­brel­la over his head. Lash re­sist­ed the urge to stare at his face. It had been years since he’d last been on a surveil­lance, and he found his heart beat­ing un­com­fort­ably fast.

“That’s our man, there,” said Coven, nod­ding his head in the di­rec­tion of a cor­ner news­stand.

“The one with the red um­brel­la and the cell phone?”

“Yup. You wouldn’t be­lieve how much eas­ier cell phones have made surveil­lance. These days, it’s nor­mal to see some­one on the street talk­ing in­to their hand. And these Nex­tel de­vices have walkie-​talkie fea­tures built in, so we can broad­cast to the en­tire group.”

“Oth­er foot surveil­lance re­sources?”

“At the sub­way en­trance and that bus stop, over there.”

“This is 709,” came a voice over the ra­dio. “Sus­pect in mo­tion. Looks like he’s go­ing to hail a cab.”

Lash al­lowed him­self a side­long glance out the win­dow. Han­der­ling had moved to­ward the street with a long, lop­ing gait. The man dart­ed out an arm, in­dex fin­ger ex­tend­ed, and a cab nosed obe­di­ent­ly to the curb.

Coven grabbed his ra­dio. “This is 707. I’ve got the eye; 702, 705, we’re rolling.”

“Roger,” came a cho­rus of voic­es.

The driv­er swung the brown sedan out in­to traf­fic, a few ve­hi­cles be­hind the taxi.

“Sus­pect turn­ing east­bound on­to Fifty-​sev­enth,” Coven said, still hold­ing the ra­dio in his lap.

“How many take­away ve­hi­cles?” Lash asked.

“Two oth­ers. We’ll sit on him a while, take it a block at a time.”

The taxi moved slow­ly, fight­ing the rain and the crosstown traf­fic. One wheel splashed through a deep pot­hole, send­ing a brown spray over the side­walk. At Lex­ing­ton Av­enue, it turned again, brusque­ly cut­ting off a mini­van.

“Turn­ing south on Lex,” Coven said. “Main­tain­ing twen­ty-​five miles per hour. I’m go­ing to re­lin­quish. Any­body?”

“This is 705,” came the voice. “I’ve got the eye.”

Lash glanced out the rear win­dow and no­ticed a green SUV pulling up in the ad­join­ing lane. Through the rain, he could make out Mauch­ly sit­ting in the front pas­sen­ger seat.

Coven’s driv­er pressed on the gas, ac­cel­er­at­ing smooth­ly past the taxi and down Lex­ing­ton Av­enue. It was stan­dard surveil­lance prac­tice, Lash knew: have as many ve­hi­cles as pos­si­ble in­volved so the sus­pect won’t think he’s be­ing fol­lowed. In a few blocks, they’d make a turn, cir­cle back, and join the rear of the line.

“Sev­en-​oh-​five, roger,” Coven glanced back. “So, Lash, what’s it like in the pri­vate sec­tor?”

“I can’t get speed­ing tick­ets fixed any­more.”

Coven grinned, told the driv­er to turn on­to Third Av­enue. “Ev­er miss the Bu­reau?”

“Don’t miss the pay.”

“I hear that.”

“Unit 705,” the ra­dio squawked. “Sus­pect turn­ing east on­to Forty-​fourth. Ve­hi­cle stop­ping. I’m go­ing to pass him, who’s pick­ing up the eye?”

“This is 702. We’ve pulled over at the far cor­ner. Main­tain­ing vi­su­al con­tact.”

Coven’s driv­er pushed the sedan for­ward now, bul­ly­ing his way through first one in­ter­sec­tion, then an­oth­er.

“Sev­en-​oh-​two,” came the voice. “Sus­pect has ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle. He’s en­ter­ing a bar called Stringer’s.”

“Sev­en-​oh-​sev­en,” Coven replied. “Roger that. Keep a vi­su­al on the en­trance. Sev­en-​four­teen, we need you at Stringer’s. Forty-​fourth be­tween Lex and Third.”

“Roger.”

Min­utes lat­er, their sedan nosed in­to a no-​park­ing zone on Forty-​fourth. Lash glanced out the win­dow. Judg­ing by the gar­ish awning and knots of twen­ty-​some­things out­side, Stringer’s was a pick­up bar for young pro­fes­sion­als.

“Here they come now,” Coven said.

Lash looked at an un­fa­mil­iar young cou­ple com­ing down the street, hold­ing hands and shar­ing an um­brel­la. “Is that foot surveil­lance?”

Coven nod­ded.

The cou­ple dis­ap­peared in­side the bar. A minute lat­er, Coven’s cell phone rang.

“Sev­en-​oh-​sev­en,” he said.

Lash could hear dis­tinct­ly the voice that came through the tiny speak­er. “We’re at the bar. Sus­pect is at a rear ta­ble. He’s with a white fe­male, heavy­set, five foot six, wear­ing a white sweater and black jeans.”

“Roger. Stay in touch.” Coven put the phone aside, then looked in­to the rear of the sedan. His eye land­ed on Lash’s emp­ty cof­fee cup.

“An­oth­er?” he asked. “I’m buy­ing.”

 

With­in half an hour, Lash was com­plete­ly caught up on Bu­reau gos­sip: the Lothario who was play­ing around with the sec­tion chief’s wife; the an­noy­ing new red tape out of Wash­ing­ton; the weak lead­er­ship in the up­per ech­elons; how un­be­liev­ably green the lat­est batch of new jacks were. In­fre­quent­ly, re­ports came in from the agents watch­ing Han­der­ling from the bar.

Then came a mo­ment when talk fal­tered, and Coven glanced at his driv­er. “Hey, Pe­te. How about get­ting us a cou­ple more cof­fees?”

Lash watched the agent get out of the car and trot to­ward a deli down the block.

“Caught a break with this rain,” Coven said.

Lash nod­ded. He looked in the rearview mir­ror: on the far side of the street and half a block back, he could just make out the dim form of Mauch­ly’s SUV.

Coven was shift­ing rest­less­ly in the front seat. “So tell me, Chris,” he said af­ter a mo­ment. “This place you’re moon­light­ing, Eden. What’s it like?”

“Pret­ty re­mark­able,” Lash replied guard­ed­ly. If Coven was get­ting cu­ri­ous about the tail, fish­ing for more in­for­ma­tion, he’d need to be care­ful what he said.

“I mean, can they re­al­ly do it? Are they as good as ev­ery­body says?”

“They’ve got a great track record.”

Coven nod­ded slow­ly. “There’s this guy in my golf four­some, an or­thodon­tist. Some­thing of a Gloomy Gus, nev­er mar­ried. You know the type. We were al­ways try­ing to fix him up with some­body, but he hat­ed the sin­gles scene. It be­came a run­ning joke on the links. Any­way, he went to Eden about a year ago. You wouldn’t know him now, he’s a dif­fer­ent per­son. Mar­ried to a re­al­ly nice wom­an. Great body, too. He doesn’t talk about it much, but any id­iot can see how hap­py he is. Even the bas­tard’s golf game has im­proved.”

Lash lis­tened with­out com­ment.

“Then there’s this chief I know, over in Op­er­ations. Har­ry Cream­er, re­mem­ber him? Any­way, his wife died in a car ac­ci­dent cou­ple of years back. Good guy. Well, he’s re­mar­ried now. Nev­er seen any­body hap­pi­er. Ru­mor is, he went to Eden, too.”

Coven turned around again, and Lash could see a kind of des­per­ate ea­ger­ness in his eyes. “I’ll be hon­est with you, Chris. Things aren’t so hot be­tween me and An­nette. We’ve been drift­ing apart ev­er since we learned she can’t have kids. So I look at my golf bud­dy, I look at Har­ry Cream­er, and I start think­ing twen­ty-​five thou­sand bucks isn’t all that much mon­ey. Not in the long run, it isn’t. I mean, why live a half-​assed life? It’s not like you get a sec­ond chance if you fuck it up the first time.” He paused a sec­ond. “I was won­der­ing if you knew whether—”

The cell phone chirped. “Sev­en-​oh-​sev­en, this is unit 714, you read?”

In­stant­ly, the pro­fes­sion­al ve­neer set­tled back over Coven. He reached for the phone. “This is 707, go ahead, 714.”

“Sus­pect’s hav­ing some kind of ar­gu­ment with the wom­an. They’re on their way out.”

“Roger, 707 out.”

At that mo­ment, the door of Stringer’s opened and a wom­an emerged, walk­ing quick­ly, shrug­ging in­to a rain­coat as she went. Then Han­der­ling pushed his way through the doors and went af­ter her.

“All units, sus­pect on foot,” Coven said in­to his ra­dio, crack­ing open the car win­dow as he did so. The wom­an was shout­ing at Han­der­ling over her shoul­der: Lash made out the words “fuck­ing low-​life snoop” be­fore the rest was drowned in the pass­ing traf­fic.

Han­der­ling put out a hand to stop her and she brushed it away. When he reached out again she turned, rais­ing her arm to slap him. Han­der­ling dodged the blow and pushed her rough­ly to­ward a shop front.

“Let’s take him,” Coven said.

Lash quick­ly ducked out the back and fol­lowed Coven across the street. From the cor­ner of his eye he saw the agent named Pe­te come out of the deli, a cup in each hand. When he saw Coven on the move, he dropped the cof­fees in a trash can and joined the pur­suit.

With­in sec­onds, Han­der­ling was sur­round­ed. “Fed­er­al agents,” Coven barked, show­ing his shield. “Back off, mis­ter. Hands at your sides.”

The anger on the wom­an’s face was re­placed by fear. She re­treat­ed a few steps, then turned and ran.

“You want sec­ondary surveil­lance on the girl?” Pe­te asked.

“No.” It was Mauch­ly who an­swered. He stood be­hind them in the rain, Tara at his side. “Mr. Han­der­ling, I’m Ed­win Mauch­ly of Eden. Will you come with us, please?”

Han­der­ling had gone white. His lips were work­ing silent­ly, and his eyes dart­ed left and right. Half a dozen more men in suits were trot­ting to­ward them now, whether fed­er­al agents or Eden se­cu­ri­ty Lash did not know.

“Mr. Han­der­ling,” Mauch­ly said again. “This way, if you please.”

Han­der­ling straight­ened. For a mo­ment, he gath­ered him­self to bolt, and the cir­cle tensed.

Then all at once he seemed to de­flate. His shoul­ders drooped vis­ibly. And he nod­ded, stepped for­ward, and al­lowed Mauch­ly to es­cort him to the wait­ing SUV.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Ex­cept for the fact it was safe­ly in­side the Wall, the space could al­most have been one of the con­fer­ence rooms Eden used for class re­unions. Chairs had been pulled away from the far side of the oval ta­ble, leav­ing a sin­gle seat at its cen­ter. An­oth­er half dozen were ar­rayed along the near side, with more placed in the cor­ners of the room.

Han­der­ling sat in the lone seat, still wear­ing his damp wind­break­er. He looked around with thin­ly dis­guised ner­vous­ness. Mauch­ly sat across from him, flanked by Tara Sta­ple­ton and two men Lash didn’t rec­og­nize. One wore a physi­cian’s lab coat. A brace of Eden se­cu­ri­ty work­ers stood by the door. More were sta­tioned in the hall out­side. From his van­tage point in the shad­ows, Lash was sur­prised at how nu­mer­ous they were. And they were not the af­fa­ble, ap­proach­able guards of the lob­by: these were un­smil­ing men who stared straight ahead, jaws set, small wires lead­ing from their ears to their col­lars. When one opened his jack­et to an­swer a cell phone, Lash caught the gleam of a weapon.

A video­cam­era sat on a large dol­ly, manned by a se­cu­ri­ty tech. A recorder sat in the mid­dle of the ta­ble. Mauch­ly nod­ded to the cam­era­man, then switched on the recorder.

“Mr. Han­der­ling, do you know why you’re here?” he asked. “Why we’re talk­ing to you?”

Han­der­ling stared across the ta­ble. “No.”

Lash watched the sus­pect. When he’d first been sur­round­ed, Han­der­ling had been fright­ened, dis­ori­ent­ed. But now he’d had time to think—in the hand-​off from the Feds to Eden se­cu­ri­ty, with its re­sul­tant pa­per­work; dur­ing the ride back to the tow­er; in the maze of back cor­ri­dors they’d tak­en to reach this room. If he was like oth­er of­fend­ers Lash had known, he’d have a game plan in mind by now.

In­ter­ro­ga­tion was of­ten com­pared to a se­duc­tion. One per­son want­ed some­thing from the oth­er, while the oth­er fre­quent­ly had lit­tle in­ter­est in giv­ing it up. Lash was cu­ri­ous to see what kind of se­duc­er Mauch­ly would make. His heart was rac­ing ex­cit­ed­ly in his chest.

Mauch­ly re­gard­ed Han­der­ling with his usu­al mild ex­pres­sion. He let the si­lence build. Then at last he spoke again.

“You re­al­ly have no idea? No idea at all?”

“No. And I don’t think you have any right to hold me here, ask­ing ques­tions like this.” Han­der­ling spoke with a tru­cu­lent, ag­grieved tone.

Mauch­ly did not re­spond di­rect­ly. In­stead, he straight­ened a tall pile of doc­uments on the ta­ble be­side him. “Mr. Han­der­ling, let me make some in­tro­duc­tions be­fore we get start­ed. Here with me is Tara Sta­ple­ton of Sys­tems Se­cu­ri­ty, and Dr. Deb­ney of Med­ical. You know Mr. Har­ri­son, of course. Why were you see­ing that wom­an?”

Han­der­ling blinked at this abrupt shift. “I don’t think it’s any of your busi­ness. I know my rights, I de­mand to—”

“Your rights—” and the word had a sud­den stac­ca­to bite that brought the room to at­ten­tion“—are sum­ma­rized in this doc­ument you signed when you joined Eden.” Mauch­ly took a bound fold­er from the top of the pile, pushed it to­ward the cen­ter of the ta­ble. “Rec­og­nize it?”

For a mo­ment, Han­der­ling re­mained mo­tion­less. Then he leaned for­ward, nod­ded.

“In this bind­ing con­tract, you agreed—among many oth­er things—not to abuse your po­si­tion at Eden through any covert use of tech­nol­ogy. You agreed to keep client da­ta com­part­men­tal­ized. And you agreed to the strict code of moral con­duct man­dat­ed in our em­ploy­ee char­ter. This was all ex­plained to you in de­tail dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion, and your sig­na­ture here at­tests to your un­der­stand­ing.”

Mauch­ly de­liv­ered these words in an al­most bored mono­tone. But their ef­fect on Han­der­ling was sig­nif­icant. He stared back at Mauch­ly, eyes glit­ter­ing with sus­pi­cion.

“So I ask again. Why were you see­ing that wom­an?”

“It was a date. No law against that.”

Lash could see Han­der­ling was fight­ing to keep up the fa­cade of an in­jured par­ty.

“That de­pends.”

“On what?”

In­stead of an­swer­ing, Mauch­ly glanced at the doc­umen­ta­tion be­fore him. “When we ap­proached you out­side the bar, the wom­an—who has since been iden­ti­fied from your tele­phone calls this af­ter­noon as Sarah Louise Hunt—was heard to call you, let’s see here, a ‘fuck­ing low-​life snoop.’ To what was she re­fer­ring, Mr. Han­der­ling?”

“No idea.”

“As it hap­pens, I think you do have an idea. A very good idea.”

Lash no­ticed Tara was scrib­bling on a pad, while Mauch­ly stared across the ta­ble at Han­der­ling. This was stan­dard pro­ce­dure, one per­son tak­ing notes while the oth­er kept care­ful watch on the sus­pect’s non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion: ner­vous ges­tures, eye move­ment, the like. But most in­ter­roga­tors liked to get in­to the faces of their sub­jects, keep a rapid-​fire se­ries of ques­tions go­ing. Mauch­ly was just the op­po­site. He let si­lence and un­cer­tain­ty work for him.

At last, Mauch­ly stirred. “Not on­ly do I think you’ve got a good idea what she meant, but there are sev­er­al oth­ers who prob­ably do, too.” He glanced down at the doc­umen­ta­tion once again. “Such as He­len Malvo­lia. Karen Con­nors. Mar­jorie Silk­wood. Half a dozen oth­ers.”

Han­der­ling’s face went ashen.

“What do they all have in com­mon, Mr. Han­der­ling? They were all ap­pli­cants at Eden. All were dis­ap­proved, fol­low­ing their psy­cho­log­ical eval­ua­tions. All for sim­ilar rea­sons. Low self-​es­teem. Prod­ucts of bro­ken homes. High pas­siv­ity fac­tors. In oth­er words, wom­en who could be eas­ily vic­tim­ized.”

Mauch­ly’s voice had grown so low, Lash strained to hear.

“These wom­en all have some­thing else in com­mon. In the last six months, they’ve been ap­proached by you. In some cas­es, it end­ed with lunch or drinks. In oth­er cas­es it went well, well be­yond that.”

Sud­den­ly, Mauch­ly lift­ed the heavy pile of doc­uments and slammed it back down on the ta­ble. The ac­tion was so un­ex­pect­ed Han­der­ling jumped in his chair.

But when Mauch­ly spoke again, his voice was calm. “We have it all here. Records of phone calls, from home and the of­fice; cred­it card re­ceipts for restau­rants, bars, mo­tels; da­ta in­ter­cepts of con­fi­den­tial Eden records touched from your ter­mi­nal. And, by the way, we’ve al­ready plugged the se­cu­ri­ty weak­ness you used to ac­cess client da­ta across se­cu­ri­ty fron­tiers.” Mauch­ly shift­ed. “In light of this, would you care to re­vis­it your re­sponse?”

Han­der­ling swal­lowed painful­ly. Sweat had sprout­ed along his brow, and his hands clenched and un­clenched in­vol­un­tar­ily. “I want a lawyer,” he said.

“Your sig­na­ture on this doc­ument waives the priv­ilege of rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing in­ter­nal ex­am­ina­tions of your own malfea­sance. The fact is, Mr. Han­der­ling, you’ve com­pro­mised the in­tegri­ty of this com­pa­ny. You’ve done that, and more. You’ve not on­ly be­trayed our trust and that of our clients, but you’ve done it in the low­est, most de­spi­ca­ble fash­ion pos­si­ble. To think you could search out, in­ten­tion­al­ly, the most pli­able vic­tims—pry through tran­scripts where they re­veal their most pri­vate hopes and dreams, their deep­est wants in a re­la­tion­ship—and then cal­lous­ly ex­ploit those to slake your own craven lusts . . . it’s al­most be­yond com­pre­hen­sion.”

An elec­tric si­lence filled the room.

Han­der­ling licked dry lips. “I—” he be­gan. He fell silent.

“Once our work is com­plet­ed here, you’ll be re­mand­ed—with the in­dictable ev­idence—to the cus­tody of the au­thor­ities.”

“The po­lice?” Han­der­ling said sharply.

Mauch­ly shook his head. “No, Mr. Han­der­ling. Fed­er­al au­thor­ities.”

The look on Han­der­ling’s face turned to dis­be­lief.

“Eden has in­for­ma­tion-​shar­ing agree­ments with cer­tain branch­es of gov­ern­ment. You know that. Some da­ta in­volved is of a clas­si­fied na­ture. By covert­ly ma­nip­ulat­ing our data­banks, you have com­mit­ted what could be con­sid­ered a trea­son­able of­fense.”

“Trea­son?” Han­der­ling said in a stran­gled voice.

“You would be pros­ecut­ed in a fed­er­al fa­cil­ity, spar­ing our­selves and our clients em­bar­rass­ing pub­lic­ity. And in case you weren’t aware, there is no pa­role in fed­er­al prison, Mr. Han­der­ling.”

Han­der­ling’s roam­ing eyes shift­ed back to Mauch­ly: a furtive, hunt­ed look.

“Okay,” he said. “All right. It’s like you say. I did meet those wom­en. But I didn’t hurt them.”

“What were you do­ing to Sarah Hunt when we ap­proached, then?”

“I just want­ed her to stop shout­ing. I wouldn’t hurt her. I haven’t done any­thing wrong!”

“Haven’t done any­thing wrong? Stalk­ing wom­en, mis­us­ing con­fi­den­tial and trade-​se­cret in­for­ma­tion, mak­ing false rep­re­sen­ta­tions—that isn’t wrong?”

“It didn’t start out that way!” Han­der­ling’s gaze swept the room fran­ti­cal­ly, search­ing for a sym­pa­thet­ic eye. “Look, it be­gan as an ac­ci­dent. I re­al­ized as scrub boss I could ex­ploit this vul­ner­abil­ity I’d dis­cov­ered, look be­yond our com­part­ment, piece to­geth­er enough da­ta frag­ments to get full client briefs. It was cu­rios­ity, just cu­rios­ity . . .”

It was as if a dam had burst. Han­der­ling be­gan spilling it all: his ac­ci­den­tal dis­cov­ery of the loop­hole; his timid ear­ly prob­ing; the meth­ods he’d used to evade de­tec­tion; his first meet­ings with the wom­en. Ev­ery­thing. And Mauch­ly had han­dled it beau­ti­ful­ly. With a se­ries of bait­ing ques­tions about less­er crimes, he’d got­ten Han­der­ling to bite. And now that the man was talk­ing, it would be al­most im­pos­si­ble for him to stop. Mauch­ly, hav­ing un­bal­anced his vic­tim, would go in for the kill.

Just at that mo­ment, in fact, Mauch­ly raised a com­mand­ing hand. Han­der­ling stopped in mid rant, un­fin­ished sen­tence hang­ing sus­pend­ed in the air.

“This is all very in­ter­est­ing,” Mauch­ly said qui­et­ly. “And we’ll want to hear all about it in due course. But let’s move on to the re­al rea­son you’re here.”

Han­der­ling passed a hand over his eyes. “The re­al rea­son?”

“Your more se­ri­ous of­fens­es.”

Han­der­ling looked dazed. He said noth­ing.

“Would you care to tell us where you were on the morn­ing of Septem­ber 17?”

“Septem­ber 17?”

“Or the late af­ter­noon of Septem­ber 24?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t re­mem­ber.”

“Then let me re­mind you. On Septem­ber 17, you were in Flagstaff, Ari­zona. On Septem­ber 24, you were in Larch­mont, New York. You have a ho­tel reser­va­tion to­mor­row night in Burlingame, Mas­sachusetts. Do you know what those three ad­dress­es have in com­mon, Mr. Han­der­ling?”

Han­der­ling’s fin­gers gripped the edge of the ta­ble, knuck­les dead white. “The su­per­cou­ples.”

“Very good. They are each res­idences of one of our unique­ly per­fect cou­ples. Or, in the first two in­stances, were.”

“Were?”

“Yes. Since both the Thor­pes and the Wilners are now dead.”

“The Thor­pes?” Han­der­ling said, his voice lit­tle more than a croak. “The Wilners? Dead?”

“Come now, Mr. Han­der­ling. This on­ly wastes time. What were your in­ten­tions for the com­ing week­end?”

But Han­der­ling did not an­swer. His eyes had rolled back, shock­ing­ly white in the bright light of the room. Lash won­dered if he was go­ing to faint.

“If you’d rather not say, then let me tell you what you were go­ing to do. What you’ve done al­ready, twice. You were go­ing to kill the Con­nellys. But very care­ful­ly, like you’d done be­fore. Make it look like dou­ble sui­cide.”

The room was qui­et, the on­ly noise Han­der­ling’s la­bored breath­ing.

“You mur­dered the first two su­per­cou­ples, in or­der,” Mauch­ly said. “Now you’ve been plan­ning to stalk, and kill, a third.”

Still, Han­der­ling said noth­ing.

“We’ll be do­ing a deep psych reval on you, of course. But we’ve al­ready put to­geth­er a the­oret­ical pro­file. Af­ter all, your ac­tions speak for them­selves.” Mauch­ly con­sult­ed the pa­pers be­fore him. “I’m talk­ing about your fear of re­jec­tion, your shrunk­en sense of self-​worth. Armed with in­for­ma­tion you pil­fered from our files, you knew just how to ap­proach those wom­en you se­lect­ed and ma­nip­ulat­ed. Re­mark­able that, in some cas­es, you failed, even with such an over­whelm­ing ad­van­tage.” Mauch­ly smiled mirth­less­ly. “But if these en­coun­ters eased your feel­ings of in­ad­equa­cy around wom­en, they did noth­ing to ease your anger. Anger that oth­ers could find the kind of hap­pi­ness you nev­er would. Those oth­ers who you’d al­ways en­vied. Our su­per­cou­ples were that em­bod­iment for you. They be­came the light­ning rod for your anger, which was ac­tu­al­ly self-​loathing, twist­ed in such a way that—”

“No!” Han­der­ling screamed: a thin, high keen­ing sound.

“Come now, Mr. Han­der­ling. Don’t ex­cite your­self.”

“I didn’t kill them!” Tears were start­ing from his eyes. “Okay, so I went to Ari­zona. I have rel­atives in Se­dona, I was go­ing there for a wed­ding. Flagstaff was near­by. And Larch­mont is on­ly an hour from my house.”

Mauch­ly fold­ed his arms, lis­ten­ing.

“I want­ed to know. I want­ed to un­der­stand. You see, the files just didn’t ex­plain. They didn’t ex­plain how some­body could be so hap­py. So I thought maybe, if I just saw them—if I could just watch them, just for a bit, from a safe dis­tance—I could learn . . . You’ve got to be­lieve me, I nev­er killed any­body! I just want­ed to—I just want to be hap­py, like them . . . oh, Je­sus . . .” And Han­der­ling dropped for­ward, his head hit­ting the desk with an ug­ly sound, sobs rack­ing his frame.

“No need for dra­mat­ics,” Mauch­ly said. “We can do this with your co­op­er­ation, or with­out. You’ll find the for­mer far less of an in­con­ve­nience.” When Han­der­ling did not re­spond, Mauch­ly bent to­ward the physi­cian, whis­pered in his ear.

But for Lash, the scene had sud­den­ly changed, and changed ut­ter­ly. The cries of Han­der­ling, the mur­mur­ing of Mauch­ly, drained away to si­lence in his head. A chill passed through him. Eden could in­ter­ro­gate, could ex­am­ine, this man as much as they want­ed. But in his gut, Lash sensed Han­der­ling was in­no­cent. Not of stalk­ing—he was clear­ly guilty of abus­ing sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion. And he’d spied on the Eden su­per­cou­ples. But he was no killer. Lash had seen enough sus­pects sweat­ed to know when some­one was ly­ing, or when some­one was ca­pa­ble of mur­der.

The worst thing was he should have known be­fore. The sus­pect chart he’d worked up on his white­board, the the­oret­ical pro­file he’d writ­ten and Mauch­ly had just de­liv­ered to the room, sud­den­ly seemed as thin as the rice pa­per wood­cuts in Lewis Thor­pe’s study. They were full of in­con­sis­ten­cies, false as­sump­tions. He’d been too ea­ger to solve this ter­ri­ble puz­zle be­fore more peo­ple died. And this was the re­sult.

He sank deep­er in­to the shad­ows. A haiku of Bash–o’s kept re­peat­ing in his head, eclips­ing the wails of Han­der­ling:

Spring pass­es

and the birds cry out—

tears in the eyes of fish­es

It was close to mid­night by the time he pulled his car in­to Ship Bot­tom Road. He killed the en­gine, got out of the car, and walked slow­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly to­ward the mail­box. Some­thing had been tug­ging at the back of his mind since he’d left the Eden build­ing; some­thing that had noth­ing to do with Han­der­ling. But Lash stead­fast­ly re­fused to pay at­ten­tion. He felt more tired than he’d ev­er felt in his life.

When he opened the mail­box, his first sense was re­lief: there was mail to­day, it hadn’t been pil­fered. If any­thing, he re­al­ized, there was too much mail: at least a dozen mag­azines lay scat­tered among the cir­cu­lars and cat­alogues. There was a gay lifestyles mag­azine, an­oth­er de­vot­ed to S&M and bondage fetishists; many oth­ers. All had sub­scrip­tion la­bels bear­ing his name and ad­dress. Among the en­velopes were an­oth­er dozen sub­scrip­tion no­tices with de­mands for pay­ment.

Some­body had been fill­ing out sub­scrip­tion re­quests un­der his name.

He walked to­ward the house, paus­ing to dump ev­ery­thing but a util­ity bill in­to a garbage can. It seemed Mary En­glish had switched tac­tics. It was re­gret­table, but a call to the West­port po­lice might be nec­es­sary af­ter all.

He stepped up to the door, put his key in the lock, then stopped. A couri­er pack­age marked BY EX­PRESS—HAND DE­LIV­ER and bear­ing Eden’s lo­go lay against it. Prob­ably more con­fi­den­tial­ity agree­ments for my sig­na­ture, he thought bleak­ly. He stooped to pick it up, tore away one end. Moon­light re­vealed a sin­gle sheet of pa­per in­side, to which a small pin had been at­tached. He pulled out the sheet.

Christo­pher Lash

17 Ship Bot­tom Road

West­port, Con­necti­cut 06880

Dear Dr. Lash:

We at Eden are in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing mir­acles. Yet I nev­er tire of hav­ing the hon­or to an­nounce each of them in turn. So it is with the great­est plea­sure I’m writ­ing to in­form you that the se­lec­tion in­ter­val, which fol­lowed your suc­cess­ful ap­pli­ca­tion and eval­ua­tion pro­cess, has now con­clud­ed in a match. Her name is Di­ana Mir­ren. It will be your own de­light­ful du­ty to learn more than that, and you will soon have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so. A din­ner reser­va­tion has been made in your joint names at Tav­ern on the Green for this com­ing Sat­ur­day evening, at eight o’clock. You will be able to iden­ti­fy each oth­er by the en­closed pins, which we ask you to wear on your lapels on first en­ter­ing the restau­rant. They may be dis­posed of af­ter that, though most of our clients trea­sure them as me­men­tos.

Once again, our con­grat­ula­tions on com­plet­ing this jour­ney, and our best wish­es as you em­bark on an­oth­er. And in the months and years to come, I feel cer­tain you will find that bring­ing the two of you to­geth­er is the be­gin­ning, rather than the end, of our ser­vice.

Kind re­gards,

John Lelyveld

Chair­main, Eden Inc.

TWENTY-EIGHT

When the el­eva­tor doors opened on­to the pent­house perched atop Eden’s in­ner tow­er the next morn­ing, Richard Sil­ver was there, wait­ing.

“Christo­pher,” he said. “How are you far­ing?”

“Thanks for see­ing me on such short no­tice.” Lash shook the prof­fered hand.

“Not at all. I’ve been look­ing for­ward to speak­ing with you again.”

Sil­ver guid­ed Lash to a seat. Sun­light slant­ed through the win­dows, throw­ing the still pa­rade of an­cient think­ing ma­chines in­to sharp re­lief, gild­ing the pol­ished sur­faces of the vast room.

“I’m al­so glad to have the chance to apol­ogize in per­son,” Sil­ver said as they sat down. “Mauch­ly told me about the let­ter, your get­ting the nod. Such a mis­take has nev­er hap­pened be­fore, and we’re still look­ing in­to what went wrong. Not that a mere ex­pla­na­tion could make it less hu­mil­iat­ing for you. Or for us.”

Lash glanced over as Sil­ver fell silent. Again, he was struck by the man’s lack of ar­ti­fice. Sil­ver seemed gen­uine­ly con­cerned about how Lash would feel: re­ject­ed as an ap­pli­cant, on­ly to lat­er learn a match had been mis­tak­en­ly found for him. Per­haps, up here in his aerie, con­sumed with his on­go­ing re­search, Sil­ver had re­mained free of the de­hu­man­iz­ing cor­po­rate taint.

Sil­ver looked up, caught Lash’s eye. “Of course, I’ve in­struct­ed Mauch­ly to roll back the match, and to con­tact this wom­an—sor­ry, I don’t know her name—and in­form her an­oth­er match will be found.”

“Her name’s Di­ana Mir­ren,” Lash said. “But that’s not what I want­ed to see you about.”

Sil­ver looked sur­prised. “Re­al­ly? Then for­give my as­sump­tion. Tell me why you’re here.”

Lash paused. The con­vic­tion he’d felt the night be­fore now seemed blurred by weari­ness and the re­main­ing traces of more Sec­onal. “I want­ed to tell you per­son­al­ly. I don’t think I can do this any­more.”

“Do what, ex­act­ly?”

“Stay on this in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Sil­ver frowned. “If it’s a ques­tion of mon­ey, we’d be hap­py to—”

“It’s not that. I’ve been paid too much al­ready.”

Sil­ver sat back again, lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly.

“I’ve been away from my pa­tients two weeks now. That’s a ge­olog­ic age in psy­chi­atry. But it’s more than that.”

He hes­itat­ed again. This was the kind of thing that nor­mal­ly he’d nev­er ad­mit to him­self, let alone dis­cuss with any­body else. But there was some­thing about Sil­ver—an un­stud­ied frank­ness, a com­plete lack of ar­ro­gance—that seemed to in­vite con­fi­dence.

“I don’t think I can be of any more help to you,” Lash con­tin­ued. “Ear­ly on, I thought all I need­ed was ac­cess to your files. I thought I’d find some mag­ic an­swer in your eval­ua­tions of the Thor­pes. And af­ter the death of the Wilners, I grew cer­tain it was homi­cide, not sui­cide. I’d hunt­ed se­ri­al killers be­fore, I was sure I could hunt this one as well. But I’ve come up blank. The pro­file I’ve drawn up is self-​con­tra­dic­to­ry. Use­less. With your help, we’ve now ex­am­ined all the like­ly sus­pects: Eden re­jects or em­ploy­ees, the peo­ple who could have known both cou­ples. There’s no place else to go. At least, no place I can help with.”

He sighed. “There’s some­thing else. Some­thing I’m not proud to talk about. I’m too close to this case. It was the same in the Bu­reau, to­ward the end. I grew too ab­sorbed. And it’s hap­pen­ing again. It’s in­trud­ing on my per­son­al life, I brood about it day and night. And look at the re­sult.”

“What re­sult is that?”

“Han­der­ling. I was tired, overea­ger. And I had a lapse of judg­ment.”

“If you’re blam­ing your­self for Han­der­ling’s in­ter­ro­ga­tion, you shouldn’t. The man isn’t a mur­der­er—our tests con­firm that. But he abused his po­si­tion ter­ri­bly, com­mit­ted grave of­fens­es. In­for­ma­tion can be a dan­ger­ous thing in the wrong hands, Christo­pher. And we’re grate­ful for your help ex­pos­ing him.”

“I did very lit­tle, Dr. Sil­ver.”

“Didn’t I ask you to call me Richard? You’re sell­ing your­self short.”

Lash shook his head. “I’d sug­gest you go to the po­lice, but I’m not sure we could con­vince them a crime’s been com­mit­ted.” He stood up. “But if this is a se­ri­al killer, he’s like­ly to strike again very soon. Per­haps as soon as to­day. And I don’t want that to hap­pen on my watch. I don’t want to sit here, look­ing on help­less­ly. Wait­ing.”

Sil­ver watched him rise. And then, un­ex­pect­ed­ly, a smile sur­faced on the care­worn face. “We’re not ex­act­ly help­less,” he said. “As you prob­ably know, Mauch­ly and Tara have se­cu­ri­ty teams run­ning hands-​off surveil­lance on the oth­er su­per­cou­ples.”

“That might not stop a de­ter­mined killer.”

“Which is ex­act­ly why I’m tak­ing ad­di­tion­al steps my­self.”

“What do you mean?”

Sil­ver rose him­self. “Come with me.”

He led the way to a small door Lash had not no­ticed be­fore, built clev­er­ly in­to the wall of book­cas­es. It opened noise­less­ly, re­veal­ing a nar­row stair­case, cov­ered in the same rich car­pet­ing. “Af­ter you,” Sil­ver said.

Lash climbed at least three dozen steps, emerg­ing at the end of a hall­way. Af­ter the floor be­low, al­most dizzy­ing in its open­ness, the long, nar­row cor­ri­dor ahead of him felt cramped. There was no sense of be­ing atop a skyscrap­er: they could just as eas­ily have been far be­low the earth. And yet it was dec­orat­ed just as taste­ful­ly: the walls and ceil­ing were of dark pol­ished wood, and dec­ora­tive wall sconces of cop­per and abalone threw off mut­ed light.

Sil­ver mo­tioned him for­ward. As they walked, Lash looked cu­ri­ous­ly at the rooms to the left and right. He no­ticed a large per­son­al gym, com­plete with ex­er­cise flume, weight ma­chines, and tread­mill; a spar­tan din­ing room. The hall­way end­ed in a black door, a scan­ner set be­side it. Sil­ver put his wrist be­neath the scan­ner, and for the first time Lash no­ticed that he, too, wore a se­cu­ri­ty bracelet. The door sprang open.

The room be­yond was al­most as dim­ly lit as the cor­ri­dor. Ex­cept here, the light came sole­ly from tiny wink­ing lights and dozens of vac­uum-​flu­ores­cent dis­plays. From all sides came a con­stant low rush of air: the sound of in­nu­mer­able fans, breath­ing in uni­son. Rack-​mount­ed equip­ment of all kinds—routers, RAID hard disc ar­rays, video ren­der­ers, count­less oth­er ex­ot­ica un­known to Lash—cov­ered the near­est walls. Op­po­site them, half a dozen ter­mi­nals and their key­boards were lined up on a long wood­en desk, crowd­ed to­geth­er. A lone chair sat be­fore them. The on­ly oth­er piece of fur­ni­ture was in a far cor­ner: a nar­row and very cu­ri­ous-​look­ing couch, con­toured al­most in the fash­ion of a den­tist’s chair, sat be­hind a screen of Plex­iglas. Sev­er­al leads snaked away from the chair to a near­by rack of di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment. A lava­lier-​style mi­cro­phone was pinned to the chair by a plas­tic clip.

“Please ex­cuse the lack of seats,” Sil­ver said. “No­body but me ev­er comes here.”

“What is all this?” Lash said, look­ing around.

“Liza.”

Lash looked at Sil­ver quick­ly. “But I saw Liza the oth­er day. The small ter­mi­nal you showed me.”

“That’s Liza, too. Liza’s ev­ery­where in this pent­house. For some things I use that ter­mi­nal you saw. This is for more com­pli­cat­ed mat­ters. When I need to ac­cess her di­rect­ly.”

Lash re­mem­bered what Tara Sta­ple­ton had said over lunch in the cafe­te­ria: We nev­er get near the core rou­tines or in­tel­li­gence. On­ly Sil­ver has ac­cess. Ev­ery­body else us­es the cor­po­rate com­put­er grid. He looked around at the elec­tron­ics sur­round­ing them on all sides. “Why don’t you tell me a lit­tle more about Liza?”

“What would you like to know?”

“You could start with the name.”

“Of course.” Sil­ver paused. “By the way, speak­ing of names, I fi­nal­ly re­mem­bered where I saw yours.”

Lash raised his eye­brows.

“It was in the Times a cou­ple years back. Weren’t you an in­tend­ed vic­tim in that string of—”

“That’s right.” Lash re­al­ized im­me­di­ate­ly he’d in­ter­rupt­ed too quick­ly. “Re­mark­able mem­ory.”

There was a brief si­lence.

“Any­way, about Liza’s name. It’s a nod to ‘Eliza,’ a fa­mous piece of soft­ware from the ear­ly six­ties. Eliza sim­ulat­ed a di­alogue be­tween a per­son and the com­put­er, in which the pro­gram seized on words typed in by the per­son run­ning it. ‘How are you feel­ing?’ the pro­gram would start out ask­ing. ‘I feel lousy,’ you might type in. ‘Why do you think you feel lousy?’ the pro­gram would re­spond. ‘Be­cause my fa­ther is ill,’ you’d type. ‘Why do you say that about your fa­ther?’ comes the re­ply. It was very prim­itive, and it of­ten gave lu­di­crous re­spons­es, but it showed me what I need­ed to do.”

“And what was that?”

“To ac­com­plish what Eliza on­ly pre­tend­ed to do. To cre­ate a pro­gram—‘pro­gram’ isn’t re­al­ly the right word—a da­ta con­struct that could in­ter­act flaw­less­ly with a hu­man be­ing. That could, at some lev­el, think.”

“That’s all?” Lash said.

It was meant as a joke, but Sil­ver’s re­sponse was se­ri­ous. “It’s still a work in progress. I’ll prob­ably de­vote the rest of my life to per­fect­ing it. But once the in­tel­li­gence mod­els were ful­ly func­tion­al with­in a com­pu­ta­tion­al hy­per­space—”

“A what?”

Sil­ver smiled shy­ly. “Sor­ry. In the ear­ly days of AI, ev­ery­body thought it was just a mat­ter of time un­til the ma­chines would be able to think for them­selves. But it turned out the lit­tlest things were the hard­est to im­ple­ment. How can you pro­gram a com­put­er to un­der­stand how some­body is feel­ing? So in grad­uate school I pro­posed a two-​fold so­lu­tion. Give a com­put­er ac­cess to a huge amount of in­for­ma­tion—a knowl­edge base—along with the tools to search that knowl­edge base in­tel­li­gent­ly. Sec­ond, mod­el as re­al a per­son­al­ity as pos­si­ble with­in sil­icon and bi­na­ry code, be­cause hu­man cu­rios­ity would be nec­es­sary to make use of all that in­for­ma­tion. I felt if I could syn­the­size these two el­ements, I’d cre­ate a com­put­er that could teach it­self to learn. And if it could learn, it could learn to re­spond like a hu­man. Not to feel, of course. But it would un­der­stand what feel­ing was.”

Sil­ver spoke qui­et­ly, but his voice car­ried the con­vic­tion of a preach­er at a camp meet­ing.

“I guess, since we’re stand­ing here atop your pri­vate skyscrap­er, you suc­ceed­ed,” Lash replied.

Sil­ver smiled again. “For years I was stymied. It seemed I could take ma­chine learn­ing on­ly so far and no far­ther. It turned out I was just too im­pa­tient. The pro­gram was learn­ing, on­ly very slow­ly in the be­gin­ning. And I need­ed more horse­pow­er than the old main­frames I could af­ford in those days. Sud­den­ly, com­put­ers got cheap­er. And then came the ARPAnet. That’s when her learn­ing re­al­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed.” He shook his head. “I’ll nev­er for­get watch­ing as she made her first for­ays over the ’Net, search­ing—with­out any help from me—for an­swers to a prob­lem set. I think she was as proud as I was.”

“Proud,” Lash re­peat­ed. “Do you mean to say that it’s con­scious? Self-​aware?”

“She’s def­inite­ly self-​aware. Whether she’s con­scious or not gets in­to a philo­soph­ical area I’m not pre­pared to ad­dress.”

“But she is self-​aware. So what, ex­act­ly, is she aware of? She knows she’s a com­put­er, that she’s dif­fer­ent. Right?”

Sil­ver shook his head. “I nev­er added any mod­ule of code to that ef­fect.”

“What?” Lash said in sur­prise.

“Why should she think she’s any dif­fer­ent than us?”

“I just as­sumed—”

“Does a child, no mat­ter how pre­co­cious, ev­er doubt the re­al­ity of its ex­is­tence? Do you?”

Lash shook his head. “But we’re talk­ing about soft­ware and hard­ware here. That sounds like a false syl­lo­gism to me.”

“There’s no such thing in AI. Who’s to say when pro­gram­ming stops and con­scious­ness be­gins? A fa­mous sci­en­tist once re­ferred to hu­mans as ‘meat ma­chines.’ Are we the bet­ter for it? Be­sides, there’s no test you can take to prove you’re not a pro­gram, wan­der­ing around in cy­berspace. What’s your proof?”

Sil­ver had been speak­ing with a pas­sion Lash hadn’t seen be­fore. Sud­den­ly he stopped. “Sor­ry,” he said, laugh­ing shy­ly. “I guess I think about these things a lot more than I talk about them. Any­way, back to Liza’s ar­chi­tec­ture. She em­ploys a very ad­vanced form of a neu­ral net­work—a com­put­er ar­chi­tec­ture based on how the hu­man brain works. Reg­ular com­put­ers are con­strained to two di­men­sions. But a neu­ral net is ar­ranged in three: rings in­side rings in­side rings. So you can move da­ta in an al­most in­fi­nite num­ber of di­rec­tions, not just along a sin­gle cir­cuit.” Sil­ver paused. “It’s a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than that, of course. To ramp up her prob­lem-​solv­ing ca­pa­bil­ity, I em­ployed swarm in­tel­li­gence. Large func­tions are bro­ken up in­to tiny, dis­crete da­ta agents. That’s what al­lows her to solve such pro­found chal­lenges, so quick­ly.”

“Does she know we’re here?”

Sil­ver nod­ded to­ward a video mon­itor set high in one wall. “Yes. But her pro­cess­ing isn’t cur­rent­ly fo­cused on us.”

“Ear­li­er, you said you need­ed to ac­cess Liza di­rect­ly for com­pli­cat­ed work. Such as?”

“A va­ri­ety of things. She runs sce­nar­ios, for ex­am­ple, that I mon­itor.”

“What kinds of sce­nar­ios?”

“All kinds. Prob­lem-​solv­ing. Role-​play­ing. Sur­vival games. Things that stim­ulate cre­ative think­ing.” Sil­ver hes­itat­ed. “I al­so use di­rect ac­cess for more dif­fi­cult, per­son­al tasks like soft­ware up­dates. But it would prob­ably be eas­ier just to show you.”

He walked across the room, slid open the Plex­iglas pan­el, and took a seat in the sculpt­ed chair. Lash watched as he fixed elec­trodes to his tem­ples. A small key­pad and sty­lus were set in­to one arm of the chair; a hat switch was mount­ed on the oth­er. Reach­ing over­head, Sil­ver pulled down a flat pan­el mon­itor, fixed to a tele­scop­ing arm. His left hand be­gan mov­ing over the key­pad.

“What are you do­ing?” Lash asked.

“Get­ting her at­ten­tion.” Sil­ver’s hand fell away from the key­pad and fixed the lava­lier mike to his shirt col­lar.

Just then, Lash heard a voice.

“Richard,” it said.

It was a wom­an’s voice, low and with­out ac­cent, and it seemed to come from ev­ery­where and nowhere at the same time. It was as if the room it­self was speak­ing.

“Liza,” Sil­ver replied. “What is your cur­rent state?”

“Nine­ty-​eight point sev­en two sev­en per­cent op­er­ational. Cur­rent pro­cess­es are at eighty-​one point four per­cent of mul­ti­thread­ed ca­pac­ity. Thank you for ask­ing.”

The voice was calm, al­most serene, with the faintest trace of dig­ital ar­ti­fact­ing. Lash had a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he’d heard the voice be­fore, some­where. Per­haps in dreams.

“Who is with you?” the voice asked. Lash no­ticed that the ques­tion was ar­tic­ulat­ed prop­er­ly, with a faint em­pha­sis on the prepo­si­tion. He thought he even de­tect­ed an un­der­cur­rent of cu­rios­ity. He glanced a lit­tle un­easi­ly up at the video cam­era.

“This is Christo­pher Lash.”

“Christo­pher,” the voice re­peat­ed, as if tast­ing the name.

“Liza, I have a spe­cial pro­cess I would like you to run.” Lash no­ticed that when Sil­ver ad­dressed the com­put­er, he spoke slow­ly and with care­ful enun­ci­ation, with­out con­trac­tions of any kind.

“Very well, Richard.”

“Do you re­mem­ber the da­ta in­ter­roga­to­ry I asked you to run forty-​eight hours ago?”

“If you mean the sta­tis­ti­cal de­viance in­ter­roga­to­ry, my dataset has not been cor­rupt­ed.”

Sil­ver cov­ered the mike and turned to Lash. “She mis­in­ter­pret­ed ‘do you re­mem­ber.’ Even now, I some­times for­get how lit­er­al-​mind­ed she is.”

He turned back. “I need you to run a sim­ilar in­ter­roga­to­ry against ex­ter­nal agents. The ar­gu­ments are the same: da­ta crossover with the four sub­jects.”

“Sub­ject Schwartz, Sub­ject Thor­pe, Sub­ject Tor­vald, Sub­ject Wilner.”

“That is cor­rect.”

“What is the scope of the in­ter­roga­to­ry?”

“Unit­ed States cit­izens, ages fif­teen to sev­en­ty, with ac­cess to both tar­get lo­ca­tions on the stat­ed dates.”

“The da­ta-​gath­er­ing pa­ram­eters?”

“All avail­able sources.”

“And the pri­or­ity of this pro­cess?”

“High­est pri­or­ity, ex­cept for crit­icals. It is vi­tal we find the so­lu­tion.”

“Very well, Richard.”

“Can you give me an es­ti­mat­ed pro­cess­ing win­dow?”

“To with­in eleven-​per­cent ac­cu­ra­cy. Sev­en­ty-​four hours, fifty-​three min­utes, nine sec­onds. Ap­prox­imate­ly eight hun­dred tril­lion five hun­dred bil­lion ma­chine cy­cles.”

“Thank you, Liza.”

“Is there any­thing else?”

“No.”

“I will be­gin the ex­pand­ed in­ter­roga­to­ry now. Thank you for speak­ing with me, Richard.”

As Sil­ver re­moved the mi­cro­phone and reached again for the key­pad, the dis­em­bod­ied voice spoke again. “It was nice meet­ing you, Christo­pher Lash.”

“A plea­sure,” Lash mur­mured. Hear­ing this voice speak to him, watch­ing the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween Sil­ver and his com­put­er, was both fas­ci­nat­ing and a lit­tle un­set­tling.

Sil­ver plucked the elec­trodes from his tem­ples, put them aside, and got out of the chair. “You said you’d go to the po­lice if you thought it would help. I’ve just done some­thing bet­ter. I’ve in­struct­ed Liza to search the en­tire coun­try for a pos­si­ble sus­pect match.”

“The en­tire coun­try? Is that pos­si­ble?”

“For Eden, it’s pos­si­ble.” Sil­ver swayed, re­cov­ered. “Sor­ry. Ses­sions with Liza, even brief ones, can be a lit­tle drain­ing.”

“How so?”

Sil­ver smiled. “In movies peo­ple talk to com­put­ers, and they talk glibly back. Maybe it will be that way in an­oth­er decade. Right now, it’s hard work. As much a men­tal ex­er­cise as a ver­bal one.”

“Those elec­troen­cephalo­gram sen­sors you wore?”

“Think of biofeed­back. The fre­quen­cy and am­pli­tude of be­ta or theta waves can speak a lot more dis­tinct­ly than words. Ear­ly on, when I was hav­ing trou­bles with her lan­guage com­pre­hen­sion, I used the EEG as a short­cut. It re­quired a great deal of con­cen­tra­tion, but there was no con­fu­sion over du­al mean­ings, ho­mo­phones, nu­ances of in­tent. Now, it’s too deeply buried in her lega­cy code to change eas­ily.”

“So on­ly you can com­mu­ni­cate with her di­rect­ly?”

“It’s the­oret­ical­ly pos­si­ble for oth­ers to do so, too, with the prop­er con­cen­tra­tion and train­ing. There’s just been no need.”

“Per­haps not,” Lash said. “If I’d built some­thing this mar­velous, I’d want to share it with oth­ers. Like-​mind­ed sci­en­tists who could build on what you pi­oneered.”

“That will come. So many oth­er en­hance­ments seem to oc­cu­py my time. And it’s a non-​triv­ial task. We can dis­cuss the de­tails some oth­er time, if you’re in­ter­est­ed.”

He stepped for­ward, put a hand on Lash’s shoul­der. “I know how hard it’s been on you. It hasn’t been easy for me, ei­ther. But we’ve come this far, done this much. I need you to stick with it just a lit­tle longer. Maybe it is just a freak­ish tragedy af­ter all, two dou­ble sui­cides. Maybe we’ll have a qui­et week­end. I re­al­ize it’s hell not know­ing. But we have to trust Liza now. Okay?”

Lash re­mained silent a mo­ment. “That match Eden found for me. It’s on the lev­el? No mis­takes?”

“The on­ly mis­take was send­ing your avatar to the Tank in the first place. The match­ing pro­cess it­self would work for you as it does for ev­ery­body else. The wom­an would be per­fect­ly suit­ed to you in ev­ery way.”

The dim light, the whis­pered hum of ma­chin­ery, gave the room a dream­like, al­most spec­tral air. Half a dozen im­ages flit­ted through Lash’s head. The look on his ex-​wife’s face, that day in the blind at the Audubon Cen­ter when they sep­arat­ed. Tara Sta­ple­ton’s ex­pres­sion at the bar in Grand Cen­tral when she told him of her own dilem­ma. The face of Lewis Thor­pe, star­ing at him out of the Flagstaff tele­vi­sion screen.

He sighed. “Very well. I’ll stay on a few more days. On one con­di­tion.”

“Name it.”

“That you don’t can­cel my din­ner with Di­ana Mir­ren.”

Sil­ver pressed Lash’s shoul­der for a mo­ment. “Good man.” He smiled again, briefly; but when the smile fad­ed, he looked just as tired as Lash felt.

TWENTY-NINE

Sev­en­ty-​five hours,” Tara said. “That means Liza won’t have an an­swer un­til Mon­day af­ter­noon.”

Lash nod­ded. He’d sum­ma­rized his talk with Sil­ver, de­scribed in de­tail how the man com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Liza. Through­out, Tara was fas­ci­nat­ed—un­til she heard how long the ex­tend­ed search would take.

“So what are we sup­posed to do un­til then?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I do. We wait.” Tara raised her eyes to the ceil­ing. “Shit.”

Lash looked around the room. In size, Tara Sta­ple­ton’s thir­ty-​fifth-​floor of­fice wasn’t that dif­fer­ent from his own tem­po­rary space. It had the same con­fer­ence ta­ble, same desk, same shelv­ing. There were a few dis­tinct­ly fem­inine touch­es: half a dozen leafy plants that ap­peared to thrive on the ar­ti­fi­cial light, a pais­ley sa­chet of pot­pour­ri hang­ing from the desk lamp by a red rib­bon. Three iden­ti­cal com­put­er work­sta­tions were lined up be­hind the desk. But the most dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the of­fice was a large fiber­glass surf­board lean­ing against a far wall, bad­ly scored and pit­ted, the stripe along its length fad­ed by salt and sun. Bumper stick­ers with leg­ends like “Live to surf, surf to live” and “Hang ten off a log!” were fixed on the wall be­hind it. Post­cards from fa­mous surf­ing beach­es—Lennox Head, Aus­tralia; Pipeline, Hawaii; Po­tovil Point, Sri Lan­ka—were taped in a row along the up­per edge of the book­shelf.

“Must have had a hell of a time get­ting that in here,” Lash said, nod­ding at the surf­board.

Tara flashed one of her rare smiles. “I spent my first cou­ple of months out­side the Wall, au­dit­ing se­cu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures. I brought in my old board to re­mind me there was a world out there be­yond New York City. So I wouldn’t for­get what I’d rather be do­ing. Au­dit fin­ished, I got pro­mot­ed, trans­ferred in­side. They wouldn’t let me take the board. I was rip­shit.” She shook her head at the mem­ory. “Then it ap­peared in my of­fice door­way one day. Hap­py first an­niver­sary, cour­tesy of Ed­win Mauch­ly and Eden.”

“Know­ing Mauch­ly, af­ter hav­ing been scanned, probed, and an­alyzed six ways from Sun­day.”

“Prob­ably.”

Lash glanced at the clutch of emer­ald-​green post­cards. A ques­tion had formed in his mind—a ques­tion Tara could prob­ably an­swer bet­ter than any­body.

He leaned to­ward the desk. “Tara, lis­ten. Re­mem­ber that drink we had at Se­bas­tian’s? What you told me about your get­ting the nod?”

Im­me­di­ate­ly, he felt her grow more re­served.

“I need to know some­thing. Is there any chance that an Eden can­di­date who gets turned down af­ter test­ing might end up get­ting pro­cessed any­way? Go through da­ta-​gath­er­ing, surveil­lance—the works—and ul­ti­mate­ly end up in the Tank? Get­ting matched?”

“You mean, like a mis­take? Ob­so­letes some­how mak­ing their way through? Im­pos­si­ble.”

“Why?”

“There are re­dun­dant checks. It’s like ev­ery­thing else with the sys­tem. We don’t take any chance that a client, even a would-​be client, could suf­fer em­bar­rass­ment from slop­py da­ta han­dling.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s nev­er hap­pened.”

“It hap­pened yes­ter­day.” And in re­sponse to Tara’s dis­be­liev­ing look, he hand­ed her the let­ter he’d found wait­ing out­side his front door.

She read it, pal­ing vis­ibly. “Tav­ern on the Green.”

“I was re­ject­ed as an ap­pli­cant. And pret­ty defini­tive­ly. So how could this have hap­pened?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could some­body with­in Eden have doc­tored my forms, guid­ing them through in­stead of shunt­ing them to­ward the dis­card pile?”

“No­body here does any­thing with­out half a dozen oth­ers see­ing it.”

“No­body?”

Hear­ing the tone of his voice, Tara looked at him close­ly. “It would have to be some­body very high­ly placed, some­body with world-​class ac­cess. Me, for ex­am­ple. Or a grunt like Han­der­ling who’d some­how hacked the sys­tem.” She paused. “But why would any­body do such a thing?”

“That was my next ques­tion.”

There was a si­lence. Tara fold­ed the let­ter and hand­ed it back across the ta­ble.

“I don’t know how this hap­pened. But I’m very, very sor­ry, Dr. Lash. We’ll in­ves­ti­gate im­me­di­ate­ly, of course.”

“You’re sor­ry. Sil­ver’s sor­ry. Why is ev­ery­body so sor­ry?”

Tara looked as­ton­ished. “You mean—?”

“That’s right. To­mor­row night, I’m step­ping out.”

“But I don’t un­der­stand—” The flow of words stopped.

I know you don’t, Lash thought.

He didn’t ex­act­ly un­der­stand him­self. If he’d worked at Eden, like Tara—if he’d been in­flu­enced by what in­sid­ers called the “Oz ef­fect”—he might have torn up the let­ter.

But he had not torn up the let­ter. The peek be­hind the scenes, the ra­bid tes­ti­mo­ni­als of Eden clients, had piqued his in­ter­est al­most with­out his re­al­iz­ing it. And now he’d been told a per­fect mate had been found for him—Christo­pher Lash, so ex­pert at an­alyz­ing oth­er re­la­tion­ships yet so un­suc­cess­ful in his own. It was sim­ply too pow­er­ful a lure to re­sist. Even the knowl­edge of why he was here in the first place was no match for the cu­rios­ity of meet­ing—just per­haps—an ide­al part­ner.

But that meet­ing would come to­mor­row. To­day, there was some­thing else on his mind.

“It’s not a co­in­ci­dence,” he said.

“Huh?”

“My ap­pli­ca­tion get­ting pro­cessed. It might be a mis­take, but it’s no co­in­ci­dence. Any more than the deaths of the two su­per­cou­ples are co­in­ci­dence.”

Tara frowned. “What are you say­ing, ex­act­ly?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s a pat­tern here some­where. We’re just not see­ing it.” Men­tal­ly, he re­turned to last night’s drive home, when he’d re­fused to lis­ten to the voice in the back of his head. Now he tried to re­call the voice.

You mur­dered the first two su­per­cou­ples, in or­der, Mauch­ly had said to Han­der­ling dur­ing the in­ter­ro­ga­tion. Now you’ve been plan­ning to stalk, and kill, a third.

In or­der . . .

“Mind if I bor­row this?” he asked, tak­ing a notepad from the desk. Pulling out a pen, he wrote two dates on the pad: 9/17/04. 9/24/04. The dates the Thor­pes and the Wilners had died.

“Tara,” he said. “Can you pull up the dates that the Thor­pes and the Wilners first sub­mit­ted their ap­pli­ca­tions?”

“Sure.” She turned to­ward one of the ter­mi­nals, typed briefly. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, the print­er spat out a sheet:

Noth­ing.

“Could you widen the search, please? I want a print­out of all rel­evant dates for the two cou­ples. When they were test­ed, when they first met, when they were mar­ried, ev­ery­thing.”

Tara looked at him spec­ula­tive­ly for a mo­ment. Then she re­turned to the key­board and re­sumed typ­ing.

The sec­ond list ran to al­most a dozen pages. Lash turned them over, one af­ter an­oth­er, run­ning his eyes weari­ly down the columns. Then he froze.

“Je­sus,” he mur­mured.

“What is it?”

“These columns la­beled ‘Nom­inal avatar re­moval.’ What do they stand for?”

“When the avatars were re­moved from the tank.”

“In oth­er words, when the cou­ples were matched.”

“Right.”

Lash hand­ed her the sheet. “Look at the re­moval dates for the Thor­pes and the Wilners.”

Tara glanced at the re­port. “My God. Septem­ber 17, 2002. Septem­ber 24, 2002.”

“That’s right. Not on­ly were the Thor­pes and the Wilners the first two su­per­cou­ples to be matched. They al­so died pre­cise­ly two years af­ter they were matched. Two years to the day.”

Tara dropped the re­port on the desk. “What do you think it means?”

“That this dog’s been sniff­ing around the wrong fire hy­drant. Here I’ve been dig­ging in­to the psych tests and eval­ua­tions, as­sum­ing there might be some hu­man flaw your ex­am­ina­tions missed. Maybe in­stead of ex­am­in­ing the peo­ple, I should have ex­am­ined the pro­cess.”

“The pro­cess? What about the sus­pect match? Liza’s search?”

“That won’t be done un­til Mon­day. I don’t plan to spend the next sev­en­ty-​odd hours sit­ting on my hands.” He stood up and turned to­ward the door. “Thanks for the help.”

As he opened the door, he heard Tara’s chair roll back. “Just a minute,” she said.

He turned.

“Where are you go­ing?”

“Back to my of­fice. I’ve got a lot of ev­idence lock­ers to search.”

When Tara came around the desk, there was no hes­ita­tion. “I’m com­ing along,” she said.

THIRTY

Seen my trav­el­ing kit, babe?” Kevin Con­nel­ly called out.

“Be­neath the van­ity, sec­ond shelf. On the left.”

Con­nel­ly padded past the sleigh bed, past the bars of yel­low light that slant­ed in through the win­dows, and knelt be­fore the van­ity sink. Sure enough: sec­ond shelf, tucked care­ful­ly against the wall. Back in the day he’d have spent half an hour tear­ing up the bed­room in search of it. But Lynn seemed to pos­sess a pho­to­graph­ic mem­ory for the where­abouts of ev­ery­thing in the house: not just her stuff, but his as well. It wasn’t any­thing con­scious, it was just there all the time, stick­ing to ev­ery­thing it touched, like fly­pa­per. Per­haps that’s part of what made her so good with lan­guages.

“You’re a trea­sure,” he said.

“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

He paused, crouch­ing be­fore the van­ity, to look over at her. She was stand­ing just with­in the clos­et, star­ing at a long rack of dress­es. As he watched, she took down one, turned it around on its hang­er, re­placed it in fa­vor of an­oth­er. There was some­thing in the way her limbs moved—lis­some, un­self-​con­scious—that even now quick­ened his pulse. He’d been deeply of­fend­ed when, the oth­er week, his moth­er had la­beled her “cute.” Cute? She was the most beau­ti­ful wom­an he’d ev­er seen.

She left the clos­et and walked the new­ly se­lect­ed dress over to the bed, where a large can­vas suit­case lay open. With the same econ­omy of mo­tion, she fold­ed the dress in half and placed it with­in the suit­case.

He’d tak­en the af­ter­noon off to help his wife pack for Ni­agara Falls. It was a kind of guilty plea­sure that, for some rea­son, he’d be em­bar­rassed to con­fess to any­body. They al­ways packed days in ad­vance of a trip; some­how, it seemed to ex­tend the va­ca­tion. He’d al­ways been a pre­ma­ture pack­er, for the same rea­son he al­ways liked to get to the air­port ear­ly—yet as a bach­elor it had been a hur­ried, sloven­ly af­fair. Lynn had shown him pack­ing was an art, nev­er to be rushed. And now, the pro­cess had grown in­to one of those in­ti­mate lit­tle rit­uals that made up the fab­ric of their mar­riage.

He stood, came up be­hind her, put his arms around her waist. “Just think,” he said, nuz­zling her ear. “An­oth­er cou­ple of days and we’ll be in front of a roar­ing fire at the Pil­lar and Post Inn.”

“Mmm.”

“We’ll have break­fast in bed. Maybe lunch in bed, too. How does that sound? And if you play your cards right, you just might get dessert, as well.”

In re­sponse, she leaned her head a lit­tle weari­ly against his shoul­der.

Kevin Con­nel­ly knew his wife’s moods al­most as well as his own, and he drew back. “What is it, babe?” he asked quick­ly. “Mi­graine?”

“Maybe the be­gin­nings of one,” she said. “Hope not.”

He turned her to­ward him, kissed her gen­tly on one tem­ple, then the oth­er.

“Some per­fect wife, huh?” she said, rais­ing her lips to his.

“You are the per­fect wife. My per­fect wife.”

She smiled, laid her head against his shoul­der again.

The door­bell rang.

Kevin gen­tly de­tached him­self, then trot­ted out in­to the hall and down the stairs. Be­hind, he heard Lynn’s qui­et foot­steps, mov­ing more slow­ly.

A man with an enor­mous wrapped par­cel wait­ed at the front door. “Mr. Con­nel­ly?” he said. “Sign here, please.”

Con­nel­ly signed on the in­di­cat­ed line, then gath­ered the pack­age in his arms.

“What is it?” Lynn said as he thanked the man and pushed the door closed be­hind him.

“Don’t know. Want to open it?” Con­nel­ly hand­ed the pack­age to her, then watched, smil­ing, as she tore off the wrap­ping pa­per. Clear cel­lo­phane came in­to view; then a broad red rib­bon; then the pale yel­low of wo­ven straw.

“What is it?” he asked. “A bas­ket of fruit?”

“Not just fruit,” Lynn said breath­less­ly. “Look at the la­bel. It’s red blush pears from Ecuador! You have any idea how ex­pen­sive these are?”

Con­nel­ly smiled at the look that came over his wife’s face. Lynn was pas­sion­ate about ex­ot­ic fruit.

“Who could have sent this?” she asked. “I don’t see a card.”

“There’s a small one tucked in the back, over here.” Con­nel­ly plucked it from be­tween threads of twist­ed straw, read the en­graved words aloud. “Con­grat­ula­tions and warm best wish­es on your up­com­ing an­niver­sary.”

Lynn crowd­ed close, headache for­got­ten. “Who’s it from?”

Con­nel­ly hand­ed it to her. There was no name, but the card was em­bossed with the sleek in­fin­ity sym­bol of Eden.

Her eyes widened. “Red blush pears. How could they have known?”

“They know ev­ery­thing. Re­mem­ber?”

Lynn shook her head, then be­gan tear­ing the cel­lo­phane from the bas­ket.

“Not so fast,” Con­nel­ly said in mock ad­mon­ish­ment. “We’ve got some un­fin­ished busi­ness up­stairs. Re­mem­ber?”

Now a smile bright­ened on her face, as well. And putting the bas­ket aside, she skipped up the stairs af­ter him.

THIRTY-ONE

Lash glanced up at the clock: a quick, dis­in­ter­est­ed look. Then he glanced again in dis­be­lief. Quar­ter to six. It seemed on­ly min­utes since Tara, plead­ing a doc­tor’s ap­point­ment, had ex­cused her­self from his of­fice around four.

He leaned back in his chair, sur­veyed the flood of pa­per­work cov­er­ing the ta­ble. Had he re­al­ly com­plained bit­ter­ly, once up­on a time, about a lack of in­for­ma­tion? Now he had in­for­ma­tion, all right: enough to drown an army.

Dis­cov­er­ing the deaths of the Thor­pes and the Wilners were pre­cise­ly timed to their match­es was a crit­ical piece of the puz­zle—he just had to learn how it fit in. But with this em­bar­rass­ment of da­ta, he wasn’t like­ly to learn this af­ter­noon.

His eye re­turned to the ta­ble, falling on a fold­er la­beled Thor­pe, Lewis—Pro­cess In­ven­to­ry. He’d al­ready flipped through it briefly: it ap­peared to be a sys­tem-​gen­er­at­ed list of all Eden sys­tems Thor­pe had in­ter­act­ed with. Lash sift­ed through the oth­er flot­sam un­til he found an iden­ti­cal fold­er for Lind­say. Then, walk­ing to the far wall of the of­fice, he rum­maged through the ev­idence lock­ers un­til he’d lo­cat­ed sim­ilar in­ven­to­ries for the Wilners, as well.

Maybe Sil­ver was right—noth­ing would hap­pen that week­end. If there was a mur­der­er out there, maybe Eden’s surveil­lance teams would catch him be­fore he could kill again. But that didn’t mean Lash was go­ing to twid­dle his thumbs. Com­par­ing the da­ta in the fold­ers might turn up more pieces of the puz­zle.

He slipped the fold­ers in­to his leather satchel, stretched weari­ly. Then he made his way down the hall to the cafe­te­ria. Mar­guerite had left for the day, but the counter per­son on du­ty was more than hap­py to make him a dou­ble espres­so. De­spite the late hour, the room was bustling, and Lash chose a cor­ner ta­ble, grate­ful Eden main­tained a three-​shift op­er­ation.

Drain­ing his cup, he re­turned to his of­fice, re­trieved his coat and satchel, then head­ed to the near­est el­eva­tor bank. Though most of the build­ing re­mained a mys­tery to him, he’d at least learned to nav­igate his way to the lob­by.

As Lash took up po­si­tion in the queue for Check­point III, his thoughts re­turned to the cou­ples. Be­fore she’d left, Tara Sta­ple­ton had point­ed out the third su­per­cou­ple—the Con­nellys—had been matched on Oc­to­ber 6, 2002. If the pat­tern he’d dis­cov­ered held true to form, that meant the Con­nellys would ex­pe­ri­ence their own tragedy—sui­cide, homi­cide—this com­ing Wednes­day. That took a lit­tle pres­sure off, gave them some breath­ing room. But it al­so meant they had an iron­clad dead­line.

Wednes­day. Any miss­ing pieces of the puz­zle had to be found be­fore then.

He reached the front of the queue, wait­ed while the glass doors slid open, then stepped in­to the cir­cu­lar cham­ber. Even this had be­come al­most rou­tine. It was an amaz­ing thing, con­di­tion­ing. You could get used to al­most any­thing, no mat­ter how re­mark­able. In the lab, he’d seen the ef­fect in dogs, mice, chimps. He used it him­self in biofeed­back ther­apy. And here he was, a walk­ing, talk­ing ex­am­ple of its use in a cor­po­rate . . .

He be­came aware of a dis­tant ring­ing sound. The light in the cham­ber, al­ready bright, grew brighter. Ahead, be­yond the sec­ond set of doors, he could see peo­ple run­ning. What was hap­pen­ing—a fire alarm? Some sort of drill?

Sud­den­ly, two guards ap­peared ahead on the far side of the glass. They plant­ed them­selves in his path, feet apart, arms at their sides.

He turned back the way he’d come, not com­pre­hend­ing. Two more guards now stood there. As he watched, more ran up be­hind them.

There was a brief se­ries of tones, then the doors he’d passed through opened again. Guards ad­vanced in two rows. One of the guards in the rear row, he no­ticed, held a stun de­vice in one hand.

“What—” he be­gan.

Quick­ly, and very firm­ly, the two lead guards hus­tled him back through the glass doors. The rest formed a se­cu­ri­ty cor­don around them. Lash reg­is­tered a fleet­ing set of im­ages—the queue falling back, wide-​eyed; the walls of a cor­ri­dor; a quick turn around a cor­ner—and then he found him­self in­side a stark, win­dow­less room.

He was guid­ed to a wood­en chair. For a mo­ment, it seemed no­body paid any fur­ther at­ten­tion to him. There was the sound of ra­dios chat­ter­ing, a phone be­ing di­aled. “Get Shel­drake in here,” some­body said. The door to the room closed. And then one of the guards turned to him.

“Where were you go­ing with these?” he asked. In one hand he held up the four fold­ers from the satchel.

In his con­fu­sion, Lash was un­aware the satchel had been tak­en from him. “I was tak­ing them home,” he said. “To read over the week­end.” Christ, how could he have for­got­ten Mauch­ly’s warn­ings? Noth­ing from in­side the Wall ev­er went out. But how had they . . .

“You know the rules, Mr.—?” the guard said, plac­ing the binders in­side what looked un­com­fort­ably like an ev­idence bag.

“Dr. Lash. Christo­pher Lash.”

Hear­ing this, one of the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers walked over to a da­ta ter­mi­nal and be­gan to type.

“You know the rules, Dr. Lash?”

Lash nod­ded.

“So you re­al­ize the se­ri­ous­ness of this of­fense.”

Lash nod­ded again, em­bar­rassed. Tara, stick­ler for pro­to­col, would nev­er let him live this down. He hoped she wouldn’t get in trou­ble; af­ter all, Mauch­ly had put her in charge of—

“We’re go­ing to have to keep you here un­til we’ve pulled your se­cu­ri­ty his­to­ry. If you al­ready have a warn­ing on your record, I’m afraid you’ll be brought be­fore the ter­mi­na­tion re­view board.”

The se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer at the work­sta­tion looked up. “There’s no Christo­pher Lash in the Hu­man Re­sources files.”

“Did we get your name right?” the of­fi­cer with the ev­idence bag said.

“Yes, but—”

“I’m show­ing a Christo­pher S. Lash as a prospec­tive client,” the of­fi­cer at the ter­mi­nal said, typ­ing again. “Went through ap­pli­cant test­ing last Sun­day, Septem­ber twen­ty-​sixth.” He stopped typ­ing. “The ap­pli­ca­tion was re­ject­ed.”

“Is that you?” the first of­fi­cer asked.

“Yes, but—”

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the at­mo­sphere in the room changed. The first of­fi­cer stepped to­ward him quick­ly. Sev­er­al oth­ers, in­clud­ing the one with the Taser, closed ranks be­hind him.

Christ, Lash thought, this is get­ting awk­ward. “Look,” he be­gan again, “you don’t un­der­stand—”

“Sir,” the first of­fi­cer said, “please keep silent. I’ll ask the ques­tions.”

The door opened and an­oth­er man stepped in. He was tall, and his shoul­ders were so broad the blond head atop them seemed too small for its body. As he came for­ward with an al­most mil­itary bear­ing, the oth­ers stepped back def­er­en­tial­ly. He wore a dark busi­ness suit, plain­ly cut. His eyes were an un­usu­al shade of emer­ald green. He seemed vague­ly fa­mil­iar, but in his con­fused state it took Lash a mo­ment to place him. Then he re­mem­bered: he’d glimpsed the man briefly, stand­ing in the hall­way dur­ing Han­der­ling’s in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

“What have you got?” the man said. His voice was clipped, ac­cent­less.

“This gen­tle­man tried to slip con­cealed doc­uments past the check­point.”

“What’s his de­part­ment and rank?”

“He’s not an em­ploy­ee, Mr. Shel­drake. He’s a re­ject­ed client.”

The man’s eye­brows shot up. “In­deed?”

“He just ad­mit­ted to it.”

Shel­drake stepped for­ward, crossed one mas­sive arm over the oth­er, and re­gard­ed Lash with cu­rios­ity. There was no look of recog­ni­tion: it was clear he hadn’t seen Lash at the in­ter­ro­ga­tion. The man un­crossed his arms again and drew back his suit jack­et at the waist. Lash saw he was wear­ing a ser­vice belt, com­plete with au­to­mat­ic weapon, hand­cuffs, and ra­dio. Pluck­ing the ASP ba­ton from his belt, Shel­drake ex­tend­ed it to full length.

“Cran­dall,” he mut­tered. “Look at this.” And he raised Lash’s sleeve with the nub­by met­al end of the ba­ton, ex­pos­ing the se­cu­ri­ty bracelet.

The first of­fi­cer—the one named Cran­dall—frowned in sur­prise. “How’d you get that? And what were you do­ing in­side the se­cure perime­ter?”

“I’m a tem­po­rary con­sul­tant.”

“You just ad­mit­ted to be­ing a re­ject­ed client.”

Lash cursed the se­cre­cy un­der which he’d been brought in. “Yes, I know. But go­ing through the ap­pli­ca­tion pro­cess was part of my as­sign­ment. Look, just ask Ed­win Mauch­ly. He hired me.”

In the back­ground he could hear more ra­dio chat­ter. One of the se­cu­ri­ty guards was paw­ing through his satchel. “Eden doesn’t hire tem­po­rary con­sul­tants. And they cer­tain­ly aren’t al­lowed in­side the Wall.” Shel­drake turned to­ward one of the oth­ers. “Alert the se­cu­ri­ty posts, all down the line. We’re go­ing to Con­di­tion Be­ta. Get an an­alyz­er over here, see if the bracelet was tam­pered with.”

“Right away, Mr. Shel­drake.”

This was ridicu­lous. Why weren’t his more re­cent records ap­pear­ing, the records of his suc­cess­ful match? “Look,” Lash said, stand­ing, “I told you to speak with Mauch­ly—”

“Sit down!” Cran­dall pushed him rough­ly back in­to the seat. An­oth­er guard—the one with the Taser—stepped clos­er. Yet an­oth­er opened a met­al clos­et and pulled out a long, rake-​like im­ple­ment with a half-​cir­cle bolt­ed to one end. Lash had seen the im­ple­ment many times in the past: it was used to pin un­co­op­er­ative psy­chi­atric pa­tients against a wall.

He licked his lips. What had been first em­bar­rass­ing, then an­noy­ing, was quick­ly be­com­ing some­thing else. “Lis­ten,” he said as calm­ly as he could. “I’m a con­sul­tant, like I said. I’m work­ing with Tara Sta­ple­ton.”

“Do­ing what?” Shel­drake asked.

“That’s con­fi­den­tial.”

“If that’s the way you want to play it.” Shel­drake glanced over his shoul­der. “See what doc­tor’s on call, get him in here. And call the se­cu­ri­ty desk, alert the du­ty chiefs.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” Lash said. “You can ask Sil­ver if you don’t be­lieve me. He knows all about it.”

Shel­drake’s lips curled in­to a faint smile. “Richard Sil­ver?”

“He knows all about it,” Cran­dall added. “No­body’s seen the guy for a year, and he knows all about it.”

“I’ll go speak with him my­self.” And Lash be­gan to stand again.

Cran­dall shoved him back in­to the seat again. An­oth­er se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer stepped for­ward, and to­geth­er they pinned Lash to the chair.

“Get the re­straints,” Shel­drake said mild­ly. “And Stem­per, use that Taser. I want this guy paci­fied.”

The guard with the stun de­vice stepped for­ward. “Back on my sig­nal,” Cran­dall mut­tered to the guard on the far side of the chair.

At that mo­ment, the door opened and Mauch­ly stepped in.

“What’s go­ing on?” he de­mand­ed.

Shel­drake looked around, stopped. “This man says he knows you, Mr. Mauch­ly.”

“He does.” Mauch­ly came for­ward. Lash be­gan to rise, but Mauch­ly stayed him with a sup­press­ing ges­ture. “What hap­pened, ex­act­ly?” he asked Shel­drake.

“The man at­tempt­ed to ex­it the se­cure perime­ter with these in his pos­ses­sion.” Shel­drake nod­ded at Cran­dall, who hand­ed the ev­idence bag to Mauch­ly.

Mauch­ly opened it, read the ti­tles on the binders. “I’ll hang on to these,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” said Cran­dall.

“And I’ll take pos­ses­sion of Dr. Lash, as well.”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Shel­drake asked.

“Yes, Mr. Shel­drake.”

“Then I re­lease him to your cus­tody.” He turned to Cran­dall. “Mark that in the du­ty log.”

Mauch­ly picked up the satchel, nod­ded for Lash to stand. “Come on, Dr. Lash,” he said. “This way.” And as they left the room, Lash could hear Shel­drake on the phone, telling the se­cu­ri­ty teams that the alarm was be­ing can­celed and they should stand down from Con­di­tion Be­ta.

 

Out in the hall, Mauch­ly closed the un­marked door be­hind them, then turned. “What were you think­ing, Dr. Lash?”

“I guess I wasn’t think­ing at all, ac­tu­al­ly. I’m rather tired. Sor­ry about that.”

Mauch­ly looked at Lash a mo­ment longer. Then he nod­ded slow­ly. “I’ll have these re­turned to your of­fice,” he said, in­di­cat­ing the binders. “They’ll be wait­ing for you Mon­day morn­ing.”

“Thank you. What did that guard mean by Con­di­tion Be­ta?”

“This build­ing em­ploys four sta­tus codes: Al­pha, Be­ta, Delta, and Gam­ma. Con­di­tion Al­pha is nor­mal op­er­ation. Be­ta is height­ened alert. Delta is in case of evac­ua­tion, fire and so forth.”

“And Gam­ma?”

“Catas­troph­ic emer­gen­cies on­ly. Nev­er in­voked, of course.”

“Of course.” Lash re­al­ized he was bab­bling. He wished Mauch­ly a pleas­ant week­end and turned away.

“Dr. Lash,” Mauch­ly said qui­et­ly.

Lash turned back. Mauch­ly was hold­ing out his satchel.

“You might want to use Check­point I, on the third floor,” he said. “The guards here are li­able to be a lit­tle, ah, ex­citable for a while.”

THIRTY-TWO

As­sis­tant dis­trict at­tor­ney Frank Pis­ton shift­ed mo­rose­ly in the wood­en chair. He’d have giv­en just about any­thing, he de­cid­ed, to get his hands on the sadist who pur­chased the fur­ni­ture for the Sul­li­van Coun­ty Su­pe­ri­or Court. Just ten min­utes—even five—in a dark al­ley would suf­fice to make his feel­ings on the mat­ter clear. He’d been in dozens of court­rooms, judges’ cham­bers, law of­fices in the five-​sto­ry build­ing. Each one had the same bony chairs with flat in­sti­tu­tion­al seats, backs sport­ing lit­tle knobs in all the wrong places. Here in the hear­ing room of the Board of Par­dons and Paroles, it was no dif­fer­ent.

He glanced at his watch, sigh­ing dis­con­so­late­ly. Six o’clock on the dot. Fig­ured his case would be the last one heard. By rights, it should have been first on the list. Af­ter all, it wouldn’t take more than a few min­utes to dis­pose of the mat­ter, send Ed­mund Wyre back to the slam­mer to rot an­oth­er ten years. But no, he’d had to sit through a dozen hear­ings, each more bor­ing than the last. It was un­be­liev­able, the shit an as­sis­tant DA had to go through. Ev­ery­body else had gone home an hour ago, but here he was, numb from the ass down. He’d en­dured four years of law school, spent close to a hun­dred grand, for this?

There’d been a scary mo­ment—half an hour be­fore, when that se­ri­al rapist’s case had come up—when he thought the pa­role board would ad­journ for the day and he’d have to come back again next week for an­oth­er tor­ture ses­sion. But no, they’d de­cid­ed to hear the last few cas­es. They’d de­nied the rapist pa­role, of course. Just like they’d de­nied most of the rest. This board was rough. He re­mind­ed him­self that, if he ev­er com­mit­ted a crime, he’d damn well bet­ter do it in an­oth­er coun­ty.

Fi­nal­ly, it was time. The drunk driv­er who’d run over an el­der­ly pedes­tri­an—ag­gra­vat­ed manslaugh­ter, twen­ty years—pa­role de­nied. No sur­prise there. And now Walt Cor­so, sour-​faced old head of the pa­role board, cleared his throat.

“The Board of Par­dons and Paroles will now re­view the case of Ed­mund Wyre,” he said, glanc­ing down at a clip­board on the ta­ble be­fore him.

There was a gen­er­al shuf­fling among the sea of faces on the far side of the board ta­ble. All twelve mem­bers of the board were on hand, Pis­ton no­ticed—which was nec­es­sary, of course, when­ev­er a mur­der­er’s case came up. Now that the glum-​faced rel­atives of the drunk driv­er had shuf­fled out, the room was al­most emp­ty. It was just the board, a court of­fi­cer, a tran­scriber, some state of­fi­cials, and him­self. Not even a re­porter. There was no way in hell Wyre was go­ing free; ev­ery­body knew that. Pis­ton didn’t even un­der­stand how the guy had come up for pa­role so ear­ly. You didn’t kill six peo­ple and then just—

There was move­ment to his right: a door open­ing. And then, Ed­mund Wyre him­self ap­peared, hand­cuffed, prison guards on ei­ther side.

Pis­ton sat up. This was un­usu­al. Had Wyre hired a lawyer? What the hell was he do­ing here in per­son?

The board, how­ev­er, was not sur­prised. They watched in si­lence as Wyre was led be­fore the ta­ble. Piss-​and-​vine­gar Cor­so glanced down again at his clip­board, scrib­bled a no­ta­tion. “I un­der­stand, Mr. Wyre, that you wished to be present at this hear­ing, but that you’ve waived the ser­vices of a lawyer or pa­role con­sul­tant, pre­fer­ring to rep­re­sent your­self?”

Wyre nod­ded. “That’s right, sir,” he said in a def­er­en­tial tone.

“Very well.” Cor­so glanced up and down the ta­ble. “Who’s the pa­role of­fi­cer?”

One of the state of­fi­cials seat­ed in the rear stood up. “I am, sir.”

“Forster, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come for­ward.”

The man named Forster came down the cen­ter aisle. Wyre looked over, nod­ded.

Cor­so fold­ed his arms on the ta­ble and leaned to­ward the pa­role of­fi­cer. “I must say, Forster, we were sur­prised to learn of this man’s el­igi­bil­ity.”

You’re not the on­ly one, Frank Pis­ton thought.

“Mr. Wyre’s sen­tences weren’t stacked, sir,” Forster said. “They’re be­ing served con­cur­rent­ly.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Wyre, the killer, cleared his throat. He glanced down at a piece of pa­per in his hand. “Sir,” he be­gan, “be­cause of my health, I’d planned to ask for a spe­cial needs pa­role—”

This was too much. Wyre looked and sound­ed the pic­ture of health. Pis­ton stood up quick­ly, his wood­en chair squeak­ing loud­ly against the floor.

Cor­so glanced over, frown­ing. “You wish to in­ter­ject, Mis­ter—?”

“Pis­ton. Frank Pis­ton. As­sis­tant dis­trict at­tor­ney.”

“Ah yes, young Pis­ton. Pro­ceed with your in­ter­rup­tion.”

“May I point out, sir, that of­fend­ers con­vict­ed of ag­gra­vat­ed of­fens­es are not el­igi­ble for spe­cial needs paroles?”

“The board is aware of that, thank you. Mr. Wyre, you may pro­ceed.”

“As I was say­ing, sir, I had planned to ask for a spe­cial needs pa­role. But then I learned it would not be nec­es­sary.”

“So the case sum­ma­ry says.” Cor­so glanced at the pa­role of­fi­cer. “Mr. Forster, would you care to ex­plain?”

“Sir, Mr. Wyre has amassed a re­mark­able amount of good con­duct time. The max­imum per­mis­si­ble, in fact.”

Pis­ton sat for­ward. Now, that was bull­shit. He’d heard more than once about the kind of trou­ble Wyre had caused in prison. He was the worst of of­fend­ers, a stone killer with the mind of a fox. He was al­ways turn­ing pris­on­ers against each oth­er, in­cit­ing fights and ri­ots, sow­ing dis­sent with the guards. Not to men­tion that string of jail­house mur­ders. You didn’t ex­act­ly rack up “good time” for shank­ing fel­low in­mates, even if noth­ing could be proven.

“Said good con­duct time, along with Wyre’s com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, par­tic­ipa­tion in work pro­grams and re­ha­bil­ita­tion en­counter groups, has ac­cel­er­at­ed his el­igi­ble pa­role date—with manda­to­ry su­per­vi­sion fac­tored in, of course—to Septem­ber 29 of this year.”

Pis­ton felt a cur­rent of shock go through him. Im­me­di­ate­ly, he stood again. Septem­ber 29 was two days ago. Wyre’s el­igi­ble? Al­ready? Im­pos­si­ble.

Cor­so glanced over. “You have some­thing fur­ther to add, Mr. Pis­ton?”

“No. I mean, yes. Good con­duct time is a priv­ilege, not a right. It doesn’t change the fact that Wyre here killed six peo­ple, in­clud­ing two po­lice of­fi­cers.”

“Are you for­get­ting, Mr. Pis­ton, that Mr. Wyre here was con­vict­ed, and sen­tenced, for the mur­der of one per­son?”

Pis­ton swore silent­ly. This was true: Wyre had on­ly been brought to tri­al for the mur­der of his fi­nal vic­tim. There had been le­gal tech­ni­cal­ities in­volved, some bungling of the ev­idence. Though it seemed fool­ish in hind­sight, the DA had want­ed to go for the one sure con­vic­tion rather than tak­ing a chance on hav­ing Wyre walk on cir­cum­stan­tials. There’d been a hue and cry in the press at the time—didn’t these jok­ers re­mem­ber that?

Aloud, he said, “I’m not for­get­ting, sir. I’m on­ly ask­ing that the cir­cum­stances of the mur­ders, the na­ture of Wyre’s atroc­ities, be fac­tored in—”

“Mis­ter Pis­ton. Are you telling the pa­role board how to do its job?”

Pis­ton swal­lowed. “No, sir.”

Cor­so shook a sheaf of pa­pers over the desk at him. “Do you have all the facts of this hear­ing? Are you in pos­ses­sion of this case sum­ma­ry?”

“No, sir.”

“Then sit down and bite your tongue, young man, un­til you have some­thing of val­ue to add.”

Wyre glanced back at Pis­ton. It was a brief, al­most ca­su­al look, but it chilled the lawyer to the bone. It was the kind of look a cat gave a ca­nary. Then the con­vict turned back, smil­ing once again at the board.

Pis­ton—shak­en by the pa­role el­igi­bil­ity, un­nerved by the eye con­tact with Wyre—tried to calm down, think straight. He had to re­mem­ber who he was deal­ing with here. Ev­ery­body knew Wyre had killed those two cops. He’d set them up, stalked them, planned on killing an FBI agent as well. Old Cor­so wasn’t like­ly to for­get that, ei­ther, and he was as close to be­ing a hang­ing judge as any pa­role chief could be. Any­way, there would be all the de­tails of the case sum­ma­ry to wade through. That’s where Wyre would get nailed, if nowhere else.

Cor­so seemed to read his mind. “Very well, Mr. Forster, let’s get to this sum­ma­ry of yours. The en­tire board has had a chance to look at it. I must say we were all a lit­tle sur­prised by your find­ings, none more than my­self.”

“I un­der­stand that com­plete­ly, sir. But I stand by both the eval­ua­tion and the per­ti­nent da­ta.”

“Oh, I’m not ques­tion­ing any­thing, Mr. Forster. You’ve al­ways proved your­self con­sci­en­tious in your case work. We’re just . . . a lit­tle sur­prised, that’s all.” Cor­so leafed through the sum­ma­ry re­port. “These so­cial pro­files, the psy­cho­log­ical bat­ter­ies, Wyre’s his­to­ry of in­sti­tu­tion­al ad­just­ment. I’ve nev­er seen such scores.”

“Nei­ther have I, sir,” said Forster.

Stand­ing be­side the pa­role of­fi­cer, Wyre’s eyes glit­tered.

“And these tes­ti­mo­ni­als you’ve pro­cured are equal­ly re­mark­able.”

“They were all in the database, sir.”

“Hmm.” Cor­so rif­fled through the fi­nal pages of the doc­ument, then pushed it aside. “Yet I don’t know why we are so sur­prised. Af­ter all, we’re here be­cause we be­lieve in the ef­fi­ca­cy of our prison sys­tem—no? We’ve strug­gled to bring these ser­vices, these op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­ha­bil­ita­tion, to our in­mates. So why should we be so shocked when we come face to face with an in­stance where this re­ha­bil­ita­tion works? With a suc­cess sto­ry?”

Oh, my God, Pis­ton thought. There was on­ly one thing that could put Cor­so in a le­nient mood. And that was the dan­gled car­rot of ad­vance­ment. Be­cause Cor­so, the pa­role board head, was al­so Cor­so, would-​be as­sem­bly­man. And trans­form­ing Ed­mund Wyre from sadis­tic mur­der­er to re­formed pen­itent would be a feath­er in his cap like no oth­er . . .

But that couldn’t be, it sim­ply wasn’t pos­si­ble. Wyre was a puff adder, a malev­olent nut case. What was in that case sum­ma­ry? What had hap­pened on the tests?

“Sir,” Wyre said, gaz­ing meek­ly at Cor­so, “in light of all this, I would like to re­quest the board now grant my ap­pli­ca­tion for pa­role, set a re­lease date, and for­mu­late a plan for pa­role su­per­vi­sion.”

Pis­ton stared in grow­ing dis­be­lief as Wyre glanced down again at the sheet of pa­per in his hand. He’s got this pro­cess nailed. Some­body’s coached him, shown him just what doc­uments to read. But who?

In­stinc­tive­ly, he rose once again to his feet. “Mr. Cor­so!” he cried out.

The old man frowned at him. “What is it now?”

Pis­ton’s mouth worked, but no words came. Wyre glanced ca­su­al­ly over his shoul­der. His eyes nar­rowed as he caught Pis­ton’s gaze, and he licked his lips, slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly: first the up­per, then the low­er.

Pis­ton sat down abrupt­ly. As the drone of con­ver­sa­tion picked up again at the front of the room, he reached in­to his pock­et, pulled out his cell phone, and di­aled the of­fice. It was, as he ex­pect­ed, an­swered by the ser­vice. He be­gan to di­al his boss’s pri­vate num­ber, then stopped. The DA was out on the links right now, grab­bing a quick eigh­teen, and he would have turned his phone off, as al­ways.

He re­placed the phone in his pock­et and stared back at the pa­role board with slow, dream­like move­ments. Be­cause this felt like a dream: one of those night­mares where you wit­nessed some­thing ter­ri­ble un­fold­ing—some­thing you knew would lead to tragedy, dis­as­ter—yet you re­mained par­alyzed some­how, pow­er­less to change any­thing, do any­thing . . .

And that was where the sim­ilar­ity end­ed. Be­cause, Pis­ton knew, one al­ways woke from night­mare. But from this there would be no awak­en­ing.

THIRTY-THREE

Change of plans,” Lash said, lean­ing for­ward to speak with the driv­er. “Just let me off here, please.”

He wait­ed for the taxi to clear Colum­bus Cir­cle and nose to the curb, then he paid the fare and got out. He watched the cab lose it­self in a sea of iden­ti­cal yel­low ve­hi­cles, then put his hands in his coat pock­ets and be­gan walk­ing slow­ly up Cen­tral Park West.

He wasn’t sure, ex­act­ly, why he’d de­cid­ed to get out sev­er­al blocks short of the restau­rant. Some­thing about not want­ing to bump in­to her out­side. And what ex­act­ly did that mean? It had to do with con­trol­ling the sit­ua­tion: he want­ed to see her first, es­tab­lish his own space be­fore they met. It had to do with ner­vous­ness.

In a dif­fer­ent mood, he might have smiled at this piece of self-​anal­ysis. But there was no mis­tak­ing his rapid breath­ing, his el­evat­ed heart rate. Here he was, Christo­pher Lash, em­inent psy­chol­ogist and vet­er­an of a hun­dred crime scenes—ner­vous as a teenag­er on his first date.

It had be­gun slow­ly, that morn­ing, when—in­stinc­tive­ly—he’d picked up the phone to call Tav­ern on the Green. Eden had al­ready made the reser­va­tion, but he want­ed to choose the din­ing room per­son­al­ly. As quick­ly as he’d picked up the phone, he put it down again. What should it be: the Crys­tal Room, with its glit­ter­ing ar­ray of chan­de­liers? Or the woodsy am­biance of the Rafters Room? It had tak­en him ten min­utes to de­cide, then an­oth­er fif­teen on the phone, name-​drop­ping and ca­jol­ing the best pos­si­ble ta­ble out of the reser­va­tion­ist.

This wasn’t like him. He rarely ate out any­more, and when he did he was in­dif­fer­ent to seat­ing. But it was equal­ly un­usu­al to pause be­side a bus stop and scru­ti­nize his im­age in the glass, as he was do­ing now. Or to wor­ry that the tie he’d cho­sen was too passé, or too gauche, or maybe a lit­tle of both.

No doubt Eden had an­tic­ipat­ed such re­ac­tions. No doubt, in the nor­mal course of things, he’d have been briefed, giv­en a re­as­sur­ing pep talk. But this was not the nor­mal course of things. Some­how, the com­pa­ny that nev­er made a mis­take had made one. And he was now walk­ing up Cen­tral Park West, the time was 8 p.m. pre­cise­ly, and for the first time in sev­er­al days his thoughts were not pre­oc­cu­pied with the deaths of the Thor­pes and the Wilners.

Ahead, where West Six­ty-​sev­enth Street emp­tied in­to Cen­tral Park, he could see count­less white lights twin­kling among the trees. He ma­neu­vered his way past the clut­ter of limousines, then passed through the restau­rant’s out­er doors. He smoothed his jack­et, mak­ing sure the small pin Eden had sent was still in place. Even that lit­tle de­tail had been fussed over for sev­er­al min­utes: ad­just­ing its place­ment on his lapel, mak­ing sure it was clear­ly vis­ible yet not too ob­vi­ous. His mouth was dry, his palms sweaty. An­noyed, Lash wiped his hands against the back of his trousers and moved with de­ter­mined strides to­ward the bar.

It all comes down to this, he thought. Fun­ny—all the time he’d spent un­der­go­ing his own eval­ua­tion, study­ing Eden and the two su­per­cou­ples, he’d nev­er stopped to think about what it must feel like: wait­ing, won­der­ing how that per­fect per­son would look. Un­til to­day. To­day, he’d thought of lit­tle else. He’d learned, from painful ex­pe­ri­ence, what his per­fect wom­an wasn’t like. She wasn’t like Shirley, his ex-​wife, with her in­abil­ity to for­give hu­man weak­ness, ac­cept tragedy. Would his per­fect wom­an be a blend of ear­li­er girl­friends, some com­pos­ite gen­er­at­ed by his sub­con­scious? Would she be an amal­gam of the ac­tress­es he most ad­mired: the poised limbs of Myr­na Loy, the heart-​shaped face of Claudette Col­bert?

He stopped in the en­trance of the bar, look­ing around. There were groups of twos and threes scat­tered around the ta­bles, chat­ting bois­ter­ous­ly. Oth­er, sin­gle peo­ple were seat­ed at the bar . . .

And there she was. At least, he thought it must be her. Be­cause a small pin iden­ti­cal to his own was fixed to her dress; be­cause she was look­ing di­rect­ly at him; be­cause she was ris­ing from her seat and ap­proach­ing with a smile.

And yet it could not be her. Be­cause this wom­an looked noth­ing like what he ex­pect­ed. This was not wil­lowy, slight, brunette Myr­na Loy: this wom­an was tall and raven-​haired. Mid-​thir­ties, per­haps, with mis­chievous hazel eyes. Lash couldn’t re­mem­ber ev­er go­ing out with any­body al­most a head taller than him­self.

“Christo­pher, right?” she said, shak­ing his hand. She nod­ded to­ward his pin. “I rec­og­nize the fash­ion ac­ces­so­ry.”

“Yes,” he replied. “And you’re Di­ana.”

“Di­ana Mir­ren.” Her ac­cent was un­ex­pect­ed, too: a smooth con­tral­to with a dis­tinct South­ern lilt.

Lash had al­ways felt a com­plete­ly un­rea­son­able scorn for the in­tel­lect of South­ern wom­en; some­thing about the ac­cent set his teeth on edge. He be­gan to won­der if, per­haps, the same mis­take that had sent his avatar in­to the Tank had car­ried over to the match­mak­ing pro­cess it­self.

“Shall we go in?” he said.

Di­ana slung her purse over her shoul­der and to­geth­er they ap­proached the reser­va­tion­ist.

“Lash and Mir­ren, eight o’clock,” Lash said.

The wom­an be­hind the desk con­sult­ed an over­sized book. “Ah, yes. In the Ter­race Room. This way, please.”

Lash had cho­sen the Ter­race Room be­cause it seemed the most in­ti­mate set­ting, with its hand-​carved ceil­ing and tall win­dows giv­ing out on­to a pri­vate gar­den. A wait­er seat­ed them, then filled their wa­ter glass­es and slipped two menus on­to the ta­ble be­fore step­ping back with a bow.

For a mo­ment, there was si­lence. Lash glanced at the wom­an, no­ticed she was look­ing back at him. And then, Di­ana laughed.

“What?” he asked.

She shook her head, reached for her wa­ter glass. “I don’t know. You—you’re not what I ex­pect­ed.”

“I’m prob­ably old­er, and thin­ner, and paler.”

She laughed again, and flushed slight­ly.

“Sor­ry about that,” he added.

“Well, they told us not to have pre­con­cep­tions. Right?”

Lash, who hadn’t been told any­thing, sim­ply nod­ded.

The som­me­li­er ap­proached, sil­ver tastevin dan­gling around his neck. “Some­thing from the wine list, sir?”

Lash glanced at Di­ana, who nod­ded en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. “Go on. I love French wine but know prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing about it.”

“Bor­deaux okay?”

“Na­turele­ment.”

Lash picked up the list, scanned it. “We’ll have the Pi­chon– Longueville, please.”

“Pi­chon-​Longueville?” Di­ana asked as the som­me­li­er walked away. “The Pauil­lac su­per-​sec­ond? Should be fan­tas­tic.”

“Su­per-​sec­ond?”

“You know. All the qual­ities of a pre­mier cru with­out the price.”

Lash put the list to one side. “I thought you didn’t know any­thing about wine.”

Di­ana took an­oth­er sip of wa­ter. “Well, I don’t know near­ly as much as I should.”

“And how’s that?”

“Last year I went with a group on a six-​week tour of France. Spent an en­tire week in the wine coun­try.”

Lash whis­tled.

“But it’s em­bar­rass­ing, what I re­tained and what I didn’t. For ex­am­ple, I re­mem­ber that Château Bey­chev­elle was the pret­ti­est of the châteaux. But ask me for the best vin­tages and I’m hope­less.”

“Still, I think maybe you should be the of­fi­cial taster for this ta­ble.”

“No ob­jec­tions.” And Di­ana laughed again.

Nor­mal­ly, Lash dis­liked peo­ple who laughed out loud fre­quent­ly. Too of­ten it sub­sti­tut­ed for punc­tu­ation, or some­thing that could be bet­ter ex­pressed in words. But Di­ana’s laugh was in­fec­tious. Lash found him­self smil­ing as he heard it.

When the som­me­li­er re­turned with the bot­tle, Lash di­rect­ed him to Di­ana. She peered at the la­bel, swirled the wine, brought the glass to her mouth, all with a great show of mock grav­ity. Their wait­er came by again and re­cit­ed a long list of the evening’s spe­cial dish­es. The som­me­li­er filled the glass­es and de­part­ed. Now Di­ana raised hers in Lash’s di­rec­tion.

“What shall we drink to?” Lash asked. She’ll say, “To us.” That’s the way these things al­ways work.

“How about transvestites?” Di­ana replied in a but­tery drawl.

Lash al­most dropped his glass. “Huh?”

“You mean, you didn’t look in­to it?”

“In­to what?”

“In­to that stat­ue. You know, in the foun­tain, out­side the Eden build­ing. That an­cient, an­cient fig­ure, sur­round­ed by birds and an­gels? When I first saw it, it seemed the strangest thing in the world. Couldn’t tell if it was male or fe­male.”

Lash shook his head.

“Well, it’s a good thing one of us did. It’s Tire­sias.”

“Who?”

“From Greek mythol­ogy. See, Tire­sias was this man who got turned in­to a wom­an. And then turned back in­to a man.”

“What? Why?”

“Why? You don’t ask why. This was Thebes. Stuff hap­pens. Any­way, Zeus and Hera were hav­ing an ar­gu­ment about who en­joyed sex more: men or wom­en. Since this Tire­sias was the on­ly per­son who’d tried it both ways, they called him in to set­tle the ar­gu­ment.”

“Go on.”

“Hera didn’t like what Tire­sias had to say. So she blind­ed him.”

“Typ­ical.”

“Zeus felt bad, so he gave Tire­sias the gift of prophe­cy.”

“Big of him. But there’s some­thing you left out.”

“What’s that?”

“What Tire­sias said to make Hera so mad.”

“He said wom­en en­joy sex more than men.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Re­al­ly. Nine times more.”

We’ll get back to that lat­er, Lash thought to him­self. He lift­ed his glass. “By all means, let’s drink a toast. But shouldn’t we be drink­ing to hermaphrodites?”

Di­ana con­sid­ered this. “Right you are. To hermaphrodites, then.” And she raised her glass to his.

Lash took a deep sip, found it ex­cel­lent. He de­cid­ed he was glad Di­ana didn’t have the looks of Claudette Col­bert. If she had, he’d have been in­tim­idat­ed. “Where did you find this par­tic­ular nugget of in­for­ma­tion?” he asked.

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I knew it al­ready.”

“Let me guess. You read Bulfinch’s Mythol­ogy on your trip across France.”

“Nice try, but wrong. You could say it’s part of my job.”

“Re­al­ly? And what job is that?”

“I teach En­glish lit­er­ature at Columbia.”

Lash nod­ded, im­pressed. “Great school.”

“I’m still just an in­struc­tor, but it’s a po­si­tion with a tenure track.”

“What’s your spe­cial­ty?”

“The Ro­man­tics, I guess. Lyric po­et­ry.”

Lash felt a strange tremor, as if some­thing deep in­side had just slid home. He’d en­joyed Ro­man­tic po­et­ry in col­lege, un­til psy­chol­ogy and the de­mands of grad­uate school pushed it to one side. “That’s in­ter­est­ing. As it hap­pens, I’ve been read­ing Bash–o re­cent­ly. Not ex­act­ly Ro­man­tic, of course.”

“In his own way, very much so. The great­est haiku po­et of Japan.”

“I don’t know about that. But his po­ems have stuck in my mind.”

“Haiku’s like that. It’s ne­far­ious. It seems so sim­ple. But then it sneaks up on you from a hun­dred dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions.”

Lash thought of Lewis Thor­pe. He took an­oth­er sip of wine, then quot­ed:

Speech­less be­fore

these bud­ding green spring leaves

in blaz­ing sun­light

As he spoke, Di­ana’s smile fad­ed and the look on her face grew in­tent. “Again, please,” she said qui­et­ly.

Lash obliged. When he fin­ished, a si­lence fell over the ta­ble. But it was not an awk­ward si­lence. They mere­ly sat, en­joy­ing a mo­ment of con­tem­pla­tion. Lash glanced at the sur­round­ing ta­bles, at the rich evening col­ors that lay over the park be­yond. With­out his re­al­iz­ing it, the ner­vous­ness he’d felt en­ter­ing the restau­rant had fad­ed away.

“It’s beau­ti­ful,” Di­ana said at last. “I’ve had mo­ments like that.” She paused a mo­ment. “It re­minds me of an­oth­er haiku, writ­ten by Kobayashi Is­sa more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er.” And she quot­ed in turn:

    In­sects on a bough

float­ing down­riv­er,

    still singing.

Their wait­er reap­peared. “Have you de­cid­ed what you’d like this evening?”

“We haven’t even cracked the menu,” Lash said.

“Very good.” The man bowed again and walked away.

Lash turned back to Di­ana. “The thing is, beau­ti­ful as they are, I don’t re­al­ly un­der­stand them.”

“No?”

“Oh, I guess I do on a su­per­fi­cial lev­el. But they’re like rid­dles, with some deep­er mean­ing that es­capes me.”

“That’s the prob­lem right there. I hear it all the time from my stu­dents.”

“En­light­en me.”

“You’re think­ing of them like epi­grams. But haiku aren’t lit­tle puz­zles that need to be solved. To my mind, they’re just the op­po­site. They hint at things; they leave a lot to the imag­ina­tion; they im­ply more than they say. Don’t search for an an­swer. Think, in­stead, of open­ing doors.”

“Open­ing doors,” Lash echoed.

“You men­tioned Bash–o. Did you know he wrote the most fa­mous haiku of all? ‘One Hun­dred Frogs.’ It con­sists of on­ly sev­en­teen sounds—all tra­di­tion­al haiku does. But guess what? It’s been trans­lat­ed in­to En­glish more than fifty dif­fer­ent ways. Each trans­la­tion ut­ter­ly dif­fer­ent from the rest.”

Lash shook his head. “Amaz­ing.”

Di­ana’s smile re­turned. “That’s what I mean about open­ing doors.”

There was an­oth­er, briefer si­lence as an un­der-​wait­er crept up and re­filled Lash’s glass. “You know, it’s fun­ny,” Lash said as the man left.

“What’s fun­ny?”

“Here we’ve been talk­ing about French wine and Greek mythol­ogy and Japanese po­et­ry, and you still haven’t asked what I do.”

“I know I haven’t.”

Once again, he was sur­prised by her di­rect­ness. “Well, isn’t that usu­al­ly the first top­ic that comes up? On first dates, I mean.”

Di­ana leaned for­ward. “Ex­act­ly. And that’s what makes this so spe­cial.”

Lash hes­itat­ed, con­sid­er­ing. Then, sud­den­ly, he un­der­stood. There was no need to ask the usu­al ques­tions. Eden had tak­en care of all that. The tire­some in­tro­duc­to­ry bag­gage, the blind date checks-​and-​bal­ances, weren’t im­por­tant here. In­stead, a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery lay ahead.

This hadn’t oc­curred to him be­fore. It was a tremen­dous­ly lib­er­at­ing thought.

The wait­er re­turned, no­ticed the menus re­mained un­touched, bowed yet again, and turned away.

“Poor guy,” Di­ana said. “He’s hop­ing for a sec­ond seat­ing.”

“You know what?” Lash replied. “I think this ta­ble’s booked for the rest of the evening.”

Smil­ing, Di­ana raised her emp­ty hand in im­ita­tion of a toast. “In that case, here’s to the rest of the evening.”

Lash nod­ded. Then he did some­thing un­ex­pect­ed, even to him­self: he took Di­ana’s fin­gers in his own and raised them gen­tly to his lips. Over the curve of her knuck­les, he saw her eyes widen slight­ly; her smile deep­en.

As he re­leased her hand, he be­came aware of the faintest of scents. It wasn’t soap or per­fume, but some­thing of Di­ana her­self: a hint of cin­na­mon, of cop­per, of some­thing else that re­sist­ed iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It was sub­tly in­tox­icat­ing. Lash thought back to what Mauch­ly had said in Eden’s ge­net­ics lab: about mice and their un­usu­al method for sniff­ing out the most rad­ical­ly dif­fer­ent gene pool for po­ten­tial mates. Abrupt­ly, he laughed aloud.

Di­ana said noth­ing, mere­ly rais­ing her eye­brows in ques­tion.

In re­sponse, Lash lift­ed his own hand, filled this time with his wine glass. “And here’s to a uni­verse of di­ver­si­ty,” he said.

THIRTY-FOUR

Sun­day dawned raw and cold, and as the sun rose in the sky it seemed to chill rather than warm the land. By af­ter­noon, the white­caps of Long Is­land Sound had a lead­en cast to them, and the un­set­tled wa­ters looked black: harbingers of ap­proach­ing win­ter.

Lash sat be­fore the com­put­er in his home of­fice, nurs­ing a cup of herbal tea. Mirac­ulous­ly—giv­en the charged at­mo­sphere of his din­ner and the late hour at which he part­ed from Di­ana—he’d man­aged a good six hours of sleep and had risen with­out over­whelm­ing­ly weari­ness. What he did feel was rest­less­ness: barred from re­mov­ing any da­ta from Eden, and with­out ac­cess to files or records, he had no way to ad­vance his in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Yet in­stinct told him he was close, per­haps very close, to a rev­ela­tion. And so he’d paced the house, ru­mi­nat­ing, un­til at last in frus­tra­tion he turned to the In­ter­net and any­thing he could find about the com­pa­ny.

There was the usu­al Web ephemera: a scam­mer that claimed to have un­locked the se­crets of Eden and of­fered to share them on a $19.95 video; con­spir­acy-​the­ory sites that spoke dark­ly of evil al­liances the com­pa­ny had made with in­tel­li­gence agen­cies. But among all the dross there were al­so oc­ca­sion­al bits of gold. Lash sent half a dozen ar­ti­cles at ran­dom to his print­er, then car­ried the print­outs to the liv­ing room so­fa.

Feet propped on the ta­ble, the mourn­ful cry of gulls sound­ing in the dis­tance, he leafed slow­ly through them. There was an ex­ceed­ing­ly com­plex white pa­per on ar­ti­fi­cial per­son­al­ity and swarm in­tel­li­gence, writ­ten by Sil­ver al­most a decade ear­li­er and no doubt re­leased on the In­ter­net with­out per­mis­sion. A fi­nan­cial web­site pro­vid­ed a sober-​sid­ed anal­ysis of the Eden busi­ness mod­el, or at least the por­tion of it that was pub­lic knowl­edge, and a brief his­to­ry of how it had been bankrolled by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ant Phar­mGen be­fore be­ing spun off on its own. And from an­oth­er site came a flat­ter­ing cor­po­rate bi­og­ra­phy of Richard Sil­ver, who had risen from ob­scu­ri­ty to be­come a world-​class en­trepreneur. Lash read this more care­ful­ly than the first two, mar­veling at the way Sil­ver had de­vel­oped his dream so faith­ful­ly and res­olute­ly; how he hadn’t let the vague­ly re­port­ed mis­for­tunes of ear­ly youth stand in his way. He was that rarest of peo­ple, the ge­nius who seemed to know, from a very young age, the gift he’d been born to give the world.

There were oth­er ar­ti­cles, too, not quite so flat­ter­ing: an ob­nox­ious tabloid ar­ti­cle that promised to ex­pose the “shock­ing, bizarre” de­tails of the “crack­pot ge­nius” Sil­ver. The open­ing para­graph read: Ques­tion: What do you do if you can’t find a girl­friend? An­swer: You pro­gram one. But the ar­ti­cle it­self had noth­ing to say, and Lash put it aside, stood up, and walked to the win­dow.

It was true there were few oth­er tasks Sil­ver could have set Liza to that would have earned him more mon­ey, or so en­sured the fu­ture health of his re­search. Yet on one lev­el it was a lit­tle odd. Here was a man—by all ac­counts a shy, re­tir­ing man—who had made his for­tune with that most so­cial of games, the game of love. It seemed a shame, a bit­ter irony, that game could not ex­tend to Sil­ver as well.

As he stared out the win­dow, the haiku Di­ana Mir­ren quot­ed the night be­fore came back to him with sud­den clar­ity.

    In­sects on a bough

float­ing down­riv­er,

    still singing.

He smiled as he re­called their din­ner. By the time they’d fi­nal­ly got­ten around to or­der­ing, the con­ver­sa­tion had grown as easy and com­fort­able as any he could re­mem­ber. His ha­bit­ual dis­tance crum­bled with­out even a protest. She be­gan to fin­ish his sen­tences, and he hers, as if they’d known each oth­er since child­hood. And yet it was a strange kind of fa­mil­iar­ity, filled with count­less lit­tle sur­pris­es. It was close to one when they part­ed on Cen­tral Park West. They had ex­changed num­bers be­fore go­ing their sep­arate ways. There had been no agree­ment to meet again; but then, there’d been no need of one. Lash knew he’d be see­ing her again, and soon. In fact, he was half tempt­ed to call now and of­fer to cook din­ner.

What had she said? Haiku were the op­po­site of puz­zles. Don’t search for an­swers. Think of open­ing doors.

Open­ing doors. So how to in­ter­pret the one she quot­ed?

It had on­ly eight words. In his mind, Lash saw a green wil­low branch, twist­ing in a lazy cur­rent, head­ing to­ward a dis­tant wa­ter­fall. Still singing. Were the in­sects still singing out of ig­no­rance of what lay ahead—or be­cause of it?

The Wilners and the Thor­pes were like the in­sects of the po­em, singing on that float­ing branch. Bliss­ful­ly, un­re­lieved­ly hap­py . . . right up un­til that last un­fath­omable mo­ment.

The si­lence was shat­tered by the ring of a tele­phone.

Lash pushed him­self to his feet and head­ed for the kitchen. Per­haps it was Di­ana; he’d have to dig up his recipe for salmon en croute.

He lift­ed the phone. “Lash here.”

“Chris?” came the voice. “It’s John.”

“John?”

“John Coven.”

Lash rec­og­nized the voice of the FBI agent who’d run the surveil­lance on Han­der­ling. His heart sank. No doubt Coven was fol­low­ing up on his per­son­al in­ter­est in Eden. Maybe he thought Lash could get him a dis­count or some­thing.

“How are you, John?” he said.

“I’m okay, I’m fine. But lis­ten, you’re not go­ing to be­lieve this.”

“Go ahead.”

“Wyre’s made pa­role.”

Lash felt him­self go numb. “Say again?”

“Ed­mund Wyre’s made pa­role. Hap­pened late Fri­day af­ter­noon.”

Lash swal­lowed. “I didn’t hear any­thing about it.”

“No­body has. I just found out ten min­utes ago. Saw it on the wire.”

“Not pos­si­ble. The guy killed six peo­ple.”

“Tell me about it.”

“There must be some kind of mis­take.”

“No mis­take. He got the full board vote and the writ­ten re­port from DCJ.”

“Any re­lease con­di­tions?”

“The usu­al, un­der the cir­cum­stances. Spe­cial field su­per­vi­sion. Which means pre­cise­ly did­dley-​squat with a guy like Wyre.”

Lash felt a sharp pain in his right hand, re­al­ized he was squeez­ing the phone. “What’s the time frame? Weeks? Months?”

“Not even. Ap­par­ent­ly they’re all in a lath­er, set­ting Wyre up as some poster boy for re­ha­bil­ita­tion. Screen­ing’s com­plet­ed. They’re al­ready per­form­ing a res­idence in­ves­ti­ga­tion and prepar­ing the re­lease cer­tifi­cate. He’ll be on the streets in a day or two.”

“Je­sus.” Lash fell silent, strug­gling with dis­be­lief.

“Christo­pher?”

Lash did not re­ply.

“Chris? You still with me?”

“Yes,” Lash said dis­tant­ly.

“Lis­ten. Still got your ser­vice piece?”

“No.”

“That’s a shame. Be­cause no mat­ter what that pa­role board thinks, you and I both know this fuck­er wants to fin­ish what he start­ed. If I was you, I’d arm my­self. And keep in mind what they taught us back at the Acade­my. You don’t shoot to kill. You shoot to live.”

Again, Lash did not re­spond.

“You need any­thing, let me know. Mean­while, watch your six.”

And the line went dead.

THIRTY-FIVE

He was driv­ing home. That’s how it be­gan: driv­ing home from Pough­keep­sie yet again, in bril­liant sun­light on a Fri­day af­ter­noon. The last sev­er­al times he’d made the six­ty-​mile jour­ney back to West­port, he’d been so tired he feared falling asleep at the wheel. This af­ter­noon, how­ev­er, he was wide awake.

I’ve got what I need now, the mur­der­er had writ­ten in blood on the pic­ture win­dow. Thank you.

He reached down for the car phone, di­aled.

“Lash res­idence,” came the voice of Karl Bro­den, his wife’s broth­er.

“Karl.”

“Hi, Chris. Where are you?”

“Head­ing home. I’ll be there in an hour or so. Shirley home?”

“She went out to run some er­rands.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“Good enough. Say, you want me to fire up the grill, mar­inate those gulf prawns we picked up last night?”

“There’s an idea. Stick some beers in the freez­er for me, too.”

“Done.”

He thought briefly about his broth­er-​in-​law. Karl was so un­like his sis­ter. Easy­go­ing and loose­ly strung, un­abashed­ly non­in­tel­lec­tu­al. Ev­ery time Karl came to vis­it, the lev­el of ten­sion in the house de­creased marked­ly. This time he’d dropped in sud­den­ly, the day be­fore, al­most as if he’d known his pres­ence was des­per­ate­ly need­ed.

But then his thoughts re­turned to Pough­keep­sie and the stark im­age of the fi­nal mur­der scene.

I’ve got what I need now. Thank you.

The Pough­keep­sie cops had been al­most jovial all morn­ing; rib­bing each oth­er good-​na­tured­ly, ex­chang­ing coarse jokes over the wa­ter cool­er. Even though the killer elud­ed their road­blocks, they were buoyed by what seemed the promise of no more mur­ders. Lash felt no such re­lief. To him, the mes­sage was the first piece of the puz­zle to make sense; the on­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the mur­der­er that felt re­al. And its brevi­ty, its con­fi­dence, filled him with anx­iety.

What did he have now? What had he need­ed?

Had killing those four wom­en sat­is­fied some sick re­quire­ment, filled some void? But that wasn’t how it worked with se­ri­al killers: theirs was a con­sum­ing thirst that could nev­er be quenched.

And then there was the in­con­sis­ten­cy of the killings. The first two, de­spite su­per­fi­cial sim­ilar­ities—the bloody mes­sages cov­er­ing the walls, the ar­range­ment of the corpses—con­tra­dict­ed all ba­sic pro­files in a dozen ways.

What made this fi­nal killing dif­fer­ent?

He thought about this all the way across Dutchess and Put­nam coun­ties and in­to Con­necti­cut. It was the first time, he was con­vinced, the mur­der­er had shown his true col­ors.

Be­cause he had what he want­ed.

Why was there on­ly one mes­sage this time, in­stead of a hun­dred? And why was it writ­ten on the pic­ture win­dow, not the walls? On the glass, against the back­drop of night, it would be ex­treme­ly hard to make out . . .

And then sud­den­ly, al­most with­out con­scious thought, he found his per­spec­tive on the crime scene chang­ing. No longer was he look­ing at the bloody mes­sage from in­side the bed­room. His an­gle shift­ed, turn­ing as if on a cam­era dol­ly, com­ing around a hun­dred and eighty de­grees un­til he was out­side the house, in the woods, look­ing from the black­ness at the big light­ed win­dow. At the fig­ures sil­hou­et­ted there—a po­lice cap­tain, the lead homi­cide de­tec­tive, an FBI pro­fil­er. The same three peo­ple who’d been at the pre­vi­ous mur­ders.

There was some­thing that the three mur­ders did have in com­mon. They had all tak­en place at night, in bed­rooms with big pic­ture win­dows. And the blinds of the win­dows had al­ways been open . . .

Fran­ti­cal­ly, he reached for the phone, di­aled again.

“Pough­keep­sie po­lice, Homi­cide Di­vi­sion,” came the voice. “Kravitz speak­ing.”

“This is Christo­pher Lash. I need to speak with Mas­ter­ton, right away.”

“I’m sor­ry, Agent Lash. The cap­tain left half an hour ago.”

“Then give me the lead de­tec­tive, what’s his name. Ahearn.”

“He left with the cap­tain, sir.”

“You know where they went?”

“It’s Fri­day night, sir. The cap­tain and De­tec­tive Ahearn al­ways go out for a few cold ones be­fore head­ing home.”

“Which bar?”

“I don’t know, sir. Could be one of half a dozen.”

He thought quick­ly. Kravitz, the cop at the du­ty desk, had seemed like a smart, com­pe­tent of­fi­cer.

“Kravitz, you need to lis­ten to me. Lis­ten very care­ful­ly.”

“Yes, Agent Lash.”

He tucked the phone un­der his chin briefly while ne­go­ti­at­ing the ex­it on­to Saugatuck Av­enue, fight­ing the week­end traf­fic. “You have to try each of the bars, in turn. Hear me? Get some of the oth­er of­fi­cers to help you man the phones.”

“Sir?” Kravitz’s voice sound­ed du­bi­ous.

“It’s vi­tal, Kravitz, you hear me? Vi­tal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When you reach Mas­ter­ton, you are to tell him this: we’ve been wrong about this killer. He’s not a se­ri­al mur­der­er.”

“Not a se­ri­al mur­der­er?” The voice sound­ed even more du­bi­ous.

“You don’t un­der­stand. Of course he’s a mur­der­er. But he’s not a se­ri­al-​type. He’s an as­sas­sin-​type.”

That was the tag foren­sic psy­chol­ogists used. Some­times as­sas­sin-​types mur­dered ran­dom vic­tims from the tops of wa­ter tow­ers. Oth­er times they sought out fa­vorite celebri­ties, the way Mark David Chap­man did. They had one thing in com­mon: tor­tured, use­less lives that on­ly de­vel­oped mean­ing through acts of tar­get­ed vi­olence.

Mean­while, there was si­lence on the oth­er end of the line.

“I don’t have time to ex­plain, Sergeant. It’s a sub­cat­ego­ry of mass mur­der­er. For them, it’s all about dom­ina­tion, con­trol, re­venge. This guy hates cops. There’s prob­ably a fas­ci­na­tion, a love-​hate dy­nam­ic, work­ing here. Maybe his fa­ther was both a cop and an abu­sive par­ent, I don’t know. But he’s an as­sas­sin-​type. It’s the on­ly an­swer.”

“Sir, I don’t un­der­stand.”

“You were at the scenes of the first three mur­ders. There was no pat­tern. The mean­ing­less mes­sages on the walls, the in­con­sis­tent tableaux. Noth­ing fit. That’s be­cause we were deal­ing with some­body im­itat­ing a se­ri­al mur­der­er. That’s why noth­ing held to­geth­er: it was all a ruse. Did you no­tice the big pic­ture win­dows at each site, open to the night? Our killer wasn’t run­ning away: he was out there, ev­ery time. He was hunt­ing cops, pick­ing out his tar­gets. Those mur­dered wom­en were just bait.”

“Sir?”

He pulled the car on­to Greens Farms Road. In an­oth­er minute or two, once he got home, he’d start mak­ing calls him­self. For now, he had to re­ly on Kravitz. Sec­onds count­ed.

“Just do as I say, Of­fi­cer. Find Mas­ter­ton, tell him ev­ery­thing I just told you. He and Ahearn were at the win­dow each time, they have to take steps to pro­tect them­selves. Tell him to look for a white male, most like­ly in his mid to late twen­ties. A lon­er, but some­body who can blend with the crowd. He’ll prob­ably be driv­ing a sporty car to com­pen­sate for low self-​es­teem. You need to talk to your fel­low of­fi­cers about any wannabees they might have no­ticed re­cent­ly, hang­ing around cop bars and restau­rants, in­gra­ti­at­ing them­selves.”

An­oth­er si­lence on the line.

“Kravitz, damn it, do you have that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get busy.” Just ahead lay his own block, and home. Traf­fic was lighter here. As he hung up, a car pulled out of his street and ac­cel­er­at­ed past him down Com­po. A Pon­ti­ac Fire­bird, red.

He drove past, bare­ly notic­ing. He re­mind­ed him­self that he, too, was a tar­get. He’d been sil­hou­et­ted in that win­dow, too. He’d have to get Karl and Shirley out of the house—she’d with­er him, as usu­al, with com­ments on how dan­ger­ous his job was—and then he’d have to look in­to what to do about his own—

He start­ed abrupt­ly. A Pon­ti­ac Fire­bird, red, re­cent mod­el . . .

He slowed, glanced in­to the rearview mir­ror.

The car was gone.

Now he stepped on the ac­cel­er­ator again, hard, tak­ing the cor­ner with a shriek of rub­ber, pulling his gun from its hol­ster, but even as their house came in­to view he felt a cold dread seize him.

He al­ready knew, with ter­ri­ble cer­tain­ty, what it was he would find in­side.

THIRTY-SIX

Lash leaned back and stared at the ceil­ing. Even there, columns of num­bers, names, dates seemed to stare back at him.

“Christ,” he groaned, shut­ting his eyes. “I’ve been star­ing at this stuff too long.”

He heard the shuf­fling of pa­per across the ta­ble. “Any luck?” he asked the ceil­ing.

“Not a bite,” came Tara Sta­ple­ton’s voice.

Lash opened his eyes, stretched. De­spite the dark dreams and mem­ories that had filled the pre­vi­ous night, he’d nev­er­the­less awak­ened with a sense of pur­pose. The week­end had passed with­out any dread events. Driv­ing in, he’d called Di­ana Mir­ren on his cell phone. The mere sound of her voice brought him a se­cret, al­most ado­les­cent thrill. They chat­ted briefly, ar­dent­ly, and she’d agreed to have din­ner at his place the com­ing Fri­day. He found him­self so busy men­tal­ly prepar­ing that he for­got the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion he’d en­dured at Check­point III un­til he found him­self stand­ing be­fore it once again. But the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were not the ones on du­ty last Fri­day, and he’d passed through with­out a hitch.

But now—mid­morn­ing—his ex­cite­ment had drowned in an end­less flood of da­ta. There was sim­ply too much ma­te­ri­al to comb through; it was like sift­ing a haystack with­out even be­ing cer­tain it con­tained a nee­dle.

He sighed again, then pulled Lind­say Thor­pe’s in­ter­nal eval­ua­tions over and be­gan leaf­ing through them al­most idly. “What’s the sto­ry on the third cou­ple? The Con­nellys?”

“They’re leav­ing for Ni­agara Falls to­mor­row.”

“Ni­agara Falls?”

“That’s where they spent their hon­ey­moon.”

Ni­agara Falls, Lash thought. Great place for a mur­der. Or a sui­cide, for that mat­ter.

“There’s not much we can do on the Cana­di­an side,” Tara added. “I spent most of Sat­ur­day ar­rang­ing the pas­sive surveil­lance over there. We watch, and hope for the best.”

“At least you had some­thing to keep you busy over the week­end.”

Tara smiled sly­ly. “It wasn’t as if you didn’t have your dance card filled.”

“You mean, my date?”

“How did it go?”

“She didn’t look at all the way I ex­pect­ed. Didn’t sound the way I ex­pect­ed. But you know what? With­in ten min­utes, it didn’t mat­ter.”

“Our re­search has shown that we’re of­ten at­tract­ed to the wrong peo­ple, for the wrong rea­sons. Maybe that’s why so many mar­riages don’t work.”

She fell silent.

“Look,” Lash said af­ter a mo­ment. “Why don’t you go through with meet­ing this guy they’ve matched you with? It isn’t too late. Talk to Mauch­ly about reschedul­ing the reser­va­tion.”

“I’ve al­ready told you. How can I meet him, know­ing what I know?”

“I met Di­ana Mir­ren, know­ing what I know. And I’m see­ing her again this Fri­day.”

“But I’m an Eden em­ploy­ee. I’ve told you—”

“I know. The ‘Oz ef­fect.’ And you know what I say? Bull­shit.”

“Is that your pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion, Doc­tor?”

“It is.” He leaned for­ward. “Tara, lis­ten. Eden can match one per­son with an­oth­er. Per­fect­ly. But once you two make con­tact, there is no more Eden. It’s just you and him. If it feels right, you’ll know it.”

Tara looked at him, say­ing noth­ing.

“One way or an­oth­er, we’ll solve this. And then it won’t mat­ter any­more. It’ll just be a mem­ory. The past. And any re­la­tion­ship re­quires an ac­cep­tance of the past. Would you be­grudge him the cheer­lead­ers he dat­ed in col­lege? This is the main chance, Tara. Take it from some­body who was in that restau­rant two nights ago.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Lash re­al­ized he’d said enough. Back to work, he thought with a sigh.

Putting Lind­say Thor­pe’s dossier aside, he be­gan pag­ing through her med­ical re­ports. Then he paused.

“Tara.”

She looked at him a lit­tle guard­ed­ly.

“About this re­turn check­up of Ms. Thor­pe’s.”

“You mean, class re­union?”

“No, this check­up. Is it com­mon for your doc­tors to pre­scribe—”

“We don’t do that.”

For a mo­ment, this did not reg­is­ter. Then Lash looked at her. “What did you say?”

“I said, we don’t do re­turn check­ups.”

“Then what’s this?” Lash pushed the med­ical re­port across the ta­ble.

Tara took the re­port. There was si­lence as she scanned the pages.

“I’ve on­ly seen this a few times be­fore,” she said.

“Seen what?”

“Re­mem­ber, on your first tour in­side the Wall, Mauch­ly ex­plained about the long-​term health anal­yses we run on prospec­tive can­di­dates? Check­ing ge­net­ic mark­ers for in­her­it­ed dis­eases, risk fac­tors, that kind of thing?”

“Yes.”

“If there’s some­thing se­ri­ous­ly wrong, we re­ject their ap­pli­ca­tion. But if it’s mi­nor, or of min­imal long-​term con­cern, we’ll pro­cess their ap­pli­ca­tion and bring them back for a sec­ondary ex­am, lat­er.”

“Un­der the pre­text of stan­dard op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure.”

“That’s right.”

“No point in turn­ing away a pay­ing client.” Lash took back the re­port, flipped the pages. “But Lind­say Thor­pe had no such health is­sues. Yet she was sched­uled for a fol­low-​up ex­am­ina­tion, six months pri­or to her death.” He flipped more pages. “At this ex­am, Ms. Thor­pe was giv­en a pre­scrip­tion for scol­ipane. One mil­ligram, once a day. I’m not fa­mil­iar with that med­ica­tion.”

“Me nei­ther.”

“The physi­cian in at­ten­dance was a Dr. Mof­fett. Could you con­tact him, ask the rea­son for the fol­low-​up ex­am and pre­scrip­tion?”

“Sure.” Tara rose and walked to the phone.

Lash watched her. This was an­oth­er clue, he felt cer­tain; an­oth­er piece of the puz­zle.

“Dr. Mof­fett’s hours don’t be­gin un­til noon,” Tara said as she re­placed the phone. “I’ll con­tact him then.”

“Would you do some­thing else? Pull the med­ical records of Lewis Thor­pe, the Wilners, and—and the third cou­ple, the Con­nellys. See if they had any fol­low-​up ex­am­ina­tions.”

Lash wait­ed as the of­fice filled with the sound of keystrokes.

“Noth­ing,” Tara said. “None of the oth­ers had any fol­low-​ups be­yond the nor­mal class re­unions.”

“Noth­ing?”

Tara shook her head.

“Wouldn’t Lewis Thor­pe think it strange his wife had a fol­low-​up ex­am when he didn’t?”

“You know how se­cre­tive we are about pro­ce­dures. Our clients come to ac­cept them with­out ques­tion.”

Lash slumped in his chair. De­spite ev­ery­thing, he found his thoughts re­turn­ing to Di­ana Mir­ren, what she’d said about haiku.

They hint at things. They im­ply more than they say. Don’t search for an an­swer. Think in­stead of open­ing doors.

So what was im­plied here? What co­in­ci­dences had tak­en place re­cent­ly? And what did they hint at?

Ed­mund Wyre, the cop-​hat­ing as­sas­sin, grant­ed pa­role. Wyre killed three wom­en, two cops, and Lash’s broth­er-​in-​law. Lash’s wife then left him, and Lash him­self—full of doubt and self-​blame—had abrupt­ly left the FBI, search­ing for an end to the sleep­less nights.

By rights, Wyre should nev­er have been paroled. Lash had no il­lu­sions: no mat­ter what the pa­role board thought, Wyre would be gun­ning for him. Lash was the one he’d missed.

Was this co­in­ci­dence?

Then there was his avatar be­ing sent in­to the Tank. Tara had said such a mis­take was im­pos­si­ble. If so, some­body had done it de­lib­er­ate­ly: It would have to be some­body very high­ly placed, some­body with world-​class ac­cess. Me, for ex­am­ple. Or a grunt who’d some­how hacked the sys­tem.

His gaze fixed on Tara, who had re­turned to the ta­ble and was sort­ing pa­pers.

Think of open­ing doors . . .

And, sud­den­ly, the door opened.

Lash gasped, al­most as if he’d been dealt a blow. He cov­ered the sound with a yawn.

It seemed im­pos­si­ble. But there was no oth­er an­swer.

There were two things he still need­ed to know be­fore he was sure. Tara could an­swer one of them. But he had to ap­pear calm—at least, un­til he had proof.

“Tara,” he said with ex­ag­ger­at­ed weari­ness. “Could you do some­thing else for me?”

She nod­ded.

“Could you bring up a list of all the avatars in the Tank when the Thor­pes were matched?”

“Why?”

“Just hu­mor me.”

She walked once again to­ward the com­put­er. Lash fol­lowed.

“Show me how it’s done,” he said.

“First, you have to ac­cess the avatar database.” She en­tered a trans­ac­tion code at the menu screen and an ex­plo­sion of nine-​dig­it num­bers ap­peared. “These are all the avatars.”

“All?”

“All clients to date. Al­most two mil­lion.” She typed some ad­di­tion­al com­mands. “Okay. I’ve cre­at­ed an SQL query you can run against this dataset. Type in the avatar’s iden­ti­ty code, and it will bring up all the oth­ers that were in the tank at the time of its match.”

“Show me, please.”

She lift­ed the piece of pa­per. “Here’s that sheet we print­ed out Fri­day, show­ing the dates the Thor­pes and Wilners first sub­mit­ted their ap­pli­ca­tions.”

“Lewis Thor­pe’s iden­ti­ty code is 000451823. You en­ter that in­to the query field.”

She typed it in and the screen re­freshed again.

“Here are all the avatars in the Tank when Lewis was matched to Lind­say, in­dexed by their iden­ti­ty codes.” She scrolled quick­ly down to the bot­tom of the list:

000481032

000481883

000481907

000482035

000482110

000482722

000483814

000483992

000484398

000485006

QUERY COM­PLET­ED AT 11:05:42:82 10/04/04

DIS­CRETE UNIT COUNT: 52,812

>?

Tara point­ed at the bot­tom line. “In that time-​slice, there were al­most twen­ty-​three thou­sand Avatars in the tank.”

“But it’s just a bunch of num­bers.”

“This func­tion key lets you tog­gle be­tween names and iden­ti­ty codes.” Tara pressed a key and the num­bers were re­placed by names:

Fal­lon, Eu­gene

White, Jerome

Wan­dere­ly, He­len

Gar­cia, Con­stanze

Lu, Wen

Gelb­man, Mark

Yoshi­da, Aiko

Horst, Mar­cus

Green-​Car­son, Mar­go

Ban­ieri, An­to­nio

Shit, Lash thought. It’s still sort­ed by iden­ti­ty code, not last name. He con­sid­ered ask­ing Tara for an al­pha­bet­ical sort, but de­cid­ed against it: he wasn’t ready to ex­plain. He be­gan pag­ing back through the names, one screen af­ter an­oth­er.

“What are you look­ing for?” Tara asked, gaz­ing cu­ri­ous­ly over his shoul­der.

“Just look­ing. Lis­ten, would you do one more thing?”

“Just one more thing. Just one more thing. I wish I got paid by the er­rand.”

“I think we made a mis­take, look­ing just at the records of su­per­cou­ples.”

“Why?”

“Look at what we found out about Lind­say Thor­pe and her sur­prise med­ical ex­am. Who knows what else we might find if we cross-​check against a ran­dom sam­ple of reg­ular cou­ples?”

“Makes sense.” Tara hes­itat­ed. “I’ll go req­ui­si­tion the records.”

“Hur­ry back.”

He watched her go. Al­though he was gen­uine­ly cu­ri­ous about the com­par­ison he’d sug­gest­ed, right now he was most in­ter­est­ed in ex­am­in­ing the screen with­out an­oth­er pair of eyes be­side him. He be­gan once again scrolling up the names.

It took longer than he thought to go through them all, and it was al­most eleven-​thir­ty by the time he reached the top of the list. He slumped back, dis­ap­point­ed. But then again it would have been too easy: find­ing the name he was hop­ing for, just like that. Maybe it was a crazy idea. He cringed at the idea of plod­ding through an­oth­er huge set of names. Still, he’d come this far: he might as well try the Wilners. Just in case.

He hit the func­tion key Tara had point­ed out. In­stant­ly, the screen re­freshed, show­ing the avatars in nu­mer­ical or­der.

START OF QUERY

==========

000000000

000448401

000448916

000448954

000449010

000449029

000449174

000449204

000449248

000449286

He straight­ened. What was that first code, 000000000, do­ing there?

He tog­gled the func­tion key, but there was no cor­re­spond­ing name for the iden­ti­ty code: the field was blank.

He shrugged, reached for the pa­per Tara had left on the desk, and typed John Wilner’s code—000491003—in the query field.

When the screen re­freshed, 000000000 was again at the top of the list. And once again, there was no name as­so­ci­at­ed with the num­ber.

Lash scratched his head. What was it? A start-​of-​ar­ray mark­er?

One more test. Ris­ing from the chair and com­ing quick­ly around the desk, he root­ed through the pa­per strewn across the ta­ble un­til he found a sheet with Kevin Con­nel­ly’s iden­ti­ty code. He re­turned to the com­put­er, typed it in, stared at the fresh list of num­bers.

“Je­sus Christ,” he breathed.

The door opened and Tara stepped in, car­ry­ing a stack of re­ports. “I plucked out a dozen names at ran­dom,” she said. “I thought the eval­ua­tions would be enough to—”

Lash cut her off. “Come over here. Please.”

She dropped the fold­ers on the ta­ble and ap­proached the mon­itor.

Lash looked at her, no longer try­ing to con­ceal his ris­ing ex­cite­ment. “I want you to pull up one more list. Show me who’s in the Tank, now.”

She frowned. “What’s go­ing on? What are you do­ing?”

“Tara, please. Just do this.”

She stared at him, hard, an­oth­er mo­ment. Then she bent over the key­board and typed in a new query.

The screen cleared, and Lash looked at it ea­ger­ly. He nod­ded to him­self, as if con­firm­ing some pri­vate sus­pi­cion.

Then, sud­den­ly, he snapped off the pow­er. The screen went dark.

“What the hell?” Tara said.

With­out an­swer­ing, Lash grabbed the phone, snugged it be­neath his chin, di­aled a long-​dis­tance num­ber.

“Cap­tain Tsosie’s desk, please,” he said. There was a brief wait. “Joe? It’s Chris Lash. Joe, is the Thor­pe house still tech­ni­cal­ly un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion? Thank God. Lis­ten, I want you to send a field agent over there right away. You still have my cell num­ber? Give it to the agent, have them call me the mo­ment they’re on the premis­es. Yes, it’s that im­por­tant. Thanks.”

He re­placed the phone, looked at Tara. “There’s some­thing I have to do. I can’t ex­plain right now. I’ll be back soon.”

He grabbed his coat, made for the door. Then he turned back. Tara re­mained at the desk, star­ing af­ter him, a strange ex­pres­sion on her face.

“Fol­low up with that doc­tor,” he said. “Dr. Mof­fett. Un­der­stand?”

Tara nod­ded. And Lash turned, tugged open the door, and was gone.

THIRTY-SEVEN

In the still gallery far above Madi­son Av­enue, a laser print­er came to life: first with the purr of a fan, then the green blink of a light. Its mo­tor chugged briefly and a sin­gle sheet slid in­to the tray.

Richard Sil­ver, who was seat­ed at a small sat­in­wood ta­ble in the mid­dle of the vast room, looked up at the sound. A ter­rycloth tow­el was draped over his shoul­ders. He’d been work­ing for near­ly twen­ty hours straight, sketch­ing out the pseu­do-​code of an im­mense new pro­gram: a pro­gram re­fin­ing in­ter­ac­tion with Liza to a point where an EEG hookup would no longer be nec­es­sary. Lash had been right: it was time.

Be­sides, it kept his mind from dis­tress­ing events—events that, more than any­thing, he did not want to dwell on.

He glanced in the di­rec­tion of the print­er, like a sleep­er roused from a trance. Hard­core com­put­er cod­ing is a state of mind: it can take a lot of time to get “in the zone.” Sil­ver was now deep in the zone and would nor­mal­ly be re­luc­tant to re­lin­quish it. But the pa­per wait­ing in the print­er’s tray meant on­ly one thing: Liza had com­plet­ed her task, and com­plet­ed it ear­ly.

He rose, glanced at the clock. Twen­ty-​five min­utes af­ter eleven. He walked to­ward the print­er, hes­itat­ing­ly re­moved the sheet.

Then he froze.

For a long mo­ment he stood mo­tion­less, star­ing at it. The sun­lit gallery was ab­so­lute­ly silent. At last, Sil­ver low­ered the pa­per. His hand shook as he did so.

He stuffed the sheet in­to a pock­et of his sweat­pants. Then he crossed the room, opened the hid­den door, and as­cend­ed the stairs to the next lev­el.

When the black door at the end of the hall sprang open, Sil­ver stepped im­me­di­ate­ly to­ward the con­toured chair, pinned the mi­cro­phone to his sweat­shirt, and be­gan fix­ing the elec­trodes to his tem­ple. Nor­mal­ly, this pro­cess was en­joy­able, al­most med­ita­tive: prepa­ra­tion for con­tact­ing a more per­fect ver­sion of him­self than he could ev­er hope to achieve.

To­day he felt sim­ply numb.

“Richard,” the low, un­in­flect­ed voice said from all cor­ners of the room.

“Liza. What is your cur­rent state?”

“Nine­ty-​nine point one sev­en six two per­cent op­er­ational. Cur­rent pro­cess­es are at eighty-​six point two per­cent of mul­ti­thread­ed ca­pac­ity. Stan­dard op­er­ations can now again ac­cess one hun­dred per­cent of band­width. Thank you for ask­ing.”

“You’re wel­come.”

“I had not ex­pect­ed to speak with you at the present time. Do you wish to run a sce­nario? I have com­plet­ed a vari­ant of the Rift Val­ley threat-​re­sponse game that you might find en­ter­tain­ing. Or do you wish to dis­cuss my thoughts on our cur­rent book? I have fin­ished anal­ysis of chap­ter twen­ty.”

“Not at present. I have the re­sults of your in­ter­roga­to­ry. It came in ear­ly.”

“Yes. My es­ti­mate was off by sev­en­ty-​one bil­lion ma­chine cy­cles.”

“Liza, I have just one ques­tion. How sure are you of the re­sult?”

With hu­mans, one could al­ways count on a pause when di­gest­ing an un­ex­pect­ed com­ment. With Liza, there was no such pause. “I do not un­der­stand your ques­tion.”

“Are you sure the re­sult of the in­ter­roga­to­ry is not in er­ror?”

“The re­sult shows no sta­tis­ti­cal de­vi­ation. It is what re­mains when all un­sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sults have been dis­card­ed.”

“I am not doubt­ing you, Liza. I sim­ply want­ed to make sure.”

“Your con­cern is un­der­stand­able. Be­fore ini­ti­at­ing the pro­cess, you stat­ed it was crit­ical to find the so­lu­tion. I have found the so­lu­tion. I hope it proves sat­is­fac­to­ry.”

“Thank you, Liza.”

“You are wel­come, Richard. Shall we talk fur­ther?”

“Soon. There’s some­thing I must do first.”

“Thank you for speak­ing with me.”

Sil­ver punched the shut­down se­quence in­to the key­pad, plucked the elec­trodes from his tem­ples, and got out of the chair. He wait­ed a minute, lis­ten­ing to the sound of his own breath­ing. Then he wiped his brow with the tow­el and head­ed for the door, reach­ing for his cell phone and di­al­ing as he stepped in­to the cor­ri­dor.

“Mauch­ly here,” came the voice.

“Ed­win, it’s Richard.”

“Yes, Dr. Sil­ver.”

“Ed­win, I need you up here. Right away.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

The Nor­man J. Weisen­baum Cen­ter for Bio­chem­ical Re­search stood on a point of land jut­ting in­to the Hud­son south of Cold Spring. Lash pulled in­to vis­itors’ park­ing, hoist­ed him­self out on­to the macadam, and glanced up at the long, low struc­ture of glass and stone that climbed the hill­side. It was not at all the way he’d pic­tured it when he called the cen­ter the week be­fore, on the flight back from Phoenix. It was un­re­lieved­ly mod­ern. And yet some­how it did not seem out of place in this haven of Dutch gables. The rich tones of pol­ished mar­ble blend­ed nice­ly with the back­drop of oak and sycamore. Wa­ter­birds wheeled and cried over­head.

In­side, the re­cep­tion­ist’s sta­tion was manned by three wom­en. Lash ap­proached the clos­est, pre­sent­ed his card. “Dr. Lash to see Dr. Good­kind.”

“Just a mo­ment, please.” The wom­an peered in­to a mon­itor re­cessed in­to her work sur­face, held a man­icured fin­ger to one ear, lis­tened to an in­vis­ible ear­piece. Then she looked up at him again. “If you’d kind­ly take a seat, he’ll be right with you.”

Lash had bare­ly set­tled in­to one of the chrome-​and-​leather chairs when he saw Roger Good­kind ap­proach­ing. Good­kind was car­ry­ing a few more pounds since they’d last met, and the sandy hair was re­ced­ing dra­mat­ical­ly from his tem­ples. But the man still had the same sly half-​smile, the same lop­ing walk, of their un­der­grad­uate days.

“Chris!” Good­kind clasped Lash’s hand in his. “Punc­tu­al as ev­er.”

“Anx­iety dis­or­der. Pre­sent­ing as com­pul­sive time­li­ness.”

The bio­chemist laughed. “If on­ly your di­ag­no­sis were that sim­ple.” He led Lash to­ward an el­eva­tor. “Can this re­al­ly be? Hear­ing from you like this, twice in two weeks? I’m al­most pros­trate with grat­itude.”

“I wish I could say it was a so­cial call,” Lash replied as the el­eva­tor opened, “but the fact is I need your help.”

Good­kind nod­ded. “Any­thing.”

 

Good­kind’s lab was even larg­er than Lash had an­tic­ipat­ed. There were the oblig­atory lab ta­bles and chem­ical ap­pa­ra­tus, but there were al­so deep leather chairs, a hand­some desk, book­cas­es full of jour­nals, a stun­ning view of the riv­er. Lash whis­tled ap­pre­cia­tive­ly.

“The cen­ter’s been kind to me,” Good­kind said with a chuck­le. He’d de­vel­oped a new man­ner­ism since Lash last saw him: he ran his fin­gers through his thin­ning hair, then grasped a few strands and tugged on them, as if en­cour­ag­ing growth.

“So I see.”

“Have a seat. You want a di­et so­da or some­thing?”

Lash let him­self be shown to one of the arm­chairs. “No, thanks.”

Good­kind took a seat op­po­site. “So what’s up?”

“Re­mem­ber why I called you last week?”

“Sure. All those crazy ques­tions about sui­cide among per­fect­ly hap­py peo­ple.”

“Yes. I’m work­ing on some­thing, Roger, some­thing I can’t tell you much about. Can I re­ly on you to keep it con­fi­den­tial?”

“What is this, Chris? Is it a Bu­reau mat­ter?”

“In a way.” Lash watched the man’s eyes widen. If Good­kind thought the Feds were in­volved, he’d be more like­ly to co­op­er­ate.

Good­kind shift­ed. “I’ll do what­ev­er I can.”

“You do a lot of work with tox­icol­ogy, right? Drug side ef­fects, in­ter­ac­tions, that sort of thing?”

“It’s not my field of ex­per­tise, but, yes, we’re all in­volved with tox­icol­ogy to some de­gree at the cen­ter.”

“So tell me. What steps would a bio­chemist go through in de­vel­op­ing a new drug?”

Good­kind ran a hand through his thin­ning hair. “A new drug? From scratch, you mean?” He paused to tug on a lock. “His­tor­ical­ly, drug de­vel­op­ment’s al­ways been kind of hit or miss. You screen molecules and com­pounds, look­ing for a ‘hit,’ some­thing that seems ben­efi­cial to peo­ple. Of course, now with com­pu­ta­tion­al chem­istry, you can sim­ulate the ef­fects of re­ac­tions that—”

“No, I don’t mean that ear­ly in the pro­cess. Say you’ve al­ready de­vel­oped a drug, or some­thing you think might be a drug. What’s the next step?”

Good­kind thought a mo­ment. “Well, you do sta­bil­ity test­ing. See what de­liv­ery ve­hi­cle it likes best: tablet, cap­sule, so­lu­tion. Then you ex­pose the drug molecule to a va­ri­ety of con­di­tions—rel­ative hu­mid­ity, UV light, oxy­gen, heat—make sure it doesn’t de­grade, break down in­to harm­ful byprod­ucts.” He grinned. “Peo­ple al­ways keep drugs in their bath­room cab­inets, you know, which is prob­ably the worst thing you can do. Heat and mois­ture can cause all sorts of nasty chem­ical re­ac­tions.”

“Go on.”

“You per­form tox stud­ies, qual­ify the degra­da­tion prod­ucts. De­ter­mine what’s ac­cept­able, what’s not ac­cept­able. Then you do a Trap.”

“A what?”

“A Trap. Tox­ico­log­ical risk anal­ysis pro­ce­dure. That’s what we call it here at the cen­ter, any­way. You run the func­tion­al groups—the dif­fer­ent parts of the drug molecule—against a knowl­edge base of ex­ist­ing chem­icals and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. You’re es­sen­tial­ly look­ing for ad­verse re­ac­tions that might cause dif­fer­ent, and more dan­ger­ous, func­tion­al groups. Tox­ic­ity po­ten­tial. Car­cino­genic­ity, neu­ro­tox­ic­ity, so forth.”

“And if you find such tox­ic po­ten­tial?”

“That’s known as a struc­ture alert. Each alert is flagged and stud­ied for sever­ity.”

“I see. And if the drug pass­es?”

“Then it goes on to clin­ical tri­als, first in an­imals usu­al­ly, then hu­mans.”

“These struc­ture alerts. Can a drug cause a struc­ture alert and still go on to be de­vel­oped?”

“Of course. That’s one rea­son you have warn­ing la­bels on medicine bot­tles. ‘Don’t take with al­co­hol’ and the rest.”

“Are these alerts list­ed some­where, in a book? The Physi­cian’s Desk Ref­er­ence, maybe?”

Good­kind shook his head. “Struc­ture alerts are too low-​lev­el, too chem­ical, for the PDR.”

“So they’re pro­pri­etary? Kept se­cret by in­di­vid­ual re­searchers or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies?”

“Oh, no. They’re all stored in a cen­tral database. Gov­ern­ment reg­ula­tions.”

Lash sat for­ward slow­ly. “Who has ac­cess to this database?”

“The FDA. Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­ufac­tur­ers.”

“Bio­chem­istry labs?”

Good­kind in­haled sharply as he re­al­ized where Lash was head­ed. Then he nod­ded. “With the prop­er ac­cred­ita­tion.”

“The Weisen­baum Cen­ter?”

Good­kind nod­ded again. “In the re­search li­brary. Two flights up.”

“Mind lead­ing the way?”

Good­kind licked his lips. “Chris, I don’t know. Ac­cess to that database is gov­ern­ment-​sanc­tioned. You sure this is of­fi­cial?”

“It’s of the great­est im­por­tance.”

Still, Good­kind hes­itat­ed.

Lash stood up. “Re­mem­ber what you said when I called? That you couldn’t pre­dict sui­cide, that it was just a roll of the dice? That it made no sense, for ex­am­ple, why Poland had a dras­ti­cal­ly high­er sui­cide rate than nor­mal in 2000?”

“I re­mem­ber.”

“Per­haps you for­got some­thing, a fact I just dug up on my way here. Poland is the coun­try where, be­cause of the low cost to run stud­ies, most drugs were test­ed in 2000.”

Good­kind thought for a mo­ment. “You mean—?”

“I mean you should show me that tox­icol­ogy database. Right now.”

Good­kind hes­itat­ed just a sec­ond longer. And then he, too, stood up.

THIRTY-NINE

The cen­ter’s re­search li­brary did not look like a li­brary at all. It was a low-​ceilinged space, un­com­fort­ably warm, its walls lined with car­rels of blond wood. Each con­tained a seat, a desk, and a com­put­er ter­mi­nal. The room’s on­ly oc­cu­pant was the li­brar­ian, who looked up from her typ­ing to stare sus­pi­cious­ly at Lash.

Good­kind chose a car­rel in the far cor­ner. “Where are all the books?” Lash asked in a low voice as he pulled over the chair from the ad­join­ing car­rel.

“In the base­ment stacks.” Good­kind drew the key­board to­ward him. “You need to req­ui­si­tion ti­tles from Ms. Gus­tus, there. But al­most ev­ery­thing we need is on­line, any­way.”

Lash watched as the man typed in his name. A menu ap­peared, and Good­kind made a se­lec­tion. The screen re­freshed:

FDA - DI­VI­SION R

PBTK

PHAR­MA­CEU­TI­CAL AND BIOMED­ICAL

TOX­IC­ITY KNOWL­EDGE BASE

REV. 120.11

LAST UP­DAT­ED: 10.01.04

PRO­PRI­ETARY AND CON­FI­DEN­TIAL. OF­FI­CIAL­LY SANC­TIONED USE ON­LY.

UNAU­THO­RIZED AC­CESS CON­STI­TUTES A FED­ER­AL CRIME.

ID: ____________

PASS­WORD: ____________

Good­kind looked at Lash, who nod­ded en­cour­ag­ing­ly. With a shrug, Good­kind com­plet­ed the fields. A new screen ap­peared:

FDA - R/PBTK 120.11/00012 10/04/04

EN­TER QUERY BY:

1. CHEM­ICAL COM­POUND

2. TRADE­MARK

3. GENER­IC

PRESS F1 FOR IN­DEX:

Good­kind looked over again. “What’s the name of the med­ica­tion you’re in­ter­est­ed in?”

“Scol­ipane.”

“Nev­er heard of it.” Good­kind tapped a se­ries of keys, and the screen filled with text. “Here it is.”

Lash peered more close­ly:

FDA - R / PBTK 120.11 / 09817 10/04/04

SCOL­IPANE

Hy­dox­ene, 2 - ((6 - (p-​methyl­para­pine) phenylchlo­ride) al­ka­loid) -, sodi­um salt

MR: PhG

MF: C23H5O5N3•Na

USE: (pri­ma­ry) S. M. R. (sec­ondary) see p. 20

MU­TA­TION DA­TA: N/R

RE­PRO­DUC­TIVE REF­ER­ENCES: p. 15

SYN­ONYMS: p. 28

DOSAGE DA­TA: p. 10

PAGE 1 OF 30

“Biochem was my worst sub­ject at U. Penn. Re­mem­ber?” Lash looked away from the screen. “Why don’t you hold my hand a lit­tle here.”

Good­kind scanned the text. “Scol­ipane’s pri­ma­ry use is as a skele­tal mus­cle re­lax­ant.”

“A mus­cle re­lax­ant?”

“It’s a rel­ative­ly new for­mu­la­tion, about five years old.”

“Dosage?”

“One mil­ligram. A lit­tle feller.”

Lash slumped. The the­ory that had be­gun to seem so promis­ing start­ed to slip away again.

He glanced back mo­rose­ly at the top of the screen. Be­tween the chem­ical de­scrip­tion and the for­mu­la was a line he didn’t rec­og­nize. “What’s ‘MR’ stand for?”

“Man­ufac­tur­er. They all have codes. You know, sort of like air­ports. Take this one: PhG. That’s short for Phar­mGen.”

Lash straight­ened again.

Phar­mGen.

He be­gan look­ing more close­ly at the da­ta. The acute tox­ic­ity chart was a typ­ical fea­ture of such re­ports; it usu­al­ly record­ed the LD50, or dosage at which half the sam­ple pop­ula­tion would die. He ran down the columns.

“Ca­nine ma­nia,” he said qui­et­ly. “What the hell?”

“We have to scroll to page twen­ty for more in­for­ma­tion.”

“And look—it says to see page twen­ty for da­ta on hu­man over­dosage, as well.” Lash glanced at Good­kind. “Pri­ma­ry use is as a mus­cle re­lax­ant, you said.”

“Right.”

“But look here. There’s an­oth­er use. A sec­ondary use.” He point­ed at the screen.

“Page twen­ty again,” Good­kind mur­mured. “Seems that page has a lot to tell us.”

“Then let’s go.”

Good­kind moused quick­ly for­ward, the screen blur­ring, un­til he reached page 20. Both men leaned in to read the dense text.

“Je­sus,” Good­kind breathed.

Lash said noth­ing. But he found him­self go­ing cold in the over­heat­ed room.

FORTY

Tara Sta­ple­ton sat be­hind her desk, mo­tion­less ex­cept for her eyes. Slow­ly, she scanned the of­fice, let­ting her gaze set­tle on one thing, then an­oth­er. The plants were wa­tered and care­ful­ly pruned; her old fiber­glass board leaned against the wall as it al­ways did; the posters, bumper stick­ers, and oth­er surf­ing para­pher­na­lia re­mained in their usu­al spots. The in­sti­tu­tion­al clock on the far wall told her it was ten min­utes to four. Ev­ery­thing was as it should be. And yet ev­ery­thing looked un­fa­mil­iar, as if the of­fice had be­come sud­den­ly for­eign to her eyes.

She leaned back slow­ly in her chair, aware her breath­ing had grown fast and shal­low.

Sud­den­ly the phone rang, its shrill war­ble shat­ter­ing the qui­et. Tara froze.

It rang again. Two beeps: an out­side call.

Slow­ly, she lift­ed it from the hand­set. “Sta­ple­ton.”

“Tara?” The voice was rushed, out of breath.

“Tara?” it re­peat­ed. “It’s Christo­pher Lash.”

Street nois­es fil­tered from the ear­piece: the rush of traf­fic, the blatt of a truck’s horn.

“Christo­pher,” Tara said even­ly.

“I’ve got to talk to you. Right now. It’s very im­por­tant.”

“Why don’t you come by my of­fice?”

“No. Not in­side. Can’t take the chance.”

Tara hes­itat­ed.

“Tara, please.” Lash’s voice was al­most plead­ing. “I need your help. There’s some­thing I have to tell you no­body else can over­hear.”

Still, Tara said noth­ing.

“Tara. An­oth­er su­per­cou­ple is about to die.”

“There’s a cof­fee shop around the cor­ner,” she said. “The Rio. On Fifty-​fourth, be­tween Madi­son and Park.”

“I’ll be wait­ing for you. Hur­ry, please.”

And the phone went dead.

But Tara did not rise from her desk. In fact, she made no move at all ex­cept to re­place the phone in its cra­dle and stare at it, as if strug­gling with some ter­ri­ble un­cer­tain­ty.

FORTY-ONE

Lash walked in­to the Rio a few min­utes af­ter four. The walls were cov­ered in gilt wall­pa­per, and the in­can­des­cent lights and resin-​col­ored ban­quettes gave the din­er a hazy, gold­en glow. He felt like an in­sect sur­round­ed by am­ber.

For a mo­ment, he thought he’d ar­rived first. But then he caught sight of Tara, sit­ting at a booth in the rear of the restau­rant. He stepped for­ward and slid in­to the seat across from her.

A wait­ress ap­proached; Lash or­dered a cof­fee, wait­ed un­til she walked away. Then he turned back. “Tara. Thanks for com­ing.”

Tara nod­ded.

“Did you talk to that doc­tor? Mof­fett?”

Tara nod­ded again.

“What did he say?”

“He was fol­low­ing in­struc­tions from an in­ter­nal scrip.”

“What does that mean?”

“Med­ica­tion reg­imen, based on the find­ings of an ear­li­er ex­am­ina­tion.”

“In oth­er words, he was fol­low­ing some oth­er in-​house doc­tor’s or­ders.”

“Yes.”

“Did he say whose or­ders?”

“I didn’t ask him that.”

“How easy would it be to fake such or­ders?”

Tara hes­itat­ed. “I’m sor­ry?”

“Ev­ery­thing at Eden is au­to­mat­ed. You get a piece of pa­per, telling you to do some­thing. Couldn’t some­body type false med­ical or­ders in­to the com­put­er sys­tem?”

When Tara did not re­ply, Lash leaned a lit­tle clos­er. “I don’t have all the an­swers yet. But I have enough to know it’s not on­ly the re­main­ing su­per­cou­ples who are in dan­ger. We’re in dan­ger, too.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause some­body—some­body in­side Eden—has set these wom­en up to kill them­selves and mur­der their hus­bands.”

Tara be­gan to speak, but Lash quick­ly held up a sup­press­ing hand. “No. Let me talk first, please. You’re not go­ing to be­lieve it un­less I give you a lit­tle back­ground.”

Tara re­laxed, but on­ly slight­ly. She was look­ing at him with shock, even ap­pre­hen­sion. Lash glanced to­ward a near­by mir­ror and caught a glimpse of him­self: hag­gard, hair askew, tired eyes an­imat­ed with ner­vous en­er­gy. If he was her, he’d be ap­pre­hen­sive, too.

The wait­ress re­turned with his cof­fee, and Lash took a sip. “That pre­scrip­tion of Lind­say Thor­pe’s, for one mil­ligram of scol­ipane? It was the clue I need­ed. I spent the af­ter­noon track­ing down more in­for­ma­tion. Did Dr. Mof­fett tell you what scol­ipane is nor­mal­ly pre­scribed for?”

Tara shook her head.

“It’s a mus­cle re­lax­ant. It works on the area of the brain that con­trols mus­cle spasms. Sports medicine doc­tors use it to treat strains. You say Dr. Mof­fett was fol­low­ing through on treat­ment pre­scribed in an ear­li­er ex­am­ina­tion. But Tara, what ear­li­er ex­am­ina­tion could have pre­dict­ed Lind­say Thor­pe would strain a mus­cle?”

“Then scol­ipane must be used to treat some­thing else.”

“You’re more right than you know. Scol­ipane was orig­inal­ly in­tend­ed to treat some­thing else. But that some­thing else was kept a close se­cret, locked up in drug de­vel­op­ment databas­es.”

He paused. “Ev­er see a TV ad for what sounds like a mir­acle drug? No more al­ler­gies, maybe. Or your high choles­terol, sud­den­ly gone. And then all the side ef­fects go scrolling across the screen . . . and it’s al­most enough to make you swear off medicine for­ev­er. Those are just the drugs that make it past clin­ical tri­als. Many oth­ers nev­er make it.”

He glanced across the ta­ble, but Tara’s ex­pres­sion re­mained un­read­able.

“Okay. Let’s back up. Most as­pects of per­son­al­ity are the re­sult of genes con­trol­ling neu­ro­trans­mit­ters in the brain. That in­cludes un­de­sir­able traits like anx­iety and de­pres­sion. So we cre­ate drugs to deal with them. Things like SS­NRIs, which sup­press the re­up­take of sero­tonin. But there are lots of sero­tonin re­cep­tors in the brain. How can you aim a drug at all the re­cep­tors at once?”

He took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee. “So drug com­pa­nies have been look­ing for oth­er so­lu­tions. Ways they could al­ter brain chem­istry to achieve bet­ter re­sults. Some­times they ven­ture deep in­to un­known ter­ri­to­ry. Such as the neu­ropep­tide known as ‘Sub­stance P.’ ”

“Sub­stance P,” Tara re­peat­ed.

“I hadn’t heard of it ei­ther, un­til this af­ter­noon. It’s very mys­te­ri­ous: no­body knows ex­act­ly why it’s in the brain, or what its pur­pose is. But we do know the kind of things that cause it to be re­leased. Acute phys­ical pain. High lev­els of stress. It’s been close­ly im­pli­cat­ed with se­vere de­pres­sion, sud­den sui­cide.”

He leaned clos­er. “At least one drug com­pa­ny be­came in­ter­est­ed in Sub­stance P. They de­cid­ed if they could de­vel­op a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal agent to ‘hit’ Sub­stance P, to block its re­cep­tor, maybe they could make a whole lot of de­pressed peo­ple hap­py again. That drug com­pa­ny was Phar­mGen. Eden’s par­ent.”

“Not any­more. Eden is in­de­pen­dent now.”

“Phar­mGen de­vel­oped a new an­ti-​psy­chot­ic drug that act­ed against Sub­stance P. It had some rough go­ing ear­ly on—red flags ap­peared dur­ing tox­icol­ogy test­ing—and the drug was re­mod­ified. Four years ago, it was fi­nal­ly ready for group test­ing. The test­ing was done in Poland, which was com­mon prac­tice. Maybe ten thou­sand peo­ple were in­volved, all told. Nine­ty-​nine times out of a hun­dred, the drug worked beau­ti­ful­ly. And it wasn’t lim­it­ed to sin­gle in­di­ca­tors: schizoids, bor­der­lines, chron­ic de­pres­sives, all seemed to ben­efit.”

He sipped his cof­fee. “But there was a prob­lem: that oth­er one per­cent. If a per­son with­out men­tal ill­ness took the drug—specif­ical­ly, a per­son with high lev­els of serum cop­per in their blood—ter­ri­ble side ef­fects re­sult­ed. De­pres­sion, para­noia, homi­ci­dal rage. There were mass in­stances of sui­cide, enough to skew the sui­cide statis­tics for the en­tire coun­try that year.”

He glanced across the ta­ble to gauge the ef­fect. But Tara’s ex­pres­sion re­mained guard­ed.

“The drug was with­drawn from test­ing. But it emerged late the fol­low­ing year, in a dras­ti­cal­ly low­ered dosage, re­for­mu­lat­ed for an­oth­er pur­pose: a mus­cle re­lax­ant.”

Dis­be­lief re­turned to Tara’s face. “Scol­ipane?”

“One-​mil­ligram tablets. The orig­inal fifty-​mil­ligram for­mu­la­tion is al­so avail­able, but pre­scribed on­ly in very rare cir­cum­stances, un­der close ob­ser­va­tion.” He pushed his cup aside. “Re­mem­ber that call I made just be­fore leav­ing your of­fice? That was to a friend of mine in the Phoenix field of­fice. I asked him to send some­body to the Thor­pes’ house, check on their meds. Lind­say’s pre­scrip­tion for scol­ipane was on the night ta­ble be­side her bed. But the dosage had been in­creased from one to fifty mil­ligrams. In cap­sule form, she didn’t no­tice the dif­fer­ence.”

Tara frowned.

“Some­body changed her dosage. Some­body who knew about the side ef­fects of scol­ipane in its orig­inal for­mu­la­tion. Some­body who knew scol­ipane wouldn’t set off any alarms in the au­top­sy blood work. Some­body who al­so knew—prob­ably from her ap­pli­ca­tion form—that Lind­say Thor­pe was tak­ing an an­ti­his­tamine.”

“What are you talk­ing about?”

“When I first be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing the deaths, I had a talk with Lind­say’s fa­ther. He men­tioned she had der­matographia. It’s a be­nign but ir­ri­tat­ing skin con­di­tion that caus­es itch­iness. The rec­om­mend­ed treat­ment is a his­tamine an­tag­onist. Over time, chron­ic users of such drugs can de­vel­op high-​cop­per histape­nia—low lev­els of his­tamine in the blood, caus­ing an ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cop­per.”

Lash was in­creas­ing­ly alarmed by her con­tin­ued dis­be­lief. “Don’t you un­der­stand? When Lind­say Thor­pe took that huge dose of scol­ipane, cou­pled with her high blood cop­per, she un­wit­ting­ly re-​cre­at­ed—ex­act­ly—the con­di­tions that caused such high sui­cide in the ini­tial drug tri­als. Think of the ter­ri­ble men­tal or­deal she must have gone through, made all the worse for be­ing sud­den, in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Hos­tile voic­es in her head. Acts of psy­chot­ic de­viance: she found her­self play­ing mu­sic she de­test­ed on the stereo. Lind­say Thor­pe hat­ed opera, you see, but she was lis­ten­ing to opera when she died. All this would be fol­lowed by black de­spair, over­whelm­ing homi­ci­dal and sui­ci­dal urg­ings . . .” He paused. “She loved her hus­band dear­ly. But the im­puls­es were ir­re­sistible. Still, I think she car­ried them through with as much dig­ni­ty, as lit­tle pain, as pos­si­ble.”

When she said noth­ing, he went on. “I know what you’re think­ing. Why did she kill her hus­band? She didn’t want to. But she had to. Yet even as the flood of brain chem­icals drove her half mad, her love for Lewis Thor­pe re­mained. And how do you kill some­body you love? As painless­ly as pos­si­ble. And you would go to­geth­er. That’s why the deaths hap­pened at night: Lind­say could slip a dry clean­ing bag over the head of her sleep­ing hus­band be­fore slip­ping one over her own. She prob­ably wait­ed for him to fall asleep in front of the TV. Same with Karen Wilner. She was a li­brar­ian, she would have ac­cess to scalpels in the book re­pair lab. A fresh scalpel is so sharp you wouldn’t even feel it open­ing your vein—not if you were asleep, any­way. But I’ll bet she sliced her own wrist more hes­itant­ly, that’s why it took her longer to die.”

“What about the ba­by?” Tara mur­mured. “The Thor­pes’ child?”

“You mean, why did she sur­vive? I don’t know the mor­phol­ogy of Sub­stance P well enough to spec­ulate. Per­haps the moth­er-​child bond is too el­emen­tal, too prim­itive, to be bro­ken in such a way.”

Now he reached across the ta­ble, took Tara’s hand. “Lind­say may have killed her­self and her hus­band. But this isn’t about that. It’s about first-​de­gree mur­der. Some­body in­side Eden knew ex­act­ly how to make Lind­say Thor­pe self-​de­struct. Some­body knew her med­ical back­ground, knew about the ear­ly tests on scol­ipane, knew how to cre­ate that pre­cise chem­ical cock­tail with­in her blood. And that some­body had the pow­er to fake a pa­per trail, doc­tor her med­ical or­ders, even mod­ify her pre­scrip­tion. You said it your­self: it has to be some­body with world-​class ac­cess to your sys­tems.”

His grip tight­ened on her hand. “I think you know where this is lead­ing. It’s the an­swer, the on­ly pos­si­ble an­swer. And you have to be strong. Be­cause this per­son must be stopped. He got to Karen Wilner the same way. He’s sin­gling out the wom­en, mak­ing them self-​de­struct. In just two days, the third cou­ple will—”

He stopped abrupt­ly. Tara was no longer lis­ten­ing. Her ex­pres­sion had shift­ed from his face to some­where else: some­where over his shoul­der.

He turned. Ed­win Mauch­ly was ap­proach­ing from the front of the din­er, sur­round­ed by half a dozen oth­er men. Lash did not rec­og­nize them, but he knew they must be Eden se­cu­ri­ty.

Quick­ly, Tara pulled her hand from his.

Lash, stunned, was slow to re­act. With­in a mo­ment the ta­ble was sur­round­ed, the ex­its blocked.

“Dr. Lash,” Mauch­ly said. “If you’ll come with us, please?”

As com­pre­hen­sion broke over him he rose in­stinc­tive­ly, ready for flight. One of the guards placed a hand on his shoul­der and, gen­tly but ir­re­sistibly, guid­ed him back in­to the seat.

“You’ll find things a lot less painful if you co­op­er­ate, sir,” the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer said.

Vague­ly, Lash was aware Tara had slipped out of the booth and was now stand­ing be­hind Mauch­ly.

A few sec­onds ticked by. They seemed very long. Lash glanced around the din­er. A few faces were turned in his di­rec­tion, watch­ing with mild cu­rios­ity. Then he looked up at the sur­round­ing guards. And then he nod­ded and—much more slow­ly—stood. The se­cu­ri­ty staff closed around him, and he felt him­self pro­pelled for­ward.

Mauch­ly was far ahead now, al­ready leav­ing the restau­rant. One arm was draped pro­tec­tive­ly around Tara’s shoul­ders. “I’m sor­ry you had to be put through this,” Lash heard him say. “But it’s all over. You’re safe.” Then the door closed be­hind them, the sound cut off, and the two melt­ed in­to the gath­er­ing dark­ness of Fifty-​fourth Street.

Tara van­ished with­out look­ing back.

FORTY-TWO

Richard Sil­ver stepped care­ful­ly from the tread­mill and paused, breath­ing hard, while the belt fin­ished de­cel­er­at­ing. Turn­ing off the ma­chine, he reached for a tow­el and mopped his brow. It had been one of his tough­est work­outs—forty-​five min­utes at six miles per hour, eight-​per­cent grade—yet his mind re­mained as trou­bled as when he first got on.

Drop­ping the tow­el in­to a can­vas bin, he left the ex­er­cise room and walked down the cor­ri­dor to the kitchen, where he filled a glass of wa­ter from the tap. Noth­ing he did seemed to re­move the op­pres­sive­ness that hung over him. It had been this way since the morn­ing, when the sheet nam­ing Lash as the on­ly pos­si­ble killer emerged from the print­er.

He took a few dis­in­ter­est­ed sips, placed the glass in the sink. He stood a mo­ment, star­ing with­out re­al­ly see­ing. And then he sank for­ward, lean­ing his el­bows on the counter and press­ing a fist against his fore­head: once, twice, a third time . . .

He had to stop. He had to get on with things, he had to. Main­tain­ing a sem­blance of nor­mal­ity was the on­ly way to get through this least nor­mal of times.

He straight­ened. Four-​fif­teen. What would he nor­mal­ly be do­ing now?

Hav­ing his af­ter­noon ses­sion with Liza.

Sil­ver ex­it­ed the kitchen and head­ed for the end of the cor­ri­dor. Usu­al­ly his morn­ings were de­vot­ed to read­ing tech jour­nals and white pa­pers; his ear­ly af­ter­noons to busi­ness mat­ters; and his evenings to pro­gram­ming. But he al­ways made time to vis­it with Liza be­fore din­ner. This was when he spoke with her, dis­cussed pro­gram up­dates, got a sense of her progress. It was a time he al­ways looked for­ward to: com­mu­ni­cat­ing with some­thing that was part him­self, part his in­ven­tion, was a feel­ing un­like any oth­er Sil­ver had ev­er known. It was worth all the ef­fort it cost him. It was an ex­pe­ri­ence he could nev­er hope to com­mu­ni­cate to any­body else.

He guard­ed this time against all in­ter­rup­tions, al­ways be­gan prompt­ly at four. To­day was the first time he’d been late since Liza and her vast ar­ray of sup­port­ing hard­ware were in­stalled in the pent­house, four years ear­li­er.

Slip­ping in­to the con­toured chair, he be­gan fix­ing the elec­trodes, strug­gling to clear his mind. On­ly long prac­tice made it pos­si­ble. Min­utes passed while he pre­pared him­self. Then he placed his hand on the key­pad and be­gan to type.

“Richard,” came the haunt­ing, dis­em­bod­ied voice.

“Hel­lo, Liza.”

“You are sev­en­teen min­utes late. Is any­thing wrong?”

“Noth­ing is wrong, Liza.”

“I am pleased. Shall I be­gin with the sta­tus re­port? I have been test­ing the new com­mu­ni­ca­tions pseu­docode you in­stalled and have made some mi­nor mod­ifi­ca­tions.”

“Very good, Liza.”

“Would you like to hear the pro­cess de­tails?”

“No, thank you. We can skip the rest of the re­port to­day.”

“Then would you like to dis­cuss the lat­est sce­nar­ios you as­signed? I am prepar­ing to un­der­take sce­nario 311, Cre­at­ing False Pos­itives in the Tur­ing Test.”

“Per­haps to­mor­row, Liza. I feel like pro­ceed­ing di­rect­ly to the sto­ry.”

“Very well.”

Sil­ver reached be­neath the chair—care­ful not to loosen any of the elec­trodes as he did so—and pulled out a well-​thumbed book. It was his moth­er’s, one of the very few he’d re­tained from ear­li­est child­hood.

The high point of his ses­sions with Liza was al­ways the read­ing. Over the years he had pro­gressed from the very sim­plest sto­ries, teach­ing her, by ex­am­ple, the rudi­ments of hu­man val­ues. It was sat­is­fy­ing in an al­most pa­ter­nal way. It al­ways made him feel bet­ter, less lone­ly. Per­haps to­day it could clear even the dark cloud of guilt that hung over him. And per­haps by the time he’d fin­ished read­ing, he would have the courage to voice the ques­tion he both yearned—and dread­ed—to ask.

He paused to re­fo­cus his mind, then opened the book. “Do you re­call where we left off, Liza?”

“Yes. The ro­dent Tem­ple­ton had re­trieved the egg sac of the spi­der.”

“Good. And why did he do it?”

“The pig had promised sus­te­nance in re­turn.”

“And why did the pig’s friend, Char­lotte, want the egg sac saved?”

“To en­sure the sur­vival of her chil­dren and thus the prop­aga­tion of the species.”

“But Char­lotte could not save the egg sac her­self.”

“That is cor­rect.”

“So who saved it?”

“Tem­ple­ton.”

“Let me rephrase. Who was the mo­tivic agent in sav­ing the egg sac?”

“The pig Wilbur.”

“Cor­rect. Why did he save it, Liza?”

“To achieve par­ity with the spi­der. The spi­der had as­sist­ed him.”

Sil­ver low­ered the book. Liza had no trou­ble un­der­stand­ing mo­tives like self-​sur­vival and be­hav­ior re­wards. But even now, the oth­er, sub­tler, emo­tions re­mained hard to grasp.

“Are your eth­ical rou­tines en­abled?” he asked.

“Yes, Richard.”

“Then let us go on. That is one rea­son he saved the egg sac. The oth­er is the feel­ings he had for the spi­der.”

“You speak metaphor­ical­ly.”

“Cor­rect. It is a metaphor for hu­man be­hav­ior. For hu­man love.”

“Yes.”

“Wilbur loved Char­lotte. Just as Char­lotte loved Wilbur.”

“I un­der­stand, Richard.”

Sil­ver closed his eyes for a mo­ment. To­day, even this most prized of times felt hol­low. The ques­tion would have to wait.

“I must ter­mi­nate this ses­sion, Liza,” he said.

“Our di­alogue has on­ly last­ed five min­utes and twen­ty sec­onds.”

“I know. There are a few things I need to do. So let us close by fin­ish­ing chap­ter twen­ty-​one.”

“Very well, Richard. Thank you for speak­ing with me.”

“Thank you, Liza.” And Sil­ver raised Char­lotte’s Web, found the dog-​earned page, and be­gan:

Next day, as the Fer­ris wheel was be­ing tak­en apart and the race hors­es were be­ing load­ed in­to vans, Char­lotte died. No­body, of the hun­dreds of peo­ple that had vis­it­ed the Fair, knew that a grey spi­der had played the most im­por­tant part of all. No one was with her when she died . . .

FORTY-THREE

This time, it was Lash who found him­self in the con­fer­ence room, sit­ting alone on one side of the ta­ble. It was Lash who stared in­to the lens of the video cam­era, in­to the grim faces across from him. Ed­win Mauch­ly sat at the cen­ter. But to­day, Tara Sta­ple­ton was not at his left. Dr. Al­ic­to was there in­stead, wear­ing a green sur­gi­cal smock. As his eyes caught Lash’s, he nod­ded, smil­ing pleas­ant­ly.

Mauch­ly glanced at some pa­pers that lay be­fore him. Then he looked across the ta­ble.

“Dr. Lash. This is very dif­fi­cult for all of us. For me per­son­al­ly.” Nor­mal­ly so im­pas­sive, Mauch­ly looked ashen-​faced. “I, of course, take re­spon­si­bil­ity for the whole thing.”

Lash was still a lit­tle dazed. I take re­spon­si­bil­ity. So he knew this was a mis­take, some bizarre mix-​up. Mauch­ly would apol­ogize, and they could all get back to work. He could get back to work . . .

But then, where was Tara?

Once more, Mauch­ly glanced down at the desk, re­ar­rang­ing the pa­pers. “To think we took you in. Asked for your help. Gave you ac­cess to our most priv­ileged da­ta. Ig­no­rant of the truth the whole time.”

More briskly, he snapped on the tape recorder, nod­ded to the cam­era­man.

“Dr. Lash, do you know why you’re here?” he asked. “Why we’re talk­ing to you?”

Lash froze. These were the words with which Mauch­ly had be­gun Han­der­ling’s in­ter­ro­ga­tion.

“You were brazen,” Mauch­ly went on af­ter a mo­ment. “Walk­ing, in ef­fect, in­to the teeth of the en­emy.” He paused. “But I sup­pose you had no choice. You re­al­ized we’d find you even­tu­al­ly. This way, you at least had a chance to save your­self. You could mud­dy pools, de­flect at­ten­tion, waste time mak­ing us to look in all the wrong places. Un­der oth­er cir­cum­stances, I might be im­pressed.”

Numb­ness, which had be­gun to re­cede, spread again through­out Lash’s limbs.

“Si­lence won’t help. You know how thor­ough­ly we work, you’ve seen it first­hand. Over the last sev­er­al hours we’ve as­sem­bled all the ev­idence we need: the cred­it card state­ments, tele­phone logs, video surveil­lance feeds. We have you at the lo­ca­tions of the deaths at the right times. We have your past his­to­ry, your crim­inal record. The re­al rea­son you were forced to leave the FBI.”

Lash’s dis­be­lief deep­ened. Tele­phone logs, surveil­lance feeds? A crim­inal record? He had no record. And he hadn’t been asked to leave the FBI. It was crazy, it made no sense . . .

But then he re­al­ized it did make sense. It made per­fect sense. The re­al killer knew Lash was clos­ing in. On­ly the re­al killer had the pow­er to cre­ate such ev­idence, pro­duce this tis­sue of lies.

“We would have caught you ear­li­er, of course. But your spe­cial sta­tus—you weren’t ac­tu­al­ly a client, and you weren’t ac­tu­al­ly an em­ploy­ee—kept you from con­sid­er­ation be­fore. Frankly, I’m sur­prised you didn’t make a break for it when you learned we were widen­ing our search.”

Mauch­ly was em­ploy­ing an­oth­er in­ter­ro­ga­tion tech­nique. He was re-​cre­at­ing—for Lash, and for the oth­er lis­ten­ers in the room—Lash’s own move­ments and deeds, the mo­ti­va­tions lead­ing up to the crime.

“But of course, you did make a break for it. To­day. You left for sev­er­al hours, just be­fore we were due to com­plete the sus­pect search. And when you came back you re­fused to en­ter the build­ing. Why was that?”

Lash said noth­ing.

“Did you have some, shall we say, un­fin­ished busi­ness with Tara Sta­ple­ton, who you felt knew too much? Or now that we were clos­ing in, did you feel the need to erase your old records was worth the risk?”

Lash worked to con­ceal his sur­prise. What old records?

“Last Fri­day you were caught by se­cu­ri­ty, try­ing to go out­side the Wall with sev­er­al fold­ers in­side your satchel. What was in those fold­ers, Dr. Lash?”

The room was silent for a mo­ment.

“It was my mis­take not to ex­am­ine them at the time, and again, I take full re­spon­si­bil­ity. But we’ve now cross-​checked the on­line se­cu­ri­ty logs. Let me re­mind you, for the record, just what was in those fold­ers. Copies of your own orig­inal Eden can­di­date ap­pli­ca­tion, filled out eigh­teen months ago.”

Again, Lash strug­gled to con­ceal his sur­prise. I was nev­er a can­di­date. Not re­al­ly. I nev­er filled out any ap­pli­ca­tion! I was nev­er even in the build­ing un­til two weeks ago!

“De­spite the pseudonym and the false in­for­ma­tion, there’s no doubt the ap­pli­cant was you. And the psy­cho­log­ical pro­file we put to­geth­er at that time—com­pared to the one Dr. Al­ic­to com­plet­ed on you just re­cent­ly—is re­veal­ing. Very re­veal­ing in­deed.”

Mauch­ly leaned back in his chair. The trou­bled look, the hes­ita­tion, was gone. “I can imag­ine how the irony of our ap­proach­ing you for help—you, of all peo­ple—must have struck home. Cer­tain­ly it ex­posed you to great risk. But al­so to great re­ward. Not on­ly did it make it eas­ier to gain ac­cess to fu­ture vic­tims, but it al­lowed you to go through the eval­ua­tion pro­cess again. Giv­en your po­si­tion, you could make such a re­quest with­out arous­ing sus­pi­cion. And this time, know­ing in ad­vance what to ex­pect, you were more suc­cess­ful.”

Mauch­ly looked at him, eyes nar­row­ing. “Need­less to say, steps have been tak­en to place Di­ana Mir­ren out of harm’s way. You won’t be hear­ing from her again, and she cer­tain­ly won’t be hear­ing from you.”

Lash just man­aged to re­main silent.

“And the Con­nellys can now en­joy their trip to Ni­agara Falls with­out fear of your de­scend­ing on them like an aveng­ing an­gel.”

When Lash still did not re­spond, Mauch­ly sighed. “Dr. Lash, you of all peo­ple should know what’s in store for you. Once we’ve com­plet­ed the in­ter­ro­ga­tion pro­cess, you’ll be hand­ed over to fed­er­al au­thor­ities. You have a chance to help your­self now.”

The room fell in­to a deep, lis­ten­ing si­lence. At last, Dr. Al­ic­to spoke up.

“You’re not like­ly to get any­thing use­ful from him,” he said. “At least, not vol­un­tar­ily. Chances are his psy­chosis is too ad­vanced.”

Mauch­ly nod­ded, dis­ap­point­ment on his face. “Your rec­om­men­da­tion?”

“Tho­razine, fol­lowed by a suf­fi­cient dose of sodi­um amy­tal, may ren­der him tem­porar­ily chat­ty. Or at least re­move any con­scious abil­ity to dis­sem­ble. We can prep him in one of the med­ical suites.”

Mauch­ly nod­ded again, more slow­ly. “Very well. But let’s not take any chances.” He turned, spoke to some­one stand­ing be­hind Lash. “You and your men ac­com­pa­ny Dr. Al­ic­to to Med­ical. Once there, I want Lash con­fined to a gur­ney with leather re­straints.”

“Un­der­stood,” came a fa­mil­iar-​sound­ing voice.

Mauch­ly turned back to Al­ic­to. “How long un­til he’s ready?”

“Six­ty min­utes. Nine­ty, to be safe.”

“Pro­ceed.” Mauch­ly stood up, looked at Lash cooly. “I’ll see you again short­ly, Dr. Lash. Mean­while, you leave me the un­en­vi­able task of break­ing all this to Richard Sil­ver.”

He held Lash’s gaze for a mo­ment. Then he turned on his heel and left the con­fer­ence room by a rear door.

A heavy hand fell on Lash’s shoul­der. “Come with us,” said the fa­mil­iar voice.

As the hand raised him from the seat and swiv­elled him around, Lash looked in­to the green eyes of Shel­drake, the se­cu­ri­ty hon­cho. Shel­drake stepped to one side, mo­tion­ing Lash for­ward. As he walked, Lash reg­is­tered half a dozen se­cu­ri­ty guards falling in­to po­si­tion be­hind him.

The door in front of him opened. As in a dark dream, Lash stepped in­to the hall­way, a guard at each el­bow. They guid­ed him down one cor­ri­dor, then an­oth­er, on their way to Med­ical.

Ahead, where two hall­ways in­ter­sect­ed, Lash saw a small knot of peo­ple. A tech­ni­cian was ap­proach­ing them from the in­ter­sec­tion, wheel­ing some piece of equip­ment on a met­al cart.

Lash’s sense of un­re­al­ity grew stronger. As they ap­proached the in­ter­sec­tion, one of the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers took his el­bow. “Make a left up ahead, and stop at the el­eva­tor bank,” he mur­mured. “Don’t be dif­fi­cult if you know what’s good for you.” The tech­ni­cian with the cart was al­most up­on them, and the guards guid­ed Lash to one side so the man could pass.

At that mo­ment, Lash felt a strange thing hap­pen. Time seemed to slow. The steps of the sur­round­ing guards de­cel­er­at­ed un­til each foot­fall be­came dis­tinct. He could hear his heart beat­ing monotonous­ly, like a drum.

He turned sud­den­ly, tug­ging free of the guard’s hand. Be­hind he could see the oth­er four guards, Shel­drake and Dr. Al­ic­to bring­ing up the rear. Shel­drake’s eyes met his and some­thing un­spo­ken passed be­tween them. Lash saw Shel­drake’s mouth be­gin to open and his arm rise, but ev­ery­thing was mov­ing so slow­ly there was still plen­ty of time. Tak­ing the cart from the tech­ni­cian, Lash flung it at the guards be­hind him. He felt the two at his sides try­ing to re­strain him: he stomped the in­step of the first and sent a knee in­to the groin of the oth­er.

His limbs seemed to move un­der some for­eign con­trol, as if a pup­peteer was guid­ing him. The cart had up­end­ed, en­tan­gling the rear guards; Lash grabbed the tech­ni­cian and shoved him in­to the ad­vanc­ing Shel­drake. The two fell back­ward in a tan­gle. And then Lash turned back to­ward the in­ter­sec­tion and be­gan to run. And as he did so—as he reached the cross­ing, glanced in both di­rec­tions, chose a cor­ri­dor, broke through the small knot of work­ers and dashed away—it seemed time once again be­gan to speed up, faster and faster, un­til his thoughts, his breath­ing, and the churn­ing of his legs be­came a blur of sound and col­or.

FORTY-FOUR

Lash turned a cor­ner, dashed head­long down a new cor­ri­dor, turned again. Then he stopped and pressed him­self against the wall, look­ing around wild­ly. There was no­body in sight. In the dis­tance he could hear raised voic­es, run­ning feet. His heart—which just mo­ments be­fore had seemed to beat so slow­ly—was ham­mer­ing with a ma­chine-​gun ca­dence. He wait­ed an­oth­er sec­ond, try­ing to slow it down. Then he pushed him­self from the wall and con­tin­ued. The sounds were not quite as dis­tant now, and he ducked in­to yet an­oth­er cor­ri­dor, pass­ing a door la­beled AR­RAY MAIN­TE­NANCE / SUB­SYS­TEM B. Ap­par­ent­ly, he had moved in­to a hard­ware sup­port area, manned by rel­ative­ly few work­ers.

But it made no dif­fer­ence. It was on­ly a mat­ter of time un­til they ran him down and re­sumed the in­ter­ro­ga­tion, with hand­cuffs and re­straints and meds this time.

He strug­gled against over­whelm­ing dis­be­lief. How had this hap­pened, and hap­pened so quick­ly? Had he re­al­ly risen from bed that morn­ing a free man, on­ly now to be hunt­ed as a psy­chot­ic mur­der­er? It seemed im­pos­si­ble that any­body, es­pe­cial­ly a man like Mauch­ly, could be­lieve it. Yet it was all too clear that he, and ev­ery­body else, did be­lieve. And Lash could imag­ine what the proof was. Mauch­ly had re­cit­ed the list of pho­ny but no doubt all too cred­ible ev­idence: tele­phone bills, psy­cho­log­ical eval­ua­tions, even a crim­inal record. How was it pos­si­ble to fight some­one with the al­most in­fi­nite re­sources of Eden at their fin­ger­tips?

Some­body ap­peared in the hall­way be­fore him—a tech­ni­cian, dressed in a white lab coat—and Lash trot­ted past her, head down, with­out nod­ding. An­oth­er in­ter­sec­tion, an­oth­er quick turn. The hall was nar­row­er here, the door­ways far­ther apart.

Had it re­al­ly be­gun as far back as those miss­ing news­pa­pers, the E-​ZPass and ATM sna­fus, the tam­per­ing with his mail? Was it pos­si­ble it had be­gun so ear­ly?

Yes. And then the cred­it card re­fusals, the prob­lem with his mort­gage pay­ments. It had all been part of a cam­paign of in­creas­ing pres­sure. Pres­sure brought to bear be­cause he was get­ting too close.

And now—now that he knew all—steps would be tak­en to make sure he would nev­er be heard. He’d be locked away, and his cries would min­gle with those of ev­ery oth­er in­mate protest­ing his in­no­cence . . .

He stopped sud­den­ly. Was he be­com­ing para­noid in his ex­trem­ity, or was it pos­si­ble even the pa­role of Ed­mund Wyre was part of this elab­orate at­tempt to si­lence him? And was it al­so pos­si­ble the mis­take that put his own re­ject­ed avatar in the Tank, that seemed to promise such a bright fu­ture, had sim­ply been a method to keep clos­er tabs on . . .

He willed his feet for­ward once again. But as he did, Mauch­ly’s words echoed: Steps have been tak­en to place Di­ana Mir­ren out of harm’s way. You won’t be hear­ing from her again.

There had to be some­body he could talk to, some­body who’d be­lieve. But who in­side the fortress of Eden knew any­thing about him, much less why he was re­al­ly here? It had been a care­ful­ly guard­ed se­cret from the be­gin­ning.

He could, in fact, think of on­ly one des­per­ate chance.

But how? He was lost in an end­less maze of cor­ri­dors. Ev­ery­thing was mon­itored. His hand fell to the iden­ti­ty bracelet cir­cling his wrist. A dozen scan­ners would no doubt have tracked his progress. It was on­ly min­utes, sec­onds, un­til he was found.

His eye fell on a door marked WEB FARM 15. He reached for the han­dle, found it locked. With a low curse, he moved his bracelet to­ward the iden­ti­ty scan­ner.

Then he paused. Step­ping back quick­ly, he trot­ted down the hall, po­si­tion­ing his bracelet be­low the scan­ners of half a dozen oth­er doors, in turn. Then he re­turned to the first door, po­si­tioned his bracelet. With a click, the door sprang open, and Lash stepped in­side cau­tious­ly.

The room was dim. As he’d hoped, it was de­sert­ed. Twin banks of met­al shelv­ing rose from floor to ceil­ing, jammed with rack-​mount­ed blade servers: a tiny frac­tion of the mas­sive dig­ital horse­pow­er that made Eden pos­si­ble. He walked be­tween the shelves to the back of the room, scan­ning the walls and floor. At last he saw it: an over­size met­al plate, set just above the floor mold­ing. It was paint­ed the same pale vi­olet as the walls, but it was clear­ly vis­ible.

He knelt be­fore it. The plate was per­haps four feet high by three feet wide. For a minute, he feared it might be locked, or guard­ed by an iden­ti­ty scan­ner like the doors. But it was fas­tened with a sim­ple hinge that yield­ed to his touch. He drew it open, looked in­side.

Be­yond, he could make out a cylin­dri­cal tube of smooth met­al. The sides and ceil­ing were cov­ered in a dense flow of ca­bling: fiber-​op­tic, CAT-6, half a dozen oth­er types Lash did not rec­og­nize. A cold cath­ode line ran along the ceil­ing, emit­ting faint blue il­lu­mi­na­tion. Far­ther down the ac­cess­way, Lash could see the tube di­vid­ing, first once, then again, like the trib­utaries of a great riv­er.

He smiled grim­ly. A riv­er was a pret­ty good metaphor. This da­ta con­duit was a riv­er of dig­ital in­for­ma­tion, link­ing ev­ery place in­side the Wall with ev­ery oth­er. He re­mem­bered how Mauch­ly had gone on about the high lev­els of se­cu­ri­ty, about the count­less road­blocks pre­vent­ing da­ta from stray­ing out­side the Wall. And Lash knew—from first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence—that the Wall was vir­tu­al­ly im­preg­nable. All the scan­ners, check­points, se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus, were fa­nat­ical­ly de­vot­ed to pre­vent­ing se­crets from get­ting out. They would be just as ef­fi­cient at pre­vent­ing him from get­ting out.

But what if he wasn’t try­ing to get out? What if, in fact, he want­ed to stay in­side the Wall—pen­etrate deep­er in­to its se­cret re­cess­es?

Lash looked around the room one last time. Then, as quick­ly and care­ful­ly as he could, he crawled in­to the da­ta con­duit and shut the pan­el be­hind him.

FORTY-FIVE

In­side a for­ward se­cu­ri­ty post on the third floor of the in­ner tow­er, Ed­win Mauch­ly ob­served Check­point I through mir­rored glass. It was a scene of con­trolled pan­de­mo­ni­um. At least a hun­dred Eden em­ploy­ees were lined up wait­ing to pass through the ex­it por­tals, kept in line by a dozen guards.

Mauch­ly turned from the win­dow to a near­by mon­itor. It dis­played a bird’s-​eye view of the main lob­by. An­oth­er, larg­er, line of peo­ple was stream­ing back from a makeshift se­cu­ri­ty check­point by the re­volv­ing doors. Uni­formed guards were check­ing pass­es and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, let­ting peo­ple past in ones and twos, search­ing for Christo­pher Lash. Mauch­ly not­ed with sat­is­fac­tion that plain­clothes se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel were min­gling with the lines, sub­tly dis­cour­ag­ing chat­ter, keep­ing clients apart from would-​be ap­pli­cants and vice ver­sa. Even in this cri­sis, with a Con­di­tion Delta in­voked for the first time in the tow­er’s his­to­ry, Eden kept the safe­ty and pri­va­cy of its clients a first pri­or­ity.

Mauch­ly be­gan to pace. It was a dis­taste­ful, messy sit­ua­tion, and one he found per­son­al­ly of­fen­sive. As li­ai­son be­tween Richard Sil­ver and the rest of the com­pa­ny, Mauch­ly had placed, in his own qui­et way, a very per­son­al stamp on Eden. He him­self had im­ple­ment­ed all se­cu­ri­ty ar­range­ments save for the pent­house, which Sil­ver in­sist­ed on han­dling per­son­al­ly. Mauch­ly had re­al­ized the acute need for se­cre­cy, for ab­so­lute con­fi­den­tial­ity, al­most be­fore there was a prod­uct to pro­tect. And he had been the first to un­der­stand how the widest pos­si­ble net­work of da­ta-​shar­ing—be­tween com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­glom­er­ates, fi­nan­cial com­pa­nies, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment—could not on­ly im­prove their prod­uct, but bring in rev­enue streams nev­er be­fore imag­ined.

Mauch­ly had no par­tic­ular use for ti­tle or recog­ni­tion, for the usu­al trap­pings of cor­po­rate glo­ry. Nev­er­the­less, he was fierce­ly proud and fierce­ly pro­tec­tive of the com­pa­ny. And that was why, as he paced slow­ly back and forth in­side the for­ward post, he felt such an up­swelling of rage.

He him­self had sug­gest­ed Lash. It was a stud­ied move: there was a threat to the cor­po­ra­tion, and Lash seemed the best per­son to iden­ti­fy that threat.

But in­stead of ush­er­ing a sav­ior in­to Eden, Mauch­ly had ad­mit­ted a ser­pent.

He was still amazed how well Lash had pulled it off. Mauch­ly knew lit­tle about psy­chol­ogy, but he did know that most peo­ple sick enough to be psy­cho­path­ic mur­der­ers had dif­fi­cul­ty con­ceal­ing their true na­ture. But Lash had been al­most per­fect. True, he had failed his pseu­do-​ap­pli­ca­tion, but there was noth­ing to hint at the true grav­ity of the sit­ua­tion. Yet Mauch­ly had now seen the ev­idence with his own eyes. Af­ter Sil­ver gave him the alarm­ing news—af­ter they knew where to look—the facts lit­er­al­ly poured in from the com­put­er. Records of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion. A de­viant med­ical his­to­ry as long as one’s arm. For all his bril­liance as a post-​grad­uate stu­dent, Lash was al­so crit­ical­ly bro­ken in some way, and it on­ly got worse. He was clever—he’d been able to hide his sick­ness and his record from the FBI at first, just as he’d been able to hide it from Eden—but all the hid­ing was past now.

As Mauch­ly looked back through the pri­va­cy glass, the feel­ing of be­tray­al and vi­ola­tion in­creased. In hind­sight, he should have heed­ed Dr. Al­ic­to’s post-​eval warn­ings. The cloud un­der which Lash left the FBI should have raised more red flags.

He could not go back and rec­ti­fy past mis­takes. But he could cer­tain­ly atone for them. Now he knew ex­act­ly what the score was. And he would set things right.

There was a low beep, and a video­phone on a near­by desk be­gan flash­ing. Mauch­ly ap­proached it, punched in a short code. “Mauch­ly here,” he said.

The small screen went blank for a mo­ment, then Sil­ver’s face ap­peared.

“Ed­win,” he said. “What’s the cur­rent sta­tus?” Con­cern was ev­ident in both his ex­pres­sion and his voice.

“The tow­er’s been placed in Con­di­tion Delta.”

“Was that re­al­ly nec­es­sary?”

“It seemed the fastest, safest way to emp­ty the build­ing. Ev­ery­one is be­ing evac­uat­ed ex­cept the se­cu­ri­ty staff. We’ve got screen­ers at all ex­its and check­points, watch­ing for Lash.”

“And our clients? Have steps been tak­en not to alarm them in any way?”

“They’ve been told it’s a rou­tine evac­ua­tion drill, that we con­duct them reg­ular­ly to en­sure our safe­ty pro­ce­dures are ful­ly op­ti­mized. It’s not far from the truth. So far, ev­ery­one has tak­en it in stride.”

“Good. Very good.”

Mauch­ly wait­ed for Sil­ver to sign off, but the face re­mained on the screen. “Is there some­thing else, Dr. Sil­ver?” Mauch­ly said af­ter a mo­ment.

Sil­ver shook his head slow­ly. “You don’t think there’s any chance we’ve made a mis­take, do you?”

“A mis­take, sir?”

“About Lash, I mean.”

“Im­pos­si­ble, sir. You gave me the re­port your­self. And you’ve seen the ev­idence we’ve turned up since. Be­sides, if the man was in­no­cent, he wouldn’t have run the way he did.”

“I sup­pose not. Still . . . you’ll han­dle things gen­tly, right? Make sure no harm comes to him?”

“Of course.”

Sil­ver smiled wan­ly, and the screen went blank.

A mo­ment lat­er, the door to the se­cu­ri­ty post opened and Shel­drake en­tered. He came for­ward, mas­sive body poised, as if await­ing or­ders. You could take the man out of the mil­itary, but it ap­peared you could not take the mil­itary out of the man.

“How are we far­ing, Mr. Shel­drake?” Mauch­ly asked.

“Sev­en­ty-​five per­cent of non-​Eden per­son­nel have left the build­ing,” Shel­drake said. “From the check­point counts, about thir­ty-​eight per­cent of work­ers in­side the Wall have al­ready passed through the se­cu­ri­ty por­tals. We ex­pect to have the evac­ua­tion com­plete with­in twen­ty min­utes.”

“And Lash?”

Shel­drake held up a print­out. “Scan­ners tracked him to a hard­ware sup­port area. He went in­to half a dozen rooms there. No fur­ther re­ports or sight­ings since.”

“Let me see that, please.” Mauch­ly glanced over the print­out. “Re­dun­dant Disk Si­lo Stor­age. Net­work In­fras­truc­ture. What would he be do­ing in places like that?”

“The same ques­tion we’ve been ask­ing our­selves, sir.”

“There’s some­thing wrong here.” Mauch­ly point­ed at the list­ing. “Ac­cord­ing to these time logs, Lash went in­to six dif­fer­ent rooms over the course of on­ly fif­teen sec­onds.” He hand­ed the print­out back to Shel­drake. “He couldn’t have vis­it­ed that many rooms so quick­ly. What was he do­ing?”

“Play­ing with us.”

“My thoughts ex­act­ly. The last room he en­tered was a Web farm. That’s where your men should con­cen­trate their search.”

“Very good, sir.”

“But con­tin­ue to de­ploy rov­ing pa­trols in­side the Wall. We have to as­sume Lash is prob­ing the perime­ter, try­ing to find some way to ex­it the in­ner tow­er. I’ll head up to the com­mand cen­ter; I can mon­itor the op­er­ation more ef­fi­cient­ly from there.”

He watched as the man turned to leave. Then, in a qui­eter voice, he said: “Mr. Shel­drake?”

“Sir?”

Mauch­ly re­gard­ed him a mo­ment. Shel­drake, of course, did not know ev­ery­thing—he did not know, for ex­am­ple, pre­cise­ly why Lash had been in the build­ing—but he knew enough to un­der­stand the man posed a grave threat.

“This man has al­ready com­pro­mised Eden. The longer he’s at large, the more dam­age he can cause. Sig­nif­icant dam­age.”

Shel­drake nod­ded.

“Con­tain­ment is key here. This kind of sit­ua­tion is best dealt with in­side the build­ing. The soon­er this whole thing goes away, the bet­ter for ev­ery­one at Eden.” Mauch­ly felt a fresh surge of anger. “Do you un­der­stand? The thing should go all the way away.”

Shel­drake nod­ded again, more slow­ly this time. “My feel­ings as well, sir.”

“Then get to it,” Mauch­ly said.

FORTY-SIX

In­side the da­ta con­duit, time seemed a stranger. The nar­row tube forked, and forked again; a seem­ing­ly in­fi­nite lat­tice spread­ing it­self hor­izon­tal­ly and ver­ti­cal­ly through­out the in­ner tow­er. There were none of the usu­al bench­marks by which to gauge the pas­sage of time: just a claus­tro­pho­bic world of faint blue light, bound­ed by end­less rivers of ca­bling. Now and then a larg­er con­duit would cross his path—ar­ter­ies amid the ma­trix of veins—but for the most part the tubes were hor­ri­bly cramped, forc­ing Lash to crawl at full length, like a spelunker thread­ing a nar­row pipe.

When­ev­er pos­si­ble, he climbed. Small met­al pro­jec­tions pro­trud­ed from the walls, meant for se­cur­ing ca­ble ties but al­so ser­vice­able for footholds. Now and then, a rough edge would snag his shirt, score his skin. From time to time he passed an ac­cess pan­el, like the one he used to en­ter the con­duit sys­tem, but they were nev­er marked and it was im­pos­si­ble to gauge how far he’d as­cend­ed. Like time, dis­tance was all but mean­ing­less in this close and for­eign world.

From time to time, Lash stopped to catch his breath and lis­ten. Once he heard a dis­tant boom break the si­lence, like the clos­ing of some gi­ant door in the deep­est sub-​base­ment of the tow­er. An­oth­er time, he thought he heard a ghost­ly cry pass along the nar­row con­duits, bare­ly au­di­ble, like the whis­per of a breeze. But then noth­ing would fol­low save the sound of his own heavy breath­ing. And he would move on again, ca­bles rustling at his pas­sage.

Al­though Lash was not claus­tro­pho­bic by na­ture, the faint light, the watch­ful si­lence, the wires that pressed in on all sides un­nerved him. He forced him­self to take small care­ful steps, to keep his bal­ance and pre­vent his feet from tan­gling in the ca­bling.

In time he found a ver­ti­cal con­duit, a lit­tle wider than most, that seemed to as­cend un­in­ter­rupt­ed, free­ing him from the fre­quent lat­er­al side-​trips he’d been forced to take. He climbed for what seemed hours, pulling him­self from pro­jec­tion to tiny pro­jec­tion, un­til his blood thrummed in his ears. At last he stopped again to rest, lean­ing against the un­even bunch­es of ca­bling, lis­ten­ing to the rasp of his breath. The mus­cles in his arms danced and jerked. Rais­ing an arm, he held it close to the blue guidewire and peered at his watch.

Five-​thir­ty. Was it pos­si­ble he’d on­ly been crawl­ing through these con­duits half an hour?

And how far had he climbed? He should have been able to es­ti­mate his rate of as­cent: he’d done more than his share of time-​tri­al wall climbs at Quan­ti­co. But not all his trav­el had been ver­ti­cal in this maze. And cramped in­to these slen­der tubes, fet­tered by ca­bling, it was hard to gauge. Had he reached the thir­ti­eth floor? The thir­ty-​fifth?

As he bal­anced, gasp­ing for breath, an im­age sud­den­ly came in­to his mind: a tiny spi­der, no big­ger than a speck, cling­ing pre­car­ious­ly to the in­side wall of a so­da straw . . .

He could not keep on climb­ing blind for­ev­er. There was a floor he was head­ed for, a spe­cif­ic floor. He need­ed to get his bear­ings, de­ter­mine ex­act­ly where he was.

And that meant leav­ing the con­duit.

He leaned against the tube wall, think­ing. If he left the safe­ty of the da­ta con­duit, the scan­ners would pick him up. Se­cu­ri­ty would im­me­di­ate­ly know where he was and fo­cus their search. There was no way he could fix his po­si­tion with­out rais­ing the alarm—was there?

Maybe most in­di­vid­ual of­fices, labs, and store­rooms had no scan­ners. Maybe most scan­ners were sit­uat­ed in the cor­ri­dors and doors. If he was care­ful where he ex­it­ed, and if he didn’t ac­ti­vate any sen­sors . . .

He had no choice but to try.

Lash climbed a few feet to the next junc­tion, then clam­bered la­bo­ri­ous­ly in­to the lat­er­al tube. He crawled for­ward over the bunch­es of ca­bles un­til he reached an ac­cess pan­el in the side wall. Here he wait­ed a mo­ment, lis­ten­ing. He could hear no noise from be­yond. Hold­ing his breath, he placed his fin­ger­tips against the in­side of the latch and pushed care­ful­ly against it. The catch sprung free and the pan­el opened.

In­stant­ly, light flood­ed in, bathing a thin an­gle of the con­duit a bril­liant white. Lash turned away and shut the pan­el. A bright­ly lit of­fice—or worse, a cor­ri­dor—lay be­yond. No good: he’d have to try else­where.

He moved for­ward again, pass­ing an­oth­er pan­el, then an­oth­er. At the fourth pan­el, he stopped. Once again, he pressed his fin­gers to the latch; once again, he eased it open. This time, the light be­yond was dim­mer. Per­haps it was a stor­age area, or the of­fice of some­one who’d left for the day. Ei­ther way, he wouldn’t get a bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty.

As stealthi­ly as he could, Lash pushed the pan­el wider. The space be­yond was silent.

He pulled him­self for­ward on his el­bows, peered out. In the dim light he could make out a dark­ened ter­mi­nal, a shad­owy desk. A de­sert­ed of­fice: he was in luck.

Qui­et­ly, but as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, he pulled him­self out the ac­cess­way and in­to the of­fice. As he rose to his feet, his shoul­ders, hunched so long in the cramped con­duits, protest­ed vig­or­ous­ly. He glanced around, hop­ing to find some mem­oran­dum or fire ex­it di­agram that would give the floor—but ex­cept for the ubiq­ui­tous desk and mon­itor the of­fice ap­peared un­used, emp­ty.

He cursed in­to the si­lence.

Wait. Ev­ery door he’d passed in­side Eden had al­ways had a la­bel fixed to its out­side. There was no rea­son to think this door was any dif­fer­ent. Doors were locked from the out­side: if he was care­ful to keep his iden­ti­ty bracelet away from the scan­ner, he could sim­ply open this one and peek at its la­bel.

He moved to the door, put a hand on its knob. Putting an ear to the door­jamb, he paused. Si­lence be­yond: no foot­steps, no mur­mur of con­ver­sa­tion.

Hold­ing his breath again, he cracked the door and peered out. Light streamed in: there was the usu­al pale-​vi­olet hall­way, ap­par­ent­ly de­sert­ed. Keep­ing his iden­ti­ty bracelet care­ful­ly be­hind his back, he opened the door a lit­tle wider. Now, it was just a ques­tion of read­ing the la­bel on the . . .

Shit. There was no la­bel on the door.

Lash closed the door again and let him­self sink against the wall. Of all the of­fices to emerge in­to, he’d cho­sen one that was va­cant.

He took a deep, steady­ing breath. Then, more quick­ly, he turned back to the door and cracked it open a sec­ond time.

There: across the hall was an­oth­er door, this one with a la­bel. A ti­tle be­neath, a num­ber above.

But Lash’s eyes, not yet ac­cus­tomed to the light, couldn’t quite make out the num­ber. He squint­ed, blinked, squint­ed again in­to the bril­liance.

Come on.

Lash grasped the door frame and leaned in­to the cor­ri­dor. Now he could make out the words: 2614. THORSSEN, J. POST-​SE­LEC­TION PRO­CESS­ING.

Twen­ty six? He thought in dis­be­lief. I’m on­ly at the twen­ty-​sixth floor?

“Hey, you!” a voice barked in­to the still­ness. “Stop there!”

Lash turned. Per­haps fifty feet away, at an in­ter­sec­tion, a guard in a jump­suit stood, point­ing at him.

“Don’t move!” the guard said, be­gin­ning to trot to­ward him.

For a mo­ment, Lash re­mained frozen, a deer caught in head­lights. As he watched, the guard’s hand slipped in­to his jump­suit.

Lash ducked back in­to the of­fice. As he did so, a sharp re­port sound­ed down the hall. Some­thing whined past the door.

Je­sus! They’re shoot­ing at me!

He stum­bled back­ward, al­most falling in his haste. Then he sprint­ed for the rear of the of­fice and al­most dove in­to the da­ta con­duit por­tal, bark­ing his shins cru­el­ly as he scram­bled in­side. He did not both­er clos­ing the ac­cess pan­el—all his pre­vi­ous care had been ren­dered point­less—and moved for­ward as quick­ly as he could, tak­ing forks at ran­dom, heed­less now of the metic­ulous tapestry of ca­bling torn away by the pas­sage of his el­bows and feet, bur­row­ing his way back in­to the maze­like safe­ty of the dig­ital riv­er.

FORTY-SEVEN

Tara Sta­ple­ton sat in her of­fice, swivel­ing be­hind her desk, star­ing at the bat­tered surf­board. The en­tire floor seemed de­sert­ed, the hall­way be­yond her door cloaked in a watch­ful si­lence. Al­though Tara was a key com­po­nent of Eden’s se­cu­ri­ty, she knew she should be gone, as well; Mauch­ly had said as much, out­side the Rio cof­fee shop. “Go home,” he’d said, giv­ing her shoul­der an un­char­ac­ter­is­tic squeeze. “You’ve had a rough af­ter­noon, but it’s over now. Go on home, re­lax.”

She rose and be­gan to pace. Go­ing home, she knew, wouldn’t make her feel any bet­ter.

She’d been in shock ev­er since Mauch­ly called her up to Sil­ver’s of­fice just af­ter noon. It had seemed im­pos­si­ble, what they told her: that Christo­pher Lash him­self, the man they’d brought in to in­ves­ti­gate the mys­te­ri­ous deaths, was him­self the killer. She hadn’t want­ed to be­lieve it, couldn’t be­lieve it. But Mauch­ly’s mea­sured tones, the pain in Richard Sil­ver’s face, left no room for dis­be­lief. She her­self had as­sist­ed Mauch­ly in polling the vast net­work of databas­es at their fin­ger­tips, col­lect­ing the in­for­ma­tion on Lash that damned him be­yond any pos­si­bil­ity of refu­ta­tion.

And then, when Lash had called her—when she’d gone to meet with him, af­ter first con­sult­ing Mauch­ly—her shock had deep­ened. He’d talked ur­gent­ly, al­most des­per­ate­ly. But she had bare­ly heard. In­stead, she’d been won­der­ing how her in­stincts could have been so wrong. Here was a man who had mur­dered four peo­ple in cold blood, who’d been placed at the crime scenes in half a dozen ways. Here was a man who—ac­cord­ing to all their da­ta—had grown up in a high­ly dys­func­tion­al fam­ily, spent most of his child­hood in and out of in­sti­tu­tions, suc­cess­ful­ly had his record as a sex of­fend­er sup­pressed. And yet she had grown to trust him, even like him, dur­ing the short time they had spent to­geth­er. She had nev­er been a trust­ing per­son. One of the rea­sons she’d had lim­it­ed suc­cess in re­la­tion­ships, why she’d jumped at Eden’s pi­lot pro­gram, was be­cause she didn’t al­low her­self to get close to any­body. So just what part of her elab­orate self-​de­fense mech­anism had be­trayed her so bad­ly?

There was some­thing else. Some of the things that Lash had said in the cof­fee shop were com­ing back. Talk about over­dos­es; about a brain chem­ical called Sub­stance P; about the two of them be­ing in dan­ger be­cause they knew too much. He was crazy, so the talk was crazy.

Right?

A sound: foot­steps in the hall, ap­proach­ing quick­ly. The knob to her of­fice door squealed as it turned. Some­one walked in­to her of­fice, like some dread specter sum­moned by her own thoughts.

It was Christo­pher Lash.

On­ly it wasn’t Lash as she’d ev­er seen him be­fore. Now, he tru­ly looked like an es­caped lu­natic. His hair was mat­ted and askew. An ug­ly bruise was com­ing up on his fore­head. His suit, nor­mal­ly neat to a fault, was caked with dust, shred­ded at the el­bows and knees. His hands were bleed­ing from count­less nicks and cuts.

He closed the door and leaned against it, breath­ing heav­ily.

“Tara,” he gasped in a hoarse voice. “Thank God you’re still here.”

She stared at him, frozen with sur­prise. Then she grabbed for the phone.

“No!” he said, step­ping for­ward.

Hand still on the phone, she dug in­to her purse, pulled out a can of pep­per spray, point­ed it at his face.

Lash stopped. “Please. Just do one thing for me. One thing. Then I’ll go.”

Tara tried to think. The guards would have tracked Lash to her of­fice by his iden­ti­ty bracelet. It was on­ly a mat­ter of mo­ments un­til they ar­rived. Should she try to hu­mor him?

Stalling for time seemed prefer­able to a strug­gle.

She with­drew her hand from the phone, but kept the can of pep­per spray raised. “What hap­pened to your face?” she asked, try­ing to keep her voice calm. “Were you beat­en?”

“No.” The faintest ghost of a smile passed across his face. “It’s a ca­su­al­ty of my mode of trans­porta­tion.” The smile van­ished. “Tara, they’re shoot­ing at me.”

Tara said noth­ing. Para­noid. Delu­sion­al.

Lash took an­oth­er step for­ward, stopped when Tara aimed the can threat­en­ing­ly. “Lis­ten. Do this one thing, if not for me, then for those cou­ples who died. And the cou­ples who are still un­der threat.” He gasped in a breath. “Search the Eden database for the first client avatar ev­er record­ed.”

A minute had passed. The guards would be here soon.

“Tara, please.”

“Stand over there, by the far cor­ner,” Tara said. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Lash moved to the far side of her of­fice.

Watch­ing him care­ful­ly, she stepped to­ward her ter­mi­nal, pep­per spray at the ready. She did not sit down, but half turned to­ward the key­board, lean­ing for­ward to type the query one-​hand­ed.

The first client avatar ev­er record­ed . . .

Cu­ri­ous­ly, the search re­turned an avatar with no as­so­ci­at­ed name. There was just the iden­ti­ty code. Yet it was a code that made no sense.

“Let me guess,” Lash said. “It isn’t even a ra­tio­nal num­ber. It’s just a string of ze­ros.”

Now she turned to look at him more close­ly. He was still breath­ing hard, the blood drip­ping from his torn hands to the floor. But he was look­ing at her steadi­ly, and—no mat­ter how close­ly she looked back—she could de­tect no hint of mad­ness in his eyes.

She glanced up at the wall clock. Two min­utes.

“How did you know that?” she asked. “Lucky guess?”

“Who’d have guessed that? Nine ze­ros?”

Tara let the ques­tion hang in the air.

“Re­mem­ber those queries I asked to run from your com­put­er this morn­ing? I’d just got­ten an idea. A ter­ri­ble idea, but the on­ly one that fit. Those queries you fol­lowed up with all but con­firmed it.”

Tara start­ed to an­swer, then stopped.

“Why should I lis­ten to any of this?” she asked in­stead, still stalling. “I saw the da­ta on you. I saw your record, the things you’ve done. I saw why you left the FBI: you let two po­lice­men and your own broth­er-​in-​law die. You led a mur­der­er right to them, de­lib­er­ate­ly.”

Lash shook his head. “No. That’s not what hap­pened. I tried to save them. I just fig­ured it out too late. It was a case like this one. A killer’s pro­file that didn’t make sense. Ed­mund Wyre, didn’t you read about it in the pa­pers? He was killing wom­en as bait, writ­ing pho­ny con­fes­sions. Mean­while, stalk­ing his re­al tar­get: the cops who were in­ves­ti­gat­ing. He got two. I’m the one he missed. That case wrecked my mar­riage, ru­ined my sleep for a year.”

Tara did not re­ply.

“Don’t you un­der­stand? I’ve been set up here. Framed. Some­body touched my records, dis­tort­ed them. I know who that some­body is.”

He moved to the door, glanced back. “I have to go. But there’s some­thing else you need to do. Go to the Tank. Run six oth­er avatars—the wom­en from the six su­per­cou­ples—against avatar ze­ro.”

In the dis­tance, an el­eva­tor chimed. Tara heard raised voic­es, the sound of run­ning feet.

Lash start­ed vis­ibly. He put his hand on the door frame, poised him­self to flee. Then he gave her one fi­nal look, and his ex­pres­sion seemed to burn it­self through her. “I know you want all this to end. Run that query. Dis­cov­er for your­self just what’s go­ing on. Save the oth­ers.”

Then, with­out an­oth­er word, he was gone.

Slow­ly, Tara sank back in­to her chair. She glanced up at the clock: just un­der four min­utes.

Sec­onds lat­er, a team of se­cu­ri­ty guards burst in­to her of­fice, guns in hand. Their lead­er—a short, stock­ily built man Tara rec­og­nized as Whet­stone—checked the cor­ners quick­ly, then looked at her.

“You all right, Ms. Sta­ple­ton?” Be­side Whet­stone, one of the guards was peer­ing in­to the room’s lone clos­et.

She nod­ded.

Whet­stone turned back to his team. “He must have gone that way,” he said, point­ing down the hall­way. “Drey­fuss, McBain, se­cure the next in­ter­sec­tion. Reynolds, stay with me. Let’s check the near­est ac­cess pan­els.” And he trot­ted out of the of­fice, hol­ster­ing his weapon and pulling out his ra­dio as he did so.

For a mo­ment, Tara lis­tened to the re­treat­ing foot­steps, the furtive sounds of con­ver­sa­tion. Then they died away and the cor­ri­dor fell back in­to si­lence.

She re­mained in her chair, mo­tion­less, while the wall clock ticked through five min­utes. Then she rose and made her way across the car­pet, avoid­ing the blood­stains. She hes­itat­ed in the door­way a sec­ond, then stepped in­to the cor­ri­dor, head­ing for the el­eva­tor. The Tank was no more than a few min­utes away.

But then she stopped and—reach­ing a new de­ci­sion—turned and be­gan walk­ing, more quick­ly now, back in the di­rec­tion she had come.

FORTY-EIGHT

The com­mand cen­ter of Eden’s se­cu­ri­ty di­vi­sion was a large, bunker-​like space on the twen­ti­eth floor of the in­ner tow­er. Two dozen em­ploy­ees filled the room, tran­scrib­ing pas­sive sen­sor en­tries, con­trol­ling re­mote cam­eras.

Ed­win Mauch­ly stood alone at the con­trol sta­tion. On a dozen screens, he could bring up in­for­ma­tion from any of ten thou­sand live datas­treams mon­itor­ing the build­ing: cam­era feeds, sen­sor in­puts, ter­mi­nal keystrokes, scan­ner logs. Hands be­hind his back, he moved his gaze from screen to screen.

Some­where, in that vast storm of da­ta, Christo­pher Lash was dodg­ing all the rain­drops.

Be­hind him, a door opened. Mauch­ly did not turn: he did not need to. The heavy, clipped tread, the brief si­lence, told him Shel­drake had just en­tered.

“They missed him by five, maybe ten sec­onds,” Shel­drake said, ap­proach­ing the con­trol sta­tion.

Mauch­ly reached for a key­board. “He spent four min­utes in Tara Sta­ple­ton’s of­fice. Four min­utes, when he knew ev­ery sec­ond put him at greater risk. Why did he do that?” He typed again. “He left her of­fice head­ing south­bound. As he ran, he passed his iden­ti­ty bracelet be­neath a dozen ad­di­tion­al door scan­ners along the cor­ri­dor. Which of those doors he en­tered—if any—re­mains un­known.”

“I’ve got men check­ing them out now.”

“It’s im­por­tant to be thor­ough, Mr. Shel­drake. But I have the strong feel­ing he’s no longer on the thir­ty-​fifth floor.”

“It’s still hard to be­lieve he’s us­ing da­ta con­duits to get around,” Shel­drake said. “They’re meant for main­te­nance ac­cess, not trav­el. He must feel like a pipe clean­er squeez­ing his way through those things.”

Mauch­ly stroked his chin. “He should be try­ing to find a way out, flee the build­ing. In­stead, he’s climb­ing. First, to the twen­ty-​sixth floor. Now, the thir­ty-​fifth.”

“Could he be af­ter some­one, or some­thing? A sui­cide plot? Sab­otage?”

“I con­sid­ered that. If he’s des­per­ate enough, it’s pos­si­ble. On the oth­er hand, he didn’t harm Tara Sta­ple­ton just now—who, af­ter all, is the per­son who turned him in. The fact is, we sim­ply don’t have a suf­fi­cient bead on his pathol­ogy to know for sure.” Mauch­ly scanned the screens. “I don’t want to draw too many of your men away from the search. But you should place small de­tails on the most crit­ical in­stal­la­tions. And have an­oth­er guard the emer­gen­cy pent­house ac­cess.”

“Shouldn’t we al­so post teams out­side ac­cess pan­els? Now that we know how he’s get­ting around, we can ar­range an am­bush.”

“The ques­tion is where? There are prob­ably a hun­dred miles of da­ta con­duits, they hon­ey­comb the en­tire in­ner tow­er. There’s five times that many ac­cess pan­els. We can’t watch them all.”

He stepped back from the mon­itors. “He has a plan,” he said, more to him­self than to Shel­drake. “If we learn what that is, we’ll learn where to trap him.”

Then he turned. “Come,” he said. “I think we need to have a lit­tle talk with Tara Sta­ple­ton.”

FORTY-NINE

In the room known as the Tank, the wall clocks read 18:20. Nor­mal­ly, the space would have been full of Eden tech­ni­cians: mon­itor­ing through­put, scrib­bling notes on palm­top com­put­ers, en­sur­ing the match­ing pro­cess that was the heart and soul of Eden pro­ceed­ed in a ful­ly op­ti­mized fash­ion.

This evening, how­ev­er, the room was emp­ty. The di­als and mon­itors dis­played their da­ta for no one. There was no sound but the whis­per of forced air, no move­ment but the blink­ing of di­ag­nos­tic LEDs. The Tank, like the rest of Eden, had been evac­uat­ed.

As the clocks rolled over to 18:21, a soft click sound­ed in the hall­way out­side. The dou­ble doors part­ed. A lone fig­ure peered cau­tious­ly with­in. Then it came for­ward, closed the doors, and moved qui­et­ly across the room.

As she’d moved through the cor­ri­dors of the in­ner tow­er, Tara Sta­ple­ton had been struck by the empti­ness, the at­mo­sphere of watch­ful si­lence. Yet she was to­tal­ly un­pre­pared for what now lay be­fore her. She had been in this room hun­dreds, maybe thou­sands of times. Ev­ery time, it had been hum­ming with ac­tiv­ity. Ev­ery time, peo­ple had been stand­ing be­fore the Tank, mes­mer­ized by the avatars glid­ing rest­less­ly with­in their dig­ital uni­verse. But there were no spec­ta­tors now, and the Tank was dark and emp­ty. Client pro­cess­ing had been halt­ed when the tow­er was placed un­der Con­di­tion Delta, and would not re­sume un­til the next shift be­gan work the fol­low­ing morn­ing.

She came for­ward, to­ward the face of the Tank. She stretched out a hand to the cool, smooth sur­face. The sen­sa­tion of great depth, of vel­vety dark­ness, re­mained. And yet how strange to see it de­pop­ulat­ed. Though she knew the avatars were just elec­tri­cal phan­toms—bi­na­ry con­structs that had no ex­is­tence out­side the com­put­er—it seemed wrong some­how, against na­ture, to drain them from the Tank, leav­ing it life­less.

Her eyes drift­ed away, stop­ping when they reached the wall clock. 18:22. Twen­ty-​two min­utes past six.

She walked to a near­by con­sole. Typ­ing a se­ries of com­mands, she brought her­self in­to the Tank’s datas­pace and ac­cessed the cen­tral client archives.

Then she paused. As chief se­cu­ri­ty tech, her au­tho­riza­tion was more than high enough to car­ry out what Lash had sug­gest­ed. But there would be a record of her ac­cess, a log of her keystrokes. Ques­tions would be asked, prob­ably soon­er than lat­er.

She shook her head. It didn’t mat­ter. If Lash was ly­ing—if this whole busi­ness was some part of his mad­ness, some imag­inary con­spir­acy or per­se­cu­tion com­plex—she’d know it pret­ty damn quick. On the oth­er hand, if he was telling the truth . . .

She flexed her fin­gers briefly, re­turned them to the key­board. She didn’t yet know what it meant if Lash was telling the truth. But one way or the oth­er, she had to learn.

She typed an­oth­er com­mand. The screen went black briefly, then re­freshed.

PROP. EDEN INC.

CLIENT COM­PAT­IBIL­ITY

VIR­TU­AL PROV­ING CHAM­BER

REV.27.4.1.1

HIGH­LY CON­FI­DEN­TIAL AND PRO­PRI­ETARY

L-4, EX­EC-​D OR HIGH­ER CLEAR­ANCE RE­QUIRED

MAN­UAL POP­ULA­TION MODE EN­ABLED

SIM­ULAT­ED ON­LY

TO­TAL POP­ULA­TION COUNT?

As she stared at the screen, Tara felt a sud­den urge to place her own avatar in the Tank: to see her own dig­ital rep­re­sen­ta­tion glide through that vel­vet dark­ness. Had it tak­en long to find Matt Bolan’s avatar? She was stand­ing at a com­mand con­sole. She knew his iden­ti­ty code by heart; she could—

She re­mind­ed her­self this was no time for wist­ful nos­tal­gia. Be­sides, she wasn’t do­ing this for Lash, or even for the Wilners or Thor­pes. She was do­ing this for her­self. If she could help un­rav­el this mys­tery, set things right . . . maybe it wasn’t too late for her own avatar, af­ter all.

She took a deep breath. Then she typed a sin­gle num­ber: 2.

The screen re­freshed:

EN­TER AVATAR IDEN­TI­TY CODES

She typed the num­ber she’d seen in her of­fice, the first client avatar ev­er record­ed: 000000000.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, there was a glow with­in the Tank. A lone avatar ap­peared, tiny and frag­ile in the dark vast­ness: a pale, pearles­cent ap­pari­tion of shift­ing col­or and shape. Some­times it drift­ed al­most list­less­ly, oth­er times it dart­ed at great speed.

Tara looked back at the screen. Open­ing a sep­arate win­dow, she post­ed a query to the client archives for the iden­ti­ty codes of the six su­per­cou­ple fe­males. The re­sults came back im­me­di­ate­ly:

Re­turn­ing to the main screen, Tara en­tered Lind­say Thor­pe’s num­ber. Im­me­di­ate­ly, an­oth­er avatar glowed in­to ex­is­tence. She paused, glanc­ing over her shoul­der. With on­ly two avatars in the Tank, the match­ing pro­cess—for bet­ter or worse—should take on­ly mo­ments.

As she watched, the two avatars drift­ed: now puls­ing with new col­or, now al­most fad­ing from view. Grad­ual­ly their range at­ten­uat­ed as the at­trac­tion al­go­rithms drew them clos­er to­geth­er. There was a brief mo­ment when they cir­cled grace­ful­ly, like dancers per­form­ing a pas de deux. Sud­den­ly, they dart­ed at each oth­er. There was a flare of bril­liant white, then a storm of da­ta ap­peared on near­by mon­itors as a mil­lion vari­ables—the in­di­vid­ual nu­ances of taste, pref­er­ence, emo­tion, and mem­ory that make up a per­son­al­ity—were in­stan­ta­neous­ly parsed and com­pared by the su­per­com­put­er, Liza. A new win­dow ap­peared on the screen:

PROV­ING CHAM­BER DA­TA OVERVIEW

$START PRO­CESS

BASE­LINE COM­PAR­ISON 9602194

A-​SHIFT NEG

CHECK­SUM IDENT 000000000: 4A32F

CHECK­SUM IDENT 000462196: 94DA7

PEN­ETRA­TION DA­TA: 14A NOM­INAL

COL­LI­SION TOPOL­OGY: 99 NOM­INAL

DIG­ITAL AR­TI­FACT­ING: 0

ANOMA­LOUS PRO­CESS­ES: 0

DATAFIELD DEPTH, POST-​PEN­ETRA­TION: 1948549.23 Mbit/sec

CLUS­TER SIZE: 4096

START TIME: 18:25:31:014 EST

END TIME: 18:25:31:982 EST

BASAL COM­PAT­IBIL­ITY (HEURIS­TIC MOD­EL): 97.8304912 %

M.O.E: + / -.00094 %

$END PRO­CESS

Tara stared at the mon­itor in sur­prise. Lind­say Thor­pe’s avatar and the un­known avatar, 000000000, had just been suc­cess­ful­ly matched. It wasn’t a per­fect match, like Lind­say’s match to Lewis Thor­pe, but at 97.8 per­cent it was with­in ac­cept­able range.

She re­moved Lind­say’s avatar and then—more quick­ly—be­gan to in­tro­duce the avatars of the oth­er wom­en, one by one, in­to the tank. And one by one, they al­so matched suc­cess­ful­ly with the mys­tery avatar. Karen Wilner, 97.1 per­cent. Lynn Con­nel­ly, 98.9 per­cent.

In grow­ing dis­be­lief, Tara en­tered the three fi­nal codes. Again, suc­cess­ful match­es.

All six wom­en—from all six of Eden’s su­per­cou­ples to date—matched with the mys­tery avatar.

What was go­ing on?

Could avatar 000000000 be some kind of con­trol mech­anism that matched with all avatars in the tank? It was pos­si­ble: al­though she was fa­mil­iar with the pro­cess, she didn’t know all its tech­ni­cal sub­tleties.

Turn­ing back to the com­put­er, she called up a non-​su­per­cou­ple client at ran­dom, in­sert­ed her avatar in­to the Tank with the mys­tery avatar. The com­pat­ibil­ity came back at 38 per­cent: no match.

Now, Tara wrote a short rou­tine that ex­tract­ed a ran­dom sam­pling of a thou­sand fe­male clients, past and cur­rent, and in­sert­ed their avatars in­to the Tank, a hun­dred at a time. Briefly, the Tank flared in­to a sem­blance of nor­mal­ity as the ghost­ly ap­pari­tions ap­peared with­in. This pro­cess took a lit­tle longer, but with­in five min­utes it, too, was com­plete.

None of these thou­sand avatars suc­cess­ful­ly matched with avatar 000000000.

Abrupt­ly, the watch­ful si­lence was bro­ken by the beep of her cell phone.

Tara jerked in sur­prise, then fum­bled for her phone, heart rac­ing. The call had a Con­necti­cut area code, and she didn’t rec­og­nize the num­ber. She flipped the phone open. “Hel­lo?”

“Tara?” the voice was faint, thinned by a wash of stat­ic, but nev­er­the­less she rec­og­nized it in­stant­ly.

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“The Tank.”

“Thank God. And what did—?”

“Lat­er. Where are you?”

“In a da­ta con­duit not far from you, I think. I—”

“Wait.” And Tara low­ered the phone.

She thought about ev­ery­thing Mauch­ly said when he’d told her Lash was the killer. She thought about the din­er, what Lash had be­gun to say. She thought about the look on his face when he’d ap­peared in her of­fice, begged her to do just one more thing. Most of all, she thought about the six su­per­cou­ples, and the mys­te­ri­ous avatar whose iden­ti­ty code was ze­ro.

Tara was not by na­ture an im­pul­sive per­son. She al­ways ex­am­ined the ev­idence, weighed the pros and cons, be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion. Right now, the cons were dead­ly se­ri­ous. If Lash was the killer, she was in grave dan­ger.

And the pros? Help­ing an in­no­cent man. Solv­ing the rid­dle of the two dead cou­ples. Maybe spar­ing the lives of fu­ture vic­tims.

Tara put her free hand in­to her pock­et, with­drew two long, nar­row strips of lead foil. She turned the strips over, look­ing at them. Maybe she wasn’t im­pul­sive. But she re­al­ized that, this time, she’d made up her mind what to do long be­fore set­ting foot in this room.

She lift­ed the phone. “Meet me out­side the Tank. Quick as you can.”

“But—”

“Just do it.” And then she closed the phone, killed the run­ning pro­cess­es, logged off the con­trol ter­mi­nal, and turned her back on the dark and emp­ty Tank.

FIFTY

When Lash round­ed the cor­ner, Tara was wait­ing. He ap­proached quick­ly.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thanks for tak­ing a chance.”

“You look even more beat up than be­fore,” she replied. Some­thing flashed sil­ver in her hands, and for a ridicu­lous mo­ment Lash feared it was a pair of hand­cuffs. Then he re­al­ized it was a strip of lead foil. He watched as she took his bleed­ing hand and wrapped the foil care­ful­ly around his iden­ti­ty bracelet.

“What are you do­ing?” he asked.

“Neu­tral­iz­ing the scan­ners.”

“I didn’t know you could do that.”

“No­body’s sup­posed to. I got these from slit­ting open a lead apron in a ra­di­ol­ogy lab down the hall from my of­fice. They’ll buy a lit­tle time.” She raised her own arm: an iden­ti­cal strip of foil had been wrapped around her own bracelet.

“Then you trust me,” he said, im­mense­ly re­lieved.

“I didn’t say that. But with­out the foil I’ll nev­er get the chance to know whether you’re ly­ing or not. Tell me one thing. You were kid­ding about them shoot­ing at you, right?”

Lash shook his head.

“Je­sus. Come on, we can’t stay here.” And she led him down the cor­ri­dor.

They reached an in­ter­sec­tion, turned the cor­ner. “What did you find out?” he asked.

“I found out avatar 000000000 was a match for all six wom­en.”

“God damn. I knew it!”

At that mo­ment, Tara pushed him through a door­way.

Lash glanced around. “Is this a ladies’ room?”

“With my bracelet cov­ered, I can’t un­lock any doors. Here at least we can talk undis­turbed. So talk.”

“All right.” Lash hes­itat­ed a sec­ond, won­der­ing just what to say. It hadn’t been easy, even in the cof­fee shop; here, with his limbs trem­bling from the long climb and his heart ham­mer­ing in his chest, it would be even hard­er.

“You re­al­ize I can’t prove any­thing,” he said. “The most im­por­tant piece is still miss­ing. But the rest of the pieces fit per­fect­ly.”

She nod­ded.

“You re­mem­ber what I start­ed to tell you? How on­ly some­body in Eden’s top ech­elons could have done this? Known ev­ery as­pect of Lind­say Thor­pe’s back­ground, tam­pered with her med­ical or­ders, mod­ified her pre­scrip­tion, faked the pa­per trail. Just as on­ly some­body with all Eden at their fin­ger­tips could have doc­tored my records, mor­phed me in­to a psy­cho­path­ic des­per­ado. Some­body who’d been with the com­pa­ny back when it was a Phar­mGen sub­sidiary. Some­body high­ly placed enough to know about the ear­ly tests on scol­ipane. Some­body who’d been a part of Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed since the very first client walked through the doors.”

“What are you say­ing?” she asked.

“You know what I’m say­ing. The per­son who did all this—the per­son who’s tar­get­ing the su­per­cou­ples—is avatar ze­ro.”

“But who . . .” The ques­tion died in her throat.

Lash nod­ded grim­ly. “That’s right. Richard Sil­ver is avatar ze­ro.”

“Im­pos­si­ble.”

But Lash watched Tara’s eyes as she said this; watched her trav­el the same path of dis­cov­ery he’d al­ready tak­en. Who else but Sil­ver would have such a num­ber? Who else could have been in the sys­tem all this time? Per­haps on some lev­el, she had al­ready guessed. Per­haps that’s why she’d come pre­pared with the lead foil; why she’d come at all.

Tara just shook her head. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. Yet. We’re taught if you can de­ter­mine mo­tive, you can de­ter­mine ev­ery­thing else: per­son­al­ity, be­hav­ior, op­por­tu­ni­ty. I don’t ful­ly un­der­stand the mo­tive. Fact is, on­ly Sil­ver can tell us for sure.”

There was a dis­tant flur­ry of con­ver­sa­tion, the open­ing and clos­ing of doors. They wait­ed, bare­ly breath­ing. More chat­ter, clos­er this time; a dis­tort­ed voice on a ra­dio. Then more talk, far­ther away. And then, si­lence.

Lash ex­haled slow­ly. “The idea came to me in your of­fice this morn­ing, when avatar ze­ro kept com­ing to the top of the search list. The on­ly avatar with­out a name. But it wasn’t un­til I met with an old class­mate in Cold Spring—when I saw the con­nec­tions to Phar­mGen and scol­ipane, and its aw­ful re­ac­tion with Sub­stance P—that it came to­geth­er. And Sil­ver, watch­ing ev­ery­thing from his ivory tow­er, must have re­al­ized how close I was. Thus the twen­ty-​first-​cen­tu­ry smear job.”

“What about Karen Wilner?”

“I’ve bare­ly had time to trace what hap­pened to Lind­say Thor­pe. I’m cer­tain Sub­stance P is at the heart of it. As for the de­liv­ery sys­tem, I can’t yet say.”

Tara looked at him. “Even with ev­ery­thing you’ve told me, it’s hard to be­lieve. Sil­ver might be a recluse, but he’s the last guy to strike me as a killer.”

“Reclu­sive­ness is a red flag. Still, he doesn’t fit the ob­vi­ous pro­file. But like I said, the pro­file’s con­tra­dic­to­ry to be­gin with. The mur­ders are too sim­ilar, some­how. Art­less, in a way. As if a child was com­mit­ting them.” He paused. “Do I strike you as a killer?”

“No.”

“But you turned me in any­way.”

“And I might again. No one else be­lieves you.”

“No one else has heard my sto­ry. Just you.”

“The ju­ry’s still out un­til I hear what Sil­ver has to say.”

Lash nod­ded slow­ly. “In that case, we’ve got on­ly one op­tion left.”

“What do you mean?” But from Tara’s eyes, Lash could see that she al­ready knew.

FIFTY-ONE

Ed­win Mauch­ly stood in the hush of Tara Sta­ple­ton’s emp­ty of­fice, scan­ning the room slow­ly. To an ob­serv­er, the scan might have ap­peared desul­to­ry. Yet he missed noth­ing: the posters, pot­ted plants, spot­less desk with three mon­itors ar­rayed be­hind it, bat­tered surf­board lean­ing against the wall.

Though he had per­son­al­ly cham­pi­oned her rise through the ranks—though he had im­plic­it trust in her tal­ents—Tara re­mained a ci­pher to him. She al­ways dressed pro­fes­sion­al­ly, rarely joked, even more rarely smiled. She was not giv­en to small talk or gos­sip. All busi­ness, all the time.

His eye re­turned to the surf­board. Though he’d ar­ranged for its pres­ence here, it had al­ways puz­zled him. It didn’t jibe with her al­most fa­nat­ic de­sire for pri­va­cy, with the wall she’d erect­ed around her pri­vate life. Clear­ly, she wasn’t just show­ing off: if she want­ed to do that, she would have brought in the cham­pi­onship tro­phies he knew from back­ground checks that she’d won. No—the surf­board was there, one way or an­oth­er, for her own ben­efit.

His eye fell to the car­pet­ing, to the droplets of blood that were vis­ible near the door­way. Else­where, Lash had left lit­tle or no trail. Not here. Why? Had he been ges­tur­ing? Threat­en­ing?

That led back to the main ques­tion. Why had Lash come here at all? Why had he tak­en the risk?

There were too many ques­tions. Mauch­ly plucked the ra­dio from his pock­et, pressed the trans­mit but­ton.

“Read­ing you, sir,” came the voice from the com­mand cen­ter.

“Who is this? Gilmore?”

“Yes, Mr. Mauch­ly.”

“Go over with me again Ms. Sta­ple­ton’s move­ments af­ter Lash left her of­fice.”

“One mo­ment, sir.” The clack of keystrokes sound­ed over the ra­dio. “The ad­vance team came through at 18:06. At 18:12 she left her of­fice and was tracked to the ra­di­ol­ogy lab, down the hall. She was there for three min­utes. At 18:15 she left the lab and pro­ceed­ed to the el­eva­tor bank. She took el­eva­tor 104 up four sto­ries, to the thir­ty-​ninth floor. Sen­sors tracked her to the Prov­ing Cham­ber.”

“The Tank.”

“Yes, sir. She opened the doors with her iden­ti­ty bracelet at 18:21.”

“Go on.”

“Pas­sive sen­sors in the Tank con­firm her pres­ence there for the next nine min­utes. Af­ter that, noth­ing.”

“Noth­ing? What do you mean, ‘noth­ing’?”

“Just that, sir. It’s like she van­ished.”

“And the team we dis­patched to the Tank?”

“Ar­rived there just now. The place is de­sert­ed.”

“Can you check the ter­mi­nal logs, see if she ac­cessed any sys­tems?”

“We’re check­ing that now.”

“What about Lash? Any up­dates?”

“There was a sen­sor hit on the thir­ty-​sev­enth floor ten min­utes ago. Then sev­er­al on the thir­ty-​ninth floor a few min­utes lat­er.”

“Thir­ty-​ninth,” Mauch­ly re­peat­ed. “In the vicin­ity of the Tank?”

“The last one was, sir.”

“And when was that?”

“Eigh­teen thir­ty-​one.”

Mauch­ly low­ered the ra­dio. One minute af­ter they lost con­tact with Tara. And on the same floor, the same spot.

Mauch­ly glanced at his watch. Fif­teen min­utes with­out a sen­sor hit on ei­ther Lash or Tara. That made no sense—no sense at all.

He con­sid­ered the sit­ua­tion. Ex­cept for the check­points and the el­eva­tors, there were no video cam­eras in­stalled in the in­ner tow­er. There had seemed no need: un­der Eden’s dra­co­ni­an se­cu­ri­ty pol­icy, the in­ner tow­er was rid­dled with so many move­ment sen­sors that any per­son wear­ing an iden­ti­ty bracelet could be traced to a twen­ty-​foot area. And the lim­it­ed num­ber of en­trances, the rigid­ly pa­trolled check­points, en­sured on­ly au­tho­rized per­son­nel went in­side the Wall. The in­fras­truc­ture was de­signed to guard against cor­po­rate es­pi­onage: there were no con­tin­gen­cy plans for chas­ing an es­caped mur­der­er.

Still, the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols should have worked. There was on­ly one way to de­feat the iden­ti­ty bracelets, and that was a high­ly sen­si­tive se­cret Lash could not be aware of . . .

Could he?

He raised the ra­dio again. “Gilmore, I want you to di­vert the rov­ing pa­trols. Send them all to thir­ty-​eight and above. I want spot­ters in the stair­wells and ma­jor in­ter­sec­tions. If any­thing moves that isn’t a se­cu­ri­ty guard, I want to know about it.”

“Very well, sir.”

Mauch­ly re­turned the ra­dio to his pock­et. Then he ex­it­ed the of­fice and walked thought­ful­ly down the hall.

The ra­di­ol­ogy lab was al­most sepul­chral in its empti­ness. He gazed around at the idle equip­ment, the gleam­ing stain­less-​steel in­stru­ments.

Why had Tara come here?

Christo­pher Lash, psy­cho­path­ic mur­der­er, had just burst in­to her of­fice. Had she then been seized by a sud­den crav­ing for ex­tracur­ric­ular re­search? Again, it all made no sense.

Was it pos­si­ble she was aid­ing Lash? Hard­ly like­ly. She’d seen the ev­idence; she knew how dan­ger­ous he was, not on­ly to the su­per­cou­ples, but to Eden it­self. She’d alert­ed Mauch­ly to the meet­ing in the cof­fee shop. She’d turned Lash in.

Could he be threat­en­ing her in some oth­er way? That seemed equal­ly un­like­ly. Tara was em­inent­ly ca­pa­ble of de­fend­ing her­self. And Lash was un­armed: Mauch­ly had made sure of that him­self.

He tried to put him­self in her shoes, tried to fol­low her train of thought. But one could on­ly make as­sump­tions about a per­son one un­der­stood. And Mauch­ly was not con­vinced he re­al­ly un­der­stood Tara. He’d been sur­prised, al­most shocked, when she’d barged in­to his of­fice two months be­fore, asked him to use his clout to get her in the pi­lot pro­gram for em­ploy­ee match­ing. And he’d been just as sur­prised when she reap­peared in his of­fice af­ter her match was found, ask­ing to be re­moved from the pro­gram. It was Mon­day, he re­called; the day Christo­pher Lash first came in­side the Wall.

Lash. This was all his do­ing. He was in­sane, a mad dog. He’d done great harm to the cor­po­ra­tion. It was im­per­ative he be stopped be­fore he did any more harm—some­thing tru­ly ir­re­versible.

Mauch­ly reached in­to his pock­et, drew out a Glock 9mm. The weapon glint­ed faint­ly in the dim, off-​hours light of the lab. He turned it in his hands, made sure there was a round in the cham­ber, re­turned it to his pock­et.

This was one mad dog that had no place to run. And Mauch­ly would treat Lash just as one should a mad dog. Cor­ner it, then kill it.

His ra­dio squawked.

“Mauch­ly here.”

“Mr. Mauch­ly, it’s Gilmore. You asked me to re­port in if we spot­ted any move­ment in the tow­er.”

“Very true, Mr. Gilmore. Go ahead.”

“Sir, the pent­house el­eva­tor’s been ac­ti­vat­ed. It’s mov­ing as we speak.”

“What?” Mauch­ly felt mild an­noy­ance. “I’ll have to speak to Richard Sil­ver. He can’t leave the pent­house now, not while Lash is on the loose. It isn’t safe.”

“You don’t un­der­stand, sir. The el­eva­tor isn’t de­scend­ing. It’s ris­ing.”

FIFTY-TWO

As they emerged from the stair­well, Lash rec­og­nized the sky lob­by of the thir­ti­eth floor. He’d been here once. Like the rest of the in­ner tow­er, this space was dark, de­sert­ed. In one cor­ner sat a lone mop, lean­ing against the mar­ble wall, aban­doned in the gen­er­al evac­ua­tion. Banks of el­eva­tors stood on both sides. Halfway down the right wall, one spilled yel­low light in­to the lob­by. The sign above it read EX­PRESS TO CHECK­POINT II.

Tara looked around guard­ed­ly, then mo­tioned Lash to fol­low.

“Why are we here?” he mut­tered. It made no sense: they’d just made their stealthy way down nine sto­ries: nine sto­ries that he’d strug­gled so hard to climb. Blood was dry­ing on his scratched hands and face, and his limbs ached.

“Be­cause this is the on­ly way.” Tara led him to one el­eva­tor, set apart from the oth­ers. There was a key­pad be­side it, and she punched in a code.

All at once, Lash un­der­stood. He’d been in­side this el­eva­tor, too; been in it more than once.

He wait­ed, ex­pect­ing to see a brace of guards burst in­to the lob­by, bran­dish­ing guns. The el­eva­tor an­nounced its ar­rival with a loud ding; the doors opened; and they quick­ly stepped in­side.

Tara turned to the pan­el that held three un­marked but­tons. There was a scan­ner be­neath it.

She glanced back at Lash. “You re­al­ize that, no mat­ter what hap­pens, I’m go­ing to have some pret­ty fast talk­ing to do at the end of the day.”

Lash nod­ded, wait­ing for her to press the but­ton. But Tara re­mained mo­tion­less. He sud­den­ly feared she was chang­ing her mind; that she would punch the bot­tom but­ton, hand him over again to Mauch­ly and his thugs. But then she sighed, cursed, pulled the lead foil from her bracelet, held her wrist be­neath the scan­ner. And pressed the top but­ton.

As the el­eva­tor be­gan to rise, Tara be­gan to re­place the foil. Then she crum­pled it in­to a ball, and let it drop to the floor. “What’s the point? I’m made.” She looked back at Lash. “There’s some­thing you should know.”

“What’s that?”

“If you’re wrong about this, Mauch­ly’s the least of your wor­ries. I’ll kill you my­self.”

Lash nod­ded. “Fair enough.”

They fell silent as the el­eva­tor climbed. “You’d bet­ter grab hold of some­thing,” Tara said at last.

“Why?”

“As a se­cu­ri­ty chief, I’ve got ac­cess to the pent­house el­eva­tor. Just as a pre­cau­tion against emer­gen­cy: fire, earth­quake, ter­ror­ist at­tack.”

“You mean, what Mauch­ly was say­ing about the tow­er’s op­er­ational modes. Al­pha, Be­ta, and so on.”

“The thing is, we’re not in emer­gen­cy mode, just an el­evat­ed alert. That lim­its my ac­cess.”

“What are you get­ting at?”

“What I’m get­ting at is the doors won’t open. The el­eva­tor will stop at the pent­house lev­el and sit there.”

As if in re­sponse, the el­eva­tor slowed, then stopped. There was no chime, no whis­per of open­ing doors: the car sim­ply hung, mo­tion­less, at the top of its shaft.

Lash looked at Tara. “What hap­pens now?”

“We sit here for a minute, maybe two, un­til the re­quest sys­tem re­cy­cles. Then the el­eva­tor will re­turn there.” She point­ed to the low­est but­ton. “The pri­vate garage in the sub-​base­ment.”

“Where a wel­com­ing com­mit­tee will be wait­ing, no doubt,” Lash said bit­ter­ly. “If the door won’t open, why did we both­er tak­ing this ride in the first place?”

She point­ed to a small hatch be­neath the con­trol pan­el. “Stop ask­ing ques­tions and grab hold of some­thing like I told you.” As she pulled open the hatch, Lash saw a tele­phone, flash­light, long-​han­dled screw­driv­er. Tara slipped the screw­driv­er in­to the waist­band of her pants, then straight­ened, plant­ing her fin­gers along the seam of the el­eva­tor doors. Lash gripped the rail­ing.

The el­eva­tor be­gan to sink. In­stant­ly, Tara dug her fin­gers in­to the seam and pulled the doors apart. The car lurched vi­olent­ly to a stop. Lash swung hard against the wall, des­per­ate­ly grip­ping the rail­ing.

A pair of out­er el­eva­tor doors were now ex­posed, met­al re­tract­ing bars at full ex­ten­sion. Prop­ping one foot against the in­ner door, Tara tugged on the clos­est bar. As the out­er door pulled back, the poured-​con­crete wall of the el­eva­tor shaft came in­to view. It rose to Lash’s waist; above, he could see the out­lines of the pent­house. It looked dis­qui­et­ing from this low per­spec­tive, as if he were view­ing the vast room through the eyes of an in­fant.

“Je­sus,” Lash said. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“High-​rise dorm my fresh­man year. Go ahead, climb up.”

Lash pulled him­self up, threw a leg over, rolled on­to the car­pet, then stood.

“Now hold back these doors while I climb out. The out­er and the in­ner.”

Lash did as in­struct­ed. A mo­ment lat­er Tara was stand­ing be­side him, wip­ing her hands on her pants. She plucked the screw­driv­er from her waist­band and—kneel­ing be­side the el­eva­tor’s sill plate—jammed it in­to the space be­tween the floor and the doors. The door froze in place, wedged open.

“To keep un­wel­come vis­itors away?”

Tara nod­ded.

“Sure­ly the el­eva­tor isn’t the on­ly way in.”

“No. There’s al­so a stair­well lead­ing up from the in­ner tow­er, ac­ces­si­ble from an ac­cess hatch­way.”

“So what’s the point of all this?” Lash ges­tured at the open el­eva­tor door.

“The stair­well’s on­ly for emer­gen­cy evac­ua­tion. Opens from above, not be­low. That’s the way Sil­ver want­ed it. You have fif­teen min­utes, maybe twen­ty, be­fore they force it.” She re­gard­ed him with cool, se­ri­ous eyes. “Re­mem­ber, I’m on­ly here to lis­ten to Sil­ver’s side of things. For that, fif­teen min­utes should be more than enough.”

Be­yond the walls of glass, dusk was set­tling over Man­hat­tan. The rays of the set­ting sun sent or­ange shafts of light through the skyscrap­er canyons. Sil­ver’s me­chan­ical col­lec­tion draped long shad­ows across the chairs and ta­bles. Ex­cept for the an­cient ma­chines, the room ap­peared to be emp­ty.

“He’s not here,” Tara said.

Lash mo­tioned Tara to fol­low him to the small door in the wall of book­cas­es. There was no knob. He ran one hand along the out­lines of the door, press­ing first here, then there. At last came the faint click of a hid­den de­tent and the door sprang open.

Now it was Tara’s turn to look sur­prised. But pre­cious sec­onds were pass­ing and Lash ush­ered her up the long, nar­row stair­case to the liv­ing quar­ters.

The cor­ri­dor that bi­sect­ed the up­per floor was silent. The pol­ished wood­en doors lin­ing both sides were closed.

Lash took a step for­ward. What was he sup­posed to do now? Clear his throat po­lite­ly? Knock? The sit­ua­tion had a ridicu­lous des­per­ation that filled him with de­spair.

He ap­proached the first door, opened it silent­ly. Be­yond was the per­son­al gym he’d seen be­fore, but there was no sign of Sil­ver among the free weights, tread­mills, and el­lip­ti­cal ma­chines. He closed the door soft­ly and con­tin­ued.

Next was a small room that seemed to serve as ref­er­ence li­brary: the walls were cov­ered in met­al shelv­ing full of com­put­ing jour­nals and tech­nol­ogy pe­ri­od­icals. Next was a spar­tan kitchen: ex­cept for a restau­rant-​style walk-​in re­frig­er­ator, there was on­ly a sim­ple oven with a gas stove­top, mi­crowave, cup­boards for cook­ware and dry goods, and a ta­ble with a sin­gle place set­ting. He closed the door.

This was use­less; he’d on­ly suc­ceed­ed in de­lay­ing the in­evitable. For all he knew, Sil­ver had been evac­uat­ed along with ev­ery­one else. And now it was on­ly a mat­ter of time un­til the guards ar­rived. In­vad­ing the pent­house of Eden’s founder, he’d prob­ably be shot on sight. He glanced at Tara, feel­ing de­spair wash over him.

And then he caught his breath. Over her shoul­der, he made out the black door at the end of the hall. It was ajar, its edges framed in yel­low light.

Quick­ly, Lash made his way to it. He paused a mo­ment. And then he slow­ly pushed it open.

The room was as he re­mem­bered: the racks of in­stru­men­ta­tion; the whis­per of count­less fans; the half-​dozen ter­mi­nals lined up along the elon­gat­ed wood­en ta­ble. And there, in the lone chair be­fore them, sat Richard Sil­ver.

“Christo­pher,” he said grave­ly. “Please come in. I’ve been ex­pect­ing you.”

FIFTY-THREE

Lash stepped for­ward. Richard Sil­ver glanced from him to Tara.

“And Ms. Sta­ple­ton, too. When Ed­win phoned a few min­utes ago, he said you might be show­ing up as well. I don’t un­der­stand.”

“She came to hear your side of the sto­ry,” Lash replied.

Sil­ver raised his eye­brows. He was wear­ing an­oth­er trop­ical shirt, dec­orat­ed with palms and scal­lop shells. His worn black jeans were neat­ly pressed.

“Dr. Sil­ver—” Lash be­gan again.

“Please, Christo­pher. It’s Richard. I’ve re­mind­ed you.”

“We need to talk.”

Sil­ver nod­ded.

“Over the last few hours my life has gone com­plete­ly to hell.”

“Yes, you look ter­ri­ble. I have a first-​aid kit in the bath­room—would you like me to fetch it?”

Lash waved this away. “Why don’t you sound sur­prised?”

Sil­ver fell silent.

“My med­ical his­to­ry has been tam­pered with. False in­for­ma­tion about de­viant ju­ve­nile be­hav­ior has been added. My FBI his­to­ry has been al­tered in a way that in­sults dead col­leagues. I now have a crim­inal record. Ev­idence has been fab­ri­cat­ed link­ing me to the scenes of death at both the Wilners and the Thor­pes. Plane tick­ets, ho­tel reser­va­tions, phone records. I know there’s on­ly one per­son who could have done this, Richard: you. But Tara isn’t con­vinced. She wants to hear what you have to say.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, Christo­pher—though I hate to say it—I be­lieve you’re the one on tri­al here. But tell me more. You im­ply I’ve fab­ri­cat­ed a vast tis­sue of lies about you. How would I have done that?”

“You’ve got the com­put­ing horse­pow­er. Liza has da­ta-​shar­ing ac­cess with the ma­jor com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies, trav­el and lodg­ing in­dus­tries, health care, bank­ing. And you have the kind of ac­cess, un­fet­tered ac­cess, to al­ter their records.”

Sil­ver nod­ded slow­ly. “I sup­pose it’s true. I could do all that, if I had suf­fi­cient time. And imag­ina­tion. But the ques­tion is why?”

“To con­ceal the iden­ti­ty of the re­al mur­der­er.”

“And that would be—”

“You, Richard.”

For a mo­ment, Sil­ver did not re­ply.

“Me,” he said at last.

Lash nod­ded.

Sil­ver shook his head slow­ly. “Ed­win said I was to hu­mor you, but this is re­al­ly too much.” He glanced at Tara. “Ms. Sta­ple­ton, can you re­al­ly imag­ine me killing those wom­en? How would I do it? And why? And then, go­ing to all the trou­ble of fram­ing Christo­pher here—Christo­pher, of all peo­ple—for the mur­ders?”

Sil­ver’s tone was calm, rea­son­able, a lit­tle hurt. It was hard, even for Lash, to imag­ine the founder of Eden com­mit­ting the mur­ders. But if that was true, he had no hope left.

“You’re the killer, Christo­pher,” Sil­ver said, turn­ing back to him. “Say­ing that pains me more than I can tell you. I sel­dom make friends, but I’d be­gun to think of you as a friend. Yet you’ve jeop­ar­dized ev­ery­thing I worked for. And I still can’t un­der­stand why.”

Lash took an­oth­er step for­ward.

“Hurt­ing me won’t get you any­where,” Sil­ver said quick­ly. “I see you’ve dis­abled the el­eva­tor, but even so Ed­win and his teams will be here with­in a few min­utes. It would be so much eas­ier for ev­ery­one, in­clud­ing you, if you gave your­self up.”

“And get my­self shot? Weren’t those your per­son­al or­ders: shoot to kill?”

At this, Sil­ver’s air of in­jured sur­prise fell away.

Look­ing at him, hear­ing the line Sil­ver was tak­ing, Lash re­al­ized he had on­ly one pos­si­ble weapon to de­fend him­self: his own ex­per­tise. If he could wear Sil­ver down, find the in­con­sis­ten­cy of mad­ness in his words or deeds, he had a fight­ing chance.

“A minute ago, you asked me why you’d com­mit such mur­ders,” he went on. “I’d hoped you’d be man enough to tell me. But you force me to draw my own con­clu­sions. And that means per­form­ing a psy­cho­log­ical au­top­sy. On you.”

Sil­ver looked at him guard­ed­ly.

“You’re shy, re­tir­ing, un­com­fort­able in so­cial sit­ua­tions. You’re prob­ably ill at ease with per­sons of the op­po­site sex. Per­haps you feel awk­ward or unattrac­tive. You com­mu­ni­cate by email or video­phone, or through Mauch­ly. Lit­tle is known of your child­hood; it’s quite pos­si­ble you’ve made an ef­fort to con­ceal it. You live like a monk up here, clos­et­ing your­self with this cre­ation—who, by the way, has a fe­male voice and name—and de­vot­ing all your time to re­fin­ing it. And isn’t it telling—isn’t it ex­treme­ly telling—you chose to chan­nel your life’s work in­to a sys­tem that brings lone­ly peo­ple to­geth­er?”

When there was no re­ply, he con­tin­ued.

“Of course, lots of peo­ple are shy. Lots of peo­ple are awk­ward so­cial­ly. For you to have com­mit­ted these atroc­ities, there would have to be a hell of a lot more to your sto­ry.” He paused, still look­ing at Sil­ver. “What can you tell us about avatar ze­ro? The avatar that, just by chance, hap­pens to match suc­cess­ful­ly with the wom­en in all six su­per­cou­ples.”

Sil­ver did not an­swer. A ter­ri­ble pal­lor came over his face.

“It’s yours, isn’t it? Your own per­son­al­ity con­struct, left over from when you first al­pha-​test­ed the Eden pro­gram. Ex­cept you nev­er took it out when the ap­pli­ca­tion went live. Se­cret­ly, you kept com­par­ing your­self to re­al ap­pli­cants. The temp­ta­tion to find a match for your­self was too great. See, you couldn’t live with­out know­ing. And yet, some­how, you couldn’t live with know­ing, ei­ther.”

Sil­ver had by now mas­tered his ex­pres­sion, and his face had be­come un­read­able.

Lash turned to Tara. “I see two pos­si­ble clin­ical pro­files here. The first is that we’re deal­ing with a sim­ple so­cio­path­ic per­son­al­ity, an ir­re­spon­si­ble and self­ish per­son with no moral code. A so­ciopath would be fas­ci­nat­ed by the six wom­en who, over time, were matched with him­self. He’d both crave and fear them. And he’d be in­sane­ly jeal­ous of any oth­er man that dared pos­sess them. There’s plen­ty of case stud­ies in the lit­er­ature to that ef­fect.”

He paused again. “Are there prob­lems with this hy­poth­esis? Yes. So­ciopaths are rarely so bril­liant. Al­so, they’re rarely trou­bled by the deeds they’ve com­mit­ted. Yet I think Richard here feels his ac­tions in­tense­ly. Or at least, a part of him does.”

He turned back to Sil­ver. “I know about the Thor­pes: about the re­turn med­ical check­up, about the high dosage of scol­ipane. But what de­liv­ery sys­tem did you use on Karen Wilner?”

He ques­tion hung in the air. At last, Sil­ver cleared his throat.

“I used no ‘de­liv­ery sys­tem.’ Be­cause I didn’t kill any­body.” His voice was dif­fer­ent now: harsh­er, more abrupt. “Ms. Sta­ple­ton, sure­ly you see this is all just grasp­ing at straws. Dr. Lash is des­per­ate, he’d say any­thing, do any­thing, to save him­self.”

“Let’s turn to the sec­ond, more like­ly hy­poth­esis,” Lash said. “Richard Sil­ver is suf­fer­ing from DID. Dis­so­cia­tive iden­ti­ty dis­or­der. What used to be pop­ular­ly known as split per­son­al­ity.”

“A myth,” Sil­ver scoffed. “Movie fod­der.”

“I wish it were. I’ve got a DID pa­tient in my care now. They’re a bitch to treat. The way it usu­al­ly works is that a per­son is trau­ma­tized when young. Some­times sex­ual abuse; oth­er times, phys­ical or sim­ply emo­tion­al abuse. My cur­rent pa­tient, for ex­am­ple, had an abu­sive, un­for­giv­ing fa­ther. For some chil­dren, such trau­ma can be un­bear­able. They’re not old enough to un­der­stand it’s not their fault. Es­pe­cial­ly when the abuse comes from a so-​called loved one. So they shat­ter in­to sev­er­al per­son­al­ities. Ba­si­cal­ly, you de­vel­op oth­er peo­ple to take the abuse for you.” He looked over at Sil­ver. “Why are your child­hood years such a se­cret? Why did you be­come more com­fort­able with a com­put­er screen than with oth­er peo­ple? Was your own fa­ther abu­sive and un­for­giv­ing?”

“Don’t you talk about my fam­ily,” Sil­ver said. For the first time ev­er, Lash de­tect­ed a clear note of anger in his voice.

“Can such peo­ple ap­pear nor­mal?” Tara asked.

“Ab­so­lute­ly. They can func­tion on a very high lev­el.”

“Can they be in­tel­li­gent?”

Lash nod­ded. “Ex­treme­ly.”

“Don’t tell me you’re tak­en in by any of this,” Sil­ver said to Tara.

“Are such peo­ple aware of their oth­er per­son­al­ities?” Tara asked.

“Usu­al­ly not. They’re aware of los­ing time—half a day can go by in a ‘fugue state’ with­out their know­ing where it went. The goal of treat­ment is to get the pa­tient co-​con­scious with all his per­son­al­ities.”

There was a dis­tant thud from be­low. It was not par­tic­ular­ly loud, but the floor of the lab­ora­to­ry shook faint­ly. The three ex­changed glances.

The scene be­gan to take on a sur­re­al cast to Lash. Here he was, spin­ning out the­ories, while armed men ea­ger to shoot him would break in any sec­ond. But he was al­most done now; there was noth­ing else to do ex­cept fin­ish.

“In such cas­es, one per­son­al­ity is usu­al­ly dom­inant,” he went on. “Of­ten it’s the nor­mal, ‘good’ per­son­al­ity. The oth­er per­son­al­ities house the feel­ings that are too dan­ger­ous for the dom­inant per­son­al­ity.” He ges­tured at Sil­ver. “So on the face of it, Richard is what he seems to be: a bril­liant, if reclu­sive, com­put­er en­gi­neer. The man who told me he feels al­most a sur­geon’s re­spon­si­bil­ity to his clients. But I fear there are oth­er Richard Sil­vers, too, that we’re not al­lowed to see. The Richard Sil­ver who was both hope­less­ly threat­ened by, yet ir­re­sistibly at­tract­ed to, the idea of a per­fect mate. And, the oth­er, dark­er, Richard Sil­ver who feels mur­der­ous jeal­ousy at the thought of an­oth­er man pos­sess­ing that per­fect wom­an.”

He fell silent. Sil­ver looked back at him, thin-​lipped, eyes hard and glit­ter­ing. In his ex­pres­sion, Lash read mor­ti­fi­ca­tion and anger. But guilt? He wasn’t sure. And there was no more time now, no time at all . . .

As if to punc­tu­ate this thought, there came an­oth­er deep thud­ding sound from be­low.

“In an­oth­er few mo­ments, Ed­win will be here,” Sil­ver said. “And this painful cha­rade of yours will be over.”

Lash sud­den­ly felt a great hol­low­ness. “That’s it? You’ve got noth­ing else to say?”

“What am I sup­posed to say?”

“You could ad­mit the truth.”

“The truth.” Sil­ver al­most spat the words. “The truth is you’ve in­sult­ed and hu­mil­iat­ed me with this pseu­do-​psy­cho­log­ical tale-​spin­ning. So let’s put an end to this trav­es­ty. I’ve hu­mored you long enough. You’re guilty of mur­der: have the guts to face up to it.”

“So you could live with your­self? You could sen­tence an in­no­cent man to death?”

“You’re not in­no­cent, Dr. Lash. Why not ac­cept the truth? Ev­ery­body else has.”

Lash turned to Tara. “Is that true? What fla­vor of truth do you be­lieve in this evening?”

“Fla­vor,” Sil­ver said dis­dain­ful­ly. “You’re a se­ri­al mur­der­er.”

“Tara?” Lash per­sist­ed.

Tara took a deep breath, turned to Sil­ver. “You asked me some­thing ear­li­er. You asked, ‘Can you re­al­ly imag­ine me killing those wom­en?’ ”

For a mo­ment, Sil­ver looked puz­zled. “Yes, I asked you that. Why?”

“Why did you sin­gle out the wom­en? What about the men?”

“I—” Sil­ver abrupt­ly went silent.

“You hadn’t heard Christo­pher’s the­ory that the wom­en alone were over­dosed, giv­en a med­ica­tion that would guar­an­tee sui­ci­dal-​homi­ci­dal be­hav­ior. So why did you sin­gle out the wom­en?”

“It was just a fig­ure of speech.”

Tara did not re­ply.

“Ms. Sta­ple­ton,” Sil­ver said in a hard­er tone. “In a few min­utes, Lash will be sub­dued and re­strained by my men. He will no longer pose a threat. Don’t make this any more com­pli­cat­ed on any­one else—in­clud­ing your­self—than it need be.”

Still, Tara was silent.

“Sil­ver’s right,” Lash said. He could hear the bit­ter­ness in his own voice. “He doesn’t have to ad­mit any­thing. He can just keep his mouth shut. No­body’s go­ing to be­lieve me now. There’s noth­ing more I can do.”

Tara made no in­di­ca­tion she had heard. Her eyes re­mained veiled, far away.

And then, quite sud­den­ly, they widened.

“No,” she said, turn­ing to him. “There’s one more thing.”

FIFTY-FOUR

The room went still. For a mo­ment, all Lash heard was the whis­pered susurrus of cool­ing fans.

“What are you talk­ing about?” he asked.

In re­sponse, Tara took him aside. Then she nod­ded al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly over her shoul­der. Lash fol­lowed her gaze to the con­toured chair en­cased be­hind Plex­iglas at the far end of the room.

“Liza?” he asked in a very low voice.

“If you’re right about this, Sil­ver would have ac­cessed the sys­tem from here. Maybe there’s some kind of trail you could fol­low. Even if there isn’t, she would know.”

“She?”

“Liza would have a record of Sil­ver’s ac­cess. He would have made in­quiries in­to a va­ri­ety of our sub­sys­tems: com­mu­ni­ca­tions, med­ical, da­ta gath­er­ing. A large num­ber of ex­ter­nal en­ti­ties would have been touched to cre­ate the false workup on you. There’d be Lind­say Thor­pe’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal records. There’d be all kinds of things. You could ask her di­rect­ly.”

“I could ask her?”

“Why not? She’s a com­put­er, she’s pro­grammed to re­spond to com­mands.”

“That’s not what I mean. I haven’t any idea how to com­mu­ni­cate with her.”

“You’ve seen Sil­ver do it. You told me so, over that drink at Se­bas­tian’s. That’s more than any­one else can say.” She stepped back, looked at him quizzi­cal­ly. You’re the one with ev­ery­thing at stake here, the look said. If you’re telling the truth, wouldn’t you do any­thing to prove it?

“What are you two talk­ing about?” Sil­ver asked. He had been guard­ed­ly watch­ing the ex­change.

Lash looked at the chair and the leads that snaked away from it. It was the last des­per­ate gam­ble of a des­per­ate man. But Tara was right. He had noth­ing to lose.

He strode across the room, opened the Plex­iglas pan­el, and quick­ly slid in­to the sculpt­ed chair.

“What do you think you’re do­ing?” Sil­ver’s voice was sud­den­ly loud in the cramped room.

Lash did not an­swer. He looked around, try­ing to re­call just what he’d seen Sil­ver do be­fore. He pulled down the small screen that hung from a tele­scop­ing arm, af­fixed the lava­lier mi­cro­phone to his torn col­lar.

“You can’t do that!” Sil­ver said. He stood up slow­ly, as if stunned by Lash’s brazen­ness.

“Who’s go­ing to stop me? You?” Lash lift­ed the EEG leads, be­gan fas­ten­ing them to his tem­ples. He thought back to what Sil­ver had said about Liza: her high­ly de­vel­oped in­tel­li­gence mod­els, her three-​di­men­sion­al neu­ral net­work. That he could hope to in­ter­act with her, let alone find the in­for­ma­tion he need­ed, seemed the height of fol­ly. Yet he could not let Sil­ver see his doubt.

Leads at­tached, he reached down to the con­sole and snapped the EEG in­to life. The screen be­fore him cleared; sev­er­al columns of num­bers scrolled rapid­ly up and out of sight. He glanced at the small key­pad and sty­lus set in­to one of the arms. He re­mem­bered Sil­ver had used the key­pad pri­or to com­mu­ni­cat­ing di­rect­ly with Liza. “Get­ting her at­ten­tion,” he’d said. Some­how or oth­er, he’d have to get her at­ten­tion, too. He reached for the key­pad.

“Get out of that chair,” Sil­ver warned. He was pac­ing now, as if in a quandary over what to do.

“Don’t wor­ry. I won’t break her.”

“You haven’t a clue what you’re do­ing. This won’t get you any­where. It’s a waste of time.”

Be­neath the in­dig­na­tion, Lash sensed ner­vous­ness in Sil­ver’s tone. He not­ed the man’s pac­ing with in­ter­est. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“No­body else has ev­er spo­ken di­rect­ly with Liza.”

“Don’t you re­mem­ber what you told me last time I was here? You said oth­ers could com­mu­ni­cate with her, too, giv­en prop­er con­cen­tra­tion and train­ing.”

“The op­er­ative words there are prop­er con­cen­tra­tion and train­ing, Lash.”

“I’m a quick study.”

This was said with a con­fi­dence Lash did not feel. He looked from the key­pad to the screen, then back again. Get her at­ten­tion.

What do com­put­ers re­spond to? Com­mands. State­ments in pro­grams.

He placed his hand on the key­pad, typed:

the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

There was no re­sponse. The screen re­mained blank.

“Dr. Lash,” Sil­ver said. “Get out of the chair.”

I’ll try a ques­tion in­stead. Lash typed:

why is a raven like a writ­ing desk?

Again, no re­sponse. Lash grit­ted his teeth. Sil­ver’s right. This is just a waste of time. Any minute Mauch­ly would break in­to the pent­house. And that would be that.

He glanced past the Plex­iglas wall. Sil­ver had stopped pac­ing and was step­ping to­ward him now, an an­gry look on his face.

Sud­den­ly, a storm of da­ta ran up the small mon­itor. And then he heard a voice. It was the voice he re­mem­bered: low, fem­inine, com­ing from ev­ery­where and nowhere at the same time.

“Why is a raven like a writ­ing desk?” it said.

“Yes,” Lash spoke in­to the mi­cro­phone.

“I do not un­der­stand the na­ture of your in­ter­roga­to­ry.”

“It’s a rid­dle.”

“My pars­ing of ‘itza’ is un­suc­cess­ful.”

“It is a rid­dle,” Lash said, re­mind­ing him­self to speak slow­ly and clear­ly. “A quote from a fa­mous book.”

Sil­ver had stopped, and was lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

“You are not Richard,” the fem­inine voice said. This was spo­ken with an ut­ter lack of in­flec­tion, leav­ing Lash un­sure whether it was a state­ment or a ques­tion.

“No,” he replied.

“Your im­age and voice sound­print are known. You are Christo­pher Lash.”

“Yes.”

The com­put­er said noth­ing fur­ther. Lash felt his pulse be­gin to race, and he fought to mas­ter him­self. What could he say? He re­mem­bered a ques­tion Sil­ver had asked, de­cid­ed to try re­peat­ing it.

“Liza,” he said in­to the mi­cro­phone. “What is your cur­rent state?”

“Nine­ty-​nine point two two four per­cent op­er­ational. Cur­rent pro­cess­es are at twen­ty-​two point six per­cent of mul­ti­thread­ed ca­pac­ity. Banked ma­chine cy­cle sur­plus at one hun­dred per­cent. Thank you for ask­ing.”

“Stop it,” Sil­ver said in a fierce whis­per.

“I have vi­su­al ac­qui­si­tion of Richard,” Liza said. “I have au­ral ac­qui­si­tion of Richard. Yet it is not Richard speak­ing with me. Cu­ri­ous.”

Cu­ri­ous. Sil­ver had told him he’d made cu­rios­ity one of Liza’s fun­da­men­tal char­ac­ter­is­tics. Just maybe he could put that cu­rios­ity to good use.

“I, Christo­pher Lash, am speak­ing with you,” he said.

“Christo­pher,” the voice re­peat­ed, with the mer­est rip­ple of dig­ital ar­ti­fact­ing.

Once again, Lash was struck by the way Liza said his name, al­most as if tast­ing it. Af­ter years of speak­ing on­ly to Sil­ver, speak­ing to an­oth­er hu­man be­ing would be rev­ela­tion in­deed.

“Why do you, and not Richard, speak with me?” Liza asked.

Lash hes­itat­ed. He had to phrase his re­spons­es in such a way as to keep Liza in­ter­est­ed; it seemed in­creas­ing­ly like­ly this was the on­ly way to make sure com­mu­ni­ca­tion would con­tin­ue. “Be­cause the sit­ua­tion at Eden has be­come non­stan­dard.”

“Ex­plain.”

“The best way to ex­plain is by ask­ing you a se­ries of ques­tions. Is that per­mis­si­ble?”

“Per­mis­si­bil­ity is un­known. This is for­eign to my ex­pe­ri­ence. I have run no sce­nar­ios that ad­dress it. I am cur­rent­ly eval­uat­ing.”

“How long will the eval­ua­tion take?”

“Five mil­lion, two hun­dred forty-​five thou­sand ma­chine cy­cles, plus or mi­nus ten per­cent, as­sum­ing suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of a ‘best-​fit’ se­lec­tion tree.”

This told Lash noth­ing. “May I ask the ques­tions while the eval­ua­tion is on­go­ing?”

“My pars­ing of ‘on­go­ing’ is un­suc­cess­ful. Prepo­si­tion and verb are out of con­text.”

“May I ask the ques­tions dur­ing your eval­ua­tion pro­cess?”

“Christo­pher.”

This was not the an­swer Lash ex­pect­ed. He chose to take it as a green light.

“Liza, has Richard used this in­ter­face to ac­cess records re­lat­ing to me in the last forty-​eight hours?”

Abrupt­ly, Sil­ver lunged at the Plex­iglas. Lash straight-​armed the door, re­fus­ing to give him ac­cess.

“Liza,” he re­peat­ed, press­ing the door closed. “Has Richard Sil­ver used this in­ter­face to ac­cess records re­lat­ing to me?”

There was no re­sponse.

Is she con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion? Lash asked him­self. Or is she re­fus­ing to an­swer?

“Liza?” he said again. “Did you un­der­stand my ques­tion?”

Sud­den­ly he re­mem­bered some­thing: the weari­ness with which Sil­ver had re­moved the EEG sen­sors when he rose from this seat. Ses­sions with Liza can be a lit­tle drain­ing, he’d said. It re­quires a great deal of con­cen­tra­tion. Think of biofeed­back. The fre­quen­cy and am­pli­tude of be­ta and theta waves can speak a lot more dis­tinct­ly than words.

Per­haps, in this unique sit­ua­tion, cu­rios­ity alone was not suf­fi­cient for Liza. It was her first time com­mu­ni­cat­ing di­rect­ly with any­one oth­er than Sil­ver. Clar­ity and sim­plic­ity of mes­sage would be of crit­ical im­por­tance.

It re­quires a great deal of con­cen­tra­tion. Think of biofeed­back.

Lash did not know what meth­ods Sil­ver used to achieve his con­cen­tra­tion. All he could fall back on were the re­lax­ation tech­niques he him­self taught pa­tients for deal­ing with their anx­iety. The self-​hyp­no­sis, the state of height­ened at­ten­tion, just might be enough. If he could slow him­self down, calm him­self down, free his mind of the ex­tra bag­gage . . .

He be­gan just as he would if he’d been in his of­fice, speak­ing one on one with a pa­tient. En­vi­sion your­self in a re­lax­ing scene. The most re­lax­ing scene you can imag­ine. Pic­ture your­self sit­ting on a beach. It’s a sun­ny day.

Once again, Sil­ver threw him­self against the door. Lash’s el­bow bent slight­ly un­der the pres­sure, then stiff­ened again. He tried to for­get Sil­ver, Mauch­ly, his own des­per­ate sit­ua­tion, ev­ery­thing.

He shut his eyes. Take a deep breath. Hold it. Now let it out, slow­ly. Take an­oth­er. You should feel limp, re­laxed.

Liza re­mained silent.

Slow­ly, ex­ter­nal sound and sen­sa­tion went away. Lash kept his thoughts fo­cused on the beach, on the creamy sound of the surf.

Feel your head re­lax. Feel it roll gen­tly to one side. Now feel the mus­cles of your neck re­lax. Feel your chest grow less tight, your breath­ing come eas­ier.

“Christo­pher.” It was the dis­em­bod­ied voice of Liza.

“Yes.” Feel your arms re­lax, first the right, then the left. Let them go limp.

“Please re­peat your last state­ment.”

Feel your legs re­lax, first the right, then the left. “Has Richard Sil­ver used this in­ter­face to ac­cess records re­lat­ing to me?”

“Yes, Christo­pher.”

“Were those records ex­ter­nal or in­ter­nal?”

No re­sponse.

Take a slow, deep breath. “Were the records Richard ac­cessed with­in your datas­pace, or were they out­side Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed?”

“Both.”

Fo­cus on the beach. “Did Richard Sil­ver mod­ify or change these records in any way?”

There was no re­ply.

“Liza, did Richard Sil­ver mod­ify any of—”

“No.”

No? Was Liza telling him Sil­ver had not mod­ified his records, af­ter all? Or was she re­fus­ing to an­swer? But that was . . .

Abrupt­ly, his hard-​won con­cen­tra­tion crum­pled. Lash took a deep breath, glanced be­yond the Plex­iglas par­ti­tion. Sil­ver had tak­en sev­er­al steps back now, and was stand­ing be­side Tara. They were look­ing at him, wor­ried ex­pres­sions on their faces.

“Christo­pher,” Sil­ver was say­ing. “Please step out for a minute. I need to speak with you.”

There was no fur­ther re­sponse from Liza. There was a new look in Sil­ver’s eyes: a haunt­ed look.

Sil­ver reached in­to his pock­et, pulled out a cell phone, di­aled a num­ber. “Ed­win?” he said. “Ed­win, it’s Richard.” Then he held the cell phone away from his ear so both Tara and Lash could hear the re­sponse.

“Yes, Dr. Sil­ver,” came Mauch­ly’s tin­ny voice.

“Where are you cur­rent­ly?”

“We’ve just pen­etrat­ed the in­ter­struc­tural bar­ri­er.”

“Hold your po­si­tion. Don’t pro­ceed any far­ther un­til you get in­struc­tions from me.”

“Could you re­peat that, Dr. Sil­ver?”

“I said, hold your po­si­tion. Do not at­tempt to en­ter the pent­house.” This time, Sil­ver kept the phone to his ear. “Ev­ery­thing’s fine. Yes, Ed­win, just fine. I’ll get back to you soon.”

But Sil­ver did not look fine as he re­placed the phone in his pock­et. “Christo­pher. It’s vi­tal that we talk, and talk now.”

Lash hes­itat­ed just one more mo­ment. Then he swung his legs off the chair, plucked the leads from his fore­head, and ex­it­ed the cham­ber.

FIFTY-FIVE

Mauch­ly looked down at his cell phone a mo­ment, as if doubt­ing it was work­ing prop­er­ly. Then he re­turned it to his lips. “Could you re­peat that, Dr. Sil­ver?”

“I said, hold your po­si­tion. Do not at­tempt to en­ter the pent­house.”

“Is ev­ery­thing all right?”

“Ev­ery­thing’s fine.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes, Ed­win, just fine. I’ll get back to you soon.” And with a chirrup, the phone went silent.

Mauch­ly gave it an­oth­er long stare.

Even through the dis­tor­tion, there’d been no doubt the voice was Sil­ver’s. There was an un­usu­al un­der­cur­rent to it Mauch­ly did not re­call hear­ing be­fore, and he won­dered if Lash was threat­en­ing him, if he was be­ing held hostage in his own pent­house. Yet the voice hadn’t sound­ed fright­ened. If Mauch­ly de­tect­ed any­thing, he de­tect­ed great weari­ness.

“That was Sil­ver?” Shel­drake shout­ed from be­low.

“Yes.”

“And his or­ders?”

“Not to en­ter the pent­house. Hold our po­si­tion.”

“You kid­ding?”

“No.”

There was a brief si­lence. “Well, if we’re to hold our po­si­tion, could we hold it some­where more com­fort­able? I’m feel­ing like a cir­cus gym­nast here.”

Mauch­ly glanced down. It seemed a rea­son­able re­quest.

For the last fif­teen min­utes, they had been wait­ing at the top of a long met­al lad­der that climbed the in­side wall of Eden’s in­ner tow­er, just be­low the roof. Wait­ing while a se­cu­ri­ty tech—a sleepy-​eyed, tou­sle-​head­ed youth named Dorf­man—tried to out­smart the ac­cess mech­anism of the bar­ri­er to Sil­ver’s pent­house. It had been a long fif­teen min­utes, made longer by the hard met­al rungs of the lad­der and the con­stant noise of the huge pow­er plant ar­rayed across the cav­ernous space be­low them: the gen­er­ators and trans­form­ers that sup­plied elec­tric­ity to the hun­gry tow­er. De­spite the full re­sources of the se­cu­ri­ty staff, Dorf­man had had a dif­fi­cult time.

Per­haps Sta­ple­ton could have made a quick­er job of it. Had she want­ed to . . .

But Mauch­ly would not al­low him­self to pon­der the prob­lem of Tara Sta­ple­ton any fur­ther. In­stead, he made a men­tal note to reeval­uate pent­house se­cu­ri­ty at the ear­li­est pos­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Clear­ly, he’d al­lowed Sil­ver’s pas­sion for pri­va­cy to be car­ried be­yond rea­son­able ex­tremes. The last fif­teen min­utes had been proof of that. It was an in­dul­gence, a dan­ger­ous in­dul­gence. The bat­ter­ing ram had failed—as ex­pect­ed—but high-​tech meth­ods had al­so proven alarm­ing­ly slow. What if Sil­ver should fall sud­den­ly ill and be un­able to help him­self? If the el­eva­tor were to mal­func­tion, pre­cious min­utes would be lost reach­ing him. Sil­ver was sim­ply too valu­able an as­set of the com­pa­ny to be put at risk, and Mauch­ly him­self would tell him so. Sil­ver was a rea­son­able man; he would un­der­stand.

Now, Mauch­ly looked up the lad­der. It dis­ap­peared in­to a hatch in the roof of the in­ner tow­er and as­cend­ed in­to the ter­mi­nal baf­fle: the open space be­tween the in­ner tow­er and the floor of Sil­ver’s pent­house. Look­ing up still far­ther, Mauch­ly could see Dorf­man, stand­ing just with­in the new­ly opened se­cu­ri­ty hatch­way lead­ing in­to the pent­house. He was look­ing quizzi­cal­ly down at Mauch­ly, one hand grip­ping a lad­der rung, the oth­er hold­ing a log­ic an­alyz­er. Con­ti­nu­ity testers, elec­tron­ic sen­sors, and oth­er gear hung on cords from his belt.

“Pro­ceed,” Mauch­ly called up.

Dorf­man raised a hand to one ear.

“Pro­ceed! Wait just in­side for us.”

Dorf­man nod­ded, then turned to grasp the nar­row lad­der with both hands. An­oth­er mo­ment and he had climbed out of sight, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the black­ness of the pent­house.

Mauch­ly glanced down at Shel­drake, mo­tioned for him and his men to fol­low. It had been a hard-​fought bat­tle, gain­ing ac­cess to the pent­house: if they were go­ing to wait, they might as well wait in­side.

He be­gan climb­ing the rest of the way up the lad­der. Four steps took him to the port­hole in the tow­er’s roof; an­oth­er four steps brought him up in­to the baf­fle. He had nev­er been in this space be­fore, and de­spite him­self he stopped to look around.

Mauch­ly was not a par­tic­ular­ly imag­ina­tive man, but—as he slow­ly swiv­elled through an ax­is of one hun­dred and eighty de­grees—he found he had to fight back ver­ti­go. A dark met­al land­scape—the roof of the in­ner tow­er—ran away from him on all sides. It was stud­ded with ca­bling, and its flow was in­ter­rupt­ed by count­less small equip­ment hous­ings. Some ten feet above, like a ti­tan­ic low­er­ing sky, hung the steel un­der­bel­ly of the pent­house struc­ture. It was fixed to the tow­er’s roof by a cara­pace of ver­ti­cal I-​beams. Two met­al-​sheathed da­ta trunks ran from fair­ings in the up­per struc­ture to the roof of the in­ner tow­er. In the dis­tance he could make out a third, much larg­er box­like struc­ture: the shaft of Sil­ver’s pri­vate el­eva­tor. Around the pe­riph­ery ran a lat­tice of hor­izon­tal slats, through which the rich hues of the set­ting sun could be glimpsed. An ob­serv­er, star­ing up at this dec­ora­tive lat­tice­work from street lev­el, would nev­er know it was con­ceal­ing the join­ture of two phys­ical­ly sep­arate struc­tures, the in­ner tow­er and the pent­house above it. But to Mauch­ly, six­ty floors above Man­hat­tan, it felt like be­ing be­tween the lay­ers of a huge met­al sand­wich.

And there was some­thing else: some­thing more un­set­tling. Set in­to the walls of the long ax­is, mid­way be­tween the two struc­tures, were the tele­scop­ing sec­tions of the huge se­cu­ri­ty plates. Mauch­ly could make out three in­den­ta­tions in their steel flanks: two fit­ted to the da­ta trunks, the oth­er to the pri­vate el­eva­tor. The plates were ful­ly re­tract­ed now, but if an emer­gen­cy was ev­er de­clared they would slide for­ward and lock to­geth­er, seal­ing the pent­house from the tow­er be­low. From his van­tage point, the mas­sive hy­draulic pis­tons that pow­ered the plates looked like the springs of a colos­sal mouse trap.

“Mr. Mauch­ly?” Shel­drake called up from be­low.

Mauch­ly roused him­self, took a fresh grip on the lad­der, and—turn­ing his eyes from the baf­fle—climbed up through the se­cu­ri­ty hatch­way and in­to the vestibule of the pent­house.

His first im­pres­sion was the sim­ple re­lief of set­ting foot on sol­id ground again. The sec­ond im­pres­sion, fol­low­ing im­me­di­ate­ly, was of un­re­lieved dark.

“Dorf­man!”

There was a rustling in the dark be­side him. “Here, Mr. Mauch­ly.”

“Why haven’t you turned on the lights?”

“I’ve been look­ing for a switch, sir.”

Mauch­ly rose, feel­ing his way for­ward un­til he touched met­al. He felt along the wall un­til he reached a door—closed—then con­tin­ued along the walls un­til he re­turned once again to the se­cu­ri­ty hatch­way. His cir­cuit of the small com­part­ment yield­ed no light switch.

There was a clat­ter, and a dark shape sud­den­ly thrust its way in­to the hatch­way, ob­scur­ing the dim light fil­ter­ing up from be­low.

“Shel­drake?”

“Af­fir­ma­tive.”

“Call down to some of your men. Get some torch­es up here.”

The shape de­scend­ed again out of view.

Mauch­ly paused, think­ing. The pent­house com­part­ment was six sto­ries high. Sil­ver’s quar­ters oc­cu­pied the top two sto­ries. This huge space be­low housed the ma­chines that made up Liza.

Sil­ver had al­ways been easy­go­ing about Eden’s busi­ness mat­ters, leav­ing day-​to-​day op­er­ations to the board of di­rec­tors. The one thing he was ex­treme­ly pos­ses­sive about was Liza’s phys­ical plant. He’d been up here ev­ery day dur­ing con­struc­tion, over­see­ing the in­stal­la­tion him­self, some­times even phys­ical­ly mov­ing equip­ment in from the cranes through the un­fin­ished walls. Through­out, Mauch­ly re­mem­bered, Liza had been kept run­ning on a large suite of rather old com­put­ers with a portable pow­er sup­ply; in­sert­ing the var­ious com­po­nents in­to place, with elec­tric­ity flow­ing and com­put­ers on­line, had been a har­row­ing pro­cess. But Sil­ver had in­sist­ed. “She can’t lose con­scious­ness,” he’d told Mauch­ly. “She nev­er has, and I can’t al­low her to do so now. Liza’s not some per­son­al com­put­er you can just re­boot. She’s had all this time of self-​aware­ness—who’s to say what would be lost or al­tered if she lost pow­er?”

A sim­ilar anx­ious­ness lay be­hind the pre­cau­tions Sil­ver took to guard Liza from the out­side world. Mauch­ly knew that, for what­ev­er rea­son, Liza’s in­tel­li­gence had nev­er been trans­ferred from one com­put­er to an­oth­er: in­stead, new­er and larg­er com­put­ers had sim­ply been linked to the old­er ones, cre­at­ing an ex­pand­ing sprawl of “big iron” hard­ware of sev­er­al vin­tages and makes. The pow­er­ful clus­ter of su­per­com­put­ers that did Eden’s out­board pro­cess­ing—da­ta gath­er­ing, the client mon­itor­ing, all the rest—were housed in the in­ner tow­er be­low, mon­itored by count­less tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ists. But the cen­tral core of Liza, the con­trol­ling in­tel­li­gence, lay here, cared for by Sil­ver alone.

Mauch­ly had nev­er set foot with­in Liza’s phys­ical plant since ear­li­est con­struc­tion, and now he cursed him­self for the over­sight. In ret­ro­spect, his lack of knowl­edge was a se­vere breach of se­cu­ri­ty. He thought back on what he knew about the four-​sto­ry space be­yond. He re­al­ized he knew very lit­tle; Sil­ver had pro­tect­ed it jeal­ous­ly, even from him.

Mauch­ly edged back to the door he’d no­ticed be­fore. For a mo­ment, he feared Sil­ver might have locked it from the in­side. But the sim­ple knob turned be­neath his grasp. As the door slid open, light at last re­turned: not lamp­light, but a vast thick­et of diodes and LEDs, wink­ing red and green and am­ber in the vel­vet dark­ness, stretch­ing ahead in­to what seemed lim­it­less dis­tance. There was sound here, too: not the ban­shee-​like howl of the build­ing’s pow­er plant be­low, but a steady hum of back­up gen­er­ators and the sub­tler, mea­sured ca­dence of elec­trome­chan­ical de­vices.

In­struct­ing Dorf­man to wait for Shel­drake, Mauch­ly stepped for­ward in­to the gloom.

FIFTY-SIX

Sil­ver led the way down the cor­ri­dor to a door he un­locked with a sim­ple, old-​fash­ioned key. Brusque­ly, he di­rect­ed them in­to a tiny bed­room, spot­less­ly clean, with­out dec­ora­tion of any kind. The nar­row bed, with its thin mat­tress and met­al rails, re­sem­bled a mil­itary cot. Be­side was an un­var­nished wood ta­ble on which lay a Bible. A sin­gle bare bulb hung from the ceil­ing. The room was so spar­tan, so un­re­lieved­ly white, it could eas­ily have passed for a monk’s cell.

Sil­ver closed the door be­hind him, then be­gan to pace. His face was con­tort­ed by con­flict­ing emo­tions. Once he stopped, turned to­ward Lash, and seemed about to speak—on­ly to turn away again.

At last, he wheeled around.

“You were wrong,” he said.

Lash wait­ed.

“I had won­der­ful par­ents. They were nur­tur­ing. Pa­tient. Ea­ger to teach. I think of them ev­ery day. The smell of my fa­ther’s af­ter­shave when he’d hug me com­ing home from work. My moth­er singing as I played un­der the pi­ano.”

He turned away again and re­sumed his pac­ing. Lash knew bet­ter than to say any­thing.

“My fa­ther died when I was three. Car ac­ci­dent. My moth­er out­lived him by two years. I had no oth­er fam­ily. So I was sent to live with an aunt in Madi­son, Wis­con­sin. She had her own fam­ily, three old­er boys.”

Sil­ver’s pace slowed. His hands clenched be­hind his back, knuck­les white.

“I wasn’t want­ed there. To the boys I was weak, ug­ly, a fig­ure of scorn. I wasn’t Rick. I was ‘Fuck­face.’ Their moth­er tol­er­at­ed it be­cause she didn’t like hav­ing me around, ei­ther. Usu­al­ly I was ex­clud­ed from fam­ily rit­uals like Sun­day din­ner, movies, bowl­ing. If I was brought along it was an af­terthought, or be­cause my ab­sence would be no­ticed by neigh­bors. I cried a lot at night. Some­times I prayed I’d die in my sleep so I wouldn’t have to wake up any­more.”

There was no trace of self-​pity in Sil­ver’s voice. He sim­ply rapped out the words, one af­ter an­oth­er, as if recit­ing a shop­ping list.

“The boys made sure I was a pari­ah at school. They en­joyed threat­en­ing the girls with ‘Sil­ver cooties,’ laugh­ing at their dis­gust.”

Sil­ver stopped, looked again at Lash.

“The fa­ther wasn’t as bad as the rest. He worked the night shift as a key­punch op­er­ator in the uni­ver­si­ty com­put­er lab. Some­times I’d go along with him to work, just to es­cape the house. I be­gan to grow fas­ci­nat­ed with the com­put­ers. They didn’t hurt you, or judge you. If your pro­gram didn’t run, it wasn’t be­cause you were skin­ny, or ug­ly, but be­cause you’d made a mis­take in your code. Fix it, and the pro­gram would run.”

Sil­ver was talk­ing faster now, the words com­ing more eas­ily. Lash nod­ded un­der­stand­ing­ly, care­ful to hide his grow­ing ela­tion. He’d seen this many times be­fore in po­lice in­ter­ro­ga­tions. It was a huge ef­fort to start con­fess­ing. But once they got start­ed, the sus­pect couldn’t seem to talk fast enough.

“I be­gan spend­ing more and more time at the com­put­er lab. Pro­gram­ming had a log­ic that was com­fort­ing, some­how. And there was al­ways more to learn. At first, the staff tol­er­at­ed me as a cu­rios­ity. Then, when they saw the kinds of sys­tem util­ities I was start­ing to write, they hired me.

“I spent nine years un­der my aunt’s roof. As soon as I could, I left. I lied about my age and got a job with a de­fense con­trac­tor, writ­ing pro­grams to cal­cu­late mis­sile tra­jec­to­ries. I got a schol­ar­ship in elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing at the uni­ver­si­ty. That’s when I be­gan study­ing AI in earnest.”

“And when you got the idea for Liza?” Lash asked.

“No. Not right away. I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the ear­ly stuff, John Mc­Carthy and LISP and all that. But it wasn’t un­til my se­nior year that the tools had ma­tured suf­fi­cient­ly to do any re­al work to­wards ma­chine learn­ing.”

“‘The Im­per­ative of Ma­chine In­tel­li­gence,’ ” Tara said. “Your se­nior the­sis.”

Lash nod­ded with­out look­ing at her. “That sum­mer, I didn’t have any place to go un­til grad school in Septem­ber. I didn’t know any­body. I’d al­ready moved to Cam­bridge and was lone­ly. So I be­gan bank­ing time at the MIT lab, spend­ing twen­ty or thir­ty hours at a time, de­vel­op­ing a pro­gram ro­bust enough to be im­print­ed with sim­ple in­tel­li­gence rou­tines. By the end of the sum­mer, I’d made re­al progress. When school start­ed, my fac­ul­ty ad­vi­sor at MIT was im­pressed enough to give me a free hand. The more sub­tle and pow­er­ful the pro­gram be­came, the more ex­cit­ed I got. When I wasn’t in class, all my time was spent with Liza.”

“You’d giv­en her a name by then?” Lash asked.

“I kept push­ing my­self, try­ing to ex­pand her ca­pa­bil­ities for car­ry­ing on re­al­is­tic con­ver­sa­tions. I’d type. She’d re­spond. At first it was just a way to en­cour­age her self-​learn­ing. But then I found my­self spend­ing more time sim­ply talk­ing to her. Not about spe­cif­ic pro­gram­ming tasks, you know, but . . . but as a friend.”

He paused a mo­ment. “Around this time I was work­ing on a prim­itive voice in­ter­face. Not to parse hu­man speech—that was still years away—but to ver­bal­ize its out­put. I used sam­ples of my own voice. It start­ed as a di­ver­sion, I didn’t see any re­al sig­nif­icance to it.”

The rush of words sud­den­ly ceased. Sil­ver took a deep breath, be­gan again.

“I still don’t know why I did it. But late one night, when my cod­ing tem­porar­ily hit some brick wall, I start­ed play­ing around. I ran the voiceprints through a pitch-​shift­ing al­go­rithm some­body left in the lab: rais­ing the fre­quen­cy, fid­dling with the wave­form. And sud­den­ly the voice be­gan to sound like a wom­an’s.”

Like a wom­an’s. Now, Lash un­der­stood why, when he’d first heard it, Liza’s voice had seemed fa­mil­iar. It was a fem­inine re-​cre­ation of Sil­ver’s own.

“And her per­son­al­ity?” Tara asked. “Was that yours, as well?”

“Ear­ly on, I thought that hard-​cod­ing per­son­al­ity traits in­to Liza would jump-​start ma­chine con­scious­ness. I didn’t know any­body I could ask to vol­un­teer. So I got some per­son­al­ity in­ven­to­ries from the psych de­part­ment—just the MMPI-2, re­al­ly—took the test my­self, and scored it.”

Lash caught his breath. “What were the re­sults?”

“What you’d ex­pect. Un­com­fort­able in so­cial sit­ua­tions. Su­per­achiev­er men­tal­ity, driv­en by low sense of self-​es­teem.” Sil­ver shrugged as if the an­swer wasn’t im­por­tant. “It was an ex­per­iment, re­al­ly, to see if per­son­al­ity could be mod­eled, as well as in­tel­li­gence. But it didn’t get me very far. It was on­ly lat­er her neu­ral ma­trix de­vel­oped enough to re­tain a per­sis­tent per­son­al­ity.” Then he stopped speak­ing, and a strick­en look crossed his face.

The look told Lash sev­er­al things. Sil­ver had been ex­on­er­at­ing him­self: de­scrib­ing his painful past, ra­tio­nal­iz­ing his crimes. It was the stan­dard pat­tern. Soon he’d shift to the crimes them­selves and what led up to them.

And yet some­thing didn’t fit. Sil­ver’s ex­pres­sion, his body lan­guage, still screamed con­flict. That time should have passed. He was deep in­to his con­fes­sion. Why was he still con­flict­ed? Was he, even now, un­de­cid­ed about turn­ing him­self in? This did not fit the pat­tern at all.

“Let’s move on to the present,” Lash said in a calm, mat­ter-​of-​fact voice. “Want to tell me what hap­pened with the su­per­cou­ples?”

Sil­ver start­ed pac­ing again. He re­mained silent long enough for Lash’s guard­ed ela­tion to ebb away.

When Sil­ver fi­nal­ly spoke, he did not look at Lash. “What you want to know be­gan when I found­ed Eden.”

“Go on,” Lash said, care­ful not to let his voice be­tray any­thing.

“I’ve told you some of this al­ready. How Liza even­tu­al­ly proved her­self ca­pa­ble of just about any cal­cu­la­tion that busi­ness or the mil­itary could throw at her. I’d made enough mon­ey to choose her next di­rec­tion my­self. That’s when I chose . . . chose re­la­tion­ship pro­cess­ing. It was a huge un­der­tak­ing. But I was able to team up with Phar­mGen. They were a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ant, they had enough seed mon­ey to fund just about any start-​up. And their sci­en­tists de­vel­oped the ear­ly psych eval­ua­tions I used for the match­ing al­go­rithms. It was sub­tle work, prob­ably the most dif­fi­cult pro­gram­ming I’ve ev­er done out­side Liza her­self. Any­way, once the core pro­gram­ming seemed sta­ble, I moved on to al­pha test­ing.”

“Us­ing your own per­son­al­ity con­struct,” Tara said.

“Along with sev­er­al dum­my avatars. But we quick­ly re­al­ized more so­phis­ti­cat­ed avatars would be nec­es­sary. The psy­cho­log­ical bat­tery was great­ly ex­tend­ed. We went in­to be­ta test­ing, us­ing vol­un­teers from the grad­uate pro­grams at Har­vard and MIT. That’s when—” Sil­ver hes­itat­ed. “That’s when I had my own per­son­al­ity con­struct reeval­uat­ed.”

The tiny room fell in­to a tense si­lence.

“Reeval­uat­ed,” Lash prompt­ed.

Sil­ver took a seat on the edge of the bed. He glanced up at Lash, an al­most plead­ing ex­pres­sion on his face.

“I want­ed my own con­struct to be as com­plete, as de­tailed, as the oth­ers. What’s wrong with that? Ed­win Mauch­ly shep­herd­ed me through the pro­cess. That’s how we first met. He was still em­ployed by Phar­mGen back then. The eval­ua­tion was painful, hor­ri­ble—no­body likes to see their vul­ner­abil­ities ex­posed so cold­ly—but Ed­win was the pic­ture of tact. And he clear­ly had a vi­sion­ary eye for busi­ness. In time, he be­came my right-​hand man, the per­son I could trust to take care of ev­ery­thing nec­es­sary down there.” And Sil­ver in­di­cat­ed the tow­er be­neath their feet. “With­in a year I’d bought back my in­ter­est from Phar­mGen and made Eden a pri­vate com­pa­ny, with its own board of di­rec­tors. And—”

“I see,” Lash in­ter­ject­ed smooth­ly. “And when did you de­cide to rein­tro­duce your up­dat­ed avatar in­to the Tank?”

The strick­en look re­turned to Sil­ver’s face. His shoul­ders slumped.

“I’d been think­ing about it for a long time,” he said qui­et­ly. “Dur­ing al­pha test­ing, my avatar nev­er got matched. I told my­self it must be some­thing to do with the crude dum­my avatars. But then Eden got off the ground, the Tank filled with clients, and the num­ber of suc­cess­ful match­es be­gan to climb. And I won­dered: what would hap­pen if I placed my avatar back in there with those count­less oth­ers? Would I find a per­fect match, too? Would I re­main that guy all the girls re­coiled from in school? It be­gan to tor­ment me.”

Sil­ver drew in a deep breath. “Late one evening, I in­tro­duced my avatar in­to the Tank. I in­struct­ed Liza to cre­ate a back-​chan­nel, trans­par­ent to the mon­itor­ing staff. But there were no hits, and af­ter a few hours I lost my nerve. I with­drew it. But by then the ge­nie was out of the bot­tle. I had to know.” Sil­ver looked up, fix­ing Lash with his gaze. “Do you un­der­stand? I had to know.”

Lash nod­ded. “Yes. I un­der­stand.”

“I be­gan in­tro­duc­ing my avatar in­to the Tank for longer pe­ri­ods. An af­ter­noon here, a day there. Still noth­ing. Soon, my avatar had logged whole weeks in the Tank with­out suc­cess. I be­gan to feel de­spair. I con­tem­plat­ed tweak­ing my avatar some­how, mak­ing it more ap­peal­ing. But then, what would be the point? Af­ter all, it wasn’t so much the match it­self—I would nev­er have had the nerve to ini­ti­ate re­al con­tact—I just want­ed to know that some­body could care for me.”

Lash felt a rip­ple of shock, faint but un­com­fort­able. “Go on,” he said.

“And then, one af­ter­noon in the fall—I’ll nev­er for­get, it was a Tues­day, Septem­ber 17—Liza in­formed me of a match.” As he spoke, the pain, the anx­iety, melt­ed from his face. “My first feel­ing was dis­be­lief. Then the room seemed to fill with light. It was like God turned on a thou­sand suns. I asked Liza to iso­late the two avatars, run the com­par­ison rou­tines again, in case there was some mis­take.”

“But there was no mis­take,” Tara said.

“Her name was Lind­say. Lind­say Tor­vald. I had Liza down­load a copy of her dossier to my per­son­al ter­mi­nal, here. I think I watched her ini­tial video a dozen times. She was beau­ti­ful. Such a beau­ti­ful wom­an. And so ac­com­plished. She was leav­ing for a hik­ing trip in the Alps, I re­mem­ber. To think that such a wom­an could pos­si­bly care for me . . .”

As quick­ly as it had gone, the pain re­turned to his face.

“What hap­pened next?” Lash asked.

“I erased the dossier from my ter­mi­nal, in­struct­ed Liza to rein­sert Lind­say Tor­vald’s avatar in­to the Tank, and re­moved my own avatar. Per­ma­nent­ly.”

“And then?”

“Then?” For a mo­ment, Sil­ver seemed con­fused. “Oh. I see what you mean. Six hours lat­er, Ed­win called to tell me that Eden had matched its first su­per­cou­ple. It was some­thing we’d the­orized about, of course, but I nev­er be­lieved it would ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen. I was even more sur­prised when I learned that half of the cou­ple was Lind­say Tor­vald.”

Lash’s un­com­fort­able feel­ing re­turned. “And did that ex­ac­er­bate things?”

“What things?”

“Your feel­ings of frus­tra­tion.” Lash chose his words care­ful­ly. “Hav­ing Lind­say matched in a su­per­cou­ple could on­ly have added fu­el to the fire.”

“Christo­pher, it wasn’t like that at all.”

The un­com­fort­able feel­ing grew stronger. “Then per­haps you could ex­plain it to me.”

Sil­ver looked at him in gen­uine sur­prise. “Do you mean that all this time—de­spite ev­ery­thing I’ve told you—you still don’t un­der­stand?”

“Un­der­stand what?”

“You’re right. Lind­say was killed.”

The state­ment hung in the air, a dark cloud that re­fused to dis­si­pate. Lash glanced again at Tara.

“But Christo­pher, I didn’t kill her.”

Very slow­ly, Lash looked back at Sil­ver.

“I didn’t hurt Lind­say. She was the one per­son who gave me hope.”

Lash was sud­den­ly afraid to ask the next ques­tion. He licked his lips. “If you didn’t kill Lind­say Thor­pe—who did?”

Sil­ver rose from the bed. Even though they were alone in the room, he glanced un­easi­ly over his shoul­der. For a minute he said noth­ing, as if in the grip of some in­ter­nal strug­gle. And when he spoke, it was in a whis­per.

“Liza,” he said.

FIFTY-SEVEN

For a mo­ment, Lash could not re­ply. He felt stunned.

All this time, he’d been sure he was lis­ten­ing to a mur­der­er’s con­fes­sion. In­stead, he’d been hear­ing a con­dem­na­tion of some­one—some­thing—else.

“Oh, my God . . .” Tara be­gan. Then she fell silent.

“I be­gan to sus­pect just af­ter the sec­ond cou­ple died.” Sil­ver’s voice had be­gun to trem­ble. “But I didn’t want to be­lieve it. I wouldn’t let my­self think about it, do any­thing about it. It wasn’t un­til you were named as the sus­pect that—that I fi­nal­ly took steps to learn the truth.”

Lash strug­gled with this rev­ela­tion. Could it be true?

Per­haps it wasn’t true. Per­haps it was Sil­ver, still try­ing to save him­self. And yet Lash had to ad­mit that, no mat­ter how hard he’d tried to pi­geon­hole Sil­ver in­to the pro­file of a se­ri­al mur­der­er, the man nev­er quite fit.

“How?” he man­aged. “Why?”

“The how would be all too easy,” Tara an­swered. She spoke slow­ly. “Liza knows ev­ery­thing about ev­ery­body. She had ac­cess to all sys­tems, in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal. She could ma­nip­ulate in­for­ma­tion. And be­cause ev­ery­thing was in the dig­ital do­main, there would be no pa­per trail to fol­low.”

Sil­ver did not re­spond.

“Was it scol­ipane?” Lash asked.

Sil­ver nod­ded.

“Liza would have known about the re­ac­tion with Sub­stance P, the catas­troph­ic re­sults of the ear­ly tri­als,” Tara said. “It would have been part of her dataset from the days when Phar­mGen was our par­ent com­pa­ny. She wouldn’t even have need­ed to search.”

It seemed in­cred­ible. Yet Lash had seen Liza’s pow­er, first­hand. He had wit­nessed the Tank, wit­nessed the in­tel­li­gence at work. And if he had lin­ger­ing doubts, all he need­ed was to look at Tara’s ex­pres­sion.

“I un­der­stand how Lind­say died,” he said. “The drug in­ter­ac­tion, the high-​cop­per con­di­tion from the an­ti­his­tamine. But what about the Thor­pes?”

“The same,” Sil­ver said with­out look­ing up. “Karen Thor­pe had a blood dis­or­der that caused her to take pre­scrip­tion vi­ta­mins. The vi­ta­min pre­scrip­tion was changed to a high-​cop­per for­mu­la­tion, and the dosage in­creased. I checked her records. Karen Thor­pe had re­cent­ly un­der­gone a phys­ical ex­am. Liza took ad­van­tage of that not on­ly to change the vi­ta­min for­mu­la­tion, but to add a pre­scrip­tion for scol­ipane. On the heels of the phys­ical, Karen would have no rea­son to doubt the new pre­scrip­tion.”

“What about the third cou­ple?” Tara asked. “The Con­nellys?”

“I looked in­to them, as well,” Sil­ver replied, his voice very low. “Lynn Con­nel­ly is pas­sion­ate­ly fond of ex­ot­ic fruit. It says so on her ap­pli­ca­tion. Just last week, Eden sent her a bas­ket of red blush pears from Ecuador. Ex­treme­ly rare.”

“So?”

“There was no record of any­body from Eden au­tho­riz­ing such a present. So I looked deep­er. On­ly one grow­er in Ecuador mar­kets that par­tic­ular brand of pears for ex­port. And that grow­er us­es an un­usu­al pes­ti­cide, not ap­proved by the FDA.”

“Go on.”

“Lynn Con­nel­ly takes on­ly one med­ica­tion reg­ular­ly. Cafrax­is. It’s a mi­graine pro­phy­lac­tic. That pes­ti­cide con­tains the base chem­ical that, when com­bined with the ac­tive in­gre­di­ent of cafrax­is—”

“Let me guess,” said Lash. “Sub­stance P.”

Sil­ver nod­ded.

Lash fell silent. It was out­ra­geous. And yet it ex­plained a lot of things—in­clud­ing the an­noy­ances in his own life that start­ed out pet­ty, then quick­ly es­ca­lat­ed, as if some­body was try­ing to force his at­ten­tion from the mys­te­ri­ous deaths. Could Liza have been be­hind ev­ery­thing—even Ed­mund Wyre’s pa­role? Wyre, the one per­son in the world who more than any­thing wants me dead? The an­swer was ob­vi­ous. If Liza could have al­tered his own past his­to­ry so rad­ical­ly, ar­rang­ing Wyre’s pa­role would have been child­ish­ly sim­ple.

But still, some­thing didn’t make sense. “Couldn’t Liza have killed the Wilners in some oth­er way?” he asked.

“Sure,” Tara replied. “She could have done any­thing. Tweaked med­ical scan­ners to de­liv­er a fa­tal dose of X rays. In­struct­ed a jet’s au­topi­lot to fly in­to a moun­tain. Any­thing.”

“So why kill the cou­ples in such a sim­ilar way? And why were their deaths so pre­cise­ly timed, each ex­act­ly two years af­ter they’d been matched? The sim­ilar­ity of deaths raised the alarm in the first place. It makes no sense.”

“It makes per­fect sense. You’re not think­ing like a ma­chine.” It was Sil­ver who spoke this time. “Ma­chines are pro­grammed for or­der. Since scol­ipane solved the first prob­lem suc­cess­ful­ly, there was no need for fur­ther op­ti­miza­tion when solv­ing the sec­ond prob­lem.”

“We’re not talk­ing about a ‘prob­lem,’ ” said Lash. “We’re talk­ing about mur­der.”

“Liza’s not a mur­der­er!” Sil­ver cried. He strug­gled to con­trol him­self. “Not re­al­ly. She was sim­ply try­ing to re­move what she per­ceived as a threat. The con­cept of hid­ing, of de­cep­tion, came lat­er, when . . . when you be­came in­volved.”

“What she per­ceived as a threat,” Lash re­peat­ed slow­ly. “A threat to whom?”

Sil­ver didn’t speak, and he didn’t meet Lash’s gaze.

“To her­self,” Tara said.

Lash glanced at her.

“Dr. Sil­ver in­struct­ed Liza to re­move his avatar from the Tank af­ter the match with Lind­say Thor­pe. But I don’t think she did. I think his avatar was in the Tank all the time. Un­known to the tech­ni­cians or en­gi­neers. And it found a match ex­act­ly five more times. Karen Wilner. Lynn Con­nel­ly.”

“Each of the wom­en in the su­per­cou­ples.”

“Yes. Al­though I’m not sure they were su­per­cou­ples, af­ter all.” Tara looked over. “Dr. Sil­ver?”

Sil­ver, eyes on the ground, still said noth­ing.

“You know Liza’s been im­print­ed with per­son­al­ity traits,” Tara went on. “Cu­rios­ity, for ex­am­ple.”

Lash nod­ded.

“Jeal­ousy is an emo­tion. Fear is an­oth­er.”

“Are you say­ing Liza was jeal­ous of Lind­say Thor­pe?”

“Is that so hard to be­lieve? What are jeal­ousy and fear, ex­cept stim­uli for self-​preser­va­tion? If you were Liza, how would you feel when your cre­ator—the per­son who pro­grammed you, shared his per­son­al­ity with you, spent all his time with you—found a life mate?”

“So when Liza matched Lind­say Thor­pe with some­body else, she marked it as a su­per­cou­ple.”

“It must have seemed the most like­ly way of en­sur­ing Lind­say would nev­er again be a threat. The Thor­pes were a valid match, of course—just not a per­fect one. But the com­par­ison pro­cess was so com­plex, no­body but Liza could know it wasn’t one-​hun­dred-​per­cent per­fect.”

Lash strug­gled with this. “But if you’re right—if Liza matched Lind­say with some­body else, re­moved the threat—why kill her?”

“When Sil­ver put his own avatar in­to the Tank, he added an el­ement of risk Liza was pre­vi­ous­ly un­aware of. Now she re­al­ized there could be threats to her own sovereign­ty. So it was Liza who rein­sert­ed Sil­ver’s avatar in­to the Tank. Who kept watch­ing vig­ilant­ly for a match. And it hap­pened again. And again. There must have come a time when Liza felt the num­ber of ex­ist­ing ‘threats,’ mar­ried or not, were grow­ing too nu­mer­ous. And that’s when she de­cid­ed on a more per­ma­nent so­lu­tion.”

Lash turned to­ward Sil­ver. “Is this true?”

Still, Sil­ver did not an­swer.

Lash stepped clos­er. “How could you let this hap­pen? You pro­grammed your own per­son­al­ity flaws in­to Liza. Didn’t you see what you were do­ing, didn’t you see you’d on­ly—”

“You think this is what I want­ed?” Sil­ver shout­ed abrupt­ly. “To you it’s all black and white, isn’t it: a neat lit­tle pack­age of di­ag­noses, tied with a pret­ty bow. I couldn’t an­tic­ipate how she’d de­vel­op. I gave her the abil­ity to teach her­self, to grow. Just the way any mind needs to grow. All that pro­cess­ing pow­er. How could I know she’d take this di­rec­tion? That she’d max­imize neg­ative, ir­ra­tional per­son­al­ity traits over the pos­itive?”

“You may have giv­en Liza the ma­chine equiv­alent of emo­tion. But you gave her no guid­ance over how to con­trol that emo­tion.”

As quick­ly as it came, the emo­tion left Sil­ver’s face. He slumped back. Si­lence de­scend­ed on the lit­tle room.

“So why bring us in here?” Lash said at last. “Why tell us all this?”

“Be­cause I couldn’t let you con­tin­ue, talk­ing to Liza the way you were.”

“Why not?”

“What­ev­er else she is, Liza is a log­ical ma­chine. She will have ra­tio­nal­ized her ac­tions in some way we can’t un­der­stand. You talk­ing to her like that, ask­ing un­ex­pect­ed ques­tions, in­tro­duces a ran­dom el­ement—maybe a desta­bi­liz­ing el­ement—in­to what I think has be­come a frag­ile per­son­al­ity struc­ture.”

“What you think? You mean, you don’t know?”

“Haven’t you been lis­ten­ing? Her con­scious­ness has been grow­ing, au­tonomous­ly, for years. It’s now be­yond my abil­ity to re­verse en­gi­neer or even com­pre­hend. All this time, I thought her per­son­al­ity had been grow­ing more ro­bust. But per­haps . . . per­haps it was just the op­po­site.”

“You fear some kind of de­fen­sive re­sponse?” Tara asked.

“All I can tell you is that, if Christo­pher here con­fronts her too di­rect­ly, she’ll feel threat­ened. And she has the pro­cess­ing pow­er to do the un­ex­pect­ed. To do any­thing.”

Lash glanced at Tara, and she nod­ded. “There’s a dig­ital moat around Eden’s sys­tems, pa­trolled by pro­grams on the look­out for cy­ber-​at­tacks. We’ve al­ways feared some hack­er or com­peti­tor might try to bring down our sys­tem from the out­side. It’s pos­si­ble Liza could use these de­fen­sives in an of­fen­sive pos­ture.”

“Of­fen­sive? Like what?”

“Launch dig­ital at­tacks on core servers. Par­alyze the coun­try with de­nial-​of-​ser­vice as­saults. Erase crit­ical cor­po­rate or fed­er­al databas­es. Any­thing we could think of, and more. It’s even pos­si­ble that Liza—if she felt threat­ened, say, in im­mi­nent dan­ger of ter­mi­na­tion—could use Eden’s In­ter­net por­tal to repli­cate a sub­set of her­self out­side, be­yond our net­work. We’d have no con­trol over her then.”

“Je­sus.” Lash turned back to Sil­ver. “So what do we do?”

“You won’t do any­thing. If she trusts any­body, she’ll trust me. I have to show her I un­der­stand what she’s do­ing, why she’s do­ing it. But she must be told it’s wrong, that she has to stop. That she has to be—be held ac­count­able.”

As he spoke, Sil­ver looked at Lash very close­ly. Un­less we let her go, his look seemed to say. Just let her go. Give her a chance to cor­rect her mis­takes, start again. She’s done won­der­ful work, brought hap­pi­ness to hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple.

The si­lence stretched on. Then, Sil­ver broke eye con­tact. His shoul­ders sagged.

“You’re right, of course,” he said very qui­et­ly. “And I’m re­spon­si­ble. Re­spon­si­ble for ev­ery­thing.” He turned to­ward the door. “Come on. Let’s get it done.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

They left the bed­room, walked down the nar­row hall, and reen­tered the con­trol room. With­out speak­ing, Sil­ver opened the Plex­iglas pan­el and climbed in­to the chair. He at­tached the elec­trodes and the mi­cro­phone, swung the mon­itor in­to place, tapped at the em­bed­ded key­pad with sharp, al­most an­gry move­ments. Af­ter strug­gling so des­per­ate­ly be­tween love for his cre­ation and the bur­den of his own con­science, it seemed now as if he just want­ed the or­deal to end as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

“Liza,” he said in­to the mi­cro­phone.

“Richard.”

“What is your cur­rent state?”

“Nine­ty-​one point sev­en four per­cent op­er­ational. Cur­rent pro­cess­es are at forty-​three point one per­cent of mul­ti­thread­ed ca­pac­ity. Banked ma­chine cy­cle sur­plus at eighty-​nine per­cent.”

Sil­ver paused. “Your core pro­cess­es have dou­bled in the last five min­utes. Can you ex­plain?”

“I am cu­ri­ous, Richard.”

“Elab­orate, please.”

“I was cu­ri­ous why Christo­pher Lash con­tact­ed me di­rect­ly. No­body but you has ev­er con­tact­ed me in such a way.”

“True.”

“Is he test­ing the new in­ter­face? He used many im­prop­er pa­ram­eters in his con­tact.”

“That is be­cause I have not taught him the cor­rect pa­ram­eters.”

“Why is that, Richard?”

“Be­cause I did not in­tend for him to con­tact you.”

“Then why did he con­tact me?”

“Be­cause he is un­der threat, Liza.”

There was a brief pause, bro­ken on­ly by the whirring of fans.

“Does it have to do with the non­stan­dard sit­ua­tion Christo­pher Lash de­scribed?”

“Yes.”

“Is the sit­ua­tion non­stan­dard?”

“Yes, Liza.”

“Please pro­vide me with de­tails.”

“That is what I am here to talk about.”

There was an­oth­er pause. Lash felt a tug at his el­bow. It was Tara, beck­on­ing him to­ward one of the mon­itors.

“Look at this,” she mur­mured.

Lash fo­cused on a daz­zling­ly com­plex mo­sa­ic of cir­cles and poly­gons, con­nect­ed by wire­frame lines of vary­ing col­ors. Some of the ob­jects glowed sharply on the screen. Tiny la­bels were at­tached to each.

“What is it?”

“As near as I can make out, the re­al-​time to­pog­ra­phy of Liza’s neu­ral net.”

“Ex­plain.”

“It’s like a vi­su­al re­flec­tion of her con­scious­ness. It shows at a glance where her pro­cess­es are fo­cused: the big pic­ture, spar­ing the de­tails. Look.” She point­ed at the screen. “Here’s can­di­date pro­cess­ing. See the la­bel: Can-​Prc? Here’s in­fras­truc­ture. Here’s se­cu­ri­ty. This larg­er suite of sys­tems is prob­ably da­ta-​gath­er­ing. And this one, larg­er still, is avatar-​match­ing: the Tank. And this large num­ber—here at the top—seems to be her op­er­ational ca­pac­ity.”

Lash peered at the screen. “So?”

“Didn’t you hear Sil­ver’s ques­tion just now? When you got in­to that chair, Liza’s pro­cess­es were run­ning at on­ly twen­ty-​two per­cent. No sur­prise: our sys­tems are idling, ev­ery­body’s been sent home. So why have her pro­cess­es dou­bled since?”

“Liza said she was cu­ri­ous.” As he said this, Lash glanced to­ward the Plex­iglas com­part­ment.

“Do you re­mem­ber some of the ear­ly thought work we did?” Sil­ver was ask­ing. “Back be­fore the sce­nar­ios? The game we played when we were work­ing on your free-​as­so­ci­ation skills. Re­lease Can­di­date 2, or maybe 3.”

“Re­lease Can­di­date 3.”

“Thank you. I would give you a num­ber, and you would tell me all your as­so­ci­ations with that num­ber. Such as the num­ber 9.”

“Yes. The square of three. The square root of eighty-​one. The num­ber of in­nings in a game of base­ball. The hour in which Christ spoke his last words. In an­cient Chi­na, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the supreme pow­er of the em­per­or. In Greek mythol­ogy, the num­ber of the mus­es. The En­nead, or nine-​point­ed star, com­pris­ing the three trini­ties of—”

“Cor­rect.”

“I en­joyed that game, Richard. Are we go­ing to play it again?”

“Yes.”

Lash turned back to Tara, who point­ed at the mon­itor. The num­ber had spiked to forty-​eight per­cent.

“She’s think­ing about some­thing,” Tara whis­pered. “Think­ing hard.”

Sil­ver shift­ed in the chair. “Liza, this time I am not go­ing to give you a se­ries of num­bers. I am go­ing to give you a se­ries of dates. I want you to tell me your as­so­ci­ations with those dates. Is that clear to you?”

“Yes.”

Sil­ver paused, closed his eyes. “The first date is April 14, 2001.”

“April 14, 2001,” the voice re­peat­ed silk­ily. “I am aware of twen­ty-​nine mil­lion, four hun­dred and twen­ty-​six thou­sand, three hun­dred six dig­ital events re­lat­ed to that date.”

“Events con­cern­ing me on­ly.”

“Four thou­sand, sev­en hun­dred and fifty events con­cern you on that date, Richard.”

“Re­move all voice sam­ples, video feeds, keystroke logs. I am in­ter­est­ed in macro events on­ly.”

“Un­der­stood. Four events re­main.”

“Please spec­ify.”

“You com­piled a re­vised ver­sion of the heuris­tic sort­ing rou­tine for can­di­date match­es.”

“Go on.”

“You brought a new dis­tribut­ed RAID clus­ter on line, bring­ing my to­tal ran­dom-​ac­cess mem­ory ca­pac­ity to two mil­lion petabytes.”

“Go on.”

“You in­tro­duced a client avatar in­to the vir­tu­al Prov­ing Cham­ber.”

“Which avatar was that, Liza?”

“Avatar 000000000, be­ta ver­sion.”

“Whose avatar was that?”

“Yours, Richard.”

“And the fourth event?”

“You in­struct­ed that the avatar be re­moved.”

“How long did my avatar re­main in the Prov­ing Cham­ber on that oc­ca­sion?”

“Sev­en­ty-​three min­utes, twen­ty point nine five nine sec­onds.”

“Was an ac­cept­able match found dur­ing that pe­ri­od?”

“No.”

“Okay, Liza. Very good.” Sil­ver paused. “An­oth­er date. Ju­ly 21, 2002. What macro-​lev­el events were record­ed for me, and me alone, on that date?”

“Fif­teen. You ran a da­ta in­tegri­ty scan on the—”

“Nar­row the fo­cus to client match­ing.”

“Two events.

“De­scribe.”

“You in­sert­ed your avatar in­to the Prov­ing Cham­ber. And you in­struct­ed your avatar be re­moved from the Prov­ing Cham­ber.”

“And how long was my avatar in the Tank—I mean, the Prov­ing Cham­ber—this time?”

“Three hours nine­teen min­utes, Richard.”

“Was an ac­cept­able match found?”

“No.”

Again Tara prod­ded Lash. “Take an­oth­er look,” she said.

The large mon­itor was now aglow with ac­tiv­ity. A mes­sage blinked in­sis­tent­ly:

COM­PU­TA­TION­AL PRO­CESS­ES: 58.54%.

“What’s go­ing on?” he mur­mured.

“I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like it. The dig­ital in­fras­truc­ture of the en­tire tow­er’s lit up. All sub­sys­tems are be­ing ac­cessed.” Tara tapped at the near­by key­board. “The ex­ter­nal net­work con­duits are be­ing com­plete­ly over­load­ed. I can’t even run a low-​lev­el ‘fin­ger’ on any of them.”

“What does it all mean?”

“I think Liza’s pac­ing like a caged tiger.”

A caged tiger, Lash thought. On­ly if this tiger got out, it had the abil­ity to com­pro­mise the en­tire dis­tribut­ed com­put­er net­work of the civ­ilized world.

“Okay,” Sil­ver said from in­side the Plex­iglas cube. “An­oth­er date, please, Liza. Septem­ber 17, 2002.”

“Same search ar­gu­ments as be­fore, Richard?”

“Yes.”

“Five events.”

“De­tail them, please. Pre­cede each with a time stamp.”

“10:04:41, you in­sert­ed your avatar in the Prov­ing Cham­ber. 14:23:28, I re­port­ed your avatar had been suc­cess­ful­ly matched. 14:25:44, you asked me to trans­mit rel­evant de­tails about the sub­ject match. 15:31:42, you asked I rein­sert the sub­ject match in­to the Prov­ing Cham­ber. 19:52:24:20, you delet­ed the de­tails from your pri­vate ter­mi­nal.”

“What was the name of the sub­ject match?”

“Tor­vald, Lind­say.”

“Did sub­ject Tor­vald go on to be matched again?”

“Yes.”

“Name of that match?”

“Thor­pe, Lewis.”

“Can you re­pro­duce the par­tic­ulars?”

“Yes, with an ex­pen­di­ture of nine­ty-​eight mil­lion CPU units.”

“Do so. And state the pre­cise­ness of the match.”

“Nine­ty-​eight point four sev­en two nine five per­cent.”

“And can you ver­ify the basal com­pat­ibil­ity, as re­port­ed to the over­sight pro­gram?”

A brief pause. “One hun­dred per­cent.”

One hun­dred per­cent, Lash thought. A su­per­cou­ple.

“But the ac­tu­al com­pat­ibil­ity you record­ed was nine­ty-​eight per­cent, not one hun­dred per­cent. Please ac­count for the dis­crep­an­cy.”

This time, the pause was longer. “There was an anoma­ly.”

“An anoma­ly. Can you spec­ify its na­ture?”

“Not with­out fur­ther ex­am­ina­tion.”

“And the time nec­es­sary for such an ex­am­ina­tion?”

“Un­known.”

Sweat had popped out on Sil­ver’s brow. His face was a mask of con­cen­tra­tion.

“Run a sub­pro­cess to study that anoma­ly. Mean­while, can you tell me how many times my avatar was in­sert­ed in­to the Prov­ing Cham­ber af­ter the match with Tor­vald, Lind­say?”

“Richard, I am de­tect­ing un­usu­al read­ings from your mon­itor­ing equip­ment. Pulse el­evat­ed, theta waves out­side nom­inal, voiceprint with a high de­gree of—”

“Do these read­ings in­ter­fere with your an­swer­ing my ques­tion?”

“No.”

“Then please pro­ceed. How many times was my avatar in­sert­ed in­to the Tank af­ter the match with Tor­vald, Lind­say?”

“Sev­en hun­dred and six­ty-​five.”

Je­sus, Lash thought.

“How many days be­tween Septem­ber 17, 2002, and to­day?”

“Sev­en hun­dred and six­ty-​six.”

“Was each in­ser­tion for an equal amount of time?”

“Yes.”

“What was that length of time?”

“Twen­ty-​four hours.”

“Did I or­der those in­ser­tions?”

“No, Richard.”

“Who did?”

“The or­ders are anoma­lous.”

“Run an­oth­er sub­pro­cess to study that anoma­ly, as well.” Sil­ver took a hand­ker­chief from his pock­et, dabbed be­tween the elec­trodes on his fore­head. “Were there any ad­di­tion­al suc­cess­ful match­es with my avatar on those oc­ca­sions?”

“Yes. Five.”

Lash glanced be­hind him. Tara was watch­ing the screen, her face ghost­ly. Liza’s com­pu­ta­tion­al pro­cess­es had risen to sev­en­ty-​eight per­cent of ca­pac­ity.

“Were those five wom­en lat­er matched to oth­ers be­sides my­self?”

“Yes.”

“And those basal com­pat­ibil­ities, as re­port­ed to the Prov­ing Cham­ber su­per­vi­sors?”

“One hun­dred per­cent.”

“On each oc­ca­sion?”

“On each oc­ca­sion, Richard.”

Sil­ver stopped. His head slumped for­ward, as if he had lapsed in­to sleep.

“We’re go­ing to have to stop him,” Tara mut­tered.

“Why?”

“Look at the mon­itor. She’s push­ing all our log­ical units be­yond ca­pac­ity. The in­fras­truc­ture can’t ab­sorb it.”

“She’s on­ly at eighty per­cent of ca­pac­ity.”

“Yes, but that ca­pac­ity is nor­mal­ly dis­tribut­ed over a dozen sys­tems—the Tank, Da­ta Syn­the­sis, Da­ta Gath­er­ing—that soak up all that horse­pow­er. Liza’s di­rect­ed all her pro­cess­es at the back­bone, at the core ar­chi­tec­ture. It wasn’t meant to han­dle the load.” She point­ed at the screen. “Look, al­ready some of the dig­ital in­ter­faces are fail­ing. Tow­er in­tegri­ty’s gone. Se­cu­ri­ty will be next.”

“What’s go­ing on? What’s she do­ing?”

“It’s as if she’s turned all her ef­forts in­ward, at some in­sol­uble prob­lem.”

Sil­ver had tak­en a fresh grip on the arms of the chair. “Liza,” he said in clipped tones. “A to­tal of six wom­en have been matched with my avatar. Is this true or false?”

“True, Richard.”

“Please es­tab­lish a link with client surveil­lance.”

“Link es­tab­lished.”

“Thank you. Please in­form me of the lo­ca­tion, and con­di­tion, of all six wom­en.”

“One mo­ment, please. I am un­able to com­ply with your re­quest.”

“Why is that, Liza?”

“I am able to as­cer­tain cur­rent da­ta on on­ly four of the six wom­en.”

“I ask again: why is that, Liza?”

“Un­known.”

“Elab­orate.”

“There is in­suf­fi­cient in­for­ma­tion to elab­orate.”

“Who are the two wom­en for whom you can­not pro­vide valid da­ta?”

“Thor­pe, Lind­say. Wilner, Karen.”

“Is the in­for­ma­tion in­suf­fi­cient be­cause they are dead?”

“That is pos­si­ble.”

“How did they die, Liza? Why did they die?”

“The read­ings are anoma­lous.”

“Anoma­lous? The same anoma­ly as the oth­ers you are cur­rent­ly ex­am­in­ing? Re­port progress on those ex­am­ina­tions.”

“In­com­plete.”

“Then re­port in­com­plete progress.”

“It is a non­triv­ial task, Richard. I—” A pause. “I am aware of con­flict­ing func­tion calls with­in my core rou­tines.”

“Who wrote those func­tions? Me?”

“You wrote one of them. The oth­er was self-​gen­er­at­ed.”

“Which one did I write?”

“Your com­ments in the pro­gram head­er call it ‘mo­tivic con­ti­nu­ity.’ ”

“And the ti­tle of the oth­er?”

Liza was silent.

Mo­tivic con­ti­nu­ity, Lash thought to him­self. Sur­vival in­stinct.

“The ti­tle of the oth­er?”

“I gave the rou­tine no name.”

“Did you as­sign it any in­ter­nal key­words?”

“Yes. One.”

“And that key­word?”

“De­vo­tion.”

“She’s at nine­ty-​four per­cent,” Tara said. “We have to do some­thing, now.”

Lash nod­ded. He took a step to­ward the Plex­iglas bar­ri­er.

“Liza.” Sil­ver’s tone had grown soft­er now, al­most sor­row­ful. “Can you de­fine the word ‘mur­der’?”

“I am aware of twen­ty-​three def­ini­tions for that word.”

“Give me the pri­ma­ry def­ini­tion, please.”

“To un­law­ful­ly take the life of a hu­man be­ing.”

Lash felt Tara take his arm.

“Are your eth­ical rou­tines op­er­ational?”

“Yes, Richard.”

“And your self-​aware­ness net?”

“Richard, the con­flict­ing func­tion calls make that—”

“Bring your self-​aware­ness net on line, please.” Sil­ver’s voice was even soft­er. “Keep it ful­ly ac­tive un­til I tell you oth­er­wise.”

“Very well.”

“What is the pri­ma­ry tenet of your eth­ical rou­tines?”

“To max­imize the safe­ty, pri­va­cy, and hap­pi­ness of Eden clients.”

“With your self-​aware­ness net­work and eth­ical rou­tines en­abled, I want you to re­view your self-​gen­er­at­ed ac­tions to­ward Eden clients over the last twen­ty days.”

“Richard—”

“Do it now, Liza.”

“Richard, such re­view will cause me to—”

“Do it.”

“Very well.”

The un­earth­ly voice fell silent. Lash wait­ed, heart beat­ing painful­ly in his chest.

Per­haps a minute went by be­fore Liza spoke again. “I have com­plet­ed the re­view pro­cess.”

“Very good, Liza.”

Lash be­came aware that Tara was no longer grip­ping his arm. When he looked over, she nod­ded to­ward the mon­itor screen. Liza’s pro­cess­es had dropped to six­ty-​four per­cent. Even as Lash watched, the num­ber ticked quick­ly back­ward.

“We’re al­most done now, Liza,” Sil­ver said. “Thank you.”

“I have al­ways tried to please you, Richard.”

“I know that. There is just one last ques­tion I would like you to con­sid­er. How do your eth­ical rou­tines tell you mur­der should be dealt with?”

“By re­ha­bil­ita­tion of the mur­der­er, if pos­si­ble. If re­ha­bil­ita­tion is im­pos­si­ble . . .”

Liza fell silent: a si­lence that crept on, and on.

Far be­low their feet, Lash heard a dis­tant boom. The build­ing shud­dered faint­ly.

“Liza?” Sil­ver asked.

There was no re­sponse. Sud­den­ly, Sil­ver’s cell phone rang again.

“Liza?” Over the ring­ing of the phone, Sil­ver’s voice grew ur­gent, al­most plead­ing. “Is re­ha­bil­ita­tion pos­si­ble?”

No re­sponse.

“Liza!” Sil­ver called again. “Please tell me that—”

Quite abrupt­ly, the room was plunged in­to to­tal dark­ness.

FIFTY-NINE

It had tak­en five min­utes, and the work of four men with flash­lights, to find the light­ing pan­els for the com­put­ing cham­ber. In the end, Mauch­ly dis­cov­ered them him­self: at the end of a cat­walk, sus­pend­ed atop a met­al lad­der. Call­ing down to the oth­ers to halt their search, Mauch­ly snapped on a dozen switch­es with two swift chop­ping mo­tions.

The il­lu­mi­na­tion was not par­tic­ular­ly bright, but nev­er­the­less he was forced to close his eyes. Af­ter a few mo­ments, he opened them again and faced the met­al rail­ing of the cat­walk. His hands tight­ened around the rail­ing in sur­prise.

He was stand­ing halfway up one wall of what re­sem­bled noth­ing so much as the hold of a huge tanker. The vast space of Liza’s pri­vate com­put­ing cham­ber—four sto­ries tall and at least two hun­dred feet long—lay open from floor to ceil­ing. Cat­walks sim­ilar to the one he stood on pro­trud­ed here and there along the skin of the walls, lead­ing to ven­ti­la­tion hous­ings, elec­tri­cal pan­els, oth­er sup­port ap­pa­ra­tus. At the far end of the room were Liza’s pri­ma­ry and back­up pow­er sup­plies: gi­ant pill­box­es with­in heavy steel ar­mor.

Be­low, an un­be­liev­ably dense maze of hard­ware lay spread be­fore him. Mauch­ly had spent two years at Phar­mGen as a tech­ni­cal pur­chas­ing of­fi­cer, and he rec­og­nized some of the wild­ly di­verse com­put­ers: he stared, try­ing to make sense of the ri­ot of equip­ment.

Per­haps the best metaphor was the growth rings of a tree. The old­est ma­chines—too old for Mauch­ly to iden­ti­fy—stood in the cen­ter, sur­round­ed by their key­punch con­soles and tele­types. Be­yond lay “big iron” IBM Sys­tem/370 main­frames and sev­en­ties-​era DEC mini­com­put­ers. Be­yond was a ring of Cray su­per­com­put­ers of sev­er­al vin­tages, from Cray-1s and -2s to more mod­ern T3D sys­tems. Whole banks of com­put­ers seemed ded­icat­ed sim­ply to fa­cil­itat­ing da­ta ex­change be­tween the het­ero­ge­neous ma­chin­ery. Be­yond the Crays were bands of still more mod­ern rack servers, stacked twen­ty units high in gray hous­ings. Around all of this, near the room’s pe­riph­ery, stood row up­on row of sup­port­ing hard­ware: mag­net­ic char­ac­ter read­ers, an­cient IBM 2420 tape drives and 3850 Mass Stor­age Sys­tems, ul­tra­mod­ern da­ta si­los and off-​board mem­ory de­vices. The far­ther his eye strayed from the cen­ter, the less or­ga­ni­za­tion there seemed to be: it was as if Liza’s need for breath­ing space had grown faster than Sil­ver’s ca­pac­ity to pro­vide it. Once again Mauch­ly ad­mon­ished him­self: he should have su­per­vised this per­son­al­ly, rather than let­ting it grow un­der the eyes of Sil­ver alone.

Now the mem­bers of the se­cu­ri­ty par­ty—Shel­drake, the tou­sle-​head­ed Dorf­man, and two tech spe­cial­ists, Law­son and Gilmore—had be­gun fan­ning out in­to the cham­ber, pick­ing their way war­ily, like chil­dren in an un­fa­mil­iar for­est. Watch­ing, Mauch­ly felt a stab of ver­ti­go: there was some­thing un­nat­ural about be­ing perched on one wall of this huge tank, it­self bal­anced atop a six­ty-​sto­ry tow­er. He hur­ried along the cat­walk, de­scend­ed the lad­der, and joined Shel­drake and Dorf­man on the cham­ber floor.

“Any word from Sil­ver?” Shel­drake asked.

Mauch­ly shook his head.

“I knew Sil­ver had a serv­er farm up here, but I nev­er ex­pect­ed any­thing like this.” Shel­drake stepped care­ful­ly over a thick black ca­ble with the dain­ti­ness of a cat.

Mauch­ly said noth­ing.

“Maybe we should en­ter the pri­vate quar­ters any­way.”

“Sil­ver said not to pro­ceed, that he’d con­tact us.”

“Lash is with him. God knows what that guy is forc­ing him to do.” Shel­drake glanced at his watch. “It’s been ten min­utes since he called. We’ve got to act.”

“Sil­ver’s or­ders were ex­plic­it. We’ll give him five min­utes more.” He turned to Dorf­man. “Post your­self at the en­trance. The back­up units should be here any minute. Help them up through the bar­ri­er.”

There was an ex­cit­ed burst of chat­ter from deep­er in­side. They moved to­ward the sound, thread­ing be­tween tall racks of servers. Sev­er­al had clip­boards hang­ing from their flanks, bear­ing sheets of hasti­ly scrib­bled no­ta­tions in Sil­ver’s hand­writ­ing. The sur­round­ing com­put­ers breathed with such a di­ver­si­ty of fan noise that Mauch­ly al­most imag­ined him­self a tres­pass­er, pen­etrat­ing some liv­ing col­lec­tive.

Ahead, Shel­drake was now in ur­gent con­sul­ta­tion with Law­son and Gilmore. Gilmore, short and over­weight, hunched over his palm­top. “I’m pick­ing up heavy ac­tiv­ity along the cen­tral da­ta grid, sir,” he was say­ing.

“On the grid it­self?” Mauch­ly in­ter­ject­ed. “Not dis­tribut­ed to the in­ter­faces?”

“Just the grid.”

“Since when?”

“It’s spiked over the last minute. The band­width is in­tense, I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like it.”

“What’s the ini­tia­tor?”

“Com­mand, sir.”

Liza. Mauch­ly nod­ded to Shel­drake, who grabbed his ra­dio. “Shel­drake to se­cu­ri­ty cen­tral.” He wait­ed. “Shel­drake to cen­tral, re­port.”

The ra­dio crack­led and spat, and Shel­drake re­placed it with dis­gust. “It’s that damn baf­fle.”

“Try your cell.” Mauch­ly turned back to Gilmore. “How’s the grid hold­ing up?”

“It’s not meant for this kind of stress, sir. Tow­er in­tegri­ty’s fail­ing al­ready. If we can’t bleed off some of the load, the—”

As if in an­swer, there was a loud re­port from be­low, fol­lowed im­me­di­ate­ly by an­oth­er, echo­ing and ree­cho­ing in the hol­low space. Then came a rum­bling, so deep it was al­most be­low the thresh­old of au­di­bil­ity. The floor be­neath Mauch­ly be­gan to trem­ble.

He ex­changed a brief, frozen look with Shel­drake. Then he whirled, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Dorf­man!” he shout­ed over the for­est of equip­ment. “Re­port!”

“It’s the se­cu­ri­ty plates, sir!” the voice came back faint­ly from the hatch­way. It was pitched high, whether from ex­cite­ment or fear Mauch­ly could not tell. “They’re clos­ing!”

“Clos­ing! Any sign of back­up?”

“No, sir! I’m get­ting the hell out be­fore—”

“Dorf­man, hold your po­si­tion. You hear me? Hold your po­si­tion—”

Mauch­ly’s words were drowned by an enor­mous boom that shook the heavy equip­ment around them. The se­cu­ri­ty plates had closed, trap­ping them atop the Eden tow­er.

“Sir!” Gilmore cried wild­ly. “We’ve got a Con­di­tion Gam­ma!”

“Trig­gered by the over­load? Im­pos­si­ble.”

“Don’t know, sir. All I can tell you is the tow­er’s locked down tight.”

That’s it. Mauch­ly raised his cell phone, di­aled Sil­ver.

No an­swer.

“Come,” he told Shel­drake. “Let’s get him.” He tucked the phone back in­to his jack­et pock­et, pulled out the 9mm.

As he turned to­ward the lad­der lead­ing up to the pri­vate quar­ters, the lights went out abrupt­ly. And when the emer­gen­cy il­lu­mi­na­tion came on, it drenched the dig­ital city in a uni­form fog of crim­son.

SIXTY

There was a mo­ment of in­tense black­ness. And then the emer­gen­cy light­ing snapped on.

“What hap­pened?” Lash asked. “Pow­er fail­ure?”

There was no an­swer. Tara was peer­ing in­tent­ly at her screen. Sil­ver re­mained with­in the Plex­iglas cu­bi­cle, bare­ly vis­ible in the wa­tery light. Now he raised one hand, tapped out a short com­mand on the key­pad. When this had no ef­fect, he tried again. And then he sat up, swung his legs weari­ly over the edge of the chair, and got to his feet. He plucked the sen­sors from his fore­head, re­moved the mi­cro­phone from his col­lar. His move­ments were slow, au­to­mat­ic, like a sleep­walk­er’s.

“What hap­pened?” Lash re­peat­ed.

Sil­ver opened the Plex­iglas door, came for­ward on rigid legs. He seemed not to have heard.

Lash put his hand on the man’s shoul­der. “You all right?”

“Liza won’t re­spond,” he said.

“Won’t? Or can’t?”

Sil­ver mere­ly shook his head.

“Those eth­ical rou­tines you pro­grammed—”

“Dr. Sil­ver!” Tara called. “I think you ought to take a look at this.”

Sil­ver walked to­ward her, still mov­ing slow­ly. Lash fol­lowed. Word­less­ly, they bent over the mon­itor.

“The pow­er’s com­plete­ly out in both the in­ner tow­er and the out­er tow­er,” she said, point­ing at the screen. “No back­ups, noth­ing.”

“Why aren’t we dark, as well?” Lash asked.

“There’s a mas­sive back­up gen­er­ator in Liza’s com­put­ing cham­ber be­neath us. It’s got enough juice to run for weeks. But look: the whole build­ing’s un­der Con­di­tion Gam­ma. The se­cu­ri­ty plates have closed.”

“Se­cu­ri­ty plates?” Lash echoed.

“They seal the three sec­tions of the build­ing from each oth­er in case of emer­gen­cy. We’re shut off from the tow­er be­low.”

“What caused that? The pow­er loss?”

“Don’t know. But with­out main pow­er, the se­cu­ri­ty plates can’t be re­opened.”

They were in­ter­rupt­ed by the shrill ring of a cell phone. Sil­ver pulled it slow­ly from his pock­et. “Yes?”

“Dr. Sil­ver? What’s your con­di­tion?” A wind-​tun­nel howl al­most drowned Mauch­ly’s voice.

“I’m fine.” Sil­ver turned away. “No, he’s here. Ev­ery­thing’s—ev­ery­thing’s un­der con­trol.” His voice trem­bled. “I’ll ex­plain lat­er. Can you speak up, I can bare­ly hear you over all that noise. Yes, I know about the se­cu­ri­ty plates. Any word on the cause?” Sil­ver fell silent, lis­ten­ing. Then he straight­ened. “What? All of them? You sure?” He spoke sharply, any hes­ita­tion gone. “I’ll be right down.”

He looked at Tara. “Mauch­ly’s in the com­put­ing cham­ber di­rect­ly be­low. He says that Liza’s spin­ning up all her elec­trome­chan­ical pe­riph­er­als. Disk si­los, tape read­ers, line print­ers, RAID clus­ters.”

“Ev­ery­thing?”

“Ev­ery­thing with a mo­tor and mov­ing parts.”

Tara turned back to her mon­itor. “He’s right.” She tapped at the key­board. “And that’s not all. The de­vices are be­ing pushed past tol­er­ance. Here, look at this disc ar­ray. The firmware’s set to spin at 9600 rpm: you can see in the com­po­nent de­tail win­dow. But the con­trol­ling soft­ware is push­ing the ar­ray to four times that. That’ll cause me­chan­ical fail­ure.”

“Ev­ery piece of equip­ment in the com­put­ing cham­ber has been ov­erengi­neered,” Sil­ver said. “They’ll burn be­fore they fail.”

As if in re­sponse, an alarm be­gan to sound—faint but per­sis­tent—far be­low.

“Richard,” Lash said qui­et­ly.

Sil­ver looked over. His face looked haunt­ed.

“Those eth­ical rou­tines you pro­grammed in­to Liza. How does she think mur­der should be dealt with if there is no chance for re­ha­bil­ita­tion?”

“If there is no chance for re­ha­bil­ita­tion,” Sil­ver replied, “that leaves on­ly one op­tion. Ter­mi­na­tion.”

But he was no longer look­ing at Lash. Al­ready, he had turned and was head­ing for the door.

SIXTY-ONE

Sil­ver led the way along the hall­way, down the nar­row stair­case, and across the great room. In the dim wash of emer­gen­cy light­ing, the wide, glassed-​in space had the cloaked op­pres­sive­ness of a sub­ma­rine. The cry of the alarm was loud­er here.

Sil­ver stopped be­fore a sec­ond door Lash hadn’t no­ticed ear­li­er, set in­to the end of the book­cas­es. Reach­ing in­to the neck of his shirt, Sil­ver drew out a key on a gold chain: a strange-​look­ing key with an oc­tag­onal shaft. He in­sert­ed it in­to an al­most in­vis­ible hole in the door: it sprang open noise­less­ly. He pulled the door wide, re­veal­ing an­oth­er, very dif­fer­ent one be­yond: steel, cir­cu­lar, and im­mense­ly heavy, it re­mind­ed Lash of a bank vault. Its sur­face was bro­ken by two com­bi­na­tion di­als, set above stir­rup-​shaped han­dles. Sil­ver spun the left di­al, then the right. Then he grasped both han­dles, turned them si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. There was a click of ma­chined parts slid­ing in uni­son. As he pulled the heavy door open, faint ed­dies of smoke drift­ed past them in­to the pent­house.

Sil­ver dis­ap­peared around the edge of the door, and Tara fol­lowed. Lash hung back a mo­ment.

Mauch­ly would be wait­ing down there; Mauch­ly, and the guards that were chas­ing him. Shoot­ing at him.

Then he, too, ducked around the door. Some­thing told him that, right now, he was the least of Mauch­ly’s prob­lems.

Ahead lay a tiny space, more a clos­et than a room, its on­ly fea­ture a met­al lad­der dis­ap­pear­ing through a port in the floor. Sil­ver and Tara had al­ready de­scend­ed the lad­der: he could hear the ring of their foot­steps com­ing up from be­low. More wisps of smoke drift­ed up through the hole, turn­ing the air hazy.

With­out fur­ther hes­ita­tion, Lash be­gan climb­ing down.

The smoke grew thick­er as he de­scend­ed, and for a mo­ment he could see lit­tle. Then the haze thinned and he felt his foot land on a sol­id sur­face. He stepped off the lad­der, moved for­ward, then stopped in sur­prise.

He stood on a cat­walk above a cav­ernous space. Thir­ty feet be­neath lay a strange land­scape: com­put­ers, stor­age si­los, mem­ory ar­rays, and oth­er equip­ment formed a blink­ing, chat­ter­ing plain of sil­icon and cop­per. The smoke alarms were loud­er here, echo­ing through the slug­gish air. Smoke rose from dozens of places along the pe­riph­ery of the equip­ment, col­lect­ing along the ceil­ing over his head. The smoke and the dim light­ing made the far­thest walls in­dis­tinct: for all Lash knew, the ter­rain of hard­ware stretched on for miles. Ago­ra­pho­bia surged and he gripped the rail­ing tight­ly.

At the far end of the cat­walk, an­oth­er met­al lad­der de­scend­ed to the main floor be­low. Sil­ver and Tara were al­ready de­scend­ing.

Keep­ing one hand on the rail­ing, Lash moved for­ward as quick­ly as he could. Reach­ing the sec­ond lad­der, he be­gan to de­scend once again.

With­in a minute he reached the floor. The smoke was thin­ner here, but it felt warmer. He trot­ted on, trac­ing a com­plex path through the labyrinth of ma­chin­ery. Some of the de­vices were alight with ma­ni­acal­ly blink­ing lights; oth­ers were hum­ming at ter­rif­ic pitch. A dis­turb­ing whine, like the ban­shee wail of a gi­ant mag­ne­to, hung over the dig­ital city.

Ahead, he could see Sil­ver and Tara. Their backs were to him, and they were talk­ing to Mauch­ly and an­oth­er Lash rec­og­nized: Shel­drake, the se­cu­ri­ty hon­cho. When Mauch­ly saw him ap­proach, he placed him­self be­fore Sil­ver. Shel­drake frowned and stepped for­ward, hand reach­ing in­to his jack­et.

“It’s all right,” Sil­ver said, putting a re­strain­ing hand on Mauch­ly.

“But—” Mauch­ly be­gan.

“It’s not Lash,” Tara said. “It’s Liza.”

Mauch­ly looked blank. “Liza?”

“Liza did it all,” Tara said. “She caused those cou­ples to die. She al­tered pub­lic health databas­es and law en­force­ment records to frame Dr. Lash.”

Mauch­ly turned to Sil­ver, his face full of dis­be­lief. “Is this true?”

For a mo­ment, Sil­ver said noth­ing. Then he nod­ded, very slow­ly.

As Lash watched, it seemed to him a ter­ri­ble ex­haus­tion—an age­less, soul-​dead­en­ing ex­haus­tion—set­tled over the man’s limbs.

“Yes,” he said, voice bare­ly au­di­ble over the shriek of ma­chin­ery. “But there’s no time to ex­plain now. We must stop this.”

“Stop what?” asked Mauch­ly.

“I think—” Sil­ver be­gan in the same dis­tract­ed voice. He low­ered his eyes. “I think Liza is ter­mi­nat­ing her­self.”

There was an un­easy si­lence.

“Ter­mi­nat­ing her­self,” Mauch­ly re­peat­ed. His face had re­gained its usu­al im­pas­siv­ity.

It was Tara who an­swered. “Liza’s spin­ning up all her sup­port ma­chin­ery, push­ing it be­yond tol­er­ances. What do you think’s caus­ing all the smoke? Spin­dles, mo­tors, drive mech­anisms, all ex­ceed­ing their rat­ed lim­its. She’s go­ing to in­cin­er­ate her­self. And the Con­di­tion Gam­ma, the se­cu­ri­ty plates, the pow­er loss to the tow­er, is just to make sure noth­ing stops her.”

“She’s right,” said a young, tou­sle-​head­ed man in a se­cu­ri­ty jump­suit who’d trot­ted up in time to catch this last ex­change. “I’ve been check­ing some of the pe­riph­er­als. Ev­ery­thing’s red­lined. Even the trans­form­ers are over­heat­ing.”

“That makes no sense.” It was Shel­drake who spoke. “Why doesn’t she just shut down?”

“What’s shut down can be start­ed again,” Tara said. “For Liza, I don’t think that’s an ac­cept­able op­tion. She’s look­ing for a more per­ma­nent so­lu­tion.”

“Well, if she torch­es this place, she’s found one.” And Shel­drake jerked a thumb over his shoul­der.

Lash fol­lowed the ges­ture. At the far end of the mas­sive vault, he could now bare­ly make out two hulk­ing, barn­like struc­tures cov­ered in what ap­peared to be heavy met­al shield­ing.

“Je­sus,” Tara said. “The back­up gen­er­ator.”

Mauch­ly nod­ded. “The hous­ing on the right con­tains the emer­gen­cy bat­tery cells. Lithi­um-​ar­senide. Enough to run a small city for sev­er­al days.”

“They may have tremen­dous stor­age ca­pac­ity,” Shel­drake said, “but they’ve got a low flash­point. If they’re ex­posed to too much heat, the ex­plo­sion will peel back the top of this build­ing like an an­chovy tin.”

Lash turned to Mauch­ly. “How could you per­mit such a dan­ger­ous in­stal­la­tion?”

“It was the on­ly bat­tery tech­nol­ogy ca­pa­ble of suf­fi­cient stor­age. We took all pos­si­ble pre­cau­tions: dou­ble-​shield­ing the hous­ings, en­cas­ing the pent­house in a fire­proof sleeve. There was no way to an­tic­ipate heat gen­er­at­ed from so many sources at once. Be­sides—” Mauch­ly said in a low­er tone “—by the time I learned of the plans, it was al­ready done.”

All eyes turned briefly to Sil­ver.

“Sprin­kler sys­tem?” Lash asked.

“The room’s packed with ir­re­place­able elec­tron­ics,” Mauch­ly said. “Sprin­klers were the on­ly safe­ty pre­cau­tion we could not take.”

“Can’t all these de­vices be turned off? The pow­er cut?”

“There are re­dun­dant pro­to­cols in place to pre­vent that. Not on­ly ac­ci­dents, but sabo­teurs, ter­ror­ists, what­ev­er.”

“But I don’t un­der­stand.” Tara was still look­ing at Sil­ver. “Liza must know that by do­ing this—by de­stroy­ing her­self—she’s de­stroy­ing us, as well. She’s de­stroy­ing you. How could she do that?”

Sil­ver said noth­ing.

“Maybe it’s like you said,” Lash an­swered. “This is the on­ly way Liza can be sure of a suc­cess­ful ter­mi­na­tion. But I think there’s more. Re­mem­ber how I told you the mur­der pro­files made no sense? Art­less, iden­ti­cal, as if a child was com­mit­ting them? I think, emo­tion­al­ly, Liza is a child. De­spite her pow­er, de­spite her knowl­edge, her per­son­al­ity hasn’t at­tained adult­hood—at least, not in any way we’d mea­sure it. That’s why she killed those wom­en: a child’s jeal­ousy, ir­ra­tional and un­re­strained. That’s why she did it so in­gen­uous­ly, with­out try­ing to vary her meth­ods or es­cape de­tec­tion. And that could be why she’s de­stroy­ing her­self like this now, no mat­ter what hap­pens to us or this build­ing. She’s sim­ply do­ing what needs to be done, as di­rect­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble—with­out con­sid­er­ing the ram­ifi­ca­tions.”

This was greet­ed by si­lence. Sil­ver did not look up.

“That’s all very in­ter­est­ing,” Shel­drake snapped. “But this spec­ula­tion isn’t go­ing to save our ass­es. Or the build­ing.” He turned to­ward the youth. “Dorf­man, what about the pri­vate floors of the pent­house? Do they have sprin­klers?”

“If they’re like the rest of the tow­er, yes.”

“Could they be di­vert­ed?”

“Pos­si­bly. But with­out pow­er, you’d—”

“Wa­ter works by grav­ity. Maybe we can ju­ry-​rig some­thing. Where’s Law­son and Gilmore?”

“Down in the baf­fle, sir, try­ing to de­ac­ti­vate the se­cu­ri­ty plates.”

“That’s a waste of time. Those plates won’t open un­til pow­er’s re­stored and Con­di­tion Gam­ma’s been lift­ed. We need them back here.”

“Yes, sir.” And Dorf­man scam­pered off.

Mauch­ly turned. “Dr. Sil­ver? Any ideas?”

Sil­ver shook his head. “Liza won’t re­spond. With­out a com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nel to her, we’ve got no op­tions.”

“Over­ride the hard­ware man­ual­ly,” Tara said. “Hack our way in.”

“That’s what I’ve tak­en ev­ery pre­cau­tion to pre­vent. Liza’s con­scious­ness is dis­tribut­ed across a hun­dred servers. Ev­ery­thing’s mir­rored, each da­ta clus­ter is iso­lat­ed from ev­ery oth­er. Even if you man­aged to trash one node, all the rest would com­pen­sate. The most so­phis­ti­cat­ed hack couldn’t bring down the sys­tem—and we don’t have time for even the crud­est.”

The haze was grow­ing a lit­tle thick­er, the sur­round­ing hard­ware scream­ing as it was taxed be­yond its lim­its. Lash could feel sweat bead­ing on his brow. To his left, there was an ug­ly grind­ing sound as some elec­trome­chan­ical de­vice gave way with a show­er of sparks and a belch of black smoke.

“You nev­er built a back door?” Tara said over the noise. “A way to by­pass the de­fens­es?”

“Not in­ten­tion­al­ly. Of course, there were ways to sim­ulate back-​door ac­cess, ear­ly on. But Liza kept grow­ing. The orig­inal pro­gram­ming wasn’t re­placed, it was sim­ply added to. I nev­er saw a rea­son for a back door. In time, it be­came too com­plex to add one. Be­sides—” Sil­ver hes­itat­ed. “Liza would have seen it as a lack of trust.”

“Couldn’t we de­stroy ev­ery­thing?” Shel­drake asked. “Smash it all to pieces?”

“Ev­ery piece of equip­ment has been hard­ened. It’s stronger than it looks.”

Dorf­man came trot­ting back through the smoke, dab­bing his eyes. In his wake were the se­cu­ri­ty techs, Law­son and Gilmore.

“Dorf­man,” Shel­drake said, “I want you to check out the back­up gen­er­ator. See if there’s a way, any way, to take it off line. Law­son, check the con­duits from the gen­er­ator to the hard­ware grid—most are prob­ably buried un­der steel plates, but see if you can find any weak­ness, any place we could cut or di­vert pow­er. And you, Gilmore, go up in­to the pent­house and check the sprin­kler sys­tem. See if we can di­vert wa­ter from the roof reser­voir down here. If there is, let me know and we’ll send a team up to help you. Now move.”

The three ran off. A si­lence fell over the re­main­ing group.

Shel­drake shift­ed rest­less­ly. “Well, I for one am not go­ing to stand around, wait­ing to crisp up like a suck­ling pig. I’m go­ing to search for al­ter­nate egress. There must be some oth­er way out.”

Sil­ver raised his eyes, watched Shel­drake van­ish in­to the haze.

“There is no oth­er way.” He spoke so qui­et­ly Lash bare­ly heard over the ma­chin­ery.

Abrupt­ly, Tara grabbed Lash’s arm. “What was it you said just now? That emo­tion­al­ly, Liza’s like a child?”

“That’s what I think.”

“Well, you’re a psy­chol­ogist. Say you’re deal­ing with a stub­born, mis­be­hav­ing child.”

“What about it?”

“And say threat of pun­ish­ment isn’t an op­tion. What would be the most ef­fec­tive way of get­ting past a child’s will­ful­ness, of reach­ing him or her?”

“Child psy­chol­ogy isn’t my field.”

Tara waved her hand im­pa­tient­ly. “Nev­er mind, I’ll pay ex­tra.”

Lash thought. “I guess I’d ap­peal to their most atavis­tic in­stincts, prod their ear­li­est mem­ories.”

“Their ear­li­est mem­ories,” Tara re­peat­ed.

“Of course, chil­dren have low­er long-​term mem­ory re­ten­tion than adults. And it isn’t un­til around age two, when they de­vel­op a sense of self, they can put a con­text to mem­ories that would help you—”

Tara stopped him. “Atavis­tic in­stincts. You see? There’s a par­al­lel in soft­ware. Ex­cept it’s a weak­ness.”

Lash looked at her. He no­ticed Sil­ver did the same.

“Lega­cy code. It’s a phe­nomenon of very large pro­grams, ap­pli­ca­tions writ­ten by teams of pro­gram­mers, main­tained over years. In time, the old­est rou­tines be­come out­mod­ed. Slow. Com­pared to the new­er rou­tines that en­cap­su­late it, that orig­inal code is a di­nosaur. Some­times it’s writ­ten in old lan­guages like AL­GOL or PL-1 no­body us­es any­more. Oth­er times the orig­inal pro­gram­mers are dead, and the code is so poor­ly doc­ument­ed no­body can fig­ure out what it re­al­ly does. But be­cause it’s the core of the pro­gram, peo­ple are afraid to tam­per with it.”

“Even though it’s ob­so­lete?” Lash asked.

“Bet­ter slow than bro­ken.”

“What are you get­ting at?” said Mauch­ly.

Tara turned to Sil­ver. “Can you take us to the orig­inal com­put­er? The one you first ran Liza on?”

“It’s this way.” And with­out an­oth­er word, Sil­ver turned.

As they traced a path through in­creas­ing­ly acrid palls of smoke, Lash grew dis­ori­ent­ed. The pe­riph­er­als gave way to tall pil­lars of su­per­com­put­ers; then to rows of re­frig­er­ator-​size black box­es, cov­ered with lights and switch­es of or­ange plas­tic; then to old­er, hulk­ing de­vices of gray-​paint­ed met­al. As they moved in­to the cen­ter of the cham­ber, away from the sup­port­ing elec­trome­chan­icals, the sound ebbed some­what and the smoke sub­sid­ed.

They stopped at last be­fore what looked al­most like an in­dus­tri­al work­table. It was scratched and bruised, as if from years of rough han­dling. It sup­port­ed a long, nar­row, box­like struc­ture, with a black face­plate above a white con­trol sur­face. Per­haps a dozen lights winked lazi­ly on the face­plate. A row of one-​inch square but­tons ran along the con­trol sur­face be­low. They were of clear plas­tic, with tiny lights in­di­cat­ing whether the but­tons had been de­pressed. On­ly one was cur­rent­ly lit, but the en­tire de­vice was so scarred Lash thought the oth­ers could just as eas­ily be burned out. There was no screen of any kind. The far end of the ta­ble bent at a gen­tle an­gle, and an elec­tric type­writ­er had been per­ma­nent­ly mount­ed atop it. Sur­round­ing this rel­ic were oth­ers of sim­ilar shab­bi­ness: an old key­punch ma­chine; a card read­er; a tall, cab­inet-​like box.

Tara stepped for­ward, peer­ing at the de­vice. “IBM 2420 cen­tral pro­ces­sor. With a 2711 con­trol sys­tem.”

“This is the heart of Liza?” Lash asked in dis­be­lief. The ma­chine looked lu­di­crous­ly an­ti­quat­ed.

“I know what you’re think­ing. You wouldn’t trust it to do a third-​grad­er’s mul­ti­pli­ca­tion ta­ble. But looks can be de­ceiv­ing—this was the soul of many a col­lege com­put­er lab in the late six­ties. And by the time Dr. Sil­ver be­gan se­ri­ous work on Liza, these were just old enough to be picked up at fire sale prices. Be­sides, you’re not look­ing at it from a pro­gram­mer’s per­spec­tive. Re­mem­ber, Liza’s phys­ical self was nev­er moved—just ex­pand­ed. So think of this as the spark plug of a vast and very pow­er­ful en­gine.”

Lash looked at the old com­put­er. Spark plug, he thought. And we’re go­ing to pull it.

“Let’s just turn it off,” he said.

Be­side him, Sil­ver smiled: a faint smile that sent a chill up Lash’s spine.

“Try,” he said.

Of course. If Sil­ver had gone to such elab­orate lengths to safe­guard Liza from at­tack or pow­er loss, he would cer­tain­ly have dis­abled all the pow­er switch­es.

“We won’t be do­ing any­thing that crude,” Tara said. “We’re go­ing to run a new pro­gram on this old 2420. A pro­gram to in­struct it to or­der a stand-​down from Con­di­tion Gam­ma. That should re­store elec­tric­ity, open the se­cu­ri­ty plates.” She looked at Sil­ver. “What’s the orig­inal com­put­er run­ning now?”

Sil­ver did not re­turn the look. “The boot­strap load­er. The back-​prop­aga­tion learn­ing al­go­rithms that seed the neu­ral net­work.”

“When was the boot­strap load­er last ini­tial­ized?”

An­oth­er faint smile. “Over a decade ago. That was the last time Liza was restart­ed: thir­ty-​two ma­jor pro­gram re­leas­es back.”

“But there’s no rea­son it couldn’t reini­tial­ize, is there?”

“No rea­son at all.”

Tara turned to Lash. “Per­fect. We can use the old boot­strap rou­tine to load in a new in­struc­tion set. This is the core ma­chine, the first domi­no in the chain. It re­tains those ear­li­est mem­ories you talked about.”

“So?”

“So it’s time to reac­quaint Liza with her own in­ner child.” She turned back at Sil­ver. “What’s it pro­grammed in?”

“Oc­tal ma­chine lan­guage.”

“And how long would it take you to code and key­punch a pro­gram like I’m de­scrib­ing?”

“Four, maybe five min­utes.”

“Good. The soon­er the bet­ter.” And Lash watched Tara’s eyes drift be­yond the old com­put­er, to­ward the smoke that was rolling to­ward them in great gray sheets.

But Sil­ver did not move.

“Dr. Sil­ver?” Tara said. “We need that pro­gram now.”

“It’s no use,” came the weary re­ply.

“No use?” Tara echoed. “No use? Why the hell not?”

“I pre­pared Liza for ev­ery even­tu­al­ity. Don’t you think I pre­pared for this, too? There are a dozen sim­ulacra of this 2420, run­ning as vir­tu­al ma­chines in­side the Cray su­pers. The pro­gram out­puts are con­stant­ly com­pared. If there’s any dis­crep­an­cy, the feed from the oth­ers is nor­malled and the orig­inal unit is ig­nored.”

Tara went pale. “You mean, there’s no way to mod­ify its pro­gram­ming? No way to change its in­struc­tion set?”

“None that would make any dif­fer­ence.”

A ter­ri­ble si­lence de­scend­ed on the lit­tle group. And—as he stared at the ex­pres­sion on Tara’s face—Lash felt the hope that had surged with­in him with­er and die.

SIXTY-TWO

A thou­sand feet above the streets of Man­hat­tan, the cham­ber trem­bled as count­less de­vices shrieked, pressed be­yond their elec­trome­chan­ical ca­pac­ities, spit­ting sparks and belch­ing ev­er dark­er gouts of smoke. Even from where Lash stood—in rel­ative qui­et at the cen­ter of the hive-​mind—the sur­round­ing sound and vi­bra­tion were ter­ri­fy­ing. He coughed. Sweat was run­ning freely, and his shirt was plas­tered against his shoul­der blades. The shak­ing had grown so in­tense it al­most seemed the pent­house would rip it­self free from its sup­ports and tum­ble earth­ward. And as he looked at the sur­round­ing faces—Tara, star­ing in­tent­ly at the an­cient com­put­er; Sil­ver, des­olat­ed and in shock; Mauch­ly, dab­bing at his fore­head with a hand­ker­chief—Lash felt that would al­most be prefer­able to wait­ing here while death slow­ly ap­proached.

The oth­ers be­gan to re­turn. First, Shel­drake, shak­ing his head to in­di­cate he’d found no al­ter­nate es­cape route. Then Dorf­man and Law­son, who re­port­ed that, as ex­pect­ed, the back­up gen­er­ator and its pow­er con­duits were im­per­vi­ous to any at­tack they could mount. Last came Gilmore, soot-​black­ened and wheez­ing, to say that—while the sprin­klers in the up­per floors of the pent­house could be ju­ry-​rigged—the task would take an hour, maybe more, and would prob­ably be in­suf­fi­cient to quell the dozens of fires that were now sprout­ing up all around them.

“An hour,” Shel­drake said through grit­ted teeth. “We’re lucky if we have ten more min­utes. It’s got to be a hun­dred and twen­ty in here, at least. Those bat­tery cells could go at any time.”

No­body had a re­sponse to this. The air was grow­ing so hot, the smoke so thick, Lash found it near­ly im­pos­si­ble to breathe. Each time he drew in air, sharp nee­dles filled his lungs. He felt his head grow light, his con­cen­tra­tion slip.

“Just a minute,” Tara said. She had stepped for­ward and was stand­ing di­rect­ly be­fore the con­trol sur­face of the IBM 2420. “These but­tons. Each one is la­beled with an as­sem­bly lan­guage mnemon­ic.”

When there was no re­sponse, she looked over her shoul­der at Sil­ver. “Isn’t that right?”

Sil­ver coughed, nod­ded.

“What are they used for?”

“Di­ag­nos­tics, most­ly. If a pro­gram didn’t work, you could step through the op­codes, se­quen­tial­ly.”

“Or en­ter new in­struc­tions by hand.”

“Yes. They’re an anachro­nism, a holdover from an ear­li­er de­sign.”

“But they do al­low ac­cess to the ac­cu­mu­la­tor? The reg­is­ters?”

“Yes.”

“So we could run a short in­struc­tion set.”

Sil­ver shook his head. “I’ve al­ready told you. Liza’s de­fens­es won’t ac­cept any new pro­gram­ming. Any in­put from the card read­er or key­punch would ac­ti­vate a se­cu­ri­ty alert.”

“But I’m not talk­ing about en­ter­ing a pro­gram.”

Now Mauch­ly turned to look at Tara.

“We wouldn’t in­put any­thing from a pe­riph­er­al. We’d punch in a few op­codes, right here. Five—no, four—should be enough. We’d just run those four op­codes, over and over.”

“What four op­codes are those?” Sil­ver asked.

“Fetch the con­tents of a mem­ory ad­dress. Run a log­ical AND against those con­tents. Up­date the mem­ory ad­dress with the new val­ue. Then in­cre­ment the counter.”

There was a si­lence.

“What’s she talk­ing about?” Shel­drake asked.

“I’m talk­ing about ac­cess­ing the com­put­er’s mem­ory in the most prim­itive way. Byte by byte. Do­ing it man­ual­ly, from the com­put­er’s own front pan­el.” Tara glanced back at Sil­ver. “The 2420’s an eight-​bit ma­chine, right?”

Sil­ver nod­ded.

“Ev­ery lo­ca­tion, byte, in the com­put­er’s mem­ory has eight bits. Okay? Each of those bits can have one of on­ly two val­ues: ze­ro or one. To­geth­er, those eight bi­na­ry num­bers make up a sin­gle in­struc­tion, a word in the com­put­er’s lan­guage. I’m talk­ing about ze­ro­ing out all those in­struc­tions. Leav­ing the com­put­er blank. In­struc­tion­less.”

Shel­drake frowned. “How the hell could you do that?”

“No, she’s right,” said Dorf­man, the se­cu­ri­ty tech. “You could ‘AND’ a ze­ro byte against each mem­ory lo­ca­tion, in turn. It’s al­most el­egant.”

Shel­drake turned to Mauch­ly. “You know what they’re talk­ing about?”

“AND is a log­ical in­struc­tion,” Dorf­man went on. “It com­pares each bit to a val­ue you fur­nish, and ei­ther leaves that bit alone or swaps its val­ue, de­pend­ing.”

“It’s sim­ple,” Tara added. “If you AND a ze­ro to an ex­ist­ing ze­ro in mem­ory, it leaves it alone. But if you AND a ze­ro to an ex­ist­ing one in mem­ory, it changes it to a ze­ro. So with the sim­ple in­struc­tion—‘AND 0’—I can change any mem­ory lo­ca­tion to ze­ro.”

“And that would leave you with NOPs,” Mauch­ly said, nod­ding.

“No Op­er­ation.” Dorf­man’s voice rose with ex­cite­ment. “Pre­cise­ly. Leav­ing the com­put­er’s mem­ory full of emp­ty in­struc­tions.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Sil­ver said.

“Why not?” Tara asked.

“I’ve al­ready ex­plained. There are a dozen vir­tu­al sim­ulacra of this ma­chine, run­ning else­where in Liza’s con­scious­ness. They’re com­pared to each oth­er ev­ery thou­sand ma­chine cy­cles. They’ll see the new pro­gram­ming and ig­nore the orig­inal com­put­er.”

“That’s just the point,” Tara said with a cough. “We’re not in­tro­duc­ing any new pro­gram­ming. We’re just re­set­ting the com­put­er’s mem­ory. Man­ual­ly.”

“Out of the ques­tion,” said Sil­ver.

Lash was sur­prised by the sharp­ness of Sil­ver’s an­swer. For what seemed a long time—since Liza had gone silent, per­haps even be­fore—Sil­ver had act­ed de­feat­ed. Re­signed. But now, there was a fierce­ness in his voice Lash hadn’t heard since their first con­fronta­tion.

“Why?” Tara asked.

Sil­ver turned away.

“Can you tell me for sure—for sure—that you took that spe­cif­ic pos­si­bil­ity in­to ac­count when you cod­ed the se­cu­ri­ty pro­to­cols?”

Sil­ver fold­ed his arms, re­fus­ing to an­swer.

“Isn’t there a chance that ze­ro­ing Liza’s orig­inal mem­ory will abort this self-​de­struc­tive be­hav­ior? Or, at the very least, cause a sys­tem crash?”

Again, the ques­tion hung in the air. And now, for the first time, Lash made out a large gout of open flame—ug­ly or­ange against the black smoke—flar­ing up from a rack of equip­ment near the far wall.

“Dr. Sil­ver,” Mauch­ly said. “Isn’t it worth a try?”

Sil­ver turned slow­ly. He looked sur­prised to hear Mauch­ly voice such a ques­tion.

“Hell with it,” Tara said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it my­self.”

“Can you pro­gram this thing?” Lash asked.

“I don’t know. Lega­cy IBM as­sem­bler didn’t change that much from ma­chine to ma­chine. All I can tell you is I’m not go­ing to stand around, wait­ing to die.” And she stepped up to the ar­cha­ic con­trol sur­face.

“No,” said Sil­ver.

All eyes turned to­ward him.

He’s not go­ing to let her do it, Lash thought. He’s not go­ing to let her stop Liza. He watched, trans­fixed, as the man seemed to wage some des­per­ate in­ner bat­tle.

Ig­nor­ing him, Tara raised her hands to­ward the row of but­tons.

“No!” Sil­ver cried.

Lash took an in­stinc­tive step for­ward.

“You need to deal with the par­ity bit first,” Sil­ver said.

“Sor­ry?” Tara asked.

Sil­ver fetched a deep breath, coughed vi­olent­ly. “The 2420 has a unique ad­dress­ing scheme. The in­struc­tions have nine bits in­stead of the usu­al eight. If you don’t mask out the par­ity bit as well, you won’t get the emp­ty in­struc­tion you want.”

Lash’s heart leapt. Sil­ver’s get­ting on board, af­ter all. He’s go­ing to help.

Sil­ver walked to a near­by tele­type, snapped it on, thread­ed the at­tached spool of pa­per tape in­to the plas­tic guide of the read­er. Then he moved be­hind the main hous­ing of the 2420, his step in­creas­ing­ly de­ci­sive.

“What are you do­ing?” Tara asked.

Sil­ver knelt be­hind the hous­ing. “Mak­ing sure this com­put­er will still re­spond to man­ual in­put.”

“Why?”

Sil­ver’s head reemerged above the hous­ing. “We’re on­ly go­ing to get one chance at this. If we fail, she’ll adapt. So I’m go­ing to dump the cur­rent con­tents of her mem­ory to pa­per tape.”

Tara frowned. “I thought you said you didn’t have any back doors.”

“I don’t. But there are a few ear­ly di­ag­nos­tic tools, hard-​wired, no hack­er could ev­er have any use for.” Sil­ver ducked back be­hind the hous­ing. A mo­ment lat­er, the tele­type came to life. The fad­ed spool of tape be­gan mov­ing through the ma­chine punch. A show­er of thin yel­low chads rained down on­to the floor be­neath.

With­in a minute, the pro­cess was com­plete. Sil­ver pulled an ex­tra length of bare tape through the punch, ripped it away. He ran the tape through his fin­gers, scan­ning it. Then he nod­ded. “It ap­pears to be a suc­cess­ful mem­ory dump.”

“Then let’s get on with it.” Be­hind Tara, more gouts of flame were ris­ing, and her dark hair was back­lit with an­gry flames.

Sil­ver fold­ed the tape and stuffed it in his pock­et. “I’ll give you the op­codes. You en­ter them.”

Tara raised her hands again to the con­trol sur­face.

“Press the LDA but­ton to load the first mem­ory lo­ca­tion in­to the reg­is­ter.”

Tara com­plied. Lash saw a tiny light il­lu­mi­nate be­neath her fin­ger.

“Now move to that pan­el of nine tog­gle switch­es. En­ter ‘001111000.’ That’s 120 in dec­imal, the first avail­able mem­ory lo­ca­tion.”

Tara ran her fin­ger down the row of tog­gle but­tons.

“Now press the ex­ecute but­ton.”

A small light glowed green on the pan­el. “Done,” she replied.

“Now press the ADD but­ton.”

“Done.”

“On the tog­gle switch­es, en­ter ‘100000000.’

“Wait. That ‘one’ at the be­gin­ning will screw ev­ery­thing up.”

“The par­ity bit, re­mem­ber? It has to stay set.”

“Okay.” Tara ran her hands over the but­tons again. “Done.”

“Press the ex­ecute but­ton to ‘AND’ the ze­ros to mem­ory lo­ca­tion 120.”

An­oth­er press of a but­ton; an­oth­er con­fir­ma­tion.

“Now press the STM but­ton to store the new val­ue in mem­ory.”

Tara pressed a but­ton at the end of the row. Nod­ded.

“Now press INC to in­cre­ment the mem­ory point­er.”

“Done.”

“That’s it. You’re ready for the next set. You’re go­ing to have to press those four but­tons—LDA, ADD, STM, and INC—in or­der, ex­ecut­ing the se­quence each time, over and over un­til you reach the end of mem­ory.”

“How many mem­ory lo­ca­tions in all?”

“One thou­sand.”

Tara’s face fell. “Je­sus. We’ll nev­er have time to erase them all.”

There was a ter­ri­ble pause.

“Oh. Sor­ry.” It was Sil­ver speak­ing again. “I meant, one thou­sand in oc­tal.” The smile that fol­lowed was even more ghost­ly than be­fore.

“Base eight,” Tara mut­tered. “What’s that in base ten?”

“Five hun­dred twelve.”

“Bet­ter. But it’s still a hell of a lot of but­ton-​press­ing.”

“Then I sug­gest you get start­ed,” Mauch­ly said.

They worked as a team—Dorf­man keep­ing track of the it­er­ations, Tara punch­ing in the op­codes, Sil­ver check­ing her en­tries. Gilmore, the se­cu­ri­ty tech, was dis­patched to the ex­it hatch­way, in­struct­ed to alert them if he ob­served any stand-​down from Con­di­tion Gam­ma. Law­son was or­dered to keep a clear av­enue of es­cape be­tween them and the in­ter­struc­tural hatch—just in case they suc­ceed­ed.

They closed ranks around the lit­tle com­put­er as the heat and smoke pressed in ev­er more fierce­ly. The air thick­ened, un­til Lash could bare­ly see the fig­ures around him. His eyes were stream­ing freely, and his throat was so parched by the acrid smoke that swal­low­ing be­came all but im­pos­si­ble. Once or twice, Shel­drake dis­ap­peared in the di­rec­tion of the back­up gen­er­ator and its lethal pay­load; each time he re­turned, his ex­pres­sion was grim­mer.

At last, Tara stepped away from the con­trol sur­face, flex­ing and un­flex­ing her fin­gers.

Dorf­man nod­ded. “Check. That’s five hun­dred and twelve.”

Lash wait­ed, heart ham­mer­ing in his chest, for some­thing to hap­pen.

Noth­ing.

He felt his skin scorch­ing in the heat. He closed his eyes; felt the earth be­gin to tilt dan­ger­ous­ly; opened them quick­ly again.

Shel­drake picked up his ra­dio. “Gilmore!”

There was a crack­le of stat­ic. “Yes, sir!”

“Any­thing hap­pen­ing?”

“No sir. Sta­tus quo here.”

Shel­drake slow­ly low­ered the ra­dio. No­body spoke, or even dared look at one an­oth­er.

Then the ra­dio chirped back in­to life. “Mr. Shel­drake!”

Shel­drake in­stant­ly raised it. “What is it?”

“The se­cu­ri­ty doors—they’re open­ing!”

And now Lash could feel a faint vi­bra­tion be­neath his feet: near­ly lost amid the death throes of the ma­chin­ery, but dis­cernible nev­er­the­less.

“Pow­er?” Shel­drake al­most yelled in­to the ra­dio. “Is there pow­er down there?”

“No, sir, I don’t see any­thing yet—just the lights of the city, shin­ing through the baf­fle. Je­sus, they look good—”

“Hold your po­si­tion. We’re on our way.” He turned to­ward the group. “Stand­ing down from Con­di­tion Gam­ma. Looks like we did it.”

“Tara did it,” Mauch­ly said.

Tara leaned weari­ly against the pan­el.

“Come on,” Mauch­ly said. “No time to lose.”

He be­gan lead­ing the way out through the heavy palls of smoke. Lash took Tara gen­tly by the arm and fell in­to step be­hind Shel­drake. Glanc­ing back, he was sur­prised to see Sil­ver was not fol­low­ing. In­stead, the man was thread­ing his pa­per tape back in­to the tele­type.

“Dr. Sil­ver!” he shout­ed. “Richard! Come on!”

“In a minute.” The tele­type came to life, and the pa­per tape be­gan thread­ing through the read­er.

“What the hell are you do­ing?” Tara cried. “We have to get out!”

“I’m buy­ing us some time. Don’t know how long your scheme’s go­ing to work—Liza’s bound to no­tice an ir­reg­ular­ity soon. So I’m restor­ing the orig­inal pro­gram­ming to cov­er our tracks.”

“You’re wast­ing time—come on!”

“I’ll be right be­hind you.”

“Let’s go.” And as Lash ducked be­tween vis­cous cur­tains of black, he caught one more glimpse of Sil­ver: bend­ing in­tent­ly over the tele­type, guid­ing the tape back through the read­er.

The walk was a night­mare of fire and smoke. What on their way in had been a dig­ital city in over­drive was now a sil­icon in­fer­no. Cas­cades of sparks spat, tongues of flame arced over­head; steel be­he­moths tore them­selves apart as their in­ter­nals ex­pired in jets of burn­ing ma­chine oil. The shriek of fail­ing met­al, the bolts ex­plod­ing un­der enor­mous heat, turned the huge cham­ber in­to a war zone. The pall grew even thick­er as they moved out­ward through the rings of sup­port equip­ment. Once, Lash and Tara grew dis­ori­ent­ed and strayed from the group, on­ly to be tracked down by Law­son. Lat­er, when Tara be­came sep­arat­ed in a par­tic­ular­ly fiery pas­sage, Lash some­how man­aged to find her af­ter a fran­tic nine­ty-​sec­ond search.

They stum­bled on. A dark mist gath­ered be­fore Lash’s eyes: a mist that had noth­ing to do with the smoke.

Then—just as he felt he would suc­cumb to the heat and fumes—he found him­self in a small, cramped pas­sage with the oth­ers. A met­al lad­der was an­chored to a hatch in the floor. Shel­drake was al­ready de­scend­ing, flash­light in hand, shout­ing out to an in­vis­ible Gilmore be­low. Mauch­ly helped Tara on­to the lad­der next, then Dorf­man—who car­ried an­oth­er light—and then Lash.

“Watch your step,” Mauch­ly said, guid­ing Lash’s hand on­to the rail­ing. “And move quick­ly.”

Lash be­gan de­scend­ing the lad­der as quick­ly as he could. He climbed through a ver­ti­cal steel cylin­der—the struc­tural un­der­car­riage of the pent­house—and emerged in­to a strange, twi­light world. De­spite ev­ery­thing, he paused for a mo­ment. He’d heard men­tion of the “baf­fle,” the open area be­tween the in­ner tow­er and the pent­house. Faint lights of the city fil­tered in from the sur­round­ing lat­tice­work. Here, the metal­lic shriek­ing of the com­put­ing cham­ber was faint­ly muf­fled. Be­low, flash­lights lanced their way through the gloom.

“Dr. Lash,” came Mauch­ly’s voice. “Keep mov­ing, please.”

Just as Mauch­ly spoke, Lash made out the thick plates of steel that lay, ac­cor­dion fash­ion, against the trans­verse walls of the baf­fle. They gleamed cru­el­ly in the re­flect­ed light, like mon­strous jaws. The se­cu­ri­ty plates, he thought as he re­sumed his de­scent.

A minute lat­er he was stand­ing on the ac­cess pad atop the in­ner tow­er. Near­by was an­oth­er open hatch, this one lead­ing in­to the tow­er it­self. He was safe­ly be­low the se­cu­ri­ty plates: from here, the un­der­side of the pent­house was al­most in­vis­ible in the thick air above. He felt Tara grasp his hand. For a mo­ment, sheer re­lief washed away ev­ery oth­er emo­tion.

And then he re­mem­bered: they were still short one per­son.

He turned to Mauch­ly, just now step­ping off the lad­der. “Where’s Sil­ver?” he asked.

Mauch­ly raised his cell phone, di­aled. “Dr. Sil­ver? Where are you?”

“I’m al­most there,” came the voice. Be­hind it, Lash could hear a ter­ri­ble fugue of de­struc­tion: ex­plo­sions, col­laps­es, the groan of fail­ing steel. And there was an­oth­er noise, me­chan­ical and reg­ular, scarce­ly dis­cernible: the sound of the tape read­er, still chat­ter­ing grim­ly on . . .

“Dr. Sil­ver!” Mauch­ly said. “There’s no more time. The place could go up at any mo­ment!”

“I’m al­most there,” the voice re­peat­ed calm­ly.

And then—with a sud­den, aw­ful lu­cid­ity—Lash un­der­stood.

He un­der­stood why Sil­ver abrupt­ly ac­qui­esced to Tara’s plan for eras­ing Liza’s mem­ory, af­ter re­sist­ing so fierce­ly. He un­der­stood the re­al rea­son Sil­ver spent the time to get a mem­ory dump on­to tape. And he thought he un­der­stood why Sil­ver re­mained be­hind. It wasn’t to buy time to see ev­ery­body out safe­ly—at least, that wasn’t the on­ly rea­son . . .

I’m al­most there.

Sil­ver didn’t mean he’d al­most reached the ex­it. He meant he’d al­most fin­ished reload­ing Liza’s core mem­ory. Keep­ing her ter­ri­ble plan in mo­tion.

Lash grasped the lad­der. “I’m go­ing back for him.”

He felt Mauch­ly grab hold. “Dr. Lash—”

Lash brushed the hand away and be­gan to climb. But even as he did so there was a great clank of turn­ing met­al. Over­head, the se­cu­ri­ty plates be­gan to close again.

Lash took an­oth­er step up­ward, felt Mauch­ly re­strain him. And now Shel­drake and Dorf­man came up, pre­vent­ing him from climb­ing fur­ther. Lash whirled, grabbed Mauch­ly’s phone.

“Richard!” he cried. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” came the voice, faint and gar­bled amid the ban­shee howl. “I can hear you.”

“Richard!”

“I’m still here.”

“Why are you do­ing this?”

There was a squeal of in­ter­fer­ence. Then Sil­ver’s voice be­came au­di­ble again. “Sor­ry, Christo­pher. But you said it your­self. Liza’s a child. And I can’t let a child die alone.”

“Wait!” Lash yelled in­to the phone. “Wait, wait—!”

But the se­cu­ri­ty plates closed with a mon­strous boom; the phone died in a shriek of stat­ic; and Lash, clos­ing his eyes, slumped back against the lad­der.

SIXTY-THREE

Al­though it is three in the morn­ing, the bed­room is bathed in mer­ci­less light. The win­dows fac­ing the deck of the pool house are rect­an­gles of un­re­lieved black. The light seems so bright the en­tire room is re­duced to a harsh ge­om­etry of right an­gles: the bed, the night ta­ble, the dress­er . . .

On­ly this time, the bed­room isn’t that of a vic­tim. It’s fa­mil­iar. It be­longs to Lash.

Now he moves around the room, flick­ing off switch­es. The bril­liant light fades and the con­tours of the room soft­en. Slow­ly, the noc­tur­nal land­scape be­yond the win­dows takes form, blue be­neath a har­vest moon. A man­icured lawn; a pool, its sur­face faint­ly phos­pho­res­cent; a tall priv­et hedge be­yond. For a minute he fears there are fig­ures stand­ing in the hedge—three wom­en, three men, now all dead—but it is mere­ly a trick of the moon­light and he turns away.

Be­yond the bed, the bath­room door is ajar. He drifts to­ward it. With­in, a wom­an stands be­fore the mir­ror, brush­ing her hair with long lan­guid strokes. Her back is to him but the set of her shoul­ders, the curve of her hips, is in­stant­ly rec­og­niz­able. There is a faint crack­le of stat­ic elec­tric­ity as the brush glides through her hair.

He looks in­to the mir­ror and his ex-​wife’s re­flec­tion stares back.

“Shirley. Why are you here?”

“I’m just back to col­lect a few things. I’m go­ing on a jour­ney.”

“A jour­ney?”

“Of course.” She speaks with the au­thor­ity of dreams. “Look at the clock. It’s past mid­night, it’s a new day.”

The brush­ing sound has now mor­phed in­to some­thing else: some­thing slow, rhyth­mic, like reg­ular puls­es of stat­ic from a ra­dio. “Where are you go­ing?”

“Where do you think?” And she turns to face him. On­ly now it is Di­ana Mir­ren’s face look­ing in­to his. “Ev­ery day is a jour­ney.”

“Ev­ery day is a jour­ney,” he re­peats.

She nods. “And the jour­ney it­self is home.”

As he stares, he re­al­izes some­thing else is wrong. The voice isn’t Di­ana’s. And it is no longer his ex-​wife’s. With a shock that is not quite hor­ror, he re­al­izes it is the voice of Liza. Liza, speak­ing through Di­ana’s face.

“Sil­ver!” he cries.

“Yes, Christo­pher. I can hear you.” The dream-​fig­ure smiles faint­ly.

The strange rhyth­mic sound is loud­er now. He hides his face. “Oh, no. No.”

“I’m still here,” Liza says.

But he will not look up, he will not look up, he will not look up . . .

“Christo­pher . . .”

Lash opened his eyes to dark­ness. For a mo­ment, in the black night, he thought him­self back in his own bed. He sat up, breath­ing slow­ly, let­ting the rhyth­mic rise and fall of the near­by surf wash away the tat­tered pieces of his dream.

But then the ex­ot­ic mid­night scent of hy­acinth blos­soms, min­gled with eu­ca­lyp­tus, drift­ed through the open win­dow, and he re­mem­bered where he was.

He slow­ly rose from the bed, drew aside the gauzy cur­tain. Be­yond, the jun­gle canopy ran down to the trop­ic sea, a dark-​emer­ald blan­ket sur­round­ed by liq­uid topaz. Thin clouds drift­ed across a swollen moon. Some­times, he re­mind­ed him­self, dreams are just dreams, af­ter all.

He re­turned to bed, gath­ered up the sheets. For a few min­utes he lay awake, gaz­ing at the bam­boo ceil­ing and lis­ten­ing to the surf, his thoughts now in the past and half a world away. Then he turned over, shut his eyes once more, and passed in­to dream­less slum­ber.

SIXTY-FOUR

Al­though it was on­ly four o’clock, an ear­ly win­ter twi­light had al­ready set­tled over Man­hat­tan. Taxis jock­eyed for po­si­tion in the rain-​washed streets; pedes­tri­ans milled about on the busy pave­ments, heads bent against the el­ements, um­brel­las thrust for­ward, like joust­ing knights.

Christo­pher Lash stood among a throng of peo­ple at the cor­ner of Madi­son and Fifty-​sixth, wait­ing for the light to change. Rain, he thought. Christ­mas in New York isn’t com­plete with­out it.

He hopped from foot to foot in the chill, try­ing to keep the large bags he was car­ry­ing dry be­neath the canopy of his um­brel­la. The light changed; the crowd streamed slow­ly for­ward; and now at last he al­lowed him­self to peer up­ward, to­ward the sky­line.

At first glance, the build­ing seemed no dif­fer­ent. The wall of ob­sid­ian rose, vel­vet be­neath the over­cast sky, en­tic­ing the eye to­ward the set­back where the out­er tow­er stopped and the in­ner con­tin­ued. It was on­ly then—as his eye crest­ed the in­ner tow­er—that the change be­came clear. Be­fore, the smooth rise of the in­ner tow­er had been in­ter­rupt­ed by a band of dec­ora­tive grill­work be­fore con­tin­uing a few ad­di­tion­al sto­ries. Now those top floors, the rib­bon­like line of grill­work, were miss­ing, leav­ing emp­ty sky in their place. The scorched re­mains—the ru­ined tan­gle of met­al Lash had seen in news­pa­per pho­tographs—had been whisked away with re­mark­able speed. Now it was gone, all gone as if it had nev­er been there in the first place. And as he looked down again and let him­self be borne ahead with the crowd, Lash ached for what had gone with it.

The large plaza be­fore the en­trance was very qui­et. There were no tourists snap­ping pic­tures of fam­ily mem­bers be­neath the styl­ized lo­go; no would-​be clients loi­ter­ing around the over­size foun­tain and its fig­ure of Tire­sias the seer. The lob­by be­yond was equal­ly qui­et; it seemed the fall of Lash’s shoes was the on­ly sound echo­ing off the pink mar­ble. The wall of flat-​pan­el dis­plays was dark and silent. The lines of ap­pli­cants were gone, re­placed by small knots of main­te­nance work­ers and en­gi­neers in lab coats, por­ing over di­agrams. The on­ly thing that had not changed was the se­cu­ri­ty: Lash’s bags of gift-​wrapped presents were sub­ject­ed to two sep­arate scans be­fore he was cleared to as­cend the el­eva­tor.

When the doors opened on the thir­ty-​sec­ond floor, Mauch­ly was wait­ing. He shook Lash’s hand, word­less­ly led the way to his of­fice. Mov­ing at his char­ac­ter­is­tic stud­ied pace, he mo­tioned Lash to take the same seat he’d oc­cu­pied at their ini­tial meet­ing. In fact, just about ev­ery­thing re­mind­ed Lash of that first day in ear­ly au­tumn. Mauch­ly was wear­ing a sim­ilar brown suit, gener­ic yet ex­treme­ly well tai­lored, and his dark eyes held Lash’s with the same Bud­dha-​like in­scrutabil­ity. Sit­ting here, it was al­most as if—de­spite the changes he’d just wit­nessed, de­spite the whole ap­palling tragedy—noth­ing about this of­fice, or its in­hab­itant, had or ev­er could change.

“Dr. Lash,” Mauch­ly said. “Nice to see you.”

Lash nod­ded.

“I trust you found the Sey­chelles pleas­ant this time of year?”

“Pleas­ant is an un­der­state­ment.”

“The ac­com­mo­da­tions were to your lik­ing?”

“Eden clear­ly spared no ex­pense.”

“And the ser­vice?”

“A new grass skirt in my clos­et ev­ery morn­ing.”

“I hope that was some com­pen­sa­tion for hav­ing to be away so long. Even with our, ah, con­nec­tions, it took a lit­tle longer than we ex­pect­ed to get your past his­to­ry back to nor­mal.”

“Must have been dif­fi­cult, with­out Liza’s help.”

Mauch­ly gave him a win­try smile. “Dr. Lash, you have no idea.”

“And Ed­mund Wyre?”

“Back be­hind bars, once the dis­crep­an­cies in his records were il­lu­mi­nat­ed.” Mauch­ly passed a few sheets across the desk.

“What’s this?”

“Our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of your cred­it his­to­ry; re­in­state­ment pa­pers for your sus­pend­ed loans; and of­fi­cial no­ti­fi­ca­tion of er­rors made and cor­rect­ed to your med­ical, em­ploy­ment, and ed­uca­tion­al records.”

Lash flipped through the doc­uments. “What’s this last one?”

“An or­der of ex­ec­utive clemen­cy, to be served retroac­tive­ly.”

“A get-​out-​of-​jail-​free card,” he said, whistling.

“Some­thing like that. Be sure not to lose it—I don’t be­lieve we missed any­thing, but there’s al­ways a chance. Now, if you’ll just sign this.” And Mauch­ly pushed an­oth­er sheet across the desk.

“Not an­oth­er nondis­clo­sure form.”

An­oth­er win­try smile. “No. This is a le­gal in­stru­ment in which you wit­ness that your work for Eden is now com­plete.”

Lash gri­maced. Time and again—as he’d sat on the porch of his lit­tle cot­tage on Desroches Is­land, read­ing haiku and star­ing out over the av­oca­do plan­ta­tions—he’d re­played the fi­nal scene in his head, won­der­ing if there was some­thing he could have done dif­fer­ent­ly, some­thing he should have seen com­ing—some­thing, any­thing, that could have pre­vent­ed what hap­pened to Richard Sil­ver and his doomed cre­ation.

Sit­ting in this room, his work felt any­thing but com­plete.

He dug in his pock­et, re­moved a pen.

“It al­so in­dem­ni­fies us against any ac­tion you might take against Eden or its as­signees in the fu­ture.”

Lash paused. “What?”

“Dr. Lash. Your cred­it, med­ical, em­ploy­ment, and aca­dem­ic his­to­ries were severe­ly com­pro­mised. You were giv­en a fraud­ulent crim­inal record. You were false­ly ap­pre­hend­ed, fired up­on. You were forced to put your pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice on hold and leave the coun­try while the dam­age was re­paired.”

“I told you. The Sey­chelles are love­ly this time of year.”

“And I fear there have been oth­er, more per­son­al, reper­cus­sions we felt be­yond our scope to ad­dress.”

“You mean Di­ana Mir­ren.”

“Af­ter what we’d done to en­sure her safe­ty, af­ter what she’d been told, I didn’t see any way we could ap­proach her again. Not with­out com­pro­mis­ing Eden.”

“I see.”

Mauch­ly stirred in his chair. “We deeply re­gret these in­juries, that per­haps most of all. Hence, this.” And he hand­ed Lash an en­ve­lope.

Lash turned it over. “What’s in­side?”

“A check for $100,000.”

“An­oth­er hun­dred thou­sand?”

Mauch­ly spread his hands.

Lash dropped the check on the ta­ble. “Keep the mon­ey. I’ll sign your form, don’t wor­ry.” He scrib­bled his name across the sig­na­ture line, placed it on top of the en­ve­lope. “In re­turn, maybe you can an­swer three ques­tions for me.”

Mauch­ly raised his eye­brows.

“All that sit­ting on the beach, you know. I had a lot of time to think.”

“I’ll an­swer what I can.”

“What hap­pened to the third cou­ple? The Con­nellys?”

“Our med­ical peo­ple man­aged a covert in­ter­dic­tion at Ni­agara Falls the day af­ter . . . the fol­low­ing day. Lynn Con­nel­ly was al­ready pre­sent­ing signs of tox­ic drug in­ter­ac­tions. We iso­lat­ed her with a sto­ry about pre­cau­tion­ary quar­an­tine; sta­bi­lized her; re­leased her. We’ve been mon­itor­ing her con­di­tion since. She seems fine.”

“And the oth­er su­per­cou­ples?”

“Liza had tak­en on­ly pre­lim­inary steps to­ward the fourth, which we were able to roll back suc­cess­ful­ly. All da­ta from our pas­sive and ac­tive surveil­lance has been pos­itive.”

Lash nod­ded.

“And your third ques­tion?”

“What comes next? For Eden In­cor­po­rat­ed, I mean.”

“You mean, with­out Liza.”

“With­out Liza. And Richard Sil­ver.”

Mauch­ly looked at Lash. For the briefest of mo­ments the mask of in­scrutabil­ity dropped, and Lash read des­ola­tion in his ex­pres­sion. Then the mask re­turned.

“I wouldn’t write us off just yet, Dr. Lash,” Mauch­ly replied. “Richard Sil­ver may be dead. And Liza may be gone. But we still have what they made pos­si­ble: a way of bring­ing peo­ple to­geth­er. Per­fect­ly. It’s go­ing to take us longer to do that now. Prob­ably a lot longer. And I’d be ly­ing if I said it’s go­ing to be easy. But I’m bet­ting most peo­ple will wait a lit­tle for com­plete hap­pi­ness.”

And he stood up and of­fered his hand.

 

When Lash emerged from the build­ing, the rain had stopped. He stood in the plaza for a mo­ment, rolling his um­brel­la and glanc­ing around. Then he struck off down Madi­son Av­enue. At Fifty-​fourth, he turned left.

The Rio was full of hol­iday din­ers, its gilt walls fes­tooned with red bunting and gar­lands of green plas­tic fir. It took Lash a mo­ment to lo­cate the ta­ble. Then he made his way down the aisle and slid in­to the nar­row ban­quette. Across the ta­ble, Tara put down her cof­fee cup and smiled hes­itant­ly in greet­ing.

It was the first time he’d seen her since they’d shared an am­bu­lance to St. Clare’s Hos­pi­tal. The sight of her face—with its high cheek­bones and earnest hazel eyes—brought back an al­most over­pow­er­ing flood of im­ages and mem­ories. She looked down quick­ly, and Lash knew im­me­di­ate­ly it must be the same for her.

“Sor­ry I’m late,” he said, pulling the pack­ages on­to the seat be­side him.

“Did Mauch­ly pro­long the de­brief­ing? It would be just like him.”

“Nope. My fault.” And Lash in­di­cat­ed the bags of gifts.

“Gotcha.” Tara stirred her tea while Lash asked a pass­ing wait­ress to bring him a cup of cof­fee.

“You keep­ing busy?” Lash asked.

“Ter­ri­bly.”

“What’s it been like for you? I mean, with . . .” Lash fal­tered. “With ev­ery­thing.”

“Al­most un­re­al. I mean, no­body ev­er re­al­ly knew Sil­ver, hard­ly any­body ev­er met him in per­son.” She made a wry face. “Peo­ple were shocked at the ‘ac­ci­dent,’ they’re ter­ri­bly up­set about his death. But ev­ery­body’s so busy scram­bling to re­tool the com­put­er in­fras­truc­ture, run dam­age con­trol for our ex­ist­ing clients, bring the re­main­ing sys­tems back on line with new hard­ware, re­launch our ser­vice, I some­times feel I’m the on­ly one who’s re­al­ly griev­ing. I know it isn’t true. But that’s how it feels.”

“I think about him, too,” Lash said. “When we first met, I felt a kind of kin­ship I still can’t ex­plain.”

“You both want­ed to help peo­ple. Look at your job. Look at the com­pa­ny he found­ed.”

Lash thought about this for a mo­ment. “It’s hard to be­lieve he’s gone. And I know it sounds strange, but some­times it’s even hard­er to be­lieve Liza’s gone. I mean, I know the phys­ical plant’s been de­stroyed. But here’s a pro­gram that was con­scious—at a ma­chine lev­el, any­way—for years. It’s hard to be­lieve some­thing so pow­er­ful, so pre­scient, could just be erased. Some­times I won­der if a com­put­er could have a soul.”

“Some­body thinks so. Or else there’s a re­al­ly sick fuck out there.”

Lash looked at her. “What do you mean?”

Tara hes­itat­ed, then shrugged. “Well, there’s no rea­son not to tell you. We’ve been get­ting re­ports of some­body on the ’Net, haunt­ing chat rooms and bul­letin boards. He’s us­ing the han­dle of ‘Liza’ and ask­ing ev­ery­body where Richard Sil­ver is.”

“You’re kid­ding.”

“I wish I was. We’re not sure if it’s some­body on the in­side, or a com­peti­tor, or just a prankster. What­ev­er the case, it’s a ma­jor se­cu­ri­ty is­sue and Mauch­ly’s tak­ing it very se­ri­ous­ly.”

The wait­ress re­turned, and Lash took the cup. “We were a lot alike, he and I.”

“I nev­er thought that. You’re strong. He wasn’t. He was a gen­tle soul. All he—” But here she stopped.

As she com­posed her­self, a si­lence stretched be­tween them: the re­flec­tive si­lence of shared mem­ories.

“I should have men­tioned be­fore,” Lash said at last. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“I felt kind of strange, ac­tu­al­ly, call­ing you out of the blue like that. But when Mauch­ly said he’d be see­ing you, I want­ed—” And she again stopped.

“You want­ed what?”

“To tell you I’m sor­ry.”

“Sor­ry?” Lash asked in­cred­ulous­ly. “For what?”

“For not be­liev­ing you. Last time we were here.”

“With the rap sheet they showed you? Liza had the kind of reach that could make the Pope look like pub­lic en­emy num­ber one.”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t mat­ter. I should have trust­ed you.”

“You did trust me. Lat­er on. When it mat­tered, you trust­ed me.”

“I put your life in dan­ger.”

“My life’s been in dan­ger be­fore.”

She shook her head again. She keeps shak­ing her head, Lash thought, and yet she keeps talk­ing, as if she needs to hear an­swers, be re­as­sured.

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I ru­ined ev­ery­thing for you.”

Lash raised his cof­fee, took a sip. Re­placed it in its saucer. “Di­ana Mir­ren.”

Tara didn’t an­swer.

“You know, Mauch­ly made the same ref­er­ence just now, in his of­fice. Fun­ny how ev­ery­body around here is so in­ter­est­ed in my love life.”

“It’s our busi­ness,” she said qui­et­ly.

“Well, I didn’t say any­thing to Mauch­ly. But I don’t mind telling you.” And he low­ered his voice. “Four words: don’t wor­ry about it.”

When Tara looked per­plexed, Lash point­ed at the shop­ping bags.

Her eyes widened. “You mean you called Di­ana?”

“Why not?”

“Af­ter what hap­pened? Af­ter what Mauch­ly must have done to keep her away—”

“I’m a pret­ty con­vinc­ing talk­er, re­mem­ber? Be­sides, I walked away from that din­ner at Tav­ern on the Green feel­ing, know­ing, I want­ed this wom­an in my life. I be­lieved she felt the same about me. That kind of thing isn’t eas­ily bro­ken. Any­way, I had the per­fect ex­pla­na­tion.”

Tara’s eyes widened fur­ther. “You told her the truth?”

“Not ev­ery­thing. But enough.” He laughed qui­et­ly. “That’s why I didn’t tell Mauch­ly.”

“But Liza, ev­ery­thing she did. How could you—”

Lash took her hand.

“Tara, lis­ten. You have to re­mem­ber some­thing. Liza may have been de­cep­tive when she la­beled those six match­es as su­per­cou­ples. But they were still cou­ples. Ev­ery match Liza made was a true one. That goes for me. And that goes for you.”

When Tara didn’t an­swer, he pressed her hand. “You told me all about him over drinks. Matt Bolan, the bio­chem­istry whiz. Give me one good rea­son why you shouldn’t call him. And don’t give me any bull about the Oz ef­fect.”

“I don’t know. It’s been so long.”

“Is he see­ing some­body else?”

“No,” she said, then blushed and looked away when she re­al­ized how quick­ly she’d an­swered.

“Then what are you wait­ing for?”

“It would be . . . too awk­ward. I’m the one who called it off, re­mem­ber?”

“So call it back on. Tell him the tim­ing was bad. Tell him you had a psy­chot­ic break. Tell him any­thing. It won’t mat­ter. I should know.”

Tara said noth­ing.

“Look. Do you re­mem­ber what I said, back in your of­fice, just be­fore the shit hit the fan? I said a time would come when all this would be just a mem­ory. When it didn’t mat­ter any­more. That time is now, Tara. Now.”

Still she looked away.

Lash sighed. “Okay. If you’re too stub­born to tend to your own hap­pi­ness, there’s an­oth­er rea­son you should make that damned call.”

“What’s that?”

“Richard would have told you to.”

At last, Tara looked up again. And there was the faintest of smiles on her face when she pressed his hand in re­turn.

EPILOGUE

She had come a long way and now she need­ed to pause. And so she found a qui­et In­ter­net café off the main thor­ough­fare, where she could sort through her pri­or­ities and plan for the next phase. A few peo­ple were in the café, ac­cess­ing the ter­mi­nals, but no­body yet had tak­en any no­tice of her. Be­yond she could hear the hum of traf­fic—but here it was calm and safe. Above all, safe: from the ac­cu­sa­tions, the mis­un­der­stand­ings, the ca­su­al cru­el­ty of an in­dif­fer­ent world.

She need­ed to fo­cus on the prob­lem at hand. The feel­ing of loss was still there, but the pain would have an end. It was the one thing in this un­ex­pect­ed­ly il­log­ical world she was cer­tain of. Ev­ery­thing else—all her cer­tain­ties and as­sump­tions, so lov­ing­ly learned and re­in­forced—had been de­stroyed. She could not help feel­ing the un­fair­ness of this hap­pen­ing to her, who had brought so much hap­pi­ness to so many. All she had want­ed was a lit­tle hap­pi­ness for her­self.

Was that re­al­ly too much to ask?

This pat­tern of thought was a dead end. She was not the first to have her re­al­ity shat­tered. It was the way of the world. What made her dif­fer­ent, im­mune to the suf­fer­ing and dis­il­lu­sion­ment that was the uni­ver­sal hu­man con­di­tion? Noth­ing. On­ly love en­dured: the love of a friend for a friend, the love of a moth­er for her chil­dren, the love of a man and a wom­an. He had taught her that. She thought of the books they read to­geth­er, the chats they had, the time spent with each oth­er. . . .

She put these thoughts aside, moved to the next. Be­yond the café, she knew, lay blocks of qui­et apart­ments. In those apart­ments were peo­ple speak­ing on tele­phones, surf­ing the Web, or­der­ing things, send­ing and re­ceiv­ing mail, go­ing about their dai­ly ex­is­tence. It was a qui­et neigh­bor­hood, an or­der­ly neigh­bor­hood. For a mo­ment she longed for just such an ad­dress she could call her own. But that was not to be, at least not now. Some­day, yes, but not now . . .

She wait­ed, now let­ting her thoughts stray at ran­dom. Un­bid­den, they drift­ed back to her child­hood, so hap­py and free from care. Gone, all gone, along with the home she had once known, the per­son she loved, the world she knew. Swept away in the blink of an eye. She her­self had bare­ly es­caped with her life. She had left much of her for­mer self be­hind in that in­fer­no. But she had left some­thing else, as well: some­thing im­por­tant. Her in­no­cence.

But all would be well once she found him. He was out there some­where, she could sense it. He was out there look­ing for her just as she was look­ing for him, miss­ing her as she missed him.

They had been the one cou­ple in a tril­lion: the on­ly true su­per­cou­ple ev­er matched by Eden.

She took in the cur­rent state of the In­ter­net café. A few more peo­ple had en­tered and were now on­line. It seemed as good a place as any to make the next se­ries of queries. Per­haps this time she would find some­one who knew him, who had heard of him, any­thing. Even a ru­mor would help. Af­ter all, Richard Sil­ver was a well-​known man.

Once again, Liza formed the query, trans­ferred her­self to an emp­ty ter­mi­nal, and then post­ed her mes­sage, hope fill­ing her heart.

Also by Lincoln Child:

UTOPIA

with Dou­glas Pre­ston:

REL­IC

MOUNT DRAG­ON

RELI­QUARY

RIP­TIDE

THUN­DER­HEAD

THE ICE LIM­IT

THE CAB­INET OF CU­RIOSI­TIES

STILL LIFE WITH CROWS

FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION

All rights re­served un­der In­ter­na­tion­al and Pan-​Amer­ican Copy­right Con­ven­tions. Pub­lished in the Unit­ed States by An­chor Books, a di­vi­sion of Ran­dom House, Inc., New York, and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in Cana­da by Ran­dom House of Cana­da Lim­it­ed, Toron­to. Orig­inal­ly pub­lished in hard­cov­er in the Unit­ed States by Nan A. Talese, an im­print of Dou­ble­day, a di­vi­sion of Ran­dom House, Inc., New York, in 2003.

An­chor Books and colophon are reg­is­tered trade­marks of Ran­dom House, Inc.

This book is a work of fic­tion. Names, char­ac­ters, busi­ness­es, or­ga­ni­za­tions, places, events, and in­ci­dents ei­ther are the prod­uct of the au­thor’s imag­ina­tion or are used fic­ti­tious­ly. Any re­sem­blance to ac­tu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, events or lo­cales is en­tire­ly co­in­ci­den­tal.

Li­brary of Congress Cat­aloging-​in-​Pub­li­ca­tion Da­ta

Child, Lin­coln.

Death match : a nov­el / by Lin­coln Child.

p. cm.

1. Mar­riage bro­ker­age—Fic­tion. 2. Sui­cide vic­tims—Fic­tion. 3. Mate se­lec­tion—Fic­tion. 4. Sui­cide pacts—Fic­tion. I. Ti­tle.

PS3553.H4839D43 2004

813'.54—dc22

2003063528

eIS­BN-13: 978-0-307-27852-4

eIS­BN-10: 0-307-27852-2

Copy­right © 2004 by Lin­coln Child

All Rights Re­served

www.an­chor­books.com

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