The Footprints of God

by Greg Isle

  The piercing blue eyes fixed Ravi with a relentless stare. "What are you doing here. Dr. Nara?"

  "I was hoping to take you off the ventilator. But I see your nurses have already done that."

  Godin glanced at Geli. They seemed to be sharing a private joke.

  Ravi searched for something to support his lie. "Levin told me the prototype could reach Trinity state soon. I knew you'd want to be as alert as possible when that happens."

  "And all due to Andrew Fielding," Godin said. "The ironies are breathtaking."

  Ravi glanced nervously at Geli. "It's a miracle, Peter. You're going to live to see your dream come true."

  Godin's lids descended until his eyes were slits. "Really? Have you heard from Skow lately?"

  Ravi's blood pressure plummeted. "I spoke to him earlier today. He's very excited. He's going to fly out soon."

  Godin snorted. "He wants to be present at the creation?"

  "I suppose so. I mean, naturally he does." The ensuing silence became almost unbearable. Ravi couldn't bring himself to look into Geli's eyes. He was searching for an excuse to leave when Godin said, "How long do I have left? Worst case?"

  Ravi was too frightened to speak anything but the truth. "You could code again in the next half hour. If you chew your food wrong, it could trigger fatal hydrocephalus."

  Godin nodded soberly. "What's the longest I could live?"

  "Maybe . . . twenty-four hours."

  Ravi marshaled all his courage and stepped toward the bed. "I'd like to do a quick examination, if you don't mind."

  Geli blocked his path. She did nothing overtly threatening, but her very posture seemed dangerous. Ravi could hardly believe he'd once spent hours fantasizing about having sex with her. The idea that he could satisfy a woman of such strength and power seemed ludicrous.

  "Search him," Godin said.

  Ravi knew then that he was lost. He wanted to bolt, but he was like a man facing an attack dog. If he ran, Geli would pounce and rip his throat out.

  She knelt before him and patted him down. She gave his groin a taunting scratch with her fingernail, but as her hand passed over his right thigh, her eyes lit up like a mischievous child's. Reaching into his pocket, she pulled out the loaded syringe, which she held up for Godin to see.

  "What's in that?" Godin asked.

  "Epinephrine," Ravi said. "In case of another code. I wanted to be ready."

  Geli shook her head. "I just reviewed a surveillance tape of you in the dispensary earlier this afternoon. It shows you filling this syringe from a bottle marked KC1. Potassium chloride."

  Ravi's hands began to shake.

  Godin spoke in a neutral voice. "Dr. Thomas Case from Johns Hopkins is being flown here as we speak. You will brief him when he arrives. Dr. Case will perform any hands-on treatment that is required after that point."

  Ravi's face felt numb.

  Godin's eyes sought him out, refusing to let him hide. "You couldn't wait one day for the cancer to take me?"

  What could he say? Would blaming Skow spare him anything?

  "Don't answer," Godin said. "Despite past glory, you want more. You look at your achievements not with pride, but with fear that you might never repeat them. You're a pygmy in your soul, Ravi. Andrew Fielding was worth ten of you."

  "And of you," Ravi said, surprising himself. "Is that why you killed him?"

  The blue eyes closed, but Godin answered in a clear voice. "Fielding was a great physicist, but no man can hold back the future. He'll have another chance at life. He's partly alive in Containment now, and one day his model will reach Trinity state. On that day, he'll understand what I've done. Now . . . it's time for you to go."

  Ravi had never seen Geli Bauer smile with more pleasure than she did now. Taller than he by three inches, she draped her arm around him like a lover. Then she looked down into his eyes with chilling intimacy.

  "There's only one question we need answered," she said. "Did you hatch this in your own little overheated brain, or did you have help?"

  You already know that, Ravi thought. He tried to slip out from under her arm, but Geli only tightened her grip. Then she ran a fingernail along his shoulder to his neck. "Come on, Ravi . . . haven't you ever fantasized about spending some time alone with me?" He feared his bladder would let go.

  Jerusalem

  For Rachel the night had not passed without hope. But as dawn crept over the Dead Sea and lighted the valley of Kidron, she sank slowly into despair.

  David was dying.

  The neurologist who had appeared to evaluate him yesterday evening was a short, good-humored man named Weinstein. Dr. Weinstein had dark hair and quick black eyes that missed nothing. He'd done some training at Massachusetts General in Boston, and he spoke perfect English.

  As soon as he read the EEG, he ordered an MRI scan of David's brain. Rachel decided then that she had to tell part of the truth. She asked Weinstein if he'd heard of Ravi Nara. The neurologist knew Nara's work and was impressed that his new patient had done research with the Nobel laureate. Rachel explained that Nara's research involved a highly advanced MRI unit that caused neurological side effects in some people. For this reason she begged Weinstein to postpone any MRI scans until there was no other option.

  "I understand what you're telling me," Weinstein said. "And I'm intrigued. But in my opinion this man is very close to death. I'm sure you're aware that diffusion-weighted MRI images show the brain stem far more clearly than a CT scan. There's just too much heavy bone in that area for CT to image it well."

  "I know," Rachel said. "But do you really think this coma is being caused by a tumor in the brain stem?"

  The neurologist shrugged. "Frankly, it's the only thing we haven't ruled out. You're thinking Dr. Nara's scans would have turned up any masses?" "Yes."

  Weinstein folded his arms and sighed. "You know what I think?" "What?"

  "Your friend is going to die very soon if we don't find out what's wrong with him."

  Sixty minutes later, Weinstein was reading diffusion-weighted MRI scans of David's brain stem. They showed no tumor. As he related his findings to Rachel, David's theta and beta waves vanished from the EEG screen. Rachel grabbed the tracing, which now displayed only the uniform alpha wave of alpha coma. She began to cry.

  Dr. Weinstein put an arm around her. "There's no way an MRI caused that." He sounded as though he were trying to convince himself more than Rachel. "Maybe you should call Dr. Nara. We're in uncharted territory here."

  Rachel closed her eyes. How could she explain that she couldn't call Nara without risking assassination?

  "I'll try," she said. "It may take me a while to get him."

  Weinstein took her into an adjoining office and showed her how to place long-distance calls from the hospital. Then he gave her his pager number and left to go home to his family.

  Rachel stared at the phone, trying to talk herself into calling the White House. It was the only way she could think of to reach Ravi Nara. But something held her back. It was a growing belief that David, no matter how ill he might be, was not completely delusional. He had told her Ravi Nara was dangerous, and part of her believed him. David might never learn of this expression of faith in him, but wasn't that the nature of faith? To believe without answer, without reward, without proof? She got up, wiped her eyes, and left the phone untouched.

  That was ten hours ago.

  She'd spent the time since with her eyes fixed on the EEG screen, like a pilgrim watching a marble statue in the hope that it would weep. Yet the alpha waves remained constant. As a young resident, she had spent many nights watching patients slide slowly and irreversibly toward death. As a psychiatrist, she'd watched suicidal patients die by inches from self-administered poisons whose effects could not be countered. But only one previous experience had taken her to this awful realm of solitude.

  The death of her son.

  She had barely survived that, and now, after finding a man who might give her another child someday, she foun
d herself sitting by his hospital bed, helplessly awaiting the inevitable.

  At three in the morning, another burst of theta and beta waves had crossed the EEG screen. They lasted seventeen minutes, then vanished. Every half hour, she clapped her hands beside David's ear, but the alpha wave remained constant.

  According to the machine, David was brain-dead.

  An hour after dawn, she bent and kissed him on the forehead, then went into the adjoining office and picked up the telephone. It took some wrangling with operators, but within a few minutes she was connected to the White House switchboard in Washington, D.C.

  "I'm calling about Project Trinity," she said.

  "Please repeat that," said the operator.

  "Project Trinity."

  "Hold, please."

  Rachel closed her eyes. Her hands were quivering, and a voice inside her told her to hang up. Before she could, a curt male voice came on the line. "Who's calling, please?"

  "Rachel Weiss."

  There was a sharp intake of breath. "Say again?"

  "This is Dr. Rachel Weiss. I'm with Dr. David Tennant, and I desperately need help. I think he's dying."

  "Stay calm. I'm going to—"

  "Please!" she cried, losing her self-control at last. "I need to speak to someone who knows about this!"

  "Dr. Weiss, whatever you do, stay on this line. You've done the right thing. Don't have any doubt about that."

  Chapter 33

  >White Sands

  Ravi Nara was lying on a cement floor with a needle pressed to his jugular vein when he was paged to the hospital over the White Sands PA system. Geli Bauer was going to kill him with the syringe of potassium chloride he had planned to use on Godin.

  "Dr. Nara, please report to the Bubble immediately."

  "Peter could be coding again!" he cried.

  Geli jerked him to his feet and pushed him toward the door.

  As they hurried toward the hospital, he thought about the past half hour. After finding the syringe, Geli had marched him from the Bubble to the bare storage room. When they arrived, Ravi asked what the hell she was doing in White Sands. Geli smiled and leaned against the wall, studying him as she might an insect that she was about to pin to a board.

  "I wanted to know if Skow was telling the truth," she said. "If Godin was really dying. If Trinity was really going to fail."

  "And?"

  "Godin is dying, but Trinity isn't going to fail. It's going to save Godin's life."

  "Not his life," Ravi said. "His mind."

  "That's the very essence of life." Geli stepped close to Ravi and drew a gleaming knife from her belt. "I could sever your spinal cord anywhere between C-one and C-seven. You'd be an instant quadriplegic. If I gave you the choice between that and death, would you choose death?"

  Ravi stepped back. "I see your point."

  Geli smiled with fascination, her tongue showing between her teeth. He had always sensed that she felt some connection between sex and violence, and her behavior now confirmed it. She was toying with him, and watching his fear aroused her.

  "I also wanted to see my father," she said. "I haven't had that unique pleasure in a long time."

  Ravi said nothing.

  "There's one other reason I'm here. If you guess it, maybe we'll just stop at paraplegic."

  "Stop this stupid game!" Ravi snapped. "Skow will be here any minute."

  "Can't you guess?" Geli said.

  "No."

  "I wanted to be scanned by the machine."

  He hadn't expected this. "Why? You know the scans cause neurological side effects."

  Geli laughed. "People risk side effects for cosmetic surgery. I'll take some risk for immortality."

  Ravi wanted her to keep talking.

  "This technology will be held very closely for a long time," she said. "Only a few people will be scanned. Presidents and geniuses like Godin. Maybe a few half-ass scientists like you. But not security chiefs. So, I spent three hours this afternoon having a picture taken of my brain. Quite an experience."

  Geli took the syringe of potassium chloride from a pouch on her belt.

  "I wonder what my side effect will be?" she mused. "Narcolepsy and epilepsy, I don't need. Tourette's . . . no. Short-term memory loss I could stand. I'm getting it anyway. But yours is definitely the winner. It already fits my personality."

  Ravi shook his head. Uncontrollable sexual compulsions sounded funny until you had to deal with them. Like any true compulsion, they could drive you to the edge of suicide.

  "I used to watch you on the security cameras," Geli said, laughing. "Running to the bathroom five times a day, wanking your little weenie ... I heard you moaning my name a few times. Pathetic."

  Ravi ground his teeth and silently hoped that Skow planned to remove Geli Bauer from the planet. He was trying to think of a way to stall some more when Geli kicked him in the chest.

  He went down hard, and before he could recover his breath, she was kneeling on his chest with the syringe at his throat. What saved him was not Skow, but the PA system calling him to the hospital.

  Godin had developed serious problems with his tongue. He could barely swallow, and shooting pains had returned to the surface of his face. These were textbook effects of a glioma, and nothing could be done about anything but the pain. After an hour, he regained control of his tongue, but his face had started drooping on the left side.

  As Ravi pretended to treat the old man, Godin's cell phone rang, and Geli answered. It was the White House. She held the phone to Godin's face while he listened. Ravi couldn't make out what was being said, but he sensed that something had gone wrong.

  "No, Ewan, I'm fine," Godin lied. "My health is as good as it's always been, and I can't imagine what Skow was thinking when he told you that."

  Godin listened for a while, then said, "If Fielding's death was anything but a stroke, I think Skow is the man we need to talk to. He never got along with Fielding, and he's been running the hunt for Tennant as well. . . . Don't worry about Dr. Tennant. I'll send Ravi Nara over on my company jet immediately. He's the only doctor in the world who knows anything about that type of coma."

  Send Ravi Nara over where? Ravi wondered. Anywhere was better than in the storage room with Geli Bauer.

  "Yes, I'll give you an update as soon as possible. . . . Good-bye, Ewan."

  Godin waved the phone away, then looked up at Ravi. "You're going to Jerusalem."

  Ravi blinked in astonishment. "Israel?"

  "Tennant is in a coma at Hadassah Hospital. Dr. Weiss is with him. She just called the White House for help. I assured Ewan McCaskell that you're the only man in the world who can help Tennant."

  "But why do you want to help Tennant?" Ravi asked. "Why do they? The newspapers are saying Tennant wants to kill the president."

  Godin swallowed painfully. "Presidents know better than to believe newspapers. And you're forgetting it was Matthews who foisted Tennant on me in the first place. He wants Tennant's side of the story."

  "I see." Ravi didn't see at all. "What do you want me to do in Jerusalem?"

  "Kill Tennant."

  Ravi closed his eyes.

  "He's practically brain-dead now," Godin said. "One tiny push from you and he's gone, and nobody the wiser."

  "Peter, I can't walk into an Israeli hospital and . . ."

  "Why not? You were prepared to murder me. Why not Tennant?"

  "I never intended to hurt you."

  The right side of Godin's face clenched in spasm.

  "Has the pain returned?"

  "Shut up, Ravi. This is your chance to redeem yourself. Your one chance to live."

  Ravi cut his eyes at Geli. Anything was better than being alone with her again. "All right. But what if I can't do it? I mean, what if it's impossible?"

  "You won't be the only one trying."

  "I see. Well. . . when am I leaving?"

  "I want you airborne in ten minutes. My Gulfstream is fueled on the strip. Go to Administration first. You'll
have a telephone call waiting."

  A telephone call? "All right, Peter."

  Ravi started to leave, but some remnant of professional responsibility held him back. "What about you?"

  "Dr. Case can keep me alive until Trinity state is reached." Godin waved him away. "Don't worry. Tennant will probably die before you get there."

  Jerusalem

  Rachel sat by the telephone and prayed that the return call from Washington would come soon. If a bed opened up in neurology, someone would come to move David out of the ER. She was thinking of going to check his EEG tracing when the telephone rang. "Hello?"

  A distinctly American voice said, "Is this Dr. Rachel Weiss?"

  "Yes."

  "This is Ewan McCaskell, the president's chief of staff."

  Rachel closed her eyes and tried to keep her voice steady. "I recognize your voice."

  "Dr. Weiss, I'm calling to assure you that the president has the utmost concern for Dr. Tennant's health. We're not quite sure about the reasons behind the events of the past few days, but we intend to find the truth. The president is back in the United States now, and I assure you that Dr. Tennant is going to get a fair hearing."

  Something inside her let go then, a tangled knot of fear and tension that had been building ever since she'd seen David shoot the gunman in his kitchen. A stuttering rush of sobs came from her throat.

  "Dr. Weiss?" said McCaskell. "Are you all right?

  "Yes . . . thank you so much for calling. There's something terrible going on, and Dr. Tennant has been trying to warn the president about it."

  "Try to calm down, Doctor. I know you have a medical situation there, so I'm going to bring Dr. Ravi Nara in on our call. I'm told he's the only man who has the knowledge to deal with Dr. Tennant's problem."

  Rachel tensed at the mention of Nara. There was a crackle as though the connection had been lost.

  "Dr. Nara?" said McCaskell. "Are you there?"

  A precise voice in a higher register came on the line. "Yes, hello? Dr. Weiss? This is Ravi Nara. Can you hear me?”

  Chapter 34

  My eyes opened like those of a newborn, startled by the world's bare brightness. As I blinked against the overhead bulb, my body announced itself with aching hunger and an overwhelming urge to empty my bladder. I sat up and looked around. I was sitting in a medical treatment room. I'd worked in dozens just like it.