This particular CI "greened" (that is, passed) this first round of tests, and it was assigned a rating of 0.003. It was then passed through a firewall to a subsystem of the M455 where it was subjected to a powerful Stutterlogic analysis. This analysis upgraded its rating to 0.56 and passed it back to the main database module with "questions." The database loops returned the CI to the Stutterlogic module with the "questions" having been "answered." On the basis of those answers, the Stutterlogic module raised the rating of the CI to 1.20.
Any CI rating over 1.0 was forwarded to a human listener.
The time was 11:22.06.31.
RICK MUZlNSKY HAD begun his vicariously lived existence as a boy listening for hours at his parents' bedroom door, hearing with sick fascination everything they did. Muzinsky's father had been a career diplomat and Rick had lived all over the world, picking up a fluency in three languages besides English. He had grown up on the outside looking in, a boy with no friends and no place to call home. He was a vicarious human being, and with his job in Homeland Security he had found a way to make a good living at it. The job paid extremely well. He worked a total of four hours a day in an environment that was free from dim-witted bosses, moronic coworkers, incompetent assistants, and deficient secretaries. He did not have to deal with people at the coffee machine or the Xerox machine. He could clock in his four hours in any way he wished during each twenty-four-hour period. Best of all, he worked alone – that was mandatory. He was not allowed to discuss his work with anyone. Anyone. So when someone asked him that inevitable, obnoxious question, What do you do for a living? he. could tell them anything he liked but the truth.
Some people might consider it crushingly dull, listening to one CI after another, almost all of them asinine exchanges between idiots, full of empty threats, psychotic rants, political outbursts, brainless pronouncements, and wishful thinking – the self-deluded ramblings of some of the saddest, dumbest people Muzinsky had ever heard. But he loved every word of it.
Once in a while a conversation came along that was different. Often it was hard to say why. It could be a certain seriousness, a gravitas, to the utterances. It could be a sense that something else was being said behind the words being spoken. After a few listenings, if the feeling didn't go away, he would then call up the information associated with the conversation and see who the interlocutors were. That was usually most revealing.
Muzinsky had no role in following up on the CIs that he identified as threatening. His only role was to forward those CIs to an appropriate agency for further analysis. Sometimes the computer even identified the agency the CI should go to – should Muzinsky pass it – as certain agencies seemed to be listening for certain cryptic things. But he passed only about one CI in every two or three thousand conversations he listened to. Most got forwarded to various subagencies of the NSA or Homeland Security. Others went to the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, CIA, ATF, INS, and a host of other acronyms, some of whose very existence was classified. Muzinsky had to match each CI with the right agency and do it fast. A CI could not be allowed to bounce around, looking for a home. That was what led to 9/11. The receiving agencies were now primed to handle incoming intelligence immediately, if necessary within minutes of its receipt. That was another lesson from 9/11.
But Muzinsky had nothing to do with that side of things. Once the CI left his cubicle, it was gone forever.
Muzinsky sat at the terminal in his locked cubicle, headphones on, and punched the READY button indicating he was free to receive the next CI. The computer sent him no preliminary data or background information about the call, nothing that might influence his mind about what he was about to hear. It always started with the naked CI.
A hiss and it began. There was the sound of a phone ringing, an answer, a thump, the sound of breathlessness on the other end, and then the conversation began:
"Melodie? How's the research going?"
"Great, Dr. Corvus, just great."
Chapter 8
JUST BEFORE THE turn on the Forest Service road leading to Perdiz Creek, Maddox slowed and pulled off the highway. A pair of headlights had appeared behind him, and before he actually made the turn he wanted to make sure they didn't belong to Broadbent. He shut off his engine and lights and waited for the vehicle to pass.
A truck rapidly approached going a tremendous clip, slowed only slightly, then sped past. Maddox breathed a sigh of relief – it was just some old, beat-up Dodge. He started the car and made the turn, bumped over the cattle guard, and continued down the rutted dirt road, feeling a huge lifting of his spirits. He rolled down the windows to let in air. It was a cool and fragrant night, the stars shining above the dark rims of the mesas. His plan had worked: he had the notebook. Nothing could stop him now. There would be a certain amount of law enforcement excitement around the area in the coming days after Broadbent reported his wife's abduction, but he'd be safe up at Perdiz Creek working on his novel... And when they came by to question him, they'd find nothing – no body, nada. And they never would find her body. He'd already found a perfect place to lose it, a deep water-filled shaft in one of the upper mines. The roof above the shaft was shored with rotting timbers, and after he deep-sixed the corpse down the shaft he'd set off a small charge to bring down the roof – and that would be it. She'd be as gone as Jimmy Hoffa.
He checked his watch: nine-forty. He'd be back at Perdiz Creek in half an hour, and he had something to look forward to.
Tomorrow, he'd call Corvus from a pay phone to tell him the good news. He glanced at his cell phone, tempted to call him right away – but no, there could be no mistakes now, no risks taken.
He accelerated, the car lurching along the potholed dirt road as it climbed through a series of foothills. In ten minutes he had reached the area where the piñon-juniper forest gave way to tall ponderosa pines, dark and restless in a night wind.
He finally reached the gate in the ugly chain-link fence that surrounded the property. He got out, unlocked it, drove through, and locked it behind him. A couple hundred more yards brought him to the cabin. The moon hadn't risen and the old cabin loomed up pitch-black, a stark outline blotting out the stars. Maddox shivered and vowed to leave the porch light on next time.
Then he thought of the woman, waiting for him in the darkness of the mine, and that thought sent a nice, warm feeling through his gut.
Chapter 9
SALLY'S LEGS ACHED from standing in the same position unable to move, her ankles and wrists chafing under the cold steel. A chill flow of air from the back of the mine penetrated her to the bone. The dim glow from the kerosene lantern wavered and spluttered, filling her with an irrational fear that it would go out. But what got to her most was the silence, broken only by the monotonous drip of water. She found it impossible to tell how much time had passed, whether it was night or day.
Suddenly she stiffened, hearing the rattle of someone unlocking the metal grate at the mouth of the mine. He was coming in. She heard the grate clang shut behind him and the chain rattle as he relocked it. And now she could hear his footsteps approaching, becoming louder by degrees. The beam of a flashlight flickered through the bars and a moment later he arrived. He unbolted the bars over the door frame with a socket wrench and tossed them aside. Then he shoved the flashlight in his back pocket and stepped inside the small stone prison.
Sally sagged in the chains, her eyes half-closed. She moaned softly.
"Hi there, Sally."
She moaned again. Through half-lidded eyes she saw he was unbuttoning his shirt, a grin splitting his face.
"Hang in there," he said. "We're going to have ourselves a good time."
She heard the shirt land on the floor, heard the jingle as he undid his belt buckle.
"No," she moaned weakly.
"Yes. Oh, yes. No more waiting, baby. It's now or never."
She heard the pants slide off, drop to the floor. Another rustle and soft plop as he tossed his underwear.
She looked up weakly, her eyes s
lits. There he was, standing before her, naked, priapic, small key in one hand, gun in the other. She moaned, drooped her head again. "Please, don't." Her body sagged – lifeless, weak, utterly helpless.
"Please do, you mean." He advanced toward her, grasped her left wrist, and inserted the key into the manacle. As he did so he leaned close over her bowed head, put his nose in her hair. She could hear him breathe in. He nuzzled down her neck with his lips, scraping her cheek with his unshaved chin. She knew he was about to unlock her left hand. Then he would step back and make her unlock the others. That was his system.
She waited, maintaining her slackness. She heard the little click as the key turned the tumbler and she felt the steel bracelet fall away. In that moment, with all the force she could muster, she lashed out with her left hand, striking at his gun. It was a motion she had rehearsed in her mind a hundred times, and it caught him off guard. The gun went flying. Without a pause she whipped her hand around and clawed her fingernails into his face – fingernails she had spent an hour sharpening into points against the rock – just missing his eyes but managing to score deeply into his flesh.
He stumbled back with an inarticulate cry, throwing his hands up to protect his face, his flashlight landing on the mine floor.
Immediately her hand was on the unlocked manacle. Yes! The key was still in there, half turned. She pulled it out, unlocked her foot in time to kick him hard in the stomach as he was rising. She unlocked the other foot, unlocked her right hand.
Free!
He was on his knees, coughing, his hand reaching out, already grasping the gun he'd dropped.
In yet another motion she had rehearsed in her mind countless times over the past hours, she leapt for the table, one hand closing on a book of matches, the other sweeping the kerosene lantern to the floor. It shattered, plunging the cavern into darkness. She dropped to the ground just as he fired in her direction, the shot deafening in the enclosed space.
The shot was following by a raging scream, "Bitch!"
Sally crouched, creeping swiftly through the darkness toward where she remembered the door to be. She already knew she couldn't escape the mine through the outer tunnel – she had heard him lock the grate. Her only hope was to go deeper in the mine and find a second exit – or a place to hide.
"I'll kill you!" came the gargled scream, followed by a wild shot in the dark. The muzzle flash burned an image on her retina of a raging, naked man clutching a gun, twisting around wildly, his body distorted – wrapped in the grotesque tattoo of the dinosaur.
The muzzle flash had shown her the way to the door. She scuttled blindly through it and crawled down the tunnel, moving as fast as she dared, feeling ahead. After a moment she chanced lighting a match. Ahead of her, the two tunnels came together. She quickly tossed the match and scuttled into the other fork, hoping, praying, it would take her to a place of safety deep in the mine.
Chapter 10
IAIN CORVUS, WAITING in an idling cab across from the museum, finally saw Melodie's slim, girlish figure moving up the service drive from the museum's security exit. He glanced at his watch: midnight. She had taken her bloody time about it. He watched her diminutive figure turn left on Central Park West, heading uptown – no doubt she was heading back to some dismal Upper West Side railroad studio.
Corvus cursed yet again his stupidity. Almost from the beginning of their conversation that evening, he'd realized the colossal mistake he'd made. He'd tossed into Melodie's lap one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and she had caught it and run with it to a touchdown. Sure, as senior scientist his name would be first on the paper, but the lion's share of the credit would go to her and nobody would be fooled. She would cloud, if not eclipse, his glory.
Fortunately, there was a simple solution to his problem and Corvus congratulated himself on thinking of it before it was too late.
He waited until Melodie had disappeared into the gloom up Central Park West, then he tossed a fifty to the cabbie and stepped out. He strode across the street and down to the security entrance, went through security with a swipe of his card and a terse nod, and in ten minutes he was in the Mineralogy lab, in front of her locked specimen cabinet. He inserted his master key and opened it, relieved to see a stack of CD-ROMs, floppies, and the prepared sections of the specimen arranged neatly in their places. It amazed him how much she had managed to do in just five days, how much information she had extracted from the specimen, information that would have taken a lesser scientist a year to tease out – if at all.
He picked up the CDs, each labeled and categorized. In this case, possession of the CDs and specimens was more than nine-tenths of the law – it was the whole law. Without that she couldn't even begin to claim credit. It was only right he should have the credit. After all, he was the one who was risking everything – even his own freedom – to claim the tyrannosaur fossil for the museum. He was the one who had snatched it from the jaws of a black marketeer. He was the one who handed her the opportunity on a silver platter. Without him taking those risks Melodie would have nothing.
She'd have to go along with his seizure of her research – what was the alternative? To pick a fight with him? If she pulled something like that, no university would ever hire her. It wasn't a question of stealing. It was a question of correcting the parameters of credit, of collecting his due.
Corvus carefully packed all the material in his briefcase. Then he went to the computer, logged on as system administrator, and checked all her files. Nothing. She'd done what he said and wiped them clean. He turned and was about to leave when he suddenly had a thought. He needed to check the equipment logs. Anyone who used the lab's expensive equipment had to keep a log of time in, time out, and purpose, and he wondered how Melodie had handled that requirement. He went back to the SEM room, flipped open the log, perused it. He was relieved to see that even here Melodie had performed exactly as required, recording her name and times but recording false entries under "purpose," listing miscellaneous work for other curators.
Excellent.
In his bold, slanting hand, he added log entries under his own name. Under "Specimen" he put High Mesas/Chama River Wilderness, N.M., T. Rex. He paused, then added under "Comments," Third examination of remarkable T. Rex. vertebral fragment. Extraordinary! This will make history. He signed his name, adding the date and time. He flipped back and finding some blank lines at the bottom of previous pages, he added two similar entries at appropriate dates and times. He did the same to the other high-tech equipment logbooks.
As he was about to leave the SEM room he had the sudden urge to look at the specimen himself. He opened his briefcase, removed the box holding the specimen stages, and took one of the etched wafers out. He turned it slowly, letting the light catch the surface that had been mirrored with twenty-four-karat gold. He switched the machine on, waited for it to warm up, and then slotted one of the specimen stages into the vacuum chamber at the base of the scope. A few minutes later he was gazing at an electron micrograph of the dinosaur's cancellous bone tissue, cells, and nuclei clearly visible. It took his breath away. Once again he had to admire Melodie's skill as a technician. The images were crisp, virtually perfect. Corvus upped the magnification to 2000x and a single cell leapt into view, filling the screen. He could see in it one of those black particles, the ones she'd called the Venus particle. What the devil was it? A rather silly-looking thing when you got down to it, a sphere with an awkward tubular arm sticking out with a crosspiece at the end. What surprised him was how very fresh the particle looked, with none of the pitting, cracking, or damage that you might expect to see. It had weathered well those last sixty-five million years.
Corvus shook his head. He was a vertebrate paleontologist, not a microbiologist. The particle was interesting, but it was only a sidebar to the main attraction: the dinosaur itself. A dinosaur that had actually died from the Chicxulub asteroid strike. The thought of it sent tingles up his spine. Once again he tried to temper his enthusiasm. He h
ad a long way to go before the fossil was safely ensconced in the museum. Above all, he needed that bloody notebook – otherwise he might spend a lifetime wandering about those mesas and canyons. With a chill in his heart he removed the specimen stage and powered down the machine. He carefully locked the CDs and specimens in his briefcase and made one more round of the lab, checking that nothing, not the slightest trace, remained. Satisfied, he slipped his suitcoat on and left the laboratory, turning off the lights and locking the door on his way out.
The dim basement corridor stretched ahead of him, lit with a string of forty-watt bulbs and lined with sweating water pipes. Horrible place to work – he wondered how Melodie could stand it. Even the assistant curators had windows in their fifth-floor offices.
At the first dogleg in the hall, Corvus paused. He felt a tickling sensation on the back of his neck, as if someone were watching him. He turned, but the corridor stretching dimly behind him was empty. Bloody hell, he thought, he was getting as jumpy as Melodie.
He strode down the hallway, past the other laboratories, all locked up tight, turned the corner, then hesitated. He could have sworn he'd heard behind him the soft scrape of a shoe on cement. He waited for another footfall, for someone to round the corner, but nothing happened. He swore to himself; it was probably a guard making the rounds.
Clutching his briefcase, he strode on, approaching the double set of doors leading to the vast dinosaur bone storage room. He paused at the doors, thinking he had heard another sound behind him.
"Is that you, Melodie?" His voice sounded loud and unnatural in the echoing hall.
No answer.
He felt a wave of annoyance. It wouldn't be the first time that one of the graduate students or a visiting curator had been caught sneaking around, trying to get their hands on someone's locality data. It might even be his data they were after – someone who had heard about the T. Rex. Or perhaps Melodie had talked. He was suddenly glad he had had the foresight to take charge of the specimens and data himself.
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