"No trouble spotting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Kingsley said, facing into the warm offsh.o.r.e breeze. Solid and moist, the tropical lushness lay beneath the fierce glare of a blue-white dot.

"How good does the targeting have to be?" Benjamin asked to focus his attention. He was still distracted and foggy and wondered if this internal weather would be permanent.

"Not terribly, the magnetosphere theorists say. The vital region is about a hundred kilometers across and they are closing at speeds that allow the warhead triggers to go off within a microsecond's accuracy."

"So we can hit it within a few meters' accuracy? Wow."

"These weapons chaps are quite able. Impressive. Unfortunately, our understanding of the underlying magnetic geometry is muddy. I am not optimistic."

"Want to lay odds?" Benjamin chided him.

Kingsley had spilled most of the insider stories from his trip, including the incredible bit about the U Agency guy at Dulles. Benjamin still had trouble believing that things had gotten so extreme. But then, he had told himself, they had spent months holed up here, while the world outside went through a conceptual beating.

So far this entire thing had been easier for scientists to take because they were used to rubbing against the irreducible reality of a universe that was in a sense even worse than the hostility of the Eater. The TwenCen had cemented a solid belief that the universe was indifferent. For many ordinary people, that view was impossible to accept. Not that the eerie interest of the Eater was much solace.

"On success? Small, I should think."

"Let's be quant.i.tative."

Kingsley smiled. "All right, what odds do you give me?"

"Three to one for a fizzle."

"I'm not quite that large a fool."

"You really don't think we can short it out?"

"Quite unlikely."

"But you helped target them."

"Precisely. I am not married to models, particularly those devised by theorists like ourselves."

"Okay, ten to one."

"That I can accept. Stakes?"

"I'll put up a thousand bucks."

"So if the Eater dies, your bank account does, too."

"Don't give a d.a.m.n. I'm betting on American warheads."

"Good point. A general treated me to an hour's lesson on how hardened and compact they are. 'A megaton inside a suitcase,' the fellow boasted."

"d.a.m.n right," Benjamin said and wondered why he felt called upon to swagger around like this.

"I shall cheerfully pay up."

They waited in silence in the soft, salty wind. The ocean lay like a smooth blanket and the world held its breath.

The three flashes came as one, a hard white blink and then a fast-fading yellow. A cheer came faintly up the hillside, ragged and angry, from a thousand voices inside the buildings.

"I'd pray if I believed any of that," Benjamin said.

"As would I."

"It'll be a while before we know-"

"No, we've failed."

"What?"

"The color of the jet emission has not even altered. Its ejection is operating normally."

"Well, that could-"

"To succeed, we had to disrupt its control mechanisms. Moving ma.s.s into those magnetic funnels is a colossal endeavor. We haven't a clue how it pulls off the trick. If it can still do that, it has survived."

Benjamin had known it, too, but something made him argue with Kingsley. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Where is she?"

"In an orbit timed to put her on the other side of the Earth right now."

"Good show."

"You think she'll..."

"Have to be used?" Kingsley gave him a long, sympathetic gaze. "Inevitably."

"d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, I..."

Kingsley put a hand on his shoulder. "That is, above all, what she wished."

PART SEVEN.

NO BODY IN A BOX.

3.

Kingsley quickly realized the next morning that to the bureaucratic mind, the most pressing matter would, of course, be the a.s.signing of blame.

This fell to an a.s.sortment of U Agency types. These in the general Executive Committee meeting used "It is believed" rather than "I think," theorists who said "It has long been known," when they meant "I can't remember who did this," or stated portentously "It is not unreasonable to a.s.sume" instead of "Would you believe?" Those defending their ideas-the imported target specialists, DoD experts and the like, retreated into "It might be argued that," which was a dead-on clue that it actually meant "I have such a good answer to that objection that I shall now raise it myself..." These were the same sort whose speech included "progressing an action plan" and "calendarizing a project." Only painfully did it penetrate that the calendar here was set entirely by a being n.o.body understood.

Part of the problem in a.s.signing responsibility was the swelling numbers of Center consultants, U Agency staff, a.s.sorted specialists, and the like. More moved in as the possibility of communications failure grew. The Eater might chop the human digital networks with a single swipe.

In the end, there was plenty of blame to go around.

All Earth's telescopes and diagnostics, concentrated upon the comparatively tiny region of a few hundred kilometers around the rapidly decelerating Eater's core, saw much that no one comprehended. The huge energies of the three warheads had sent great plumes of high temperature plasma into the magnetic geometry, all right. But somehow it flowed along the field lines and then into the accretion disk. More fuel for the Eater of All Things.

"The Eater ate them," Amy Major observed laconically. "And like us all, eating makes you bigger."

It had swelled, become more luminous. In the next few hours, the Eater crossed the remaining half a million kilometers to Earth, bearing in on a spiral orbit.

Kingsley watched the U Agency break down into factions that fed upon each other. Outside the Center battalions of newsfolk demanded answers. Washington already knew that, fundamentally, there were none. The Eater said nothing about the attack, until two hours later: MY-SELVES NOTE THAT YOUR INTERCOMMUNICATIONS REFER TO ME AS A PROCESSOR OF FOOD. THIS IS NOT A SERVICEABLE DISTINCTION. INGESTION IS SHARED BY NEARLY ALL LIFE-FORMS. I WISH YOU TO REFER TO ME BY A TERM MORE NEARLY DESCRIBING MY ESSENTIAL BEING IN YOUR MEASURE. ULTIMATA.

"Looks like a signature," Arno commented to the Semiotics Group.

"But what's it mean?" a voice called, and others chimed in: "The ultimate?"

"Should be singular."

"It says 'my-selves,' though."

"So it's what? An anthology intelligence?"

"Like Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?"

"Don't be humorous about that!"

"About life and death? Laughing is best."

"Ultimate as in final? Fatal?"

"Maybe it's the plural of ultimatum."

This last from a University of Oklahoma professor sent a chill through the room.

Later, secluded in his office, Arno asked the old working group of Martinez, Amy, Benjamin, and Kingsley if they thought these were reasonable readings. Amy said, "It knows dozens of languages by now. Choosing a name like that-well, it proves it's learned how to pun."

"To underline that it wishes its demand for specific persons obeyed," Kingsley said.

Amy said, "There's a Mesh story that says they're reading the sections of Einstein's brain that were in formaldehyde."

"Lots of luck deciphering that," Benjamin said.

Amy waved the Einstein matter away as a stunt, but then said earnestly, "There are thousands of specialists working on the whole uploading problem. They're learning every day. If we have to give it all those people, the technology will be ready."

Arno asked her, "How many volunteers?"

"Real ones? A few dozen."

Arno looked startled. "But the Mesh says there are already over ten thousand."

"That's counting captive 'volunteers' from dictators."

"How about reading in the brains of those just dead?" Arno pressed. "There are eight billion people on Earth. Dying at a rate of better than a hundred thousand every day day-"

"Everybody's resisting that," Amy said briskly. "Most aren't anywhere near a facility that has the equipment. And anyway, the magnetic sensing process takes several days, minimum. Dying patients aren't up to it, and their readings get screwed up, too."

"The Eater doesn't know that," Arno said.

Kingsley said, "Not so. It samples all our radio and TV. It can eavesdrop on a great welter of talk."

Amy seemed more energetic than the men here, and Kingsley marveled again at how she had become steadily stronger as this crisis developed. That had first drawn him to her, the sheer sense of untapped energy. She had an appet.i.te for detail, for st.i.tching together the innumerable Eater messages, then shopping them out to the working groups-all the while remaining a warm, insightful woman, not an office automaton, as did so many of both s.e.xes in these fear-fraught days.

"I...see." Arno's former spotless attire had eroded. His suit was unpressed, tie askew, shoes unpolished-all mirroring his wrecked face, which was not used to receiving a serving of unremitting bad news. No sleep and pressure from above had not been kind. "Well, at least we've solved the question of who was after Kingsley."

This made Kingsley brighten. "How is old buddy Herb?"

"Conscious, finally. He'll recover. He was from the China-option faction, I found out."

"Trying to silence opponents?" Kingsley guessed.

"They wanted you in hand to control reactions and help with follow-up targeting," Arno said.

This startled them all. "They planned on failing?" Amy asked.

"Any good general has a retreat in mind," Arno said. "They wanted to hit it several times, overload it."

Kingsley guessed again, "But didn't say so to the President."

"Seems so," Arno said. "He overruled that, of course. If they'd had you to head up the advocates, maybe they'd have won, be slugging it out with the Eater right now."

Benjamin said angrily, "Inside our satellite belt? That would skragg all our communications."

"Yep," Arno said blandly. "I'm getting so nothing surprises me, even from Washington."

"The p.r.o.nuke faction is vanquished, then?" Kingsley asked.

"Not at all." Arno grinned cynically. "They just sit in the back of the room now."

"Ah, politics," Amy said.

Arno's screen beeped and a priority message appeared, more from the Eater: IT IS INCONSISTENT WITH THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE FOR A SEVERELY LIMITED, NATURALLY EMERGED BEING SUCH AS A HUMAN TO BE FULLY ACQUAINTED WITH THE DIVINE, OR WITH CREATED BEINGS OF HIGHER ORDERS.

"Cryptic son of a b.i.t.c.h, isn't it?" Arno prodded them.