"Not quite that subtle.'' Marty rolled up a tortilla with a strange mixture of beans, shredded cheese, and olives. By the time the public learns about it, it will be 'Oh, by the way, we've taken over Congress and the Pentagon. Stay out of our way while we work this out.' He bit into the tortilla and shrugged at Reza.

Six weeks from now, Reza said.

Six eventful weeks, Amelia said. Just before I left Texas, I sent the rationale for the doomsday scenario to about fifty scientists-everyone in my address book tagged as a physicist or astronomer.

That's funny, Asher said. I wouldn't have gotten it, since I'd be in your book as 'math' or 'old fart.' But you'd think some colleague would have mentioned it by now. How long's it been?

Monday, Amelia said.

Four days. Asher filled a mug with coffee and steaming milk. Have you contacted any of them?

Of course not. I haven't dared to pick up a phone or log on.

Nothing in the news, Reza said. Aren't any of your fifty publicity-hungry?

Maybe it was intercepted, I said.

Amelia shook her head. It was from a public phone, a data jack in the Dallas train station; maybe a microsecond download.

So why hasn't anybody reacted? Reza said.

She kept shaking her head. We've been so... so busy. I should have... She set down her plate and fished through her purse for a phone.

You're not- Marty said.

I'm not calling anybody. She punched a sequence of numbers from memory. But I never checked the echo of that call! I just a.s.sumed everybody got... oh, s.h.i.t. She turned the handset around. It showed a random jumble of numbers and letters. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d got to my database and scrambled it. In the forty-five minutes it took for me to get to Dallas and make the call.

It's worse than that, I'm afraid, Mendez said. I've jacked with him for hour after hour. He didn't do it; didn't think of it.

Jesus, I said into the silence. Could it have been someone in our department? Someone who could decrypt your files and cream them? She'd been keying through the text. Look at this. There was nothing but gibberish until the last word: G

O

D

S

W

I

L

L.

IT TAKES TIME FOR information to percolate up through a cell system. By the time Amelia found evidence that the Hammer of G.o.d had scrambled her files, there was still one day left before the very highest echelon knew that G.o.d had given them a way to bring on the Last Day: all they had to do was keep anybody from interfering with the Jupiter Project.

They were not dumb, and they knew a thing or two about spin themselves. They leaked the news that there were lunatic-fringe conservatives who wanted to convince you that the Jupiter Project was a tool of Satan; that continuing it could precipitate the end of the world. The End of the Universe! Could anything be more ridiculous? A harmless project that, now that it was set in motion, cost n.o.body anything, and might give us real information as to how the universe began. No wonder those religious kooks wanted it suppressed! It might prove that G.o.d didn't exist!

What it proved, of course, was that G.o.d did exist, and was calling us home.

The Ender who had decrypted and destroyed Amelia's files was none other than Macro, her t.i.tular boss, and he was glad beyond words to see that his part in the plan was crystallizing.

Macro's involvement did help the other Plan- Marty's rather than G.o.d's-in that he deflected attention from the disappearance of Amelia and Julian. He had set up Ingram to get rid of Amelia, and a.s.sumed he had taken care of the black boyfriend at the same time, good riddance to both of them. He had forged letters of resignation from both, in case anyone came looking. He'd a.s.signed their teaching duties to people who were too grateful to be curious, and there was already so much rumor brewing about them that he didn't bother to manufacture a cover story. Young black man and older white woman. They probably pulled up stakes and went to Mexico.

FORTUNATELY I STILL HAD the rough draft of the paper on my own notebook. Amelia and I could clean it up and send a delayed broadcast after we left Guadalajara. Ellie Morgan, who had been a journalist before committing murder, volunteered to write a simplified version for general release, and one with everything but equations for a popular science magazine. That would be a pretty short article.

The staff removed all the plates, empty or piled with bones, and brought back plates of cookies and fruit. I couldn't look at another calorie, but Reza attacked both.

Since Reza has his mouth full, Asher said, let me be devil's advocate for a change.

Suppose all it took to become humanized was a simple pill. The government demonstrates how it's going to make life better for everyone-or even that life will end if everyone doesn't take it-and they supply the pills to everybody. Pa.s.s a law saying it's life imprisonment if you don't take the pill. How many would manage not to take it anyhow?

Millions, Marty said. n.o.body trusts the government.

And instead of a pill, you're talking about a complex surgical procedure that only works ninety-some percent of the time and when it doesn't work, it usually kills or stupefies the victim. You'll have people running for the hills.

We've been through this, Marty said.

I know. I got the argument when we were jacked. You don't provide it for free-you charge for it and make it a symbol of status and individual empowerment. How many Enders do you think you're going to get that way? And what about the people who already have status and power? They're going to say, 'Oh, good, now everybody else can be like me'?

The fact is, Mendez said, it does give you power. When I'm linked with the Twenty, I understand five languages; I have twelve degrees; I've lived over a thousand years.

The status part will be propaganda at first, Marty said. But when people look around and see that virtually everything of interest is being done by the humanized, we won't have to sell the idea.

I'm worried about the Hammer of G.o.d, Amelia said. We're not likely to convert many of them, and some of them like to serve G.o.d by murdering the G.o.dless.

I agreed. Even if we convert a few like Ingram, the nature of the cell system would keep it from spreading.

They're notoriously antijack anyhow, Asher said. Enders in general, I mean. And arguments about status and power aren't going to move them.

Spiritual arguments might, Ellie Morgan said. She looked kind of saintly herself, all in white with long flowing white hair. "Those of us who are believers find our belief strengthened, and broadened.

I wondered about that. I'd felt her belief, jacked, and was attracted by the comfort and peace she derived from it. But she'd instantly accepted my atheism as another path, which didn't sound much like any Ender I'd met. The hour I'd spent linked with Ingram and two others, Ingram had used the power of the jack to visualize imaginative h.e.l.ls for me three of us, all involving a.n.a.l rape and slow mutilation.

It would be interesting to jack with him after he'd been humanized, and play those h.e.l.ls back for his entertainment. I suppose he'd forgive himself.

That's an angle we ought to map out, Marty said. Using religion-not your kind, Ellie, but organized religion. We'll automatically have people like the Cyber-Baptists and Omnia on our side. But if we could be endorsed by some mainstream religion, we could have a big bloc that not only preached our gospel, but demonstrated its effectiveness. He picked up a cookie and inspected it. I've been concentrating so much on the military aspects that I've neglected other concentrations of power. Religion, education.

Belda tapped her cane on the floor. I don't think deans and professors are going to see the appeal of gaining knowledge without working through their inst.i.tutions. Mr. Mendez, you plug into your friends and speak five languages. I only speak four, none of them that well, and it took a large piece of my youth, sitting and memorizing, to learn three of those four. Pedagogues are jealous of the time and energy they invest in gaining knowledge. You offer it to people like a sugar pill.

But no, it's not like that at all, Mendez said earnestly. I only understand things in j.a.panese or Catalan when one of the others is thinking with that language. I don't keep it.

It's lice when Julian joined us, Ellie said. The Twenty never had a physical scientist before. When he was linked with us, we understood his love for physics, and any of us could use his knowledge directly-but only if we knew enough, anyhow, to ask the right questions. We couldn't suddenly do calculus. No more than we understand j.a.panese grammar when we're linked with Wu.

Megan nodded. It's sharing information, not transferring it. I'm a doctor, which may not be a huge intellectual accomplishment, but it does take years of study and practice. When we're all jacked together and someone complains of a physical problem, all the others can follow my logic in diagnosis and prescribing, while it's happening, but they couldn't have come up with it on their own, even though we've been jacked together off and on for twenty years.

The experience might even motivate someone to study medicine, or physics, Marty said, and it certainly would help a student, to have instant intimate contact with a doctor or a physicist. But you still have to unplug and hit the books, if you want to actually have the knowledge.

Or never unplug at all, Belda said. Just unplug to eat or sleep or go to the toilet. That's really attractive. Billions of zombies who are temporarily expert in medicine and physics and j.a.panese. For all of their so-called waking hours.

It'll have to be regulated, I said, the way it is now. People will spend a couple of weeks jacked, to humanize them. But after that...

The front door opened so hard it banged against the wall, and three large policemen strode in with submachine guns. An unarmed policeman, smaller, followed them.

-I have a warrant for Dr. Marty Larrin, he said in Spanish.

-What is the warrant for? I asked. -What is the charge?

"-I am not paid to answer to negros. Which of you is Dr. Larrin?

I am, I said in English. You can answer to me.

He gave me a look I hadn't seen in years, not even in Texas. ''-Be silent, negro. One of you white men is Dr. Larrin.

What is the warrant about? Marty asked, in English.

Are you Professor Larrin?

I am and I have certain rights. Of which you are aware.

You do not have the right to kidnap people.

Is this person I supposedly kidnapped a Mexican citizen?

You know he is not. He's a representative of the government of the United States.

Marty laughed. Then I suggest you send around some other representative of the government of the United States. He turned his back on the guns. Where were we?

To kidnap is against Mexican law. He was turning red in the face, like a cartoon cop. No matter who kidnaps who.

Marty picked up a phone handset and turned around. ' This is an internal matter between two branches of the United States government. He walked up to the man, holding the phone like a weapon, and switched to Spanish. -You are a bug between two heavy rocks. Do you want me to make the phone call that crushes you?''

The cop rocked back but then held his ground. I don't know anything about that, he said in English. A warrant is a simple matter. You must come with me.

Bulls.h.i.t. Marty touched one number and unreeled a jack connector from the side of the handset. He clicked it onto the back of his head.

I demand to know who you are contacting! Marty just stared at him, slightly wall-eyed. Cabo! He gestured, and one of the men put the muzzle of his submachine gun under Marty's chin.

Marty reached back slowly and unjacked. He ignored the gun and looked down into the little man's face. His voice was shaky but firm. In two minutes you may call your commander, Julio Castenada. He will explain in detail the terrible mistake you almost made, in all innocence. Or you might decide to just go back to the barracks. And not further disturb Comandante Castenada.

They locked eyes for a long second. The cop jerked his chin sideways and the private withdrew his gun. Without another word, the four of them filed out.

Marty eased the door shut behind them. That was expensive, he said. I jacked with Dr. Spencer and he jacked with someone in the police. We paid this Castenada three thousand dollars to lose the warrant.

In the long run, money isn't important, because we can make anything and sell it. But here and now, we don't have a 'long run.' Just one emergency after another.

Unless somebody finds out you have a nanoforge, Reza said. Then it won't be a few cops with guns.

These people didn't look us up in the phone book, Asher said. It had to be someone in your Dr. Spencer's office.

You're right, of course, Marty said. So at the very least, they do know we have access to a nanoforge. But Spencer thinks it's a government connection I'm not able to talk about. That's what these police will be told.

It stinks, Marty, I said. It stinks on ice. Sooner or later, they'll have a tank at the door, making demands. How long are we here?

He flipped open his notebook and pushed a b.u.t.ton. ' 'Depends on Ingram, actually. He should be humanized in six to eight days. You and I are going to be in Portobello on the twenty-second, regardless.

Seven days. ' 'But we don't have a contingency plan. If the government or the Mafia puts two and two together.

Our 'contingency plan' is to think on our feet. So far, so good.

At the very least, we ought to split up, Asher said. Our being in one place makes it too easy for them.

Amelia put a hand on my arm. Pair up and scatter. Each pair with one person who knows Spanish.

And do it now, Belda said. Whoever sent those boys with guns has his own contingency plan.

Marty nodded slowly. I'll stay here. Everybody else call as soon as you find a place. Who speaks enough Spanish to take care of rooms and meals? More than half of us; it took less than a minute to sort up into pairs. Marty opened a thick wallet and put a stack of currency on the table. Make sure each of you has at least five hundred pesos.

Those of us who are up to it ought to take the subway, I said. An army of cabs would be pretty conspicuous, and traceable.

Amelia and I got our bags, not yet unpacked, and were the first ones out the door. The subway was a kilometer away. I offered to take her suitcase, but she said that would be too conspicuously un-Mexican. She should take mine, and walk two paces behind me.

At least we'll get a little breathing s.p.a.ce to work on the paper. None of this will mean anything if the Jupiter Project is still going September fourteenth.

I spent a little time on it this morning. She sighed. Wish we had Peter.

Never thought I'd say it... but me, too.

THE WOULD SOON FIND out, along with the rest of the world, that Peter was still alive. But he was in no shape to help with the paper.

Police in St. Thomas arrested a middle-aged man wandering through the market at dawn. Dirty and unshaven, dressed only in underwear, at first they thought he was drunk. When the desk sergeant questioned him, though, she found that he was sober but confused. Monumentally confused: he thought the year was 2004 and he was twenty years old.

On the back of his skull, a jack connection so fresh it was crusted with blood. Someone had invaded his mind and stolen the last forty years.

What was taken from his mind corroborated the text of the article, of course. Within a few days, the glorious truth had spread to all of the upper echelons of the Hammer of G.o.d: G.o.d's plan was going to be fulfilled, appropriately enough, by the G.o.dless actions of scientists.

Only a few people knew about the glorious End and Beginning that G.o.d would give them on September 14.

One of the paper's authors was safe, most of his brain in a black box somewhere. The academics who had juried the paper had all been taken care of, by accident or disease. One author was still missing, along with the agent who had been sent to kill her.

The a.s.sumption was that they were both dead, since she hadn't surfaced to warn the world. Evidently the authors had been uncertain how much time they had before the process became irreversible.

The most powerful member of the Hammer of G.o.d was General Mark Blaisdell, the undersecretary of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Not too surprisingly, he knew his arch-rival, Marty's General Roser, in a casual social way; they took meals at the same Pentagon dining room- officers' mess, technically, if you can apply the term to a place with mahogany paneling and a white-clad server for each two messers.

Blaisdell and Roser did not like each other, though both hid it well enough to occasionally play tennis or billiards together. When Roser once invited him to a poker game, Blaisdell coldly said, I have never once played cards.

What he did like to play was G.o.d.

Through a series of three or four intermediaries, he supervised most of the murder and torture that was regrettably necessary to hasten G.o.d's plans. He used an illegal jack facility in Cuba, where Peter had been taken to have his memory stripped. It was Blaisdell who reluctantly decided to let the scientist live, while the five jurors were succ.u.mbing to their accidents and diseases. Those five scientists lived all over the world, and there wasn't much to immediately link their deaths and disabilities-two of them were in comas, and would sleep through the end of the world-but if Peter showed up dead as well, it could make trouble. He was moderately famous, and there were probably dozens of people who knew the ident.i.ties of the five jurors and the fact that they had turned down his paper. An investigation might lead to a re-evaluation of the paper, and the fact that Blaisdell's agency had mandated its refusal might attract unwanted scrutiny to other activities.

He tried to keep his religious beliefs to himself, but he knew there were people-like Roser-who knew he was very conservative, and might suspect, given a whisper of fact or rumor, that he was an Ender. The army wouldn't demote him for that, but they could make him the highest-ranking supply clerk in the world.

And if they found out about the Hammer of G.o.d, he'd be executed for treason. He would personally prefer that, of course, to demotion. But the secret had been sealed for years, and he would be the last one to give it away. Marty's group was not the only one with pills.

Blaisdell came home from the Pentagon and put on sport coveralls and went to an evening soccer game in Alexandria. At the hot dog stand he talked to the next woman in line, and as they walked back toward the bleachers, he said their agent Ingram had gone to the Omaha train station the evening of July 11 th, to pick up and eliminate a scientist, Blaze Harding. Agent and scientist left the station together-security cameras confirmed that-but then both had disappeared. Find them and kill Harding. Kill Ingram if he does anything that makes you think he's on the wrong side.

Blaisdell returned to his seat. The woman went to the ladies' room and disposed of her hot dog, and then went home to her weapons.

Her first weapon was an illegal FBI infoworm, threading undetected through munic.i.p.al transportation records. She found out that a third party shared the cab with the agent and his supposed victim; they had stopped the cab on Grand Street, no particular address. The original order had been for 1236 Grand, but they'd stopped early, a verbal cancel.

She went back to the security tapes and saw that the two had been followed by a large black man in uniform. She didn't yet know that there was a connection between the scientist and the black mechanic. She a.s.sumed he was a backup for Ingram; Blaisdell hadn't mentioned it, but maybe it was an arrangement Ingram had made on his own.