Eli gave a little laugh.

"Yes," he said, pleased. And then he caught himself, for it was him whose body kept the cube.

"You are not a man, and you will die."

"Indeed," said Roni Tahr.

"Death comes for all of us in time; the ends of all our days are constant as the dictates of the logic of biology," Eli gave his prisoner a puzzled look.

"English," he said.

"You're talking nonsense."

Roni Tahr shook his head.

"No," he said, "I never would. I meant to tell you only this: everything that G.o.d makes will die, returning to the Creator as the breath you draw returns to the sky. Nothing lives immutably forever--because any family that could not change to face the challenges around it would surely die forever."

Eli still didn't follow, but he wearied of the attempt to understand.

"Whatever," he said.

"I will now prepare your lunch. Lie there quietly and I will leave you unbound."

"And if I attempt escape?"

Eli laughed.

"There is no escape. You will be civil, or you will not. It does not much concern me."

"I see," said Roni Tahr. And hesitated.

"What does concern you, Eli? What brings us to this time, this circ.u.mstance? How come you to this place and time?"

Eli smiled.

"I am none of your concern," he said.

"Remember that and we will both live longer lives."

The FBI began its search with emba.s.sies and safe houses, targeting known hostiles--particularly the ones who were well financed. The Libyans; the Sudanese.

Iran. Myanmar, reflexively hostile to the West for decades and now possessed of real wealth from the pillage of its rain forests. Serbia, which found itself awash in Uranium money that year.

It took three and a half days for the FBI to raid and search every known safe house in metropolitan Washington; another two for it to finish all of those in the northeast and upper south.

Searching the emba.s.sies was another matter, since emba.s.sies -are technically the territory of the foreign nationa whose envoys they house. On the face of things our government pays great respect to that sovereignty, and expects the same regard in turn--but the Feds have ways to search the emba.s.sies, mark my word.

They used them that week. They had used them before.

And they surely will again.

By noon of the seventh day after the kidnapping of Roni Tahr, the FBI had searched every hostile emba.s.sy in Washington, and many of the emba.s.sies of friendly powers. Twice agents had been caught in the act--and sent to the FBI for burglary prosecution.

Amazing, that. The FBI can be as slick as its reputation.

But none of those searches, however slick or well conceived they may have been, none of those searches revealed anything of any value, much less a hint as to the whereabouts of Roni Tahr.

The search turned fitful after that. Agents were a.s.signed to investigate the mob, the Cuban--some were even sent to watch madmen like the Unabomber in their prisons.

As the FBI spun its wheels on the eleventh and twelfth days of the search.

Till some genius in accounting had an inspiration at the commissary during lunch.

"You know, Marv." he said to the administrator beside him, "there's only one power in the world with the resources to pull off something like the disappearance of this alien."

"Who's that, Steve?"

"Us."

A laugh.

"You and me? Don't joke. It's serious out there.

The aliens in orbit are getting anxious at us."

"No, no--us, the U.S. The Americans. Our country.

We could have done that--lots of our government could have done that.

So could some of the contractors, big ones like the guys who work for

JPL.".

"You're out of your mind, Steve," his companion told him.

And that would have been the end of it for days, or weeks, or maybe no one ever would have realized what'd happened to Roni Tahr and his companions.

These men were just accountants, after all. They had no real business with the investigation.

Except for the fact that one of the investigation's lead managers--a hostile and frustrated man named Johnson Smith--was standing in the commissary line behind the two accountants.

And heard the exchange.

And chewed it for three hours as he reviewed reports of severed leads and pointless burglaries.

Till it came to him that the accountant, Steve Wrightson, had a point.

Someone with serious resources had stolen away with the aliens.

Resources that Johnson Smith didn't know to name, because until that day he'd never had a need to know about anything of the sort.

As he picked up his phone.

And dialed one of his a.s.sociates.

"Roberts," he said.

"We need a liaison to the Black Budget people. Can you arrange that for me?"

"Sure," Roberts said.

"What're you looking for?"

A sigh.

"Anything. Everything. We need a fishing expedition.

Somebody's behind the technology that abducted Tahr--somebody who works for us."