"Please, Liz. He's suffering."

I stumbled out to the lounge vid center. Despite the early hour, Janglish was already in his power suit. He looked as if his collar were strangling him. "Cobble, what the h.e.l.l have you done with Ramsdel Wetherall?"

"That's Dr. Cobble. And I haven't done a d.a.m.n thing with him."

"Not for lack of trying. The naive act isn't going to fool me, Cobble. You were pretty slick about dodging the waiver. But just because you didn't sign, doesn't mean you can sink your hooks into him."

"You tried his hotel?"

"You know he was never at that hotel. He was just using the room to forward his messages. I began to get suspicious when it was always an avatar that answered whenever I called him there. Couple that with several reckless remarks he made about you, and I realized you must have him. I want him back now, do you hear me?"

"I believe they can hear you in Stuttgart, Mr. Janglish."

"Murk," Nguyen broke in, "you're way out of line, even for you. We haven't seen Wetherall since he left after the mobile base test. He hasn't made it out to the site in days. And Liz has been here all along-I would certainly have noticed if she had been sneaking off to cavort with the boss."

"You're vouching for her, Nguyen?" sniffed Janglish.

"Why yes, I suppose I am." Out of range of the camera he drew a one with his forefinger for the favor I now owed him.

Janglish was only slightly mollified. "Well, then okay. For now. But I want you both to start looking for him. Give it your highest priority. Your project has got him neglecting his real responsibilities. There are ten transnational enterprises dependent on his input. I'm holding you responsible for distracting him. And if I find out that you've seen him and then let him get away, I'll have make you sorry you ever heard the name Murk Janglish."

"I already am," I muttered.

"Now Murk," said Nguyen, "you really ought to calm down. Wetherall is a slippery devil. Trying to catch him will only raise your blood pressure."

Janglish glared back at Nguyen. "It's a already hundred and eighty over ninety, and don't think you've helped it one bit." Then the screen went black.

"I believe I enjoy a special rapport with that man," Nguyen mused. "What do you think?"

"What was he going on about?" I asked. "What reckless remarks?"

Nguyen squinted out the window at the spectacular sunrise over the Wasatch Mountains. The shadow of Pile C pointed toward Laputa like an accusing finger. "I'll try the construction base," he said. "Maybe he's has some hiding place I've missed."

"I'm going to take a Serentol," I said, and headed for the bathroom.

I donned one of Nguyen's staff uniforms, took a jeep, and headed across the flats toward the press encampment. The place seemed unusually busy for seven in the morning, but then, reporters on a.s.signment don't sleep much. I ignored the swarm headed for the press tent, parked the jeep near a sol-power unit and prowled down the aisles of truck, vans, and satellite uplinks. Nests of fiberoptic cables sprawled across the scuffed salt. Finally I found what I was looking for.

The Jolly Freeze van was parked near the edge of the camp. There was no one in sight. I circled around to the back and kicked at the door. Not only did it feel great, but I believe I may have dented it.

"Wetherall!" I shouted. "Come out of there, you weasel!"

The door opened. Wetherall leaned out, grabbed me by the wrist, and yanked me in. "Thank G.o.d you're here, Liz."

Unlike the van he had used to pick me up at the university, this one was outfitted as a camper. There was a teak bunk, a teak drop table, a compact but sophisticated media center, galley, head. Three smart la.s.sos lay coiled under the bunk. On the pix was the Queen Jolly Freeze construction site. The exterior of the house was completed, and workmen were entering and exiting through the balcony entrance.

"You've been here all along, haven't you? Even the other night when I was outside this van trying to talk to you, you were here, not in any hotel."

"Yes," he admitted.

I thought for a moment. "Did you even have a woman in here with you, or did you just invent her to make me feel used?"

"That wasn't why I invented her, Liz. I just wanted to to keep away from Murk."

"Right in the middle of the biggest army of reporters in the country?"

"The Purloined Letter dodge. I'm sorry I deceived you."

"You're not forgiven. Do you know that Janglish has accused me of stealing you away from your 'responsibilities'?"

"Murk has a different view of my responsibilities than I have. He figures if he controls the women I see, then he controls me."

"Has it occurred to you that I don't give a d.a.m.n about your women?" I was so angry at the man that I felt as if I had stepped aside from myself. What I did next shocked me. "Look, I've had enough of this. I quit. Hire Thorp, for all I care."

I turned and stalked out of the van. I tried to slam the door behind me, but Wetherall caught it. "Liz," he protested. "Please don't go."

I stormed down the aisle of vehicles, Wetherall following me, begging me to listen to him. There was some commotion in the press camp. Reporters were milling around the main tent, trailing cameras and cable. No one noticed Wetherall, even though he wasn't wearing a silly hat or a phony beard. I spotted Nguyen about the same time as he saw me and made a broad pointing gesture toward Wetherall. I've got him, I mouthed.

You take him, I thought.

Nguyen b.u.mped his way over to us. There was salt dust on his b.u.t.ter-colored suit. His eyes were wide with excitement. "Big doings," he said. "You have to see this."

"Why?" I said.

Without replying, he ushered us over to the tent and picked up the edge where it had come loose from a stake. We ducked through.

Blaine Thorp was giving a press conference, only the sound system was so loud that I couldn't understand what he was saying. I heard him bellow the word "convergence." Nguyen pushed into the crowd to get a better look; I grabbed Wetherall by the sleeve and tugged him into the back corner of the tent, behind some sound equipment. Wetherall looked hunted. He was surrounded by reporters, the enemy, breathing the same sweltering air that they breathed. I had never seen him sweat until that moment.

I don't think it was because the air-conditioning in his shirt had failed.

Convergence. Earlier in the day, it had been reported, the s.h.i.tdogs in all four of the other sites had ducked their noses and begun digging. Every s.h.i.tdog on the planet besides ours here at Stateline had simultaneously disappeared under the crust of the desert.

When it became apparent that the s.h.i.tdogs weren't resurfacing, robot probes were sent in after them, to track their movements, and chart the direction of their digging, if there was any direction to it.

There was. All four sets of s.h.i.tdogs were tunneling in a straight line directly for Nevada.

They were closing ranks, and Stateline had been declared base.

Somebody adjusted Thorp's microphone.

"That's precisely what I'm saying, Darla," he told a reporter in the first row. "The Atacama Desert, the Gobi Desert, Ethiopia's Danakil Plain, and Lake Disappointment in Australia are all about eight thousand statute miles, as the crow flies, from Stateline. As the mole burrows, that's a little over seven thousand miles. a.s.suming the s.h.i.tdogs can burrow at a top speed of eight miles per hour, they'll be here in fifteen days."

"That can't be right," I said to Wetherall. "He's got the math wrong."

"So what happens when they get here?" Someone shouted a follow-up.

"Nothing right away, I hope. But that depends on stopping any further disturbance of the s.h.i.tdogs, the casting piles or the jewels. The s.h.i.tdogs are the advance wave for the race of aliens who sent them. Call these aliens the 'Big Dogs.' The casting piles are the power sources and the jewels the beacons. What we have here is an attractive nuisance set up by these superminds. A fire alarm. If we mess with it, thereby showing our intelligence, we set off the alarm. And Ramsdel Wetherall, with his construction activity, his wrong-headed advice from the academic establishment, and his obsession with the jewels, is intent on giving us away. Does he realize this? Of course he does! How could he not? It's common knowledge that pile C here in Stateline has been growing at an alarming rate, while there has been no change at any of the other sites. He's tripped the alarm, and wants to bring the Big Dogs down. That's the reason we've got convergence, and that's why we've got to stop him."

I couldn't stand it any more. I stood up and waved my hand frantically. Wetherall blanched and tried to pull me back, but it was like facing Matthewson at a Curriculum Committee meeting. "What a load of unfounded bulls.h.i.t!" I shouted.

In the corner of my eye I saw Nguyen slip out of the tent. Thorp squinted until he made me out against the lights. "Dr. Cobble? I'm glad you deigned to show up. You have a better explanation?"

"What is this theory based on, other than your Ouija board? It sounds like the plot of some pre-millennial sci-fi movie. I've known about the growth in pile C for weeks, and you just figured it out!"

The reporters turned, Wetherall clutched at my arm, and I realized that once again my pa.s.sion had carried me a little past the bounds of discretion. "Oops," I whispered.

"Let's get out of here," Wetherall muttered.

We made a dash for the outside. When the reporters realized the man next to me was Wetherall, they rushed after us, and nearly cut us off before we could leap into Nguyen's jeep.

As we sped across the flats toward Laputa, Nguyen spoke to Wetherall. "I believe we are faced with a moment of truth."

On the ride back, I sat beside Wetherall and tried to melt into a puddle so I could soak though the floorboards into the salt flat. I should have told him about pile C days ago. He knew I knew. I knew he knew. Now Thorp was villifying us both, and I'd handed him the means to do it.

Wetherall spoke first. "We've got to hurry up the launch."

"Listen," I said. "I screwed up. I let Thorp scoop me on the big story. But that doesn't justify all that garbage he's dumping on us. Don't let him force our hand."

"The s.h.i.tdogs have forced our hand, Liz," said Wetherall, his voice flat. I tried to read him, but couldn't. It was probably because he was planning to send Murk Janglish over to lop off my head for what I had-or rather, hadn't-done. But why was I worried that he might fire me? I had just quit.

By the time we reached Laputa, Wetherall was already planning his counter-strike. He would hold a press conference of his own, float a raft of different but eminently plausible explanations of the s.h.i.tdogs' behavior to defuse any panic Thorp might have aroused.

"Thorp's not a credible scientist," I protested. "We don't need to respond."

"We?" said Wetherall. "So we're 'we' again?"

"I'm sorry, Wetherall," I said. "For everything. How about a deal? If you don't fire me, I won't quit."

Nguyen's eyebrows arched but he said nothing. Neither did Wetherall. He simply offered me his hand and we shook. His hands were warmer than I remembered. He didn't seem angry or disappointed with me, only focused on our next step.

"Then we can proceed immediately. You'll speak for us, Liz. You carry more weight than Thorp. You can make him look like the eccentric he is."

A lot Wetherall knew about eccentrics. "But I can't face down an army of reporters. They'll nibble me to death."

"You don't have to," said Wetherall. "Your avatar is ready. She can do it."

I sat with Nguyen in Laputa's media room to watch the press conference. Wetherall was holed up in his room.

On the pix, it looked just like a live press conference. Behind the microphones were Wetherall and I-or rather our avatars. Wetherall's was the accustomed grinning, overenthusiastic barrel-of-quirks. I'd thought his avatars exaggerated until I met the man and learned they were actually realistic.

Mine was good. I couldn't complain about that. The avatar-modeling program had caught my edges, my impatience and sarcasm. Although I had never smiled that much in my life, at least it hadn't softened me to oatmeal.

There was only one problem.

"Cobble" and "Wetherall" were standing too close together. It looked like their hips were touching behind the podium. And they were flirting, bantering like teenagers, much to the detriment of the spin they were trying to sell.

They positively glowed.

I could see tomorrow's gossip columns as clearly as if they were etched in the air before me.

I opened the interface Wetherall had given me to move "Cobble" to a polite distance, only then she lost the train of her thought. If I was going to take control of my avatar, it seemed that I would have to do all the talking. I couldn't.

I ran up one level and pounded on Wetherall's door. I was doing a lot of that lately.

The door opened. "h.e.l.lo, Liz-"

"I thought 'Let's-not-and-say-we-did' was supposed to be a mutual decision," I said.

"Eh?"

There was a pix open on the bed. Murk Janglish glowered on it. "Who is it, Ramsdel? Not that Cobble woman again?"

"You're not watching our press conference?" I said.

Wetherall shrugged, "I've been too busy. Murk tells me that my money missed me while I was gone. Besides, we're not really saying anything important, are we? That's the whole point of a press conference."

"Ramsdel," said Janglish, "aim me at her. There's something she needs to hear."

"We may not be saying anything, but our avatars are practically in each other's pants," I said.

"Really?"

"Come down and take a look."

"Ramsdel!" shouted Janglish. "Wait, Ramsdel. Don't . . ."

"Hold that thought," said Wetherall, and turned him off.

Down in the media room, Nguyen had broken out the champagne. "This is really quite interesting," he said.

Wetherall watched for a moment. His response was blithe. "I'm sorry Liz, but I'm not at all sure this is bad strategy. If our supposed 'romance' becomes a story, then it will distract the reporters from Thorp. But if you want, I'll call the team leader and get your avatar tweaked right away."

"Mine? What about yours?" From where I sat, it looked like 'Wetherall' was trying to peek down 'Cobble's' blouse.

"If you insist, I can have my avatars adjusted as well."

"What good is that going to do? The damage is done. The reporters are going to think I'm your mystery woman. We'll be the talk of the net tomorrow."

"They've got me in bed with any woman who gets within ten kilometers. I'm sorry-I'm used to it. Maybe I shouldn't be. But I'll do what I can to spare you the indignity of being thought of as romantically linked to me. Now if you don't mind, Murk is having apoplexy."