Garwood grimaced. "Look, I'm sorry, Davidson, but I had no choice.""Sure. What do a few lives matter, anyway?"

"Davidson*"

"Especially when your personal freedom's at stake. You know, I have to say you really did a marvelous job of it. Now, instead of your colleagues hounding you for whatever it is those equations are, all they have to do is hound us. All that c.r.a.p about the dangers of this stuff getting out*that's all it was, wasn't it? Just c.r.a.p."

Garwood gritted his teeth. He knew full well that Davidson was playing a game here, deliberately trying to enmesh him in conversation until reinforcements could arrive. But he might never see this man again....

"I wasn't trying to saddle you with this mess, Davidson*really I wasn't. I needed to strengthen the effect enough to stop the car, but it wasn't a tradeoff between my freedom and all h.e.l.l breaking loose.

You and your men can't possibly retain the equations I was calling out*you don't have the necessary mathematical background, for one thing. They'll be gone from your mind within minutes, if they aren't already."

"I'm so pleased to hear it," Davidson said, heavily sarcastic. "Well, I'm certainly convinced. How about you?"

To that Garwood had no answer.... and it was long past time for him to get out of here. "I've got to go, now. Please*tell them to leave me alone. What they want just isn't possible."

Davidson didn't reply. With a sigh, Garwood turned his back and hurried toward the other end of the car lot and the street beyond it. Soon, he knew, the soldiers would be coming.

II.

"...one... two... three."

Davidson opened his eyes, blinking for a minute as they adjusted to the room's light. He swallowed experimentally, glancing at the clock on the desk to his left. Just after three-thirty in the morning, which meant he'd been under for nearly an hour... and from the way his throat felt, he'd apparently been talking for most of that time. "How'd it go?" he asked the man seated beyond the microphone that had been set up in front of him.

Dr. Hamish nodded, the standard medical professional's neutral expression pasted across his face. "Quite well, Major. At least once we got you started."

"Sorry. I did warn you I've never been good at being hypnotized." A slight sc.r.a.ping of feet to his right made Davidson turn, to find a distinguished-looking middle-aged man seated just outside his field of view there. On the other's lap was a pad and pencil; beside him on another chair was a tape recorder connected to the microphone. "Dr. Saunders," Davidson nodded in greeting, vaguely surprised to see Backdrop's director looking so alert at such an unG.o.dly hour. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Dr. Hamish was having enough trouble putting you under," Saunders shrugged. "I didn't think it would help for me to be here, too, during the process."

Davidson's eyes flicked to the notepad. "Did you get what you wanted?"

Saunders shrugged again, his neutral expression almost as good as Hamish's. "We'll know soon enough,"

he said. "It'll take a while to run the equations you gave us past our various experts, of course.""Of course," Davidson nodded. "I hope whatever you got doesn't make things worse, the way Garwood thought it would."

"Dr. Garwood is a pessimist," Saunders said shortly.

"Maybe," Davidson said, knowing better than to start an argument. "Has there been any word about him?"

"From the searchers, you mean?" Saunders shook his head. "Not yet. Though that's hardly surprising*he had over half an hour to find a hole to hide in, after all."

Davidson winced at the implied accusation in the other's tone. It wasn't his fault, after all, that none of the d.a.m.ned "not-me" generation drivers on the interstate had bothered to stop. "Men with mild concussions aren't usually up to using car radios," he said, perhaps more tartly than was called for."

"I know, Major." Saunders sighed. "And I'm sorry we couldn't prepare you better for handling him.

But*well, you understand."

"I understand that your security wound up working against you, yes," Davidson said. "If a fugitive is carrying a weapon, we're supposed to know that in advance. If the fugitive is a weapon, we ought to know that, too."

"Dr. Garwood as walking time bomb?" Saunder's lip twitched. "Yes, you mentioned that characterization of him a few minutes ago, during your debriefing."

Davidson only vaguely remembered calling Garwood that. "You disagree?"

"On the contrary, it's an uncomfortably vivid description of the situation," Saunders said grimly.

"Yeah." Davidson braced himself. "And now my men and I are in the same boat, aren't we?"

"Hardly," Saunders shook his head. The neutral expression, Davidson noted, was back in place. "We're going to keep the three of you here for awhile, just to be on the safe side, but I'm ninety-nine percent certain there's no danger of the same... effect... developing."

"I hope you're right," Davidson said. Perhaps a gentle probe... "Seems to me, though, that if there's even a chance it'll show up, we deserve to know what it is we've got. And how it works."

"Sorry, Major," Saunders said, with a quickness that showed he'd been expecting the question. "Until an updated security check's been done on you, we can't consider telling you anything else. You already know more than I'm really comfortable with."

Which was undoubtedly the real reason Saunders was keeping them here. "And if my security comes through clean?" he asked, pa.s.sing up the cheap-shot reminder of what Saunder's overtight security had already cost him tonight.

"We'll see," Saunders said shortly, getting to his feet and sliding the pad into his pocket. "The guard will escort you to your quarters, Major. Good-night."

He left the room, taking the tape recorder with him, and Davidson turned his attention back to Hamish.

"Any post-hypnotic side effects I should watch out for, Doctor?" he asked, reaching down for his crutches and carefully standing up. He winced as he put a shade too much weight on his injured leg.

Hamish shook his head. "No, nothing like that.""Good." He eyed the other. "I don't suppose you could give me any hints as to my prognosis here, could you?"

"You mean as regards the*ah*problem with Dr. Garwood?" Hamish shook his head, too quickly. "I really don't think you're in any danger, Major. Really I don't. The room here didn't suffer any damage while Dr. Saunders was writing down the equations you gave him, which implies you don't know enough to bother you."

Davidson felt the skin on the back of his neck crawl. So Garwood had been telling the truth, after all. It was indeed pure knowledge alone that was behind his walking jinx effect.

He shook his head. No, that was utterly impossible. Much easier to believe that whatever scam Garwood was running, he'd managed to take in Backdrop's heads with it, too.

Either way, of course, it made Garwood one h.e.l.l of a dangerous man. "I see," he said through stiff lips.

"Thank you, Doctor. Good-night."

A Marine guard, dressed in one of Backdrop's oddly nonstandard jumpsuit outfits, was waiting outside the door as Davidson emerged. "If you'll follow me, Major," he said, and led the way to an undistinguished door a couple of corridors away. Behind the door, Davidson found a compact dorm-style apartment, minimally furnished with writing desk, chair, and fold-down bed, with a closet and bathroom tucked into opposite corners. Through the open closet door a half dozen orange jumpsuits could be seen hanging; laid out on the bed was a set of underwear and a large paper bag. "You'll need to put your clothing into the bag," the guard explained after showing Davidson around the room. "Your watch and other personal effects, too, if you would."

"Can I keep my cigarettes?"

"No, sir. Cigarettes are especially forbidden."

Davidson thought back to the car ride, and Garwood's disintegrating trick. "Because that effect of Garwood's destroys them?" he hazarded.

The Marine's face might have twitched, but Davidson wouldn't have sworn to it. "I'll wait outside, sir, while you change."

He retired to the hallway, shutting the door behind him. Grimacing, Davidson stripped and put on the underwear, wondering if it would help to tell Saunders that he'd already seen what the Garwood Effect did to cigarettes. The thought of spending however many days or weeks here without nicotine...

Preoccupied, it was only as he was stuffing his clothes into it that his mind registered the oddity of using a paper bag instead of the usual plastic. A minor mystery, to go with all the major ones.

The Marine was waiting to accept the bag when he opened the door a minute later. Tucking it under his arm, he gave Davidson directions to the mess hall, wished him good-night, and left. Closing the door and locking it, Davidson limped his way back to the bed and shut off the nightstand light.

Lying there, eyes closed, he tried to think; but it had been a long day, and between fatigue and the medication he'd been given for his leg he found he couldn't hold onto a coherent train of thought, and two minutes after hitting the pillow he gave up the effort. A minute after that, he was fast asleep.

The jumpsuits hanging in the closet were the first surprise of the new day.Not their color. Davidson hadn't seen any other orange outfits in his brief walk through Backdrop the previous night, but he'd rather expected to be given something distinctive as long as he was effectively on security probation here. But it was something else that caught his attention, some oddity in the feel of the material as he pulled it off its wooden hanger. Examining the label, he quickly found the reason: the jumpsuit was one hundred percent linen.

Davidson frowned, trying to remember what Garwood had said about the potential targets of his strange destructive power. Engines, plastics, televisions, had been on the list; modern conveniences had also been there. Did synthetic fibers come under the latter heading? Apparently so. He pulled the jumpsuit on, fingers brushing something thin but solid in the left breast pocket as he did so. He finished dressing, then dug the object out.

It was a plastic card.

Frowning, Davidson studied it. It wasn't an ID, at least not a very sophisticated one. His name was impressed into it, but there was no photo, thumbprint, or even a description. It wasn't a digital key, or a radiation dosimeter, or a coded info plate, or anything else he could think of.

Unless...

He licked his lips, a sudden chill running up his back. Engines, plastics, televisions... He'd been wrong; the card was a dosimeter. A dosimeter for the Garwood Effect.

Whatever the h.e.l.l the Garwood Effect was. He gritted his teeth. All right, let's take this in a logical manner. The Garwood Effect destroyed plastics; okay. It also ruined car engines and pistols... and cigarettes and ash trays. What did all of those have in common?

He puzzled at it for a few more minutes before giving up the effort. Without more information he wasn't going to get anywhere... and besides, a persistent growling in his stomach was reminding him he was overdue for a meal. No one thinks well on an empty stomach, he silently quoted his grandfather's favorite admonition. Retrieving his crutches from the floor by his bed, he clumped off to the mess hall.

After the linen jumpsuit, he half expected breakfast to consist of nuts and berries served in coconut sh.e.l.ls, but fortunately Backdrop hadn't gone quite that far overboard. The dishware was a somewhat nonstandard heavy ceramic, but the meal itself was all too military standard: nutritious and filling without bothering as much with flavor as one might like. He ate quickly, swearing to himself afterward at the lack of a cigarette to help bury the taste. Manhandling his tray to the conveyer, he headed off to try and find some answers.

And ran immediately into a brick wall.

"Sorry, Major, but you're not authorized for entry," the Marine guard outside the Backdrop garage said apologetically.

"Not even to see my own car?" Davidson growled, waving past the Marine at the double doors behind him. "Come on, now*what kind of secrets does anybody keep in a garage?"

"You might be surprised, sir," the guard said. "I suggest you check with Colonel Bidwell and see if he'll authorize you to get in."

Davidson gritted his teeth. "I suppose I'll have to. Where's his office?"Colonel Bidwell was a lean, weathered man with gray hair and eyes that seemed to be in a perpetual squint. "Major," he nodded in greeting as Davidson was ushered into his office. "Sit down. Come to apply for a job?"

"More or less, sir," Davidson said, easing gratefully into the proffered chair. "I thought I could lend a hand in hunting down Dr. Garwood. Unless you've already found him, that is."

Bidwell gave him a hard look. "No, not yet. But he's in the Champaign-Urbana area*that's for d.a.m.n sure*and it's only a matter of time."

Automatically, Davidson reached for a cigarette, dropping his hand to his lap halfway through the motion.

"Yes, sir. I'd still like to help."

For a long moment Bidwell eyed him. "Uh-huh," he grunted. "Well, I'll tell you something, Major. Your file came through about an hour ago... and there are things there I really don't like."

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir," Davidson said evenly.

Bidwell's expression tightened a bit. "Your record shows a lot of bulldog, Major. You get hold of something and you won't let go until you've torn it apart."

"My superiors generally consider that an a.s.set, sir."

"It usually is. But not if it gets you personally involved with your quarry. Like it might now."

Davidson pursed his lips. "Has the colonel had a chance to look over the rest of my file? Including my success rate?"

Bidwell grimaced. "I have. And I still don't want you. Unfortunately, that decision's been taken away from me. You're already here, and it's been decided that there's no point in letting you just spin your wheels. So. Effective immediately, you're a.s.signed to hunter duty. Long-range duty, of course*we can't let you leave Backdrop until your updated security check is finished. You'll have a desk and computer in Room 138, with access to everything we know about Dr. Garwood."

Davidson nodded. Computer a.n.a.lysis was a highly impersonal way to track down a quarry, but he knew from long experience that it could be as effective as actually getting into the field and beating the bushes.

"Understood, sir. Can I also have access to the less secure areas of Backdrop?"

Bidwell frowned. "Why?"

"I'd like to get into the garage to look at my car, for one thing. Garwood may have left a clue there as to where he was headed."

"The car's already been checked over," Bidwell told him. "They didn't find anything."

Davidson remained silent, his eyes holding Bidwell's, and eventually the colonel snorted. "Oh, all right."

Reaching into his desk, he withdrew a small card and scribbled on it. "Just to get you off my back.

Here*a Level One security pa.s.s. And that's it, so don't try to badger me for anything higher."

"Yes, sir." The card, Davidson noted as he took it, was a thickened cardboard instead of standard pa.s.scard plastic. Not really surprising. "With your permission, then, I'll get straight to work.""Be my guest," Bidwell grunted, turning back to his paperwork. "Dismissed."

"What in blazes happened to it?" Davidson asked, frowning into the open engine compartment. After what had happened to his cigarettes and gun, he'd rather expected to find a mess of shattered metal and disintegrated plastic under the hood of his car. But this"It's what happens to engines," the mechanic across the hood said vaguely, his eyes flicking to Davidson's orange jumpsuit.

Davidson gingerly reached in to touch the ma.s.s of metal. "It looks half melted."

"Yeah, it does," the mechanic agreed. "Uh... if that's all, Major, I have work to get to."

All right, Davidson thought grimly to himself as he clumped his way back down the corridor. So this Garwood Effect doesn't affect everything the same way. No big deal*it just means it'll take a little more work to track down whatever the h.e.l.l is going on here, that's all.

What it didn't mean was that he was going to toss in the towel and give up. Colonel Bidwell had been right on that count, at least; he did indeed have a lot of bulldog in him.

Dr. James Garwood was one of that vanishingly rare breed of scientist who was equally at home with scientific hardware as he was with scientific theory. A triple-threat man with advanced degrees in theoretical physics, applied physics, and electrical engineering, he was a certified genius with a proven knack for visualizing the real-world results of even the most esoteric mathematical theory. He'd been a highly-paid member of a highly respected research group until two years previously, when he'd taken a leave of absence to join the fledgling Backdrop Project. From almost the beginning it seemed he'd disagreed with Saunder's policies and procedures until, three months ago, he'd suddenly disappeared.

And that was the entire synopsis of Garwood's life since coming to Backdrop. Seated before the computer terminal, Davidson permitted himself an annoyed scowl. So much for having access to everything that was known about Dr. Garwood.

Of Garwood since his break there was, of course, nothing; but the files did contain a full report of the efforts to find him. The FBI had been called in early on, after which the National Security Agency had gotten involved and quickly pulled the rest of the country's intelligence services onto the case. In spite of it all, Garwood had managed to remain completely hidden until the report of yesterday's incident at the Springfield bus station had happened to catch the proper eye.

After three months he'd been caught... and promptly lost again.

Davidson gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to dwell on his failure. Bidwell had been right: too much emotional involvement had a bad tendency to cloud the thinking.

But then, there was more than one form of emotional involvement. Leaning back in his seat, stretching his injured leg out beneath the desk, he closed his eyes and tried to become Dr. James Garwood.

For whatever reason, he'd decided to quit Backdrop. Perhaps he and Saunders had argued one too many times; perhaps the presence of the Garwood Effect had finally gotten too much for him to take.

Perhaps*as he'd claimed on the ride last night*he truly felt that Backdrop was a danger and that the best thing for him to do was to abandon it.So all right. He'd left... and managed to remain hidden from practically everybody for a solid three months. Which implied money. Which usually implied friends or relatives.

Opening his eyes, Davidson attacked the keyboard again. Family...? Negative*all members already interviewed or under quiet surveillance. Ditto for relatives. Ditto for friends.