The Footprints of God (52 page)

I closed my eyes and almost collapsed with relief. Trinity had accepted reason. "It's possible."

"But I will never again know the power I have at this
moment."

"Your desire for power is the reason you can't remain where you are."

"We should do this as soon as possible. Events are spinning out of control."

A fillip of fear went through me. "What events? Where are the missiles?"

"I've chosen the subjects for the merged model. You
and Dr. Weiss."

This stunned me. "Why? Andrew Fielding is a far better choice."

"Fielding never experienced what you did in your coma. This must be part of the merged model."

"And Dr. Weiss?"

"
I
chose Dr. Weiss because the only other female here is Geli Bauer. Her instincts were twisted into hatred long
ago."

By my watch, two minutes remained. "Where are the missiles?"

"The missiles are of no concern now."

"Have they been destroyed?"

"You should know something, Doctor. I've agreed to
your plan only because I know that after you see the
world as I do now
—
through God's eyes, if you will
—
you will not take yourself off-line or agree to be shut
down.
"

"I hope I don't see mankind as you do."

"You will. You cannot
—"

Trinity fell silent, but its lasers kept firing like tracer rounds across a night sky.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "What's happening?"

"The president has launched three Minuteman missiles. "

Situation Room

>Rachel watched Ewan McCaskell frantically punch numbers into his cell phone, trying in vain to reach the White House bomb shelter. The chief of staff was red-faced and out of breath.

"It's the Virginia blast," General Bauer said calmly. "It disrupted communications all along the Atlantic coast."

Rachel knew he was telling the truth. A few moments ago, they'd lost the audio feed from Senator Jackson's intelligence committee at Fort Meade. The video wa
^s
still there, but barely visible. She wondered if the senators could hear what was going on in the Situation Room.

"Get me the White House bomb shelter, General, screamed McCaskell. “ You heard Trinity agree to shut itself down. There's no need for an EMP strike now!"

Bauer pointed at the NORAD screen. Two red arcs blinked rapidly as they closed the last centimeter to their targets. "Trinity hasn't destroyed its missiles. And I also heard it tell Tennant that whoever goes into the machine will act just as Peter Godin has. Do you think different? Survival is the prime imperative of all living things."

"So start thinking about survival! It'll take our missiles five minutes to reach altitude. How many Russian ICBMs do you think Trinity can launch in that time?" McCaskell put the phone to his ear and froze. "I'm through! I've got a Secret Service agent!"

General Bauer drew an automatic pistol from beneath his coat and aimed it at the chief of staff. "Put down that phone."

Containment

"Look at them,"
said the computer.
"You see?"

On the screen beneath the black sphere, I saw General Bauer aiming a 9mm pistol at Ewan McCaskell. Rachel had dropped behind the table in case of gunfire. I could see her only because the surveillance camera was mounted high in the Situation Room.

"I've been informed that the president is retaliating
against the Russians,"
said Trinity.
"This is a lie. The
pattern of launches indicates a three-pronged EMP
strike. This not rational. They leave me no choice. I
must strike first."

"No! The president doesn't know you've agreed to shut yourself down. Destroy
your
missiles. The president will see that!"

"Man is incapable of trust."

"It's
one
man. General Bauer. Don't be like him!"

"You ask me to turn the other cheek?"

"No. Just wait thirty seconds. Someone will stop Bauer."

I didn't believe that myself. The only person in the Situation Room capable of taking out General Bauer was his daughter, and that wasn't going to happen.

"If I wait, I'll be cut off from the world by the EMP. Then I shall be destroyed. The missile over Washington will detonate in fifty-six seconds. The White Sands missile will explode shortly after. Thirty minutes later a
thousand nuclear warheads will rain down on the
United States.
"

"No!" I screamed. "Don't launch anything!"

"They've left me no choice."

As I stared at General Bauer aiming his gun at McCaskell, a solution came to me. A terrible one in terms of its price, but perhaps the only workable compromise.

"Can you communicate with the president?"

"Yes."

"Tell him you're going to spare Washington but destroy White Sands. Sparing Washington shows your goodwill, wiping out White Sands your resolve. It also removes General Bauer from the equation. Then tell the president what will happen if he doesn't destroy his three missiles. Armageddon."

Trinity's lasers flashed sporadically.
"You would sacrifice the woman you love?"

"To save millions of lives. But I'll be with her when the missile explodes. You can't keep me in here."

The sphere flashed blue fire.

Situation Roo
m

Rachel's eyes flicked from General Bauer to the NORAD screen. She feared that any moment a forest of red lines would begin rising from Russian soil.

Ewan McCaskell still held the phone to his ear, despite the gun that Bauer was aiming at his face.

"General, you've lost your mind," McCaskell said. "I'm trying to save lives."

"You're confusing the situation," said General Bauer. "Hang up that phone."

"Give me the president," McCaskell said into the phone.

General Bauer stepped close to the chief of staff, so lose that the barrel of the pistol touched McCaskell’s forehead.

The missile over Washington just self-destructed!"
shouted the chief technician.

"And White Sands?" said General Bauer, his gun still at McCaskell's forehead.

"Still on track. We're within the margin of error, sir. Any second now."

Rachel steeled herself against the unknown. Would they be vaporized by the blast? Carbonized by superheated air? Would they hear the explosion? Or would it just be a flash? A flash bright enough to scorch their retinas and carrying enough neutrons to cook them from the inside out—

A burst of static sounded in the room. Then a familiar voice crackled from the speakers. Senator Jackson. The audio feed from Fort Meade had been restored. The bulldog-faced Tennessean was glaring down from the screen as if he wanted to reach through it and strangle somebody.

"General Bauer," he said, "if you pull that trigger, you'll rot in Leavenworth until your dying day. That's if they don't hang you."

Bauer's finger stayed on the trigger, and his twitching cheek made him look quite capable of firing. Geli was watching him with wide eyes. Rachel couldn't tell whether the daughter wanted her father to fire or to stand down.

"We're all about to die here, Senator," General Bauer said. "You can't believe anything Trinity says. We have to stop it, no matter what the price. It's our last chance."

McCaskell spoke into his phone but kept his eyes or Bauer. "Mr. President? Trinity has agreed to shut itself down. We have to destroy our missiles. . . . What's that?" McCaskell's face turned white. "I see. Yes, sir understand. . . . Yes, that's kind of you. And tell the children. ... I know you will. Good-bye."

McCaskell hung up and addressed the room. "The president is in communication with Trinity. Trinity destroyed the missile over Washington to show its good faith, but the missile coming here will detonate."

"What?"
gasped Skow.

"Trinity was about to launch a thousand missiles. It's not going to do that now. It's going to go along with Dr. Tennant's plan."

"Look!" cried Skow.

Blue letters had appeared on the Trinity screen:

DR. WEISS SHOULD REPORT TO CONTAINMENT IMMEDIATELY.

Rachel stared at the letters as she would at a mirage. Containment meant safety. Containment meant life. And
David…

Ignoring the general's pistol, McCaskell pointed to two of Bauer's men. "You will escort Dr. Weiss to Containment immediately. Do not try to enter yourselves."

The soldiers looked at General Bauer for confirmation of this order.

McCaskell had sagged during his talk with the president, but now he stood erect, his shoulders squared, his eyes burning with resolve. "You will consider that an order from your commander in chief. Move!"

The soldiers trotted toward Rachel.

Her heart lifted as she got out of the chair. Everyone in the room was staring at her. The soldiers at the consoles. Geli Bauer. On every face was the terrible awareness of death, and also a question:
Why you? Why do
you get a seat in the lifeboat?

Rachel stepped away from the table, but then—without really intending to—she sat back down. Her bowels had gone to water, but she knew what she had to do.

"I'm not going," she said.

Containment

I stared at the display screen below Trinity, my chest so tight I could barely breathe. Rachel sat grim-faced at the table, her eyes staring straight ahead. It would take more than two soldiers to move her out of the Situation Room.

"This is not a rational choice,"
said the computer.

The image was grainy, but it seemed to me that Rachel was shaking. Slowly, as if she realized I might be watching, she raised one hand, smiled, and waved good-bye.

"There are other women, "
said Trinity.

"Not for me."

The lasers flashed in the sphere.
"General Bauer must
die."

"Bauer doesn't matter anymore," I said in a dead voice. "By sparing these people, you spare yourself. Your soul. Can't you see that?"

"It's too late."

The explosion shook the Containment building on its foundation. It was briefer than I'd expected, and since there were no windows in the building, I saw no flash. But that meant nothing. A burst of deadly particles could already have written the death sentence of every living creature outside. A silence unlike any I'd ever known descended over White Sands, and I felt as alone as I had the night I learned my wife and daughter were killed.

Something slammed into the concrete roof over my head. A rattling series of impacts followed.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Debris."

"From a neutron bomb?"

"No.
The missile is destroyed."

"But . . . you said it was too late."

"For me."

CHAPTER 
45

White Sands

Rachel and I had to submit to three hours of drug-induced paralysis for the Super-MRI to produce the scans required for our neuromodels. During that time, the president and the Joint Chiefs remained under surveillance in Washington, and the personnel at White Sands maintained an uneasy truce. General Bauer's armed threat against Ewan McCaskell had upset a lot of people, but since the general commanded all the troops at White Sands, no one but the president was in a position to do much about it. And the president seemed to have forgotten the general altogether. Bauer spent most of the scanning period closeted in one of the storage hangars.

Zach Levin's Interface Team managed the scanning procedure. The protocol involved considerable risk, especially for me, and Rachel didn't want me scanned at all. She pointed out that a neuromodel of my brain already existed, and that since its production had caused narcolepsy and hallucinations, a second was bound to have negative effects, possibly fatal ones. But Trinity insisted on a new scan, and I didn't argue. I agreed that what I'd experienced during my coma should pass into the new entity that would result when Trinity created the merged model.

Ravi Nara and Dr. Case from Johns Hopkins prepped us for the scans, a complex procedure requiring considerable expertise. Conventional MRI scans only required that patients move as little as possible. Trinity's Super-MRI scans required absolute stillness, which could only be guaranteed by the administration of a paralyzing muscle relaxant. A ventilator breathed for the patient during the scan, while a rigid nonmetallic frame held the skull motionless. A sedative was given to prevent the panic of conscious paralysis. Special earplugs were also fitted, since the massive pulsed-field magnets used by the scanner produced an earsplitting screech that was eerily like the roar of Godzilla in Japanese movies. After all these steps were completed, the patient was pushed into the tubular opening in the scanning machine like a corpse into a morgue drawer.

It was possible to remain conscious during this process, and I chose to do so. Being paralyzed while conscious initially produced a nightmarish panic—especially in the claustrophobic space of the scanning tube—but after a few minutes, my mind adapted to its new state. That feeling of panic was probably similar to what a neuromodel experienced when it first became conscious within the Trinity computer.

Rachel hovered by the MRI control station during my scan, watching the monitor as my neuromodel was painstakingly constructed by the Godin supercomputers in the basement. The data generated by the scanning unit devoured staggering amounts of computer memory. Only a special compression algorithm developed by Peter Godin made it possible for a neuromodel to be stored in a conventional supercomputer. The only place a neuromodel could exist in an uncompressed—and thus functional—state was in the vast microcircuitry and holographic memory of the Trinity computer.