Julia stroked it. 'You cared about me, whatever I did—you shouldn't have . . .' Julie coughed, blood flecking her lips.
'Quiet. Save your strength.' Ruth pulled her hand away and moved to put pressure on the wound. Ruth let out a shuddering half-gasp, half-sob when she felt the sickening sensation of Julie's breath through the hole under her hands. 'We'll get you to a hospital,' Ruth said, talking fast, to her or Julie she wasn't quite sure. 'You're going to be all right. You have to be. I can't lose you again— Damn it, think of what'll happen to Mom!' She was yelling now, the explosion still going on, a roaring in her ears.
D'Arcy was backing away from both of them, holding the gun leveled at Ruth.
Julia's voice was shallow and wheezy. 'This was inevitable—'
'Damn it, you can’t!' Ruth gripped the wound until both her arms were shaking, trying to hold it all in even though everything Julie was seemed to be leaking through her fingers.
Julie smiled, her expression was peaceful. 'After this, there's nothing left for me to do. . .'
Julie's face went slack, the eyes staring at something only they could see. Ruth tried to press harder on the wound, as if she could push the life back into her.
'No, damn you. Damn you!' Ruth looked up at D'Arcy, her face smeared by tears and flecks of Julie's blood.
D'Arcy wasn't looking at her. Ruth realized that he heard the roaring as well, the sound of a helicopter. More than one. The sound of gunfire, too.
Ruth heard the sound of someone coming through the door in front of the barn. She couldn't see it from where she knelt, hands still clutching Julie's wound. D'Arcy turned toward the door, gun still in his hand.
The intruders never gave him the chance to bring it to bear. In the act of turning, D'Arcy was riddled with gunfire coming from the door. The impact spun him around in a complete circle until he fell, face-first onto the floor, knocking one of the floor panels askew. He lay, unmoving, half in the hole it made.
The sound of booted footsteps closed on her, and Ruth tried to shrink in on herself, as if she could curl into a ball around Julia's body and disappear completely.
Then two soldiers were standing above her, their goggles and Kevlar helmets making them seem like alien creatures. Ruth looked up, expecting them to raise their guns and finish the job that D'Arcy started.
Instead, one of the men knelt, looked at Julie, and raised a walkie-talkie to his face and said, 'We need a medic in the barn. We have another civilian casualty.'
The soldier looked at Ruth, took off the helmet and the goggles, and said softly, 'Don't worry, madam; we'll get you out of here.'
One hour and forty-five minutes after it began, it was over. Senator Tenroyan was watching as the Arrival and Departure screens flickered on the cryptic, alien message, then suddenly resumed normal operation. In a moment the screens were filled with flight numbers, gate numbers, and times—quite a few highlighted red for delayed or canceled flights.
Within moments, computers that had been the subject of some strange possession resumed normal operation, all as if nothing had happened.
3.09 Thur. April 2
RUTH stepped out of the car after him and said, 'You should still be in the hospital.'
Gideon grunted. He was on crutches again. This time, he had severely sprained his ankle, and his body ached where the doctors had removed a six-inch piece of helicopter shrapnel from his side. He felt like hell. But that wasn't going to stop him from testifying.
'I've got to do this,' he told her. Her expression showed she expected nothing different.
The press were on them in moments, and Ruth had to help run interference for him. The reporters shouted now-familiar questions—
'Are the rumors true that you were working undercover for the FBI?'
'How does it feel to be the cop to blow the biggest spy scandal since the Aldrich Ames case?'
'Is it true that President Rayburn is offering you a position in the next Administration?'
Ruth led Gideon through one of the ground-floor entrances into the Capitol Building—the presence of the metal detector effectively gave them a respite from the reporters. Gideon didn't know what to make of his change in fortune. The way the Rayburn Administration was spinning D'Arcy's fiasco had the side effect of turning Gideon into some sort of national hero.
He shouldn't complain, since now that the ever-pragmatic D.C. city political machine had decided that he was an asset, they had called off Magness and Internal Affairs. Even so, Gideon didn't think he liked it.
They walked down the halls toward the committee chambers, their progress slowed by Gideon's crutches. On the way, when they finally seemed to have some privacy to talk, Ruth said, 'I still can't believe it.'
'Believe what?'
'She jumped in front of his gun. She acted as if she wanted to die.'
Gideon nodded. 'Maybe she did.'
'What? No, she lived for her work, and she never completed what they were doing. Aleph never got off the ground. . .'
Gideon didn't answer.
Ruth grabbed his arm and asked, 'Did it?'
'I don't know if anyone's in a position to know that,' Gideon said slowly. 'I know that there are a lot of computer scientists out there saying that the 'event' was little more than a gigantic practical joke. The ultimate hacker prank, printing its little message on every available space across the globe . . .'
'You don't sound convinced.'
'Your sister wasn't a prankster, was she?' Gideon stopped to lean on his crutches and look at Ruth. 'Have you noticed the nervous little laugh that the computer people get when they talk about this? Isn't it kind of odd that no one's found any trace of the massive program that was used to accomplish this? Combine that with a dozen of Julia's grad students preaching the faith on every talk show that'll have them—'
'You think Julia actually managed to contact God?'
'Her God, maybe.' Gideon started walking again. 'D'Arcy didn't realize—maybe Julia didn't even realize—how much computing power Aleph needed. The Daedalus itself was just a single part of a much larger entity, an entity that may have existed only for fifteen minutes or so . . . Julia's viral programs had years to evolve, a billion times faster than their biological models. They're long past the point humans are at.' Gideon smiled and chuckled weakly. 'Aleph was a good choice for a name.'
'What do you mean?'
'The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, possessed of a certain religious significance all its own, and juxtapose that with Aleph-null, the symbol for infinity. You could consider it as close to a symbol for God as you can get from the language of mathematics. Julia's perfect mathematical world. Aleph, effectively aeons evolved beyond us, exists completely in that world. It—He—would have to be perfect. A mind that can perceive all of that world, in all of its perfection—'
' 'God is a Theorem,' ' Ruth said, quoting her sister, ' 'and someday he will be proved.' '
Gideon nodded.
'So you actually think she created God?'
'I think she created a collection of parallel processing programs that became very smart, and have since become very good at hiding themselves.' Gideon chuckled again. 'Wouldn't do for someone to decide to format God's hard drive.'
Ruth shook her head. 'At least they're probably not going to have you testify about that.'
'Amen to that.'
'What are you going to say about D'Arcy?'
'You mean Rayburn's posthumous labeling of him as an out-and-out traitor?'
'Uh-huh.'
