'I wouldn't think there are a lot of thousand-kilometer antennas lying
around,' Michaels said. He kept his voice dry.
'You'd be surprised. An antenna needn't be made of steel girders--you
can make one out of coils of wire, or transmitters linked
electronically, or several other ways.
For our purposes, we use the sky itself.
'The Earth is essentially a giant magnet, surrounded by incoming cosmic
and solar radiation. A certain number of these solar winds spiral in
and down at the magnetic poles, in what is known as the electro jet
This is what causes the aurora--the northern and southern lights. With
HAARP, we can, in effect, turn the length of the electro jet into a
kind of antenna, and by certain electronic manipulations, make it as
long as we want, within limits, of course.'
'I see. And this means you can generate frequencies that might affect
human mental processes with a lot of broadcast power behind them, over
a long distance.'
'It does.'
'Are you here as a whistle-blower. Dr. Morrison? I'm the wrong guy,
you want to be talking to the DOD--' 'No, no, nothing like that.
There's nothing wrong with the military seeking out new weaponry;
that's part of their job, isn't it? The Russians have been playing
with this stuff for years, and it would be foolish for our government
to ignore the potential. It would be much better to be able to tell an
enemy to lay down his weapon and have him do it than have to shoot him,
wouldn't it?
'No, I'm here because I am certain somebody has been sneaking into our
computers and stealing the information about our experiments.'
'Ah.'
'Yes. And because I don't know who might be doing it, I came to you
rather than my superiors.'
Michaels nodded. Now it made sense.
'And how is it you came to believe somebody has been stealing
information?'
Morrison smiled and took another DVD disc from his briefcase.
'They left footprints.'
Vermillion River, Lafayette, Louisiana
Michaels sat in the stern of a twelve-foot aluminum bateau, his hand on
the control arm of the little electric trolling motor. The sluggish
waters of the bayou flowed past, the motor just strong enough to hold
the boat's backward movement to a slow drift. The boat had been dark
green once, but was rain-and sun-faded to a chalky, lighter shade. It
was hot here, probably in the low nineties, even on the water, and the
humidity of the air wasn't much drier than the bayou itself. On the
shores to either side, huge live oaks loomed, gray Spanish moss hanging
down like ragged, organic curtains. A three-foot-long alligator gar
broke the surface half a body length, fell back, and splashed the murky
water next to a bobbing incandescent lightbulb somebody had thrown in
somewhere upstream.
Michaels pulled on the rubber handle of the Mercury outboard motor's
starter. The starter rope was nylon, and had once been white, but was
