Impact

Leung worked at the Mars mission down the hall as a Mars meteorology specialist. She was funny and irreverent, a refreshing change from the nerds who swarmed that end of the building. And she was smart. First-generation Chinese, she'd grown up in the back of a Chinese laundry run by her parents. They didn't speak English and she went to Harvard. Corso liked that kind of story. She was like his own grandfather, running away from home in Sicily and getting to America, all by himself, at the age of fourteen. Corso felt a kind of kinship with her.

'You read that report on Freeman?' he asked her.

'Yeah.' The bartender slid the drinks over and she took hers. 'So creepy. We used to come here for drinks once in a while.'

Corso had heard about something brief between Leung and Freeman. He hoped it wasn't true.

'It's just awful, him getting murdered like that.' She shook her head, sending ripples through that hair.

Corso took a chance, pressing his knee against the side of hers with a little more pressure. There was an answering pressure. He could feel the flush of the martinis traveling through his capillaries.

'You must have taken it hard,' she said.

'I did. He was a really good guy. A little crazy.'

'You know why he got fired?' she asked.

'Not specifically. Other than a sort of general deterioration. He might have had a run-in with Derkweiler over data issues.'

'Data issues?'

'Gamma ray data.' Corso realized he was approaching a security compartment line, talking about data outside of the building with a person in another section. He sipped his drink; fuck the rules.

'Oh yeah,' she said. 'He was talking about that but I didn't really get it. What about gamma rays?'

'Seems to be a gamma ray source somewhere on Mars. A point source. At least, that's what I get when I subtract the overall background noise--a faint periodicity.'

She leaned forward. 'Wait a minute. You're kidding.'

She got it right away, thought Corso. 'No, no kidding. The period is somewhere around twenty-five to thirty hours. Which is pretty close to the Martian day.'

'What the heck in the solar system could be producing gamma rays? Not even the sun has enough energy.'

'Cosmic rays.'

'Yeah, but cosmic rays produce a weak, diffuse glow from every body in the solar system. You say this signal has periodicity. That implies a point source on the planet's surface.'

Corso was even more taken aback by how fast she was figuring it out.

'Right. Problem is, the Compton detector on MMO isn't directional--no way to tell where the gamma rays are coming from. It could be anywhere on the planet's surface.'

'You have any ideas what it might be?' Leung asked.

'At first I thought it might be from a nuclear reactor that crashed on the planet's surface--maybe from a secret government project. But I ran the calculations and it would have to be, like, a reactor the size of a mountain.'

'What else?'

Corso took another swig. He could feel his heart pounding from the pressure of his knee, now on her inner thigh. She was returning the pressure. 'I've been wracking my brains. I mean, high energy gamma rays are usually only produced by big-time astrophysical processes--supernovae, black holes, neutron stars--stuff like that. Or in a nuclear reactor or atomic bomb.'

'This is incredible. You're on to something big.'

He turned to her. 'I think it could be a miniature black hole, or a very small neutron body, somehow caught on the surface of Mars or orbiting around it.'

'You're shitting me.'

He gazed steadily into her lively, black eyes. 'No. I'm not. When you've eliminated the impossible . . .'

'. . .whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' She finished the familiar aphorism for him, punctuating it with a bright smile on her red lips.

He lowered his voice. 'If this is a miniature black hole or tiny neutron star, it could grow, eat Mars--and sterilize the Earth with killing gamma rays--or even explode. This isn't some academic exercise. This is real.'

Leung breathed out. 'Jesus.'

He put his hand on her leg, gave it a squeeze. 'Yes. It is real.'

She leaned forward, her face closer to his. He could smell her shampoo. 'What are you going to do about it?'

'It's going to be the subject of my presentation.' He slid his hand just a bit under her skirt, which was riding up on her thigh as she sat on the stool. After a moment she flexed her hips forward, causing the hand to slide up farther. He could feel the hotness of her thighs.

She leaned closer to him and said, 'Mmmmm,' into his ear, her peppermint breath tickling his face.

'Another drink?' he asked.

She adjusted herself on the stool, sliding her hips even farther forward so that his fingers came in contact with the hot curve of her panties. She pressed her thighs together on his hand. 'Do you want to come back to my place?' she whispered, her lips brushing his ear.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, I do.'

13

Sisophon was as ugly as Ford remembered it, whitewashed cement buildings scattered among tattered palms and sickly banyan trees. The streets were dirt and many of the building facades were still pecked with shrapnel from the war. As Ford's driver entered town, a UN Land Cruiser, stuffed with blue-helmeted men, careened past, its sides emblazoned with UNDP MINE ACTION SERVICE logos.

The Tourist A-1 Hotel was right where it had always been, more rundown than ever, the street outside thronging with child vendors. The cinder block building mostly hosted NGOs and had probably never seen a real tourist in all its shabby days. Ford booked a room and left his suitcase with the manager, giving him a ten-thousand riel note with a promise of fifty thousand more if the case was intact on his return.

Leaving the hotel on foot, Ford directed his steps toward an open-area antiquity workshop on the outskirts of town. As he walked, cement buildings gave way to wood-and-thatch huts on stilts, small rice paddies, and water buffalo hauling wooden carts. The antiquity workshop, sprawling over a vast field, was a scene of bustle and activity. Open-sided tents were set up in long rows, inside of which stonemasons labored to the merry clink of steel chisels on stone. It was one of the more famous antiquity workshops in Cambodia, where a battalion of talented artisans turned piles of broken sandstone rocks into fake Angkorian antiquities to be sold in Bangkok and around the world.

Strolling through the cheerful outdoor workshop, Ford watched stoneworkers chiseling away at chunks of stone propped on sandbags, from which emerged eleventh-century dancing apsaras, devatas, buddhas, lingams, and nagas. In a nearby metal shed, powered by its own generator, the hum of high-tech printing could be heard, as forgers created the documents necessary to authenticate an antiquity and give it a convincing provenance. To one side the fresh sculptures were being subjected to acid sprays, mud baths, tea stainings, egg-white coatings, and even burial to make them look old.

Ford scanned the crowds of workmen, buyers, and sellers, looking for the figure of his old friend Khon. And there he was, impossible to miss, the rotund figure and polished head moving among the artisans, chatting with