Timeline

'And I need a victory,' Doniger said. 'Professor Johnston has been out there in France with his Yalies for three years on our nickel. We ought to have something to show for it.'

'Not yet, Bob. Anyway, we don't have all the land.'

'We have enough of the land.'

'Bob…'

'Diane will go. She can pressure them nicely.'

'Professor Johnston won't like it.'

'I'm sure Diane can handle Johnston.'

One of the assistants opened the door to the conference room and looked into the hall. Doniger said, 'In a goddamn minute!' But he immediately began walking toward the door.

He looked back at them over his shoulder and said, 'Just do it!' And then he went into the room and closed the door.

Gordon walked with Kramer down the corridor. Her high heels clicked on the floor. Gordon glanced down and saw that beneath the very correct and corporate black Jil Sander suit, she was wearing black slingback heels. It was the classic Kramer look: seductive and unattainable at the same time.

Gordon said, 'Did you know about this before?'

She nodded. 'But not for long. He told me an hour ago.'

Gordon said nothing. He suppressed his irritation. Gordon had been with Doniger for twelve years now, since Advanced Magnetics days. At ITC, he had run a major industrial research operation on two continents, employing dozens of physicists, chemists, computer scientists. He'd had to teach himself about superconducting metals, fractal compression, quantum qubits, and high-flow ion exchange. He'd been up to his neck in theoretical physicists - the very worst kind - and yet milestones were reached; development was on schedule; cost overruns were manageable. But despite his success, Doniger still never really confided in him.

Kramer, on the other hand, had always enjoyed a special relationship with Doniger. She had begun as an attorney in an outside law firm, doing work for the company. Doniger thought she was smart and classy, so he hired her. She was his girlfriend for the next year, and even though that was long over, he still listened to her. She'd been able to head off several potential disasters over the years.

'For ten years,' Gordon said, 'we've kept this technology quiet. When you think about it, it's a miracle. Traub was the first incident to get away from us. Fortunately, it ended up in the hands of some doofus cop, and it won't go any further. But if Doniger starts pushing in France, people might start to put things together.

We've already got that reporter in Paris chasing us. Bob could blow this wide open.'

'I know he's considered all that. That's the second big problem.'

'Going public?'

'Yes. Having it all come out.'

'He's not worried?'

'Yes, he's worried. But he seems to have a plan to deal with it.'

'I hope so,' Gordon said. 'Because we can't always count on having a doofus cop sifting through our dirty laundry.'

Officer James Wauneka came into McKinley Hospital the next morning, looking for Beverly Tsosie. He thought he would check the autopsy results on the old guy who had died. But they told him that Beverly had gone up to the third-floor Imaging Unit. So he went up there.

He found her in a small beige room adjacent to the white scanner. She was talking to Calvin Chee, the MRI technician. He was sitting at the computer console, flicking black-and-white images up, one after another. The images showed five round circles in a row. As Chee ran through the images, the circles got smaller and smaller.

'Calvin,' she was saying. 'It's impossible. It has to be an artifact.'

'You ask me to review the data,' he said, 'and then you don't believe me? I'm telling you, Bev, it's not an artifact. It's real. Here, look at the other hand.'

Chee tapped the keyboard, and now a horizontal oval appeared on the screen, with five pale circles inside it. 'Okay? This is the palm of the left hand, seen in a midsection cut.' He turned to Wauneka. 'Pretty much what you'd see if you put your hand on a butcher block and chopped straight down through it.'

'Very nice, Calvin.'

'Well, I want everybody to be clear.'

He turned back to the screen. 'Okay, landmarks. Five round circles are the five palmar bones. These things here are tendons going to the fingers. Remember, the muscles that work the hand are mostly in the forearm. Okay. That little circle is the radial artery, which brings blood to the hand through the wrist. Okay. Now, we move outward from the wrist, in cut sections.' The images changed. The oval grew narrower, and one by one, the bones pulled apart, like an amoeba dividing. Now there were four circles. 'Okay. Now we're out past the palm, and we see only the fingers. Small arteries within each finger, dividing as we go out, getting smaller, but you can still see them. See, here and here? Okay. Now moving out toward the fingertips, the bones get larger, that's the proximal digit, the knuckle… and now… watch the arteries, see how they go.. . section by section… and now.'

Wauneka frowned. 'It looks like a glitch. Like something jumped.'

'Something did jump,' Chee said. 'The arterioles are offset. They don't line up. I'll show you again.' He went to the previous section, then the next. It was clear - the circles of the tiny arteries seemed to hop sideways. 'That's why the guy had gangrene in his fingers. He had no circulation because his arterioles didn't line up. It's like a mismatch or something.'

Beverly shook her head. 'Calvin.'

'I'm telling you. And not only that, it's other places in his body, too. Like in the heart. Guy died of massive coronary? No surprise, because the ventricular walls don't line up, either.'

'From old scar tissue,' she said, shaking her head. 'Calvin, come on. He was seventy-one years old. Whatever was wrong with his heart, it worked for more than seventy years. Same with his hands. If this arteriole offset was actually present, his fingers would have dropped off years ago. But they didn't. Anyway, this was a new injury; it got worse while he was in the hospital.'

'So what are you going to tell me, the machine is wrong?'

'It has to be. Isn't it true that you can get registration errors from hardware? And there are sometimes bugs in scaling software?'

'I checked the machine, Bev. It's fine.'

She shrugged. 'Sorry, I'm not buying it. You've got a problem somewhere. Look, if you're so sure you're right, go down to pathology and check the guy out in person.'

'I tried,' Chee said. 'The body was already picked up.'

'It was?' Wauneka said. 'When?'

'Five o'clock this morning. Somebody from his company.'

'Well, that company's way over by Sandia,' Wauneka said. 'Maybe they're still driving the body-'

'No.' Chee shook his head. 'Cremated this morning.'

'Really? Where?'

'Gallup Mortuary.'

'They cremated him here?' Wauneka said.

'I'm telling you,' Chee said, 'there's definitely something weird about this guy.'

Beverly Tsosie crossed her arms over her chest. She looked at the two men. 'There's nothing weird,' she said. 'His company did it that way because they could arrange it all by phone, long-distance. Call the mortuary, they come over and cremate him. Happens all the time, especially when there's no family. Now cut the crap,' she said, 'and call the repair techs to fix the machine. You have a problem with your MRI - and that's all you have.'

Jimmy Wauneka wanted to be finished with the Traub case as soon as possible. But back in the ER, he saw a plastic bag filled with the old guy's clothes and personal belongings. There was nothing to do but call ITC again. This time he spoke to another vice president, a Ms. Kramer. Dr. Gordon was in meetings and was unavailable.

'It's about Dr. Traub,' he said.

'Oh yes.' A sad sigh. 'Poor Dr. Traub. Such a nice man.'

'His body was cremated today, but we still have some of his personal effects. I don't know what you want us