Startled, the others at the table awkwardly followed suit.
Feeling emboldened, Winslow gestured for one of the wait people to load his glass once more.
The Snake lifted out of the Barn and Eagle wasted no time shifting the wings from vertical to horizontal. Eagle took them up to high altitude to fly a waiting racetrack, making sure the cabin was pressurized, because once they got a location for the Rift, the higher they were, the faster they could move. They all knew that on the other side of the world the Russian team was also airborne, but because of the recent theft of the hard drive, odds were the Rift was going to be on this side.
Moms was on the link with Ms. Jones, running through the things they always ran through on a Rift alert. Air Force refuelers were being scrambled at all points of the compass to top off the Snake if the distance to the target was greater than the craft’s range. For the moment, the number-one priority of the entire US military and the Support staff at Area 51 was to back up the Nightstalkers. At various military posts around the country and overseas, Quick Reaction Forces were being alerted, with no clue what they might be involved in.
Mac was kicking back in his seat and on the team net. “Hey, Doc. What’s the number, given that we got human error already involved courtesy of our stupid Courier?”
“I’d say it’s grave, perhaps at four.”
Kirk looked across at Mac and raised his eyebrows in question.
“Doc got a Rule of Seven,” Mac explained. “We could be in the middle of some heavy shit, bullets flying, Roland flaming things, and Doc will be trying to figure out how bad it could get. He says true disasters, like the Titanic, or a plane crashing—”
“Hey!” Eagle yelled from the cockpit. “None of that.”
“—require a minimum of seven things to go wrong, one of which is always human error. So far we ain’t never hit higher than a five, but that was pretty bad.”
“Forget the Rule of Seven and focus on the Rule of One.” Nada was writing in his Protocol, having figured out a way to save six seconds during loading. “It don’t take seven things to kill you. Once is bad enough.”
The waitstaff came out with dinner, pretending it came from the kitchen, which was a joke because Lilith couldn’t boil water without burning a hole in the pan, despite the Viking stove and whatever fridge, some big name, that she absolutely had to have. Lilith was on her feet, chattering, as if she might have to dash to the kitchen to correct something.
Winslow would have laughed, but instead he turned to the cute grad student, Mary, next to him and thought she might be someone who would dash in to tend to something, but not food. Mary was short, toned, and had wavy red hair that attracted lots of attention.
“When are your orals?” Winslow asked Mary.
She blinked.
“They can be right now,” the drunker professor to her other side said.
His wife glared from across the table. “Remember, you don’t have a prenup, dipshit.”
So they all started talking about prenups, which didn’t bother Winslow because he knew Lilith would gut him before she’d get a divorce.
“We don’t have a prenup, do we, darling?” Lilith said. That silenced the table.
His wife held up her glass and a waiter refilled it.
“I do love my Champers,” she said, calling the champagne by a name that generally set Winslow’s teeth on edge. She lifted the glass, some spilling over the edge of the Waterford crystal. “If I leave you, I get nothing, correct?” She looked around the table, stopping at the three pretty grad students, each for a moment. “Nothing.” She smiled coldly. “Which is why I will never leave.”
Everyone started asking for their dessert. The haves had seen this before, while the have-nots were appropriately embarrassed.
The professor raised his glass to Lilith, thinking, I’ve got to get rid of her. He glanced at Mary and thought she might make a nice third ex-wife. But his mind kept sliding back to the computer. He put the glass down and went all the way upstairs to take a leak, but really to look at the laptop. He realized he was staggering slightly and there was a slur in his speech, but he didn’t care. He paused in the closet and checked the computer. He was surprised to see the golden glow on the screen.
No data. Just the glow.
He knelt in front of the laptop, as if worshipping it, mesmerized by the glow.
He had no idea how long he had been like that when he suddenly shook his head, snapping out of the trance. His wife probably thought he was off with one of the grad students. He hurriedly got to his feet and made his way downstairs, taking the closest staircase this time, making sure he had a firm grip on the handrail.
As soon as he recovered his seat, he indicated for his champagne glass to be topped off once more.
This was going to work!
Nada was checking the time, and he looked forward, toward Moms. Her head was cocked at that strange angle she had whenever she was on the direct link to Ms. Jones.
Moms slapped Eagle on the shoulder as Russia and Japan triangulated with the Can under Area 51 to get the first rough approximation of the pending Rift. “North or South Carolina.”
Eagle hit the thrusters and they were racing east.
UNC was ahead and only two minutes to go. The DVR cut to commercial and the jerks at the cable company didn’t allow fast-forwarding on some things. Ivar picked up his iPhone and checked his texts and e-mails, relayed from the small wireless transmitter he’d hooked up to the Internet line running into the lab.
“Frack!” Ivar exclaimed as he saw Doctor Winslow’s e-mail about the dampener. It was time-stamped over three hours ago.
Ivar looked at the computer. There was the slightest of golden haze around the mainframe. Anxiously, he checked the monitor and breathed a sigh of relief. All within parameters.
He went over to the keyboard and began to type in the code that should have been typed in three hours previously.
Winslow could barely sit back down. He felt drawn to the computer with an urgency he couldn’t comprehend. Lilith was still fuming at her end of the table. Winslow tried to remember what had initiated it. Something about prenups?
Lilith fixed him with her gaze. “Stephen here wants to know more about your experiment. Your new experiment. You know, the one you haven’t told me about.”
Winslow glared back. Stephen the chemist was an ass. He’d correct you if you called him Steve or even Steven as if you were ignoring his silent syllables. Winslow downed his glass of champagne and thought of the laptop. The golden glow. He noted that his wife’s hand was on Stephen’s arm. He’d never considered the fourth possible end of the evening — Lilith with someone else.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand it, Stephen,” Winslow said.
All the grad students were tracking him now, because it was one thing to be left out of the loop concerning what was going on at the lab, but it was another to see him in his cups and his wife provoking him. This would make great social media chat later.
Mary thought she was saving him by jumping in. “Yes, Doctor Winslow. What is this experiment?”
But that was just throwing gas into the fire. Winslow jumped to his feet, startling everyone. “I’ll show you.”
He took the stairs two at a time, his rage steadying him. The drawer was partly open. He unplugged the laptop and cradled it in his arms as he took it downstairs.
He was tempted to slam it down on the dining room table, but a small part of his brain that was still functioning knew that would be dangerous to the program running inside.