'We can think!' he whispered intensely. 'The Navy is sailing in circles, no one is really trying to understand what is going on!'
He relaxed and put his hand momentarily on hers. 'There's no doubt we'll be at a handicap. This analysis by subterfuge will be far less efficient and useful than the way we proceeded before. But we can use our heads on the data at hand rather than hide from it. Any effort at analysis will be preferable to the fiddling which is going on now. Our Rome is up there in orbit,' he glanced at the coifing, 'and it could burn any minute.'
Danielson looked at him. She concluded that he acted from a variety of motives, but that the overriding one was a deep concern to prevent the escalation of the conflict with the Soviets by understanding what was happening to the earth. She could not readily accommodate the notion that she might personally affect global power politics, but she keenly felt the need to come to grips with the mysterious motions in the earth that she herself had coaxed into rational form. Could the alignment of the Stinson and the Novorossiisk with the trajectory she had mapped out be only a coincidence? To believe that would be so easy, but, like Isaacs, she could not do so. The alternative was horrendous to contemplate, but impossible to ignore. Whatever drove the seismic signal, killed. What bizarre, implacable thing plagued them?
She recalled her notion that Isaacs might have had some romantic motive for this meeting. A wave of embarrassment burst upon her. How trivial that notion was compared to the fearsome reality.
The idea of violating a directive both fascinated and terrified her. She nodded at Isaacs, and he leaned back in satisfied relief.
Jason, he thought to himself. The next step is to call Jason. Aloud to her he said, 'Next weekend is the July Fourth holiday. I'll have to ask you to keep it open. We may have to take a trip.'
Chapter 8
Nancy Wambaugh pedaled down the sidewalk on her bike. School was out for the day, and the crisp air and warm winter sun of late June felt good in her windblown hair. Sometimes the teacher made her do things in the first grade she didn't like, but she was delighted with the lesson she had learned today. Her daddy had taught her some time ago to recite, sag-song, where she lived — ' Newcastle , New South Wales , Australia.' When she was too young to be ashamed, she would put a little curtsy at the end, pleased at her father's big smile. She had always loved the image in her mind of a new castle , full of princesses and good things, but today she had learned a new grown-up thing about it. She had learned to spell it, and it made a little poem! As she pumped, she sang,
'N, E, W, C,'
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.
'A, S, T, L, E,'
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.
Wham!
Nancy landed on her right elbow and cheek, feet tangled painfully in the pedals of the bicycle. She sucked in her breath from the shock and then wailed as she looked at the blood that began to seep from the long scrape on her arm. She scrambled away from the bike and looked around, hurt and angry. She was sure her older brother, David, had bumped her off the bike with a pillow, that's what it had felt like when the bike tumbled, like when they had pillow fights and David knocked her down. She put her fingers to the sting on her face, and they came away bloody. She screamed louder.
Her cries drowned the hiss that rose above her head. The raucous whisper returned some distance away as Nancy ran towards home.
'MOMEEEE!
McMasters's head snapped up from the report he was reading at the sound of the intercom buzzer. 'Yes, what is it?'
'Alan Mirabeau, from the computer section, is here to see you.'
'Umm, ah, yes.' McMasters leaned back in his chair in anticipation. 'Send him in.' McMasters watched as the earnest young man peered around the door and then walked to his desk.
'Sir? You asked for me to monitor requests for certain files?'
'Indeed.'
'Well, a request did come this morning for some of the inactive files associated with Project QUAKER. Here's a list of the files that were requested.'
McMasters leaned forward to take the proffered sheet. 'The files were transferred out for about an hour, then written back in and deactivated again.'
Long enough to transfer their contents to any active files, McMasters mused. He glanced over the list. They meant nothing to him, and everything. 'Who requested this?' He knew, but he wanted to hear.
'It was a written request, sir. Signed by Mr Isaacs.'
Mirabeau was nervous. He had dreamed of a chance like this to interact with the upper echelons, but this was not what he had envisioned. He wanted terribly to please McMasters, but not at the expense of getting in trouble with Isaacs, another member of the ruling circle. He had not realized that McMasters's seemingly routine and innocuous request was going to put him in the position of spying on Isaacs. Every fibre of his being was attuned to sensing the desires of his superiors and satisfying them. He was in agony at the thought that he could not please one of these men without incurring the displeasure of the other.
'Can you put a trace on this material?' McMasters put a finger on the list in front of him.
'But it's been deactivated again,' Mirabeau protested, but then the light of understanding spread over his face, and his admiration for McMasters increased. 'Oh, I see. You think a copy was kept out.'
'Precisely,' McMasters replied.
The young man concentrated for a moment.
'The file names will have been changed, so a search for them would be pointless. There is no simple way to search for this material, but I can do a sampling of running jobs to search for particular combinations of data and instructions that occur in these files.'
'I want to know when this material is used, and by whom,' McMasters demanded.
'Yes, sir.'
'That's all.'
'Yes, sir.' The young man headed for the door.
'Oh, Mirabeau.'
'Sir,' he replied, swivelling quickly.
'Not a word of this to Isaacs, or his associates.'
The young man smiled with relief.
'No, sir, of course not, sir.' That solved his problem of divided allegiance. Now he was acting under direct orders. He gave a brief bow towards McMasters and then shut the door behind him.
Saturday morning Isaacs paced up and down in front of the check-in counter at Dunes. He felt unmoored, detached from the bearings that had given him stability for almost two decades of his career. He was desperate to get on with this quest, but awash with anxiety over the risks he was taking, risks he had convinced Pat Danielson to share. And now she was late. He stopped to look at his watch and glance down the passageway towards the main terminal. He fought down the urge, born of frustration, to blame her tardiness on her womanhood. She didn't deserve that. She was too good, too responsible. She'd have some good excuse. He clinched his fist on the handle of the slim briefcase he carried and resumed his pacing.
He prayed that some glimmer of understanding, some hint of where to turn next, would come from his hurried unauthorized rump meeting with Jason. He feared that it would prove nothing but a scamper out onto a limb, with McMasters grinning, sharpening his saw. He rethought the steps he had taken, the precautions. He had done everything practical to minimize the chance that McMasters would stumble on to his resurrection of Project QUAKER, but the old bird was canny, there was no way to be absolutely sure. He jumped when the hand grasped his arm. He turned to see Pat Danielson's flushed, excited face.
'Bob — Mr Isaacs.'
His irritation at her faded with the relief of her arrival and the infectious sparkle in her eyes.
'Right the first time.'