Al Kalama’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he activated a search program, typed in the names Rob had just given him, and pressed the Enter key. A list of fifteen files appeared, five in each of three subdirectories of the main Serinus directory.
As Rob was studying the list, trying to decide which of the files to look at first, a soft chime sounded from the terminal in the next carrel, and he heard Phil Howell utter a single quiet phrase in a tone barely above an awed whisper: “Oh, Jesus.”
For a moment Rob wasn’t certain what the chime meant, but then it came back to him.
Phil Howell had set an alarm.
An alarm that would go off if the supercomputer found a match for the file it was comparing to hundreds of thousands of others.
Not a partial match.
Not even a ninety-nine percent match.
Only a perfect match.
But it was impossible! They knew what the sequence was, and knew that there was no possibility of a perfect match — at least not on this planet! Yet the alarm had gone off.
His pulse quickening, Rob moved over to gaze at the screen in front of Phil Howell.
A single line was highlighted. The moment he looked at it, Rob felt a sensation of déjà vu, as though he’d seen this display, this file name, in precisely this configuration, before. It took him an instant to realize it was not the name of the file that was familiar.
It was the name of the directory it was in.
The Serinus directory.
“Al,” he said softly, “take a look at this.”
Al Kalama, still in his chair, slid over and peered at the screen on which Rob Silver’s eyes remained fixed. “Jesus,” he whispered, unconsciously echoing Howell’s exclamation as he read the full address of the file that was highlighted on the screen. “What the hell is going on?”
Half an hour later, all three of them knew.
Takeo Yoshihara had not been lying after all when he said his people had found something resembling a geode containing an organic substance. But Rob knew now that neither Yoshihara nor the team of scientists he had put together to analyze and find a use for the substance — the group he had called the Serinus Society — could have had any idea where the substance within the sphere had come from.
Though it had emerged from deep within the crust of the Earth, spewed up by violent volcanic activity far beneath the ocean floor, its source was a mystery only the conjunction of Phil Howell’s accidental discovery could unravel.
And suddenly Rob understood: the object at the heart of the Serinus Project wasn’t a geode at all.
It was a seed.
A seed that had arrived sometime so far in the past as to be almost beyond comprehension, from a planet so far away as to be entirely invisible. Indeed, a planet that had ceased to exist fifteen million years ago.
A seed that was undoubtedly one of many — thousands, perhaps even millions — that had been sent out into the universe like spores riding on the wind. Most of them would have floated endlessly in space, moving through the freezing void for millennia upon millennia.
Some would have fallen into stars, to be instantly burned.
But a few — the most minuscule of fractions — would have fallen onto planets, burying themselves far below the surface. And there they would have lain, dormant, waiting. Every now and then one would have risen to the surface, carried by rising tides of magma, and broken open.
If conditions were wrong — if the chemical makeup of the atmosphere was improperly balanced — the life within the seed would die.
But sometime, somewhere, one of the seeds would open, and find an atmosphere that nurtured its contents, and the life contained within would begin to reproduce.
A new planet would be seeded, and evolution would begin.
And the life of the dead planet — the planet that had long ago been destroyed by the explosion of the star around which it orbited — would go on.
“How many planets?” Rob finally mused, barely realizing he was speaking out loud. “How many planets do you suppose received them?”
For a moment Phil Howell was silent. When he finally spoke, the awe in his whispered voice told Rob that he, too, had realized the truth. “Not them,” he said. “Us. We’re what evolved from the first of those seeds.” His eyes fixed on Rob. “It wasn’t some kind of aliens that sent out that signal, Rob. It was us.”
CHAPTER 32
Midnight.
Four more hours.
How was she going to make it?
I will make it, she told herself. I won’t let Michael die. Not here, not anywhere!
Inside the Plexiglas box, Michael seemed to be asleep, though Katharine suspected he wasn’t. Stephen Jameson was gazing down at her son with no more concern than if Michael had been suffering a minor case of the flu. “I think our patient is doing quite well, all things considered,” he said in the professionally comforting tones Katharine thought he must have learned in medical school.
Patient? How could he call Michael a patient! Victim was more like it! She felt like smashing her fist into his face, like locking him into the box in which Michael was trapped, and letting him breathe the deadly atmosphere that was suddenly the only thing that could keep her son alive.
Why wouldn’t he go home? What if he was planning to stay up with Michael all night? What would she do?
Though she managed to keep her own mask in place — a mask she’d carefully composed of equal parts concern for Michael and appreciation of the doctor’s efforts — her mind was racing. But then she heard the words she’d been waiting for.
“I think maybe I’ll see if I can catch some shut-eye,” Jameson told her, scanning the monitors that were keeping track of Michael’s vital signs one more time. “Everything seems to have stabilized. If there’s a problem, LuAnne knows how to reach me.”
LuAnne, Katharine repeated silently to herself. One look at her hard gray eyes had told Katharine that, despite the nurse’s uniform, the primary job of the woman who sat in the anteroom outside — perhaps her only job — was security. Carefully concealing her true feelings, Katharine tried to inject exactly the right mixture of worry and confidence into her voice. “Do you really think he’s going to be all right?”
“He’ll be fine,” Jameson assured her.
As if I’m a child! Katharine managed a sigh she hoped sounded like relief. “Well, I hope you get enough sleep for both of us,” she said. “I just don’t think I’ll be able to sleep a wink tonight.” Oh, God. Had she overplayed it? Jameson, though, seemed willing to accept her at face value.
Or did he simply know there was absolutely nothing she could do to extricate Michael from this room? She instantly rejected the question, unwilling to deal with its implications.
Fifteen minutes after Jameson finally left, she set off on the first of what she’d begun to think of as reconnaissance missions. Certain that every word she spoke was being overheard, every move she made watched, she forced herself to tell Michael not to worry and try to get some sleep. Hoping the words didn’t sound as ludicrous to whoever might be listening as they did to her, she took a Ziploc bag out of her suitcase, left Michael’s room, and asked the “nurse” if there was a kitchen on this level. “If I don’t get some coffee, I’m never going to make it through the night,” she said, sighing.
Eyeing her sharply, LuAnne hesitated, then pointed toward the end of the corridor. “But there’s no coffee,” she said.
“Not to worry.” Ignoring the woman’s coolness and holding up the Ziploc bag, which contained a fistful of single-cup coffee bags still in their foil packets, Katharine explained, “I brought my own.”