“Where’s the demon core?” Ivar asked Doc as he slid shut the second drawer.
Doc looked up from the cabinet he’d been rifling through. “Ah, the dragon’s tail. The very first Rift.”
“The records are incomplete,” Ivar said.
“Of course they are,” Doc said. “Everyone who worked on it disappeared.”
Ivar shook his head. “No. I mean even the paperwork before they opened the Rift is wrong. Like they were hiding something.”
“They were Nazis and—” Doc paused, searching for the right word—“you know, there was never a word for those who followed the emperor of Japan into that war. Who perpetuated crimes as bad as the Nazis. Nanking. The Bataan Death March. Unit 731.”
“Japanese,” Ivar said.
“Yes, but we make such a distinction between Nazis and Germans sometimes. Was every German a Nazi? Was every Japanese responsible for those crimes?”
“The records,” Ivar said, thumping the drawer. “There’s very little on what this group, Odessa, was doing. The theoretical physicists.”
“Ah, yes,” Doc said. “Odessa. Does the name ring a bell?”
Ivar shrugged. “Not particularly.”
“Ask Eagle about it sometime,” Doc said.
Ivar tapped the drawer, getting back on track. “There’s some mention of the demon core.”
“From Los Alamos,” Doc said. “Majestic-12 appropriated the plutonium core from Los Alamos that killed Daghlian and Slotin. They nicknamed it the demon core because of those accidents.”
Every physicist knew of Daghlian and Slotin. Cautionary tales told early in their studies. “What was that thing about the dragon’s tail?” Ivar asked.
“Enrico Fermi told Slotin that playing with that core was like tickling the dragon’s tail and that the dragon was going to consume him. More like it farted when Slotin’s screwdriver slipped, but it was a radioactive fart and it killed him.”
“Where’s the demon core now?” Ivar asked. He looked about the Archives. “In some big lead box?”
“They never found it after the first Rift,” Doc said. “It was assumed that the Odessa group used it to open the Rift and it got sucked through with them.”
Ivar frowned. “But how come everyone who has opened a Rift since then hasn’t needed a plutonium core? Just algorithms?”
“Good question, isn’t it?” Doc said.
“But plutonium has a half-life of a little over twenty-four thousand years,” Ivar said. “Wherever it is, that core is still putting out a lot of radioactivity and potential power.”
“Let’s hope it’s frying whoever is on the other side of the Rifts,” Doc said, and then pointedly went back to looking at the file he’d just pulled out.
Wallace Cranston was standing at the craps table in the Bellagio losing his stash, his savings, and his shirt. He was thinking about going to the ATM to get the money he swore he wouldn’t get.
His wife’s money.
Even though doing that would most likely change that status to ex-wife. But he could feel it in his bones that his losing streak was just about up and he was going to hit it good.
Of course, he didn’t even know what day it was, never mind what time it was, but he was on vacation and breathing the lovely oxygenated air they pumped in, and he was on the fourth, or fifth, or sixth day of a fantastic bender, and he felt anything was possible.
He noticed the cleavage on the waitress as she handed him another rum and Coke, and he thought, Maybe even that’s possible, even though she had the dead eyes of one of Stephen King’s bad people from The Stand. Which reminded him he’d been to Boulder, Colorado, where the supposed good people had made their “stand,” and the locals there had been a bunch of liberal, stuck-up pricks, so he’d rather be here with the bad.
“It’s Vegas, baby,” he whispered to himself, then took a slug of his drink and started to weave his way toward the ATM. He bounced into it, then used one hand to claim it as an anchor as he pulled his wallet out. He fumbled through it for the cash card he’d swiped before leaving home, hoping his wife hadn’t canceled it already.
Then the phone that never went on vacation started to vibrate in his shirt pocket and chime with “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” which was more than appropriate here in Vegas. Cranston had a theory that people went to Vegas to die and to L.A. to suffer. He glanced back at the waitress with the dead eyes and thought, You’d like me better if you knew who I was.
Then again, maybe not.
He pulled the phone out and with surprisingly steady hands accepted the incoming text message. He saw the five letter groupings and knew he’d have to go back to his room to decrypt and forward.
He looked at the ATM and sighed. His wife would never know how close it came. Saved by the bell. By the ringtone. He started to giggle as he walked toward the elevator.
He loved his job.
And that was when the Men in Black appeared, seemingly out of the walls, one on either side, lifting him up off the ground, his feet still churning, searching for floor. They hustled him into the elevator. A third one, they all looked alike, took the phone and glanced at the screen.
“Do you have the decryptor?”
Cranston nodded. “In my room. I was gonna do it.”
“We’ll help. It’ll save time. You don’t want to get this wrong.”
Nada and Zoey were looking at the babies.
They weren’t supposed to be in the nursery. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY the placard on the outside door read, like that had ever stopped Nada from going anywhere. In fact, it was practically an invitation.
Nada checked his watch. They had three minutes before the nurse came by again. The staff had a rigid schedule, the bane of all security. They even had a little infrared thing they had to scan on a light on the wall to confirm they were doing their checks on time; someone thought the trinket added to the security of the place, when in reality it made the hospital all that much more vulnerable to those in the know. Nada knew he could have snatched every one of these little beasts, thrown them into a duffel bag, and been on the road before anyone noticed.
But that would be wrong. Probably even to think it was wrong.
“Hurry,” Nada said in a voice that said do anything but hurry to Zoey. He’d learned that was the best way to couch things with his niece. She still hadn’t quite forgiven him for the park incident and being abandoned to the police. She was stopping at each basinet and whispering baby talk and all sorts of gooey-gooey. A part of Nada suspected it was an act, designed to irritate him, so he feigned not being irritated.
Plus, it was the right thing to do, he supposed, not very up on baby talk. In fact, Nada was known for not being up on talking at all.
It was a bunch of babies, for frak’s sake, not the gold at Fort Knox. Was there an epidemic of baby stealing? For all he knew, there was, not having studied the matter.
He followed Zoey, peering over her shoulder at each one. There were some damn ugly ones, but he imagined everyone would lie and say “How precious,” “How gorgeous,” whatever it was people had to say about babies, because the parents had a lot vested in those little suckers. Nobody would look in and scream in dismay at the sheer ugliness of the bugger and predict it having a life full of pain and misery because of its looks. Whoever said beauty was only skin deep had none. It’s easy to diss what one does not have, Nada knew. He considered adding that to his Nada Yadas but didn’t see the point.
As he looked at each one, he wondered what kind of different people they’d turn into. Some were fretting and crying in their blankets, their tight cocoons of cloth unraveled, and he figured that’s sort of the way their life would turn out for them. Others were sound asleep, snug as bugs, their blanket tight around them. They’d live quiet lives, not making a fuss, security — another word for fear in Nada’s opinion — being their priority.