Others were distracted by our behavior. Jack Joy came sidling up from nowhere and joined our group. He was watching us suspiciously, but I was confident he couldn’t see the fish tank. But Barnette kept talking, in bold, bright colors, and kept most people’s attention focused; perhaps she, too, had heard what was going on, and was doing her part in keeping everything together.
Tom whispered, “I don’t get it. What’s that he’s holding?”
“It’s a mole,” I said. “Partially disassembled. It’s lacking its nose cone, the spiral bit.”
Sonia was glaring down, her eyes sharp. “I don’t know anything about the technology, but the setup’s obvious. I’ve had to deal with it a dozen times. You can see it in his posture, his body language. He’s a suicide bomber.”
I think we all knew it, on some deep level. But having Sonia say it out loud in her precise soldier’s tones was something else.
Shelley whispered, “He’s one of our technicians. I suppose we weren’t hard to infiltrate. And you can see how he’s made his bomb. That mole might be lacking its nose, but it still has its Higgs-energy heart.”
I stared at her. “The Higgs pod?” I had been intimately involved in the design of the pods; they were intrinsically safe anyhow, and were laden with security factors. “I can’t imagine how he’s rigged it.”
“Then he’s more imaginative than you, Michael. Say good-bye to innocence.”
Tom asked, “What happens if it goes up?”
“Like a small nuke,” Shelley said.
Sonia glanced around. “How close are we?… Too close, I guess. We ought to think about evacuation.”
“It’s already in hand,” Gea said quietly. And, looking around, I saw that people were quietly being led out of the back of the marquee. Gea said, “The worst may not happen. There are measures in place.”
Sonia didn’t say anything, but she looked dubious.
I felt bemused, battered. I was aware of my heart beating slowly, steadily. It was all happening too quickly for me to take in. I didn’t even seem to be concerned that my son was standing with me here at ground zero. I just stood there, waiting to see what happened next.
John tugged my sleeve, and drew me aside. “You saw her again, didn’t you?” he hissed.
“What?”
“Morag. You saw her. Just before Gea showed up. Listen, Michael.” He was conflicted, I saw, bursting with whatever he had to say, but still hesitant. He glanced back at Tom, to make sure he couldn’t hear. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
I almost laughed. “Now? Can’t it wait?”
“It’s to do with Morag,” he said heavily, painfully. “Michael, if we don’t get through this — or if Morag shows up again, and she tells you herself — Lethe, I can’t believe I’m talking about a fucking ghost—”
His intensity broke through my numbed detachment. “Tell me what, John?”
He took a breath. “About me. Morag and me. Something you never knew. We meant to tell you — we didn’t want to hurt you — but we always waited, waited, and then she died, and I couldn’t bear to hurt you again.”
“You had an affair.” Suddenly I saw it. Of course she had been a friend of John’s first. Even after our marriage they had worked together, she and John, the bio-prospector and the environmental-compensation lawyer, immersed in complex and urgent twenty-first-century issues. “All those times I was working, when travel was just impossible and I had to stay away, when Morag and Tom stayed with you—” In my head the events of those years shivered into fragments, whirled like kaleidoscope pieces, and came down in a different pattern.
“We didn’t mean for it to happen,” John said, more defensive now. “All right? It wasn’t deliberate. But we were thrown together, and you weren’t there. You weren’t there, Michael. And then the baby…”
“The baby who died,” I said stupidly. “The baby whose birth killed my wife. What about the baby?”
But of course I knew the answer. The baby had never been mine.
Tom was looking at us both through the crowd. His face was empty of expression. He knew something was wrong between us, but he didn’t know what.
“I knew I had to tell you sometime,” John said desolately. “I never had the guts. And then Morag showed up. What if that’s why she’s come back, Michael? That’s what I keep asking myself. What if she’s come back to tell you what we did, me and her?”
I don’t remember throwing the punch.
People scattered around us, shocked. Suddenly John was on the floor, blood streaming from his mouth, and my fist felt as if I had slammed it against a wall.
Shelley Magwood grabbed my arm and dragged me away. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on with you two, but we’ve got enough trouble here.”
Around us the flow of VIPs out the back of the marquee was becoming noticeable. Barnette was still talking, but her message was now one of reassurance, admonitions to keep calm. And in the little fish tank, the tiny figure of the bomber was gesticulating, shouting tinnily at unseen negotiators.
John slowly got to his feet. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I said, “All right. I’m calm. Are they getting anywhere with the nut?”
“He’s a suicide bomber,” Shelley said, her voice full of anger and despair. “What do you think?”
“Can’t we just disable his trigger?”
“Not remotely. He’s got it figured out pretty well. And he has a dead man’s switch.” She laughed, hollow. “The kid’s a good engineer. Our only hope is to talk him down. But we can’t even figure out what he wants.”
“He probably wants many things.” Jack Joy stood beside me, sweating harder than ever. “Some even contradictory. But we all act for many reasons, don’t we?”
I stared at him, trying to figure him out. “What the hell do you want?… Can you see this?”
He tapped his ear. “I have my own channels.”
Shelley glared at him. “Who are you? Have you got something to do with this?”
He wouldn’t answer. He said mournfully, “It isn’t personal. Please believe that. I as an individual in fact sympathize with your goals, on this specific project; the hydrates are clearly a menace. But it’s what you represent, you see. The movement of which you have become a part. The philosophy behind your actions. The futile attempt to resist a change in the world’s natural order, when we should be relishing the opportunities opened up to us. The curtailing of our liberties in the process. The accruing of power by unelectable and unaccountable organizations and individuals.”
It was a type of argument I had heard many times before. But this wasn’t the time for bullshit. I tried to grab his collar, but he was a VR; my hand passed harmlessly through his shirt, scattering flesh-colored pixels. I snapped, “If you’ve got some information, say so.”
“I apologize,” he said almost formally. “Sincerely. I like you, Mike. I do, really!” He winked out of existence.
And, two kilometers out to sea, the bomber pressed his trigger.
“Awareness is the core of the Transcendence,” Leropa said to Alia. “Think of it as an awakening. In sleep you are aware only of yourself, your dreams and hopes and fears. It is consciousness of a sort, an awareness of self. But as you awake from sleep, you become more aware of yourself, and of a wider universe beyond your own head — and of other consciousnesses like your own, your parents, your siblings. It is essential. You must see the universe through their eyes, understand how they feel, before you can care. ”
“It is more than care,” Alia said. “It is love.”
“Love, yes! Love is the full apprehension of another soul, and the cherishing of her. And through love you awaken to a new level, a full awareness of others, so your own consciousness expands further. This is a deep root of our very humanity,” Leropa said. “It is believed that consciousness evolved as a way to deal with other consciousnesses. So full self-awareness is not possible in isolation, but only through an engagement with other minds. And the deepest such engagement is through love.