The countdown clock on one computer screen indicated that the holographic projection would be complete in one minute and twenty seconds. Valery and his father waited in silence, both preferring to stare at the camera images than fake inane conversation. Pytor Borodin didn’t seem to notice the tension between them, but Valery was well aware.
Finally the counter ran down to zero, and Pytor Borodin activated the holographic imager. The model projected against the plotting table began as just a hazy conical outline, but quickly sharpened. Crags, radiating dikes, and smaller vents were easily distinguished. The projection looked as solid as a plaster cast but was composed entirely of laser beams.
“Activating the extrapolation logarithms.”
The computer had already done the tens of billions of calculations necessary to predict the growth of the volcano, so the image began to change immediately. A shimmering blue plane representing the ocean’s surface appeared and the volcano quickly rose through it, tiny simulated waves pounding against the bleak basalt shores.
Borodin pressed several more buttons on his console and longitude and latitude lines were added to the projection, accurate to the second of a degree.
With a note of satisfaction, Pytor Borodin remarked, “This is the third straight test where the summit has broached more than a thousand meters outside of Hawaii’s two-hundred-mile exclusionary limit. I think it is now time to inform Kerikov.” He turned to a female assistant. “Tell the captain that I wish us to remain on the site for an additional twenty-four hours.”
She nearly bowed as she left the lab. Borodin strode back to his console and called to the room at large, “Reset the sensors and the computers. I want to run another simulation immediately.”
Just as Valery turned to go, his father grabbed him lightly by the arm. “You have yet to see the latest from the gas spectrometry lab.”
The two left the lab together, Borodin’s hand still on his son’s arm, as if he expected him to bolt at any moment.
The spectrometry lab was crammed with gleaming stainless steel equipment and several computer monitors slaved to the mainframe. The gas spectrometer itself was as large as an automobile, but infinitely more complex. It used the spectrum of light given off by vaporized material to decode its chemical composition. The system was also paired with a seismic wave echo sounder as a backup.
“Vassily, show our second-in-command what you showed me earlier this evening.” Borodin never called Valery his son.
The sheets of paper the scientist thrust into Valery’s hands were covered in bands of rainbow hues broken up by black lines of varying thicknesses. The lines corresponded to the wavelengths of light absorbed by the vaporized materials.
As easily as a geographer deciphering the myriad lines on a topographical map, Valery leafed through pages, noting no deviations from the normal composition of asthenospheric magma, until he came to the last set of spectrographic images.
He recognized the lines denoting basalt, silica, and ferro-magnesium, but there was also a series of conspicuous lines indicating the presence of vanadium, and next to that, a jumble of alternating thick and thin lines that he had never seen before.
“The earliest writings on alchemy date from the mid-fifth century and have been found in Arab and Chinese codices as well as European,” Pytor Borodin said softly, looking over his son’s shoulder at the printout. “For the following twelve centuries, alchemists represented the best scientific minds of their time and gave rise to modern chemistry and pharmacology, yet they all failed at their self-appointed task. Not one was ever able to transmute lead into gold.
“Now, in the age of supercomputers, satellites, and atom smashers, we have returned to the very roots of science. We have done what thousands of people have wasted generations trying to accomplish. At the time of the great alchemists, gold represented the true power of the world. Today, power in the literal sense is what drives the planet. We have done something that mankind had given up as hopeless — we have turned base earth into the most precious substance in the universe. Not some gaudy metal with only limited use, but a power source that can recreate itself even as we use it up. With that kind of strength, Valery, no one will ever have the strength to challenge us.”
Uncomfortable with his father’s words, Valery silently let the papers slide to the desk and walked out of the lab. He was reminded of a quote from Hindu mythology, in which Shiva announced, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” They were the same words used by Robert Oppenheimer after his creation vaporized a portion of the New Mexico desert.
Arlington, Virginia
Mercer woke just before six in the morning, the jet lag he’d expected burned away by the previous day’s adrenaline overdose. He rose stiffly, gently fingering the livid bruises on both shoulders. He shaved and showered before descending to the rec room. With a cup of thick black coffee in hand, he tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on the morning papers. Throughout the night, his sleep had been interrupted with new questions about Tish’s story, but there were no answers. He resigned himself to waiting for the information from David Saulman in Miami.
By quarter of seven, his coffee cold in the cup, Mercer impatiently folded the newspapers and slid them down the length of the bar. Behind the bar, between a bottle of Remy Martin and one of Glenfiddich, lay a one-foot section of railroad track. Half of it was rust-colored and pitted, the other burnished to an almost mirror finish.
Mercer retrieved the heavy rail and set it on a towel on the bar. Beside it he placed a shoe box containing a metal polishing kit, usually stored next to the antique fridge. He began polishing the rail with a remarkable amount of concentration, as if when the steel was beneath his fingers, nothing else in the world mattered. As the rust and grime slowly dissolved under the chemical and physical onslaught, he silently thanked Winston Churchill for giving him the idea for such a meditative device. When the British prime minister found himself under even greater stress than his legendary constitution could handle, he would build brick walls in the courtyard behind Number 10 Downing Street. The repetitive act of mortaring, setting, and pointing allowed his mind to disengage from the frantic pace of the Second World War and focus on one particular problem. When a solution was thrashed out in this fashion, an aide would tear down the wall, chip the mortar from the bricks, and stack them neatly for the next crisis.
Emulating this idea, but adapting it for apartment life, Mercer had begun polishing railroad track while attending the Colorado School of Mines. He would polish a section for an hour or so before a big exam, clearing his mind and focusing his energy on the upcoming challenge. He graduated eleventh in his class and swore that this ritual was the key.
Of course, he chuckled as he worked on the rail, a near photographic memory didn’t hurt. Since school, Mercer estimated that he’d polished nearly sixty yards of track.
He was still polishing when Tish entered the rec room a little past nine.
“Good morning,” she said.
Mercer laid his polish-soaked rag in the shoe box, feeling no need to explain his actions. “Good morning to you. I see they fit.”
Tish pirouetted in front of him, the thin black skirt twirling around her beautiful calves. Her top was a simple white T-shirt from Armani. Mercer had bought the clothes for her at a local mall while she had slept through the previous afternoon.