Gideon looked out over the barn and tried to understand what was going on here. If this was really a government operation, why did Zimmerman have to leave the NSA to run it? "I can't make sense of it," Gideon whispered.
Mike nodded, misinterpreting him. "I know, I sometimes can't get my head around it myself. Awesome, ain't it?"
Gideon shook his head. "What can she do here that she couldn't do at Fort Meade?"
Mike chuckled. "And why couldn't we let MIT know what we were doing? Fear. I mean, we all know what we're doing here. We've gone through I don't know how many fail-safes and tests before we let the rabbits out into the field. But what do you think the administrators at MIT would do if they knew about it?" Mike shook his head. "People would panic—people are panicking. People panic when someone e-mails them about a phony virus. How'd they react about a real one?"
"Is Julie over there?" Ruth asked. Her breath fogged the window.
Mike nodded. "Overseeing the final stage. It's all just oversight now, monitoring the pipeline to the machine. I'm a programmer, not much for me to do now but watch."
Gideon did feel a wave of awe. Not at the project, whatever that was, but at finally reaching this point. Here it was, the crux of everything, the why. . .
Julia, Gideon thought, can you give me a reason for Rafe’s death?
Gideon tried not to let his emotions into his voice, he still needed to know what was happening. "I would think," he said after a moment, "that the NSA would have more freedom for this kind of thing than MIT."
Mike laughed and waved them down another flight of stairs. "You'd think, wouldn't you? But when it comes down to it, they're free to do what they want when it comes to information warfare, targeting some enemy of the state, but once you get into pure research—especially stuff in the field—the reaction is something like people get when they hear that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was injecting plutonium
into people."
Ruth sounded surprised, "You mean that this isn't an official Government project?"
For once, Mike's expression faltered. Gideon could glimpse some of Mike's doubts about what was going on. Gideon wondered if he knew that people had died because of this thing, whatever it was.
Mike spoke slowly now, obviously choosing words with care, "This is D'Arcy's project. He believes in Aleph, and once we gather the final programs, we'll all be proved right."
That frightened Gideon because that meant, as far as anyone outside this farm was concerned, this was some international terrorist operation. That meant that it would be too easy for him and Ruth—not to mention Zimmerman and Mike and everyone else here—to just disappear. D'Arcy had a pre-made explanation for anyone who turned up dead.
Mike led them outside, through a door that bypassed the room full of abandoned furniture. There was no porch on this side of the house, and Gideon stepped out into the snow after Mike and Ruth. Here they faced the barn a few hundred feet away.
Gideon stood in the snow, breath fogging in the sharp, cold air. Gideon looked around and saw the guards moving out there by the treeline. Mike led them toward the barn, oblivious.
He followed Mike and Ruth, turning his attention to the barn. It appeared worse off than the house. The sides had been weathered to an uneven gray, and the roof was shot through with missing shingles, and bowed in the center. There was a shed adjoining the rear of the barn, which might have once housed tools, a tractor, or cattle, but it was now little more than a roof supported by apparently random two-by-fours planted into the ground.
Under the shed's roof stood a cluster of sleek metallic antennas and a small dish. Mike saw Gideon looking and said, "That's our uplink, can't get a high volume ground line in here without someone noticing."
Gideon shook his head, still trying to understand exactly what was happening here. Mike had dropped some broad hints about viruses and from the sound of it, what was going on was a domestic experiment in information warfare. That's the only thing that Gideon thought would require this kind of rogue operation.
Mike led them around to the front of the barn. As they closed on the entrance, a small door set next to the huge barn doors, Gideon began to hear a noise, like a car idling. It got louder as they approached the barn.
Then Gideon started to feel a slightly warm wind brush against his face. He stopped, suddenly still, and looked up at the wall of the barn.
The door they faced was new construction, a pre-made vinyl-coated door, set rather abruptly into the weathered gray wood. That wasn't the only modification. Gideon could see a series of new metal vents set high up, above the top of the barn door, set in a line across the front of the barn. That's where the warm breeze came from, Gideon was certain. The wind shifted and the warmth left him.
Why would they be venting warm air? The only thing that Gideon could think of was a refrigeration system of some sort. . .
There was only one thing that Gideon knew of that would require refrigeration in this climate, but he didn't think it could be possible.
Mike led them through the door, and Gideon saw, immediately, that it was possible.
Behind the barn doors, sitting on a platform that was adjusted to give a level surface on the dirt floor, was a Daedalus supercomputer. Gideon recognized it immediately, even when it was half-hidden by silvery vents that led up into the gloom of the barn's loft, venting the waste heat, keeping the superconductors from frying while the machine operated.
From under the platform came a twisted mass of cable snaking back into the bam. The end of the bam without the Daedalus looked as if someone had decided to transplant someone's office pool. There were more leveling platforms set up, the cables snaking across the dirt to disappear under them in a half-dozen places. They had set up partitions making a half-dozen cubicles. And hanging from the rafters above were long fluorescent light fixtures.
The idling sound came from two generators that sat on the dirt floor of the bam, between the computer and the office area, snaking their own cables to both.
"Welcome to Project Aleph," Mike said.
The people back in the office weren't guards. Gideon could tell because all the people were more interested in what was going on on their desks than they were in the door. Gideon could tell the guards by their Kalishnikovs, and by the fact that they started straight toward the door from their positions flanking the generators.
Ruth called out, toward the cubicles, "Julie!"
Everything stopped.
The guards looked off toward the office area. The people in the office area turned and looked off toward the intruders.
One woman separated herself from a terminal where she'd been looking over the shoulder of some guy about Mike's age. She took a few steps toward them. She was taller than Gideon had expected. Her hair was loose and hung down around her shoulders, and her depthless gray eyes stared at all of them with what seemed to be a cold curiosity.
"Thank you, Gribaldi," she said. "Both of you should come with me. I suppose you have some questions."
3.05 Fri. Mar. 26
THERE was a dark corner of the barn, by the ersatz offices. It was walled off completely, for privacy. Julia took them inside, leaving Mike out on the floor of the "lab" with the other computer people. She shut the door on the activity outside, and the room became disturbingly silent. Gideon felt as if they were completely alone with Julia Zimmerman.
He couldn't help staring at the woman. There was only the barest hint that there was anything extraordinary about her—and it might only have been there because Gideon expected it, and was looking for it. Her posture broadcast confidence, perhaps—as Dr. Nolan would have said—arrogance. Her eyes were deep and powerful, and seemed to look through him, or into him.