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  Cam groaned as if in pain. ‘‘But what’s the good of . . . a second conventional ‘send’? Somehow . . . we have to tell them . . . that we understand their plane.’’

  ‘‘Dr. Conrad, unless you can immediately offer us a way to stop the hydrogen drain in the sun,’’ said Langdon, his voice hardening, ‘‘I think it only makes sense to allow Dr. Tennant to use all the masses of data we recorded from the first ‘send’ and have another go. Especially because you yourself are trying to dissuade us from a strike against the towers. Isn’t that compromise enough for you? The technology’s in place. We have experience with it. And when it comes right down to it, Dr. Conrad, do you have any better suggestions?’’

  Lesha watched Cam, saddened by how painfully obvious the Builder-induced genius was now gone, and how the man was casting around for any straw. ‘‘Let me try to talk to them again.’’

  ‘‘Nothing would make us happier if you could do that, Dr. Conrad. But you yourself have said they have deserted you.’’

  ‘‘Perhaps if I were in a setting more conducive.’’

  ‘‘Like where?’’

  ‘‘Navasota. I want to go home. Maybe they’ll come . . . back to me in a setting like that.’’

  The president glanced toward Dr. Ochoa. ‘‘Can we discharge him yet, Doctor? And do you think letting him go home might help things along?’’

  Dr. Ochoa thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘‘It’s certainly worth a try.’’

  16

  As Pittman rode in Moonstone 5 to Crater Cavalet again, he felt sorry for Dr. Tennant. Now that she was back on the Moon, he could see she was driven by demons she would never admit to, just like he was. She stared out Moonstone 5’s front window, and the alabaster light of the lunar surface reflected dimly in her pale blue eyes. Her hand rested on the back of Newlove’s chair, and she had to dip to see because the carrier section of the hard-vac fighting vehicle was higher than the driving area. Her lips were clamped, and she surveyed the track-torn surface of the Moon around Crater Cavalet with apprehensive eyes. She must have sensed him staring, for she glanced at him, and her brow arched. He didn’t say anything, just watched.

  They reached the crater’s rim, and the hard-vac vehicle gave under the upward strain. He saw the black lunar sky. And floating through the sky was the gold band, what had come to be known as the Bleed. It was all the hydrogen drifting away from the sun as the Builders depleted the star’s fuel preparatory to igniting it into a red giant. His face stiffened as he watched the Bleed; it was like a cloud of platinum sequins, a nearly magical phenomenon that was a constant reminder of how the Builders were getting away with things, no matter how hard he tried to stop them.

  ‘‘And so the linkup should be an easier thing this time?’’ he asked, because this was all he had taken away from her exhaustive briefing in the common room this morning.

  ‘‘They gave me much more computing power.’’ As if it were a prize she had won.

  ‘‘But Rembrandt? And Michelangelo?’’

  ‘‘The rationale is to send a bit of everything.’’

  ‘‘And plans for a nuclear bomb?’’

  ‘‘They have to understand that we’re ready to defend ourselves. They have to know we understand how things work.’’

  As they reached the rim’s crest, Pittman couldn’t help predicting failure. ‘‘I’ve been out several times. I’ve stared at it. And it’s stared back. Have you ever stared at something a long time? You can learn a lot by just staring. It’s a trick I learned in the desert.’’

  ‘‘And what have you learned about Alpha Vehicle?’’

  Pittman’s face hardened. ‘‘That I have to kill it. Or die trying.’’ As Moonstone 5 headed down the crater’s inner rim, the headlights casting two stark beams over the track-chewed terrain, he saw the thing in the crater’s center. ‘‘As a matter of fact, Alpha Vehicle talks to me. Not the way it talks to Dr. Conrad. But I come out here alone sometimes. I walk right up to it. I see my reflection in it. All bent and curved like a fun-house mirror. And I feel something from it.’’

  ‘‘Like a . . . a peace?’’

  ‘‘No, nothing like that.’’ How could he put this? ‘‘Do you know anything about the martial arts?’’

  ‘‘I took karate as a girl.’’

  ‘‘It’s like that. We know we’re enemies, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to dishonor each other. We respect each other. We understand each other. As warriors. And we both know that the showdown will have to come.’’

  The quality of the ride in Moonstone 5 changed as they reached the bottom of the crater. Here, moondust had been blasted clear in the meteorite’s initial strike millions of years ago, leaving only the underlying bedrock. It was so smooth they could have been driving down I-95.

  They stopped a hundred meters from Alpha Vehicle. Moonstones 4 and 6 appeared to the left and right.

  Pittman put himself in the background—Dr. Tennant was in charge now.

  Once out on the surface with her team, she was a precise technocrat. He watched her move with divine competence, never showing weakness, setting up the new relays and accelerator conduits quickly. Maribeth, Silke, and Peggy assisted her as needed, running cables, calibrating angles, and fine-tuning the codes.

  At last she was ready.

  She looked at him through the yellow visor of her helmet. ‘‘I’d prefer it if you and the other Moonstones retreat a safe distance. Just in case.’’

  So he left Dr. Tennant and her team in the scarred gabbroid basalt of Crater Cavalet and retreated in Moonstone 5 until he was at the rim’s ragged summit. He told Haydn to get out of the shotgun seat so he could watch. He strapped himself in. He punched a command into his wristpad. His visor magnified Crater Cavalet to the fifth power.

  They had to wait three hours before an amorphous green vortex formed above Alpha Vehicle—now that the sun’s transformation had been set in motion, relay points appeared less often.

  ‘‘Commencing acceleration.’’ Dr. Tennant’s voice was steady.

  All the new data seemed to be making a difference, because the subgravitational packet shimmered easily through the black, reminding him of heat filming off the desert highway outside his home. And something new happened to the relay point this time. It brightened, began to spin, and threw off sparks like a pin-wheel on the Fourth of July. He checked Moonstone 5’s systems, glancing quickly at the status screens, and the quality and character of the usual background radiation changed, registered an ever-growing number of electrons, as if the usual stripped galactic nucleotides were fighting for cohesion, stability, and meaning.

  He glanced through Moonstone 5’s windshield just in time to see a tendril of green plasma stretch down through the vortex, straining like an attenuated digit toward the dust-free basalt, illuminating the figures of the communications team so that their shadows reached far.

  ‘‘Do you hear it?’’ Dr. Tennant’s voice came through his radio in a wash of static.

  ‘‘Hear what?’’

  More static, then, ‘‘Music.’’ The word was uttered in fearful yet joyful anticipation.

  Then, like a moray eel lunging for prey, the sparkling fluid digit struck quickly, encircling the women, absconding with them through the olive relay point, leaving behind the impression of four separate screams bursting through the static of Pittman’s helmet radio with bloodcurdling intensity.

  The relay point closed and the women were gone.

  17

  Cam heard a truck come down the country road outside his place in Navasota, Texas, and knew it had to be Lesha, back from her weekly jaunt to Washington.

  He lifted his cane, gripped the edge of the table, and carefully rose from his chair. His red setter, Roosevelt, got up from the hearth. Cam glanced out the sliding glass door into his gentleman’s acreage, watched the wind weave patterns over the wild grass, worried that in the middle of August the Texas sky should be so cloudy all the time, with temperatures ten to fifteen degrees
below normal as the sun went into its preexpansion chill phase.

  He maneuvered around the table into his open-concept living-dining area. As he passed the CenCon— the house’s Central Control Console—it asked him if he wanted to adjust the thermostat, and he said yes; then it told him that solar power storage was nearing depletion, and offered him a choice, his independent generator or the grid.

  ‘‘Put me on the grid,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Acknowledged,’’ said the CenCon.

  He crossed the living room, cautious as he made the transition from the carpet to tiles, his Builder episodes still affecting his motor skills, though not nearly to the same degree as before. He gripped the doorknob, gave it a gentle twist, opened the door, and walked to the stoop.

  Lesha came up the long hickory-lined drive in her truck, the cab a dove gray shell over her head, her hands at ten and two o’clock, driving manually because automatic feeds ended at Conroe. She took a dip in the drive, and the shock absorbers gave. Then it was up a small incline and past the side door. She waved and headed to the small lot at the rear.

  Cam negotiated the three risers down to the drive and ambled toward her. Two barns rose at the end of the lot, one a gray relic from the past, the other an aluminum Quonset. Lesha swung left and brought the truck to a stop next to his. She got out.

  It was strange to see her in a camel-hair jacket at this time of year when ordinarily it was so hot. She wore knee-high boots over beige cords, and had added gold highlights to her hair—he could readily imagine the California blond of years ago. She dug behind her seat, pulled out her computer gear and other electronics, swung them over her shoulder, slammed the door, and came toward him with a purposeful stride.

  ‘‘Have you seen the news?’’ she called.

  ‘‘Not since last night.’’

  ‘‘The PRNC Pacific Fleet has gone on maneuvers.’’ She reached him and gave him a kiss. ‘‘Congdon characterizes the move as provocative. Po Pin-Yen claims the maneuvers are routine, and have been scheduled for a long time.’’

  ‘‘Has the U.S. responded?’’

  ‘‘Not yet.’’ She motioned toward the south. ‘‘And Hurricane Delilah has shifted. It’s expected to make landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast instead of Mississippi.’’

  ‘‘You’re rattled.’’

  ‘‘A week of Washington does that.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got coffee brewing. Are you hungry?’’

  ‘‘How are your nights? Are they getting better?’’

  ‘‘I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. Yet I don’t feel tired at all.’’

  ‘‘I’ve got the results of your scan.’’

  ‘‘And?’’

  She leaned over and kissed him. ‘‘Your sylvan fissure remains enlarged, but there’s no atypical electrical activity anymore. And the shadow is gone. Maybe you should tell Dr. Ochoa about the insomnia.’’

  He shook his head. ‘‘Until I have definitive contact with the Builders again, I’d sooner be left alone. Do you realize Goldvogel actually had the nerve to suggest a guard platoon? I told him to buzz off. The point of coming out here is solitude. Solitude is more conducive to getting in contact with the Builders than having a guard platoon as company. Come to the kitchen. I’ll make a sandwich for you.’’

  She slipped her hand through his elbow and they walked to the house. She pulled back and watched his legs. ‘‘You’ve really improved.’’

  ‘‘Roosevelt and I walk to the spring each day.’’

  ‘‘And your speech.’’ They climbed the steps and went inside. ‘‘It comes more quickly.’’

  In the kitchen, he got tomatoes, cheese, and romaine lettuce, and sliced some whole grain bread. Lesha reacquainted herself with Roosevelt, taking the setter’s chin in her hands, scratching his neck, telling him he was a good dog, her long hair falling past either side of her face, her brown knee-high boots making her legs look alluring. He had the oddest feeling, one he hadn’t felt in a long time. He was happy. And he couldn’t help regretting that the Builders were cooking the sun into oblivion just as he had discovered this unexpected Nirvana with Lesha.

  The knife sliced through the tomato. Lesha put her stuff on the wicker chair next to the sliding glass doors, looked out at the pool, then walked over to the entertainment unit and turned on the TV. It was already tuned to the news channel.

  A cute chickadee of an anchorwoman cheerfully delivered the latest developments in the renewed tension between the U.S. and the PRNC. The USS Terpsichoreand USS Rondon had been given new orders, were leaving the Indian Ocean, and chugging toward the Pacific to ‘‘observe’’ the maneuvers of the PRNC fleet.

  ‘‘And Hurricane Delilah has strengthened to the strongest category-five hurricane on record. What has meteorologists particularly worried is how far south the jet stream has moved. Due to the sun’s recent cooling, a massive cold front has moved down from Canada, as far south as Texas.’’

  At this point a weather map appeared. It showed frigid Arctic air covering most of the contiguous United States. Underneath this mass, in the Gulf States, the area was entirely red, with temperatures well above normal. Hurricane Delilah fed on these record-breaking highs.

  The anchorwoman said meteorologists were worried by this unusual convergence of cold and hot air masses, feared this new possibility everyone was talking about, the superblizzard. ‘‘Experts say that if this occurs, it won’t last long but that damage could be extensive.’’ She then continued with a few details. Sustained winds of three hundred and eighty-five kilometers per hour. Snow, hail, and freezing rain. All thanks to what the Builders were doing to the sun. The storm was now expected to make landfall at Freeport, rip through Houston, and continue north over Navasota.

  At the mention of Navasota, Cam put the knife down and turned to the television.

  Lesha was now sitting on one of the stools staring at the TV intently. She turned to him. Their eyes met, held for several seconds as the anchorwoman described how the storm was three hundred kilometers across, and how all of eastern Texas would be affected.

  ‘‘Highway Forty-five from Houston to Conroe was packed,’’ said Lesha.

  ‘‘These windows are hurricane-proof.’’

  ‘‘So we’re going to ride it out here?’’

  ‘‘We’ll hope the cold front doesn’t move too far south.’’

  ‘‘How far inland are we?’’

  ‘‘Two hundred klicks.’’

  ‘‘You think we’ll be okay?’’

  ‘‘It’ll be a rough night, but we should make it.’’

  Over lunch, Lesha briefed him on the latest Operation Moonstone developments. ‘‘Dr. Tennant has been up there getting things ready. The new ‘send’ is scheduled for today. The administration has installed buffer software on all critical systems to guard against another Worldwide Crash.’’

  ‘‘Have they released the contents of the new ‘send’?’’

  ‘‘I have it here on my wafer. Not that there’s anything you can do about it now.’’ She glanced at her watch. ‘‘In fact, I think they might have already gone ahead.’’ She offered her wafer. ‘‘But Blunt thought you might want a look.’’

  Over the coming hours, as the sky got darker, and the wind strengthened, Cam and Lesha reviewed the new ‘‘send’’ materials.

  They included an overview of Newtonian physics, a recording of Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony in G Minor, a thousand visual images, Einstein’s theories, and at last, Cam’s own rough equations that groped toward an understanding of hyperdimensionality.

  ‘‘It was Blunt who insisted we include your equations.’’

  Cam remained skeptical. ‘‘I’m flattered, but my own equations remain unproven.’’ And here the loss of Stradivari haunted him like the ghost of a dearly departed friend. ‘‘I mean, yes, I agree. Here in this packet are the most profound examples of human thought. Yet I intuit in the Builders a species so advanced, a race so well beyond the envelope of human knowledge, I
can’t reasonably anticipate this fresh message will move them in any way. It may show the Builders music and pictures, and outline my own unproven and possibly erroneous equations regarding the more esoteric subatomic features of the universe, but I don’t think it will be enough to convince them to stop doing what they’re doing. We can’t tell them that we’re smart. We have to show them that we’re smart.’’

  And there it was, the thing that Cam had been looking for, what had eluded him ever since his meeting with the president. They had to show the Builders with a demonstration. But a demonstration of what? He glanced outside. And saw snow. Snow in August. In Texas. They had to illustrate to the Builders that they knew about strings. About hyperdimensions, interdimensions, and even antidimensions, the whole gambit of unproven, highly speculative, and counterintuitively reasoned physics, where gluons met quarks, space met time, science met faith, and where the universe turned out to be far stranger than anybody could imagine.

  ‘‘If we could demonstrate, even for a few seconds, that we can swim in the same waters they do, breathe the same air, give them some notion of Stradivari . . .’’

  Lesha sighed. ‘‘Yes, but with the Stradivari equipment destroyed . . .’’

  ‘‘Can you ask Blunt for new equipment?’’

  An apprehensive hardening came to her brow. ‘‘What? Right now?’’

  ‘‘Call Blunt on your cell.’’

  She hesitated. But then took out her cell and called Blunt.

  She had to hold for five minutes, but at last she got through.

  Cam watched her. She explained his idea cogently. But then the corners of her lips turned downward, and her delicate nostrils twitched, and she gave him a worried glance, and said, ‘‘I see,’’ every now and again for the next two minutes. At last she said good-bye and folded her phone.

  ‘‘He characterizes your proposed demonstration as a laboratory experiment, and says that they need more than laboratory experiments at this point. They need something definitive, a gesture that’s going to diffuse the situation. Especially now that the PRNC fleet is on maneuvers. We have to show the rest of the world that we have the Builder situation under control. And we particularly have to show the PRNC.’’