Draft80


 * 1)  IKA: The town of Headwater, true to its name, sits at the source of the Squaw River. Paved road starts there, as does the railroad. No one ever spends the night in Headwater because no one ever passes through. Even the FBI had to crane off a trailer to have a place to sleep.
 * 2) IKB: The Church had steadily lost adherents since peaking in 1917 but there were still many congregations scattered across America and even some in Europe. When families of the deceased came to Headwater for the Last Rite often the only place for them to stay was the Temple itself.
 * 3) IKC: The C Wing had six modest rooms which were offered to visiting families for their brief stay of a day or two. Klaus Hansen had never given them much thought. As far as he knew or cared the beds made themselves, so he was startled to find Dory and Gabriel cleaning the rooms.
 * 4) IKD: "What is this?" he demanded.
 * 5) "It goes with the position of Extraordinary Lay Minister of the Last Rite," Gabriel replied. "Somebody has to get the rooms ready."
 * 6) "What's she doing here?"
 * 7) "Cousin Dory is pitching in."
 * 8) "I only want to see Red Wingers here on Wednesdays."
 * 9) IKE: Dory and Gabriel, being Red Wingers both, made as thought to leave, but Klaus said, "Not you, boy."
 * 10) "I'll pick you up at five, cuz," said Dory on her way out. When sha was out of earshot, Klaus said, "Where's the Golden Gift?"
 * 11) "It's in the Temple, as we agreed."
 * 12) IKF: "How do I know that's true?"
 * 13) "This is the Temple. Liars have no part in the life to come."
 * 14) "Show it to me."
 * 15) "Mike told me to only bring it out at need."
 * 16) "Fuck Mike. You need to show it to me."
 * 17) Gabriel unlocked a supply room. A red cookie tin sat on a shelf.
 * 18) IKG: It was empty but Gabriel thought it was perfect. When che reached outside of the universe it always looked like somebody chopped hez hand off with an ax, which would need explaining. Gabriel produced the relic and to Hansen's eyes it looked like che pulled it out of the tin.
 * 19) IKH: "How do I know that's not just something you whipped up in metal shop and painted gold?"
 * 20) Gabriel squeezed the relic. The hissing shifted down in pitch as the black rip in reality grew, drinking in the light and air of the room.  Hez ponytail tossed in the growing breeze.
 * 21) IKI: Klaus Hansen had never been so close to the Golden Gift in operation and was entranced with the sheer otherworldliness of it. Gabriel was amazed at hez self-restraint for not slicing the man in half where he stood.
 * 22) Dory saw the sheriff's deputies smoking and joking outside.
 * 23) IKJ: "Hello officers," sha said.
 * 24) "Afternoon, Dory," said Deputy Bill.
 * 25) Neither he nor Bob could guess why sha was grinning and not even trying to hide it, but sha knew why they were there and what was coming. Meantime sha got into Peter's station wagon, which was har car now.
 * 26) IKK: Four hundred feet below the temple, on the north side of Green Dome, was Peter's house and that was Dory's too now that he and Jaroah were in Heaven. Hunky and Robyn waited for har there. It was quite a step up from a tree house. They could see the FBI trailer from there.
 * 27) IKL: Dory drove the '41 Chrysler Town and Country down the icy nine percent grade to har love nest and fell into Hunky's tree limbs.
 * 28) Robyn rolled her eyes and said, "Could you hold off long enough to drive me down to the library? I want to leave a surprise for Special Agent Felt."
 * 29) IKM: "Alright, Gabriel," said Hansen when the thrill of the Golden Gift wore off, "put it back in the can and lock this room back up."
 * 30) IKN: When it was done Klaus told hem to hand over the key and the look on his face seemed to dare hem to show even a twinge of insubordination, but he got nothing. "Who else has a key?"
 * 31) "Deacon Paul," replied Gabriel. As though summoned by an evil spell Paul Bergin joined them.
 * 32) IKP: Looking somewhat distraught, he said, "Ruth just phoned. The sheriff and an FBI agent visited our home."
 * 33) "Let's take this to my office," said Hansen, making a gesture to hush.  Klaus took him by the shoulder and led him away so they could speak with more privacy.
 * 34) IKR: In the office, he asked Paul, "What did Ruth say to get rid of them?"
 * 35) "Get rid of them? She invited them to come inside!"
 * 36) "Jesus, Paul, what did she tell them?"
 * 37) "She didn't tell me that. But she did ask me why the knife block she used this morning was gone."
 * 38) IKS: "How did you handle that?"
 * 39) "I said I didn't know anything about it. The knife block is at the landfill and no one will ever find it, but Ruth said she let them take her fingerprints, and that makes me wish the knife was squirrelled away with the clothes and other stuff."
 * 40) IKT: "What's done is done," Klaus said. "Even if they found the knife and trace it to Ruth, so what? She had no motive to kill the girl. She probably doesn't even know her."
 * 41) "What if they come here next?"
 * 42) IKU: "That is a very good question, Paul. So now, I think, is a good time to be out in Headwater tending to the flock as deacons must."
 * 43) When Paul went out to his parked car he saw the same deputies Dory had greeted only a few minutes earlier, but he did not stop to chat.
 * 44) IKV: Instead, he tried to get back inside the Temple. Sheriff Roddy Walker and Special Agent Mark Felt intercepted him at the door.
 * 45) "Sheriff, would you do the honors?"
 * 46) Roddy said, "Paul Bergin, you are under arrest for the murder of Kimberly Zinter. Hold out your right arm please."
 * 47) IKW: Paul was too shocked to move, so Roddy grabbed his jacket sleeve, cuffed his bare wrist, then made Paul face the wall. After both arms were cuffed behind Paul's back Roddy patted him down, removed his wallet, and unlatched the carabiner key chain looped to his belt.
 * 48) IKX: He handed both of these to Felt, then handed Paul himself off to his deputies. "Fingerprints, new home, not a word, boys."
 * 49) Special Agent in Charge Tolson was just coming up with Agent Sullivan.
 * 50) "Do we knock?" Felt asked them.
 * 51) "No need," said Tolson.
 * 52) IKY: "This is a public house of worship." He pulled the huge doors open.
 * 53) "Gabriel Shybear," Agent Bill Sullivan said when he saw who was standing inside. Tolson knew who Gabriel was from Sullivan's reports but he had never actually seen hem.
 * 54) IKZ: "Aren't you supposed to be on some island shooting Japs right now?"
 * 55) Gabriel shook hez head and dug out hez draft card. "The Army didn't think I was man enough, Special Agent Sullivan. Navy too."
 * 56) "Gabriel, what are you doing here today of all days?" Roddy asked.
 * 57) ILA: "I'm here every day now, Sheriff. There's been some changes. I hold an office in the Church.  Extraordinary Lay Minister of the Last Rite." Only Felt could find his voice after that news, simply because he missed the import. "We have a warrant to search the Temple."
 * 58) ILB: Gabriel said, "Uh-oh, I better tell the Prophet," and che jogged backwards up the broad carpeted hall through the center of A Wing, facing the sheriff and the FBI agents, until nearly reaching the drum-shaped Sanctuary in the center of the Temple. Che knocked on one door.
 * 59) IKC: "Prophet Hansen, some gentlemen are here to see you."
 * 60) Klaus stepped out of his office, prompting the sheriff to say, "You're the Prophet now? What happened to Peter Twofeathers?"
 * 61) "I've been given to understand he is dead."
 * 62) "Not dead," said Gabriel. "He lives in Heaven now."
 * 63) IKD: "Gabriel, are you talking about another homicide?" asked Roddy.
 * 64) "No, Peter and his wife volunteered to go. So did the Prophet who came after him, if you think about it."
 * 65) "Hold your tongue, boy!" blurted Hansen. "No one cares to listen to your addled nonsense!"
 * 66) IKE: With a sudden, awkward silence, Sheriff Roddy Walker stepped in to make all the required introductions. "Mr. Peter Hansen, this is Special Agent in Charge Clyde Tolson, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and with him are Special Agents Mark Felt and Bill Sullivan.
 * 67) IKE: "I need to talk to both of you," said Felt, "but first, we have an order to search the Temple for evidence pertaining to the  murder of Kimberly Zinter."
 * 68) Klaus demanded to see the order and Tolson let him read it. He glanced at the keys in Felt's hand. "Where's Paul?"
 * 69) IKF: "On his way to county lockup," Roddy said.
 * 70) "I will hold you fellows to the absolute letter of this search warrant," he said. "You may search only in the rooms which are locked with those keys."
 * 71) The offices of Klaus and Gabriel were unlocked and so were off-limits.
 * 72) IKG: But the Bureau agents went through Paul's office like a tornado and yielded a pair of boots in a desk drawer. Roddy bagged them, tagged them, and locked them in his truck. Three other rooms were filled with a great deal of material that appeared to be from an earlier age.
 * 73) IKH: After a quick glance at the contents the sheriff offered Felt an explanation. "B Wing is set up like a museum of Church history. Or at least it was. This looks like the material that was on display there."
 * 74) "Only the history of the Kuwapi," Gabriel said. "We're in the New Reich."
 * 75) IKI: "That's a damned shame," Felt said, holding up a broken arrow.  "Some of the relics are damaged."
 * 76) They moved to the hallway that ran around the circumference of the Sanctuary and did a third of a turn to the right, checking for more locked doors, before entering C Wing.
 * 77) IKJ:  The room that Gabriel and Dory were cleaning was not locked.  The other guest rooms were searched and found to be devoid of any evidence.
 * 78) "What's behind that door?"
 * 79) "That's a dry hole, Agent Sullivan," said Gabriel.
 * 80) "It's just my broom closet." Che locked eyes with Klaus.
 * 81) IKK: Nevertheless, Special Agent Felt found the appropriate key. Like Gabriel said, there was nothing within but cleaning supplies. Felt shook the red cookie tin sitting on a shelf but heard nothing, and opened it to make sure it was empty. Klaus seemed both puzzled and relieved.
 * 82) IKL: After that the sheriff and three Bureau agents headed down the wide carpeted stairs to the basement cafeteria. The Prophet, lagging behind, asked Gabriel, "How did you know they would search?"
 * 83) "I didn't know, Mr. Hansen, my newlywed wife did. Robyn knows all, sees all."
 * 84) IKM: There wasn't much of interest downstairs, which was open and airy, even in the kitchen, but the supply room was locked and everyone gravitated to there.
 * 85) "Is this the room from your report?" asked Tolson.
 * 86) "Mecca," Sullivan said.
 * 87) Tolson gestured for Felt to pop it open.
 * 88) IKN: Mecca turned out to have the same broken piano, hymnals, mason jars, and stacks of Green Dome coloring books that Gabriel had seen before when he took Robyn and Dory in the supply room.
 * 89) Bill Sullivan pointed at the plywood board at the back wall.  "Flashlights, gentlemen."
 * 90) IKO: The board was moved aside, and presently the three G-men were standing around the rock cairn that formed the uttermost summit of Green Dome.
 * 91) Tolson said to Sullivan, "If the kids were in such a hurry to clear out when Paul caught them why are all the stones back in place?"
 * 92) IKP: "That is a very perceptive question," Sullivan said. He began looking for the easiest stone to move.
 * 93) Felt didn't like the sudden turn in the murder investigation into an area where he hadn't been briefed. Tolson's agenda was intruding.  A stone fell and Tolson went in.
 * 94) IKQ: Felt heard Tolson utter an oath that was most unbecoming of an FBI agent. After Sullivan ducked inside the cairn items started getting tossed out: a dress, shoes, bloody clothing, rubber gloves. Felt shouted for them to stop but Tolson was frantic. "There's nothing here!"
 * 95) IKR: After the search under the altar fell through SAiC Tolson left the temple and took Sullivan with him. Special Agent Mark Felt was fine with that.  Conflicting agendas were never productive. He helped the sheriff document the evidence that had been tossed out of the cairn.
 * 96) IKS: That left only the B Wing of the temple to search. It was set up as a historical museum, although under the new management of Prophet Hansen the Kuwapi contribution to the Church of Green Dome had been stripped out. Some of the more valuable pieces were missing entirely.
 * 97) IKT: Something about B Wing stayed with Mark Felt for the rest of his life. Perhaps it was the variety of genuine articles dating back to the Civil War.  Perhaps it was the way Sheriff Walker explained what he was looking at.  Agent Felt found the experience profoundly immersive.
 * 98) IKU: Deacon Paul had nothing to say, and he declined to make his phone call to a lawyer or anyone else. FBI Special Agent Mark Felt was content to let Bergin stew in the county lockup overnight and he called it a day. The sheriff dropped him off at the library on 17th and V.
 * 99) IKV: When Felt wasn't in counter-surveillance mode he slammed to the full reverse and became a man of precise routine. His ritual at the end of the workday was always to sit in a library, summarize the events of the day, and mail it to Dotty back in DC. Somehow this Robyn knew.
 * 100) IKW: That day had been more eventful than any since Quantico, and it took Felt longer than usual to summarize events for Dotty on the stationary Robyn had provided. When he was finished, Felt spotted a book on the table with a note taped to it, inked in a neat feminine hand.
 * 101) IKX: The note said: Dear Special Agent Felt, Well done on the bust, but there were two sets of footprints at the scene of Kim's murder and you've put away the low-hanging fruit. The other fellow is smarter and has (or rather he will have) an unexpected ally within the Bureau.
 * 102) IKY: Meanwhile, to compensate for the unfortunate renovation of B Wing at the Temple, I bring your attention to this excellent account of the Red Wing's part in the origin of the Church of Green Dome. It might explain the behavior of your supervisor SAC Tolson. Enjoy!
 * 103) IKZ: Robyn  Felt glanced around the library to see if Robyn was watching. How did she know to leave the book at just that table and not another one? The title of the book was "Island in the Sky: The Life of the Kuwapi People" written in 1925 by Jashen Shybear and it was rather thick.
 * 104) ILA: Opening the book was a mistake. Before he knew it, the librarian came around to inform him the branch was closing and he had made not the slightest effort writing his report to Dotty.  He did note the Dewey number on the spine of the book so he could find it again.
 * 105) ILB: At roughly the same time that evening Dr. Wahkan received an honored guest in his office.  The visitor said, "Dory told me you found something on Kim's body and hid it from the FBI."
 * 106) "Yes, Teacher, certainly," said Dr. Wahkan, and he retrieved a small object from his desk.
 * 107) ILC: It was rubbery on one side, and looked like one end of the Purple Cable on the other. He gave it to Michael.
 * 108) Michael asked, "Does anyone know about this?"
 * 109) "No one saw it, Teacher, and I didn't write it up in a report. Dory was very specific about that."
 * 110) "Thank you, Doctor.
 * 111) ILC: This device doesn't really belong in this time and place, you see. It comes from about fifty years from here, after a great many changes that you would find difficult to fathom."
 * 112) "Teacher, may I ask what it does?" Michael smiled gently. "It has two purposes, Doctor Wahkan.
 * 113) ILD: This side looks like a big brown mole because that's easier to explain than an electrical connector coming out of your head. But it's also very much like a radio transmitter."
 * 114) "How wonderful," said Wahkan. "I don't believe I've seen a single tube smaller than that gadget."
 * 115) ILE: "Yes. Vacuum tubes are useful but in a generation they will seem as quaint as whale oil lamps. I gave Kim this 'gadget' so I could capture all her experiences, even to the very instant of her death.  It was a promise I made to her when she agreed to be killed."
 * 116)  PA0: The house was too cramped to properly show hyz father what hy had come up with so Ithuriel led hym to the top of the little knoll which was still adorned with Dory's treehouse. Dory harself had gone on ahead to Franklin along with most of the Red Wing of the defunct Church.
 * 117)  PA1: Ithuriel could not hide hyz pleasure at the rare presence of hyz father, the seraph Michael, who was the absolute lord of Earth and arguably at least half of Heaven. And Ithuriel had no doubt that when hy demonstrated hyz breakthrough hyz father would be all smiles as well.
 * 118)  PA2: To the north they could see where the Squaw River forked to form an island, but it was just a trickle now. Ithuriel brought that to Michael's attention and said, 'The town is dying a little bit every day, father. I've come up here many times and I've watched it shrivel.'
 * 119)  PA3: 'There is no wisdom in completely stopping the flow of water,' Michael said, knowing that Ithuriel was well aware the source of the Squaw River was actually in Nyduly Wood more than four years away as the photon flies. 'But as you have seen I am reducing it by degrees.
 * 120)  PA4: I keep it just below the level it needs to be to fully support the declining population of the town as it is from day to day. That serves to keep them moving out. Eventually DECON will own the whole town, but by then they'll need to bring all their water in by truck.'
 * 121)  PA5: 'One consequence I've noticed, father, intended or not, is that the White Wingers who thought it was a bargain buying up Red Wing homes at seventy cents on the dollar are now grateful to sell their own homes to the United States government for thirty cents on the dollar.'
 * 122)  PA6: Michael allowed hymself a sly smile. 'Over the centuries many have attributed to me the virtue of justice.' To the north and west they saw the island that formed the center of Greendome, anchored at one end by the courthouse and on the other end by the sheriff's station.
 * 123)  PA7: But half of the business were closed so hard they weren't even boarded up. They were simply abandoned by their former owners and left for Clyde Tolson of DECON to remake them in whatever image he had in mind. But Tolson himself had not been around for several months.
 * 124)  PA8: The War in Europe had entered its final year and J. Edgar Hoover had given Tolson's leash a tug, made him put whatever side project he had going on in Greendome on hold to hunt down actual domestic enemies, not phantoms, infiltrators who were Third Reich saboteurs and spies.
 * 125)  PA9: To the east over the roof of his home Ithuriel could see the bulk of the town platted out south of the river. Dory's friends Robyn and Sofie used to live there but they had moved with her to Franklin. It was eerily quiet, with little traffic. Half of the homes lay vacant.
 * 126)  PB0: South and east was the little bump informally called Mt.  Motorcycle. It was perhaps fifty feet taller than Treehouse Hill. The railroad from the east wrapped completely around it and merged with itself, the absolute end of the line. Passenger service had ended years ago.
 * 127)  PB1: Behind them the uppermost vale of the Squaw bent south, then turned west again to wrap nearly halfway around the small mountain called Green Dome that dominated the skyline. On its summit lay the charred ruins of the temple, more or less untouched since the Desecration.
 * 128)  PB2: Ithuriel took hyz copy of the Golden Gift into hyz hand and allowed the deadly hissing shaft of absolute darkness to come into existence and reach a meter in length. Hy said, 'My lord and father need have no introduction to this artifact, which was made by hyz own hand.'
 * 129)  PB3: 'Indeed,' said Michael, 'and all the more so when its operation relies entirely on dark light provided by myself, which I can withdraw at will.' And to punctuate hyz words, the weapon abruptly ceased to operate. Ithuriel put the relic away and withdrew a silver version.
 * 130)  PB4: 'Ah, yes, father, but the one I have made works entirely on its own, without your willing participation from instant to instant.' Hy brought the noisy dark shaft into existence and waved the new weapon around. But there was a subtle difference in the appearance of the shaft.
 * 131)  PB5: The angle of the shaft emerging from the Golden Gift always matched that of the muzzle. But however Ithuriel rocked hyz new weapon the dark shaft seemed to rebuild itself at the new position, and the process, though swift, was just slow enough that the eye could catch it.
 * 132)  PB6: Ithuriel allowed the shaft to disappear, then handed the weapon to hyz father with the muzzle pointed away from both. Michael was stunned to silence, but hy tried the weapon for hymself, carving a deep trench in the ground as easily as it could be done with the Golden Gift.
 * 133)  PB7: Michael, too, allowed the shaft to disappear. When at last hy found hyz voice hy said, 'Nothing in all of the lore of the Elohim, spanning more than nine hundred thousand years, suggests that dark energy can be synthesized artificially, outside of the body of a living sun.'
 * 134)  PB8: 'The effect you see with my imitation, father, is identical in most ways to what is produced by your device, yet it is not brought about by dark energy.' Ithuriel, who was Michael's best student, was also a remarkably effective teacher. Hy undertook to instruct hyz father.
 * 135)  PB9: 'By way of explanation, consider a magnet, which always has a north and south pole. Now if you break it in half, you will have two smaller magnets, and each one has its own north and south pole. Even the elementary particles that comprise them are just tiny magnets.
 * 136)  PC0: 'So we see if a magnetic field line enters a magnet of any size whatsoever, it also must continue through and leave the magnet. The field lines are closed loops. But what if there existed fundamental particles that could be either a source or a sink of a magnetic field?'
 * 137)  PC1: 'Ithuriel, you are speaking of a theoretical particle which is called a magnetic monopole, but again, with my access to all of the knowledge accumulated by Ein Sof, the City of Stars, I can tell you the Elohim have never once observed a particle such as you describe.'
 * 138)  PC2: 'And yet, father, years ago you told me the Elohim have developed models describing the primordial universe, and some of these models posit an era when the universe was richly flooded with magnetic monopoles. That was, in fact, when I first learned of the concept.'
 * 139)  PC3: 'I remember telling that to you, son,' said Michael, 'but I also remember telling you that the most elegant model, one with the most beautiful simplicity combined with the greatest explanatory power, remains merely conjecture if the most obvious details remain unobserved.'
 * 140)  PC4: 'Then, father, please allow me to mention an article in the May 1940 journal Physical Review announcing the synthesis of element 93. It has a half-life of only two million years, so any large amounts that were present at the formation of the Earth have long since decayed.
 * 141)  PC5: It was not until a sample of element 93 was prepared by neutron irradiation that anyone on Earth actually observed it. So if magnetic monopoles are similarly unstable, it would come as no surprise the Elohim have not found one, if they never attempted to synthesize them.'
 * 142)  PC6: Michael was beginning to enjoy this unexpected battle of wits with hyz beloved son. Hy said, 'On the contrary, the Elohim have examined collisions from the ejecta of collapsed stars, which are quite a bit more powerful than anything mankind can assemble here, to no avail.'
 * 143)  PC7: 'I suspected as much, father, and I have abandoned searching for magnetic monopoles as exotic particles. But there are lanthanide crystals with interesting properties, made from molecules which have a tetrahedral geometry. They have four dipoles with two spin states each.
 * 144)  PC8: Under normal conditions, in a crystal, each unit has two dipoles with their magnetic moment directed in, towards the tetrahedron, and two dipoles directed out. This is the lowest energy state, and the crystal forms a kind of committee of the whole which enforces this.
 * 145)  PC9: But if you heat the crystal, thermal agitation can flip the dipoles to a random orientation. Increase the heat until the molecule sublimates off the surface of the crystal as a metal vapor, and the state of the dipoles are baked in. That's when things get interesting.
 * 146)  PD0: On the scale of the molecule itself, all is well. The magnetic field lines pass through the dipoles as loops, as they should. But scale things up a bit, and look at the molecule from the outside. You might have three magnetic moments pointing in, and one pointing out.
 * 147)  PD1: So you have a net sink of the magnetic field. Alternatively, you might have three magnetic moments facing out and one in, giving you a net source. As a result, the molecule can be treated, mathematically, exactly like a magnetic monopole. And it's part of an ionized gas.
 * 148)  PD2: So it's easy enough to make monopoles, the real trick is to keep them separated long enough to put them to work. Monopoles are unstable in the same sense that antimatter is unstable, because they're immersed in an environment that is hostile to their continued existence.
 * 149)  PD3: As hyz son continued to explain hyz device Michael was reduced to staring at Ithuriel in open-mouthed awe. Hyz thoughts raced ahead to glimpse how magnetic monopoles, the real ones, might have reduced the prevalence of normal matter to the present four percent of reality.
 * 150)  PD4: Ithuriel went on to say, 'At some distance from the monopole the electric and magnetic fields operate under an extension of Maxwell's equations that include a parameter for magnetic charge. But the two kinds of fields are not compatible. It'd be like mixing oil and water.
 * 151)  PD5: Since lines of magnetic and electric flux can never cross there develops something like a skin between the two different fields, and that's where a wonderful and unexpected thing happens. If quanta of light energy cross that surface, they become carriers of dark energy.
 * 152)  PD6: If matter crosses that surface all the mass remains, and it's still subject to the gravitational field, but it no longer interacts with the electromagnetic field, so it goes 'dark'. Electrons fly free of their attraction to protons. Perhaps they recombine with dark protons.
 * 153)  PD7: But from our frame of reference the matter is just gone. This is exactly what happens when we use your macro, father, I just get there by a slightly different route. So there you have it, the best I can do describing how it works without resorting to a mass of equations.'
 * 154)  PD8: 'But certainly the run time of your device must be very limited in comparison to that of the macro.' 'That is true, father, and yet your macro has a severe run time limitation of its own. What if Keter or Daat knew of all the rat tunnels under this town and in yonder hill?
 * 155)  PD9: Would they not begin to wonder where you found so much dark energy, and thus unravel the first knot of your ancient operational deception?' 'You make a good point, son, but now your Silver Gift can explain the most extravagant use of the macro. I consider it a gift indeed.
 * 156)  PE0: But you have taught me something much more important than the secret of your Silver Gift. You may not yet see the full import of your deed, but I would proudly rank it among any of the works of the Elohim.  Perhaps one day men will have a fold-door network of your own.
 * 157)  PE1: So I have learned that every teacher must be ready for the day when hy has nothing more to pass along, simply because hy has been surpassed by hyz own student. I tell you that day has now come, and I should be melancholy, yet I am exceedingly proud, for you are my own son.
 * 158)  PE2: 'I don't understand, father. Why should you feel sad when you have fulfilled your role as teacher?' 'Perhaps it has to do with being a living star by nature, and a worlddweller only by choice. When I saw your achievement, I also saw the beginning of sunset for the Elohim.'
 * 159)  PE3: 'Then with your leave, father, grant your student another lesson for hyz teacher. Ever you have seen the Elohim as the ones who teach, and humanity as the ones who are taught. Yet what is the goal of such a relationship if not that both should grow into a full partnership?
 * 160)  PE4: Have you never considered what the B'nei Elohim will do after we aid in your victory over Keter and Daat? Do you think their corruption is unique among the Elohim? Are there no other living stars who are held aloof from Ein Sof? We will find and ally with them as well.'
 * 161)  PE5: Michael bowed hyz head in acceptance of Ithuriel's gentle rebuke, but at once a new stream of thought came into hyz mind. Hy said, 'Are you fully assured that you can communicate with your daughter Doriel at once, at any time, no matter the physical distance between you?'
 * 162)  PE6: 'Of course I am, father, but I also happen to know that Dory prefers to keep such communications to a bare minimum. I don't blame har.' 'Then are you also assured that no matter where you are, if you are in immediate danger I can summon a fold door and whisk you away?'
 * 163)  PE7: 'There are the tales in the Green Book, but I was too young to remember my mother before sha died. I have only known this place and time. But Dory told me that you once 'whisked' har and Gabriel to the top of Green Dome in such a manner, and I have no reason to doubt har.'
 * 164)  PE8: 'Then I have one more question, Ithuriel. Do you think you can stand before seraphim, either Keter or Daat, and lie to their face?' 'Now that, father, might need to be put to the test, and failing it, I would certainly be glad of a lifeline to Dory. But why do you ask?'
 * 165)  PE9: 'Your Silver Gift suggests an entirely new course of action to me, and I would have you and your family leave this place, but I wanted you to be entirely certain I would never put you nor Anael nor Remiel in any sort of danger with no promise of instantly retrieving you.'
 * 166)  PF0: 'What danger, father? Are we now to join Doriel and the others who have already moved to the west coast?' 'Oh no, I had a place in mind that is somewhat farther away than just the state of Washington. Something on the order of five hundred million miles away.'
 * 167)  PF1: By late fall the homes in Franklin were complete and the Red Wing was migrating out of Greendome by train, six families a week. And a curious thing happened. The Squaw River, which debouched full-grown from the western slope of Green Dome, slowed to a mere trickle.
 * 168)  PF2: Then even J. Edgar Hoover got tired of Clyde Tolson wasting time with his obsession on the high plains and called him back to DC. A war was still raging. Or perhaps he just missed him. When Robyn began to have labor pains she could visit Dr. Wahkan without fear of capture.
 * 169)  PF3: 'I'm glad you came in,' he said. 'You won't need to be sedated because you can choose to isolate your conscious mind from any pain but it's still going to kick your ass. Your body, your subconscious mind is still going to know something is going very wrong.'
 * 170)  PF4: 'Why is that, Doc?' she asked. 'Why can't we just drop 'em like cows do and carry on?' 'Because humans are the only animals on Earth that walk upright, on two feet. At every moment we are faced with the threat of being disemboweled simply by standing up.
 * 171)  PF5: 'So the hole in the pelvic floor has to be as small as possible to prevent that. At the same time, humans have the largest brains of any animal on Earth as a percentage of their total body mass. So the opening in the pelvis cannot be too small, do you see?'
 * 172)  PF6: Robyn nodded. 'Otherwise the infant would get wedged in the birth canal and die.' 'Correct. The baby's skull does not fully form until after birth, so it actually deforms during birth to ease the passage, but the ordeal is still very dangerous for mother and child.'
 * 173)  PF7: 'Assuming we both survive, what am I in for?' 'You mean, what are you going to get?' Robyn nodded. 'Well, Gabriel is a jen, hez sex chromosomes are X and Z. You're are X and X. So there's a fifty percent chance you're going to get a beautiful and human baby girl.'
 * 174)  PF8: 'And there's a fifty percent chance you're going to get an equally beautiful baby nephil. Flip the coin again. Heads che's an ambi, like Doriel's mother. Tails che's a che like hez father Gabriel. I could have tested for it earlier, but now it's so close there's no point.'
 * 175)  PF9: Robyn's husband and her two closest friends stayed close to her during the whole ordeal. Once, just once, she let herself be in full contact with the worst of the labor pain, and she quickly retreated, thankful that she could retreat. The Change had completely spoiled her.
 * 176)  PG0: When it was over she was holding a baby girl. Gabriel suggested they name her Ariel, and Robyn agreed. Ariel was perfectly whole and healthy and came with a little pad of soft black hair. Robyn found that words failed to fully convey this greatest of human experiences.
 * 177)  PG1: Robyn loved to hold Ariel's face close to her own and inhale her soft baby scent, that special new person factory-fresh smell. She was Ariel's mother! Gabriel, too, was filled with joy to be Ariel's father, but he felt sliced out, somehow, from the pure joy that Robyn felt.
 * 178)  PG2: By any stretch of the imagination the things David Morrich saw in Washington, D.C. on October 19, 1973 far surpassed anything Judith had witnessed in the Nazi death camps, but somehow they affected him far less. Perhaps he was wired differently, or made of sterner stuff.
 * 179)  PG3: At seventeen, Dave was a good kid. Sure, he dropped out of school just before his senior year, to the great consternation of his father, but Dave figured the kind of work he could find after one more year of school wouldn't be all that much different from his situation now
 * 180)  PG4: Sure he was a skinny young black man with a wild afro, but nobody living in the Seventies would look back a few decades later and say they were proud of their hair. Dave's father had a civil service job, his parents were still together, and Dave loved both of them.
 * 181)  PG5: If he had been born ten or twenty years later, he would have been the exception rather than the rule. That Friday he was on the job site in a cavern dug under the city, a space intended to become an ornate Metro station when the system opened just three years later.
 * 182)  PG6: Overtaken by events, it never did open. Dave didn't have any construction skills per se, and he lacked the upper body strength in any event, but his job was simply to keep the area as clean as possible while the other men worked. He did so with much youthful energy.
 * 183)  PG7: On October 19 the lights went out and there was something like a long earthquake. An eerie white light reflected down one of the connecting tunnels and hot dust filled the cavern even as the light faded from purple to red. But the light never disappeared entirely.
 * 184)  PG8: The city above was on fire. Dave Morrich and his co-workers were lucky. There are very few survivors so close to the footprint of the Soviet fusion warhead. The yield and corresponding destruction is many times greater than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
 * 185)  PG9: In the Tidal Basin next to where the Washington Monument once stood was now a dry crater so hot the Potomac River continually turned to steam before it could fill the hole. Surrounding this was a ring of destruction where the White House and the monuments used to be.
 * 186)  PH0: When Dave stepped out of the subway tunnel and looked to where his home used to be he saw the view was largely unobstructed, yet there was no way for him to locate exactly where he was. All the landmarks were gone. In that instant he knew that he was an orphan.
 * 187)  PH1: There was no point in even trying to look for his parents. They were as gone as anyone can possibly be. So he turned and began to walk in what he guessed was the next best direction, which was direcly away from the pillar of steam that was ground zero.
 * 188)  PH2: As he walked, he passed through a ring of human bodies that were almost recognizable, but they were charred black, and even the beer bottles and car windows lying at their feet were melted. After that he passed through a ring of halfstanding blackened buildings.
 * 189)  PH3: These buildings had white 'shadows' along their base that had been people blocking the initial flash. There Dave had to pick his way through the rubble of structures that had already been burned out just to find a hole to make his way to the next ring.
 * 190)  PH4: Dave passed through a ring of people who were still alive, but they were burned so badly they had no hope of recovery, and they were in such a state of shock that they feel nothing, made no sound, and would soon die. They were actually the lucky ones.
 * 191)  PH5: He passed through a ring of people who do make a sound, for each of them were immersed in a sea of absolutely unendurable agony that never stopped. They stripped themselves naked because clothes only made the pain worse. Their arms were held at a forty-five degree angle.
 * 192)  PH6: If their arms touched their bodies the pain of the contact grew too great. Dave was forced to remain in this ring until the fires of the rings farther away burned themselves out. He hasnt been injured, but even as he walked residual radiation did its invisible dirty work.
 * 193)  PH7: With Washington DC and much of the surrounding area devastated, America went through a profound political shift. The United States was reduced to those states which remained loyal during the Civil War, basically New York, New England, and the swath embracing the Midwest.
 * 194)  PH8: The western half of the states of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, including San Francisco, formed a new nation called Pacifica. Everything else in the south, the plains, and the mountain west was reorganized as the New Confederate States of America.
 * 195)  PH9: Tolson's DECON project still had a lot of surviving infrastructure and in the vacuum left by the FBI it became independent. DECON, in fact, grew to occupy the role of internal security in the NCSA. J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972 and Tolson died in the attack on DC.
 * 196)  PI0: But Special Agent in Charge Earl Roland, who was the technical director of the DECON project, survived. Tolson's obsession with the B'nei Elohim lived on in Roland. Every day for a half-hour or more he sat in an anteroom of the DECON headquarters in Greendome.
 * 197)  PI1: There he silently contemplated a glass case displaying the dessicated white shapes of the modified brains of Gabriel and Rebekah. The amount of science DECON had been able to obtain by studying the brains of the once-living subjects was maddeningly limited.
 * 198)  PI2: Images made with the electron microscope revealed that every molecule in every brain cell had been replaced with a kind of articulated plastic that did not degrade like the organelles and components of living protoplasm. Yet it remained beyond analysis.
 * 199)  PI3: The Hanford site where the Trinity and Nagasaki 'Fat Boy' bombs had been assembled was itself nuked in Black '73 but it was about the size of a full county and large portions were still in use five years later. The 'N' Reactors on the site was completely gone, of course.
 * 200)  PI4: Walla Walla and the tri-cities of Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland, all downwind, were still more or less ghost towns, but contamination levels in the southeast corner along the Columbia River approached the slightly elevated levels of just prior to the attack.
 * 201)  PI5: This corner was still in use. The New Confederacy was contemplating shutting the place down for good, but there was still a lot of useful infrastructure: a rail network, a power grid, a number of empty structures. Dave Morrich ended up here with two other individuals.
 * 202)  PI6: A company called Pharmadigm told Dave he would be among the first human beings to receive an experimental drug. He had little choice. The cancer that developed after the DC strike was in his bones now. It was agonizing, and he had no way to manage the pain.
 * 203)  PI7: The isolation and security at the Hanford Site was attractive when corporations meditated doing something that isn't entirely kosher from a legal standpoint, even under the lax laws of the NCSA. Dr. Amanda Chase was fully aware of this state of affairs.
 * 204)  PI9: But she didn't understand why she had to leave her rented car parked at the checkpoint called Rattlesnake Barricade. 'Government or company vehicles only,' said Dr. Ian Trochmann, her sponsor, as he drove her to the lab. 'I didn't make the rules, Dr. Chase.' 'And my visitor badge?' she asked.
 * 205)  PI9: He glanced down at his own permanment badge clipped to his front pocket. 'There is a good chance you will choose to part ways with Pharmadigm after you learn a bit more. Your recruitment involved a number of necessary deceptions which, professionally, you may not accept.'
 * 206)  PJ0: 'What do you mean?' 'First, Dr. Chase, tell me what you know, or rather, what you think you know about Pharmadigm.' She thought about that for a moment, or rather, she thought about how to get it across in a way that Dr. Trochmann, professionally, would accept.
 * 207)  PJ1: 'I know Pharmadigm is a pharmaceutical, as the name suggests. It's not one of the big ones, but it's been around for about thirty years. It began, so it is said, when government insiders privy to taxpayerfunded research met with venture capitalists to monetize it.'
 * 208)  PJ2: 'So it is said. Do you think it is true?' 'Thirty years is a long time. Things change. There are prestigious organizations with much shadier pasts. Did you know, Dr. Trochmann, that many ballet schools in Europe centuries ago were really just fronts for cathouses?'
 * 209)  PJ3: 'Can you think of a major product that is produced by Pharmadigm?' 'Nothing in the literature stands out, but science marches on even through a string of failures. I recall a potential anti-anxiety drug that actually had a reverse effect. It caused a very intense anxiety.'
 * 210)  PJ4: 'Oh, that compound has proved beneficial after all. Suppose you wanted to ask questions but you have a tough customer, so you bring out the standard toolkit for asking questions. Without the drug, you have to use the tools. With the drug, you can just show the tools.'
 * 211)  PJ5: That seemed to set Amanda back a little. Trochmann said, 'The company called Pharmadigm, which you imagine to be a pharmaceutical, is in fact a shell corporation, a front, managed by what used to be the Special Projects section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
 * 212)  PJ6: Special Projects had always been run by the Deputy Director, Clyde Tolson, who insisted that we call it DECON, for Domestic Enemies Containment, Observation, and Neutralization, but Hoover was more in tune with the political niceties and never let him make that official.
 * 213)  PJ7: But Hoover died in '72 and Tolson died in the '73 attack on DC, and there was, as you know, a reorg. Earl Roland was Deputy under Tolson, and he became Director concurrently with DECON stepping into the role for the New Confederacy the FBI formerly had for the US.
 * 214)  PJ8: I worked for Tolson from the very beginning, during World War II. Back then there was a...well, we treated it as an outbreak. A contagion. The details are so bizarre that you will imagine we are having you along for a massive joke, but it is most certainly not a joke.
 * 215)  PJ9: You will have every opportunity to examine the subjects, the decades of accumulated research and all the other evidence for yourself, under any conditions you name.' 'Is that why I was hired? You are reaching out with this information? You just want to be believed?'
 * 216)  PK0: 'On the contrary, Doctor Chase. Your field is neurology. You completed your residency under Dr. Paul Brand, who was well-known to us. It was he who discovered leprosy patients were losing toes and feet due to their neuropathy rather than to the bacilli.
 * 217)  PK1: 'I heard that Dr. Brand went over to Pacifica in the, ah, reorg.' 'Alas, no one is perfect, Dr. Chase. If you choose to work with us you will find we are dealing with a disease of both the central and the peripheral nervous systems. You are well qualified to consult.'
 * 218)  PK2: She said, 'I was hired to oversee human trials of a new kind of anaesthetic.' 'That much is entirely true,' said Trochmann. 'There will indeed be human trials. And you will find the subjects gain the ability to consciously choose to ignore any level of pain.'
 * 219)  PK3: 'You said this 'outbreak' first happened in World War II? If it is still an issue why has nothing remotely like it appeared in the literature? I would have most certainly been alert to any reports of patients with the ability to voluntarily override pain.'
 * 220)  PK4: 'Between 1942 and 1950 I was able to examine only four persons afflicted with what I call White Brain Disease. We have the remains of two of these. We lost contact with the other two and we have been unable to locate them ever since, but we know they remain alive.
 * 221)  PK5: Four years ago, a woman named Judith Gervasi was brought to our attention. She presents the first confirmed case of White Brain Disease we have seen in nearly three decades. As with the others, we are exercising our authority to hold her in a mandatory quarantine.
 * 222)  PK6: Miss Gervasi was born in the United Kingdom, but she also holds an Israeli passport, for what that's worth, as there really is no Israel anymore. Like the four other subjects, she is most reticent when it comes to questions about how she contracted her strange ailment.
 * 223)  PK7: We recently learned, however, that a very dark fluid drawn from the patient is capable of inducing White Brain Disease in test animals after about a week. So it can cross species. And yes, we are now ready to commence human trials, which is where you come into the picture.
 * 224)  PK8: It was Director Roland who thought we should be 'reaching out' with this problem. He hopes that a fresh set of eyes and a fresh mind, one from outside of DECON, might help us reach a more productive state and finally discern what the hell is going on with all this.'
 * 225)  PK9: They arrived at the desolate location where the town of White Bluffs once existed, before all the townspeople were ordered to move away in the spring of 1943. Only two structures existed here, the DECON lab, and a shack for the guards who watched the lab overnight.
 * 226)  PL0: 'So here we are at the lab, and the Director himself is waiting for you inside, if you still want the position. If not, I will drive you back to Rattlesnake Barricade for a friendly parting of our ways, I'll hand over a check for your time already spent, and no harm done.'
 * 227)  PL1: Amanda said, 'I'll stay, Dr. Trochmann. You've certainly made me curious, and it would be a shame to waste the weeks of prep I went through for this job. But what puzzles me is the usual non-disclosure agreement seems to have been omitted. Or perhaps it was just forgotten?'
 * 228)  PL2: Dr. Trochmann turned off the engine and smiled. 'Think back to the anxiety-inducing drug, Dr. Chase. Somehow, DECON has never seen the need to get a formal non-disclosure agreement in writing. Somehow a informal understanding by all parties has always been sufficient.'
 * 229)  PL3: In the conference room of the lab where Dr. Amanda Chase was introduced to Director Earl Roland her eyes kept drifting to what she thought were two detailed models of human brains cast in white plastic, sitting in the center of the long table. 'May I have a closer look?'
 * 230)  PL4: 'Most certainly,' said Roland, grinning, as he pushed both of them closer to her side of the table. Examining both of them quite thoroughly, she said, 'They are both remarkably accurate, except for this structure at the back. I fail to see the point of making that.'
 * 231)  PL5: Roland's grin became an full smile after that remark. 'Ah, you must think these are sculptures of some sort, or perhaps casts made in plastic of a mold taken after the demise of a living person. But what you have in your hands are actual relics, Dr. Chase.'
 * 232)  PL6: Amanda eyed both Roland and Dr. Trochmann with a quick flash of indignation, which they fully expected. She said, 'The color is all wrong, no matter what solution you used to preserve them. Brains of this age would be an unsightly dark yellowish-brown. And softer.'
 * 233)  PL7: Trochmann said, 'Dr. Chase, do you see the pins inside the cup of bone shaped like the letter 'D'?' She looked closely, but shook her head. 'I see none.' 'Oh, you must be looking at Gabriel Shybear,' said Roland. 'The other one belonged to Kimberly Shybear.
 * 234)  PL8: That one still has the pins.' Amanda looked at the other relic and saw rings of black pins arranged with geometric precision. It was the precision which spurred her unbelief. 'The pins you see would grow back if they were broken off, at least they would in a living subject.
 * 235)  PL9: There was a subject named Rebekah Redstar who was also afflicted with this change. She held Gabriel's brain in her hands even as you are holding Kim's in your own, and sabotaged it. She broke off all the pins. So we learned they do not grow in a subject who is dead.'
 * 236)  PM0: She said, 'Even healthy living things do not develop with such mechanical precision, yet you say this is a disease? Or perhaps a mutation? So much the worse for your claim.' Roland said, 'If you look more closely, you will see where we cut tissue strips as samples.
 * 237)  PM1: We have examined these samples under extreme magnification, and there is always more detail. But it is the nature of the detail which is most interesting. How did Director Tolson put it, Ian?' Trochmann remembered well. 'He compared it to a bridge across a stream.
 * 238)  PM2: He said that nature, with all the time in the world, still only made bridges by mindlessly rolling boulders into a rough line, or maybe having a log drift downstream and get caught by boulders, and that is what we see with how evolution made our nervous system.
 * 239)  PM3: But this is like someone poured concrete over the boulders, then cut up the log for timber to build a functional and efficient truss.' 'So you think this is artificial,' mused Amanda. Roland said, 'That is something I'd like to find out. And if so, who did it, and why.'
 * 240)  PM4: Dr. Trochmann asked a question. 'Dr. Chase, in your professional opinion, what is the mechanism by which human beings store long-term memories?' She thought about that for a moment, then said, 'Even now, we only have a variety of competing models, all in a state of flux.
 * 241)  PM5: And when you talk about them, you have to specify what level you're referring to. For instance, I am of the opinion that what we call autobiographical memory is stored, at the highest level, in the dream format. But you may be asking about the lowest, physical level.'
 * 242)  PM6: Trochmann nodded his head, so she continued. 'The brain has layers upon layers of neurons arranged in networks that are connected more or less randomly, but order can be imposed on them in much the same way you can tread through a field of grass and create paths.
 * 243)  PM7: So every time you get behind the wheel of a car, your movements seem almost automatic. You call it 'muscle memory' but it's really your mind rehearsing some well-worn paths in the grass. But other paths double back around and make loops. These are nagging memories.
 * 244)  PM8: You might find yourself rehearsing something you did in the past that was very stupid, something that nobody else in the world but you remembers, yet you process them with emotions of regret, or shame. Those are the loops. But they're important in making you who you are.'
 * 245)  PM9: 'Thank you, Dr. Chase. And would you find it safe to say that three years after death, a human brain could not, by any means, still retain memories in any meaningful way?' 'Not even three minutes after death,' said Amanda. 'It begins to turn to slurry almost immediately.'
 * 246)  PN0: 'And yet Deputy Director Tolson reported that a woman named Rebekah Redstar, who exhibited the same Dshaped cup at the back of her head, was able to connect herself to the brain of Gabriel Shybear with a cable prepared specifically for that purpose.
 * 247)  PN1: Director Tolson reported that this Rebekah, after making contact with Gabriel's brain, knew about and reacted to actions and conversations that only he, Gabriel Shybear, and Director Roland had witnessed, words and events which had been conveyed to no others.
 * 248)  PN2: Amanda shifted her glance to Earl Roland, as though seeking confirmation, which he provided simply by not objecting to what Dr. Trochmann said. Trochmann continued. 'We have concluded that that these brains are preserved in both the external and internal sense.'
 * 249)  PN3: Amanda chewed on that, then said, 'Do we all agree these are not living brains?' Trochmann and Roland both made affirmation of that. 'And you told me these pins at the back, if they were damaged, would grow back, but only if the subject was still alive.' Both men agreed.
 * 250)  PN4: 'In that event, gentlemen, I fail to see how these relics can be, as you claimed, preserved in an internal sense. It takes a great deal of energy for neurons to propagate information. The brain alone consumes fully a fifth of all the energy used by a human body.'
 * 251)  PN5: 'Science has advanced quite rapidly over the last thirty-five years,' said Trochmann, 'but we knew, even in the beginning, the dynamics of this change. It moved from neuron to neuron and retained all the pathways, but the ion channels were replaced with something else.
 * 252)  PN6: Instead of atoms of potassium and chlorine and sodium being pumped in and out of cell walls to make a wave, like letters moving on a marquee, you have long gadgets with sliding rods. It's mechanical now, not electrical. Memories are stored in the position of the rods.
 * 253)  PN7: That, at least, is what we discovered when we put samples of these relics under an electron microscope, and if you care to take your own samples, Dr. Chase, and have a look for yourself, it is most certain you will find that to be true as well.'
 * 254)  PN8: Amanda removed her glasses to rub her eyes as she shook her head. Director Roland interpreted this as an expression of exasperation. He said, 'Dr. Chase, we are pleased that you have joined our project, and it is my sincere hope that you will help us finally crack this nut.'
 * 255)  PN9: 'But if you believe we are executing a complicated ruse for some obscure but nefarious purpose, we are ready to let you take all the time you need to investigate all the evidence for yourself, with any apparatus you require and under any conditions you name yourself.'
 * 256)  PO0: 'There is no need,' said Amanda. 'I know how important you are, Director, and I cannot imagine why you would spend decades carrying out an elaborate practical joke. Besides, considering what you now have planned, certainly I will see the transformation myself, first-hand.'
 * 257)  PO1: Judith Gervasi's door wasn't locked. At mid-day there came a knock, and Amanda Chase entered the area of the lab set aside as Judith's living space to find her eating lunch. Amanda herself brought a white cardboard box that had been given to her by Dr. Trochmann.
 * 258)  PO2: 'Hello, Judith? I'm Doctor Amanda Chase. I came to have a look at you but they said you were having lunch, so I thought I'd have my lunch too before we started. If you'd rather eat alone just say so, and I can leave.' Judith merely smiled and waved at a second chair.
 * 259)  PO3: Dr. Chase sat down and started unpacking what they had given her to eat. She looked across to Judith and asked, 'What are you having?' 'I'm having what passes for roast beef, in America,' she said. 'But I'm not really complaining. In the army I've had much, much worse.'
 * 260)  PO4: 'In the army? Were you in the British army, or the Israeli?' 'I hold the rank of Sgan Aluf in the Tsva ha-Hagana le-Yisra'el, or the Israeli Defense Force. This puts me above a major but below a colonel, but none of that really matters if I'm the last one left alive.'
 * 261)  PO5: Amanda's eyes sank to her food, and she said, sheepishly, 'I'm sorry.' Amanda saw that she, too, had been given a plate of roast beef wrapped in foil, along with potato wedges, greens, and a small can of pineapple juice. She ate for a bit, then laid eyes on Judith again.
 * 262)  PO6: 'Your chart says you were born in 1928. I don't know how you managed it, Judith, but I was born in '48 and frankly, you look like you are my age.' 'I did not lie about my age, Dr. Chase. I have passports from two countries that were satisfied with other documents.'
 * 263)  PO7: 'Aside from that, after we have lunch and you give me the physical you came to do, you will find the indelible evidence of my stay at Ohrdruf-Nord, which would indicate I was born before the end of the War, at the very least. And you will be glad you ate first.'
 * 264)  PO8: Amanda was much chastened. She said, 'Please, Judith, I did not mean to imply you were untruthful. But your youthful appearance is absolutely remarkable. If I look like you do in twenty more years it would be a most happy state of affairs. I wonder, how do you manage it?'
 * 265)  PO9: 'There is a trick to it,' Judith said, 'but Roland and Trochmann have already asked you to believe in six impossible things before lunch. You are here to evaluate my health, including my cognition, and if I told you my secret there is a chance you would misdiagnose me.'
 * 266)  PP0: 'Very well, Judith, if my own cognition does not fail me I shall not inquire about this subject again, and your concern for a possible misdiagnosis, by itself, argues well for your mental health. I shall make a note of that. Fair enough?' And Judith nodded with her assent.
 * 267)  PP1: So they finished their lunch with only small talk, then Amanda, with Judith's permission, proceeded to the examination, starting with her vital signs. She was also checking for any damage Judith might have allowed to happen to herself by the ability to ignore pain.
 * 268)  PP2: 'They told me you can choose not to endure pain,' Amanda said. 'Is that true?' 'Yes, it's true,' Judith replied. 'It seems to be part of the position description for the B'nei Elohim.' 'The B'nei Elohim?' 'Yes. That is Hebrew for 'offspring of the holy ones.'
 * 269)  PP3: Think of it as my coping mechanism. I like to think there is a purpose to what happened to me. At any rate it sounds better than White Brain Disease.' 'Well, Judith, pain is also a coping mechanism. It's how your body, once damaged, avoids further damage. It's a gift.
 * 270)  PP4: I can tell you that people born without the ability to feel pain rarely live to see their twentieth birtday. If you have the ability to turn pain off at will, it does not bode well for a long life.' 'I have learned that pain is a gift that can be abused,' Judith said.
 * 271)  PP5: 'So think of my adaption as a defense mechanism against that abuse.' When Judith lifted her blouse to allow Amanda to listen to her breathe with a stethoscope the whip scars were revealed. Amanda could not stop herself from taking a sudden gasp of air at the sight.
 * 272)  PP6: There were at least a dozen cross-crossing weals, and some were raised as long unsightly ridges called keloids. 'This happened to you in, where did you say it was? Nordruff?' 'Ohrdruf-Nord,' corrected Judith. 'April 1945. Nothing in my life prepared me for this. Nothing.'
 * 273)  PP7: 'Have you ever talked through this with anyone before?' 'Oh yes, there is a certain acquaintance who has helped me in so many ways I cannot tell. After the war I wanted to hunt down the rats who did this and got away, but hy convinced me that the army was a better choice.
 * 274)  PP8: 'But the one who did this.' Judith made a gesture to the scars on her back. 'I did her a treat, oh yes I did, on the day the camp was liberated.' 'How did you come to be there, Judith? Germany? Poland? I thought you were a subject of Her Majesty.'
 * 275)  PP9: 'My family lived on the Isle of Wight, in the English Channel. We were abducted, my mother and I, and taken to a camp in Cherbourg, France. That camp was just a camp. But before it could be surrounded by the invading allies we were taken further east to a work camp.
 * 276)  PQ0: The allied armies kept coming, so we kept moving, and ended up in the kind of work camp where you were worked to death. And still Patton came on. That's how we ended up at Ohrdruf-Nord, which was a satellite of Buchenwald. No more work, just a living hell, until death.'
 * 277)  PQ1: 'I'm not really a student of history,' Amanda said, 'but all this sounds so horrible, Judith. I don't know how you came through it.' 'I like you, Dr. Chase. I want you to remember that when this is over and I'm no longer here to tell you.' 'What do you mean, Judith?
 * 278)  'Do you imagine something is going to happen to you?' 'You are going to add David and Jerry to the ranks of the B'nei Elohim, and after that we're all going to walk right out of here.' 'Do you really think so, Judith?' 'Why not? Three others did precisely that.'
 * 279)  Judith smiled at the sheer naivete of Amanda. 'I'm here under official quarantine, am I not? How did Kimberly Shybear and Sofie Krause escape? Were they cured and released? And why did Tolson let Rebekah Redstar go? You're not asking the right questions, Dr. Chase.'
 * 280)  'You must be mistaken, Judith, at least in part. I've seen what Director Roland claims are the remains of Kimberly Shybear. So she must have died in quarantine, no?' 'No. Germany was not the only country to operate concentration camps. Kim was once held in an American one.
 * 281)  Weren't you even curious what happened to the previous subjects of this particular research project?' 'Dr. Trochmann told me only that they 'lost contact' with two of them.' 'What a strangely passive way to put it,' Judith said. 'Wouldn't you like to know more?'
 * 282)  When Amanda had no answer, Judith said, 'I believe in your heart of hearts that you do. At the very least, it will keep you from being entirely blindsided when three B'nei Elohim walk out of here in our usual spectacular fashion, right under your very noses.'
 * 283)  As they crossed the Appalachians Lilith tried to explain how Robyn's precognition worked. She explained that a particle, like an electron, wasn't just a little dot moving through time, it was more like a long line, growing like a crystal, and the exact point where it crystallized was the present.
 * 284)  From that point going forward, many other lines existed in a ghostly form, including the Primary, the most probable future, which was almost firm enough to be a crystal. 'Time is a fire,' Lilith said, 'and history is ash.' After Robyn understood all that, she wanted to know how they could loop back in time.
 * 285)  'Wouldn't we be walking into the middle of a bunch of hard crystals? she asked. Even the air we breathe?' Lilith said that their bodies could dissolve the crystals of everything they touched, set even the ashes of the past afire again.
 * 286)  'But we don't put the whole world in play again just by being back here,' she cautioned. 'I'm looking for a crucial event that can give us leverage.' 'I don't understand,' Robyn said. 'I know I have a power, but that power comes entirely from you and Bat-El. Why am I tagging along?'
 * 287)  'It's hard to explain,' Lilith said, 'but I guess the way I could put it is I can't see the forest for the trees. Yes your power ultimately comes from the Elohim, but by necessity you are looking at time as though through a pinhole. Am I right? Tell me, Robyn, what is it like for you?'
 * 288)  'There's this bigb&canvas, but every time I do something or even say something, I can see a ripple run up that canvas and change the paint that's on it. Sometimes it's a big ripple, l like when you showed up with Edgar the Elder, and the whole painting changes.' 'That's why you're tagging along, Robyn.
 * 289)  I have too much information of all the different ways things can go, so I have no information. But you, with your pinhole view, can help me find the pivot points where we can do tiny changes and make big improvements.' 'So you can see that canvas also, you and Bat-El?'
 * 290)  'We're painting that canvas, my daughter and I. And do you know something else about our art, Robyn? We are perfectionists.' Robyn and Lilith ran out of Highway 50 at the nation's capital and got a room on the fourth floor of the Howard Johnson's hotel on Virginia Avenue.
 * 291)  After they got all settled in, and the sun had gone down, Lilith took Robyn out on the balcony and said, 'I brought you here to sensitize you, to let you practice what I need you to do.
 * 292)  So please tell me what comes to mind.' Robyn was silent for a moment as she surveyed the stack of events that piled up in her mind. At length she said, 'All this, the city, it's gone in a few months. H-bomb.'
 * 293)  'In October there will be a war in the Middle-East that will spin out of control. It won't turn into World War III, but if you are able, Robyn, tell me what does happen.' 'There's chaos at first. Millions of people are dead, here and in Russia.
 * 294)  The United States moves the capital back to Philadelphia, where it was in the very beginning, but the states in the South and the mountain West take advantage of the opportunity and file for divorce, like way back in the Civil War.
 * 295)  America is basically down to just New England and the states north of the Ohio River over to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, that area. The other side picks Atlanta to be their capital, and they get southern California, the Rockies, the Great Plains, and Dixie.
 * 296)  They actually go ahead and call it the New Confederacy. But Northern California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, they form a third country called Pacifica.' 'So look out towards the end of the century, Robyn. Tell me what happens.'
 * 297)  'Okay, so what's left of the United States still has the most people and industry and money, but militarily they're kind of weak. All the bases were in the south and the west.
 * 298)  The New Confederacy has the most land and resources, but their culture and their political system isn't set up to allow their people to flourish, only corporations.It was the same thing in the Civil War, men dying to keep cotton-growers in the money. Anyone who isn't white and straight will be basically non-citizens there.
 * 299)  The New Confederates end up using the military they inherited to extort their neighbors, US and Mexico, the Caribbean, and try to bite off chunks of land.
 * 300)  Everyone thinks they're assholes. But they won't mess too much with Pacifica, though, because that country inherits the west coast submarine fleet, a bunch of carriers and a crapload of nukes.' 'Tell me about Pacifica then. That's where we shall have to live.'
 * 301)  'Pacifica is the smallest piece, with the fewest people, but in that country the people will come first. They will do some amazing things to make life on Earth a paradise, but the operative word there is Earth. The space program is entirely forgotten in all this, except for lofting some satellites.
 * 302)  Everyone turns inward. And this, Lilith, if I understand your goals correctly, will not do.' 'No, Robyn, it will not do at all. We must make some sort of change, if only to make sure the suffering of those millions of people will not come to be.
 * 303)  But I'm entirely at a loss as to how to proceed. I need to find a place where events constrict in such a way that if we apply a small change it will prevent the Cold War from going hot in October.
 * 304)  But only you can see time that way, how it does constrict.' Robyn desperately wanted to help, or at least give Lilith the impression that she was trying to help.
 * 305)  She looked across the well-lit street at a large array of striking, modern buildings with graceful curves, very unlike any architecture she had ever seen. 'There's something about that place,' she said with more confidence than she really felt.
 * 306)  'Something important, and the President is mixed up in it, but we're about a year too late and now I can't unravel what it was.' 'Give me a date and we're there.' 'What day is it now? Some vacation, huh? I completely lost track.' 'Today is Saturday, June 16, 1973.' 'So there you go, Lilith.
 * 307)  Make it June 16, 1972.' They bugged the wrong phone during the May 1972 Watergate break-in. It was just a secretary's phone mostly used by staffers to order in Chinese food, not the one used by the Democratic Party chairman that was clear on the other side of the office in a locked room.
 * 308)  The corresponding Operation GEMSTONE transcripts were useless and the Attorney General, loath to piss away $89,000 in diverted and laundered campaign funds, ordered a second break-in to square things away.
 * 309)  On June 14 the GEMSTONE leader codenamed 'Daddy' got his Washington team back together and the 'Spook' told the same group of burglars he used the first time to fly back up from Miami.
 * 310)  It took two days to get everyone into place with the right equipment, mostly off-the-shelf stuff that couldn't be traced, but there was no written plan and no rehearsal. This astonished the 'Photographer', a semi-retired CIA operative who had captained a boat for over three hundred missions to communist Cuba.
 * 311)  Some of the captives where men who might have been his own friends had he dared to lift their hoods. But his friend the 'Realtor', a fellow Bay of Pigs veteran, practically worshiped the ground the Spook walked on.
 * 312)  The 'Quiet Man' walked nonchalantly through the front door of the Watergate office complex, signed in, took the elevator to the top floor, entered the stairwell, then used duct tape to cheat the locks on every door all the way down to the parking garage levels. But the Quiet Man was a complete moron. He taped the doors horizontally, rather than vertically, so anyone and his dog could see it.
 * 313)  A private security guard named Frank Wills did see the tape, because his first task was always to check the basement doors for tampering when he came on to his shift at midnight. He pulled the tape off and called his supervisor, who told him to check the other doors and call back in fifteen minutes.
 * 314)  But what Frank did instead was go get some fast food across the street with a young intern who was pulling a late-nighter, a young lady that he was trying to make tracks with.
 * 315)  When the actual burglary commenced, it lasted for about seven minutes before they came back to their base of operations in Room 419 of the Watergate Hotel and told Daddy the duct tape on the B-2 garage level door was missing. Meanwhile the 'Locksmith' and 'The Goon' went around looking for another lock to pick.
 * 316)  The Realtor and the Spook told Daddy they wanted to abort the mission, because obviously a guard must have removed the tape. The Photographer said he was ready to do whatever Daddy decided to do. Daddy decided to cancel the evolution and try again two weeks later.
 * 317)  So the Quiet Man made his rounds again, this time removing the tape from all the doors. By the time Frank Wills finished his hamburger and actually did what his supervisor told him to do (check the other doors), there was no tape.
 * 318)  He figured it had just been some lazy workman who taped the B-2 level door open that one time to save a few seconds of hassle fumbling for keys while carrying something big. Wills forgot about the entire episode.
 * 319)  But the third time was the charm for the burglars. On July 1 the GEMSTONE team returned one more time to the sixth floor offices of the DNC at the Watergate complex, bugged the correct phone, and photographed ten rolls of film of the Realtor holding documents in his blue-gloved hands.
 * 320)  He even made off with some blank stationary with Party letterhead. What they didn't find was evidence that Cuban President Fidel Castro was giving money to the Democratic Party, which is what they hoped to find.
 * 321)  But that was okay, because President Nixon's master of dirty tricks, Donald Segretti, simply used the letterhead they stole and the photographs of various signatures to manufacture such evidence.
 * 322)  Tactically, there was little profit in any of this illegal activity, all it really did was turn what would have been a historic 49-state victory in November 1972 into an even more historic 50-state victory.
 * 323)  But having avoided a messy second term scandal, Nixon was free to bring about what he called the New American Revolution, making the executive branch nearly omnipotent with a cabinet whose heads were supremely loyal to him. Congress he largely ignored.
 * 324)  But this notion of an imperial presidency was going to bite America in the ass in October 1973 when the Yom Kippur War spiraled out of anyone's control, even that of an Imperial President. Rewind to early Saturday morning, June 17, 1972.
 * 325)  At 12:30 in the morning, Robyn and Lilith walked across the street from the Howard Johnsons and entered the parking garage of the Watergate hotel/office complex. Robyn led them one level down, and walked toward the door leading into the building. It was locked.
 * 326)  'This is going to sound very strange, Lil, but if there's an empty mailbag sitting right here for the next hour, Washington DC will not get nuked..' 'A mailbag?' 'Yeah, you know, like the kind a mailman carries.' 'What's going on here anyway?'
 * 327)  'President Nixon sent some burglars here tonight. Well, not the President exactly, but men working for him did. If the burglars get caught, there's not going to be a nuclear war. He'll be too preoccupied by the scandal.' 'Why would such a small thing become a scandal?'
 * 328)  'Because Nixon will abuse his power and try to cover it up, and that will be the scandal.' 'So why don't we just call the police?' 'If we do, they'll get away. They've got a lookout posted in our hotel. In the room right next to ours, in fact.'
 * 329)  'So how does a mailbag lead to them getting caught?' 'It's very complicated. If I try to explain, we'll run out of time.' 'Fine, I'll go find a mailbag.' 'Empty one, Lil.' Robyn saw Lilith shift a little bit, change her position slightly, but she was carrying an empty mailbag.
 * 330)  Lilith had used the worm-tunnel to pop into a nearby post office, lifted a bag, dumped out the mail, and returned to the same spot and instant that she left.  Then they both went back across the street to their room and watched from the balcony.
 * 331)  At one AM the balding Quiet Man pushed open the door from the inside, noted that the duct tape he had placed there before was missing. But he did not immediately assume a guard had removed it, because he saw the empty US Postal Service mail bag sitting there.
 * 332)  He assumed a mailman had come and tried to use his key to unlock the door, but found the door was already accessible thanks to the strip of tape. The Quiet Man also assumed the mailman had removed the tape, but that he would be too busy delivering mail to think of reporting it to anyone.
 * 333)  So he replaced the missing tape with another strip to cheat the lock, and of course being stupid he posted it horizontally, leaving it perfectly visible. At about one thirty, the Watergate security guard Frank Willis pushed the door open a second time and saw another strip of tape.
 * 334)  He said, 'What the hell?' but left the second piece tape in place. He left to call the police. At 1:52 AM, Robyn and Lilith watched a piece of junk car pull up across the street.
 * 335)  Two informally dressed longhaired men got out of the vehicle and entered the hotel. Neither Robyn nor Lilith realized they were plainclothes cops using an unmarked car, and neither did Alfred Baldwin, watching from the balcony right next door to them.
 * 336)  Lilith scowled at the man, then went back inside the room. Baldwin was more than a little nervous and felt like he had to say something to explain to Robyn why he was out on his balcony watching the Watergate. 'Beautiful night.' 'You have no idea.'
 * 337)  It was getting late, but Robyn and Lilith watched the growing police presence at the Watergate complex from their balcony in the Howard Johnson's across the avenue. Their funny neighbor Mr. Baldwin had to check out quite suddenly. Lilith asked Robyn, 'So did we do well?'
 * 338)  Robyn looked dreamy for a few seconds. 'Oh yes. This bust right here isn't enough to do in the President, at least until after the election, but he's going to try to cover it up, and then he's going to totally botch the cover-up, and that will nail him in the end.
 * 339)  'What about the war in the MiddleEast next year?' 'We still get that, and Israel wins, barely, but it doesn't go nuclear. No one goes nuclear, in fact, until well into the next century. Meanwhile the space program just sort of peters out. The moon landings are never followed up.'
 * 340)  why do they kill the space program?' 'It costs too much and there's no more rivalry with the communist world to conquer space. Oh, they don't kill it dead, they still muck around in orbit, but the planets? They just send robots there instead.
 * 341)  'No it doesn't. We definitely must find a way to make the Americans reconsider rolling back their space program.'  'You should use reverse psychology, Lil. If we're waiting for them ud there telling them to go ahead and dial their program back, they'll do precisely the opposite.'
 * 1)  why do they kill the space program?' 'It costs too much and there's no more rivalry with the communist world to conquer space. Oh, they don't kill it dead, they still muck around in orbit, but the planets? They just send robots there instead.
 * 2)  'No it doesn't. We definitely must find a way to make the Americans reconsider rolling back their space program.'  'You should use reverse psychology, Lil. If we're waiting for them ud there telling them to go ahead and dial their program back, they'll do precisely the opposite.'