“Pernicious?”

“George, where was the debate? Were you consulted? Did you vote to have your whereabouts blasted to the universe? What right had these people to act on your behalf?”

“I can’t say it keeps me awake at night.”

“It does me,” he said hoarsely. “We know there is something out there waiting for us. The Kuiper Anomaly — long faded from the news — is still out there, orbiting silently. My seismic signals, the dark matter craft that decelerated and veered inside the Earth: more evidence. Signaling is dangerous. It must be. That is why the sky is so quiet. Whoever is out there has learned to keep quiet — or has been forced to be.”

“Peter, I don’t see what this has to do with the destruction of the black hole lab.”

He sighed again. “George, there are some SETI proponents who say that our feeble attempts to signal so far are futile. Plaques on clunky spacecraft, radio signals — all of this is laughably primitive technology. Jungle drums. It won’t attract the attention of anybody advanced enough to matter.”

“Right. And the kind of technology they will use—”

“Well, we don’t know, but we can speculate. For instance, about technologies based on quantum gravity. Or even the manipulation of space-time itself. If you could do that there is no limit to what you could achieve. Warp drive — faster than light. Antigravity. The control of inertia—”

I began to see where this was going. “The San Jose Black Hole Kit would be a manipulation of space- time.”

“That toy black hole would have stood out like a single campfire shining in the middle of a darkened landscape.”

“You think the San Jose people were trying to signal to aliens?”

“Oh, they didn’t mean to. All they were doing was trying to build a test bed for quantum gravity, just as advertised. I’m sure of that. But they wouldn’t listen to our warnings — the Slan(t)ers. They would have gone on, and on, until they lit that damn campfire …”

And then I understood what had been done. I rubbed my eyes. “What did you use, Peter?”

“Semtex-H,” he whispered. “Not difficult to get hold of if you know how. Before the fall of communism the Czechs shipped out a thousand tons of the stuff, mostly through Libya. My police background …”

He hadn’t set the thing off, he said, but he had designed the system. It turned out to be simple. He had used electronics parts he bought from RadioShack to build a simple radar-activated sensor. It was based on dashboard detectors supposed to warn drivers of the presence of a police radar gun. If attached to a detonator, such a sensor could be used to set off a bomb, in response to a signal from a radar gun — or even from something smaller, lighter. He had learned these techniques in Northern Ireland.

“You know, Semtex is remarkable. It’s brown, like putty. You can mold it to any shape. And it’s safe to handle. You can hold it over a naked flame and it won’t explode, not without a detonator. So easy.”

I held my breath.

“You see, it’s all about the future,” he said softly. “That’s what I’ve come to understand. We humans find ourselves on a curve of exponential growth, doubling in numbers and capability, and doubling again. We are wolflings now, but we are growing. We will become adults, we will become strong. Billions will flow from each of us, a torrent of minds, a great host of the future. This is our predestination. The future is ours. And that is what they perceive, I think.”

“Who?”

“Those beyond the Earth. They see our potential. Our threat. They would want to stop it now, while we are still weak, cut down the great tree while it is still a sapling.”

I tried to hold this extraordinary chain of logic in my head. “All right. I can see why you thought the San Jose lab should be stopped. But what are you doing here?”

“The hive is just as much of a threat to the future. Don’t you see that yet? It is an end point to our destiny. And we have to avoid it.”

I could see a glimmer of light in the rock cleft. He was holding something; it looked like a TV remote. “Peter, what’s that?”

“The switch,” he said. “For the bomb.”

My sister stood there in her white smock, her hands clenched in fists at her sides. I didn’t need to tell Rosa her worst suspicions had turned out to be accurate.

Her attendants, the beefy drones, whispered and fluttered, wide-eyed, clutching each other and walking about in little knots. Meanwhile Peter sat silently in his cave, a brooding demon.

And I was stuck in the middle, trying to find a way out for everybody.

“Peter.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” he said dryly.

“Do you trust me?”

“What?”

“I’ve listened to your theories. I’ve taken your advice. I’ve even taken you seriously. Who else has done all that?”

He hesitated. “All right. Yes, I trust you.”

“Then listen to me. There has to be a way out of this.”

“You’re talking about negotiation? George — you said it yourself. You can’t negotiate with an anthill.”

“Nevertheless we have to try,” I said. “There are a lot of lives at stake.”

“Nobody will be hurt. I’m not some homicidal nut, George, for God’s sake. But I will open this place up. Expose it to the world.”

“But maybe you won’t even have to take the risk. Why not give it a try?” I fell silent and waited, forcing a response. Old management trick.

At last he replied. “All right. Since it’s you.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

“Rosa,” he hissed now. “She is the key. The rest were born here, and are beyond hope. But Rosa might understand. She has a broader perspective, a self-awareness you’re not supposed to have, here in the termite mound. You might persuade her to see what she is. But George — you’ll have to get her on her own. Get her away from the others. Otherwise you’ll never jolt her out of it.”

“I’ll try.”

I walked up to Rosa. Her eyes narrowed as she waited for me to speak. Suddenly I had power, I realized, but it wasn’t a power I wanted. “He’ll talk. But you have to do things my way, Rosa.” I glanced at the drones, who continued to flap ineffectually behind her. “Get rid of these people.”

Rosa actually quailed. I could see that the thought of being alone in a situation like this, cut off from the rest of the Order and the subtle cues of other drones, disturbed her on some deep level. But she complied. The drones went fluttering away, out of sight around the bend of the corridor.

I snapped: “And bring Lucia here.”

She shook her head. “George, the doctors—”

“Just do it. And her baby. Otherwise I walk away.”

We confronted each other. But, just as I had waited out Peter’s response, I stared her down.

At last she backed off. “All right.” She walked a little way down the corridor, dug a cell phone out of her pocket, and made a call.

It took a few minutes for Lucia to arrive. She was dressed in a plain smock, and she was carrying a small blanket-wrapped bundle. She was barefoot, and she walked slowly, uncertainly; I glimpsed attendants, perhaps from the chambers of the mamme-nonne, lingering around the bend of the corridor. When Lucia saw me she ran toward me. “Mr. Poole — oh, Mr. Poole—”

“Are you all right?”

Her face was sallow, I saw, her cheeks sunken, her eyes rheumy. Her hair was coiffed but it looked lifeless. She had lost weight; I could see her shoulder blades protrude through the smock, and her wrists and ankles were skeletal. I would never have believed she was still just fifteen. But she was smiling, and she held up her baby to me — her second baby, I reminded myself. She handled the child awkwardly, though. “They had to fetch her from the nurseries … It’s the first time I’ve seen her since she was born. Isn’t she beautiful?”