"You're kidding."

"Not at all. He thought that they would just raise some money and replicate the Taj. And all the other Americans just nodded as though that were a perfectly reasonable idea."

"It's unbelievable."

Dr. Radhakrishnan had opened the little case now, taking care not to burn his hands with the intense cold, and removed the two narrow glass tubes. Each one was mostly empty except for a small dark wad of material near one end. He raised them up toward the light.

"They have no values of any kind," he said. "Nothing means anything to them. The Taj is just a construction project, a particular manipulation of assets. And whatever they're doing on the Ashok Theatre site is more of the same."

He saw a glint of red and realized that the dark wads must be tissue samples of some kind, which had presumably leaked a bit of blood against the glass walls of the tubes before they had frozen. He stepped over toward his window to allow the winter sunlight to illuminate them a little better.

Arun's voice sounded far away. "Maybe they're building a Taj in Delhi so they don't have to take the bus all the way to Agra," he joked.

Dr. Radhakrishnan said nothing. He had recognized the contents of the tubes.

Mr. Salvador had mailed him pieces of two people's brains.

12

From two thousand feet above the California coast, Dr. Radhakrishnan could see the whole thing taking shape. This was one of those especially nice corporate jets with oversized windows: a Gale Aerospace Gyrfalcon. The windows gave him a panoramic view of the entire parcel: there was the flat, sandy plain where the future position of the private landing strip was already marked out with little fluorescent orange flags. There was the gravel access road, which was rapidly being transmuted into asphalt by a road crew. There was the grove of trees that would be turned into a little park where the workers could recreate. And finally, high above the pounding white crests of the Pacific, there was the rocky bluff where the facility itself would be constructed.

Was being constructed.

"My God," Dr. Radhakrishnan blurted. "It's half finished."

Mr. Salvador smiled. "This sort of rough structural work always goes surprisingly quickly. I suppose that putting on all the door-knobs will take eons. Care for another cigar?

The coastline passed beneath them. The afternoon sun was now slanting in through the windows on the left side of the Gyrfalcon.

Dr. Radhakrishnan still didn't know how to take all of this. He had been thinking about it for days and still hadn't figured it out. It

was way too much. Totally unrealistic. He had scraped for money and recognition his whole career. Now he was getting everything.

The Manhattan Project, as Arun had said. This could not be happening. But it was happening.

His instincts told him that there was no rational explanation for bis frantic expenditure of money. But that was a closed-minded attitude not befitting a scientist. He was not a businessman. Who was he to say that it didn't make financial sense?

Dr. Radhakrishnan V.R.J.V.V. Gangadhar belonged on this business jet. And he deserved his research institutes also. It was altogether fitting and proper.

"I couldn't help noticing you had some newspapers in your briefcase," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "I didn't get a chance to pick one up this morning."

"Yesterday's New York Times," Mr. Salvador said.

"Oh," Dr. Radhakrishnan said disappointedly. "I was hoping to take a look at the stock quotes."

"Say no more," Mr. Salvador said. He put his cigar down and moved to the front of the cabin. He sat down in a leather swivel chair in front of a portable communications setup that was built into the forward bulkhead of the Gyrfalcon, just behind the cockpit. It included a telephone and a fax machine, a keyboard, and a couple of flat-screen monitors. The fax machine had been oozing paper almost since the moment they had taken off in Elton, and by now a long curlicue had piled up beneath it on the deck. "These Gale birds are pricey but they have peerless avionics," Mr. Salvador continued, punching away on the keyboard.

A stock ticker materialized at the bottom of one of the monitor screens, scrolling from right to left. "Can you make this out from where you are?"

"Yes, I can see it very clearly, thank you."

"I should have anticipated our interest and had it running when you came aboard. My apologies."

"Oh, I'm not that much of a player," Dr. Radhakrishnan said, embarrassed by the fuss. "But I have a bit of stock in Genomics, that company in Seattle. When we began working with them, I was so impressed that I decided to buy in."

"And it's been moving rapidly of late, making you a nervous wreck," Mr. Salvador said.

"Exactly. Takeover rumors. I told my broker to sell at eighty-three."

"Then you made out brilliantly." "I did? What do you mean?"

"Genomics was just bought out by Gale Aerospace this morning. At eighty-five. You called it exactly."

"Gale Aerospace now owns Genomics?" Dr. Radhakrishnan said. He was relieved and delighted. But he also thought it was just a bit eerie. He glanced around at the interior of the jet's cabin as if it might be able to tell him something. "Yes."

"Why would a rocket and missile company want to own a scruffy little genetic engineering firm in Seattle?"

"Diversification!" Mr. Salvador said. "An intelligent enough strategy in this age of world peace, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes. Now that you mention it, it does seem perfectly logical." "While we happen to be on the subject of tissue culture, did you get my other package? The tissue samples?" Mr. Salvador said.

Tissue samples was a nice word for it. "I did," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "They were good clean samples. Whoever took them for you knew his business." "We try to hire well," Mr. Salvador said.

"This is the first opportunity I have had to work with human brain tissue," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. As he delivered this sentence, he slowed down, sensing that he was on slick footing.

Mr. Salvador smiled understandingly. "I know that the regula­tions on these things in the States can be quite stifling."

"Exactly. Anyway, I, uh, or we, my students and I, were not sure exactly - we have so little experience." Dr. Radhakrishnan knew that he was groping pathetically, but Mr. Salvador kept smiling and nodding. "We have, anyway, initiated the cell culturing process with those samples... sent them on to Genomics. There were a few false starts-"

"Naturally. That's how science works."

"-but the samples you gave us were so, well, generous, so large, that we had a lot of margin for error. I am almost surprised, well..." "Yes?"

"Of course human brains are larger than baboon brains, so my perspective is skewed just a bit, but if I were to take samples of a human brain that were so large, I would" - again, he sensed he was on slick footing - "well, let us say that in America, with its malpractice hysteria, where you always have to cover your tail-" "Ridiculous." Mr. Salvador agreed. "-lawyers-"

"Carping and niggling and backfilling," Mr. Salvador said. "In some ways, Doctor, America is the best place in the world to do research. In other ways, with its litigiousness, it is a terrible place. We think that India and America may be able to complement each other in this respect."

He was so good. "Exactly. Mr. Salvador, you have a knack." "I am so pleased that we are able to see eye to eye on this," Mr. Salvador said.

"How are the, uh, patients doing, by the way?" Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "Ha! I almost called them specimens."

"Call them whatever you like," Mr. Salvador said. "They are doing well. You will be able to examine them shortly. Of course we would not have selected them for inclusion in this program if they had not already suffered neurological damage, so this makes answering your question somewhat problematic." "Yes, I see your point." "Well. I don't mean to wear you out with all this technical chitchat. We'll be taking the great circle route to Delhi," Mr. Salvador said. "We'll make refueling stops in exciting places Anchorage and Seoul. There's a private cabin on the other side of that bulkhead where you can get some rest, and while you're there I'm sure that Maria will be happy to give you a massage or engage you in conversation or whatever it is that would make the time go faster."