"I want Godin brought in here."

Skow shook his head. "We don't want him talking to McCaskell."

"I don't give a shit about that. Godin knows things I need to know. He can die here as well he can in the hos¬pital."

Skow reluctantly walked away.

"Tell my daughter I'll personally vouch for Godin's safety!" Bauer called. "She can lie in his bed with her pistol if she wants."

After Skow left the hangar, General Bauer looked up at a display screen showing a floodlit view of the Containment building. He stared at it for a few moments, then looked at Ravi.

"You're the neurologist, right? Dr. Nara?"

"Yes, General." Ravi walked toward the oval table.

"Is Godin out of his mind?"

"No, sir." Ravi figured the general would appreciate a sir, even from a civilian. "He's quite sane."

"What about his brain tumor?"

"He's had it for some time, but our Super-MRI detected it when it was very small. The tumor was inop¬erable even then, but it wasn't affecting his mind. I don't think it is even now."

General Bauer looked hard at Ravi. "But you might testify differently at a congressional hearing."

Ravi averted his eyes. "That's quite possible. It's a complex case."

"Skow told me you tried to kill him. Godin, I mean."

Ravi wasn't sure how to respond.

Bauer gave him a grin. "Stick around, Doctor. I may need you."

Ravi bowed his head.

Ewan McCaskell strode into the Situation Room flanked by two Secret Service agents. Like Skow, McCaskell hailed from Massachusetts, but he'd left the affectations of the Ivy League far behind him. The chief of staff had black hair and wore a navy suit so dark it looked black. He took the chair at the head of the table and motioned for General Bauer to sit to his right.

Skow had returned and now took a seat farther down the table. When the general waved his hand for Ravi to join them, Ravi sat at the far end of the table, opposite McCaskell.

"Peter Godin will be here in a few minutes," said Skow. "They're moving his life support equipment now."

McCaskell nodded and looked around the table, his eyes projecting a laserlike focus. "Gentlemen, I am here to assess this situation, and also to clear any and all potential action with the president before it's taken."

General Bauer's face tightened.

"For the time being," McCaskell continued, "we will discuss the issue of how the hell this unauthorized facility came into being, and whose heads will go on the chop¬ping block when this is over." Skow looked at the table.

"Peter Godin told the president that none of these brain models have been loaded yet, but the media is screaming about a computer taking over the Internet. Something is happening on the Internet. Just what are we dealing with, gentlemen?"

General Bauer said, "I think Mr. Skow and Dr. Nara are better able to speak to that issue than I am."

"Somebody better start talking," snapped McCaskell. "We're dealing with something no one has ever dealt with before," Skow said. "A neuromodel has almost certainly been loaded into the computer. And that neu¬romodel was almost certainly Peter Godin's. But all we can be sure of is that we're dealing with a superior intelligence."

McCaskell didn't like this answer. "But it's still Peter Godin, right?"

"Yes and no. Godin's neuromodel is his mind, in the strictest sense. But from the moment it entered the com¬puter, that mind began to operate at an exponentially faster speed than it did when it was confined to organic brain tissue. Dr. Nara?"

Ravi considered it a good sign that Skow had called on him. "Electrical signals in computers travel about one million times faster than they do in brain neurons, Mr. McCaskell."

"And the difference isn't merely one of speed," Skow clarified. "Once it begins functioning in digital form Godin's mind has the ability to learn in an entirely new way. Massive amounts of stored data can be downloaded into it. So it's possible-in theory, at least-ever since the computer reached Trinity state, Godin's technicians have been loading data into it. History, mathematics, military strategy. It can also search the Internet and absorb anything it finds, which from all indications it seems to be doing."

McCaskell shook his head in amazement.

"To view the Trinity computer as a mere extension of Peter Godin would be a mistake," Skow said. "Godin's neuromodel left Godin the man behind hours ago. And an hour to Trinity is like a century to us. By now, Godin's model has evolved into something none of us has ever contemplated dealing with."

"You talk like it's some kind of god," McCaskell said.

Skow gave the chief of staff a condescending look. "That is why we refer to a functional neuromodel as being in the 'Trinity state.' It's man and machine, yet greater than both."

"What the hell am I supposed to tell the president?"

"That we don't yet know what we're dealing with," said General Bauer.

"When will we know?"

"When the computer tells us something," Skow replied.

"Goddamn it," said McCaskell. "I still don't under¬stand why somebody hasn't just cut the power to this machine."

General Bauer cleared his throat. "Mr. Godin advised me that doing so would be a costly mistake."

"What else would you expect him to say?"

"I've known Peter Godin a long time, sir. I'm not inclined to test his honesty on that point."

"What are you afraid of, General?"

Bauer tensed at the implication of cowardice, but he kept his voice even. "Mr. McCaskell, the NSA funded Project Trinity because it believed this computer had the potential to become the most powerful weapon in his¬tory. That weapon is now self-directed and aimed at us. It doesn't take a degree from Cal Tech to know how dependent America is on computer systems. What am I afraid of, sir? I'm afraid this machine may be in a position to blackmail us in a way the Soviet Union never could with nuclear weapons. Because we have no deterrent against it. It has no children it wishes to protect. No cities. No population. We can assume it wants to sur¬vive, but not nearly so badly as we do."

"Blackmail us?" McCaskell echoed. "It's a machine. What the hell could it want?"

There was a clang from outside the ring of display screens, then a squealing of casters.

"Godin's hospital bed," said Skow. Three soldiers wheeled Godin's bed into the ring of display screens. Four more followed, pushing medical carts and an IV tree. Dr. Case from Johns Hopkins walked beside the bed, and Geli Bauer followed the pro¬cession like a praetorian guard of one.

“Is he conscious?" asked McCaskell.

Dr. Case said, "I want to go on record as objecting to this."

"Noted," said McCaskell, standing and approaching the bed.

Godin motioned to Geli with his hand. She stepped forward and cranked a handle on the bed, raising Godin to eye level with McCaskell. The old man's breathing was more labored than before.

"We've met before, Mr. Godin," said McCaskell. "I don't have time to waste on pleasantries, and neither do you. I'd like you to tell me what you intended by breaking protocol and loading a neuromodel into that machine."

Godin blinked like a man trying to orient himself after coming out of a dark room. "Trinity hasn't spoken for itself?"

"No. Will it?"

"Of course."

"You haven't answered my question. What was the purpose of this?"

"You don't know?"

"No."

"The old systems have failed, Mr. McCaskell. Even ours, the noblest experiment of them all. It's time for a new one."

"What systems are you talking about?"

"Rousseau said democracy would be the perfect polit¬ical system if men were gods. But men are not gods."

McCaskell glanced back at Skow and General Bauer. "Mr. Godin, this isn't getting us anywhere. Am I to infer that you have a political goal?"