"What kind of weapon are you talking about?" asked McCaskell.

"A short-range heavy missile called a Vulcan. It was designed to deliver a massive EMP strike without having to launch an ICBM, which is easily detectable by Russian surveillance satellites. Vulcan hurls its payload two hundred miles straight up, detonates, and the lights go off across the country. All Trinity will see on the NORAD radar screens is a bomber on a training run over the central U.S. But what Vulcan will deliver…" General Bauer held up a fist, then flipped it open, extending his fingers like rays from the sun.

"Exactly what does this Vulcan carry?" asked Senator Jackson.

"A fifteen-megaton thermonuclear warhead."

Several senators gasped.

"Sweet Lord," murmured a silver-haired man at the back of the table. "That's a thousand times the size of the Hiroshima blast."

"Eighteen hundred times," said General Bauer. "That's what it takes to do this job in one go. Our B-52 will reach the launch point in thirty minutes. Its code is Arcangel. You can order the Vulcan launched, or have the bomber circle indefinitely. I realize I acted without authorization, but we're in an extraordinary situation. I wanted you to have the option."

The silence that followed this revelation was absolute.

"Would we attempt to minimize the damage of this weapon beforehand?" asked Senator Jackson. "Warn the populace?"

"No. By doing so, we'd alert Trinity to our plans."

"Where exactly would this warhead be detonated? Over what state?"

"It must detonated very near the geographic center of the country."

"I asked you what state," Jackson repeated.

The general hesitated, then barked his answer. " Kansas, sir."

" Kansas?" cried one of the senators. "That son of a bitch wants to vaporize my home state!"

"What kind of damage would we be looking at on the ground?" asked Senator Jackson. "From fallout and things like that? Long-term damage."

"Surprisingly little, sir. There'll be windblown fallout, but the prevailing winds are westerly, and at that alti¬tude, much of it would be carried out to the Atlantic before it did much damage. We could get contaminated rainfall. There could be long-term consequences for the grain harvest."

"Define long term," said the senator from Kansas.

"A thousand years," I said.

"That's a gross exaggeration," said General Bauer. "Senators, you have to balance these effects against what could happen if Trinity chooses to act on the threats it's made. And we have to assume that it eventually will. Unless…"

"What?" asked Jackson.

"We surrender." Bauer's tone made it clear what he thought of that option.

The senators began talking among themselves. Ewan McCaskell seemed to be taking his own counsel. Again, memories of Fielding rose in my mind. If he were here, he would not be silent.

"If you attempt this mission," I said loudly, "you'll cause the very destruction you're trying to avert. This country will be destroyed."

The senators looked down at me from the screen.

"Why do you say that, Doctor?" asked Senator Jackson.

"General Bauer can't hide his mission from Trinity. The computers at the NSA, NORAD, and possibly even Barksdale Air Force Base were built by Peter Godin or Seymour Gray. Trinity has access to them all. Even if Trinity doesn't detect the mission in progress, do you think it hasn't predicted our most likely methods of attack? That it doesn't know its own Achilles' heel?"

"This is one heel it can't protect," said General Bauer.

"Of course it can. It can strike preemptively."

Ewan McCaskell moved his head from side to side, like a man weighing odds. "The computer's measured response against the German hackers gives me hope that its retaliation would be survivable. And if General Bauer's plan can be accomplished, limited retaliation is worth the risk."

"How do you feel about full-scale thermonuclear war?" I asked. "Is attacking the computer worth that level of retaliation?"

"What are you talking about?” asked Senator Jackson. "General Bauer assured us that nuclear war isn't a possibility."

"Do you know about something called the 'dead-hand' system, Senator?"

Jackson 's deep-set eyes narrowed. "We were just dis¬cussing that. The consensus is that it's a myth."

"What do you know about it, Doctor?" asked General Bauer.

"I know what Andrew Fielding told me. He believed that system existed during the Cold War and might still today. So does Peter Godin. Fielding and Godin discussed the potential for Trinity to disarm such a system prior to a nuclear exchange. And Godin has been involved in Amer¬ican nuclear planning since the 1980s."

Everyone looked at the hospital bed. Godin still lay unconscious on his pillow.

"Is he sleeping?" asked McCaskell.

"We had to give him morphine," explained Dr. Case. "Nerve pain."

"Can you wake him up?"

"I'll try."

General Bauer addressed the senators. "Peter Godin built supercomputers that carried out nuclear-test simu¬lations. That's the extent of his contribution to American strategy. The Soviet dead-hand system never existed. That's the informed consensus of the American defense establishment."

Horst Bauer was a good salesman. The temptation to agree to his plan was tangible in the room. I could read it on the faces of the senators on the screen. That the plan involved a nuclear weapon only made it more attractive. Every American carries a memory of Hiroshima as the terrible but final solution to the dead¬liest war in history. And the unknown nature of Trinity's power seemed to cry out for some force of equal mystery and power to vanquish it. What the senators did not understand was that nuclear weapons held no mystery for Trinity. In the world of digital warfare, atomic bombs were as primitive as stone clubs. There was only one weapon on earth remotely equal in power to Trinity. The human brain.

I got to my feet, faced the screen, and spoke with as much restraint as I could muster. "Senators, before you attempt something that could trigger a nuclear holo¬caust, I beg you to allow me to speak to the computer. What do you have to lose?"

General Bauer started to speak, then thought better of it. The senators conferred quietly. Then Barrett Jackson spoke.

"General, why don't we see how the computer feels about speaking to Dr. Tennant? It hasn't talked to any¬one else."

Skow began to protest, but Senator Jackson cut him off with an upraised hand.

"Tell the computer who Dr. Tennant is," said Jackson. "Also where he is. Then ask the machine if it will talk to him."

"I need to go into the Containment Building to do this," I said.

Jackson shook his head. "We can't allow that, Doctor. What if you start hallucinating? You might hit a switch or something. No, if you speak to Trinity, you do it from here."

On General Bauer's order, a technician typed in what Jackson had said and sent it to Trinity.

Blue letters flashed instantly onto the screen.

I will speak to Tennant.

"I'll be damned," said Senator Jackson.

"Look," said Ravi Nara.

More letters had flashed up on the screen.

Send Tennant into Containment.

"What the hell?" said General Bauer. "Why would it ask that?"

McCaskell looked at me. "Can you explain this, Doctor? Why would the computer make the same request you did?"

"I have no idea."

"Type this," said McCaskell. "'Why do you want Dr. Tennant in Containment?'"

The response was instantaneous.

Hath the rain a father? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? Or fill the appetite of the young lions? Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Who then is able to stand before me?

"That's Scripture, isn't it?" said McCaskell, obviously taken aback.