McCaskell was shaking his head. "The Russians know our missiles aren't under computer control. And the president explained the situation to the Russian lead¬ership before he went under surveillance. As did Trinity itself, with its message to world leaders."

"That was two hours ago," General Bauer reminded him. "Fear has its own reasons."

"Or none. We can't afford to act out of fear now." "Or not to," Bauer retorted.

"General!" yelled a technician at one of the consoles. "NORAD shows one of the Russian missiles going down over the ice cap. Looks like a malfunction." "Let's hope for more of those," said Jackson. "The satellite has detected multiple high-energy flashes," the tech continued. "That was a MIRV war¬head, probably from a prematurely detonated SS-18. Spectrum analysis is not yet completed, but yield esti¬mates show ten warheads at five hundred and fifty kilotons each."

"In twenty-five minutes we'll have that happening over Manhattan," said General Bauer.

On the NORAD screen, a group of red arcs extended from Russian soil to the edge of the polar ice cap. The arcs continued slowly and steadily toward North America.

"Why did this happen?" asked Senator Jackson. "Because the computer is crashing? That's what caused the Russian launch?"

"No way to know," said General Bauer. John Skow stood and spoke in a loud voice. "I think we should cut power to Trinity while it's in a chaotic state. We've seen its retaliatory response. Let's not give it a chance to do more damage."

"General Bauer?" said Senator Jackson.

"I'm tempted, Senator, but I've been proved wrong once already. Trinity told us that it exported its retalia¬tory ability to other computers. So neutralizing the com¬puter here doesn't solve our problems. If we cut power, we could be dealing with another twenty-nine hundred inbound missiles. I don't want to contemplate that."

"Point taken."

"Two more heat blooms!" cried the tech. "Bases are Nizhniy Tagil and Kantaly. Those missiles will be SS-25s."

"Damn it!" roared Senator Jackson. "We've got to know what's causing these launches!"

"I can't answer that," said General Bauer.

I stood and walked toward the screen. "I can, Senator, Those missiles were launched because Peter Godin died."

Senator Jackson looked down at me. "Does the com¬puter know Godin died?"

"Not consciously."

"What does that mean?"

I had never needed Andrew Fielding more than I did now. "Senator, in quantum physics, there's a phenome¬non called quantum entanglement. That's where two dif¬ferent particles separated by distances of miles can behave in exactly the same way."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Bear with me. Two atomic particles are shot through different fiber-optic cables. Halfway along the cables, each meets a glass plate. There's a fifty-fifty chance that each particle will either bounce off the plate or pass through it. But when the particles are quantum entangled, they make the same decision one hundred percent of the time."

"What?"

"It's a fact, Senator. Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance.' Andrew Fielding believed that quantum processes like that play a role in human consciousness, and because of this-"

"Are you saying that Godin's mind and the computer model of his mind were somehow linked?"

"Yes. When Godin died, that link was broken, and it threw the computer into disarray."

"Are you suggesting that Trinity is dying, Doctor?"

"It's possible."

"No," said Ravi Nara. "Look at the screen."

The chaotic flow of numbers and letters had slowed considerably, as though someone screaming unintelligi¬ble words had begun to calm down.

"Dr. Tennant," said Senator Jackson, "by your rea¬soning, these Russian missile launches could have been an accident."

"I think they were. Trinity programmed certain com¬puters around the world to retaliate against attacks on it by triggering the Russian dead-hand system. Those com¬puters perceived Trinity's sudden confusion as the result of an attack, and they retaliated as programmed. I think if Trinity recovers in time, it will do all it can to stop those missiles from hitting their targets."

"General Bauer," said Senator Jackson, "I want Dr. Tennant in that Containment building when Trinity comes out of this coma or whatever it is. Someone's got to tell the damned thing what happened, and Tennant's the man on the spot."

I started for the door.

"Hold it, Doctor," said General Bauer.

Two soldiers instantly blocked my path.

"Let that man through!" bellowed Senator Jackson.

The soldiers did not part until General Bauer gave them a nod. I moved quickly toward the hangar door, but the senator's voice continued behind me.

"Don't get confused about who's in charge here, General. How long until the first missile impact?"

"Corporal?" said General Bauer.

"Twenty-three minutes, sir."

"Where's your bomber, General?" asked Jackson.

"Arcangel will be at the initial point in forty minutes. But we can launch the Vulcan in twenty if we need to."

Jackson spoke with cold precision. "General Bauer, you will not launch that weapon without a direct order from this committee. Is that understood? No EMP with¬out a direct order."

I didn't hear a reply.

The Containment building was a circular pile of rein¬forced concrete bathed in the brilliant glow of army arc lights. The soldiers guarding it told me to approach the building with my hands up. Just before I reached the black steel door, it opened, and Zach Levin appeared. He waved me forward.

I walked past the hollow-cheeked engineer into a world of half-light. I'd expected something like the lab in North Carolina, a warren of rooms with equipment scat¬tered everywhere. The reality could not have been more different.

The interior of Containment looked like a set for Stanley Kubrick's 2001. To my left stood a massive bar¬rier that I recognized as a magnetic shield. Ten feet high and four feet thick, it bisected the building into two large rooms, only one of which I could see. To the right of the barrier stood the colossal scanning unit of a Super-MRI machine. Against the back wall stood the scanner's control station. These two machines together, when linked to a supercomputer, produced the neuromodels that the Trinity computer existed to animate.

Levin led me around the left side of the barrier. What I saw there took away my breath. The entire space was dominated by a large black globe poised on a metal base. As I neared the sphere, I realized it was not solid, but a rigid web of interwoven carbon nanotubes, a semiconductor material more efficient than silicon and stronger than steel. So dense was the webbing that it was difficult to see through, yet see through it I could. Needle-thin rays of blue laser light flashed from the sphere's inner wall to its center-thousands of them-and at a rate so rapid that trying to follow them made my eyes ache.

In the curved wall of the sphere was an opening about a meter wide. Through it I saw the target of the lasers, a spherical crystal like the one on the fob of Fielding's pocket watch, only this one was the size of a soccer ball. The outer web of carbon nanotubes was the processing area of the computer; the crystal sphere was its memory. The lasers lining the sphere's inner wall were the means by which data was manipulated in the mole¬cules of the crystal. The data itself was stored as a holo¬gram, or optical interference pattern, and the lasers could write, retrieve, and erase information by altering that pattern.

The elegance of the design stunned me, and I saw Fielding's hand in it. Unlike the boxy prototypes that lit¬tered the basement of the North Carolina lab, this machine was a work of art, and like all creations of true genius a thing of profound simplicity.