Tennant's not getting anywhere, General. Your bomber's in position. I think it's time to launch the EMP strike.

"What are we looking at?" asked McCaskell.

Skow whispered, "Trinity's broken our codes."

"Gabriel to Arcangel!" shouted General Bauer, grab¬bing the microphone. "Execute! Execute!"

As the radar navigator in the B-52 asked for clarifica¬tion, another voice drowned him out. Rachel heard con¬fusion in the second voice, then panic. Someone screamed something about haywire instruments. Then the transmission went dead.

"What happened?" asked McCaskell. "Did they launch the weapon?"

"Gabriel to Arcangel!" shouted General Bauer. "Acknowledge!"

The technician at another console turned toward him. "Sir, they can't hear you."

Bauer whipped his head toward the tech. "What?"

"Arcangel is going down. They've got no comm at all. No UHF, no VHF. Nothing."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm patched into Kansas City Center. Arcangel's IFF beacon went off twenty seconds ago, and a Delta Airlines 727 just reported the lights of a very large air¬craft that appeared to be in an uncontrolled spin."

Disbelief slackened General Bauer's face. "What the hell happened?"

"No idea, sir."

The technician sitting beneath Bauer cocked his head as he listened to his headset. "General… NRO satel¬lites detected a high-energy beam directed toward the last-known position of Arcangel."

"What kind of beam?"

"A high-energy particle beam."

"From where?"

"Space."

"Space?"

"Yes, sir. It must have come from a space-based weapons platform."

"General Bauer!" said Senator Jackson. "What the hell is going on there?"

"Arcangel appears to be down, Senator."

"What do you mean 'down'?"

"It was probably destroyed by a weapons system I thought was still in development."

"Whose system? The Russians?"

"No, sir. The Russians don't have anything like that. Our air force must have some component of its Osiris system deployed. It's a prototype antimissile system, but it was clearly powerful enough to fry the avionics of our B-52. It must be under Trinity's control now."

"Did the bomber launch the EMP weapon?"

"I doubt it, sir. The timing was too perfect. Trinity must have broken our codes some time ago. It knew exactly what we were doing."

"But, General-"

"Listen to me, Senator." General Bauer's nerves were finally showing the strain. "In a very short time, every¬one here will be dead. You're going to be on your own. Only those in Containment will survive here, and Washington will be hit shortly after."

Jackson looked at his fellow senators, then back at General Bauer. "Can you get inside the Containment building?"

"Not without the computer's permission."

"Look at the screen!" Rachel cried, surprised to hear her own voice.

Trinity was sending a message to the Situation Room.

YOU WERE WARNED. YOU DISREGARDED MY WARNING. YOU MUST SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. YOU MUST LEARN.

Rachel looked at the NORAD screen. The missile tracks moving toward White Sands and Washington were slowly blinking red.

"Type what I tell you!" shouted McCaskell.

"Do it," said General Bauer.

"We made a mistake," said McCaskell, trying to keep his voice under control. "You can't hold millions of people responsible for the error of a few misguided individuals."

Trinity's response flashed up the moment McCaskell's words were keyed in.

I HAVE DONE NOTHING. THOSE LIVES WERE IN YOUR HANDS, AS WERE YOURS. YOU HAVE THROWN THEM AWAY. IT WAS TO BE EXPECTED. A HUMAN CHILD PLAYS WITH FIRE UNTIL IT IS BURNED.

General Bauer turned away from the screen and walked to his chair. Rachel saw defeat etched into his face.

"General?" said Senator Jackson. "What options do we have?"

Bauer looked down the table at his daughter. Geli stared at him like an enraptured spectator watching the end of some great tragedy.

"None," said the general, collapsing into his chair.

Ravi Nara came to his feet again, his eyes wild. "General, you must ask the computer to let us into Containment! Peter Godin was my friend. He'll let us inside!"

"You tried to kill Godin," General Bauer said calmly. "You think he wants to spare you now?"

"He will!"

The general motioned for a soldier to restrain Nara.

"We don't all have to die!" Nara screamed as the sol¬dier grabbed him. "Please!"

The neurologist was too distraught to be restrained by one man. The general called for another guard, but suddenly Geli Bauer materialized beside the wrestling men. She grabbed Nara 's neck with almost lazy speed, took him to the floor, then rolled him onto his stomach and jammed a knee into his back. A guard bound Nara 's wrists with plastic flex-cuffs, then led him out of the hangar. General Bauer nodded to Geli but said nothing.

"General," said Senator Jackson. "There must be something you can do about those last two missiles. You name it, we'll authorize it."

"There's nothing, Senator. It's up to Dr. Tennant now."

CHAPTER 43

I stood in shock before the black sphere, watching a dis¬play screen that had appeared from behind a panel in Trinity's base. The bomb blast had created a crater a half mile wide in the ocean, and I had no doubt that a tidal wave would soon smash into the Virginia coast¬line. As the mushroom cloud climbed high into the atmosphere, part of my mind tried to convince me that I was looking at some barren Pacific atoll, not a patch of ocean just a few miles from a major U.S. city. I looked away from the screen and focused on the blue lasers fir¬ing in the sphere.

"You must destroy the last two missiles," I said.

"Nothing compels me to."

"How much time is left?"

"Twenty-two minutes."

I'd thought the next detonations would happen at any moment. "But… that means you launched those two missiles on purpose."

"Yes."

"What's the point in more killing? You've shown what you can do."

"There will be relatively little loss of life from the first warhead, given the missile's malfunction."

"Do you really have to kill to make your point?"

"History answers yes to that question. Man is slow to learn. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two hundred thou¬sand died. Man learned from that."

"But you'll kill millions!"

"A small number measured against the seven billion souls on the planet. Sacrificing the few to save the many is a time-honored human tradition."

"You're not doing this to save people. You're doing it to enslave them."

"A matter of perspective, Doctor. If you saw through my eyes, you would understand."

I frantically searched my mind for logical argu¬ments. "If you wipe out the U.S. government, you'll be making things harder on yourself, not easier. People will panic."

"They will also realize there is no going back."

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Desperation had blanked my mind. There was only one option left.

"If you allow those missiles to explode, I won't finish telling you my visions."

The computer was silent for several moments. "You believe this threat will force me to submit to your will?"

"I believe you want to know what I know more than you want to detonate those warheads."

"Why?"

"Because there are limits to even your knowledge. Science can take you back to a few nanoseconds after the Big Bang, but no farther. It can take you forward a few billion years-maybe even to the end of the uni¬verse-but no farther. Only I can do that."

Trinity's response was something like a laugh. "You believe you can. But it should be as obvious to you as it is to me that your visions are almost certainly creations of your mind. Your own psychiatrist believes you're paranoid, perhaps even schizophrenic." "So why are you listening to me?" Silence from the sphere.