Skow's face shone with admiration. "That could work."

"But we can't launch an ICBM from here," McCaskell said.

"We're not. The president's going to launch it. He's got the nuclear briefcase with him, and he's with the Joint Chiefs. They'll know the necessary altitude and yield for an EMP blast."

"But they're all under surveillance!"

The helicopter was descending fast. Ravi had dreamed that a machine like this one would carry him out of harm's way, but the pounding rotor blades overhead did not soothe him. This bird was a harbinger of war.

General Bauer laid his hands on McCaskell's shoul¬ders. "Do you know a Secret Service agent you can trust? Someone who'd be in the White House and whose cell number you know?"

"Of course. But we can't transmit a word without Trin¬ity hearing it."

"Yes, we can. Our mistake has been to use our most advanced communications. Trinity is focused on those. We need to do it the old-fashioned way."

"Telephone," said Skow.

"Right. Lockheed has a research lab six miles west of here. If you use a land line from there, and you don't use key words like Trinity, the computer would have to sift through massive amounts of data to find the conversa¬tion. It's like hiding hay in a haystack."

Skow was nodding excitedly.

Bauer stayed focused on McCaskell. "Call your Secret Service man and tell him that unless the president and the Chiefs are moved to the White House bomb shelter, they'll be vaporized. He should say that on camera, so that Trinity can hear it. As soon as the president is clear of surveillance, you get him on the phone and explain what he has to do. He and the Chiefs can launch the missile on their way to the bomb shelter."

The thunder of the approaching helicopter was drown¬ing the conversation.

"General!" McCaskell shouted. "If an EMP pulse will knock down an ICBM, what will it do to commercial airliners?"

"Airliners have redundant hydraulic systems! They'll lose electrical power, but they'll be able to land just fine. You've got to go now, sir. The president has less than fif¬teen minutes to live."

A Black Hawk gunship painted in desert camouflage set down thirty meters from the hangar.

"Go!" Bauer yelled.

McCaskell turned and ran for the waiting chopper. A soldier pulled him up into its belly, and the Black Hawk lifted into the night sky.

"I can't believe he bought that," said Skow.

"What?"

"Older planes like 727s and DC-9s have redundant hydraulics, but newer models are fully computerized. They won't make it. There are probably three thousand airliners aloft right now. The passenger load is at least a hundred thousand people. If only half of them crash, that's twenty times the casualties of the World Trade Center. We'll have bodies strewn from Maine to California."

"Experienced pilots will be able to set down on the interstates," General Bauer said.

"In Montana, maybe. The rest will be blocked by stalled cars and trucks, and they won't move an inch without new parts. But there won't be any parts. There won't even be food moving on the roads. Not unless the National Guard moves it. And they'll be too busy shoot¬ing looters and delivering water to do that."

General Bauer looked fiercely at the NSA man. "If that missile had hit Norfolk, we'd be looking at two mil¬lion dead. Two million."

Skow nodded soberly.

"And if we don't knock down the next two, you can scratch off three million souls in and around Washington. Including your wife and kids, if I'm not mistaken."

The NSA man looked stricken.

"Now, you get somebody working on finding Trinity's 'all is well' signal. Because if we don't get our bone marrow fried by a neutron bomb in the next four¬teen minutes, we just might need it."

CHAPTER 44

CONTAINMENT

The black sphere of Trinity pulsed with blue light as the lasers inside fired into its crystal memory. Given the enor¬mous capacity and speed of the computer, I could not begin to imagine how many trillions of bits of data it had to be manipulating to cause such activity. Was it monitor¬ing the military status of every nuclear-armed nation? Scanning and analyzing every square meter of the earth visible to satellites? Was it searching obscure astrophysics theses for references to the concepts I had been talking about? Or was it patiently writing a perfect symphony while we awaited nuclear disaster? Perhaps it was doing all that simultaneously.

My original intention to persuade Trinity to shut itself down had changed under the threat of the incom¬ing missiles. I had focused instead on convincing Trinity to spare those lives under immediate threat. Yet my efforts had failed. Trinity wanted only to continue our discussion of my coma revelations. As I stood dazed before the black sphere, hoping that General Bauer was evacuating the base, the last part of my coma conversa¬tion with Trinity began to play from the hidden speakers.

"You said that when matter and energy come to an end, consciousness will survive by migrating into some¬thing else. What can it migrate into?"

"When I was younger, I heard a Zen koan I liked. I never knew why exactly, but now I do."

"What is it?"

"'All things return to the One. What does the One return to?'"

" Very poetic. But I find no empirical evidence to sup¬port even a theoretical answer to that question. What remains when matter and energy disappear? "

"Some people call it God. Other people call it other things."

"That answer is unsatisfactory."

"I have a more detailed answer for you. For us all, I think. But-"

The light within the globe faded, and Trinity went black. Then a few needle-thin rays fired into the crystal.

"I want to know," Trinity said in real time. "What is this thing that some humans call God and other humans call other things?"

I glanced at my watch. My face felt hot. Rachel is in the helicopter, I told myself. On her way to safety. It's Washington that's at risk. And my best chance of saving it is doing what I planned to do in the beginning. What I was sent here to do.

"The longer you wait, " said Trinity, "the more people will die."

Peter Godin's vision of Trinity as a benevolent dicta¬tor was not proving out. I closed my eyes and tried to find words to relate the knowledge imparted to me in Jerusalem.

"There is a force in the universe that we don't yet understand. A force without energy or matter. I'm not sure it's a force at all, actually. It may be more like a field. It pervades all things but occupies no space. It's more like… antispace."

"What is this force? Or this field?"

"I have no name for it. I only know it exists."

"What is its function?"

"Let me answer with a question. What is a chair? What is required for a chair to exist?"

"A seat. Legs. A back."

"Is that all?"

"There are other types of chairs. Bean chairs. Japanese stools."

"You've left something out. Something else is absolutely required to have a chair."

"What?"

"Space."

The sphere went black again. "You are correct. Space is required."

"In the same way that space is required for a chair to exist, the field I speak of is required for space to exist."

The lasers fixed for several seconds. "Is that the sole function of this theoretical field?"

"No. It can act as a medium of communication. Such as that between quantum particles."

"Be specific."

"I'm referring to those cases when atomic particles make simultaneous decisions across vast reaches of space, as if they were invisibly connected. Experiments show that information traveling between such particles would have to be communicated at ten thousand times the speed of light. And breaking the speed of light is impossible."