Dark Matter. Greg Iles

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      Godin brushed a wisp of white hair off his ear and looked around the table. “The weaponization of science is the inevitable first step that brings countless peacetime gifts in its wake. Oppenheimer’s superhuman efforts to give us the bomb ended the Second World War and gave the world safe nuclear energy. We here—we five who remain—face a task of no lesser importance. We’re not trying, as Fielding sometimes suggested, to assume the mantle of God. God is merely a part of the human brain, an evolutionary coping mechanism that developed to make bearable our awareness of our own deaths. When we finally succeed in loading the first neuromodel into our prototype and communicating with it, we will have to deal with that part of the brain, just as with all the rest. For those who favor anthropomorphic expressions, we will have to deal with Him. But God, I predict, will prove no more troublesome than any other vestigial element of the brain. Because the completion of Trinity will render that particular coping mechanism unnecessary. Our work will end death’s dominion over humanity. And surely there can be no more noble goal than that.”

      Godin laid his crooked hands on the table. “But today … today we mourn a man who had the courage of his convictions. While we, out of grim necessity, focused on the military and intelligence possibilities of an operational Trinity prototype, Fielding looked toward the day that he could sit down and ask the computer man’s oldest questions: ‘How did life begin? Why are we here? How will the universe end?’ At sixty-three, Andy Fielding had the enthusiasm of a child, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. Nor should he have been.” Godin nodded soberly. “And I, for one, will miss him.”

      My face felt hot. I’d expected the crocodile tears of John Skow, then a rush back to full-scale research and development. But Peter Godin was classier than that. His words showed that he’d known his adversary well.

      “After the cause of our neurological symptoms has been found,” Godin concluded, “the project will resume. If we need another quantum physicist, we’ll hire one. What we will not do is charge forward without knowing the dangers. Fielding taught me the importance of prudence.”

      Godin carefully massaged his right hand with the fingers of his left. “We’ve all sustained a severe shock. I want everyone to take three full days of rest, beginning at lunch today. We’ll meet in this room on Tuesday morning. All the usual off-site security precautions will be observed during this period.”

      The resulting silence was total. The man who drove himself twice as hard as anyone else was suggesting time off? Such a “vacation” went so against Godin’s nature that no one knew what to say.

      Skow finally cleared his throat. “Well, I, for one, could use some time at home. My wife is about ready to divorce me over the hours I put in here.”

      Godin frowned and closed his eyes again.

      “Meeting adjourned?” Skow said, glancing at Godin.

      The old man got unsteadily to his feet and walked out without another word.

      “Well, then,” Skow said needlessly.

      I stood and walked back to my office, my eyes on Peter Godin’s retreating back. The meeting had gone nothing like I’d expected. Ahead of me, Godin started to turn the corner, but instead he stopped and turned to face me. I walked toward him.

      “You and Fielding were very close,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

      “I liked him. Admired him, too.”

      Godin nodded. “I read your book two nights ago. You’re more of a realist than I would have guessed. Your opinions on abortion, fetal tissue research, cloning, the expenditures on last-year-of-life care, euthanasia. I agreed with all of it, right down the line.”

      I couldn’t believe Peter Godin had worked with me for two years without reading the book that had brought me to Trinity. He looked over my shoulder for a moment, then back at my face.

      “Something occurred to me during the meeting,” he said. “You know the old hypothetical about history? If you could go back in time, and you had the opportunity to kill Hitler, would you do it?”

      I smiled. “It’s not a very realistic formulation.”

      “I’m not so sure. The Hitler question is easy, of course. But imagine it another way. If you could go back to 1948, and you knew that Nathuram Godse was going to assassinate Gandhi—would you kill him to prevent that assassination?”

      I thought about it. “You’re really asking how far down the chain of events I would go. Would you murder Hitler’s mother?”

      It was Godin’s turn to smile. “You’re right, of course. And my answer is yes.”

      “Actually, I think your question is more about causality. Would murdering Hitler’s mother have prevented the Second World War? Or would some other nobody have risen from the discontented masses to tap German resentment over the Versailles Treaty?”

      Godin considered this. “Quite possibly. All right, then. It’s 1952, and you know that a clumsy lab technician is going to ruin the cell cultures of Jonas Salk. The cure for poliomyelitis will be greatly delayed, perhaps by years. Would you kill that innocent technician?”

      A strange buzzing started in my head. I had a sense that Godin was toying with me, yet Peter Godin never wasted time with games.

      “Thankfully, real life doesn’t present us with those dilemmas,” I said. “Only hindsight allows us to formulate them.”

      He smiled distantly. “I’m not so sure, Doctor. Hitler could have been stopped at Munich.” Godin reached out and patted me on the arm. “Food for thought, anyway.”

      He turned and carefully negotiated his way around the corner.

      I stood in the corridor, trying to read between the lines of what I’d heard. Godin never wasted words. He hadn’t been idly reflecting on history or morality. He had been talking quite frankly about murder. Justifiable murder, in his mind. I shook my head in disbelief. Godin had been talking about Fielding.

      Fielding’s murder was necessary, he was saying. Fielding was innocent, but he was interfering with a great good, and he had to be eliminated.

      As I walked back toward my office, I realized I was shivering. No one had asked about my call to Washington. No one had mentioned my visit to Fielding’s house. Not one word about Rachel Weiss. And three days off would give me plenty of time to speak to the president. I might even be able to fly to Washington. What the hell was going on?

      I froze in my office doorway. A tall, sinewy blonde woman with electric blue eyes and a stippled scar on her left cheek sat in my chair, gazing at my computer screen. Geli Bauer. If anyone in this building had murdered Andrew Fielding, it was she.

      “Hello, Doctor,” she said, a trace of a smile on her lips. “You look surprised. I thought you’d be expecting me.”

       ELEVEN

      I stood speechless in my office doorway. Relief had turned to paralyzing anxiety in less than a second, and the fact that Geli Bauer was a woman did nothing to slow my racing pulse. Like her handpicked subordinates, she was lean and hard, with a predatory gleam СКАЧАТЬ