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at Reza.
"Six weeks from now," Reza said.
"Six eventful weeks," Amelia said. "Just before I left Texas, I sent the
rationale for the doomsday scenario to about fifty scientists everyone in my
address book tagged as a physicist or astronomer."
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"That's funny," Asher said. "I wouldn't have gotten it, since I'd be in your
book as 'math' or 'old fart.' But you'd think some colleague would have
mentioned it by now. How long's it been?"
"Monday," Amelia said.
"Four days." Asher filled a mug with coffee and steaming milk. "Have you
contacted any of them?"
"Of course not. I haven't dared to pick up a phone or log on."
"Nothing in the news," Reza said. "Aren't any of your fifty publicity-hungry?"
"Maybe it was intercepted," I said.
Amelia shook her head. "It was from a public phone, a data jack in the Dallas
train station; maybe a microsecond download."
"So why hasn't anybody reacted?" Reza said.
She kept shaking her head. "We've been so... so busy. I should have..." She
set down her plate and fished through her purse for a phone.
"You're not " Marty said.
"I'm not calling anybody." She punched a sequence of numbers from memory. "But
I never checked the echo of that call! I just assumed everybody got... oh,
shit." She turned the handset around. It showed a random jumble of numbers and
letters. "The bastard got to my database and scrambled it. In the forty-
five minutes it took for me to get to Dallas and make the call."
"It's worse than that, I'm afraid," Mendez said. "I've jacked with him for
hour after hour. He didn't do it;
didn't think of it."
"Jesus," I said into the silence. "Could it have been someone in our
department? Someone who could decrypt your files and cream them?" She'd been
keying through the text. "Look at this." There was nothing but gibberish until
the last word:
"G|O|D|S|W|I|L|L."
IT TAKES TIME FOR information to percolate up through a cell system. By the
time Amelia found evidence that the Hammer of God had scrambled her files,
there was still one day left before the very highest echelon knew that God had
given them a way to bring on the Last Day: all they had to do was keep anybody
from interfering with the Jupiter Project.
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They were not dumb, and they knew a thing or two about spin themselves. They
leaked the "news" that there were lunatic-fringe conservatives who wanted to
convince you that the Jupiter Project was a tool of
Satan; that continuing it could precipitate the end of the world. The End of
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the Universe! Could anything be more ridiculous? A harmless project that, now
that it was set in motion, cost nobody anything, and might give us real
information as to how the universe began. No wonder those religious kooks
wanted it suppressed! It might prove that God didn't exist!
What it proved, of course, was that God did exist, and was calling us home.
The Ender who had decrypted and destroyed Amelia's files was none other than
Macro, her titular boss, and he was glad beyond words to see that his part in
the plan was crystallizing.
Macro's involvement did help the other Plan Marty's rather than God's in that
he deflected attention from the disappearance of Amelia and Julian. He had set
up Ingram to get rid of Amelia, and assumed he had taken care of the black
boyfriend at the same time, good riddance to both of them. He had forged
letters of resignation from both, in case anyone came looking. He'd assigned
their teaching duties to people who were too grateful to be curious, and there
was already so much rumor brewing about them that he didn't bother to
manufacture a cover story. Young black man and older white woman. They
probably pulled up stakes and went to Mexico.
FORTUNATELY I STILL HAD the rough draft of the paper on my own notebook.
Amelia and I could clean it up and send a delayed broadcast after we left
Guadalajara. Ellie Morgan, who had been a journalist before committing murder,
volunteered to write a simplified version for general release, and one with
everything but equations for a popular science magazine. That would be a
pretty short article.
The staff removed all the plates, empty or piled with bones, and brought back
plates of cookies and fruit.
I couldn't look at another calorie, but Reza attacked both.
"Since Reza has his mouth full," Asher said, "let me be devil's advocate for a
change.
"Suppose all it took to become humanized was a simple pill. The government
demonstrates how it's going to make life better for everyone or even that life
will end if everyone doesn't take it and they supply the pills to everybody.
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