Flames were everywhere. Her parka caught fire and she yanked it off while staying flat on the floor. Crawling forward, she found the door, the hallway, the top of the stairs. Amy lay unconscious, the smoke thick and dirty. Maria hadn't bothered to breathe and was running out of air. Grabbing the little girl, she got out of the house by leaping from the second story into a snow bank. But not before a falling timber had caught her midriff and burned in a permanent six-inch scar across her belly.
"I showed you mine," Dan said as she completed her story. They had bedded down on the two family-room couches that nearly converged in an L shape. His head was a couple feet from hers.
"What do you mean?"
"I spilled my guts; you should show me your scar so I can tell you it isn't a big deal."
"I'm not showing you my scar."
"You want to."
"Go to sleep, Dan."
They were in the bowels of a USC science lab in the section devoted to zoology. The large, somewhat haphazard work space lay under a maze of old pipes wrapped in something that looked like plaster-cast material. Evidently, the bat people weren't graced with the best digs. Dr. Michael Sanford welcomed them into his office and brought out the photos.
"We'll start with the bat. There are about one hundred species of bats that we know of. Nearly one quarter of all mammal species worldwide are bats." His eyes glistened with enthusiasm. "Bats belong to the order Chiroptera. But they defy generalization because their dietary habits and habitats vary so widely. Now this fellow here looks like a hoary bat. Notice I said 'looks like.' He isn't quite. Coloring around the neck is a little different. I had to do quite a bit of comparing to figure that out. Almost classifies as a subspecies. It's always exciting to find something new." He sighed and took off his glasses. "I don't suppose you know where I could get a carcass?"
"No," Dan said. "If you knew they were in a particular area, would you know how to find them?"
"Oh yes. They live in trees, come out at night, and feed on insects. Any relative would be very interesting, especially if its behavior differed."
"Do they ever come out during the day?"
"Never. Unless you kick them out of the tree, but then they'll go immediately to another and roost again."
''Anything odd about this one other than this neck color?''
''Not that I can see. But there could be all kinds of things if we actually had a carcass."
"What about the math? And these chemical equations?"
"You know, these pages are electro-chemical equations on one side and quantum neural mechanics on the other. The chemistry and applied math seem completely unrelated. I showed this around to some chemistry professors and applied math men. The fellow who did this math in the photo is expert in artificial intelligence. The math guys got a kick out of it, wrote a sort of informal memo for me. Here it is," he said, handing it to Dan with a wink. "You can read it later, when you're having trouble falling asleep." Dan folded it up and put it in his pocket. "Enjoy," the professor said. "I hope it helps. It's written for a layman. Sort of. The gist of it is that this guy was doodling in quantum mathematics. The man who wrote this equation has a theory that quantum mathematics is the best model for describing intelligence or artificial intelligence if you were trying to replicate what a mammal does. The same math we use for describing the universe. In layman's terms we could say it's a richly descriptive language for that purpose. Whoever did this was interested in quantum neural dynamics, otherwise known as quantum consciousness. You want me to explain that?"
"Yes, please."
"Using Hilbert math or quantum math, we can better describe thoughts because a thought may be more than the sum of its parts. A thought is the sum total of a pattern of neural firing. In traditional math a thought could never be more than the sum of its parts. Not so with quantum neural mechanics. In that realm the sum of the parts could be much more than the whole. Hence, a thought. Or thoughts about a thought. Or, for a nonhuman mammal, an image associated with a feeling. You're furrowing your brow. Read the paper. It'll help. We can simplify for our discussion. Judging from what we see here, we can assume this fellow was very interested in solving some riddle about brains."
"How could bats relate to all this?"
"Any evidence of bats behaving strangely?"
Maria and Dan looked at one another. "You say that bats never fly in the daytime. We observed one do just that."
"So the person who wrote this equation may have been a specialist in mammalian neural networks. In the context of your situation, perhaps he was pondering bat behavior. He may have been a zoologist who knew a lot about neural networks and this was just some of his chicken scratch. Thinking on paper, so to speak. Contemplating odd bat behavior would be consistent with his training."
"If he was a zoologist with a picture of this bat, he would have been interested in the new species aspect as well."
"Anybody in that line of work would."
''If this is a bat that's merely like a hoary bat, is it possible that it flies around in the daylight?"
"It would be the only known bat species that does that and it would be terribly fascinating."
"So if the scientific community knew of a forest habitat where they could find a colony of these bats, what would happen?"
"Army of zoologists, that's what. You don't know of such a forest, do you?"
"No. We saw one bat flying in the daylight."
"Where?"
"You don't want to go there," Maria said.
"Try me."
"No way. Now what about the chemistry?"
"I'll call my colleague. He's standing by in his office." While they waited, the professor told them all about bats, more than they expected to hear, and tried to wheedle information about the location of their bat sighting. They remained firm. About fifteen minutes later the chemistry professor showed up. He reminded Dan of Jack Nicholson without hair.
"Well, Frank, tell them about the chemistry," Dr. Sanford said after making introductions all around.
"That's fairly easy except you only got a small part of the equation. This is a portion of an equation that I believe describes a process for the conversion of wood fiber into something like an alcohol or a methanol. Unfortunately, you didn't get the interesting part. Nothing in the middle or the end. I'd love to see it. My gut tells me they are on to something new."
"Could it be valuable?"
"Turning wood into liquid gold? Yeah, it could be valuable. How valuable is Saudi Arabia if its wells never run dry? A new process to convert wood to fuel that's cheaper and maybe more efficient and you have something analogous to Saudi Arabia with no end in the oil supply. You can always grow a new tree."
"Does whoever wrote this have such a process?"
"It looks interesting, but I need the rest."
"So all we can discern is that they are turning wood into a fuel, like a petroleum substitute."
"I think you have it."
They were on their way to La Jolla and Maria's parents. Maria's mother had met them at the airport upon their arrival and had taken Nate home while they proceeded to the university. Now Dan couldn't resist asking, "Is there something you haven't told me about all this? You've been nervous all day."
"Like what?"
"Like why a hard-driving businessman would be home in the early afternoon to see a daughter with whom he has only a formal, chilly-I believe that is the word- relationship. Like why you're nervous about it."
"Do I look nervous?" she asked. "You know it's really irritating when you smirk like that. And I said that it was a slowly thawing, chilly relationship."