In a deserted locker room Mara threw off the mask and respirator and stripped off the overalls. He fitted the cylinder into its harness and arranged his robes to cover it. He attached the hose and nozzle to his right arm with tape and made sure the butane lighter was in the small leather pouch at his waist.
There was no need to rehearse. Mara had practiced the sacred ritual many times in dummy runs. In his mind the sequence was sharp and exact, the operational manual's instructions etched into his memory as if he had the page in front of him.
1. Left hand/grasp/flick--ignition
2. Right hand/extend/twist--jet
3. Left hand/apply/withdraw--flame
4. Right hand/advance/aiin--target
5. Right hand/aim/sweep--burn
6. Right hand/sweep/approach--conflagration
7. Right hand/retract/end--death
Mara came out of the locker room and moved hunchbacked to the elevators. There he paused, his finger hovering over the panel of buttons. Direct route to the assembly hall unwise. Guards. Official passes. Access points under surveillance. Corridors patrolled.
His crouching shadow slid along the wall. He turned a corner and eventually came to an illuminated sign: emergency exit.
Underneath it a printed notice, red capitals on white.
CAUTION!
sealed enclosure ends here.
oxygen level in stairwell.
below tolerable limit.
respirators required.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Mara closed his eyes. His awareness shrank to a single glowing point. His breathing slowed. His heartbeat became like the slow ponderous beat of a drum. Gradually the world became distant and faded away. Everything was quiescent.
He had to use both hands to release the door from its thick rubber seal and to overcome the pressurized air inside the building. The stairwell was lit by caged red globes. The door hissed and thumped solidly shut behind him, and Mara began to climb the steps in the red gloom.
20
"You don't feel sick or dizzy or anything? Sure?" "I'm all right now. Honestly."
Cheryl ruffled Dan's hair and he squirmed away, embarrassed. "Don't! I'm all right. "
"I certainly hope so." Cheryl frowned at Chase accusingly.
Nick said, "He was perfectly okay in Princeton. Jen said he ate like a horse." He winked at Dan. "Must have been all that female cosseting."
The four of them were in Chase's hotel room on Broadway, which overlooked what had once been the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. Since the city's bankruptcy the center had drifted downward, from recording studio to supermarket to discount furniture store. Now it was a squatters' refuge, charity clothing shop and soup kitchen combined. In a sense it had come full circle--the land it occupied from West Sixty-second to Sixty-sixth streets fifty years ago had been the notorious West Side slum area, celebrated in a stage and screen musical.
Chase stood looking out at the murk; even if there'd been something to see he wouldn't have seen it. He felt restless and nervy, and guilty too. What in hell did he have to feel guilty about? Don't answer that question. He knew damn well--and it had nothing to do with Dan being sick.
"Is Madam Van Dorn expecting you?" Cheryl asked him, the "Madam" sounding distinctly chilly.
"Yes, but she's got a heavy schedule today. It's her annual address to the General Assembly."
"I still don't understand, Gavin." Cheryl wished he'd turn around to face her; he'd been staring out at nothing for the last ten minutes. "You've always insisted that we have to change people's attitudes first, that real progress is impossible politically or scientifically. That was the whole idea behind Earth Foundation, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"And yet you've agreed to this." Cheryl shook her head, puzzled and resigned. She couldn't understand his decision, nor his reluctance to discuss it. This wasn't a bit like him. "We've got our hands full already with Earth Foundation. We can't do both."
"There's no reason why Earth Foundation shouldn't continue," Chase said. "But I happen to believe that a project like this has a chance of succeeding. It could make a real and positive contribution."
"You mean find a practical solution? But you've always said that until and unless we can change people, change the way they think, nothing else is worth a damn. Don't you believe that anymore?"
"Yes, but I also believe that as scientists we have a duty to sort out this mess--if it can be sorted out." At last he turned to her. "Why do you think your father spent years of his life on a lump of rock in the middle of the Pacific? Not for wealth or personal glory, but because he wanted to use his gifts, his talents, whatever, in the service of mankind. That's what he was best fitted for. So was he wrong? Was his life wasted?"
Their eyes met and locked, yet it seemed to Cheryl that for the very first time she couldn't see inside him. It was as if a fine gauze separated them, impeding direct communication. It was Chase who broke away, turning back to the shrouded mausoleum of Lincoln Center, and Cheryl said:
"What do you think about this, Nick?"
"About the project? I'm not really sure." Nick leaned back, hands clasped behind his balding head, gnawing his lip above the frizzy fringe of beard. "In theory there's no reason why we couldn't undo the harm we've done. That's point number one. Point number two is how. Point number three--assuming we find the answer to point number two--is do we have the urge and the will to change things for the better?"
"What do you mean, the urge?" Dan asked. He was hunched forward on the arm of the couch, chin propped in his hand.
"I mean that the human race seems to have a collective death wish, like somebody who accepts that cigarettes cause lung cancer and still carries on smoking. Bloody hell, we've known for decades that we were damaging the environment, perhaps irrevocably, and what's been our response--the response of a supposedly intelligent species?" His elbows lifted in a shrug. "Just to keep right on doing it."
"But you think there's a chance, do you?" Cheryl said.
"What, of finding a scientific solution? Yeah, I think there is, providing the thing's organized properly and the funds are available."
Cheryl was studying the back of Chase's head. "Well, they've got the organizer, haven't they?" she said, a small frown on her lightly freckled face. "That only leaves the money."
There was a silence, and then Chase said, "The money's there. Ingrid Van Dorn and Prothero have fixed it."
"The UN is funding it?" Cheryl said in plain disbelief.
Chase turned and leaned on the sill and met her gaze. "No," he said calmly. "They've arranged private sources. Companies. Trusts. Wealthy private individuals. That's one of the things I want to discuss with them." He looked at his watch. "In fact I'd better go. Try and catch her before her speech."
Cheryl didn't say anything. There was an expression on her face that Chase couldn't read, and wasn't sure he wanted to.
At the UN his mood wasn't helped by a young security officer who looked him up and down as if to imply that Chase was displaying quite remarkable effrontery in asking to see the secretary-general in person. Covering the mouthpiece with a white-gloved hand he smirked sideways at Chase. "I don't expect you have an appointment, do you?"
There was a blank at the end of the sentence, the "sir" conspicuously missing.
"No, I don't have an appointment," Chase replied, his tight smile costing him great effort. "But I think the secretary-general will see me all the same."
The officer nodded, humoring this imbecile. Then the smirk became fixed and wooden and his eyes glassy as he listened to the voice on the phone. He put the receiver down slowly, made a jerky gesture over his shoulder, and a white-helmeted guard marched forward, stamping to attention.