On the screen of the computer was a map of the galaxy, with only the major players marked out on it: the sun at the centre, the planets around it. They were orbiting slowly, randomly. In the corner of the screen a series of numbers in date format were flicking over, too quickly for anyone to read.
Lieberman watched the display, waited for the moment, then pressed a key. The picture froze where it was and even to them it looked impressive, even to a nine-year-old's eyes there was some awful symmetry here.
The planets formed a line. The earth was on one side, with Pluto, neatly labelled in red, behind. Aligned together perfectly on the opposing side of the sun were four planets, names flashing: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
'See — we know from studies done by NASA that just an alignment of Jupiter and Saturn can cause a twenty per cent increase in sunspot activity. When you add in three other planets in what we call the Grand Cross like this, and whatever effects their gravitational pull might have on the earth, maybe you get even more — or less, that's a possibility too. And…'
That was enough. He realized it abruptly. They were too quiet and he was just giving it to them too straight, without the caveats.
'And that happens on Wednesday,' Mo said, no expression on her face at all.
Lieberman swore inwardly at himself. The date was on the screen. He really shouldn't expect these people to be plain dumb.
'On Wednesday,' she continued, and walked around the yard as she spoke, arranging all the pine cones into a row, aligning them with the rock, 'we have both this conjunction of planets and the summer solstice. All together.'
'Correct.'
Lieberman looked at Annie and felt a little happier. He'd lost her. She'd wandered off somewhere else in her head, found this all too big, too distant to bother her, and he was relieved.
'And the reason we're here is to record it,' he continued. 'For posterity, some kind of solar project — don't ask, they haven't favoured me with a full brief yet. We're here to watch, make notes, take pictures. See what we can learn.'
Annie had her hand up again, and Lieberman braced for yet another unsettling question.
'I need to go,' she said, and he gave an inward sigh.
'Time for home,' Mo said. 'Say thank-you to Michael.'
'Thanks,' Annie said flatly, then began the climb back down the steps.
'Wait for us at the bottom,' Mo said.
They watched her hop and skip down the hill. Lieberman shrugged his shoulders, felt a little old and stupid after such a rambling display.
'Long time since I gave a school talk,' he said, shrugging.
'It was good.'
The scared side of her had gone. Maybe it had never been there, really; it was just something the burning day had fired in his imagination. But she was a little warmer. That was no trick of the light.
'You're kind,' he said.
'No. I mean it.'
'Annie's quite a kid.' He hesitated a moment, then ventured, 'Is it hard?'
'What?'
'Being on your own.'
Mo gave him a frank look. 'Annie and I… we've been on our own for a couple of years. We have an understanding.'
He could think of nothing to say, just nodded. This was not the time to ask, he thought. Definitely not. He started tidying his stuff away.
'Say,' he said after a few seconds. 'You play tennis? I brought along my long-framed Prince tennis racket, which I prefer to think of as the long-framed tennis racket formerly known as Prince. There's an old court I saw back at the house. It's a touch beaten up but I've got a spare racket. And tennis is quick. We could be over and done in thirty minutes.'
She laughed anyway, and looked frankly into his face.
'I'm terrible at tennis,' she said, smiling still.
'I'm great but I have no killer instinct, I drown in sympathy for my opponent. I promise to play down to you. I'll promise to lose if you like.'
'You're married,' she said, and it was a statement.
'Was. Strictly single and unattached these days.'
'Oh.'
She watched Annie skipping down the steps, following every movement.
'What kills a marriage in your world, Michael?' she said, turning suddenly to stare into his eyes.
'Same thing you find everywhere else, I guess. Time. Boredom. Insecurity. Fear.'
'And hitting on women when you're away from home?'
She didn't stop smiling when she said it. This was not, he guessed, a judgement.
'That too. But it's all connected. You'd be amazed how much fear gets to the heart of things, and winds up on the other side with some new label, like lust.'
She laughed quietly, and he guessed he deserved as much.
Lieberman's hand reached, automatically, for his head. His thick black head of hair was soaked in sweat. He missed the baseball cap.
'This isn't a move,' he said. 'I'm just trying to rebuild a few social skills that got lost over the years. Nothing more. Really. If I've offended you in some way, I apologize. I didn't mean to.'
'No problem. And thanks for the talk. It was… illuminating. And for helping with Annie too.'
'My pleasure,' he said, meaning it. 'And I'll tell you what. They're throwing some briefing tonight. I'll get you invited if you like. We could both find out a little more about why we're here.'
'Sure,' she said quietly, and looked down the steps, saw Annie waiting there seated on the stone wall.
He shook his head, and softly cursed the way the heat was turning his brain. For a moment there he almost thought she looked scared.
CHAPTER 10
Wagner's First Day
Helen Wagner looked at the office and knew it had been swept. It had that antiseptic look that came from polish and machines. People looking for things. People peering into the past. Standard practice when an office in the Agency changed hands under odd circumstances. And something so male about it as welclass="underline" For all its cleanliness the place seemed untidy, disorganized, just plain wrong.
Until a week before, this had been the home of her predecessor, Belinda Churton, the woman who'd made the post of head of the CIA's Science and Technology directorate — S&T for short — a real job, not just a passing nod at fashion. In eight busy years, she'd screamed at the men who ran the Agency until they couldn't ignore her pleas. And Helen Wagner had followed her all the way, first as a newly recruited graduate out of MIT, then as number three in the formative years of the directorate's rise to glory, when the Internet and biotechnology came out of the lab and fell straight into the hands of crooks and terrorists everywhere.
She gazed at her reflection in the long, deep office window, the image hardened by the dazzling daylight outside. It was an attractive face, sympathetic and intelligent, with sharp blue eyes that never seemed to rest. She wore neat black hair tied in a bun, as if to put it in its place and drown a little of her natural beauty. She knew what the whispers were down the corridors, and this was the curse of her looks.
This hard, somewhat standoffish elegance belonged, they thought, close to the top of the organization, but not at its helm. She lacked the practical, careworn appearance of the person you expected to find running a department of government.
She wore a grey two-piece suit in light wool, and would take off the jacket, sit at the desk in her cream silk shirt the moment she settled down to the job. Physically, she felt good. She worked out. She looked after herself. She had a strong, curvy body that was guaranteed to turn heads, though she'd long ago stopped noticing. 'Keep the body fit, the mind follows,' her mother had said over and over again, in the long years of waiting, in the self-imposed exile that followed her father's sudden death. It was the kind of pat, easy sentiment that passed her lips so easily, spoken in that curious accent, a mix of Polish, Yiddish, and American, that never changed. This job, this ascent through the Agency was, Helen knew, some attempt at redemption. She wondered what her father would have thought, and knew such rumination was futile, stupid. He'd died when she was two, when the scandal had broken and refused to leave their door. There was nothing in her memory of that time. Her consciousness began later, in the dead, in-between years, waiting in the shadow of this infamous, vanished man.