'Code Blue.' And Mary Kay flew out the door. A half-minute later, she reappeared on the monitor.
'What's happening?' asked Rau.
Vera turned her wheelchair to face the monitor. 'They're losing the poor girl. She's in cardiac arrest. Look, here comes the crash wagon.'
Thomas was on his feet, watching the screen intently. Rau joined him. 'Now what?'
he said.
'Those are the shock paddles,' Vera said. 'To jump-start her heart again.'
'You mean she's dead?'
'There's a difference between biological and clinical death. It may not be too late.' Under Mary Kay's direction, several people were shoving aside tables and wrecked machinery, making room for the heavy crash wagon. Mary Kay reached for the paddles and held them upright. To the rear, a woman was waving the electric plug in one hand, frantically casting around for an outlet.
'But they mustn't do that!' Rau cried.
'They have to try,' said Vera.
'Didn't anyone understand what I was talking about?'
'Where are you going, Rau?' Thomas barked. But Rau was already gone.
'There he is,' said Vera, pointing at the screen.
'What does he think he's doing?' Thomas said.
Still wearing his cowboy hat, Rau shouldered aside a burly policeman and made a sprightly hop over a spilled chair. They watched as people backed away from the stainless-steel table, exposing Yamamoto to the camera. The frail young woman lay still, tied and taped to the table, with wires leading off to machines. As Rau approached, Mary Kay stood her ground on the far side, shock paddles poised. He was arguing with her.
'Oh, Rau!' Vera despaired. 'Thomas, we have to get him out of there. This is a medical emergency.'
Mary Kay said something to a nurse, who tried to lead Rau away by the arm. But Rau pushed her. A lab tech grabbed him by the waist, and Rau doggedly held on to the edge of the metal table. Mary Kay leaned to place the paddles. The last thing Vera saw on the monitor was the body arching.
With Thomas pushing the wheelchair, they hurried to the laboratory, dodging cops, firemen, and staff in the hallway. They encountered a gurney loaded with equipment, and that consumed another precious minute. By the time they reached the lab, the drama was over. People were leaving the room. A woman stood at the door with one hand to her eyes.
Inside, Vera and Thomas saw a man draped partway across the table, his head laid next to Yamamoto's, sobbing. The husband, Vera guessed. Still holding the shock paddles, Mary Kay stood to one side, staring vacantly. An attendant spoke to her. When she didn't respond, he simply took the paddles from her hands. Someone else patted her on the back, and still she didn't move.
'Good heavens, was Rau right?' whispered Vera. They wove through the wreckage as Yamamoto's body was covered and lifted onto a stretcher. They had to wait for the stream of people to pass. The husband followed the bearers out.
'Dr. Koenig?' said Thomas. Wires cluttered the gleaming table.
She flinched at his voice, and raised her eyes to him. 'Father?' she said, dazed. Vera and Thomas exchanged a concerned look.
'Mary Kay?' Vera said. 'Are you all right?'
'Father Thomas? Vera?' said Mary Kay. 'Now Yammie's gone, too? Where did we go wrong?'
Vera exhaled. 'You had me scared,' she said. 'Come here, child. Come here.' Mary
Kay knelt by the wheelchair. She buried her face against Vera's shoulder.
'Rau?' Thomas asked, glancing around. 'Now where did he go?'
Abruptly, Rau burst from his hiding place in a heap of readout paper and piled cables. He moved so quickly, they barely knew it was he. As he raced past Vera's wheelchair, one hand hooked wide, and Mary Kay grunted and bent backward in pain. Her lab jacket suddenly gaped open from shoulder to shoulder, and red marked the long slash wound. Rau had a scalpel.
Now they saw the lab tech who had tried to pry Rau loose from the table. He sat slumped with his entrails across his legs.
Thomas yelled something at Rau. It was a command of some kind, not a question. Vera didn't know Hindi, if that's what it was, and was too shocked to care.
Rau paused and looked at Thomas, his face distorted with anguish and bewilderment.
'Thomas!' cried Vera, falling from her chair with the wounded physician in her arms. In the one instant Thomas took his eyes from the man, Rau vanished through the doorway.
The suicide was aired on national television that evening. Rau couldn't have timed it better, with national media already gathered for the university's press conference in the street below. It was simply a matter of training their cameras on the roofline eight stories above.
With a fiery Rocky Mountain sunset for a backdrop, the SWAT cops edged closer and closer to Rau's swaying form, guns leveled. Aiming their acoustic dishes, sound crews on the ground picked up every word of the negotiator's appeal to the cornered man. Telephoto lenses trained on his twisted face, tracked his leap. Several quick-thinking cameramen utilized the same bounce technique, a quick nudge up, to self-edit the impact.
There was no doubt the former head of India's parliament had gone insane. The hadal head cradled in his arms was all the proof anyone needed. That and the cowboy hat.
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind.
– RUDYARD KIPLING, The Jungle Book
19
CONTACT
Beneath the Magellan Rise,
176 degrees west, 8 degrees north
The camp woke to tremors on the last day of summer.
Like the rest, Ali was asleep on the ground. She felt the earthquake work deep inside her body. It seemed to move her bones.
For a full minute the scientists lay on the ground, some curling in fetal balls, some clutching their neighbors' hands or embracing. They waited in awful silence for the tunnel to close upon them or the floor to drop away.
Finally some wag yelled out, 'All clear. It was just Shoat, damn him. Wanking again.' They all laughed nervously. There were no more tremors, but they had been reminded of how minuscule they were. Ali braced for an onset of confessions from her fragile flock.
Later in the morning, several in a group of women she was rafting with could smell what was left of the earthquake in the faint dust hanging above the river. Pia, one of the planetologists, said it reminded her of a stonecutters' yard near her childhood home, the smell of cemetery markers being polished and sandblasted with the names of the dead.