Master Sergeant Dennis consulted a clipboard that was attached, through the suit, to the six-inch stump that was all that remained of his right arm.
"Batch two one seven decimal five."
"And what have we done to this?" Colonel Hamilton inquired.
"The same thing we've done to two one seven decimals one through four."
"Which is?"
"Fifteen minutes of the helium at minus two-seventy Celsius."
Minus two hundred seventy degrees Celsius is minus four hundred fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit. To find a lower temperature, it is necessary to go into deep space.
"Present temperature of substance?"
"Plus twenty-one decimal one one one one Celsius, or plus seventy Fahrenheit."
"And it has been at this temperature for how long a period of time?"
"Twenty-four hours, sixteen minutes."
"What was the length of thawing time?"
"Exposed to plus twenty-one decimal one one one one Celsius, it was brought up from minus two hundred seventy Celsius in eight hours and twelve minutes."
"With what indications of chemical or biological activity during any part of the thawing process?"
"None, nada, zip."
"Sergeant Dennis, I am forced to concur. That shit is as dead as a doornail."
"And so's all of batch two one seven. You give Congo-X fifteen minutes of the helium at minus two hundred seventy Celsius, and it's dead."
"It would appear so."
"Who are you going to tell, Colonel?"
"I have been considering that question, as a matter of fact. Why are you asking?"
"I don't like what Aloysius told us they're trying to do to Colonel Castillo."
"Frankly, neither do I. But we are soldiers, Kevin. Sworn to obey the orders of officers appointed over us."
"But what I've been wondering, Colonel, is what happens if we tell the CIA and somehow it gets out. Either we tell the Russians, 'Fuck you, we learned how to kill this shit' or they find out on their own?"
"Frankly, Kevin, I don't understand the question."
"Two things we don't know. One, how much Congo-X the Russians have."
"True."
"And, two, we don't know if they know how to kill it. But let's say they do know that helium at near absolute zero kills it. You know how much we had to pay for the last helium we bought?"
"I entrust the details of logistics to my trusted principal assistant," Hamilton said.
"A little over fifteen bucks a liter. You know how many liters it took to kill batch two-seventeen?"
"I don't think, Kevin, that cost is of much consequence in the current situation."
"Eleven liters to freeze about a half a kilo. Call it a hundred and sixty bucks. And that was freezing decimal two kilos at a time. I haven't a clue how much helium it would take to freeze just one beer keg full of Congo-X. But a bunch."
"I am not following your line of thought, Kevin."
"I had to go to four different lab supply places to get the last shipment. Not one of them could ship us one hundred liters, which is what I was trying to buy. There's not much of a demand for it out there, so there's not a lot of it around. And we don't have the capability of making large amounts of it, or of transporting it once it's been liquefied.
"The Russians know this. If they hear we know how to kill Congo-X, they're liable to use it on us-whether or not the President gives them Castillo and the Russians-before we can make enough helium to protect ourselves."
"We don't know how much Congo-X they have," Hamilton said.
"We have to find out, Colonel, and I'd rather have Castillo try to find out than the CIA."
"But is that decision ours to make, Kevin?"
"Well, it's not mine, Colonel, and I'm glad I'm not in your shoes."
Colonel Hamilton tapped his silver-gloved fingertips together for perhaps thirty seconds.
"Kevin, there is a military axiom that the worst action to take is none at all. If you don't try to control a situation, your enemy certainly will."
"That's a little over my head, Colonel."
"Switch your commo to the Casey network," Colonel Hamilton ordered. [FOUR] "So what's new by you, Jack?" Aloysius Francis Casey (Ph.D., MIT) asked ten seconds later of Colonel J. Porter Hamilton (Ph.D., MIT), addressing him by his very rarely used intimate nickname.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology had brought together Casey and Hamilton, although they had not known each other at the school, or even been there at the same time. They had met at a seminar for geopolitical interdependence conducted by that institution, for distinguished alumni, by invitation only.
Both had accepted the invitation because it had sounded interesting. And both had fled after the second hour, and met in a Harvard Square bar, by chance selecting adjacent bar stools.
Dr. Casey had begun the conversation-and their friendship-by asking two questions: "You were in there, right?" and then, after Dr. Hamilton (in mufti) nodded: "You think that moron actually believed that bullshit he was spouting?"
Dr. Hamilton had been wondering the same thing, and said so: "I have been wondering just that."
"Aloysius Casey," Casey had said, putting out his hand.
"My name is Hamilton," Dr. Hamilton replied, and then, having made the split-second decision that if Casey were one of the distinguished alumni, he would have said, "I'm Dr. Casey" and not wanting to hurt the feelings of the maintenance worker/ticket taker/security officer or whatever he was by referring to himself with that honorific, finished, "Jack Hamilton."
He hadn't used "Jack" in many years. He still had many painful memories of his plebe year at West Point during which he had been dubbed "Jack Hammer" by upperclassmen. If he was a bona fide Jack Hammer, the upperclassmen had told him, he would do fifty push-ups in half the time this fifty had taken him. This was usually followed by, "Try it again, Jack Hammer."
"Hey," Casey had said, grabbing the bartender's arm, "give my pal Jack another of what he's having and I'll have another boilermaker."
When the drinks were served, Casey touched glasses and offered a toast, "May the winds of fortune sail you. May you sail a gentle sea. May it always be the other guy who says, 'This drink's on me.'"
"In that case, I insist," Hamilton had said.
"You can get the next one, Jack," Casey had replied.
Three drinks later, Jack asked Aloysius what his role in the seminar for geopolitical interdependence had been.
"Well, I went there, of course. And every once in a while, I slip them a few bucks-you know, payback for what I got-and that gets me on the invitation list, and every once in a while I'm dumb enough to accept. What about you, Jack, what do you do?"
"I'm a soldier."
"No shit? Me, too. Or I was. I was a commo sergeant on a Special Forces A-team. What branch?"
"Originally infantry. Now medical corps."
"No shit? I'm impressed. What do you do?"
"I'm involved in biological research. What about you?"
"I try to move data around. I make stuff that does."
At that point, Colonel Hamilton experienced an epiphany.
"The AFC Corporation. You're that Aloysius Francis Casey."
"Guilty."
"My lab is full of your equipment."
"How's it doing?"
"I couldn't function without it," Colonel Hamilton said. "I can't tell you how pleased I am we've met."
A week later, Colonel Hamilton had visited the AFC Laboratories in Las Vegas. In the course of explaining how he used AFC data equipment in his Fort Detrick laboratory, and what kind of capabilities in that area he would like to have if that was possible, he of course had to get into some of the specifics of the work of his laboratory.
Three weeks after that, while in Las Vegas to view the prototypes of the equipment Casey was developing for him, Hamilton was introduced to some of Casey's Las Vegas friends. He quickly came to think of them as "those people in Las Vegas." And then, gradually, he came to understand that he had become one of them. "Aloysius, I don't want those people to hear this conversation."
"Ouch! You know the rules, Jack. What one knows, everybody knows. That's the way it works."