Firebird

One

OneForty-five minutes after they’d left an inert deputy director in the surge room, Slava Archangelsky, hair bedraggled, eyes bloodshot, staggered through the labyrinthine corridors of CFRC toward Nathaniel’s office to see that half the lab’s thousand employees had beaten him there. No thought confusing his mind, he shoved his way to the door to find his colleague inside under journalistic siege.

“Do you know what happened, Dr. Machuzak?” “N…no I don’t.” “Are you sure?” “Cyrus Krieg-Zuber seems to have been electrocuted in an accident.” “Do you know what caused it?” “Current.”

“Would you care to—”

“—speculate? No!”

Resembling the mad Rasputin more than ever, Archangelsky grabbed the nearest reporter by the shoulders and herded him toward the door, just as that one huffed, “Jesus, what a fool.”

“Go to hell,” Slava said and booted him out. God, he needed a cigarette. What kind of country is this where it’s illegal to kill yourself? Riffling his pockets, he shoved a tattered stick into his mouth, took it out when he saw Machuzak painfully staring into the reporter’s wake. Slava cast at him a sympathetic glance. Like most Americans, Nat lacked a ready wit, but no scientist deserves to be called a fool because he says he doesn’t know. “I don’t know” is honest, more honorable by far than saying you know when you don’t. In an instantaneous world, Nat’s problem was that he was an old-fashioned romantic. He remembered that PhD meant doctor of philosophy. “Forget it,” Slava tried to beat it into his brain often enough. “We are not natural philosophers pondering workings of the universe. We are here to build the tokamak. Save world from itself.”

Now, having been sucked dry by parasites, Mac to most, Nat to Archangelsky, sat before the Russian with hazel eyes staring blankly ahead. “You look like hell,” Archangelsky offered, puffing on the unlit cigarette. Machuzak usually came across as young for his years. Wrinkles hadn’t intruded much yet, but tonight his face was all creases. “You need a drink?”

“How could this have happened?” was the physicist’s only reply.

“Stupidity. i***t plays with high-voltage system he doesn’t know s**t about. What do you expect? He saves Enterprise? Look, you predicted it yourself. Nobody listened.”

“Did the local emergency people show up?” Nathaniel asked dumbly, still frozen.

“Da, everybody. The devil would break a leg over there.”

Finally Nat exhaled and he scratched his gray-streaked temples as he did when stumped. “So, friend, we’ve just had the most public accident in fusion history. Christ, half the world was watching. It’s already all over…everything.” With one motion he brushed aside a mop of his lazy brown hair and waved across the images leaping from the monitor. “Protestors, board members, reporters… We couldn’t have set it up better if we tried.”

Seated on the edge of the desk, Archangelsky nodded heavily and they fell silent. He liked Nat because, unlike most CFRC grunts, he thought beyond physics. He didn’t need to say that today’s events had put the entire program in jeopardy; that was written all over his face. Pravda, Nat was a little slow. Slava briefly recollected their first meeting, six years ago when he’d come to CFRC after a previous existence at Dubna and the Kurchatov Institute. Maybe he was testing his new colleague—after all, the tokamak was invented by Andrei Sakharov himself. These Americans? Within a minute, the two had gotten into a heated argument, which required some calculations. Machuzak’s math was clumsy—he’d obviously never been through enough Olympiads—and after an hour Archangelsky spat, “You can teach me nothing.”

The American went white like a ghost and walked slowly away. A week later, though, Nathaniel caught him in a stupid mistake and Archangelsky laughed, “So you can teach me something after all.” They hooked their arms and drank to brotherhood with a bottle of French cognac Slava had stuffed into his pocket and they’d been putting up with each other ever since. No, Nat wasn’t much of a mathematician, but he had an experimental nose like a razor. Somehow his career had been derailed. He’d gotten his PhD at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, once America’s leading fusion research center, now little more than some half-empty buildings standing in a New Jersey meadow. Leonard recruited him just as he transformed the Austin National Fusion Research Laboratory into CFRC. Recently he’d been made a division head, but everyone knew the reason for that.

The momentary silence was cut short by Andy Lipman, who appeared at the door with three emergency people. “Uh, Mac,” the tech said, “they wanted to ask you a couple questions for their report.” Slava got to his feet and ushered them in with a silent frown. The last thing either physicist was interested in was answering more of the same.

Neither did the emergency people appear in a hurry to ask. “Can we get this over with?” Archangelsky said, but something about Machuzak’s office amused them; they clucked in mock admiration at the shelves of texts, the stacks of printouts heaped up everywhere, the blackboard, the wall charts. All the while a fire-truck beacon flashed through the window, painting everyone with pallid Christmas colors as the low rumble of the engine sent concussions through the air. In that weird twilight zone Archangelsky fidgeted with his cigarette, waiting. The fireman made a bad joke about smoking regulations, to which Slava replied with a ferocious stare. The intruder swallowed; they got down to it.

Machuzak repeated what he’d said to the reporters: At the surge room, they found Krieg-Zuber receiving CPR on the floor. He’d evidently backed into a charged capacitor and, as they’d learned, a couple hundred milliamps is just right for the heart of an acting director.

The paramedic checked his notes. “Isn’t there supposed to be a safety interlock or something that discharges those capacitators when you open the door?”

Machuzak nodded wearily, glancing at Slava.

“But it failed?”

“Yes,” Machuzak said, “it failed. We don’t know why. There’s a lot of old equipment down there. We use parts from previous machines.”

“Got it. Anything else you can add, Dr. Machuzak?”

“No,” he sighed again, “I really can’t.”

“I can,” interrupted Slava, throwing down his cigarette. “Terminator shouldn’t have been there in the first place. The man didn’t know what he was doing. That’s all there is to it.”

“Slava, take it easy,” Machuzak interrupted.

Archangelsky immediately caught himself, gazed forlornly at the cigarette on the floor, raised his hand in a peace salute. His nerves were more on edge than he’d realized. “Sorry.”

The apology didn’t seem to appease the police sergeant, who was showing more interest in the “Miss Fusion” calendar pinned above Nat’s desk than in an EMT report. She turned to the Russian and said, “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Yaroslav Archangelsky,” Slava replied without expression.

“Yaaroslaave Archangelsky?” she repeated with a serious Texas twang, obliterating his name.

“Yahroslav Arkhahngelsky,” Slava said as if correcting a schoolchild.

The fair-haired policewoman didn’t perceive the menace in Slava’s voice. “You descend from high places,” she said cheerfully enough, intending to alter the mood or at least show that she understood his name even if she couldn’t pronounce it.

Now Archangelsky answered at absolute zero. “Just old name from old country. You need history lesson?”

“Sorry,” she said, seeing that things were going from bad to worse, “just curious. You know, it’s quite a place y’all have. I’ve always wanted to visit. Never been too clear about what you do here—”

“Build bombs,” cracked the fireman, having remained in a private bubble throughout.

Archangelsky wouldn’t let the remark pass. “Energy,” he said severely, punching out the words. “No bombs, no secrets. We want to give the world energy. Understand?”

“Oil’s pricey for sure, but we got plenty o’ sun and wind in Texas. Don’t need no radiation.”

“Why you ignorant sonofabitch!” Slava leapt toward the fireman.

“Slava!” Machuzak shouted, at once on his feet, fully interposing himself between the two men.

“Sorry,” the policewoman said in the same instant, pinning the fireman to the wall with an evil eye. “Sorry,” she repeated. “You know how gung-ho we Texans can be. Anyway, I hope you can give me the cook’s tour once this is sorted out. What d’ya do now?”

Machuzak accepted the peace offering and eased Slava into his chair. “Serious accidents almost never happen, but there’ll be an internal investigation.”

Despite the last minute’s drama, the cop continued to prowl around the room in a slightly distracted manner, as if the business at hand only half captured her attention. “Seems straightforward,” she said after a pause so long that both Archangelsky and Machuzak were caught off guard. “Who’ll be in charge for the interim?”

The two physicists exchanged glances. “I…it’s difficult to say. Our director Leonard Rasmussen is seriously ill—”

“Well, maybe this Krieg-Zoober will pull through.”

“Huh?” Both Nathaniel and the Russian started. “Zuber isn’t dead?”

The officer shrugged. “He was, but the EMT crew finally jump-started his ticker. They said he’s pretty fried inside and it’ll be touch ’n’ go for a day or two. Anyway, we’d best be on our way. Sorry about what happened.” The sergeant ushered the others out and had half disappeared herself when she took a step closer to the large wall chart outlining the principles of fusion. “Plasma physics… Yeah, people use that word a lot when they talk about this lab. Everybody who doesn’t think you’re building bombs thinks y’all are doing blood research and—that ain’t what’s goin on here.”

“No…” Machuzak smiled faintly, “… it ain’t.”

The young woman continued to ponder the chart, eerily discolored by the flashing fire-truck beacon, and scratched her head. “This really isn’t too clear. D’ya think you could tell me what a plasma is?” At a glance at the scientists’ ashen faces, she retreated. “Well, maybe another time.” Again she prepared to depart but instead moved closer to a cluster of photographs on the wall. “Hmm, Durham Cathedral,” she said, peering closely at the first. Then she touched two fingers to her forehead in a salute, said, “Good evening, sirs,” and vanished.

* * * *

Slava lifted his phone to make a call only to find that not only could he not get a signal, but his address book had been erased. Machuzak tried an outside landline but it was dead. “Eb tvoiu mat’,” Slava muttered. Leaving Nat with a perplexed look on his face, he stepped into the corridor and ran downstairs to the lobby. John Henderson, CFRC’s security chief, motioned for him to wait as he frantically tried to deal with the internal calls lighting up his board.

“What the hell’s going on, John?” Slava finally interrupted.

Henderson looked up at Slava in a desperate bafflement. “W…wireless is jammed and outgoing Internet seems to have been cut.”

“How?” asked Archangelsky.

Removing his cap Henderson scratched his head. “Cyrus installed some equipment in the back room last year. H…he didn’t tell me what it does.”

“This isn’t goddamned NSA!” cursed Archangelsky. Maybe it was. This is exactly how things were going at CFRC. Four years ago Krieg-Zuber had silently put in place a routing system: all scientific papers bound for publication were siphoned to his office and secretly vetted. Nat Edward’ich himself uncovered the scheme and protested to Leonard until it was shut down.

“Why cut signals now?” Slava continued. “World knew what happened hours ago. f*****g amateurs…”

“Must be automatic. Don’t ask me how.”

“That miserable sack of s**t… He got this from his CIA trainers at Cryotech…” Waving his arm in disgust, Archangelsky returned to Machuzak’s office to explain what had happened. He switched on the light and found Nat looking more exhausted than he’d left him, brooding over the unfiltered incoming broadcasts.

“It’s worse than we imagined,” Machuzak said before Slava could open his mouth. Every news organization in the state was broadcasting from the environs of CFRC, and blogs—divided equally among those claiming Krieg-Zuber was alive and those claiming he was toast—already saturated the Web. Cut to Washington. Whatever coffee-infused staffers journalists can uncover at this ungodly hour are eager to assure viewers that an investigation is called for.

“Government no longer funds science,” Slava talked back to the screen. “Those off-course whores can’t call for anything.”

“They can and they will,” Nathaniel corrected him wearily. “We still get enough federal bucks that Congress can sink this ship.” One or two maybe.

Slava snorted as he squashed a big roach with his foot. “The bastard isn’t even dead yet.”

“The bastard isn’t the point, Slava; the accident is. Mark my words: the politicians will be on us within a week.”

“Another prediction, Cassandra? Look at them,” Archangelsky pointed to a smirking senatorial aide. “It’s as if they were waiting for this to happen, ignorant sons of bitches.”

“Slava,” Machuzak said, suddenly turning, “what got into you before, calling that fireman an ignorant son of a b***h? Were you out of your mind? Why do you think ignorant sons of bitches want to shut us down?” Aye, you didn’t need to be a Cassandra to see that in more ways than today fusioneers had themselves to blame for what was taking place before their eyes. For too many decades the bigwigs had insisted that a commercial reactor was “just over the next machine,” a claim that would ring ever more hollow as Nature slowly revealed the awesome difficulty of the endeavor. Tonight that arrogance was coming to roost.

“Sorry,” answered Slava with as much contrition as he was capable of. “Nerves… Anyway, public will get investigation. Too bad they won’t investigate the way that svoloch’ has been running lab.” He went on to explain what had just taken place.

“Well, at least we can forget about The Terminator for a while.”

“Not before the crayfish whistles on the hill.”

Nathaniel chuckled morosely, swiveling away to answer incoming mail.

“Don’t.” Slava stayed his hand.

For a moment Machuzak stared blankly at the Russian until Slava launched a new window and pointed to the message that for years had appeared on their screens:… Individuals using this system expressly consent to having all their activities monitored and recorded by system personnel…

Why the implications of the advisory had never sunk in before this moment entirely eluded Machuzak and he mumbled only, “You’ve got to be kidding.” Then he remembered Krieg-Zuber’s paper-vetting scheme.

There was nothing for it. Nathaniel silently got to his feet and switched off the lights. Outside, the parking lot was deserted; phones functioned but memories were gone. The two men breathed heavily. At this hour here was only one thing to do—head to town and the Yellow Rose, where Slava would bargain with the dancers for their G-strings, and hope that tomorrow would not prove worse.