FourteenAt eight o’clock the morning after Sixth Street, while Slava and T. J. made their way to Europe, Nathaniel entered the lobby of the main building and tore off the top page of the deadline calendar. He crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the nearest basket, watching another day slip uselessly from their grasp.
Ripping off the sheet had not been his first act this day. Two hours earlier, he’d badged himself into the test cell, where one of those stand-up balloons of Edvard Munch’s Scream with Bill Balustradi’s face pasted over it now guarded the entrance. Although it was hardly dawn, skies yet gray, the lab was alive. An undermanned first shift had just gotten under way, and clean-suited technicians were disappearing into the tokamak to begin the task of washing the inside of P
