She gave her head a vehement shake. “Never. Not Doug. He was thinking of picking up some GEM stock on the chance that what he’d learned meant it was going up, but I know blackmail would never ever cross his mind.”

“You’re sure?”

“Without a doubt.”

Nadia could have been kidding herself, like the mother of the school’s biggest pothead saying, Not my kid. But Jack didn’t think so.

“So I doubt it’s GEM.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Nadia said. “Milos Dragovic is somehow connected to GEM, and GEM is connected with”—she took a deep breath—”Berzerk.”

“Damn!” Jack said, slapping the table. “I knew it! That sample I gave you matched up, I take it.”

She nodded reluctantly. “It’s my project at GEM, the very molecule I’m supposed to be stabilizing. It’s called ‘Loki’ there.”

“Loki… makes you loco. And stabilizing it makes sense. The guy who sold it to me told me about how it all changes to something useless after a certain time.”

Nadia rose from her seat and wandered out from behind the deck, rubbing her hands in a washing motion. She looked agitated, too agitated to sit.

“Every twenty-nine days, twelve hours, forty-four minutes, and two-point-eight seconds.”

Jack blinked. “How—?”

She seemed to be on automatic pilot as she moved to the coffee setup and grabbed the mug with nadj across its front.

“And it’s not just the molecule itself that changes. Every representation of the structure of the active molecule, whether it’s a drawing, a model, a computer file, even human memory of it, changes along with it.”

She stopped pouring her coffee and turned to stare at him, pot in hand, as if waiting.

“Go on,” he said.

“Aren’t you listening?”

“To every word.”

“Then why aren’t you telling me I’m crazy?”

“Because I believe you.”

“How can you believe me? What I’m telling you is impossible—or should be.”

“Yeah. And the same could be said for the beastie your buddy Monnet gets his Loki from.”

“‘Beastie?’ You mean it comes from an animal?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of what?” Nadia was saying, and sounding a little annoyed as she went back to pouring her coffee. Good. Better than crying. “It ‘sort of comes from an animal, or it comes from a ‘sort-of animal?”

“A sort-of animal that doesn’t follow any of the rules, just like this Loki stuff.”

Things were beginning to make sense now… sort of. Jack told her how he’d followed Monnet out to the freak show, and what the boss there had later said about a research scientist who’d found some “fascinating things” in the dying rakosh’s blood.

“Doc, I’m willing to bet that one of those ‘fascinating things’ turned out to be Loki or Berzerk or whatever it’s called.”

She turned, holding her mug with both hands. “But what kind of animal—?”

“I wouldn’t call it an animal—animal might make you think of a rabbit or a deer. I’d call it a creature or a thing. The only one of its kind left. And it’s not like anything else that’s ever walked this earth.” He could have added that he had it on good authority that a rakosh wasn’t completely of this earth, but he didn’t want to get into that here. “Let’s just say anything is possible where this thing is concerned.”