‘Could it kill him?’ Hammerson asked.

‘Not sure, but I doubt it in the short term.’ Graham anticipated Hammerson’s next question. ‘Jack, we thought about halting the treatments, but we think that may either kill him or send his system into an irreversible vegetative state. At this stage, all we can do is watch and learn. He’s unique, Jack, and very valuable. When can we have him back?’

‘In a month or two, Graham. Just give him back in one piece.’

Graham was silent for a moment, then spoke with a lowered voice. ‘Don’t forget our agreement, Jack. He’s yours until he’s killed or incapacitated. Then we own him.’ The scientist’s eyes went again to the bone saw.

SEVEN

‘But there was no thermal energy release – there was nothing on the seismographic sensors, not a single tremor. I know it was subsurface, and I bet they had concrete and lead shielding, but that gamma flash must have gone straight through it – a controlled nuclear test blast should have been better contained. The radiation signature reads like something non-terrestrial.’

Zachariah Shomron was arguing furiously with his professor; or rather, with himself, using his professor as an audience.

Professor Dafyyd Burstein clasped his pudgy hands together above a stomach that was straining over a thin belt and raised his eyebrows in a look that he reserved for his best students, those who raised brilliant questions and probably already knew the answers. ‘Are you saying a stellar mass somehow fell to earth in the Iranian desert, Zachariah?’

‘Yes, no, of course not . . . maybe. It’s just that the pulse had all the characteristics of a cosmic gamma burst, but it’s impossible that it originated from Earth. Though it only flashed for microseconds, it gave off thousands of sieverts. A nuclear blast only delivers about 300 sieverts per hour downwind, but it also throws out neutrons, alpha and beta particles and X-rays. The only thing that saved Iran from being incinerated was the flash’s micro duration . . . and then, it just turned off. It’s impossible! This is so weird – it’s getting into dark matter territory.’

‘Yoish!’ exclaimed Burstein. ‘Okay, okay, we can discuss all this later. I came up to tell you that there’s a large and serious-looking government type waiting to talk to you in the foyer. Have you been late paying your bills again, Zachariah?’

Burstein took Zachariah by one of his bony elbows and led him towards the door, nodding as the younger man kept up a stream of near impenetrable musings on obscure gamma-wave effects.

Zach stopped mid-sentence when he saw the man in the foyer. He was the most perfectly square human being Zach had ever seen, all hard edges that looked machine-cut, starting from his flat-top crew cut and broad shoulders, and continuing down to column-thick legs stuffed into charcoal suit pants. The man took a step forward and Zach automatically took one back.

‘Boker tov, Zachariah Shomron.’