Late in the afternoon, the sociology group presented another team report in the main compound lecture hall. About twenty team members were in the audience; not many more than sat on the low stage, behind the lectern. Rimskaya stood to one side while Wallace Rainer introduced the first of four sociologists.

Lanier watched and listened from the back, slumped in the seat. Ten minutes into the first presentation, Patricia sat beside him and folded her arms.

The first speaker outlined a brief hypothesis of Stone family groupings. She went into some depth on triad families, chiefly found among the Naderites.

Patricia glanced at Lanier. "Why am I barred from the libraries?" she asked in an undertone.

"Everybody is," he said. "As of today."

"Yes, but why?"

"It's very complicated. I can explain later."

Patricia turned away and sighed. "Okay," she said. "I'll do as much as I can outside. That's still allowed."

He nodded and felt a sharp surge of empathy for her.

The second speaker was Tanya Smith—no relation to Robert Smith—and she briskly elaborated on the previously presented report on the evacuation of the Stone.

Patricia half listened.

"It now seems apparent that a resettlement committee handled applications for corridor migration and coordinated transportation—"

Patricia glanced at Lanier again. His eyes met hers.

It was all crazy, no way to run a railroad, much less a huge research effort.

In its most crucial hour, the human race was represented by a team of blindly searching, hog-tied and gagged intellectuals. Thinking of Takahashi, and how useless all the security had been, Lanier's stomach went sour again.

The plan, of course, had been to allow researchers on the lower levels of security clearance and badge status to do their work as best they could, watched over by a senior member with almost full clearance. Their findings would then be filtered and collated and assembled into final statements, checked with corresponding documents in the libraries. It had to be that way. With so few people cleared to do research in the libraries, and with lifetimes of information stored away, decades would have passed before substantial overviews emerged.

That had been the reasoning, at any rate. Lanier had gone along because he was still, after all, a military man at heart, obeying if not implicitly trusting those beyond Hoffman in the chain of command.

Not that it mattered.

Not that it mattered one goddamn bit, because it was all being shut down anyway. They were going to pack up and go home and Takahashi would (if all went well) report that a good-faith effort was being made to placate the worried Soviets.

But the Soviets would still not be allowed into the libraries. Unless the President was totally mad. Only one hand in Pandora's box at a time.