Teague approached the box and looked down at the papers. "Jesus," he murmured. "Wonder what this stuff is." He bent and ran his fingers just above the line of symbols. There were cursive letters mixed with bold black lowercase letters; double upright bars reminiscent of the matrix symbols he had studied in flight school, integral signs, exponents containing German gothic letters and Greek letters, squiggles and triangles and lopsided circles with double dots in the middle, letters with single and double dots like umlauts over them. . .

"What a mess," Sergeant Teague said, rising again. His neck hair bristled and he sniffed the air, twisting suddenly.

Of course, nothing was there. What did he expect?

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Lanier had slept through most of the two-day OTV ride, head full of weightless dreams indiscriminately mixing the Stone and Earth, past and future.

He looked at his watch and then at the face of the secret service agent sitting beside him in the limousine. There was an eighteen-hour lag between the time he had landed at Vandenberg and the time he would report to Hoffman's office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Outside the smoke-colored car window, desert flashed by. The air pressure was high and the gravitation oppressive. Even through the dark windows, the sun was hot and yellow.

He missed the Stone.

"I have some spare time," he said.

"Yessir." The agent looked straight ahead, face pleasantly bland.

"You fellows are discreet."

"Oh, yessir. We are that," the driver said. The agent seated beside the driver glanced back at Lanier.

"Ms. Hoffman says we're at your disposal, but we're to have you in Pasadena, alive and sober, by eight o'clock tomorrow morning."

Lanier wondered how Hoffman would react to being called "Ms." "Gentlemen," he said. "I've been celibate for more months than I care to count. Rank hath its responsibilities. Is there a safe place in Los Angeles where one can get. . .” He searched for a phrase as antique as "Ms." ". . . one's ashes hauled? Discreetly, charmingly, cleanly."

"Yessir," said the driver.

He was allowed two drinks in a fancy but ancient hangout known as the Polo Lounge, surrounded by aged relics of the bad old days of network television. By three o'clock in the afternoon, two suites in the Beverly Hills Hotel—directly opposite one another—were checked out. The agents efficiently inspected the suite where he would stay and pronounced the rooms safe with a nod to each other.

He finally had some illusion of privacy. He took a shower, lay on the bed, almost drifted off. How long would it take for him to get used to the extra weight? How would it affect his performance?

The woman who arrived at five was stunningly beautiful, very friendly, and ultimately—through no fault of her own—unsatisfying. He judged his performance as adequate, but the act brought little joy. She left at ten.