“The weapons-makers,” Faust answered flatly. “The ‘harbinger adepts.’ There were three lists. The first list is people who surrendered, the second people they kidnapped, and the third list is those Utopia couldn’t get their hands on, who are still at large, and capable of weaving massive, massive death. Everyone has that list now: you, me, O.S., the pretty public. There’s only one name on it, Cornel, one person still not in Utopia’s control who could make superweapons, the most dangerous and valuable person in the world. Everyone who’s anyone will be in the race now, to snatch that fruit. Everyone but me, of course. I shall remain voyeur.”

“Who is it?”

“Cato Weeksbooth.”

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH

The Race for Cato Weeksbooth

Written August 19–20, 2454

Event of August 18

Klamath Marsh

As, in a famine, a wise man does not clutch his last biscuit to the end, but chooses carefully the hour it will serve him best, so my many masters judged this the right day to use the bloodhound that is Mycroft Canner.

The first alarm which went off at the Klamath Marsh Secure Hospital was not the perimeter alarm, but an internal security system on one of the pharmaceutical storage lockers. Possibly someone tried to access the locker, but more probably the alarm box was jostled when one employee body slammed another against the door. It took eleven minutes from the publication of the Utopian lists for reports of trouble at the hospital to reach Papadelias, and twelve further minutes for Klamath Marsh Secure Hospital to fall silent. By then we were already en route—myself, Achilles, Martin, and a mix of guards—but it was sixty-five minutes from Romanova to Oregon, whose mountains offer Nature’s therapy to those minds Science can’t yet heal, and there were many already moving on Cato’s side of the Atlantic. Individual tracker calls leaked from the hospital, but these were few and calculated, most calling their own Hives or personal contacts rather than general emergency lines. The six Masons employed at the hospital could describe only being trapped in some wing far from the prisoner. Papadelias and Spain forwarded us fragments which were not much better. Silence from Kosala, Ancelet, and Dominic confirmed they too were in this race.