"Regardless,
we need to know who it is." She turned to Blanes. "David,
that leaves you. Are you with us?"
"No!"
he cried, storming out of the room, repeating, "I am
not
with
you! I am
not
with
you!" in an anguished voice.
For
a second, no one reacted. And then Carter spoke slowly, darkly.
"He's
a little too concerned with making sure this experiment isn't carried
out, don't you think?"
ELISA
decided
to follow him, reaching the hall in time to see him turn toward the
corridor leading to the first barracks. Instantly, she knew where he
was headed. He turned left, passed the lab doors, and opened the one
that led to his old office. That was one of the areas worst hit by
the explosion, and now it was little more than a dark, empty
mausoleum.
The
wind moaned through the cracks in the buttressed walls. The only
thing left was a small table. Blanes rested his fists on it.
Suddenly,
she felt like she was interrupting one of his Bach recitals to show
him the results of her calculations. When he found mistakes, he used
to say, "Now go correct that damn error once and for all!"
"David,"
she said softly.
He
didn't respond. He was just standing there in the dark, hanging his
head.
Elisa
felt calmer now, though it wasn't easy. The heat and the tension were
both unbearable. Despite the fact that all she wore was a tank top
and a pair of shorts, her back, armpits, and forehead were drenched
in sweat. She really needed to get some sleep. Even just a few
minutes, but she had to close her eyes. Nevertheless, she knew (first
thing she told herself) that if she wanted to live, she'd have to
stay awake, and (second thing) above all, she had to remain calm.
That's
why she decided to be totally up front.
"You
lied to us, David."
He
turned and stared at her.
"You
said only the people who carried out the experiments saw splits.
Marini got the images of the rats and dogs, but you
both
did
the Unbroken Glass. You saw the glass's split, too, didn't you?
That's why you don't want us to do this now."
He
gazed at her in the darkness.
She
could picture what he was seeing: her hourglass figure, backlit,
leaning in the doorway, her black hair up in a ponytail, cropped
T-shirt short enough to show her stomach, cutoffs rubbing against her
thighs.
"Elisa
Robledo," he whispered. "The smartest, most beautiful
student... and the most arrogant little fucker."
"You
never gave a shit about any of those things."
They
were weighing each other up with their glances. And then,
simultaneously, they smiled. But David went on to say the most
macabre thing she could imagine.
"There's
another Zig Zag victim that you don't know about.
The
one that I killed." His fists rested on the table. He stared
down at them intensely, gazing at something only he could see. The
whole time he spoke, he never looked up at Elisa. "Did you know
that when I was eight years old, I saw my little brother
electrocuted? We were in the dining room, my mother, my brother and
I. And... I remember this really well... my mother disappeared for a
minute and my brother, who'd been playing with a ball, started
playing with the tangle of cords behind the TV without my realizing.
I was reading a book, I still remember the title:
The
Marvels of Science.
And
at one point, I looked up and saw my little brother all stiff, his
hair sticking out like a porcupine's. He was making this guttural
sound. From the waist down, he looked like a water balloon; he was
urinating and defecating on himself. I threw myself onto him, half
crazed. I'd read somewhere that you shouldn't touch someone who was
being electrocuted, but at the time I didn't care. I ran to him and
pushed him hard, like we were fighting. Just then the fuses blew, and
that was what saved me. But in my memory, I have the impression that
I somehow ... touched electricity. It's a very strange memory, and I
know it's not
real,
per
se, but I can't get it out of my head. I touched electricity, and I
touched death. And death, the death I felt, was not a calm force, it
wasn't something that descended gently and put an end to things. It
was taut and hard and it buzzed like a powerful machine. Death was a
charred metal monster... When I opened my eyes, my mother was hugging
me. I don't remember my brother after that. I erased the vision of
his body from my memory. And that was when I decided to become a
physicist. I guess I wanted to learn everything I could about the
enemy..."
He
stopped and finally looked up at her. Then, in a broken voice, he
went on.
"A
couple of days ago, I lived through another terrible moment. The
worst one since my brother's death. But that time, I
regretted
having
become a physicist. That was on Tuesday. Reinhard called me around
lunchtime, after having taken a look at Sergio's documents, and he
told me what he thought was happening. I had to go to Madrid to
prepare for our meeting, but first... first I wanted to see Albert
Grossmann, my mentor. I
had
to
see him. I think I once told you that he was against the whole idea
of Project Zig Zag. He helped me discover equations for the sequoia
theory, but when he began to suspect the possible consequences of
entanglement, he quit, leaving it to Sergio and me. He said he didn't
want to commit a sin. Maybe that was because he was old. I was young,
and I was glad he'd said that. That's the biggest difference between
old people and young ones: the elderly are horrified by sin, and the
young are attracted to it. Anyway, that Tuesday after Reinhard told
me everything Marini had done, I aged. Overnight. And I needed to go
tell Grossmann. Maybe I wanted to be absolved." He paused. Elisa
listened, rapt, her head leaning against the doorframe. "He was
in a private hospital in Zurich. He knew he was dying, and he'd
accepted it. His cancer was very advanced; he had pulmonary and
osteal metastases. He was in and out of the hospital every other
week. I got them to let me in, even though it wasn't visiting hours.
And he lay there, listening to me in agony. I could see death
descending over him the way night descends over the horizon. He was
terrified when I told him that the murders (which he didn't know
about) were connected to Zig Zag's existence. He wouldn't even let me
finish. He called me a bastard. 'You tried to see what's forbidden!
God forbade us, and you did it anyway! You are to blame, and Zig Zag
is your punishment!' He kept repeating it, shouting as loud as he
could, coughing, as he lay there on his deathbed. 'Zig Zag is your
punishment!' He was already dead, he just didn't know it."
Blanes
panted, as though rather than tell a story he'd run five miles. He
drummed his fingers on the dusty table like it was a keyboard.
"A
nurse came in and kicked me out. When I got to Madrid the next day, I
found out he'd died that night. In a way, Zig Zag used me to kill
him."
"No,
David, you didn't—"
"You're
right," he interrupted her, struggling to speak. "I did see
the glass's splits. Sergio and I studied them, and we knew the risks
of quantum entanglement. I refused to continue, and thought I'd
convinced Sergio to quit, too. We swore we'd never tell. But he kept
experimenting in secret. Years later, I started to sense what was
happening, but I didn't say a word. Not to Grossmann, or to anyone
else. Everyone around me was dying, and I... I didn't say a word!"
Suddenly, he burst into tears.
They
were awkward, racking sobs, as if crying were something he had no
idea how to do. Elisa went to him and held him. She thought of
Blanes's mother, holding her oldest son as tight as she could,
touching him to make sure that at least
he
was
alive, that at least
he
had
not been touched by the powerful machine.
"You
didn't know...," she cooed softly, stroking his sweaty neck.
"You couldn't be sure, David. None of this is your fault."
"Elisa...
My God, what have I done? ... What have
we
done?
... What has the entire scientific community done?"
"Get
it right, or get it wrong: that's all we can do." Elisa held him
as she spoke. "We're going to try again, David. And this time
we're going to get it right. Please, let me try..."
Blanes
seemed to have calmed down a little. But when he pulled away and
looked into her eyes, she could see sheer terror there.
"I'm
as scared of getting it right as I am of getting it wrong," he
said.
"THAT
'S
it,"
Jacqueline announced from her seat.
"Whatever
the professor wants," Carter said, watching the screen; Elisa
was at the computer. "Right smack on her ass."
Elisa
turned back to the tiny camera hooked up to the control room
computer. It was on a tripod behind her, aimed at the keyboard. She
nodded, approving of the position. If Ric had used the accelerator
that night, she guessed he'd done it from there. Plus, from that
position it would also record the door to the generator room, where
Rosalyn had died.
She'd
spent all afternoon preparing. She convinced Blanes to let her do it
alone (she'd had to convince Victor, too): it was less risky for the
group that way, she said, because if there were splits, she'd be the
only one to see them. She didn't want any help, even with her
calculations, claiming it would just slow her down. But she did have
to learn how to operate the equipment. Though Blanes didn't know
everything about SUSAN, he knew enough to teach her to turn the
particle beams on and off. Victor helped out by checking the
computers. Elisa didn't know much about the programs on them, but the
software was pretty outdated and that worked in her favor. The image
profilers were more complicated, but she'd only use them if she had
to. She wanted to see the images just as they were.
By
the time the really strong winds picked up, it was after six o'clock;
you could hear the gales howling, even from the control room.
"That
storm might cause problems," Blanes said uneasily.
"That's
the least of my worries."
It
started with a storm, it can end with a storm.
Elisa
tried to think of it as a good sign.
Jacqueline
approached her. She'd pulled her thick hair back into a rubber band,
and the ends were drooping down like a plant in need of water.
"What
will you do... when you get the images? We
all
need
to see them."