"Shaw didn't mention anything about CERN. He just — "

"Thank God! Look, you're not to say anything to anyone about what you were doing, understand?"

"But — "

"Not a word. The damage is doubtless in the billions, if not the trillions. Our insurance won't cover more than a tiny fraction of it."

Theo didn't know Beranger well, but all science administrators worldwide were doubtless cut from the same cloth. And hearing Beranger go on about culpability brought it all into perspective for the young Greek. "Dammit, there was no way we could have known this would happen. There's no expert anywhere who could claim that this was a foreseeable consequence of our experiment. But something has occurred that has never been experienced before, and we're the only ones who have even a clue as to what caused it. We've got to investigate this."

"Of course we'll investigate," said Beranger. "I've already got more than forty engineers down in the tunnel. But we've got to be careful, and not just for CERN's sake. You think there aren't going to be lawsuits launched individually and collectively against every single member of your project team? No matter how unpredictable this outcome was, there'll be those who will say it was a result of gross criminal negligence, and we should be personally held accountable."

"Personal lawsuits?'

"That's right." Beranger raised his voice. "Everyone! Everyone, your attention please."

Faces turned toward him.

"This is how we're going to handle this issue," he said to the group. "There will be no mention of CERN's possible involvement to anyone outside the facility. If anyone gets email or phone calls asking about the LHC experiment that was supposed to be performed today, reply that its scheduled running had been delayed until seventeen-thirty, because of a computer glitch, and that, in the aftermath of whatever it was that happened, it didn't get run at all today. Is that clear? Also, absolutely no communication with the press; it all goes through the media office, understand? And for God's sake, no one activates the LHC again without written authorization from me. Is that clear?"

There were nods.

"We'll get through this people," said Beranger. "I promise you that. But we're going to have to work together." He lowered his voice and turned back to Theo. "I want hourly reports on what you've learned." He turned to go.

"Wait," said Theo. "Can you assign one of the secretaries to watch CNN? Somebody should be monitoring this stuff in case anything important comes up.

"Give me a little credit," said Beranger. "I'll have people monitor not just CNN, but the BBC World Service, the French all-news channel, CBC Newsworld, and anything else we can pull off a satellite; we'll save it all on tape. I want an exact record of what's reported as it happens; I don't want anyone inflating damage claims later."I'm more interested in clues as to what caused the phenomenon," said Theo.

"We'll look for that, too, of course," said Beranger. "Remember, update me every hour, on the hour."

Theo nodded, and Beranger left. Theo took a second to rub his temples. Damn, but he wished Lloyd were here. "Well," he said at last, to Jake, "I guess we should start a complete diagnostic on every system here in the control center; we need to know if anything malfunctioned. And let's get a group together and see what we can make of the hallucinations."

"I can round some people up," said Jake.

Theo nodded. "Good. We'll use the big conference room on the second floor."

"Okay," said Jake. "I'll meet you there as soon as I can."

Theo nodded, and Jake left. He knew he should spring into action, too, but for a moment he just stood there, still stunned by it all.

Michiko managed to pull herself together enough to try to call Tamiko's father in Tokyo — even though it was not yet 4:00 A.M. there — but the phone lines were jammed. It wasn't the sort of message one wanted to send by email, but, well, if any international communications system was still up and running, it would be the Internet, that child of the Cold War designed to be completely decentralized so that no matter how many of its nodes had been taken out by enemy bombs, messages would still get through. She used one of the school's computers and dashed off a note in English — she had a kanji keyboard in her apartment, but none was available here. Lloyd had to actually issue the commands to send the message, though: Michiko broke down again as she was trying to click the appropriate button.

Lloyd didn't know what to say or do. Ordinarily, the death of a child was the biggest crisis a parent could face, but, well, Michiko was surely not the only one going through such a tragedy today. There was so much death, so much injury, so much destruction. The background of horror didn't make the loss of Tamiko one whit easier to bear, of course, but—

— but there were things that had to be done. Perhaps Lloyd never should have left CERN; it was, after all, his and Theo's experiment that had likely caused all this. Doubtless he'd accompanied Michiko not just out of love for her and concern for Tamiko but also because, at least in part, he'd wanted to run away from whatever had gone wrong.

But now—

Now they had to return to CERN. If anyone was going to figure out what had happened — not just here but, as the radio reports and comments from other parents he'd overheard indicated, all over the world — it would be the people at CERN. They couldn't wait for an ambulance to come to take the body — it might be hours or days. Surely the law was that they couldn't move the body, either, until the police had looked at it, although it seemed highly unlikely that the driver could be held culpable.

At last, though, Madame Severin returned, and she volunteered that she and her staff would look after Tamiko's remains until the police came.

Michiko's face was puffy and red, and her eyes were bloodshot. She'd cried so much that there was nothing left, but every few minutes her body heaved as if she were still sobbing.

Lloyd loved little Tamiko, too — she would have been his stepdaughter. He'd spent so much time comforting Michiko that he hadn't really had a chance to cry himself yet; that would come, he knew — but for now, for right now, he had to be strong. He used his index finger to gently lift Michiko's chin. He was all set with the words — duty, responsibility, work to be done, we have to go — but Michiko was strong in her own way, too, and wise, and wonderful, and he loved her to her very soul, and the words didn't need to be said. She managed a small nod, her lips trembling. "I know," she said in English, in a tiny, raw voice. "I know we have to head back to CERN."

He helped her as she walked, one arm around her waist, the other propping her up by the elbow. The keening of sirens had never stopped — ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, warbling and wailing and Doppler shifting, a constant background since just after the phenomenon had occurred. They made their way back to Lloyd's car through the dim evening light — many of the streetlamps were out of commission — and drove along the debris-littered streets to CERN, Michiko hugging herself the whole time.

As they drove, Lloyd thought for a moment about an event his mother had once told him about. He'd been a toddler, too young to remember it himself: the night the lights went out, the great power failure in Eastern North American in 1965. The electricity had been off for hours. His mother had been home alone with him that night; she said everybody who had lived through that incredible blackout would remember for the rest of their lives exactly where they were when the power had failed.

This would be like that. Everyone would remember where they'd been when this blackout — a blackout of a different sort — had occurred.