"Dad…"

"We make disposable soldiers."

"We do?"

"Look, honey, the science already exists. Gene splitting began in the early 1980s. In the late nineties we were cloning sheep and pigs. Then we started splicing genes and crossbreeding animals like the beefalo. Four years ago a company named Celera made a DNA map of the entire human genome. Millions of genetic base pairs. Once you can isolate a gene, you can employ gene-splicing techniques to incorporate any genetic trait into any plant or animal on earth, just like they're doing with that damned genetically engineered corn. This is not far-fetched. It's not science fiction. It's today."

"And what do you suppose they're designing?"

"I think…" He stopped and looked out to sea, almost afraid to say it, so she said it for him.

"Aliens?" but she sort of hissed it, or sighed it.

"Honey, why not? What if Ten-Eyck stands for some kind of alien life form? You believe they have aliens on ice out at Area Fifty-one, don't you?"

"I'm not so sure about all that, Dad." She said it because she'd never been able to get completely behind that one, but it made her feel like a traitor to put the thought into words.

"Not sure? We've filed two lawsuits over it."

She finally just nodded.

But Herman was just getting started. "If there are dead aliens at Area Fifty-one, and if we harvested their DNA, what's to stop DARPA from doing some careful gene splicing, putting some of that alien DNA into the human zygote, upgrading the Homo sapiens, making a hybrid with selected alien powers mixed with our human dexterity and intelligence? The human-alien, this chimera, might have shadowy thoughts, or some genetic memory from outer space. It might have a strange appearance, but even that isn't necessary. The human zygote-the human egg-could be spliced to make the chimera look more physically acceptable to us. Then we raise it and train it to fight. Imagine disposable soldiers with ten times human strength. You could gene-splice them to be heat-resistant for desert warfare, or cold-resistant for places like Kosovo. Put 'em on the ground and let 'em do what we are no longer willing to have our own children do-fight and die. Chimeras have no parents. They are test-tube-grown and lab-incubated, so there is no one to grieve if they die in battle. They're the perfect conscription soldier. I'm telling you, honey, this is just the kind of shit those guys at DARPA come up with."

"Dad, I don't think…" She stopped, skeptical as she was, because her father was shaking his head sadly now. Then he slumped and looked down at the sand between his feet.

"I'm always alone," he said softly. "Always fighting everything by myself. I need someone to believe in me." He looked at her. "I need someone to be on my side."

"Daddy, I believe in you. God, how I believe in you. Don't you know that?"

"I can't let this go. I can't check into a hospital with this going on. Can't you see what's at stake here?"

It was then that she knew she had lost. "Yes, Daddy. I see." She was so afraid she was going to lose him, afraid that this fight would consume him.

They sat for a long time watching the waves blast the shore, then suck the Whitewater back up to build a new wave that slammed onto the sand again a few seconds later. The rhythmic motion of the ages.

"Did you find us a detective?" he asked, his voice tired.

"Yes. His name is Jack Wirta. He has good contacts on the San Francisco PD. But the feds took the case away from the locals, so he probably can't help us anymore."

"The local cops may have lost the case, but they have a duplicate file tucked away someplace. Cops are like that. Information is power. Believe me, there's a record of the investigation somewhere in their files. Mr. Wirta has to get them to show it to you."

"And what are you going to do?"

"I've gotta raise ten thousand dollars in three days."

"That's all?"

"This month's payment. She still wants the whole mil- ten a month for eight years."

"Oh, Daddy, I'm sorry."

"I'm also gonna go out to JPL-find out what's on those fifty pages of encryption," he said, changing the subject.

They sat quietly. After a while, she reached over and hugged him. He looked closer to defeat than she had ever seen him. "I'm on your side, Daddy."

"I know." But it broke her heart the way he said it.

It was raining in the Bay Area, and the flight was bumpy. They careened off cumulonimbus clouds and bounced violently on pockets of hard air, dropping hundreds of feet without warning, then straining up again. The passengers all had the same tight, anxious smiles people get when they're trapped in an elevator. Jack and Susan both heaved a sigh of relief when the plane finally touched down.

Rental car-map of the city-heading toward town, windshield wipers clicking. They said almost nothing until they passed the old Candlestick Park, each lost in separate thoughts.

A lot of things were on Jack's mind. First and foremost, his back had been battered on the plane ride and he was miserable. His thoughts had already begun to circle the pill bottle in his faded briefcase.

He was wearing ironed jeans, a brown corduroy sport jacket, a yellow shirt, a blue necktie, and his best Cole Haan loafers. He was dressed for bullshit because he had promised to get Eleanor Drake of the SFPD to cooperate, but it was more likely she'd yank out that little nine millimeter Titan Tiger she always carried and start blasting.

Jack had cheated on Eleanor. Not that they'd been exactly betrothed or anything, but they had been serious enough to be taking long weekends together, meeting up in Monterey, making love, walking on windblown beaches, holding hands. He should never have stepped out on her with Angela Macabe. Angela had a centerfold's body. He'd made a glandular mistake.

He was also thinking about how to get the Institute for Planetary Justice (an irredeemably corny name, he thought) to pay him something in advance. She was his first client, and he'd never done this before. He'd sort of been expecting Susan to write out a check, but all those natural opportunities had come and gone, and now he was just going to have to flat-out ask for it.

Susan sat in the passenger seat mulling over problems of her own. She was consumed by worry about her father. She had to get this job done fast and get back to L.A. so she could find a way to get him checked into the hospital. She was also praying that whatever was on those fifty pages would turn out to be nothing. A traitorous thought, but there it was. If that coded material was just more corn research, which they didn't need anymore, maybe she could get him back into Cedars-Sinai. Lastly, she was wondering how to avoid paying Jack Wirta anything in advance, because, quite frankly, they were selling the Washington, D.C., furniture and office equipment to pay for Melissa King's fine, so there sure as hell wasn't a thousand a day lying around for the Wirta Detective Agency.

"I usually get my money in advance… at least some portion of it," he said, startling her by reading her thoughts like John Edwards.

"Is that normal? I figured you'd just bill us and we'd handle it in the normal course of business."

"Some of the larger agencies do it that way, but us little guys go for cash up front. I'm already out my airline ticket, and expenses are supposed to be in advance."

She smiled at him and he melted like ice cream on a summer day.

"Well, that is… normally they are. Not always… sometimes, though," he stammered.

"Well, I suppose I could write you a check."

"Good! That works." Problem solved, he thought.

While they continued into the city she took out her checkbook, holding it up to her chest like a losing poker hand. Then she wrote him a thousand-dollar check, tore it off, and handed it to him. "There you go," she said brightly.