Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.

And one of them was Robert B. "Porky" Butler. The bastard who'd damn near killed Vicky hadn't spent a single night in jail—wasn't even being charged with anything.

"I've got to make a call."

Abe didn't offer his phone and Jack wouldn't have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.

Jack had retrieved Butler's phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.

When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.

"I'm an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I'd like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?"

"Very well," the woman said.

"Is he in a lot of pain?"

"Hardly any."

Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.

"May I speak to him a minute?"

"He's with a physical therapist right now. Let me check."

A minute later she was back. "Mr. Butler can't come to the phone right now, but he'll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon."

Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he'd be over around one.

Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…

He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.

4

Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she'd done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she'd begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.

Changed, just like her printout.

OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager's memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.

She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn't say exactly what, but it wasn't right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.

The dry lab lightened, then darkened again as the door behind her opened and closed.

"Are you a believer yet?"

She turned at Dr. Monnet's voice. He stood behind her, looking as if he hadn't slept last night.

She swallowed. "Tell me this is a trick. Please?"

"I wish it were." He sighed. "You have no idea how much I wish this were some sort of hoax. But it is not."

"It has to be. If you were simply asking me to believe that this molecule alters its structure during the course of some 'celestial event,' I could buy that. I'd want to know how the 'event' effected the change, but I could imagine gravitational influence or something equally subtle acting as a catalyst, and I could handle that. But what we've got here—if we haven't been flim-flammed—is a molecule that not only mutates from one form to another but substitutes its new structure for all records of its original structure. In effect, it's editing reality. And we both know that's impossible."

"Knew," Dr. Monnet said. "That was what we assumed was true. Now we know different."

"Speak for yourself."

He smiled wanly. "I know how you feel. You are utterly confused, you are frightened and suspicious, yet you are also exhilarated and challenged. And the tug-of-war between all these conflicting emotions leaves you on the brink of tears. Am I right?"

Nadia felt her eyes begin to brim as a sob built in her throat. She wiped them and nodded, unable to speak.

"But it's true, Nadia," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Trust me. We are not being tricked. There's something here that challenges our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the physical world, about reality itself."

And that was what was so upsetting, making her crazy. What if the ability to reorder reality, along with the very memory of reality, were not confined to this one molecule? What if it were happening every day? How many times had she typed or written a word and then stopped and stared at it, thinking it looked wrong, that it was spelled some other way? She'd look it up and find most times that her original spelling had been correct, so she'd move on despite the feeling that it still looked wrong.

"We must know how it works," Dr. Monnet said. "And the first step toward an answer is to stabilize the molecule."

"How can you do that if you can't even remember what it looked like originally?"

He pulled a vial from his pocket and held it out to her. "Because we have a new supply."

Nadia stared at the tube for a heartbeat, then snatched it from him and with trembling hands began preparing a sample of the pale blue powder for the imager. When it was ready she fed it to the machine and waited.

Finally the molecule appeared and she wanted to cheer when she recognized it. This was what had been erased from her brain. Now the memory was back and, disturbing though its shape might be, she felt whole again.

"How… where did you find the unaltered Loki?"

"From the source. It doesn't change within the source, only after it's been removed from it."

She turned to face Dr. Monnet. "And are you still keeping the source a secret?"

"For now, yes."

Nadia wanted to scream at him to tell her. It had to be organic—a plant? An animal? What?

"And the mysterious celestial event? Does that remain a secret too?"

"I only held back on that until you'd seen for yourself the changes wrought by the event. The event itself is common, occurring a dozen, sometimes thirteen times per year: the new moon."

Nadia wet her lips. "The new moon? When was that?"

"Exactly eight-forty-two last night."

The cycle of the moon, one of the primal rhythms of the planet. And the new moon… a time when Earth's celestial night-light was out, blind to what was going on below on the darkest night of the cycle.

A chill ran over her skin.

"I'd like you to get started right away," Dr. Monnet was saying. "We have no time to lose. The Loki source may be… unavailable after this, and then we will have lost forever our chance to unlock its secrets."

"Don't you think we should get some outside help? I mean, if we've only got twenty-nine days…"

Dr. Monnet shook his head vigorously. "No. Absolutely not. Loki does not leave GEM. I thought I made that clear."

"You did, but—"

"No buts about it." His face paled, but Nadia wasn't sure whether from anger or fear. "Absolutely no outside consultation on this."

Nadia wanted to wail that he couldn't—shouldn't—put all this responsibility on a beginner like her.

"You are going to help me, I hope," she said.

"Of course. To save you time, I'll show you all the dead ends I've already explored. After that, I'm counting on you to come up with a new perspective."

Uncertainty tickled her gut. "I don't know if you should count too heavily—"

He held up a hand. "I never told you this, but before I hired you I put in a call to Dr. Petrillo."

She stiffened. Her research mentor during her fellowship—the Grand Old Man of anabolic steroids. "What did he say?"

"What didn't he say! I couldn't get him to stop talking about you. He was overjoyed you were staying in research instead of 'wasting' your talents in clinical practice. So you shouldn't underestimate your abilities, Nadia. I'm certainly not. But as an extra incentive: if you stabilize the Loki molecule within the next four weeks, I am authorized to offer you a bonus."