She’d tried to keep her tone light, but her fear, she found as she voiced the notion, was real. Was this the beginning of the Carter catastrophe, this little glowing hole in the fabric of matter?

“Actually, no,” Dan said. “At least we don’t think so. It’s because of that positive charge; it keeps normal nuclei matter away. In fact the larger it grows the more it repels normal matter. But if it were negatively charged—” He waved his ringers, miming an explosion.” — Ka-boom. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Listen, Ms. Della, there are opportunities as well as threats here. If you feed a nugget neutrons or light ions it will eat them, giving off energy in the process. You could conceivably throw in radioactive waste. Tritium, for instance. Then, when the nugget is fat enough, you could bombard it with heavy ions to split it. Two nuggets. Then four, then eight… A safe, efficient, clean energy source. Extremely valuable. And—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have to outline the weapons potential. More than half the researchers here are from military labs.”

“Okay. And I take it the children won’t tell you how they managed all this.”

“No.”

So, Maura thought, Tinkerbell was at once a great possible boon to humankind, and at the same time a great possible threat. Both carrot and stick. Almost as if the children planned it that way.

These Blue children, it seemed, had upped the stakes. For the first time a group of children had moved beyond eerie behavior and startling intellectual stunts to the physical, to something approaching superhuman powers.

Already we were terrified of them, she thought. But if… when this news gets out…

“Okay, Dan. What now?”

“The children want to talk to you.”

“Me? I have no power here.”

“But the children know you. At least, Tom Tybee does.”

She closed her eyes, took a breath. But who am I negotiating with, exactly? And on behalf of whom? It seemed humankind’s relationship with its strange Blue offspring was about to reach a new crisis.

Dan grinned. “It’s take-me-to-your-leader time, Representative.”

“Let’s do it.”

They walked out of the lab room. Her shadow, cast by the trapped cosmological glow, streamed ahead of her.

Anna was waiting for her in the principal’s office. Maura walked in with Reeve and Dan Ystebo.

When they entered, Anna backed away against the wall. Maura could see bruises on her neck, and when she opened her mouth she was missing a lower front tooth. “Just you,” Anna said to Maura. Her voice had the faintest trace of Aussie twang.

Principal Reeve said, “Now, Anna—”

Maura held up her hand.

“Just you,” Anna said. “That was the deal.”

Maura nodded. “If you say so. But I need your help. I’d like Dan here—” Maura indicated him. “ — to stay with me. I don’t understand as much of the technical stuff as I ought to.” She forced a smile. “Without Dan to interpret, it will take me a lot longer to figure out what you want. I guarantee, positively guarantee, he’s no threat to you. But if you want him to leave, he leaves.”

Anna’s cool gray eyes flickered. “He can stay. Not her.”

Reeve was visibly tired, stressed-out, baffled, angry. “Representative, she’s a child. And you’re letting her give you orders.”

“We nearly allowed her to be killed, Principal,” Maura said gently. “I think she has a right to a little control over the situation. Don’t you?”

Reeve shook her head, furious. But she left, slamming the door behind her.

Anna showed no reaction.

Maura said, “We’re going to sit down, Anna. All right? In these two chairs, on this side of the desk. You can sit, or stand, whatever you want.”

Anna nodded, and Dan and Maura sat down.

Anna said, “Would you like a drink?”

Maura was surprised. “I — yes. Yes, please.”

Anna crossed to the water cooler, neatly extracted two paper cups, walked gracefully around the table and handed them to Dan and Maura.

“Thank you,” Maura said, sipping the water. It was warm, a little stale. “Now, Anna. Tell me what it is you want.”

Anna dug her hand in a pocket of her gold jumpsuit, pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, and pressed it on the desk. She pushed it across to Maura.

The paper looked like a page torn out of an exercise book. It contained a list written out in a childish hand, complete with errors, a couple of the longer words even phonetically spelled.

She passed it to Dan Ystebo. “Deuterium,” he read. “A linear electrostatic decelerator… Maura, I think they want to grow Tinkerbell. Maybe even make her some companions.”

Anna said, “We will give you the Tinkerbell. And others.” She frowned with the effort of speaking, as if English were becoming unfamiliar. “They could light cities, drive starships.” She looked at Maura. “Do you understand?”

“So far,” Maura said dryly.

“We have other gifts to offer,” said Anna. “In the future.”

“More technology?”

Anna was concentrating, a crease appearing in the middle of her perfect forehead. “We are still learning, here at this center. And elsewhere.”

Dan leaned forward. “Are you in touch with the others? The other children, like you? In the other centers? How?”

She returned his gaze calmly. “We have suggestions. Ways of making food. Ways to make medicine, to make ill people well, to make them—” that pause, the struggle with the language again “ — not grow old. And we have better ways for people to be together.”

Dan frowned. “What do you mean? Politics? Ethics?”

“I don’t know those words.”

Maura said, “Better ways for people like me to run things.”

“Yes. But nobody should have to run things.”

Dan laughed out loud. “She gotcha there, Representative.”

“We have to work all this out,” Anna said.

“I understand,” Maura said evenly. But the promise is there. “And you will give us all this.”

“In return.”

“In return for what?”

“No harm.”

Maura nodded. “You must understand I can’t promise you anything. Those in charge here have a wider duty, to protect people. Do you understand that people are frightened of you?”

Anna returned her gaze, and Maura felt chilled.

“This is an important time,” Anna said suddenly. “Everything we do now is very important. Because everything comes out of

here.”

“Out of the here and now,” Dan said. “The future flows from this moment. We cast long shadows. Is that what you mean?”

Anna didn’t reply. She seemed to be withdrawing.

Dan was frustrated. “Why are you here? To help us avoid the Carter catastrophe? Are you from the future, Anna?”

There was no reply, and Maura put her hand on Dan’s arm to silence him.

The sunlight outside the center buildings was hot, flat, glaring.

Tinkerbell in a cage.

Everything Maura had seen seemed unreal, remote, as if swimming away into space after Reid Malenfant.

“Quite a prospectus those kids offer,” Dan was saying.

“Yes.”

“New technologies, new medicine, new clean power. What sounded like a Utopian political and ethical framework. Peace and prosperity for all.”

“Absolutely,” Maura said.

“So, you think anyone will listen?”

“Not a hope in hell.”

Dan sighed. “But we’ll want the goodies even so, won’t we?”

“You bet. You think we can afford to give them what they want? The deuterium, the decelerator…”

“Representative, I’m not sure if we can afford not to.” Dan glanced around to be sure nobody else could overhear them. “So here we have these children building their magic cage just in time for this quark nugget — which has been wandering the universe since the Big Bang — to come floating in, ripe to be captured. And not only that, it arrives in the nick of time to save Anna from the evil clutches of wacko Wayne Dupree. And on exactly the right trajectory, too.”