“Maybe,” Lisa said, “but we’re getting into deep hypothetical water here. Unless you care to tell me exactly what it is that Ed Burdillon was asked to do, and why your bosses think that Morgan’s particular expertise might have had a special bearing on the problem, I can’t make a useful judgment.”

Either Smith didn’t know the answer himself or he didn’t care to tell her yet—which didn’t surprise Lisa in the least. “We’re here,” he said as the Jaguar swung into the entrance of an underground parking lot.

While the vehicle paused at the booth outside the opaque screen that covered the entrance to the lot, Lisa had time to look up at what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary office building. Whatever kind of ID the blond driver was holding up to the security guard at the barrier must have impressed him, because he saluted as he pressed the button that raised the screen, then waved them through.

“Let’s see what Ahasuerus has to tell us,” Smith said as he reached across to open Lisa’s door for her, even though her left hand would have been perfectly adequate to the task.

NINE

The building into which Lisa and Peter Grimmett Smith ascended was indeed perfectly ordinary, at least by the standards of recent construction. The elevator from the parking lot took them only as far as the lobby atrium, where they had to pass through a metal detector before being allowed to approach the reception desk. The edge of the circular desk was surmounted by a transparent wall made of some chitinoid substance that glittered eerily as its curves reflected the light of the high-set mock chandeliers.

Smith passed a smartcard through a narrow slit in the wall. The bored teenage girl who accepted it fed it to her station with the world-weary air that was currently de rigueur among what the tabloids called “slaves of the machines.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Smith,” she said after consulting her screen. “Dr. Goldfarb’s waiting for you. Take elevator number nine. This afternoon’s code is 857. Thank you for your patience.”

Lisa tried to remember when “Thank you for your patience” had replaced such vapid formulas as “Have a nice day” in the standard lexicon of programmed social interaction, but she couldn’t put a date on it. Patience had been in such short supply for so long that the mantra might have come into use at any time between 2001 and 2030.

The principal design features of the high-rise had, of course, predated the establishment of the Containment Commission by some twenty years. Their ostensible purpose in the 2020s had been to offer protection against the ever-present menaces of client rage and employees inclined to “go postal.” Unfortunately, the equipment of such edifices with “fortress hearts” had quickly demonstrated that the quality of a fortress is only as good as the people and systems manning it. It hadn’t taken more than a couple of years to reveal the many kinds of chaos that could be created in such a building by a systems crash, and only a couple of years more to reveal how much worse such chaos could become if it were boosted by active malice.

Arguments had raged for years as to how much better each new generation of “foolproof software” really was—until the advent of new plagues had brought about a sudden reversal of public opinion as the millions of people who had to work within the carcasses of these monstrosities suddenly realized the advantages of careful isolation. The building housing the West-of-England office of the Ahasuerus Foundation was probably host to more than a hundred different megacorp groups and close to a thousand human employees, whose chances of picking up even so much as a common cold within its walls were negligible. Even the fiercest plague war was highly unlikely to touch inhabitants of institutions like this one, provided they kept their cars clean and their clothes smart. It also helped if they lived alone.

No wonder the world is overfull of workaholics, Lisa thought as the elevator smoothly carried them up to the thirty-first floor. While conversation was suspended, she took the opportunity to ring Mike Grundy and ask for news. He reported that Chan still hadn’t checked in and that his own attempts to see Ed Burdillon at the hospital had been thwarted by Smith’s men. He also confirmed that her flat was still out of bounds. Lisa asked him to transfer her car, some clean clothes, and a few other essentials of everyday life to the Renaissance. He promised to see to it.

“Did your people get anything useful from Ed Burdillon?” she asked Smith when she’d returned the phone to her belt.

“Nothing useful,” Smith told her, so glumly that it had to be true. “We passed the clothes he was wearing to Forrester—let’s hope he can come up with something.”

The elevator car was capable of sideways movement through “unmanned corridors,” as well as vertical movement in its shaft, so it eventually delivered them direct to a door that was supposedly unreachable by any other means.

Dr. Goldfarb was a little man in a dark-blue suit. The suit was as smart in the new sense as Peter Grimmett Smith’s, and considerably smarter in the old sense. Although the texture of Goldfarb’s skin implied that he was five or ten years younger than Smith and Lisa, he was wearing gold-rimmed spectacles that would not have looked out of place in a Dickensian costume drama; either he was something of a poseur, Lisa deduced, or he was untreatably phobic about lasers.

Goldfarb ushered his visitors through the reception area and into his station-packed inner sanctum. He seemed to be in sole charge of the office at present, although there were two chairs in each section. He politely offered both the chairs in the inner office to his visitors, but Smith declined and Lisa thought it best to do likewise. It was as if none of the three wanted to offer any of the others the psychological advantage of standing.

“I’m afraid that I really can’t offer you much help,” Goldfarb said, securing his quasiDickensian image by rubbing his hands together to emphasize his helplessness and his regret.

“This is both a police matter and a matter of national security,” Smith informed him coldly. “I understand that you need to operate a policy of strict confidentiality, but Morgan Miller’s life may be in danger. We need to know exactly what he told you.”

“Oh, yes, of course”Goldfarb was quick to say. “I’ve been in touch with New York, and they agree entirely that we must cooperate fully.The problem is that Professor Miller really didn’t give me any significant information when he visited. I’ve made a tape of our entire interview for you, but I fear that you won’t find it very useful.”

As he spoke, he picked up a wafer from the console to his left and held it out to Lisa. Lisa accepted it, then glanced at Smith to see if he wanted it passed on to him immediately. When he made no sign, she put it in the breast pocket of her tunic.

“Thank you,” said Smith.

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Goldfarb insisted, although no one had insinuated by word or gesture that he was. “Professor Miller came here primarily to ask me questions about the organization. He’d read our mission statement and had made what seemed to me to be a reasonably comprehensive study of the research projects we currently sponsor, but he seemed slightly anxious about certain unfortunate rumors that have circulated in the tabloid press….”

“I presume that what you mean,” Peter Grimmett Smith observed, although he didn’t inject any measurable sarcasm into the statement, “is that he wanted to make sure you’re a real research institute, not a bunch of crackpot conspirators.”

Goldfarb actually blushed, but he didn’t go so far as to wince. “If you want to put it so crudely,” he conceded. “Professor Miller was anxious to ascertain that we would make responsible use of any data that he might pass on to us.”