Not one for small talk, thought Lash. “Over the weekend, I managed to speak to their doctor, Karen Wilner’s brother, John Wilner’s mother, and a college friend who’d spent a week with them last month. It’s the same story as the Thorpes. The couple was almost too happy, if such a thing is possible. The friend said the one disagreement she’d witnessed had been minor — about which movie they should see that night — and it dissolved into laughter within a minute.”

“No indications for suicide?”

“None.”

“Hmm.” Mauchly steered Lash through an open door and into a room where a worker in a white coat waited behind a counter. Mauchly reached for a stapled document on the counter, handed it to Lash. “Sign this, please.”

Lash leafed through the long document. “Don’t tell me this is another confidentiality agreement. I’ve signed more than one of these already.”

“That was when you were privy only to general knowledge. Things have changed. This document just spells out in greater detail the extent of the punitive damages, civil and criminal liabilities, and the like.”

Lash dropped the document onto the counter. “Not very reassuring.”

“You must understand, Mr. Lash. You are the first non-employee to be given access to the most sensitive details of our operation.”

Lash sighed, took the proffered pen, and signed his name in two places indicated by yellow flags. “I’d hate to see the kind of screening your employees have to go through.”

“It’s much more stringent than the CIA’s. But our pay scales and benefits are uniquely high.”

Lash handed the document to Mauchly, who passed it to the man behind the desk. “What wrist do you wear your watch on, Dr. Lash?”

“What? Oh, the left one.”

“Then would you please extend your right arm?”

Lash did so, and was surprised when the worker behind the desk slipped a silver band around his right wrist, tightening it with what looked like a miniature band wrench.

“What the hell?” Lash jerked his arm away.

“Strictly a security precaution.” Mauchly raised his own right wrist, displaying an identical bracelet. “It’s coded with your unique identifier. While you wear that, scanners can track your movements anywhere inside the building.”

Lash rotated the thing around his wrist. It was tight, but not uncomfortably so.

“Don’t worry, it will be cut off when your work here is complete.”

“Cut off?”

Mauchly, who so rarely smiled, smiled faintly now. “If it was easy to remove, what would be the point? We’ve tried to make it as unobjectionable as possible.”

Lash glanced again at the smooth, narrow bracelet. Although he disliked jewelry — he’d even refused to wear a ring during his marriage — he had to admit the discreet-looking silver band was vaguely attractive. Especially for a manacle.

“Shall we?” Mauchly said, ushering Lash back into the hall and leading him to a different bank of elevators.

“Where are we going?” Lash said as the elevator began to descend.

“Where you requested. Following the Thorpes and the Wilners. We’re going inside the Wall.”

For a moment, Lash simply stared at Mauchly. The chairman’s words came back to him: You’re being given unprecedented access to Eden’s inner workings. You’ve requested — and been granted — a chance to do what nobody with your knowledge has done before.

“Inside the Wall,” he said. “I heard that same expression used in the emergency board meeting.”

“It’s quite literal. This tower is actually made up of three separate buildings. Not only for security, but for safety — in an emergency, the three structures can be completely isolated by security plates.”

Lash nodded.

“The front section of the Eden tower is what our clients see: the testing suites, breakout areas, screening rooms, conference halls, and the like. The rear structure is where the real work goes on. Physically, it’s larger. There are six entrance checkpoints. We’re headed for Checkpoint IV.”

“You mentioned three buildings.”

“Yes. Atop the inner tower is the penthouse. Dr. Silver’s private quarters.”

Lash glanced at Mauchly with new interest. So little was publicly known about the secretive founder of Eden, the brilliant computer scientist behind its technology, that simply hearing he lived here — that there was a good chance he was close at hand — seemed a revelation. Lash found himself wondering what kind of a person Silver was. An eccentric, Howard Hughes figure, emaciated and addicted? A despotic Nero? A cold, calculating arch-tycoon? Somehow, the mere lack of information served to increase his curiosity.

The elevator doors slid back to reveal a wider corridor. Lash could see that it ended in what looked like a wall of glass. A large Roman number IV glowed above it. People were queued before the glass wall, almost all of them wearing white lab coats.

“Most of the checkpoints are on the lowest levels of the building,” Mauchly said as they joined the end of the line. “Makes access easier at the start and the close of the working day.”

As the line shuffled slowly forward, Lash got a better look at what lay beyond the glass: a short hexagonal corridor, like a horizontal honeycomb, brightly lit, with another glass wall at the far end. As he watched, the near wall slid open; the person at the head of the line walked through; and the wall slid closed again.

“You didn’t bring along any mechanical devices, did you?” Mauchly asked. “Voice recorder, PDA, anything like that?”

“I left everything at home, as you requested.”

“Good. Just follow my lead. Once the guard has verified your bracelet, just walk slowly through the checkpoint.”

They had reached the head of the line. Two guards wearing beige-colored jumpsuits flanked the glass. Everything — the guards, the checkpoints, the bracelet, all the fanatical baggage of security — seemed out of scale. But then, Lash recalled what the company’s revenue had been the prior year. And Mauchly’s words: Secrecy is the only way to protect our service. There are any number of would-be competitors who will do whatever it takes to obtain our testing techniques, our evaluation algorithms, anything.

As Lash watched, Mauchly held his left hand beneath a scanner set into the wall. A blue light shone onto his skin, and the bracelet flashed. With a faint hiss, the glass wall slid away and Mauchly walked into the brilliant space beyond. The near wall closed, then the far wall opened. Once Mauchly was through the chamber and both doors had shut, the guards motioned Lash forward.

He held his bracelet beneath the scanner, felt his wrist grow warm under its beam. The glass wall slid back and he moved into the chamber.

Immediately, the wall whispered back into place behind him. The light inside the checkpoint chamber was so bright, and it reflected so brilliantly off the white surfaces, that Lash was only dimly aware there was more to this honeycomb chamber than bare walls. As he walked forward, he was aware of shapes protruding from the walls, painted the same white as their surroundings and hard to make out. There was a faint humming noise, like the purr of a distant generator. This was more than a corridor — it was a conduit linking two separate towers.

Then the glass wall at the far end slid open and he stepped out. There was a lone guard here, who nodded at Lash as he emerged. Lash nodded back, looking around curiously. “Inside the Wall” did not look particularly different from the Eden he had already seen. There were a variety of signs: Telephony A — E, Online Surveillance, Advanced Data Synthesis. People moved along the corridors, talking in low voices.

Mauchly stood to one side, waiting. As the inner glass wall slid shut behind Lash, he stepped forward.

“What was all that about?” Lash nodded at the chamber he’d just passed through.