Lying had become so reflexive since then, it took some effort to break the habit today. “Um, what did Stan tell you?” he asked George Hutton, whose broad features still glistened under a thin gloss of perspiration.

“Only that you claim to have a secret. Something you’ve kept from reporters, tribunals… even the security agencies of a dozen nations. In this day and age, that’s impressive by itself.

“But we Maori people of New Zealand have a saying,” he went on. “A man who can fool chiefs, and even gods, must still face the monsters he himself created.

“Have you created a monster, Dr. Lustig?”

The question direct. Alex realized why Hutton reminded him of Pedro Manella on that humid evening in Peru, as tear gas wafted down those debris-strewn streets and canals. Both big men had voices like Hollywood deities. Both were used to getting answers.

Manella had pursued Alex onto the creaking hotel balcony to get a good view of the burning power plant. The reporter panned his camera as the main containment building collapsed amid clouds of powdery cement. Cheering students provided a vivid scene for Manella to feed live to his viewers on the Net.

“When the mob cut the power cables, Lustig,” the persistent journalist asked while shooting, “that let your black hole out of its magnetic cage. It fell into the Earth then, no? So what happens now? Will it emerge again, blazing and incinerating some hapless place halfway around the world?

“What did you make here, Lustig? A beast that will devour us all?”

Even then, Alex recognized the hidden message between the words. The renowned investigator hadn’t been seeking truth; he wanted reassurance.

“No, of course I didn’t,” Alex remembered telling Manella on that day, and everyone else since then. Now he let go of the lie with relief.

“Yes, Mr. Hutton. I think I made the very Devil itself.”

Stan Goldman’s head jerked up. Until this moment, Alex hadn’t even confided in his old mentor. Sorry, Stan, he thought.

Silence stretched as Hutton stared at him. “You’re saying… the singularity didn’t dissipate like the experts said? That it might still be down there, absorbing matter from the Earth’s core?”

Alex understood the man’s incredulity. Human minds weren’t meant to picture something that was smaller than an atom, and yet weighed megatons. Something narrow enough to fall through the densest rock, yet bound to circle the planet’s center in a spiraling pavane of gravity. Something ineffably but insatiably hungry, and which grew ever hungrier the more it ate…

Just thinking about it put in sudden doubt the very notions of up and down. It challenged faith in the ground below your feet. Alex tried to explain.

“The generals showed me their power plant… offered me a blank check to construct its core. So I took their word they’d be getting permission soon. Any day now, they kept telling me.” Alex shrugged at his former gullibility. An old story, if a bitter one.

“Like everybody else, I was sure the Standard Physical Model was correct — that no black hole lighter than the Earth itself could possibly be stable. Especially one as tiny as we made at Iquitos. It was supposed to evaporate at a controlled rate, after all. Its heat would power three provinces. Most of my colleagues think such facilities will be cleared for use within a decade.

“But the generals wanted to jump the moratorium—”

“Idiots,” Hutton interrupted, shaking his head. “They actually imagined they could keep a thing like that secret? These days?”

For the first time since Alex’s bombshell, Stan Goldman put in a comment. “Well, George, they must have thought the plant well isolated in the Amazon.”

Hutton snorted dubiously, and in retrospect Alex agreed. The idea was harebrained. He’d been naive to accept the generals’ assurances of a calm working environment, which proved as untrustworthy as the standard models of physics.

“In fact,” Goldman went on. “It took a leak from a secrets registration service to set that Manella character on Alex’s trail. If not for that, Alex might still be tending the singularity, safe inside its containment field. Isn’t that right, Alex?”

Good old Stan, Alex thought affectionately. Still making excuses for his favorite student, just as he used to back in Cambridge.

“No, it’s not. You see, before the riot, I was already preparing to sabotage the plant myself.”

While this seemed to surprise Goldman, George Hutton only tilted his head slightly. “You had discovered something unusual about your black hole.”

Alex nodded. “Before 2020, nobody imagined such things could be made in the laboratory at all. When it was found you could actually fold space inside a box and make a singularity… that shock should have taught us humility.

But success made us smug, instead. Soon we thought we understood the damned things. But there are… subtleties we never imagined.”

He spread his hands. “I first grew suspicious because things were going too bloody well! The power plant was extremely efficient, you see. We didn’t have to feed in much matter to keep it from dissipating. The generals were delighted of course. But I started thinking… might I have accidentally created a new type of hole in space? One that’s stable? Able to grow by devouring mere rock?”

Stan gaped. Alex, too, had been numbed by that first realization, then agonized for weeks before deciding to take matters into his own hands, to defy his employers and defang the tiny, voracious beast he’d helped create.

But Pedro Manella arrived first, amid a flurry of accusations, and suddenly it was too late. Alex’s world collapsed around him before he could act, or even find out for certain what he’d made.

“So it is a monster… a taniwha,” George Hutton breathed. The Maori word sounded fearsome. The big man drummed his fingers on the table. “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. We have a purported stable black hole, that you think may orbit thousands of miles below our feet, possibly growing unstoppably even as we speak. Correct? I suppose you want my help finding what you so carelessly misplaced?”

Alex was nearly as impressed with Hutton’s quickness as he was irked by his attitude. He suppressed a hot response. “I guess you could put it that way,” he answered, levelly.

“So. Would it be too much to ask how you’d go about looking for such an elusive fiend? It’s a little hard to go digging around down there in the Earth’s core.”

Hutton obviously thought he was being ironic. But Alex gave him a straightforward answer. “Your company already makes most of the equipment I’d need… like those superconducting gravity scanners you use for mineral surveys.” Alex started reaching for his valise. “I’ve written down modifications—”

Hutton raised a hand. All trace of sardonicism was gone from his eyes. “I’ll take your word for now. It will be expensive, of course? No matter. If we find nothing, I’ll take the cost out of your pakeha hide. I’ll skin you and sell the pale thing in a tourist shop. Agreed?”

Alex swallowed, unable to believe it could be so simple. “Agreed. And if we do find it?”

Lines furrowed Hutton’s brow. “Why… then I’d be honor bound to take your pelt anyway, tohunga. For creating such a devil to consume our Earth, I should…”

The big man stopped suddenly. He stood up, shaking his head. At the window, Hutton stared down at the city of Auckland, its evening lights beginning to spread like powdered gemstones across the hills. Beyond the metropolis lay forested slopes slanting to Manukau Bay. Twilight-stained clouds were moving in from the Tasman Sea, heavy with fresh rain.

The scene reminded Alex of a time in childhood, when his grandmother had taken him to Wales to watch the turning of the autumn leaves. Then, as now, it had struck him just how temporary everything seemed… the foliage, the drifting clouds, the patient mountains… the world.