cape, concealing without restraining. Then she walked casually out the door.
“Pretty smooth,” I said. “She might not be official. She could have been hired by anyone.”
“Or she could be a Hammer of God nutcase. They had Blaze tracked as far as the train station in Omaha.” He switched to an outside camera.
“Ingram had a lot of government authority, as well as being a nut. I guess she might, too.”
“I was sure the government lost her in Omaha. If anyone had followed the limo, St. Bart’s would have had company long before now.”
She stepped out and looked around, her face revealing nothing, and started up the sidewalk toward town like a tourist on a morning constitutional, neither slow nor hurried. The camera had a wide-angle lens; she dwindled away pretty fast.
“So should we check the hotels and try to find out who she is?” I asked.
“Maybe not. Even if we got a name, it might not do us any good. And we don’t want anyone to make a connection between St. Bart’s and Guadalajara.”
I gestured at the screen. “No one can track that signal to here?”
“Not the pictures. It’s an Iridium service. I decrypt them passively from anywhere in the world.” He turned off the screen. “You going to the unveiling?” Today was the day Jefferson and Ingram were to have finished the humanization process.
“Blaze wondered whether I ought to. My feelings about Ingram are still pretty Neanderthal.”
“I can’t imagine. He only tried to murder your woman and then you as well.”
“Not to mention insulting my manhood and attempting to destroy the universe. But I’m due in the Clinic this afternoon anyhow, to get my memory fucked with. Might as well see Wonder Boy in action.”
“Give me a report. I’m going to stay by the screen for the next day or two, in case ‘Agent Simone’ tries another visit.”
Of course I wouldn’t be able to give him a report, because the encounter with Ingram was related to all the stuff I was having erased, or at least so I assumed—I wouldn’t be able to remember his assault on Amelia without recalling what she had done to attract his attention. “Good luck. You might check with Marty—his general might have some way to access FBI personnel records.”
“Good idea.” He stood up. “Cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks. Spend the rest of the morning with Blaze. We don’t know who I’m going to be tomorrow.”
“Frightening prospect. But Marty swears it’s totally reversible.”
“That’s true.” But Marty was going ahead with the plan even though it meant the risk of a billion or more dying or losing their sanity. Maybe my losing or keeping my memories didn’t rank too high on his list of priorities.
* * *
the woman who called herself Audrey Simone, whose cell name was Gavrila, would never go back to the monastery. She had learned enough there.
It took her more than a day to put together a mosaic of Iridium pictures of the two blue vehicles making their way from North Dakota to Guadalajara. By God’s grace the last picture was perfect timing: the truck had disappeared and the bus was signaling for a left turn into an underground parking garage. She used a grid to find the address and was not surprised when it turned out to be a clinic for installing jacks. That Godless practice was at the heart of everything, obviously.
General Blaisdell arranged transportation to Guadalajara for her, but she had to wait six hours for an express package to arrive. There was no sporting goods store in North Dakota where she could replace the ammunition she’d used up opening doors—Magnum-load dum-dum bullets that wouldn’t set off airport detectors. She didn’t want to run out of them, if she had to fight her way to the redheaded scientist. And perhaps Ingram.
* * *
ingram and jefferson sat together in hospital blues. They were in straight-backed chairs of expensive teak or mahogany. I didn’t notice the unusual wood first, though. I noticed that Jefferson sat with a serene, relaxed expression that reminded me of the Twenty. Ingram’s expression was literally unreadable, and both of his wrists were handcuffed to the chair arms.
There was a semicircle of twenty chairs facing them in the featureless white round room. It was an operating theater, with glowing walls for the display of X-ray or positron transparencies.
Amelia and I took the last empty chairs. “What’s with Ingram?” I said. “It didn’t take?”
“He just shut down,” Jefferson said. “When he realized he couldn’t resist the process, he went into