don’t know, Steve,” Mark Malone said quietly. “All I know is that right now we have to deal with one thing at a time. Let’s get Sally into a bed, and then I’d better get to the emergency room. I want to be there when they bring Randy Corliss in.”
Paul Randolph nervously paced his office, wishing he still smoked. But smoking was no longer part of the proper image for anyone even remotely connected with medicine, so no matter how badly he wanted a cigarette, he would not light one. He glanced at the other two men in his office and wondered how they could sit so calmly, as if nothing were happening.
They had been waiting all morning now, and still they had heard nothing from Carmody’s team, nothing past that first phone call, when they’d found out who had gathered at Lucy Corliss’s house.
Damn the woman. Damn her and her friend Mrs. Montgomery both. And that fool, Dr. Malone. How on earth had they gotten him involved in their snooping? And what had they found? Damn them all!
“It isn’t really so bad, you know,” George Hamlin said softly, breaking the silence that had hung over the room for the last half hour. “We deliberately formulated a base that would be used only on women who didn’t want children in the first place. It’s not as if our failures were children somebody wanted. Just the opposite is true. These women specifically did not want children! Frankly, I can’t see how we’ve damaged them.”
“Apparently, they don’t see it that way,” Paul Randolph replied, his voice oozing as much sarcasm as he was able to muster. “Apparently, they’re under the impression that we’ve murdered and kidnaped their children. And, damn it, we have done just that, haven’t we?”
Lieutenant General Scott Carmody shifted his weight uncomfortably. He wasn’t used to waiting, and sitting for any length of time made him stiff. “There’s always a price,” he said. “The army needs these boys, Randolph, and the sooner this project comes together, the better off this country will be.”
“No matter what the cost?”
Carmody’s voice grew hard. “We’ve lost men in every program we’ve ever started. Sacrifice is part of the price of progress, and we all know it.”
Randolph groaned. “Please,” he said. “Spare me the old saw about eggs and omelettes. We’re talking about children here.”
“That has yet to be determined,” Hamlin interrupted. He rose, and, stretching, ambled over to the window where, with his arms clasped behind his back, he gazed out at Logan Airport With the same pleasure he had taken from the sight since he was a boy, he watched a plane hurtle down the runway, then soar into the sky. “I wonder if my boys enjoy that?” he mused more to himself than to the others.
“Pardon?” Randolph asked, but before Hamlin could repeat his question, the phone on Randolph’s desk jangled to life. Randolph picked it up, then handed it to Carmody, who listened for a few moments, issued some instructions, then hung up. He turned to face the others, the tension of the long night and morning suddenly gone.
“I think we’ve got it contained,” he said. “Lucy and James Corliss are dead, along with Bronski. And Wiseman is dead too.”
“Wiseman?” Randolph asked. “What happened?”
“Killed himself.”
“What about Randy Corliss?” Hamlin demanded. “Is he dead?”
“No,” Carmody replied. “He’s not dead. He survived the explosion, and the fire, and got out of the wreckage. He’s at Eastbury Community Hospital.”
Randolph turned white. “Then how can you say it’s contained? If that boy talks—”
But George Hamlin had already grasped the point “It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s he going to talk about? We’ve washed the computers, and by tonight the Academy will be gone too. There’s no evidence of anything anymore.”
“Except that Randy Corliss knows the names of everyone on the project.”
Carmody shrugged. “Not one of whom will ever be traceable. If you were to go searching for them right now, Randolph, you would have trouble proving that anyone connected with the God Project ever lived. Up to, and including, Dr. Hamlin here. Computers not only allow us to keep track of people, Randolph. They also allow us to bury them.”
Randolph sank into his chair. “Then it’s over?”
“No,” Hamlin replied. “There are still the Montgomery to contend with. And that, Paul, is going to be your job.”
As he listened to George Hamlin outline what he had in mind, Paul Randolph once again wished he had a cigarette.
An hour later, though, as he drove to Eastbury and