Greg Bear - Quantico

He had spent most of his time working in a concrete room off the underground vaults where the estate’s wine was stored in rows of oak barrels. ‘All he ever does is putter with chemistry sets and computers,’ the probate court had been told by one of his uncles, a rich fellow who had no interest in the property, the inheritance-or in Tommy.

Tommy had inherited everything, but the court had appointed a caretaker, his father’s older sister, Aunt Tricia, to watch over his interests until his majority. A cheerful, outdoorsy, garrulous woman in her seventies, Aunt Tricia had refused to take no for an answer, much less sullen silence, and she had promptly packed a few bags into her old Jaguar coupe and taken Tommy traveling.

They had spent three months on the road, between August and October of 2001. They had visited Oklahoma and Illinois, then driven south to Florida and back up the coast to New Jersey and New York. Tommy had been miserable, terrified by so many strange places and strange people-and by what he had heard on the news.

They had then returned to Temecula. Resolute to the end, convinced that Tommy must finally grow up, the formidable Aunt Tricia had been planning a second trip when she died in November of that dreadful, noisy year.

After her death, Tommy had mustered up enough courage to approach several local attorneys before finding one desperate to earn some fees. The attorney had brought Tommy out from under the shadow of court protection. Tommy had then inherited the remainder of his parents’ money, enough to pay taxes and keep him comfortable-if he could ever be comfortable.

Tommy had sought to hide away from a world he knew was trying to find him, a world going to war (he believed he was partly to blame for that), a world that made unexpected and unwanted phone calls and sent him suspicious junk email with impossible promises and lures, a world he knew wanted all of his money and cared nothing for him-an inhospitable world he ‘ thought ’ was going completely mad.

He had stripped away the winery’s signs and erected a barrier across the road to the vineyard.

Within a few years, the winery had been forgotten. The fields, hidden in rolling hills, had dropped off the tourist maps. Tommy had kept to himself, staying well away from the watchful eye of Homeland Security, even after federal edicts had required registry and yearly inspection of wineries, breweries, and other facilities capable of growing large quantities of microbes.

Aunt Tricia’s jaunt across America had taught Tommy that he had wellsprings of unknown strength. Still, he preferred to leave the estate only at night, driving the El Camino or the red Dodge pickup. Rather than buy more equipment and attract unwanted attention, Tommy had burgled local high schools, junior colleges, even a university, to get what he needed, based on what he read in his large collection of textbooks and stacks of science magazines.

Tommy had proven himself much more than an idiot savant-he had become a wizard of improvisation and stealth. But for Tommy, stealth was not a goal in itself. His true delight lay, as always, in reading about nanotech and biotech, playing around in his lab, learning new techniques-and having people leave him be.

Until he needed to reach out and touch them.

As far as Sam could judge, Tommy had only done that two or three times-the first time with his parents, the second, in 2001, with the mailing of fifteen small envelopes.

The death of Tommy’s aunt was an unknown. Tommy did not discuss it.

But Tommy had grown bored. He was discovering he could do many wonderful things in his small lab, things the experts said were impossible, and he could do them cheaply and efficiently. He had a gnawing wish to be important, to be recognized.

And so once again he had reached out, this time to offer his services to someone who might appreciate them…

Some acquaintances that Sam had acquired in a professional capacity-people deeply interested in ecological issues, or in animal rights-had told him about a strange young man who was offering up his odd skills; a creepy little runt with big hands and a large head and pig-eyes. Tommy had come to Sam’s attention at an important moment in his own life, a time when he was being stalked by grief and finding his calling-all that he did, all that he thought he believed-less than convincing.

In a professional capacity, Sam had decided to check in on Tommy. In some respects, Sam and Tommy were alike. Sam had been doing some burgling of his own. He had collected surprises about which he had not informed his superiors. Sam and Tommy were both foraging through a world changing far too rapidly to even begin to realize where dangers might hide.

For Sam and Tommy, things had clicked into place like the tumblers in a door lock, and that door had opened onto a new life. Sam had applied all of his charm-bringing groceries, books, installing a new generator. Tommy had stopped retreating under the covers in the middle of every visit. He had blossomed under Sam’s patient attention. The man-boy had even learned a number of rudimentary social skills. He could go out in the daytime, if necessary, and run errands. He could meet people without turning away and mumbling.

And since Sam’s appearance, Tommy had not reached out to touch anybody. Sam had assured him they now had a higher purpose. Of course, putting Tommy to use again put a final nail in the coffin of Sam’s former life, his career-everything he knew.

But those things had long ago stopped being important.

Meeting Tommy had stopped Sam from giving up and killing himself.

At altitude, the big gray and green C5A flew smooth as silk, even filled with two tanks, five armored vehicles, tons of crated cargo and twenty passengers. Two military brats-a seven-year-old boy and his ten-year-old sister-were running up the aisles between the seats, trying to play basketball with a tied-up roll of plastic bags. The constant throbbing low-level growl of the gigantic turbo-fan engines had lulled most of the other passengers to sleep.

Farrow had driven William Griffin to Andrews to join the flight from Georgia on its way to Washington state. The FBI had quickly wrangled an Air Mobility Command ticket.

William slumped in his seat. His eyes were heavy-lidded and he was fighting to stay awake, but he had refused coffee as the cargo officer had worked her way aft with a steel pot and a stack of foam cups. He did not want to sharpen his jagged emotions.

The basketball brats were now goggling at the tie-downs and chains that imprisoned two Stryker armored vehicles. William had flown AMC twice as a young boy, on much smaller aircraft. They had spent some time in Thailand and then in the Philippines. His father had been gone for much of the time, leaving them to fend for themselves in spartan base housing at Subic that dated back at least to the 1950s. All he remembered now of those years was his mother hoisting him up into a garishly decorated Jeepney and his father cleaning volcanic ash off their Subaru station wagon.

The cargo officer walked back down the aisle again and asked William if he was FBI. ‘We have a satcom relay for William Griffin,’ she explained, and handed him a wireless headset. ‘SCA Keller.’

‘SAC Keller,’ William corrected with a thin smile. ‘Special Agent in Charge.’

‘Right,’ the officer said, and stood back with her arms folded.

‘William Griffin here.’ He listened. Griff had been pulled out of the wreckage. Life Flight had transported him to Seattle. He was in critical condition, but he was alive.

‘Does my mother know?’ William asked. ‘They were divorced. She doesn’t live with him…she’s moved out of our old house, too.’

‘I’ve notified your mother,’ Keller said. ‘She says she’s not well enough to travel. You’ll have to represent the family.’