Michael Crichton - Binary

`You'll be all right. Just don't inject any more of that stuff. You uncouple the tanks?'

Graves pointed.

`Well,' Nordmann said. `That's it, then.' He looked around the room. `Quite an elaborate setup.'

With a pluck! Graves pulled one of the rubber suction `vibration sensors' off the wall and showed it to Nordmann.

`I'll be damned,' Nordmann said. `Phoney as a fourdollar bill. But he really kept us guessing.'

Phelps came into the room. `What's going on here?'

`The tanks have been uncoupled,' Nordmann said. `There's no danger any more.'

`Good work,' Phelps said. He said it to Nordmann. Graves was angry about that, but he made no gesture. There was no sense in giving Phelps the satisfaction.

Phelps left. Somebody brought Graves a glass of water. Graves sipped it and wandered around the room, looking at the equipment, touching it idly..

`Well, anyway,' Nordmann said. `Congratulations.'

Graves shrugged.

`You're not accepting congratulations?'

Graves finished the water, tried his voice. `I'm not sure they're in order yet.'

`Why? Surely it's clear -'

`The double whammy,' Graves said. 'Wright is a master of it.'

`That may be,' Nordmann said, `but -'

`Then where's the second punch?' Graves said. He continued to wander around the room. When he came to the scintillation counter, he clicked it on. The machine chattered loudly like an angry insect.

`Damn,' Nordmann said. `Everybody out!'

Graves laughed and shook his head. Everybody left the room quickly. Phelps was outside in the corridor, talking with policemen who were removing the two dead bodies. `What is it now?' Phelps asked.

`A second punch,' Nordmann said. `Radiation in that room.'

Phelps smiled in total triumph. `We're prepared for that,' he said. He picked up a walkie-talkie. `We have a radiation hazard on the nineteenth floor,' he said. `Get the shielding up here.'

Graves and Nordmann exchanged glances.

`Oh,' Phelps said, `I'm not a complete fool.'

`Nobody ever suggested you were a complete fool,' Nordmann said.

It took two minutes for the policeman to arrive. He entered the room with the lead cases, which were carried on small, rolling dollies. He also had a pair of long tongs. He emerged a moment later. `All clear,' he said. `Two bars of some isotope. Shielded now.'

Phelps smiled. `As soon as we heard about the explosive,' he said, `I checked truck hijackings. There were two today: one for the explosive and another for the isotope.'

`Good work,' Graves said. He said it to Nordmann.

Phelps looked pained.

Graves and Nordmann went back into the room. Nordmann said, `Satisfied now?'

`Almost.'

Nordmann laughed. `You're a hard man to satisfy.'

`It's not me,' Graves said. `It's him.'

Nordmann looked around the room. `Well,' he said, `I don't know what you expect to find here…'

`Neither do L'

`You seem so certain.'

`I'm not certain. I'm just worried.'

Nordmann raised an eyebrow. `A triple whammy?'

`Maybe.'

`I think you're giving him too much credit.'

`Maybe.'

Graves continued to prowl around the room.

`Well,' Nordmann said, `in the meantime I think we'd better move these tanks apart. Just in case. I'll be happier when they're separated by a distance of several miles.'

`Okay,' Graves said. He was hardly paying attention, looking at the equipment in the room. `You know,' he said, `I can't get over the feeling that it's been too simple.'

`Too simple? It's been complicated as hell.' Nordmann put his arm over Graves' shoulder. `I think you're tired,' he said gently.

Across the room Lewis said, `It's five o'clock, gentlemen.' Everyone, including the cops, laughed. One or two of the men in the room clapped.

On the floor the timer wheel clicked once. There was a loud metallic snap.

The battery light blinked on.

The twin solenoids clicked to the `open' position.

And nothing happened, because the solenoids had been disengaged from the tanks.

`Well,' Nordmann said, `I can't imagine that there's anything else.'

`I guess not,' Graves said.

He and Nordmann left the apartment and walked down the corridor towards the elevators.

At 5:02 Graves pressed the button for the elevator. The light didn't go on. He looked up at the floor numbers, one of which should have been lighted; they were all dark.

`That's funny,' he said.

Nordmann frowned. `Maybe they went on the blink.' `Why?' Graves asked.

`Maybe when we cut the power to the apartment -' `But they worked before.'

`Yes, that's true. They did.'

`Why should they break down now?'

At that moment a cop came up the stairs, panting heavily. `Damned elevators are broken down,' he said. `We checked the circuit breakers in the basement., There was a timer wired in to knock out the elevators exactly at five.'

`At five?' Graves asked. He looked at Nordmann.

Nordmann shrugged. `Probably just a little irritant he threw in.'

`An irritant? But that doesn't make sense.'

`It's plenty irritating to me,' Nordmann said. `I don't want to walk down nineteen flights of stairs.'

`Of course,' Graves said. `But why do it now?'

`I don't get you.'

`Well, if Wright wanted to make things difficult, he would have knocked out the elevators at four PM. And that would have made things very difficult for us. It might even have delayed us until the gas went off.'

`True.'

`But why wait until five? By then we've either beaten his system or we haven't.'

`Listen,' Nordmann said, `I think you're tired. You've been worrying about Wright for so long -'

`I am not tired,' Graves said, shaking off Nordmann's arm. 'Wright was a logical man, and there is logic in this move.'

`There are no more moves,' Nordmann said. `We've won.'

`Yes,' Graves said. `That's exactly what we're supposed to think.'

And he turned and walked back to the apartment.

`John,' Nordmann said, running to catch up with him. `John, listen -'

`You listen,' Graves said. `What's the point of knocking out the elevators after five?'

`It has no point. It's a foolish irritation.'

`Wrong,' Graves said. `It has one important point. It traps everybody on the nineteenth floor. And it traps the tanks as well.'

`That's true,' Nordmann said. `But it hardly matters. We've disarmed the mechanism.'

`Have we?'

`Oh, for Christ's sake, of course we have. You did it yourself. You know it's disarmed.'

`But what if it's not?'

`How can it not be?'

At that, Graves sighed. `I don't know,' he admitted. He reentered the apartment.

HE OFTEN FEELS THAT A PROBLEM IS SOLVED WHEN

IT IS ONLY HALF FINISHED, OR TWO-THIRDS FINISHED.

Graves remembered the psychological report as he paced the apartment, talking out loud. Nordmann watched him and listened. In the background, cops were disassembling the tank mechanisms.

`All right,' Graves said. `Let's think it through. Wright designed a mechanism.'

`Yes.'

`And the mechanism had a purpose.'

`Yes, to dump nerve gas over the city at five rht.'

Graves nodded. `And we have thwarted that.'

`Yes,' Nordmann said.

`Did he have any other purpose?'

`Well, I don't know. You could answer that better than anyone. Somebody mentioned something about disagreeing with the President over China -'

`No, no,' Graves said. `Let's forget about motivation. Let's consider only the intent of his system. Did he intend to do anything besides dump the nerve gas?'

`Raise hell, create panic…' Nordmann shrugged.

Graves was silent, frowning at the room. `I mean,' he said, `did Wright intend his elaborate mechanism to do anything besides dump the gas?'