Authors: Robert W. Walker
Robyn had switched off the radio to shut Ovierto up, but now she wondered if it had been wise. Good police work meant listening to the killer when he gave you the opportunity, but with the child in the car, she hadn't a choice. She wondered if such a consideration would have occurred to Thorpe. She wondered if Thorpe were not trying now to get through to them, worried silly about the whereabouts of her protected lady of science.
Quietly, she reached for the radio to switch it back on when she thought better of it. If Ovierto heard what was said between her and Thorpe, he'd find them. She thought better of making any attempt to contact Thorpe. Thorpe had become a kind of magnet for Ovierto wherever Thorpe was, Ovierto was sure to go.
She realized that Thorpe had found Hogarth in Seatte first, but now it dawned on her that Thorpe had made no effort to relocate the Hogarths from here before now; she had baited Ovierto, using these people. It was Inspector Thorpe's style, all right.
Robyn drove on to the border, crossing into Oregon in the pitch dark, finding a small, unremarkable motel where they would stay the night. The neon-lit sign read North Star.
"Well get a room here, move on when its light," she told Hogarth.
Elena Hogarth, tending to the child asleep in her lap, said nothing. Robyn saw to the details, taking one room for the three of them and obtaining a folding bed for the girl. Once inside, Robyn claimed the bed nearest the door, not at all sure that Hogarth wouldn't run if she had the chance, as she had in Chicago. Robyn had ordered a pizza be delivered to them, and they ate enough to fill their stomachs.
The little girl could hardly eat, however, and she re-turned to the safety of sleep. Robyn observed the tenderness between the mother and child. When she was sure the girl was asleep, Hogarth came back to where Robyn sat watching the news. "She's devastated," she told Robyn. "She'll never recover from seeing her father die like that."
"If she's anything like you, she'll fight back."
"How do we fight a maniac like this man?"
"Any way you can."
They sat in a deep, blue-lit shadow, staring at one another. Elena's eyes misted over. "She's my baby."
"I know you're scared. So am I."
"That doesn't quite reassure me, knowing that."
"But I'm good at my job. You're safe."
"For the time being... but for how long?"
"Dr. Hogarth, tell me about Pythagoras."
She looked stricken. "What?"
"The project you and Oliguerri and the others were working on, the thing that's making this crazy man chase you across the country to destroy you and your family."
"It's got nothing to do with the project. I've been as-sure of that by—"
"By Thorpe?"
"Yes."
"Thorpe is almost as warped as this creep, Ovierto. Now tell me about Pythagoras. Tell me. You've got to trust someone."
"I never even told Randall."
"Dr. Hogarth, please."
"No, I...1 couldn't."
"Not even if it helps save you and your child?"
She looked from Robyn to the child and back again. "How can it help?"
"Anything that helps me understand this creep better will only help our chances."
"Pythagoras..." she said it as if it were a curse. "Wish I'd never heard of it."
Robyn gently nudged her on. "You've got to trust someone."
Her sniffles subsided as she began to talk. "It's a major undertaking for space, astrophysics and medicine... that is it began that way, as a benevolent proposal for a humane program that would rid the world of any number of diseases—"
"From space?"
"Without space it would be impossible."
"Is it possible?"
"We were close... very close. Dr. Oliguerri held the key."
Robyn thought of the papers Oliguerri had left behind, the ones she carried now, the ones Thorpe wanted. "How close?"
"Everyone else had perfected their part. Oliguerri's was the most difficult, and I was assisting him the night... when he was killed. This monster, this Ovierto, he does want the research, doesn't he? Doesn't he?"
"It certainly appears so. He wants to make some sort of a trade, the lives of future victims—scientists—for the information."
"I suspected as much, but Thorpe—"
"Thorpe has her own view of matters."
"And you?"
"My concern is with protecting you, and, to be honest, getting Joe Swisher's killer."
"At least you seem... honest."
"I’ll show you just how honest."
"What?"
Robyn reached into her bra and brought out the folded pages of Oliguerri's work. "I don't know if this means anything, but you're the first one I've shown it to."
Elena Hogarth gasped. "It's Oliguerri's work... his final conclusion on the project."
"Can you read it?"
"Somewhat. He enjoyed the secrecy of his unusual language. It was as good as a computer code, but he taught me some. The figures of course... yes... yes..." She went into the reverie of those engulfed in the fascination of their work.
After giving her ample time to look over the paperwork, Robyn asked, "What does this all... mean? That your Pythagoras project is workable?"
"Possibly... possibly..."
"And what would this be worth to a foreign government?"
"Hmmmmmph, billions."
"A cure for diseases of—"
"It is a double-edged sword."
Robyn stared into the dark eyes of the scientist. "There is a potential then for destruction?"
"Yes."
"So, Thorpe wasn't bullshitting about that much. Just how destructive could this thing be?"
"It could wipe out whole populations. What's worse it could turn whole populations into mutants."
"If that's true, why did you continue to work on it?"
"Why did men build the first cannon, the atom bomb? To see if it could be done. Not that Oliguerri and I didn't have our reservations. We spent many restless nights with ourselves. It all started out harmlessly enough...the application of concentrated sun rays to destroy toxins and waste sites, in fact. Benevolent enough for you?"
"But it got twisted?"
"It was taken a step further, to help in diseases, to actually pinpoint and alter genetically impaired T cells—"
"T-cells?"
"—in the human immunological system."
"A concentrated laser from outer space sifts the sunlight into a beam that can destroy cancer cells in a man on Earth?"
"Yes... our beneficent repast from space exploration and laser technology with the help of Fermilab. Don't you see what it could mean? The long-term results, possibly wiping from the planet all genetically impaired cells of any kind. Oliguerri imagined an Africa free of disease."
"Pretty heavy stuff," Robyn said.
"But we both immediately recognized the dangers, as did others. The first fear was that some one person gaining control of this would, well, control all medicine, since medical practice as we know it would be... well—"
"A thing of the past. No more surgery, for instance."
"Yes.”
“
"Ovierto was a surgeon, you know."
"There are more lethal problems with the technology," she replied.
She stood and paced before Robyn, gathering her words. "It took Ibi and me months to determine just how lethal after our initial discovery. You see, what one can do in solar laser technology, one can undo just as quickly."
"Depends on whose wielding the laser scalpel, you mean?"
"Precisely. Whoever controls this thing has the power to nuke whole populations, and there'd be no place to hide. It would make what we're doing now, hiding from this maniac, playpen time by comparison."
It was like letting the genie out of the bottle and taking your three nasty wishes only to lose your soul to the genie.
"Genetic altering from space?"
"Or genetic dismantling... one step beyond gene splicing, call it gene dicing," she said. "God, why didn't we shut down like Cartier wanted."
"Cartier, the English scientist killed by Ovierto?"
"Yes. She called it the power of Hider to the tenth power. Imagine, Sergeant Muro, implanting a genetic malady or an immune deficiency in an entire race, and you have the dark side of Pythagoras."
Robyn considered what she was hearing carefully, trying desperately to place Ovierto in, but he seemed a square peg here. "Space," she muttered, "final frontier of what, man's ignorance, fears, hatred. Why Pythagoras?"
"Greek philosopher... took it from one of my husband's books. He was first to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun, and that was in 500 bc. He also believed that the sun revolved around a fire at the center of the universe, a kind of cauldron of the universe..." She stopped to gather her strength and her thoughts. "He was quite ahead of his time, spoke of the harmony of the spheres, and proposed the theory that all phenomena may be reduced to numerical relations—"
"So, you named it for a dead man."
Dr. Hogarth frowned at this. "Most things are... named for the dead. Pythagoras also believed in the concept of the soul, and I liked that. He believed in a life of moderation, and he took a keen interest in medicine"
Now Robyn stood to stretch, shaking her head. "To your knowledge, Ovierto knew nothing of this technology?"
"Nothing, but information in the scientific community of this size... well, it's like any other community... news travels. We'd tested the laser with several dump sites before I ever heard of Ovierto. Mirrors were already in place at the orbiting stations before all this... this madness coming at us. The physicists worked out the necessary concentrations of sunlight required, along with the engineers who'd actually designed the laser itself. Hundreds of people worked on some portion of the whole."
"But few people knew of the whole, right?"
"Yes, correct."
"Like you and Oliguerri."
"Yes."
"And you never spoke of it to your husband, ever?"
"Only in the most general terms, and the most glowing. I didn't burden him with the razored side."
"You told him you named it Pythagoras?"
"Yes, tried to involve him a bit. We were having difficulties communicating lately, and—"
"I see."
Dr. Hogarth returned to the laser itself. "People like me, bacteriologists, microbiologist, we became most important to the project. Without us, it wouldn't come off, and we knew this. We understood the diseases we were going after. We understood cell biology, reproduction, disease. Most people connected with the project were kept in the dark about its ultimate goals, for good reason. Oliguerri and I, along with Carder, were among the few to make waves about the direction the research was suddenly being forced to take, one of a military nature, one of biological warfare."
"This was work done with NASA?"
"They were taking the payloads up. The Defense Department got into it afterwards. We tried telling them that countless experiments on disease cures in space are yet to be done, but they took a different view, an industrial application view at first, to do away with waste and toxins we earlier had no idea of what to do with —a true boon, really."
Robyn put her head in her hands. "But it's all gone sour somehow, don't you see?"
"Yes... yes, sour, after the tests."
The tests?"
"Los Alamos, seemed the proper setting... history, all that"
"How long ago were these tests done?"
"Oh, six years, I'd say."
"Six years?"
"Yes"
"About the time Ovierto became a problem for the FBI."
"I'm not sure about that."
"But I am." Robyn paced, trying to make the connection. "When you were at Los Alamos, were you secretly brought in, housed, all of you?"
"Well, yes... all very hush-hush. Didn't see my daughter for almost a year. My husband was ready to divorce me at that point."
"Ovierto was there.”
“
What?"
"At Los Alamos. He was there, on hand. Either legitimately or illegitimately, he was part of it. He had to be, don't you see?"
"Well, now you mention it, there was a surgery, a medical team."
"Were there any accidents? Anyone hurt?"
"We... I was never aware of anything of that nature, no. But then..."
"But what?"
"We were pretty well confined to one work area. There seemed to be a great deal going on elsewhere, however, but at that time there was no thought of human experimentation."
Robyn was skeptical. "How sure of that are you now?"
"I... I don't know."
"Ovierto may have been more involved than we know."
"No, I never..."
"He gained access to the safe house, wired the place... how? He either had a contact among the FBI men or someone in the house."