The Magic Circle, Katherine Neville [parable of the sower read online .TXT] 📗

The Idaho site where I worked was the premier site in the world when it came to nuclear safety research: that is, we studied how accidents happened, and how they could be prevented.

The topic in our field that had recently gained particular prominence—waste management—dovetailed, as it happened, with the exact project Olivier and I had been working on for the past five years. Olivier and I controlled the largest database in existence to identify and monitor where toxic, hazardous, and transuranic materials were stored or buried. As pioneers in the field, we felt it only right that we’d also accumulated the world’s largest stockpile of scatological humor—quips like “Other people’s waste products are our bread and butter.”

But Olivier and I were small fare. The real bread and butter of the research done here in Idaho consisted of the wide-ranging tests on meltdowns and other types of accidents at our reactors out in the lava desert. Though it wasn’t surprising that the International Atomic Energy Agency, watchdog to the world, would send a representative like Wolfgang Hauser to Idaho to share ideas on such topics, I was unprepared for what the Pod was now telling me about this forthcoming mission.

“Ariel, you’re aware of the problems going on just now in the Soviet Union” were his first words when I was seated in his office and he’d shut the door.

“Um—well, of course. I mean, it’s on the six o’clock news every night,” I replied. Gorbachev had hell to pay, introducing freedom to a country that had imprisoned or slaughtered millions of people just to keep them from discussing it over tea.

“The IAEA is concerned,” the Pod went on, “that the Soviet Union might lose control of some of its republics—permanently lose control, that is—that there might be large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials in these places, not to mention the breeder reactors they’re so fond of, many of which are antique with inadequate control systems. All that falling into the hands of untrained provincials with no centralized authority, nothing to lose, and everything to gain by the situation.”

“Holy … Moly,” I said. “So what can I do to help out?”

He threw back his head and laughed, a surprisingly warm and open laugh. Despite his well-deserved reputation, much of the time I couldn’t help but genuinely like Pastor Owen Dart. A wiry, rugged former army boxing champ and Vietnam vet, he wore his shaggy bronze hair and leathery, battered face as badges of his inner nature. Though he was barely taller than I, the Pod was a scrappy fighter who only did better coming out of tight corners. But I was still relieved that I’d never had to cross him. Unfortunately for me, all that was about to change.

“Your assignment, you mean?” the Pod was saying. “I’ll leave that to Wolf Hauser, when he returns. Had I known you were back already, I would have detained him long enough to meet you, but he’s out doing field work for the rest of this week. I can tell you this much, though not for publication: Your involvement will require that you accompany Dr. Hauser to Russia in a few weeks. The arrangements are already under way.”

Russia? I couldn’t go flitting off to Russia. Not with Sam newly resurrected from the grave, dodging a squad of hit men from God knew where, and lurking only a few yards from here in the parking lot leaving messages for me on bits of string. Sam and I thought we were having trouble communicating now, but as far as I knew, they didn’t even have working phones in the Soviet Union! Much as I fancied the idea of an intimate foreign boondoggle with the gorgeous, pine-scented Dr. Wolfgang Hauser, I knew I must put a stop to this at once.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity, sir,” I told the Pod, “but frankly I don’t see how I can help with this project. I’ve never been to Russia, and I don’t speak the language. I’m not a Ph.D. chemist or physicist, so I wouldn’t know what I was classifying if it walked up and bit me. My job has always been security—tagging and tracking what other people have already dug up and identified. Besides, you told Olivier Maxfield this job would only last a few weeks and wouldn’t take me away from our own project.”

I was out of breath from this back-paddling, but it seemed my canoe was going nowhere.

“Don’t worry,” the Pod assured me in a non-reassuring voice. “I had to tell Maxfield something, or he would have wondered why he wasn’t included in this. After all, you’re codirectors on your project.”

I wanted to ask why, indeed, Olivier had not been included. But the Pod’s voice had taken on that detached tone he often used with those whose funeral oration he had already prepared. He was on his feet and seeing me out. I felt a chill in my bones at what I still had to do.

“The fact is,” he added before we reached the door, “the IAEA handpicked you months ago, based on your record and my recommendation. It’s been discussed fully, and finalized. And frankly, Behn, you should leap at this chance. It’s really a plum assignment. You ought to be kissing my hand for ensuring that you got it.”

I was reeling from the number of blows that had been delivered just since lunchtime. As he opened the office door, I blurted, “Besides, I don’t even have a Russian visa!”

“That’s been arranged,” the Pod said coolly. “Your visa will be handled by the Soviet consulate in New York.”

Curses, foiled again. Well, at least I had learned the bad news before my private phone chat with Sam. Maybe he could figure out something—along with everything else we had to unravel—to bail me out of this trip.

“By the way,” the Pod added in a more conciliatory tone as I was about to take my leave, “I understand that the reason you