Mammoth

catch her, no question, but it wasn't going to be easy.

"What's your name, son?"

"Darryl, sir."

"Listen very carefully, Darryl. Are the police and fire units there yet?"

"No, sir."

"Okay. When they get there, you are going to tell them you hit the button accidentally."

"But, sir, you can't hit the—"

"Listen very carefully, Darryl. I know you're going to look a little foolish. Don't worry about it.

Your job is secure. In fact, you are in for a promotion, starting tomorrow, if you simply tell this harmless little lie. We have the situation under control down here. Darryl, are you still listening?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Tell this little lie, and you are going to be a very, very happy man. You are going to find some money in your bank account. A good deal of money. Okay, Darryl?"

"I understand, sir."

"Good. Now go meet the firemen." Warburton immediately started making more phone calls.

DARRYL hung up the phone and looked at Ed Crane, who had been listening in. "What about me?" Ed said. "You, Ed, are going to back my play, and I know Mr. Warburton will take care of you. It's none

of our business, right?"

"Right."

Darryl grasped the clear plastic cover that had covered the panic button and twisted it off. He dropped the cover into his pocket and headed out to eat crow in front of the firemen, a big smile on his face. THE phone woke Andrea first. Howard could sleep through an earthquake. She shivered. She hated staying over at Howard's apartment in his damn tower, she knew it would fall over in a quake. But he loved it way the hell up here, and she hadn't talked him out of it. Yet. She shoved him once, twice. That particular phone wouldn't ring with that particular tone unless it was very, very important. He snorted, and sat up quickly.

"Warburton wants you." She sat back and watched as he punched the speakerphone button.

"Yeah?"

"Somebody stole Fuzzy."

Later, Andrea thought that most men, ambushed by a statement like that, musty-headed with sleep, would have said, What do you mean, somebody stole Fuzzy? What Howard said, after only a half-second pause, was...

"That bitch!"

Howard kept talking. In fact, he continued to pace the room for the next fifteen minutes, seeing nothing, totally focused on the phone pressed to his ear, pausing only to curse steadily as he dialed another number. Andrea didn't need to hear the other sides of the various conversations. She was fairly good at deduction herself.

She went to the big closet and sca

There was nothing in the suitcases or in the closet suitable for the conditions they might be encountering. She would make some calls herself, once they were in the jet, get somebody to have parkas and Gore-Tex coats and warm wool socks and good hiking boots in their sizes waiting for them when they landed at PDX. It was a little more than two hours to Portland; that ought to be enough time.

She tried not to smile. She had to admit she was glad for the excuse to get back out of this terrorist magnet, this needle on the world's largest seismograph, this damn Resurrection Tower. And she liked an adventure. I'm amazed at you, Susan, she thought. She liked the woman, and she had just made the biggest mistake of her life, other than carrying a torch for that hopeless nerd Matt Wright. But look who's talking, she told herself. She watched affectionately as Howard, supernerd himself, paced the room.

And he worshipped her. She was used to that. Millions worshipped her, and it didn't mean much to her anymore. At first, sure, but now she was devoted to her art, and to her causes. She would do anything for those two things, and for Howard.

Howard felt the same about her, and about Fuzzy.

Poor Susan.

And yet, in a part of her mind, she had to admit she was... what? Pulling for her? No, certainly not that, if Susan got away with this it would devastate Howard.

But she felt admiration for this incredible stunt. Damn it, the girl had guts.

MICHAEL Bartlett sat in his rented truck in the parking lot of a Goodwill store in the town of Sandy, Oregon, a town that had grown hugely in the last few years because it was just down the road from Fuzzyland. His driver's license was good, there were no warrants on him. He had led a very clean life for the last two years... not that it had done him any good. Before, he had not been good at waiting. He always wanted to be moving, always wanted some action. Now, he was an expert at waiting. Three years in jail did that to you. You learned to wait patiently, or you went crazy.

He had waited a long time for this moment. Many times he had despaired that it would ever come—the man was just too powerful, too unreachable. He had imagined a dozen ways to kill him, and he thought a few of them might actually work—the man's security was good but he was often careless. But he didn't want to kill Howard Christian, not really, he didn't think of himself as a killer, only as an avenger, a righter of wrongs, a liberator of the oppressed.

No, what he had been waiting for was the opportunity to kick Howard Christian in the balls, very, very, very hard. Michael Bartlett, in what by now seemed almost like a previous life, had once gone by the nom de guerre of Python.

Oddly enough, he was never charged with the destruction he had helped to bring about at the warehouse in Santa Monica. Every shred of evidence had been hurled into the past. The site was excavated but not even a piece of foundation was found. Sometime in the intervening ten to fifteen thousand years the whole structure must have been washed away in a flood or a series of them, buried, and eventually covered by the metropolis. Christian didn't want to prosecute, anyway, he didn't need the possible bad publicity, the demonstrations by animal rights and antiabortion nuts.

He came from an upper-middle-class family but his parents were dead, he had spent his small inheritance, and he didn't have much money of his own. He had a college degree but hadn't worked in his field for some years, devoting himself to the cause of animal liberation. He came out of the joint determined to stay away from any criminal activity whatsoever, for all time, end of story, though he intended to keep in contact with old friends from the Movement. But no more action, no more conspiracy. He was well and truly rehabilitated.

Then he found out he couldn't get a job. No, that wasn't quite right. He got hired several times, once went as long as two weeks before being inexplicably fired. No explanation, sorry, man, it just turns out we don't need you after all. Here's your paycheck and there's the door.

At the last place he was fired the boss relented a little. "It was Howard Christian," he admitted. "Somebody working for him. Some... pressure was brought to bear. Sorry, Michael, I can't afford to piss that man off. Good luck."