Interface

Dr. Radhakrishnan V.R.J.V.V. Gangadhar was poised above his anaesthetized patient, just about to flick the power switch on his bone saw, when the first tendrils of noise began to infiltrate the reinforced-concrete walls of the Radhakrishnan Institute. It was a noise that was senses through the soles of the feet - not so much an actual sound as a change in the way the ground felt. Perhaps there had been another earthquake up in Uttar Pradesh. He flicked the switch and pressed the madly vibrating blade of the bone saw against the freshly peeled skull of Sasha Yakutin, a promising young up-and-coming Russian politician who had just been cut down in the prime of his life by a tragic stroke.

When he finished cutting a hatch through Mr. Yakutin's head and turned off the saw, the room became quiet - but not entirely quiet. A palpable noise was penetrating the walls of the operating room.

A nurse entered the operating theater. "Your brother Arun in on the telephone," she said.

"Can't you see I am in the middle of an operation?"

"He says it's an emergency. He says you should get out of the country."

A tremendous impact reverberated through the structure of the building, causing the steel instruments to vibrate against their trays. Down the hallway, someone screamed.

"Continue the operation," Dr. Radhakrishnan said to Toyoda, one of his most promising young proteges."

"Doctor?" Toyoda said.

Dr. Radhakrishnan stripped off his gloves and tossed them into a rubbish can.

When he stepped out into the corridor, the noise became louder; but it was still indistinct. He had heard something like this once in Elton. He had been awakened early in the morning by the most frightening noise, a noise that could peel paint from walls, the noise that madmen must hear in their nightmares, and had shivered under the covers for a few moments, thinking it was the end of the world; finally he had peered out under a windowshade and discovered that the trees in his front yard had been taken over by a vast flock of starlings, millions of them, all screeching at the tops of their lungs.

Dr. Radhakrishnan was approaching a closed door at the end of a hallway. The noise was coming through that door, seeping around its edges.

He opened the door. The sound was crushing, maddening, a noise that could cave your skull in. This room was a third-story office with a picture window that faced on to a major street. But the window had been smashed out. Slivers of smoked glass had been strewn explosively all over the room. A few rocks and bricks littered the floor, looking crude and dirty in this clean high-tech space. Hot polluted air streamed in through the window and blew over Dr. Radhakrishnan's face. He stepped forward, walking carefully on the broken glass, and looked out the window.

The Radhakrishnan Institute had been surrounded by two million people.

They were all pumping their fists in the air and chanting. Like starlings. They covered the ground for miles in every direction, flowing in a smooth carpet around buildings and vehicles, like the monsoon floods.

The mob seemed to have no particular center. But a few hundred yards away, he could see a kind of vortex, a swirling center of activity, moving slowly through the crowd. Moving toward the institute.

It was an elephant. Unlike the mob, most of whom were poorly, minimally clad, the elephant was stu

Dr. Radhakrishnan recognized the man. He was an ex-patient. And then, at last, he figured out what the crowd was chanting.

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA.

Zeldo's telephone rang again in the late afternoon; probably another one of his friends calling to ask him if he had heard about Presidents Cozzano and Richmond. Zeldo didn't have time for it now. He had been at the California branch of the Radhakrishnan Institute for almost twenty-four hours, going over some data from one of their newest patients - one Aaron Green. Green had been committed here around the time of Election Day, plagued by psychological troubles - posttraumatic stress from the Pentagon Towers bloodbath. Finally, he had volunteered to have several chips implanted in his head.

Zeldo jerked the phone out of its cradle. "What?"

"It's me." Zeldo would have known the voice anywhere: it was Mary Catherine Cozzano. "They're covering their tracks. We've been hearing some weird stuff from the Pentagon and we think you're in trouble. Get on that bike of yours and pedal like your life depends upon it, because it does. See you at di

Something in Mary Catherine's voice got Zeldo up out of his chair. He grabbed his backpack, skittered down the stairs, and yanked his mountain bike from the employee bike rack out front. He rode across the small parking lot of the Radhakrishnan Institute and into the entrance of the bicycle path.

He was about half a mile away from the Institute when some­thing caught his eye: an airplane. Usually you didn't notice airplanes, they were part of the scenery. But this one drew his attention because it was flying incredibly low. He thought maybe it was coming in for a landing at the airstrip. But it was going way too fast to make a landing. It was streaking across the landscape, actually kicking up a dust trail from the ground. It was very small, and dark.

Zeldo recognized the shape. He had seen a documentary about these things once, on 60 minutes, a few years ago. It was a Gale Aerospace Stealth Cruise Missile. It had achieved great notoriety for going way off course during its test flights.

The cruise missile shot over the airstrip, made a minor course correction, and then headed directly toward the Radhakrishnan

Institute, making no effort to slow down. Finally, to Zeldo's relief, it popped up in the air. It was going to miss the building and fly harmlessly out to sea.

But it didn't. It shot up several hundred feet, then nosed down into a power dive. It covered the last mile of its trajectory in a few seconds and finally entered the Institute through a skylight, which took it straight down a central atrium.

Vast surges of white flame vomited out of every door and window in the Institute. The image was burned on to Zeldo's retina in an instant and then he was blinded for a moment. The shock wave knocked him off his bicycle and sent him sprawling off the bike path, into the dust.

He didn't feel a things. His mind was stuck on the last thing she'd said: See you at di

President Richmond traveled up Pe

There was a lot to do. She ensconced herself in the Oval Office even while the FBI men were sca