SILK

5 hr 37 min to Birth

Ten minutes to the Laboratory Complex. Flannigan looked at her watch as the Jeep jostled down the road, kicking up dust.

She studied Gene. He didn't seem to be concerned about what they were going to find. That worried her.

"Do you know, Raymond, whether flybots are actually designed as invertebrates?" Gene asked. "You've probably built them with interior skeletons, in which case they'd be vertebrates and not much like flies at all."

"Flies are invertebrates?" Flannigan asked. Simon's scowling gaze was fixed on the passing roadside.

"They are, yes," Gene said. "They don't have backbones -- rather, they have exoskeletons. In fact, they have a lot in common with slimey and slithering invertebrates like worms and slugs. For example, some of them can make silk. Only invertebrates can make silk. If you want something that is light, strong, and elastic, there is no better material yet in existence than silk. Some worms can make it, spiders, a variety of insects, but no vertebrates."

Is he nervous? Flannigan wondered. Is he talking to pass the time? Then she remembered: Gene actually cared about this stuff. She had read it in a file, once.

At the outset of the Distributed Operations program, Flannigan used some of the operatives to create psychological profiles of hundreds of key individuals within the intelligence community. She assigned spies -- she called them "psycho-spies" -- to study senior management and persons of interest at the Agency and a great number of individuals in the D.C. area. Unbeknownst to Gene, the attractive "greeter" who had ridden with Gene to the airport was one of these psycho-spies. Rather than laying wiretaps, or promoting dissension, they asked questions. Their information, supplemented by the guidance and analysis of Flannigan and a few psychologists at Flannigan's disposal, yielded rich reports.

Gene's report had mentioned in passing that, as a child, he had been infatuated with animals.

Gene, like a flawlessly beautiful woman, was somewhat boring for all his lack of blemishes. The psycho-spies who spent weeks and months profiling him (in short meetings, mostly) came back for the most part with highly abridged notes of his thoughts on abstract topics -- nothing much for the analysts to use. But there were a few gems in the report. Gene came across as a mathematician, a limitless genius, not a naturalist. But on two occasions, a psycho-spy had stumbled into a conversation about animals with him and suddenly his eyes had lit up in such a way that made all his previous enthusiasm for math and puzzles seem listless.

He had confided to one psycho-spy: Did you know that wasps plant eggs in the cones of oak trees and the larvae grow there? They look just like a fruit, but there's an animal inside. Some of the wasp "eggs" even secrete honeydew. Any person who saw or touched it or licked it would assume it's a hard fruit or maple, but it has a wasp inside. We have such clear ideas of what a plant is and what an animal is. But there are so many plants that look like animals and vice versa -- it makes me wonder.

Flannigan started to remember other details from the report. Every psycho-spy commented with reverence on Gene's profound and nimble mind. He also had the classic, expected weakness: overconfidence. It was the mark of every genius. Confidence was what led his mind to solutions and discoveries, but it blinded him a little.

One beautiful psycho-spy reported: He's not my type. He's witty, charming, but I'm attracted to vulnerable men and he's the opposite. It was too easy to fool him into thinking I was interested. For a moment, he seemed like a dumb chauvinist, assuming that I HAD to be interested in him. That was the only vulnerability I was able to detect.

As the words played back in her head, Flannigan noticed that the psycho-spy was connecting Gene's overconfidence with women. Was he overconfident because he was a genius, or because he was a proud man and almost certainly a social outcast while growing up?

The psycho-spy reported: He was the smoothest-talking NSA type I've ever met. At first I thought it was a study or a science for him, like a recluse learning how to talk to women from a textbook. But this wasn't true. It was like a sport for him -- a sport that he never practiced, but he threw himself into any game he played, anything he did. I think he got a little high from the idea that, as a reclusive academic, he wasn't supposed to be good at talking to women, he didn't have much practice at it, but he was good at it just the same.

Gene's other vulnerability was a sense of guilt. According to the psycho-spies, his remarks, otherwise oh-so-perfect, occasionally leaked small admissions and minute apologies about his choice of career. Gene made small apologies for the fact that he worked at the NSA.

He's afraid, in his heart of hearts, that he's a mercenary. He thinks he's a sellout. He fears he should be doing mathematics at a university and contributing to the future, not working at the NSA and contributing to espionage.

There were two parts to it. He wanted to contribute to the future. He also wanted memory of him to survive it.

He's not nervous, Flannigan thought. He's excited. It was a glimmer of childlike excitement.