Free Cold Silence by James Abel Page A

gliding past burnt-up stars, directed back toward our pitching plane. “Israel, Joe? Why did you ask about Israel?”
    â€œBecause we heard you over the line earlier when you said there was a problem in Galilee.”
    The admiral said quietly, “The audio was on?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œChrist, those technical guys! Well, you’re right, Joe. It
is
in Galilee. You heard correctly. But not Galilee, Israel. Come home. It’s in Galilee, Nevada,” he said. “By the way, how are you two feeling?”
    â€œUs?” said Eddie.
    â€œAny tingling in your fingers?” the admiral asked, soundingconcerned.

FOUR

    The animals went crazy when Harlan turned on the light, emitting
high-pitched cries of panic, clawing up against their wire mesh cages, bumping into each other in terror, staring out at him with tiny glazed eyes. He tried to soothe away their fear as they skittered and screamed. Normally, when calm, they sounded like cooing babies. Now they sounded like something from another world.
    â€”Shhh. Shhh. I’m not going to hurt you.
    It didn’t work, though. They recognized him, or rather, anything with two legs meant trouble, and they understood in the recesses of their primitive neuron passageways that even if they escaped pain at this particular moment, nothing good would come from association with him. Those things in the cages had brains the size of walnuts, DNA fifty million years old. Any analytical effort of which the smartest one—the Einstein of these creatures—might be capable might, at best, equal the thought power of a lumbering rhinoceros. They couldn’t add one plus one. The concept of “tomorrow” was beyond them. They’d stare at the red telephone as if itwere a rock. But when it came to pain, they knew they were in trouble and their cage floors were creamy masses of piss and shit and emitted an acidic odor that took him back to the swamps where he’d grown up, hunted alligators and feral hogs, learned the truth about pain, trust, and the nature of life. It seemed like ten thousand years ago. He was forty-nine.
    â€”Calm down, you little guys!
    This time of night, 12
A.M.
, he was alone in the big lab two stories beneath the ground, the only one permitted access. Red light on. Air control system humming over the whimpering noises. Satellite shots of Jerusalem blown up on the walls; and close-ups from the old walled city; a narrow footpath, Via Dolorosa, “the way of suffering,” where Jesus walked to his crucifixion; the golden Dome of the Rock, from where Mohammed ascended on his white steed Baraq to heaven, to converse with God. And only a few hundred yards away, the site of Solomon’s Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant, given to Moses, came to rest for the Jews.
    One square mile, Harlan thought, filled with joy. Remove that mile of earth, and two thousand years of human history—its crossroads, its major figures, its legends and lies and consequences—would be different. Nothing . . . not countries, not customs, not even science and aspiration would be the same.
    Back to work.
    Abutting the corner dissection area was a holding cell, now empty, and a top-of-the-line Bosch steel freezer, which required a four-digit combination to enter. He walked in and the cold hit him. He felt himself being watched on closed circuit feed by the night duty guards in the computer center, where the tech team sent out tweets, feeds, e-mails, and alerts. It was twenty-five degrees in here. His breath frosted as he stamped to keep warm, scanned the racks of medicines and blood and vials containing ground-up bits of animal intestine, brain, arterial scrapings. Other shelves were piled with supply cartons, blue stickers forstuff to be donated, yellow for vital, purple for transport over the coming weeks.
    â€”Ah, there you are!
    He took five small stoppered glass bottles filled with fluid the color of ten-year-old