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been forced into selecting this isolated location high in the White Carpathians (over such likelier and
more hospitable sites as Cluj in Rumania, Budapest in Hungary and Gdarisk in Poland) because
Talbot’s friend Victor had selected this site. CERN had had Dahl and Wideroe and Goward and
Adams and Reich; CEERN had Victor. It balanced. He could call the tune.
So the laboratory had been painstakingly built to his specifications, and the particle
accelerator dwarfed the CERN Machine. It dwarfed the four-mile ring at the Fermi National
Accelerator Lab in Batavia, Illinois. It was, in fact, the world’s largest, most advanced
“synchrophasotron.”
Only seventy per cent of the experiments conducted in the underground laboratory were
devoted to projects sponsored by CEERN. One hundred per cent of the staff of Victor’s complex
were personally committed to him, not to CEERN, not to the Eastern Bloc, not to philosophies or
dogmas...to the man. So thirty per cent of the experiments run on the sixteen-mile-diameter
accelerator ring were Victor’s own. If CEERN knew--and it would have been difficult for them to
find out--it said nothing. Seventy per cent of the fruits of genius was better than no per cent.
Had Talbot known earlier that Victor’s research was thrust in the direction of actualizing
advanced theoretical breakthroughs in the nature of the structure of fundamental particles, he would
never have wasted his time with the pseudos and dead-enders who had spent years on his problem,
who had promised everything and delivered nothing but dust. But then, until Information Associates
had marked the trail--a trail he had previously followed in every direction but the unexpected one
that merged shadow with substance, reality with fantasy--until then, he had no need for Victor’s
exotic talents.
While CEERN basked in the warmth of secure knowledge that their resident genius was
keeping them in front in the Super Accelerator Sweepstakes, Victor was briefing his oldest friend on
the manner in which he would gift him with the peace of death; the manner in which Lawrence
Talbot would find his soul; the manner in which he would precisely and exactly go inside his own
body.
“The answer to your problem is in two parts. First, we have to create a perfect simulacrum of
you, a hundred thousand or a million times smaller than you, the original. Then, second, we have to
actualize it, turn an image into something corporeal, material, something that exists. A miniature
you with all the reality you possess, all the memories, all the knowledge.”
Talbot felt very mellow. The milky liquid had smoothed out the churning waters of his
memory. He smiled. “I’m glad it wasn’t a difficult problem.”
Victor looked rueful. “Next week I invent the steam engine. Get serious, Larry.”
“It’s that Lethe cocktail you fed me.”
Victor’s mouth tightened and Talbot knew he had to get hold of himself. “Go on, I’m sorry.”
Victor hesitated a moment, securing his position of seriousness with a touch of free-floating
guilt, then went on, “The first part of the problem is solved by using the grasers we’ve developed.
We’ll shoot a hologram of you, using a wave generated not from the electrons of the atom, but from
the nucleus...a wave a million times shorter, greater in resolution than that from a laser.” He walked
toward the large glass plate hanging in the middle of the lab, grasers trained on its center. “Come
here.”
Talbot followed him.
“Is this the holographic plate,” he said, “it’s just a sheet of photographic glass, isn’t it?”
“Not this, “ Victor said, touching the ten-foot square plate, “this!” He put his finger on a
spot in the center of the glass and Talbot leaned in to look. He saw nothing at first, then detected a
faint ripple; and when he put his face as close as possible to the imperfection he perceived a light
moiré pattern, like the surface of a fine silk scarf. He looked back at Victor.
“Microholographic plate,” Victor said. “Smaller than an integrated chip. That’s where we
capture your spirit, white-eyes, a million times reduced. About the size of a single cell, maybe a red
