The Sixth Idea (2 page)

PRESENT DAY

S
ixty years later, the large table and the darkened room still existed in a mansion in upstate New York, but the five men who had originally held court there had been replaced three times over. Some had died of natural causes over the years, others not so natural—if you outlived your usefulness on this panel, you outlived your usefulness on earth. They still referred to one another by numbers only, just as their predecessors had, but everything else had changed dramatically over the decades.

For instance, the current five were now sitting in an observation deck in a much larger, adjacent ballroom that had been renovated into an apotheosis of technology—banks of monstrous supercomputers whirred and hummed, lovingly tended by a small, carefully selected
cadre of America's brightest minds. At the moment, they were chattering quietly in nervous excitement, their eyes fixed on the digital countdown clock hanging above an enormous flat screen that showed aerial photos of various cities around the world.

The third-generation Zero had only been a part of this elite group for fifteen years, and yet he had seen the astronomical rise of something miraculous, something that had been a mere pipe dream of a man named Donald Buchanan. According to the countdown clock on the wall, two minutes would tell them all if that pipe dream would cross over from the realm of science fiction to reality.

“T minus ten seconds to Operation Silver Dune Alpha Test,” a voice from the computing floor called out, and the room went silent and still—no one moved, no one spoke, no one breathed.

It took a few moments, and then every person in the room burst into applause as a section of the screen went dark.

“Detroit is now off-line,” a voice dutifully reported, as if the men in the observation deck couldn't see that for themselves. “Permission to restore?”

“Granted,” Zero replied.

C
huck Spencer settled into his first-class window seat, pulled down his tray table, and started unloading his briefcase. These were the last of his father's effects to be sorted through, and the three-and-a-half-hour flight from L.A. to Minneapolis would give him just enough time before he met Wally tonight.

When the miscellaneous pile of papers and old photographs started to tower and slip, he put the rest of the contents on the empty seat next to him. It wouldn't be empty for long with the plane fully booked, but the papers might discourage his unknown seatmate from bending his ear. Clearly he was a busy man who shouldn't be disturbed. See all my papers?

Grousing his way uncomfortably through his early sixties, Chuck was annoyed by a lot of things now that never annoyed him before. And this plane was one of them. A 757? An A320? Whatever. This
one's entrance was in the front of first class, so you got to watch every passenger file by as they boarded, never knowing which one would take the seat next to you. Would it be the tremendously fat man wearing far too much—what was that? English Leather? Did they still make that? Or maybe the elderly woman who had a tissue tucked into the sleeve of her cardigan, which meant she was probably carrying bird flu or some other potential pandemic. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when she passed by, rewarding her with a friendly smile for having the decency to fly coach.

One of the last stragglers to board was a pretty woman definitely young enough to be his daughter and perhaps young enough to be his granddaughter. She had a sweet face and an obvious case of nerves. Her eyes were darting this way and that, probably making note of the emergency exits and any potential terrorists she might have to subdue mid-flight.

She slowed, then stopped to stand next to the empty seat Chuck had cluttered with his paperwork, and gave him a timid smile.

Chuck smiled back and started gathering up his papers. In the ever-capricious lottery of air travel, this lady was the jackpot as far as seatmates went. She was thin and would take up no room at all, she was attractive and seemed quite shy, she didn't smell like English Leather, and she wasn't coughing or sneezing or carrying tissues up her sleeve. “Sorry about the mess.”

“No worries.” She sat down abruptly once he'd cleared the seat. “I'm Lydia Ascher,” she mumbled at her lap, frantically trying to fasten her seat belt.

“Chuck Spencer.”

She was obviously terrified of flying, and that could go one of two ways. Nervous fliers either went dead silent during takeoff and pulled up on their armrests as if they could hold the plane up with the sheer force of their will, or they chattered like magpies and looked you straight in the eye and pretended they weren't on a plane at all. The latter was the worst-case scenario for anybody who valued solitude of any kind, even on a crowded plane, as Chuck did.

He stole a crafty, peripheral glance at his seatmate, trying to assess her demeanor so he could form an isolation strategy if need be.

Since she was just sitting there rigidly, staring at the seatback in front of her, Chuck figured her to be one of the silent types who suffered their terror alone, and thank God she wasn't investigating the puke bag. He relaxed a little, then turned his attention back to his papers.

A few minutes later, he realized he was completely distracted by a creeping guilt. This poor thing sitting next to him was clearly fighting off demons, and he was just sitting there doing jigs in his mind because she was mute. And really, what could be so bad about having a conversation with a pretty young woman if she chose to engage in one, especially if it helped calm her nerves?

Chuck finally decided to breach the silence, for better or for worse. “Don't worry, it'll be a smooth flight. No weather between here and Minneapolis,” he reassured her.

She turned her head slowly to look at him, as if she were afraid any sudden movement might tip the plane on its side. “It's that obvious, huh?”

“Only to anybody who pays attention, but your secret is safe with
me, because nobody pays attention to anything but their phones anymore.”

She let out a great sigh and leaned back in her seat. “Isn't that the truth.”

Chuck let the comment hang, and she didn't pursue it, which was fantastic. When a flight attendant announced that the doors were being closed for takeoff, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Just as the plane began taxiing and he was starting to nod off, he felt a light hand on his arm.

“Thank you, by the way.”

Chuck straightened from his dozy slump. “Uh . . .”

“Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I woke you up.”

“No, no,” Chuck insisted in classic sleep denial. He'd never understand what compelled most humans to deny they'd been wakened. Phone call at four in the morning? No problem. Hell no, I wasn't sleeping, what can I do for you?

“Yes, I did, and I'll shut up. I just wanted to thank you for trying to make me feel better.”

“I'm sorry it didn't help,” Chuck finally said earnestly, looking down at her white-knuckled grip on the armrests.

She gave him a sheepish look. “I'm pretty hopeless.”

“Is there anything that distracts you?”

“A stiff Bloody Mary would distract me.”

He was surprised to find himself chuckling, even more surprised to be enjoying this little conversation with a complete stranger, another of his later-in-life peeves. “We can take care of that once we're airborne. What can I do for you between now and then?”

She let out a shaky sigh. “Well, you could tell me your life story.”

“Trust me, reading the in-flight magazine is a lot more interesting than my life story.”

Lydia let out a breathy giggle, part anxiety, and maybe, Chuck thought, there was a little mirth mixed in, too. “I don't believe that for a minute.”

“Then you haven't seen this month's edition. You can now buy a seven-foot gargoyle statue for your lawn for two hundred dollars.”

She looked at him in disbelief. “Really?”

“Really. Are you interested?”

“I'm only interested in what kind of person would
want
a seven-foot gargoyle statue in their garden.”

Chuck was pleased to see that Lydia seemed to be relaxing. It made him feel good; paternal, even, in spite of the fact that he had no children of his own. And then the pilot came on the PA and announced, “Flight attendants, prepare for takeoff,” and the poor girl gave him a look of pure, crystalline terror.

“I hate this part the most,” she whispered, her voice all apologies. “My grandfather died in a plane crash. On takeoff,” she blurted out.

Chuck's thoughts slammed to a halt and he suddenly felt a little panicky himself. He'd never actually met anyone who knew someone who died in a plane crash. No wonder she was terrified. And how did you respond to that? He could lecture her on the physics of flying, how it worked, why it was so safe, but that would probably just make things worse. She was in the red zone already. “It's going to be okay,” he said lamely.

Lydia just nodded, her wide eyes fixed straight ahead.

“Lydia? Why don't you tell me
your
life story.”

Chuck had no idea what had made him say such a dangerous
thing, but apparently it had been the right thing. She seemed to calm a little as she began speaking to the seatback in front of her, and by liftoff she was making eye contact with him, and he knew both her parents were deceased and she lived on a small lake an hour from Minneapolis.

By the time the aircraft had banked over the Pacific and turned toward the country's midsection, he found out that she was a successful artist who was returning home from some important gallery visits in L.A., and her posture seemed much looser, almost normal.

Somewhere over Nevada, Chuck realized he was genuinely enjoying himself despite the fact that the conversation was one-sided. They ordered Bloody Marys and the serpentine route of their conversation somehow ended up on the topic of her mother's childhood, and that was the moment the lopsided conversation grew another leg. As she was listing every city that her departed mother had lived in as a child, ten cities in ten years, to be precise, Chuck's jaw went slack, because he had lived in every one of them.

Good God. His own childhood was a mirror of this girl's mother's. He probably went to grade school with her. What kind of odds were we talking here? “This is really weird. I lived in all those towns at about the same time your mother did,” he said.

When she didn't reply, he turned to look at her. She was staring at the clutter of paperwork on his tray table, her eyes wide and her mouth open. He quickly looked down at the tray table, hoping there wasn't a nude centerfold in the pile. He didn't see anything offensive at first glance. Maybe she was just having a fear-of-flying seizure or something.

Finally she reached over and pulled a photograph from the middle of the pile. “Where did you get this?”

“It belonged to my father.” He pointed to one of the men in the photo. “That's him, and the rest are some guys he worked with about fifty years ago. Why?”

She shook her head in disbelief and pointed to the man standing next to Chuck's father. “Because that one is my grandfather.”

“What?”

“That man right there. He was my grandfather. The one who died in the plane crash.”

Chuck gave her a skeptical look. “Whoever it is might look like your grandfather, but I guarantee it isn't. There were only eight men in the world who even knew about this project, including the President. See? That's President Eisenhower at the end of the line.”

“I know. I have this very same photograph at home. These were the men who supervised the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.”

Chuck just stared straight ahead for a moment, sorting through all the calculators in his brain, estimating the odds of being seated next to one of the very few people in this world who would know who the men in that photo were. “I never knew any of this until my dad died six months ago and I started going through his things.”

“Your dad never told you?”

“I hadn't seen him in years. When I started cleaning out his house, I found this mess”—he gestured at the stack on his tray table—“and a whole lot of other records. Up until that moment I never knew what my dad did for a living. I always thought he was an engineer.”

Lydia raised her brows. “The project's been declassified for a couple decades now.”

“Like I said, we didn't see each other. We didn't talk. It was kind of a weird childhood.”

“So was my mom's. Let me guess. Your dad traveled all the time with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. You moved every year or so, and men in suits came and talked to all your little friends, asking if you ever told them what your father did, right? And all you knew was that he was an engineer and worked for American Iron Foundry.”

Chuck closed his eyes. “Jesus. That's exactly what it was like. This is unreal. Wally's never going to believe this.”

“Who's Wally?”

“A new friend. When I did a little research on the Web and found out what Dad had really been doing all those years, I started a website dedicated to finding other descendants of those eight men, or maybe even some of the original men still living. Just for fun, you know, like going on Ancestry-dot-com. Kind of a strange mystery I wanted to follow. Wally and several others found my website and signed into my chat room. He lives in Minneapolis. That's what I'm doing on this flight. We're getting together tonight. And suddenly, I find myself sitting next to another descendant. It's kind of freaking me out.”

Lydia smiled. “It is pretty unreal.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. “Give me a call and let me know how your meeting with Wally went. If you're going to be in town for a while, maybe we can all get together.”

“I have a better idea. Why don't you come along tonight? Hell, the three of us have more in common than a lot of siblings.”

Lydia was tempted, but clearly not as obsessed with the past as
Wally and Chuck, maybe because she was a generation further down the line. “The thing is, I've been away from home for ten days, and I am truly whipped. Tomorrow? I could come into the city and meet you both for lunch, say around noon?”

“Terrific.” He scribbled on a cocktail napkin. “That's my cell and my hotel. Give me a call when you're close and I'll meet you in the lobby.”