Gideon had met him three or four times, at one university function or another, and each time Bruno had eagerly peppered him with one crackpot theory or another. Last time it had been the proposition that the pyramids had been built as huge protective baffles by Egyptian priest-scientists who had discovered how to utilize the energy of the Van Allen belts by transporting it to earth along ionized laser beam paths. A slight accident in calculation, Bruno had told him, had created a momentary overabundance of power that had knocked the planet off its axis in 3001 B.C., prematurely ending experimentation along this line.

Despite all this, or possibly on account of it, Gideon had taken a liking to Bruno. He liked his energy and his amiable-ness, he liked his open-handed philanthropy, and he liked the enthusiasm with which he’d attacked Egyptology, even if he’d made straight for some of its nuttier byways.

He liked Bea Gustafson too. An intelligent, feisty, pint-sized woman about Bruno’s age-sixty or sixty-one-she had made a fortune of her own as an investment manager, and was obviously an equal partner, or maybe a little more than an equal partner, in the Gustafsons’ current financial activities. They made a good team: one the visionary, the dreamer, the man with the big but fuzzy ideas; the other the clear-eyed, no-nonsense realist who kept their feet on the ground and their cash flow positive.

Once upstairs, Rupert led the way to a table at the big window and arranged for Bruno and Bea to sit facing eastward, looking out over a spectacular view that took in Lake Washington with the floating-and occasionally sinking- Evergreen Point bridge in the foreground, and, farther off, the thrusting, jagged wall of the Cascades, glinting with an early layering of snow.