"But the answers are bound up in who you are! Dreams aren't independent of the rest of your brain! You-"

The ringing telephone cut her off. I got up and went into the kitchen to answer it, a strange thrumming in my chest. The caller could be the president of the United States.

"Dr. Tennant," I said from years of habit.

"Dr. David?" cried a hysterical female voice with an Asian accent. It was Lu Li, Fielding's Chinese wife. Or widow…

"This is David, Lu Li. I'm sorry I haven't called you." I searched for fitting words but found only a cliché. "I can't begin to express the pain I feel at Andrew's loss-"

A burst of Cantonese punctuated with some English flashed down the wire. I didn't have to understand it all to know I was hearing a distraught widow on the verge of collapse. God only knew what the Trinity security people had told Lu Li, or what she had made of it. She'd come to America only three months ago, her immigra¬tion fast-tracked by the State Department, which had received a none-too-subtle motivational call from the White House.

"I know this has been a terrible day," I said in a com¬forting voice. "But I need you to try to calm down."

Lu Li was panting.

"Breathe deeply," I said, trying to decide what approach to take. Safest to use the corporate cover the NSA had insisted on from the beginning. As far as the rest of the Research Triangle Park companies knew, the Argus Optical Corporation developed optical computer elements used in government defense projects. Lu Li might know no more than this.

"What have you been told by the company?" I asked cautiously.

"Andy dead!" Lu Li cried. "They say he die of brain bleeding, but I know nothing. I don't know what to do!"

I saw nothing to be gained by further agitating Fielding's widow with theories of murder. "Lu Li, Andrew was sixty-three years old, and not in the best of health. A stroke isn't an unlikely event in that situation."