"Eleven."

His mother said, "He reads a lot. His father's at Los Alamos."

Nieto nodded. "And what's the point of this quantum foam, Kevin?"

"There isn't any point," the kid said. "It's just how the universe is, at the subatomic level."

"Why would this old guy be talking about it?"

"Because he's a well-known physicist," Wauneka said, coming toward them. He glanced at a sheet of paper in his hand. "It just came in on the M.P.D. Joseph A. Traub, seventy-one years old, materials physicist. Specialist in superconducting metals. Reported missing by his employer, ITC Research in Black Rock, around noon today."

"Black Rock? That's way over near Sandia." It was several hours away, in central New Mexico. "How the hell did this guy get to Corazуn Canyon in Arizona?"

"I don't know," Beverly said. "But he's-"

The alarms began to sound.

It happened with a swiftness that stunned Jimmy Wauneka. The old man raised his head from the bed, stared at them, eyes wild, and then he vomited blood. His oxygen mask turned bright red; blood spurted past the mask, running in streaks across his cheeks and chin, spattering the pillow, the wall. He made a gurgling sound: he was drowning in his own blood.

Beverly was already running across the room. Wauneka ran after her. "Turn the head!" Nieto was saying, coming up to the bed. "Turn it!" Beverly had pulled off the oxygen mask and was trying to turn the old man's head, but he struggled, fighting her, still gurgling, eyes wide with panic. Wauneka pushed past her, grabbed the old man's head with both hands and wrenched hard, twisting him bodily to the side. The man vomited again; blood sprayed all over the monitors, and over Wauneka. "Suction!" Beverly shouted, pointing to a tube on the wall.

Wauneka tried to hold the old man and grab for the tube, but the floor was slick with blood. He slipped, grabbed at the bed for support.

"Come on, people!" Tsosie shouted. "I need you! Suction!" She was on her knees, shoving her fingers in the man's mouth, pulling out his tongue. Wauneka scrambled to his feet, saw Nieto holding out a suction line. He grabbed it with blood-slippery fingers, and saw Nieto twist the wall valve. Beverly took the neoprene probe, started sucking out the guy's mouth and nose. Red blood ran up the tubes. The man gasped, coughed, but he was growing weaker.