From ParaScope: "Flight to Oblivion" [The Strange Death of Coach "Bo" Rein]

This article first appeared in the July 1997 issue of FATE magazine. It recounts the strange events surrounding the death of football coach Robert "Bo" Rein and his pilot, Louis Benscotter. Since 1980 several other incidents like this have occurred, such as the loss of pro golfer Payne Stewart in 1999. Hypoxia is almost certainly the cause of the pilots' loss of control (and eventual crash), but in the Rein case the question remains, what caused the loss of pressurization in the Cessna Conquest?

After this article was published in FATE, I received an email from the BBC (yes, the BBC) who wanted to know more about my sources and more details of the incident. I tracked down Jack Barker of the Atlanta FAA office (by then retired), and he confirmed that the agency withheld tapes of cockpit transmissions from independent investigator Frank McDermott. He had no idea why, as this was not standard procedure at all. I asked him if he was willing to talk to the BBC for whatever documentary they were preparing, and he agreed.

As far as I know, it never happened. I never heard from the BBC again, and I don't know if the story was ever used. 

Wikipedia's article on Rein contains information on the case that surfaced after my article was written.

The article as it appeared on ParaScope can be found here. Modern comments below have been added in red.

A Cessna Conquest (stock photo)

Flight to Oblivion

by Paul B. Thompson
Nebula Editor
[Out of date email address removed]

Thursday, January 10, 1980:
A twin-engine private plane taxied onto the runway of the Shreveport, Louisiana, municipal airport. At the controls was Louis Benscotter, 47. Benscotter, a veteran pilot with 31 years of experience, was preparing to fly to Baton Rouge, a 40-minute hop across the state. When he filed his flight plan with the Federal Aviation Administration, Benscotter indicated he would have two passengers. But when he left the ground he had only one: Robert E. "Bo" Rein, head football coach of Louisiana State University.

The plane, a Cessna Conquest, took off at 9:22 p.m. Four minutes after takeoff, Fort Worth, Texas, Air Traffic Control advised Benscotter of heavy thunderstorms in the Baton Rouge area and suggested he bypass them. The pilot asked for permission to divert east, toward Jackson, Mississippi. Fort Worth cleared Benscotter to go east and climb from 23,000 to 25,000 feet. Benscotter acknowledged his new flight plan. That was the last voice contact anyone would have with Cessna N441NC.

At 9:38, FAA radar showed the Conquest climbing above its assigned altitude and veering to the northeast. The FAA called the plane, but received no answer. Fort Worth ATC then contacted a Pan Am flight near the wandering Cessna and asked the airliner to warn Benscotter to check his en route radio frequency. The Pan Am pilot heard Benscotter trying to respond to Fort Worth, but the transmission was weak. The Cessna pilot did not respond to air-to-air calls from the Pan Am plane, nor did he answer calls from an Eastern Airlines jet in the vicinity.

By now Rein and Benscotter had climbed to 33,000 feet, the operational ceiling of the Cessna. Their course was almost due east. The FAA continued trying to reach the wayward plane. Air traffic centers in Memphis, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., joined in. None of them succeeded. N441NC flew on, sometimes climbing as high as 40,500 feet. As the plane neared the North Carolina state line, the Air National Guard at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, North Carolina, was notified. Two F-4 Phantom fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the Cessna. The National Guard pilots were ordered to close on the private plane and try to assess the problem. Why was Benscotter so far off course? Why did he not answer radio calls? Why was he so far above normal flying altitude for his model aircraft?

The Phantoms scrambled. Within minutes after take-off, they would intercept the Cessna somewhere in the sky over Raleigh, North Carolina. 

                                                                          #

Bo Rein was a comer. At 30 he became the youngest head football coach at an American college, and everyone agreed his career held great promise. Born July 20, 1945, Rein attended Ohio University and received a Bachelor's degree in 1968. A talented athlete, he played minor league baseball in 1967 for the Cleveland Indians' organization. He played three seasons of baseball, and he might have gone to the majors had he not suffered an Achilles' tendon injury. Rein was also a football All-American in college, and was drafted by the Baltimore Colts of the NFL in 1968. Rein's destiny did lie on the gridiron, but not in uniform. Injuries convinced him to coach rather than play.

In the early 1970s Rein honed his coaching skills as an assistant coach at a number of schools: Ohio State, William and Mary, Purdue, North Carolina State, and Arkansas. His time at Raleigh's North Carolina State was particularly productive, as Rein worked under colorful head coach Lou Holtz. Holtz left N.C. State in 1976 for a brief stint as head coach of the NFL's New York Jets. The university chose Bo Rein to replace him.

In three seasons at N.C. State, Rein did so well he attracted the attention of other, larger college football programs. In November 1979 he left Raleigh to assume the top spot at Louisiana State.

Bo Rein was much admired by his players and respected by his coaching opponents. His energy was legendary. One fellow coach described Rein as "aggressive, tireless, persistent." In 1969, for example, Rein flew from Ohio to Las Vegas to play in a Continental League football game. As soon as the game was over he flew right back to Ohio. Rein enjoyed flying and never avoided it -- even a short trip like Shreveport to Baton Rouge.

                                                                            #

Two National Guard Phantoms closed on the lonely Cessna. In the darkness the jet pilots could see no interior lights in the plane. No one seemed to be at the controls. Repeated close-range radio calls brought no response. The Guardsmen even tried wagging their wings, hoping to attract attention. The Conquest flew on with no more reaction than a radio-controlled model.

The east coast was below them now, and the Phantoms had to break off the chase because their fuel was running low. The Air Force took up the pursuit, rousing an F-106 fighter out of Langley Air Force Base in southern Virginia. By the time the F-106 pilot, Captain Daniel Zoerb, found the Cessna, it was flying along at 40,600 feet, eastward over the sea. Zoerb followed, and N441NC began a gradual descent to 25,000 feet. The Air Force pilot closed in and saw no signs of life aboard, only a red glow in the cabin that probably came from the Cessna's instrument panel.

At 25,000 feet the Conquest dropped a wing and fell into a spin. Zoerb watched it spiral down a hundred miles off the coast of Norfolk. N441NC never recovered from its spin and plunged into the sea. Local weather was poor, visibility no more than 15 miles, and waves were running two to three feet high. Water temperature was only 40 degrees. The crash occurred shortly before 1 a.m. on January 11.

Seventy miles from the scene of the crash, the Coast Guard cutter Taney was on patrol. Word of the downed plane reached the cutter, which immediately put its helm over. An area 40 by 75 miles was assigned to be searched. A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft joined the operation.

At 6:30 a.m., the cutter Cherokee took over the rescue operation and kept it up all day. Some debris was sighted but not recovered: a wheel thought to be the Cessna's and some orange trim from the fuselage. That was all.

The Conquest had been a troublesome plane for Cessna. The model was grounded twice by the Federal Aviation Administration, in 1977 and 1979, because of failures in the tail structure. After the second grounding, all existing planes were modified to correct the fault. The FAA recertified Cessna Conquests as safe to fly in September 1979. The history of tail structure failures does not seem to have had anything to do with what happened to Benscotter and Rein.

The twin turboprop wasn't just a "grasshopper." It was a million-dollar executive transport. On top of his 31 years of flying experience, Benscotter had passed a two-week training course on flying the Conquest. Shortly before its final flight, N441NC had made a round trip to Houston without incident. So what happened?

Suspicion immediately centered on pilot incapacitation. Wandering off course, flying to extreme altitudes, and the failure to answer the radio all pointed to Benscotter and Rein being unable to respond to these problems. Whatever happened must have happened to both men at the same time. Had Benscotter alone been stricken (say, by a heart attack), Rein should have been able to call for help.

Carbon monoxide from the engines' exhaust might have overcome two men in a light plane, but it seems unlikely in this case. Instead of a single engine in the nose, the Cessna Conquest had two wing-mounted turboprops. In flight, the slipstream would tend to wash away any exhaust fumes long before they penetrated the fuselage.

The National Transportation Safety Board zeroed in on oxygen deprivation as the most probable cause of the strange last flight of Cessna N441NC. Hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, is a common threat to anyone flying above 10,000 feet. The Conquest's cabin was pressurized, like a civilian airliner's. An 11-cubic-foot oxygen tank was provided, and an elaborate safety system was built into the plane to prevent the pilot or passengers being deprived of vital oxygen.

For example, if the pressurization system was not turned on during the pre-flight check, a red warning light would come on [Is this the light Captain Zoerb saw?] when the plane reached 10,650 feet. Normal, healthy adults would be conscious at this altitude and couldn't fail to notice the warning. If they did, at 14,500 feet emergency oxygen masks would pop out, just like the masks on commercial airliners. It takes 20 minutes of low pressure before hypoxia sets in, and between two men, one of them should have been able to take emergency measures.

As a final safety check, the heating and cooling systems in the Conquest would not function at any altitude if the cabin pressurization was left off. 

Though hypoxia seems like the best explanation for what happened to Benscotter and Rein, there are notable objections to the theory. The first is the fact that the trouble began only minutes after takeoff, when the Cessna was not yet at high altitude. Failure to actuate the plane's oxygen system seems improbable for a pilot of Benscotter's experience. Mechanical failure isn't likely, either. The Cessna passed all its safety checks in Shreveport before the flight. N441NC was a relatively new plane, not worn out or rickety. Before its last flight the airframe had only 38 hours flying time on it.

Why did none of the jet pilots chasing the Cessna see anyone on board? If Benscotter had passed out at the controls, his body should have been visible, strapped in his seat. The slowly climbing attitude of the plane was probably the result of the pilot trimming it to climb as per his instructions from Fort Worth ATC, early in the flight. Then for some unknown reason Benscotter left his seat; he must have, else the weight of his inert feet and legs on the foot pedals would have seriously affected the plane's course.

Hypoxia can lead to euphoria, but no suggestion was found that Rein or Benscotter left the plane while in flight. Small civilian planes don't carry parachutes.

From the start, the FAA took the investigation of the loss of Cessna N441NC very seriously. In May 1980 a spokesman announced that some 20 possible causes of the incident were being studied, ranging from failure of the Conquest's oxygen system to sudden cabin depressurization from a mid-air collision with a bird. (Neither Captain Zoerb nor the Air National Guard pilots mentioned seeing any external damage to the Cessna.) The FAA refused to endorse any specific theory as long as their investigation continued.

Others involved in the mystery were not so patient. In March 1980, the Nichols Construction Company, owners of the plane and employer of Louis Benscotter, filed suit against the FAA and their own insurance company, Insurance Company of America. Nichols had hired a private investigator, Frank McDermott of McLean, Virginia, to conduct a parallel inquiry into the incident. McDermott specialized in aircraft accidents and had many previous investigations to his credit. Nichols decided to sue the FAA because FAA Washington headquarters refused to allow McDermott to hear or copy the tape recordings of air traffic controllers' conversations with Louis Benscotter.

The FAA specifically ordered its regional offices not to give McDermott access to the tapes, even though they had always allowed private investigators such access in the past. The ostensible reason for this stonewalling was that the official inquiry wasn't yet over. Jack Barker, of the FAA's Atlanta office, told the press he couldn't understand why the tapes were being withheld from McDermott. After all, the only conversation between Benscotter and Fort Worth ATC consisted of ordinary takeoff clearances and requests to change altitude, or so the FAA reported. Nichols wanted to collect the insurance on the million-dollar aircraft and could not do so until the FAA investigation was concluded.

No wreckage or remains were ever recovered. The area of ocean where the Cessna crashed is more than 1,100 feet deep, making salvage impractical. In April 1980, Judge E. Maurice Braswell declared Rein and Benscotter legally dead so that their estates could be settled. It was not until December 10, 1980, that the NTSB issued its official report on the loss of Cessna N441NC. After almost a year of theorizing and wrangling, a spokesperson for the Board said, "The Board was unable to determine a cause because it was unable to find any wreckage. This is the end, unless some new evidence is offered and the case reopened."

All that remains is the mystery. Something happened to Rein and Benscotter within minutes of their take-off from Shreveport. Something rendered both men helpless, yet allowed the Conquest to fly on its own for more than a thousand miles. Auto pilot could do that, but that presumes Benscotter was able to activate it. The plane climbed to heights greater than it was designed for, and it most likely crashed because it ran out of fuel.

There have been many aviation mysteries over the years, from the disappearances of the French dirigible Dixmude in 1923 [exploded in midair over the Mediterranean], flying ace Charles Nungesser in 1927, to the crew of Navy blimp L-8, the Star Tiger, the Star Ariel, and many more.

But all these machines, their pilots and passengers, vanished over featureless seas, without any witnesses to record their fates. The last flight of Louis Benscotter and Bo Rein is an entire other dimension of mystery. It was tracked across well-populated and well-monitored countryside, chased by military jets, investigated by federal and private experts -- and yet there are no answers.

Somehow this incident is all the more unsettling for having happened under such close observation. It shakes our faith in our omnipresent technology, much as a public tragedy like the Challenger disaster did. In that case answers were found, but the empty sky and deep Atlantic yield no answers to the disappearance of Coach Bo Rein, no matter how long we ponder them.


Text copyright (c) 1997. Revised 2024, with additional material by the author.

 

RED SANDS Now Available as a Kindle eBook!

I'm pleased to announce that an early novel written by Tonya Cook and me, RED SANDS, is now available from Amazon in a new Kindle edition. First published in 1988 and long out of print, RED SANDS was nominated for the World Fantasy award that year (didn't win, alas). This newly digitized edition also features an afterword by me describing the origins of the novel and how it was working with TSR in those early days. In the near future, I hope to make RED SANDS available as an audio book through Audible.

See https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4Y7G44F/ref=sr_1_1...

The original 1989 cover by Clyde Caldwell.

From ParaScope: Secrets of the Pyramids (1996)

Here's another article from the now defunct online magazine PARASCOPE, once part of America Online's Greenhouse Project. This piece I wrote for Donald Trull's department "Enigma," which dealt with various Fortean and ostensibly paranormal phenomena. Modern comments are in red.

Secrets of the Pyramids

by Paul B. Thompson
Nebula Editor
[Obsolete email address deleted]

Few monuments of the ancient world exude as much mystery, wonder and romance as the pyramids of Egypt. For centuries after the tongues of the ancient Egyptians were stilled, travelers spoke in awe of the silent mounds of stone that dot the western shore of the Nile. Prior to the decipherment of hieroglyphics in the early nineteenth century, very little authentic information could be had about the pyramids. Much of what the world knew came from sources like the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC), who described the pyramids of Giza as the tombs of the Pharaohs Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. [These were Greek forms of the Egyptian Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.]

He was right as far as that went, but other details Herodotus certainly got wrong -- that the pyramids were built using wooden cranes, that Cheops' daughter prostituted herself in order to obtain stone for her own pyramid (one block per customer... ), or that a subterranean canal conducted water from the Nile to the Great Pyramid, creating an underground island on which Cheops was buried, etc. These tales, like those heard today at any tourist trap, were likely made up to impress travelers by sharp local guides eager for baksheesh.

The fact is, today we know a great deal about the pyramids, who built them, and how. Some details remain murky -- understandable after 4,700 years -- but the religious, cultural, and engineering development of the Egyptian pyramid is well understood after two centuries of scientific study.

In the first two dynasties of unified rule, Egypt's royalty were buried under large mud brick structures known as mastabas (Arabic for "bench"). Mastabas were rectangular mounds whose walls sloped slightly inward. As the deceased pharaoh was as divine dead as he had been when living, shrines were built adjoining the mastaba for worship of the dead god-king. This practice would continue after the Egyptians ceased building royal mastabas and began building pyramid tombs; every finished pyramid has an associated funerary temple, which in ancient times was often considered as impressive as the pyramid itself.

By the dawn of the IIIrd Dynasty (circa 2700 BC), Egypt was sufficiently advanced and prosperous to support ever larger building projects. King Zoser, first monarch of the IIIrd Dynasty, decided to show off his wealth and success by constructing for himself the most imposing mastaba yet. He was fortunate to have as his architect Imhotep, one of the first identifiable geniuses of history. Imhotep designed an impressive mastaba for Zoser, but it wasn't grand enough for his royal master. While it was being enlarged, Imhotep had a design breakthrough: he decided to pile other, slightly smaller mastabas atop the original one. Moreover, Zoser's tomb would be wrought in stone, not mud brick. Zoser must have been delighted, for study of his tomb shows it was recast once more with six ascending levels instead of four. The result was the first pyramid in Egypt, known as the Step Pyramid. (The name is purely informational; Zoser's tomb resembles a set of steps.) In its final form the Step Pyramid dwarfed all previous royal tombs, as it was 140 meters long, 118 meters wide, and sixty meters high. An elaborate walled enclosure encompassed the pyramid and mortuary temple into a sacred precinct where Zoser could be revered for all time.

Is the pyramid shape significant, other than as the inspiration of architect Imhotep? Whatever their advances, the Egyptians were limited in what they could build, both by the materials they possessed and the technology they understood. They did not know how to build domes or arches, as the Greeks and Romans used later in their monuments. The pyramid is a simple geometric solid, the only shape other than rectangles the Egyptians could build with the materials and methods they knew.

On the other hand, the pyramid did acquire religious significance. The royal cult was closely linked to worship of the sun god Re. A hieroglyph developed at the dawn of Egyptian history depicts the sun as a phoenix perched atop a pyramid-shaped object called a benben. This benben has been taken to represent the sun's rays spreading to the earth, so a definite symbolic link can be found between the solar cult and the tombs of the pharaohs, the sun god's son on earth.

Considerable speculation has been made about how the Egyptians built their pyramids, from Herodotus's tales of cranes to modern claims of extraterrestrial aid or occult levitation. While interesting, these paranormal theories are unnecessary to explain the pyramids' construction. When we examine the existing pyramids, from Zoser's down to the last royal pyramid tombs of Dynasty XIII (nearly 1,000 years apart), we see different plans, different types of construction, and different materials used. But the pyramids of Dynasties III and IV -- the greatest ones of all -- were built of stone blocks. How did the Egyptians raise all those heavy stones to the heights of the pyramid's peak? What motive force did they use?

As it turns out, they used the simplest methods available: ramps and the muscles of many men. How do we know this? The Egyptians themselves left us the evidence.

Following the reign of the mighty Pharaoh Zoser came an ephemeral king named Sekhem-khet. Like his predecessor, Sekhem-khet resolved to erect a great step pyramid for himself at Saqqara. Unfortunately, Sekhem-khet's reign was brief (six years), and his pyramid wasn't finished. The site was abandoned and gradually covered by the desert. It was not until 1951 that archeologist Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim found Sekhem-khet's "lost" pyramid. As Ghoneim cleared the site he discovered, to his delight, that long ramps of packed earth and rock were still in place along the sides of the unfinished tomb! Here, as plain as could be, was at least one version of how the Egyptians built their pyramids.

To move the stone blocks into place, the Egyptians used neither wheels nor draft animals, but sledges hauled by men. In some tomb paintings there are scenes of oxen drawing blocks from a quarry, but animals weren't precise enough to use on the pyramid itself. Fewer than a dozen men could manhandle a pyramid building block into place; this can be deduced from a famous scene from the tomb of XIIth Dynasty noble Dhutihotep, in which 172 men drag a colossal statue, many times larger than any pyramid block. The essential ingredient to building a pyramid therefore was steady, dedicated labor and a high degree of social planning. And money -- lots of money, in the form of food and shelter for the pyramid workers. [The pyramid workers were not oppressed slaves, but hired laborers who worked on monuments during the flood season, when their fields were inundated. A few were professional builders--pyramids were their life.]

From the tomb of Dhutihotep: how to move a 

colossus

As the Egyptians had their successes, so did they have their failures. Sekhem-khet's successor, Kha-ba, is believed to have built the so-called "Layer" pyramid at Zawiet el Aryan. Here the Egyptians tried a different form of construction, layering vertical piles of stone into a step pyramid shape. It didn't work, and the Layer pyramid today is a low mound of rubble, whereas Zoser's step pyramid still stands at Saqqara.

The Layer Pyramid; the Pyramid of Meydum

The last king of Zoser's line, Hu, began his tomb as another step pyramid. Apparently Hu died prematurely, for his pyramid at Meydum was finished by his successor, Snefru. Snefru was not of Hu's line, and is considered the founder of the IVth Dynasty, the greatest pyramid builders of all time. Snefru must have had a visionary architect of his own, because Hu's pyramid was finished not with stepped sides, but as a smooth solid, the first true pyramid. Hu's tomb at Meydum no longer looks like a classic pyramid, however. The lower courses have fallen away, revealing the core "steps." Hu's pyramid now resembles a square tower.

One claim often made by theorists who believe the Great Pyramid at Giza has powers and attributes beyond the mundane is that the angle of the pyramid's sides is of special mystical significance. Khufu, son of Snefru, built the Great Pyramid with sides angling up at 51 degrees, 52 minutes. Yet there is no standardization of slope angle among the other pyramids. If the angle of the Great Pyramid were of such cosmic significance, the Egyptians surely would have repeated it in subsequent pyramids -- but they didn't. Virtually every shade of angle from as shallow as 43 degrees to as steep as 65 degrees occurs on pyramids other than Khufu's.

We can even see evidence of miscalculation by the ancient architects as they attempted to build beyond their skills. Snefru's first pyramid at Dahshur, known as the "Bent" pyramid, has a compound angle because the builders changed it halfway through the job. The original angle was 54 degrees, 31 minutes had to be lessened to 43 degrees, 21 minutes when the architects realized the weight of the upper part of the building would crush the burial chamber of Snefru inside. Oops!

The Bent Pyramid

Another common objection voiced by those who don't believe the Giza pyramids were tombs is that their interiors are so plain and undecorated, with simple stone tubs instead of elaborate sarcophagi. In fact, before the VIth Dynasty (2340 BC) tombs were not heavily carved or decorated. The common vision of sumptuous funerary equipment stems from the treasures found in New Kingdom tombs, like Pharaoh Tutankhamen's. Fourteen hundred years separates Khufu from Tutankhamen, the same distance between Queen Elizabeth II and Emperor Justinian of Byzantium. Customs evolve, art changes, and economies shrink and grow considerably in fourteen centuries.

It's easy to observe a modern economic phenomenon at work in the history of pyramid building: inflation. Through the last of the Giza pyramids (that of Pharaoh Menkaure), the use of solid stone blocks in the substructure persisted. As the IVth Dynasty faded into the Vth, not even the god-kings of the Nile could afford to build so hugely in costly stone. Even long-lived, powerful pharaohs like Dedkare Isesi (Vth), Teti (VIth), and Merenre (VIth) had to settle for tombs made of stone shells filled with rock, rubble and sand. These hard-shell pyramids might have looked impressive when new, but once the fine stone casing broke, the pyramids collapsed like a broken hourglass. The burial chambers, cut into bedrock below the pyramids, survived. On the walls of VIth Dynasty tombs we first find the famous Pyramid Texts, poetic religious texts intended as guide and comfort to the soul of the dead monarch.

The "pyramid" of Merenre

Egypt fell into anarchy after the VIth Dynasty, and few had the power to build even shoddy pyramids. When Theban princes reunified the country under dynasties XI and XII (circa 2134 BC), pyramids tombs were built again.

The XIIth Dynasty pharaohs applied new techniques to pyramid construction. They could not afford solid stone monuments like Khufu's (inflation again), but they saw the ruin that could come to the hard-shell tombs of the VIth Dynasty. Their solution was to build stone or brick "skeletons" inside the pyramid to brace up the exterior casing. The spaces between the ribs were filled with mud brick -- cheap, but more stable than sand and rubble. The internal arrangements of XIIth Dynasty pyramids became more elaborate, and for sinister reasons. The mighty pyramids of previous eras had been plundered during the days of lawlessness. To protect the home of their eternal Ka, XIIth Dynasty pharaohs built tombs of a complexity to delight the fictional Indiana Jones -- false passages, trap doors, hidden chambers -- but no man-traps! The tomb of Amenemhet III at Hawara is the prize of this type of pyramid. Amenemhet's burial chamber was hewn from a single block of quartzite, hollowed into a rectangular box with exquisite precision and sunk into the core of the pyramid. A labyrinth of passages hides it, but even Amenemhet III's grave was eventually robbed.

Pyramid of Amenenhet III

This fact ultimately led to the end of pyramid building. No tomb, no matter how splendid, was of any use to the pharaoh if it was plundered and his mummy profaned. In the New Kingdom, monarchs turned to remote rock-cut tombs (like Tutankhamen's) to keep their burial secure. It was to no avail. Robbers, incited by the enormous treasure available, found every pharaoh but Tutankhamen, and stripped them of their riches.

Questions remain about the ownership of some pyramids. Money for research is the biggest single impediment to finding any answers.

The pyramids are still wonders, but there is no need to mystify them. Scientific Egyptology has found many answers to their mysteries, and not once has there been a need to involve aliens, Atlanteans, or any supernatural agency. The genius of the ancient Egyptians is manifest. Why should we deny them the treasures of their art and intellect?

(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.

FIANCHETTO: Sin Conductor

Earlier in the novel Victor agrees to an interview by a famous online personality, Karasu Nohane. In an era where most actors, hosts, and reporters are AI generated talking heads, Karasu is unusual in being a real person. She's unusual in other ways, as Victor discovers.

Some notes: "vee-vee" is 2065 slang for all visual media, a combination of movie and TV. Your/World is the global audio-visual system, comprising all phone, internet, film, television, and publishing.

 

            Victor was met at LAX by a large, bearish fellow wearing a plaid 'Canada' T-shirt. He carried one of those Nixie tube signs that read V/LEVENTON. Victor approached with his single overnight bag.

            "Cuervo Refugio?" he asked.

            The big guy snatched the bag out of Victor's hand. For a moment he thought this was some heavy-handed robbery, but Canada guy flashed an ID card with Karasu's crow logo on it. His name was Charlie-something.

            "This way," he said. His voice was as bearish as his physique.

            Ranks of self-driving cabs awaited at the curb outside the terminal. Canada waved his PDL at them. One lit up and whirred over to them. Victor was startled to see the label SIN CONDUCTOR in peeling yellow letters on the side of the cab.

            He pointed, puzzled. Charlie said, "Means 'driverless' in Spanish." They got in.

            The cab was a little more than a metal box on four wheels. Two rows of hard, flat seats filled the interior, room for four passengers. The controls up front were mounted in a painted steel housing, looking like an armored safe. The rear of the housing bore numerous scuffs and dents.

            Mr. Canada fell heavily into the left-hand front seat. Victor sat behind, on the right rear bench. The guy from Cuervo Refugio promptly kicked the taxi's console with the knobby sole of one of his black combat boots. The door closed with authority and the taxi lurched away from the curb. Victor hadn't even buckled his seat belt yet.

            With neck-snapping acceleration, the cab injected itself into the artery of traffic passing the airport. Contrary to endless Your/World ads about the smoothness and safety of driverless cars, the Sin Conductor surged forward, braked hard, and changed lanes often while surfing the wave of traffic. The electric powered box darted in and out, playing chicken with enormous land trains, buses, and other anonymous wheeled boxes. Charlie tried to point out landmarks as they whirled past. Victor saw downtown highrises and the Hollywood sign, now in permanent holographic form since the famous metal emblem was lost in the Big Shake of 2046.

            Cuervo Refugio was on the northern edge Hollywood. Every town in southern California seemed to flow into the next, creating an endless stream of strip malls, low rise office complexes, and pastel stucco apartment blocks.

            The taxi hurtled off the highway onto a side street. Here the buildings were plainly older, going as far back as the 1970s. The Sin Conductor slowed as they passed a three-story brick and structure topped with sign projectors touting Your/World channels like Mi Vida Sexy and
Phật Và Cơ Thể Của Bạn.

            "Cuervo Refugio, third floor," Charlie remarked. "We'll be back here tomorrow morning."

            The cab hummed down the side street to a nearby micro hotel, The Hutch. Victor saw the video sign and said, "Isn't a hutch where rabbits live?"

            "If you say so, man. Beats hell out of me.”

            He checked Victor in, and carried his bag upstairs. Charlie left him a nano dot with codes and a link list so he could get it touch with the studio if needed.

            "When do I meet Ms. Karasu?"

            "Tomorrow, at the studio," Charlie said. Then he left.

            The room was standard micro size, twenty-eight square meters. Victor had stayed in a place like this when he went to India to play NAAG. The half blank inside wall was a Your/World screen. A Kumo utility PDL was fixed to the coffee table. Victor tapped it, then continued exploring. It took about twenty seconds to tour the whole place. The king size bed was hinged to the baseboard and folded into a recess. The bathroom fixtures were nestled so closely together he could stand in the shower and easily piss in the pot--or the sink.

            The wall was beaming cheerful scenery and upbeat music at him when he returned to the main room.

            "Welcome to The Hutch! We hope you enjoy your stay! For room service, ask for 'Room Service.' For the latest Your/World programs and films, ask for 'Your/World.'"

            Most of the people who stayed here must be idiots, he decided. Victor muted the wall and took out his personal PDL.

            He input her address. She didn't answer. He switched to text mode and typed In L.A. Where are you? The text flashed off into Your/World's infinite stream of noise and chatter, forever lost. He waited a while for an answer. None came.

#

            Victor awoke at sunrise as he often did. Ever since he was a child, he relished the solitude of dawn. It was his personal time in the world. In college, when most guys his age turned into night crawlers, Victor was often in bed by eleven PM in order to greet the sun.

            He went to the window and threw back the lightproof curtains. The view faced north, and the horizon there was still deep gray with night. The earth rotates at approximately 1,600 kilometers an hour, so as Victor stood there, he was hurtling through space too. He calculated it. Every minute was another 26.66 kilometers, or 444 meters per second.

            A delivery van, marked 'Sin Conductor' on its roof, turned onto the access road behind The Hutch. It glided up to a loading dock and disgorged four pallets of--what? Food for the kitchen? New carpet for the foyer? From the second floor the containers were just big tan boxes.

            "Your/World on," he said. Behind him the wall burst into operation. He muted the sound. It was a chirpy local morning show in Spanish. Farmers in the valley were tenderly harvesting hydroponic strawberries.

            "Your/World Secret Door."

            This was his porn portal. A hundred thumbnails popped up, though at this scale each thumbnail was the size of a dinner plate. Turning away from the window he scanned the images. There were new vee-vees by some of his favorites, but this morning they meant nothing, felt like nothing.

            "Your/World Games, chess."

            Overnight video stream from a match for International Masters in Perth. Two grandmasters, one South African, one Finnish, were giving commentary in an inset window. Victor closed the commentary. The players were too slow.

            "Playback 2X."

            The images moved at two times speed. The match ended after fifty-nine moves. The others dragged on.

            "Playback 4X."

            Table after table concluded in a blur of hands and moving chess pieces. The day's matches ended in less than five minutes at this speed. The last game, between an elderly Australian and a young Ukrainian went on the longest.

            "Replay. 6X."

            Now the separate inset frame of video strobed so fast it was hard to detect individual movements. The entire game went by in eighty seconds.

            "Give me tight view, table 11." That was where the Ukrainian was playing. The caption below read KURLENKO, Y. His Australian opponent was BATTERLSEY, B.

            "Play table 11, 6X."

            There it was. He caught a glimpse of it at 4X, but at six times speed the crux of the game stood out like the bullet impact in the Zapruder film. That's where Kurlenko killed Battersley, at that fragment of time and play.

            "Playback stop."

            In his mind Victor played out hundreds of variations of how the game could have gone from that point forward. In the two hundred third branch of possibilities he found how Battersley could have drawn the game.

            "There!" he muttered. "Stupid shit, why didn't you shift that pawn to f6?"

            The door chimed behind him. In his mind Victor ran the game backward. Battersley, playing Black, was holding his own until the twenty-eighth move. Kurlenko slyly pushed a knight to e6. That was the beginning of the end.

            The door chimed. Victor ordered the PDL to open the door.

            It was Charlie. This morning his shirt read "Espaňa." His clothes got around.

            "Mr. Leventon? Time to go."

            Victor was standing before the wall screen in his underwear. He hadn't bathed or dressed. When he inquired "Time?" the screen flashed 8:19. He'd been absorbed in the tournament video almost two hours.

            "Oh hell, give me a minute!" He ran to the tiny puzzle box bathroom and tore back the shower curtain.

            Charlie wandered over to the mini bar. He put two 400 ml Heineken paks in his jacket pockets and cleaned out the packets of smoked almonds. Backing away, he frowned at the chess tournament video, looping over and over again at six times normal speed.

            "Some weird shit," he said. He stopped the playback. Closing the chess screen, he found Secret Door still open behind. Before he could focus on any particular thumbnail, the sound of the shower ceased. Charlie killed the screen.

            Victor emerged, towelling his hair. He dressed rapidly in his charcoal Knyphausen suit. The strobe tie he brought suddenly seemed gawdy and out of place. He asked Charlie what Karasu's other male guests wore.

            "Some wear ties. Some don't."

            He left the strober on the bed. Better to look too informal than reek of geek.

            "Let's roll!"

            Victor grabbed his PDL and shoved it in his coat pocket. Charlie, wearing dirty jeans, lace up b-ball shoes, and his Espaňa shirt, shrugged and held the door for him.

            Saturday mornings at this hour the streets were quiet. Charlie had come in a hand-driven van, and he drove with easy swings of the steering wheel through the empty streets. In short order they arrived at the nondescript office building that held Cuervo Refugio.

            Cuervo's building looked more suited to dentists' offices or realtors, which were exactly the businesses on the floors below Karasu's West Coast studio. Victor knew nothing about Your/World facilities or recording studios. He'd never seen Your/World until he went to college. Since then, his imperfect knowledge came from ancient vee-vees. Mounting the outside staircase, Victor spotted a matte black door with a stylized chrome crow silhouette inset in it.

            Charlie's PDL unlocked the door. He went in, calling out in his back country accent, "Comin' in!"

            A petite black-haired woman appeared, dressed in a test pattern skirt and top. The moiré pattern blinked as she moved.

            "I'm Teresa," she said, extending a slim hand. Victor introduced himself as Charlie thumped past, disappearing down a hallway.

            The outer office resembled a dentist's office too: cubic furniture, small Your/World screens on pivots by each chair. On the wall facing the entrance was a life-size video marker of Karasu Nohane, which slowly alternated with the logo of Kirin Studios. It was a unicorn-like creature with a goaty face and chin beard. Victor knew Kirin as a brand of Japanese beer, but 'chi-rin' was also the name of a one-horned creature from Asian mythology.

            Without being called, Charlie emerged from the back with two demitasse of blistering hot coffee. Handing them over, the big guy retreated again.

            "My apologies for interrupting you this morning," Teresa said pleasantly. Blowing on his coffee, Victor asked what she meant. "You were playing chess."

            How did she know? He asked as much.

            She smiled. "Charlie wears a Your/World micro-cam, 24/7. It's the coming thing." Micros were no larger than shirt buttons, and were often disguised that way. Lapel cams were even smaller.

            Victor stared. Everything Charlie saw went out on the network? Even his underwear-clad catharsis?

            "Don't worry, we don't necessarily feed live to Your/World," Teresa said. He noted the important word 'necessarily.' Silently Victor resolved to be more careful.

            A third Cuervo Refugio staffer joined them, Ramón, Karasu's stylist. He and Teresa made casual conversation for a few minutes, then the woman set down her cup and said, "Would you like to see the studio?"

            He followed them down a hall. The actual studio set was an old office layout modified into a large, open space. The ceiling wasn't high, and there was no obvious special lighting. On the ceiling there were four interlaced curving metal tracks whose purpose Victor did not recognize. Along the room's long axis were two mid-century modern swivel chairs. The carpet was dead black. Behind the chairs the converging walls were covered completely by two of the largest Your/World screens Victor had ever seen.

            "You'll sit here," Teresa said, indicating the farther chair. "Karasu-san will sit there. Be sure to look at her when she speaks."

            "Where are the cameras?"

            "They'll be on those tracks above you," Ramón said.

            The long screen came to life. It showed not the blue screen of an empty signal, but settled in as black as the carpet. Faintly lighter vertical bars marched slowly along its length. A hundred point digital clock readout appeared: 09:22:07 PDST 04/24/65. The seconds readout climbed steadily.

             Ramón had Victor sit in his designated chair. He took a white leather case from his coat pocket and snapped it open. Wielding an aerosol tube no bigger than Victor's finger, Ramón spritzed some kind of preparation on his forehead, nose, and cheeks. The stylist stood back and pointed his own PDL at Victor, whose eyes were still shut.

            Four steps away, in the center of the long room, Teresa said, "Get his chin."

            Victor opened his eyes. Twisting in the cup-shaped fiberglass chair, he saw himself projected on the huge screen behind him. At this size he looked like Big Brother in a revival of 1984. Ramón's spray prep had rendered his face smooth and pore-less, except for his chin.

            Ramón turned his face toward him again. "Close your eyes." Victor felt a slight warming sensation below his lips. Teresa pronounced herself satisfied.

            Victor wanted to see what he looked like now, but Ramón shut off his PDL feed and the wall returned to black bands and the clock display. 09:37:41 PDST.

            Charlie came in with three contraptions resting in the crook of his left arm. They resembled jointed rods of black plastic, each tipped with a clear 10 mm bead.

            "What's the setup?"

            Teresa indicated the second, third, and fourth metal tracks in the ceiling. Charlie raised one of the spidery devices, and it clicked into the second track. He did the same at the remaining two metal arcs.

            "Are those the cameras?" asked Victor.

            "Uh-huh.” Teresa used her PDL to test them. Though the hanging rods had no obvious optical device on them, when she tested the first one, a red LED glowed on the tip, and Victor's profile appeared on the wall behind him. She activated each one in turn.

            "Good." She left the camera on Victor's far left on and made some notations on a scripter.

            Their devices chimed in unison. Unconsciously Ramón, Teresa, and Charlie stood up straighter.

            "She's here," said Ramón.

            "How do I address her?" Victor asked. "Ms. Karasu? Karasu-san?"

            "Anything but Nohane," Teresa said.

            There were voices in the outer office. The door had opened. Ramón and Teresa hurried out. Charlie checked some things on his PDL.

            "Is she that scary?" Victor asked quietly.

            "She's the boss."

            "Any advice?"

            He looked up from his device. "Don't be a dick."

            A stir in the outer office presaged Karasu's entrance. Ramón bustled in, hands in motion as he described another project they were working on. Then Karasu Nohane entered.

            She was very tall, as common gossip said. Her glossy black hair was cut chin length and free of any colored highlights. She wore a Cossack smock of mustard-colored silk over ballooning black capris. As was the style, her legs were bare, and she wore pleekays: stick-on leather foot pads. Her legs were smooth and rather pale. From four meters away, aside from her height, Victor saw nothing else unusual about her appearance. He stood and slowly approached.

            Teresa said, "Ma'am, this is Victor Leventon."

            Karasu extended a long hand. "Yes, I recognize him from his videos."

            Lauren Bacall, he mused. A certain contralto, her voice was not as deep as her size led him to imagine. She was at least twenty cm. taller than Victor.

            "It's an honor," he said, shaking her hand. Karasu's nails were enameled blue steel.

            "I am 198 centimeters tall," she said, gazing directly into Victor's eyes. Hers were as black as onyx.

            He didn't how to reply. She laughed lightly. "That's what everyone wants to know the first time they meet me! Not two full meters, as the gossips say. One hundred ninety-eight centimeters! Remember that!"

            She was smiling, but Victor had the distinct impression he had better remember.

            Karasu extended a hand, bidding Victor take his seat. The wall read 09:51:33.

The famous Your/World personality sat opposite him. Teresa discreetly adjusted her chair so that she did not tower too much over her guest. Ramón had his spray out, but he professed the boss didn't need it. Karasu checked herself with the stylist's PDL. Tersely she ordered him to tidy up the backs of her hands and the base of her throat. While this happened, Victor noted the faint tracing of an IR tattoo on her upper left arm. Under white light it was almost invisible. Kata-kana, he thought. Karasu? Crow.

            "Mr. Leventon," she began as Ramón backed out of the cameras' line of sight.

            "You can call me Victor."

            She smiled fleetingly. "It's better I not. Now, Mr. Leventon, when did you start playing chess?"

            Had the interview started? Victor looked left and right. Teresa, Ramón, and Charlie were present, off camera, silent as statues.

            Karasu patted his hand on the arm of his chair.

            "I'm over here, Mr. Leventon." Her face was a friendly mask, but her manner was imperious.

            "I first played chess when I was six."

            "Was that at Fysikós Farm?"

            The name pierced him like a hypodermic. "Yes."

            "What was it like on the farm?"

            He flexed his fingers. "Quiet. We had no Your/World there, not even recorded vee-vees."

            "Sounds lonely and dull."

            "It wasn't so bad. There were other kids to play with--"

            "Play chess with, you mean?"

            He shrugged. "Sometimes."

            "You mother, Frances Clarke, ran the place, didn't she?"

            Where was she going with this? He shifted from star-struck mode to analyzing the possibilities.

            "My mother was one of several people on the council that guided the operation of Fysikós Farm."

            "But she was in charge, wasn't she?"

            He met Karasu's hard jet eyes. "Not as much as she thought."

            Karasu sat back, folding her long hands in her lap.

            "To what do you attribute your remarkable abilities, Mr. Leventon? Was it the deprived atmosphere of Fysikós Farm, or something else?"

            Have you stopped beating your wife?

            "I wouldn't call life at the farm deprived. Insulated, maybe, but it was not a lab for creating chess prodigies--or prodigies of any kind, for that matter."

            "Do you have any contact with people from Fysikós now?"

            That question hung unanswered for a long time. In the background Teresa stirred nervously, hand to her mouth.

            "I haven't been back to the farm since 2048."

            Karasu crossed her legs. Composing herself to look sensitive and concerned, she asked, "Did you attend your mother's funeral?"

            Queen's Gambit.

            Unblinking, he replied, "No. No one could. Her body was lethally contaminated with plutonium. She and the others who died at the Washington Monument are housed in a government nuclear waste facility in Utah."

            The wall read 10:00:00. There was a blare of music from Holst's The Planets, the 'Jupiter' movement.

            "We're recording in five--four--three--" Charlie held up two fingers, then one.

            A masculine recorded voice declared in rapid Japanese, "Karasu Nohane! Now she is here!"

            The wall image behind them hardened into a stylized arrangement of Staunton chess pieces. The LED on camera three glittered. Karasu looked directly at the light and spoke in quick, breathy Japanese. Off camera, Ramón held up a scripter for Victor that displayed a translation of what the host was saying.

            Victor read: "Good morning, good day, good night! I am Karasu Nohane. It's an honor to be watched at this time.

            "At this moment I am here with Mr. Victor Leventon, an American engineer who has set the world of chess and artificial intelligence into great turmoil! He has not invented a new chess playing machine, oh no. Mr. Leventon is a chess playing machine! He has beaten several previously invincible AIs in China, India, and Turkey. At this moment, he is poised to challenge the great Russian device ARAKHNA. If he can defeat it, only one thing stands between him and the world chess championship—the awesome Swiss machine FORT!"

            Karasu turned to Victor, dropping into English.

            "Mr. Leventon, it is very interesting to have you here!"

            "Thank you."

            "The world chess championship has been held by artificial intelligences for more than thirty years. Why is that?"

            Gambit accepted.

            Victor crossed his legs and folded his hands in exact imitation of his host. "They play better than most people."

            "Is that the only reason?"

            "Of course. Beginning in the late twentieth century, computer engineers increased the calculating power of their machine exponentially every few years. By 1997, when former world champion Garry Kasparov lost a game to the IBM computer Deep Blue, the growth of computing power was great enough to challenge the analytic power of any human player."

            "Those old computers were just high-speed adding machines, weren't they? Their power came from brute force computation?"

            "True . . . "

            "Whereas AIs," Karasu went on, leaning forward, "actually think?"

            He leaned forward as well. She noticed this, a thin line appearing on her brow as she tried not to frown.

            "Artificial Intelligences use synaptic architecture that mimics the functions of the human brain. It's not computation, like Deep Blue used sixty years ago. It has more to do with pattern mapping and pattern recognition. Old style computers only knew what they were programmed to know."

            "Is it possible to beat ARAKHNA and FORT?"

            Another long interval of silence. It unnerved Karasu's staff, but not her.

            Victor smiled. "Yes. I wouldn't play, otherwise."

            She put a hand to her chin. "Does one have to be eccentric to be good at chess? Or insane?"

            He mimicked her again. Now the furrow in her brow deepened.

            "The eccentricity of chess masters is exaggerated."

            "Is it? Wilhelm Steinitz thought he could talk to anyone in the world by telephone—even without a line connecting them. He played chess with God, giving himself a pawn handicap to make it more fair. Bobby Fischer saw Communist or Jewish conspiracies behind every reverse in his life. Alexander Alekhine urinated on himself during matches--"

            "He was a Nazi collaborator, too," Victor said. "And Carlos Torre used to run around naked in public and lived on pineapple sundaes. These are old stories. I doubt being an advanced chess player means you're any more eccentric than other champion athletes or celebrities."

            "Sherschansky, the last human to hold the title, was convicted of murder."

            "It was self-defense."

            "He killed his doctor at dinner with a table knife. How was that self-defense?"

            "The doctor had been injecting him with cortisone, with the result that Sherschansky suffered from steroid psychosis."

            "That sounds like malpractice, not attempted murder."

            "A Russian judge agreed with you. I don't."

            She bit her lower lip slightly. So did Victor.

            "What would you have done in Sherschansky's place?"

            "Playing chess, I would have beaten MEFISTO. As for being drugged, I haven't killed anyone yet," he said.

            Karasu relaxed. She seemed pleased by the reaction she had provoked. Signaling a cut, the recording was stopped. Teresa brought her a glass of mineral water. Victor asked for orange juice.

            She did not speak to him during the break. Ramón touched them up with his sprayer. Charlie counted down and the number 4 LED glowed.

            "The American writer Edgar Allan Poe once wrote, in regards to chess, 'What is only complex is mistaken for what is profound.' Do you think that's true, Mr. Leventon?"

            She was all grace again. Victor looked at her steel-colored nails and razor cut hair. Despite the perfection of her look—or maybe because of it—Karasu struck him as totally artificial, as inhuman as any AI.

            "It's a game," he said. "It's also a test."

            "What does it test?"

            He spread his hands. "The power of the players' minds."

            "Bobby Fischer once compared defeating a chess opponent to getting his hands around their neck and throttling them. Do you agree?"

            "No."

            "Another world champion, Magnus Carlsen, once said 'I enjoy it when I see my opponent really suffering.'"

            "Frankly, I don't pay that much attention to my opponent."

            She rested her finely molded chin on the back of one hand. Victor adopted the same pose. This time she didn't betray any annoyance.

            "What's it like for you when you win?"

            "It's very satisfying."

            "Because you've crushed your enemy?"

            "Victory isn't always a violent sensation. Sometimes it’s amusing, even funny. It can also be . . . tender."

            Karasu leaned back as if startled. "An act of love?"

            Victor reclined too. "More like a moment of enlightenment, or the resolution of great tension."

            "A sudden release?" He nodded. "So for you, the feeling of victory is closer to an orgasm than to murder?"

            Slowly: "Depends on the opponent."

            "Not many women make it to the highest ranks of chess mastery. Do you ever feel this tenderness with male opponents?"

            "I haven't played a serious game against a human being in ten years." He forced a smile. "When you're a teenager, all sorts of reactions are possible."

            One etched eyebrow slightly arched, Karasu said, "As you describe it, playing chess sounds rather perverse."

            "I've no experience with perversity, ma'am."

            "None at all?"

            "Practically none."

            Karasu smiled, not showing any teeth at all. "An interesting qualification. Would you care to elaborate?"

            "I came here to talk about chess, not play true confessions."

            "Ah, but they say confession is good for the soul."

            "We can play if you like. You first. Your task seems more complicated than mine."

            With great precision she said, "In what way?"

            "At least I have a soul."

            Teresa silently gasped. Over Karasu's shoulder Victor caught the ghost of a smirk on Charlie's bearded face. Karasu regarded Victor with utter, unblinking ferocity.

            “And I do not?”

            “From where I sit, I can’t tell.”

            “Are you that perceptive?”

            “It doesn’t take a genius to sense a void.”

            Karasu turned to camera 2, which did not cover Victor.

            "There is another exciting angle to this story I am pursuing," Karasu announced. "What is the real secret of the AI FORT’s power? For several months I have been personally researching the Swiss AI and its operation. Soon I will expose its innermost workings!" She looked into the active camera and spoke in Japanese. Ramón's scripter translated for Victor: "Follow Kirin Studios' Karasu Nohane show for more on this exciting topic!"

            Smiling, she said, “And cut." Her smile vanished.

            Karasu stood abruptly. She gave the seated Victor a withering stare from her height, turned and strode from the room. Hands working, Teresa hurried closely on her heels. Ramón closed his spray case with a snap and slowly followed them.

            Charlie shut down the cameras. Still seated, Victor asked, "Did I fuck up? She was baiting me."

            The big guy shook his head. "She does that. Makes good vee-vee. The ones who love Karasu-san will be pissed off at you. The ones that hate her will cheer. We call that a win. But she ain’t happy right now. Nobody mocks her.”

            From his baggy pants pocket Charlie dug out one of the half-paks of Heineken he'd scored from Victor's room at the Hutch. He tore off the cap and held it out to Victor. He popped the top on the second one for himself. It was only 11:00 in the morning, but Victor's mouth was surprisingly dry.

            "You did okay," Charlie said.

            Victor drank, swallowed. "Will it be on tonight?"

            "Ten PM Pacific Daylight Savings Time."

            He didn't see Karasu or her team again. Charlie called a taxi for him. A Sin Conductor arrived to take him back to the Hutch. His flight back to the East Coast was in the cattle car class on a red-eye softjet, fleeing LAX at midnight.

            Victor was surprised when Karasu aired the interview exactly as it went down. He

imagined she'd cut out his impudent posing and remarks, but she didn't. As Charlie said, it made 

good vee-vee.