CHAPTER 13
“…so close, the infinitesimal and the infinite, but suddenly I knew they were really two ends of the same concept…the unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle.”
Friedrich Durrenmatt,
Swiss dramatist
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
September 24, 2062
5:15 a.m.
First Nanospace Battalion's Delta Helix Task Force arrived en masse at Tanzania's capital of Dar es Salaam just before daybreak. The full complement of weapons and gear had come all the way from Table Top by a fleet of hyperjets in about four hours. UNIFORCE had also assembled a small contingent, headed up by a French colonel, Dominic Villiere, to assist the effort. Villiere met Johnny Winger on the tarmac at Masai International Airport.
The Frenchman was a lean, mustachioed, ruddy man, with outsized hands and a black beret tilted at a jaunty angle. He saluted briskly as Winger and the task force deplaned, then pumped the Lieutenant's hands like a long-lost uncle.
"Bon jour, bon jour, Lieutenant Winger…I have heard so very much about you and your men." Villiere waved at his own assembled UNIFORCE blue-hats, standing in dress ranks in full jungle combat gear, several platoons' worth. "My men are here to assist you in any way possible."
Winger suppressed a sour smile. Then stay the hell out of my way, he didn't blurt out. Instead, he made a short speech to the troops about international solidarity and fraternal comradeship in battle and the glorious history of French expeditionaires. Then he got down to the business of getting deployed.
The tactical plan was simple enough in concept. Task Force Delta Helix would be subdivided into two detachments, Alpha and Bravo. Detachment Alpha would load up all their gear, most of the lighter kit for rapid deployment, aboard a pair of lifters furnished by the Tanzanian Ministry of Defense. Detachment Bravo would have the task force's heavier weapons and equipment, including the HERF guns and a spare TinyTown containment cylinder and Doc Frost's mobile lab equipment. Winger would command Alpha. Lieutenant Dana Tallant, anxious to get back into the field with the nanotroops, had badgered Major Kraft enough to be given command of Bravo.
The lifters would fly ahead and scout the terrain around Engebbe, which was on the border with Kenya, then land nearby and set up camp. The rest of their gear would come up from Dar es Salaam by range truck, anticipated to be about a seven-hour trek across the Masai plain to the foothills of the mountains. Kilimanjaro itself would be visible for most of the trek.
After exchanging pleasantries with the Tanzanian commander, Major Dikesi, Winger and Detachment Alpha lifted off and turned northwest for the hour's hop up to Engebbe. The flight was uneventful, though many of the nanotroopers remembered their harrowing recon of the village of Uliba, and the great snorting red beast of Kipwezi volcano a month back.
Sergeant Gibbs was thoughtful, as he stared out the porthole, watching Kipwezi steam and fume puffs of black smoke into a hard blue sky. "Wonder how the villagers are doing now, Lieutenant? I hope UNIFORCE was able to help them….since we couldn't."
Winger was also bothered by the thought they had failed the stricken villagers, unable to defeat the Serengeti mech that had lain waste to the place.
"We didn't do so well in that battle," he agreed. His eyes narrowed, following the line of the Ngongolo Hills as they marched through low-hanging thunderclouds drifting westward from the sea, toward the borderlands, and the dig site.
This time, it's going to be different.
The Tanzanian lifters crossed the great Rift Valley, and began their descent across vast acacia woodlands and open grassland, thick with galloping herds of wildebeest and zebra. Through light chop surrounding the twin summits of Mawenzi and Kibo, the formation settled onto a dusty plateau rimmed with massive outcrops of rock, hillocks of lava known as kopjes, in the local dialect. As the lifters touched down, a few hyrax and a solitary leopard scuttled away into the grass.
"Welcome to Engebbe Valley," said Major Dikesi. He ordered the detail of Tanzanian soldiers to dismount and form up a perimeter around the dig site. "The birthplace of Man--" the Major proudly announced.
Engebbe was a dry, sere wasteland of ash fall and rock, desiccated as the bones that often turned up on its pockmarked ground. The Valley itself was little more than a wide spot in the meandering streambed of the Engebbe River, a waterway in name only for most of the year. As Johnny Winger stepped out onto the hardpan of the ravine, he saw only a sinuous ribbon of slightly damp soil marking the outlines of the river's course.
The dig site itself was situated on a sloping shelf of rock and solidified ash north of the riverbed, surrounded by rugged slopes of rock and crushed ash heaps. Roughly trapezoidal in layout, the dig site was a series of concentric trenches circling the outer, surface-level perimeter of a vast pit. Each trench was meticulously laid with grid lines of laser lights and rows of mobile mirrors and flood lamps arrayed in and among the grid lines. The entire pit bottomed out some sixty five feet below the top surface of the ledge.
Just upstream of the dig, a small gathering of huts and trailers had grown up, given the name, so Major Dikesi said, of Camp Matterhorn. Above the camp, a sheer cliff rose in a near vertical escarpment to a patch of level ground overhanging the valley. In the middle of this ground, the ruins of an old Arab trading fort, known locally as El Mareb, lay in piles of stone and broken wall. The riverbed coursed and undulated downstream to the southeast. Some miles away, a turnoff from the Nairobi Highway led to a small village called Longido, the closest thing resembling a town. The border with Kenya was less than four miles north of the dig itself.
While the lifters were being unloaded and a secure post set up a few hundred meters from Camp Matterhorn, Dikesi and Winger picked their way along the streambed toward the edge of the dig.
They were met there by several men and one woman. The tallest man was sunburned Frenchman named Hugo Valdemore. He was the dig leader. A portly Indian grad student named Ruman Bhindi accompanied him, along with a tall young black woman named Lucy Sinkira, the dig interpreter from Longido, who was fluent in the local Masai dialect.
Dikesi brusquely told Valdemore that the Tanzanian Army's 1st Liwale Rifles were on hand to occupy the Engebbe dig site for the time being.
"It is for the national security," Dikesi informed them. "Critical and sensitive operations are to be done here."
Valdemore, not surprisingly, was thoroughly incensed. He ripped off his dingy bush hat, revealing a tuft of curly and sweaty black hair. "This is an outrage, Major. Mon Dieu, a complete outrage. I have permission from your government, written permission, for an entire season of digging here…we're right in the middle of finishing our excavation of D Level….that's two and a half million years back. Just this morning, we found teeth fragments and splinters of bone….it's very ticklish--"
But Dikesi was nothing if not persistent. "It's only for a few days, Professor. I'm sorry, but you'll have to gather your tools and leave the site."
They argued for a few minutes more, even as Dikesi's men filed down into the dig site and began forcibly removing people, surveying gear, lamps, sieves and cameras and spectrometers and other equipment. Bhindi and several others went waving and flailing hands after the soldiers, while Valdemore pleaded his case. But it was no use.
Quantum Corps and the First Liwale Rifles were moving in to stay.
Frustrated, Valdemore and Bhindi could only stand helplessly by, watching from a perch at A Level, near the top of the pit, while their gear was hauled off and years of painstaking work trashed by clumsy soldiers.
"Bhindi, this is a crime…that's all I can say," Valdemore mopped his forehead, swatting away incessant flies. "Look at them--savages--" he pointed to a staked-off mound of dirt and rubble on the opposite side of the dig, at their same level. "We started there two years ago…site A-1."
Bhindi nodded glumly, though his concerns were not the same as Vald
emore's. "I remember, Professor. Australopithecus Gebbensi…the very first cranial fragments, the first tissue prints. A fabulous discovery--"
"Scattered like trash…do they know what they're doing…do they have the slightest idea what treasures they're kicking around? This ground…these deposits, they're priceless--"
"Animals," agreed Bhindi. The presence of Quantum Corps was a development he hadn't counted on. Obviously, Nathan Caden had failed again. Something would have to be done--
"We can't stand by and let this happen. Science…my God, History Itself, will never forgive us."
"Professor, I can go back to the camp…call up the Department of Antiquities. Dar es Salaam, remember? Vice Minister Tagani will help us. He can call off the Army…and these Quantum Corps animals. The idea--"
Valdemore was agreeable. "Desecrating all our work…the years! Do that, Bhindi…go and call Tagani. Beg him to stop this outrage--"
"At once, Professor." Bhindi grunted and trotted off to the trailer ground at Camp Matterhorn. He broke into a run and was soon breathing hard in the dry, dusty air as he galloped along the riverbed.
No, this would never do. The Professor was right. The Army had to be called off. And something--he wasn't sure just what--would have to be done about the Quantum Corps.
The presence of the Quantum Corps force was most worrisome. What did they want? Why had they come…here, of all places? Bhindi's throat was dry as he unlocked his trailer and went in, blessing the cool of the air conditioned quarters. He shut and locked the door.
Ruman Bhindi was a good warrior, scion of Indra and a true soldier for the Lords of the Mountain. But he wasn't sure what to do. Quantum Corps…the dig site…Valdemore's fury and--
His eyes fell on the battered metal desk in one corner of the single room trailer. Inside, was the device, the qupler. His link to the Lords of the Mountain, to Shaio Hong Ser. To Red Hammer.
He reached into the desk and withdrew the quantum-burst transmitter. The qupler was his most secret possession, the badge he had earned when he'd been initiated into Red Hammer. The Lords of the Mountain had told him that only brothers of the Red Hammer had such a thing, no one else, not even enemies like the Quantum Corps. Through femtosecond slices of quantum-entangled states, the device sent and received messages secure from intercept, messages that had told Bhindi what to do for all the months he had been working the dig site at Engebbe, all the months he had been feeding the Project.
Bhindi was well aware of the importance of Engebbe to Red Hammer. Had he not told them the ancient tales of vast invisible spirit clouds of death that once had circled the world, eons ago? Clouds he himself had helped to re-create. And of the great plagues that now visited Mankind because of his offer, years ago, to Escorial? All of that, he had told the Lords of the Great Himalaya Mountains beyond his home, had come once from a single place in east Africa, a place called Engebbe.
Bhindi was sworn on his life and his honor to defend this place, defend it against all enemies. The Project depended on it. The Engebbe Valley would surely become the graveyard for the hated devils of the Quantum Corps.
But first, he had to consult with the Lords.
Bhindi emerged from his trailer after only a few minutes. He forced himself to act as before, careful that his halo be up and operating properly, maintaining the nanoderm patches. Consciously, he kept his hands out of his pockets, and away from the small fob and its two buttons. Valdemore came running up, his arms flailing like an angry eagle.
"Bhindi…Bhindi…did you get him? Did you call Tagani? Is he going to stop this madness?"
Bhindi walked on, trying to stay calm. The Lords had given him a direct order, a new mission. Within thirty feet, closer if possible-- In his pocket, the small fob seemed to weigh a ton. He tried to ignore Valdemore's rantings.
"I called him." Bhindi said evenly. His mouth seemed dry. "Tagani will call the Major…the orders are being drawn up right now--"
"Mon Dieu!" Valdemore staggered after Bhindi, as the Indian stepped down rough-hewn stairs onto the A Level of the pit. "They must hurry--"
But Bhindi wasn't paying attention. He found the Quantum Corps officer the Lords had described, there, dead ahead, at the mound of rubble and the flags signifying A-1 Site, the First Discovery. The officer was young, crewcut, clean-shaven, rather stocky with a prominent chin and nose. Yes…this was the target…Bhindi was sure of it. He picked up his pace, circling A Level to get within range.
"Hey, Lieutenant--" came a voice from behind them. "--we're going to need a hoist to get this containment cylinder down there--"
The target looked up and responded. "--be right there…and watch that thing, will you? ANAD'll be more than just pissed if you drop it over the side."
Johnny Winger left the mound of rubble and jogged around the perimeter of A Level toward the rock steps. When Bhindi was certain he was in range, he reached into his pocket, felt for the fob, manipulated it until his finger found the right button and pressed.
That's when Johnny Winger screamed and nearly pitched headlong into the pit.
The officer dropped suddenly to both knees, and pressed his hands to his heads, crying out, swaying, nearly toppling over the edge. All of a sudden, soldiers came running.
But Winger wasn't the only one affected. Bhindi moved aside to let help slip by on the narrow ledge, then after they had passed, pressed the fob again. More screams. Two more troopers, at the surface level, unloading gear from an aircart, cried out, and fell back. Their load, no longer steadied, swung down and flipped over the edge of the pit, spilling equipment into the excavation. Pieces of heavy gear clattered and tumbled down the sides of the pit, all the way to the bottom. Miraculously, no one was hurt.
But three Quantum Corps troopers were down, writhing and thrashing about, squeezing their heads, trying to fight the vise that had suddenly invaded their skulls.
Quietly, Bhindi backed up and headed for the rock steps. In less than minute, he had left the dig and climbed a rope ladder to the escarpment above. The Indian grad student walked quickly away from the commotion and disappeared into the cool shadowy ruins of El Mareb. There was still a lot of work to be done to be ready for the battle he knew was coming.
Sergeant Al Glance had heard the screams and reacted instantly. He saw Lieutenant Winger down, right on the edge of A Level, squirming and moaning. Above him, near the edge of the pit, Mighty Mite Barnes and Sergeant Gibbs were doing likewise, kicking and twitching in agony.
He swallowed hard. He figured he knew right away what was happening.
"Mechs!" he yelled across the dig. "Mechs in the air!" Somehow, they'd been penetrated…somehow, the screens had been breached.
Glance rushed toward the writhing form of Johnny Winger.
“Lieutenant…Lieutenant Winger!” Glance bent over the prostrate form of Johnny Winger, pinning him to the ground as he thrashed and flailed about.
“My head—“ the Lieutenant was trying hard to rip his own head off at the neck. “They’re in…inside…it’s my head!!!” He squirmed, fighting off Glance, who waved frantically for help. Troopers from around the dig site came running from every direction.
Glance put his full weight on Winger’s chest, before stepping back and helping hoist Winger’s squirming body up into a makeshift litter.
“Get him to the aid station…fast! Other side of the camp!” Sheila Reaves yelled. Winger, Gibby, and Barnes were each carried around the excavation to the base camp. Then, each one was restrained on portable gurneys inside the enclosure.
“Get a screen up around this camp, pronto!” Reaves barked at Nguyen.
“ANAD’s still initializing,” Glance told her.
“I don’t care…get a shield up now! We could be assaulted any second!”
While Glance worked to power up ANAD and launch a shield force of mechs, Reaves pressed her face close to Winger’s. “You got mechs inside you…just hold o
n—we’re prepping ANAD now—“
Winger’s face was contorted in a grimace of pain, his lips moving but no sound came out. With effort, he croaked out a few words.
“What…how…what…our shields?—“ He tried to lift himself up.
“I don’t know what happened,” Reaves told him. She pushed him back down into the bed. “There were no alarms…Superfly was up but he didn’t see a thing. It just happened…be still, will you?—“ She felt tremors pulsing through his body, one after another, waves of tremors like small seizures. The mechs were systematically penetrating critical motor circuits deep inside his brain, bit by bit taking firm control.
It was a race now, she realized, a race between the mechs inside his head and Al Glance, who was working furiously with Moby M’Bela to get ANAD ready to go. Time was short, growing critical. All three of them had to be restrained to keep from hurting themselves. Reaves tried to comfort Winger in between seizures.
“We’re going to put ANAD inside you,” she told him, bending closer to his shuddering face. “Search and destroy—“
Winger managed a weak smile. “Watch out…what you destroy—“
Reaves helped turn him over so Moby could fit up the injector tube.
“I…want to…to pilot—“ Winger gritted out the words with difficulty. “I can—“
“No you can’t.” Reaves was firm. “Sergeant Glance is a perfectly capable pilot. He can grab atoms with the best of them.”
“Not…inside my…brain, he can’t,” Winger grimaced. “Look—“ he strained against the restraint straps, clawing at Reaves’ tunic. “—look, it’s Serengeti…I know it…it has to be…I know ‘em…know where they hide…seen them…tactics—“
Glance was ready for launch. “With all due respects, Lieutenant, your hands are shaking too much. You could hurt yourself…pretty bad—“
Winger fought the straps so vehemently that Reaves had to relax them. He struggled up to a sitting position, still shivering, his forehead wet with perspiration, his eyes glazed over from the fiery buzz burning in the center of his skull.
“Give—“ he stretched out his fingers toward the IC panel. “…I can do it, I tell you! I can—“but his face screwed up into a mask of pain and his outstretched fingers curled into a quivering fist. “…can…I can…pilot this thing—“
Reaves didn’t want to. It was a bad idea, dangerous, fraught with too much risk. But she couldn’t find the courage to say no. She took a deep breath, glared at Winger, then at Glance and Moby. Nobody else was senior, nobody else had command authority. It was her decision, thrust on her by events.
“Give it to him.”
“Sergeant, it’s too—“
“Give it to him!”
Glance moved the IC panel closer to the gurney. He nodded at Barnes and Gibby. “What about them?”
“Get the Lieutenant going first,” she decided. “Once he’s stable, we’ll worry about the others.”
Moments later, the injector tube was hooked up to the skinpinch, the tube was enabled, and the pressure pulse from the containment cylinder snapped through the linkup, sending the ANAD master hurtling in a slug of compressed solution inside Winger’s carotid artery. Glance worked side by side with Winger at the panel, managing config, while the Lieutenant gently grasped the joysticks, trying to calm his fingers long enough to grasp the controls. The rest of the detail looked on anxiously.
Somehow, Johnny Winger had to guide ANAD into battle with renegade Serengeti mechs active deep inside his own brain’s limbic system, mechs already replicating rapidly to seize control of critical neural circuits. As ANAD cruised deeper into his bloodstream, Glance sent signals to begin replicating for battle.
While he did that, Johnny Winger alternated between moments of lucidity and moments of wrenching convulsions.
He could barely make out the imager through eyes blurry with pain and shaking. Somehow—maybe Glance had done it—ANAD had transited the carotid artery and the blood-brain barrier and was inside Winger’s cortical tissues, heading down, deeper into the midbrain, past the finger-like projections of the hypothalamus, past the amygdala and the hippocampus, cruising through the nucleus accumbens at the highest speed possible, until at last the pea-shaped ventral tegmentum was straight ahead. The imager view was a blur of spidery axons and dendrite projections, tangled into dense jungle growth, with cascades of flickering light tracing paths in every direction at once.
ANAD cruised on his picowatt propulsors for a few moments, playing hide and seek among the projections, tacking against fluid currents among the axons, steering clear of dense knots of fiber, while Glance helped the Lieutenant operate the controls.
“Sounding ahead, sir,” Glance muttered. “Let’s see what’s out there. How do you feel now, sir?”
Winger was dizzy, disoriented. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew millions of Serengeti mechs were seizing control of critical circuits deep in his ventral tegmentum, setting up shop to commandeer the reward pathways of his mind and stimulate pain and pleasure on demand.
“Like I got the worst hangover in the history of man…where are we?”
Glance took a hack off the vascular grid and computed their position. “Sixty thousand microns off the parietal approach to the tegmentum. Sir, I recommend we config ANAD for Threat 1 defense.”
“Do it,” Winger slurred. He shook off the drowsiness, clearing his head for a moment. How long the clarity would last, he didn’t know. They were in a race now, a race against an enemy inside his own brain and the grand prize was control of Johnny Winger’s own limbic system.
This is one race I can’t afford to lose.
“Picking up pressure changes, Lieutenant,” Glance said. He tweaked the sounder, focused in on the bearing of the hit.
By habit, Winger slowed ANAD to half power and cycled his outer effectors. “Bond disrupter’s ready, Sergeant. My carbenes are itching now…something’s out there and it’s not far away.”
The telltale signature of an enemy force maneuvering deeper in the forest of axon fiber was easily enough detected. ANAD rapidly closed the gap, nosing his way through the fiber mats easily.
“Slowing to one-quarter,” Winger gritted out. The convulsion hit one second later.
The Lieutenant shuddered and nearly twisted off the bed onto the floor of the aid station.
“Hold him up!” Glance yelled. Hands reached in and supported the Lieutenant, steadying him as the seizure took hold. His body was rigid, his hands curled into shaking fists, as he rocked and shook violently next to Glance. The Sergeant knocked his hands away from the controls to keep him from crashing ANAD into a critical structure, perhaps doing irreparable damage to vital tissues. Reaves and Deeno D’Nunzio hugged the Lieutenant tight, as the spasm worked its way down the length of his body. Wave after wave of convulsions coursed through his limbs.
Glance gritted his teeth. To hell with recon, he told himself. The Lieutenant needs help before he breaks an arm.
He nudged ANAD forward, ignoring the splash of soundings made by the dense axon forest, barreling toward his best estimate of the enemy’s last position.
“Range…to…target…” Winger grunted out, squirming in the grasp of three people.
“Now four thousand microns…large returns…big returns…many hits…looks like the enemy’s dispersing…”
Winger felt the spasm beginning to subside. They’d probably provoked it sending ANAD in so fast. He’d just have to live with it…knowing Serengeti wouldn’t give up without a fight.
“Just keeping an eye…on us…” he gritted out. As his body relaxed, Reaves and Deeno relaxed their hug and let the Lieutenant breathe a little better. Their eyes met his. “Thanks…guys…”
“Big hits ahead!” Glance said. “Dead ahead…right through that gap—“ He indicated a fissure in the thicket of axons ahead, a reef of tissue held open by cranial fluid currents. The imager wavered,
careened, then began settling down. “Sorry for the blur, sir…that’s your head rocking back and forth. Like a typhoon inside the midbrain—“
“Tell me about it, Sergeant—“
“There they are!”
Winger watched tensely as the imager showed a blurry picture of a mech floating in for a close-up look. The mech looked for all the world like an ANAD clone, same tetrahedral core, same effectors, same bulb in the center of the lattice, housing the nanoprocessor. Even the same propulsor layout, whirling like propellers as the device glided by.
Jesus Christ, it is ANAD!
Just a few microns closer—
“Now! Re-config now, Sergeant! Assault One…give ‘em a taste of knuckles and fists!”
As ordered, Glance stabbed a button and the config was squirted off to ANAD. Slaved to the master, millions of replicants re-configured themselves into attack mode, baring carbene grabbers and pyridine probes, ready to close for battle.
“Enabling bond disrupters,” Glance muttered.
“I’ve got the master!” Winger added. He pulsed his stick and ANAD closed the gap, turning immediately on the curious mech. The screen thrashed violently in the ensuing combat, as the forces closed for battle.
Instantly, he felt the beginnings of another convulsion, a seizure coming on, fierce unrelenting pain like a billion needles jabbing into his head.
“Arrrgghhh!” he cried out, but somehow, he was able to keep the pain confined in a box and focus on maneuvering ANAD. Behind him, Reaves’ reached out with strong hands to grasp his shoulder. Winger shrugged her off. “No…I’m okay! I’m okay…I can handle it—“
“Lieutenant…we’re just—“
“Really…I’m…okay—“ he gritted out. Another spasm, more needles, tongues of fire. The box was breaking down.
He concentrated for a second on rebuilding the box, cramming the beast with no name back into it.
Remember El Dorado cave…remember Diablo Lake…remember Bailey…he’s there…he won’t let go of you…just follow the winking red light—
Fighting this battle on two fronts wasn’t going to be easy.
“We’re engaging now!” Glance said, following the chaotic scene on the imager. “The whole front, looks like.”
The battlefront seemed a vast, endless forest of fiber and tissue, yet its entire length was barely half an inch in extent. Deep inside dense groves of axons flickering with light, ANAD and his force slammed headlong into the enemy formation, gathering and bending atoms to build structure, quickly fashioning its programmed arsenal of weapons: electron lens, bond disrupters, enzymatic knives.
The cytoplasm frothed and churned with furious combat.
Winger squinted through bloodshot, pain-filled eyes at the melee unfolding before them. By instinct and training, his hands twitched and tweaked the stick and propulsor controls, battling nearby mechs blindly. Concentrating with all his might, squeezing out the needles that were jabbing his head, he entered the infinitesimal world of nanoscale war and became one with ANAD, whirling like a Roman centurion with halberd and sword at enemies in every direction.
Come on, ANAD…it’s you and me, pal…you and me against all these poor suckers—
ANAD seized a phosphor group at the outer edge of the nearest Serengeti mech and twisted atoms until the bond snapped. Liberating thousands of electron volts, the disrupter zapped the mech and shattered its outer shell, ripping off probes left and right. The mech seemed to shudder from the assault and spun with the pulse, then re-engaged to fight off another bond snap. Throughout the forest of the ventral tegmentum, trillions of ANAD replicants duplicated the same tactic.
“Go, Lieutenant! You got ‘em on the run!”
Winger zeroed in on the mech’s inner core, the throbbing pod at the center of its lattice. This was the heart, the brains of the device. If he could get past the inner effectors, if he could rip through more of the phosphor and carbon groups, dodge the van der Waals buffeting….
“I’m going for the jugular, Sergeant—watch my ass—“
Glance made sure the immediate vicinity was swept clean of Serengeti, pummeling a few mechs, ripping a gash through a cloud of atoms around the ANAD master.
“You’re clean, sir…give ‘em hell!”
He fought his way in but Serengeti was an elusive foe. Time and again, ANAD and the enemy mech feinted and parried, engaged and disengaged, struck out and withdrew, each time closing to within bondsnap range then dancing away just in time. Winger grew more and more frustrated with the maneuver, clenching his fist at each near miss.
“It’s like the damn thing knows what I’m doing…like there’s more intelligence here than we thought—“ He clenched his teeth, driving ANAD forward, barreling through, slammed and torqued by rough forces and currents. “I’m just not strong enough to break in—“ More than ever, he was sure he was dealing with something beyond nanoscale intelligence.
“Someone’s driving this baby,” he told them. “It has to be…it just doesn’t make any sense otherwise…it’s like the thing’s just playing with me.”
Reaves was already polling her sensors. “Superfly’s not seeing anything, sir. We don’t have a shield fully up yet…but there’s no other sensor indication of a signal in the area.”
Another convulsion, this one lighter in strength, wracked his head. “Mmmm—“ Winger clenched his teeth. He was getting close, he had to be, and Serengeti was fighting a desperate rearguard action. He shuddered and shivered for a few moments, while ANAD circled his prey, looking for a way in.
What was it Doc Frost used to say--?
Know the enemy and know yourself; then you shall not fear even a hundred battles.
Suddenly, he had an idea. “Config zero!” he told Glance.
“Config zero? Lieutenant—we’re right in the middle of the enemy—“
“Do it!” he got out, wincing, squeezing his eyeballs shut, willing himself to be still, feeling Reaves and Deeno’s hands gripping his shoulders. “It’s an old tactic…it’ll work. It’s got to work!”
Against his better judgment, Glance complied, sending the signals to ANAD to safe and store all effectors, to sheath all weapons. On the imager screen, the churning plasma began slowly clearing. All throughout the axon forest, ANAD replicants suddenly shrank back from their engagements and stowed their weapons.
“Lieutenant—I don’t—“
“We’re going to draw them in real close,” Winger told him. “Surround us, envelope us completely.”
“If we do that,” Glance was wary, unsure of the Lieutenant’s mind , “it’ll be over in minutes. We let Serengeti flank us…we let these buggers encircle us and ANAD’ll be swamped. We’ve got to engage again and fast.”
“No, I know what I’m doing.”
Now, he remembered Doc Frost saying something else. Frost had long been a student of military history…and a devoted protégé of Sun Tzu.
Reconnoiter first. He who is skilled hides in the most secret recesses of the earth.
The seizure was subsiding. They were less and less frequent now and less and less vicious. ANAD had diverted Serengeti from its primary mission. The enemy mechs had vacated their positions among the synapses of his tegmentum to do battle with ANAD. Everything seemed clearer, brighter.
More and more, he was sure this was the right tactic.
“Sergeant Reaves?”
Reaves hovered behind the Lieutenant, ready to hold him again if the convulsions and spasms came again. “Right here, sir.”
“Take a detail. Sweep this camp from one end to the other. Serengeti’s under remote control, I’m sure of it. This isn’t nanomech intelligence I’m facing here. It’s human, and it’s got to be nearby. I thought the same thing at Lion’s Rock. Now I’m sure of it. There has to be someone, or something directing Serengeti…a transmitter somewhere.”
“On my way now, sir.” Reaves grabbed Buddha Nguyen just outside
the aid station and passed on the Lieutenant’s orders. “Get Major Dikesi too. The Tanzanians can help out.”
“What are we looking for?”
Reaves shrugged. “How the hell should I know? Lieutenant says somebody’s driving the mechs that are inside his head. Probably Gibby and Barnes too. Maybe there’s a transmitter or something. We’ll know it when we find it.”
They hustled off to get a search going.
It was an anxious, nerve-wracking wait, as Winger and Glance let Serengeti flow back in and among the ANAD formation, re-gaining much of the ground it had lost in the early battles. Winger knew it was a risk too, as whoever was driving the enemy mech might well detach a small element to resume their synaptic pumping, milking the serotonin cascade and jabbing scissors and needles into the back of his head again.
It was a chance he would have to take.
If he was right, playing dead might just trigger the enemy mechs to make the one, fatal mistake they couldn’t afford to make.
And if he was wrong—
Nguyen, Reaves and Villa organized the recon sweep with Major Dikesi’s platoon leaders, systematically searching and securing every hut and trailer that made up Camp Matterhorn. One by one, each hut was approached, its occupants turned out and the entire place ransacked for anything that could be a transmitter, anything that could be signaling Serengeti.
Inside of an hour, Professor Valdemore and most of his team was standing along the edge of the excavation, grumbling and impatient, as Dikesi’s men went about their work. Valdemore’s face was florid with fury.
“I assure you the authorities will hear of this!” he thundered. “It’s an outrage…these men are animals. Look at them! They’re wrecking years of research, destroying priceless fossils…the heritage of all humanity. Do they even know what they’re doing? The Ministry of Antiquities will have your head, Major.”
Dikesi was unperturbed. He had his orders and his orders said to assist the Quantum Corps troops in any way possible. He wasn’t about to let this civilian prick get in the way.
Dr. Irwin Frost was sympathetic. He tried to console the tall Frenchman.
“It’s a matter of security, Professor. That’s all. Lives are at stake. I’m sure the Corps respects your work…it’s just that somebody’s running nanomechs around here and they can’t be allowed to interfere. The Corps’ just trying to do their job.”
But Valdemore was not to be dissuaded. “Now look at them—“ he pointed to a detail of Tanzanian troops, led by two Quantum Corps nanowarriors, heading down into the excavation itself. Overhead, a barely visible swarm of microbots wheeled to follow, sniffing the EM spectrum for any kind of emission. “—tramping through years of work, years of sweat and toil. My God, man, do they even realize what they’re doing—“ Valdemore looked like he was about to faint. “Site A-1…the first fossilized skull fragments…my whole career, my whole life…kicked away like dirt—“
Frost ignored Valdemore’s wailings as he watched the detail wind its way down the spiraling steps hewn right out of the sandstone, dropping level by level into the bowels of the earthen pit, all the while accompanied by the flock of bots systematically hunting down every stray signal, every fly and mosquito, every particle of soot and ash floating in the air.
How were they doing it? he wondered. How was Red Hammer controlling the mechs? Maybe El Mareb…the old Arab trading fort up on the hill?
The same thought had occurred to Buddha Nguyen.
Nguyen and a detail of Tanzanians had peeled off from the excavation and climbed the winding path up the sandstone cliffs to the ledge overlooking Engebbe Valley, where El Mareb sat in crumbling ruins. Sergeants Villa and Tsukota had joined him; Tsukota controlling the Superfly element that hovered and probed twenty feet overhead.
“Anything?” Nguyen asked. He hauled himself up the last few dusty steps onto the ledge, and let his eyes take in the jumble of ruins that was El Mareb. Crenellated towers in vaguely minaret shapes anchored the four corners of the fortress, now little more than heaps of slumped rubble, leaning inward. Remnants of ancient arabesque scrollwork could still be seen through a patina of dust and ash from nearby Kipwezi. A low dome in the middle had long since been breached like a broken egg, exposing the inner courtyard to the harsh East African sun.
Tsukota was 1st Nano’s CQE2, the acknowledged whizkid at quantum engineering. He studied Superfly’s readings on his wristpad.
“Basically nothing…’Fly’s tracking some debris…molecule fragments, that’s about it. No EM, no acoustics.”
Nguyen’s nose wrinkled. “Fragments? What kind of fragments?”
“More like a disturbance, really, Decoherence wake, maybe. Trail of loose atoms, really zipping around, like something happened right here, something passed this way. Kind of weird, actually. ‘Fly can’t really characterize it. Too small. Whatever it is, it’s subquark in scale.”
“Quantum fluctuations?”
“Could be. If we had ANAD, we could search for wake effects. He’s small enough to do that.”
Nguyen glared at Tsukota. “Just what do you mean ‘wake effects’? Is ‘Fly seeing something or not? That’s a big fort up there.”
Tsukota shrugged. “It’s just a hunch, that’s all. I saw something…reminded me of a lab experiment we ran last year at Table Top…remember those exercises with quantum states? Trying to focus and control them?”
“Vaguely. Whatever they were doing, it didn’t work…I recall that much.”
“It was an experiment. When quantum states collapse, they go through something called decoherence. Basically, all things are possible in the quantum world. But when that world interacts with our macroscale world, all those possibilities collapse into a single state, and that’s what we observe. Only, this experiment seemed to show that one of the outcomes of this quantum collapse was a wave, called a decoherence wave. Some call it an NT wave, for entanglement. Don’t ask me to explain that.” Tsukota was pecking out commands on his wristpad, tuning Superfly to alter its search patterns. “The experiment seemed to show this wave could be detected.”
“And you think that’s what ‘Fly is seeing?”
Tsukota waved at the ruins of El Mareb. “Like you said, it’s a big place.”
Nguyen grunted. “Can ‘Fly follow this wake?”
“I’m trying to tune his search algorithm now to do just that…” Tsukota finished his reprogramming and let Superfly hunt around for awhile. A puzzled frown came over his face.
“What does he see?” Nguyen asked. The Tanzanians were restless and stirring behind them, ready to move forward and reconnoiter the fort.
“Something—“Tsukota muttered, tweaking his controls. “—something there—“ he pointed at the western-most tower of El Mareb, toward the rubble pile at the base. “Bearing zero eight eight…wake effects are thickest on that heading.”
Nguyen gestured at the Tanzanian commander, signaling for his men to encircle that side of the fort and close on the tower.
In less than five minutes, a series of shouts erupted from inside the ruins of the tower. Scuffling and grunts, the sound of fists on flesh, then something heavy crashed to the ground. The rest of the detail came running from every direction.
Hustled out of the shadows of the tower by the scruff of his neck was the Indian grad student Ruman Bhindi, surrounded by a squad of grinning soldiers. His left eye and cheek were purple with bruises, swelling rapidly. The Tanzanians weren’t known for hospitality to their prisoners. Bhindi was dragged before Nguyen and Tsukota. One soldier brandished a small palm-shaped device in his hand. Two lights winked on and off, alternately yellow and green on top of the device. The soldier handed it to Tsukota.
Another soldier was already rummaging roughly through Bhindi’s pockets. The Indian glowered at all of them.
“It’s a spectrum analyzer,” he insisted, twisting vainly to get out of the firm grip of his captors.
“I was studying remains.”
The pocket search produced a small canvas bag. It was filled with chips of bone, fossil fragments. Nguyen emptied the contents into his own hand, felt the rough edges of the bone fragments.
“You always do your research in a dark pile of ruins?”
Bhindi was unbowed. “If that’s where the fossils are, yes—“
Tsukota commanded Superfly to hover directly overhead. He hoisted the “analyzer” into the air, letting the bots got a whiff of the device. His wristpad registered the hit almost immediately. “It’s the source, all right. Big decoherence waves emanating from this baby. I don’t know how this analyzer’s supposed to work, but this gizmo’s generating NT waves and stirring up quantum states like crazy.”
Nguyen glared at Bhindi, who glared right back. “A signaling device?”
“Could well be.”
Nguyen had seen and heard enough. “Finish searching the fort,” he told the Tanzanian commander. “We’ll take this joker with us.”
The first thing Tsukota and Nguyen did when they brought Bhindi back to the command post was to scan the bugger for nano. That was SOP, and smart too. You couldn’t be too careful. A small portion of ANAD replicants would do the trick. Seconds after they were deployed, Tsukota’s wristpad chirped like an angry bird.
“What the hell?” He squinted up at Ruman Bhindi, forceably restained in a chair. . “You’ve got a halo, mister. Very faint, but it’s there.”
The Indian sneered back but said nothing.
Nguyen came over. “A halo…I didn’t get any reaction when I touched him.”
Tsukota was studying the readouts. “It’s not like any halo I’ve ever seen. First it’s there, then it isn’t.”
“Can you turn it off?”
Tsukota pursed his lips, tried a few commands. “I can try.”
With the small ANAD force under his local command, Tsukota changed config and let ANAD hunt down the nanoscale enemy forming an invisible shield around their prisoner. The air around Bhindi suddenly thickened and turned opaque, then iridescent blue-white. Sparks zapped the air, forming a faint crackling half-ring. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the crackling vanished. And with it, the Indian’s disguise.
“Look!” Nguyen cried.
Even as they watched, the face of their prisoner began morphing into something else, a new identity…his facial planes were like molten clay, sliding around below his eyes, which themselves broadened and changed color. His lips and cheeks throbbed and kneaded like hot dough, sharpening and changing tone. After a minute, Bhindi’s face had been re-made, recast into a new face.
Tsukota and Nguyen both stared back in disbelief.
Glaring up at them from the chair was none other than the ex-Balkistani dictator, His Excellency Mustafa Gaidar.
“Well, I’ll be a—“
Gaidar scowled. “It’s too late to stop it now. I’ve already changed config…taken down the locks. There’s nothing to hold it back now, just like it was five million years ago. No defenses at all. Serengeti’s free to engage…max rep, max rate. You’ll never stop it. ANAD can’t deal with this kind of mech.”
Tsukota was turning the palm-shaped device over and over in his hands, thumbing the control studs. “Don’t be too sure, pal. What the hell is this thing, anyway?”
Gaidar was grim. “Not something you’re likely to figure out. It doesn’t matter now anyway. Serengeti’s on auto, a mind of its own. I made sure of that when I removed the last lock and latched the config controls into overdrive. You’ll never stop the thing now…it can’t be stopped…not until it’s swarmed every living thing it can reach—“
Nguyen said, “I’ve heard enough—“ he squeezed Gaidar’s chin hard, causing the Balki to flinch. Without his halo, Gaidar was no more than a slightly overweight, mid-fiftyish Balkistani expatriate.
“Me too,” said Tsukota. “MOB him. And take him back to the lifters. I’ll let the Lieutenant know what kind of trash we’ve got here.” The CQE2 studied the control device with a skeptical eye, feeling for a seam in its cover. “Then, I’ll get to work hacking into this gizmo and see what we’ve got.”
After seeing that Mustafa Gaidar was MOB’ed and secured inside the lifter, Tsukota came back to the CP. He shut down the ‘analyzer’, powering it down until the lights no longer winked up at him. A few minutes’ examination located a recessed keyhole on the bottom. By experimenting, Tsukota and Doc Frost found they could power up and power down the device easily. And each time power was applied, Tsukota soon found out, Superfly found the same convergence of NT waves, emanating from the device.
“It’s a quantum radio,” Tsukota said. “I’m sure of it. Somehow, this fellow’s got a device that can send and maybe receive signals via entangled quantum states.”
Doc Frost was more interested in the fossil fragments. He laid them out on a map table, examining each one carefully. “Red Hammer might have the technology to do something like that. Especially with backing from China, or Peoples Liberation Army scientists. Fuzhou University’s been a hotbed of subquark and quantum research for years.”
“The question is: what signals is this joker sending? Who’s he talking to?”
Frost withdrew a palmtop sequencer from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table alongside one of the fragments. “Maybe this will give us an answer. This looks like a piece of skullbone, maybe mandibular in origin.” He scraped off a tiny pile of shavings with a pocket knife and fed them to the sequencer, dropping the first few flakes into a tiny port on top. The device winked and hummed as power was applied. Frost fiddled with the remaining fossil scraps as they waited. “Full DNA sequencing takes about a minute. We’ll see if my theory’s right.”
A soft beep signaled the end of the program. Frost held up the sequencer and interpreted the output off a screen near the port.
“Mmm…I don’t like the looks of this—“
Nguyen and Tsukota both took turns reading the array patterns. “A familiar sequence, Doc?”
Frost nodded. “Too familiar. Here—I’ll match up this sequence with something we know better. Like Human Neuro-Receptor Inhibiting Virus—HNRIV.” He altered the tiny display to overlay the two sequences, one from the device’s memory, one from the just-analyzed cranial fragment. “See for yourself.”
Nguyen studied the match. “Almost a perfect fit…that would mean—“ his eyes narrowed, met Tsukota’s, then Frost’s.
“Exactly,” Frost murmured. “Within the errors of this handy little device, we’ve got a near perfect match between the DNA pattern of the HNRIV virus and the DNA pattern of residual cells from this fossil.”
“But—that can’t be…can it?” Tsukota frowned. “A coincidence?”
Frost shook his head. “:I doubt it. And you’re right, Sergeant. It can’t happen…or at least, it shouldn’t happen. The chances for such a match in nature are simply astronomical, too great even to calculate. No—“ Frost’s face darkened as he fed more shavings into the sequencer port, “the only way this kind of detailed match could happen is for HNRIV, the virus, to have evolved from the same DNA patterns as this fossil. In other words, HNRIV came from this very fossil, or from a common ancestor.”
Nguyen was beginning to catch the Doc’s meaning. “Then HNRIV didn’t just appear out of nowhere, out of a natural reservoir.”
“No,” said Frost. “It has to have been engineered, from something very like the DNA of this fossil.”
“That would mean Serengeti--“ said Tsukota, “which was designed as a nanobotic antidote to HNRIV—“
Frost read off the next array pattern, finding an even better match. “—was just part of the same engineering. Exactly, Sergeant. There’s been a lot of speculation around the world the last few months, in Virology and Public Health circles, but nothing could be proven. Vivonex has a lot of brilliant scientists. It’s possible they were brilliant enough to
determine the structure of HNRIV and design Serengeti in such a short time.”
“But not likely…that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it, Doc?”
Frost nodded. “The odds are against it. Heavily against it, I’d say.”
Tsukota whistled. “Then the HNRIV plague…the whole Serengeti thing…the malfunctions…the recalls…”
Nguyen saw where he was going. “It’s all a front. A conspiracy. Vivonex, the drug company, in league with Red Hammer, engineering a virus and letting loose a plague, then quickly coming up with the antidote to the virus. Only the antidote—“
Frost smiled coldly. “Remember the story of the Trojan Horse, gentlemen? That’s what Serengeti is.” He showed them the latest sequence array. “This little pattern right here is the key.” He tapped an array of dots on the screen. “I’ve studied this section for months…hell, I’ve lived with it, slept with it, wrestled with it. Trying to answer one question: how could a naturally evolving virus have developed such an insidious method for seizing control of the human brain’s pleasure/pain circuit and stimulating it. This pattern here is called the serotonin cascade. It codes for proteins that develop and maintain all the structures in your brain that control the flow of serotonin, a key neurotransmitter involved in generating pain and pleasure signals inside your limbic system. HNRIV does this—we thought by a naturally evolved mutation—and Serengeti’s supposed to block it, turn this sequence of genes off, so the protein won’t be made. That’s what ‘s been malfunctioning in the Serengeti devices the last month.” Frost started pacing the command post, circling the map table, making points by tapping fingers into the palm of his hand.
“Now it’s clear…HNRIV was engineered to do exactly this. And Serengeti doesn’t prevent anything…it’s not malfunctioning at all. It’s also doing what it’s supposed to do…replace HNRIV with something even stronger. A nanobotic device, or a swarm of devices actually, that can operate a human brain’s pain and pleasure circuit, from remote control. On command.”
Tsukota suddenly snatched up the signaling device, the ‘analyzer’ , they had taken off Bhindi. “And this thing is how that command is achieved.”
Frost was certain he was right. “I’d bet money on it.” Suddenly, his eyes lit up. “That’s the key! That’s how we help Johnny Winger out. And Barnes and Gibby too. We’ve got to reconfig ANAD to block the serotonin cascade. Interrupt the flow. Stop fighting Serengeti directly. Just dam up the flow and Serengeti’s useless. Winger’s got to block the serotonin channels, while he’s engaging Serengeti…in fact, he’s got to draw the mechs away from those very synapses in his own brain…a feint, a deception, something—“
Nguyen had grabbed the ‘analyzer’ and was already heading out of the command post, breaking into a run toward the aid station.
“Come on, Doc!” he yelled. “Let’s get over there! We don’t have much time!”
Johnny Winger rocked back and forth, convulsing and shuddering, on the side of the gurney, as Doc Frost tried to explain what to do. The Doc was right in his face, his hands on the Lieutenant’s shoulders, repeating again and again every word of his plan.
“The battle’s going to be won or lost at your own synapses, Johnny. That’s how Serengeti works. It binds to the molecules that take up excess serotonin between the synapses. It keeps that excess flowing between nerve cells by keeping the molecules from being re-used. You…and ANAD have to stop that. You have to free all those serotonin molecules, so they can be taken up. That’ll break the link with Serengeti. Take command of those molecules, Johnny…take ‘em away from Serengeti!”
Winger heard Doc Frost’s voice, off in the distance, in between spasms. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders. He was cold, so very, very cold. He saw the avuncular eyes, the broad nose and wrinkles bobbing up and down, questions in the eyes, a question…that’s what it was. A question had been asked—
“—can get to ANAD—“ Doc Frost was saying. His eyebrows arched upward.
Johnny, do you hear me? Can you hear me?”
Weakly, Winger nodded. “It’s all fuzzy….so blurred—“
Frost turned to Reaves and Nguyen. “It’s coming back…I’m seeing micro-seizures—watch his fingers…see how they’re trembling?”
Reaves shook Winger by the shoulders. “Lieutenant….LIEUTENANT! Johnny Winger…front and center! Do you read me, sir?”
Then the fog seemed to lift. Winger shook his head. “Loud and clear, Sergeant.”
Frost interjected. “Johnny, you’ve got to contact ANAD. Directly. ANAD’s got to get into the middle of your tegmentum, block the serotonin channels, interrupt what Serengeti’s trying to do.” He ran through a quick explanation. Winger nodded, seeming to comprehend.
“It’s like a dream,” he reported. “I’ve been back at El Dorado…looking for Bailey. Tinkering with his core functions…and Dad…he’s always right there…looking over my shoulders…pointing out which card goes with which circuit—“
“ANAD—“ Frost repeated. “Get to ANAD—“
Winger shook off the trance. “Hub to ANAD…do you read me? Hub to ANAD—“
After a few minutes’ trying, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler responded.
“ANAD to Hub…reading you five by five…awaiting further instructions.”
Winger let his eyes wander over the interface controls. They seemed like a huge puzzle, nothing seemed familiar, until he felt Sergeant Glance’s hands guiding his own.
“ANAD, what’s your status now?”
“Hub, I am at config zero…just drifting around in this soup.”
Soup? Johnny Winger smiled faintly. That soup is my intercranial fluid. “ANAD, sound ahead…one pulse. I want to know what the enemy’s doing.”
“Sounding now—“ the assembler’s high-pitched voice came back. A burst of acoustic energy shot forward. Winger felt a faint scratchy buzz in the back of his head. Seconds later, the return came back. He studied the disposition of Serengeti mechs, finding it harder and harder to concentrate. A tingle brushed the back of his neck. Then his left hand went rigid and he withdrew it from the controls.
Damn mechs. They were toying with him now, testing out different circuits, trying to extend their control. At least, they weren’t trying to engage ANAD. Probably don’t see him as a threat, in config zero. A brief thought: was there still a mind at the other end now? Or was Serengeti reverting back to its own program?
The mechs were infiltrating back into his tegmentum…that much was clear. The pulsemap showed clear traces of their maneuvers, and clots and clusters of the mechs came back as dark spots, where the nerve tissue was especially thick…nodes and junctions and major exchanges in the columns of nerve cells.
“ANAD, I’ve got a little mission for you—“
The whiny voice was almost sarcastic. “It’s about time, Hub. I’m not doing any good, just drifting around in this junk, stuck at config zero. Let me at ‘em”
Johnny Winger explained briefly what Doc Frost had told him. “The key places are the synapses at the ventral junctions—grid squares six-six-nine-two and –three on your map. Anterior to the Fissure of Rubens…about twenty-thousand microns anterior. The serotonin cascades begin there.”
“I remember the place,” ANAD said. “Pretty thick back in there…maneuvering’s tight.”
“That’s okay…it means Serengeti can’t maneuver very well either. Here’s what I want you to do—“
The explanation took a minute. Winger had ANAD repeat the instructions back verbally, then he sent new config data to the assembler.
“Just a small force,” he told ANAD. “You replicate 10 exp 6 times, no more. Tighten up the formation too. Then make best speed for the Fissure of Rubens…say about one-quarter propulsor. When you get there, signal and go to Config Four. But keep your outer shielding mechs at Config Zero. That way, you shouldn’t create too much of a
stir. Serengeti won’t see you as a threat…I hope.”
ANAD was eager. “I’ve got the rep command…grabbing atoms now. It’s about time we went after these bastards—“
Winger shut down the link with a wry smile…for the first time, his head felt almost normal, if a little thick. ANAD was like a young colt, like the babies he had learned to halter and strut back at the North Bar Pass bridle pen. A pleasant image of Linda Lamont came to mind…or was that the mechs squeezing glutamate along a memory trace? Didn’t matter…he could still feel the taste of her lips, the soft spray of her auburn hair—
Winger took a deep breath. Sitting next to him, Al Glance put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“You okay, Lieutenant?”
Winger beat back a tremor that was crashing through his head and managed a weak smile. “Kinda stormy up here, Sergeant,” he said, tapping the side of his skull. “Winds are up…sea state six…could be a real blow coming—“
They both chuckled and re-focused on following ANAD’s progress.
The trip took twelve minutes. The ANAD master had replicated a small detail and surrounded itself with a camouflage of drifting oxygens and carbon rings. The whole formation drifted at one-quarter propulsor speed across vast sargassoes of dendrite and axon fiber, coursing gently through the mats, probing…listening…maneuvering ahead, then probing and listening again. ANAD dared not sound the tissues. Any pulse now would give away their position, possibly even their intentions.
Serengeti was everywhere, hidden in the tangles of fiber, clustered in knots of mechs, beached against the shoals of serpentine nerve cells, replicating, changing config, tickling and testing synapses everywhere, mapping and steadily extending its control over the pain and pleasure pathways inside his midbrain. Every minute, a new piece of territory was conquered, and every minute, a new tremor, a new spasm made that conquest known to Johnny Winger. Moment by moment, Serengeti was infiltrating and spreading throughout the interstices of his tegmentum, diverting flows of serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine into new paths, establishing an altogether new regime in the center of his mind, a new master running the show, now increasingly in charge.
Finally, ANAD seemed to be in position. Winger and Glance both concurred, comparing coordinates from the vascular grid and the imager view. Doc Frost added his own agreement.
“That shadow there,” he pointed out, “is the entrance to the Fissure of Rubens. It bundles dendrites innervating your medial reticular activating system. Grand Central Station for attention and arousal.”
“Doc, you sound like a surgeon,” Glance said.
Frost was grim. “Just trying to make sure ANAD’s in the right spot. There’s going to be a hell of a battle soon. I’d hate to be responsible for collateral damage, especially to areas not involved.”
“Me too,” admitted Winger. “Shall I send in the troops?”
Frost nodded. “Do it, Johnny. And hold on to your head.”
Winger signaled ANAD to begin moving into position. The plan was to stealthily maneuver the small force, with the ANAD master at its core, so as to simultaneously seize and immobilize the Serengeti mechs that were binding to the serotonin transporters. If the tactic worked, and speed was critical, ANAD would be able to disable the mechs interfering with serotonin flow and allow the natural transporters to do their job.
It was a critical mission and it had to be work. As long as Serengeti could manipulate serotonin flows, Johnny Winger’s brain would be at the mercy of the enemy mechs.
If ANAD could break the mechs’ stranglehold, he could swarm Serengeti throughout the tegmentum and put the enemy on the defensive.
And Johnny Winger would regain control over his own mind.
ANAD’s detail was now in position, easing steadily closer to the armies of pirate mechs shuttling along the dendrite tracks like so many railcars. Each mech was a tetrahedral core festooned with arms and effectors and each mech carried one or more transporter molecules, seized from nearby synapses, imprisoned in a cage of squirming carbon atoms. When the moment came, ANAD’s force would speed forward and assault the captor mechs in one furious thrashing charge, aiming to rip off enough carbon atoms to free the transporter and then impale the mech’s core with a bond disrupter.
“NOW!” said Winger. He stabbed the command button and the order was sent.
They watched the imager jostle slightly, as a vast undulating highway loomed into view. It was a dendrite fiber, curving across their view, extending into the murky distance on both sides. As ANAD moved forward, a tinny voice issued from the speaker.
“Yahoooo…ride ‘em, cowboy--!!”
Winger smiled sheepishly at the surprised looks around him. “I sort of tinkered with his core processor awhile back…kind of reminds me of home…you know, the ranch, the horses, Bailey—“ he shrugged.
The battle was joined as ANAD squirted ahead. The curving highway now took up the entire view and all of them could see the traffic of Serengeti mechs hauling transporter molecules along its length, like a convoy of trucks bearing vital freight. ANAD and his squadron bore down on the highway like attacking jets, cruising low enough to see the carbon cage vibrating in their backwash.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. ANAD had surprised the mechs, catching the convoy heavily loaded with cargo. The assemblers slashed through the line like a surging wave, shredding mechs left and right, unzipping the convoy and sending carbon atoms spinning off into the murk. Flashes lit up the dark as assemblers tore at the enemy’s bonds, zapping electrons away in sizzling trails of energy as each mech disintegrated under the assault. The dendrite highway was soon choked with debris. Like a long thread coming unraveled, the convoy gave up its imprisoned transporters mile after mile.
Clouds of debris made maneuvering impossible. But ANAD had already done the trick. Under command, the assemblers corralled transporter molecules like wayward sheep and herded them back along the dendrite road toward their home synapses. The remains of the Serengeti mechs drifted apart and were soon lost to view, their cores winking out one by one, as Brownian motion tugged at the remnant atoms. Soon, the thrashing, churning fluid began to clear.
ANAD quickmarched the transporters back home.
“We did it!” Glance exulted. “We fried the bastards….” He turned toward Winger. “How does that feel, Lieutenant?”
Winger felt his head clearing a little. The tingling and buzzing that had lasted for what seemed like days had subsided. The tremors in his fingers had ceased too, at least for the moment. He knew they still had a long way to go.
“Hold the celebrations, fellows. The main assault’s still to come.”
Doc Frost was one step ahead. “The rest of the force is still at config zero, Johnny.”
Winger decided to chance a sounder pulse, to get a good map of the tactical situation. The whine echoed inside his skull for a few seconds, but the returns were good. They studied the disposition of the force.
“ANAD’s config zero assemblers have drifted almost into the very midst of the tegmentum,” Glance noted. “They’ve got Serengeti all around them…everywhere. The mechs haven’t lifted a finger.”
Indeed, the entire span of his tegmentum, and adjoining tissues, was saturated with Serengeti mechs, still working along dendritic highways, reconstructing new roads for pain and pleasure signals to follow. And ever so subtly, ANAD’s main force had been allowed to infiltrate into the very center of the region, almost as if the mechs hadn’t recognized the assemblers as a threat.
“That’s why I think the mechs have reverted to program control,” Winger explained. “Before, they were more curious…they came around sniffing and probing. Now, they’re just mindless bots, hacking out new paths inside my head.”
Doc Frost agreed. “That ‘analyzer’ we took from the Indian was undoubtedly a control device. He was running the mechs from inside the Arab trader’s fort.”
“He or someone
he was linked to.”
Winger still struggled to keep alert, to keep focused. Doc Frost explained that Serengeti was rebuilding pathways between the aqueduct of Sylvius and the parietal amygdala.
“It controls your state of attention, and your level of motivation,” he told them. “Fight it, Johnny…you’ve got to stay on task. Fight it.”
“I’m trying—“ but he realized there was no sense waiting for ANAD any longer. He screwed up his eyes, willed himself to --FOCUS!, dammit, FOCUS!—and decided it was time to go.
He opened up the voicelink again, patching through to the ANAD master, trillions of microns away from the soon-to-be battlefield, but heading there at flank speed.
“ANAD, I’m taking direct command of the infiltration force…I’m dumping the program. Gonna fight this battle myself—I have to—“
ANAD’s voice was tinny, uncertain. “Hub, is that a good idea? It’s an awfully big place—nasties everywhere—“
“ANAD, this is the only way…I’ve got to keep my concentration, stay after ‘em. On my command, prime bond disrupter. Initialize outer effectors. Enzymatic knife to assault one….”
ANAD’s voice was resigned. “You’re the boss…here goes—“
“You’re still at config zero,” Sergeant Glance noted. “Much longer and—“
Winger shook his head. His brain felt thick, furry, clogged with cotton. Was he ready for this? There was only one way to find out.
“Take a hack off the grid,” Winger ordered, shutting his eyes down to slits. The less distraction, the better. Concentrate! Focus!
Glance turned the resolution on the grid to maximum gain. They dare not sound a pulse now.
“ANAD main force filtering in…the bulk of ‘em are centered just anterior to the accumbens dorssimus…about eight thousand microns. Here—“ he tapped the grid position overlaid on the imager.
Winger nodded. “ANAD…slow to one-quarter propulsor…and prepare to execute config change.” He shook his head again, willed his hands to be still, while he tapped out a new configuration for the assault. A dull and distant buzz echoed through his jawbone…perhaps the first dopamine cascades, starting to take effect.
“Closing on the targeted position,” Glance repeated, “—now down to six thousand microns.”
Just a few hundred microns more…a little bit closer….
“I’m reconfigging now,” Winger whispered. His eyes were locked on the imager, on ANAD’s sensors, sniffing the plasma for any disturbance but there was nothing. Serengeti mechs were all around them, dim scuttling beetles ratcheting along the dendrite fibers, carrying molecules, building new structures, moving in like unwanted neighbors. ANAD and his daughter swarm drifted silently into the very midst of the enemy, holding formation, doing nothing but listening…and watching.
The reconfig command stream was sent. Upon receiving the instructions, ANAD stopped all propulsors and held position. Coded instructions were sent to all replicants in the force. The swarm acknowledged and, silently, swiftly, began reconfiguring.
ANAD’s carbene effectors reached out and snagged molecules racing by, reeling them in. One after another, molecules were seized and their atomic bonds broken. ANAD twisted, curved and distorted the atom groups into new shapes, compatible with the config design Hub had sent. It scanned and computed bond energies in each outer electron shell, then adjusted valence to match instructions. Inside of a few minutes, all of it without ever disturbing the enemy mechs, the rearrangements were done. ANAD pulsed back a stream of data through its acoustic coupler to its human overseer septillions of nanometers away.
“Reconfig complete,” Winger muttered.
“ANAD proceeding forward…”:Glance added.
“I’m preparing to engage.”
“Almost there—“ came a voice from behind him. It was Moby M’Bela, hugging the back of the seat.
“Any sign of activity?”
Winger shook his head, fiddled with the gain to get better resolution on the passive sensor. “None. Sensor mechs are out—I can tell that much. ANAD’s reporting probes all around our perimeter—they’re testing us everywhere, tugging electrons, pulling at bonds. Just sniffing around, making sure.”
The swarm of assemblers closed on the nearest dendrite fiber, a complex tangle of ropy vine festooned with scuttling enemy mechs, crawling with bugs scurrying back and forth. That’s my head they’re fiddling with, Winger told himself. Glance counted down the final distance…three thousand microns…two thousand…one thousand….
“Now—“ Johnny Winger whispered. A single finger stabbed the transmit key and pre-coded instructions sounded through the plasma. He imagined he could even hear the sound of several trillion propulsors spinning up—
The imager screen flared into light and jostled from turbulence. ANAD executed Assault Two, charging into the midst of the freight train of enemy mechs, aiming right for the vulnerable polymer chains of radicals that made up the active end of each mech. Like Greek archers charging across the plains of Thermopylae, the swarm plunged into the dendrite bush in a furious, frothing assault. Carnage and destruction churned the plasma as benzenes and amino acids and polypeptides were slashed, ripped apart and dismembered.
“You did it!” exulted Glance. “You slammed ‘em!”
“Caught ‘em by complete surprise,” Moby smiled, pumping the air with his fist. “Look at that, will ya?”
Even Frost was triumphant. “Kick the bastards to hell and back, Johnny!”
ANAD and his fanatical brood swarmed to the attack. The melee lasted only four minutes and fifteen seconds, covering a battlefield less than half an inch in girth, though it might as well have been the Battle of Jutland, for all the difference in scale.
The battle raged back and forth inside his head. Drifting in and out of consciousness, fighting back convulsions, steadied by Glance and Moby in the seat, alternately sleepy and drugged, lucid and emotionally chaotic, Winger somehow managed to prevail over the enemy mechs.
After the worst of the combat had subsided, ANAD had managed to seize the upper hand and slowly began mopping up the last fanatical pockets of resistance, clearing out active Serengeti mechs hiding in the dimmest recesses of his tegmentum.
“An epic battle” Doc Frost said, squeezing the Lieutenant’s shoulders. “Well done, Johnny. Well done.”
Glance clenched a fist at their unseen enemy. “ANAD’s still got the goods on ‘em!”
Winger was all smiles, flushed red from the exertion, a few tears welling up in the corner of his eyes. He slumped back in the seat, accepted the smiles and back slaps, just glad to finally be free of the infestation.
“You’ve got no idea what it was like,” he told them. “Your whole head’s on fire, then your arms and legs…you can’t control anything…you start seeing things…hearing things—“
Winger subconsciously wiped at the tears at the corner of his eyes, even as he signaled ANAD to prepare for extraction. He didn’t know, nor did any of the others, that a small element of Serengeti mechs had fled the tegmentum in the first moments of the assault. Traveling along a complex route through dendrite highways across the C4 level of his prefrontal cortex, hiding among herds of glutamate molecules as they crossed the medial forebrain, seeking evasion and escape, always in shadow, the element came at last to the visual cortex and its bundled optic nerve duct. Unknown to anyone, the small force clambered onto the optic nerve bundle and scuttled outward, away from the cortical junctions, toward the beginnings of the duct, toward the eye.
Toward light.
Unseen and undetected, the nanoscale element of enemy mechs navigated without incident all the way into the retina of Johnny Winger’s right eye, exited into the stormy seas of his lachrymal ducts and lifted off into space, a nanometer puff of atoms, on the bare edge of existence, becoming airborne.
Led by a master replicant with full computational powers, the tiny force fled the aid stati
on tent on maximum propulsor power and crossed the Engebbe excavation pit against steady winds sweeping down across the north Serengeti plain, seeking perhaps in its own highly structured, algorithmic way the source, the birthplace, the womb of its own origin.
Unnoticed and unobserved, the mech force retreated into the depths of the Engebbe dig, finding a small fissure in the sandstone floor of the site, burrowing into the earth below. Burrowing to find sanctuary.
And to regenerate itself and await instructions.
For the next hour, Johnny Winger concentrated on administering the same treatment he had performed on himself to the stricken Mighty Mite Barnes and Hoyt Gibbs. Soon enough, they too were free of the infestation of mechs, and sitting up on their gurneys, trying to recover.
“It was like the worst nightmare I’ve ever had,” Gibby admitted. He gulped water, and mopped his forehead, grinning crookedly. “Every kind of demon, monsters, my older brother—they were all chasing me through this weird forest. I kept tripping, falling…I just couldn’t get away.”
Doc Frost was sympathetic, examining Gibby’s eyes and ears, testing his reactions and reflexes. “The serotonin cascade,” he explained. “Does strange things to a victim. Serengeti’s a nasty bugger. It’s worse than HNRIV, even though it was supposed to be an antidote.”
In time, the group left the aid station and went outside for some fresh air. Outside, Major Dikesi’s troops were deployed around the dig site, while Valdemore and the archeologists sullenly gathered their tools and began stowing them on makeshift pallets for removal.
“How long until Detachment Bravo gets here?” Winger wondered.
Bravo was headed up by Lieutenant Tallant, and was slowly making its way across the Masai steppe, following the Pangani River in a convoy of trucks and transporters. The heavier elements of 1st Nano’s gear were loaded aboard.
“Should be pulling into camp in about two hours, Lieutenant,” said Deeno D’Nunzio. The wise-cracking New Yorker was working with “Ozzie” Tsukota to handle the TinyTown containment cylinder with ANAD inside, taking the device back to the command post.
“We could use some of that gear now,” Winger said. “We’re kind of exposed here.”
While the group talked, Sheila Reaves’ attention was suddenly diverted to a beep on her wristpad. It was Superfly, orbiting over the camp, sniffing the air and EM spectrum for anything out of the ordinary.
Puzzled, Reaves dialed up the command bot and studied the return. She wrinkled up her nose, not sure what to make of the reading.
Winger noticed right away. “What is it, DPS?”
“I’m not sure, sir.—“ Reaves tweaked something on her wristpad. Beyond the edge of the dig, the flock of microbots swarmed to the excavation, converging overhead at an altitude of twenty feet, thickening the air like a dust devil as they orbited the crater. “—remember those readings we got a few hours ago, when ‘Fly saw those decoherence waves…that wake of quantum bubbles?”
Tsukota’s ears perked up. “I shut down the quantum radio that bugger was using. Here—“ he reached into his pocket, pulled out the palm-sized device. “—here it is, right here. Dead as dirt.”
“Maybe so,” Reaves said, “but ‘Fly’s reading something that looks just like those NT waves. See for yourself.” She ported the readings to their wristpads. For a moment, Winger and the others studied the readings.
“Point source of heat,” Tsukota interpreted what he saw on his own wristpad.
“Expanding rapidly,” Reaves pointed out. “Small aspect but its dimensions have changed just in the last minute.”
“I see the ‘bubble’ wake now, in the signal,” Tsukota admitted. “It looks like the same thing. But this baby’s—“ he held out the signaler like it was alive—“—this baby’s not active. No readings from it.”
“Then there’s another quantum signal around here,” Winger decided. “Another signaler.”
“Or another receiver,” Reaves said, uneasy.
“And an expanding point source of heat.” The hairs on the back of Johnny Winger’s neck were standing straight up. “There’s only one realistic explanation for that—“
Reaves noticed that Doc Frost was a little uneasy too. “Mechs,” Frost muttered. “More of them and nearby. It’s Serengeti…it’s his signature, I’m sure of it. He’s around here.”
Suddenly, Superfly’s readings went off the scale. The point source of heat had erupted into a supernova, expanding exponentially in all directions. A low whine and rumble shook the ground at their feet. The dust devil of Superfly bots tightened into a fist—a column of dirt and sandstone vaulted in the sky and Reaves’s eyes widened in terror. “’Fly’s tracking something---Jesus! It’s gone crazy…it’s a big bang!”
“GET OUT OF HERE!! Winger yelled.
All across the dig site, Dikesi and the Tanzanian soldiers scattered in every direction, scrambling up out of the pit as fast as their hands and legs could carry them.
Valdemore and the archeologists dropped their picks and hammers and fled too.
Johnny Winger barely had time to get his troops to cover before the attack began.
Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor Page 16