LITTLE DEADLY THINGS
Copyright © 2012 by Harry Steinman. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are invented or used ficticiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, past, present or future, to events, locations, or businesses, is a matter of coincidence. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Author photo: Barry Schneier
Cover and design: Roger Gefvert
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Steinman, Harry.
Little deadly things / Harry Steinman.
p. cm.
LCCN 2012945815
ISBN 978-1-9389526-0-9
ISBN 978-1-9389526-1-6
ISBN 978-1-9389526-2-3
1. Women scientists—Fiction. 2. Nanotechnology—Fiction. 3. Medicinal plants—Fiction. 4. Science fiction. 5. Suspense fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.T47642L58 2012 813’.6
QBI12-600160
Published by Alloy Press. For information, address:
Alloy Press
29 Prospect Avenue
Winthrop MA 02152
[email protected]
www.alloypress.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945815
ISBN: 978-1-938952-60-9
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my father, Jody, Rory and Rachel—the past, present, future and future perfect generations
In the hierarchy of Taíno deities, Yocahu was the supreme Creator. He lived in the northeast mountains, in the rainforest called El Yunque.
Juricán was the god of evil and the hurricane. He was perpetually angry and often turned on his own followers.
CONTENTS
ONE // BEGINNINGS
Prologue: Feasible Control
1 Suffer the Little Children
2 The Rozen Plan
3 Taína
4 A Boy and His Dog
5 School Days
6 An Eighteen Inch Journey
7 Walking With Juricán
8 Two Verdicts
9 Extinction Burst
10 Discontent, Renewal, and Disquiet
11 Rafael
12 Harvard
TWO // CERBERUS
Prologue: Rudolph
13 An Uneasy Reunion
14 Home Schooling
15 Counterpoint
16 ZVI
17 Halcyon Days
18 Whom the Gods Would Destroy
19 In Dreams
20 Debate
21 Disaster
22 Diamonds and Dust
THREE // THE GREAT WASHOUT
Prologue: Public Works
23 Unquiet Phenomena
24 A Gentle Touch is All
25 Second Skin
26 Departures
27 Guessing Games
28 The Great Washout
29 The Fourth Floor
30 Recovery
31 My Mother
32 Cerberus (II)
33 Dead Man’s Switch
34 Special Prosecutor
35 Gray Goo
36 A Promise
37 Mea Culpa
38 El Yunque
Acknowledgements
PART ONE
BEGINNINGS
“WHOSO SHALL OFFEND ONE OF
THESE LITTLE ONES WHICH BELIEVE IN ME, IT
WOULD BE BETTER FOR HIM THAT A MILLSTONE
WERE HANGED AROUND HIS NECK, AND THAT HE
WERE DROWNED IN THE DEPTH OF THE SEA.”
-Matthew 18:6
PROLOGUE
___________________________________________
FEASIBLE CONTROL
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2038
2:00 PM
Eva Rozen strode into the waiting room looking like a shrunken wraith—girlish, ghoulish.
The 29-year-old scientist and entrepreneur had pale skin that could be compared to alabaster, if one were to be charitable, like plaster if not. It was pulled taut against the uneven planes of her face to produce an impression of constant tension, of perpetual threat. To look at her for more than a few moments was to falter, to lose one’s balance.
This tidal wave in human form could move with great stealth but today Eva Rozen surged up to the receptionist’s station trailing disturbance like a gunboat’s wake. Sparks flew up from the clinic’s marble floor where her heels struck, and the air boiled around her. The office administrator looked up and froze. She’d been linked, but stopped speaking midsentence and tapped a small skin-toned communication patch just above her jaw to end the conversation.
Eva held out her hand to the attendant. The gesture was not an old-fashioned handshake. She dismissed ordinary social actions, and especially any that required physical contact. Rather, the act was part of a communications protocol. It signaled that Eva was using her datasleeve to gather the receptionist’s cloud data, her public information: Bethany Jamison, genetic female, age 41, no criminal record. Eva’s sleeve displayed all manner of private information as well. Jamison’s credit profile, medical history, sexual preferences, augmentations, and other private and presumably secure data were available to Eva at a glance.
Armed with the administrator’s name, Eva demanded, “Bethany, get Jim Ecco.” Bethany Jamison, genetic female, age 41, no criminal record, did not move.
“Bethany,” Eva repeated, “get Ecco. Now. Tell him Eva is here.”
The administrator struggled to regain her composure. “Uh, I don’t, that is, he’s with a resident,” she managed, “and Mr. Ecco has a full schedule,” recovering.
“His residents stink. Tell Mr. Ecco that Dr. Rozen is waiting.” Then, an afterthought, “Please.”
Rozen’s glare activated Bethany’s survival instincts. The unflappable gatekeeper of Boston’s largest animal shelter jumped up and scurried down a well-lit hallway. Two minutes later Bethany reappeared, stopping well short of the reception area. She looked once more at the visitor and then dove into an examining room like a soldier seeking cover.
In her place stood James Bradley Ecco—behaviorist, trainer, and chief handler of Haven Memorial Animal Shelter’s three-score rescued dogs. Eva nodded a brief greeting that took in her old friend. He smelled of musk with traces of ammonia. Stray hairs left multicolored streaks on his uniform—tan scrubs with a dark blue logo, a paw print, and the word ‘Haven’ embedded over his left breast. His name, employee ID number, photo, and title glowed beneath the logo. His slight frame gave an impression of insubstantiality that belied his strength, speed, and anger.
The dog trainer, husband, and father could claim another distinction: in the entire world, he was Eva Rozen’s only remaining friend.
Jim’s face lit up. “Eva! This is a surprise. What are you doing here? I mean, it’s great you’re here. What have you been—”
He stopped midsentence. Few would have noticed the tightening below her eyebrows and fewer still would have recognized Eva’s sudden impatience. Jim Ecco seldom missed small warnings, neither in dogs nor in people. He adopted a relaxed posture and leaned back imperceptibly, giving Eva an inch more space to signal his respect for her.
“Talk to me,” Jim said. “What exciting plans do you have? Decided to adopt a puppy?”
“Nope. Don’t need any research animals.”
One corner of Jim’s mouth turned up in a half grin. “Ah, Eva,” he sighed theatrically. “Ever the humanitarian.”
“Jim Ecco, ever the idealist. You make any kind of a decent wage cleaning up after dogs? Or does Plant Lady carry you?”
He
ignored the barb. “Here to sell me stock in NMech?”
“Not going public just yet. But you should help me. Leased medical nanoagents means—
“Means NMech grows rich. Where on earth did you get the idea of leasing medicine, anyway?”
“I copied my strategy from King Gillette.”
“King who?” asked Jim.
“King Gillette. That was his name, not a title. He invented disposable safety razor blades, figuring that he could just about give away the razor but charge for the blades, as long as they were short-lived. He made a fortune. It’ll work for medicine, too.”
“Rent-a-remedy?”
“Meds for the masses.” Eva’s eyes tightened again. Jim turned just a degree or two. It was the same indirect body posture that he would adopt with an agitated dog in his care. He fixed his gaze just to the side of his old friend and then looked down at the floor. Eva relaxed.
“I need your help,” she said abruptly.
“My help? Or Marta’s?”
“Yours. Hers. Both.”
“We’ve been through that,” said Jim. “We made a family decision.”
“Yeah, well, I can sweeten the deal. I have something that will interest the Plant Lady.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Take my word for it. She’ll like what I can put on the table. First I have to know if she can give me what I want.” Eva, the Needy.
“First, I need to see my patients. You know, the stinky ones? Then we can talk.”
“Patients? The vets have patients. You have shovels.” Eva, the Relentless.
Jim did not respond. She would take any response, even correction, as tacit approval.
“I’ll wait,” she said. Eva, the Unexpected.
Jim stared. “You’ll wait? Now I’m confused. You stormed in, a woman on fire. You lit up poor Bethany, demanded to see me, and now you’ll wait? Why didn’t you just link to me? I’d have been expecting you.”
“I need to talk to you, that’s why.”
“Yes, Eva, but most people link ahead. Courtesy doesn’t take that much work.”
“Overrated,” she snapped. “When it’s time to do something, it’s time to do it. Besides, I checked your schedule and I knew you’d be here.”
“You checked my... ?” Jim looked down at his datasleeve and frowned. “You’re still up to your old tricks.”
When Eva said nothing, Jim conceded, “Okay, it must be really important. Make yourself at home.” He smiled and walked back to the kennels.
Eva stood still in her friend’s cramped office. Only her eyes moved as she examined her surroundings. After a few silent minutes, she frowned and ran stubby fingers across her scalp, leaving rows of dirty blond hair like freshly-plowed farmland.
She took in Jim’s neat piles of old-fashioned books and data-plaques. They were stacked on every available surface except Jim’s small desk, bare save for a coffee service. Eva touched her datasleeve and launched a snooper application to search for key words, terms, and algorithms on the chance that any of Marta’s work would be on Jim’s datapillar. In the time that it took the handler to complete his morning duties, Eva sifted through Jim’s pillar in an unsuccessful search. Her frown was a brief departure from her normal expressionless demeanor.
When Jim reappeared, he was covered in dog hair. Leashes hung around his neck like leather boas. He looked drained. He shuffled to his desk and brewed coffee. “Ah, sweet elixir of life,” he said with his first sip and offered a cup to Eva who shook her head impatiently.
“Anybody ever tell you that you’re full of crap?” Eva asked without rancor.
“Only you, darling.”
Eva stood very still. She cocked her head, heard sounds within her that grew and threatened to drown out the sounds around her. She blinked hard, forcing a moment’s quiet, and when she could hear again, she said, “Now it’s darling?”
“Eva, you could charm the skin off a snake. Wouldn’t you rather have a lifetime friend?”
Eva said nothing. The inner din quieted.
Jim gave no sign that he’d observed her distress. He lifted his cup in a toast to his old friend. “You never do anything without a purpose. And to wait without complaint? What’s up?”
Eva looked at Jim. “I’ve got a problem. My project at Harvard produced two medicines—”
“Your project?—”
“—Okay, our project at Harvard produced two medicines that Plant Lady extracted from her rainforest. We showed that they could be built in a nanoassembler. I turned that project into NMech. I damned near went broke building an assembler that could be implanted in a patient’s body. Getting FDA approvals was murder. But we’re making a little money now.”
“You’ve got working internal assemblers?”
“Didn’t I just say so?”
The old manufacturing paradigm, whether for medicine or metals, was to whittle larger hunks of material into smaller ones. Nanotechnology, the science of matter at a scale so small as to be nearly unimaginable, permitted products to be built up, molecule by molecule. Eva’s company focused on synthesizing drugs using this technology.
“Congratulations” Jim said. “So, what’s the problem?”
Eva said, “Control. Let’s say that you implant a nanoscale assembler inside a patient’s body. It fabricates and dispenses the meds automatically. But you need to be able to raise or lower the dosage to match the patient’s condition. We need to control the assembler after it’s been implanted.”
“An assembler at sub-cutaneous scale? That’s science fiction, stuff of the future. What am I missing?”
“Everyone seems to think that progress is fantasy—until they get their nose rubbed in it. About one-hundred years ago, movie producer Darryl Zanuck predicted the end of television. Twenty years later? The world watched the first moon walk on their televisions. Trust me, I know exactly how to build a nanoassembler, and make it small enough to be implanted. What I need is control.”
“Control is old hat,” said Jim. “Doctors have had wireless control over drug implants for years.”
Eva interrupted. “The problem with wireless control is the physician. Too busy to keep track. And the patients? They’re worse. They skip appointments to recalibrate the implants. But if I could control nanoagents remotely? A Boston administrator manages a Berlin patient’s prescription? If I can control the dosage from a datapillar, I can make the system efficient.”
“You mean, you can control the cure.”
“Don’t get high-and-mighty with me. The system now means that physicians have to do a technician’s job. Not fair to the doctor, not fair to the patient. But NMech has the medical skill and the technological know-how to manage the dosage remotely.”
“Eva,” Jim said gently, “she wants to practice medicine, not be a drug manufacturer. You know that.”
“Let me finish. I have a proposal that she will like, if remote control is feasible.”
Jim said nothing for a few moments, then subvocalized. His lips moved but he pronounced his words silently. A skin-toned comm-patch seated on his cheek registered the minute vibrations in his jaw and throat from the silent speech and converted the resonance into electronic pulses, and then sent a series of commands to his datasleeve. The sleeve activated a heads-up holographic display. Jim peered into the projection for a few minutes.
“According to Marta, the theory is simple enough.”
“You can access her notes?” Eva asked. She held up a hand like an old-time traffic cop. The gesture indicated that Eva wanted to receive a datafile, the information that Jim had examined.
“No. These are her files. You want them? You ask her. If she wants to share, then she’ll share.” Jim spoke in a flat voice, a momentary withdrawal of camaraderie.
“Fine,” said Eva. “Tell me how you get excorporeal control of a nanoagent. And, yeah, I will take a cup of your magic coffee.” Jim touched a pot. In a moment the pot glowed gently and Jim poured hot water into a French press and set a cu
p in front of her.
“It’s already been done, just not well,” Jim said, peering back into the display. “About twenty years ago, researchers at Chambers Hospital implanted a tiny reservoir under the patient’s skin to dispense medication subcutaneously. They added magnetic ferrite nanoparticles”—bits of material measured in billionths of a meter, near-atomic size—“to the reservoir. When the researchers turned on a magnetic field, the reservoir’s membranes heated, and then turned porous. That released the medication.”
“I know about the Chambers trials,” Eva waved dismissively. Her coffee sat untouched. “But the membranes overheated and dumped the entire reservoir into the bloodstream. That’s not going to work.”
“True, but the idea is still good. At Chambers, they used a steady magnetic pulse which caused the overheating. What you need is a reliable regulator, and Marta thinks it’s possible with something called chameleon magnets. Take a nonmagnetic material and hit it with an electronic pulse to organize the spin of the electrons. That turns the material magnetic. The reservoir’s membrane heats and turns porous and delivers the medication. Turn the field off, the dosage stops. That would make an effective regulator. But the research on chameleon magnets was in the field of computer science, not in medicine, and nobody ever put the two ideas together.”
“Huh,” said Eva. She thought a moment. “Could the control signal come from a central datapillar? And be relayed to a home pillar?”
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