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OPM 98765432 1
For my nephew, Shelby Hettinger, From Cybertron to Texas,
With every good wish, from Uncle Alan
PROLOGUE
17,000 B.C.
The tiger was faster than its pursuers. It was stronger, quicker, and far more deadly. Hunting alone, it could take down prey that was considerably larger than itself. But still it ran. Because it had learned that the slower, weaker, feebler creatures now close on its trail could kill its kind. They had done so often within the realm of the tiger’s memory. If they could, they would do so again, eager to claim its pelt and teeth and claws. They represented by far the most lethal threat to the tiger’s domain and dominance that it had ever encountered.
Until now.
The men pursuing the big cat breathed steadily and evenly. Each was an experienced hunter, each eager to be the one to deliver the final blow or ultimate spear thrust. They knew well the tiger’s ways. Knew all its tricks, its favorite hiding places, which trail it was most likely to take in its increasingly futile attempt to escape their hand-hewn weapons of obsidian and bone. They would run it to ground or corner it against the
shore of the sea, kill it, and claim its strength as their own. They were the masters of the land in which they lived. Nothing could stand against them—not tiger, lion, or even the great elephant. Nothing could . . .
Fifty tons of metal terminating in a broad, gleaming foot came crashing down between the hunting party and its quarry.
To their credit, none of the intrepid hunters fainted. They did not retreat, either, but that was because they were paralyzed by the vision that had appeared before them. Blissfully indifferent to the complications imposed by the first stirrings of complex thought that now afflicted the hunters, and therefore spared any need to ponder the reason behind the cessation of their pursuit, the relieved tiger plunged down into a small arroyo and made good its escape.
The hunters were not so lucky. It was immediately evident that they were in the presence of a god. Their tribal pantheon made room for many gods. There was the god of the hunt, who had plainly chosen to abandon them. There was the god of good weather, who allowed them to track and follow the prey animals that sustained their people. There were gods of clean water and spring berries and fish and female fecundity. But this god was new to them.
Eight times the height of a man, it towered above the tallest in their party. The god was roughly manshaped, with two arms, two legs, and a head. But there any similarities ended. It was made not of flesh but of a bright, shiny substance, fragments of which the tribesmen occasionally encountered in broken rock or stream pebbles. Instead of being curved and soft like a person, the god was all flat lines and hard surfaces. And its eyes ... its eyes . . .
The intent look with which it was now regarding them was not warm.
Though their concept and command of language was rudimentary, to a man the hunters knew what they had to do. As one, and without a sign from their leader, they fell to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the earth in supplication. The enormous metal shape standing over them regarded this action with an indifference that bordered on contempt. Since the creatures showed no sign of moving, in the interest of accumulating an additional bit of information about the world on which it found itself, it bent over and picked one of them up.
Too shocked to faint, the unfortunate hunter, who found himself held tightly in metal fingers and lifted high, was now too frightened to slump into the unconsciousness he so desperately sought. Instead, he was brought close to a face that was an angular caricature of his own. Where human eyes should have been was a pair of enormous flat spaces that glowed like the sky at sunset after a heavy rain. Their color and aspect were anything but reassuring. The man squirmed slightly but could not free himself. On the ground below, his terrified companions tried to bury their faces in the mud and prayed they would be ignored.
The metal giant examined the specimen of local bipedal life with the same advanced probing instrument it had utilized to record the makeup of everything from trees to fish—and with the same lack of emotion or empathy. Big insect, small insect—this world was overflowing with them. It duly noted the specimen’s heart rate, body temperature, weight,
chemical composition, and other characteristics. The thing in its grasp was alive, a biological entity not dissimilar from the thousands of others whose makeup the giant had already noted and recorded. Placing this newest organism in the appropriate category of native bioforms, the giant unclenched his fingers, turned,
and strode off in the direction of the rising sun. During the entire episode, it had not uttered a sound or indicated in any way that it recognized its captive and his frightened companions as any more intelligent than the field mice that fled from its gigantic feet—or, for that matter, the rocks that were crushed beneath its great weight.
Falling from a height of some forty feet, the freed hunter hit the ground hard. The impact stunned him, but with the aid of his fellows he was able to stand on his own two feet. Their small stature notwithstanding, men who hunted tigers and elephants and antelope were as tough as they were wiry. Much grunting and gesticulating ensued until the leader of the small band growled for them to be quiet.
In the silence that followed, a new sound became audible. The giant was unlike anything they had ever seen. This noise was unlike anything they had ever heard. By dint of gestures and protowords, several members of the group indicated that no matter what their leader ordered, they were returning to the communal cave as fast as their feet would carry them. The leader did not try to stop them.
The same curiosity that had elevated his kind to their present level of dominance drove the leader and several of his companions to investigate the source of the strange new noises. Though the indifferent god had left them, his enormous strides carrying him over a ridge and out of sight, the hunters picked their way carefully. Outstanding trackers, they had no difficulty following the sound to its source. What they saw when they finally peered over the rim of the bluff on which they were walking and into the canyon below stunned them almost as much as their encounter with the metal god.
The canyon was full of smaller gods. Though differing in size and shape from the giant who had interrupted the chase, their appearance was sufficiently similar to that terrifying entity for the relationship to be unmistakable.
Among the old men of the tribe who could no longer participate in the strenuous activity demanded by a hunt was one who had mastered the ability to make small baskets out of dried reeds the women collected from the shore of a shallow lake. He had taught this valuable skill to others, and now teenage children and women with deft fingers helped in the making of the useful baskets. Confronted by a sight outside their experience and for which they had no other frame of reference, the crouching hunters could only conclude that the small gods, under the supervision of the big one, were weaving the most elaborate basket they had ever seen. And they were making it not from dried reeds, but out of bits and slabs of shiny rock not unlike themselves. The basket was huge, glistening, and tapered to a high point. They could not begin to imagine what its purpose might be. It certainly was not meant to hold dried fish or freshly gathered fruits. The mere look of it frightened them, though they could not have said why this should be so.
Keeping under cover, they observed the activity for much of the remainder of the day. Since neither the big god nor his smaller minions came toward them, the hunters were convinced that they remained undiscovered in their hiding place atop the bluff. This was not the case. Every one of the machines was aware of their presence. The machines also noted the occasional appearance of birds in the sky, small mammals scurrying in the underbrush, and beetles and other bugs underfoot. Since none of these native organic creatures interfered with their work, they paid them no heed.
The bold hunters on the bluff would have been discomfited to learn that in the hierarchy of possible threats to the work being conducted below them, they ranked no higher than the worms and considerably lower than a pack of wandering wild dogs.
1
Despite rampant, not to say runaway, development in the course of the preceding decades, the sprawling megalopolis of Shanghai still boasted areas that could be relatively dark and quiet—especially after ten at night. Even in bustling modern China, not all enterprises operated around the clock. Not every commercial venture burned power by keeping its lights on when the last shift had left for the day. The outskirts of the business park that was home to assorted heavy industries was nearly silent. A minimum of lights pushed against the darkness at an assortment of locations where such illumination was deemed necessary for security reasons.
A sizable chunk of the ancient city had sacrificed its homes and alleys, its noodle shops and kiosks, to make way for the extensive industrial compound. A few of the old neighborhoods still clung to its fringes, saved from demolition when the developers’ voracious appetite for land had finally been sated. Most of those who dwelled within the surviving houses counted themselves fortunate. Their homes had been spared, the living was cheap, and they had benefited from good jobs in the factories while being spared the need for an expensive commute. Their preserved hutong was safe, too. Spillover from the advanced security that protected the commercial development kept thieves and vandals away from their homes.
In the absence of the delivery trucks that rumbled to and from the industrial complex throughout the day, the surrounding streets were comparatively quiet. Exhausted workers slept, while behind closed doors and windows those who could not rest parked themselves in front of garrulous televisions or plied the Internet. Young lovers stole moments of intimacy where they could in a city where privacy was among the scarcer commodities. Elders contemplated how much their lives had changed in the preceding decades, much as elders have done since the time when their predecessors prowled for food in fields and jungles instead of massive grocery stores.
A nomadic distributor of such food was presently plying its lonely way among the district’s deserted streets and avenues. The ice-cream truck was squat and battered, and had visibly been heavily used. Its bells tinkled an oddly familiar melody while the intensity with which its headlights illuminated the surrounding streets and structures suggested hidden power quite out of keeping with its scruffy external appearance. Equally iconoclastic was the English- language sticker that decorated part of the truck’s rear bumper:
DECEPTICONS—SUCK MY POPSICLE
Out of the darkness a trio of powerful motorcycles came thundering. Their leather-clad female riders were beautiful, alluring, and as alike as identical triplets. Occasionally their outlines wavered like the advanced holograms they were. Though not real, they were all part and parcel of the single entity to which they belonged.
The lateness of the hour neither inhibited the two children who came running after the ice-cream truck nor diminished their desire for its produce. Waving yuan, the boy and girl tried desperately to intercept it. Short legs being no match for large tires, they were too late. Despite their imploring shouts they rapidly fell behind, slowed, and finally came to a discouraged and disappointed stop. Then the truck abruptly halted, turned, and with headlights dimmed came straight toward them.
Brother and sister, too startled to get out of the way, could only stare as the truck bore down on them. In the absence of an adult to snatch them up and carry them to safety, scream at them to run, or deliver any other instruction, they stood dumbly in the middle of the street and gaped at the oncoming vehicle. At the last possible instant the truck did the impossible: it split perfectly in half. As if mounted on individual gyroscopes, each section sped past the paralyzed children, one on each side. Whirling around to maintain eye contact, brother and sister became simultaneously aware of two subsidiary impossibilities. The more obvious one was that the two halves of the ice-cream truck had rejoined to once more become one. The other was that it had left in its wake a small
mountain of Popsicles, Dreamsicles, drumsticks, and other frozen treats both imported and domestic. Instantly putting aside all thought of the magical vehicle that had nearly run them down, the delighted children piled into the stack of frozen treats with an enthusiasm that would have done their physical education instructors proud.
On another street, a speeding black semi was in the process of disgorging contents of a very different kind. No treats these, frozen or otherwise. The small Hummers it unloaded carried men clad in full hazmat gear. In addition to their protective clothing they
bore a variety of cutting-edge search-and-seek instrumentation. They also packed weaponry designed to deal with whatever their searching might find. Their expressions matched their gear and reflected their determination.
Ice-cream-seeking children aside, the industrial complex was a hive of uncharacteristic nocturnal activity. Blackhawk choppers had joined the rapidly deploying hazmat teams and began to circle the district. They were backed up by Cobra gunships. Bigger copters of Russian design mounting heavier weapons formed still another line of aerial defense.
No shots were fired. No disinfecting elements were deployed. The increasing number of weapons- wielding arrivals worked in silence, searching for . . . targets. The men and women of several squads began to slip out of their bulky hazmat suits. The insignia on their uniforms identified them not as waste workers but as soldiers.
One such group preparing to exit a rapidly descending chopper, was led by a somber-faced major who was better prepared than anyone else in the area to deal with the unknown possibilities it currently presented. Better prepared, that is, except for the master sergeant crouched beside him. As always, Epps had his iPod with him, but for once it was tucked away in a secured pocket. There was a time and a place for swaying to the music, and this particular night in industrial Shanghai was neither. Like Major William Lennox, the sergeant was all business. Behind them, highly trained troops readied themselves to follow the pair’s lead. Though they had been well briefed and given some idea what they might expect to encounter, all of them knew they would have to rely on the expertise of the two battle-hardened Americans.
Reaching up, Lennox gently repositioned his lightweight headset. “Break, all stations, this net: cordon and search. People’s Republic has put out an appropriate cover story, so the area should be clear of civilians. ‘Toxic spill’—had to evac the district for search and rescue. That’s us, ’cept for the ‘rescue’ part. Don’t need to restate how important this is—and how in all probability dangerous. Six sightings in eight months; gotta make sure this one does not get out in the public eye. ’Specially after Rome. So keep it tight and let’s make this operation as clean as possible.”
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