by Victor Koman
“That’s right.” “You may borrow anything you want,” Bhotamo said, “including my personal staff.”
“Thank you, though I may simply need a steady supply of liquid helium.” Over his shoulder, he shouted toward his two friends. “Lei-get the cryogenics out of my van. Rock-get the fire suit ready.”
•
The fire suit actually served as an all-purpose insulation garment. Made of dozens of layers of insulating fabric and coated with a reflective Mylar surface, it protected equally well against blazing heat or chilling cold. Rock helped Cap seal up inside it, making certain that the internal air conditioning functioned flawlessly.
“How’s the video, Flash?” Cap asked via the communications setup in the fire suit.
“All fine here, boss.”
“If this fails, you know what to do.”
Flash said nothing. He knew what his partner meant. If the bizarre silver stuff should eat through the fire suit before Cap could peel it off and escape, he would be the new man in charge.
Leila, wearing thick gloves of the same material as the fire suit, hefted a two-gallon stainless-steel canister to the edge of the police line. A thick layer of frost coated the cylinder. When she set it down, sheets of ice sheared from the sides to melt steamily on the asphalt. She had taken the container from the same place Rock had gotten the fire suit-Cap’s van. On the outside, it looked like nothing special, with an innocuous white paint job and ordinary commercial license plates. Inside that plain exterior, though, resided enough ingenious tools of superscience to supply several university science labs and several more government weapons centers.
Captain Anger stepped under the line and picked up the tank. Speaking now through the comm, he said, “Warm up the atomic force ‘scope, then keep everyone fifty feet away from the van.”
“Right.” Leila spoke to Fleming, who relayed the request to a police sergeant.
Cap opened the cryogenic canister. Inside, a cloud of icy vapor swirled around like a miniature storm. Carefully advancing to the very edge of the small puddle created by the paramedics’ death, he tilted the cylinder to pour a small amount of clear bluish liquid on the boundary. Amid the cloud of evaporating liquid helium, the mirrored surface dulled and grew grainy. Over the comm, Cap heard a strange, crisp noise, like the sound made by crushing the dried husks of dead insects.
Using a pair of insulated forceps, Cap plucked up a piece of the brittle, frozen grey stuff and deposited it in the quartz dish Rock had left behind the police tape.
“Let’s see if that’s slowed things down enough for us to take a look.” Adding more liquid helium, he handed the vapor-spewing dish to Leila, who rushed it to the van. Laying the forceps near the puddle, Cap sealed the helium canister and stepped to the other side of the police line.
The Hazardous Materials team watched from a safe distance, as did the police and fire personnel. Rock’s angry glare kept reporters at a safe distance.
Inside the van, Leila’s gloved hands carefully placed the dish into the microscope’s sample chamber. She evacuated the chamber and commanded the computer to lower the microscope’s needle to the surface of the sample.
An atomic force microscope creates an image by tracking the point of an infinitesimally thin diamond needle-in this case, just ten atoms wide at the tip-across the sample, letting it rise and fall as it is repelled by the charge of the electrons on the minute features it encounters. A clutch of lasers detects the position of the needle and relays the information to the computer, which generates an image. Leila watched the picture appear line by line while Rock helped the captain out of the fire suit.
“How’s it coming?” Cap asked over the comm.
“I think you’ll be interested in this,” she said.
He climbed inside the van, followed by Rock and Dr. Bhotamo.
“That’s no chemical compound or virus.” She reached over to adjust the monitor. The four gazed at a false-color computer-enhanced image as it focused into a jumble of identical shapes frozen in a sea of elemental atoms.
The shapes-oblong and identical-looked U-shaped, like a length of channel iron. The outer surface bristled with armatures that-if they had been on a bacterium the same size-could have been the hairlike cilia used for locomotion. Those, however, would have been curved. The cilia one these objects consisted of straight sections connected at ball-and-socket joints. More arms clustered inside the lengthwise U-channel. These looked even more complex, some of them ending in tips of various incomprehensible shapes, some in what looked for all the world like miniature scalpels, and still others that mimicked construction tools. What appeared to be cogwheels or gears a few ten-thousandths of an inch wide connected each to the main body.
Cap turned his attention to Dr. Bhotamo. “Are these yours?” he asked with simple directness.
Bhotamo shook his head, his deep brown eyes gazing intently at the screen. “We make weapons, but we don’t make them this small. One division has been working on microbotics for several years, but all they have so far are some gears and tongs ten times larger than this. And a DC motor, none of which they’d originated. I know of only one researcher who could possibly have gotten this far.”
“Dr. Madsen,” Cap said.
Dr. Bhotamo nodded. “Yes. But how could he have acquired the funding for this after his expulsion from Stanford?”
Cap stared at the screen, shifting the field of view around with a trackball control. “He could have built the prototype in a microfactory the size of a thimble attached to a home computer. All he needed was the conceptual breakthrough this design reveals. Just look at the way those carbon rods attach to the silicon shafts. And that electrostatic motor there-it’s genius in action. He’s got shapes there that no one could get using mask fabrication techni-”
“Cap,” Leila said, “temperature’s rising in the chamber. Should I add more helium?”
Rock perked up. “Da, chyort vosmi! I don’t want to see those things come alive again!”
Cap shook his head. “The freeze inactivated them. Look at those cracks along the central channel. I’ll wager they can’t stand up to temperature extremes. Heat or cold. We’ve got a weapon against that lake of them out there, but we need something that will stop them wherever they may appear, including on or inside living tissue.”
“If they’re man-made,” Rock said, “what in hell are they doing melting everything they touch?”
“Simple,” Cap said, saving the microscope scan to the memory of the powerful computer and switching off the screen. “They’re tearing matter apart for raw materials. These things are the ultimate recyclers.”
“But what are they using the matter for?” Leila asked.
Cap stood and stretched, bending to do so in the cramped van. “To build copies of themselves. More scavengers.”
A worried look passed across Dr. Bhotamo’s face. “Something must be wrong with whatever passes for their programming- nothing is telling them to stop making copies. Mechanical cancer.”
Rock ground his teeth together for a moment, then rumbled out, “You mean these things could just keep replicating until they’ve dismantled entire planet?”
Cap nodded grimly. “Left on their own, they’d probably just cover one continent-there’s not much in seawater they could use and the salt would probably corrode them. But people and animals can carry them. Aircraft and automobiles. Ships.” He turned toward his assistants.
“Leila-set up the magnetic trap. I want to isolate an active sample. Rock-coordinate with Dr. Bhotamo on freezing that pool with liquid helium-”
“I don’t think we have enough for that,” Bhotamo said.
“How about nitrogen?”
“Yes, plenty on hand.”
“All right. Nitrogen ought to be cold enough. Have someone bring a truckload. Flash?”
“Here, skipper.”
“Locate Dr. Julius Madsen, Ph.D.s in molecular chemistry and electronics. Start with the Bay Area. I suspect we’ll find him som
ewhere near this mess. And contact the others. Tell them we’ve got a hot one.”
“Roger-over and out.” With that, Flash signed off.
Leila stood in the door of the van, gazing outward at the eerie mirror surface of the pool of busy microbots. Overhead, police and TV news helicopters thwupped around in circles, vying for prime viewing position.
“Cap…” Her voice held an edge of apprehension. “Take a look at this.”
“What?” he said, stepping over behind her.
“The pool-it’s moving!”
Chapter Six
Flash Reports
Phil “The Flash” Hoile-Philip James Hoile, more formally- turned his attention away from the TV monitors to concentrate on the computer screen above him. In the cool, low light of the spacious room, he reclined on a chair that conformed to his body, pulled the large keyboard into position, and lay back to search for Dr. Madsen.
The computer room served as the nerve center of Richard Anger’s non-Institute operations. Inaccessible to faculty or researchers, it was the nexus of activity for Captain Anger and his six gifted partners.
And in it, Flash reigned as undisputed master.
Even though Captain Anger probably knew as much or more about computers and electronics, his knowledge of economics and human organization was even deeper; knowing the value of division of labor allowed Captain Anger the luxury of assigning tasks to others without worry or the constant need to micro-manage. Flash had never met a more trusting, confident man than Richard Anger III.
Hoile’s long, slender fingers raced over the keyboard. His first electronic destination was the inner depths of Cyclops, the Universal Encyclopedia. The brainchild-literally-of Flash, Cap, and the Anger Institute, the ultra-fast computer Cyclops comprised over 1,000,000 parallel processors, each of which could tear apart a problem and work on a part of its solution. Cyclops held within its silicon innards nearly one quadrillion pieces of knowledge. It was more than a huge catalogue, though. Cyclops held its information relationally; that is, every bit of information related to other bits. Its neural nets stored information the way a human brain would-holographically: here and there, all over the net, designed with numerical, probabilistic connections that allowed Cyclops not only to store and retrieve information, but to interpret it and acquire more.
It was, at this point in its artificial life, self-learning. Using optical scanners and text-recognition programs, Cyclops could “read” four different human languages (English, German, Japanese, and Russian). One department at the Institute consisted solely of a team of researchers who sliced pages out of books and magazines to feed to the bank of scanners that fed Cyclops its diet of information. Another department did nothing but ask it questions, checking to see if Cyclops was relating its information properly and also to find any new insights the machine might generate.
At the moment, Flash Hoile posed it a simple question. He adjusted the lightweight voice-input headset and asked, “Can you find Dr. Julius Frederick Madsen, Ph.D.s in molecular biology and electronics?”
Within a seconds, Dr. Madsen’s file appeared on the screen.
Dr. Julius Frederick Madsen
Age: 55 Height: 5’ 4" Weight: 125 Hair: White Eyes: Grey Race: European B Fingerprints: On File, National Security Net Voiceprint: On File, National Security Net Retinaprint: Not On File DNAprint: Not On File
Cyclops listed his education from grade school onward, noting degrees, honors, scholarships, fellowships. Page after page scrolled past on the screen, noting everything in public records concerning the life of Dr. Julius Madsen. Flash read every line, digesting the information into the personal computer behind his eyes.
Dr. Madsen had led a salutary life, creating enough new technology to have contributed significantly to the betterment of mankind. Flash concentrated on Madsen’s career over the past few years. He had been a professor emeritus at Stanford University while performing research at the Drexler College of Nanotechnology. Flash read over the list of patents awarded to Madsen. Certainly enough variety and utility there for him to license and live comfortably off royalties for the rest of his life.
A year ago, the record started to turn spotty. Missed appearances at conferences, research papers scheduled for publication going undelivered, a squabble with a graduate student over credit for a discovery. What discovery, Cyclops did not know. Dr. Madsen, though, had his funding cut off and his position at the college terminated, which indicated to Flash that there had been more to the incident than any public record indicated. The student, in addition, had been found dead-an apparent handgun suicide-three weeks before Dr. Julius Madsen disappeared from the face of the Earth.
He lived in Palo Alto until his disappearance four months ago. Cyclops showed mortgage payments and taxes current, something Flash noted with interest. Utilities also remained on.
He switched on the communications link to Captain Anger and crew.
“Cap-I’ve got an address for Dr. Madsen’s domicile.” He waited a few seconds for a reply. “Cap?” he said.
No reply.
“Skipper?”
Digital silence filled his headphones.
Chapter Seven
The Marching Lake
Captain Anger, Rock, and Dr. Bhotamo turned to stare at the silvery pool. Where once the surface had been flat and reflected the sky and buildings around it like a mirror, now the image seemed to bend. The eastern end of the pool arced like a concave mirror-the reflection of the collapsed building stretched and curved as if printed on taffy. The western end- the part closest to the street and the cluster of reporters-bulged convexly upward, like the rising crest of a silver wave.
“It’s flowing west!” Rock cried.
Without a word, Captain Anger jumped from the van. Still in his grimy disguise, with ripped pieces of flesh-colored rubber hanging from his face, he looked like a nightmare creature racing toward the line of police officers and the throng of reporters and onlookers.
“Get out of its way!” he shouted in a voice that commanded attention. Everyone turned to stare at the bizarre man, then at the microbotic shoreline.
Rather than eat its way through the pavement, the sea of churning electronic life now flowed out of the hole it had made, washing up over the street in a decidedly unfluid manner. Parts of it seemed to extend like the pseudopodia of an amoeba-a quick surge, followed by a resting phase while other rivulets caught up. Within moments, a shiny protuberance reached the police cordon. The officers scattered-all except one, who struggled to move the yellow vinyl tape farther forward, as if that would keep the monster contained.
“Drop it!” Cap cried. “Just get away!” His feet pounded the pavement as he sped toward the man.
A glittering pseudopod shot blindly toward the officer. Cap shoved off the pavement in a flying leap that propelled him along the police line. Sailing past the arm of death just inches below him, Cap tackled the cop with full force. The powerful collision knocked his target five feet sideways and out of the path of the microbotic scavengers.
They hit the ground and rolled across asphalt and gravel, the cop howling with pain and surprise. Cap merely grunted upon impact, rolled, and sprang to his feet, catlike and ready.
Fearful and enraged, the officer yanked the revolver from his holster and fired at the slithering mass. The bullets pounded deep holes and disappeared into the stuff, the cavities quickly filling in. Shooting the parts had in no way harmed the whole.
“Forget it,” Cap said. “You’re just feeding them.”
The cop turned and ran to join his fellows at their new redoubt.
Cap switched on his earcomm. “I think they’re at least partially solar-powered,” he said to the others. “And I think they’re trying to follow the setting sun.” His dark, emerald-hued eyes scanned the horizon. Sunlight glinted off something atop a building.
“Or maybe they’re being guided!”
“Cap!” Flash’s voice sounded. “Am I glad you’re back on line! I’ve-”
>
“Not now, Flash!” With an alarming burst of speed, Captain Anger rushed down the street toward an ancient brick building, ratty tweed coat fluttering in the breeze.
“Rock-Follow me and bring the guns! Lei-clear everyone away from that stuff. Clear the whole block!”
Rock seized a holstered pistol and jumped from the van, rushing to join Cap at the far corner of the street. His short, thick legs powered him to an impressive speed for his height and ungainly, squat shape. His massive arms swung back and forth with each stride, adding even more force to his motion.
Cap disappeared into a doorway. In seconds, Rock sailed through.
“Cap!” he shouted, forgetting that he still wore his comm earplug.
“Upstairs,” Cap replied. The sounds of his footsteps echoed through the building. Rock ran through the lobby of a seedy- and evacuated-hotel, heading for the stairway at the rear.
Four flights brought him to the roof door, which hung open on bent hinges. Cap had slammed through it at full speed.
Rock emerged into daylight, pistol drawn, gaze darting here and there across the tarpaper-and-gravel roofing. Cap stood to his left, peering up into the blue sky.
“Gun!” Rock cried, tossing the holster toward Captain Anger.
Cap’s outstretched arm snatched it from mid-air without his turning to look. He strapped it on while examining the object of his attention. In front of him, a small video camera stood mounted on a tripod. Its lens focused on the now-demolished diner. Next to it stood a satellite dish antenna pointed heavenward. Cap stared in the direction its beam would be taking.
Rock holstered his pistol, knowing better than to interrupt the captain while he was thinking. He knew that Captain Anger was deep in calculation, estimating the altitude and azimuth of the transmission’s destination. After a moment, he said, “Flash- someone’s been watching the action and uplinking to the military satellite Carnelian Sapphire. Find where it’s downlinking.”