Towne cleared his throat. “What have you found?”
She started, as if jarred out of a complex thought. “We hold the design rights on the vonoomans that made this grass.”
“Imbitek?” Towne asked.
“We were called Imbedded Technologies and Environmental Manipulators, Incorporated, at the time, but essentially, yes. It was fully half our sales right before the first wave of interstellar colonization began.”
“You’re talking about the Spacers?” Coren asked. “Those colonists?”
“Exactly.” She sighed, exasperated. “Let me explain some things.”
“I think you had better,” Towne said ponderously and sat down.
Dr. Savin glared at Towne. “All right,” she said, and folded her hands together at her chin. She seemed to gather herself together mentally. Then she dropped her hands.
“We had two industries back then that literally saved our civilization, if not our lives. We forget how closely what we make determines how long we’ll last. And we forget how integrally what we make is a part of who we are. That’s probably why we never think about it. It’s a tenuous relationship in many ways because it’s so easy to break a system up and destroy it. The two industries were cybernetics—robotics, mainly—and nanotech. They went hand-in-glove, couldn’t really do one without the other. Nanotech required the machine-logic we got out of cybernetics and robotics required the miniaturization and process-concept of nanotech. That was before the Riots and the Interdicts.”
“The Interdicts pertain to robots, though,” Towne observed. “There’s no mention in them of nanotech.”
“Nanotech was phased out and banned more gradually,” Dr. Savin said. “Little at a time. By the time the robots were banned, no one really remembered the plagues.”
“Plagues?” Coren prompted.
“It’s complicated. I could recommend a couple of history texts for the details, but, in essence, we used nanotech to alter ecologies. We had to feed people, and we had a lot of people to feed. Population had leveled off at ten billion, but it fluctuated, and that many mouths put a heavy burden on Earth’s resources. The only reason we didn’t devolve into absolute chaos was nanotech, which initially proved to be a panacea. We still use it in the home kitchens. Vat production is a direct descendent of agricultural nanotech. Crop yields increased ten, twenty-fold over time.”
“What happened?” Towne asked.
“It got away from us. Think of a virus. It invades a cell, analyzes what that cell does, then inserts itself into the machinery of the cell to modify it and use the cell to make copies of itself, releasing those copies to infect other cells and keep the process going. I’m simplifying—or making it more complex, depending how you look at it—but that’s what our agronans did. They altered the internal machinery of a plant to change what that plant did. Initially, it turned the plant into a super-productive organism, increasing yield. Over time, we found that this put a heavy burden on the soil and there were other problems with simply adding nutrients. So we built some vonoomans that would enter the cycle at an earlier point, in the soil, and increase the efficiency of the bacteria present, increasing nutrient absorption, complimenting the augmented crop demand, and so on. We found we could modify the system from top to bottom. Eventually, we even added some into the food products themselves to increase the efficiency of digestion and cell utilization of the nutrients available.”
“You mean, you passed vonoomans into people themselves?” Coren asked.
Dr. Savin nodded. “That’s when we started running into problems. We had allergic reactions, new cancers, a variety of metabolic disorders. Nothing we couldn’t adapt for and cope with. Initially, anyway. It got worse.”
“How was the population of vonoomans controlled?” Towne asked.
“That’s where it got worse. You see, the true definition of a vonooman includes self-replication.”
“Oh, dear,” Towne said.
Coren glanced from Towne to Savin. “ ‘Oh dear’ what?”
“It was deemed cost effective,” Savin went on, “to endow these devices with the ability to manufacture themselves. A small part of the energy involved went to reproduction. The math indicated it would be a self-regulating system. They would never produce more than the necessary quantity to achieve the desired effect.”
“But?” Coren prompted.
“Remember the virus. The damn things were designed to analyze environments and adapt to them. We thought that their range was limited, so the need for closer monitoring was unnecessary. In the first assumption, we were correct. In the second . . . well, we keep learning how very little is necessary to turn a benefit into a disaster.”
Coren thought for a moment. “Is this the source of the UPD infections?”
“You know about those, do you?” Dr. Savin asked. “Untreatable Physiological Dysfunction. Yes, they are. Were. Our machines mutated. Just enough. And all hell broke loose for about forty years.”
“This isn’t widely known.”
“No, it isn’t. People don’t really want to remember, so why help them? It ended, we controlled it. Here, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Towne asked.
“This stuff was our largest export to the new colonies. It was absolutely essential to any terraforming effort on an alien world. The Spacer colonies were just getting started when the plagues began. By the time we were able to control them, the movement had changed from one of simple colonization to a panicked flight of the frightened wealthy. The last four or five Spacer colonies were established by hygienic paranoiacs.”
“Like the Solarians,” Coren said.
“They’re still paranoid,” Dr. Savin said.
Coren looked at the display. “So what is this?”
“This is a variety of hardy grass which was used early on to supplant indigenous flora on colony worlds. Very versatile. In this form, it carried its own potential colony of agronan machines. The plant manufactured them upon taking root in new soil and the machines would begin analyzing soil and atmosphere and returning that data to the plant itself to begin modifying it. While the plant was adapting, the vonoomans were spreading in the biosphere and changing it. Over several generations, the grass would literally remake the ecology and prepare it for other, less adaptable varieties. Originally, it was a variety of palm grass, setaria palmifolia. Common name was Burundi Grass.”
“That,” Towne said, “sounds familiar. Not in this context.”
“No, not in this context,” Dr. Savin said sardonically. “Burundi’s Fever.”
“Ah,” Towne said, nodding. He pointed. “From this?”
“We think so. Frankly, given the nature of Burundi’s Fever, the records are questionable.”
“I’ve heard the name,” Coren said. “But . . .”
“The Spacers have a different name for it,” Savin said. “They call it mnemonic plague.”
Coren thanked Myler Towne—and Dr. Savin, though she did not seem to hear—and returned to his private office. All the way back he thought of Ariel. Mnemonic plague . . . she had mentioned to him once that she had suffered it, that it, in fact, linked her with Derec Avery. They had been talking about the past and about their lives and her own story ended abruptly, and she had admitted that, beyond a certain point—beyond, it turned out, her first visit to Earth—she had no real memory of her life. The plague had destroyed her access to it, blocked her off with permanent amnesia—permanent because it was not induced psychically, but synaptically.
We’re both orphans, he thought, each in our own way . . .
He avoided thinking about the larger implications of what he had learned. Too much, too fast, and far outside the scope of his immediate interests.
Still, he had to admit that it explained a lot of the history of Earther and Spacer. It explained, for instance, the initial reluctance on the part of the Spacers to agree to a new colony program, to accept the Settler worlds. Fear of infection. A fear which had subsequent
ly proven false, but certainly based on a real threat far in the past. Spacers even lived on Earth now, few though they were, and interacted with Terrans. What kept them apart now was more attitude than pathology.
But none of this explained why that grass had been in the abandoned shell of Nova Levis Research Labs, or how it had gotten there.
He opened the door to his office and stepped inside.
Hofton was there, again, waiting. Hofton stood.
“Mr. Lanra,” he said quietly, without preamble, “I have a message from Ambassador Setaris. She is—we are—that is, Aurora—very interested in taking some action concerning Gamelin. She would like to discuss it with you in person.”
17
MASID ALREADY knew a few of Filoo’s agents. In the next days after his meeting with Rekker, Masid noticed a change in their attitude when he arrived at the bazaar. Before, they watched him the way they watched all freelance merchants and dealers, warily, but with no special attention. Now they seemed to be talking about him, paying closer attention, noting who bought from him.
Masid arrived at the open market on the fourth morning to be met by three visibly armed men. He slowed to a stop a couple meters from them. He recognized one as an agent of Filoo, but not the other two. One was short and stocky with a thick growth of beard, the other taller and clean-shaven.
“‘Morning,” Masid said.
“Yes, it is,” Filoo’s man said. “Got a minute to talk some business?”
“Sure.”
“Privately.”
Masid glanced left and right. He gestured. “Café over there, nobody there yet this early.”
“We had a more private place in mind.”
“I’m sure, but I might not like what you have to say. I prefer to find my way back after a disagreement.”
The agent shook his head, about to say more, when the stocky one grunted. The agent turned the gesture into a yawn and shrugged. “No way you’ll dislike what we have to say. But why not?” He craned his neck to peer at the café. “Gorim’s. They have good coffee. Sure.”
“After you,” Masid said.
Masid trailed after the trio, keeping five meters between them. He watched the buyers and dealers to see if anyone followed him, but it seemed everyone else was too busy to notice.
Gorim kept his place bright up front, but the tables in back fell quickly into darkness. Candles flickered on each one. Masid found his three hosts waiting around one, their faces lit grimly by the fragile tongue of flame between them.
“All right,” Masid said, turning a chair around to straddle. He rested his arms on the back. “You have a proposal.”
“We’ve been watching you,” the agent said.
Masid held up a hand. “ ‘We’? Who’s that? And what’s your name?”
“Kar,” the agent said. He jerked a thumb at the clean-shaven one. “Tosher.”
Masid looked at the stocky one. “That makes you Filoo.”
The man stared silently at Masid for a long moment, then nodded. “Kar thinks I shouldn’t do my own negotiations. We have a disagreement about that. So we play this little game, which I always said was stupid.” He glared at Kar.
“This is the first time anybody’s figured it,” Kar protested weakly.
“One time too many,” Filoo said. He shrugged. “Security. When is it too much?”
“When you no longer enjoy doing what you’re doing,” Masid said.
Filoo looked surprised, then laughed quietly. “You’ve been selling steady for weeks now. What’s your supply?”
Masid started to rise.
“Whoa, whoa—” Kar said, one hand going into his jacket.
Filoo touched Kar’s shoulder. “Patience. What’s the problem? Question too difficult?”
“Question isn’t welcome. I don’t even know you and you think you can ask me something personal like that? Stick to neutral topics on a first meet, like who my mother’s sleeping with, or who you think you owe credit to, but nothing personal.”
“Sit down,” Filoo said, a faint smile on his lips. “We can go slow, long as it doesn’t take forever. We’re in the same business, that’s all. I’ve been at it a little longer—makes me confident I know a few things.”
“But you don’t know where I get my supplies,” Masid said, still standing. “Does that make us competitors or potential partners?”
“Depends. I have a large operation. When anything gets big enough, certain errors creep into the accounting.”
“You’ve got a leak. You want to know if it’s me.” He shook his head. “I’m not stupid enough to steal from someone who can kill me as an afterthought.”
Filoo patted the table before Masid’s still vacant chair. “Not stupid. Confident. Arrogant. Cocky. One or two successes make a man think he can get away with something all the time. Playing the odds doesn’t make him stupid.”
“Playing something you don’t know does,” Masid said. He sat down. “All right. I have my own source, unconnected to anybody. I own it, it’s all mine. I don’t need to steal from anybody.”
“There are no independent sources,” Kar said.
“Is that confidence or arrogance talking?” Masid asked. “Or wishful thinking?” He looked at Filoo. “It’s not a large source, just enough to keep me in consumables and a roof, so I doubt it would ever damage your trade. With all the sick people, we’ll both be forever dolling out pharmaceuticals. But if you have a security problem, then so do I.”
“Really?” Filoo asked. “How so?”
“Until you fix it, you’ll be thinking I have something to do with it. That’s not going to be good for friendly relations.”
“Sounds like you have a fine appreciation of the situation. What would you propose to deal with it?”
“Well, you have a few options. The quickest is you can order your cocks here to kill me. I might be a problem, if not now then further down the line. I might, for all you know, be the source of your leak.”
“You claim not, though.”
“Why should you believe me? Kill me and be done with it. If it turns out you were wrong about the leak, you might be right about the future problem. Of course, that leaves you then with your leak. It’ll probably stop for a while, till it seems you’re satisfied, but it’ll start up again. A thief is never content with well-enough. So after a few months or a year, once again you’ll be trying to scratch an itch you can’t find. Annoying.”
“Very. Another option, then?”
“You can ask me to move to another district. Same consequences apply, except then you might lose track of me. That could be a problem later on. A third option would be to hire me to find your leak. Short-term contract, bring in an outsider to hunt down your thief, and when it’s over we go our separate ways.”
“Of course,” Filoo said, grinning, “that leaves you as a potential problem further down the line.”
“Of course. So if I were you, I’d just hire me as a subcontractor. You get a percentage, I operate as usual, but with the added protection of your organization, and if I learn anything at all about your leak, then I’m honor-bound to let you know about it.”
Filoo leaned back in his chair. A waiter brought a tray then with a carafe and cups and a plate of sweetcakes.
Filoo poured coffee for everyone, then took a cake. “Of course, there is one more option: I could buy you out, source and all, and simply bind you to me.”
“To do what? Sell or run security? What would that prove?”
“Prove? Nothing. It would just keep you in reach.” He chewed a mouthful of cake thoughtfully. “How would you go about finding a leak?”
“Hypothetically?”
“Whatever.”
“Watch the market,” Masid said. “Track the buys, see who is no longer buying from you who used to. See if anyone is buying in larger than normal quantities. Find out why they changed. Trace it back.”
“You sound like a cop,” Kar said.
“Oh,” Masid said, “that’s
such an ugly accusation. Of course, there’s another way. Riskier.”
“That doesn’t concern me just now,” Filoo said. “What does is your response to my offer.”
“You made an offer?”
“I did.”
Masid thought for a few seconds. “I don’t really need a partner.”
“Perhaps not. Maybe I need a favor.”
Masid looked across the table at Kar. “Give me a few days to think about it?”
“Three. I expect an answer in three days.”
Masid lifted his cup and breathed in the aroma of fresh, expensive coffee. Doubtless Gorim carried it exclusively for Filoo. Masid met Filoo’s gaze over the rim of the cup and nodded.
One of Masid’s customers paid him with a wad of scrip for six ampules of dexanadrine-H derivative, a wide-range antibiotic which, as far as Masid had been able to tell since arriving on Nova Levis, did absolutely nothing to any of the pathogens killing the population. Folded within the wad of currency he found a list of names and a note:
These are my designated dealers. F.
Seven names. Masid pocketed the list and did a slow circuit through the bazaar, checking his memory against the names. Since starting here, he had identified everyone who sold regularly. He made two more deals before locating and identifying all seven under the tent, then quit for the day and headed back to the apartment.
His rooms had been searched twice—once, he discovered, while he drank coffee with Filoo. They were very careful about it, and Masid only knew because he had placed tells around the apartment. He had his little factory locked in a cabinet with a very obvious self-destruct device. No one had yet dared to try to open it, but by now Filoo probably guessed what Masid kept hidden within.
He deactivated the device and opened the doors wide. His machines hummed faintly. The complex soup he had set his synthesizer to brewing that morning was ready. He took it upstairs to Tilla.
Tilla smiled wanly while he did a quick blood analysis and then administered the concoction. He imagined sometimes that she looked better, but the numbers told a different story. He had managed to fight some of the infections to a standstill—one of them was actually in abeyance—but he had no illusions of saving her life. He was postponing an inevitable battle that Tilla would lose. He had prepared another kind of ministration for that day. Till then, she was more comfortable, more alert. But it was temporary and both of them understood that.
Isaac Asimov's Aurora Page 22