Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  If a Mandasar female of six years old started suckling on a queen during the right week in spring — and if she was allowed to suckle whenever she wanted, day or night, big sips or small, throughout the year — by the next spring the little girl lobster would be a junior queen. The constantly changing mix of chemicals mutated her body; one day’s feeding multiplied her brain cells, the next day stimulated a gland, the next made her muscles grow. Soon she’d be bigger, smarter, stronger, and lots more regal than other girls her age. (Provided she didn’t die or go mad. Things like that happened now and then. There’s a reason it’s called venom.)

  So walking across Willow’s hold, where there might be venom on the floor, I watched my step real carefully. But even when I got close to the queen’s carcass, I couldn’t see any leaks — not a drop on her lobstery tail, no wetness on the sacs themselves, no dribbles down her carapace or puddles on the steel-plast beneath her. Still, the sacs kept shrinking: very very slowly, but over the course of a minute, I could definitely see the difference.

  So where was the stuff going? Seeping back into her corpse? I guess she had to have ducts or tubes connecting the sacs to the inside part of her body. Maybe the tubes got damaged as the queen tried to bash her way through the hull. Or maybe, when the League of Peoples wanted the queen to die, they’d just broken open a valve and let the venom slop back into her insides. Maybe that was considered poetic justice, having the queen poisoned by her own juices.

  The League folks were aliens. Who knew how their minds worked?

  As gingerly as a feather, I reached toward the nearest sac… and just before my hand touched the surface tissue, I felt a funny sort of fuzzy sensation on my palm.

  Fuzz? There shouldn’t be any fuzz. The outside of the sac was as smooth as a balloon.

  Then the truth struck me. "Ship-soul," I yelled, "nano scan! Here, now, centered on my hand."

  Two seconds later, a rackety choir of alarms started wailing their brains out.

  Lucky for me I’d left the hatch open. I dived out the door just before the automatic computer defenses slammed it shut with a great whacking clang. That didn’t mean I was safe, but at least I wouldn’t be locked in the hold when a full-scale nanotech war broke out. I rolled to my feet and wondered if I had time to get back to the captain’s quarters. No — a black cloud was already roaring down the corridor toward me, like a dust devil whirling on the desert wind. I dropped to the deck again, squeezing my eyes shut, covering my mouth and nose with my left hand while holding my right far out from my body. That was the hand that had touched the venom sac; that was the hand that needed to be sanitized.

  The cloud swept over me like a tornado. Each tiny black-dust particle was a microscopic robot, a hunter-killer built to destroy the equally small nanites that had been buzzing about the queen. Yes — the fuzz I’d felt had been little machines, the size of bacteria or maybe even viruses; and they’d been crowding around the venom sacs so thick I could actually detect them with my fingers.

  Fuzzy air.

  There was only one thing the nanites could be doing: sneaking their microscopic way through the membrane of the venom sac, scooping up minidrops of venom like bees sipping nectar, then crawling out again. That’s why the venom sacs had been deflating — weeny little robots were draining them in a miniscule bucket brigade.

  And now Willow had sent a cloud of its own nanites to wipe out the intruders.

  I could feel the defense nano scouring my skin — not just the hand that had touched the enemy, but everywhere: my face, my scalp, all under my clothes. The defenders would rip apart everything they found… even natural skin bacteria, because the people who built nano invaders often tried to disguise the tiny little monsters as ordinary microbes. When something is the same shape and size as an everyday bread mold, it’s easier to sneak past an antinano scan.

  Every ship in the navy was constantly running defense scans. When crew members came aboard, they all got the once-over. So did cargo and supplies and equipment. The ship-soul also took down-to-the-atom audits of selected cubic centimeters of air, checking out every microscopic thingy to make sure it wasn’t a nanite in paramecium’s clothing. Even so, with all those precautions, a camouflaged swarm of invaders could usually avoid being noticed unless the computerized detectors knew exactly where to look. Most times you didn’t know you’d been boarded till the nanites actually attacked.

  The only good news was that the League of Peoples killed bad nanotech the same way they killed bad humans: instant death as soon as the host ship crossed the line. So those of us in the Outward Fleet didn’t have to worry much about lethal attacks to ourselves or essential life-support systems. Microrobot invaders could be programmed for vandalism, like cracking ship security or gumming up fuel lines, but they were never allowed to out-and-out kill you.

  They could, however, steal stuff. Valuable stuff. Like hive-queen venom.

  Willow’s defense cloud chafed me hard for twenty seconds. Then it swept away, heading for the hold and the bigger battle. I was left on the deck, feeling as if a whole layer of my skin had been chewed clean off.

  It had. My right hand was covered with stinging pinpricks of blood, like I’d scraped it full strength against rough concrete. As for my clothes… well, the little hunter-killers had ripped furiously into the fabric, chewing it to tatters wherever they found the least little microbe lurking in the weave. Natural microbes or otherwise. Considering how many microbes there are everywhere, I scarcely had an intact stitch left on my body.

  Good thing there was no one on board to see me.

  I hurried back to my cabin for new clothes. And to wash off my blood-specked hand. While I was dressing, I asked the ship-soul what was happening down in the hold.

  "Our defenses are engaging the enemy," the ship-soul answered. "There is ongoing opposition."

  "So the nanites are fighting back?"

  "Some are providing cover while their fellows retreat. Our defenses have numerical superiority, but are encountering difficulties." "Show me."

  The vidscreen in my cabin wasn’t nearly as big as the captain’s, but it still gave a decent view of the hold. Not that I had much to see: the black cloud of Willow’s defenders were bunched up close to the door and trying to push farther into the room. Something unseen was pushing back, bottling up the cloud in a pocket around the hatch.

  Our forces and the enemy, fighting nano-a-nano.

  "Can you magnify the shot?" I asked the ship-soul. "I want to see what they’re actually doing."

  The picture switched to microscopic resolution: four black hunter-killers, each with a blobby body, a whiplike tail, and a jaggedy pincer claw, had surrounded a much smaller enemy. The enemy looked like it was made from jelly, and shaped like a ripped-out eyeball — a juice-filled balloon with a little bulge on the front and a stringy tail out the back. The tail was for propulsion, so the little beastie could swim through air like a tadpole through pond water; the bulgy bit up top probably held the nanite’s tiny brain. As for the main balloon body, it was full of grass green fluid… Mandasar venom, stolen from the dead queen.

  The hunter-killers closed in fast, whipping their own tails and driving forward till the enemy was within pincer range. They all grabbed on at the same second: four claws scissoring into the enemy’s jelly body and slicing right through. The eyeball didn’t try to defend itself… and it didn’t have to. As soon as its body got cut open, venom splooged out onto all four attackers, beading up on their claws and slopping back onto their bodies. The hunter-killers suddenly started jerking their tails as if they were having fits, two of them flying right off the screen while the other pair jittered like crazy till their claws broke off.

  That venom was wicked stuff. Especially against hunter-killers who weren’t built for chemical warfare.

  I sat back from the vidscreen and chewed a bit on one of my knuckles. Our hunter-killers were programmed to attack four-on-one, I knew that much… so for each enemy eyeball destroyed, four of our guys wo
uld be taken out by the venom spill. Not such a great ratio for our side. We’d still win in the end, by sheer force of numbers — Willow carried at least three full defense clouds, and could manufacture more pretty quick — but by the time we fought through the nanites who were trying to delay us, the other invaders would have retreated to other parts of the ship. Finding them would be a real needle-in-the-haystack.

  Of course, the computers would handle the search. Nothing for me but to sit back wondering what it all meant.

  Who in the world could smuggle nano onto a navy ship? Who knew the queen would be on Willow? And who would ever want to steal queen’s venom?

  Drug pirates? Supposedly the big crime lords were always looking for new chemicals that did strange things to people. So were legitimate drug companies. Those databases on Troyen, the ones that listed the ingredients of venom at each point in the cycle… they were locked up top-secret, passworded and encrypted. Samantha once called the databanks "the high queen’s golden trust fund" — formulas that could be sold for tons of money if Verity ever needed the cash.

  Of course, Verity was dead now. Maybe all the people who knew the passwords were dead too. Troyen’s civil war had been going on for twenty years.

  I wondered if one of the rebel factions on Troyen might want to steal venom to manufacture a whole bunch of new queens. But that was crazy — even if they milked this dead queen dry, they’d only get juice from one point in the yearlong cycle. You couldn’t use that on some poor little girl. Today’s venom might kick a gland into high gear, and tomorrow’s shut it off again. If you gave a girl one day’s dose without giving her the next day’s too, you’d completely throw off her body’s chemical balance. Like the gene treatments that were supposed to make Sam and me extra special, you might end up with someone better than average… but you might also make the little girl "a hopeless retarded idiot."

  Would anyone take such an awful risk with a child? Well, yes — who knew that better than me? But it still didn’t make sense. Sending nano onto a navy ship would make the Admiralty as mad as a swarm of hornets. There had to be easier ways to get a sip of venom than taking on the entire Outward Fleet.

  So why did someone do it?

  For a second, I wished there was a special venom to make humans smarter. I knew I’d never be smart-smart; but I hated the way so many things went straight over my head.

  If Samantha were here, she’d know what was going on.

  4

  SHIVERING A LOT

  The pinpricks on my hand kept stinging. I soaked the sore parts in cold water and thought about going to sick bay for ointment… but the doctors were dead, and I wouldn’t know what to look for on my own. Instead, I headed for the captain’s quarters again, to keep tabs on the search for the nanites.

  An hour later, the computer reported the hold was clean. That didn’t mean we’d killed the intruders — they’d just managed to get away to other parts of the ship. The ship-soul had found a teeny hole chewed through one of the lock hatches in the vent shafts between the hold and hydroponics next door. No surprise there; even if most of the nanites were miniature tankers loading up venom, they’d have an escort of sappers for digging in and out of wherever they wanted to go.

  By now, the nanites might be spread like dust through the whole of Willow, or hiding in little bunches, tucked into crawl spaces where no one would notice them. The ship’s scans might trip over a few invaders, but a Security officer once told me such scans missed at least 95 percent of the bugs that were out there. It’s just monumentally difficult to search every particle of air for something the size of a virus, especially when the things you’re trying to find are programmed to avoid being caught.

  The best I could do was tell the ship-soul to station a defense cloud around the queen’s venom sacs in case the invaders came back. I didn’t expect the cloud would have any luck — the rotten little thieves knew we were onto them. But you have to do something, don’t you?

  I fell asleep in front of the captain’s vidscreen, just as ship’s day was dawning. When I woke again, my right hand really hurt — the pinprick marks were redder than before, and turning hot. So I went to sick bay after all, where I spent half an hour holding up one medicine after another and asking the ship-soul, "What does this do?" (It’s no good reading the packages; they’re all written in doctorese. Big complicated words that are intentionally invented so people can’t understand them.)

  Eventually I found something to smear on: an anti-inflammatory, the ship-soul said, and that sounded like just what I wanted. By then, I was worried the swelling might be more than a simple infection; there might be eyeball nanites under my skin, or hunter-killers that had got carried away when they were cleaning me off. Supposedly the hunter-killers knew enough not to chop up human tissue… but if they noticed an eyeball burrowing its way into me, they might decide to claw in after it.

  That’s not something you want to think about too long.

  The infection got worse over the next day. My hand swelled up; I tried icing it, but after a while I couldn’t stand the pain of anything touching my skin. The red flush of inflammation started creeping past my wrist and slowly up my arm. I wondered if I should put on a tourniquet or something… but that seemed like a lot of work, and I was deep-to-the-bone tired. No energy to care about stupid red flushes. I felt freezing cold, too — now and then I’d get so shivery, my teeth would chatter. Eventually I pulled myself over to the captain’s bed, dialed up the heat to maximum, and wondered why I still wasn’t warm enough.

  Sick and dizzy, jumbled and confused. Sometimes I thought I was back on Troyen again, where I’d spent a year in and out of my head with a disease called the Coughing Jaundice. My sister had come by every day — wasting time on me when she should have been solving the little crises that were piling up into one big disaster. For years after, I wondered if I was the one to blame for the civil war: keeping Sam from her work, because I’d caught some alien flu. Me, lying in a special royal infirmary, woozy and out of touch, while the streets filled up with mutineers…

  I tried to keep my mind off the bad times. Soon, I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Every so often, I’d hallucinate there was someone else in the captain’s cabin, trying to talk to me. For a while it sounded like Samantha and Queen Verity, asking why I hadn’t saved them. Then it turned into a male voice I didn’t recognize, telling me it was time to wake up, that I’d slept long enough and people would suffer if I didn’t come to my senses soon. I decided it must be the ship-soul trying to snap me out of the shivers… except for one little snippet of pleading that must have been completely inside my head.

  "Please, Edward. Innocence needs us. Both of us."

  That’s what the voice said. And it wasn’t the ship-soul speaking, because Willow’s computer couldn’t possibly know about Innocence. Nobody did, except me and Verity and a few other people who were bloodily murdered twenty years ago. So it must have been my own brain talking, babbling all mixed-up and bleary.

  Well… yes and no.

  Two days of that, all spinning and confused. Then I woke and it was over. My head clear. My shivers gone. Even a bit of energy and appetite.

  But I’d sure made a mess of the captain’s bed.

  While I cleaned up the sheets, the ship-soul gave me an official report on the status of Willow. Most of the words just bounced off my brain — there was a big long recitation of statistics, fuel, battery power, and what all, which I guess the captain was supposed to listen to every few days. The ship-soul absolutely refused to talk about anything else till I’d heard the whole checklist.

  I nodded and said, "Oh, is that right?" now and then, the way my sister taught me when I didn’t understand much of what someone was saying. You’d be surprised how seldom you get into trouble that way. Most times, when people go on and on, they aren’t talking about things you have to do anything with, they’re just emptying their heads.

  After the ship-soul finished its spiel, I wanted
to say, "How much of that is normal, and is there anything that’s really broken?" But if something was broken I wouldn’t know how to fix it, so there wasn’t much point in asking. Samantha always claimed it was a golden rule of diplomacy, Never ask a question when you don’t want to hear the answer.

  So instead I got the ship-soul to tell me about the search for invader nano. In the three days since the fight in the hold, our defense clouds had apparently destroyed 143 definites, 587 probables. Those were pathetic numbers, even if the probables were all real nanites, which they likely weren’t — just unidentified bacteria that the hunter-killers ripped apart on the theory of better-safe-than-sorry. Seeing as there must have been millions of nanites in that fuzz I’d felt, Willow’s defenses were doing a pretty lousy job.

  Maybe if there’d been a real captain running the search, we would have found the invaders by now. Of course, I’d been sick with that infection…

  I stopped, and thought about that. Had it really been an infection? No — now that I wasn’t dizzy or delirious, my head was clear enough to understand what had happened. There’d been a whole bunch of eyeball nanites on my hand: nanites filled with venom. The hunter-killers had ripped those nanites apart, spilling venom droplets all over me. Even worse, the hunter-killers had clawed up my skin pretty good during the fight. The pinpricks they’d chewed into me had given the venom a way into my bloodstream.

  What I’d thought was infection had actually been a microscopic dose of venom poisoning. I figured it was a good thing I’d only absorbed a tiny bit of the stuff — anything more might have killed me.

  But I was all right now. Wasn’t I?

  5

  ARRIVING AT STARBASE IRIS