by Pete Barber
Quinn scanned the room. Sixty or more white-sheeted gurneys were double-parked along the walls. Quinn couldn’t tell whether they’d been autopsied or still waited. It brought home the human tragedy of what, until now, he’d been dealing with as hunt-the-hoodie. These people had families and jobs and lives. But now, all they were was dead. Anger surged through him. He forced it down. To catch this murderer he needed focus, not fury.
Quinn tapped the tall, thin doctor on the shoulder. “So what’s the big secret, Mike?”
Mike spoke without looking around. “Give me a minute, Quinn.” The female pathologist he was observing was bent over a corpse, and speaking in a low, fast voice into a handheld Dictaphone. Once finished, she stepped back, revealing a woman’s body. Quinn checked the corpse’s face: thirty maybe, no more. No rings, perhaps they’d already been sealed in her personal baggie.
“Damned shame,” Quinn said.
“Tell me about it. We’ve pulled in staff from five counties, and it’ll still take us three or four days to process them all. Anyway, thanks for coming, Quinn.” Mike nodded to Quinn’s partner. “Hi, Frank. I thought you two had a lover’s tiff and split up?”
“This is a Special Branch investigation,” Frank said and handed Mike his card.
Mike turned to Quinn, who rolled his eyes.
“Oh. Right. Um, come with me.” The Coroner led them past the gurneys to a small, windowless office. He closed the door behind them.
“What do you make of that?” Mike pointed to a three-foot-tall, black, headless, armless torso perched at the center of a battered, old metal desk.
“Don’t tell me you brought me here to admire a new work of art,” Quinn said.
“No, Dummy. What do you think it is?” He waited.
Frank laughed. “Did someone chop off ET’s head and legs and leave him here?”
Quinn glared at his ex-partner. This was no time for jokes. “I’m not sure, but the ribs aren’t sculpted correctly.”
“Close, but no cigar.” Mike stepped toward the bust and ran a gloved hand down the front of its neck as if the contact might give him inspiration, provide an explanation of how the object had come to be. “Not sculpted, molded,” he said. As though someone poured quick-setting concrete down their throats . . . or, you know, the foam-in-a-can stuff that you squirt into gaps and it expands to fill them? Something entered through the airway, filled the lungs, expanded, and hardened to this black compound. Look here.”
He ran his finger along the corrugated neck of the bust. “This is an exact impression of her trachea.”
“That’s why the ribs are indented. It’s molded from the inside,” Quinn said.
“Exactly, and that’s not all. With this muck in their lungs you’d expect them to die of asphyxiation, right?”
Quinn and Frank nodded.
“Wrong again. See that?” The coroner pointed to a grapefruit-sized indentation midway down the left front of the casting.
“This stuff expanded so fast that her heart was crushed to a stop. I have two hundred and four heart-attack victims in my lab.”
The coroner moved back from the bust to allow them an unobstructed view. He held out a box of latex gloves.
“Pick it up. Go ahead.”
Quinn started to move but checked himself and let Frank take the lead. Frank pulled on gloves, put his hands either side of the ribcage, and raised the torso a few inches off the desk.
“Solid, but lighter than I expected.” He rapped with his knuckles and rubbed the surface. “Feels like those charcoal briquettes you buy for the barbeque.”
When Frank finished, Quinn also lifted and felt the material. He checked his hands. They were black. “Soot?”
“Have you seen anything like this before?” Quinn asked the coroner.
“Come on, Quinn . . . no one’s seen anything like this before.”
Chapter 3
Two Years Earlier . . .
Nazar Eudon was an oilman. Finding oil, processing oil, and selling oil had made him rich. But nowadays “oil man” wasn’t politically correct; so, on the advice of his marketing VP, he had made a token investment in green energy, or the closest to it he could stomach—ethanol production.
The one thing that annoyed Nazar more than being only 276th on the Forbes World’s Billionaires list was wasting his time. Nazar’s head of research had invited him to a demonstration at Eudon Ethanol’s Ohio facility in Akron. He’d allocated four hours for the visit, and he begrudged every second.
Professor Philip Farjohn’s eyes were bright and his face flushed with excitement as he illustrated his points with expansive sweeps of his arms. “We have d . . . d . . . developed a remarkable technology since our l . . . l . . . last meeting, Mr. Eudon.”
While the professor talked, Nazar peered through a letter-box-sized window into a thirty-foot-diameter metal fermentation tank. A transparent container the size and shape of a telephone booth occupied the center of the tank, twenty feet below him. A stepladder stood ready beside it.
A clear liquid filled the bottom of the container, which overflowed with garbage: old tires, newspapers, flattened cardboard, plastic soda bottles, and a pizza box (complete with pizza remnants) were visible. Nazar wondered whether the professor had brought the trash from home. The man was eccentric enough to consider it.
After five minutes of the professor’s stammer-filled explanation, Nazar held up his hand to signal a stop. It took a few seconds for the tall, angular man to slow his words and calm his arms. Finally, like a clockwork toy running out of spring tension, he came to rest.
Nazar said, “Professor, I believe it will be more efficient if I tell you what I have understood from your briefing and then allow you to correct any omissions.”
“Yes, b . . . b . . . but . . .”
“Professor.”
“Sorry, it’s ju . . . just . . .”
Nazar’s hand edged forward until it touched the professor’s large, bony nose. The man jerked back and fell silent.
Nazar pointed to the window. “I’m looking into a fermentation vessel. Normally, it would be loaded with wood chips and flooded with water. Specialized fungi developed at your lab would break down the chips. The resultant mash, when heated, releases the sugars from the feedstock.”
“Yes, the p . . . p . . . process takes a huge amount of energy, but—”
Nazar cleared his throat and continued. “Yeasts feed on the sugars and convert them to alcohol, which is distilled to extract ethanol.”
“As you say, but now—”
“Your team has developed, or, if I understand correctly, they have used nanotechnology to build artificial microbes, atomic-scale machines which you call nanobots. You believe this development constitutes a breakthrough.”
“They are l . . . l . . . less than one nanometer, one billionth of a meter, Mr. Eudon, but amazing, quite amazing.” The professor smiled a smug, self-congratulatory grin.
Nazar continued. “You claim these nanobots are intelligent enough to analyze and then break down a wide variety of feedstock. They can disassemble the feedstock at an atomic level and reassemble the atoms into the molecular structure of ethanol, eliminating the lengthy fungal decomposition and expensive heating phases.”
The professor nodded along with Nazar’s description, and, when his boss finished speaking, he jumped in. “The nanobots bring an additional benefit. When alcohol concentrations rise, the yeast dies, leaving valuable sugars unconverted. With nanobots, we can continue the conversion and harvest the maximum p . . . potential from the f . . . feedstock. Yields are much higher.”
“How high?”
“Thirty percent by volume.”
Nazar nodded. Finally, he’d heard something interesting. He pointed to the trash in the center of the chamber.
“Professor, it looks as though you cleared out your garage.”
The man blushed sufficiently to confirm Nazar’s suspicion.
“Initially,” the professor said, “we d . . . deve
loped the nanobots to work with wood chips. The breakthrough came when we built the analytical layer into them. Theoretically, they can p . . . process any biomass—anything that grows with s . . . s . . . sunlight.”
“What’s the liquid?”
“Water. The bots need a supply of hydrogen; they’ll extract it from the H2O.” He leaned close, his mouth twisted into a conspiratorial grin. “Shall we l . . . let them loose, Mr. Eudon?”
Nazar turned to the viewing window. He’d tolerated enough dramatics.
The professor picked up a wall phone and spoke. A short, bearded man wearing a white lab coat and silver gloves walked through a door in the side of the fermentation tank below and climbed the stepladder until he was level with the top of the junk pile. He unscrewed the cap from a soup-can-sized container and poured a liquid over one of the old tires. Then he pulled off the gloves and dropped them and the empty container into the box.
“Is it safe? I mean, couldn’t these nanobots disassemble him?”
“The nanobots operate according to programmed start and stop parameters. These bots will only become active with the application of sunlight, and they’re programmed to terminate after eleven minutes.”
The lab technician closed the door, sealing the chamber. Nazar heard a whirring sound. He looked up. Sixty feet above, silvered blinds slid back from the domed glass roof of the fermentation vessel. Sunlight flooded in, concentrated by the dome, and shone a spotlight on the garbage pile.
“1:43 p.m.” The professor read off a wall clock.
“How much material can they process in eleven minutes?” Nazar asked.
“Well, I’ve n . . . never used such varied feedstock.”
Nazar spun and glared at the professor. “You mean you’ve never tried this before?”
“Not with this particular m . . . mixture. I thought we should try something special in honor of your visit. This s . . . seemed more . . . um . . . theatrical.”
“Hmph.” Nazar turned away. He did not enjoy being a guinea pig.
Movement in the chamber caught his attention. Lower-level items moved and caused the trash to bump and settle.
“The tire moved.” Nazar said.
“Yes.” The professor laughed, an unpleasant, piercing sound, which made Nazar wince. “Yes, it did. L . . . L . . . Look at the pizza.”
Nazar watched the pizza slip out of sight as the garbage slid lower, like snow melting in a heated saucepan. The water at the bottom of the vessel had turned bright orange.
“Won’t they eat through the box?” Nazar asked.
“Carbon-free glass,” the professor replied.
As the last of the junk submerged, Nazar noted the time: 1:48 p.m.—five minutes.
The liquid bubbled and belched and rose higher in the containment vessel. Gradually, the orange coloration faded, and the agitation slowed. Eleven minutes after the process started, the box was half-full of still, clear liquid.
“I see solids at the bottom,” Nazar said.
“Carbon-free items: certain types of glass, aluminum cans, and so on.”
“I don’t understand how a few bots can convert that much material in eleven minutes.”
“C . . . convergent assembly. The nanobots we placed on the pile used energy from sunlight to assemble molecular machines. Each machine made more machines, and so on. In the nanoworld, things are p . . . processed at nanospeed. A single assembler performs over one million processes in a second. One makes a million, and each of those makes another million. Within s . . . sixty seconds, the initial stock created a huge army of nanobots.”
“But why so much liquid?”
“Obviously the bots don’t create m . . . matter—that’s impossible—they are simply rearranging atoms and transforming them into the atomic sequence we program them for. Rather like tearing down a Lego house and rearranging the blocks to make Lego cars.”
“What’s in the box now?”
The professor squinted at the container. “I’d say about two hundred gallons of l . . . liquid from which we can distill about sixty gallons of ethanol.”
Nazar’s eyebrows lifted and his mouth opened, but when no sound came out it triggered another bout of piercing laughter from the professor. This time, Nazar laughed with him. He reached out and shook the professor’s hand.
“Professor, this is indeed a breakthrough. What was the catalyst?”
“Not what, Mr. Eudon. Who!”
The professor’s flippancy irritated Nazar, but he waited.
“The who is Dawud Ferran, or D . . . David Baker, as he’s known in America. Yes, that is who. But why is David Baker here? And the answer to the question is because of you, Mr. Eudon. He’s here because of your wise and farsighted investment in the s . . . skills of your fellow countrymen. His family is from Beirut, Lebanon.”
“He came out of my scholarship program?”
“David joined us two years ago after completing his Master’s. We had first option on his employment. I interviewed the boy, well, m . . . man, I suppose, but he is so young. I was very impressed.
“We were using the bots as accelerators, but David examined the problem holistically and went for the ju . . . jugular.” The professor leaned in and spoke in a reverent whisper. “Mr. Eudon, I believe David’s nanobots are the most exquisite objects I’ve ever encountered.”
“Professor Farjohn, I’d very much like to meet David.”
“Yes, of course.” He glanced at the wall clock. “Ah, it’s two o’clock. I’m afraid he won’t be available for an hour.”
“Why can’t I meet one of my employees? Is he not working today?”
“David is always here. To be candid, Mr. Eudon, he works constantly—reminds me of myself at his age. Although I confess I am s . . . somewhat in awe of the young man’s mind. I wouldn’t have been a match for him, even in my prime.”
“Why can’t I meet him until then?”
“He’s at p . . . prayers, Mr. Eudon. Didn’t I explain? He prays each afternoon. We’ve set aside a small room with the orientation of Mecca marked on the w . . . wall for the Muslims on campus. David is always present. He’s very devout.
“I understand.” Nazar was accustomed to the call to prayers being used in his Middle Eastern operations, often to escape unwelcome work. “I’ve e-mails to catch up on, please find me a guest office, and arrange for David to meet me once his religious obligations are satisfied.”
Nazar spent the next hour running numbers. He didn’t understand nanotechnology, but, if the chemical transformation was scalable, David’s nanobots could be the holy grail of energy production. Ethanol was an ideal fuel, usable in vehicles, or as a substitute for oil and coal in power plants.
Although producing ethanol from corn was politically expedient in the Corn Belt, it used energy that came from dirty nonrenewable fossil fuels. Nanobots used sunlight and water to transform garbage into ethanol, turning the cost model on its head.
Nazar located Eudon Ethanol Inc. in Akron because the sitting US Senator was an influential member of the Sub-Committee on Energy. After what he’d witnessed today, he would need to move the technology to a more remote location—no publicity, not yet. But first he must secure the brains behind the nanobots.
At three-thirty, Nazar thought he heard a knock at his door. He waited a few seconds and there it was again, a quiet tapping.
“Come in.”
When the door opened it seemed to Nazar that a child entered, but something about the posture convinced him it was indeed a man.
“Are you David?”
“I am.”
Nazar switched to Arabic.
“Masa al-khayr. Please, Dawud, come in and sit. I have been looking forward to meeting you.”
The young man walked toward the desk with a self-conscious, shuffling gait; head down, shoulders hunched. Less than five-feet tall, the boy’s stooped posture cost him three inches. Unkempt black hair merged into a dark scruffy beard and moustache. He sat opposite Nazar and stared at the floo
r.
“Professor Farjohn demonstrated your nanobots to me this afternoon.”
“I was there.”
“Ah, you brought them in?”
“Yes.”
“Well, young man, you have done remarkable work. I understand you have only been with us for two years?” The boy, for that’s how Nazar saw him, continued to look down. His face remained impassive and sullen. Nazar tried a different approach.
“Where is your family from?”
“Banquet, Ohio.”
“I mean originally.”
“Beirut, Lebanon.”
“Did you know my family is originally from Lebanon?”
“Yes.”
“Dawud, I intend to enlarge the scope of the nanobot project. I need to know whether the nanobots will scale up.”
“They will.”
Nazar smiled. “Good. The professor informs me that you haven’t taken a break since you joined us. Is that correct?”
David finally looked up. His eyes were black slits peering from beneath thick dark eyebrows. “I am perfectly satisfied with my work and my working conditions, Mr. Eudon.”
“I’m pleased to hear it, but I need to ask more of you. I intend to move the laboratory away from Ohio. I would like to offer you a reward if you are prepared to relocate, perhaps a bonus?”
David’s face remained implacable; the monetary incentive made no impression.
“Or an extended vacation, a visit to your homeland to reacquaint with family and friends?”
David cocked his head to the side. “I have a lifelong ambition to complete the Hajj.”
“That’s most commendable.” Nazar stood and offered his hand. David responded.
Nazar gripped the small, soft hand and stared hard into David’s eyes. “David, if you stay with the project, I will personally arrange for you to take the Hajj. I can’t spare you this year. Do you know the date of next year’s pilgrimage?”