Nanotech

by Gardner Dozois

  One year after Holt had relocated with his small staff to the impoverished but eager Arab country, there was no more Tunisia.

  It still existed in the physical sense. The land—its earth, its people, its buildings—had not vanished off the map. But in a metaphysical and legalistic way Tunisia was no more. As a separate political entity, the country had disappeared. President Ben Ali had, all unknowingly, engineered a coup against himself.

  Details of what was quickly dubbed the "Gadget Revolution," how it had been accomplished so easily, were scant. Other nations, recognizing a peril to their own integrity even if they could not define it, had exhibited great alacrity in slapping quarantine on the infected nation. But the fact of great changes was soon plain.

  After dismantling the government of his host, Holt and the technology he embodied had absorbed Libya to the southeast and Algeria to the west. Both had immediately stopped pumping oil. The rest of OPEC, picking up the slack, prevented more than a slight hiccup in the world economy. The closing of these markets to Western goods and the repudiation of foreign debts was actually more troublesome, and corporations agitated for a quick return to normalization of relations—assuming, of course, that the offending nations could be forced to give up their dangerous new technology.

  Morocco, where Taylor now found himself, entered into the union a year later. Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan followed in short order. Egypt proved more stubborn, but had acquiesced just six months ago. And now, as Taylor had recently read, Israel looked likely to follow.

  These countries, then, made up the strange and unlikely amalgam known, to the Western press at least, as Maxwell's Land.

  Home to demons.

  Taylor didn't know what he expected to see as he walked ally through the noisy city. Perhaps alien scenes of unhuman construction, swarms of semi-sentient mechanisms, perhaps upheaval and confusion . . . Instead, everything appeared utterly mundane. Tangier was in fact flourishing, despite the seemingly airtight trade embargo imposed by the rest of the world.

  He had never visited North Africa before, but a thousand travelogues had prepared him for the innocuous, albeit colorful reality. In the medina, the old town, the soukhs were all busy, heaps of produce and piles of carpets, booths lull of brass and basketware, jewellery and clothing, all proudly on display.

  The only traditional element missing from the city, in fact, was misery. Taylor saw no beggars, no faces ravaged by untended controllable illnesses. He passed many clinics, mailed by Westerners: immigrants in their new jobs. Also, he realized that there were no draught animals or conventional vehicles. Instead, small carts and scooters, impelled noiselessly by odd engines—Taylor's trained eye recognized them as Stirling cycle devices, powered by demon heatpumps—were everywhere.

  The whole city seemed slightly inebriated, in fact. There was an almost physical euphoria, something in the air like ozone on a mountaintop. Taylor found his attention drifting again, and forced himself to recall his mission.

  He stopped, attracted by a tea-stand. Having stood in the sun since before noon, he was parched. He watched the proprietor prepare numerous cups of hot dark tea for his customers. Each cup of water was heated to boiling individually over a small black cube emblazoned with a demonsign. The cube had a single control.

  Taylor stared at this device with almost as much interest as he held for the drinks. Here was one of Holt's products—the most revolutionary—in its simplest form: inside the cube was nothing but a number of self-replicating Maxwell's demons—sophisticated nanomechanisms, silicrobes—and a quantity of plain air at ambient temperatures. The demons, intelligent gates, were layered in a screen that divided the interior of the cube in half. By segregating molecules of common air with non-uniform velocities, the silicrobes produced heat in one half of the cube, while the other half grew frigid. (Some of this energy they used for themselves.) The control regulated how many gates were switched on.

  Endless free power. A local reversal of entropy.

  This was what had toppled governments and transmogrified societies. Inside this small featureless cube was a power that was well on its way to remaking the globe.

  Taylor watched as customers exchanged dinars for drinks. A few seemed to partake without paying, failing to arouse any protest from the man running the booth. Taylor was just on the point of daring to do so himself when a voice spoke from his side.

  "You are just off the boat, I wager."

  Taylor turned. A young Arab man with five-o'clock shadow, wearing jeans, a T-shirt emblazoned with the demonsign, and cowboy boots, stood beside him.

  "Yes," admitted Taylor.

  "Understandably, you are perplexed. It is a common reaction. Money, you see, is on the way out here. In a society of growing abundance, it is losing its value. Many cling to it still, out of habit, but are willing to give freely of their products and labor if asked, knowing they may take freely in return. But enough of theoretical economics. It was my field of study, and I think sometimes I was on my way to becoming quite a pedant. You are thirsty." The man spoke in Arabic to the proprietor, who quickly fixed Taylor some tea.

  Tea in the Sahara, he thought, sipping. That was both an old song and a chapter in one of Aubrey's books. Things seemed suddenly to converge in a rush upon Taylor, and he felt dizzy.

  "Please," said the Arab, taking Taylor's arm, "my name is Azzedine, Azzedine Aidud. Allow me to find you some shade."

  Taylor finished his tea quickly, nearly scalding his mouth, returned the cup, and allowed the man to lead him off.

  Walls old as life, alleys narrow as death, shadowy doorways—Taylor lost all sense of where the port was. His attention wandered, and he followed Azzedine as he had followed Narciso. Used to giving orders and leading, he now found himself reduced to a child's role.

  They ended up in a walled garden, water purling gently in a fountain. Taylor vaguely remembered the Arab saying something about his family. Azzedine was speaking.

  "—and when I heard what was happening in my homeland, I left my studies in America—I was at Stanford, do you know it?—and returned. It was the only thing to do, obviously."

  Taylor was seized by a sudden feverish energy. He grabbed Azzedine's wrist.

  "Listen—do you know where Holt is now?"

  Azzedine's face filled with near-religious awe, then disappointment. "The great man. How I wish I could meet him! It would be an honor to thank him personally, something I could tell my children about some day. But, sad to relate, I do not know."

  "Is there some way we could find out?"

  "There is a branch of Holt's tribe in town. They might know."

  "His tribe?"

  "That is what the ones who work with Holt call themselves."

  "Please, would you take me there?"

  "Certainly."

  The office of the tribe was a former Army building denoted by a special demonsign that featured a capital H in its centre. The place was bustling with activity. The chain of command was hard to distinguish: no receptionists, no private offices, no obvious executives. After some time, Taylor found himself talking to a dark-haired Canadian named Walt Becker, Azzedine listening attentively.

  Taylor tried to lie convincingly. "Listen, you've got to tell me where Holt is. It's imperative that I see him. I have crucial information for him."

  "About what?"

  "It's—it's information about an attempt on his life."

  "It wouldn't be the first. Holt can handle it."

  "No, this is different. He's not prepared. Please, he's an old friend. I couldn't stand it if anything happened to him."

  "You know Holt personally?"

  "We went to school together . . ."

  Becker seemed unconvinced, on the point of turning away. Taylor rummaged desperately through his small bag of tricks.

  "The woman with him, Aubrey. She's my wife."

  Becker perked up. "What's your name again?" Taylor told him. "And what project were you just working on?"

 
"Chunnel Two."

  Becker nodded. "She said you might show up."

  Taylor's heart skipped. What kind of tripwires had she set?

  It looked, however, as if no alarms had gone off. Becker picked up a phone. "We'll get you transportation right away."

  Azzedine interrupted. "No. I claim the right to take him. My family were always marabouts, guides. I brought him here. It is only fair."

  Becker shrugged. "Why not? Holt's in the desert, the Tanzerouft, not far from Taodani. He got a project going with the Tuareg. Exactly what, I'm not sure."

  Taylor laughed bitterly. "Out in the field himself. Holt always did have a weakness for micromanaging things."

  Becker chuckled. "Call it nanomanaging now."

  "The new Tangier to Tombouctou highway passes near to Thodani."

  "How far is it?"

  "Not far. A thousand miles, more or less."

  "You call that 'not far'?"

  "In the past, yes, it would be a long distance. But not on the new road. You'll see. Let's get your bag, and we'll be off."

  Azzedine's transportation was a two-seater, a teardrop-shaped, three-wheeled vehicle with a canopy laminated in gold to reflect the desert heat. Powered by demons, it needed no refueling. The man was immensely proud of it, and seemed able to discourse endlessly on it, much to Taylor's annoyance.

  "Classical physics, you know, Mister Taylor, claims that our power source is impossible. Information theory was supposed to have put a final nail in the coffin of Mister Maxwell's demon, you see. In sorting molecules, the demon was supposed to discard information, which was thermodynamically costly, thereby negating all the work it had done. Holt's insight was to see that a mechanism with a large enough memory could increase the entropy of its memory in order to decrease the entropy of its environment. When saturated, it would replicate a fresh heir, then self-destruct. Thus the problem of thermodynamic irreversibility is sidestepped."

  As they moved slowly through the streets of Tangier, Taylor, eyes closed, reclined alongside the driver in his comfortable seat. The amber light filtering in through the one-way transparency colored his face like a marigold.

  "It's all bullshit, Azzedine. There's some hidden payback down the road. There has to be."

  Azzedine seemed hurt. "Then, Mister Taylor, I must affirm that this car is powered on bullshit. Seriously, do you believe Mister Holt would set something loose like this if it were not perfected? He is a unique soul. Why, to aid the Tuaregs qualifies him as a holy man."

  "Why's that?"

  "The Tuaregs are not even really Arabs. They claim to be an ancient noble race, but I do not trust them. Do the men not veil their faces, so you cannot read them?"

  "If you say so."

  "I do. Holt is brave to work with them. As you might say, he's one 'major dude.' I know many in other lands vilify him, claiming he is irresponsible and crazy to unleash such forces so rapidly. But he knows just what he is doing. Some say the whole world will acknowledge him as its savior, as we here do now."

  "We'll never live to see if it happens as you predict."

  "Only God knows. And as there is no God but Allah, Holt is his prophet."

  On the outskirts of Tangier began a golden road of almost supernatural smoothness, heading south-east straight as a surveyor's wetdream. The road was lined with young palms led with a continuous length of trickle-irrigation tubing, studded with demon-powered pumps.

  "Look," said Azzedine with admiration, "fused from sand by more of Holt's creatures of genius."

  "Wonderful," said Taylor. He was simultaneously keyed-up and weary. There definitely seemed to be something in the air that sharpened the senses and quickened the pulse. Conversely, his mind was burdened with its weight of fatality, the self-imposed geas to regain Aubrey and put an end to Holt's madness.

  Azzedine cranked the little car up to one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. Twelve or fifteen hours, and they should be there.

  Taylor managed to doze off during one of Azzedine's impassioned monologues about the miracle of North Africa. He awoke as they passed through Fez and began to ascend into the Grand Atlas Mountains. They crossed the nonexistent border near Chaouf, and entered the true desert. Even here, the road flew out ahead of them, indomitable, lined with hopeful trees.

  Azzedine drove like one possessed by the Holy Spirit, Taylor, waking at intervals in the night, tried vainly to imagine what was going on in the Arab's mind. Did he view himself as divinely appointed by Kismet to find the stranger in the marketplace and convey him to his meeting with Saint Holt?

  Around midnight, after eight hours of driving, they stopped for a brief rest at an oasis.

  Hive-shaped buildings with thick walls, constructed by nanomachines from sand, sat beneath date-palms and talha trees. Camels were hobbled by the well. A man in a flowing gandourah appeared, and bowed them welcome. He brought them inside and roused his whole family: two wives and six children. The women, their hair modestly concealed from the strange males by cloth wraps, served Taylor and Azzedine couscous with chunks of lamb and a milk drink called zrig, followed by dates and honey.

  Taylor was curious. "Ask them why they live out here, so far from anywhere."

  Azzedine enquired. The husband launched into a long impassioned speech. Azzedine's eyes grew large.

  "He claims that wherever Holt has rested becomes a haram, a holy place, and he hopes to gain heavenly merit by staying here and helping travelers."

  "Oh, Jesus, this is really too much—"

  After Azzedine had a short nap, the travelers were off.

  Fifteen hours after their departure, as dawn was breaking in shades of apricot and cream, they reached Taodani, a small town in the north of a Mali that was no more.

  They parked. Outside the car, the heat smote them like a velvet-covered hammer, dazing Taylor.

  "Now what?" asked Taylor.

  "We will find a local who knows where the Tuaregs are camped and can serve as guide. Then, I'm afraid, it will be camels for us. There are no roads in the Tanzerouft."

  A shopkeeper, instantly cooperative at the mention of Holt's cursed name, directed them to a man called Mahfoud.

  Mahfoud, apparently in his fifties, was desert-thin, desert-dark. "Of course I can bring you to Holt. Did I not guide the azalai, the salt caravans, for years?"

  "How far is he?"

  "Twenty-five miles. With luck, eight hours' travel."

  Taylor groaned. "When can we start?"

  "Tonight. Traveling by dark, we will avoid the heat."

  Taylor and Azzedine spent an hour or two buying, under Mahfoud's direction, a few supplies. They napped in the house of the town's prefect. By moonrise, they had all assembled on the edge of town.

  The camels wore wooden butterfly-shaped saddles. Mahfoud tied the waterskins, the girbas, to the saddles. Each camel was controlled by a bridle to which was attached a rope.

  Mahfoud couched the camels. "Mount now."

  Taylor and Azzedine ascended. The camels rose, making half-hearted protests at the weight.

  "Your beasts will follow mine. But do not drop the headrope, whatever you do, or they will bolt."

  Mahfoud moved to the fore of the caravan. Holding his camel pole across his shoulders, he started the train in motion.

  Mounted on his camel, Taylor, still wearing his filthy linen suit, found the riding deceptively easy.

  Two hours later, his whole body felt like a single giant bruise. The night, while cooler, was still in the nineties. The monotony of the trek, the slowness after the speed of the drive, made him want to scream. Would he never reach Holt?

  Rocking atop the smelly beast, Taylor was suddenly taken by the ironic notion that his whole journey was more comedy than tragedy. A plane to Spain, a boat to Africa, a car to the desert, a camel to some filthy nomad encampment. It was all too much like one of those movies where the characters experience successive degradations in their quest, until they end up pedaling on a child's bicycle . . .

  See
king reassurance, Taylor reached beneath his jacket. Tucked into the waist of his trousers was his gun. It felt hot against his skin.

  Constellations spun; the desert drifted past them.

  The Tuaregs had not moved, and were easily found. They were camped in a depression which even Taylor could recognize as a dry wadi. From a distance, their flattened oval tents of dom fibre looked like some abandoned circus, dropped impossibly into the waste of sand. In the middle of the encampment was a modern tent, obviously the ringmaster's, Holt's.

  Taylor tried urging his camel to greater speeds, but found it as unresponsive as stone. After a seeming eternity, they arrived in the midst of the camp.

  It was so early, pre-dawn, that no one was yet up.

  Taylor painfully dismounted.

  He stumbled at an awkward trot towards Holt's tent. Azzedine hung back out of respect, while Mahfoud was busy with the camels.

  Taylor pulled back the tent flap and an unexpected blast of air-conditioning smacked him in the face, utterly disconcerting him for a moment. Recovering, he saw in the dim light two sleeping figures on separate cots: Aubrey and Holt, both in T-shirts.

  If they had been together in bed, he knew he would have shot them.

  But as they were, looking like children, his wife and his best friend, they drained everything from him except self-disgust.

  With a roaring in his ears, Taylor raised the gun to his own temple.

  He pulled the trigger—

  Once, twice, a number of times.

  No flare, no aroma of gunpowder, nothing but dull clicks.

  Taylor dropped his hand and looked down in befuddlement at the traitorous weapon. He ejected the full clip, studied it as if expecting it to voice an explanation, then tossed it aside. He began to cry.

  Holt and Aubrey were awake now. A light came on. Holt maneuvered a campstool behind Taylor, and pressed his shoulders. He sat.