The Grapple

by Moshe Ben-Or

  He’d waited over a month for the second message, before the pod’s radio had finally come back to life. “Your mission is vital,” said his answer, “Paradise is key to the war. We extend you every assistance. Set the planet aflame!”

  Encrypted with the same unbreakable cypher Leo carried in the plain-looking Golden Age biometric signet ring upon his left hand. Authenticated by His Grace Reginald Alexeyevich, the Duke Freeman. Signed in the same name, as Admiral of the Fleet.

  The robotic birds had come a bit over two weeks later, exactly as promised. Out of the northeast, the night after the one when the sky had blossomed suddenly with strange new comets, and a smattering of white splotches that seemed like glowing, distant nebulae, but were not that, at all.

  From some nameless spot out there in the sky, somewhere over the vast emptiness of Oceano Verde. Orienting on the icy peak of San Sebastian, shining like a beacon in the night as it reflected racing Kleodora’s brilliant light. Passing silently over the sprawling delta of the New Amazon, marking the distinctive shapes of natural Baia de los Santos and man-made Baia de Calma. Overflying the ruins of unfinished Prosperity Tower amid the shattered skyscrapers at the tip of Cabo Natal. Looking down, unmoved and unweeping, at the fallen wonder of Vitoria Bridge and the glassy devastation that was once the Gilded City. Sighting off the intermittent, thin black ribbon of Highway One as it turned west from the coast and climbed up through the Paso Chungara, shifting their transparent wings and puffing their whispering jets as they came gliding like ghosts over sleeping mountain crests. Navigating by compass and landmark until they saw, finally, the few scattered lights of diminished Greater San Angelo, sensed the omnidirectional pulse and rotating beam of the radio beacon at Alamedo Airport, and parsed out the weak cacophony of signals from the restored Greater San Angelo Navigational Grid.

  The very systems the Sanchez Ministry of Infrastructure had erected in the new planetary capital as it struggled to turn ruined plascrete jungles full of starving two-legged beasts back into functional cities, were the systems the invisible robotic birds now used to find their way as they circled, silent and undetected, over the rural vastness of Angeles Province’s northernmost districts and the trackless wilderness of the Paso Chungara National Park. And as they circled, they watched and listened, looking for the flickering lights and the sputtering engine of a rickety farm truck, one of thousands upon thousands of pickups hastily slapped back together by Ministry of Infrastructure Reconstruction Teams as they’d rushed all over the planet, putting civilization back on its feet before everyone simply starved to death. A rolling wreck like a million others on this planet, bleeding static from a shoddy distribution system and a stuttering, cheap power coil. The one truck among countless hundreds and thousands whose flickering lights marked their nest, the complex harmonics of whose static were modulated with their landing signal.

  Amid empty fields and lonely dirt tracks the flocks of invisible birds had landed, just as the pre-dawn sky was beginning to brighten in the east. Each barely a meter and a half long and less than half again as wide. A handy, oblate cylinder with an extensible polymer tail and tough, folding wings, no bigger and no heavier than a prewar mail service bot, or a large hobbyist’s toy.

  Waiting, stealthy hands had snatched them up and tossed them quickly into cargo beds, and other, unstealthed hands had just as quickly covered what their owners could not see but knew was now there, with hay and straw and corn husks and compost and manure and unwashed wool, and all kinds of other unremarkable, ordinary rural cargo. And the rickety old pickups had driven off into the brightening, pre-dawn murk, stopping here and there, as farm trucks should, at villages and haciendas, pulling into unremarkable barns and work sheds amid the ordinary, readily-explicable business of an everyday winter country morning.

  Each stealthy bird would fly again, when the time came, as an observation drone or light bomber, or precision-attack cruise missile. No wonder of themselves, though the Paradisian kids had marveled at them. What they had brought was more remarkable by far.

  Despite the message, Yosi himself could not truly believe it, until he saw the tiny, seamless polymer boxes. Little olive-green things no bigger than a toddler’s palm, labeled in neat, clear black type, in Hebrew and Zemelsky, and Standard, and Paradisian.

  Things of wonder. Tiny pieces of the Golden Age. A technological miracle yanked by the scruff of its neck out of some top-secret Technion lab via a crash development program and an emergency procurement contract. The full measure of his mission’s importance. The full meaning of Duke Reginald’s “every assistance.”

  Gauss Rifle, assault, Mk.23, cal. 1.3mm.

  Gauss Rifle, automatic, Mk.33, cal. 1.3mm

  Laser Weapon, individual, Mk.37 Mod.8, 46MW

  Laser Weapon, crew-served, Mk.47 Mod.12, 46MW

  Mortar System, automatic…

  Autonomous System, assault…

  Swarming Multisystem, obstacle-breaching…

  Battle Command System, networking...

  Camouflage System, personal…

  Personnel Protection Suite, adjustable...

  Medical Intensive Care System, individual…

  Nanofactory, munitions…

  Nanofactory, chemical…

  Shimshon was the only one who didn’t gape and stare. He’d grinned like a devil possessed, and Yosi had felt, with that inexplicable feeling that only the Talent could be responsible for, that he, alone among all of them, had seen their like before, outside historical VR. And that is why he’d put Shimshon in charge of the project.

  It had taken time. The instructions had specified materials to be gathered. Copper, so many kilograms. Cast iron or low-grade steel, so many kilograms. Stainless steel, so many kilograms. Aluminum, so many kilograms. Wood or cellulose, so many kilograms. Ceramic tile, so many kilograms. Glass, so many kilograms. High-strength industrial or construction polymer, so many kilograms…

  It had been an extensive list. Too much, was good. Not enough – absolutely unacceptable. The most resource-efficient thing to do, according to both Shimshon and the instructions, was to arrange all the nanopacks together carefully, amid properly-distributed piles of materiel, and turn them on all at once.

  Specified precautions and preparations were also extensive. Snap-your-fingers historical VR fantasy, this was clearly not. Shimshon had looked over the instructions carefully, pursed his lips in thought for a bit, and then added a few extra precautions of his own. That’s when Yosi had become fully convinced that this wasn’t the man’s first rodeo with these dangerous Golden Age wonders come to real life.

  It had taken more time to put together the necessary equipment, and to train the men. There’d been four full-up dry runs, and equipment tests, and contingency drills, before Shimshon was satisfied enough with the crew and the gear to try this thing for real. And then there’d been the space.

  As Shimshon leads the way, Yosi emerges into a vast, echoing cavern. The thin, tough layer of construction plastic that keeps toxic limestone dust and poisonous, metal-rich groundwater out of inhabited spaces within the Har Maoz complex is absent here. It’s all hard hats, goggles and respirators in this place.

  Most among Shimshon’s crew don’t have ponchos. Ponchos they don’t need and wouldn’t know how to use, anyway. But the standard precautions of mining and underground construction on Paradise are quite familiar to them, and so is the standard protective equipment. They are all hand-picked, and very good at their jobs.

  The foreman salutes smartly as his commander enters the place. Señor Shimshon is deeply respected here. His expertise with the equipment and deep understanding of the machinery they are about to unleash are obvious to all. His every word is absolute law.

  The foreman knows full well that Señor Shimshon, Señora Morales’ foreign technical expert, will not be here forever to hold his hand through the steps. He knows full well also, that the microscopic machinery they are about to set loose in this cavern is as revolutionary as the discovery of fi
re and the splitting of the atom. Should it get out of control, it can be as devastating, and potentially as deadly, as a thermonuclear bomb. The foreman is eager to learn all he can.

  There is a tension in the air. In the harsh glare of industrial lights, men swing from rappelling lines amid the bevy of grid markers that stud the walls and ceiling of the cavern, calling to one another over hand-held radios as they perform final equipment checks. Here and there, a bad grid marker is rebooted, and, occasionally, replaced. Yosi suddenly has the feeling that he is an ant, looking upward at the inside of a gigantic pincushion. Or maybe that a strange, precisely-planted forest of coral sprouts inward from the limestone.

  The floor is divided into a numbered grid with taut polymer string and colored fishing line, lined with carefully-arranged piles of materials and dotted with the tiny squares of nanopacks. Supervisors walk slowly along the rows, checking and double-checking labels and numbers, occasionally whipping out a ruler or even a laser rangefinder to make sure of their work. Hurry is the enemy of safety and quality, here. Everything must be exactly in its specified spot, not a centimeter to the left or right, forward or backward. For the complex, multi-pack gear like the regen tanks and the nanofactories, this is especially vital. Even the precise geometric arrangement of the numbered subcomponents with respect to each other and the materiel piles is a critical thing that must be carefully checked and rechecked by multiple, watchful eyes.

  At the edge of the working space, in the mouth of the tunnel, the nanite control team double-checks its equipment. They are the first line of defense for the entire complex, firemen about to face an inferno of their own making. The nervous kids out in the hallway behind are pretty good, but they are the backup.

  These men are nervous, too. For all their confidence in themselves and in their gear, this is their first time facing off against the real thing. Should they fail, the lives of hundreds of people out in the main complex may be in danger, and they themselves will almost certainly die to the very last one. The staff sergeant in charge rechecks every EMP gun, rebreather and plasma shield personally. His thoroughness would do justice to a League Shock Corps NCO, or to an Imperial Marine. Before the war, it would not have been possible to even imagine a Paradisian being this careful about anything in the world.

  Minutes pass. Shimshon is in no hurry. The foreman checks and rechecks everything on his list. Finally, it is all ready. The workers troop back behind the nanite control team, and Shimshon personally double-checks the foreman’s count before he sends them on their way, past the second anti-nanite screen.

  There is an order to don rebreathers, seal ponchos and turn on personal plasma shields. Everyone who is still here is well equipped against the deadly menace about to run loose out in the cavern. The shields and guns are not proper military equipment, but Shimshon’s bulky, industrial-grade handiwork is quite impressive nonetheless. It certainly meets the specs that had come with the nanopack instructions. The ponchos are military grade, protection against both the retina-searing hard UV about to be pumped out by the grid markers and the poisonous gases that will surely leak their way despite the cavern’s ventilation system. Should worse come to worst, the ponchos are also well equipped to fight back against microscopic foes. Within the complex micromachine ecosystem of each one, dwells a whole contingent of specialized robotic warriors. The rebreathers are camp-made, too, but, like the EMP guns, they are quality, industrial-grade equipment.

  Yosi unholsters his EMP pistol. He should not, in theory, have need to use it. But he’d double-checked it just the same.

  Shimshon had not wanted spectators to begin with. When pushed, he’d demanded, quite sensibly, that would-be spectators qualify as potential future instructors, and attend all rehearsals and drills. Which they, quite sensibly, had.

  The airlock behind the second nanite control team slams shut. A siren echoes through the corridor.

  Beware! Magic dragon’s eggs are about to hatch en masse, right here, in this cavern beneath Paradise’s Golden Mountains.

  Out on the working floor, tiny olive-green boxes spring open like blooming flowers, all at once. Supply piles slump and melt within seconds, like wax, collapsing into the spreading lake of seething gray goop.

  There is a bubbling and a splashing, like a gigantic pot of soup on the boil. Strange, lethal gases creep along the floor. Yosi’s poncho flashes poison and ambient oxygen depletion warnings. Triple-checking his rebreather was a damned good idea, no doubt at all.

  “¡Santa Maria, Madre de Dios!” mutters someone out in the hall. Not everyone believes in Patty’s Living Goddess, thinks Yosi, even among the kids in the second line. Or perhaps it is simply force of habit. Old habits die hard.

  The working floor is meters below the entrance, reachable only via retractable ladder. But there is a sudden surge of boiling gray goop over the edge, nonetheless. They should have made it deeper, thinks Yosi, as the big plasma generator begins to zap. EMP guns snap and capacitors whine as the control team fights to beat back the surging gray menace. The plasma screen out front is a seething sheet of blue flame.

  The gray goop is relentless, searching for a way past the shield, reaching forward with deadly tentacles. The floor at the edge of the screen begins to crumble. The lethal goop looks to tunnel underneath.

  The foreman shouts a nervous command, and a squad of kids from the second line runs up to reinforce the men of the forward screen.

  Shimshon’s calm, clear voice gives an order. The forward screen holds its fire and pulls back, rolling the plasma generator along as it retreats upslope, toward the lock. A few flying droplets splash against the shield, but the bulk of the seething gray mass does not follow.

  It didn’t want them after all, thinks Yosi. Not a surge of mutants. Something else. A foraging party from the hive. Trying to get at a supply of some rare material they didn’t have enough of in the materiel piles, despite the preparations. Something it did not find enough of in the special powders that had come with the nanites, inside every nanopack. A vein of heavy metal, perhaps.

  It is a very good thing that this cavern is at the very lowest point in the tunnel complex and far removed from everything else, that below, behind and all around it there is nothing but endless, solid rock, that its ceiling is high above, and that all openings leading to it, even the ventilation ports the hive should theoretically be unable to reach for sheer distance, are defended by plasma screens and determined men with EMP guns.

  The gray goop does not think. It is not conscious. But it is, without doubt, alive. It has a collective mind, like any proper, self-respecting hive. And, to that mind, anything that is not self, is food.

  The foraging cycle seems complete now, and it looks like the replication limit has been reached. The goop’s self-checking mechanisms should have hunted down and recycled any dangerous, uncontrollably-replicating mutants. The mass of gray goop begins to sink downward, eating away at the cavern floor as it finishes its work. There are lots of trace elements in Paradisian limestone. A whole slew of heavy metals and inclusions, deposited eons ago by the microscopic organisms whose tiny fossilized shells make up these rocks. The gray goop is happy with what it has. The relentless swarm mind is certain now. Its life’s mission shall be a success.

  Out of the sinking, boiling gray mass, familiar outlines begin to emerge.

  The goop subsides, turning quickly to dust.

  Only ninety minutes have passed, though it feels like an entire day. Many meters below, at the bottom of a sheer, smooth cliff mildly pitted as if by centuries of dripping water, there lies row upon ruler-straight row of military equipment, dusted ever so lightly with a layer of fine gray.

  Poncho warnings go away as the cavern’s ventilation system overcomes residual poisons and the lack of ambient oxygen. The plasma generator hums quietly to itself.

  The foreman and his assistants check their equipment. Shimshon rechecks both sets, just in case. There must always be double-sensor, double-eyes confirmation. Mistakes are
unacceptable. The danger is still very great. This is no puddle of friendly industrial nanites they deal with, incapable of breeding, confined to a reactor, lacking the ability to as much as power themselves outside. This is a free swarm of self-replicating gray goo, with all the potential horrors that simple combination of words can entail.

  Finally, they are satisfied. The magic seems quiescent. But its residuals can still kill.

  EMP guns snap. The team advances slowly to the edge of the cliff. Sensors are checked again. All seems well so far.

  A test piece is thrown to the bottom. It lands in a puff of white and gray dust. Fine, like talcum. Calcite minerals from the limestone, mostly. But also bits of techno-magic, supposedly now dead.

  The test piece is a bundle of metals and ceramics wrapped in polymer, just a little bit more of everything than instructions had called for, in order for a single rifle to be made. If the magic yet lives, the reaction should be immediate.

  Nothing happens. The men wait. Minutes pass.

  Shimshon gives the nod. They have waited longer by far than the instructions had called for.

  The plasma generator is lowered to the bottom. A ladder follows. A scout climbs down, snapping all around with the EMP gun before he steps foot onto the cavern floor. A second man follows, then a third.

  The fire team clears a safe zone, marking edges with weighted bits of day-glo orange tape as it works. Finally, the corporal waves. A second fire team follows. The third is right behind. Soon, there is a squad. The sergeant takes charge, expanding the cleared zone.

  The men are thorough, but they are quick in their work. Endless hours of practice and dry runs are paying off, as usual. The cleared zone grows. A second plasma generator follows the first down to the bottom. An initial decontamination area is established.