Fantastic Voyage : Microcosm

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Swarms of busy nanomachines worked on the cell structure around them, modifying and rejuvenating the dormant alien body like a vast urban-renewal project. Tomiko tensed at her weapons, but Devlin got the false identifier signal started again, casting just enough ambiguity that the Mote was out of range before the nanomachines could rally.

  Two lumbering devices blocked the racing ship's passage, by accident rather than by organized ambush. Tomiko destroyed them without a second thought. She frowned at her gauges, saw that she had power for only a few dozen shots more. “Laser cannons running low, Marc.”

  He flicked a few switches. “I expected the lasers to be used once or twice on a whole mission, for surgical strikes only.”

  “Been a blast, though, hasn't it?” she said with a smile.

  Eavesdropping from the main compartment, Arnold Freeth said, “You're very strange, Ms. Braddock.”

  Devlin didn't try to cover his smile. “I bet Mr. Freeth doesn't often get the opportunity to call anybody else strange.” He soared past a sheet of fatty tissue impregnated with corkscrewing blood vessels. Tense, he looked at the dwindling time on the chronometer, at the snapshot of Kelli, then flew onward.

  “Recognize anything yet, Doc?” He looked back at Cynthia Tyler, who sat tense in the main compartment, strapped into her seat for the final rough ride out of the alien body. “Give me good news.”

  She continued to stare out at the wilderness of cells and vascular systems. “This looks similar to our initial entry through the epidermis. These walls and the fibrous structure remind me of the hypodermis, and the reticular layer should be the next section.”

  “Just point me to the nearest hair follicle, or sweat pore, or whatever.” He glanced at the mission clock again. Nine minutes left.

  Impellers whirring, the ship approached a tissue discoloration, a yellowish window like a billboard advertising a particularly fine brand of mucous. “There, Major Devlin.” Tyler pointed her slender hand. “Through that barrier. I think it's the bulbous end of a sebaceous gland.”

  “Exactly what I wanted to hear.” Devlin aimed the Mote's prow toward the center of the rubbery wall, then accelerated to ramming speed. “On our way.”

  On impact, the cell wall split open, and the ship dove into an ocean of pus-yellow fluid. “Now we're making progress,” Freeth said.

  The overheating impellers carried them through thick turbulence, brilliant spotlights shining out as if through dense fog. The engines groaned louder, fighting through the viscous liquid.

  Flying blind, Devlin stumbled unexpectedly into a cluttered construction site of partially assembled nanomachines. “Great, a nanocritter convention.” He rolled sideways to avoid ramming several carbon-matrix devices that loomed in front of them.

  The nanomachines crowded together, like a large marching band flowing toward the exterior of the alien.

  “It's a mass exodus,” Tyler said.

  “Or a concerted invasion,” Freeth said.

  Another machine drifted into their path, and the Mote's hull scraped against the multi-armed device. Devlin overcompensated, and on the rebound they crashed into a second machine that was sifting raw materials out of the organic mucous. The wreckage of articulated fullerene arms, imprinted diamond memory flakes, and buckyball gears spun off in separate directions.

  Muttering imaginative curses under his breath, Devlin zigzagged through the obstacle course while broken components spanged off the hull.

  Long ago, as a test pilot, he'd once flown into a flock of seagulls that had cracked his cockpit windshield, bombarded his plane's sidewalls, and fouled one engine. He'd barely maintained control amidst a spray of feathers and blood.

  Now, as he swung around in the thick fluid, the tethered signal generator smashed into the lumbering devices, the loser in a game of crack-the-whip. On Devlin's control screens, the decoy transmitter flickered, and the power flux shut down.

  The signal died.

  Tomiko reacted instantly. “Step on it, Marc, before they figure out who we are.”

  Like shadows in the fog, several curious devices moved forward, suddenly noticing the Mote. The nanomachines closed around them like a tightening noose.

  “I think they already know.” Throwing caution to the wind, he soared through the glandular fluid. Currents buffeted them, and the viscous slime flowed across the cockpit windshields like a slow downpour. Devlin could barely see where he was going, but he didn't slow.

  Working in eerie concert, a battalion of nanomachines linked claw arms and segmented limbs into a mechanical mesh to block the Mote's passage, like a military roadblock. The impellers spun up with an overworked roar, as if the miniaturized ship were voicing her own indignation. “Everybody hold on!”

  Conscious of her dwindling weapons, Tomiko fired only two careful shots. Hot lances burned through the milky pus, opening a breach in the linked barricade of nanomachines, and Devlin rammed through the crumbling blockade. The machines dropped away from each other and streaked after the fleeing ship.

  With the jury-rigged IFF transmitter knocked out, the sparking tether cable flailed behind them like a scorpion's tail. As more nanocritters closed in, Devlin dodged left and right, barely able to see ahead of him, but he couldn't let up for a second to wipe away the sweat beaded on his brow. “Hey, Doc, where did you say this gland opens?”

  “It should be just up ahead,” Tyler said.

  The Mote's brilliant beams penetrated the murk, but not far enough.

  “I know you'd prefer to deal with one challenge at a time.” Tomiko indicated the mission chronometer. “But we've only got seven minutes to get out of here before we start growing.”

  “Then I hope we're close to the skin surface.”

  Freeth groaned. “If we don't get out of the lifepod in time, that alien astronaut is going to find an awfully big exploration vessel up his—uh, lap.”

  “Felix wouldn't appreciate the mess,” Devlin said.

  Thanks to the dense static, the Director hadn't heard a word from them in an hour and a half. He hoped Felix believed they were still alive. At the very least, he'd be extremely agitated, no doubt regretting his decision to send them on this crazy mission.

  In the fluid around them, the nanomachines crowded thicker. The devices had reproduced in wave after wave, far beyond what was required to finish reviving the alien astronaut. Now, in masses, they migrated toward the skin surface, from which they could emerge and sweep across the Earth.

  A cold lump formed in Devlin's stomach. If his nanotech warfare scenario was true, then simply escaping from the alien's body would not be good enough for Team Proteus.

  Two grappling machines collided with the Mote and clung to the hull like lampreys, while others approached from all sides. Devlin put the ship into a violent spin, throwing the nanocritters off.

  Desperate, he worked the comm system controls and replayed recordings of the original IFF signal. But no longer fooled, the nanocritters came forward in a redoubled attack. Like torpedoes, the devices rammed the Mote.

  Tomiko fired eight more times, scoring hits on five devices, but her lasers were growing weaker. According to her gauges, she had only a few shots left.

  And the gathered nanomachines were countless.

  At last, the glandular fluid spilled out like a slow-motion Niagara, lubricating the walls of a titanic shaft, a bottomless pit in the alien's skin.

  “Emergency exit, right this way.” Devlin shot out into the pore, spraying mucous behind them. Runnels like protein-thick honey trickled off the windows and hull.

  A galaxy of nanocritters lined the opening of the glandular duct. Reacting to the proximity of the Mote, they dropped like paratrooper saboteurs. Two machines thudded onto the roof, and Devlin saw no choice but to fly straight up. “Hang on.” He scraped the upper hull against the flexible gland wall, knocking the clinging devices off. Crushed carbon-lattice debris tumbled behind them. Devlin didn't glance back.

  “Look at them all!” Freeth said.r />
  A horrendous marching army of nanomachines lined the pore, thousands upon thousands of them. Devlin kept the Mote in the center of the shaft, out of their reach. He pulled the control stick toward him and shot upward, accelerating so hard that his lips stretched back against his teeth.

  A hungry xenozoan moved down the pore wall, a flowing blob. Suddenly a squadron of nanocritters engulfed the monstrous microorganism, tearing it apart like ants on a fat caterpillar. The tiny robots ripped away protein chains, organelles, and genetic material, scavenging the necessary resources to swell their numbers even further. Devlin's stomach twisted with revulsion.

  Six minutes remained on the mission chronometer.

  Tomiko stared through the scratched cockpit windshield as they rocketed upward. “Is that what I think it is? Genuine outside light, way up there?”

  “Roger that, and about time, too.” Devlin punched the impellers in a high-G ascent, as if he were testing a fast jet aircraft. He dodged a few floating nanomachines intent on trapping them, but paid little attention to irrelevant obstacles. He plowed ahead without pause and left battered devices in his wake.

  The Mote burst out of the skin pore, and Devlin let out a whoop of triumph.

  “Watch out for the pedicels, Major Devlin,” Tyler said, wiping long strands of permed blond hair out of her eyes. “It would be embarrassing to be destroyed now, after all our trouble.”

  Freeth looked at her, wondering whether she had intended to make a joke. “Believe me, it would be more than embarrassing.”

  But as the Mote rose above the organic dermal plain, they saw that the waving forests of pedicels had been felled, as if by an onslaught of lumberjacks. The alien's gray skin looked like a battlefield strewn with cadavers.

  Vicious nanomachines had trimmed all outer defenses and used the pedicels' raw materials to build more and more copies of themselves. The vast epidermis crawled with billions of the tiny devices, all of them ready to swarm outward in an invasion force too small for the human eye to see.

  Devlin soared into the blurry white distance of the “sky.” Time was running out—five minutes now. Luckily, the tiny locator beacon Dr. Sujatha had installed on the outer glass would help them find the pinprick escape hole in the lifepod's covering.

  “Something's not right up there. I can't hear the pinger.” He stared through the windowport, searching for the transparent dome far overhead. “And I can't find the ceiling either.”

  The Mote flew and flew, but encountered no barrier. On their minuscule scale, he could see nothing, had no sense of perspective. “We've gone past where we should have encountered the pod glass.”

  Tomiko strained her eyes, but she saw nothing that would help him. “I'd really like to get through the escape hole before we return to normal size.”

  Finally, unexpectedly, they reached a metal wall the size of a Grand Canyon cliff. Devlin recognized the outer lip of the lifepod—and understood. “That's why we can't find the ceiling. The pod's been opened.”

  “Opened?” Tomiko slumped in her chair, looking sick. “Great, and now the containment room has been exposed to all this alien nanotechnology. Just look.”

  Lines of advanced nanocritter scouts trooped across the edge of the lifepod, spilling onto the floor, onto every surface. Spreading… swarming.

  “Billions and billions,” Freeth said. “They must be grabbing raw material from the lifepod itself.”

  Once the microscopic armies flooded into the room, they would dismantle chairs, tables, equipment, anything to reproduce themselves. An unstoppable, invisible army.

  Tyler sounded guilty and tired. “It appears that we're too late.”

  “Don't jump to conclusions. Now that we're out of the body, we can send a clear signal to Felix. Maybe Project Proteus can come up with some counter-measures.” Devlin glanced at the mission chronometer again. “We start growing in four minutes.”

  “Then at least we'll be too big for the nanocritters to bother us,” Freeth said. “That'll be a relief.”

  “Time to use your imagination again, Freeth.” Tyler turned to him, happy to point out something that the UFO expert hadn't realized. “Once we reach our normal size, the nanomachines will infest us.”

  Chapter 38

  Mission clock: 7 minutes remaining

  As time ran out, the creature that had been Dr. Sergei Pirov became more calculating. And much more dangerous. It would take so little to set in motion the unstoppable invasion.

  Even with his brute strength, his muscles and bones reinforced by nanotech modifications, he was not able to break free of the chamber. Armored walls enclosed him, maddened him, prevented him from doing what he must do.

  Entirely transformed now, his brain buzzed with the need to complete the instructions programmed into him. He had to unleash the replicating nanomachines so the inhabitants of this planet could be subsumed.

  It must be done.

  Depthless black eyes, designed for the light of a different sun, scrutinized his resources as he tried to determine another way out of the chamber prison. Restless and searching, he prowled among the analytical equipment and medical debris strewn around the chamber.

  Slowly, his new mind grasped that breaking free from the containment chamber would be more difficult than it had first seemed.

  But not impossible.

  * * *

  Feeling his body change minute by minute, Sujatha surrendered to the inevitable. He worked at the seals and zippers of his useless anti-contamination suit.

  With a pause to summon his last shreds of bravery and dignity, he tore the collar seam and removed the flexible hood. As if he were using a napkin at a tea party, he gently set the hood on the floor, its cracked faceplate up. He blinked his grossly enlarged eyes and drew a deep breath.

  Now in the open air, weird smells bombarded him, chemical traces that he could not understand, scents processed through altered olfactory sensors. Inhaling through shallow nostrils and a flattened nose, he wanted to breathe fresh mountain air again, Pon-derosa pine trees and meadow flowers, for one last time. He wanted to see the spectacular Sierra Neva-das or his beautiful family—not these armored walls and sterile chrome surfaces. Not the armed Marines waiting to shoot him if he tried to escape.

  He squinted in the too-bright lights, unable to cry, unable to speak. He wondered if these alien eyes were even capable of shedding tears. The Pirov creature had stalked away from the window, and Sujatha felt very alone.

  When he cleared his throat, he heard a growling noise that did not sound like his voice. He thought he might be able to speak out loud once more, though the nanomachines might send another punitive jolt to incapacitate him if he openly defied them. Still, he wanted the chance to strike another small blow—if he could just think of a way.

  With face and head naked, Sujatha looked up to the observation deck. Felix Hunter, his distinguished expression now filled with despair, could not tear himself away from the window. “Director Hunter, sir,” he said, and his voice came out thin and ethereal, “please… contact my wife and daughters. Tell them I love them.”

  “Of course,” Hunter said. He placed his hands against the high window.

  On trembling legs, Sujatha stood. He noticed only a blurred reflection of himself in the shatterproof windows. When he stepped forward to look, the startled Marines backed away and trained their rifles on him. Seeing their terrified faces, he understood all he needed to know.

  He turned to Hunter again. “But sir, please do not tell them… what really happened to me.” He hoped Hunter would find a way to let them know he had ended his life as a hero, or at least a faithful scientist.

  If the world itself survived.

  Fastidiously, Sujatha pulled off his polymer gloves. His new fingers were long and smooth; somehow, he had acquired an extra joint in each one. When he bent one finger, concentrating on muscle control, the digit curled like a monkey's prehensile tail.

  He watched his old fingernails flake off, one by one.r />
  Oddly fascinated, he touched the surface of an equipment table and felt the cool metal, sensing his nerve responses. Heightened neural receptors covered the pads that had once swirled with his personal fingerprints. Now though, his fingertips were completely smooth.

  One more step in erasing his identity.

  With deep-seated fear, Sujatha touched his face, felt the smooth planes, ran his fingers along the bridge of his nose, which seemed smaller. When he brushed around his eyes, a shower of tiny hairs fell off, his remaining eyebrows and lashes. As he touched the back of his head, dark hair sloughed off to reveal the smooth skin of a bulbous cranium, an ovoid skull.

  A deeply human moan of despair came out of his throat.

  He remembered how his wife had loved to run her hands through his hair, and how he had kissed her. But now his lips were papery and dry, his face emotionless and alien.

  His daughters would run screaming if they saw him now.

  “Soon I may… not be responsible for my actions, Director, sir,” Sujatha said, already feeling the compulsions, so difficult to resist.

  His vision lost focus, and the chamber walls shimmered with optical haloes and flares. His modified eyes were not yet fully integrated, making it hard to recognize the open lifepod, the deactivated laser drill, the rotary bone-cutting saws, battery-powered laser scalpels, and medical instruments that were strewn on the floor.

  The Pirov-alien picked up tools, inspected them, played with the buttons, trying to understand or remember how the instruments functioned. He cocked his head, ransacking the storehouse of knowledge left inside his brain after Sergei Pirov's original personality had been erased.

  Pirov hefted a heavy-duty bone-cutting saw, a powerful device that could have been used to crack open the extraterrestrial's skull, if Hunter had given them permission to conduct a full autopsy. With long, smooth fingers, Pirov flicked it on. The diamond-edged rotary blade whirled, a silver crown of thorns that sparkled in the light.