The Micronauts

by Gordon Williams

  “They are under medical care; they must not be disturbed. I order you out of this building—I will make the strongest complaints to my superiors.”

  “Who are your superiors?”

  “I refuse to answer any more questions!”

  Khomich nodded. He strolled across to a large carved stand on which stood a bell-shaped glass case. Inside the case, artistically mounted against a background of ferns and flowers, were scores of stuffed hummingbirds in flight. He nodded appreciatively at the brilliant plumages of the tiny birds.

  “Look, Jany,” Bruce said quickly, “you can either show us everything or Staff-Commander Khomich will conduct his own guided tour—and he rarely bothers to knock.”

  Jany shook his head.

  “Is George Richards here?” Khomich asked.

  Jany’s mouth tightened.

  Khomich hooked his right boot round the foot of the carved plinth, then gave it a vicious jerk.

  The bell-shaped case tottered at an angle, then hit the tiled floor. The glass shattered. Dried leaves and stuffed hummingbirds spewed across the tiles.

  Jany stared at him in horror. Then his shoulders fell. He looked at Bruce. “I appeal to you as a scientist—these soldiers have no place in a research establishment—send them back to their helicopter and I will discuss this with you— ”

  Khomich shoved between them. “There will be no discussion. On the authority of the Commissioner I will search this building.”

  Jany closed his eyes and sighed. With a little shrug he said. “Oh well, it had to come sooner or later.”

  Bruce and Khomich followed him into a dimly-lit corridor, Khomich using his elbows to make sure he was never more than one pace behind Jany. They entered an old-fashioned library. The sight of so many leather-bound books, on shelves that went all the way up to the plaster moldings of the ceiling, made Bruce gasp. In a world where books were considered at best to be irrelevancies, a collection like this was surely reason enough for the secrecy surrounding Arcadia. But he was given no time to inspect the shelves.

  Jany pressed a button under the light-switch.

  A concealed door slid soundlessly open and they were looking into a huge, split-level studio full of cameras and laboratory equipment. People in white coats stared as Jany led them across the floor. Jany led them up a short flight of stairs to an upper-level platform facing out over the rear gardens of the mansion. Immediately below was the domed glass roof of what appeared to be a small conservatory extension. On the raised platform several technicians were at work, one using what looked like a periscope scanner, others speaking to faces on video-screens.

  “Still no contact, Doctor,” a woman said without looking up from her console.

  “Thank you, Jeanette.”

  Jany gestured at the view beyond the huge plate- glass windows. Bruce saw a wide, uncut lawn and then a

  THE MICRONAUTS

  sloping rockery or rock garden. Beyond that were shrubs and ferns and then trees in a large overgrown garden surrounded by a red brick wall.

  “Well—there is Project Arcadia,’’ said Jany.

  Khomich looked down at the mass of equipment on the floor beneath them. “Does this look like the stuff on the list, Professor Bruce?’’

  “Could be.’’ Bruce peered out over the garden. “ That’s Project Arcadia?”

  Jany grimaced. “I will have to explain— ”

  “Getting him now,” exclaimed the woman he had called Jeanette, pulling down an RDF wheel.

  Jany picked up a hand-mike. “Control to Richards. We are hearing you faintly. What is your position, over?”

  Through a dull* roar of static, they heard a small, urgent voice.

  “Richards to Control, Richards to Control, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday...”

  Into another speaker, the woman operator said, “Control to Recovery, take a bearing on this transmission, Professor Richards on Channel B. Status Red Alarm, over.”

  “Control to Richards, what is your current position?” Jany said into the hand-mike. He was frowning. “Why isn’t he using the pack-set? Try Carrere on Channel A, Camisa.”

  “Tell Recovery to scatter-drop LS capsules in the general area of Crossing Two,” Jany said to the woman operator.

  “Was that Professor Richards?” Khomich demanded, peering through the huge plate-glass windows. “I cannot see him.”

  Jany used the hand-mike again. “Control to Richards. Capsules now being scattered around Crossing Two—transmit for fix, over.”

  “Richards to Control, I am hearing you now. I am roughly south of Crossing Two. We were heading for Station Three to be lifted out. I have lost contact with the others. They may have crossed to the north side of the

  “Well . . . there is project Arcadia,” said Jany.

  stream. You must scatter-drop LS capsules. Get somebody with a rifle to— ”

  For a brief moment, they heard an upsurge in the static—then a dull, acoustical silence.

  “Recovery couldn’t get a bearing, sir,” said the woman operator. “He’s probably too low for them—our Grid bearing is south-line five-two. Capsules have been dropped.”

  “We were lucky to pick him up on a personal communicator at that range.”

  “Is Richards taking part in some kind of simulated siress experiment?” Bruce asked patiently. Jany shook his head.

  “Ask Recovery if they’ve seen any big birds—they must be shot immediately.”

  “They’re looking now. It must have come in from the south, through the trees at the pond.”

  “We must speak to Professor Richards immediately,” Khomich said. “Where is the door to the garden?”

  “Nobody is allowed out in the garden, it is too dangerous,” said Jany.

  “ Dangerous? What have you got out there—tigers?”

  “I will explain in one moment. Camisa— be ready to take cross-bearings if he transmits again. Keep constant surveillance of both channels.”

  “Yes, Doctor. You think Professor Richards is testing the emergency procedure we were discussing at the last planning committee?”

  “I hope so, but we will presume it is for real.” He turned to Khomich and Bruce. “If you will come with me.”

  They followed him down the steps to the ground- level. He stopped at a brightly-lit model garden on a stand. His finger hovered above tiny replicas of grass and stones and trees and shrubs. “Richards is on an acclimitization exercise,” he said. “His route took him across this lawn, down this short rockery slope—across this open ground—his party was heading originally for

  Station Four— ” He pressed a button on a small panel. A light came on under a tiny glass canopy in one corner of the model garden. “But now he seems to be in this section— ” His finger indicated an area close to a small stream running into a miniature glass pond among some model trees.

  Bruce saw that Khomich was ready to explode. He took Jany’s arm. “We don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Doctor.’’

  “I want Professor Richards here immediately or my men will go out there to find him,” Khomich snapped, “I don’t care what stupid scientists’ games you are play-

  ■ ^ n

  ing.

  “I will take you to Richards,” Jany said calmly.

  They followed him through the big house. Through half open doors they saw people working in laboratories and workshops. Jany stopped at a steel door. Above it was an illuminated sign: CRYOGENIC ROOM—NO ADMITTANCE. Jany pushed a serrated plastic card into a slot on a control panel. A green light came on above the door, which slid open. They stepped into a brightly-lit room with a low ceiling. The air was cold. The door closed behind them. Jany went to a large instrument console and started pressing switches. The room’s lighting dimmed, to be replaced by a low, pinkish glow. He punched a series of numbered buttons.

  From a bank of what looked like large filing drawers began slowly to emerge a long, metal cabinet.

  The room seemed to become even chillier.
r />   They looked down into the cabinet.

  “You wanted to see George Richards,” Jany said with a little sweep of his hand.

  “He’s dead!” Khomich exclaimed.

  Bruce frowned. George Richards’s eyes were shut. The interior of the cabinet was lined with a shiny metal. The naked body was submerged in a thick, opaque liquid—only the face above the surface. Clamped to every part of the head and body were thin gold wires. The face was deathly pale. There was no sign of breathing.

  “You will understand cryogenic techniques, Bruce,” said Jany. To Khomich he said, “He is not dead. He is in suspended animation—on ice you might say.”

  “But if that’s Richards—who did we hear on the radio?”

  “That was George as well.”

  “I am putting you under arrest,” Khomich said firmly. “All operations will cease immediately—we will radio for doctors— ”

  “Why don’t you see all of Project Arcadia before you do anything stupid?” Jany snapped.

  “I have seen enough— ”

  Bruce shook his head. “The Commissioner’s instructions were to evaluate the entire project—we want to see everything.” He followed Jany back to the instrument panels. Jany pressed two switches. The metal cabinet slid back into the wall. The lighting returned to normal.

  “Life support systems?” Bruce asked, looking at the dials and electrographs.

  “Yes—we have seventeen guests in deep-freeze at the moment. All bodily functions are monitored and controlled by this analog computer—it can react automatically to a very wide variety of input variables. The technique was evolved at Houston for the Stellar Probe project. Our longest resident has been here for three months. As far as we know, there is no reason why suspended life could not be maintained indefinitely— even past the normal life span.”

  Forthefirsttime, Khomich looked doubtful. “You have seventeen people—in these cabinets?” Bruce asked.

  “You will understand when you see what else we can

  do.”

  “Is that titanium lining the cabinets? I wondered why you needed two tons of it.”

  “So that’s how you got onto us? We always knew there was a risk of somebody checking on the missing materials.”

  “It came out in a routine stock audit. How long has all this been going on, Jany?”

  “About two years. We went operational six months ago. Now, if you will come this way.”

  “When I sat on that Board you were working on genetic engineering. Has it anything to do with that?”

  “You will see. As a scientist, you know how obsessive we can be.”

  “So when we vetoed your pet project, you simply carried on illegally? And Richards backed you because he’ll do anything to prove he’s bigger than the WFC administration. Who else is involved?”

  “All of us here are deeply involved.”

  “I mean at top level.”

  Jany shrugged. “I do not know if George told any of his senior colleagues—everyone here took a vow of secrecy. Here we are—the clinic, as we call it.”

  Several people in white coats looked at them with unmistakable hostility. “Mary—can you operate the projector for us?” Jany said to a dark-haired girl who was working what Bruce recognized as an infrared spectrograph. They went into a small room. Jany pulled out chairs in front of a screen. “We’ll go through the whole sequence, Mary.”

  The lights dimmed. The first slide came up.

  “Recognize that, Bruce?”

  “It’s a single cell—human?”

  “Right. From the liver of an adult male.” The second slide was of two identical blobs. “The single cell has replicated—these photomicrographs are all of the same culture. You know anything about cell-cloning, Bruce?”

  “I know it was banned.”

  “All scientists are branded as heretics at some stage—if they are any good. This is known as cellcloning, Staff-Commander. I’ll try to explain in layman’s terms. We have about fifty million million cells in our bodies. Each contains the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes which carry the full genetical blueprint for our physical entities. Normally, reproduction starts at a halfcell—meiosis—when the male sperm and female ovum fuse to form a single cell carrying hereditary material

  from both parents. That first ceil then starts dividing equally—mitosis. For cloning, we use the process called anucleation. We remove the nucleus from a single ceil and replace it with the nucleus of a sex-cell from the same donor, making sure it is of the donor’s sex. The fertilized cell is then induced to replicate itself—as in the womb. All the hereditary material comes from the original donor of the cell.

  We induce replication by putting the cell in a culture media made from twenty different amino acids—these make the necessary proteins for the cell to develop and divide. Proteins form the structure of the body and they also make enzymes, which control the body’s chemical reactions. Once the original cell has started to divide in the culture, it is merely a case of providing an artificial womb environment. Although we have special sex cells, the fact is that all our cells contain the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make us the individuals we are. So we can produce an identical twin to the person we took the original cell from—only, with Project Arcadia, there is one very important difference—which you should find fascinating, Bruce.”

  ‘‘You were specifically forbidden to experiment with cloning, Jany. God knows, I detest the WFC bureaucracy, but I agreed with them on that.”

  “Galileo was also forbidden to challenge the ruling assumptions of his time. Keep showing the sequence, Mary.”

  At the next slide, Bruce drew in a sharp breath. Khomich frowned, glancing uneasily at Bruce.

  “That’s right,” said Jany, a slight note of triumph coming into his voice. “Beginning to look like a foetus now. Of course, we have cheated—by now we are adding a variety of growth hormones—this sequence is from one of our earliest attempts. As we became more sophisticated, we hurried the process along by adding cells from different parts of the body. Look—see the heart beginning to beat?”

  “You mean you have actually replicated a living human embryo?”

  “That is simple. Even before I was disciplined, people were making tissue cultures and incubating cell colonies.” Jany laughed. ‘‘They thought that transferring me to plant biology would keep me out of mischief! Now— here is Stage Two. We are now using ordinary photography—notice that our little man is wearing an oxygen mask. In normal terms he has been born—and I want you to note that these photographs are still from the same sequence, still from that first single cell...”

  They were looking at a perfectly normal, naked, well-proportioned adult male!

  The lights went on. Jany thanked the girl. She put the boxes of slides into a cabinet and left the projection room. Jany smiled at their suspicious faces. ‘‘Yes—the sequence was shown in correct order and everything came from one cell.”

  ‘‘That was a fully-developed man! Even if you could do it, a sequence like that would have taken eighteen years at least— ”

  ‘‘So how could I have shown you slides of such an advanced clonjng technique from eighteen years ago?” Jany stood up, his face glowing with triumph. ‘‘Bruce— those slides were all taken between September and November of last year. From single cell to fully-developed adult male in forty-three days! And believe me—we have become a lot more sophisticated since last year!”

  Khomich looked impatiently from Bruce to Jany and then at Bruce again. Bruce stared at the Frenchman, who seemed delighted at his bewilderment.

  ‘‘And that is not even half of it, Bruce,” he said enthusiastically. ‘‘Do you realize that the final sequence of photographs were all life-size?”

  ‘‘Life-size? But they were— ”

  ‘‘Exactly! Why do you think we had to work in total secrecy? That fully-developed male you saw—his name is Carrere, a radio-operator. He is out in the garden at this moment.”

  ‘‘I
t’s the wrong time for jokes, Jany.”

  ‘‘Bruce—did you ever hear about my mini-wheat fiasco in New Mexico? We were using polyploidy and

  growth hormones to produce a bigger wheat—but what did I do? Quite accidentally I grew ears of wheat about twenty times smaller than normal. Instead of a Growth Stimulating Factor, I’d come up with a Growth Inhibiting Factor. Naturally, it was not considered a great triumph to produce micro-wheat with a world food shortage but—” he smiled modestly “—well, I’m well-known as a maverick, although I prefer to regard it as devotion to pure science. I isolated the hormones which produced the Growth Inhibiting Factor, then I evolved the chemical formula for synthesizing the GIF. The miniaturizer you might call it. That was when I got in touch with George Richards—he has always been on the side of pure science against the dictates of bureaucracy. It worked with individual organs—we could produce a functional human liver to any size we wished. We tried it on fish and mice—and then pigs—on a trial and error basis, of course. We had our fair share of monsters at the start— but even I was surprised by what we could produce— micro-fish—complete in every detail! Then mice and pigs. And finally—human beings!”

  “Are you serious, Jany?”

  “Of course! Why else did we have to steal the equipment? Genetical engineering is the single most emotive issue of recent history—but imagine the outcry if we combined identical-twin cloning with miniaturization! We had to go on with it, of course, we had no choice—it is going to be the salvation of the human race!”

  “What is?”Khomich demanded. “Making us all dead bodies in freezing cabinets?”

  Jany was amused by Khomich’s stupidity. “You understand what I have been trying to explain, Professor. Believe me, it works. Once we have a single cell, we can clone identical twin replicas of any person alive on earth. A hybrid computer with an optical monitoring capability is programmed to control the replication—we can’t simply produce a perfectly proportioned micro-man because volume and weight increase or decrease at a ratio of eight times to each doubling or halving of the size. Adjustments have to be made or the muscles would be so