The Nano Flower

by Peter F. Hamilton

  "Yeah, as far as I can tell. At least it's very earnest."

  Now she was close she could see Royan's nose had been eaten away, there were no lips left, and his eyes—she was sure they were missing. The Hexaëmeron had done that, in a moment of fear and panic Royan had said. Could what was virtually a machine intelligence fear and panic? "Keep scanning it, I have a question to ask. I must know if the answer is honest."

  "OK."

  "Was the microbe spliced together, or was it natural?" She held her breath. Had they been deliberately manufactured, set loose on the universe with the intent of conquering?

  "That is a null question," the Hexaëmeron said. "There were no laboratories involved, no instruments nor machines. All that was left alive contracted to this. What I am. The sentience coadunation molecule at the centre of the gene sphere was a product of necessity. Designed, perhaps, though you would call it being driven. There was no free will involved. Primordial life originated as a microbe, as was the first, so is the last. The difference is the genetic codes. Six billion years of history. Do you consider you have the right to extinguish that, Julia Evans?"

  "Nobody should have to decide this," she said, almost to herself. "Not something like this."

  "Anyone who has the ability to decide, will decide. This is inevitable. If you were unable to decide, you would not be here, Event Horizon would not exist in the form it does. There can be no abrogation of your position."

  "Royan?" she appealed.

  His deliquescent face remained devoid of emotion. "You already know the answer, don't you, Snowy? The Hexaëmeron is God's creature. Why it's here, I don't pretend to understand. But I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to decide in your place, I would do anything to spare you this. But I guess this is His test for you."

  She gave Greg a forlorn look.

  He returned a sad smile. "Tell you, Julia; this, you, it's all way out of my league. But the alien is right, if anyone's to decide, it should be you. I'd rather it was you."

  "There is one thing I can add," Rick said quietly. "A third option."

  "Go on."

  "Send it back."

  * * * *

  There were no NN cores to consult. And it had been a long time since she hadn't had a second and third opinion on every topic under the sun. She carefully cancelled the waiting logic matrix in her processor node. Then there was just her, alone.

  Julia made her choice.

  * * * *

  It was a standard personality package, configured to establish control in whatever system it found itself operating in. She had to add a few modifications first.

  When the squirt was complete it checked its own integrity, then began to re-format the command routines of the cellular array it was stored in. This time there was a difference; as well as altering the processing structure's programs, it could change the actual physical nature of the network itself. Protean cells elongated and joined together, forming a complex new topology, their membranes' permeability altered.

  Julia's mentality unfolded into the new neural network. Satisfied she was now in total control of a clump of cells over a metre in diameter she sent a go code to her flesh-and-blood self.

  Memories streamed in, of Peterborough and Wilholm and Event Horizon and the children and Royan; regressing, Grandpa alive, school in Switzerland, Mother and Father—she hadn't thought of them for over a decade, childhood in the desert sandstone warrens. Not just the visual image, but sounds, tastes, smells, textures, raw emotion. She grew from the present back down into the past. Complete.

  Her sensorium was different, three-hundred-and-sixty degrees spherical; optical reception extending from infrared up into high ultra violet; vibration acceptance was so sensitive she could actually hear the big mining machines cutting out New London's second chamber; the magnetic and electromagnetic spectrums were strange; as was the chemical reception. She began to modify cells and compose filter programs. Chemical reception was easy to translate into smell, once she'd tagged the molecular formulae. Magnetic and electromagnetic she translated into black and white, seeing the gigaconductor cell in Greg's Tokarev laser shining brightly. It was the all-directions-at-once panorama which gave her the most trouble; she began to adapt her sensory reception and interpretation routines, enlarging the associated neurone structure. Her attention stopped flicking round nervously, and started to accommodate the whole view.

  "Have you confirmed your operability?" the Hexaëmeron asked.

  "Yes."

  "Very well, Julia Evans, I defer to your authority. This idea goes against every instinct I possess. I am the micro, destined to timeless embrace of the cosmos. This brash voyage goes against nature. Gambling all on one risky flight. What strange, hasty creatures you are."

  "It's just youthful enthusiasm, the inability to resist challenge. We dream, that is our flaw, and our beauty. Your strength is physical, ours lies in conviction of self."

  She felt the Hexaëmeron's consciousness fading into dormancy. Her control routines extended out through the remaining cells as it retreated.

  "Royan, darling? I'm here with you now." She said it without a hint of trepidation; the emotion mechanism still existed, but she had superseded it, becoming the Julia Evans everyone always thought she was. A minor pulse of amusement trickled through the prohibition, and she sent a smile image at him.

  "You sure, Snowy?" The tone was cautiously welcome, sceptical rather than contemptuous.

  "Yes. Watch."

  Cells flowed. A pseudopod distended from her ovoid shell, the tip flattening out. Fingers and a thumb appeared, a human hand took its final shape and gave the three people in the chamber a thumbs-up.

  "All right, Snowy, I believe you."

  * * * *

  She worked in tandem with Royan to transform a section of the cells he commanded into a neural network.

  "Like old times, Snowy. You and me, working like this."

  "Yeah, old times."

  Her internal perception tracked the neural network forming. When it was complete Royan squirted in his personality package.

  "Are you operational?" she asked the mini-entity.

  "Yeah."

  Royan began to download his memories.

  Julia resumed control of the cells Royan had converted into his life-support system, and began to digest the remains of his ruined body. She left the brain until last, a closed-circuit loop supplying it with re-oxygenated blood from a small haematopoiesis saccate.

  "Ready?" Julia asked.

  "Memories intact," Royan said. "More fun to travel than arrive, so let's go go go."

  The protean cells broke his brain apart, gorging on the raw chemicals they released, reproducing as they went. Julia felt round inside herself until there were no more intrusions; then opened a channel to the terminal in the chamber. "You'd better leave now," she told Greg, Rick, and her flesh-and-blood self. "Go down into the cave where you first met the drone, and wait until I've gone past. There may be tekmercs about."

  She watched her flesh-and-blood self quirk her lips in silent acknowledgement. Some of the tiredness seemed to have gone. She was glad, body and mind had been subjected to far too much pressure over the last three days. Almost maxed out.

  "It worked, then," Greg said, his voice had the sluggishness she knew came from a neurohormone hangover.

  "Yes," she said. "The Hexaëmeron won't be coming back."

  "Bon voyage, the pair of you."

  Julia began to send tendrils of herself out into the floor, breaking down and digesting the disseminator plant. Watched Rick, Greg, and her flesh-and-blood self scurry down the connecting passage as a circular bulge rippled out from her base.

  The tendrils' inner core of protean cells absorbed the chemicals that the outer layer had dissolved and processed, fissioning rapidly. Individual tendrils met and merged into a single consumptive wavefront. It reached the chamber walls and rose up hungrily.

  Once the last of the chamber's rubbery strings had been converted, Julia pulled the s
kirt of protean cells back, and began to alter her shape, becoming more pliable. She headed towards the passage, her movement a combination of rolling and slithering. When she reached the entrance she extended a ring of herself that melded with the translucent walls, and began to digest them. She sent a second ring of cells swelling fluidly over the top of the first, then a third. Her main bulk moved forwards, soaking up the engorged rings as she went. More rings were formed and sent on ahead. Specially formatted suckers fastened on to the rock beneath the disseminator plant, and began to leach out various minerals the cells needed.

  By the time she squeezed out of the end of the passage she was a globe over seven metres in diameter, almost touching the hemispherical chamber's apex. Her weight crushed the composite cargo pods into blade-like splinters. She covered the whole chamber in a digestive layer, and moved on into the next passage, pushing a tube of cells ahead of herself as she followed the spiral down. The titanium nuggets in the tumours were ingested and pulverized, the motes held in suspension. She would need all the metal she could get later.

  In the bottom chamber she waited for the new cells to catch up with her, at the same time sending fresh tendrils out into the four remaining passages to suck in still more organic matter.

  She could perceive Greg and her flesh-and-blood self standing at the far end of the passage, consternation on their faces. The three crash team hardliners had taken their Konica rip guns from their armour suits' waist clips.

  "Do we run?" Rick yelled.

  "No," Greg said. "But it'd be a good idea to stand back against the wall when it comes, no messing."

  "It's still her?"

  "Yeah."

  "Jesus."

  "You wanted to come," her flesh-and-blood self said. There was a ripple of light laughter in her voice that had been missing for quite some time. "Insistent, you were."

  Rick grunted in dismay. They flattened themselves against the passage walls.

  Julia's alien body began to coalesce. The chamber wasn't going to be big enough to accommodate her; Royan's disseminator plant had been more extensive than she'd expected -another five of the hemispherical chambers, nearly a kilometre of connecting passageways. She shaped herself into a serpent form a couple of metres in diameter, hardened and roughened her external layer for traction, and surged down the passage.

  "My Lord!" Sinclair shouted. "The Beast! The Beast is come." He fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer. "And when they shall have finished their testimony, the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them."

  "Oh, shut up," Rick said.

  The security hardliners' rip guns were aimed at her in fear as her questing tip slithered past.

  "Down," her flesh-and-blood self ordered in an iron tone. "Put those guns down. It won't touch us."

  Not that it mattered even if they did fire. She could absorb the bolts without any real damage, and take their guns away as any mother would from errant children. Yes, Royan had been right to fear the Hexaëmeron. She regarded the knot of cells that held her lover's slumbering consciousness tenderly. They would be together again one day, and truly free.

  Her tip split into two as it emerged into the catacombs, then those tips branched again. She started to probe the fissures and passages of the fault zone. A tide of cohesive oil penetrating every cranny; some of her extremities were thinner than leaves, barely five cells thick.

  Caves and passages were observed, oppressively miasmatic in the low infrared band. Rock formations revealed their composition and weaknesses; ores were assayed. She watched freshets coursing through the bleak ragged cavities, several thin waterfalls splattering down isolated clefts, their volume visibly decreasing; and guessed at the lake next to the Celestial Apostles' village being breached.

  She started to siphon the water into herself, opening up a plexus of capillaries to distribute it evenly.

  Bodies in muscle-armour suits were lying above the sinking water, jammed into tight rifts, or caught on jutting rock fangs. Little clumps of jetsam bobbed along. In one passage she discovered a dog, its fur badly singed, barbecued flesh peeling away. She sent out a pseudopod, and digested it.

  Suzi was floating face down in a crescent-shaped cave where the water had pooled, long scorch gouges down the back and legs of her armour. Rip gun bolts had gouged molten scars in the rock, glassy beads dribbling down the walls like wax from a candle.

  Julia ingested the water, then pushed a large lump of herself into the cave, inflating it like a bubble until every square centimetre of the rock's surface was covered with a thin skin of cells. Four missiles had detonated, she could taste the bitter chemicals of the warheads imprinted on the walls. Minute particles of metalloceramic were detectable, along with composite and plastic fragments. Leol Reiger had been hit.

  She retracted her far-flung body from the more distant sections of the fault zone, and concentrated on examining the area around Suzi's cave.

  Footsteps betrayed him, she could hear the crash team blundering about in and around the village cave, but discrimination procedures quickly eliminated them. She heard it then, a monotonous clumping, one foot moving slowly, coming down hard.

  She infiltrated the passage behind him, sprouting exploratory tentacles into the wall cracks. They discovered a labyrinth of narrow chinks behind the surface, dislodged ore veins, rock and metal torn apart. Her body oozed in, filling every cranny. The leading edges passed round him in silence, slithering on ahead. Ten metres in front of him, she seeped back out into the passage, forming a solid clot like cold brimstone.

  The armour suit was limping, left leg grating loudly at each movement. One infrared helmet beam shone weakly ahead, swaying from side to side. Two of the thermal dump panels on his back were dead, the third glowed strongly in the infrared. Her magnetic-sensitive cells picked up shivers of energy from the muscle bands. Air filter intakes on the helmet growled asthmatically.

  Leol Reiger stopped, his rip gun raised to point at the smooth protoplasm barrier. Julia sculpted a relief of her own face, a metre high, and extended it out of the integument. A green laser fan from the suit's shoulder sensor pod swept over her.

  Julia opened her mouth, and used the cells inside as a diaphragm. "I warned you before, Mr. Reiger, I would not forget you."

  Leol Reiger's suit speaker clicked on. "Julia Evans. Gotta hand it to you, this is some stunt. You wanna deal?"

  "No. I want you to know it was me."

  "Yeah? Then you'd better be good, rich bitch, you'd better be flicking supreme. Because I told you once already, the only way out now is you and me."

  "Yes, that you did."

  Leol Reiger fired, walking forwards. Rip gun bolts tore into her outsize face, clawing it to cinders. Steam and carbon particles spewed back at him as cells died in their hundreds of billions.

  Julia started to expand her cells, filling the cavities around the passage. Osmosis impelled the water through her, bloating every capillary. She felt it as a peristaltic contraction, muscles straining at their limit. The rock screeched in agony as hydrostatic pressure began to close the passage. A violent shudder threw Leol Reiger to his knees. The rip gun clattered away. He rolled on to his back, and stuck his arms up, pushing against the roof as it descended. The metalloceramic armour buckled.

  Julia kept on squeezing long after it was necessary, wringing every wisp of air out of the compacted rock.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Greg pressed himself against the rough surface of the passage wall as the alien behemoth squirmed past. He could almost believe neurohormone abuse had sprained his synapses into hallucinosis, abandoning him in a universe of the mind's whimsy. In a way he wished it were true, that would mean the alien wasn't real.

  Two metres in diameter, a skin like coarse leather, coloured sable-black, gruesomely supple, and possessing more inertia than a rampant dinosaur. Shadowform thought currents purled along its length, distorted human idiosyncrasies, anything bu
t reassuring in their metamorphosis. Human without humanity.

  "A serpent of the night," Sinclair cried. "Satan incarnate."

  Strong eddies of air whipped past Greg's face, bringing a scent of corruption, of ripe fruit mouldering on branches. He coughed, eyelids blinking against the acridity.

  "Hail Mary, for all me sins I beg your forgiveness," Sinclair said. His eyes were right shut.

  "It won't hurt you," Julia said, her voice raised above the rasp of alien skin slithering over rock. Her thought currents had a self-assured tranquillity Greg envied.

  "Not this," Sinclair cried. "I didn't want this. You've let loose the beast. I wanted an end to madness, the start of justice."

  "It's harmless," Rick said. "Believe me. That's what we've done, neutered it. You'll never see it again."

  Sinclair opened one eye, and shivered.

  Greg wondered just how big the alien was now. There must have been a lot of disseminator plant to give it this much bulk.

  "Is it an angel or a demon?" Sinclair asked.

  "Neither," said Julia. "It's hope. A very noble sort of hope."

  "For who?"

  "Maybe a lot of people. The whole Earth is going to be given proof we're not alone in the galaxy, and never have been. They'll see it written in the sky tonight. And God knows this world deserves to be touched with wonder."

  "You're a religious woman, Miss Julia?"

  "Yes, I suppose I am."

  The tail of the alien rushed by. Swallowed by the darkness in seconds. Greg hadn't really appreciated how fast the bloody thing was moving. Muscles unknotted, his legs were shaking.

  Circles of light from the helmet spots on the hardliners' suits shone on the opposite wall. He stepped out into the middle of the passage. The alien presence was dwindling, a dawn-washed star at the back of his mind. Julia was staring into the gloom after it.

  "Regrets?" he asked.

  "Not one. It was all I could do."

  He put his arm round her shoulder, and gave her a little hug. Doubts were still cluttering the peripheries of her mind.