His emotions warred within him, and the intensity frightened him. He had always been calm, too calm sometimes according to his wife Sinda.
Why had the Sim-Mars sterilization precautions not been sufficient?
What if the ever-present dust on the lunar surface was itself a vector, transporting alien automata from one place to another? And what did it matter how they had gotten loose? The question of what to do about the infestation remained.
Parvu felt guilty for having sent her to the Moon, for pushing her into an assignment she did not want. He had felt confident and proud of Erika, but now she would never be able to come home ... if she managed to survive the contamination at all.
As he paced inside the living area, listening to the Antarctic storm outside, Parvu turned his anger toward Celeste McConnell for having given Erika inadequate facilities to work with, not enough assistants, an unproven lab and primitive equipment for sophisticated work. And now no one else would be coming to help her.
But most of all he turned his confused anger on the faceless aliens themselves who had the gall to indiscriminately fire their destructive mechanisms across the Galaxy -- without regard to the ecosystems they might disturb, to the lives they might ruin. Like Erika's.
Shuffling around his living quarters in his slippers, Parvu stared at the stockpile of freeze-dried food, but nothing looked appetizing. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten or slept. He needed to make sure he had fed the white rats recently. In the perpetual darkness of Antarctic night, it was difficult to keep a routine. Especially alone.
He wondered if he should go back out to the lab dome, to study the prototype specimens in the nanocore again. Or the inert alien automata Kent Woodward had scooped up.
Parvu had found a total of twelve specimens in the remaining snowpack samples. All twelve were dormant. He hadn't the slightest idea what had happened to switch them off.
As he pondered, he made the connection between the inert automata he had found in the snow and the dormant machines in Erika's bloodstream. Why had they shut down -- especially those that had been taken from the Daedalus array on the Moon? Those automata had already proven themselves to be exceptionally active -- and destructive.
What had Erika done to deactivate them, if indeed she had done anything? Parvu had gone over her logs, all the experiments she had accomplished. What could possibly be in common between Erika's blood and Antarctic snow? How had she managed not to be destroyed, when the automata had already proven their threat by annihilating three people on the Farside?
He paced the room. Back in his own quarters, he changed the CD, sifting through his stacks to select better "thinking music." On the walls, his videoloops of family members still went through their motions, maddeningly reminding him of happier times.
Come on, think! There had to be something there, some small similarity. Why was it that Erika had been so much luckier than the three astronauts who had been killed....
Then it occurred to Parvu that the automata had not directly killed the three people on the Farside of the Moon. The tiny machines had merely begun to disassemble the pressurized hopper, Waite and Snow's spacesuits. Explosive decompression had done the rest. What would have happened if the automata had actually reached the living bodies of the three astronauts? Would they have shut themselves down, just as they seemed to have done in Erika's bloodstream, and in the Antarctic snow?
Was it something to do with living things..._organic_ material?
Antarctica seemed about as dead as anyplace on the Moon. In the center of the continent, across the vast wasteland, it was indeed the most sterile place on Earth. But Parvu remembered reading something about the failed search for life on Mars from the Viking probes, how the soil tests had showed little activity
-- and how a similar test performed in the most barren Antarctic core sample would have gone off like firecrackers. Even here, in this inhospitable climate, Earth had enough bacteria and leftover organic material that the automata could not have gone far without bumping into some signs of life.
He drew in a quick breath. Had the aliens perhaps included a fail-safe system that caused the self-replicating machines to terminate their programming if they encountered life? Parvu frowned. Aliens with a conscience? That changed everything.
He thought about contacting the United Space Agency, telling them that it was no use quarantining the Moon, because the nanomachines had already reached Earth. Humans would not be able to stop them from doing whatever they had been programmed to do, and so it made no sense to keep Erika up there as a hostage. They might just as well let her come back home so she could work with him here to solve the problem!
But he did not want to tell McConnell about his discovery. Not yet. Her reactionary tactics -- such as ordering the destruction of the Collins --
frightened him. What would she do upon learning that automata had landed on Earth? What would the rest of the population do? Already, signs of panic manifested themselves across the world, fear of the invisible enemy approaching too closely. The terror would only increase once people learned that the enemy was already here, that it was already too late.
At MIT, that egotist Taylor had refused to go to work for a week and he had assigned all his grad students to different duties. Maia Compton-Reasor had spent money out of her own pocket to hire security guards around her labs at Stanford.
The contamination of the moonbase had already proven that research precautions were not sufficient against such sophisticated automata. Parvu could never be completely assured of his own safety, no matter how many preventive steps he might take. Certainly, no one would ever come to work with him now. He wondered how long it would take before radical activists came plodding across the snowpack to wave signs around in front of the NIL -- or perhaps they would do more damage than that.
Soon, Parvu would probably receive orders to shut down his work in Antarctica and come home -- after obliterating the viable prototypes in the nanocore. It would be such a waste, after their tremendous success.
He didn't have much time. Erika didn't have much time. Perhaps, the Earth didn't have much time. But he had to do something to help Erika first, to find a way to get rid of the mechanical organisms in her bloodstream. The image of her dissolving into a disassembled pool of fluids and protoplasm made him wince. He stumbled toward the double airlock doors. He had to get back into the lab.
Parvu had thirteen specimens of the dormant alien automata to work with. And he had only one tool with which to study them.
His own prototype assemblers had been tremendous successes in their own small way. They had been designed to study samples for microstructure, to disassemble and analyze test objects, and to transmit information back out to the nanocore's collating computers. He would let them study the inert alien machines. There was no telling what they might find.
Somehow it seemed fitting. He would use his own clumsy prototypes to study those far more efficient ones.
Suddenly, it seemed brash to him, exciting. But he would be doing it for Erika. It was his only hope. And besides, what was the NIL for -- with all its drastic containment precautions -- if not risky work like this?
He increased the volume on Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" and went to dress for the clean-room. As the music swept him up and away into imaginary places, he thought it appropriate for the wonderland he might now be encountering.
He could see the nanocore pillar in the center of the lab. The nutrient solution was murky from the population of self-replicating prototypes he had been testing for weeks. Now he was going to introduce them to something much more sophisticated.
He only prayed he would not concoct some sort of monstrous changeling.
--------
CHAPTER 18
MOONBASE COLUMBUS
Jason Dvorak watched the last evacuee from the Collins struggle through the moonbase airlock. Though the lunar gravity was only one sixth of Earth normal, it seemed overpowering to the crewmembers who had s
pent the last four months in zero-G. Normally all personnel would have been gradually acclimated for a return to a gravity environment, but the nanotech infestation had not allowed any time for that.
Now, in the Columbus receiving area, all 17 evacuees cycled through the electrostatic dust-suppression unit as they entered the base. Lunar dust hung in the air, and the filtration system couldn't cleanse the receiving complex fast enough. Everyone began coughing as soon as their helmets came off. As one of the first to be processed, Bernard Chu stood silently beside Jason like a conquering hero returning to reclaim the land that was rightfully his.
But the matter of Erika Trace burned foremost in Jason's mind. The sandy-haired young woman had seemed to light up Columbus when she had first appeared ... what, two weeks ago? She was so fresh, so nervous, so out of place among the other crewmembers. Her youth and naivete had reminded everyone of normal life back on Earth. Something about Erika had hinted at the tourists and adventure seekers that were to come when the moonbase became a full-fledged outpost. Her attitude was a welcome change to the matter-of-fact professionalism that permeated the colony.
But this fresh-faced woman had brought the terrible nanotech infestation right into their homes. Through her incompetence, she had cut them off from any possibility of returning to Earth.
They would probably all be dead in a few days, because of her mistake.
Jason would never again see his children. He would never learn exactly what the Daedalus construction was meant to represent. He felt like a jackrabbit on the road at night, frozen by approaching headlights.
How many centuries had it taken humans to reach the Moon? To establish a precarious toe-hold on a bit of lunar rock that still demanded the utmost of combined technology for simple survival? Yet the whole effort -- billions of dollars, trillions of rubles and yen -- were now wasted because of an alien infection caused by what must have been a moment of carelessness on the part of this young woman.
Watching Erika as she struggled out of her spacesuit in the receiving dock, Jason felt anger well up inside. He had liked her a lot, but now his jaw involuntarily tightened. She had ruined everything for them.
But yet --
What did they have to gain by lynching Erika Trace?
Jason knew deep down that it was not her fault. She hadn't done anything not demanded of her by Director McConnell. Erika had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Erika had never wanted to come up in the first place. But Jason couldn't bring himself to transfer the blame completely, not now. He had to have a scapegoat, someone that he could shake a finger at, didn't he? For a disaster of this magnitude!
Everyone else felt the same way, from the grumbling he had heard in the tunnels. He wondered who would get Erika first -- the alien nanomachines or the angry moonbase inhabitants.
The last evacuee stumbled into the airlock. After removing her helmet, the woman bent over and started coughing from the floating dust. Newellen squeezed through the lock behind her.
The dust shield around Newellen's mouth looked like a button on an oversized clown, but at least it kept him from coughing like the others. When he spoke to Jason, the filter muffled his voice. "Have you heard the word from Earth? We didn't catch the latest on the riots."
"Riots?" Jason lifted an eyebrow. With all that was going on, who would think to listen in on any of the Earth channels? "We've only kept in contact with the Agency the last few days, and they didn't mention anything like that."
Newellen rolled his eyes. "Surprise, surprise."
"What is going on, Big Darry?" asked Chu. Jason wondered if McConnell would give Chu his command back ... and if he himself really cared.
Newellen rubbed his hands along his coveralls, then snorted as none of the dust went away. He looked at Jason, then Chu. "Well, since nothing's left of the Collins, I trained the directional antenna back to Earth, picked up the newsnet broadcasts relayed up to geosynchronous sats. It was a little weak, but I'm sure we could pick up the sidelobes here -- "
"The news, Big Daddy," said Jason in exasperation. "What's going on?"
"You mean the riots?"
"Yes, Lon."
"Why didn't you ask? Earth seems to be going absolutely apeshit --
marches, riots, protests, all that type of thing."
Jason turned to Chu. "Did you hear anything about this before you abandoned the Collins?"
Chu merely shrugged. "We had an open line to the Space Agency, but they indicated nothing for us to worry about. Of course, they didn't bother to consult me about blowing up my station either. 'We can never afford to have anyone set foot on the Collins again,' Celeste says. She made damn sure of that!"
Jason looked around. The evacuees had been ushered off to the infirmary for checkups and monitoring. Jason didn't know how they were going to fit seventeen more people into the limited quarters; crowding would make tensions rise even higher, but there were going to be some mighty close friends before this was over. If anybody survived.
Chu nodded in the direction of the control center. His face looked flat and tight, his skin stretched like a drumhead over his cheekbones. "Let us find out what is going on. If Celeste is feeling a great deal of pressure. She may decide to do something ... drastic."
As they started for the control center, Chu held out a hand to steady himself against the wall, but once he got his step, he seemed to be all right.
They passed through two airlocks and a series of interconnecting tunnels through the buried modules to reach the domed control center. The tunnels were constructed of inflatable foil, made rigid by an interlocking agent.
Once in the control center, Jason called to Cyndi Salito, sitting at her duty station. "Anything unusual over the link to the Agency?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary," she said. Salito had been scheduled to go home on the next rotation of crewmembers to Earth; now she would be stranded on Columbus with the rest of them.
"No news flashes, public unrest?"
"Should there be?"
Chu stepped up. "Have you been monitoring anything other than the Agency channels?"
"Just listening in on Agency Select." The semi-official channel carried news items, human interest stories, and some of the more popular shows that highlighted the United Space Agency's efforts. Jason knew that the crewmen didn't have the time or inclination to call up and pay for commercial video, and the Select channel normally did an outstanding job of distilling what was important out of the hundreds of drivel newsnets. It was generally hard to pick up the commercial nets anyway with sufficient resolution to make them worth watching.
"I suggest we try some other frequency. Tune in one of the commercial channels," Chu said to Salito.
Jason felt embarrassed to be caught so much off guard in front of his predecessor. He had never thought the Select newsnet would turn out to be a one-way propaganda filter.
Seconds later the talking head of one of the commercial networks appeared in a cube, worms of purple and gray static lacing through his 3-D
image. "Locked on," said Newellen. Standing next to Salito's station, he munched on a sandwich, probably retrieved from a hiding place in the control center.
" -- since the startling video transmission of astronauts dissolving on the Farside of the Moon and the discovery of an enormous alien construction being built there. The United Space Agency still vehemently denies that the phenomenon has spread to anywhere else on the lunar surface."
The announcer's head faded out to show footage from one of the flyovers of the growing Daedalus construction, looking like a gigantic diamond water lily sprawling across the crater floor.
"We switch now to Julia Falbring, our science correspondent, who is with Dr. Maia Compton-Reasor, a prominent researcher in nanotechnology at Stanford University in California. Julia?"
"Thank you, Tom." The image resolved to show a curvaceous blond.
Besides the fact that she wore a minimum of clothing, Julia Falbring's skin, hair, and even voice were so perfect J
ason thought she must be a computer-generated sim-person, living only in some cyberworld.
"Here at Stanford, Dr. Compton-Reasor heads a group of researchers at the cutting edge of technology." A squat black woman appeared beside her; red-rimmed glasses slid down her nose.
Jason found his mind wandering as the holotank filled with an artist's conception of a tiny molecular construct. He looked around. The control center was crowded with more than the normal number of people. Most of the Collins crew would still be checking through the infirmary.
Erika was not among those who had come to the control center, though she would not have been much affected by the change in gravity. He wondered if she would hide herself away at the Sim-Mars lab again, to keep working with the nanomachine specimens. Jason considered calling her to his office, but thought better of it. If he had been responsible for infecting the crew, he'd want to hide as well. Jason turned back to the holotank and the commercial newscaster.
" -- and with that in mind, I think we all have something to ponder, Tom."
"Thank you, Julia." The newscaster swung around in his chair as a corner camera took the shot from another angle. "And finally, we have live in our studio Major General Simon Pritchard, Special Assistant to the Director of the United Space Agency. General?"
"Thank you, Tom." The view drew back to encompass the features of General Pritchard. He sat back in his seat, relaxed, with one leg crossed over the other. His Air Force uniform looked immaculate. It was plain, blue, and not overladen with the medals or emblems so popular with the other military services. Jason remembered Pritchard as the man who had been with Director McConnell when Columbus sent the first telepresence explorer to Daedalus.
"General, just how seriously is the Agency taking this threat of alien technology? We've just seen through our special-effects studios how an entire planet might be devoured if nanotechnology is allowed to run rampant. Is there anything we can do?"
"Well, first of all, Tom, we're not sure that this is alien
Assemblers of Infinity Page 16