Assemblers of Infinity

by Kevin J. Anderson

  "No," Erika said. Her green-brown eyes had widened and her voice dropped to an awed whisper. "It means they've stopped. All of the nanocritters. They're shut down."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "No more activity. They switched themselves off." She turned to the image on Newellen's holotank. "And that means they must be finished! The structure at Daedalus is completed. Whatever it is."

  Albert Fukumitsu's voice broke in from Earth, agitated. "Columbus, what the hell is going on up there? Should I contact Director McConnell?"

  Chu waved a hand at the back. "Turn those clowns off so I can think."

  Newellen grinned and spoke into the link, "Ah, having some trouble up here, Mission Control. We'll have to deadstart the link." He switched off communications with Earth.

  Chu stepped up to the holotank. He stared at it for a long time.

  "Launch another one of Newellen's supercameras. I want to see the regolith close up. If the nanomachines have indeed shut down, then the camera will keep broadcasting images." He scratched his dark hair. "This way we can see exactly what those aliens are up to over there."

  Three cubes displayed test-pattern images from the incoming supercamera; tags identifying them as IR, VISIBLE, and UV glowed beneath each of the respective cubes. After a splash of static as the images reassessed themselves, they began to show high-resolution micrographs of regolith grains.

  Nothing else.

  "Nothing. Just plain nothing," said Newellen. He stared intently at the three cubes.

  The camera's sampling end had penetrated several meters into the regolith; it should have been swarming with the nanomachines that had taken apart Waite, his companions, and their hopper. Instead, they saw only regolith.

  The view from the probe's upper stereochips looked out over the crater from a canted angle. The glistening alien structure stood waiting.

  "But why now?" Chu swung around in his chair. "It doesn't make any sense."

  Newellen sat up straighter. "Do you think they might have caught on that we're going to blow the hell out of them? Maybe they're holding their breath to see what we'll do. Maybe they're massing right now to take out the nukes."

  Salito snorted. "They would have shown up in the IR."

  "It had to happen," Erika said. "When they're finished with the preprogrammed construction, they would have to shut off."

  Again, silence. The images in the holotank hadn't changed. If anything, the IR cube had grown darker, less patchy.

  "One minute." announced Newellen.

  Erika moved away from Jason and approached the holotank. She stood next to Chu and with her finger followed the outline of the distant structure in the holotank.

  Jason watched her for a moment, then said, "Okay, what now?"

  "Cut it," said Chu. "We'd better decide fast what we should do --

  otherwise the Agency is going to make up our minds for us. They'll get spooked and push the button."

  Erika's voice came out stronger than the murmuring comments in the control center. "There's something we have to do. Something we can finally do.

  It's been impossible before."

  Jason saw that all eyes in the control center had turned to her. Even Bernard Chu watched her with eyebrows raised, waiting.

  Erika spoke as if she were saying the most obvious thing in the world.

  "We have to go out there in person. We can finally see what this thing really is."

  --------

  CHAPTER 34

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Celeste woke up screaming.

  She couldn't breathe. The sweat-drenched sheets tangled around her like ghostly assailants trying to hold her down and rape her.

  Chuck and Yeager leaped off the bed and started barking, as if to protect her from some unseen threat. The bed rocked as they sniffed and placed their paws on the mattress, craning their heads to find the enemy that had somehow come into the house without them noticing.

  Beside Celeste, Simon Pritchard sat up wide eyed and blinking. He couldn't seem to form words after his startled awakening. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him. "Shhh," he said.

  Celeste shivered, fighting back the visions clamoring out of her subconscious. She nestled back against Pritchard's chest, feeling the warmth of his body, the press of his skin, the strength of his arms as he held onto her.

  Her nightmare was like a shadow of something terrible unleashed across the Earth, so great that it would swallow up the stars. Another facet of the dream, bright light and blinding cold. Someone had let the demon out of the bottle, or someone would. Celeste felt tiny and weak, smothered by the dreaded foreknowledge.

  She had no idea how she could stop something so immense.

  "It's okay," Pritchard whispered in her ear. He gripped her arms, kissed the back of her shoulder.

  She couldn't drive the blackness of terror from her mind. Her heart pounded, trying to catch up to her panic. She knew her breathing had stopped during the vision -- she had barely survived the nightmare.

  She squirmed out of Pritchard's grasp, reluctant to leave his encircling arms but needing something to wash down the screams in her throat.

  Trembling, she gulped some lukewarm water from the glass on the bedside table.

  Beside the bed, the black lab and the German shepherd both whined, looking at her anxiously to make certain everything was all right. Celeste squeezed her eyes shut to stop another gush of panic. No, it wouldn't be all right. Nothing would ever be all right again.

  Unless she could do something to stop it. She had failed many times to interpret her dreams correctly -- but she had succeeded with the Grissom. This time, she must get it right.

  Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away, keeping her back turned to Pritchard. He remained sitting behind her, baffled and helpless, unaware of what she needed him to do.

  Reaching out, she let the two dogs lick her fingers, reassuring them.

  Her gut-level reaction kept telling her to run. But Celeste McConnell, Director of the United Space Agency, could not surrender without a fight. Her rare moments of peace shattered so quickly, so easily.

  She and Simon Pritchard had intended to have a few quiet hours to themselves after weeks of unrelenting scrutiny and too little sleep. They had enjoyed a quick candlelight dinner of take-out barbecue ribs and cole slaw, eaten in the screened-in porch of her house. When she had excused herself and returned a few moments later wearing a new glittersilk negligee, Pritchard had laughed before standing up to wrap his arms around her, pushing his hips against hers.

  When they made love on the floor, listening to the hum of thousands of insects outside, Celeste could taste the spicy barbecue sauce on Pritchard's lips.

  Afterward, lethargic, she had shut off all the household communication systems before leading Pritchard to the bedroom. Just to get some peace, some much-needed sleep. The two of them deserved that much of an escape. They had kissed for a while, holding each other's sweat-slick bodies in the humid air before drifting off to quiet dreams.

  And nightmares. A thousand times worse than the Grissom dream, worse than her feelings of dread when an accident was about to happen. Whatever was now unfolding would shake the entire world.

  Pritchard tried to comfort her again. He squeezed her shoulders, massaging her neck and her back. Normally, she would have purred with contentment at his touch, but now the muscles felt as if they might snap rather than relax. She had not turned to look at him in nearly a full minute.

  "It's okay," he said again. "It's just a nightmare."

  "No," she said in a brittle voice. Pritchard did not understand, nor would he. How could she ever explain her dreams? "No, it isn't 'just' a nightmare, Simon. Never 'just' a nightmare."

  Without waiting for him to respond, Celeste went into the living room.

  The fireplace sat black and cold. In the screened-in porch, the table where they had eaten lay strewn with smeared napkins.

  On the main screen in th
e den, an insistent red message light flashed.

  Though it did not surprise her, seeing the light filled her with dread. This was it. Last time, the communication had been Bernard Chu telling her of the contamination on the Collins. This time the nightmare had been infinitely worse.

  She heard the rustle of a robe as Pritchard came up behind her, still perplexed. With him there, she spoke to the receiver. "Play message." She felt her anxiety surge as the image formed.

  Albert Fukumitsu, the manager of local Mission Control, stared out at her, appearing both exhausted and annoyed. His black hair looked even shaggier than usual. He sighed and pursed his lips in a frown before speaking.

  "Director McConnell, I wish I could find you. I've tried your office, your vehicle phone, now home." He sighed.

  "I hope you get my messages. You really should be here." Behind him several technicians in the nerve center were busy, more agitated than they should have been at such a dead hour. She could see spacesuited figures on the holoscreens in the background, but she knew of no special EVA activities on the schedule.

  "The alien nanomachines at Daedalus site have shut down. All at once.

  Whatever that alien construction is, it must be completed, ready to go. Jason Dvorak and Erika Trace have taken Columbus's last hopper over there. You really should be here, Director McConnell. The whole world is watching. Please get in touch with me as soon as possible." He signed off.

  In the dim room, Celeste stood naked and shivering. Everything had gone cold within her body. Outside, in the thick forests overlooking the Potomac, she could hear the buzzing of insects, who seemed to be whispering to each other about the impending end of the world.

  The two dogs paced the den, bumping her legs in an effort to get a casual pat from her. Celeste felt sick with fear. The pieces were starting to fall into place.

  The Daedalus construction was complete. Any moment now it would fulfill its purpose -- or Dvorak and Trace would trigger something. Either way, all of humanity was threatened.

  "This is fantastic," Pritchard said, startling her. She turned and saw his eyes wide with childlike wonder. "Now we can finally see what's out there."

  For a moment, Celeste wanted to scream at him for being so stupid. How could he express delight and curiosity when the construction might be a planetary-sized weapon that could crack Earth open to the core? She controlled herself and martialed her thoughts. If she was going to have a chance at saving humanity, she would have to call on every scrap of ability she possessed.

  "Simon," she said, turning to him, "this is a crisis. I need you now more than ever. Get dressed. You'd better make it your dress uniform. The whole world is watching, as Albert said. We have to make this good." She checked the time of Fukumitsu's message and glanced at the chronometer on the wall. "Damn it all to hell! Why couldn't I have more time?"

  She glared at Pritchard who still stood in his robe, wide awake but stunned. "Simon!" She hustled him back to the bedroom, to his clothes. "We've got to stop them before they destroy all of us!"

  --------

  CHAPTER 35

  DAEDALUS CRATER

  "You two going to be all right staying in the hopper?" Jason finished checking the chest panel of his spacesuit. He flexed his gloves before looking up to Bryan Zimmerman and Cyndi Salito by the cramped controls.

  "Give me a break," grinned Cyndi. "Right Zed?"

  Zimmerman grunted. He didn't appear interested in anything except disabling the Agency's coded radio links with the nuclear weapons encircling the crater. He tried to key in a hack that would scramble the detonation sequence.

  As they looked at the towering alien superstructures, Jason felt like kicking himself for agreeing to place the ring of warheads -- it had seemed like a safe option at the time, a comforting defense against the unknown. But now he and three others were sitting ducks if someone back on Earth got itchy fingers.

  Not to mention the threat from the supposedly dormant nanomachines inside the hot zone. They were about to go trudging across the regolith where Waite, Snow, and Lasserman had gotten chewed to pieces.

  The hopper's IR sensors were hooked up to alarms designed to yammer like crazy if they detected any telltale waste heat indicating a surge in nanotech activity. Inside the helmets, Bitchin' Betsy chips would squawk at them to get out of there.

  Jason glanced at Erika. "About ready to go?"

  She smoothed back the headcap that held her sandy hair out of her eyes.

  "Time's a'wasting." She turned to the hopper's airlock. "You're holding up my Nobel Prize."

  Jason picked up his helmet to follow her. "We'll keep in contact, Cyndi. Hey Zed, any luck with the links to the nukes?"

  "Not yet," Zimmerman said. "They're pretty damn safeguarded."

  Jason tried to squelch his panic. "Keep trying. If there's any way you can cripple the detonation links -- "

  "He's trying the best he can," said Cyndi. "We've got just as much incentive to stop those things from going off." She leaned over and kissed Jason on the cheek. "Be careful out there." She spoke softly and threw a glance at Erika. "And take care of her, too. She's good for you."

  "Thanks." Was his attraction to Erika so obvious? Of course it was.

  After sealing his helmet, Jason squeezed into the airlock with Erika.

  When the pressure began to drop, his suit stiffened as the trapped air redistributed itself to push against the vacuum, like a thousand tiny palms.

  Emerging from the hopper, they climbed down the ladder. Stars burned in the lunar sky, though it was Farside's daytime. As soon as they touched the crumbly ground, Jason could see the fine dust kicked up by their landing.

  Outcroppings of lava rocks were draped on the crater wall, highlighting the access road Waite had taken in his rover, before anyone had known of the alien construction. In the distance, sprawled across the flat pan of the crater like a madman's twisted glass sculpture, the Daedalus artifact stood out against the backdrop of space.

  Knock knock. Anybody home?

  Jason bumped his chin mike and spoke to Erika. "Get as many pictures as you can with the additional stereochips. Keep them interested Earthside."

  Erika finished taking a panoramic shot of Daedalus crater and the disassembled portion of the VLF array. The gaping pit beneath the giant weblike struts looked bottomless.

  Beside the hopper, the inflatable lunar rover unfolded and swelled to size. Jason scanned the rover's controls as his own breathing echoed inside his helmet. He was reminded of snorkeling on the reefs in Hawaii. Only this time there wouldn't be pretty fish to see -- only dormant Disassemblers ready to switch to new, more destructive programming.

  Three video screens with touch-driven menus took up most of the control panel. Powering every system on, Jason brought up the forward-looking IR

  sensor as well as the surface-scanning radar to warn of obstacles washed out by the glare of sunlight.

  On another display screen he brought up a digitized map of the construction. The whole crater had been well mapped out by now, watched almost daily as the alien complex grew in size. Inside the hot zone plunged a deep pit from which rose the main arches of the structure. Low-slung objects that resembled buildings lay all around the edge. Nine causeways -- roads? --

  connected the buildings to the area outside the hole.

  With his eyes on the map, Jason traced a path to the pit, then to an access way that might allow them to enter the complex. The printout gave a running estimate of the probable material strength of the construction.

  Nanomachines locking crystals together one molecule at a time could create substances with enormously greater flexibility and strength than even the best zero-G materials Jason himself had used in his Earthbound architectural designs.

  "Well, are we gonna get going?" Erika asked.

  Jason stopped reviewing the map. "Right now." He brought the rover up to its maximum speed. They approached the Daedalus artifact.

  Cyndi's voice came over the radio. "You'll h
it the hot zone in about seventy seconds."

  "Former hot zone," Jason corrected.

  Erika broke in, "Still no activity?"

  "You'd be the first to know," said Cyndi. She clicked her mike.

  "Thanks," said Jason. Behind her unreflectorized faceplate. Erika looked scared, but amazed to be setting foot in the place she had studied for so long.

  Jason kept his attention riveted to the blasted ground in front of him.

  The crater floor was smooth, and even at the rover's speed, there was little jarring. Somewhere beneath the dust, uncountable millions of nanocritters had been swarming only hours ago. He hoped they would remain sleeping. The image of Trevor Waite dissolving kept replaying itself in his mind.

  He glanced at the IR scope in front of him and saw no activity.

  Newellen's supercamera was still transmitting in perfect health. As they trundled along the access road, the radar scan showed no obstacles bigger than five centimeters -- except for the artifact.

  "Ten seconds."

  Jason looked to Erika. She stared straight ahead, intently watching the alien artifact grow closer.

  Cyndi said, "Congratulations, guys. Let me be the first to welcome you to nanotech neighborhood. Please keep your seatbelts fastened until the Moon has come to a full and complete stop."

  "Dr. Salito, please restrain your sense of humor," Bernard Chu's voice broke in through the suit radio, reminding them that all of the Moonbase, and Agency Mission Control too, were watching every move they made.

  "Roger, sir," clicked Cyndi.

  Oh well, Jason thought. This isn't supposed to be fun anyway. Another minute or so and they would be at the rim of the pit. Jason clenched the steering controls, ignoring how the gloves bit into his fingers.

  Cyndi's voice came over the radio. "Careful you don't go flying over the edge, Jase. No safety rails, you know."

  Jason pulled back on the throttle and paid more attention to the radar images on the flatscreen. The rover slowed to a more reasonable fifteen klicks. Jason decided to get in as much sightseeing as he could -- this was one of the biggest firsts in the history of humankind.

  The radar screen turned black at the edge, showing the rim of the nanocritter-excavated hole. Jason looked out over the horizon, and suddenly the hole grew enormous in front of them.