Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor

by Philip Bosshardt

CHAPTER 1

  "Kinsman held aloof, brother was forsaken by brother, oftentimes husband by wife; nay, what is more, and scarcely to be believed, fathers and mothers were found to abandon their own children to their fate, untended, unvisited as if they had been strangers."

  Boccacio

  Preface to the Decameron

  Ngongolo Hills, Kenya

  Near the village of Uliba

  August 18, 2062

  Midday

  No question about it, Johnny Winger was the best code and stick man 1st Nanospace Battalion had ever seen. He was a natural about it, like he'd been born to the interface controls, able to see and anticipate things at indescribably tiny scales in a way that was almost eerie. As a platoon leader in 1st Nano, Lieutenant Winger was a short timer; he'd been in the billet less than six months. Which was probably just as well. With Major Kraft having named him to lead the ANAD Detachment on a recon of HNRIV's home territory in Kenya, Winger had enough to deal with.

  He didn't need any static from jealous colleagues like Dana Tallant and Nathan Caden.

  Quantum Corps' hyperjet Charioteer touched down at Nairobi's airport a little after noon local time, kissing the tarmac with a hard bump after a grueling eight-thousand mile, three-hour flight from Table Top. From the top of the ramp, Winger found the capital of Kenya a sprawling, dun-colored metropolis perched on endless miles of grassland and scrub bush. Though the city was only a hundred and fifty miles south of the Equator, the air was surprisingly cool and dry. Through distant haze, snow-capped mountains rimmed the horizon.

  Kilimanjaro is somewhere out there, Winger remembered from the maps. But there was no time for sightseeing.

  "Fall out!" he yelled. "Get the pallets unlocked and rolled out. Lifters'll be here at 1350 hours."

  The ANAD Detachment was a bastard creation on anybody's organization chart, but Kraft had pulled all the talents and ratings a Level 1 mission would need and Winger was glad of it. As the team floated their pallets of equipment out of Charioteer and stacked them for loading on the lifters that Quantum Corps Central had staged down from Balzano, Italy, Winger silently inventoried the team and their gear.

  First were the IC's, interface controllers to the uninformed. IC's were the Detachment's 'code and stick' men, responsible for programming the ANAD mechanisms, or 'driving' the master replicant if the situation called for it.

  Next were the CEC's. That stood for Containerization and Environmental Control. The CEC's did service and support for the TinyTowns that ANADs traveled in, from one theater to another. And you couldn't forget the CQE's, Communications and Quantum Engineering. CQE's were the Mr. Fixits of the detachment. They had responsibility for the comm and data links, for computer setup and maintenance, even the hypersuits the unit sometimes wore into combat.

  Rounding out the detachment were a pair of SDC's, whose main job was stealth and defensive countermeasures for the unit and another pair of DPS's, the Defense and Protective Systems specialists, who manned the coil-gun patrol bots and the group's HERF and magnetic weapon systems.

  Overseeing all, the CC's were command and control ratings who did all the mission planning, all the tactical decisions, the sitreps and writeups and most of the ass-kicking needed in the field.

  That was ANAD Detachment Alpha, twelve people in all. Only the two CC's were officers. Everybody else ate from the non-comms' mess.

  Winger motioned the CC2 over. Lieutenant Dana Tallant had been helping the CEC's with stowing the containment pods for loading aboard the lifters when they arrived, when she saw Winger's hand signal. Tallant jogged over to see what was up.

  Winger was shaking hands with a heavy-set ruddy-cheeked man in a khaki outfit.

  "Lieutenant, meet Dr. Stuart Macalvey…just flew in from Atlanta. Our WCDC contact and guide."

  Macalvey bowed and offered his hand. Tallant snapped off a smart salute.

  "A bit dry and dusty, gents," Macalvey was saying. He lowered his cap, squinting off toward the west. A utility truck was speeding across the tarmac toward Charioteer, a rooster-tail of dust trailing behind it. The truck jerked to a stop ten feet away. A statuesque black man got out and came over.

  Macalvey recognized the officer and made introductions. "Ah, just in time…this is Colonel Udinka, Kenya Territorial Guard. He'll be our chaperon today."

  Udinka saluted all. "You have all your gear here, Lieutenant?"

  Winger nodded. "Yes, sir…just waiting on the lifters."

  Udinka squinted into the western sun. "Where we are going is kulwezi liwale…how do you say, most disturbing. The spirits are angry…much death…great suffering--"

  Macalvey spied the pair of UNQC lifters overhead, circling Mombesi Field, ready to land near Charioteer. "Here comes our ride, gents. The Colonel has generously detailed two infantry platoons to use…we've already worked out the details with the village chief. Rather obstreperous fellow. Shell-shocked you might say, over the plague and all. Name's Enkare."

  "We need to gather intelligence on the threat, Colonel," Winger said. "Sampling the air, soil, some of the human remains, may give us some idea of what we're up against."

  Macalvey cleared his throat. "Mmm…that could present a slight problem." He managed a sideways glance at Colonel Udinka. "You see, Chief Enkare is dead set against any more desecration of the dead. Restless spirits and all. Seems we may have to do a little cajoling to smooth things over. Chief Enkare won't take kindly to digging up corpses and launching your ANAD bugger inside them."

  "Not to worry," Udinka boomed. "I have authority from the Government to assist you in any way."

  His voice was drowned out by two black lifters settling onto the ramp a few dozen yards away. Winger hand-signaled for the Detachment to start moving their gear out.

  Before the dust had settled, the pallets were pressurized and hustled over on curtains of air, while the lifters squatted down to accommodate the loading process. They looked for all the world like fat mosquitoes, their articulating landing skids retracted to ground level for mission onloading.

  Lieutenant Nathan Caden supervised the process. Ten minutes later, he jogged over to Winger. "Another half hour and the pods will be secured. Then it’s just the DPS stuff...charges are being checked now--and we'll be ready to rumble."

  "Very well." Winger checked his watch. He wanted to be at the village of Uliba before sundown. "Muster the detachment for a final briefing. We go airborne at 1400 hours."

  Udinka waved his own troops to fall out and board the Quantum Corps lifters. "It's an hour flight down to the border. Ngongolo Hills and the crater straddle the boundary. Uliba's just on our side, right next to the crater and Kipwezi…the volcano."

  "Lieutenant, you figuring Level One…opposed entry?" Caden asked. Tactical doctrine called for proper protection any time 1st Nano troops went into unfriendly terrain.

  Winger had other ideas. "My read of the tactical situation is no…it'll take too long to suit up. But bring the hypersuits anyway. HNRIV or Serengeti may yet have some unpleasant surprises for us."

  Caden snorted but obeyed. He was certain Major Kraft would regret having made Winger CC1 for the mission.

  Caden and Tallant oversaw the final loadout of the lifters, then gave the CQE's a hand with the hypersuits. Hard-shelled, boosted exoskeletal frames, the H-suits were an infantryman's best friend, short of his assault weapon. It took the Detachment half an hour to suit up and check systems.

  By midafternoon, in a stiff northwesterly breeze, the flotilla of lifters set off, bearing south by southwest on a direct vector to the Ngongolo Hills district and the Tanzanian border.

  The hour went by quickly enough and Johnny Winger watched the pale blue oval of Lake Victoria slide by along the horizon, while he reviewed the tactical plan for Quantum Warrior in his mind, rehearsing scenarios and options over and over again. SOFIE was always a comforting voice at times like this. Rather like having your mother go over your hom
ework with you, he thought.

  A grassy escarpment rolled by twenty-thousand feet below them, as the lifter pilots maneuvered toward Ngongolo Hills. Acacia woodlands dotted an open grass range, with the shoreline of Lake Natron and the craggy faulted walls of Ngongoro crater making an impressive backdrop. As Winger and the rest of the Detachment looked on through scattered clouds, great herds of wildebeest and Thomson's gazelle undulated across the plain, kicking up dust for miles around.

  "Impressive, isn't it?" Dr Macalvey observed. "I've been coming here with the Epidemic Intelligence Service for the better part of two years and I never tire of the view. Over there'--" he pointed through a porthole at strings of smoke issuing skyward from an encampment on the steeply sloping ramparts of Kipwezi volcano. "Cooking fires from the village. That's our destination…Uliba."

  Moments later, the lifter pilots had circled the volcano several times to gauge the prevailing winds and set the small force down with a thump onto dark pebbly ground in a clearing southwest of the village. A quick infrared and EM scan of the surrounding rocks and black hills produced no obvious threat signatures.

  As soon as the lifters touched down, Winger got on the tactical crewnet and issued dismount orders.

  "Step lively, fellows. And keep your eyes and antennas open. HNRIV may yet have something nasty in store for us."

  The rest of the Detachment had been unloading gear for a few minutes when a small group of local Masai appeared at the edge of the clearing. They were tall, regal people, the men with colorful checked headbands, bearing spears, and the women wearing intricate beaded necklaces and cotton sarongs, called kangas. Many of them seemed weak, drawn, haggard, even sad.

  The villagers moved into the clearing and surrounded the Detachment, not threateningly, but with purpose.

  Colonel Udinka and the Territorial troops moved out and secured a perimeter to block any further approach. Udinka shouted out a few words in the local dialect.

  "Kombasa ulithi lugguru mahenge!"

  One man, weighted with ornate headbands and an especially large spear, came forward.

  "Mahenge maua. Njombe!" He swept his arms around, palms out, circling the clearing with his gestures. "Mortangi…mortangi…" his head and voice dropped to a whisper. "--mortangi…."

  Macalvey muttered to Winger. "That's Enkare, the chief. He's rather distressed this afternoon."

  Udinka said a few more words, then brusquely ordered his troops to fan out toward the village. The Colonel came over.

  "The chief says there is still great death here…he does not like us to come anymore…he says we bring more death."

  Winger had seen the plaintive looks of the villagers. There was a grim determination to them. "Tell them we've come to help out. We're here to find what causes the Great Death and get rid of it."

  Udinka translated and added a few more orders for his troops. Presently, Enkare came directly up to Johnny Winger. He reached out with the tip of his spear and touched Winger on the top of his forehead.

  "Uleezi komangi…" several more gentle taps and a circle of the spear tip around the top of the Lieutenant's head. "Ne…mortangi…chaki mabati."

  Udinka smiled, translating. "Chief Enkare makes you a spirit warrior…komangi for the village."

  Winger met the Chief's grief-stricken eyes with a level gaze of his own. "I'm honored. My Detachment is here to fight the Great Death. We want to study what He has done."

  While Udinka interpreted, Macalvey nudged the Lieutenant in the ribs. "Not bad for a Yank, eh? You'll get the hang of this in no time." The Scottish virologist recognized several friendly faces among the villagers and dived into an outpouring of hugs and handshakes.

  Winger explained, through Udinka, what he wanted to do.

  "We've got to take a look at the index case."

  Udinka exchanged words with Enkare, gesturing first at his own troops, then the Detachment. "His name was Soweto. Terrible, terrible mortangi, much suffering. The Chief doesn't want to disturb the gravesite again. It angers Kalbamba, the giant who lives in the volcano."

  Winger and Macalvey and Udinka pleaded with Enkare for understanding but the

  Chief was adamant. Finally, exasperated, Macalvey summoned his friends from the crowd of villagers. Around the rotted stump of a commiphora tree, arguments and tempers flared. Winger knew they had the force to complete the mission even against the Chief's wishes. He didn't want it to come to that.

  At last, Enkare relented, persuaded by pleading sobs from several woman. Macalvey identified the older woman as Soweto's widow.

  "Her name's Nalinka. She's been through a lot. Got the bug herself but somehow, with help from S Factor and some good fortune, she threw it off. Can't explain that at all."

  Winger was sympathetic. ANAD needs to look at her too, he told himself. After all she had been through…but it couldn't be helped.

  Enkare formed up a procession of the villagers and led them deeper into a tangle of acacia trees and scrubland to the village outskirts. The gathering of huts formed a tight circle, no more than a hundred yards across, nestled in the brow of a ridge from the crater. Each hut was a crude twig and branch skeleton, draped with straw and cowhide. Antennas and cables snaked across the clearing, powering Uliba's telecom systems, the only concession to the 21st Century.

  Throughout the village, listless addicts lay strewn about the dirt paths, entangled in the brush, propped up against acacia trees, their eyes glassy from S Factor overdose. Several twitched and convulsed, trembling every few seconds, hard in the grip of the malfunctioning mech treatment. Legs and arms were half hidden in dense tufts of vine, still with rigor mortis, swollen bodies hosting angry hordes of flies and mosquitoes. The lucky ones had already died.

  Johnny Winger swallowed hard as they filed into the main clearing.

  "Nalinka's the only survivor from Soweto's family," Macalvey explained. "He had two other wives plus a menagerie of sons and daughters, probably thirty in all."

  "All died…from HNRIV?"

  "And the treatment." Macalvey nodded somberly as they reached the darkened hut at the edge of the clearing, set off with twine and rope from the rest. Bright red and blue majombe spirit faces had been fashioned out of straw and hung all around the hut.

  Enkare called the procession to a halt. The villagers formed a ring around the abandoned hut. He pointed to a mound of rock and dirt behind. The mound was shrouded with a faintly visible gel, wispy as a spiderweb, secured to the ground, forming a ghostly dome over the site.

  "Mortangi…Soweto enkilosa…dazo…dazo."

  "The gravesite," Udinka announced. His face was ashen. The Territorial troops hung back, visibly disturbed, muttering among themselves.

  Winger started forward but Macalvey held him up. "Not just yet, chum. See that shimmering. UN bioweb. This is a Level Four isolation site. You'll need the UN codes to breach containment."

  Winger swallowed hard. "Right. Sorry. I was just--"

  Macalvey nodded. "Anxious."

  "DPS1…front and center!" Winger ordered.

  Sergeant Sheila Reaves was a Defense and Protective Systems specialist. She was a chatterbox redhead with a sniper's rating in coil-gun competition. As DPS for the Detachment, she had responsibility for dealing with protective gear, even UN stuff. In seconds, she had worked her way up to the edge of the clearing and produced a small keypad.

  "Got it, boss. I'm dialing up the UN codes now."

  Winger circled the shimmering field of microgel mesh. "Corporal Nguyen, get everybody back at least fifty feet. I want to expand that bioweb far enough for five people to work inside it."

  An Nguyen was DPS2. With Barnes and Villa, he pushed and cajoled the villagers further away from the gravesite, giving the bioweb room to expand. As that was being done, Reaves found the UN frequencies on her keypad and started sending.

  "Uh oh--"

  Winger came over. "What is it, Sergeant?" />
  Reaves showed the Lieutenant the screen. "We've had activity here…recent activity. See that--" she fingered some graphs. "Nanomech activity…right here…inside the web boundaries. The bioweb's been cycled several times, in the last few months. And here--signatures of nanomech. Molecule debris…heat fused soil…organic residue."

  The hairs stood up on the back of Winger's neck. It was a feeling he had long ago learned to pay attention to. He summoned Chief Enkare, and Udinka.

  "Does he know anything about this?"

  Udinka translated. Enkare nodded gravely. Then he nodded more vigorously, gesticulating from Nalinka to the hut to the clearing.

  "Chunya sumbawanga mpanda mpeke mawaru! Mpeke mawaru…dazu!"

  Udinka nodded, translating, "He says a group of white men were here two months ago, working around the gravesite. They had guards. Wouldn't let anyone near."

  "What were they doing?"

  Udinka translated that and got a quick reply. "He doesn't know. They came one night and left the next day."

  Winger rubbed his chin. "I don't like this. DPS?"

  "Yes, sir?"

  "You've got bioweb control now?"

  "I'm into the UN channels. I can make the thing sing and dance, if you want, Lieutenant."

  "Expand the web perimeter, like I said." He turned to Dana Tallant. "We need to push everybody back, way back. If there's been mech activity here, recent activity--"

  Tallant was already handwaving the Detachment to push the villagers away. "I'm on it. Come on, move back…move back…." Udinka ordered some of his own troopers to form a perimeter, now a hundred feet back.

  "Get into your suits," Winger ordered. "I'm not sure what we've got here."

  It took the Detachment half an hour to get into their suits and get powered up. Winger let the servos level him as he knelt at the edge of bioweb, looking through his 'scope for fibers, treads, any signs of recent human presence at the edge of the isolation zone. There was plenty.

  "Okay, DPS, do it."

  Reaves sent commands through her keypad to the bioweb controller. Instantly, the shimmering changed color, becoming more opaque as the web generator expanded the clean zone. In less than a minute, the web had grown to a faintly pulsating iridescence, washing over Winger and the rest of the Detachment, eventually growing to enclose most of the clearing. It was eerie and vaguely unsettling and Winger found himself subconsciously holding his breath, as if a great wall of water were crashing over them.

  Now they were inside, inside the hot zone of containment, where HNRIV and S Factor had dueled inside the body of Soweto.

  Winger knelt at the mound of rocks. "Open it up," he said and started pulling rocks away with his hands. Tallant, Caden and several others joined in.

  Moments later, they stopped suddenly.

  Lieutenant--" it was Reaves again, her eyepiece glowing red with warning icons. "--I got nano residue all over the place…Jesus, big spikes in carbon and silicon, assembler debris, molecule fragments all over the place, radicals galore…."

  "Get Superfly up…" Winger ordered. "Fast!"

  Nguyen's hypersuit whirred as he tapped out commands on his wrist pad. Superfly was a swarm defense net for the detachment, a horde of micro-entomopters, that surrounded the unit and became its eyes and ears against nanomech assault. In seconds, the swarm had formed up, a throbbing gray blur filling the clearing like real flies. Nguyen dispersed the swarm to a mid-range surveillance distance, quickly forming a huge dome of nearly invisible sensors around the village of Uliba.

  The villagers dropped to their knees, eyes wide, as the swarm deployed.

  "Superfly's up and in position, Lieutenant."

  "Very well." Winger let the others finish knocking down the rock mound. When they were done, they found the grave empty.

  "What the hell-?"

  Winger whirred in his suit to a kneeling position, probing the soft ground. He'd seen a faint streak of white ashy particles under the last stone.

  "I wouldn't do that, sir--" DPS1 Reaves came over, probing with her own sensors. "That's nanomech residue…organics, from what I'm seeing--"

  "Soweto--?"

  Tallant was kicking at the streaked dirt with the toe of her laminate boot. "Looks like it, Lieutenant."

  "Mech assault…Jesus Christ--he's been--"

  Macalvey's face was visible against the outer shimmer of the web. "What is it, mates? What's happening in there?"

  Winger stood up. "There's no body here, Doctor. Soweto's gone. Nanomech disassembly, it looks like."

  "What the devil--" Macalvey's voice pinched. "Are you sure?"

  "Quite sure," Winger said. "Someone's been here, and recently. We've got residue of nano activity, organic remnants. There was a human body here. But no more. Just a few stray atoms."

  Through the faint veil of the bioweb, the detachment could hear murmurs and raised voices, coming from the villagers. Winger slipped through the bioweb boundary and emerged into the dusty afternoon sunlight, squinting to see what was happening.

  Enkare and Nalinka were engaged in heated argument, right in front of Soweto's hut. Other villagers were taking sides. There was shoving in the back, as more crowded in, jostling Udinka's troops, who wrestled and shoved back, trying to keep order.

  "Mortange…mortange…kip wezi kananga!"

  Macalvey himself had been pushed to the outside of the melee, as Colonel Udinka waded in, shouting, three troopers wielding batons behind him. It took several moments for the Territorial soldiers to calm things down.

  "What's going on?" Winger asked.

  Macalvey worked his way through the throng. "Enkare's upset. Nalinka too. Soweto's grave was robbed. They're afraid. Afraid of Kipwezi, the spirit in the volcano. What did you find in there?"

  Winger shook his head, powering down the hypersuit. He unlatched the helmet faceplate. "Nothing…that's the problem. Somebody got inside the bioweb and did a number on Soweto. Burned him down to atoms. Full disassembly. But they left organic residue…like they wanted us to find it."

  "Damned peculiar, if you ask me." Macalvey stroked his red beard, batting away flies as he did so. "I saw the body. I was here at the burial. I watched the ceremony."

  "Nobody around here could have done this," Winger said. "I don't know who did…but I've got an idea." He peered into the crowd, still roiling with shouts, jostling with Udinka's troops. "Where's the widow?"

  "Nalinka?" Macalvey pointed out the tall somber woman with the red checkered kanga and bone necklace. "That's her. You want to talk to her?"

  Winger ordered the detachment to de-suit. "And Sheila--" he radioed to Reaves, "--secure the bioweb. Don't touch anything. Just get out of there." To Macalvey: "Actually, I want to do a probe. Launch ANAD inside her and see what's going on."

  Macalvey swallowed hard, as he followed Winger over to Soweto's widow. "This should be interesting."

  Johnny Winger introduced himself. Dana Tallant came to, figuring a woman's touch was surely needed here.

  He explained what he wanted to do, as simply and gently as he could. Udinka tried to translate, but stopped when Nalinka's eyes grew wide. Enkare, the chief, was adamantly opposed. Nalinka simply stared in disbelief.

  "She was treated with Serengeti, wasn't she?" Winger asked.

  Macalvey nodded. "I treated her myself. An early version. It worked fairly well, but not without some complications. She had HNRIV same as her husband, virulent strain, from my tests. Nasty time, we had with her too…high fever, edemas all over her, tissue hemorrhaging, spasms, seizures and convulsions." The Scot shuddered at the memory. "It was a struggle, even with Serengeti. She was lucky."

  "Doc, I want to send ANAD inside Nalinka's brain, exploratory expedition. She was treated with early Serengeti, you said. Initial batch of S-Factor. And it worked. But she hasn't suffered any of the post-treatment symptoms you told us about. Neural impairment…limbic system
trauma?"

  "Not that I'm aware of." He asked Udinka to interrogate Nalinka about her recovery.

  The woman listened, shaking with fear, then shook her head vigorously.

  "Nalombe…ni mortange!"

  Macalvey got the translation. "She insists she's fine. And she doesn't want to do this."

  Winger was frustrated. "Tell her we can help find the body of her husband…it's the best way."

  Translations were done. Nalinka was still reluctant, her eyes wide, pleading, looking from Udinka to Enkare to Winger.

  But bit by bit, her resistance was worn down. Macalvey's idea that the spirit of Kipwezi be invoked overcame her remaining objections. Forlorn and spent, her eyes lingered on Chief Enkare with dread. Her daughters and neighbors consoled her, hugging and murmuring in her ear. Nalinka finally relented, convinced she was soon join her dead husband in the infernal fires of Kipwezi.

  At length, Enkare decided Johnny Winger could do what he was asking.

  "But enkasa will guide you…protect Nalinka from evil. Enkasa will lead you in this."

  Macalvey whispered in Winger's ear, as the Lieutenant acknowledged the chief's help. "That's the spirit doctor. The enkasa is the village's shaman and medicine man. That's him over there." He indicated an older, portly man with an elaborate black and white headband and clinking bone necklaces. "I don't know his name."

  Enkare and Nalinka and the enkasa went inside their hut and came out a few moments later. Nalinka was draped with ritual necklaces and beads and colored mud had been daubed around her face. She seemed more at ease.

  The enkasa motioned Winger over, took hold of the Lieutenant's hand and firmly placed his fingers in a wad of colored mud on Nalinka's forehead.

  "Ni mortange…kulu Nalinka eskina somoru."

  Colonel Udinka translated. "He says now you are the same soil. Dirt to dirt. Now your hands are protected too."

  Winger was touched but anxious to get started. He smiled at Nalinka, took her trembling hands in his own. "We'll be in and out in no time. Don't you worry. Okay, IC's, let's get her prepped and ready. Moby, break out TinyTown. We'll set up inside her hut. Prepare to launch ANAD."

  Nalinka's hut was a round twig and branch affair, draped with a facing of mixed mud, water and cow dung. The pungent smell took some getting used to. There was a hard-packed mud floor and a small fire pit for cooking. Wood slats partitioned the place into zones for children and small animals. A bed of tanned hide dominated one zone.

  "Set up there," Winger ordered. He helped Nalinka lie down. She was already sleepy, her eyes heavy from sedation. She was unconscious a few moments later, unaware of the TinyTown mobile containment cart being wheeled in beside the bed.

  The oddity of doing an ANAD insertion in a Masai hut in a tiny east African village wasn't lost on the Lieutenant.

  It was a whole new way of fighting a war and Johnny Winger knew that half the time, they were inventing tactics as they went along.

  "Okay, Lieutenant," Dana Tallant patted down the incision she had just made in the side of Nalinka's skull. "Subject's prepped and ready."

  Winger handed 'Moby' M'Bela the injector tube, attached by hose to the containment chamber. Moby was the detachment's CEC1. "Steady even suction, Moby. ANAD ready to fly?"

  The IC1, Nathan Caden, came back, "Ready in all respects, Lieutenant."

  "Vascular grid?"

  "Tracking now. We'll be able to follow the master just fine. I'll replicate once we're through the blood-brain barrier."

  "Watch for capillary flow," said Sergeant Hoyt Gibbs, the IC2. "When her capillaries narrow, your speed will increase. And viscosity will stay up."

  "Like slogging through molasses. ANAD's inerted and stable…ready for insertion."

  The insertion went smoothly enough. A slug of plasma forced the replicant master into Nalinka's capillary network at high pressure. Winger got an acoustic pulse seconds later and selected Fly-by-Stick to navigate the system. A few minutes' run on its propulsors brought the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler to a dense fibrous mat of capillary tissues. The image soon appeared on Winger's IC panel.

  "Ready for transit," he told Gibbs. "Cytometric probing now. I can force these cell membranes open any time."

  Gibbs used ANAD's acoustic coupler to sound the tissue dam ahead, probing for weak spots. "There, Lieutenant, right to starboard of those reticular lumps…that's a lipid duct, I'd bet a hundred bucks. Try there."

  Winger steered ANAD into the vascular cleft of the membrane. He twisted his right hand controller, pulsing a carbene grabber to twist the cleft molecules just so, then released the membrane lipids and slingshot himself forward. Seconds later, ANAD was floating in a plasma bath, dark, viny shapes barely visible off in the distance. The plasma was a heavy viscous fluid. Winger tweaked up the propulsor to a higher power setting and took a navigation hack off the vascular grid.

  "Ventral tegmentum, Lieutenant. Just past the mesoencephalic nucleus. Looks like we're in."

  Winger navigated ANAD through the interstices of Nalinka's brain for the better part of an hour. He had programmed the assembler to send an alarm when it encountered any kind of unnatural activity…especially assembler maneuvering or replication. If there were any remnants of HNRIV left in her brain, he wanted to be ready.

  "Hopefully, the last treatment with Serengeti finished them off," he muttered to himself.

  At 1824 hours, ANAD sent the alarm.

  The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across their view like shadowy ping-pong balls. Winger studied readouts from ANAD's sounder…something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. He fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter.

  Something approximately sixty nanometers in one dimension, narrow with a globe structure at one end…and scores of probes, effectors, cilia, whatever. Incredible mobility…triple propulsors beat an idling rhythm as ANAD closed in….

  Gibbs let out a whoop. "Will you look at that?"

  Macalvey came closer, squinted at the vague, fuzzy outlines on the screen. "Serengeti Factor, mates. A whole colony of them. A welcoming committee, it would appear. Come to see what we're about."

  Winger's fingers flew over the interface controls. "We're about to check this joker out…" Quickly, he signaled ANAD to prime its defensive mechanisms, and slowed its approach to a crawl.

  Reconnoiter first. He remembered a line from Sun Tzu, the Nanowarrior wargames last spring….

  He who is skilled hides in the most secret recesses of the earth.

  Under Winger's guidance, ANAD maneuvered among the jostling molecules of chlorine and sodium and potassium. A huge kinked snakelike cluster of hematite molecules drifted by. Winger had an idea. He signaled ANAD to grab a few hematites as a shield. Seizing oxygen atoms with its effectors, ANAD clutched several molecules.

  Gradually, the shape and size of the Serengeti device became clearer. Bristling with effectors and arms, it looked like a miniature Apollo Lunar Module. The head was a multi-lobed cluster of spheres and hexagons; inside the churning electron cloud dimmed out any detail.

  Below the head was a cylindrical sheath, covered with pyramidal facets and undulating beads of proteins - the assembler's probes and effectors. Winger was frankly awed at the sight.

  "Hell of a lot of gear for this bastard," he said. "Just to fight off HNRIV. Wonder if this is Serengeti's base template."

  "Maybe he's programmed to evolve with the virus," Dana Tallant suggested. She had positioned herself to study the image too.

  "Or maybe he's just programmed to evolve…" Macalvey wondered. "A set program, in multiple stages. One routine to insert and fight off HNRIV--"

  "And another to take control of its environment," Winger said. "It might explain some things--"

  "So many different k
inds of effectors," Tallant marveled.

  Indeed, the horde of Serengeti assemblers were rigged out like battleships, with devices for every conceivable mechanical or chemical action. A flatplane baseplate capped one end of the sheathed body. The tail structure was dense thicket of fibers, each tipped with penetrator clusters. The penetrators enabled the virus to attach to and enter any structure.

  Winger brought ANAD to a complete stop. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. Something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The data was wrong…Serengeti wasn't supposed to be like this at all.

  "Dr Macalvey…what do you make of this?"

  The Scottish virologist was amazed at the images ANAD was returning. "It's the basic anti-viral structure we've seen before with Serengeti. Vivonex published that two years ago. But it's enhanced, somehow. Changed or evolved. I've never seen so many effectors. Amazing. That probe for instance--" he fingered a dark, indistinct structure to one side of the nearest device--"looks just like a saw. And that--I believe I recognize…I'll be damned--"

  Winger had seen it too. "Sorting rotor?"

  "That's what it looks like." At Macalvey's request, Winger fiddled with the resolution, managed to tweak the view even sharper. Dim outlines became clearer. "A segment of a sorting rotor. Cam-driven with carbene grabbers and--" he squinted down at the imager, adjusted his glasses "--looks like--yep, diamondoid follower rods. "Probably process upwards of several hundred thousand molecules per cycle." Macalvey shook his head with grudging respect. "Neat workmanship. But I'd bet my aunt Emma's life savings that bugger's not part of the original template. This is new."

  Dana Tallant was growing uneasy. A small crowd had entered the hut, gathered around the prostrate body of Nalinka, now draped with the mesh of the vascular grid. Enkare fidgeted with beads in one corner, toeing the hard dirt floor, clinking the beads nervously. The enkasa was on one knee beside the girl, murmuring spells and incantations under his breath.

  "Just what exactly are you saying, Doc?" Tallant asked.

  "Simply incredible." Macalvey pointed out the dendritic branches of nearby nerve cell tissue. "Artificial nerve stimulation, gentlemen. I'm sure of it. Serengeti's been inserted into this poor woman's brain, fought off HNRIV, then reconfigured itself as a sorting rotor. Now it's sitting alongside her synaptic clefts like a circus performer, pumping dopamine back and forth on command. Or more likely, according to a program stored in its processor. What you're looking at is in vivo stimulation of artificial nerve impulses according to programmed nanobotic control. Simply incredible."

  Dana Tallant paled at the implications. "Is that what's infected this woman?"

  Macalvey shrugged, tugged at loose hairs on his red beard. "Impossible to say. Serengeti's undoubtedly spun off swarms of these buggers. Possibly the process isn't perfect. Or who knows? Maybe Serengeti just evolved to scramble the works…pump useless molecules of whatever its assembler brain decides…maybe formaldehyde or something…into the post-synapses. Your central nervous system seizes up and shuts down…death in minutes, if not in seconds. But the more likely probability--now that I see the bastard up close in a living victim--is more frightening. Nalinka's suffering from overstimulation. We've seen similar effects on addicts we've studied. But until now, we've never been able to get small enough to watch these buggers in action. Serengeti's too nimble. We even experimented with this ourselves a few years ago. Never could get it to work."

  Winger pulsed ANAD's propulsors, maneuvering in for a close-up look. "I'd say Vivonex…or somebody has."

  Macalvey shook his head. "Fantastic engineering, if it's what I think it is. Acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin…the possibilities are endless. Synthesize enough of the right molecules and inject them across the synaptic gap here. You're basically in control of a nerve impulse."

  Unnoticed by anyone, the swarm of Serengeti mechs had begun to re-orient themselves tail first toward ANAD. Their tail fiber penetrators quickly reconfigured, locking into attack position.

  He is who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Winger saw the maneuver on the imager.

  "Look out!" Gibbs saw it too. "He's changing position…all of 'em, coming at us--"

  "I'm ready," Winger muttered. His fingers flew across the keyboard. Instantly, ANAD brought all its defensive mechanisms to attack position. It cast off the hematite shield and closed for battle.

  Macalvey was stunned. "What the hell…it thinks you're HNRIV--"

  "Or some kind of intruder," Winger said. "I'm need to get closer, grab one of those jokers for analysis--"

  As ANAD sped forward, Serengeti grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speeds. The outer membrane of the mech seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.

  The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield.

  Beside Nalinka's bed, the enkasa's voice rose and fell, repeating incantations in a shrill tongue.

  Winger was stunned by the speed of the assault. A battalion of Serengeti soon engulfed ANAD. No time to replicate now…got to get free…signal daughters….Winger fired off a burst of instructions to gather all the daughters ANAD had replicated going in. It might be too late.

  The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.

  Several minutes passed. The imager view vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The water was soon choked with cellular debris. Serengeti replicated several times, adding new molecule strings. It stripped off electrons to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms. In seconds, ANAD was immobilized by the chlorine sheath.

  "I can't hold structure!" Winger yelled. "I'm reconfiguring…shutting down peripheral systems!"

  Sergeant Gibbs had taken a place beside Winger at the interface controls. "Got to disengage, Boss…emergency truncation. Everything not critical. We've got to get ANAD out of there before we lose him!"

  "I'm trying…but the damn mech's penetrated the signal path…if he cuts the link…."

  "I know, I know…just keep trying, Jesus…internal bonds on main body structure weakening…I've lost all grappling capability…."

  As they watched, Serengeti systematically dismantled ANAD, molecule by molecule. ANAD was woefully unprepared for the assault. With ruthless efficiency, Serengeti mechs whirred and chopped every device ANAD could generate. ANAD tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers--but it was no use.

  Serengeti mutated too fast. Somehow, the mech seemed to anticipate ANAD's every move.

  Winger was awed by Serengeti's combat capabilities. "Incredible," he whispered. "The perfect warrior. Must have a hell of a processor."

  Dana Tallant agreed. "Probably quantum, just like ANAD."

  They were all stunned at the ferocity of Serengeti's response. "I thought these jokers went into hibernation when they killed HNRIV," Winger muttered.

  Macalvey just shook his head. "According to the specs Vivonex put out, that's exactly what Serengeti's supposed to do. I don't understand it…ANAD closes for a quick look and--"

  "--the bastard blows up like we're some common virus."

  Winger's fingers flew across the keyboard. "It doesn't make sense. Why would S Factor try to fight off ANAD? The damn thing's actively trying to defend its position, trying to keep control of Nalinka's brain."

  He had no choice but to disengage to save the ANAD master. Extract before ANAD was chopped to pieces and leave Nalinka to the Serengeti device.

  "We're losing signal strength, Lieutenant!" Gibbs yelled.

  "I see it! Serengeti's penetrated the matrix. Main processing funct
ions in danger…I'm counterprogramming…." Winger pecked madly at the keyboard.

  Dana Tallant shook a fist at the imager screen, now a dark, swirling mass of shapes and forms. "Come on, damn it! Come on…."

  But ANAD couldn't hold. Every move was countered by the nanomech. Serengeti's response was swift and sure. Winger, Gibbs, and the others watched in amazement and horror, as one by one, ANAD's capabilities--fine motor control, attitude and orientation, propulsors, sensors, molecule analysis, replication--were rendered inert, or completely excised.

  ANAD was helpless.

  "Got to get the hell out of Dodge," Winger muttered. While I still can.

  Sergeant Gibbs was checking status. "It's bad, Lieutenant. We've got no electron lens. No enzymatic knife. Hardly any effector control. ANAD's crippled."

  Johnny Winger gritted his teeth. "Not just yet…" His fingers flew over the keyboard. "We've gotta get some data…got to probe that bugger, get some structure on him…if I can just get stabilized--"

  "Lieutenant--there's nothing left to stabilize--"

  Nalinka's prostrate body shuddered and convulsed. Dana Tallant held her breath…behind the frothing outlines of the assault, the imager showed swarms of Serengeti mechs beating back through her cranial plasma, ready to resume their mindless pumping of dopamine. A low moan escaped her lips.

  Enkare started shaking. On the floor beside the bed, the enkasa's incantations trilled higher, louder.

  Despite all odds, Winger wasn't about to give up. Grimly determined, he piloted what was left of the ANAD horde back for another wrestling match with the enemy.

  "Whatever this thing is," he swore to himself, "it reacts like ANAD itself." He worked the config controller, while Gibby managed status, crossing his fingers that the ANAD master would hold together.

  Extend a grappler there. Poke a carbene there. Do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around—

  While Tallant and Moby and Deeno helped hold Nalinka still, Winger disengaged ANAD, scrunching up an atom group as he tacked against the churning plasma, closing steadily on the nearest mech. Inside a few dozen nanometers, he siphoned off the mech's outer charge and let the zap break him away.

  Reams of bond energy data and config details burst onto the imager. Gibby let out a yelp. The enemy mechs had given up vitals on structure and ANAD snatched the info right out from under him, storing it, pulsing it back to the IC's.

  "Now, I gotcha, you little bastard--"

  Winger knew he had to get ANAD away while he still could. Serengeti swarmed forward at the same time Nalinka convulsed again.

  Dana Tallant and Moby couldn't hold her down. "Neural seizure, Johnny…Serengeti's eating her alive…"

  Macalvey was powerless to save her. Tallant cradled Nalinka's pale face, watching the onslaught on the imager screen. "Damn mechs have gone berserk…they're shredding neural tissue…flooding synapses--" Nalinka jerked and spasmed violently, arching her back so far, her spine cracked. Startled, the enkasa fell back and stumbled, scrambling away from her twitching body.

  "Makombe…makombe…mortangi…."

  The shaman backed into Johnny Winger's legs, nearly knocking the CC1 off his feet.

  At the same time, Winger was determined to get ANAD out of her skull before he lost the assembler completely.

  "Executing quantum collapse…NOW!" Come on baby, get small for me…get real small….

  Deep inside Nalinka's brain, the ANAD master collapsed what was left of its own structure in an explosive puff of atom fragments. Base, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its nanoprocessor, went hurtling into the plasma in a big bang of spinning atom parts.

  Instantly, ANAD disappeared. To all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves.

  Less than four minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD was finally extracted and re-inserted into the mobile TinyTown, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.

  One minute later, Nalinka died.

  A somber tactical briefing was held outside Soweto's hut, with Colonel Udinka's troops holding back the restless villagers, stirred to a frenzy by the enkasa's chants and the scent of yet another death in the village. The people of Uliba moaned and swayed in unison with the thumping beat of the shaman's voice, moving with a single mind, pressing in on the security perimeter the troops had formed.

  Johnny Winger was frustrated. He wiped sweat and flies from his face. Macalvey was at the hut entrance, keeping an eye on the post-mortem analysis going on inside.

  "What the hell are we dealing with here, Doc? Is it evolution? Or deliberate design?"

  Macalvey was equally disturbed. "Exactly my question. Is it an accident of nature or intentional?"

  "What I saw could be an isolated malfunction."

  "Or it could be something more--"

  Winger agreed. "One thing's for sure: Serengeti wouldn't let me alter anything inside Nalinka's limbic system. I couldn't grab a mech either. I was damn lucky to get what I did."

  Macalvey eyed the surging villagers with concern. The perimeter held by Udinka's troops was getting smaller with every minute.

  "Either way," the Scot said, "Serengeti's not what it was originally designed to be. It's not supposed to actively oppose nanomech intervention, unless the intruder resembles HNRIV. Something's happened to its program."

  Dana Tallant emerged from the hut and blinked in the strong sunlight. Her face was ashen.

  "What did you find?"

  Tallant stripped off her gear and stowed it. "I'm still not sure. Nalinka died of neural trauma. Poor woman expired like an old motor run at too high a speed for too long. Neurotransmitter overstimulation of the central nervous system. An excess of dopamine, flooding her synapses. More like a tidal wave, actually. I'd say ANAD triggered some kind of protective routine in the S Factor resident in her brain." She shook her head, bent to pack up her gear. "It wasn't pretty."

  Macalvey was intrigued. "Same progression as all the addicts we're seeing. Something's jazzing up the program, making it run overtime, pumping a river of dopamine through their limbic systems. Triggers an avalanche of signals…your body just can't handle it. Eventually, the seizures and convulsions cause a myocardial infarction, and kill you."

  Deeno D'Nunzio and Moby M'bela emerged from the hut, their faces somber. They had finished prepping Nalinka's body for burial.

  Johnny Winger was deep in thought. "We're not dealing with any ordinary nanomech or medbot here, guys. This bastard's got brains."

  "Yeah," said D'Nunzio, "and balls too. What do we do now, Lieutenant?"

  "Back to Nairobi. Vivonex developed every strain of Serengeti Factor at their drug lab in Switzerland. At least, that's what they say publicly. We need to pay a little visit to that lab."