by Ben Bova
“Prayer never hurts.”
“Put your trust in the Lord. And keep your powder dry.”
Deirdre recognized the quote: Oliver Cromwell, from seventeenth-century England.
Archer laughed. “Good advice.”
“Good luck, then,” said Muzorewa.
“Thanks, Zeb.”
The wall screen went blank.
Turning to Deirdre, Archer explained, “Zeb was my mentor when I first came to this station. He’s been a good and firm friend all these years.”
“I see,” Deirdre said. Suddenly she realized, “But how can you talk with him in real time if he’s in Selene? The Moon’s at least half an hour away, in light time.”
“He’s not in Selene,” Archer explained. “Zeb’s right here at the station, down in the third wheel. He just arrived less than an hour ago. He’s carrying your nanomachines.”
Still bewildered, she asked, “He got here from Selene in a week?”
“High-g boost. We know you need the nanotherapy as quickly as possible, so Zeb volunteered to zip out here with your nanos.”
“You asked him to?”
“I didn’t have to,” Archer replied. “I simply explained the problem to him and he volunteered. Brought a couple of nanotechs with him. They developed your therapeutic nanos on the way here.”
Deirdre felt overwhelmed. “They did this for me?”
His smile widening, Archer said, “Frankly, I think Zeb was happy to have an excuse to get back here. He’s as curious about the leviathans as I am. He’s the one who turned Dr. Corvus on to the problem of communicating with them.”
“I’d like to thank him,” Deirdre said.
“Tomorrow. Right now Zeb and his two technicians are in the infirmary in the third wheel, being checked out after their high-g trip: hernias, heart arrhythmias, that sort of thing. Also, I’m not sure that I want Mrs. Westfall to know that they’re here.”
“My goodness,” said Deirdre. But she wondered if Grant Archer or anyone else could prevent Katherine Westfall from learning about Muzorewa’s arrival.
“I know that you’re supposed to report everything you learn to her, but I hope we can keep this from her, at least for a little while.”
Deirdre saw the earnestness in his expression, heard the unvoiced question he was asking her.
“I…” She hesitated, wondering what she should do, then heard herself say, “I won’t volunteer any information about Dr. Muzorewa and the nanotech specialists.”
“Thank you,” Archer said. “That could be very helpful.” Then, leaning back slightly in his recliner, Archer said, “I notice that you’re early for our little conference.”
Feeling almost embarrassed, Deirdre said in a lowered voice, “I wanted to ask you…”
“Yes?”
“Andy—Dr. Corvus—he wants me to go on the mission with him.”
“I know. He’s very pleased with the ease with which you make contact with the dolphins.”
Deirdre realized she was wringing her hands and purposely pressed them flat on the thighs of her creased slacks. “I … I’m not sure that I want to go down there.”
Archer sat up a little straighter. “You did fine in the immersion tank.”
“I suppose so,” Deirdre said, suppressing a shudder, “but I really didn’t like it. I don’t know if I could stand being in that slimy stuff for days on end.”
“I know how you feel. I understand. I didn’t like it much myself when I was in the soup.”
“What will happen if I don’t go?”
With a shrug, Archer said, “It just makes Corvus’s job that much more difficult. Not that establishing communications with the leviathans will be easy, under any circumstances.” He hesitated a heartbeat, then added, “And, of course, I was hoping that you might be able to make some sense out of the visual imagery the leviathans use to communicate.”
“I just…” Deirdre faltered, then admitted, “I’m afraid!”
Strangely, Archer smiled at her. “You have every right to be. I’d wonder about your sanity if you weren’t.”
CLINIC
Katherine Westfall found Dr. Mandrill in the middle of his morning rounds, accompanied by two women in white while moving slowly through the clinic’s sole ward. Only three of the ten beds were occupied.
With a polite little cough she caught the portly doctor’s attention as she stood by the ward’s main door. He frowned at first, but immediately smoothed his expression into a forced smile. After whispering a few words to his aides he waddled up the aisle between the rows of beds to her.
“This is a surprise,” said the doctor, in a low tone. “I didn’t expect you—”
Westfall cut him off. “My time is important, Doctor. I need some information from you. Quickly.”
“As soon as I finish—”
“Now,” she snapped.
Barely suppressing his anger, Dr. Mandrill dipped his double chin and acceded, “Now.”
He led her out of the ward and down the short passageway to his office. Once the door was closed, Mrs. Westfall said, “My informants tell me that a Dr. Muzorewa has arrived here from Selene.”
“Muzorewa? Himself?” The doctor’s brows hiked up. “He was director of this station, before Dr. Archer.”
“He came with two nanotechnicians.”
“Indeed?”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“What would bring the respected Zareb Muzorewa back to station Gold?” Dr. Mandrill mused. “And with a pair of nanotechs?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
Mandrill went to his desk and slid heavily into its swivel chair. “Selene is a center for nanotechnology research and development,” he said. “But Muzorewa was a fluid dynamicist, not a nanotech man.”
Still standing, Westfall asked, “Could nanotechnology be used to kill the rabies virus?”
The doctor blinked his red-rimmed eyes once, twice.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I suppose it’s possible … if one engineers nanomachine disassemblers specifically to attack that particular virus.”
“They’d need samples of the virus, wouldn’t they?”
With a heavy-shouldered shrug Dr. Mandrill replied, “Perhaps not actual samples. Three-dimensional imagery would do, most likely.”
Westfall leaned both hands on the back of the chair in front of the doctor’s desk. “So they could produce therapeutic nanomachines and use them to kill her virus.”
“Her?” Understanding dawned on Mandrill’s dark face. “Ah! You’re talking about Ms. Ambrose.”
“Nanomachines could wipe out her specific type of rabies virus?”
Mandrill nodded warily. “If the nanos were specially designed to attack that variety of virus. It all works by shapes, you know. Like keys and locks.”
“They could cure her,” Westfall muttered.
“But nanomachines can be dangerous,” the doctor pointed out. “The type of nano you’re talking about might be able to disassemble other types of organic molecules, as well.”
Westfall’s eyes brightened.
“In street slang they’re called gobblers. The great fear has always been that gobblers would get loose and tear apart everything they come into contact with. It’s been called ‘the gray goo problem.’ That’s why nanotechnology is forbidden on Earth. They could reduce everything they touch into a slime of broken molecules.”
“Gray goo. Yes, I’ve heard of that.”
“But of course in Selene the nanomachines are handled with great care. Tremendous care. The same would apply here, naturally. Dr. Archer wouldn’t allow—”
“He already has,” Westfall snapped, with a hint of triumph in her voice.
* * *
As Deirdre opened the door to Grant Archer’s office, she saw he was deep in conversation with a tall, handsome black man. He looked like a statue carved in ebony: very grave, very powerful. Then he turned toward her and smiled, and his face became del
ightfully human. She recognized him as Zareb Muzorewa.
“You must be Ms. Ambrose,” he said in a deeply resonant voice as he rose to his feet.
“Deirdre Ambrose,” said Archer, waving Deirdre to a chair beside the black man. “Meet Dr. Muzorewa.”
Archer was smiling broadly. He seemed wonderfully pleased to have Muzorewa in the room with him. “This is the first time Dr. Muzorewa’s been out here in … what is it, Zeb, ten years?”
Muzorewa’s brows knit in thought. “Closer to twelve. I must say that you’ve enlarged the station far more than I ever could, Grant.”
Archer shrugged modestly as Deirdre took the chair beside Muzorewa.
“I’d like to thank you,” she said as she sat down, “for coming all this way to help me.”
Quite seriously, Muzorewa replied, “I must confess that it wasn’t only to help you. I want to disabuse my idealistic friend here of his notion that the leviathans are intelligent.”
“You’re wrong, Zeb,” Archer said gently. “They are intelligent.”
“Without tools?” Muzorewa scoffed. “How could a species develop a high order of intelligence without tools? Tool-making is a hallmark of intelligence.”
Archer countered, “A hallmark of our intelligence. Other species follow different paths. The dolphins, for instance.”
“Now you’re saying that dolphins are intelligent?”
“They pass knowledge on from one generation to another,” Archer said. “Deirdre made that discovery just recently.”
Muzorewa looked unconvinced. “Tool-making was a key to our developing intelligence. My anthropologist friends tell me that making tools made us intelligent. Dolphins, whales, the leviathans—they live in an environment where tool-making is impossible. They’ll never utilize fire. They have no energy source available to them outside of their own bodies.”
“But they tell stories to each other, Zeb. The dolphins do that. And the leviathans flash pictures to one another. They’re conversing, exchanging information. That takes intelligence.”
As Deirdre wondered how long this argument would go on, the office door slid open and two people—a man and a woman—stepped in.
“Dr. Archer,” said the man. “Are we interrupting? You did ask us to come to your office.”
Muzorewa got to his feet again. “Grant, Ms. Ambrose, I’d like you to meet Franklin and Janet Torre, nanotechnicians from Selene.”
Deirdre nodded toward them. Siblings? she wondered. Maybe twins. Both of the Torres were short, delicately built, with round faces that had a sprinkling of freckles across their snub noses. Both wore identical pale blue one-piece coveralls.
As they pulled up chairs, Muzorewa said, “Back at Selene they’re called the Terrific Torre Twins. They’re the best nanotechs in the solar system.”
Janet Torre started to object, but her brother grinned jovially and said, “I’ve got to admit that they’re right, since I’m not afflicted with false modesty.”
“Or true modesty, either,” his sister wisecracked.
Everyone laughed, and Deirdre felt at ease.
“Now then,” said Muzorewa, getting serious, “we are here to get this modified rabies virus out of your body.”
“Are you a nanotech specialist, too?” Deirdre asked.
Muzorewa shook his head slightly. “No, no. I’m here strictly as an observer.” He turned back toward Archer. “To tell the truth, I welcomed this opportunity to see what Grant has accomplished with this old station.”
Archer looked pleased.
Leaning forward, his childlike face utterly serious, Franklin Torre said to Deirdre, “We’ve ’ginned up a nanomachine that disassembles the virus analogs we built in our lab back at Selene.”
His sister took up, “But we’ve only worked on analogs, based on the three-dimensional imagery that Dr. Archer sent to us.”
“So we need to get a sample of the real virus from you,” Franklin resumed, “and see if our nanobugs will chew it up.”
“And if they don’t?” Deirdre asked.
He looked surprised at the question. “We’ll modify the nanos so that they work right. No sweat.”
His sister nodded her agreement.
“You’ll be working down in the third wheel,” Archer said. “My people are setting up an isolation area for the nanotech lab.”
Janet Torre said, “Can you rig the passageways leading in and out of the area with high-frequency ultraviolet lamps? We engineer our nanomachines to be deactivated by hard UV.”
Archer said, “I meant to ask you about that. Wouldn’t it be dangerous for people?”
“Not really,” said Janet. “You just need a few meters to be exposed to the UV. People can get through it without harm, as long as they don’t linger in the area.”
“I wouldn’t want to go sunbathing out there,” Franklin quipped.
“It’s just insurance that no active nanomachines will get out of the lab,” Janet added.
“People worry about nanos,” Franklin Torre said lightly. “It’s pretty silly, really. A machine that’s specifically engineered to destroy one certain type of molecule isn’t going to develop a taste for other molecules.”
“Tell that to the crazies back on Earth,” Archer muttered. “Nanoluddites.”
Muzorewa held up a finger. “Be fair, Grant. With twenty billion people on Earth there are plenty of fanatics and madmen who would happily develop nanomachines into terror weapons.”
“I suppose,” Archer admitted.
“A disassembler developed to take apart one kind of molecule,” said Janet Torre, “could be modified to attack a wider range of molecules.”
“Only by somebody who knows what he’s doing,” said her brother. “And is nuts.”
“That’s what they call gobblers,” Muzorewa said, his red-rimmed eyes looking sad, wary.
Deirdre asked, “Can the nanomachines actually cure me of rabies? How fast will they work?”
“I’ll explain all that over dinner,” said Franklin Torre.
The room fell silent. Deirdre heard in her mind her father’s warning about smooth-talking blokes. But Franklin Torre didn’t look like a smooth-talking bloke to her. He seemed more like a smiling little leprechaun.
“Dinner?” she replied, pleased and a little alarmed at the same time. “With both of you?”
Franklin glanced at his sister and said, “Oh, Jan-Jan’s going to be too busy. It’ll be just you and me, Deirdre.”
MAIN GALLEY
Deirdre looked over the galley but could not see Franklin Torre. She had agreed to meet him at the galley’s entrance at 1900 hours. She had purposely arrived ten minutes late, to make certain he’d be there waiting for her. But he was nowhere in sight.
She had put on a modest pair of forest green slacks with an overblouse of lace-decorated pale lemon. As she stood at the galley’s entrance she saw several people, mostly men, turning to stare at her.
“Don’t tell me a beauty like you is all alone.”
Startled, she turned to see Rodney Devlin grinning at her. He was in his usual white chef’s jacket, spotless for a change. His brick red hair was shaved close, as usual, while his mustache was thickly luxuriant.
“I’m waiting for someone, Mr. Devlin.”
“Red. Call me Red. Everybody does.”
Deirdre nodded and made a smile for him.
“Well,” said Devlin, pointing, “you won’t have to wait long.”
Andy Corvus came ambling through the galley doors.
“Hi, Dee,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “Going in to dinner?”
“I … um, I’m waiting for somebody, Andy,” Deirdre said, feeling uneasy that Devlin was still close enough to hear everything they said.
“Not Max, I hope.”
“No, not Max. And not Dorn, either. Somebody you haven’t met yet.”
Corvus looked puzzled. Deirdre thought he was about to scratch his head as he stood there frowning slightly.
“Hello, there!”
Franklin Torre came striding up to them, a happy wide smile on his round, snub-nosed face. Deirdre realized for the first time that Torre barely reached her chin.
Feeling slightly awkward, she introduced the two men to each other. Torre shook hands with Corvus, who looked as suspicious as a policeman.
“Franklin’s one of the nanotech specialists,” Deirdre tried to explain. “From Selene.”
“Oh,” said Corvus.
Torre’s expression suddenly went solemn. Almost whispering, he said to Corvus, “You’re infected with nanomachines, aren’t you?”
“Me?” Andy yelped. “No!”
“Yes, you are,” Torre insisted. “Don’t try to hide it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not—”
Torre suddenly broke into a wide grin. “Viruses, man. Viruses. They’re natural nanomachines and you’re full of ’em!”
“Huh?”
Laughing, Torre tapped Corvus on the shoulder and said gleefully, “Gotcha! You should see the expression on your face!”
With that, he took Deirdre by the arm and led her grandly into the galley, leaving Andy standing at the entrance, looking befuddled. Deirdre looked back at him over her shoulder, trying to apologize with her eyes. Andy just stood there, obviously hurt.
Deirdre said to Torre, “That wasn’t nice, Franklin.”
Torre shrugged. “I couldn’t help it. Nobody realizes that our bodies are filled with natural nanomachines.”
“It still wasn’t nice to trick him like that,” she insisted.
With a sigh, Torre said, “He’ll get over it.”
Glancing back at Andy again, Deirdre saw that Devlin had disappeared. Back into the kitchen, she surmised. Andy was standing at the galley’s entrance alone now.
Torre showed her to a table for two. As they sat, Max Yeager and Dorn joined Corvus, who was still staring in her direction. The expression on Andy’s face worried Deirdre. He seemed … she groped for a word. Hurt. That’s how Andy looks: wounded, as if I’ve hurt him.
Torre paid no attention to Deirdre’s distress; he talked all through dinner about his nanotech work and how the disassemblers he and his sister had designed would destroy any rabies virus in her body.
