Moonseed (35 page)

“All told,” Henry said, “we lost eighty-three percent of marine invertebrate genera, three-quarters of the amphibian families, eighty percent of the reptilian.”

“A fucking big rock,” Bromwich said.

“Probably not a rock,” Henry said. “Violent volcanism is the best hypothesis.”

“You say,” David Petit said. Petit was a Nobel Prize winning chemist, a thickset man with a Brooklyn accent. “Others don’t agree—”

Bromwich snapped, “And is this where it will stop? With this—Permian shit?”

“No,” Henry said. “Ultimately, the mantle infestation will be the most serious. When the Moonseed is spreading
under
the crust.”

“Why?”

Monica saw that Bromwich still didn’t understand.

“Because,” she said, “it will blow the crust off the planet.”

“Like Venus.”

“Yes, Admiral. Like Venus.”

Silence, briefly.

Henry brought up molecular structure charts and scanning microscope images. “We think we have a handle on how the Moonseed works. If not why. It primarily attacks basaltic rocks, particularly those rich in olivine.”

“Like the Earth’s mantle material.” That was Alfred. “And comet dust, and primordial debris.”

The Admiral asked, “Primordial?”

“Left over from the formation of the Solar System,” Alfred said. “Admiral, this thing feeds on the most basic rock suite in the universe. It is well adapted to conditions in this universe. More so than we are, in fact. We should have suspected the existence of this thing. Even logically deduced it.”

Henry said, “It appears to reassemble the crystalline structure of a mass of rock in a recursive form which—”

“In English, doctor,” Monica said.

He brought up another image. A slice of rock, the crystal structure picked out with false color. A maze of dwindling tunnels, disappearing beyond the resolution of the ’scope into some invisible center, a heart of darkness.

“It is changing the structure of the rocks it touches. Building something.” It was a kind of bootstrap process, Henry said. The manipulation of the outer layers of a crystal structure enabled the more detailed rebuilding of inner layers, which in turn enabled changes on a still smaller scale…and so on. Like waldos, Monica thought, each layer of miniaturization building the next level down, on to invisibility.

“There is a certain logic in this,” Alfred mused. “Between planets, where resources are scarce, one might expect an evolutionary drive of this type. Toward the very small—the utilization and building-in of complexity into even the smallest grains of matter available.”

David Petit, the chemist, locked his boxer’s hands behind his head. “Your qualifications are all in geology, Dr. Meacher. True?”

“Yes.”

“Not in chemistry or particle physics or biology.”

“That’s true.” Henry was quite unfazed.

Petit stopped there, satisfied he had made his point. For now.

Alfred Synge said, “Of course maybe this isn’t some kind of geological thing, or even biological. Maybe this is nanotech. By which I mean the manufacture of materials and structures with dimension less than a billionth of a meter. Molecular machines—”

That started an argument.

“Nanotech is on our own horizon,” insisted Alfred. “We can manipulate atoms with microscope probe elements, we can use the amino acids to make new, non-natural proteins. We can posit self-replicating assemblers that can take inexpensive raw materials—any hydrocarbon feedstock would do—and produce anything from a rocket ship to a disease-fighting submarine that would roam your bloodstream—”

David Petit slammed the table with the palm of his hand. “Nonsense,” he said. “Sure you can manipulate atoms. You can even get them to hold still for a while. But
only by cooling your sample down to liquid helium temperatures. At room temperature, the atoms of your assemblers will start combining, with the ambient air, water, with each other, whatever medium your assemblers are floating in.

“And what about the laws of thermodynamics? What about information flow? How do these assemblers get their information about which atom is where, in order to manipulate them? How do they know where they are themselves, to get from their tiny supply depots to wherever they are supposed to be working? How do they get their power for breaking up material, and navigating, and computing?” He turned to Bromwich. “Admiral, this is just more nonsense. Nanotechnology is cargo cult science. A plot generator for lazy sci-fi writers. Nobody has demonstrated
any
of this, outside computer simulations, where of course you can do anything you like.”

Evidently, Monica thought, watching him, the good doctor has a beef against nanotech. She wondered which grant application of his had been turned down in favor of some sexy nano-proposal.

Henry said mildly, “I’m not here to defend nanotech. The Moonseed, however, is doing one simple thing: building inward, and smaller. The structure, in fact, seems to be similar on all scales. You don’t need much stored information, or computation, or materials transfer to achieve that.”

The Admiral frowned. “I wish you scientist types wouldn’t argue with each other. So the Moonseed is some kind of artificial phenomenon. We’re looking at tiny machines here. Is that what you’re saying?”

Henry said, “Maybe they are artificial. Maybe they are alive. It may be that when a life-form is sufficiently advanced, there is no difference. It may not matter anyhow.”

Bromwich shook her head, visibly angry, dissatisfied at the speculation and lack of clarity. “Continue with your analysis,” she told Henry. “What’s this thing
for?
What’s the point of rebuilding a rock?”

“Concentration of energy,” Henry said.

“What?”

“There is enough chemical energy in a tank of gasoline to achieve unified-theory levels of energy density—
if
all the energy could be applied to a single proton. Which we can’t achieve. We build colliding accelerators miles long to try to emulate that, but we don’t even come close, not within orders of magnitude.”

Bromwich pulled her lip. “You’re saying these little critters turn lumps of rock into—uh—miniature particle accelerators.”

“That’s exactly it, Admiral.”

Henry showed images from Edinburgh, exploding rocks around a volcanic plug called Arthur’s Seat, evidence from the lab where Apollo sample 86047 had exploded.

“The contaminated rocks achieve densities, toward the center, at which fusion processes, at least, can occur. When the Moonseed destroys a chunk of rock, the outcome is dust, and a flood of high-energy radiation, and more Moonseed. It’s a way of propagating.”

“Mini nukes?” asked the Admiral.

“Yes.”

“What do you mean,
at least
fusion?”

This was Monica’s specialty. “He means the Moonseed constructs may reach greater levels of force unification than just fusion.”

“We’ve also observed this astronomically, now we’ve started looking,” Alfred said. “In the Earth-Moon system. The same radiation signature as on the ground. There seems to be a concentration of Moonseed at the Lagrange points.” He looked around the table for understanding. “Lagrange points are gravitationally stable collection points in the Earth-Moon system. We always wondered why we couldn’t see anything at the Lagrange points: no minor bodies, asteroids, trapped there. Now we know.
The Moonseed is there,
destroying whatever drifts in.”

“Just here? Where else?” Bromwich asked.

“Venus,” said Alfred Synge bluntly.

“Maybe space is their natural habitat,” Henry said. “Rather than planets. Our models show that they have difficulty reaching the surface of a planet, from space. They burn up in atmospheres, or are smashed by simple impact, on an airless body like the Moon.”

Alfred said, “But if they do get to a planet—”

“If they do,” Henry said, “then they transform it. Like Venus.”

Petit said dryly, “Explain something else to me. You say the planets are shielded from the Moonseed, by atmosphere and gravity. We brought it here, from the Moon. But how did it get to Venus?”

“We’ve developed a theory about that too,” said Henry.

Petit said dryly, “I thought you might.”

“We took it there,” Henry said.

“What?”

“You need a soft landing to deliver Moonseed to a planetary surface. The only objects which have soft-landed on the planets are our probes.”

“You’re saying
we
did this?”

Henry shrugged. “It’s a hypothesis. The probes collected the dust from the Lagrange clouds in near-Earth space. Specks in the paint work. And then delivered them to the planetary surfaces.”

Petit pulled Henry’s laptop toward him. “Give me a minute…Ah. The first probe to soft-land on Venus was Soviet. Venera 7. Landed in 1970.” He looked up.

“So,” Alfred said softly, “it takes a few decades to destroy a world the size of Venus.”

The Admiral snapped, “How big is Venus?”

“Similar to Earth,” Alfred said. “Eighty percent of the mass.”

“Jesus H—So there’s our timescale.”

“Oh, this is just bull,” Petit protested. “For God’s sake. There are holes in this you can drive a Chevy through. We’ve also been to Mars. Mars is only eleven percent of
Earth’s mass. How come we didn’t destroy Mars too? And we know it’s on the Moon. How come the Moon hasn’t burst like a party balloon?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said, looking determined. “But I think that’s the key, Professor Petit.
The Moon.
The Moon is the key.”

Monica asked, “The key? To what?”

But Alfred was speculating again. “You know, you’re right, Dr. Meacher. The only way the Moonseed can get to a planetary surface is through the action of intelligence.”

“Which means—”

“Maybe that’s the purpose of intelligence. Maybe we were
meant
…”

There was a moment of silence.

Petit laughed. “Alien nano robots manipulating history, eh? Is that what you’re going to tell the President? Should she go on TV with that? Admiral Bromwich, I intend to disprove this absurd scaremongering hypothesis, point by point.”

Henry nodded. “Do it. I’ll be there to applaud you.”

“But in the meantime,” the Admiral said, “we have to consider how to advise the President. And Dr. Meacher, for all he’s a little swivel-eyed for my taste, is the only one coming up with any scenarios here.”

“Thank you,” Henry said dryly.

Bromwich said, “I think we have to work on a worst-case assumption.”

Petit laughed. “The worst case being the end of the world. In an election year, too.”

Admiral Bromwich turned to Henry. “You’ve told me how bad this is going to get. Now tell me what we should do about it.”

“Three things,” Henry said. “We know we can slow the Moonseed down, if not stop it altogether, at least before it gets into the mantle.”

“How?”

“The structures it forms are fragile. They can be smashed, to put it bluntly.”

“We’ll bomb the shit out of it,” the Admiral said.

“And,” Petit said, “when you run out of bombs?”

“Then I’ll be on the White House lawn ripping it apart with my teeth and bare hands,” the Admiral said. “Where will you be? What else, Dr. Meacher?”

Henry said, “Maybe we can come up with some kind of nano counter-agent.”

“I thought you said there was no hope of that.”

“I might be wrong. We have to try. But, no, I don’t think there is any hope.”

He let that hang in the air, for long seconds, maximizing its impact.

Monica studied Henry anew. He was the first to understand this, she thought. There must have been a time, right at the beginning, when only he knew this. Only he, of all the billions on the planet, could see the future. The unfolding of Moonseed logic: Christ, the end of the world. How must that have felt?

Probably, she thought, much like the moment when the doctor, an absurdly young man, had told her, in cool, compassionate terms, that she had such a short time left to live.

If it had been me, would I have had the strength to act as Henry has done? To communicate, to risk mockery and ridicule?

After all, she wouldn’t live to see the end, whatever happened.

There is no hope. Yet we must act as if there is.

Yet there was still something in Henry’s manner she didn’t understand. Something he didn’t want to tell them.

Or something he wanted to achieve.

She said, “Dr. Meacher, give us your third recommendation.”

“We need to go back to the Moon. To Aristarchus, where Jays Malone picked up that rock.”

The Admiral frowned. “Why?”

Because the Moon is the key, thought Monica. That’s the center of his case.

Henry said, “We have the question Professor Petit raised. We know the Moon is infected with Moonseed—
but the Moon hasn’t been destroyed.
Why not? We’ve learned all we can here. Something on the Moon must be inhibiting the Moonseed. We have to understand what.”

Monica watched him. This is what he wants, she realized, on some deep intuitive level. The Moon mission. This is what he’s seeking from us, today.

But, she sensed, there’s something he wants to achieve up there beyond what he’s telling us.

But he fears ridicule, obstruction, if he tells us about it…

“I agree,” she said immediately.

Henry looked at her, surprised. He said, “We have to go quickly. While we still can. Before we’re overwhelmed. It may be in a few months we won’t be capable of mounting a Moon mission, whether we want to or not.”

The Admiral nodded. “How the hell? I thought we smashed up all the Moon rockets, or put them in museums.”

“We did,” Henry said. “But NASA has a way.”

Monica said softly, “When can you leave?”

He looked startled. “Me?”

“Who else?”

“Dr. Beus, I’m a rock hound, not an astronaut.”

“Difficult times,” the Admiral said. “We all have to think out of the box, Dr. Meacher.”

Henry subsided, looking confused, calculating. But he leaned forward again. “There’s something else.”

“What?” the Admiral said.

“Weapons. We need to take weapons.”

Petit gasped. “You can’t be serious.”