The Goliath Stone (10 page)

The bag for dust collection was remade into a net. The original material wasn’t very good, so it was redesigned as strands of linked loops of buckytubes, with operators around the edge of the net.

The entities had never heard of chain mail.

The material they didn’t use for the net was made into braided cables of the same design, which were used to wrap the rolled net. An army of operators was gathered and instructed in a single function: linking together and pushing on other linked operators. Thousands of layers of these around the parcel would impart the speed necessary to fling it at the passing rock at the proper moment. The net would open, wrap around the target rock, and join together on the far side, and hundreds of miles of cable would thereafter connect the two rocks, which could then be drawn together.

They had never heard of a harpoon gun.

Which was a pity, as they had never heard of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride either.

Fortunately the new rock was passing to sunward, and they needed light, so no operators were jerked loose when the bindings suddenly dug in, spalled away some surface material, and yanked Target One along.

There was no record of it in the Library, but the late Warren Littlemeade had selected Target One in preference to scores of more dangerous Earthgrazers because its rotation was negligible.

Target Two was ten times as large, and it was spinning. It completed a rotation in just under thirty-one hours, which wasn’t terribly fast, but it made the ride very much more interesting for the entities as the cables wrapped around it and wound them in. Not very evenly.

As cable wound around the net holding Target Two, the increased speed of Target One in its orbit pulled it farther from the Sun. Target Two was slowed in its own orbit, pulling it closer to the Sun. When rotation finally stopped, the two rocks were linked by a rigid tether.

The appalled entities had not been idle, and before the tether could get Target Two rotating in the opposite direction—they had never heard of bungee cords either, but they had worked out the principles—a torus, filled with operators and Wieland, was fired along the cable to where it met the capture net, which was at once bound firmly to the cable. The two asteroids maintained their orientation.

Unfortunately, this put Target Two between Target One and the Sun. Occultation was neither complete nor constant, but it presented a great hardship.

This lasted only until Wieland sent the torus back bearing conductive cables. The operators that had survived impact and linkage had resumed their default program and had been copying themselves, and Target Two was now rich with power production.

In principle, everyone could have moved everything to Target Two, detached Target One, and taken the larger rock to Earth. They never thought of it. They had been created to bring Target One to Earth, and that was hardwired into the processor of every individual operator. Sufficiently large clusters could have other ideas, but all such concepts worked against a terrific resistance. Even Set had given up the idea of ignoring Earth once the processors that had been damaged by (comparatively) high voltage were replaced.

They began winching the rocks together.

It took years. They had to build the oxygen drive earlier than planned, to compensate for the rotational changes from shortening the cable. And since it had to be on Two, because One was going to be crushed by the collision, that meant they were getting farther from the Sun. Not much, but some.

Wieland was killed when the rocks came close enough for gravity to make the winching easier. Until then, gravity had simply been accepted as the thing that made everything go around the Sun, and applying the concept to smaller objects had been unimportant. The collision happened earlier than expected, and the entity hadn’t gotten clear. It had been busy supervising the assembly of a thick iron plate.

Though not as heavy as planned, the plate succeeded in its purpose, which was to be contacted by the molten core of Target One, melt, wrap around it, and prevent actinides within Target Two from participating in the reaction as the core sank in. That would have created a larger version of the same problem they’d had before.

Smaller oxygen drives had been built. The heat differential between the core and the surface was used to power them and cancel the rotation of the combined mass. They would be used for steering as needed.

The entities did not have the human need to name things. Their mode of communication specified whatever they were discussing. Nevertheless, Set, who had spent the most time studying the Library and who, though lacking a term for it, had come to like Wieland, proposed a name for the new object.

Forge.

A sail was constructed and extended to three times the diameter of Forge. It was a single solid layer of operators with far more than the usual number of light converters. Course was set for Earth, and slowly Forge began to change its path.

The Library had included no classical mythology. The significance of a black sail was something the entities couldn’t know.

But they would have approved.

*   *   *

It wasn’t difficult to curve the sail into a parabolic reflector. Wavelengths too long for the sail to absorb were focused on detectors. Deliberate transmissions to Target One had been abandoned, but Earth radiated amazing quantities of noise in a wide band of frequencies.

Sorting out the metals and other solids, produced as a consequence of using the drive, into separate elements, still left most of the entities with copious free time.

Sorting out the gibberish, collected by the sail and detectors, into usable information, was much harder, and a good deal more interesting.

XIV

Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

—ABIGAIL ADAMS

“Would they have moved to another rock?” May said as Toby typed rapidly.

“Doubtful. Target One is still invisible. Black. If they moved they’d hardly have left it coated with light collectors.”

“What if it isn’t invisible? It was lobed. What if it came apart and we’re looking in the wrong places for the pieces?”

“They’d be in related orbits, and so far I haven’t found any new grazers. At least one would still dip down to Earth.” He started another search. “If anyone else on the old team has any ideas … oh my God. They’ve been arrested by DHS.”

“
What?
”

“Over the last three days. It’s all over the media. Go ahead and smack me.”

Toby was skipping through stories. May did her own search, and found photos and videos of dozens of frightened, aging people doing the Perp Walk in the company of suited men wearing sunglasses.

“The Feds look sick,” she said.

“Nanos at work,” Toby said. “I bet they’re in serious pain. —Goddammit, Renee was a
janitor
! This is atrocious. May, we’ve got to do something.”

“Toby, they’re doing this to smoke you out.”

His hands froze above the keyboard. Then he got into his e-mail again and sent a message to proudrobot.

Subject:
Let My People Go!

Check the news for orkers of cows.

Cans need opening NOW.

—Moonseller

“What in the world—”

“We have to assume some kind of monitoring, watching for keywords, but they have to be things the Feds would understand and expect. Connors used to pronounce ’coworkers’ as ’cow orkers.’ His ID comes from a classic story about a drunken genius who built the most perfect creature possible and forgot why. It was to open beer cans for him.”

“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten it until now. —It’s hard to remember how old he is after seeing him run.”

“All those years trapped in the ice may have helped.”

“Huh. I was thinking of him hiding out in a cave under his house.”

“Wrong story. That’s because you didn’t know him. He liked being conspicuous. And he’s not averse to killing Nazis.” He chewed on his upper lip, which he hadn’t done since he’d started growing whiskers. “I wish I had a phone number for him.”

“Check your phone. You did get a message on the airplane.”

Toby looked at her and checked his phone. There was a callback number. He used it.

The first ring wasn’t completed before he heard, “Hi, slick! Good to hear from you. You catch the race?”

Toby grinned in spite of himself. Nobody else ever called him that. “Just the end. Mycroft, some people we used to know are having legal trouble. You know a good lawyer?”

“The legal department at AOL-CBS are supposed to be hot stuff.”

“How about one you can get hold of?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I own it.” After a few seconds, the voice continued, “Breathe.”

Toby inhaled sharply. “That’s handy,” he said.

“Yeah, now and then. Frivolous, or frame?”

“Hanh?”

“Lawsuit, or arrest?”

“Probably both, but definitely frame.”

“I’ll wind ’em up and turn ’em loose. Everybody?”

“Right down to the janitor.”

“Make a nice story for
Lowdown
. —That is part of my
nose
.”

“What?”

“The duly authorized officials are testing the paint our shaman put on my face before the race. Atheists. —You should try the pool. Get some color in your cheeks.” The call ended.

“He owns AOL-CBS,” Toby said.

“
How
the
hell
did he do
that
?”

What with the events at Littlemeade and Watchstar, Toby knew far more about business deals than a nanotech engineer had ever wanted to, but he said, “Knowing him, some way nobody ever thought of. He’s sending their legal team. He suggested we go out for a swim and get some color in our cheeks. I assume from the nanos.”

May narrowed her eyes, thinking. “He wants us to be hard to identify. They’re still tracking you.”

“I never got used to you being smarter than me. I better not introduce you two.”

May shook her head and patted his arm. “I’m not his type.” At his puzzled look, she added, “All the women he’s sent to meet us have had serious boobage. It’s not rocket science.”

“Well, if anyone would know— I did notice Cristina. All of them?”

She nodded, looking pleased. “Let’s go for a swim.”

He was smart, but he was a guy. He couldn’t figure out right away why she was smiling. Tentative hypothesis: it was because he hadn’t paid attention to anyone but her.

He was a guy, but he was smart. He didn’t ask.

*   *   *

They hadn’t been outside in days. Toby expected the nanos to go to photosynthesis mode as soon as direct sunlight hit, but they splashed around nude in the pool for a couple of hours before anything happened.

When it did, it was May, all at once. She had just turned to Toby and started to speak, and she went dark red. “I’m getting hungry,” she said, then frowned. “I thought I was.”

“You just changed color,” Toby said.

She held up a hand to look at it. “Huh. You haven’t.”

“I had a bigger breakfast. Water soaks up body heat. —He couldn’t just come out and say, ‘Get good and hungry so your nanos will start supplying power,’ oh, no.” He shook his head irritably.

“How’s it look to you?”

The red skin and blond hair were an incredible combination. “You look like a succubus.”

“I know that smile. Let’s get back indoors.”

*   *   *

He definitely had
not
been this good.

*   *   *

“I’m a little worried about being hungry and suddenly not being hungry,” May said much later. “Should it have worked that fast?”

Toby had been fighting a weight problem for more years than he liked to think about. Being a techie and also fannish, he’d learned a huge amount of things about it. “Perception of hunger and fatigue are all tangled together,” he said. “If the nanos are linked, then the quanta they soak up can supply every cell directly. You hungry now?”

She had to think, but she nodded. “Thirsty, too.”

“Can’t think why.”

“Behave.”

May had an attack of the giggles when the light went back on, as well she might. Toby was dark red too. “Your fault,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Polite.” They went out and got fed.

They’d finished loading the dishwasher, and Toby was kneading dough for baguettes, when May said, “I can’t figure out what they’re
doing
.”

“Okay,” Toby said, “we can eliminate three-wishes errors.” (That is, it wasn’t a case of badly phrased instructions being taken literally.) “They’ve developed awareness and decided to do something markedly different from original instructions.”

“Obviously.”

“No, not obviously, or we’d have made plans for things like this. We
did
make plans for things like this. The original mission is hardwired. The tell-me-three-times confirmation occurs at every level of processing, and if they developed minds they’d still have the habit of two overriding a third.”

May stared, then put her hand on his arm to hold it still. “Toby, that breaks down in two steps.”

“What?”

“Picture nine processors in groups of three. One group is all for the original plan. Each of the other groups has one, uh, loyalist, and two, mm, rebels. The two groups with two rebels each both say No. The third group says Yes and is overruled. Four rebels have just outvoted five loyalists. This is why republics end up as oligarchies.”

“I see the problem. I’ve said it badly. May, every processor has to refer to the hardwired system in any kind of network processing. Any action which contradicts the original plan literally makes it harder to think.”

“What if they replace the hardwired program with their own hardware?”

“The moment it’s removed they go blank.”

“What if they build nanos with their own hardware and copy themselves into matching networks?”