Author: Joan D. Vinge
Category: Science
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“She is a sibyl,” Danaquil Lu said abruptly. “We trained her ourselves. And she was a Summer. I would have known if she was not.”
Capella Goodventure looked at him, her eyes narrowing; he met her stare, until finally she was the one who looked away. “She isn’t right,” she said finally, looking at Clavally again. “I will tell you what I have told every sibyl I’ve seen—I have to return to the city, but you do not. Don’t go to Carbuncle.” She turned and started away, her angry momentum splitting the crowd like a ship’s wake.
Clavally looked at Danaquil Lu, found him already looking at her. “Perhaps the only thing that’s truly wrong with the new Queen is that she isn’t a Goodventure,” she murmured.
Danaquil Lu’s mouth twitched with a fleeting, ironic smile; the smile disappeared. “What do you really think?” he asked her.
She brushed at a fly that was buzzing in her ear like doubt, and felt another frown start to form. “I remember the girl Moon Dawntreader that we knew. She was different … there was something about her … but I always felt that it was good. I think that I want to know for myself what the truth is, Dana.”
He nodded, his face pinching. “You want to go to Carbuncle.”
Slowly she nodded. “But what do you think? What do you feel?… What do you want to do?”
He looked out across the sea again, squinting with the glare of light on water, looking north. She saw him swallow as if something were caught in his throat. At last he said, “I want to go home.”
ONDINEE: Razuma
“Halt. Who are you?”
He stopped in the inquisitory’s shadowed corridor as weapons surrounded him, with cold-eyed men behind them.
“The Smith.” They knew him only as the Smith when he came on errands like this; when he wore openly the pendant of silver metal that he usually kept hidden beneath his shirt. He could pass unmolested through circumstances that would be suicidal if he did not wear the cryptic star-and-compass, which stood for so many things to so many people. The star in this particular pendant was a solii, a rare and secret gem born in the heart of dying stars, more precious than diamonds, believed by some mystics to hold powers of enlightenment. In this setting it symbolized all that, and more. “The High Priest sent for me.”
The men surrounding him wore the uniforms of the Church Police, with the blood-red badge of the High Priest’s elite guard. They looked dubious as they took in his face, his youth; they studied the sign he wore. Their weapons lowered, slightly. They carried plasma rifles, not the stun rifles that most police forces used, that were both cheaper and far more humane. The High Priest’s red-badges were called the Terror, and the name was not an empty threat. “Come with us,” one of the guards said finally, nodding his head. “He’s waiting for you.”
The Smith followed them along the dark, echoing corridor, down a flight of steps cut from stone. The steps had been worn into crescents by the pitiless tread of booted feet going down, and up again; by the feet of the inquisitory’s countless victims, going only down. Someone screamed, somewhere, as they reached the bottom. The guards glanced at him as he hesitated, measuring his reaction to the sound. Infidel, their stares whispered. Criminal. Offworlder scum.
He looked back at them, letting them into his eyes, letting them see what waited for them there. “Let’s go,” he whispered. They looked away, and started on into the inquisitory’s bowels.
They passed many closed doors; he heard more screams, moans, prayers in more than one language. The parched heat of the streets was a reeking fever-sweat here. He felt himself sweating, not entirely from the fetid heat. One of his escort unlocked a door, and the noises he had been trying not to listen to suddenly became impossible to ignore. They led him through the chamber beyond.
He did not look right or left, staring fixedly at the back of the man ahead of him; but the corners of his eyes showed him a naked, bleeding body suspended from chains, an inquisitor irate at the interruption; an array of torture equipment ranging from the primitive to the sublime. Nothing ever became obsolete, in this business. The stench was overwhelming, like the heat, the sounds.… A rushing filled his head, his eyesight began to strobe; he swore under his breath, and turned it into forced meditation, pulling himself together. He finished crossing the room.
Beyond the far door was another corridor, and at its end another room: a laboratory this time. The air was suddenly, startlingly cool. He realized that this must be where the government kept the research installation he had heard rumors about. No wonder the secret of its location kept so well. He took a deep breath, let it out as Irduz, the High Priest of the Western Continent, came forward to greet him. Irduz was here in person; this was a bigger mess than he’d expected.
“Shibah be praised you’ve come so soon—”
He shrugged off the touch of Irduz’s hand. The High Priest must have his own entrails on the sacrificial plate, to make him touch an unbeliever as if they were friends. “What’s the problem?” the Smith asked, his voice rasping.
Irduz stepped back. “That is,” he said, and pointed. Behind him stood half a dozen men in lab clothing, some Ondinean, some not. “Our researchers were trying a replication process. Something went wrong.”
The researchers moved aside as the Smith started forward, giving him access to what lay behind them. He stopped, staring. Beyond the electromagnetic barrier of an emergency containment shield he saw a seething mass of glittering, cloudlike material. He looked at the display on the wall beside it, just as one more subsystem went critical, and another indicator slipped into the red in a spreading epidemic of crisis. “What the hell…?” he murmured. He turned back to the research team. “What is it?”
They looked at each other, glancing nervously at the High Priest. “We were trying to create a replication process that would restructure carbon into diamond, for a building material—”
He gave a bark of sardonic laughter. “By the Render!” He looked back at Irduz, watching the High Priest’s barely controlled anxiety become barely controlled anger, at his blasphemy, at his mockery. “Maybe Shibah and the Hallowed Calavre don’t approve of your unnatural methods.”
“Our plans for the new temple require large expanses of a material that is both transparent and extremely strong. Diamond veneer will not suffice. The Holy of Holies knows that everything we do in this place is to the greater exaltation of the Name,” Irduz snapped. His heavy robes rustled like leaves of steel.
The Smith glanced toward the door he had entered by, and what lay beyond it. He smiled sourly. “Why don’t you just evacuate, and drop a nuke on this place? That would solve your problem.”
“That is not an acceptable solution,” Irduz said, frowning.
“You mean it’s too obvious?” The Smith shook his head, turning back to the displays. They had been trying to create a primitive replicator, as limited in function compared to the Old Empire’s smartmatter as an amoeba was to a human being. They had wanted something that would mindlessly realign the molecular structure of carbon, transforming it into diamond. They had tried to create an imitation of life; and they had been too successful.
Instead of an army of cell-sized mechanical slaves, whose purpose was endlessly replicating the molecular pattern of diamonds, they had gotten an army of mindless automatons whose only purpose was reproducing themselves. And getting rid of them would require something far more sophisticated and lethal than a dose of disinfectant. The replicators by design incorporated diamond and other materials into their own analog-bacterial structures, making them stronger, more active, and far more resistant to attack than any natural organism.
He studied the displays silently, feeling incredulity and disgust grown inside him as he located the critical error sequence in their programming. He glanced again at the systems monitors, confirming his worst case expectations with one look. “This is eating its way through the shields.” He turned back. “It’s feeding on their energy output. In about half an hour the whole system is going to crash.
Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve produced a universal solvent.”
The looks on the faces of the researchers turned critical, like the data readings behind him; and he realized that they had suspected it all along. But they had not even dared to speak its name, had been hoping against hope that he would come in here like a miracle and tell them that they were wrong—
“A universal solvent?” Irduz took a step backward, pressing an ebony hand to his jeweled breastplate. “It can’t be.” It was the ultimate demon of Old Empire technology run wild. “That absorbs everything it comes in contact with. Everything. Nothing can contain it. Nothing can stop it. It’s the end of the world.…” He looked back at the stricken researchers, his indigo eyes filled with death. “By the Holy—”
The Smith silenced him with an impatient gesture. “Tell me,” he said evenly, to the cluster of researchers, “why haven’t you stopped this?”
“We can’t—” someone protested.
“What do you mean?” the Smith said angrily. “You knew what the problem was. Anybody who knows bacteriology and its analogs could kill this thing. You have the processing power here; and you presumably possess at least the variety of chemical tools available to the average drug dealer. Don’t you—?”
“Yes, but—”
“But what, for gods’ sakes?” He caught the man and jerked him forward. “What the hell were you waiting for?”
“But—but—we can’t get in there.” The researcher gestured at the seething mass waiting beyond the transparent wall.
“You what?” the Smith whispered.
“We can’t get at it.” He wiped his sweating face. “When the emergency shields are up, there’s no way to get access to what’s contained inside them. But if we open the shielding the solvent will get out—”
The Smith laughed incredulously. “You can’t be serious.” He looked at their faces. He looked back at the shield displays. “How in the name of any god you like could you possibly set up a system with no emergency access?” You miserable, stupid bastards— His hands tightened.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?” someone asked, in a voice that sounded pathetically high. “There must be something. You’re the expert—!”
“I really don’t know. You’ve done your work so well,” he said softly, twisting the knife, almost enjoying the look on their faces.
“What if you can’t?” Irduz said thickly. “What will happen to our world?”
The Smith glanced at the data on the displays beside him. “It could be worse.” He shrugged.
They looked at him. “What do you mean?” Irduz demanded.
“The term ‘universal solvent’ is really a misnomer. There are a number of different biotechnical compounds you could call ‘universal solvents.’ Their interests vary depending on their composition. A few things would actually survive if this escapes containment—”
“What kind of things?” Irduz said. “What—?”
The Smith stared at his feet, rubbing his face, wiping away any trace of sardonic smile. He looked up again, finally. “Titanium spires in some of your monuments.”
“What else?”
He shrugged again. “There are a number of things I can think of that would retain their integrity … but nothing you’d be interested in; except diamonds. Ships at the starport with titanium hulls, if their locks were completely sealed, might even get off the ground.… Carbon-based lifeforms will be the first to go, though; the replicants need carbon to make diamond, obviously. We’ll all become diamond—filigrees of diamond frost, on a pond: the human body is mostly water; they don’t need water.” He glanced at the glittering cloud of doom. “This will spread like a disease.… The solvent can’t destroy everything as fast as it will destroy human body tissue; some things will take weeks to break down. The whole planet will probably take months to transmogrify.…”
“Stop it!” Irduz said, and it took the Smith a moment to realize that he meant the solvent itself. “Stop it and you can have anything you desire—”
The Smith’s mouth twisted. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “Maybe you can bribe your gods, priest, but you can’t bribe mine.” He gestured at the disintegrating fields, let his hand fall back to his side. “I can probably stop it…” he murmured finally, in disgust, looking at their terrified faces. “Personally I’d see you all in hell first, and me on the next ship out of here. But our mutual friends want your ass sitting in the High Seat a while longer, Irduz.” He touched the pendant hanging against his shirt. “So the next time you say your prayers, you’ll know who to thank. But if I save the world for you. I want you to take these incompetent sons of bitches on a tour of your other facilities.” He jerked his head at the door to hell.
“It wasn’t our fault!” the researcher beside him said. “Fakl was in Transfer! We were in contact with the sibyl net the whole time, we followed the process exactly! There were no mistakes in our program, I swear it!”
The Smith spun around. “You got this data through sibyl Transfer?” he asked. “I don’t believe that. That’s impossible.”
Another man stepped forward, wearing a sibyl’s trefoil. “I was in Transfer during the entire process,” he said. “We made no mistakes at our end. We followed everything exactly. The sibyl net made the mistake. It was wrong. It was wrong.…” His voice faded. The Smith saw fear in his eyes—not fear of the Church’s retribution, or even of the end of the world, in that moment—but instead the fear of a man whose belief in something more reliable than any god had been profoundly shaken.
“That’s impossible,” Irduz said.
“No,” the Smith murmured. “It could be true.” It could be why I’m here— He shook his head, as the stupefying visions of a realtime nightmare suddenly filled his mind, filling him with incomprehensible dread. He sucked in a ragged breath. Why—?
“Do you mean there’s something wrong with the entire sibyl net?” Irduz demanded. “How could such a thing happen?”
“Shut up,” the Smith said thickly, “and let me work, unless you really want to find out firsthand what it feels like when your flesh cracks and curls, and all the water oozes out of your crystallizing body—”
“You dare to speak to me like—”
The Smith stared at him. Irduz’s thin-lipped mouth pressed shut, and the Smith turned away again.
He began to give commands to the control system, going back over the faulty sibyl data; doing his analyses half in the machine, half in his head. The purity of analytical thought calmed him, fulfilled him, making him forget his human fears. The replicators were essentially an analog of bacteria, structured for strength. They could be stopped by the application of appropriate analog toxins. Once he understood their structure well enough, he would know what tools would destroy them. But he also needed heat—a lot of heat, to break down the carbon-carbon bonds of the diamond matrix that made the replicators almost impervious to attack. And then, somehow, he had to deliver the blow.…
He crossed the lab to another bank of processors, cursing under his breath at the impossibly inadequate design of the lab itself. He transferred his results, inputting more data, his murmured commands loud in the sudden, perfect silence of the sealed room. “I need access to your toxin component inventory.” He gestured at the displays.
One of the researchers came forward. He made a quick pass of his hands over the touchboards, and stood aside again. “You’re cleared.”
The Smith went back to his work as the accesses opened, searching for the fastest way to create his silver bullet from the simplistic assortment of analog toxins he had available. The solution to this problem was painfully obvious; but it had to be quick, subtle, and right the first time.… He was oblivious now to everything but the exaltation of his work—caught up in an ecstasy that was more like prayer than anything anyone else in this room had ever known.
When he had his prototype toxin designed, he activated the sequence that would begin to produce it in large quantities in aerosol form, a
nd heat it to three or four thousand degrees centigrade. He estimated that half that much heat, combined with the toxin, should be enough to turn the seething mass of replicant ooze into useless slag that would harm nothing. This much would also leave their entire system in ruins. Destroying their system wasn’t absolutely necessary to this process; but it was better to be safe than sorry, when you were dealing with the end of the world. And besides, he felt like it.
“All right…” he said, turning back to his silent witnesses. “Turn off the emergency shields.”
“What—?” someone gasped.
“Do it!” he snapped. “I have to get this mixture in there, if I’m going to stop what’s happening, and the only way to do that is to shut it down.”
“But if the solvent escapes—”
“Shutting off the fields will slow it down, because it’s feeding on their energy,” he said, as patiently as if he were speaking to someone with brain damage. “That should give my agent enough time to do its work. This is your only chance.… You have about five minutes before the replicant mass overloads the barriers anyway, you stupid sons of bitches. And then there will be no stopping it. Shut off the goddamn field!” He went back to his position among the system displays, never taking his eyes off the researchers as they looked toward Irduz; as Irduz nodded, slowly, and someone gave the fateful command.
He watched the data on the screens, barely breathing; timing his own directives to synchronize, to feed the superheated gas into the space at the exact point in time when the shields went down.
Something happened beyond the protective window/wall of the observation room that registered in his eyes as blinding pain; he shut them, as the virtually indestructible material of the window, the room, and the building itself made sounds that no one in this room had ever expected to hear. The Smith felt an impossible heat reach him like the sun’s kiss, making his flesh tingle, even here. He stood motionless until he felt the sensation fade, the reaction snuffing out. He opened his eyes. The formerly transparent window before him was opaqued now by a sheen of metallic silver-gray. He could make out nothing beyond it.