“No,” she said to him. She crouched, facing the ants, holding her knife in front of her. She could delay the ants, maybe, give the others time to escape. Meanwhile, more soldiers poured out of the nest. They began hunting around, seeking enemies. A soldier raced toward Peter and Karen, its mandibles wide.
Peter thrust his spear at the ant. The ant dodged it and went for him, moving extremely fast.
“Leave me, Peter!” Karen King shouted. She backed away from the ants. Then she leaped into the air, soaring far higher than a normal human could ever jump, and landed catlike away from the ants. At the same time, she pulled from her belt the spray bottle of defensive chemicals that she’d planned to show to Vin Drake. Benzos. Ants didn’t like benzos, she was pretty sure of that. She sprayed the stuff toward an advancing ant. The ant stopped instantly, turned around…and ran away.
“Yeah!” she yelled. The spray worked. It made them run like rabbits.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the others running away from the ant nest. Good. Buying them time. She kept spraying, and the spray held the ants back, stopped their attacks. But the bottle had contained only a small amount of the liquid. And still more soldier ants were breaking out of the nest. The nest had gone into full alarm. An ant leaped up onto Karen, landing on her chest, tearing her shirt, and it began snapping at her neck.
“Hai!” she shouted and grabbed the ant behind its head, held it up in the air, and with her other hand slammed her knife into the ant’s head. The blade punched through the ant’s head, and a clear liquid squirted out—it was hemolymph, insect blood. Instantly she flung the ant away. It landed on the ground and went into convulsions, its brain destroyed. But the ants had no fear, no sense of self-preservation, and there seemed to be no end to their numbers. As the ants closed in on her, Karen jumped away, soaring head over heels backward like a circus tumbler, and again landed on her feet.
And then she ran.
Ahead of her, she saw the other humans running explosively fast, driven by fear, leaping over leaves and fern stems, dodging things, fleeing like gazelles. How can I run this fast? I’ve never run so fast in my life…Karen thought. Clearly their bodies were much stronger and faster in the micro-world. It gave Karen a feeling of superhuman power and exhilaration. She leaped over obstacles like a hurdle runner, clearing things in a series of incredible jumps. She realized she was sprinting at about fifty miles an hour, in the scale of the micro-world. I killed an ant. With a knife and my bare hands.
They soon got out of the visual range of the ants. Ahead, in the distance, stood the tent.
Worker ants continued to butcher Kinsky’s body. They bit off the arms and legs and cut the torso into chunks, making cracking sounds as they sheared through the ribs and spine, yanking out the man’s viscera. The ants drank the spilled blood, making sucking noises. A welter of torn clothing, blood, and intestines was strewn about, while the ants began transporting the meat underground.
Karen King stopped running for a moment to look back, and she saw the ants carry Kinsky’s head down the hole. The severed head stared back as it went down, pulled by workers. It seemed to hold a look of surprise.
Chapter 15
Nanigen Headquarters
29 October, 10:00 a.m.
I t was a sunny day in central Oahu, and the view from Nanigen’s meeting room swept across half the island. The windows looked over sugar-cane fields to the Farrington Highway, then to Pearl Harbor, where Navy ships floated like gray ghosts, and to the white towers of Honolulu. Beyond the city, a ragged line of peaks extended along the horizon, painted in misty greens and blues. These were the Ko‘olau Mountains, the Pali of Oahu. Clouds had begun to build over the range.
“It will rain on the Pali today. It usually does,” Vincent Drake murmured to nobody in particular, while he thought, The rain will solve the problem. If the ants haven’t solved it already. Of course, if there were any survivors, they might find refuge in a supply station. He reminded himself not to overlook this detail.
Drake turned away from the window and sat down at a long table of polished wood, where a number of people were waiting for him. Seated across from him was Don Makele, the vice president for security. There was the Nanigen media officer, Linda Wellgroen, and her assistant, as well as various other people from different departments.
At the far end of the table, by himself, sat a slender man wearing rimless spectacles. Edward Catel, MD, PhD, was the chief liaison for the Davros Consortium, the group of pharmaceutical companies that had supplied capital to Nanigen. The Davros Consortium had invested a billion dollars in Nanigen; Edward Catel monitored events at Nanigen for the Davros investors.
Drake was saying, “…seven graduate students. We were recruiting them to do field work in the micro-world. They’ve disappeared. Our CFO Alyson Bender has also gone missing.”
Don Makele, the security chief, said, “Maybe they went to watch the surf on the North Shore.”
Drake looked at his watch. “They should have checked in with us by now.”
Don Makele said, “I should file a missing-persons report.”
“Good idea,” Drake said.
Drake wondered just when the police would discover the corporate car with Alyson’s body and the students’ clothing in it. The car had fallen into a tidal inlet. He did not think the police would be able to make much sense of the crash. The cops are locals, he thought. Hawaiian locals take life easy, they go for the simple explanation, since that makes the least amount of work for them. Even so, he didn’t want the police to get too interested, so he gave Don Makele and the media staff his orders: “Nanigen cannot afford any media attention right now. We are at a critical stage of our explosive growth. We need to work quietly while we smooth out the wrinkles in the tensor generator, especially the problem of the micro-bends.” He turned to Linda Wellgroen, the media officer. “Your job is to stop publicity over this incident.”
Wellgroen nodded. “Understood.”
“If you get media inquiries, be warm and helpful but don’t give out any information,” Drake went on. “Your job is to be boring.”
“It’s in my résumé,” Wellgroen said with a smile. “ ‘Experienced at media-diffusive ambiguation in real-time crisis contexts.’ It means that when the crap is flying I can be as exciting to the media as an Episcopalian vicar discussing how to toast a crumpet.”
“Those kids didn’t get into the tensor generator, did they?” said Don Makele, the security chief.
Drake said firmly, “Of course not.”
Linda Wellgroen jotted something on a legal pad. “Any idea what happened to Ms. Bender?”
Drake looked concerned. “Frankly, we’ve been worried about Alyson in recent days. She was known to be deeply depressed, possibly distraught. She had been having an affair with Eric Jansen, and when Eric tragically drowned…well…let’s just say Alyson struggled with private demons.”
“You think Ms. Bender took her own life?” Linda Wellgroen said.
Drake shook his head. “I don’t know.” He turned to Don Makele. “Tell the police about Alyson’s state of mind.”
The meeting broke up. Linda Wellgroen tucked her legal pad under her arm and walked out of the room, accompanied by the others—but at the last minute, Vin Drake touched Don Makele’s elbow and said, “Wait.”
The security chief stayed while Drake closed the door. Now only Makele and Drake were left in the room, along with the Davros advisor, Dr. Edward Catel, who had remained seated at the end of the table. He hadn’t spoken a word during the meeting.
Drake and Catel had known each other for many years. They had made significant amounts of money working together on deals. Vin Drake thought that Ed Catel’s greatest strength was the fact that he displayed no emotions. The man had no discernible feelings of any kind. Catel was a medical doctor, but he had not treated a patient in many years. He was all about money, deals, and growth. Dr. Catel was as warm as slate in January.
Drake waited a moment.
Then he said, “The situation is different from what I just told our media people. Those kids did go into the micro-world.”
“What happened, sir?” Makele asked.
“They are industrial spies,” Drake said.
Catel broke in, speaking for the first time. “Why do you think that, Vin?” He had a mild, even voice.
“I caught Peter Jansen in the Project Omicron area. That zone is forbidden. He had a memory stick in his hand. When I walked in on him, he looked guilty as hell. I had to grab him and rush him out of the zone. The bots could have killed him.”
Catel raised an eyebrow; he was one of those people who seem to have yogic control over their facial muscles. “The Omicron zone doesn’t sound secure if a grad student can walk in there.”
Drake got annoyed. “The zone is very tight. But we can’t have the security bots active all the time—nobody could enter the zone. I should be asking you about security, Ed. You paid Professor Ray Hough a great deal of money to let us recruit his grad students.”
“I didn’t pay him a cent, Vin. He got stock in Nanigen. Under the table.”
“So what? You are responsible for the behavior of those students, Ed! You manipulated the situation in Cambridge to get those students out here.”
“You have not solved the problem of bends,” Dr. Catel answered in a bland voice. “You planned to send them into the micro-world at considerable risk to their lives. Or am I conjecturing?”
Drake ignored him and paced the room. “The ringleader is Peter Jansen,” he went on, speaking rapidly. “He’s the brother of our deceased vice president, Eric Jansen. Peter seems to irrationally blame Nanigen for his brother’s death. He’s looking for payback. He’s trying to steal our corporate secrets. He may be planning to sell our technology—”
“To whom?” Catel asked sharply.
“Does it matter?”
Catel’s eyes narrowed. “Everything matters.”
Drake didn’t seem to hear him. “A Nanigen employee is involved in the spying,” Drake went on. “A control-room operator named Jarel Kinsky.”
“Why do you think so?” Catel asked.
Drake shrugged. “Kinsky has disappeared, too. I think he’s in the micro-world, in the Waipaka Arboretum. Where he’s serving the students as a paid guide. What they’re doing, I think, is trying to find out how we operate in the field and what we’re discovering.”
Dr. Catel pinched his lips together but said nothing more.
“You want me to start a rescue—?” Don Makele began.
Drake cut him off. “Too late. They’re dead by now.” Drake gave his security chief a sharp look. “Nanigen has been attacked on your watch, Don. You didn’t seem to notice. Is there anything you want to explain about that?”
Don Makele’s jawline tightened. He was wearing an Aloha shirt. He had an ample belly, but his bare arms, sinewy and massive, were fatless, and Drake saw how his security man’s arms went rock-tense. Don Makele was an ex-Marine intelligence officer. A security failure like this—a spy ring operating under his nose—was unforgivable. “I offer my resignation, sir,” he said to Drake. “Effective immediately.”
Drake smiled and stood up, and put his hand on Don Makele’s shoulder, feeling the moisture soaking the man’s rayon shirt. It pleased him to see how a few well-chosen words could make an ex-Marine break into a sweat. “Not accepted.” Drake’s eyes narrowed, and he got a careful look. He had humiliated his security chief, and now the man would be eager to please. “Go to Waipaka Arboretum and collect the supply stations, Don. All of them. Bring them back here. They need to be cleaned and refurbished.”
That would prevent any survivors from taking refuge in a station.
Dr. Catel had picked up his attaché case and was moving toward the door. He glanced at Drake and gave him a nod, and left without saying another word.
Vin Drake understood exactly what Dr. Catel’s nod meant. Clean up this mess quickly and the Davros Consortium won’t hear about it.
He went over to the window and looked out. As always, the trade winds were blowing across the mountains, endlessly lofting into mist and showers. There was nothing to worry about. For humans without weapons and protective gear, survival time in the micro-world was measured in minutes to hours, not in days. Speaking to himself in a murmur, he said, “Nature will take its course.”
Chapter 16
Station Echo
29 October, 10:40 a.m.
The seven graduate students gathered at the entrance of the tent. A sign over the tent’s door said, SUPPLY STATION ECHO. PROPERTY OF NANIGEN MICROTECHNOLOGIES. They were in a state of shock, filled with horror over the brutality of Kinsky’s death. They were also extremely surprised at how fast they had run. Danny Minot had lost his tassel loafers. The shoes blew off his feet while he’d made a jaw-dropping dash that would have shamed an Olympic sprinter. Danny stood there in muddy, bare feet, shaking his head. And they had seen Karen King fighting the ants. Her twists and leaps, soaring through the air.
It was clear they could do things in the micro-world they couldn’t have dreamed of before.
They investigated the supply station quickly, as a raiding column of ants could show up at any moment. The tent, stocked with various boxes, sat atop a concrete floor. In the center of the floor, there was a round steel hatch. The steel hatch was operated with a wheel lock, like a bulkhead door of a submarine. Peter Jansen spun the wheel and lifted up the hatch. A ladder went down into darkness. “I’ll check it out.” He put the headlamp on his head and switched it on, and descended the ladder.
He ended up standing in the middle of a dark room. As he swung his headlamp around, the beam fell across bunks and tables. Then he spotted a bank of power switches on the wall. He threw them, and the lights came on.
The room was a concrete bunker. It contained spartan living quarters. Tiered bunks were stacked along two walls. There were laboratory benches, equipped with basic lab supplies. There was a dining area, with a table and benches and a cooking stove. A door led to the bunker’s power source: a pair of D-size flashlight batteries, looming far above their heads. Another door led to a toilet and shower. A chest held some freeze-dried meals in pouches. The bunker was secure against predators, a sort of bomb shelter in a dangerous biological environment.
“It’s not a Disneyland ride out there,” Peter Jansen said. He sat slumped at the table in the bunker, exhausted. He felt unable to think clearly. Images of Kinsky’s death ran through his mind.
Karen King leaned against the wall. She was splashed with ant blood. The blood was gooey and clear, with a slightly yellowish color, and it dried fast.
Danny Minot sat hunched at the dining table. He had resumed picking at his face and nose with his fingertips.
A computer sat on the lab bench. “We could learn something from this,” Jenny Linn said, and switched it on. The computer booted, but a password screen came up. Of course, they didn’t know the password. And Jarel Kinsky wasn’t there to help them with things like that.
“We’re not safe here,” Rick Hutter remarked. “Drake could show up.”
Amar Singh agreed. “I propose, let’s stock up with food and gear and leave immediately.”
“I don’t want to go outdoors,” Erika Moll said, her voice trembling, as she sat down on a bunk. Why had she ever left the university in Munich? She longed for the safe world of European research. These Americans played with fire. Hydrogen bombs, megapower lasers, killer drones, shrunken micro-people…Americans were demon-raisers. Americans awakened technological demons they couldn’t control, yet they seemed to enjoy the power.
“We can’t stay here,” Karen said to her, speaking gently. She could see how frightened Erika was. “The most dangerous organism we face is not an insect. It’s human.”
It was a good point. Peter Jansen suggested that they stick to the original plan: go to the parking lot, try to get on a truck to Nanigen, get into the tensor generator somehow. “We have to get restored to normal size as soo
n as possible. We don’t have much time.”
“We don’t know how to operate the generator,” Jenny Linn said.
“We’ll cross that bridge later.”
Rick said, “We have some good tools for getting ourselves on the truck, including the rope ladder we found in the pack.” He had been poking around in the supply boxes, and he’d pulled out something: another pair of radio headsets. This meant they now had a total of four communication radios.
“There is only one thing to do,” Danny Minot murmured. “Call for help.” He held up a radio headset.
“You call Nanigen,” Rick said to him, “and Vin Drake will come around looking for us, and not with any magnifying glass. With the toe of his boot.”
Peter suggested that they keep radio silence except in an emergency, in case Drake was listening for them.
“I don’t see the point,” Danny said. “We need to call for help.”
Jenny Linn did not take part in the conversation. Instead, she opened all the cabinets, one by one, and went through them carefully. She found a lab notebook. She opened it and began flipping through the pages. Somebody had jotted handwritten notes on the first few pages—weather readings, logs of sample-gathering activities, mostly. It didn’t seem useful, until she came to the map.
“Look at this, guys,” Jenny said, spreading the notebook on the table.
On a page of the lab notebook, somebody had sketched a rough map of the Manoa Valley. The map showed the locations of ten supply stations, scattered through Fern Gully and partway up the mountain slopes toward Tantalus Peak, at increasing distances from the greenhouses and parking lot. The supply stations were designated by letters of the NATO alphabet, from Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, up to Kilo. There was an arrow marked TO TANTALUS BASE—GREAT BOULDER. Tantalus Crater wasn’t shown on the map, nor was the base.