Lofton was nursing a steaming mug of coffee as he pecked at a tablet, setting up the debriefing with a formal intelligence inquiry protocol. “You two are a walking gold mine of intel. You’ve been inside what we believe is the cartel’s main base of operations. I’ve got about a million questions.”
“And another million from me,” Kraft remarked. He took off his wristpad, punched a few buttons and a 3-D relief topographic map of the Tibetan plateau was projected across his desk. “You can start by pinpointing the location of this monastery—what was the name?”
“They called it Paryang,” Mary Duncan said. “It’s not a functioning monastery. The buildings are just a cover, a front. The underground complex is quite extensive below, from what we saw—“
“Twenty levels,” Frost chimed in. “Roughly circular, dug right into the mountain base. It’s in a valley, and the valley is well defended, believe me. Botscreens everywhere, even below ground, so no approach from that direction is possible without being detected.”
“Reconsats show beam weapon installations scattered around the valley and the nearby mountain peaks,” Lofton consulted a new file on his tablet. “Any defensive weaknesses you can tell us about?”
“None obvious,” Frost said. “But the real problem isn’t Red Hammer, gentlemen.”
That made Kraft sit up straight. His Black Forest moustache twitched with alarm. “It isn’t? What are you saying, Dr. Frost?”
Here, Frost studied the 3-D topo map for a few moments, before replying. “I want to be careful in how I say this. Mary and I have discussed what we saw and we’ve decided that the truth is rather more alarming than just dealing with a criminal cartel. It seems that Red Hammer is definitely in contact with some kind of entity…some kind of intelligent group…that doesn’t exist on this planet. Perhaps something extra-terrestrial.”
Now if was Lofton’s turn to sit up straight. He looked at Winger and Tallant. “They have been cleared for this debriefing, Lieutenant, have they not? No residual effects? No bots in the brain, that sort of thing?”
Winger said, “Yes, sir. I cleared the bots myself. The corpsmen at the Infirmary have double-checked. They’re free and clear.”
Kraft spoke up. “I almost thought I heard you say Red Hammer’s in contact with an off-world intelligence. Little green men, Dr. Frost?”
Frost was deadly serious. “They may not be green and they may not be men, Major. The exact nature of this intelligence isn’t clear. It could be just some form of super AI…artificial intelligence. It could be robotic. It could be swarm-based…Mary and I have reasons to believe that.”
Lofton held up a hand. “Okay, okay…let’s not get carried away here. Let’s put this idea in the ‘parking lot’ for a few minutes, and deal with it later. What about the cartel itself…do you have evidence Red Hammer’s behind these zones of toxic air that are erupting out nowhere? That’s the immediate threat.”
“That and all the angels that are sprouting like weeds everywhere we look,” Kraft added.
Frost nodded. “It’s an ongoing project. And the two threats are related. Now, Mary and I had limited access to labs or planning sessions. They wanted us to work on adapting ANAD for later use…the toxic air threat is just known as The Project inside Paryang. The cartel already has scientists and technicians working on swarm-based para-human entities—what we’ve always called angels—whose primary purpose is to occupy these zones of altered atmosphere, force out the real humans and replace them. Then the ransom will come.”
“Ah,” Lofton said, “ransom…now that’s something I can understand. Only problem is we haven’t received any ransom message yet, have we, Major?”
Kraft said, “Not that I’m aware of. Doctor, you have specific knowledge about the bots that are modifying the atmosphere?”
Frost nodded. “Mary and I worked on the Project for some time, different parts of it…I know they’re ANAD clones. But the way the assemblers have been designed, the way they replicate, the way fold and cleave and the way they extend and retract effectors…I never thought Red Hammer could have come up with that on their own.”
“Probably not,” Lofton said. “They’ve been kidnapping top scientists around Asia for months. There’s your explanation…not some race of little green men in the sky.”
Winger was intrigued with the cartel’s designs. “Specifically, Doc, what makes their bots so much better than ours? I’ve seen the halo bots we engaged inside your head grow effectors in ways I never imagined possible.”
Frost said, “It’s in the processor, Johnny. The config engine and templates. Their bots can hold molecules in geometries that shouldn’t be possible…not with atomic forces we know about. That alone gives their bots capabilities no one else has.”
Kraft said, “Doctor, you mentioned Red Hammer’s working on angels. Technology to deploy para-human swarm entities. I assume that means Symborg.”
Mary Duncan spoke up. “Oh, Major, Symborg is only the beginning.”
“To what purpose? Why do this?”
Duncan shrugged. “Customers, Major. The cartel wants customers. And they want to keep customers. Angels, Symborg, the spread of Assimilation, they’re behind all of it. Addiction on demand, that’s the goal. But Irwin and I saw things…and heard things…that made us both believe there’s more going on than just making addicts of all of us, important as that is to them.”
Frost picked up the idea. “Mary and I have some ideas on how to combat Red Hammer’s technology…we worked on it when we could…when we thought we could evade our halos. It may require another trip to Engebbe, a closer look at some of the ruins and artifacts that Dr. Volk has discovered there.”
“Great,” said Winger. “My favorite place.” Dana Tallant silently poked him in the ribs.
“Do you think you’re up to a memory trace, Doctor?” Lofton asked. “I want to know what you know about the cartel’s plans and designs, all of it.”
Frost and Duncan looked at each other. It was the kind of look that spoke volumes but nothing was ever actually said. “As long as Johnny here can assure me those blasted halo bots are gone, I’m think we can manage.”
“I’m for anything that could give us an edge with those bastards,” Kraft said.
Frost had an opinion. “Major, there’s a reason why Red Hammer always seems to be one step ahead of Quantum Corps. Why they have assemblers that seem to be ANAD clones but can do impossible things. Why they’ve managed to flood the world with angels and people are following Symborg and adopting this craze like their lives depended on it.”
Lofton wore a skeptical frown. “This is your little green men theory, again, Doctor?”
Frost shrugged. “It is a theory, true enough, Major. But Mary and I have talked about this a lot. Assume, for the sake of argument, that we’re right…the cartel somehow has established contact with an intelligence not our own…an entity or a race of whatever, offworld. Just for the sake of argument.”
Lofton started to roll his eyes. “Sorry, Doc. Just for argument…okay, go on—“
“If Red Hammer had access to the technical archives—call it the library—of such an entity, might not that explain how they’ve developed angel and ANAD technology so far and so fast? Red Hammer has weapons, devices, and processes that nobody can explain…certainly not Mary and I. Look at the quantum coupler…Johnny here has one embedded in the back of his skull. It helps him communicate with ANAD. We know that came from a Red Hammer defector. Look at all the angels we see…until Symborg, we’d never been able to control a swarm, manage its configuration, so perfectly that it could resemble a human being and fool almost everybody. Where did that come from, gentlemen? I submit that all the kidnapped scientists in the world—and Mary and I know a little something about that—couldn’t have come up with this technology. And then there’s the Keeper.”
Lofton and Kraft both blinked. Lofton said, “The Keeper--?
”
Mary Duncan said, “We heard a lot of talk among our scientist group about something…or someone…called the Keeper. No one knew exactly what the Keeper was…but everybody agreed that it seemed to be the source of everything. Directives, orders, strategy…nothing was done that wasn’t approved by the Keeper.”
Frost said, “At first, I thought the Keeper was just the leader…head of the Ruling Council. Boss of all bosses, to use an ancient term. But later, Mary and I had the distinct impression that this Keeper was more…that he or it was like a gatekeeper. Or a portal. A way to communicate with someone or someplace else. An Indian physicist, actually British, told us the rumor going around was that the Keeper was really a machine entity and Red Hammer used it to communicate with this other intelligence. The Keeper was like a radio or a Net server, helping the cartel download ideas, designs, plans, things like that.”
“This fellow wasn’t named Nigel Skinner, was he?”
Frost said, “I believe that was his name. We were both halo’ed but we later became good acquaintances. Then he just…disappeared.”
“Did you ever see or observe this Keeper?”
Frost shook his head. “No, but we—“ He stopped when Johnny Winger spoke up.
“Major, I think I have. Lieutenant Tallant here, too. Or maybe a piece of it.”
Now it was Kraft’s turn to look perplexed. His moustache straightened out, coming to attention like the sharpest cadet. “Winger, what are you saying?”
Winger then proceeded to relate the story of the strange sphere he and Tallant had discovered at Kurabantu Island. The sphere that, when they had touched it, had sent the two of them off into some netherworld that neither could explain.
“That sphere is here, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” Lofton asked. “I read the logs on that…nobody had the faintest idea what it is.”
“Yes, sir…the sphere is in level four containment at Table Top. So far as I know, nobody’s been able to penetrate it, or figure out what it is. It’s completely resisted all analysis. But when Dana and I touched it, and there was something similar in the cave I was trapped in at Engebbe, we went somewhere else…it was like a dream.”
“More like a nightmare,” Tallant agreed.
“Kraft, your boys have anything on this?” Lofton asked.
Kraft didn’t like having something dropped in his lap without warning. “No, we don’t. But we can fix that. Winger, you and Lieutenant Tallant get over to Containment on the double. Find out what’s what on this sphere. Is it some kind of comm system? A surveillance device? A nest of bots about to erupt? What the hell is it? And take the doctors here with you. I want a full report by 1200 hours.”
Winger and Tallant both rose. “Yes, sir.”
The two atomgrabbers took Frost and Duncan with them and headed out across the snow-covered quadrangle outside of Ops. They scanned themselves in through all the biometrics and security protocols at Containment and descended four floors to the Level Four lab in the basement.
Corporal Thielen, Containment Tech 1, was manning the lab. The sphere, actually a slightly ovoid object about eighteen inches in diameter, rested on a small pedestal inside a containment vault. Imager and scanning devices surrounded it. A small high-resolution image appeared on a nearby display at Thielen’s station.
Frost and Duncan studied the thing. “What kind of emissions are you detecting, Corporal?”
Thielen was mostly bald, with a big black semi-regulation moustache adorning his lips. He chewed absent-mindedly on his ‘stache. “Well, sir, pretty much zilch. I’ve scanned every band and wavelength I can think of…thermal, acoustic, infrared, other electromagnetics. The thing absorbs everything. Even came in close with a quark imager. All I can say is that it’s made up of atoms and molecules…nothing unusual in the species scan. But the arrangements are…well, sir, let me put it this way: the geometries ought not to work. Bond energies seem to be pretty much impossible. Looking at it at molecule scale—the thing should be flying apart. But it just sits there.”
Johnny Winger said, “Doc, I’d like to send an ANAD probe in, poke around all those atoms and molecules. Physically handle them, to get a feel for the thing.”
Frost agreed. “What kind of config, Johnny?”
“Standard template. Basic effector arrangement.”
It was agreed that containment would be breached long enough for a replicated Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler to enter the tank.
The insert was done smoothly enough and straight away, Winger established coupler contact with the tiny bot. He went over the ‘waterfall,” switching the imager from macro to ANAD view and tried to get a sounding off the surface of the sphere, now dead ahead, some forty thousand microns. Nothing came back.
“Damned peculiar,” Winger muttered. “I’ll slow to one half-propulsor and approach on a tangent. No sense taking chances just yet.”
The approach took half an hour. “We should be in visual range now,” Dana Tallant suggested.
“If we can get any reflection. Let’s see—“
The imager rolled and fritzed and eventually settled down. As ANAD drew closer, they saw an endless lattice receding into the distance, shadowy but discernible, quivering with things popping into and out of view. The effect was one of a wavering surface, almost as if they were looking at it underwater, with light refracted and reflected in crazy, funhouse-mirror distortions.
“Quantum bubbles,” said Frost quietly. “Atoms are hard enough to pin down as it is but this—this is unprecedented. First an atom is there, then it isn’t…superposition on display, gentlemen, right in front of our eyes. Common sense says two objects can’t occupy the same space at the same time. Quantum mechanics says they can. You’re looking at the proof of it right now.”
Tallant noticed the image beginning to shudder. “Wings, you still have control of ANAD?”
Winger shook his head. “Not any more. Just now, we’re picking up some kind of interference…he’s sluggish. I can’t get a response.”
“He seems to be getting closer,” Mary Duncan pointed out. “Johnny, I’d keep some distance if I was you.”
“I’m trying, I’m trying, but it’s like ANAD’s being pulled in. What kind of force--?”
It happened in an eye blink. In one instant, the ANAD bot was cruising along a path parallel to the sphere’s surface, at one-half propulsor. Winger had just sent commands to deploy all effectors and make a slight right turn. But in less than an instant, ANAD veered sharply right and plunged without warning directly into the surface. There was a momentary flash, then…nothing.
Winger threw up his hands. “Doc, what happened? I had him…I was moving a thousand microns closer, then whoosh---he’s gone—“
Frost asked Thielen. “Corporal, can you replay the imager run…slow it down as much as you can.”
“Yes, sir.” The CT1 pecked out some commands on his keyboard and the imager jumped back to the starting point, then scrolled forward, step by step.
They saw the sphere surface sliding by. They saw the surface change aspect as Winger’s commanded right turn took effect. They saw the surface looming larger and larger as ANAD veered toward impact. Up close, they saw the quivering murky clouds of atoms wavering as if underwater.
“Nothing unusual so far,” Frost muttered.
Then the quivering clouds parted and a black seemingly infinite void opened up. There was a flicker on the screen, then an instant later, the same quivering atoms came back.
“Where did the little guy go?” Tallant asked. “One minute he’s at the surface, then he’s gone.”
Winger remembered the roller-coaster ride he’d taken when he’d touched the sphere he and Sheila Reaves had encountered in the cave at Engebbe.
“Another time and place,” he said quietly.
“Almost like a wormhole,” Frost theorized. “Or a passageway.”
“A quantum tu
nnel,” Duncan agreed.
Frost had an idea. “Johnny, this may corroborate what Mary and I heard while we were unwilling guests of Red Hammer. More than one scientist spoke of the cartel having a way to download designs and schematics and other things from someplace far away. A portal or a communication device they could use to communicate with—“
“Little green men,” Winger completed the thought. “If Red Hammer has access to the archives or library of some offworld intelligence, then maybe this sphere is like a library card. Some kind of way in. Access control.”
“And this device came from an island…that island in the Pacific?”
Winger and Tallant both acknowledged. “Kurabantu Island, to be specific. And I saw something like this at Engebbe too. There must be more than one of these library cards around.”
Frost and Mary Duncan exchanged glances. “The main portal has to be at that monastery at Paryang. Red Hammer has multiple ways of accessing this intelligence, communicating with them.”
Winger was sobered at the prospect. “Doc, this is bad. Real bad. No wonder the cartel’s always ten steps ahead of us. They’ve got technology we can’t even dream of. Doc, I’ve got a crazy idea.”
Frost took a deep breath. “Why am I not surprised?”
“No, really, Doc…the only way we can deal with this is to shut down this portal. All the portals. Even the one at the Paryang monastery.”
Now it was Tallant’s turn to be skeptical. “Okay, Wings, I’ll bite… how do you propose to do that? The damn thing absorbs everything we throw at it. I guess we could try zapping it with particle beams or some such. But from what Thielen’s saying, that probably won’t work.”
“Hear me out, okay? Doc, Dana, Dr. Duncan…what if we break containment? Open up the tank. Then me and Doc reach in and try to make surface contact with the sphere ourselves, actually put our hands on it.”