14
The Nanomite War
"After the volcanos erupted and the sun was hidden by thick clouds of ash," Colonel Tomel continued, “everything changed dramatically on Tarizon. You could still tell the difference between day and night, but barely. Many plants and trees died for lack of light. Forests became dangerous tinder boxes ready to explode if ignited by lightning or careless soldier. Wildfires raged across the planet exacerbating the pollution in the atmosphere.
“The soot was the first big challenge. Everything was buried in it—up to your elbows in most places. The wind used to whip it up into great clouds and the rain swept it into the rivers turning them into cesspools. In this dim, polluted world, crime escalated, the economy soon crashed, transportation came to a standstill, and the health system became clogged with millions of people who were sick and dying.
"During this time building and construction almost came to a standstill. With so little sunlight filtering through the surface of the planet, Tarizon literally turned yellow within a few segments. There was still lumber that could be harvested even if the trees were dying, but there was nobody to harvest them. People in the rural areas were being evacuated to the domed cities and most of the planet's resources were being directed to restoring law and order, providing clean air, water and food, and expanding the health system to accommodate millions of people in need of medical care.
“Building maintenance and new construction was critical to all of these efforts. Millions of refugees needed housing and support facilities, which prompted the government to start searching for non-conventional building techniques. One of the men assigned to this task was Berne Baldrich. Baldrich had been aware of the Nanomites for many cycles and was impressed with their ability to quickly construct rather complex crystal structures in their desert homeland. Now, with a staff and an unlimited budget, he started to study them in earnest.
"The Nanomites had never been considered an intelligent life form. Being extremely small, so small a human could only see them in a microscope, it was thought they were like plants with little or no intelligence or ability to communicate. Baldrige, however, believed the Nanomites had to be highly intelligent because of their building and engineering skills. He also was sure they had some means of rapid communication because to build these structures took considerable coordinated effort.
"When Baldrige went to the Nanomites’s desert homeland, he estimated there were about five million swarms. In the course of his study he discovered that their numbers had remained fairly stable since scientists had begun studying them, shortly after unification under the Supreme Mandate. He wondered why their population hadn’t grown and expanded. Was it that they needed certain chemicals and nutrients that only existed in their desert homeland, or did the desert climate have something to do with it? His finally realized it was both. The Nanomites needed a dry environment to build. Moisture slowed them down and made it impossible for them to work efficiently. They also needed a chemical called bacuum that was naturally produced in the desert where they lived.
“Baldrige conjectured that the number of swarms would multiply almost geometrically if they were put in an ideal environment and given all the chemical ingredients they needed. When Baldrige asked his scientists if they could reproduce bacuum in the laboratory, they assured him they could. This excited him since it meant he could take them anywhere on the planet to build, as long as he kept the construction site dry.
"Of course, increasing the Nanomites population would do Baldrige no good unless somehow he could communicate with them and get them to build structures that would be useful to the government in the recovery effort. So, his study turned to figuring out how to communicate with them.
"In researching previous pre-eruption studies of the Nanomites, he learned that the swarmmaster, a loosely connected array of super-nanomites, acted as the brain of the swarm and controlled its members within a swarm field. Nobody knew exactly how the swarmmaster communicated with each of the individual Nanomites in the swarm field, but it was presumed there was some kind of common will within the swarm. This led Baldwin to experiment with telepathic communication.
“To do this he enlisted the help of those most gifted with telepathic abilities. Although none of these persons were able to establish reliable communication with the Nanomites, there was some reaction from the Nanomites to their efforts. This made Baldrige believe he was on the right track. What he needed was someone with stronger or more precise telepathic abilities. This is when he was told about Threebeard, the mutant Peter mentioned earlier.
"Threebeard was too busy to devote much time to the task, so he enlisted the help of his sister, Arits, who loved a challenge and worked on the project tirelessly until she was successful. It turned out she had to teach the Nanomites to understand Tari before the two life-forms could effectively communicate. Artis confirmed that they were indeed intelligent, disciplined, and a vibrant life form that could be quite useful to Central Authority. Even better was the fact that the Nanomites were a docile life form. Their primary concern was survival. They were natural builders, because they had to protect their population from the environment, specifically rain and moisture. That was why they had learned to build such strong and magnificent structures.
“Using their telepathic abilities, Threebeard and Artis could communicate with the swarmmasters almost instantaneously. In time Threebeard and Artis taught other humans with telepathic abilities to communicate with them too. This was fortunate for Central Authority, for Threebeard soon withdrew from the project when he realized that it cared little about the Nanomites as a life-form and only sought to exploit them.”
“Why would he have to teach others how to communicate with the Nanomites?” Peter asked. “You’d think anyone with telepathic abilities could do it.”
“No. It doesn’t work that way. Not everyone has the same level of skill. The level of a person’s telepathic abilities depends on his intelligence, training, and experience. Many people who are telepathic never know it.”
“So, anybody can be taught to be telepathic?”
“No. They must have the gift, but just having it by itself isn’t enough. They must be trained to use it effectively. So, Threebeard taught others how to increase their abilities to the point where they could converse with the Nanomites.”
“I see,” Peter said feeling disappointed. Having felt first Threebeard and then the rhutz touch him with their minds made him wish he could do the same.
“So,” Colonel Tomel continued, “through Rupra Bruda, who later founded the Purist Party, Central Authority immediately began to negotiate with the Nanomites to build a few small buildings on an experimental basis. To do this, of course, architects and engineers were brought in to draw the plans and specifications. These plans were communicated by Bruda to a high swarmmaster who coordinated the project with other swarms. In the end the experimental buildings turned out to be quite satisfactory and the first major construction projects were soon underway.
"What was perfect about utilizing the Nanomites to rekindle the building industry was that they asked for so little in return—just an adequate supply of the food and bacuum needed to sustain their optimal physical health, the right to live in the core of the buildings they built, and time to rest and pray to their God. They had no desire for wealth or power, just to reproduce in a safe environment. Since humans would be occupying only the interior rooms, halls and compartments, the two life forms could live together without even knowing the other was there.”
“Why couldn’t the Nanomites expand out of the desert on their own? Couldn’t they bring the bacuum with them and transport it when they ran out?” Peter asked.
“They didn’t have the ability to transport it over long distances or store it for later use. Remember they are a fairly fragile life form. Too much water or cold can kill them. Their entire existence was devoted to building structures that could protect their population from these natural enemies. When the Central Authority promised them a co
ntrolled environment, unlimited food and nutrients, they jumped at the opportunity because it meant their species would be freed from their desert confinement and would be able to live anywhere on Tarizon. Since they were so small and lived inside solid objects it didn’t matter to them where Central Authority took them. Their environment was always the same.
"The partnership between the Central Authority and the Nanomites worked well for a while and dozens of great buildings were constructed, including the Hall of the Councillors. Then the Purists, led by Videl Lai, began to worry about the Nanomites becoming too powerful. It seemed that their numbers had grown from five million swarms to over a hundred million and, of course, they were living within the walls of the government buildings they had constructed. The Purists feared that the Nanomites were spying on the government, and might use any information overheard to subvert it. This was ridiculous but many began to believe it.
"These fears led to Central Authority adopting a rule requiring all Nanomites to vacate each building after it had been constructed. This was a direct violation of the agreement with the Nanomites and didn't make a lot of sense because these buildings needed constant maintenance, and the Nanomites were happy to provide it since the buildings were their homes. Making the Nanomites leave after a construction project caused an enormous logistical problem as well. Nanomites farms had to be established all over the planet so that Nanomites workers who were not on a job could have a place to live.
"After a job was completed they would be transported to the closest farm where they would wait for their next assignment. It often took many days for the Nanomites to vacate a building, get settled in their temporary transport vehicles, and moved to the nearest farm. These farms were expensive to maintain and the controlled environment they needed often wasn’t provided, causing many to die and others to live in agony. Being moved all the time, they never felt like they had a home either. In the farms they were far worse off than they had been in their desert homeland.
"Things came to a head about twenty cycles ago when a construction superintendent, who was in a hurry to go on holiday, decided he didn't have time to transport the workers back to their farm after the job was done. He decided it would be easier just to fumigate the building and kill all the Nanomites living within it. He had little respect for the Nanomites since there was a surplus of them at the time, and didn't figure he would have trouble finding new ones for the next project. What he forgot about was the Nanomites ability to communicate with other nearby swarms.
"Word spread quickly to the Nanomites farms about the extermination of over fifty of their brother swarms. Of course, they were outraged and demanded that the humans responsible be brought to justice. Charges were brought against the superintendent and nine members of his crew for genocide, but many argued that killing a Nanomites was not illegal under the Supreme Mandate. After all, the Nanomites life-form was not well understood when the Supreme Mandate was written. After a long trial the superintendent and his crew were acquitted on the technicality that Nanomites were not a protected life form under the Supreme Mandate.
"The Nanomites had never organized politically before, but fearing their survival was at stake, elected a leader. His name was Allo; and he had promised retaliation if the humans weren't punished for their crimes and within hours of the verdict that retaliation began. At the time I was a member of a cleanup crew sent to recover the bodies of human workers who had been killed by the Nanomites. It was a chilling site seeing the dead human bodies, without a scratch or a wound of any kind, incased in clear crystal crypts. Survivors said the Nanomites would first build crystal restraints over the legs and arms of their sleeping victims. When they later woke up, they couldn't escape and were helpless as they watched the crypts forming around them. Eventually the victims would use up the oxygen within the crypt and they would die. The look of horror on the victim’s faces haunt me to this very day.
"The incident eventually escalated into all out war and the Purists, led by Videl Lai, called for the total annihilation of the Nanomites life form on Tarizon. But the war didn't turn out to be an easy one. The Nanomites waged an effective invisible war against the Central Authority for several phases. After the war began I was promoted and put in charge of an infantry unit. It was an impossible war because the Nanomites could hide themselves in almost any dry inanimate object. Fortunately, they couldn’t invade living organisms because they contained so much water, but they found indirect ways to attack us. Many lands were scourged in a futile effort to kill the Nanomites, but they always managed to elude us.
"During those phases they destroyed communication facilities, invaded computers and rendered them inoperable, caused power outages, and subverted key stress points in buildings until they collapsed—not to mention the fact that for two cycles construction on Tarizon once again came to a halt. Frustrated with their inept attempt at defeating the Nanomites, they turned to Baldrige again for help. He reluctantly told them how to defeat the Nanomites. All they had to do was disrupt their supply of bacuum and they would be brought to their knees. Of course, this simple solution was easily accomplished by seizing control of all bacuum supply depots, all bacuum mines and natural deposits that could be found on the planet. Once the supply of bacuum was cut off the Nanomites were forced to negotiate for peace and with the help of Artis and Threebeard a peace treaty was worked out.
"Since that time the Nanomites have been treated as slaves and required to live on their farms unless they were on a construction project. The farms are encircled by deep moats filled with poisonous chemicals that radiate into the ground and prevent the Nanomites from escaping. If they refuse to work they are denied food and bacuum and threatened with death until they cooperate. Of course, the Vice-Chancellor has been the primary proponent of anti-Nanomites legislation and denies they have any rights as a legitimate life form.
"As you can imagine this issue is of great importance to all of us. The Supreme Mandate clearly protects all life-forms and does not tolerate slavery. Videl Lai is deliberately trying to subvert the Supreme Mandate and the ideals and values that we all cherish. We must stop him or die trying."