THE nanomachines were efficient, but they were not intelligent as a human is intelligent. Their function—their only function—was to preserve the life of the body into which they had been injected, and they did that single-mindedly. If they must modify a human radically in order to succeed, they would do it.
Jeff had been a difficult case. Without massive changes, he would die. The nannies did not hesitate. Lungs and heart were replaced by powerful pumps of resilient plastic. Eyes were eaten away by strong acid solvents, and crystalline sensors, more sensitive and adaptable than human retinas and lenses, grown in their place. The entire digestive system was disposed of, and a small nuclear power pack installed in the belly as energy source. Taloned metal claws, a superior alternative to human hands, formed the end of the tough inorganic sinews and cables of modified arms. Finally, a glittering and metallic exoskeleton replaced tender skin. Now the host could survive anywhere, even in a hard vacuum. His new home would be outside, naked under the silent stars.
Jeff became conscious slowly, knowing what had been done to him. He lifted his arm and opened his eyes, expecting to see a taloned paw outlined against the glow of the Messina Dust Cloud.
What he saw was his own familiar right hand, trembling with tension. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt of pale brown that ended at the wrist. A perfectly normal wrist. Above him, no more than two feet away, the blind face of a display screen peered down. He gasped, dropped his arm to his side, and closed his eyes again. The nightmare was just that, the product of his own imagination. The fear of Cyborg Territory had been planted deep.
He lay for a few minutes, eyes closed. It seemed to have become a way of life: the slide into unconsciousness in one place, the awakening somewhere completely different with no certainty of his own condition.
He felt fine; rested and not sick or hungry or thirsty. He no longer trusted those feelings. Maybe he was not a cyborg in external shape, but he lacked the final say in control of his own body The micromachines decided what he would do, when he would eat, whether he would sleep or wake.
He heard the creak of a chair to his left. He opened his eyes and looked that way. He thought he might see Tilde, or Hooglich, or maybe even Lilah or Connie Cheever. Instead he was staring into the bright eyes of Billy Jexter, only a foot away. The dark head nodded. "Hi. I've been watching you. Hooglich said to call her the second you looked like you were going to wake up. So I did."
"What happened to me?"
"Dunno. But Galen says you ignored the warning signals. You tried to override the nannies. That never works, and you passed out."
"I don't know Galen. Do I?" Jeff at the moment was not sure of much.
"Dunno. Galen's a Logandoc. Galen delivered me when I was born, Lilah says. But I don't remember that."
Mention of Hooglich had Jeff feeling for his pocket. Neither the page she had drawn on nor the pocket itself was there. Someone had changed his clothes. He started to sit up, then had second thoughts. He didn't want to collapse again. "Is it all right for me to get up?"
"Dunno. But Galen says the nannies are done with you. You won't fall over, if that's what you're worried about."
Jeff eased himself off the bed. "How long was I unconscious?"
For a change, Billy had an answer. "Since last night. It's morning now. Want to know a secret?"
"Where are my old clothes?"
"Dunno. Maybe Lilah took 'em. She's been in and out of here ten times while I've been watching you. She wants to talk to you." Billy came closer. "I have a secret. I know something you don't know."
The look on Billy's face said that he was bursting to tell, if someone would just ask. Jeff deliberately didn't. He wasn't interested in the secrets of a six-year-old. He had his own problems. He was a failure—again—and this time he had been labeled a deserter. He couldn't even send a message to his mother, explaining what had happened and defending his name.
Again he thought of her burn-scarred face and months-long struggle to breathe, and of the awesome power of the nannies. Nanomachines could have cured her in days. Did the people of the Messina Dust Cloud have it right, and Earth's government have it all wrong?
Yes, in his opinion, but it was a dangerous thought. Was it even the thought of a traitor?
"Am I a prisoner here?"
"Huh?"
Billy obviously wasn't the person to ask. The idea of prisons and prisoners didn't seem to have reached the Messina Dust Cloud.
Jeff moved away from the bed and prowled around the room. It was sizeable, maybe four meters square, windowless and simply furnished with bed, desk, terminal, easy chair, and a small autochef. He saw a small heap of things sitting on the desk. It was the contents of his pockets: a locket with a picture of his parents, a couple of pens, an old compass which had no possible value in space, a small brass weight shaped like a sea horse, his personal computer, and the sheet of paper, several times folded, that Hooglich had given him. They were the only signs of anything personal in the room. The walls were a plain buff in color, leading to a sterile overall effect, as though no one had ever lived here. The empty cabinets and cases along one wall seemed to confirm that.
There were two doors, in opposite walls. The first could be locked from the inside. The second led to a small bathroom. Jeff peered in and felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to use what he saw.
Billy was sitting cross-legged on the bed when Jeff came out. He had a self-satisfied expression on his face. "Said you would, didn't I? Did it hurt?"
Jeff took his cue from Lilah. "No. But what I'm going to do to you will."
Billy was off the bed and at the outer door before Jeff could add, "Whose room is this, anyway?"
"Why, it's nobody's." Billy understood from the question that the threat had been withdrawn, and he stepped back to the middle of the room. "What I mean is, it's yours. The Logans put it together for you. They'll put your stuff in later and decorate it any way you want. Don't you like it?"
"It's perfectly fine." Jeff had no "stuff," more than what he stood up in or what sat on the desk. The rest of the things he had brought with him to space had been left on the Aurora. But he had another idea to struggle with. From the sound of it, the interior of Confluence Center changed all the time. Connie Cheever had mentioned that the loner Simon Macafee could be holed up in a place specially made for him by the Logans. It wouldn't be difficult to fabricate new living areas anytime you wanted to, when a hundred smart machines served ever human. And there was plenty of interior space. How much?
He could have gone over to his computer, but it wasn't worth it. Jeff stood and did the calculation in his head. If the main body of the Center was a cylindrical disk two kilometers across and half a kilometer thick, then, even without the external corridors, that provided a volume of a billion and a half cubic meters. Be generous and allow a space of a thousand cubic meters for each apartment and its support facilities. You had enough room for a million and half people. Connie Cheever had said there were only a hundred thousand in the whole Messina Cloud. Confluence Center was nowhere near capacity.
"Billy, I think you lied." It was the deep voice of Hooglich, interrupting his thoughts. "You told me he was awake. Looks like he's dreaming to me."
Jeff turned to her. "I was just calculating something."
"Ah. That's all right then. Calculations are sacred." She was as big and bulky as ever, but she had changed into a uniform of pale blue that fitted better than anything she had worn on the Aurora. Her clothes were also a lot cleaner. "How are you feeling, Brother Kopal?"
"Better. I asked a really stupid question last night." Jeff had to get this out of the way, before any other subject came up. He went across to the desk, unfolded the piece of paper, and marked a set of lines on it with one of the pens.
"You were three parts zombie," Hooglich said. "I knew you'd figure it out, either before you passed out or right after you woke up."
He held the page toward her. "I realized as soon as you left. Acceleration is a body force, the same as the Anadem field. So if you want to accelerate hard this way"—he moved his finger upward to follow the lines he had drawn on the sheet—"and not feel it, you set up an Anadem field that works the opposite way round from the one here on Confluence Center. The field produces a force on anything within the double rings in the same direction as the acceleration. If you make the field strength right, the forces from the Anadem field and the acceleration will cancel each other out."
"Locally." Hooglich took the page from him. "If it exactly cancels here"—she touched it—"halfway toward the rings' center, you would still feel a force at the center. And you'd feel a force in the other direction if you were right between the rings." She gave the sheet back to him. "All right. You've got it."
"Of course. It's really simple."
"Everything is, once you understand. But when you don't . . . . And we don't understand the Anadem field. Don't confuse what something does and how it does it. Are you feeling up for something harder?"
"I think so." Jeff was learning caution.
"It's all right. You'll enjoy this, it involves the Anadem field again. What do you know about reverse engineering?"
"I've seen the words, but I have only a vague idea what they mean. Isn't that something to do with finding out how a machine works?"
"Close enough." Hooglich led the way out. Jeff followed and noticed that Billy Jexter was trailing silently along behind. Lilah was right; the kid seemed to wander as and where he liked.
"Reverse engineering is used," Hooglich went on, "when you want to duplicate some gadget a company makes, and the company won't tell you. Sometimes the device is sealed, so you can't dismantle it without destroying it." She was taking them on a path where their weight rose and fell, but overall there was a steady increase. It meant they were winding their way toward the outer perimeter of Confluence Center, where the Anadem field was strongest. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. Jeff noticed that Billy had vanished. The conversation was beyond him, and he must have grown bored.
"So what you do," Hooglich said, "is you buy a few of their machines. You put them through their paces, with every input you can think of, and you measure the performance and output for every set of circumstances. Maybe you try to probe the interior with ultrasonics, or X rays, or neutrinos—though that's always dangerous; the probes might destroy the machine. When you've learned all you can, you build a machine of your own. Ideally, it will be the same inside as the ones you bought. If it's not, but it's good enough so it mimics their performance exactly, no one will ever know the difference."
They had emerged through a little door into a great narrow corridor, ten meters wide and scores high. It ran smoothly away on either side until its own curve hid it from view. Waiting for them, lounging easily against the far wall with a smug look on his face, was Billy Jexter.
"Slideway shortcut," he said. "I guessed where you'd be going, when you talked about the Anadem field. I could have told you a good way."
"But you didn't," Hooglich said. "Why not? You're a pain in the butt, Billy."
"Well, you never asked." He glanced from side to side, and his voice dropped. "I know a secret."
"I know a hundred." Hooglich turned to Jeff. "You'll never find a better use for reverse engineering than this one. No one knows where Macafee is, but we have the Anadem field right here, to play with any way we like."
"Did Connie Cheever say it was all right?"
"More than that. She suggested it. The Cloud jinners are all working on it, too."
"Why? Why not wait until Simon Macafee shows up, and just ask him?"
"A call went out, but there may not be time to wait until he chooses to show up." They were ascending a spiral staircase made of an open lattice of metal. "What Russo warned, of a whole CenCom fleet coming through the node, actually seems to be happening. A coded message came in from one of the harvesters close to Node 23. At least forty fleet ships are already through from Sol. There may be more on the way. The administrator is asking if we can increase the Anadem field strength, add drives to Confluence Center, and be ready to boost away from danger if we are attacked."
"That doesn't sound like reverse engineering."
"It's on the way to it. You might say we don't really have to know how the field works, just how to change its settings. But we don't know what else might happen when we make the field stronger. The more we understand of the basics, the better. That's what we'll be working on."
They had climbed the spiral staircase all the way to the top, where a small boxlike room with one door and no windows perched just under the metal ceiling. Hooglich was almost too big to get inside. She somehow squeezed through. Billy had wandered away again. His attention span seemed to be short. Jeff ducked his head and followed Hooglich.
He had been expecting some kind of control center for the Anadem field. What he found was a room bare of equipment. Russo was sitting like some strange idol, cross-legged and with folded arms, against the far wall. Hooglich went across, grunted at the effort, and lowered herself next to him. She gestured to Jeff to sit down.
He remained standing. "I thought you were going to work on modifying the Anadem field."
"We are. You are. We'll join the Cloud jinners in just a few minutes. But first . . . ." She turned. "Russo, how does it look?"
He raised his head and tilted it back, as though the great nose was sniffing the air. He nodded. "They don't have the slightest idea of security. But so far as I can tell, this is a place that can't be overlooked or overheard from anywhere."
"Not even by Billy Jexter?"
"I won't guarantee against that little imp. But I hope we're snug."
"We'll have to risk it and talk." Hooglich turned to Jeff. "You must be wondering what this is about. Me and Russo, we think we're all in bad trouble."
"We are." Russo sniffed. "My smeller tells me. It's never wrong."
"You mean, because of the report that Captain Dufferin made?"
"That, and a lot more than that. Russo's been thinking, and he believes he's finally figured it out." Hooglich turned. "Go on, Rustbucket. This is your show."
"I'd like to be wrong. But"—Russo tapped the side of his nose—"I don't think so. Remember when we were back on the Aurora, and nothing seemed to make sense? We had a teeny little ship with just about no weapons, run by a captain known through the whole fleet as all mouth and trousers. And we were sent to tell everyone in the Messina Dust Cloud to surrender to us—or else. That was the first piece of strangeness. But there was another one, and it seemed to have nothing to do with the first. That was you." Russo pointed a gnarled finger at Jeff. "A Kopal, the first ever to be sent to BorCom. What were you doing shipping with us?"
"I told you. Back on Earth, I made a real mess—"
"Yeah, yeah. I heard all that. We know Giles Lazenby was involved, too. But if you follow fleet talk, when it comes to Brother Giles the simple explanation is never the right one. And as the Hoog said to you and to me, if Giles wanted to make his own kid look good, he'd have put you, Jeff—no offense—next to Myron, where people could compare and contrast the two of you.
"Then there was what we were told on the Aurora about secession, which Connie Cheever says is nonsense. The Cloud never thought for a minute of seceding from Sol. That's where I was stuck, until your little sweetheart, Lilah—"
"She's not my sweetheart! She's—she's—"Jeff groped for words strong enough. "She's a horse fanatic."
"Is that right? I never saw a horse, not live at least. Ate it a few times, back in the Pool. Not bad, when you've been living on cornmeal." Russo blinked. "Where was I? That Lilah, she came up with a good one. The business with the Aurora looked as though somebody wanted to start a war and needed a reason, she said. Now, the Anadem field, there was a real good reason—'specially if you happen to be Kopal Transportation."
"I didn't—"
Russo waved his hand. "It's all right, Jeff, I'm not accusing you. You'll see why in a minute. Let's go on. Now I'm moving from fact to theory. Somebody might want to start a war with the Cloud territory, but they couldn't just up and make it happen. Not even if a piddling little nothing of a ship like the Aurora was captured or lost. Actually, I think we were sent through the node, under Squeaky's command, intended to be captured or defeated. The sounder just made things happen a lot faster. But for starting a war, you need something special. Can you think of anything that would make everybody back in the fleet, and all over Earth, willing to send the fleet through the node network and teach the Cloud a lesson—and, along the way, and just by accident, get our hands on the Anadem field? Well, suppose that those terrible cyborg monsters in the Messina Dust Cloud captured a Kopal—an innocent young recruit, ensign in the Space Navy, and a member of the proudest and most famous family in Earth's military and commercial history." Russo pointed at Jeff. "You. Now there's a real reason to go to war. Either to get you back, or to revenge your death." He folded his arms. "That's what I think. And I ask, do you see anything wrong with it?"
The whole idea made Jeff's head spin, but he could still think. "There is something wrong with it. Your idea could only work as long as we're out here. The moment we got back and told people in the fleet and on Earth the full story—"
Jeff paused, and Russo nodded.
"You just got it," Hooglich said softly. "I told you he would, Russo. For the scheme to work, we wouldn't be going back to tell our stories. Not now, not ever. There's only one way to make sure of that. In the next stage of the operation, three people have to die: Russo, and me, and—most important of all—Jeff Kopal."