Inherit the Earth - Brian Stableford [45]
“You don’t think this stuff poses any kind of threat, do you?” said Damon, intrigued in spite of himself. “It’s not likely to start displacing DNA organisms, is it?”
“Until we know more about it,” Karol said punctiliously, “it’s difficult to know how far it might spread. It’s not likely to pose any kind of threat to human beings or any of our associated species, given the kind of nanotech defenses we can now muster, but that’s not why it’s important. Its mere existence expands the horizons of the imagination by an order of magnitude. What are a few crazy slanderers, even if they’re capable of inspiring a few crazy gunmen, compared with this?”
“If it is natural,” said Damon, “it could be the basis of a whole new spectrum of organic nanomachines.”
“It’s not obvious that there’d be huge potential in that,” Karol countered. “So far, this stuff hasn’t done much in the way of duplicating the achievements of life as we know it, let alone doing things that life as we know it has never accomplished. It might be woefully conventional by comparison with DNA, capable of performing a limited repertoire of self-replicating tricks with no particular skill; if so, it would probably be technologically useless, however interesting it might be in terms of pure science. We’re not looking to make another fortune, Damon—when I say this is important, I don’t mean commercially.”
“I never doubted it for a moment,” Damon said drily—and turned abruptly to look at the man who was rapidly coming up behind them. For a moment, it crossed his mind that this might be an Eliminator foot soldier, mad and homicidal, and he tensed reflexively. In fact, the man was an islander—and Karol Kachellek obviously knew him well.
“You’d better come quick, Karol,” the man said. “There’s something you really need to see. You too, Mr. Hart. It’s bad.”
Ten
T
he package had been dumped into the Web in hypercondensed form, just like any other substantial item of mail, but once it had been downloaded and unraveled it played for a couple of hours of real time. It had been heavily edited, which meant that the claim with which it was prefaced—that nothing in it had been altered or falsified—couldn’t be taken at all seriously.
The material was addressed To all lovers of justice, and it was titled Absolute Proof That Conrad Helier Is an Enemy of Mankind. It originated—or purported to originate—from the mysterious Operator 101. Karol Kachellek and Damon watched side by side, in anxious silence, as it played back on a wallscreen in Karol’s living quarters.
The first few minutes of film showed a man bound to a huge, thronelike chair. His wrists and ankles were pinned by two pairs of plastic sheaths, each three centimeters broad, which clasped him more tightly if he struggled against them. He was in a sitting position, his head held upright by an elaborate VE hood which neatly enclosed the upper part of his skull. His eyes were covered, but his nose, mouth, and chin were visible. His pelvic region was concealed by a loincloth. There were two feeding tubes whose termini were close to the prisoner’s mouth, and there was a third tube connected to a needle lodged in his left forearm, sealed in place by a strip of artificial flesh.
“This man,” a voice-over announced, “is Silas Arnett, an intimate friend and close colleague of Conrad Helier. He has been imprisoned in this manner for seventy-two hours, during which time almost all of the protective nanomachinery has been eliminated from his body. He is no longer protected against injury, nor can he control pain.”
Damon glanced sideways at Karol, whose face had set like stone. Damon didn’t doubt that this was, indeed, Silas Arnett; nor did he doubt that Arnett had been stripped of the apparatus that normally protected him against injury, aging,