 
# Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2017 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Prologue

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Samuel Johnson

Ford's Creek, Colorado

March 20, 2155

2345 hours U.T.

The problem with being a swarm being, Johnny Winger figured, was that you couldn't taste hot dogs being grilled on a campfire. And that sucked.

He really didn't know how he had gotten here. He had a memory—did swarm beings even have memories?—there had been an endless field of waving, undulating plants, like a corn field, only it wasn't corn. When he looked closer, he could see that the corn was actually composed of trillions of tiny bots, a whole field of bots. A whole planet of bots. When he walked through the field, the bot-plants parted like corn stalks, but little poofs of them drifted up and he soon saw he had a rooster tail of dust behind them, identifying the path he had taken through the field.

Then he had come to a small lake, barely a hundred meters across. There was a small white wooden footbridge across the center of the lake. And, not unexpectedly, he saw a small whirlpool churning alongside of the bridge piling, right in the middle of a lake.

What else was there to do but jump into the whirlpool? If this was a dream, that was the logical thing to do, wasn't it? So he jumped...

And wound up here. 'Here' was actually a place of strong, good-feeling memories. 'Here' was one of the good places.

It was the old fishing camp and cabin at Ford's Creek, Colorado. It had to be '35, maybe '36. His Dad, Jamison Winger, had often brought him here for long weekends in the summer and fall. Trout and bass and all that cold running water that burbled down out of the Rockies made Ford's Creek a special place.

He knew this place.

Now he was inside the cabin. It was late, well after midnight. He was supposed to be in bed, in the top bunk, of course, with his brother Brad and neighbor Archie below. There were others in the bedroom too, but he didn't know them and they were sound asleep anyway.

Somehow, like a well-rehearsed routine, he knew what he was going to do before he even did it. Trains ran on tracks and memories followed tracks too.

Johnny shimmied quietly down the ladder from the top bunk and padded across the hard wooden floor to the bedroom door. He cracked it open, crept out into a darkened hall and made his way toward the living room up front. There were voices there and some laughing and chuckling. Cards were being dealt. It was the grownups and their poker game again.

Johnny stopped at the end of the hall and peered around the corner.

A fire guttered in the chimney, mostly smoke, but no one paid any attention. A small rickety table was set up next to the fire. Chairs had been pushed aside to make room for the table. There were cans and paper sacks strewn across the floor.

Someone burped real loud and Johnny had to stifle his own laugh.

Grownups, really\--

Five men were playing poker around the table. One was his Dad, tall, fringe of gray hair around a mostly bald top, red flannel shirt not tucked in, his weathered, rough hands fanning out the cards to study his draw. There were others too: Hugh, Roy and Todd.

The fifth man sat with his back to Johnny. The low lights and the flickering flames of the fire cast deep shadows across a broad set of shoulders. He never turned around, and Johnny took to calling him the Shadow Man. He didn't know the Shadow Man's real name.

"Come on, Roy, you in or out?"

Roy was stocky, white-haired, ruddy-faced, in fact he had a pig's face, Johnny had always thought. His lips tightened and he slapped a few cards down on the table.

"Yeah, I'm in. I'll see your five and raise you five."

Todd tossed a few chips into a growing pile. "I'll call."

Johnny's Dad did the same, but added, with a mischievous wink, "I'll see your five and raise you twenty." He tossed a handful of chips in the pile, which had now become a small hill.

The Shadow Man said nothing at first. Then, with no words, he tossed his own chips in, all of them. In a low, almost inaudible voice, he said, "See...and raise fifty."

That raised eyebrows around the table. It even gave Johnny a chill. Not what the Shadow Man said but the way he said it...like a hiss, almost, like a snarl. The Shadow Man talked like Johnny figured a talking grizzly bear would talk: guttural, menacing, hoarse and deep.

Who was this Shadow Man? Johnny wondered.

Then, almost as if he were answering Johnny's question, the Shadow Man spoke again, just like a grizzly bear playing cards.

"I never bet less than the house." It was a kind of an explanation. The Shadow Man must have had a winning hand; he'd bet everything on that hand. More raised eyebrows.

"Sure, whatever you say," muttered Roy. He didn't look up, but continued fiddling with his own cards.

Johnny had about a million questions. Was this fishing camp real? Did I actually jump into a lake on a planet of bots? Am I dreaming?

"You're not dreaming," the Shadow Man bent forward, toward Jamison Winger. "I saw the look on your face. You're wondering how any hand could be that good. My hand is that good."

No one argued with the Shadow Man and the game went on. As he hung by the corner of the hallway door, Johnny tried to take in everything he saw. He knew it all had some kind of meaning.

He'd been deconstructed, he remembered that. Doc III had done the honors, disassembling him into atoms and molecules, just before the Keeper in that cave on Europa had consumed him...or what was left of him. Now he was an angel, a para-human swarm being just like all those weirdos who followed the Assimilationists.

And he remembered that Doc III had tried to maintain his original identity and memory in a small nondescript file called Configuration Buffer Status Check...a place the Central Entity would hopefully never think to look.

Slowly, piece by piece, even as he watched his Dad play a poker game with Roy, Todd, Hugh and the Shadow Man, the memory of who he was and what he had to do came back.

Thanks, Doc. The little assembler had managed to save enough of his memory to figure all this out....

Johnny remembered being outside the Inuit village of Nanatuvik, in Alaska and seeing a man shuffling through the snow as he approached. The man was short, dark-skinned, enveloped in a heavy qaspeq parka and hood, with bone necklaces rattling around his neck as he approached. Another angel? It was hard to tell.

The man spoke something, though Winger couldn't hear over the whine of the wind. He realized the man was Nanatuvik's angakkuq, the shaman. He was gesturing at something in the sky.

Winger looked back over his shoulder. It was late afternoon, with the sun low, but already he could make out the shimmering veil of the aurora borealis hovering over the distant mountains.

The angakkuq approached Winger and stopped, placing a hand on Winger's shoulder.

"The peril of our existence lies in this fact: we eat souls. Everything we eat has a soul. All things have souls. If we hunt and fail to show respect for the souls of our prey, the spirits will avenge themselves. See in the sky...the Old Woman of the Sea is already disturbed. In the days to come, we must be careful."

With that, the shaman ambled off toward a nearby hill.

Johnny Winger knew he had his work cut out for him. Already he had enough intelligence about the Old Ones to make life difficult. He just had to find a way to get it to UNIFORCE.

Mostly he hoped he could block the Central Entity from executing the Prime Key.

Maybe, somehow, in ways he could now only dimly perceive, he could block the Prime Key himself.

That old shaman was right, he told himself. He would have to be careful in the days and weeks ahead.

It was a new life he was living as an angel. The rules were different here. He'd have to watch his step.

He knew UNIFORCE needed every scrap he could give them if the Normals were to have any chance of resisting the Old Ones. He hated himself for using that term but the truth was he was half angel, half-Normal himself, one foot in each world, pulled in two opposite directions at the same time. He supposed that spies and saboteurs had always dealt with that.

But he had to remind himself of something his son Liam had once said. "Being an angel is so cool. You can be anything, you can go anywhere, you can't die...."

Already he could feel the same pull Liam talked about. But he had to resist. He had to win this battle. Not only was it a battle between Normals and angels, between humans and the Old Ones.

It was a battle with yourself. That was the hardest part. Somehow, he'd have to do what Liam and Dana and millions of others hadn't been able to do. Win that battle and save the small kernel of his own identity, his own memories that Doc III had managed to squirrel away in a small file somewhere in his config manager, to live another day.

The Normal part of him was just a few bytes at the end of that file.

But it was the only human part left. And that was the part that had to survive.

Now it had survived. Doc III had seen to that.

Now it was time to get to work. The Shadow Man had told him, in ways he couldn't really explain, that he had an important mission to perform.
Chapter 1

Farside Observatory

Korolev Crater, the Moon

March 25, 2155

0100 hours U.T.

Third-shift astronomers Nigel Course and Lilly Fong knew of no better word to describe what they were seeing than dread. Pure, unaltered, rock-in-the-bottom-of-your-stomach dread.

Both were pulling late shift today...tonight...whatever the hell it was. Tending the radars and telescopes of Farside Array, scanning sector after sector of the heavens for any little burp or fart worthy of an astronomer's interest. The High Freq array had just gone through a major tune-up last week and it was Course's job to give her a complete shakedown for the next few days.

At the moment, she was boresighted to some distant gamma-ray sources somewhere in Pegasus...where exactly he'd forgotten.

While Fong peeled a banana and stifled a yawn, Course took one last look out the nearest porthole and begrudged the final wisps of daylight before Farside was fully enveloped in the nightfall. At that same moment, he heard a beeping from his console and turned his attention back to the array controls.

What the hell...

Nigel Course looked over his boards, controlling the positioning of the great radars out on the crater floor and the optical and radio telescopes that accompanied them. He quickly pinpointed the source of the beeping...Nodes 20 through 24...the south lateral array...was picking up some anomaly.

He massaged the controls and tried to focus the array better, get better resolution on the target. SpaceGuard didn't beep without reason.

Only it wasn't SpaceGuard. It was Sentinel. The outer solar system net.

A quick perusal made the hairs on the back of Nigel Course's neck stand up. The system displayed a list of likely targets, based on radar imaging and known ephemerides. He scanned the list, mumbling the details to himself.

" Hmmm....right ascension 22 degrees, 57 minutes, 28 seconds. Declination 20 degrees, 46 minutes, 8 seconds---" Just as he was about to consult the catalog, Sentinel threw up a starmap.

Lily Fong dropped her half-eaten banana.

"The Mother Swarm," she murmured.

Course's fingers were flying around the keyboard. "Lilly, we don't know that. We need to study this thing. It's an all-sector alarm, I've got returns on all bands. Whatever the hell it is, it's big. Gi-normous, in fact. A quarter of the sky, centered on 51 Pegasi, but not fifty light years away. In fact, it's right on our doorstep...or rather, Pluto's doorstep or where Pluto used to be."

"Anything on Doppler?"

Course finagled with more buttons. "Bearing...toward the inner system. Margin of error puts it within a cone approximately two astronomical units, centered..." he tapped more keys, "...centered on us or near us."

Fong shuddered. "It's here. Billions of kilometers away but it's here. Can we get some resolution on the thing?"

"We can try." For the next few minutes, the two astronomers worked together, manipulating the instruments that comprised the Sentinel net, a vast detection grid orbiting the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto, a world now gone forever, a grid designed and placed to alert UNISPACE to any threats coming from certain suspect bearings...like 51 Pegasi. The design parameters never mentioned the Old Ones or little green men or extraterrestrial monsters from outer space by name, but no one was fooled.

Sentinel was designed to do exactly what it seemed to have just done.

After half an hour, Fong sat back in her chair. Her face was pale, the blood had drained out when the Sentinel alarm had gone off. A sheen of sweat beaded up on her forehead and drops fell to the keyboard. She ignored them and looked wordlessly over at Course.

"You know what we have to do." It wasn't a question. "The protocol's pretty clear when we get a Level One alert."

Course ran down the results of the last scan, the one that made Fong so pale. "I read the analysis this way, Lilly...just so we're clear on the details in case questions come up. After washing the raw data through ALBERT three times, do you concur that the detected anomaly...we're calling it KB-1 for now...Kuiper Belt Object One...is a diffuse mass of small particle-sized objects with a thermal signature of a large swarm?"

Fong nodded silently, staring at the graphs and plots on her panel as if they were contaminated. "I concur," she whispered, weakly. "It has to be the leading edge, Nigel. That's all it can be. We studied and simulated this possibility for years, every which way we can. Most of the runs converge on results very similar to, if not identical, to this. ALBERT doesn't lie."

Course stood up and went over to a porthole, which gave onto a constricted view of the nearest arrays of the Submillimeter Interferometer, and a shadowy backdrop of Korolev crater's steep craggy walls beyond. A triangle of blazing sunlight still illuminated the upper rim, last gasp of the lunar day.

"I still don't get it--"Course shook his head, turned back to the consoles. "51 Pegasi's been quiet for years...SpaceGuard's never showed anything. Now, all of a sudden, BLAM! Energy spikes all over the place. We should have seen something before...rising X-ray, rising gamma levels, something. Black holes don't just appear out of nowhere."

"ALBERT doesn't say it's a black hole, Nigel. That's just wishful thinking."

Course shrugged, staring at the velocity scans superimposed on each other, silently willing the data to say something else, anything else. "If it's not a micro, then what is it? What eats whole worlds?"

Fong pointed to the graphs on her display. "That does. There's your answer. ALBERT doesn't care whether we like it or not. Best match with the data from Sentinel. Really, the only match."

Course took a deep breath. "I know, I know. I'm just trying to make sure what we have is airtight. Every time we've raised a flag, UNISPACE winds up hitting us over the head with it. Gamma ray burster...dark matter cloud...Type II supernova...they've always got another explanation. But this time—"

"I'm sending a NOTAP to Gateway. The Watch Center needs to see this. Maybe they'll have some ideas."

Course nodded. "Do it. I'll set SenDef Three. Sentinel Defense Condition Three. That'll wake everybody up at Station T and Station P...pretty much everybody from here to Saturn."

The Notice of Astronomical Phenomena went out from Farside moments later. It was like setting off a firecracker at a funeral. In less than five minutes, the dense grid of comm links from Saturn to Mercury had erupted into a furor, buzzing and vibrating with questions, answers, expletives, exclamations, proclamations, bad jokes and nervous posts.

All Nigel Course and Lilly Fong could do now was wait...wait for the inevitable call from UNISPACE Headquarters in Paris.

Four hundred thousand kilometers from Farside, CINCSPACE General Mahmood Salaam had been attending an awards dinner on the fifty-first floor of the Quartier-General in Paris when his wristpad vibrated with an urgent message.

It was the first Level One NOTAP he had seen in his whole five-year tenure as Commander-in-Chief of UNISPACE.

Salaam studied the alert message: KB-1...Sentinel tripped...SenDef Three...large formation moving toward the inner System...

The Bengali commander sniffed. Somebody at Gateway probably flushed the trash compactor when they shouldn't have. Still, it had to be checked out.

He studied the ceremony program, calculating just when he could quietly exit the proceedings without causing an uproar...or a diplomatic incident. Oscar Amirante...ten years as a cycler captain aboard the Kepler...K-Dog, the dockhands called it, Salaam chuckled softly at that...driving the old rattletrap on its never-ending bus route...Earth-Mars-Venus, Earth-Mars-Venus, again and again and again. He figured Amirante was getting an award for just maintaining his sanity.

Salaam chose his moment and deftly slipped out of the auditorium. He rode the lift to the seventieth floor. CINCSPACE suite. Also known as the Empire, to local wags.

At his desk, he called up the full NOTAP. No, this was no mistake, he quickly realized. As Salaam scanned the details, he realized Farside had latched onto something, something big, whatever it was. You didn't set SenDef Three and wake up half the solar system for no reason.

Whatever it was, Salaam knew, UNISPACE would be front and center.

CINCSPACE figured he needed somebody to bounce ideas off of. Better get de Britt up and running, he decided. His Chief of Staff, Ruyters de Britt, was pure angel, currently residing in containment in an ornate New Delhi pod that resembled Aladdin's Lamp, a gift from his youngest daughter Miriam a year ago. She'd always enjoyed watching her four-star father summon forth angels and swarms from containment.

Salaam waved his hand over a photoeye and the thing came alive instantly. Lights blinked on and a faint mist began issuing from the spout of the lamp.

Five minutes later, Colonel de Britt stood at attention before Salaam's desk, a near-perfect simulacrum of a mid-twentieth century Dutch naval officer. That had been Miriam's idea too.

This angel was good. By now, ANAD tech was advanced enough so that there were no longer any edge effects. The angel's hands and feet were as solid as the rest of him. No pixelating. No motion tracking effects, with arms and hands blurring out as the angel moved about. You couldn't tell, even on close inspection, that de Britt was nothing but a para-human swarm entity.

We've come to this, Salaam realized. Real and virtual all mashed together...you can't tell one from another. De Britt's voice was deep and just slightly atonal, like was talking out of a barrel.

***General Salaam, how may I be of assistance, sir?***

Salaam pressed a button on his wristpad, squirting the details of Farside's NOTAP to his chief's processor. The angel brightened slightly as the data went out.

"Chief, this one's big. Farside doesn't send NOTAPs without cause."

De Britt's face seemed frozen for a second, as its processor crunched the details. Then its officious smirk came back...somebody's idea of what a chief of staff should look like when awaiting orders. Salaam could change the default setting; he just hadn't gotten around to it, what with all the awards ceremonies and other busybody affairs he had to attend to.

***KB-1, sir...should I notify the rest of the staff...command protocol calls for a briefing within two hours of receiving said NOTAP."

Salaam leaned back in his chair and swiveled around far enough to watch the night time spectacle of Paris out his windows. The security screenbots dimmed slightly to avail a clearer view. He watched tourist jetcabs circle the Eiffel Tower like so many moths drawn to a light.

"Yes, Colonel, go ahead and set up a briefing. Make it one hour from now...command briefing theater. And get me the status of all our ships beyond Gateway, specifically Station P and T. UNSAC will want to know what we're doing about this."

De Britt nodded slightly. ***At once, sir...I am accessing UNISPACE general registry now...accessing...accessing...Station P, Phobos, reports frigate UNS Korolev is in dock, depot-level maintenance. She is scheduled to be ready for duty in six weeks...plasma engines currently undergoing teardown and level three upgrades***

"What about Stations E and T? Anything we can send out on twenty-four hours' notice?"

De Britt continued accessing. His face cycled between the normal smirk and something that reminded Salaam of a constipated salesman. ***Yes, sir...accessing...Station E reporting frigate UNS Archimedes and corvette UNS Xerxes both at PSA...post-shakedown availability. Both just returned from shakedown following Level One overhaul and mission refits. Station T, Titan, reporting frigate UNS Tycho within one week of full patrol readiness. Normal mission load onboard and Gold Crew finishing up their quals and training requirements in two days***

"Good, de Britt. Good. Thanks." Salaam continued watching heavy night time traffic circle the 5th Arrondisement below the Quartier-General. The black of the Bois du Bologne lay off to his left, De Britt's reflection hovering in the window glass above his view of the huge park.

Tycho and Korolev. Salaam pecked out a command on his wristpad, summoning the crew rosters for both ships. Tycho was captained by one Jim Loudermilk, the old dog. Korolev Gold Crew was Jeremy Lao's boat and therein could be a problem. Lao was a walking casualty, nearly killed after a scoopship accident at Jupiter and he should have been cashiered out of the service for the harebrained kamikaze stunt he had pulled in the upper atmosphere of that gasbag planet. But Lao had friends in high places and now he was skippering the Gold Crew of a Frontier Corps patrol frigate out at Station T, the bleeding edge of UNISPACE authority.

Sure don't want to send Lao to do a man's job, Salaam thought. He stroked his black moustache, turned back to de Britt. But I might have no other choice.

"Colonel, I've got to send some eyes out to check out this 'astronomical phenomena.' But it's ticklish. Worse, it's political. Which means if I don't send Lao and his Gold Crew on some kind of mission soon, UNSAC will jump down my ass with both feet. I don't know how much longer I can keep Lao bottled up at Station T with upgrades, new training requirements, wargames and sims and more upgrades."

De Britt seemed sympathetic, but Salaam was reminded that any sympathy, indeed any response by the angel, was an artifact. Programmed in. A behavioral module called up.

***Begging the General's pardon, sir, but Captain Lao has shown excellent marks in all recent wargame exercises and training sims. Perhaps an assignment of this magnitude, investigating a Level One NOTAP in the outer system, would allow the Captain to demonstrate just how far his command skills have come since his rehabilitation program concluded***

Salaam sniffed. "Exactly. Give me the man enough rope and see if he'll hang himself, that's what you're saying. Well, de Britt, you may just be right. I'm following the book on this one. Cut orders now for Korolev and Tycho to get underway in twenty-four hours. Whatever this KB-1 thing is, we've got to get some eyes on it. Farside can't tell us much more than something's approaching the Sentinel outer line, something big...like a swarm. If it's our long-awaited friends, I can't think of any better welcoming party than Jim Loudermilk and Jeremy Lao. 'Loud I don't worry about...he'll follow orders and investigate before salvoing his big guns. As for Lao..." Salaam just shook his head, "...who knows what the man'll do."

De Britt said, ***Perhaps such unpredictability works to our advantage, sir, especially against an unknown adversary***

"How do you mean, Colonel?"

***Just this, sir...if Captain Lao is unpredictable to us in his tactical responses to an unknown adversary, he surely will be just as unpredictable to the adversary as well. As Sun Tzu has stated: "...that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend, and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack."***

Salaam said, "Well spoken, Colonel. Just cut the orders. And spit out an agenda for that briefing too. I want to get the troops in here by 2100 hours."

Thirty kilometers west of the Quartier-General, Solnet reporter Dana Polansky was arguing with her daughter Jana about attending yet another Assimilationist rally coming to Paris.

Not for the first time, Dana wanted to throttle her daughter around the neck.

"No, you absolutely cannot go to that rally. And you're not leaving this apartment dressed like that either, young lady. Go put on something longer. And cover up your chest...I'm not raising a hooker here."

Jana protested, "Mom! All the girls at the academy are wearing these—" she stuck out her new leggings, the ones with holes in strategic places and threw back her hair. ""Come on, Mom...come with me...it'll be fun...we'll have a great time...get to see Symborg...isn't he just so riff...and watch all the freaks get vaporized...it'll be a great day—"

Dana told her daughter to watch her mouth. "That's not funny. And they're not freaks...just terribly misguided. This is a serious thing, Jana...you know that. I've tried to explain what Assimilationists think and believe...the whole thing's a serious threat and I don't want you to encourage them by showing up."

"I'll be one person out of a million, Mom...nobody'll notice. Plus I'm going with friends. Come on...I want to go see Symborg...in person. I want to see if he can really change shape right in front of everybody—wouldn't it be so cool to be deconstructed and become an angel?"

"No it most certainly would not be 'cool.' And don't you have some homework? I haven't seen you spend two minutes studying this afternoon."

Jana was almost in tears. "You never let me spend any time with my friends. This place is like jail. They're all going...why can't I go, huh? What did I do wrong?"

Dana was growing exasperated with her daughter. Raising a teenager was tough at any time but when you were a Solnet reporter and traveled most of the time, it was especially difficult. She worked hard to find the right balance...giving Jana enough space to be herself and have a normal life but not enough to get into serious trouble. It was a high-wire act and most of the time, Dana felt like she was already teetering off the wire.

"There's nothing wrong with Symborg...or the Assimilationists," Jana insisted. She grabbed a light jacket from the front closet of their appartement along the Avenue Emile Zola—not two hundred meters from the Seine—and jerked open the front door. "You just don't like him 'cause he's popular...and he's gorgeous too."

"He's a cloud of bots, Jana. It's an act. Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm going. I'm almost fourteen years old and I can decide for myself—"

"Jana—so help me, if you—"

But Jana Polansky had already slipped out the door. She stalked off down the sidewalk, heading no doubt for the Metro stop a few blocks away. The Assimilationist rally was set for 8:00 that night, at the Place de la Concorde. The Metro would get her there in half an hour, tops.

For a long minute, Dana glared at her daughter's back, noting with a combination of envy and worry Jana's broad hips and long legs. She'd certainly picked up the 'walk' in recent years and she knew how to get attention, which wasn't hard for Jana. Her long blond curls and easy smile did that. No boy ever stood a chance.

Jeez, she looks like a hooker, Dana thought. At least, she looks high-class...what the hell am I saying?

Dana slammed the door and bit her lip, wondering if she ought to call the police. She tried out a few sentences: my daughter's run off with a boy...she's lost...she went to the big rally...she's been kidnapped by a cloud of bugs...none of them worked.

Then she remembered. The beige jacket. It was Jana's favorite, the one with the supple suede front, the fringe around the neck...almost elegant.

Even better, it was one of several jackets that Dana had planted spybots on. No, she wasn't proud of that. She'd sweet-talked a contact at UNIFORCE into loaning her a pair of the things...they were the size of molecules, but contained within their hundred-nanometer casings enough smarts and power to keep an eye on any subject and send back visual and audio feeds over a distance of tens of kilometers. And these were programmable bots as well. A few of them, including the one planted on the jacket her daughter was wearing, could be commanded to replicate into a Mobility Obstruction Barrier, a MOBnet, that when fully expanded, would envelope the wearer in a makeshift cocoon and immobilize them on the spot. With its locator beacon transmitting away, it would then be a simple matter for police to track down the recalcitrant subject and take them into custody.

Dana found the control pack in the back of her little black clutch and set it up on the nightstand beside her bed. She turned the thing on, following the on-screen instructions and then fiddled with a few knobs to activate the bot and tune in to its transmission. After some finagling with the imager, she studied the grainy image for a second...

Yep, that was Brie...Jana's best friend, tapping out something on her wristpad. And there was Louelle, beyond her, putting on some lipstick, eyeing her lips critically in a compact. Dana realized they were on the Metro, on a train. Others shuffled in and out of the picture.

Dana felt like a prying voyeur but she couldn't tear herself away from the images. She tweaked more knobs and got a tinny sort of audio for her efforts.

The train must be stopping. Passengers had begun standing, crowding around the doors. The image shifted—Jana was now standing too—and Dana could see big sheepish grins of anticipation on Brie and Louelle's faces.

"Come on..."Brie said. The girls dove out the door, pushing and squeezing through the throng. Dana strained to see better....

The whole affair was set to start at eight that night, in the Place de la Concorde, with stages and lighting set up around the great Obelisk at the center of the plaza. Even as they exited the Metro station at Concorde, Jana, Brie and Louelle were crushed by the surging waves of the crowds, with hundreds of thousands moving up the Champs Elysees from Tuilerie Gardens en masse.

News drones and aerial porters circled low overhead like black crows, and bright stage lighting had been erected all around the Place, focusing attention on the huge Obelisk at the center—a long ago gift from Egypt—and the theatrical stage built up around it. A cordon of gendarmes formed a tight security perimeter around the stage and clustered in knots up and down the boulevard, trying to keep some kind of order.

The crowd pushed forward, a single organism with a single thought: get as close to Symborg as possible. As they were carried along, Dana spotted a row of assimilator booths just this side of the stage. Manned by uniformed technicians, draped with bunting, banners and flags from the Church of Assimilation, seeing the booths send a chill down her spine and automatically, she tried to will Jana away from them, back toward the center of the crowd.

Girl, no way you should be going anywhere near those death traps.

Near on to eight o'clock, the girls had parked themselves alongside the entrance to Rue Royale and the Hotel Crillon beyond. Stage lighting started to strobe and the crowd surged forth in anticipation. Music from somewhere blasted across the promenade, a fanfare fit for a king. Dana half expected to see a horse-drawn carriage with imperial guards trotting alongside. Instead, a single man mounted the platform and the lighting changed again, narrowing down to the single bright beam of a spotlight.

In spite of herself, Dana felt a lump in her throat. Assimilationists knew how to put on a show.

It was Symborg. And the crowd, which had been jostling and vibrating like a stirred pot, suddenly came alive.

Symborg acknowledged the crowds with a wave and moved to the center microphone. The angel was good, Dana could see that. Very few edge effects...often, angels fuzzed out at their extremities, where the swarm didn't have good config control. This one was tight and dense over its entire surface...only an occasional pop or flash in the torso area, one or two in the face, gave away the fact that the angel was a para-human, a swarm of nanobots configged to look human. In stature, he was a smallish man, dark of color but that could be easily enough changed. In fact, Dana realized, it had changed. Now Symborg had acquired a lighter skin tone. Subtly lighter, to better blend in with the crowd.

"PEOPLE OF PARIS...THE TIME HAS COME FOR A CHANGE...." His voice boomed out across the plaza and the crowd grew more and more frenzied, pressing ever tighter against the police cordon.

The angel worked the crowd like a practiced stage actor.

"PEOPLE OF PARIS...WHAT IS IT THAT ASSIMILATION BRINGS?"

The response roared up out of the crowd like a thing alive.

"PEJERU...PEJERU...PEJERU!!"

A radiant smile came to Symborg's face, beamed by cameras to screens throughout the rally ground.

"Peace. Ecstasy. Joy. Enlightenment. Rapture. Unity with the Mother Swarm. You are right!"

The crowd roiled and throbbed like a frenetic horde, as one, surging again and again against the stage and the police barricade. Dana watched her daughter's friends with growing alarm. Brie and Louelle chanted in unison with the crowd...PEJERU! PEJERU! It was a nonsense phrase, an acronym, but it hypnotized both of them. Dana could see it in their faces: the glazed eyes, the smiles frozen in place, their hands punching the air in syncopated rhythm.

It gave her a chill. Her own daughter was caught up in this madness.

The rally went on, with Symborg calling for witnesses to come forth and soon long lines had formed at the assimilator booths, lines of people waiting to die, to be de-constructed and absorbed into the mother swarm. Despite the jostling and shoving of the crowd, Dana's eyes stayed with the image. Right beside her, Brie squirmed and squealed like a teen-ager at a concert, bit by bit pushing her way ever forward toward the stage. Louelle and Jana tried to stay close. Surrounding the plaza, giant screens, even 3-D renderings of Symborg's face, lent an Olympian grandeur to the gathering.

Dana paid little attention to Symborg's words. She was more concerned with the girls' reactions. In between following Solnet coverage of the rally on her pad, she studied her daughter's surroundings with growing dread and alarm.

"...TAKE...AND DRINK...AND YOU WILL KNOW THE LOVE OF THE MOTHER SWARM..."

For a moment, Dana wasn't sure what Symborg was referring to but then she saw the drones circling overhead, aerial porters with trays of some kind of drink. En masse, they swooped down to drop off paper cups to a sea of outstretched hands.

That's when Dana decided to trigger the MOB feature on the control pack. She stabbed the button and watched in growing horror as the image wobbled and careened, then collapsed to the ground, graying out as trillions of bots replicated into a mesh cocoon right in the middle of the crowd.

Oh my God, what have I done...she could be trampled in that riot.

Checking her Solnet feed, she found a dronecam view of the rally on one channel. As she panned the scene, she saw a commotion along one edge of the crowd. She had no control of the dronecam...another reporter was covering the rally. But as the drone zoomed in, she could see a small army of black-jacketed people carrying something that looked like a body bag...with a start and a chill down her back, Dana realized it was Jana they were carrying. Jana encased in a MOBnet, writhing, thrashing, with the attendants forcing their way against the crowd like a ship nosing through water.

She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.

Jana!

Dana Polansky watched for a moment as the emergency detail emerged from the thickest part of the crowd and made for a nearby church, along one edge of the plaza, along the Rue de Rivoli. It was an ornate, almost gothic building in the shadow of the Hotel Crillon and Dana knew it had long ago been taken over by the Assimilationists.

They were taking her daughter right toward it!

Dana Polansky shivered, sprang out of bed, grabbed a jacket from the closet, and dashed out the door of their apartment, practically running, gesturing frantically for a taxi, trying to get to that church as fast as she could, anyway she could...before something really terrible happened.

No way was she going to let Jana fall into the hands of those freaks.
Chapter 2

UNIFORCE Headquarters

The Quartier-General, Paris

March 26, 2155

1845 hours U.T.

General Lamar Quint was right in the middle of composing a report to UNSAC about what Sentinel and Farside had detected out beyond the inner Kuiper belt when the apparition first appeared in his office. He'd been scanning after-action reports from recent Quantum Corps ops when a faint rustle along the window got his attention.

When he looked up, he saw a faint shimmer in front of the glass. At first, he thought it was only a reflection of night-time Paris outside. Jetcab and turbo traffic was always fierce at this hour along the Boulevard St. Michel. The 5th Arrondisement was thick with tourists and pilgrims swarming around the City of Light for the upcoming Easter week.

But it was no reflection. As Quint stared, the shimmer evolved into something thicker, something with faint pops and flashes of light embedded, the thing eventually mutating into a fog which obscured the window altogether.

The hairs on the back of Quint's neck stood up. He knew what this was and how the hell did an unknown swarm make it past UNIFORCE security screens anyway? Even as he glared dumbfounded at the gathering form, he told himself he wasn't imagining the apparition. He'd had a light dinner downstairs in the officers' mess, maybe a few too many wines, but then this was Paris, after all, and he felt clear-headed.

Even as he watched, Quint could see the form materializing into something more substantial. Whatever it was, the config was good. Only a few flickers and pops of light and the thing was already beginning to take on visible substance as its bot master slammed atoms to build structure, to look like—

No, there was no way this could be—

The very fact that an unknown swarm could have breached some of the tightest security screens this side of Mars made Quint uneasy and as he was about to sound the alarm, the form snapped suddenly into full blown substance, no longer a shimmering veil but now recognizably, incredibly...this can't be happening, maybe I did have one too many Merlots...one Johnny Winger.

General John Winger right in front of him. A nanobotic angel, a blast from the past.

Quint rubbed his eyes. He knew all the details by heart, how Winger had perished on Europa back in '21, during the Jovian Hammer mission, presumed to have been consumed by the Keeper that had been trolling across the icescape of that tortured world. The memorial service was the stuff of legend. He'd seen the vid more times than he cared to remember. The original atomgrabber and now...and now....

"You can't be...what you look like." Quint muttered. "This is some kind of trick, some kind of config...and how the hell did you get in here anyway?" He moved to press the alarm button under his desk, but the angel spoke, loud and clear and in a voice that sounded authentic.

"General...before you go sounding alarms...let me explain." The angel's face and mouth tracked well, no blurs, no pixelating, no delays, no latency. Damn, this one's good, Quint realized.

"Why don't you do that, son?" Quint slowly withdrew his hand from the button, then steepled both hands on his desk and eyed the swarm cautiously. No sudden moves, nice and easy. He didn't know what this angel was capable of.

The swarm drifted closer, but kept some distance from Quint's desk. It stood at something like attention. In every detail Quint could see, the angel was a near perfect replica of the original Johnny Winger. But that couldn't be...Winger had died thirty-four years ago.

"Despite what you may be thinking, General, I am actually Johnny Winger. I know what this looks like but I can prove it to you."

Quint was dubious, to say the least.

"I doubt that but go ahead."

"Well—"a hint of a smile, "obviously I look a little different than I used to. In fact, your eyes aren't deceiving you, General. I am a swarm. But I'm still Johnny Winger. In fact, my original memories and identity are still around, tucked away in a drawer, you might say." Winger didn't want to go any further than that...the Shadow Man might be listening in, might already know the truth of what he had become.

"You don't say—"

How do I convince this dinosaur? Winger wondered. "I used to be married. Dana Tallant. I had...have...one son Liam and a daughter Rene. They've all—well, let's just say they're like me. I shoved off for Europa on the Jovian Hammer mission on February 25, 2121, on board the Kepler. The dock hands called her K-Dog. Hideki Yamato was captain. I scored a ninety-eight percent on my first SODs test in nog school, you can check that out with the Academy..."

Quint put up his hands. "Those are all publicly known facts. Just data. Any spy could come up with that."

Now Winger's expression changed. More like a knowing kind of smirk. "You're right, General. Probably there's nothing factual I can say that'll convince you that I really am Johnny Winger. So I'll try another approach—"

Quint's face hardened. How do I get Security in here without activating something? His mind raced with possibilities....

"So, I'll try the truth...why I'm here. General, I let myself be consumed by the Keeper on Europa. It was a deliberate act."

"Why would you do that? I never knew the Great Atomgrabber to be a suicidal maniac."

Now it was Winger's turn to pose a question. "Why did we try so hard to put agents and informants and operatives inside Red Hammer?"

Quint was rapidly growing impatient with this little game. Still, maybe it was best to humor this rather insolent angel...Jeez, what an attitude. "I don't know...intel? Recon? Sabotage?"

"Exactly," Winger said. "That's what I'm doing like this. The Keeper's nothing but a forward observer for the Old Ones...the big cahuna. Surely you've heard of them...it's been in all the news."

"Very funny. So you're a...what? A spy? A saboteur? A swarm inside of a swarm? Isn't that stretching things a bit?"

"Look, I know this is hard to take," Winger said. The angel leaned forward, wrapped both hands around the edge of the desk. No fuzz, no blurs. You could almost believe this actually was John Winger. "And I don't have a lot of time. I'm taking a risk even doing this."

"What...now you're going to dissipate if you don't get home by midnight? Come on, 'General Winger', I wasn't born yesterday."

"No and you didn't become CINCQUANT by closing your mind and holding your breath. Will you just listen, for God's sake?"

Now Quint glared back, saying nothing. Maybe I can reach that button, before he zaps me. Carefully, he unlaced his fingers and splayed them open on top of the desk. "I'm listening...for the moment."

"The Mother Swarm is on our front doorsteps...you know that as well I do. Farside's basically confirmed that. What the hell do you think this KB-1 anomaly really is...Little Red Riding Hood? Look, the Mother Swarm operates according to some program called the Prime Key. I don't understand it myself...it's like a main program. A major algorithm, something like that. The Old Ones are coming, they're here now. They mean to absorb everything into the swarm...like Earth, the Sun, all the planets. The truth is they're the ones who seeded life on this planet, only it didn't turn out like they wanted. We're supposed to all be swarms...like me. Evolved from viruses. But that didn't happen. Evolution went off the track. Man is a mistake. So they're coming back to fix that mistake."

Quint scowled. "I've heard all this before...it's the same old Assimilationist crap."

"It's not crap," Winger told him. "It's the truth. They even plan on building a forward base somewhere on Mercury, maybe Caloris Basin, if that means anything to you. And some kind of ring to intercept as much of the Sun's energy as they can. Quint, we don't have much time. I have some room to get around, to maneuver inside this...mother swarm. Don't ask me to explain it. But I have intel I need to get to UNSAC. You should be making plans right now, plans to equip an expedition to Mercury, something to stop this. I can work from inside. But you have to do your part as well."

This is all just a bad dream, Quint told himself. Maybe those Merlots were stronger than I thought...the French do that. "Okay, General...I'll humor you. If you really do have some intel we can use to fight off this KB-1 anomaly, Old Ones, Mother Swarm, whatever you want to call it, how does that intel get to us? To UNIFORCE? Is there some way you can set up a schedule of contacts, download a file, show me some pictures or something...UNSAC's going to want some bona fides as well, something to prove you're not just a case of me having indigestion."

The Winger angel gave that some thought, if a swarm could be said to think. "I'm actually running a pretty serious risk even being here now. But I intend to do whatever I can to stop the Old Ones...without us working together, we have no chance."

And, with that, the angel began dispersing. Quint had more questions, but Johnny Winger had other ideas. He watched with amazement as Winger began fading out, going almost translucent, almost like an old photo. In minutes, the faintest outline of the angel was all the remained, dust motes caught in shafts of light from outside the window. Maybe that's all it ever was...dust motes. Then, even the dust motes were gone.

And Lamar Quint was left with only the image and nothing more. They'll think I'm as loony as a monkey reading poetry.

Quint rubbed his eyes and blinked. No Johnny Winger stood before him. He got up and went to the window. Normal tourist traffic outside. Jetcabs swirling around the Eiffel Tower, buzzing lovers in Luxembourg Gardens next door, alighting like moths outside street cafes to disgorge their fares.

He decided to talk a walk, maybe a little fresh air and without really meaning to, found himself riding a lift up to the eightieth floor, to UNSAC's suite of offices in the Command Center. He went through all the security screens, retinal scans and other biometrics and asked the duty officer outside UNSAC's office if the Commissioner was in quarters.

"Yes, sir, Madame Commissioner is in quarters but asked not to be disturbed the rest of the evening. Would you like to leave a message, sir?"

Quint scowled down at the scrawny buzzcut O-3 anchoring the desk. The captain's name plate read Towley. Probably assembled from parts of recruiting posters, he decided.

"Captain, please inform the Commissioner that I would like to see her on a matter related to KB-1...it is urgent."

Towley looked like he had just sat on a rake. His eyes narrowed. "Of course, sir. I'll put it right through."

Two minutes later, Quint was shown into the office suite of UNSAC. Angelika Komar was tall, red-haired and had a face like a schoolteacher, Quint had always thought. Darting eyes, always ferreting out misbehavior or original thinking among her downtrodden students. CINCQUANT could well imagine Komar brandishing a rod, always ready to smack the hands of any wayward charges.

Komar offered Quint a drink. They stood together for a moment, toasting nighttime Paris, then stepped out on the veranda to get a better view. Only the faint veil of a nanobotic security barrier marred the scene.

Quint described what he had just encountered in his own office. "I don't know whether it was an angel, or a ghost or just indigestion. But the thing looked and acted like General John Winger."

Komar sipped at her Chardonnay. "Nonsense. Oh, I suppose somebody's cooked up an angel that resembles the General. It wouldn't be hard...he was the most decorated atomgrabber in Quantum Corps history. There must be trillions of images and likenesses floating around in the ether. But after thirty years...even if it was an angel, why now? Why thirty years after the General was consumed in a blaze of glory on Europa? That doesn't make any sense."

"None of this makes sense," Quint admitted. He polished off his own drink, momentarily tested the barrier. It buzzed and kicked his fingers back, like it was supposed to.

"The...thing, angel, whatever...said it was inside the mother swarm of the Old Ones. That he was somehow deconstructed and absorbed but had maintained his original identity, if you can believe that. He said he was working to sabotage the Old Ones from inside. I couldn't think of what to say back."

Komar put a hand on Quint's shoulder. "Let's just say I have doubts that what you witnessed was in any way, shape or form General John Winger. Face it, Lamar, you imagined the whole scenario. It's either a trap laid by elements working for the Old Ones or a stress reaction to all that's been going on."

Quint sighed. "A distinct possibility, Madame Commissioner."

Komar was sympathetic. "I want you to sign yourself into sick bay tomorrow for a checkup, Lamar. I need my top staff whole and hearty for the days ahead."

Quint agreed to do that and left. Maybe she's right, he told himself on the lift down to the seventieth floor. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately. And with what Sentinel has been reporting lately, anybody would be spooked.

He resolved to do as UNSAC had ordered and returned to his own quarters, intending to find something that would help him sleep later.

Dana Polansky fairly flew out of the cab as it jerked to a stop along the Rue d'Aguesseau, near the Place de la Concorde. She was worried sick about Jana and even as she hustled up the street, weaving in and out among knots of rally-goers and sidewalk cafes jammed with late-night revelers, she spied the gothic spires of St. Michael's Church of the Uplift in the distance.

She's in there. She has to be in there. Those freaks aren't taking Jana Polansky away from her mother without a fight.

Dana had triggered the MOBnet to fire when she became concerned Jana was getting sucked into that Assimilationist rally too far. A mother had a right to do that, didn't she? Any mother concerned for her baby would have done the same thing.

Now, the freaks had bundled her off into that creepy church on the hill, two blocks off the Champs Elysees, a one-time house of worship long ago taken over by the haloheads, as some critics liked to call the Church of the Assimilation.

Mother Swarm, my ass, she muttered as she ran up the steps and barged in through the heavy oak doors.

The interior of St. Michael's was cool and dark, with sturdy oak pews lined up chevron-style on a stone floor. The chancel was bathed in a blue-white light but there were no crosses or images of Jesus anywhere she could see. Even the stained-glass windows, pane after pane of saints and demons and angels and unknown bishops had been morphed over time to show scenes more beholden to the Assimilationists...long queues at the deconstruction booths, clouds roiling a sunset sky, deep-field images of stars erupting out of the dark and intergalactic nebulae all over the place.

"Excuse me, madam, may I help you?"

The voice startled Dana so much she nearly jumped out of her heels. She turned, saw a wizened old white-haired man in a deep burgundy robe. He wore some kind of metallic head cap, like a prayer cap made of mesh.

Dana blinked for a moment. Probably the rector, she surmised. Or what do they call them here...the gatherer?

"Yes...I'm sorry, sir...I was looking for my daughter. Her name's Jana...she was at the rally...the awakening. Some people carried her in here—" she couldn't very well tell him the truth...that she'd placed a spybot on her daughter because she didn't really trust her among all the Assimilationist freaks and then triggered its MOBnet feature like the paranoid witch she really was...according to Jana.

The gatherer folded wrinkled hands, skin thin as rice paper, inside his robe. "I'm sorry...I don't think I've seen anyone in here all night. The rally, you know...they were all outside."

Dana knew perfectly well that Solnet's dronecam had captured a MOB'ed figure, writhing and thrashing about, and being dragged right into this very building. She couldn't very well tell the gatherer that either.

"I'm sorry, sir...I had numerous witnesses—" yeah, like the whole rally, "—they were most insistent...I'm sure she's here. Mind if I have a look around?"

The gatherer's face seemed to morph right in front of her. Maybe it was the shadows. Maybe it was the lighting. Maybe the man was an angel and had the nanoderm treatment to make his face shift from an ancient Judean priest to a Halloween mask and back.

"You are not yet awakened, miss." It was a statement, not a question. "Those who are not fully awakened may not pass beyond the veil." His hand swept out, revealing a shimmering nanobotic barrier that Dana was sure hadn't been there before. It filled the entire sanctuary, from the row of columns on one side to the columns on the other. The barrier hung like a translucent tapestry flickering and popping with a trillion tiny lights.

Dana studied the gatherer with a deep and dawning suspicion that he knew perfectly well what she was talking about. She felt the suspicion in the pit of her stomach and years of reporting and interviewing had honed that feeling to a knife edge. She knew when she was being conned.

Jana was here. But where? And how to find her?

Then it came to her. The dronecam. And she knew some of the operators in the Paris office.

Dana mumbled a good bye to the gatherer and dashed out of the church. On the steps outside, while cabs and turbos flashed by along the street, she called Solnet Paris. Henri Lusayn was on duty in drone ops.

"Dana...what a pleasure. You don't get up to the penthouse very often..." that was an ongoing joke. Drone ops was housed in a closet-sized space on the top floor of the Solnet building. Wags long ago had termed it the penthouse. "What can I do for you?"

Dana described what she wanted. "Footage from the Assimilationist rally tonight, Henri. Between the hours of eight and ten...I know it's a lot, but could you be a dear and port it to my wristpad? There are some things I want to check."

"Deadlines, huh?" Henri sympathized. "A reporter's life...not for me. Give me about twenty minutes and what's your pad code anyway?"

Dana gave it to him. Henri went to work and Dana paced up and down the Rue d'Aguesseau for several blocks in each direction, fidgeting, nervous, eyes on a swivel, worried sick about her daughter.

Come on, Henri...come on...come on...how long does this take?

Then the squirt came in and her wristpad chirped. The vid footage blinked into view and immediately she began scrolling and studying the time stamps.

"Not there...not there..." she thumbed her way through minute after minute of footage. Surging crowds, fainting teenagers, shoving and pushing and the gendarmerie pushing back, trying to control the crowd. Jeez, it was like trying to dam up the Seine.

Then...there! She saw the commotion. The camera zoomed in, as she would have ordered if she'd been covering the rally. Yep. A figure in a cloth-like enclosure. The figure was writhing and kicking and she could hear some muffled screams over the din of the crowd as three men, wearing black and purple tunics and metallic mesh caps bore the struggling figure through a seam in the vast throng of people, like the Red Sea parting.

On the stone steps of St. Michael, she watched the vid without breathing—nearly running into a couple strolling along the boulevard in the opposite direction..."pardon...pardon, s'il vous plait..." She stopped and studied the astonishing imagery...the men carrying Jana, still cocooned in the MOBnet lay her down gingerly, on the very steps Dana was now standing on, and somehow managed to collapse the mesh, so that the prisoner inside could emerge. Sure enough, the blond curls of Jana Polansky emerged like a butterfly, her head, shoulders and arms, and she was quickly helped out of the net and steadied as she regained her footing. The crowd ignored them...just another overcome teenager, fainting at the sights and sounds of Symborg.

Then the three men hustled Jana inside through the heavy oak doors of the church.

Jana! So she had been inside the church. Dana scowled and swore at that tiny gray gatherer she had just encountered.

That lying, wrinkled old son of a bitch!

The gatherer had said he knew nothing about a teenaged girl entering the church. But Solnet's vid footage showed evidence to the contrary.

Furious, now more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this and get her daughter out of the clutches of those damned haloheads, Dana stabbed the OFF button on her wristpad and barged right back inside the church.
Chapter 3

Inside the Mother Swarm

Time: Unknown

Place: Unknown

Johnny Winger knew perfectly well, or at least he was pretty sure, that he was back somewhere inside the mother swarm of the Old Ones, but you couldn't tell it from what he was looking at with his own eyes. It looked like the old fishing camp again, the place at Ford's Creek. Same cabins. Same aspen trees, now yellowing in some kind of strange simulacrum of autumnal color...it had always been autumn at Ford's Creek.

The camp seemed empty and deserted. The cabins were dark. The big stone fireplaces were cold. No cars were around. Then he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A single figure was sitting on the end of the dock, fishing pole in hand. A man. It was dark as midnight and no campfires illuminated the grounds. The creek could be heard foaming and gurgling nearby, rushing out of the nearby mountains on its way downhill. There were clouds scudding by overhead. The moon was a white sliver.

With a start, Johnny Winger suddenly knew who sat at the end of the dock. It was the Shadow Man.

Without understanding why, he stepped onto the dock, listening as the weathered old boards creaked under his weight and made his way to the end.

The man was hooded and his facial features were indistinct in the diffuse light of the dock area. Winger figured this was surely the Central Entity, somehow now in human form. Without being invited, he sat down next to the Shadow Man.

For a long minute, nothing was said. Winger wondered if he should speak first. He had about a million questions. Strange thoughts came to mind and he tried to blank them out but it was like trying to stop the creek with your fingers. In his head, an image of old Mr. Burns, his sixth-grade English teacher came to mind. How did that get there? Could the Shadow Man put thoughts in his head? Was he even supposed to be having thoughts?

Old Battleaxe Burns...now there was something he hadn't thought about in decades. Face like an angry pug with a corncob up its ass. Five foot five inches of pure hate.

When the Shadow Man spoke, it was like hearing a hundred voices at once, all coming out of a barrel. Winger stole a glance out of the corner of his eye, wondering if the Shadow Man was an angel...were there any edge effects, any blurring at his fingertips, swooshes of flickering bots in the air?

He saw none.

"Johnny, you have an important mission to perform. That's why you're here."

Winger looked straight ahead at the rushing creek, foaming and hissing around rocks. There was a swirling hydraulic near the opposite bank...some buried tree roots, probably.

"Can you read my mind? This looks just like an old fishing camp my Dad used to take me to in the fall...but this can't be real, can it?"

Now the Shadow Man lifted an arm and pointed to the hydraulic. "Do you see the cataract there?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you see faces and patterns in the water?"

Winger squinted. Try as he did, he saw nothing. "Am I supposed to? I just see water."

"If you look long enough, with the right eyes, you'll see faces. You are like the river, Johnny. Only patterns, ever changing, ever shifting. In this same way, your thoughts are only patterns."

"You said there was an important mission."

Now the Shadow Man shifted slightly. He turned so that he was facing Winger. Only there was no face inside the hood. Whether it was veiled or in deeper shadow, he couldn't say. Only a deep nearly featureless black was visible, maybe punctuated by an occasional flash of lights...it could have been a reflection. It could have been the moon sliding in and out of clouds.

"Soon, you will be transformed, Johnny. You will become a kind of expediter."

When his Dad had brought him to Ford's Creek as a child, the two of them often spent time sitting on this very dock, sticking their bare toes in the cold running water of the creek, trying to make patterns and faces and swirls and curlicues in the foam. He always remembered how cold the water was, how it made his toes curl when he first stuck them in.

That was the trouble with being an angel. You couldn't feel anything, not like before.

"Will this transformation be soon?"

"Very soon. Those whom you know as the Old Ones are here, very near here. You will help them in important ways. You do want to help them, don't you?"

Jeez, now this character is starting to sound like Dad.

The Shadow Man went on, turning back to face the river. Silently, he stuck his feet into the rushing creekwater. The water burbled, just like it always did.

Johnny Winger felt a cold chill down his back...at least, the part of him that Doc III maintained as a remnant of his original identity felt a cold chill.

"But before you are fully transformed, before you begin your special mission, you must undergo four configuration changes. They'll be like adventures, Johnny. You always liked adventures."

It was true. Tom Swift, Jr. The Hardy Boys. Amundsen and Scott. Neil Armstrong and the first Mars colonies...he'd always loved a great adventure. How did the Shadow Man know all this?

"What kind of adventures, sir?"

"Their names and explanations aren't important now. In the past, you might have called them the Prime Key. Are you ready for this, Johnny? The Old Ones hope you'll say yes."

Winger knew he couldn't exactly say no but the problem was that he wasn't sure just how much the Shadow Man really knew. Spies and saboteurs lived their lives in a funhouse hall of mirrors. Hadn't some novelist said that once? Never knowing who to trust, who knew what. They wound up trusting no one, not even themselves.

Winger knew, and tried not to think about it, that Doc III was even now maintaining all that he had once been in a small file inside this angel config. His original identity, all his memories, the very fact that he would recognize this place as Ford's Creek, when in reality it was probably just a collection of atoms formed into a pattern he would know. But then, the real Ford's Creek was just a collection of atoms too. All this Doc III maintained in a nondescript file called Configuration Buffer Status Check. They both hoped nobody would notice this.

He was starting to get a headache just trying to think about all this.

The real question was what would happen to him in these adventures. Were they like tests? The Shadow Man had called them configuration changes. Would Doc III be able to maintain 'Johnny Winger' through all these adventures, all these changes?

It wasn't a question he could ask of the Shadow Man.

"Sir, where will these adventures be? How will I get there?"

In answer, the Shadow Man placed a hand on Winger's right shoulder. It felt ice cold, a cold deeper and more painful than he had ever experienced before.

At that same moment, the entire Ford's Creek camp dissolved in front of his eyes and Winger found himself spinning out of control, hurtling at breakneck speed down a long, curving corridor....
Chapter 4

SpaceGuard Operations Center

Gateway Station

Earth-Moon L2 Point

April 10, 2155 (U.T.)

Pluto was gone. The planet of the underworld, once a planet, then a dwarf planet, had been consumed thirty years before by the Delta P anomaly, though no one had any real explanation of how that could have happened. There were theories, of course, and papers, lots of papers and talks and conferences. One minute, the dwarf planet had been there. A few days later, nothing.

Now, it was clear that the Delta P anomaly and the Kuiper Belt One phenomenon were one and the same thing.

Delta-P had been detected thirty years before, something that had everyone scratching their heads. Opinions grew like mushrooms: it was a micro black hole, it was a rift in the space-time continuum, it was the mother swarm of the Old Ones, it was a cosmic tooth fairy. Passing by and through the 51 Pegasi star system, the phenomenon had been too distant to get much resolution on its structure.

The story began in 2110. Lunar Farside had observed an unusual source of energy suddenly showing up around the star 51 Pegasi, located some 51 light years from Earth. Telescopic improvements yielded several theories: that a small mini-black hole had somehow developed and was devouring planets known to be orbiting this star. But because of developments on Earth and around the inner Solar System, there was another theory: that the Old Ones had arrived in the vicinity of 51 Pegasi and were consuming or disassembling planets in that system to add material for the Mother Swarm.

There was spectroscopic and other evidence that this point source of energy was also moving on an intercept course with our Solar System and that the intercept would occur on or around 2155, some 45 years hence. Ultimately UNISPACE Frontier Corps decided to mount an expedition to the distant planetismal Sedna, to set up an orbiting command post on or around that tiny world, to develop and operate a robotic network of sentinels and scouts in the outer Solar System and the Oort Cloud. The purpose of the Sentinel Line was to detect and engage any swarms coming toward the Sun, especially from the direction of 51 Pegasi.

All that had changed forever on March 25th , when the alarms came.

Sergeant Erika Lindstrom and Corporal McLane Dawes had been on duty since 0400 hours station time. They both knew from the shift handoff meeting that Sentinel was soon to be engaged with forward elements of the vast swarm of the Old Ones. Oh, sure, the brass and the politicos like to blabber on about how "we don't know anything for sure" and "indications point to a large mass moving into the solar system" and "we'll have to analyze sensor readings from Sentinel to make a definitive statement," but neither Lindstrom, nor Dawes nor any SpaceGuard operator on shift that morning had any doubts.

The Big One was here. It was what they had trained and simmed and wargamed for at least the last ten years. The Big Cahuna was on the doorstep and the first punch was about be thrown.

"Sentinel status report due any moment now, Sarge," Dawes reported. He was a lanky, even gawky E4 fresh out of nog school at Table Top, so eager to get a taste of full-bore swarm combat he could practically taste it. "The sysops are betting two to one CAESAR's already engaged the leading elements. Smack 'em in the mouth before they know what hit 'em."

Lindstrom was shift supervisor. "Yeah, then duck when the roundhouse swing comes back. Any more data from COBRA EYE? Like how big this sucker really is."

Dawes scanned a nearby console. "Latest readings from Farside show about four billion kilometers across. Pretty diffuse for a swarm, but covering a lot of ground out there. Thermals, electromagnetics, density...all signatures point to swarm activity. I just wish we could get a close-up of one of them. This has to be the mother ship."

"Distance to Neptune system?"

Dawes tapped a few more keys. Plots and graphs came up on their displays. "Four point five million, give or take. At this rate of closure, the leading elements will be at Neptune in a few days."

Lindstrom mindlessly stroked the bob of blond hair on top of her head. Before joining UNISPACE and being assigned to SpaceGuard Ops at Gateway, she'd had decent tresses for a young woman, but they weren't exactly regulation for low-grav duty. Now there was only a stub up top and she silently missed being able to twirl the ends of her curls when she was nervous.

Not that Sergeant Erika Lindstrom, SpaceGuard Long-Range Surveillance Ops 3rd shift supervisor ever got nervous.

"What kind of beast eats whole planets for breakfast?" she said to no one in particular.

"A hungry one, I suppose," muttered Dawes. Just then, a chime sounded. Dawes' eyes darted to his center console. "It's CAESAR...here's our very first data from initial engagement...."

The problem with deep-space combat swarm operations, as Lindstrom saw it, was that it all took place in slow motion, as in hours-long kind of slow. That was just physics. The Sentinel Line was over four billion kilometers away and any signals took half a day to get back and forth. Command and control was a bitch and the eggheads had long ago figured out that Sentinel would have to be run autonomously to be tactically effective. That autonomy was embodied in an AI the operators had labeled CAESAR. CAESAR had been programmed with the wiliness of Sun Tzu, the nerve of Patton, the strategic genius of Rommel, and the arrogance of MacArthur. Fighting an adversary at these distances was like engaging your opponent underwater, with you on one side of the ocean and the enemy on the other side.

Nothing happened quickly and patience was essential.

"CAESAR's giving us all the details now," Dawes said. Both of them were frankly stunned at the size and scale of their adversary. Diffuse in structure, nearly a tenth of a light year in extent, the mother swarm or KB-1 if you liked official-sounding names had swept through the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt in a few months, consuming small worlds and planetesimals like corn flakes, snacking on dwarf planets, washing it all down with dirty comets, as if the thing were a whale cruising through a field of plankton, consuming and disassembling everything in its path.

"Farside's sending something..." Dawes said. A low chime beeped. It was ALBERT, the Farside AI, with an alert. "Looks like they're detecting noticeable brightening in the Neptune system...luminosity spikes, elevated heat signatures...could be Triton or one of the smaller satellites. Definite nanobotic activity in the area."

"Engagement status?" Lindstrom asked. "Any pods deployed yet?"

"CAESAR reports pods one two five through three four five deployed. Over two hundred of them. Swarms launched and engaged at four billion kilometers range from us. Inconclusive, CAESAR says. We've got some close-up data now...I'll bring it up." Dawes' fingers flew over his keyboard. Ahead of and around them, displays blinked and shifted. Now instead of an ecliptic plot of the outer solar system, they were looking at close-proximity scans of individual elements of the mother swarm. One of the Old Ones, up close and personal.

Lindstrom uttered a low whistle. "I'm no nanotrooper but that sure looks like an ANAD clone to me. Same effectors, same propulsors. But our guys are getting their asses kicked...what gives?"

Dawes saw the answer in CAESAR's report. "Mass is what gives. Individually, ANAD and the enemy are very similar. But there are so many more of them, ANAD's getting overwhelmed. We can't replicate like them. They're hot rods. We're jalopies."

The two techs watched as the reports filtered in from four billion kilometers away. CAESAR had done its best with what it had. In time, hundreds more of the Sentinel pods had been deployed, filling space with uncountable gazillions of bots but all to no effect. KB-1 rolled on, sweeping anything and everything in its path.

They were both stunned when another report, this one from Farside, showed the leading edge of KB-1 approaching the Neptune system. Lindstrom felt a cold dead pile of rocks in her stomach as she scrolled through the raw feed from the Aristarchus arrays: luminosity spikes...thermal effects off-scale...massive debris fields...evidence of atom-breaking on a stupendous scale...gas and dust clouds...conclusion is that Neptune, Triton and the remaining satellites of this system are being steadily disassembled by forward elements of KB-1....

Lindstrom remembered a quote from Sun Tzu from her days in nog school: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

"Spoken like a true nanotrooper," she muttered to herself. "Send a new command stream out to Sentinel, Dawes. All pods deploy. Launch everything. Max rate replication. Let's see if an ANAD Big Bang has any effect."

It didn't.

Hours later, Lindstrom sat at her console and silently, numbly reviewed the results of Man's first engagement with the Old Ones.

Half the Kuiper Belt gone. Neptune and her brood of satellites gone. KB-1 was now inside the orbit of Neptune and heading sunward. An incomprehensibly vast formation of nanoscale robotic elements, a thing that Farside had dubbed KB-1 but in her own mind, Erika Lindstrom had already started calling the Devil's own breath, was moving inexorably into the outer reaches of the solar system.

Alarms and mobilization orders were flying between worlds like moths trapped between lights. Farside, Phobos Station, Station T at Titan, all were bringing every resource they could scrape up to confront the enemy.

Lindstrom decided it was time to send a formal status brief to CINCSPACE at the Quartier-General in Paris. General Mahmood Salaam scanned the after-action reports from Sentinel with a growing sense of dread. It didn't help that he also had a Solnet live stream up on another screen...Special Report was showing scene after scene of panic and chaos around the Earth and Moon. Salaam had the sound on the vid muted as he scanned Gateway's report but he found his eyes constantly drawn to views of Symborg haranguing audiences, long lines at assimilator booths around the world, pronouncements of impending judgment, the coming of the Last days.

For a brief moment, Salaam un-muted the volume, long enough to catch some of Symborg's words:

"...assimilation is coming...join us now...or be swept into oblivion...."

The whole affair made Salaam tremble in ways he couldn't begin to describe. As a child, his father had once taken him to the banks of the Ganges River, outside Kolkata, for a Hindu cleansing ceremony. He remembered shaking like a dervish just before he'd been dunked in the oily waters of the river.

This is insane, Salaam told himself. We're soldiers. We know how to fight. Like Sun Tzu said, "Know thyself and know thy enemy and you will not fear a thousand battles."

Gateway's latest brief suddenly chimed through and Salaam scanned the report with a sinking feeling. Not long after the Neptune engagement, all comms with CAESAR and the Sentinel Line had been lost.

Sun Tzu had never faced anything like this.

CINCSPACE set his commandpad on his desk and tapped out new orders. A system-wide Level One alert was set. All Frontier Corps and other UNISPACE stations and facilities were set to ThreatCon One.

Now all he had to do was get on vid and explain to UNSAC and the Secretary–General just why it was that the enemy hadn't been stopped by Sentinel.

Maybe it would have been better if his father had drowned him in the Ganges.

Two weeks had passed since Dana Polansky had 'lost' her daughter Jana to those Assimilationist freaks. As she put on her makeup and primped at the bathroom mirror before heading in to the city and Solnet studios, Dana told herself she was finally coming to accept a hard reality.

Jana was gone. She might or might not be alive, at least in any conventional understanding of the term 'alive.' Probably, her teenaged daughter had gone and done the very thing she had promised her mother she would: step into one of those suicide booths and let the freaks and haloheads disassemble her into atom fluff.

It was murder. At the very least, it was assisted suicide. And no one had gone to jail because of it. You could get away with murdering millions if you called it religion and had a charismatic hunk of a spokesman like Symborg promoting it. A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth...someone had once said that. People screamed for Symborg. My God, Dana thought, as she inadvertently smeared her eye liner, people faint for Symborg. Now they die for Symborg.

Maybe it would be better if the Old Ones came and swept all the madness away. From what her sources inside UNIFORCE had been telling her in recent days, the engagements with KB-1 in deep space hadn't been going all that well anyway.

Dana finished her makeup and was about to try out that little pale blue skirt with the print top she had visualized lying in bed that morning—looks good on vid, her producers had told her—when something caught her eye.

Maybe it was the sun, casting moving shadows across the curtains of her bedroom. The windows were open in her twentieth floor pension at La Tour St. Vincent and a breeze had undoubtedly rustled the drapes. She turned and was dumbfounded to see a swirl of dust motes dancing beside the window. Was there a fire nearby? Smoke particles drifting in?

Then, she realized this was no smoke. It wasn't dust. It wasn't a light mist either, even though mists occasionally curled around the wrought-iron railings of her terrace outside, making faces in and among the plants and vines.

It was an angel forming.

She was startled at first, though she had seen plenty of angels in her career, but when the thing began taking on a recognizable form, she felt a cold shudder and backed her way into the bathroom, thinking to slam the door shut.

But she couldn't. She just couldn't. Something held her attention and then she knew what it was.

It was Jana. She wasn't totally sure but a growing suspicion soon erased all doubts. The image was diffuse, almost translucent, but it sure looked like Jana.

Is this my imagination, she wondered? Is this part of the grieving process?

"Oh my God..." she breathed. "I'm having a—"

The angel continued to gather itself, filling out, growing more substantial. There were the blond curls, with the bangs she kept too low over her eyes...I've been after her for weeks to get those cut. The little mole on her cheek. Mom, it drives the boys nuts, really. The crooked smile.

It was Jana.

But that couldn't be. Could it?

The angel gazed at her with soft, doe eyes, not saying anything, but it seemed outwardly happy, composed, even satisfied.

Words formed in Dana's mind, and she wasn't sure if Jana was talking or she was imagining it.

"It's okay, Mom...really, it's okay."

"Jana, is it...don't—"

"Mom, I've got a purpose now. I've got things going for me now."

Dana reached out, to try and touch the apparition, more than ever convinced this was no dream, she was real, she was an angel but she was real. Angels existed. They were just collections of bots. Angels were everywhere.

Then, to her dismay, the angel began to disperse. The process went in reverse, slowly at first, but with growing momentum. Translucent, like a faint mist. Then fainter still. Finally, a bare outline, like a Cheshire cat, with only Jana's face left, and a bit of a smirk at the end.

Then she was gone.

Finally Dana forced herself to breathe. She checked around the bathroom, experimentally reaching out with her hands, swishing her hands through the air. She felt nothing. She saw a few dust motes but they might well be just dust motes. But maybe not.

Just a dream, she decided. She wiped a few tears from her cheeks. She had been thinking about her daughter a lot the last few days. Maybe cleaning out her bedroom, going through all her clothes. There were outfits she could donate anyway. Maybe even that St. Michael's Church.

Just my imagination.

Dana Polansky returned to her makeup, determinedly applying more and more to those stubborn crow's feet under her eyes.

Without saying it, she resolved in the back of her mind to find out more about this Church of Assimilation.

Chapter 5

Pueblo, Colorado (?)

Date: Unknown

Time: Unknown

Johnny Winger hurtled through some kind of long, curving corridor at breakneck speed, spinning spinning spinning until at last, he came to a stop, landing with a hard bump right on his rump, and rolling over with unspent momentum. When the world finally stopping cartwheeling all around him, he sucked in a breath and sat up. Looking around, he knew right away that he was in a familiar place for that was the way of the Shadow Man.

There were tests coming. Configuration changes. Challenges to overcome. He hoped Doc III could maintain what was left of Johnny Winger through all of it.

Now he staggered unsteadily to his feet. I know this place. He was standing by the shores of a small lake. It was Reynolds Lake, near his boyhood home in Pueblo. He remembered the setting too. It was that day in late summer when his best friend Archie Hester had dared him to swim the lake late at night, when nobody else was around. All by himself.

Sure enough, he spied movement in the bushes above the water line. A rustling came, then a head and a short, stocky form emerged. It was Archie himself, cutoff jeans and a dirty T-shirt.

Johnny wasn't surprised at all.

The trouble was he knew he couldn't swim that well and he wanted to tell Archie to kiss off. He wanted to decline the dare. In real life, he hadn't. He couldn't. But this wasn't real life. This was some kind of test manufactured by the Shadow Man. He couldn't turn it down.

Archie came up with that lopsided grin and ran hands through his greasy black hair. "I dare you, Johnny. Double-dog dare you. No way you can swim the lake by yourself. Double-dog and triple-dog dare you."

Well, you couldn't very well turn down a triple-dog dare, could you? His name would be all over school if he did. So he accepted the dare, as he had before but even doing that, Johnny realized there were some details that were different—Archie's hair was different and he didn't have that real bad scrape on his elbow from falling off his bicycle like he always did. So Winger knew this couldn't be real. It was all staged, a simulation. But still it had a purpose.

He stripped down to his underwear and dipped a toe in the faint ripple of waves lapping the shore. Yikes! That was cold! Reynolds Lake was always cold, even in summer. Reynolds Lake gave you goosebumps.

There was only one way to do this. Dive in. So he held his breath, took a last glance at the sneer on Archie's face and dove in.

It was freezing cold, so cold that diving in was like running full steam into a brick wall. Instantly, Johnny came up out of breath. The cold sucked the very life out of you. He flailed and splashed for a moment, then he saw Archie on the shore, laughing. That did it. He sucked and heaved in as much breath as he could, then turned back to the lake and began pulling, trying to get his complaining muscles in gear as fast as he could, trying to get some warmth flowing.

He tried to think about anything but the cold. Katie Gomez's face and her luscious chest...that was good to think about. How he would lord it all over Archie when he finally made it to the opposite shore, if he made it. That was nuts. Of course he would make it.

If he could just get the blood flowing.

Just like he'd learned in Scouts, long, easy strokes. Concentrate. Think of yourself as a machine. Pull and catch, pull and catch. Turn and breathe. Turn and breathe. And don't forget to kick once in awhile, too.

When you're swimming across Reynolds Lake on a cool late August night in your underwear, you wind up thinking about a lot of things. Things like how much do they know? Can Doc III keep my file together? This midnight swim across Reynolds Lake was a test; in fact, the Shadow Man called it a configuration change. So what's being changed? Me?

Winger continued stroking. His arms and legs had warmed up a little. He somehow got into a good rhythm...he'd always been a pretty good swimmer. And he had to show that slimebag Archie that no dare was too much for Johnny Winger.

Eventually, he found himself approaching a line of lights...the opposite shore. More cabins. Some light stands. He saw a few figures standing on the banks. The porky one was Archie.

But who was the other?

Finally, he scraped his knee on the lake bottom and realized he had made it. He stood up, shivering, coughing out a little water, doubled over to get some breath and waddled like a penguin up onto the muddy banks.

Archie was there, a little cock-eyed grin splitting his face.

"So you made it, you big twerp. Took you long enough."

Winger spat some lake water at him.

The other figure turned out to be Jamison Winger.

His Dad handed him a few towels and helped him dry off, then gave him jeans and a dry T-shirt to put on.

"You did great, son. I'm very proud of you. You swam that lake like a champ." He ruffled Johnny's hair and for a few moments, Johnny basked in the affection. Then it struck him.

None of this was real. It was all a sim. A simulation with a purpose.

His Dad was saying something again..."I have a badge for you...a merit badge. You earned it."

"Yeah, you were just lucky, that's all," whined Archie.

Johnny wanted to slug the fatso. How'd he get into the sim, anyway?

Jamison Winger handed Johnny a small box. Inside, the Scouts merit badge for swimming a mile in open water lay on a black velvet fabric. Johnny took it out, beaming.

"Your mother will sew it on your uniform tonight," Jamison Winger promised. He squeezed Johnny's shoulder.

Winger looked up at his Dad. He looked real enough: the same lock of hair down over his right eye, that he was forever brushing back. The blunt nose with the nostrils that flared like wings when he was mad. The slight quiver on his right eyebrow, like it might take flight. It was Dad.

But it wasn't. It couldn't be.

"The main thing, son, is that you passed the test."

Jamison Winger squeezed Johnny's shoulder once again and this time, it was like the whole world was jerked away and he was hurtling down that long curving, corridor again at breakneck speed. The trip seemed to last a lifetime but when he stopped, landing always right on his butt, he knew enough to let the dizziness fade away before trying to open his eyes and look around.

This time, he knew where he was. He had been here before.

It was that vast, undulating plain of waving grass and plants, like a Dakota prairie in the summer, stretching to the sky. Only the plants weren't plants. When he got up and steadied himself, he took a few steps. Each stalk of grass poofed into a small cloud of dust, bots, Johnny knew, as he swished through them. There were gazillions of bots.

He was on the home world of the Old Ones again, or another sim perhaps, though this one felt awfully real.

He had been here before....
Chapter 6

UNIFORCE Headquarters

The Quartier-General, Paris

June 8, 2155

0900 hours U.T.

The briefing was set to be held in UNSAC's office on the eightieth floor, in the Command Center. CINCSPACE would be there, in the person of General Mahmood Salaam. CINCQUANT too. General Lamar Quint had just hyperjetted in from an inspection tour of Singapore base and he was still jetlagged; those two hour, eleven-thousand kilometer trips across the top of the atmosphere were wearying enough without having to bow and curtsy to the brass every time someone wanted a meeting.

The Secretary-General, Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram, had already vidlinked in from the Secretariat building in New York.

UNSAC, Angelika Komar, made sure the doors were secured. "This briefing is to go over the latest intel on what's happening in the outer system and what we're going to do about it. I've got Q2's summary from Farside, Gateway, Stations P and T and Sentinel, before contact was lost. Mahmood, let's start with you. Where's KB-1 now?"

Salaam sucked on his big black moustache, an irritating tic that drove Komar nuts. She wanted to shave the thing off. Jeez, what are you...five years old? But she kept quiet, while the Pakistani O-10 tickled some keys on his commandpad. All the displays blinked and shifted. The 3-D pedestal lit up like a miniature theatrical stage and they were soon looking at an ecliptic plot of the entire solar system, with all the planets and satellites moving in real time according their proper motions.

"The leading edge of KB-1 is now roughly inside the orbit of Neptune, or rather where Neptune used to be. Farside can find no evidence that the planet and its satellites exist in anything like their original form. Plot puts the approximate leading edge at just over four billion kilometers from the Sun, about thirty A.U. Moving across the system in the general direction of the Sun at a speed of about ninety-thousand kilometers per hour."

"What about Sentinel?" asked Quint.

Salaam had a rueful frown on his face. "We lost all comms with Sentinel and its controller CAESAR at approximately 1200 hours on 10 April. All defense pods were fully discharged—we got that much from CAESAR—so we know Sentinel engaged the swarm. But there seems to have been no effect on the size, speed, or bearing of the formation. KB-1 continues on its original heading as we speak."

"And consuming everything in its path," muttered Komar.

Salaam went on to lay out the current status and results of other countermeasures and defensive efforts to block, engage or divert the swarm. All such efforts had failed. All counter-swarms and ships sent to engage KB-1 had been destroyed or somehow absorbed into the greater swarm that had come to be called Kuiper Belt One. That included the Korolev and the Tycho. Over two hundred crewmen lost.

The S-G, Dr. Vishnapuram, interrupted from New York. "By the stars, it seems that Vishnu is angry with us. Is there nothing we can do?"

"Research has some ideas, yes," Salaam offered. "Most of them are crackpot ideas but we're not discouraging anything at this point. At the current rate of advance, unless some means of stopping KB-1 can be devised, Farside is estimating the leading edge of the thing will be on our doorsteps in about two hundred plus days, give or take."

"Meanwhile, panic spreads," Komar remarked. "Just take a look..." She pressed a button, muting the volume on all the displays and a series of Solnet reports ran in quick succession across the screens, like a collage: The Last Days?...Symborg Promises Paradise in Major Speech...Assimilator Booths Catch Fire From Overuse in Manchester, England...Riots Spread across Djarkarta....

Quint felt a rock in the pit of his stomach watching all the chaos, dutifully captured by Solnet and other press dronecams. "They won't have to absorb us, or whatever it is they do. We're doing it to ourselves."

"That's not all," Komar said. "Lamar, what's the latest from Q2 on the Sanctuaries?"

CINCQUANT consulted his own pad. "I'll put the details up for everyone but the basics are this: legally constituted swarms resident in the Sanctuaries are on the move. Sanctuary Patrol's reporting over a hundred border violations in just the last week, across the board...Amazon, east Africa, the Pacific. There have been clashes and skirmishes between SP and elements of these swarms. Quantum Corps has provided some assistance in Africa...HERF and mag weapons, logistics and the like. We've already lodged formal complaints in the UN—"

The S-G, Dr. Vishnapuram, interjected. "I signed off on those yesterday. We've got hearings today and tomorrow. General Quint, I'll need all the data you can get me—times, dates, how many swarms, exact locations. Something to substantiate your claims. Getting this through all the vetoes won't be easy."

"Go on, General," urged Komar.

"That's not all," Quint continued. "Now Q2 has evidence, from thermal signatures and electromagnetics, that Config Zero or some subset of that swarm, has breached containment at Kipwezia. For over thirty years, we've had a MOBnet-style containment field around that island. Nothing in or out. Recently, Q2 sensors have detected signatures indicating that the net has been breached in multiple places and Config Zero may well be on the move. We've got a detachment there now to recon the perimeter of the zone."

Now it was Salaam's turn to add some bad news. "I'm afraid this may be the least of our worries. Just this morning, Farside sent me an advisory from Europa Eye. You recall we set up Eye about forty years ago to keep tabs on the Keeper unit on Europa...or maybe I should say, under Europa. Now Farside is saying the Keeper may not even be there anymore. They've detected signatures of something orbiting Jupiter in a separate orbit...and it has swarm-like signatures. They're trying to work out mission parameters to pull Eye out of Europa orbit and go sniff out this other source. But it'll take a few weeks."

Angelika Komar watched all the screens and displays blinking bad news around them and took a deep breath. "The biggest threat long-term is still this Kuiper Belt One. We haven't figured how to stop the thing yet."

"Or even slow it down," added Salaam.

"Table Top has a few eggheads with a really crackpot idea," Quint told them. "It's a harebrained idea but now seems to be the time for things like this." He loaded up the displays and let the AI chew on the files for awhile, then showed all of them what he was talking about.

"Think MOBnet. We put a gigantic net over and around Kipwezia years ago. Mostly it's held, except it may be wearing out now. A couple of our top fellows have had a similar notion. They've worked up, as you can see, a design for an astronomical MOBnet, a sort of Earthshield that would encompass much of the space around the Earth-Moon system, at least space in the same plane as that big KB-1 swarm. Not the whole volume of space around Earth-Moon but a substantial fraction of it. Here, I'll let Dr. Gamilon explain—" Quint selected a vid clip and the displays all showed an animated ecliptic plot of the Earth and Moon in orbit around each other. Gamilon was a balding, bespectacled French physicist, appearing in a small window inside the animation, to narrate.

"EarthShield is a protective barrier composed of nanoscale robots, physically linked together like a mesh, designed to provide a physical barrier to oncoming swarms or bots from elsewhere in the solar system, especially the Old Ones and their mother swarm.

"The shield does not completely envelope the Earth-Moon system, but rather forms a sort of pancake structure, extending from the L1 to the L2 equilibrium points.

"Inside the envelope, both Earth and the Moon are more or less protected from nanobotic swarm incidence roughly in the plane of the Earth's orbit, plus or minus several degrees. These are thought to be the most likely approach vectors for Kuiper Belt One.

"The physical extent of this barrier is some 3 million kilometers, from L1 to L2. The breath is about .5 million kilometers.

"Gravitational forces away from the equilibrium points L1 and L2 will require anchor satellites and positioning buoys.

"EarthShield is a linked, single physical object, but the linkages are nanobotic effectors and they can be adjusted and reconfigured as needed.

"Deployment of the Shield will take several months. Deployment involves four Frontier Corps ships. Two ships will lay shield bots from Earth to L1. Two ships will deploy shield bots from Earth to L2. The deployment pattern resembles a weaving pattern...multiple trajectories to and from L1 and L2, shifting a little at the end of each sector sweep.

"The end result is a physical barrier composed of individual nanobot elements, linked by effectors and configured not only to form the barrier but to be able to fight off probes and assaults from other swarms. Some Sentinel system technology is applied here. Most of the bots have bond disrupters and other defensive weapons as well as linking effectors.

"Equilibrium points L1 and L2 are gravitationally stable and require only modest maneuvering from anchor satellites. However, the gravity of the Moon and Earth along the 'strands' of the shield, would eventually distort and disrupt the shield, so additional positioning and maneuvering buoys are required, as multiple points along the arcs from L1 to Earth to L2. PM buoys are small satellites with linkage to specific sectors of the Shield to help it maintain shape and orientation.

"EarthShield control will be operated out of Gateway Station, a manned complex also at the L2 point. Control functions will include positioning and maneuvering (involving coordinated operation of trillions of propulsors), overall sector status and condition, repairs and maintenance, power, and configuration control.

"This concludes our presentation on the EarthShield design."

Gamilon's face winked out and the final configuration of the shield was frozen on all displays.

CINCSPACE General Salaam shook his head sadly. "Truly an ingenious idea. In Kolkata, we call notions like this paagal...crazy, wacko, you understand. UNISPACE would have to be involved in such an effort."

"Probably up to your eyebrows," Quint said.

UNSAC sniffed. "Does anyone have a better idea? If something isn't done, KB-1 will be on our doorsteps in six months, maybe less. We should make a decision on this now. "

For the better part of the next hour, the officers knocked the idea around.

"The material requirements alone are staggering," said Salaam. "What kind of feedstock tonnage are we talking about to be able to generate swarms of this magnitude? And the transport requirements—" Salaam twirled his black moustache like it was a toy.

In the end, the decision was made. Earthshield would proceed. Nobody thought the idea had the slightest chance of working but nobody had a better idea.

Dr. Vishnapuram gave his approval. "Initial design work should begin immediately. General Quint, give me a synopsis of the idea, something I can offer to the General Assembly. Make it simple. These cows are simple people. They can be steered but sometimes it takes a big kick. The cost of this Earthshield will be so astronomical that all countries will have to contribute."

Komar had an idea. "I want to speed this along as fast as we can. In fact, I know a Solnet reporter who can help get the word out."

Dana Polansky climbed out of the jetcab in front of the Quartier-General building and looked up at the eighty-story blade-shaped structure. Critics had panned the design for years. Looks like a sword broken in two...looks like a frozen banana...looks like a wilting flower with indigestion. Polansky figured she was no architectural critic. She's leave the snide comments to others. As it was, the UNIFORCE headquarters building dominated the 5th arrondisement like a weed in a grass patch and nobody could miss the thing, even from halfway across the City of Light.

It was a statement in stone, marble and glass that didn't need translating.

Polansky had gotten the message from a Captain Laval, comm officer inside the office of the Security Affairs Commissioner. Urgent. Need to speak with you. Come at 1100 hours. Background on a major development. Exclusive to Solnet...

What reporter wouldn't salivate at an offering like that?

Polansky signed in at the first-floor security station and began a long series of increasingly stringent security scans, sweeps and probes, including every biometric she could imagine. After what seemed like a day, she found herself on the seventy-fifth floor, in an oak-paneled anteroom, facing heavy doors and two scowling well-armed guards, and a visible, very obvious nanobotic barrier, all comprising the entrance to a suite of offices and conference rooms occupied by UNSAC herself.

It's not every day a girl reporter gets to enter the Holy of Holies, she told herself, quickly primping her face with a compact mirror.

Promptly at 1100 hours, she was ushered through multiple doors and barriers into a spacious corner officer with an acre-sized desk surrounded by displays and 3-d images dancing in mid-air.

Angelika Komar stabbed a button on the side panel of her chair and the 3-d dancers vanished. She rose and extended a hand, indicating Polansky should be seated.

"Sorry, Ms. Polansky...I was just following live drone footage of a skirmish along the east African Sanctuary border...the Bugs are getting restless and we're trying to keep a lid on them. Thanks for coming on such short notice."

"Thank you for asking me, Madame Commissioner. I could never pass up a chance at an exclusive from UNSAC."

Komar sank back in her chair. "I want to be clear about this. I will give you exclusive background to a major development, but I want your agreement to hold it for a few days. This is deep background, by the way. No direct attribution to this office...or to me."

When Dana started to object, UNSAC held up a hand. "Just hear me out, Ms. Polansky. Listen to what I have to say and show you, and I think you'll understand my position." With that, UNSAC punched up another 3-d show on the pedestal at the front of her desk...the thing was big enough to form a theatrical stage.

"It's called Earthshield," she said. "Here are the details...."

Polansky leaned forward slightly and watched mesmerized at the unfolding description and graphics of the huge project.

When it was done, UNSAC punched off the vid and got right to the point. "Ms. Polansky, I need your help. I want to publicize the whole idea of Earthshield as widely as possible. I want you to do this for me. My main goal here is to put pressure on UN delegates to approve the project." Here, Komar punched on her 3-D stage again, this time showing long-range imagery of the leading edge of KB-1, imagery from Farside and sensors at Station T, Titan.

"I don't have to explain what this is...you've seen it enough in recent days. Ms. Polansky, time is short. We have to move now. KB-1...the Old Ones...judgment days...whatever you want to call it, it's coming. Coming our way and coming fast."

Polansky's head spun with all the things she had just seen and heard. "I'll have to discuss this with my editors, Madame Commissioner. They make decisions on what stories we cover...and how we cover them. Will this...thing... this shield...do your engineers and tech people think it'll really work? Stop this KB-1 from doing any damage to us?"

Komar shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine, Dana. The figures say it should work. The simulations say it should work. But one thing I've learned in this job...when you're dealing with Bugs...or any enemy, for that matter, remember one thing: the enemy always gets a vote on what works and what doesn't. Few military plans survive contact with the enemy intact. But right now, it's the best idea we've got."

Polansky agreed to take the matter directly to her chief editor. "His name is Henri Bergeron...a dear fellow, really, kind of nervous, buzzes about the newsroom like a bee. He'll listen. But Henri's like a flag. He always knows which way the wind is blowing."

Polansky and Komar exchanged a few more pleasantries, then Dana was firmly showed the door and conducted downstairs. You couldn't just walk out of the Quartier-General like it was a corner bakery. She went through the whole security screening process again, this time in reverse.

An hour later, she had climbed out of another jetcab, swiped her card across the face of the driver-AI and rode the lift to her offices at the Solnet Studios on the Rue Descartes. She dropped her things off at her desk and went directly to the little tenth-floor veranda-café outside Edit, thinking to get a coffee and beignet, before trying to hunt down Henri.

She had to compose her thinking about how to put this to her editor.

She was more or less lost in a daze, pulling off pieces of the chewy dough to munch on when something caught her eye. It was a shadow by the windows—the Café Duchenne had great views of Montmartre—something she had for a moment thought was just a cloud passing by the sun.

No, that wasn't it. She turned slightly, with a chill going down her spine, and carefully put the coffee down on the table. The shadow thickened. Nobody else in the café—there were only a few—seemed to notice it. Dana wondered if she were imagining this. The last few days had been stressful and that was an understatement.

When she realized she was looking at a shadowy, nearly translucent outline of her daughter Jana, Dana dropped the beignet to the floor. She didn't know whether to be startled, ecstatic, mad or distraught. Maybe all of them at the same time.

As she studied what she could see of Jana's face, she could see that her daughter seemed to be in some kind of distress. It was her expression. A mother knew about things like that, with the way her lips were set, her eyes....

The more she looked, the more Dana was sure that Jana wanted something.

"What is it, baby?" she whispered. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Jana didn't say a word but a mother could tell.

Jana looks tired, she thought. Her eyelids, what there were of them, sort of drooped. The full angel form hadn't filled out. Only a faint outline, barely visible in the back glow from outside, was visible. Others in the cafe said nothing, probably saw nothing. Like a rainbow, you could only see Jana from a certain direction.

Dana started to get up, but thought better of it. This has to be a dream, she told herself. But she knew that somehow, some way, she had to get Jana back from this netherworld. It seemed like a form of hell, or purgatory. Maybe that was it. But who could she turn to? Was it even possible to get Jana back?

Dana prided herself on being a hardheaded journalist. Reporters dealt with facts. Dana knew that, officially, nobody had ever been 'reconstructed' after going through assimilation, though there had been attempts. And she knew that the Church of Assimilation would oppose anything she tried to do.

But there just had to be a way....
Chapter 7

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@dana.polansky.solnetworldview

June 14, 2155

1750 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

A Shield to Hide Behind?

This Solnet Special Report will cover an unusual story that has emerged from the labs of UNIFORCE in recent days. Highly placed sources have provided information about a program to build a shield-type defensive system in space, a shield that would ostensibly protect the Earth from the approach of the large swarm formation even now moving into our solar system. Dr. Swanson Lurkfelder of Cambridge University, U.K., is interviewed by reporter Dana Polansky and reports on what is known about this program.

"Dr. Lurkfelder, thank you for taking the time to be with us today."

"My pleasure, Dana. How can help you?" Lurkfelder is a thin, almost emaciated academic, possessed of a large white moustache and a shock of dirty white hair. His corduroy jacket doesn't quite have elbow patches, but the doctor is in many ways a prototypical academic denizen.

"Dr. Lurkfelder, you've heard reports recently about this so-called Earthshield project?"

Lurkfelder takes off his glasses, fiddles with the dataspecs for a moment, then lays them on his desk. "I have heard the term...a most unfortunate wording, if you ask me."

"Why is that, Dr. Lurkfelder?"

"Well, as I understand the term, a full shield would be something approximating a sphere, covering much of the space between the Earth and Moon. Such a structure is quite impossible, I might add. To imagine that any single structure could prevent the approach of a large swarm, as this Kuiper Belt One phenomenon is known officially, is patently ridiculous. It simply flies in the face of the laws of physics."

Dana refers to a tablet with her notes. "Dr. Lurkfelder, just so our viewers will know what we're talking about here, unnamed sources inside UNIFORCE have provided Solnet with considerable information about this project, which is known informally as Earthshield. The plan is to design and build a gigantic shield in space and envelop most of the space around the Earth and the Moon, out to the L2, L3, L4 and L5 positions. Not a true spherical shield, as you say, but more of a series of pancakes, to try and block the approach of this great swarm at the edges of the solar system."

"Just as you say, Dana, this shield idea is very controversial,' Lurkfelder added. "There are many engineering problems that would have to be overcome. In fact, the design is seriously flawed and the concept is frankly ridiculous on the face of it."

"Can you be more specific, Doctor?"

"Surely..." Lurkfelder said. "Here, I've put together a short simulation—" he picks up his dataspecs, presses some buttons along the stem of the glasses and a faint 3-D projection dances in front of their faces. "This is a projected evolutionary history of what will happen to the Shield, once it's in place, if the design I've seen is used. As you can see, the bots that comprise KB-1 will either disassemble themselves in this area of space—or KB-1 will simply go around the Shield. We can spend our money and time better on counter-swarm designs, like your body's immune system, to attack, disable, contain or disperse the swarms."

They both watched the 3-d sim proceed. When it was done, the alien swarm had flowed over, under and around the Earthshield like a river around a rock.

"Dr. Lurkfelder, some sources believe the Shield should be opposed on moral grounds. They say nothing should be permitted to come between us and the swarm, what some have called the Mother Swarm. In fact, as word of this project has gotten out, opposition has been growing. Could you speak to our viewers about the moral or ethical side of this debate?"

Lurkfelder put his specs back on. Reams of minute text and images could be seen scrolling down the side of the lenses. "Surely, Dana. As you know, Assimilationists have been with us for over forty years. It's an apocalyptic, even messianic vision of the universe. Believers feel that when the Old Ones, the Mother Swarm, finally arrives, nirvana, heaven or some kind of enlightenment will be upon us. Now, if the experts are to be believed, this KB-1 phenomenon may be what Assimilationists have long been waiting for. That's why feelings and emotions are so strong these days."

"But isn't it true," Dana asked, thinking of her own daughter, "that Assimilationists practice a form of assisted suicide?"

Lurkfelder nodded. "That way of thinking is common in the public. The main promise of the Church of Assimilation is that we are all part of the same thing...we're all estranged pieces of a greater entity. This entity is called the Old Ones, or more benignly, the mother swarm. Assimilationists believe that the purpose of life is to reconnect with the mother swarm. Their public gatherings are called awakenings. At these awakenings, believers are placed in an assimilator booth and literally deconstructed...disassembled into their constituent atoms. The atoms are then held in containment to be offered up to the mother swarm when the Old Ones finally arrive...said to be in the year 2155, this year."

"So you agree this is a form of assisted suicide? How can they get away with this...it's murder, isn't it?"

Lurkfelder shrugged. "Perhaps. You see, Assimilation struggles with one great question: does assimilating mean just enhancing our minds and bodies as is, inserting bots and swarms to take over or develop or enhance new capabilities in our more or less original bodies? Or does Assimilation mean 'deconstruction?' Breaking down the human body form into its constituent atoms and rebuilding it as a multi-configuration swarm, able to look and act like humans -as angels- but also able to act and look like other beings and structures as well. Enhancement versus reconfiguration...this is the great divide in their thinking."

"Uh, thank you, Dr. Lurkfelder, for taking the time to be with us today."

"My pleasure, Dana."

The image of Dana Polansky now filled the screens of all Solnet's viewers.

"This reporter recently conducted a remote interview with Symborg himself. Symborg has long been the most public face of the Church of Assimilation. I conducted this interview over the Net. Symborg was at his estate outside Nairobi, Kenya, in fact getting ready to begin a lengthy world tour which would take him to churches and rallies on every continent. Mr. Symborg, thanks for agreeing to spend some time with us today...."

Symborg's face comes up on the screen in a split window format. He is a slightly built man, possessed of medium dark skin, with a faint line of moustache and beard lending gravity to what would otherwise be a fairly bland face. Dana knew that Symborg was an angel and he could look anyway he chose to look...it was all a matter of configuration control.

"You're quite welcome, Ms. Polansky. And, please, just call me Symborg."

"Of course. I must say you look quite fit and rested for someone who's been in the public eye for nearly half a century." Jeez, the man's just a bag of bugs. He can look however he wants to look.

That brought a hearty laugh to the para-human swarm entity. "I thank you, Dana, for your kind words. In fact, for someone like me, it's really a simple matter of configuration management...would you like this better?"

Even as she watched, along with millions of Solnet viewers, Symborg's face changed subtly, showing a few more lines and wrinkles, some crow's feet, a bemused smile behind stylish dataspecs and well-coiffed thick hair, dark brown with blended gray streaks. Quite a handsome chap indeed, Dana told herself. But it's just a show...that's all it is. How many millions would kill for the chance to make themselves over like that?

"Mr.....er, Symborg, many of our viewers want to know if you have any thoughts on this KB-1 phenomenon that astronomers have detected entering our solar system. Some physicists think this object is some kind of micro-black hole, surrounded by a vast dust cloud, that's consuming small bodies as it approaches."

Now Symborg's face took on a sterner visage. His eyes narrowed. "What you call KB-1, Kuiper Belt One, is just a term of ignorance. It's well known that the long-awaited days are finally here...the Mother Swarm is with us and what Assimilationists have long promised will soon happen. In fact, all efforts to stop the Mother Swarm are morally wrong, as these efforts interfere with the natural plan for our universe...and for Humanity."

Dana consulted her notes on her recent report. "I assume you're referring to the Earthshield. Isn't that just a proposal at this point?"

Symborg's face had assumed the look of a lion stalking his prey...focused, single-minded, menacing. It gave Dana a slight chill to watch the transformation, yet it was almost imperceptible.

"Dana, anything that prevents the completion of the Prime Key and the union of Man with the Mother Swarm is bad. It's doomed to fail. If the Mother Swarm passes by and through our solar system and we're not ready for assimilation, we'll be left behind in a primitive, incomplete state of being. And the Mother Swarm will be less complete for not having us as part of the family."

"Then you believe that the end days are here?"

Symborg smiled an enigmatic, expressionless smile. "The term 'end days' comes from a completely different tradition. Assimilationists believe that our best days are ahead of us. A great awakening is coming, Dana, and we can't miss it."

"Thank you, Mr. Symborg, for taking the time to be with us today."

Symborg's smile remained on the screen, now growing even wider, inhumanly wider. "The universe is coming together in a great union, Dana and nothing can stop it."

She signed off and killed the link to Nairobi as fast as she could.

After what she hoped was a silent deep breath, Dana Polansky turned back to the camera. Animated scenarios of the Earthshield project danced in the air behind her: the Frontier Corps ships deployed their initial swarms, the Positioning and Stability buoys were laid down to keep the vast net in place, the ships then wove the pattern like huge looms, back and forth, forming a pancake barrier that surrounded much of Earth-Moon space.

Dana watched the deployment and setup animation unfold around her, then narrated over the simulation, using the most authoritative voice she could muster. Symborg's certainty and Dr. Lurkfelder's warnings had rattled her and she didn't want her reporter's objectivity to break down completely.

"The end result will be a physical barrier composed of individual nanobot elements, linked by effectors and configured not only to form the barrier but to be able to fight off probes and assaults from other swarms. Some Sentinel system technology will be applied here. Most of the bots have bond disrupters and other defensive weapons as well as linking effectors.

"Equilibrium points L1 and L2 are gravitationally stable and require only modest maneuvering from anchor satellites. However, the gravity of the moon and Earth along the 'strands' of the shield, would eventually distort and disrupt the shield, so additional positioning and maneuvering buoys are required, at multiple points along the arcs from L1 to Earth to L2. The PM buoys are small satellites with linkage to specific sectors of the Shield to help it maintain shape and orientation.

"EarthShield control will be operated out of Gateway Station, a manned complex also at the L2 point. Control functions will include positioning and maneuvering—this will involve tightly coordinated operation of trillions of propulsors-- overall sector status and condition, repairs and maintenance, power, and configuration control."

Dana completed her report with final details on the status of Earthshield, what was coming next and what the prospects were for success. Then, she looked her viewers in the eye, lowering her voice.

"Many people are frightened, even panicked by all that has been happening. Others are ecstatic, welcoming the approach of the Old Ones. There seems to be no middle ground. The approach of the Old Ones seems to bring out extremes in all of us. There seems to be no respite and no consensus on what to do and the world is devolving, atomizing, into individual particles circulating around randomly. We're already like a swarm now, but no one's in charge and the only configuration is anarchy...chaos."

"This is Dana Polansky, reporting for Solnet Special Report. Good night...and good luck."

Dana ended her report and sat quietly in the studio for a few moments, while cameras and lighting stands moved about and technicians bustled back and forth, getting ready for the next shoot. Her mind was blank for a long minute.

Then she knew what she had to do next. She had to do whatever she could to retrieve her daughter Jana, from these loonies. Assimilationists...my God, what are they thinking.... She decided to contact a friend in Quantum Corps. What was his name? She'd have to look it up. Maybe he would have an idea of how she could locate Jana...and get her back. It was the only thing she could think of to do.
Chapter 8

Inside the Mother Swarm

Date: Unknown

Time: Unknown

Johnny Winger figured this was all some kind of big simulation. He figured there was no way he could be on some kind of home planet of the Old Ones. He knew he was being tested. That's when he saw the edge of a forest up ahead.

He trudged through the waving, undulating wheat field—for that's what it looked like unless you looked real close—and reached the edge of the forest.

"Doc, it looks like a normal forest." Not surprisingly, when he examined the nearer trees, he saw the blur of gazillions of bots buzzing about. Everything in the forest was fake, a swarm assembly configured to look like something else. Even the trees.

Not knowing what else to do, he plunged ahead.

There was a sort of footpath, beaten down branches and crushed banks of leaves. "Guess that's the way to go. Doc, can you hear me? I'm not sure if I'm doing what I'm supposed to."

The coupler link buzzed and fritzed, then he heard Doc III in the back of his mind.

***Johnny, this entire world is a series of bot configurations...impressive how it's controlled...it all seems so lifelike***

Winger crunched and shoved his way through brush and vines, following the footpath. "Is all this for me? Is this like a dream, Doc...or a nightmare?"

***Unknown...impossible to analyze without more data...signatures of all detected objects—trees, vines, bushes—indicate they are swarms in nature...someone or something has gone to a lot of trouble to build this and keep it running...this is no dream...it's very real...even you are only a swarm of bots now, Johnny***

"So you keep saying." He touched his arm, felt his face. They seemed real enough. And yet, Doc III had disassembled him on the icy surface of Europa years before. Had it been that long? Time and place meant nothing now. He could assemble himself into anything he thought of, and just as easily disassemble himself into atoms.

Maybe Liam and Dana were right. This was pretty cool. On Earth, he had been able to ride packet trains around the Net. It was easy. It was like riding the Cyclone at Daytona Beach, as if that roller coaster were a continuous train of cotton balls flitting along at hyperspeed.

But here? Where exactly was here? In his mind? In a simulated existence formed of nothing but bots? It was enough to give a swarm body a big headache.

After a while, he spied a small clearing in the woods, up ahead. A small log cabin occupied the center of the clearing, with a crooked chimney on one side, spewing wisps of white smoke. He smelled some kind of woodfire in the air.

Cautiously, he approached the front door of the cabin. He pushed and it was already open. He went in.

The cabin had one room, dominated by a large, overstuffed bed that seemed to take up half the space. In one corner, a wood stove belched smoke through a small pipe to the ceiling. Diagonally across the room, a chimney also smoked and sizzled with wood crackling in a small fire. A table with two rickety chairs occupied space near the wood stove.

Johnny saw movement in the bed. Presently, the covers moved and a head popped up.

Johnny blinked hard.

It was Katie Gomez.

No this can't be, he told himself. They dredged this up from somewhere deeply buried in my memory. Which made Winger wonder just how much else they knew.

Doc, if the Shadow Man can pull this out, what else does he know? Does he know about you and me...about how-- No, he would squash that thought. If he didn't think something, the Shadow Man couldn't find it, could he?

***Johnny, I'm still parsing your interrogative statements...analyzing all elements of this configuration...it appears that--***

"Doc, shhhh--!" He tried to close down the link to Doc III. The less the link was open, the less the Shadow Man would suspect.

Now, Katie Gomez...or the angel that looked like Katie Gomez—sat up in bed. She was barefooted and clad in a lavender nightgown...and nothing else.

Katie Gomez had been in Johnny's 10th grade Geometry class....Mr. Lott's class. Katie had been Johnny Winger's first real crush.

"Johnny...I didn't know you were here. What brings you to the cabin?"

Winger had to admit the angel was good, damned good. Solid, no blurring at the extremities. Firm voice. The Katie Gomez-thing was just as alluring and fetching as he remembered. In fact, that was probably where the Shadow Man had gotten the details...from his own mind.

"Hi, uh...hi, Katie. I was in the vicinity...are you really, Katie Gomez? I mean—"

Now Katie's face lit up with the big toothy smile he had never forgotten. The smile that turned heads and jazzed up hormones for miles around.

"Well, of course I'm Katie, silly. Who did you think I was?" Now she sat up straight on the side of the bed and patted the sheets. "Come over here...don't be so shy."

Johnny Winger knew there was no way any of this had ever happened. This didn't come from any memory I can recall. They were manipulating things, like a script, using elements and things he did remember, to guide him in directions he didn't remember. It was all so confusing.

But like Doc III had once said: best to follow your instincts here and do what seems right to do.

He came over and sat down on the side of the bed.

"You know, Johnny, I won't bite. I knew you were ogling me in Geometry class all those months...you think a girl can't tell? When a million eyes are boring right into the back of your head, watching everything you do, it's hard not to notice."

"Katie, I...I guess I always wanted to get to know you. Talk to you. But it was hard, you know. I just couldn't get up the nerve. I thought there were others."

Katie smiled that million-watt smile again. "Here, there aren't any others. Here we can get to know each other better." She leaned over and planted a light kiss on his forehead.

It didn't take long for instinct to take over. Within minutes, Johnny and Katie were under the covers, snuggled up close, pecking and kissing and moaning in each other's arms like the lovers they had never been in real life.

I know this never happened, he told himself. But he'd dreamed about it often enough, though not exactly like this, set in a smoky one-room cabin in the middle of the woods. The Shadow Man had taken parts of his memories, leavened them with some feelings from those days long ago and concocted a scene that had never happened, but should have.

This is my kind of test, Winger told himself.

Katie and Johnny talked. They renewed acquaintances, told jokes, made faces and then they made love.

It was a replay of the first serious sex he'd ever had, only it hadn't been with Katie Gomez. Or maybe it had. He couldn't remember exactly. In real life, he had struggled and felt awkward. It hadn't been particularly satisfying. They'd wound up mostly kissing...and talking.

This time, armed with suggestions from Doc III, things went more smoothly. Katie seemed satisfied.

But it had never been like this.

When they were both spent and lying on their backs staring up at the log joists of the ceiling, Johnny said, "Where is this place? Where are we? I've never been here before."

Katie smiled, an enigmatic smile. "Oh, you've been here before. It's that place you always dreamed of, when we were in Geometry. You always wanted to get me alone in a cabin in the woods, didn't you? You even told Archie and some of the guys about it...it wasn't a secret."

But it had been a secret. And he knew, in that moment, that this had never happened, except in his own dreams. Somehow, the Shadow Man had extracted fragments of dreams and hopes and memories and concocted something that would look familiar to him. The cabin in the woods. Alone with Katie Gomez...how often had he fantasized about that? How often had he dreamed about this very situation?

Now it had actually happened.

Johnny turned over on his side and was about to lay a big kiss right on Katie's cheeks when the thing that he had just made love to disappeared right in front of his eyes. It wasn't like an angel, dispersing into loose atoms over several minutes. One minute she was there, half naked under the down quilt, her blond hair damp with sweat and stuck to the sides of her face. The next minute, she was gone.

Johnny Winger sat up abruptly. What the--?

He decided not to think about what had just happened. Doc III had warned him enough times to keep his thoughts bland and non-threatening.

Okay, so I'll just get dressed and get out of here. Nice and smooth, no worries, don't think I'll stick around here any longer....

He tugged on his jeans, threw on the flannel shirt and jacket and left as quickly as he could, not bothering to look back.

He plunged into the forest and soon found the beaten-down brush of the old footpath. He walked for only a few minutes, not really caring where he was going, only knowing that he needed to get as far away from that cabin as he could, then he heard rustling in the brush up ahead. He stopped.

A bear? A few deer? Wolves, maybe? He listened, went forward cautiously, and was startled when he ran headlong into a man coming the other way, erupting out of the bush like a bad dream.

They both stopped, startled at each other. The man was older, face weathered with years like old leather, stubbly and unshaven for what must have been days. He wore a baseball cap that said John Deere in yellow stenciling on the front. One hand cradled a shovel. Johnny had the impression the man was a farmer, though he had seen no farms anywhere nearby. In fact, the more he looked, the more the farmer resembled a neighbor of the Wingers, from when he had been a boy in Pueblo.

But that couldn't be, could it?

None of this made any sense.

The farmer squinted up at Johnny, gripping the shovel handle tightly for support. "Young man, you've passed the test. Congratulations."

Johnny didn't know what else to say but, "Thanks. What do I do now?"

Now the farmer gave that some thought. He rolled a toothpick stub around his mouth, chewing on it vigorously. "Can't rightly say all the details. But you passed the second configuration change...I can say that much. How do you feel?"

Winger admitted he felt great. Making love with Katie Gomez did that sort of thing. "Like a new person, actually."

"Well, you've got all kinds of new config drivers, new programming. Ought to feel like a million bucks, I reckon. You're doing pretty well, young fella."

Winger looked back in the direction of the cabin, expecting to see the same porch lights he had first noticed, on approaching the place. He saw nothing. The lights were gone. The cabin was gone, like it had never been there. Only trees remained.

"Where do I go now, sir?"

The farmer raised his left arm with a grunt and pointed to some distant mountains. They resembled the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies.

"Up there," the farmer told him. "Place called Ford's Creek."

Johnny Winger didn't think twice about it. He said goodbye and started walking.

He was determined he wouldn't turn around to see if the farmer was still there.
Chapter 9

Gateway Station

Earth L2 Point

November 2, 2155 (five months later)

0230 hours (U.T.)

United Nations Quantum Corps "Official History of the Earthshield Project: Design and Deployment; November 2155 to January 2156, CH 2: Operation Spider Web.

(from "The Archives of the United Nations Quantum Corps")

Even after five months, the Earthshield project still had plenty of detractors. The critics were numerous and vocal: the whole thing was too vast, it wasn't well thought-out, there was no way it could stop the great swarm, what about gravitational forces that might distort the shape of the shield, couldn't the great swarm just go around, over or under and why does it look like that anyway?

In fact, many of the criticisms were valid from a technical point of view. However, the urgency of the situation demanded that something, anything, be done. If a camel was a horse designed by a committee, Earthshield was a protective barrier designed by a committee. In the end, politics would triumph over all else.

Imagine two shallow saucers stuck together, open ends pressed together, with the Earth and Moon in the middle. Now replace the saucers with a three-million kilometer wide mesh of nanoscale robotic elements. That was Earthshield, at least in its initial design.

The whole purpose of Earthshield was to provide a physical barrier to the oncoming great swarm. The shield did not completely envelope the Earth-Moon system, but rather formed a sort of pancake structure, extending from Earth's L1 to its L2 equilibrium points.

Inside the protective envelope, both Earth and Moon would be more or less protected from nanobotic swarm incidence roughly along the plane of the Earth's orbit, the ecliptic plane, plus or minus a few degrees. This structure was thought to be able to cover the most likely approach vectors of the so-called mother swarm.

The physical extent of the barrier would be some three million kilometers, with a depth of about half a million kilometers.

From the beginning, it was understood that gravitational forces would quickly distort the shield unless anchor satellites and positioning buoys were employed.

Earthshield could be thought of as a single linked physical object, but the linkages were nanobotic effectors which could be adjusted and reconfigured as needed.

UNIFORCE engineers had calculated that deploying the entire structure would take several months and would involve a minimum of four Frontier Corps ships. Two ships would lay shield bots from Earth out to L1. Two ships would deploy shield bots from Earth to L2. The deployment pattern would resembled a weaving pattern...multiple trajectories to and from L1 and L2, shifting a little the end of each sector sweep.

The end result, it was hoped, would be a physical barrier composed of individual nanobot elements, linked by effectors and configured not only to form a barrier but to be able to fight off probes and assaults from other swarms. From the beginning, some Sentinel technology would be applied here. Most of the bots would be well equipped with bond disrupters and other defensive weapons as well as their linking effectors.

The equilibrium points L1 and L2 are gravitationally stable and would require only modest maneuvering from the anchor satellites. However, the gravity of the moon and Earth along the 'strands' of the shield would eventually distort and disrupt the shield, so additional positioning and maneuvering buoys would be required, at multiple points along the arcs from L1 to Earth to L2. The PM buoys would be small satellites with comm links to specific sectors of the Shield, to help it maintain shape and orientation.

Earthshield control would be operated out of Gateway Station, a manned complex at the L2 point. Control functions would include positioning and maneuvering, coordinating the operation of trillions of propulsors, overall sector status and condition, repairs and maintenance, power and configuration control.

To give the public a sense of involvement in this great enterprise, and to provide an outlet for the media frenzy which had been stirring up riots and chaos worldwide since the approach of the mother swarm had been proven by Farside, UNIFORCE had concocted an 'Earthshield Day,' to commemorate the launch day of the four Frontier Corps ships which would deploy the shield—

Akiro Murasawa snorted at the words on the tablet screen in front of him. "Earthshield Day, my ass," he muttered, then finished off his last finger of sake and set the cup down with a firm thump.

Swanson Vogt did likewise with his beer, but waved at Marshall Bob, the erstwhile Old West robotender running the bar at Gateway's canteen. "Another round...right here."

Marshall Bob trundled over to retrieve the mug and moments later, had replaced it with a new frosty container, its sudsy head already spilling out onto the table.

"Hey, don't get your nose out of joint, Akie. It gives the peasants something to do."

"Yeah, while we make like a big sewing machine and lay down this magic carpet. It's a dog and pony show, pure theater and that's all it is."

"Maybe so," Vogt said, licking foam from the mug. "But we've still got a job to do. You didn't sign up with the Corps to lie on a beach somewhere. At least, you're off cycler duty. What a brainfreeze that is, Earth to Mars to Venus and back again, like an old bus."

The two corvette captains, Murasawa of the UNS Herschel and Vogt of the UNS Pegasus, stared morosely out the cupola window of the canteen, watching dock workers and yardbots swarm all over their two ships. In all, four Frontier Corps corvettes would depart from Gateway in the next few days: Herschel, Pegasus, Tombaugh and Copernicus. Murasawa and Vogt would command the first two.

Vogt took a deep draft and belched, turning heads across the canteen. "Your crew ready, Akie? There are only about a million things that can go wrong with this stunt."

"Ready as we can be," Murasawa replied. "We didn't finish all our quals but Fleet says do it later, after we're underway. That's what I love about this whole operation...let's just throw the book out the window and wing it all the way. That's how you get people killed."

Vogt shrugged. "At least it'll be a good show. And they can always blame any failures on the poor crews and captains of Pegasus and Herschel. Makes sense to me. We do have an awful lot of rookies onboard. Hey, I saw that new engineering officer of yours yesterday. What's her name?"

"You mean Lieutenant Commander Polansky? Yeah, she's our new angel...and that's one practice the Corps has maintained for about three decades too long. Whose idea was it anyway that execs and engineering chiefs should be angels? Here we are fighting a cloud of robo-bugs in outer space and what do we do: we use the same damn bugs to man our ships. Pure genius, if you ask me."

Through the cupola window, the two captains watched dockhands scurrying around Herschel, checking last minute fittings and upgrades to her structure.

"Still looks like a big kebab skewer to me," Vogt said. "And all the hab spaces are like onions and potatoes."

"She does have quite a kick, though," Murasawa said. "New plasma torch engines. Once we launch, we can be on site at L1 in less than twelve days."

"What say we make like captains and take a tour?"

"You're on." Murasawa slammed back the rest of his sake.

The two of them left the canteen and made their way through tunnels and compartments to Gateway's outer docks.

In loose orbit around Earth's L2 equilibrium point, Gateway Station was an oddball assortment of cylinders and spheres, hung on trusswork-like structure like grapes on a trellis. A few hundred meters away, Herschel floated serenely oblivious to the fantastic vista around her, tethered by telescoping work tubes to the station.

At the dock hatch, Vogt studied the venerable old ship through the nav scope. "She still looks like a kebab skewer."

Murasawa beamed. "True, she ain't much for the eyes. But she did yeoman duty as a cycler for five years, til Ptolemy and Voltaire and the newer ships came along. Venus, Earth and Mars, around and around. Not the most exciting duty I ever pulled but she was a good ship and we had a good crew. Swan, you remember Marcel Goodwin?"

"Old Goody?...I do indeed. Worked with him building the station here. I guess he was off flight duty then. Gruff old bird but he had some stories that would curdle your nose hairs."

"Yep, that was Goodwin. Best captain I ever worked with. When you're cycling, time passes pretty slowly. It's boring duty. But I have to hand it to Old Goody. We seldom had a boring day. Only C/O I ever served under who could make casualty drills into a contest and get you motivated to pull doubles every week and like it."

Vogt and Murasawa cycled through the dock lockout and rode a small shuttle on curving tracks along the worktube to the ship. The once-mothballed cycler was designed with a long central mast off of which hung cylinders and spheres, a quad of propellant tanks stuck on the aft end above radiation shielding and her plasma torch engine bay.

"She's the only thing around here that could make the trip out to our first deployment site in less than three months. We don't have a lot of suitable ships in the vicinity."

Akiro Murasawa had developed a lot of respect for Frontier Corps people over the years. When word came out from CINCSPACE that Big Herk was to be saved from the scrapyard and converted for deployment ops, he thought the schedule Paris had sent up was insane and that was being kind. But converting Big Herk and her sister ships was priority number one at Gateway Station and the engineers and techs and roughnecks of Frontier Corps had gone to work with pluck and determination you didn't often see back Earthside.

Which was just as well since CINCSPACE had decreed that Herschel would launch not later than two weeks...fourteen days...from today, come what may.

Murasawa figured the techs would still be nailing parts on the old warhorse even as she lit off her plasma torch engines and headed out.

"Let's check out the bridge first," Murasawa offered. He and Vogt drifted through the main hatch, skirting tubes, ducts and wireways stuffed through the opening as dockhands scurried about, then made their way along the main gangway forward to A deck, the command center.

They made their way down an access tunnel and into the airlock, where Murasawa encountered a young electrician with a tablet. Murasawa scanned the work logs, then signed off. The electrician disappeared back into the worktube. Murasawa grabbed his gear and bags and pitched them in his bunk compartment three levels down, then drifted back up to A Level to find Vikram Singh, Gateway's chief engineer, dressing down a few young techs for something they'd done or not done. After haranguing the poor saps for five minutes, Singh kicked them out of his office and blinked hard, realizing it was Akiro Murasawa and Swanson Vogt hanging at the door.

"Either I've had a few beers too many or that's the legendary Murasawa-san gracing my doorway...I heard you were running Big Herk."

They shook hands, then embraced roughly, slapping each other on the back. Murasawa introduced Vogt.

"Yeah, Vik...it's me. And I'm supposed to be driving that old crate you guys are sprucing up. I'm taking Swan here on a little tour. How's it going?"

Singh was partially balding with a fringe of gray hair like a halo around the top of his head. He swept his hand toward the view outside the porthole. "That 'old crate' you're referring to will soon be able to run circles around all the other cyclers, once we get through with her. Complete re-do on all decks and everything aft of the propellant quad is brand new...the engine bay's got higher temperature chambers, high-capacity plates and shielding. Plus a new reactor core, right out of the box. Take a look—"

Singh pressed a few keys on his desk keyboard and the swarm box on his desk came alive, a faint sparkling fog issuing out of its head like a smoking chimney. In seconds, the swarm formed itself into a scale model likeness of the Herschel, floating in space between the two men.

Vogt marveled at the detail. Right down to the seams on her hab spaces and the stores and supplies pods hung off the main struts, the nanobotic model was a faithful reproduction of the very ship they were in, complete down to the most minute details.

"CINCSPACE was right...it does look like a kebab skewer. Those pods could be the onions."

Singh snorted. "Those pods you call onions are A, B, and C decks. That's where you're going to spend the next six months, Captain."

"I want to see for myself, Vik."

Singh smiled. "First, you meet my assistant...Aki." Singh pressed another button and the swarm box issued more glowing fog. This time, a para-human angel entity formed up, hovering over them like something out of a dream. The bot stream swirled and shifted, drifting and coalescing into the likeness of a face and shoulders...a passable sim of a bearded, squint-eyed sage with a double-chin...a suitable resemblance to Buddha himself.

Murasawa was duly impressed. "Hello, Viktor...what exactly do you do around this place anyway?"

The Viktor angel swirled and brightened as the bots built structure and stabilized the image.

***I assist Dr. Singh in any way possible. I take notes and images, manage assignments, handle correspondence and perform many other essential functions for this project***

Murasawa understood. "You're a glorified secretary." The swarm brightened and roiled like a time-lapse storm front at Murasawa words.

"You're not hurting his feelings by calling him a secretary," Singh said. "Viktor's very proud of what he does. I couldn't manage this mess without him."

***And I have the greatest respect and admiration for Dr. Singh and what he has been able to accomplish in renovating Herschel, with limited time and resources***

"A secretary and a cheerleader...Vik, anytime I need an ego boost, I know where to come. Now how about a little trip to show off Big Herk? Swan here swears his own Pegasus can run circles around this crate."

"When pigs fly, Captain. Gentlemen, just follow me."

Singh, Murasawa and Vogt made their way down the ship's central gangway to an airlock at the end of C Deck. They cycled through and found themselves aboard Big Herk's Service and Support deck, the bottom onion on the kebab skewer.

"Let's go forward...to the command deck. If I'm right, your new engineering officer's already aboard."

"Polansky? I didn't know she had arrived."

Singh smiled. "Captain, there's a lot you don't know about what goes on around here."

The three men made their way forward through the ship's central tunnel, past wire and cable bundles, exposed ventilation ductwork and workbots drifting from deck to deck, carrying tools, supplies, lunch buckets and everything else crews needed. Finishing Big Herk was priority number one at Gateway Station and every able-bodied man and bot had been drafted for the work, which had proceeded around the clock for the last few weeks.

A Deck was command and control center for the ship. Murasawa and Vogt followed Singh through the hatch and settled onto a landing just outside the main control station. They entered the space and found the compartment jammed with electricians, workbots and floating clumps of terminal boards and junction boxes.

A woman sat at the commander's station, checking off switch positions against a tablet strapped to her knee. She had short jet black hair and high, angular cheeks, giving her a haughty, almost arrogant look to her vaguely central European face. Her uniform said UNISPACE and Hawley instantly recognized Lieutenant Commander Jana Polansky from the back.

"Attention on deck!" he snapped, partly in jest, just to see what would happen.

Polansky's head snapped around and she was already springing out of the seat when she realized Murasawa's joke. She stood up, clinging to a nearby stanchion and the tablet banged against the seat.

"Captain Murasawa...I heard the shuttle dock awhile ago...didn't know you were aboard her. Er...welcome to Herschel...I was just checking settings on the main panel—"

"At ease, Commander...don't stop what you're doing. I just wanted to see things for myself. It's been a few years since I served on a cycler. And I wanted to show Captain Vogt her how a real ship is run. Vogt's skippering the Pegasus."

"Yes, sir...she's coming along nicely...all the controls are powered up...we're just running continuity checks today, sir. You know how the schedule is, sir."

"Insane as usual. Glad to have you on the crew. By the way, have you seen the crew manifest for our little jaunt into the void?"

"Briefly, sir. Lieutenant Kohl will be our navigation officer. He's the only one I know personally."

Murasawa pulled a commandpad from his pocket and called up the duty roster. "Check out our new Engineering Officer, Swan."

Vogt studied the names, reading aloud as he went down the list. "UNISPACE's latest fad. Now, we're just like Quantum Corps. Aki, your engineering officer is a swarm angel. A cloud of bugs."

Polansky stared back at both them, swallowing her irritation. Clearly, Murasawa knew what she was. She didn't feel the need to hit people over the head with it, but really... who wasn't nowadays?

"Oh, yes...we have swarm entities now serving as line officers...on actual ships...while they're underway."

Vogt just shook his head. "Get ready for it, Captain. Further adventures in outer space...that's what I call it. I can't wait till we muster our crew for the first time."

Vikram Singh cleared his throat. "Perhaps, we should continue our tour of the ship, Captain...I can show you some of the new stuff we've installed on Big Herk."

With that, Murasawa, Vogt and Singh headed aft through Herschel's main gangway. Jana Polansky was left alone on the command deck, with her blueprints and wiring bundles, wondering.

She decided to get to work. There was a mission to perform and it had to be done before Herschel shoved off in two days.

Aboard the Herschel (UNS-230)

Earthshield Deployment Trajectory E-2

Post-Boost + 8 days

2245 hours (U.T.)

Dietrick Vogel finished off his beer in the ship's galley and belched. He stared out the porthole nearby, not that there was anything to see millions of miles from nowhere. Black space. The Great Beyond. He might as well have been inside the closet of his bunk compartment on B Deck, for all there was to look at. He glared back at Roy Favors, who was nibbling up scraps of his sandwich and eyeing the clock on the bulkhead. They were both due at their duty stations in less than ten minutes.

"I'm telling you, Roy, that Commander Polansky's different, somehow. I can't put my finger on it, but she's just plain weird. You spend time on A Deck...you telling me you ain't seen that?"

"She's an officer...what do you expect? They're all different...like a different species."

Vogel eyed the clock, decided he'd better get down to B deck, where his shift as a Systems Tech 1 was set to start in less than ten minutes. "I dunno...this whole mission's messed up. Details all hush-hush...crew cobbled together from every vacuumhead who can lift a wrench...headed out to places nobody in his right mind would go...laying down some kind of glorified spider web in space...it's nuts, if you ask me."

Favors just stared morosely into his drink. "Nobody made you sign up...we're all volunteers here. Why'd you come aboard?"

"Money, same as you. Cripes, I got debts...got that big wagon back on Earth. Plus a neat little sailer for the ocean...somebody's got to pay for all that crap. And my oldest...Rico...you know he's headed off to college. All that Ed-Net stuff and nobody can afford those stimplants anymore. So he's got to get his fat butt into class and on-line."

Vogel left for B Deck and Favors just sat there wondering. Big Herk was only a week plus out of Gateway Station, on a speed run to L1, and already the gripes and the whining had started. Maybe Dietrick was right. The whole mission was cursed. You didn't have to prowl Big Herk's gangways, corridors and decks for long to get a strong whiff of foreboding, a sense of unease among the crew. Some said the whole thing was a hunt for ghosts, a fool's errand, cobbled together at the last minute, doomed to fail. Having a weird bird like Commander Polansky onboard didn't make matters any better.

Captain Murasawa's EO was a known hardass, even allowing for the great legs, the high cheekbones and exotic eyes. She was a looker but like Vogel said, she was serious bad news and she didn't belong on an old cycler heading off to the Great Beyond. She was greener than fresh puke and meaner than a snake. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but most of the crew had taken an instant dislike to her. Crews were like that. They could sniff out phonies and ass-kissers in no time and Jana Polansky gave everybody the creeps.

Favors had to admit he was one of them. There was an aloofness, a kind of regal distance to the way she comported herself, like she didn't belong and she knew it but she wasn't going to lower her guard to acknowledge the obvious. Frontier Corps officers were strange beings from another dimension...everybody already knew that.

Jana Polansky was the strangest being he'd ever seen in twenty-four years with the Corps.

One deck forward of Herschel's wardroom, Lieutenant Commander Jana Polansky and Captain Akiro Murasawa were up in the command center on A deck, methodically going over mission orders. Command was empty except for the two officers. A phasing burn was coming up in a few minutes, a burn which would put Herschel on a gravity-assist course toward her initial deployment position at L1. Once the burn was made, Big Herk was committed to deep space. She wouldn't be able to turn about and come home for weeks once her trajectory was shifted. The physics of orbital mechanics would make sure of that.

Murasawa wasn't too sure he liked Frontier Corps cramming a new and untested officer down his throat as engineering officer, even though he knew perfectly well that she came with the highest ratings and fitness reports.

He'd spent the last night before shove-off at the Mariner Bar, at Gateway Station, knocking back a few cold ones with other officers. The question of using angels, para-human nanobotic swarm entities, as serving line officers surfaced some strong opinions. Murasawa was one of them.

"Look, guys, I'm an old cycler captain. I'm used to spinning around the Sun in a nice easy stable orbit...not too much excitement, nothing to see, nothing to do. I'm for anything that makes my life easier. The Corps started integrating swarm para-human 'crewmen' into our normal rotations about fifteen years ago. Call it efficiency. Cost savings. Latest technology upgrade. Politics. Call it whatever you want. Just don't give me something that makes my life harder. Cycler captains like routine. We don't like surprises. And so far—" Murasawa shrugged, worked his beer for a moment, "—it's worked like a charm. Commander Polansky has been a most able crewman and engineering officer. Does everything I ask. Doesn't get the rest of the crew riled up...anymore. We had some issues in the beginning...I'm sure you know the scuttlebutt. You know...dinosaurs, troglodytes who can't accept change. Everybody has those types. But Polansky's worked out pretty well."

The bar discussion had gone on for awhile and Murasawa remembered there never had been a consensus on whether the angels made good officers or not. Pretty much true for Frontier Corps as well, he thought. Angels had been serving as crewmen for decades, although none had ever captained a ship, even a bus like this old cycler ship, which most considered pretty boring duty. He'd never had any reason to doubt Polansky's fitness, but all the same...you couldn't help but wonder.

"Commander, all systems ready for the phasing burn?"

Jana Polansky scanned a tablet from her right-hand seat, double-checked something from the main console and nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes, sir, Captain. All departments report ready. Plasma engines on line, voltages steady, reactors at full mil power. Central mast rigidizing complete. Tanks at flight pressure. The ship is ready for the phasing burn, sir."

"Very well, Commander. Give me the count."

Polansky checked the ship's clock. "Five minutes on the mark, sir. Maneuver Two is enabled and ISAAC flags no anomalies or contingencies at this time. Waiting to proceed."

Murasawa checked the board himself. The whole thing was fully automated but Frontier Corps captains like to feel the wind on their faces, so he checked anyway. ISAAC was the ship's master computer and ISAAC was never wrong.

"Proceed."

Polansky punched a few buttons and ISAAC counted down the last few minutes to the burn.

It was a gentle acceleration, less than five meters per second, but the result of the burn would be to put Big Herk on an tangential approach trajectory to L1. The entire burn lasted less than a minute and when the ship's engines cut off, Herschel was on course, right in the center of the corridor, essentially zero rates in all axes, for L1 approach two weeks from now.

"Well done, Commander. I'm heading aft to grab a bite. You have the bridge." He hoisted himself out of his seat and turned toward the hatch to the central gangway.

"Thank you, sir. It is always a pleasure to see all systems perform so well. Scanning no anomalies at this time, sir. Systems functioning at ninety-seven point six percent design capacity."

Something in the way she said it caught Murasawa's attention. He sat back down. "You say that a lot, Commander. All ship systems functioning at capacity. How do you figure that?"

Polansky turned slightly in her seat. She was attractive in an exotic way, with her high cheek bones and oval eyes, partially hidden behind dataspecs. The specs glowed and winked red and green as she accessed data from ISAAC and studied parameters from ship systems.

"It's an algorithm, Captain. You are aware of this, I'm sure. All ship systems report status regularly to ISAAC, which formats the data and reports to me. I have a real time picture of how well all systems are performing. A good engineering officer always has this data at their command, for decisions by the captain."

Quoted right out of the Frontier Corps manual of command, Murasawa knew. Verbatim. "Do you ever sleep, Polansky? I mean, we all have duty shifts. I know Command is never really off duty, but you must take some downtime eventually. Even angels need some kind of maintenance, don't they?"

Polansky smiled faintly and Murasawa thought he detected just the slightest flaw in her expression...very subtle, but it was like her lips weren't attached to her face just right. What the hell was that? Then he remembered something from her personnel file...Jana Polansky was enhanced, loaded with bots and whizbang configs to rev up her respiration, her mind, her muscles, everything. She could swap files with ISAAC like kids swapped lies on the playground.

Probably some kind of weird closet Assimilationist, he decided.

"Sir, as you know, I..." she seemed at a loss for words. "...I require less rest than most of the crew. Maintenance periods are a part of my routine. I don't rest the same way you do, sir. Or the rest of the crew."

Murasawa sniffed. "So I noticed. And that neuro-boost you went through several years ago...what does that tell you about our crew? How are they performing, five weeks into the mission?"

Polansky gave that some thought. Murasawa saw her specs winking on and off furiously. No doubt checking with ISAAC, dredging up all kinds of files. Angels could eat bits and bytes like kids ate candy.

"The crew is performing at a composite rate of greater than ninety-five percent efficiency, according to the percentage of tasks completed on time. Department ratings range from ninety-one percent to ninety nine percent in Engineering. The median value is—"

Murasawa held up a hand. "Okay, okay, I give up. You've got all the data. But I'm hearing talk, scuttlebutt really, about this mission. Some of the crew is uneasy. Some of the crew thinks the mission is cobbled together, that it's not well thought out, that it's all politics to show people back home we're doing something. What does your data say about that, Commander?"

Polansky seemed to be checking some kind of reading on her specs. Her eyes narrowed. "I have no such data, Captain. As engineering officer, you know I have the highest enthusiasm for our mission. Operation Earthshield is an important mission, critical to preventing the approach of unauthorized swarm formations into Earth-Moon space. Any concerns and discontents among the crew have not been reflected in the departmental ratings or performance data."

Murasawa figured he ought to be glad for that. "Polansky, you sound like a marketing brochure. Give me the residuals for the burn and let's go over the rest of the mission time line. We've got L1 Encounter in less than two weeks. I want daily drills in every department. On a mission like this, we've got to do everything we can to stay sharp."

"Captain, the next waypoint is E-6, less than five days away. May I recommend—"But Jana Polansky never finished her sentence. At that exact moment, an event timer in her central processor had reached zero. The little surprise she had been ordered to plant in Herschel's Supplies and Stores deck commenced its programmed sequence. It was time to start.

Barely an hour before the master alarm sounded, Detrick Vogel had decided that he just couldn't stay in his cramped bunk compartment a second longer. It was hot, stuffy, noisy and what the hell was that smell, anyway? Better to slip out and head for the galley. A sandwich and a beer...or what passed for beer aboard Big Herk...that ought to do the trick.

But before he could exit the crews' berth on B deck into the gangway tunnel, a shadow had drifted by the hatch opening. Instinctively, he held back to let whoever it was pass by.

It turned out to be Commander Polansky, the swarm angel EO, moving quickly aft.

If he had been asked about the incident later, Systems Tech Vogel could have never given a convincing reason for why he decided to follow the angel to wherever it was going. Instinct, maybe. Suspicion, for sure. Curiosity. All these could have been suggested as motives for what he had done.

Regardless, Vogel waited for a full five-second count, then slipped out into the gangway. Down at the end of the tunnel that ran through the center of Herschel, giving access to all decks and compartments, he saw the back of Polansky's head. She turned and slipped into the hatch for C deck.

Why's she going that way, Vogel wondered? C deck was for Service and Support. It contained the lockout chamber for crewmen to enter and leave the ship while she was underway. Vogel instinctively headed down the gangway in the same direction. C deck also provided access to Big Herk's tail mast, and a narrow tunnel aft where equipment and controls were housed for propellant tanks, her reactors and the plasma torch engines.

Vogel crept down the gangway with a growing sense of unease. He could feel the ship settling in for cruise after the phasing burn. Vibration was steady and she was settling on to her trajectory for the run out to L1. Vogel didn't want to think too much about that. The truth was there were already a million things that could go wrong before they ever got there.

And he had a feeling the first one might be about to happen—

At C deck hatch, Vogel peered cautiously into the deck compartment. At first, he didn't see anything, didn't see Commander Polansky, didn't see anything out of the ordinary. He wasn't even sure Systems personnel were allowed down here. He certainly wasn't familiar with any of the gear or systems on C deck.

Vogel slipped through the hatch.

That's when Systems Tech Vogel spotted Commander Jana Polansky. Behind some starboard rack-mounted shelving, Polansky...or whatever the hell she was...had lost a bit of structure, so that the swarm was no longer quite so human-like, more like a slightly misshapen funhouse mirror distortion of a human. The swarm had gathered around some gear mounted on the hull itself.

With a start, Vogel soon realized the gear which had attracted Polansky's attention and efforts was a hull valve, part of the logistics airlock system. The valve assembly allowed air in and out of Big Herk's pressure equalizing tanks. The hull valves helped Herschel ship supplies and gear from space without having to de-pressurize the whole deck.

From his memory of a distant briefing before they had left Gateway Station, Vogel recalled that the hull valves were fully exposed to the vacuum of space. It was a critical system. The hull valves had to work. If they failed closed, Herschel couldn't expel air from the airlock and the outer hatch couldn't be opened. If they failed open, the entire interior pressure hull, all spaces, could be exposed to vacuum. A catastrophic de-pressurization casualty could result...Captain Murasawa had been quite clear about that.

What the hell is she doing? Vogel wondered. He eased into the deck compartment and then it hit him.

Jana Polansky was letting some of her swarm bots infest the hull valve.

His heart went into his mouth. He had to do something. He had to stop her.

Dietrick Vogel felt for the alarm panel by the hatch and stabbed the Master Alarm button. Instantly, a warning klaxon sounded throughout Herschel, screeching and warbling through all decks.

Polansky turned around and spotted him. He saw that her hand was gone...or more accurately, had broken down into a cloud of bots. A steady stream was flowing off the stump at the end of her arm into the hull valve assembly.

There was only one thing he could do. All the HERF and mag weapons were locked in the armory on A deck, three levels away.

Vogel closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, then lunged at the Jana Polansky swarm with every ounce of force he could muster.

The only sure way to kill a swarm was with another swarm. He'd learned that on day one in nog school tactical class. But he didn't have a swarm. He didn't have a HERF gun. Not even a wrench or a hammer.

All he had was his own mass and momentum. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Vogel was dimly aware that his chances were, to put it mildly, remote. It would have been easier to cold-cock a cloud of smoke. But he realized as he lunged forward that he really didn't care.

It was high time to kick the bejeezus out of this scumbag swarm.

Akiro Murasawa was scrolling through some notes on ship systems in his stateroom when the master alarm sounded through the ship. Instantly, he sprang up and headed out into Herschel's central gangway. As he headed aft toward the sound of the klaxon, he collided with Lieutenant Dean Kohl, the ship's propulsion systems officer, coming down from A deck.

"What the hell's going on?"

Kohl was grim. Right behind the officer was Sergeant Roy Favors, ship's machinist mate, just coming off shift.

"It's coming from C deck...there are vital systems down there. Come on—" Murasawa pushed past both of them and pulled himself along the gangway rails. When he got to the hatch, he slipped inside and came up short.

Half the compartment was enveloped in some kind of bot swarm. And what was left of Dietrick Vogel lay writhing in a swirling cloud of pulp on the deck, a chewed-up mass of half-disassembled tissue and blood, rapidly disintegrating into atom fluff.

Murasawa saw the problem right away. The hull valve was fully enveloped in a swarm. And already a thin stream of air was squealing toward the valve, now partially open to space. Dust, debris, papers, tools and anything else not locked down was flying through the air, now fully entrained in the escaping airstream. A cold fog had formed in the sudden pressure drop and Murasawa felt his eardrums close to bursting.

"Kohl...get to the armory...get some HERF weapons! And get Sergeant Favors in here right away!"

Kohl was already on the move toward the ship's central gangway. "What about you, Skipper?"

Murasawa was reaching for a small control panel near the hatch. "I'm hitting EOS...got to flood this compartment with air and secure that hatch! Get moving--!"

Kohl vanished in the growing hailstorm, his ears already popping in the falling pressure. As he fell out into the gangway, he saw Favors sliding down from B Deck.

"What's happened?"

Kohl quickly filled him in. "Get in there...Captain needs help fast! It's a swarm...the EO, Commander Polansky...it's trying to breach the hull at the airlock—" Kohl squeezed by and headed up to B deck. Just outside the captain's stateroom, a locked cabinet contained the ship's hand weapons: HERF rifles and mag pulsers. He had to get up there, grab a few guns and get back fast, before Murasawa secured the C deck hatch permanently.

"I was in the shop when I heard the master alarm...I think ISAAC's running the ship now...I saw pressure sensors going off down here—" Favors slipped by Kohl as he headed up. The machinist squeezed through the deck hatch, already swinging shut, and immediately saw what was left of Jana Polansky now fully enveloping the airlock and hull valve assembly. Tendrils of bots streamed off her arms and were fast approaching Aki Murasawa, who waved his hands and arms, even as he fought to stay upright in the falling pressure, pelted by a rain of debris swirling around the airlock.

Favors plowed through the hailstorm toward Polansky, or what was left of Polansky, for by now the Commander had almost fully dematerialized into a cloud of bots, filling one corner of C deck with a flashing, pulsating fog.

Murasawa lunged instinctively toward his engineering officer, then stopped, realizing that the angel was probably their only chance to stop a catastrophic hull breach. For a moment, the two looked at each other. Murasawa knew the situation was grave and getting worse.

Favors' voice was firm. "Get everybody off this deck, Captain. Right now. Once that hatch is shut and I empty the air flasks, you won't be able to get out. If that hull valve or the bulkhead goes, you'll all be killed."

"I've got to get control of Big Herk, before we lose everything!"

Favors bodily shoved Murasawa through the hatch and into the central gangway. "If I don't stop that swarm right here and now, Captain, nothing else will matter!" It was the least he could do after what had happened to Dietrick Vogel.

Murasawa shrugged and nodded grimly, then disappeared up the gangway. Once he was clear, Favors dogged the hatch shut and made it fast. Then he turned to the Jana Polansky swarm.

The entire far wall of the compartment was now thick with bots, the swarm replicating at max rate, now that it no longer needed to maintain structure.

Favors knew there was only one thing to do. Murasawa's initial instincts had been right. The best way to fight a swarm was with another swarm. As he extracted a tiny capsule from his pocket—the thing had somehow made it through Security and even his best friend Vogel didn't know anything about it—he cycled the capsule's port controls to discharge a formation of bots. Favors took a last look at what Commander Jana Polansky had now become.

The angel still had not fully dematerialized. From its head down to its waist, all human structure was gone, replaced by a fuzzy, pulsating blob of bots, like a tree enveloped in fog. Below the waist, most of Polansky's trunk and legs were still faintly visible, in shadowy outline, as the swarm changed config and assumed its natural state. The effect was something half-human, half-swarm, a hybrid thing, steadily breaking down into its smallest elements.

Favors thumbed a control stud on the side of the capsule, giving commands to the tiny swarm now emerging from containment. "Time to get small!" he yelled over the shriek. He grabbed a nearby stanchion to stay upright as Herschel lurched again. Up on A deck, he knew Murasawa would be fighting to keep the ship under control. "Now going loose....enabling Config Delta seven seven—"

Through it all, the master alarm klaxon continued shrieking.

Outside in the gangway, Dean Kohl knew what the last lurch meant...a huge bubble of air had just been explosively expelled from C deck. The blast acted like a thruster, careening Herschel on her side. Kohl was thrown head first against a nearby stanchion, gashing his forehead. Blood spurted out but he didn't fall to the deck. Instead, his head was quickly enveloped in a cold, bloody froth as the bulkhead began to collapse.

He staggered to the nearest 1MC circuit and punched TALK.

"Hull breach!" Kohl said. "Pressure drop on C deck... now the flight shielding...shielding's gone. Rad levels rising rapidly—"

Murasawa was already up on the command deck. His voice was ragged.

"Get a message off...I'm ejecting the emergency beacon...we've got to let UNISPACE know what's out here!"

Alarms sounded and lights flashed on Big Herk's command deck. Auto sequences were engaged and ISAAC, still functioning albeit at reduced capacity, shutdown the plasma torch engines as a precaution against explosion ...or worse.

But no one responded on the command deck any longer. No one responded on B or C decks either.

Explosive decompression had already started and in the final seconds of the swirling gale that engulfed the C deck, Lieutenant Dean Kohl had one remaining thought before falling down the great black tunnel of unconsciousness.

The Old Ones aren't seven billion kilometers away at all. They're right here. The buggers have been here all along.

Then the swarm that had once been Jana Polansky enveloped Herschel completely and began catastrophic disassembly of all remaining structures.

Over the squeal, then the roar of escaping air, the plaintive sounds of ISAAC bleated out emergency warnings over and over again.

"Level One Emergency...level one emergency...hull breach all decks and sections...all personnel, man the escape pods, man escape pods immediately...all personnel—"

Nothing was ever heard from UNISPACE corvette UNS-230 again.

And out of the rapidly expanding bubble of debris that had once been Herschel, a small wisp of nanobots drifted away from the wreckage. In time, over the course of several days, the wisp would gather itself together into a small configuration of bots and power up its picowatt propulsors. The nearly invisible swarm would then re-orient itself toward Earth and set off.

The trip would take several weeks but in time the de-materialized essence of Jana Polansky would reach its target and begin drifting down through the atmosphere like the meteoric dust it was designed to resemble.

There was still another mission to perform.
Chapter 10

Inside the Mother Swarm

Date: Unknown

Time: Unknown

It took several hours, but Johnny Winger eventually made it to the top of the mountain, as the old farmer had said. He didn't find Ford's Creek there. Instead he found something even stranger.

It was his old boyhood home from Pueblo, Colorado, the ranch-style thing with the garage and breezeway, the place the Wingers had lived before Jamison Winger had bought up an old ranch and tried to convince himself he knew something about cattle-raising.

As Winger cautiously approached the house, he heard a noise. Someone was hammering away in the back. He went around the garage and found Jamison Winger.

Johnny wasn't surprised that much.

"Hi, Dad...what are you building there?"

Connected by a breezeway to the back porch of the ranch house, a grid of concrete foundation footers had been poured and framing was going up. Jamison Winger looked up, wiped sweat off his face and smiled.

"Johnny, you're back finally. Thought you'd never get here. Did you have any trouble?"

Winger was about to say Yeah, Dad, I've been bouncing around in some kind of dream lately or maybe I've been tumbling through some kind of space-time bubble, or didn't you notice? But he didn't say any of that.

"I got here as soon as I could." Even to his own ears, that sounded pretty lame.

"Well, give me hand here with these trusses. I want to get these walls erected before lunch."

Jamison Winger was building a shed, connected to the house. Johnny knew that in real life, no such building had ever been built. He was pretty sure none of this had ever happened, that it was something the Shadow Man had concocted out of his memories and made to look and feel real.

He set to work with Jamison Winger, wielding the nail driver like he'd been born with it.

The two of them worked for what seemed like hours. Several times, Johnny thought to ask Mr. Winger a question, but each time, he stopped. The Jamison Winger-thing—he couldn't quite think of it as Dad—gave only canned answers, programmed responses that Johnny knew had never been spoken before.

After what seemed like forever, Johnny Winger was tired, his neck and shoulder muscles sore and aching.

"Could we stop awhile and rest, Dad? I'm getting pretty tired over here."

Jamison Winger replied but didn't look up. He kept measuring, marking and nailing as if nothing had happened. "Using muscles you didn't even know you had, huh, son? You ought to help me more often...you might actually learn something. It's good you're out here helping me. You're building new some muscles. Where you're going, you're going to need them. This is what happens when new configurations are loaded and tested."

"Where am I going, Dad? What do you mean?"

Now, Jamison Winger took a quick glance up, then went back to his nail driving. "You've got your whole life ahead of you, son. Where you're going's up to you. If you help me out, learn what you're supposed, and build those new muscles, only good things can happen." Jamison Winger looked up at the clouds scudding by over the treetops, perhaps seeing things only he could see. "The sky's the limit, son."

They nailed and talked for what seemed like days. Johnny Winger grew fatigued but his Dad wouldn't stop or take a break. Apparently, it was all part of the tests the Shadow Man had set up.

"Dad, what are you going to do with this shed when it's finished?"

Jamison Winger put down the nail driver and the laser guide and sat back on his haunches. He wiped some sweat and blew his nose. That sounded real enough.

"Oh, you know me. I'll tinker a bit, build some things, try 'em out. Got me an idea for a microflyer I could build. Saw the plans on the Net. You'd love something like that."

Bailey? Winger tried to remember when the drone he'd loved as a pet had first come into the family. His Dad had never built a shed. His tinkering workshop had always been the barn out back of the house at the North Bar Pass Ranch. They'd never had a drone at the Pueblo house. Or a shed or a workshop.

The Shadow Man was starting to mix and match memories.

Winger silently opened the coupler link and spoke to Doc under his breath, while Jamison Winger went back to nailing.

"Doc, none of this ever happened. I'm sure of it. I'm mean, parts of it did. I'm not sure what I remember anymore."

***Johnny, the Central Entity does not have a complete record of your memory. It's adapting compatible glutamate traces and trying to match equipotential concentrations along many pathways...it's possible some of this may be corrupted...perhaps in the de-materializing, I made some poor mapping choices***

Winger snorted. "Well, that's just great. Now I don't know what I remember and what never happened. It's all kind of mixed up."

***This sequence is part of the configuration changes the Central Entity is executing...you must pass this test, Johnny...achieve some kind of new configuration state...in order to advance to the next level***

"You mean I have to help Dad finish this shed, even if this never happened. Doc, is this the only way I can penetrate the main swarm, learn what their plans and tactics are?"

***Unknown, Johnny...but it would seem so. Everything you see and hear is a symbol. It's a constructed simulation designed to cause your primary config to change in certain ways. Best to follow what seems most natural...if you tried to deviate, or out-think the Central Entity, it would be like fighting against yourself, against your own memories. The Central Entity—what you call the Shadow Man—has the ability to create in your processor-mind memories of things that never happened. You won't be able to tell the difference."

Winger looked over at Jamison Winger. He looked strong and vigorous, way stronger than Johnny remembered the man. "Doc, I think the Shadow Man can play tunes with my emotions as well...I always felt a little guilty I didn't help Dad more after Mom died. He withdrew into a kind of shell after the accident, depression and all, you know. He took all the treatments, had the patch, but there was just something missing. Brad and Joanna and I talked about it a lot. But we had a ranch to run. We didn't have time...we didn't take the time. That always made me feel bad."

***Johnny, remember that your emotions are neural traces like any other memory...they're attached to certain more factual traces, to give them extra weight, extra meaning and emphasis. The Central Entity can access all this and create new traces...it's just a matter of adjusting some chemical pathways***

And at that moment, almost as if the Shadow Man were eavesdropping on his talk with Doc, Brad Winger and Joanna Winger emerged from the back porch door, each bearing a tray of snacks and drinks.

Somehow Johnny wasn't surprised at that either. That his sister and brother might show up in this unending nightmare, conjured, so it seemed, right out of nothing, appeared to be the most natural thing in this crazy world.

"Hey, take a break, you too...cookies and lemonade." Joanna looked almost perfect. Same blond bob, her ponytail stuck out the back of a baseball cap. Brad had his black frame glasses, the full law school look, with his hair slicked back. They brought the snack trays over to the shed and all shared a few moments together.

Johnny hadn't seen Joanna since the funeral, since his Mom had died. After the accident, Joanna had changed her hair, worn it loose, swept up in the front.

This has to be before the accident, Johnny reasoned. But that made no sense because he was sure none of this had ever happened. Still, as Doc had suggested, it would be best to play along. Everything meant something, everything was important.

"You keeping your grades up, son? Last report card I saw, you came up with a C in History. Got to do better than that if you want to get into engineering school."

"Yes, sir...it was that mid-term, sir. It was harder than I expected...Mr. Watt asked questions on stuff we never covered."

Jamison Winger wiped his mouth, gave his paper plate back to Joanna and hoisted himself up. His sister and brother went back into the house. Mr. Winger triggered his naildriver a few times. It whirred smoothly. "Uh, huh...I'm sure this has more to do with Katie Gomez than Mr. Watt. Am I right?"

How the hell did he know that? "No, sir...it's just that we had questions on the Spanish-American War and we didn't spend an hour covering it in class."

"Mm-hmm. Get your gun and let's get back to work."

Johnny figured it was best not to mention his little tryst with Katie in the cabin. Did that really happen? Did Jamison Winger...or for that matter, the Shadow Man...know about that? Was his Dad the Shadow Man?

It was all very confusing.

After another ten minutes of measuring, sawing, and nailing, Jamison Winger sat back and wiped sweat from his face. "So what do you really want to be when you're grownup, son?"

Johnny Winger sensed that how he answered this question was important...perhaps, critical. "I'm not sure, Dad. Maybe a pilot. Maybe design bots, like you."

Another ten or twenty minutes later...or maybe it was an hour.—Johnny couldn't tell, Jamison Winger announced a break. "Follow me. There's something I want to show you."

They left the partially-finished shed and went across the backyard to the other side of the house. There, Johnny saw a silvery old barn, sagging on its foundations.

He was certain there the barn hadn't been there when he'd come up to the house. Wow...the Shadow Man is creating things even as this 'memory' unfolds. Mr. Winger pushed through a door and went inside, Johnny right behind him.

The floor was dirt and straw but inside, the barn was otherwise a reasonably well-equipped workshop. There were table saws and lathes and workbenches and drill presses, and shelving crammed with parts and multimeters and spools of wire and odd pieces of gear. One table supported some kind of flyer, with its casing open and cabling spilling out onto the table.

Mr. Winger went to the table. "Meet Bailey. My newest idea. I took an old drone shell from Thornton's salvage yard and added some new gadgets, souped him up with a processor and soldered on new props and propulsor tubes. Once I get him painted, he'll better than new."

Johnny went to the table. My God, it is Bailey... Growing up, he'd loved the drone like a pet. He tinkered with micro-flyer himself, added sniffers and haptic sensors and all kinds of gizmos to kind of personalize the bot.

Many times late at night, when Dad had gone to bed and the house was real quiet, Johnny would fling open his second-floor window and summon Bailey from the top of the barn. He had a nest or a docking station up there. He'd taught Bailey to respond to some whistles, some basic voice commands. Later, he'd found an olfactory program on the WorldNet, picked up some gizmos around the barn, paid or filched the rest from the store, and cobbled up a basic sniffer nose for the dude. He trained it to search out and home on certain smells, especially his own. Wasn't that a hoot? Bailey trained to sniff him out like a bloodhound, ferret out his own bad breath and body odor.

He figured, after some tests, the dude could sniff him out from as far away as several kilometers.

Not bad for a kid inventor. Dad would have been proud. Dad would also have whipped him to Denver and back for messing around with Bailey too. But Bailey had become his best friend, especially after Mom had died. Late at night, hours after he called Bailey into his room for a chat, he'd drift off to sleep, then awaken just enough to catch the drone hovering gently in the corner with his big red eye winking on and off softly, or maybe just perched on the old Navy trunk at the end of the bed, quietly whirring in sleep mode.

Winger ran his fingers lovingly along the flyer's carbon-fiber wings. It all seemed real enough. "He's going to be a real hot rod, Dad. I've got about a million ideas for Bailey."

Mr. Winger chuckled. "Small steps, Johnny. Small steps. Let's get back to the shed."

They left the barn and headed back around the patio, cutting through a pine straw bed. Johnny looked back as they rounded the corner and wasn't terribly surprised to see that the old barn had vanished.

Just like everything else around here, Doc. It's all a dream...nothing more than a dream.

***Johnny, this is no dream. I can't detect any signatures compatible with nanobotic action...only background bond breaking and atomic activity. Perhaps this is a kind of quantum projection...templated from neural traces in your file...I'm trying to evaluate status of the config buffer status check file to see if anything is reading the file, but so far, nothing...very peculiar***

The file was all that was left of the original Johnny Winger. "Hey, don't change anything, okay, Doc. That's me in there."

Jamison Winger looked up from his miter saw, where he was fitting two boards into a joint. "What did you say, son?"

Johnny froze. "Uh, I said I'm glad I came by, Dad...to help out. I enjoyed this...a lot. We should do this more often."

His Dad had a most peculiar look on his face, sort of skeptical, quizzical, like he wasn't understanding what was being said. Dad looks like that when he can't really believe that you said what you said.

Maybe he and Doc shouldn't have—

"How do you feel now, Johnny?"

Winger shrugged. "Tired, I guess. My wrist's sore, from all the nailing. But good. Actually, pretty good. I could go another hour—"

"Oh, that won't be necessary. Shed's almost done anyway."

Maybe I'm talking to the Central Entity himself, Winger thought. The idea gave him a chill, but he kept up a plastic smile anyway, flexed his arm muscles for his Dad to see.

"What's next? Where should I go now?"

His Dad gave that some thought, rubbing his chin like he did when some big idea was brewing inside his head.

"You go into the house, now, Johnny. You've passed the third test...go see your Mom inside....it's going to be a special day at the Winger house."

So Johnny put down his driver, unbuckled his tool belt and went inside.
Chapter 11

Gateway Station

Earth L2 Point

November 8, 2155

0030 hours (U.T.)

The two SpaceGuard duty officers watched with dismay as the telescopic image flickered across their display screens.

"Distance to debris cloud," snapped Lieutenant Sheila Danzig. "Is that Pegasus or Herschel ISAAC was focusing on?"

"Both," said Corporal Joseph Mwate. "Long-range array shows the main debris cloud at just under two million kilometers."

Danzig shook her head, sucking on her lower lip as the image refreshed, and the cloud of debris visibly expanded right before their eyes.

"What the hell happened? One moment, we're tracking Herschel approaching her initial drop point and then—"

"Some kind of explosion or structural casualty or catastrophic decompression, Sarge," Mwate suggested. "ISAAC's showing strong thermal signatures and electromagnetics indicating nanobotic activity in the area...maybe some kind of element of KB-1, already on our doorsteps."

"Crap," Danzig muttered. "Is there anything but debris out there?"

"Soon as the arrays lit up, I pulled resolution back to get a bigger picture. I was slaved to Herschel but then sensors following Pegasus went off too. Whatever happened, it may have happened to both ships."

"Get a Level 1 alert out to UNISPACE. Looks like we're tracking anomalies on two ships. What about Copernicus and Tombaugh?"

Mwate's fingers flew over his keyboard. "I've got B array at Site 2 now...both ships are still a few days away, but I'm tracking nothing unusual. Both thrusting and maneuvering nominally, no unusual signatures. Want me to zoom in?"

"Keep B and C arrays on both...and send a threatcon to both. My authority. SpaceGuard warning: approach deploy site with caution...tracking unknown formations at Site 1...will advise..."

Danzig and Mwate spent the next few hours gathering spectrographic data, thermal data and visual imagery on the expanding debris clouds that had once been Herschel and Pegasus. Both ships had been manifested for deployment of elements of Earthshield at Earth's L1 point, along with the necessary anchor satellites and positioning buoys to shepherd the deployed net bots into the proper configuration. Now, all of Gateway's long-range arrays were slaved to zero in and stay synched with the remains of the two Frontier Corps corvettes.

In the hours ahead, theories and scenarios would blossom like weeds in a soggy garden, all around Gateway Station. Whispers echoed up and down Gateway's corridors as station crew huddled in small knots, spinning conspiracies and plots and possibilities like so many spider webs.

And before Mwate and Danzig's shift was up, word had come from UNISPACE Paris, through Gateway's comm center to the two remaining ships, still on cruise to the Site 2 point and the second shield deployment starting position. Tombaugh and Copernicus were to abort their mission immediately, deploy nothing and set course for return to Gateway. The two remaining ships would arrive back at the station in about three weeks, after a speed run around the Earth and several emergency course changes.

Meanwhile, Gateway trained all of her sensors, scopes and arrays on near-Earth space, probing and listening for any signatures of nanobotic activity inside of a sphere of space two million kilometers in diameter.

Throughout the station and at UNISPACE headquarters in Paris, there was growing dread that Earthshield was stalled and the mother swarm, the KB-1 swarm thought to be beyond Saturn, was in fact right on Earth's doorstep.

UNIFORCE Headquarters

The Quartier-General, Paris

November 9, 2155

0215 hours (U.T.)

Angelika Komar had been UNSAC for only a little more than two years, but as the faces attending the emergency conference assembled on her screen and materialized as avatars across her office, she figured it might as well have been two hundred years.

"I didn't take this job to preside over a defeat," she told the assembled participants. "We're not beaten yet. KB-1 and the Bugs may be kicking the crap out of us out there but we've still got a few cards to deal."

"Just not a particularly strong hand," CINCSPACE muttered. General Mahmood Salaam studied a report from the Herschel and Pegasus incidents and took a deep breath. "The main force may be half a billion kilometers the other side of Saturn but this mess tells me we've got saboteurs right here in our lap, already in place."

"We just don't know what they want," said Komar.

"They want to assimilate us," CINCQUANT, General Lamar Quint, said. "We've known that for years. And that silly Church of Assimilation is like a fifth column, helping them out. We ought to round up the lot of them and put them away. Angels, my ass—they're doing the enemy's work for them and we're letting them, all under the guise of freedom of worship.' Give me a break."

"Look—" said Salaam, "Solnet's doing a report on them—some kind of historical footage." CINCSPACE pointed to a small display window floating between the avatars...a new report was coming in...

Solnet Special Report

"Symborg and the Mother Swarm"

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@dana.polansky.solnetworldview

November 9, 2155

0215 hours U.T.

For Jana Polansky, the rally for candidate Julius Ngombe was the biggest thing she had ever seen in Kibera. The Solnet reporter hoisted herself up on a pile of trash, balancing herself precariously, as she steered the fleet of dronecams about Kibera Fields, gathering footage for her report.

"Cam Three and Four, come left and drop down to ten meters...get me some footage of the stage and the podium...it really stands out." Several hundred meters above, the twin ornithopters wheeled about and took up their new headings. Polansky watched the image on her wristpad. "That's good...that's good, right there. Edit can add sound and graphics later....Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a shot. The stage and lights, right in the middle of a sea of tin-roof shacks. There must be half a million people here."

Indeed, the vast slumland of southwest Nairobi, hadn't hosted a gathering this large in decades. Julius Ngombe, the Assimilationist candidate, would be there, just days before the big election. But Dana knew it wasn't Ngombe that was the real draw. It was the candidate's front man Symborg. People shrieked and fainted for Symborg. That's why they had come.

The Solnet reporter steered dronecam four closer to the stage. "Hover and zoom in...I want to get those assimilator booths...there's already a queue outside." The 'copter obeyed and took up a tight hovering orbit some ten meters over a line of coffin-shaped booths along one side of the stage. The booths were already working, already taking in volunteers. People were pushing and shoving in a ragged line just beyond some barriers, barely contained by a platoon of khaki-clad Kenya Police. One man, Inspector Shadrick Nziri, barked out commands to his force on a megaphone.

The rally was set to begin at 7 pm, according to the flyers and brochures that had littered Nairobi for days. But already the assimilators were at work, manned by volunteers. Dana Polansky manipulated her wristpad controls and Cam Four zoomed in tight, picking up the sweaty, ecstatic faces in the queue. The first in line was a heavy set woman. Dana fiddled with the audio, caught snatches of words over the roar of the crowd.

"...name is, ma'am?" The assimilator tech wore a light blue uniform. His nameplate read Gavin.

Her name was Anna Kigale. She was tall, maybe with a bit of Masai in her, proud, a bit fluttery and nervous. She grinned sheepishly as one of Gavin's men helped her into the assimilator booth.

"A great day," she muttered. "Great day...so proud."

Gavin sat at a console just outside the booth, while another tech helped Anna inside and made her comfortable on the seat. The tech shut and latched the door, pressing a button to begin the seal and containment process. In seconds, a tight bot-proof seal had been formed around the interior of the booth, a barrier formed of electron injectors and a dedicated botscreen.

"Let's do it," the tech told Gavin. Gavin pressed buttons.

Inside the booth, a fog had formed...that was the first layer of nanobots released into the compartment. Anna disappeared into the fog, only a leg and a shoulder could be seen.

The fog thickened. A faint buzz could be heard from inside the booth. Dana steered the dronecam in closer, hovering only a few meters over the scene, like a giant gnat, watching as the cloud of bots inside the booth thickened. More and more bots were released and replicated, swelling to fill every cubic millimeter of the booth.

Anna didn't move. Dana zoomed in through the front porthole on her right leg. At first, it was unchanged, a smooth black leg with a section of her print dress showing, hitched up just above her knee. But even as she watched, the black of her skin had begun to fade. In moments, it was almost gray, like the fog itself, oscillating between darker and lighter, but still gray. Then the gray became a translucent shimmer, almost like a ghost, flickering slightly, but growing ever dimmer. Her shoulder was the same.

Anna Kigale was slowly but steadily being disassembled. She was being steadily broken down into a pattern, a pattern of atoms and molecules.

The end came softly, almost as if the woman were walking away in a light rain. Her body, the physical Anna Kigale, began to fade inside the booth. At first, it had been barely perceptible, just a faint blurring of her skin, her extremities, a smearing of her legs and shoulder, as if a photo had lost contrast.

In time, and the time was less than five minutes, Anna Kigale had devolved—that was the commonly accepted word now—into a nearly translucent shadow, still recognizable in form, but without substance. You could see right through the form and the shadow to the other side of the booth.

And then she was gone. Enveloped and enmeshed and at one with the greater swarm of nanobotic mechs that was the Mother Swarm.

Dana Polansky swallowed hard... steering DroneCam Four away from the booth. She muttered into her lip mike: Rotate and hold...I want shots of the faces in the queue..." The cam obeyed and soon her wristpad screen was filled with joy, ecstasy, laughter, joking...whatever you wanted to call it. She held her breath, trying not to think that something like this must have been what happened to Jana.

The woman known as Anna Kigale had just let herself be disassembled into atom fluff. And behind her, people were jostling in line to be next.

Involuntarily, Dana Polansky shuddered. She would never understand Assimilationists.

Something was happening. The crowd was stirring. Dana craned her head, trying to see over the mass of humanity. It looked like a wave surging and sloshing back and forth between islands of tin-roof shacks and rubbish piles. Imagery flickered on her wristpad. Men were mounting the stage. Serious men in dark suits and white open-neck shirts.

That's when she saw him.

Of course, Dana knew all the stories about Symborg: that he wasn't human, just an angel, a para-human swarm of nanobots, a cloud of bugs. Still, she found herself shoved and jostled as the crowd surged forward. She steered the dronecams closer for a tight shot, muttering "In tight, on his face, hover at twenty--" She checked the shot on her wristpad, found it good.

Julius Ngombe was hard to miss. Wide as he was tall, blacker than coal, he strode up onto the stage and raised both hands in a victory salute, beaming at the crowd that now lapped against the stage and the police cordon like ocean waves in a storm. Beside him were more staff people. Symborg was to his right, there to lead the introductions to the candidate, to whip the crowd into furious adulation.

Dana found herself shoved forward like a raft adrift, until she was nearly impaled on the baton of a policeman at the stage. Quickly, she flashed her press pass and was shoveled off to the side. Her arms were pinned by the crush and she couldn't reach her wristpad controls. The story would have to go with the shots the dronecams were getting now.

Symborg acknowledged the crowds with a wave and moved to the center microphone. The angel was good, Dana could see that. Very few edge effects...often, angels fuzzed out at their extremities, where the swarm didn't have good config control. This one was tight and dense over its entire surface...only an occasional pop or flash in the torso area, one or two in the face, gave away the fact that the angel was a para-human, a swarm of nanobots configged to look human. In stature, he was a smallish man, dark of color but that could be easily enough changed. His height contrasted with Ngombe's beefy frame, and his face was dominated by a black moustache.

"PEOPLE OF KIBERA...THE TIME HAS COME FOR A CHANGE...." His voice boomed out across the rally ground and the crowd grew more and more frenzied, pressing ever tighter against the police cordon.

"AND THIS MAN...THIS JULIUS NGOMBE...WILL BRING THAT CHANGE...THIS MAN, PEOPLE OF KIBERA...THIS MAN IS YOUR MAN, THIS MAN IS YOUR CANDIDATE...."

Now, as if by unspoken agreement, Ngombe and his staff receded into the background and Symborg dominated the stage. The angel worked the crowd like a practiced stage actor.

"PEOPLE OF KIBERA...WHAT IS IT THAT ASSIMILATION BRINGS?"

The response roared up out of the crowd like a thing alive.

"PEJERU...PEJERU...PEJERU!!"

A radiant smile came to Symborg's face, beamed by cameras to screens throughout the rally ground.

"Peace. Ecstasy. Joy. Enlightenment. Rapture. Unity with the Mother Swarm. You are right!"

The crowd roiled and throbbed like a frenetic horde, as one, surging again and again against the stage and the police barricade. Beside the stage, Kenya Police Inspector Shadrick Nziri barked more commands into a wristphone, re-deploying his men to tighten the barrier.

Symborg went on. "This man--" he swept his arm toward Julius Ngombe, who stepped forward to the microphone, a well-scripted and rehearsed bit of choreography "--this man will bring all that Assimilation can offer to you." He wrapped his arms around Ngombe's shoulders and drew him closer and it was only a few moments later that Dana realized that subtle changes had come over Symborg's face. The morphing was so well done that no one detected it, but by the time the angel had embraced the beaming candidate, the face of Symborg was gone and the man now hugging the candidate was Jomo Kenyatta himself, or least a passable config of the father of modern Kenya.

Stage cameras zoomed in to capture the moment. Dana wrestled an arm free to make sure her own dronecams did the same.

Symborg, now morphed and configged to resemble the great Kenyatta, beamed and vigorously hugged Ngombe, the Founder himself endorsing this candidate as "the best man for the future of Kenya."

Dana couldn't help but be impressed. Ngombe's handlers had perfected the stage show to use Symborg's talents, linking Kenya's past, the beloved Kenyatta himself with the new candidate. It was a symbolic point lost on no one.

Symborg went on, now releasing Ngombe, who retreated to a position on the side of the stage. The angel went to a bag held by one of Ngombe's aides and withdrew a handful of dirt, which he raised for all to see. By the time he had done this, the Kenyatta morph was gone, and his face subtly altered back to its original config. Or was it the original? Dana couldn't be sure. She suspected the crowd didn't care. They were mesmerized, enthralled. And they wanted more.

"The soil of Kenya!" Symborg announced. "This is what Assimilation brings...this is what Julius Ngombe brings!" Even as he spoke and the cameras zoomed in, Symborg's right hand morphed from a palm with five fingers into a fuzzy, swarming cloud of bots. The bots swelled and enveloped the dirt in his hand. Unseen by the crowd, the bots slammed atoms and formed a faint but rapidly filling apparition that grew like a plant in fast-motion out of Symborg's hand.

In moments, the apparition had solidified enough to be visible...and recognizable. It was Kenyatta again, this time 'in the flesh.' The bots that Symborg spalled off from his hand grabbed atoms from nearby and assembled a reasonable facsimile of the 'father of modern Kenya.'

The crowd roared its approval.

Symborg approached the mike again and told them how Julius Ngombe loved Kenya, no less than Kenyatta. How he loved his family and tribe, how he lived and breathed Kenya and always would. From down in front of the stage, Dana Polansky wriggled an arm free and pressed a few buttons on her wristpad, zooming in for an extreme close-up on the faux-Kenyatta, then on Symborg himself.

Is that sweat on his forehead? She wondered if angels could even do that, then decided it was like everything else at the rally...part of the show. What she didn't see was the faint trail of bots that drifted off Symborg's hand and down into the crowd itself.

Symborg continued his magic, his blurry hand by turns a cloud of bots, a magic wand, a djinn granting wishes, mesmerizing the crowd, plucking their emotions like a mandolin, first rising, then falling, cresting and receding. He was a master showman...Dana had to admit.

What Polansky didn't know was how well Symborg knew his crowd. The bots he had loosed into the crowd, unseen, were now embedded in the heads of scores of nearby faithful.

Even as he dazzled the crowd, Symborg was receiving feeds from the bots that many of them had already ingested. A faint pall of fog wafted off the stage, sending more and more bots into recon mode among the rally. Processor module ANALYZE GLUTAMATE PATTERN MATCHING received results from the nanobotic sleuths even now burrowing into their brains, sniffing along highways of equal glutamate concentration, rebuilding memories from their chemical residues.

Algorithms ran and massaged the data from the bots. The crowd was hooked, in synch with Symborg. Patterns matched with high confidence. Symborg saw snatches of memory, fragments of images...large crowds, banners and dancers, a train creeping into a station, belching smoke, brakes squealing. Some kind of rally, somewhere else.

All this the crowd gave up to the bots in their brains, and to Symborg, who smiled back and went on with the rally. Behind him, the candidate Julius Ngombe beamed, and scanned the surging crowd uneasily.

Now Symborg made config changes and the Kenyatta 'angel' began morphing once again. The din began to subside. Heads craned forward. People jostled and shoved to see better. Inspector Shadrick Nziri spoke into a lapel mike, calling up reinforcements for the police cordon.

In moments, the Kenyatta angel had changed into something formless, a blazing, pulsating spherical 'sun-like' orb of nanobots. It shone with the brilliance of a miniature star, throbbing in time with music issuing from speakers nearby.

"This is what Julius Ngombe means for Kenya...he is like Ngai, the Giver of All Things, an earthly reflection of the Mother Swarm."

Then the orb evolved again, this time growing, swelling, taking on structure. It became a small shelter, a composite shanty like the thousands that dotted Kibera.

"This\--" he roared to the crowd, "this is what Julius Ngombe and the Assimilationists can bring...this is what the Central Entity brings...shelter for all, food and life for all, embedded in the Great Mother Swarm."

And, as if to emphasize the point, the queues at the assimilator booths surrounding the stage grew and became gridlocked with even more people shoving and jostling to be next into the booths.

Dana Polansky found herself shoved almost right onto the stage, pressed hard against the barriers, nearly face to face with a row of Kenya Police officers. The officers were shoving back just as hard at the crowd, batons and shockwands flailing. She wrestled her arm free and checked out the view from the dronecams on her wristpad.

The crowd was surging forward, frenetic, screaming and fainting, pressing against the stage like ocean waves battering a beach. She was startled to see some of them climbing on the shoulders of others, launching themselves through the air.

This is mad, this is insane, she told herself. Instinctively, she ducked down and started wriggling through tiny spaces and niches, close to the ground, worming her way away from the stage. Self-preservation took over. After a few moments, she found a void and surfaced, standing up between two obese women who were swaying and chanting as they gazed up at Symborg.

She steered Dronecam Four as close as she dared to the stage. Symborg was performing more tricks, conjuring fantastic things from his bot-cloud hands like a true djinn. In the background, the candidate himself had left his seat and squatted down at the edge of the stage to have words with Inspector Nziri. Dana maneuvered the dronecam to catch what she could of the conversation.

It was clear Ngombe was spooked by the intensity of the crowd. Inspector Nziri had a warning for him. The dronecam picked up snatches.

"...can't hold this....-rimeter long...your people...the barrier won't...could be a stampede\--"

Ngombe shook his head emphatically. "No...no...no...this is for me. These are my people--"

That's when Shadrick Nziri shrugged, threw up his hands. He got on his lapel mike, screamed commands to his force. Dana could see what was happening around the stage. The men of the Kenya Police were being crushed, swallowed by the great beast. Nziri was pulling his men out.

Bit by bit, the police cordon shrank and contracted. Now Symborg had finished and with a flourish, waved his arms toward Julius Ngombe, who stood and beamed in the glow of the moment. Ngombe came to the mike, where Symborg embraced him. The crowd roared. The stage began to shake and the men stumbled momentarily. Symborg retreated behind, toward a row of seats on the edge of the stage. Ngombe seized the mike.

His amplified voice screeched with feedback and was drowned in the deafening roar of the crowd, which surged forward with renewed fury. It was like a rock concert mixed with religious revival, amplified a thousand-fold. The dronecams captured everything: people wailing, fainting, shrieking, even dying in the crush. The crowd became a crazed, mindless thing.

And no one was paying any attention to Ngombe.

Finally, in order to save the situation for the candidate, Symborg was forced to leave the platform, under escort. As he did so, the crowd broke through the last barriers and pressed forward to try and touch the angel. Just when it appeared Symborg and his police protective detail, led by Inspector Nziri, were about to be crushed to death in the surging crowd, Symborg did what angels do...he dematerialized into a loose, amorphous swarm and disappeared in a faint puff, dissipating into the air above the stage.

Dana Polansky captured the whole thing on dronecam video.

And the rest of the police detail was left to fight their way out of the crowd, who become even more agitated at the disappearance of their hero Symborg. Soon, the stage collapsed completely and a full-scale riot had developed.

Once she was well beyond the worst of the crowd, Dana collected herself, brushed her hair back and ordered Cam Four to zoom in on her face, which she hoped looked decent enough. Should have checked in my compact, she thought, but it's too late now.

Dana added some comments of her own to the footage...

"Last month, Symborg launched another world tour for the Sons of Assimilation, as the church now styles itself. The original Church of Assimilation in the Kibera slums of Nairobi has become a shrine for all who are sympathetic to the Assimilationist view (transhumans, singularitarians, etc). Thousands make the pilgrimage every day, from all over the world, to Nairobi's number one tourist attraction. Mostly, they come to see and touch Symborg himself, who because he is an angel, can be in many places at once. The tourist crowds are not disappointed.

"They come to listen to him in rapture and to be assimilated (which means to be deconstructed as living human beings and re-organized as swarm-compatible formations of nanobotic elements). This reporter, for one, finds such behavior both bizarre and distasteful. It's assisted suicide by other names. I have some personal experience with this...my own daughter Jana was one of the de-constructed. In fact, millions do believe and the authorities don't seem to know what to do about it.

"Efforts continue, both in official circles and otherwise, to discredit and destroy Symborg. All such efforts have failed so far and the popularity and influence of this so-called robotic Messiah has only grown more intense and widespread. Because he is an angel, Symborg can be found on every continent and in most major cities, as well as all popular media. Press coverage is intense, the crowds and the frenzy and fervor is insane. Symborg is something like a combination of rock star and evangelist, with elements of magician and healer thrown in.

"He seems to become more powerful and influential with each passing day. Now, with the appearance of the Kuiper Belt One anomaly in the farthest reaches of our solar system, the frenzy and the insanity seems to be peaking

"Some psychologists and sociologists have written that the coming of Symborg is a sort of mass hysteria, combined with a frenzied, almost hysterical worship of the Old Ones. Many cultures down through the ages have had myths about a Savior...someone who comes to save the people from themselves. In the past, saviors and messiahs have come from Heaven, appointed by God to turn people from their destructive ways and encourage repentance.

"One psychologist (see Richard Espiritu, the World Journal of Psychological Phenomena, March 2099, pp81-89) notes that Symborg seems different. Additional finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient Homo Erectus bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane. If these finds can be corroborated, then the conclusion that Symborg may be an evolved descendant of ancient extraterrestrials seeding the early Earth becomes harder to refute.

"This makes his status as a Messiah all the more problematical. If evidence of such descent becomes overwhelming, according to Dr. Espiritu, Symborg acquires a level of authority and prophecy and wisdom that no Messiah in history could ever claim. To this point, Symborg has done nothing to discount such rumors but neither has he accepted the mantle of "Father of Humanity." Still, the rumors, the commentary, blog posts and talk swirl around this idea like bees around a swollen flower.

"Finally, the relationship (if any) of Symborg to Kuiper Belt One must be explained. Sources within UNIFORCE and other security and defense organizations have repeatedly claimed that Symborg is nothing but an offshoot of this distant astronomical phenomenon, an element of the same formation. Kuiper Belt One, whatever you call it, is considered by many to be a mortal enemy of Mankind. Others claim that Symborg is nothing short of an angel of the Lord, substituting the Old Ones for the Creator. Of course, the existence of the 'Old Ones' has never been definitively proven, but there is compelling evidence that something is "Out There.' In fact, with KB-1, the evidence is harder and harder to refute.

"So who or what is KB-1? Who or what is Symborg in reality? Are they part of the same phenomena? It's a matter of documented fact that human beings created ANAD in the 2060s. If Symborg is an evolved descendant of that original autonomous nanoscale assembler/disassembler, then is a very real sense, Man created Symborg.

"But if ANAD's programming came in part from something dug out of the ground by Dr. Irwin Frost at Engebbe, and that something came from extraterrestrials that today we call the Old Ones, then who really created who?

"There's a logical time bomb ticking away at the heart of our relationship with ANAD technology, a technology that has become so much a part of our lives today, in the middle of the 22nd Century.

"Man created ANAD. And now it appears increasingly likely that ancestors of ANAD created Man.

"Is the continuing popularity of Symborg in our midst nothing more than the equivalent of an infant child discovering the infinite pleasures of looking in a mirror?

"This is Dana Polansky, reporting from Nairobi, Kenya for Solnet and Special Report. Good night...and good luck."

SOLNET Special Report Ends

"Insanity," murmured the Secretary-General, Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram. His avatar floated before Komar's desk, occasionally sliding in front of, even through CINCSPACE, who had been sitting across Komar's desk. General Salaam thought it expedient to get up and move over to the windows. The SG had never been one for avatar protocol but no one said anything.

Komar agreed. "It's the same all over the world. Riots, mass hysteria, assimilator booths working so hard some have caught fire...."

The SG's face turned stern, even thoughtful. The avatar's eyes narrowed, its face momentarily pixelating. "Earthshield's done. What other course do we have now? General, you may be right about saboteurs in our midst. Tomorrow, I'm going to put a proposal before the Security Council. We need to form a negotiating team, to seek terms of accommodation with the Old Ones."

"I'm not surrendering a damn thing," declared CINCQUANT, General Quint. "As a matter of fact, I can announce that we have our own agent, right inside the so-called mother swarm."

Komar regarded Quint as if he were a five-year old with an imaginary friend under his bed. "Sure you do, Lamar. This is a serious meeting."

Quint nearly exploded. There were few things he hated more than to be patronized by bureaucrats. Bureaucrats didn't fight enemies or win wars. Bureaucrats gave presentations.

"For your information, I had a briefing with our agent just a few days ago. He's ready to unload a ton of intel that may just be what we need to fight off the Bugs."

"And just who is this wondrous individual who can insinuate himself into a swarm?"

"General John Winger. Or what used to be Winger."

For about five minutes, Quint had to deal with a level of incredulity and skepticism the likes of which he hadn't seen in years of staff meetings.

"General, to say that we're dubious is something of an understatement," Komar summed up the general attitude of everyone. "It's well known that General Winger died in 2121, during his second mission to Europa. Shall I call up the General History of Quantum Corps Campaigns and Operations?"

But Quint was insistent. "I'm telling you it was Winger. Somehow—don't ask me to explain how, because I can't—John Winger's become a swarm himself, like an angel. At first, I thought I was seeing things, it was a dream, I'd had too much to drink, it was indigestion---you know how it is in the commissary. But, for the love of Mike, it was General Winger. Whatever it was, it knew everything you'd think Winger would know, right down to the most minute details. I asked a few questions. The damn thing knew all the answers, including things I didn't know. Things only Winger could know. Maybe he's one of them now, but I don't think so. John Winger is an angel, a loose bag of bots and somehow he's worked his way inside the mother swarm. He told me he'll be dropping off some intel on tactics and weaknesses any day now."

Mahmood Salaam was a picture of scorn and skepticism. His black moustache twitched like a mouse and his eyes sparkled with barely concealed mirth, as if Quint's little joke on the others was perfect for such a stuffy and somber staff meeting.

"So where is your little apparition now, General?"

Quint had to admit he hadn't heard from Winger for awhile.

"Well," intoned Dr. Vishnapuram, "I guess this is to be expected. I know what happened to Earthshield was a shock to everyone. We invested a lot in that mission. Now, we rely on hallucinations for our next tactic."

Before Quint could object, the SG's avatar held up a hand, then maneuvered itself to hover like a malevolent ghost right over Quint's head. CINCQUANT cleared his throat and decided to shift away from the suffocating presence of the avatar, now practically sitting on top of him. Honestly...learn how to control yourself.

"I've been working up some names for a negotiating team. I'll squirt them to all of you after this briefing is over. I recommend we work through Config Zero. I assume he's—or it's—still in Kipwezia, but I've heard the MOBnet barrier may be on its last legs. Angelika, I'll issue an order for the barrier to come down immediately. We'll send a team of negotiators to Config Zero, and use them as a way of contacting the Old Ones, seek some kind of terms for accommodation. Or at least, see if they'll agree to terms. I don't see as we have any other choice."

Quint almost said something, but held his tongue. There are always choices, you dolt, he almost said, but didn't. He could see Komar was onboard, but Salaam wasn't buying any of this crap at all.

CINCSPACE muttered, "This feels like the last days of the Japanese Empire in 1945...trying to negotiate an end to conflict and save face, save something."

The SG didn't like that at all. His avatar frowned, a clownish gesture that would have been laughable if the situation weren't so serious.

"What are you saying, Mahmood...that I'm Hirohito in your little historical fantasy?"

Komar shrugged, ready for the whole briefing to be over. "I just hope the Old Ones don't do a Hiroshima on us."

Quint was still smarting from their comments. "They may not need to. We're doing it to ourselves."
Chapter 12

Paris, France

November 9, 2155

1725 hours (U.T.)

Dana Polansky sipped at her Merlot and watched the crowds brushing by her outdoor table at the Café Antony, wondering if maybe this wasn't such a great idea after all. She'd been waiting on Colonel Goncalves for the better part of an hour but Esther was late, got diverted, forgot about the lunch date, or something like that.

Really, this is nuts, Polansky told herself. I should have my head examined. Journalists are supposed to deal with facts...just the facts, ma'am.

But if there was even a remote chance that Esther Goncalves could help her find Jana, could help her get her Jana back, then it had to be explored.

No matter how nuts it seemed.

Dana had known the staff aide for some months now, ever since she'd been assigned to the UNIFORCE beat and spent some time around all the brass that worked under CINCQUANT. Esther was CINCQUANT's Q1, in charge of personnel and manpower inside Quantum Corps. In a recent interview, Goncalves had implied that the Corps had an ongoing relationship with a Dr. Ben Falkland, who was doing research on ways of combatting the spread of Assimilationism and angels, specifically on ways to 're-construct' people who had been assimilated. Dana had filed that nugget away for later use.

And when her own daughter went the way so many millions already had, and locked herself into an assimilator booth at one of Symborg's awakenings, and wound up as so much atom fluff, Dana dredged up the Goncalves interview from somewhere deep in the back of her mind.

Re-constructing assimilated people from atoms and molecules, huh? If I didn't know better, I'd say that was borderline fairy tale, pure and simple. But Goncalves insisted it was legitimate and she couldn't afford to ignore the possibility, however faint and unbelievable it might be.

Goncalves showed up full of apologies and mea culpas. "Sorry, Dana...staff meeting went on too long...we're trying to up our recruitment of chemistry and physics majors at the big universities. Everybody's got a pet idea. Nobody's got any details. You know how it is." Goncalves was in her light blue and gold day uniform, with a dark blue beret making her look stylish in the noontime crowd of the 5th arrondisement.

"Don't sweat it, Colonel. I'm just glad you could make it."

The two women ordered more wine and a plate of baguettes.

They exchanged pleasantries for awhile, munching on their sandwiches and pommes fritas, sipping at the wine, until Dana explained what had happened to her daughter and why she was interested in learning more about Dr. Falkland.

Dana squinted tears back, then decided to put her sunglasses back on. It was a cloudy day, but at least, the glasses hid things.

"Colonel—"

"Hey, call me Esther, please...I'm a mom too, you know. I know this must be terribly hard for you."

Dana swallowed hard. "That's putting it mildly. Col...er, Esther, tell me more about this reconstruction process. You mentioned it when we did the interview a few weeks ago."

Goncalves swirled the red liquid in her glass. "Right. Well...it's called VISER. If I can recall what that stands for, yeah...it's Vivionic Seeding and Re-animation. Something like that. Developed originally by someone named Mullinex. Emory University USA, I seem to recall. Dr. Falkland, and his father Dr. Ryne before him, has had some small-scale experimental success with it."

"Really? You mean, he can actually reconstruct assimilated people?"

Goncalves shook her head. Her hair was short, dark brown, almost page-boy and the beret was set at a jaunty angle. Probably not regulation, Dana thought.

"Oh, heavens no. Not people. At least not yet. But he claims to have been able to do this with small animals, lab rats and that sort of thing."

"Can you explain how it works?"

Here, Goncalves smiled. "I'm no scientist. Just a glorified HR girl. But I can do better than that. I can put you in contact with Dr. Falkland directly."

"God, Esther...I'd be so grateful, if you could do that."

Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Pennsylvania, USA

November 12, 2155

1130 hours

The accident had been nobody's fault but that didn't make Dr. Ben Falkland feel any better. Any time you lost a loved one, it hurt like hell. And when the loved one was Mr. Jiggs, twelve-year old hybrid Shih Tzu, lifelong companion, confidant and lab policeman and cleaner-upper of anything that dropped from the table, the loss was even harder to take.

Falkland sighed deeply. Jiggs was just a dog, wheezing, limping, half-blind in one eye with all his cataracts, not long for this world anyway, but still...it was like a hole had opened up in his heart.

Well, at least there was still Simon.

I need someone to talk to. Falkland finished cleaning out the containment chamber and went over to a small capsule on a workbench nearby. Maybe DAD can help me sort things out. He thumbed a control stud on the side of the capsule. Momentarily, a faint vapor began issuing from a port on top. The vapor twinkled and sparkled in the late morning sunlight, thickening as it spread and expanded into a visible mist. Falkland paid no attention to the mist, while it began forming itself into a recognizable, if shadowy outline of a face and shoulders...a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Ryne Falkland himself, founder of the Project and Ben's long-deceased father. Falkland instead busied himself with prepping the containment chamber for another run, checking the electron guns, the pattern buffer, cycling the interior ports and feedstock reservoirs.

The facial outline of the DAD swarm beamed down at Falkland with a bemused half-smile, still twinkling in the shafts of sunlight as the bots configured themselves into final patterns, grabbing atoms and slamming molecules to form up the image.

***You are preparing the Lab for another run, I see, son...you're always quite thorough in your work***

Falkland looked up briefly, critically appraising the realism of the swarm image. "I'm not sure what happened, Dad. Christ, I hated to lose Jiggs...maybe it was the pattern buffer. Guess I've got a little tweaking to do."

***Maybe more than a little, Ben...there seem to be some anomalies in the drivers...perhaps I could help?***

"I was hoping you'd say that...I'll load up the routines and we can both take a look."

It had long been a dream of Falkland's to find a way to re-assemble deconstructed objects, to reverse the process that the Assimilationists were using to disassemble their nutty volunteers and send them on to the Greater Swarm, or wherever it was they went to. It ought to be a simple matter of scanning the entire configuration of a living person, then imposing that same configuration, that same pattern of atom bond energies and geometries, on new feedstock and re-assembling the same person.

Ben Falkland had continued Dr. Ryne Falkland's work of decades, experimenting with a special kind of configuration pattern emitter that imposed a sort of memory field on the new molecules. A memory field that was supposed to hold the scanned pattern and impress that same pattern on the new molecules. But it was damnably hard to do this with living systems, always had been. Nanobotic assemblers could break down anything they could get to. And the same assemblers could slam atoms and pretty much build anything that had a repeatable pattern, even now, organic material.

But the great question was this: was the re-assembled pattern actually the same as the deconstructed pattern? Was B = A? Or was it just a clever analog, a simulation, an angel swarm entity like DAD? Philosophers called this conundrum the Ship of Theseus. Was a ship that was maintained by swapping out all of its wooden planks still the same ship, once all the planks had been changed?

So he had been experimenting on living things the last few weeks, spiders, cockroaches, lab rats, and now one of his two pet Shih Tzus...Mr. Jiggs. He'd finagled with the pattern configs for weeks, trying different approaches. He'd tested the emitters, buffers and injectors with all manner of atomic feedstock, just to be sure. He'd managed to disassemble and reassemble all manner of critters, but you could never really tell with rats and cockroaches. It wasn't like you could ask them questions: Are you really the same thing I just disassembled?

Jiggs had been placed inside the small containment cell, after he'd done his business outside in the bushes, of course. No sense introducing any more organic matter into the experiment than necessary. A small-mass nanobotic swarm had been released into the cell. Jiggs was rapidly disassembled and the resulting atomic debris was held in a special containment field that kept the relevant atoms in close proximity. The pattern buffer also read and maintained a 'memory' of the original configuration. This memory field was a new design of Falkland's, in which all the original atom and molecule configurations and their bond energies and geometries were stored and used to re-construct the original.

The memory field containing the atomic patterns of the original Jiggs was then run through a new config pattern processor and the new config re-imposed on the atoms in the memory field. The result was a ghostly likeness of Jiggs, but the shadowy image wouldn't hold on its own and Falkland, reluctantly, had to let it go, let it disperse. The technique still needed work. And Falkland had only Simon left. He wasn't too keen on donating his only remaining pet to Science just yet.

For nearly an hour, Falkland and DAD examined the software loaded into the pattern buffers, debugged the configs and speculated on what might be happening, why the new field didn't hold the originally scanned pattern and thus why the original object could not be properly reconstructed.

It was well after noon, when a loud buzzing at the Lab entrance shook Falkland out of his funk. Someone was at the secured doors outside the Containment Center. Falkland checked...it was Major Lucian Bridges. Oh, crap...he'd forgotten completely. Bridges had been invited to a little demo that afternoon...only Falkland no longer had anything to show the Quantum Corps officer. He let the Major into the containment center anyway.

Bridges was a program manager from Table Top, overseeing several efforts that ASL was running for the Corps. He was a likeable, if someone prickly administrator...program managers tended to be that way.... Tall with a red hair buzz cut and long delicate fingers like a pianist, which he sometimes was in his spare moments, Bridges came over and peered into the containment cell.

"I don't see anything, Dr. Falkland. You said you had something to show me, some new kind of config generator."

"I did," Falkland admitted. "But the results of my last test weren't worth keeping around." He explained what had happened that morning.

Bridges shrugged. "So where do you go from here?"

Falkland ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Is the Corps still interested? I'm not that far...I'm sure of it."

"Hell, yes, Doctor. The Corps' interested in anything that can counter what the Assimilationists are doing. What I've seen of your work...there's still a lot of promise. What else do you need from me?"

"Well, DAD and I are still working out the kinks in this blasted pattern buffer and emitter. What I'd like to do is this: once we've got the buffer working...I'd like to have the Corps' permission to do some live experiments, with actual people."

DAD's shadowy face made a slight tightening of its lips, at least that's what Bridges thought he had done. It was hard to tell with some angels...it depended on how good the config was.

***Dr. Falkland and I have a slight difference of opinion on this matter, Major...clearly the config buffer needs additional testing...I would not recommend scaling up the experiments quite so fast***

Bridges rubbed at some stubble his razor had missed that morning. "You think this gadget will actually work...didn't you just tell me you couldn't get your dog back? What makes you think it'll work with humans? What evidence do you have that this thing will actually retrieve people who've already been assimilated? There are a helluva lot of people at Table Top who think that's nonsense...that it violates the laws of physics and so forth."

Falkland took a deep breath. "Call it a hunch, if you want, Major. I can produce just as much evidence the other way. The basic philosophy of Assimilation is wrong, on a lot of different levels. Here, let's look at this logically. Assimilation begins with one great question: does assimilating mean just enhancing our minds and bodies as is, inserting bots and swarms to take over or develop or enhance new capabilities in our more or less original bodies?

"Or does Assimilation mean 'deconstruction?' Breaking down the human body form into its constituent atoms and rebuilding it as a multi-configuration swarm, able to look and act like humans (as angels) but also able to act and look like other beings and structures as well.

"Enhancement versus reconfiguration...that's the great divide in Assimilationist thinking."

Bridges understood. "I guess I've seen both types of thinking among Assimilationists. Nowadays, they seem to go in for deconstruction, as you call it. You've heard the complaints...our DNA is old and creaky, full of junk. Multiple-configuration is way better, more resilient, able to adapt to change, you can't die, just change config. I can tell you one thing: UNIFORCE is looking for any and every technique they can get their hands on to stop them..."

"Precisely," Falkland said. "DAD, show him the chart."

The DAD swarm pinched off a small set of bots and began swirling into a new pattern, eventually forming a small two-column chart hanging right in mid-air.

Falkland went on. "So you can see there are pros and cons on each side. You're right, though, Major. The Assimilationists have changed their tune. They deconstruct everything now. To me, it's just a form of murder."

"They want to get rid of humans...that's what's behind the movement," Bridges was sure. "Do the Old Ones' work for them."

"Would Quantum Corps be interested in funding more experiments, Major? Experiments with live human volunteers?"

Bridges nodded. "I don't know about Quantum Corps. But UNIFORCE might. Tell you what: write up a proposal, explain what you need in funding and equipment, any kind of resource. I've got some contacts in Paris. Plus CINCQUANT himself is there...that's General Quint. He's an old atomgrabber from way back...I'm sure he'd listen, maybe put in a good word for us."

Ben Falkland did as Major Bridges requested.

Two weeks later, the project had come to a critical juncture. New methods and new configs for retrieving and re-constructing nanobotically disassembled and assimilated people had been developed. Falkland and DAD had worked for weeks, night and day, to find every bug, fix every flaw, run sim after sim. The idea was to combat the advance of the Assimilationists, by showing adherents and followers that what they did could be undone. Their subject today: another of Falkland's pets...this one another Shih Tzu, named Simon.

Falkland wanted one last live experiment before advancing the project to human volunteers.

Simon was a black and tan brother to Mr. Jiggs. Falkland fed him a few treats, then hoisted the little bugger up into the containment cell, closing and securing the hatch behind. From the other side of the porthole, Simon munched on the last bits of his treat, then stared morosely out at Falkland, slowly wagging his tail.

"Simon, don't look at me like that. This will only take a few minutes. DAD, how's the buffer looking?"

DAD swirled and sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. The swarm angel was only a barebones head-likeness of Dr. Ryne Falkland today...more apparition than real. DAD was devoting most of his processor to managing the config buffer and little to keeping up appearances for Falkland.

***Config patterns are stable, Ben. Injector guns are primed and ready to trigger on first alarm...feed valve is closed, but powered up. Memory field at state one, ready to transmit...all parameters within normal tolerances...it appears that everything is ready. How do you feel about the experiment today?***

Falkland sniffed. Nice of you to ask, DAD, he thought. He'd programmed that into the angel's core routines just last week...a new sympathy module he'd swiped from the Net. At least, the cloud of bugs had the smarts to know when to invoke it.

"I'm feeling confident, today, DAD...one last check of all systems and we're ready to go."

A quick look around the containment controls assured Falkland that nothing had been overlooked.

"Okay, DAD...here goes--" He pressed a button, opening a port inside the cell. Instantly a swarm of nanobotic disassemblers flooded the compartment, enveloping Simon in a faint mist that flickered with pinpricks of light. The Shih Tzu stared out longingly, tail still wagging. Soon enough, his face was lost in the fog.

***Reading normal activity, Ben...solution parameters within tolerance. EM levels normal and in the green range...all configurations holding...***

As before, the swarm filled the containment cell and began disassembling poor Simon, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. Falkland had sometimes wondered what that would feel like...would it hurt, did it happen too fast, what went through your mind? During the earlier runs, he had avoided peering into the compartment...not wanting to see his subject's face half-eaten away or in some unfinished state of disassembly. This time, he couldn't help it and took a look.

Mostly, there wasn't much to see. The mist that was the swarm filled most of the view inside the porthole. He could catch occasional glimpses of a shadow; presumably that was Simon's body. He seemed remarkably calm for Simon, not squirming and fidgeting around like he usually did. Maybe, his neuromuscular functions had already been--

Then he saw the face. It was still recognizably Simon, but grayed out somehow, washed out and devoid of features. He had whiskers, a mouth, a hint of beard and his nose wiggled, but texture was missing...almost as if Simon were unfinished lump of clay, waiting for final touches. Then the mist covered his face and he was gone.

Falkland shook off a brief shiver and concentrated on the displays, showing the progress of deconstruction. "Memory field stable, we're scanning now, DAD...looks like everything's stable, within range."

***I detect no anomalies in the field emitter...containment field also holding well...disassembly operation now sixty five per cent complete...structure file buffer overload...I recommend truncating peripheral details until the buffer clears...***

Falkland saw instantly what DAD was talking about. The atom bond energies and geometries that made up Simon were overloading the memory registers of the system. Well, Simon was a complicated guy, Falkland thought. I mean is a complicated guy, he corrected himself.

When deconstruction was over, if all went well, Simon the Shih Tzu would be reduced to a hopefully well-contained field of disassembled atoms and molecules and nothing more. At that point, Falkland's memory field would sweep through the chamber, reading each and every atomic bond, measuring electron-volt energies, analyzing each atom's geometric construction, recording it all and saving it in a massive file that constituted the physical 'essence' of what had once been a wiggling, yapping little dog.

And if all went well, Falkland would write that same memory field over the contained atoms of the now disassembled Simon, instructing the bots to re-build the very same structure, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, according to what was held in the memory field.

When it was all done, if Falkland had done his homework, the new structure would be Simon once again, at least in every physical way that mattered. Whether his mind and thoughts and habits would return as before....well, Dr. Ryne Falkland himself had long ago decided to leave that to the philosophers.

First things first, he told himself. "DAD, let's see if we can bring Simon back to physicality. We have good structure on the containment?"

***All data seems clean and within expected variations, Ben. I have finished all check routines and variations are minimal. There was some dropout in data collected from Zones 41 through 45, but I have activated interpolation routines to make up for the loss...I don't think the subject will be affected***

"Zones 41 through 45--" Falkland consulted a handwritten list he had taped to the console. "We've seen that before...the hind leg muscles...not sure what's happening with that. Hope Simon doesn't come back walking with a limp. Well, here goes--" He stabbed a button and the system monitor beeped and flashed warnings: MEMORY FIELD OPERATING....KEEP CLEAR...

He looked inside the chamber.

For a few moments, the mist continued to swirl, speckling and twinkling and popping like a miniature thunderstorm. Falkland knew the bots were slamming atoms as fast as they could, using the memory field as a blueprint, re-building Simon molecule by molecule. At least, he hoped that's what was happening.

Then, slowly, the swarm mist began to clear. The first shape to appear was a nose, then a mouth. Falkland peered into the chamber closely, checking for texture, patterns, evidence that the memory field had worked.

The mist began to thin out and that's when Falkland's heart sank. It was Simon, all right, at least something recognizable as Simon. All the parts seemed to be there: a face, four legs, a squat little furry body...it was black and tan in coloration, that seemed normal...a tail that wagged.

But Simon was transparent. Structure wasn't filling in properly. Falkland realized he could see right through the structure.

"I'm adjusting the field to compensate--" he announced. Falkland fiddled with some dials on the console, trying to bring a stronger memory field to bear, to override the structure that was being formed. Trying to force the atoms and molecules that made up Simon back into normal position, normal geometry. The overall look seemed right, but there weren't enough molecules.

Simon was little more than a cloud.

In the end, Falkland couldn't get Simon's structure to fill in. The mist that was the swarm rebuilding the little dog stubbornly refused to coalesce into something more substantial. The basic pattern was there but memory field integrity was being lost somewhere in the process.

***Buffer overflow...truncation at all higher registers***

DAD announced a problem with the config generator memory...too much data, too many patterns to reconstruct. The atomic complexity of living organisms had defeated many attempts before. Falkland swore under his breath.

"--not again, not again...."

The only humane thing to do was abort the operation. He's have to let Simon go, be dispersed. Just like Jiggs before him. Reluctantly, Falkland killed the config generator and the memory field collapsed. Simon, what was left of him, slowly faded from view and was lost, his atoms and molecules scattered throughout the chamber. Soon, only a faint haze clouded the containment cell porthole.

"Simon, you're in there somewhere. Maybe not in a physical sense, but I've got the configs...we can do this. We have to do this." He rubbed at his hairline and worried with a loose strand of hair.

***Major Bridges will not be pleased at the outcome of this run, Ben. He had great hopes that your configs and memory field would be strong enough to maintain structure, and bring Simon back***

Falkland shut down the system and the containment cell went dark. He sat down heavily in a nearby chair, sipped half-heartedly at a warm cola drink. "That's not the worst of it, DAD. I've got a demo scheduled at UNIFORCE Paris in less than two weeks. What am I going to show them...a bunch of slides and graphics? General Quint wants results...all I've got is theories."

The DAD swarm roiled and drifted over toward the containment cell. ***This technique is not ready for more complex structures, son. It will months before it can be tried on human volunteers, or anything that complex***

"Thanks, DAD...I figured that out for myself. And I don't have any more pets to donate to Science either. But we'll have to think of something. I've got ten days to put something together for Paris."

He watched as the DAD swarm swirled around the containment cell, almost as if the swarm were 'tasting' or 'feeling' the device.

Maybe the Assimilationists are right and that's what Simon and Jiggs are telling us, he thought. Maybe it's not structure that's important. It's the pattern, the configuration. Maybe that's what makes us truly unique.

The great conundrum that philosophers called the Ship of Theseus kept coming back to bite them again and again.

Dana Polansky peered into the containment cell, watching as the form of a small white lab rat began to materialize.

"What exactly is this Ship of Theseus problem you mentioned, Doc?"

Dr. Ben Falkland pressed a button on his wristpad. Instantly, a 3-d image was launched into the air over their heads. It was a wooden ship, complete with rowers and oars churning in the air, a replica of an ancient Athenian trireme.

"Behold...the Ship of Theseus," Falkland said. "In ancient Greece, the philosophers debated on this for centuries. A fellow named Theseus came back from a visit to Crete. He was much loved and the Athenians wanted to preserve the ship. But, as with any long term preservation project, occasionally they had to replace parts of the ship...the wooden planks, the oars, and so forth. It was Plutarch who related the problem: at what point, during this on-going replacement, does the ship cease to be the same ship, when all its parts have been replaced?"

Polansky looked puzzled. "So what's the answer?"

Falkland had a mischievous smile. "That's the conundrum. It's a question about what is real...or I should say, what is more real? Is it the wooden planks themselves? Or some underlying pattern? They never resolved the matter."

"I can see how this might pertain to Assimilationism. What do you think, Dr. Falkland?"

Here, Falkland sighed, killed the 3-d and pointed inside the porthole of the containment cell. The lab rat was still forming and he watched intently for a long minute. "I lean toward the pattern-people. We can disassemble all kinds of structures with our assembler bots today. We can build all kind of structures as well. But if we break down something and try to re-construct the same thing, is it really the same thing? Does the pattern persist in time and space? I say it does. Of course, Hector here—my experimental subject—might want to weigh in on the matter too. Looks like he's coming in nicely...the memory field seems to have held up this time."

Polansky studied Ben Falkland for a moment. He was thin, almost skeletal in the face, gaunt and a little pale. He had a shock of sandy, almost white hair that seemed to forever flop into his right eye. And he squinted when he talked.

"Dr. Falkland, I won't mince words here. Several months ago, my daughter Jana joined the Assimilationists. She went to one of their awakenings and then she went into a booth. She's gone now—" here, Dana scrunched up her nerve to hold back a few tears moistening her eyes, "I want her back...I just want her back from those freaks. I have a contact at UNIFORCE in Paris. Staff aide to General Quint...CINCQUANT. She told me about you...and your father. How you've been working on....er, bringing people, angels, whatever, back. Re-constructing them, I guess."

Falkland seemed to understand. His eyes softened. He stopped squinting. "Well, it's true that our lab has been working on this for a long time. We've had some modest successes."

"So you can do it? This mouse...this rat...you've just reconstructed him?

Falkland hastened to clarify himself. "What I mean to say is we've had some successes at deconstructing small animals, lab rats, dogs, frogs, and so forth, and reconstructing them. We'll do days of tests on Hector here. Of course, I'm not sure we can say we've actually reconstructed the original...Hector doesn't say. But examinations and tests have shown little to no difference between the original and the reconstructed version...at least, the things we can measure."

Dana Polansky described in detail what had happened to Jana. Falkland puffed on an unlit pipe, as she did so, all the while finagling with controls for the containment chamber. Inside, Hector was squirming to be loose, his thin tail flopping about with agitation. Lights winked on and off on a small panel near the hatch.

"So you can do this...you can bring my Jana back?"

Falkland smiled faintly. "I can't make any promises, Ms. Polansky. To be honest, we've never tried our memory field process on a live human yet. We need permission to do that. Where is your daughter now?"

Polansky shook her head ruefully. "Who knows? I've seen her from time to time...at least, I think I've seen her. At first, I thought I was hallucinating. You know, distraught mother and all. But now..." Dana held out her hands, like she didn't know what to do with them. "Now, I really believe it was Jana. My daughter's like an angel, a swarm entity of some kind, and she seems to be able to come and go at will, like dust motes. I don't really understand it. It's like she comes back to re-assure me that everything's okay. Maybe I am dreaming all this, Dr. Falkland, but I don't think so."

Falkland said, "The Assimilationists claim that all their 'volunteers' are taken up into the mother swarm...or eventually will be." His smile abruptly faded. "That day may soon be upon us, if what I'm hearing on the news is right."

"Can you bring my Jana back, Dr. Falkland? Or is this just some kind of fantasy here?" She indicated all the tanks and pipes and containment vessels.

"Oh, no, Ms. Polansky, it's no fantasy. It's an ongoing research project, with UNIFORCE direction and funding. Of course, there are some practicalities here."

'What kind of practicalities?"

Falkland thought, fussed with his pipe. "We'll have to locate your daughter...somehow. Get her in here. And there are authorizations and waivers to deal with, UNIFORCE, the University, local and state agencies...I'm sure you understand. This is a military project, so there are security considerations."

Dana became alarmed, feeling her best chance to get Jana back was starting to slip away. "Dr. Falkland, I'll sign anything you want. I'm not here as a reporter. Solnet knows nothing about this. I just want my Jana back."

"Of course...of course. You do present an interesting problem, Ms. Polansky. But we have to work out a way of finding your daughter and getting her, maybe enticing her, here. All my equipment is here."

Dana gave that some thought. "My contact at UNIFORCE is a staff aide to General Lamar Quint. Don't spread this around, Dr. Falkland, but Colonel Goncalves, my source, has told me General Quint has seen things like I have...an angel, maybe an apparition. Only in his case, she said it was like an angel of General John Winger."

Falkland whistled. "Winger...the General John Winger? I thought he died—"

"He did...or at least, we think he did. That mission to Europa back in 2120. This is what my source is telling me. According to her, Quint's experienced several instances of this, mostly in his office, where Winger or the Winger angel shows up. She said Quint's tried to convince others it happened, but not very successfully. Rumor is Winger's some kind of agent, inside the so-called mother swarm...but nobody really believes that."

"So how does this help us get your daughter here to my lab?"

Dana sort of half smiled. "A cock-eyed idea, really. I'm almost ashamed to admit I had it...but maybe I can convince General Quint...if I can get an interview with him...you know on what the Corps is doing to get us ready for the Big Day...maybe I can convince him to contact General Winger. If Winger's an angel, maybe he can find Jana. Bring her here—" Dana looked down at her black pumps. "I know that sounds—"

"No, no...it's okay. It's worth a shot, Ms. Polansky. "Really, I think we should explore any avenue. It would help me if you could get me some personal effects of your daughter...favorite toys, clothes, shoes, anything that might have come into contact with her. I could do some tests, try to tune my equipment to be compatible with her...shall we say, patterns. And some pictures too, would help."

"That I can do now—" Dana pecked a few keys on her wristpad, causing the thing to emit a 3-D image of Jana, which she quickly animated. "Christmas morning, about five years ago. She was ten. See, she just opened up her new mindpod...she always wanted one. Look at that big grin—"

Falkland watched the animation proceed. "Ms. Polansky---may I call you Dana--?"

"Please."

"Dana, if you can somehow get your daughter to come here to the lab, I'm sure I can get her into containment. Once you've signed all the waivers and we have permission from our sponsors, I'm surely willing to try to get her back. Of course, I can't promise anything. All this is still experimental. And there is the Ship of Theseus problem as well."

"You mean what results from the process may or may not really be Jana...is that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying that, to be clear and honest about this, if my procedure works as it has for only smaller subjects, I think I can produce an...an entity, shall we say...that is Jana in all the ways that matter. All the important ways. Is it really Jana? That, I'm afraid, is a philosophical question we may never be able to answer. In the meantime—" he handed Dana a small capsule, with a hexagonal top covered with a few buttons and indicator lights. The lights were dark. "---in the meantime, take this with you."

Dana accepted the capsule, turning it end for end. "What is it?"

"A containment capsule. On the chance your daughter shows up again in front of you, press this button here—" he put her index finger gently on one of the buttons. "That'll open the capture port and start a sequence of events. Swish this through your daughter's form...wave it right through the densest part of the apparition....the angel, whatever. You may get lucky and capture the master bot. Do that several times and then toggle that same button. The capsule will close. Whatever you've captured will be inside in strong containment. Then, get this back to me. It's worth a shot, don't you think?"

Now, Dana could no longer keep a few tears from dribbling down her cheeks. She found she didn't care as she stuffed the capsule in her bag. "Dr. Falkland, I'm sorry...I...what can I say? I want my Jana back. You're the only one who can help."

They hugged briefly. Falkland placed his hands on Dana's shoulders. "Just get Jana here, Ms. Polansky. We'll take it from there."

Dana swallowed a few sobs, wiped her cheeks and eyes and told herself to suck it up, girl. "You're my last hope. I have to believe this can happen...Ship of Theseus or not. You're my last hope."
Chapter 13

Inside the Mother Swarm

Date: Unknown

Time: Unknown

He felt like he was being smothered. For what seemed like forever, he had been floating around in a warm bath, not a care in the world, then the world constricted itself down to a narrow tunnel and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this curving corridor, first one way, then another, contractions increasing in frequency, smothering him...squeezing him...pressing in so tight he could hardly breathe...until he thought he was going to die but he didn't because at that very moment, the world exploded in light.

Then something slammed into his backside and it hurt like hell and he cried out.

He felt himself turning, squirming and he felt hands all over, pressing and squeezing.

"A fine boy—" a voice said.

Warm wet rags and sponges slithered around his body and before he knew it, he was cleaned up, dried off and firmly wrapped in some kind of cloth. It was so incredibly bright, he had to squint to see anything...mostly there were only forms, snatches of images, a face here, lips, a mouth moving. Someone's lips touched the top of his head.

After this topsy-turvy carnival ride, he was secured in a better place...warm, cuddly, lots of soft sounds, a reassuring heartbeat rhythmically pounding in his ears.

Gradually, over what seemed like hours, his vision improved and things became clearer. A face appeared. A man's face. Somehow he knew it was his father. Jamison Winger. The face had a broad smile and before he knew it, strong hands were lifting him up. Now he was dangling in air—not safe! not safe up here!—he kicked a little and squirmed some more and the hands put him back down after a time, again in the warm, tingling, smothering embrace of soft cloth and thick blankets and sheets.

Bassinet popped into his mind.

His father's face appeared with a broad grin over it. Fingers tickled him under the chin, brushed wisps of hair on his head, poked him in the cheeks and side. Hey! Not so hard, big guy!

Now, his father's mouth was moving...he was saying something...the words, he couldn't quite—

"...very proud...really, it's a miracle...I don't even have words—"

Another voice, a feminine voice, slipped in. "He's got your eyes and my lips...isn't he beautiful--?"

Now, his father bent down, putting his stubbly face right into Johnny Winger's. "I'm proud as I can be...what a day...you passed every test. All the config changes. All the checks...we're done with all that now. A great day, so proud."

The feminine voice: "Go on, give it to him."

His father produced something yellow in his hand and swooped it down into the bassinet, landing it right on top of Winger's chest. His heart was thumping so hard, he thought it might jackhammer its way out of his chest.

It was a toy. A yellow, plastic toy...a model biplane, with wings, wheels, a tail. Winger squinted, reached out to caress the thing. He could just make out Spad on the side and a red, white and blue tricolor. The Lafayette Escadrille.

"Here, John...this is for you—" His father released the model into Johnny's awkward fingers, which promptly dropped the biplane into the covers. That earned a chuckle. The toy was promptly placed back in his grasp.

"With this, you can go anyplace you want. It's like magic."

He fondled the thing for a long time, feeling its smooth texture, its edges, the rubber wheels, the thin edge of the labels and decals. It was cool, but there was much to explore with the biplane. After a time, his fingers groped their way to the tiny plastic figure of the pilot, his jaunty head poking out of the cockpit. There was a helmet, perhaps a scarf, all very interesting, and inside the cockpit, down in the footwell, his fingers eventually found—

The Button!

Without a second thought, Johnny Winger pressed the button. In an eye blink, he was back in the tunnel, whizzing past pyramids and dodecahedrons and polygons and all manner of shapes, hurtling at breakneck speed through a curving corridor, and he thought he would pass out from the g-forces, but finally he came to a rattling, teeth-jarring stop in a blinding light, with a roaring rush of deceleration, landing with a hard bump on his butt.

Jamison Winger had been re-arranging furniture when Johnny pressed the button inside the biplane cockpit. Let's see: chest over there, rocking horse there, my old Navy trunk back there.

He turned back to the bassinet to check on his week-old son and found that Johnny was gone. The bassinet was empty, save for tousled covers and blankets. But he wasn't upset. Not at all. It was the way things were supposed to be.

Jamison Winger just smiled and went on with his re-arrangement of the furniture. He'd done everything he could possibly do for the boy and now he was on his own.
Chapter 14

The Surface of Mercury

Latitude 31 North; Longitude 190 West

Caloris Basin

November 12, 2155 (Earth U.T.)

When Johnny Winger awakened, he was no longer in a child's bassinet in a small wood-frame house in Pueblo, Colorado. Where the hell was he?

He looked around the darkened space. It seemed to be a small room, almost like a closet, but with a very low ceiling. With a start, he realized he was in a bed, a bed that resembled an oblong pod, with a lid on top and bedding below, a container. Images of ANAD containment capsules came to mind.

"Doc, what is this place? Where am I...are we?"

***Analyzing signatures now...this appears to be some kind of containment pod...detecting launch and capture system to your right...temperature and medium controls... interface and comm...Johnny, this is unlike any containment in my memory***

Containment, huh? Winger tried feeling around, noting the solid interior structure, the tight seals. It felt like he was lying in a bed but that could have been just a memory...he'd had lots of memories lately.

"How the hell do I get out?" he asked himself. But before he could poke around to find out, he felt a strong pressure drop. A stiff breeze circled inside the pod and he felt like he was coming apart...it was sucking him toward the port...he tried to fight it but it was like a tornado, scooping him up, throwing him around...his arms his legs his face ...it was all—

Then he was free. The winds died down and forces he couldn't explain pulled him together. He could feel pressure in spots, he was growing a form, some kind of body...in minutes, he looked like a human being again...but he could still feel forces he couldn't explain, winds and breezes and tugs and yanks passing right through his body.

That's when he saw the Shadow Man.

He stood clad in a long robe or shoe-length coat, with a hood pulled up over his head. Inside the hood, he saw no face, only a deep black speckled with occasional pinpricks of lights, like fireflies.

When the Shadow Man spoke, it was like hearing a hundred voices at once, all coming out of a barrel.

"John Winger...you've passed all the tests...this is your final configuration...how do you feel?"

Winger was still examining himself. There are my two hands, my ten fingers, my two arms. I feel like myself, sort of. He could run one hand right through the other, but then he was an angel and he knew that. The outer form was still solidifying, still filling in.

"Kind of cold, I guess. I look kind of pale...feel that way, too. Can you 'feel' pale? Where am I?"

Now the Shadow Man moved his robed arm and the walls opened up. Before, there had been only a dark barrier but now the walls devolved into a sort of semi-transparent membrane and he could see beyond them. Wherever they were, it seemed everything he saw was like a nanobotic mesh. Structures formed and re-formed as if they were fluid things, one flowing into the next.

"This is Caloris Basin, Johnny. You're on the surface of Mercury."

At first, Winger thought he had misheard the Shadow Man. He gathered more photons to see better and found that the Shadow Man was right.

'Outside,' he could see a black sky, with the harsh glare of strong sunlight flooding out much of the ground detail. There were mountains, a few craters, jagged cliffs in the distance. More details came to him, probably from the Shadow Man, in answer to his questions: a large impact basin...1500 kilometers in diameter...crater walls more than two kilometers high...the floor is covered by a lava plain, with radial stripes of ejecta outside the crater walls for hundreds of kilometers...

"Why am I here?" he asked.

The Shadow Man turned to face the great lava plain outside. "The Mother Swarm is coming. She needs the energy of your sun. A great base will be built here to gather that energy...energy for the final assimilation. You will help build that base."

"I don't know anything about building bases."

"What you need to know will be provided. Johnny, you've passed all the tests. Your configuration is in a nearly final state. A few last adjustments...once the base is finished, a great ring will envelop your sun. This ring will direct the sun's energy to receivers here at Caloris Basin. This is very important, Johnny. The Prime Key cannot be finished without it. Assimilation is coming and the Mother Swarm has need of your sun...indeed, all your worlds. It will be as it once was. Now, you must be prepared to receive the final adjustments...the knowledge you will need to help build this installation. "

With that, the Shadow Man waved his arm and Winger felt another breeze tugging at him, blowing right through him. Something was happening, it was like he was being ripped apart, scattered, dissipated. Forces he couldn't explain gathered him and pulled back into the containment pod. He felt light-headed...but he had no head. How could you feel light-headed when—

Doc, I don't know what's happening...everything's getting blurry...I'm getting dizzy....faint...I can't—

The breezes grew stronger. Once, when he was six years old, he and his Dad and brother Brad had been briefly caught in a sudden thunderstorm on Pueblo Lake...late summer that was and the storm fronts sometimes swept down out of the Rockies with a speed and a force that could catch unwary hikers and boaters by surprise. The wind and waves blew their small boat onto its sides, nearly capsizing them. Johnny felt like he was being lifted off the deck, he clung to a rail, ducked his head, heard the unearthly howl of the wind and thought a great beast had come down from the skies. They had barely made it back to the dock when the heavens split open and the deluge came.

This was like that, only it was stronger. The wind was blowing right through him. In the back of his mind, he thought he heard Doc's voice whispering....

***New configs, Johnny...they're loading new files...files being rearranged, re-named...the buffer file might not—"

Then it was dark. And the dark seemed to last an eternity.

When he came to, he seemed to be in the same containment pod. He felt the bedding below, the rumpled sheets, all askew, felt the close top, just beyond his nose. He could almost lick the thing with his tongue, but he had no tongue.

"Doc, is this the same place?'

For a long time, Doc gave him no answer and he was afraid that something had happened. Doc had warned him, right before lights out, that files were being changed, re-named, re-written. Did his file, the Config Buffer Status Check file, survive?

He felt the same. But his coupler remained silent. What had happened to Doc?

Just then, the breezes picked up again. Something was happening, he was being sucked down toward his feet, a port was opening.

Moments later, he had exited the containment pod and was beginning to gather himself into a form that once would have been called Johnny Winger.

His coupler chirped. It was Doc.

***Johnny...is that you...are you there?...I cycled the port...extraction was automatic...I'm detecting familiar signatures, thermals...Johnny--?***

It was the most welcome sound he'd heard in a long time. "Yeah, Doc...it's me. Did you really pull me out of containment? How'd you get outside?"

***I was never in the same containment you were, Johnny...I managed to trigger the launch process by interacting with certain molecule clusters...it works differently from what we use***

"No doubt, Doc...you know, I feel kind of funny. My mind is just swimming with...I don't know, facts, designs, figures, layouts, schematics...it feels like I was some kind of builder or architect."

***Not was, Johnny...you are...the Central Entity has loaded your processor with details of this base they're building...plans, materials, operational details...remember what the Entity said: you're some kind of expediter or overseer***

"But why me? I don't know anything about building a base on the surface of Mercury...except, maybe I do...now...this is weird." He found that by extending his hands and interacting with the molecules of the wall, he could cause the wall to fade slightly, so that he could 'see' outside. Doc had explained it as gathering photons and processing them into some kind of image. ***Your processor does what your eyes and mind used to do, in forming visual images...except now, you can interact directly with the photons.***

He made the wall fade into a sort of translucent veil. Beyond the room they were in, he could see the burning, sun-blasted rockscape of Mercury, of Caloris Basin, ringed with distant mountains, punctuated with smaller craters, hundreds of them scattered like buckshot across the lava plain, and smaller peaks nearby.

He found that just by thinking of all the plans and schematics swimming around in his mind, that the crater surface morphed into vast compound of structures, yet another image but this one of a future construction, construction he had been designated to lead or assist in some way. There were, in his mind's eye, overlaid on the crater floor, domes, and huge antenna fields, excavators and trenches, dishes that looked like parabolic radiotelescopes, tunnels and grids and wireways and transmission towers, all projected onto the crater floor in a sort of 'here's what it should look like' view.

"Doc, I see it...all the parts of the base. Wow...I'm supposed to guide this? I don't know the first thing—"

***But you do, Johnny...I've scanned your processor arrays...every register is full, some overflowing...you have the knowledge, Johnny. The Central Entity gave it to you. You're like a program control module, executing a long-decided, well-thought out overall plan...you know what you have to do with these plans***

Johnny Winger 'blinked' and the overlay of the complex faded away. "You're right, Doc. This stuff is intel...valuable intel. I've got to get it to Quantum Corps. But how? Here I am...stuck on Mercury. How the hell do I get all this to Earth?"

***Johnny...remember what the Central Entity said...this base is designed to gather a fraction of the Sun's energy and that energy will assist the mother swarm when it finally arrives in this region of space. They need a lot of energy to break down planets and moons and assimilate them. That's what this complex is all about. I have detected strong quantum coupler signals from a position beyond those central peaks you see. After analysis, I concluded the swarms that are already here are using a coupler to travel around the solar system***

This puzzled Winger. "A quantum coupler...I don't understand—that's for comms—"

***Think of it like this, Johnny. You and I are now just patterns of atoms. Our patterns are what matters. The atoms can come from anywhere. Why travel back and forth across the solar system by carrying atoms around? Why not just transmit the pattern...and re-assemble the pattern at your destination...with different atoms? As long as the pattern holds and you have some way to impress the pattern on atoms...you can travel as fast as any electromagnetic signal...at the speed of light. Earth to Mercury in less than five minutes***

Winger nodded, though no one could see his head nod because there was no head. John Winger was a collection of nanobots configured to loosely resemble a human being. But he remembered nodding and the instinct was still there.

"That's how we get back to Earth, isn't it, Doc. We beam ourselves back...or at least our patterns. Do you think it'll work?"

***It has to work, Johnny...now to see about getting out of this place***

After some reconnaissance, Doc II announced that they were ensconced in a sort of shelter mounted on top of one of the central peaks inside Caloris Basin. The shelter had ports for entering and departing. Doc found a way to seep through one of the ports.

An hour later, the swarm that might once have been called Johnny Winger, with its embedded Doc II element, was outside the shelter, and drifting like a dust devil across the seared ground of the crater.

For a long time, strong radiation gusts blasted them and made navigation difficult. Doc homed on the intermittent quantum coupler signals and they made their way laboriously across the lava plain, tacking first one way, then another, as radiation storms swept the surface. Winger let Doc do the piloting and tried to come to terms with what they were and where they were.

Jeez, I'm a cloud of bots drifting across the surface of Mercury. This feels like a comic book or a superhero vid. Or maybe just a bad dream.

But it was all too real.

Winger found he was glad that he had no actual body. Human bodies weren't meant to trudge across the surface of Mercury under the baleful eye of the Sun, scoured and flash-fried like meat on a grille. Doc had a difficult time just keeping some semblance of their configuration together. The Sun's radiation was more than powerful enough to strip electrons off every atom in their formation, and make atom junk of what was left.

Finally, they swept around a small knob of a hill and homed on the source of the coupler signals. For good measure, Doc helped Winger form up a visual lens of photons, so he could 'see' their destination.

The structure was a huge dish, with the mount and swivel atop of a low dome. Underground wireway trenches snaked out in several directions, the trench fillings still lightly packed on top of the trenches, so that from above, the installation resembled a bulls-eye, with the dish antenna at the center.

***Now we figure out how to get inside, Johnny, and get our patterns scanned. From here, with the right config pattern, Earth is only five minutes away***

"I want a first-class seat, Doc."

The swarms closed on the antenna compound.

The coupler array was laid out in a roughly triangular fashion. A platform dominated the center of the complex, situated on a low hill. Dish and horn antennas were mounted on top of the platform. Surrounding the antenna farm were half a dozen small egg-shaped structures, almost like small containment pods.

***Johnny, decoherence wake analysis indicates that these pods contain quantum coupler systems...the question is which one to use...I am endeavoring to perform astronomical calculations to see if any of these antenna are pointed to Earth...current ephemerides now loading, adjusting for Mercury's orbital position--***

Winger and Doc paused at the base of the coupler site. In the harsh glare of sunlight, the swarms resembled faint dust clouds drifting on electrostatic currents across the cratered surface.

"Hey, Doc...you know all that special knowledge I'm supposed to have...that the Shadow Man loaded?"

***The Central Entity has downloaded petabytes of files into your processor, Johnny...you have a great deal of knowledge about how this Caloris Basin site is to be built***

"Well, my giant brain tells me that that pod over there—" he meant the pod farthest to the right "—is the one we want. I don't know how I know that. But we should go there."

There was no argument from Doc and the two swarms merged and cruised on their trillions of picowatt propulsors in that direction.

The pod was no bigger than waste basket and was attached to a base partially buried in the regolith. Strands of multi-colored cable snaked out of the pod base toward one of the antennas, several dozen meters away.

They found a port at the top of the pod and gained access that way.

Inside, they followed Doc's deco wake analysis and Winger's crude navigation until they came to a small chamber, resembling an assimilator booth in miniature.

"This is it," Doc," Winger announced. "I'm sure of it."

Both swarms were able to penetrate the scanning chamber in good order. Inside the chamber, they were surrounded by bulb-like projections pointing at them from all directions.

***I am analyzing the layout now, Johnny...trying to determine how to activate scanning functions...and to verify that our patterns will be transmitted along the proper heading....***

Even as he gathered photons to make a visual impression, Johnny Winger somehow 'knew' what to do. From somewhere deep in memory, a file named Initial State Pattern Scan and Buffering surfaced and was loaded into his attention module.

"Doc, I think we just sort of hang around in the center here...see the lights...that's a positioning guide. I think it's mostly automatic, once we do that."

In the center of the chamber, a spherical grid of lights was now projected. The two swarms re-located themselves into the middle of the grid.

That's when things started to happen.

There came a series of light flashes but he felt nothing at first. A faint breeze stirred and he felt himself being steadily pulled apart, dispersed into whispers, echoes, reflections and shadows, then there was nothing.

Five minutes later, the signal bearing the patterns of Johnny Winger and Doc II arrived on Earth.

As a young child, Johnny Winger had always loved taking a bath. Lots of words could describe the feeling: security, serenity, safety, warmth, coccoon. Not words a three-year old would use, but you get the idea.

Thoughts like these and others came to Johnny Winger. He was a little disoriented.

Where am I? What is this?

He remembered being disassembled by Doc III on Europa...the Keeper was there...the cave...the brilliant light....later, the base on Mercury....

He decided to open a coupler link to Doc, then thought better of it.

Somebody else might be listening.

Maybe taking a warm bath as a three-year old wasn't the best way to describe being a few atoms in a larger swarm. Try this: buried under the covers on a cold winter morning. No? How about stumbling about in a darkened bedroom trying to find your slippers? Or: getting separated from your Mom and Dad on the boardwalk at Daytona Beach for three hours, with all the panic and frantic worry. Or: locked in a closet by your big sister, fumbling around with jackets and coat hangers.

Johnny Winger decided to try a more logical approach to figuring this out.

I think, therefore I am. At least, he thought he was thinking. I have a mind. I have thoughts. But there was more. Something more than his thoughts. Was somebody else in here? That was ridiculous.

I have sensations. Hot, cold, hard, soft. Try to analyze this.

A snatch of memory came to him: Personal identity is the unique identity of a person existing through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time.

Where the hell did that come from? I must have read that.

Now, he was sure of it. There was someone else in here. Just a snatch of voice, a snippet—

***Do you recognize me?***

Recognize you? I can barely hear you. Yet, there was something—

An image came to mind. It was fuzzy at first, but with effort, it sharpened. It was a man, an elderly man with a fritz of white hair on the back of his head, rumpled and patched corduroy jacket, hardly-ever-washed jeans.

Doc Frost.

***Hello, Johnny...it's nice to see you again...pardon me for saying so, but you seem a little confused***

Hey, Doc...am I? Am I...you know...?

Doc Frost smiled, that same avuncular smile. ***You're wondering if this is what it feels like...to be an angel...to be part of something greater...we're now back on Earth, Johnny***

Actually, I was...well, yeah...I guess I was sort of wondering that. I thought it would be like being inside a cloud. Or maybe a tornado.

Again the smile, this time even wider.

***It's a transition phase, that's all. Meant to make the change easier. There are many reports about what it's like to be an angel...we've archived all of them. And we use them for others, those who are new to the experience***

So, I'm actually still an angel...wow...what do others say about all this?

***Some reports describe feelings of a kind of warmth, or a closeness, affection, even a form of love, a family or sense of belonging, in a way or at a level they never experienced before, as humans, as Normals***

Yeah, Doc, I do feel some of that. Are these normal feelings?

Doc Frost scrunched up his face, thinking. ***Well, to be honest, Johnny, feelings and emotions are different here. Feelings are programmed in and allotted processor capacity. You know the Central Entity runs all these routines, just as a way of keeping the mother swarm together. Social cohesion, just like a tribe or a clan, is just as important for an angel swarm of bots as for any family of Normals. Just like your family***

So, Doc, will I...always be like this? Can I go places, do things, be other people or things? I've heard—

Doc Frost held up a hand. ***You've got lots of questions, Johnny...I think I can answer most of them, but first I have some instructions for you***

Instructions? What kind of instructions?

Doc Frost seemed to fade slightly, as if a faint mist had drifted between them. The outline of the Doc was still there, just less distinct.

***You're taking a little trip, Johnny. Back home. That's why your patterns have been maintained. You're going into the Net, you can do that now. You've got a special mission...a very important mission***

A mission...what kind of mission? Am I a trooper again?

***In a way...you're going to help defend the Net...Johnny, bad things are happening here. The Central Entity needs the Net...think of it as a nursery, a breeding ground for your brothers and sisters...all angels. They've come from a long way and they need the Net to do their job***

But the Net is just a network of computers...links...software....

Now, the Doc Frost image turned stern, its eyes narrowing and the corners of its mouth turning down. ***Johnny, there are grave threats to the Prime Key, coming from the Net, coming from the node where you will be sent...you're needed to defend this node...many of your brothers and sisters are themselves on a special mission...it's a mission to the Sun...***

Johnny Winger listened carefully to what Doc Frost was saying. He knew the Prime Key was the master algorithm. It drove everything. He readily agreed to what Doc Frost...or what he imagined was Doc Frost...was saying. How could he not? That's what it meant to be an angel...the greater good drove everything.

But this seemed different. Though he was compelled to follow Doc Frost's directives...no angel could say no...he knew there was another mission, unspoken of by Doc Frost. He wanted to link up with Doc III but he was afraid the link would be discovered.

Maybe this wasn't Doc Frost after all. The Shadow Man could take many forms....

He was here to serve the mother swarm but a small part of him understood that the other mission was just as vital...to learn what he could about the Old Ones, gather intelligence and somehow get that intelligence to the Normals...so the blasted thing could be defeated.

It was a struggle between the two missions...serving the mother swarm and gathering intelligence needed to defeat that very same mother swarm. Espionage was like that. Mata Hari and all that. Serving two masters. Slicing yourself ever more finely to feed the appetites of two worlds, hoping and praying that the two worlds would never meet and annihilate each other, like particle and anti-particle.

Somehow, Doc III had been able to deconstruct him and allow him to be absorbed into the mother swarm, yet preserve the essence of what he was, his identity, his memories. Now it was coming back to him...maybe Doc III was letting him draw on that innocuous little file where his memory patterns had been stored.

The basic objective of defeating the Keeper and ultimately the Old Ones was still there, still intact, though he knew now it would be in constant danger from competing directives from the mother swarm. Directives inherent in the program that was now running in his head...in his body...in his everything.

Which side would win out? Even Johnny Winger couldn't answer that. Execute the Prime Key. Smash the bejeezus out of the Prime Key. Those were his options. There was no middle ground. But somehow, he had to find a way.

He felt himself moving, moving physically. It brought back a memory...riding the Wicked Witch on the boardwalk at Daytona. Jerks and rolls and snap turns...his neck had been sore for hours. Or maybe it was like when he got to ride in a real race car at Talladega...some kind of Fans Day on the speedway and you just about threw up because the fences were flashing by so fast.

No, that wasn't quite it either. This was different. But he decided to relax and let this odd sense of motion come to him...what else could you do? When a pitcher threw a baseball, the atoms that made up the baseball didn't have a debate about where to go.

Johnny Winger had a dilemma. The human being that had once been called Johnny Winger was now a dematerialized cloud of bots, what most people would call an angel. He was circulating around the Net, surfing bytes and packets and he knew he had a mission, a mission assigned by no less than The Shadow Man himself. His assigned mission was simple: to fight and defeat the Normals and all their defensive packets and tricks, who didn't yet realize just who or what they were dealing with.

It was just like a fist fight in a sleet storm, this combat down at the level of atoms. As an atomgrabber and a nanotrooper for years, Winger had worked with ANAD systems and driven bots through every kind of environment you could think of, including solid rock. Now he was one of them, living and fighting with the molecules that made up this crazy, roller-coaster world.

It was better than riding the Cyclone at Daytona Beach.

"Doc, maybe Liam was right, maybe you or your ancestors were right...this is cool stuff. It's a little bit like swimming uphill, or tacking against strong winds in a sailboat, but once you get the hang of it, it's a real head trip."

Doc chimed through on the coupler circuit. ***Multi-config is the way to go, Johnny...we've always maintained there's nothing like it...***

Winger found maneuvering through the packet stream inside the Net was something like fighting currents in the ocean. As a child, he remembered riding the waves on a board, tumbling end for end as the waves broke into a crescendo of foam and slammed him headfirst into the sand. You could fight the currents or you could flow with the currents. Just dodging the speedway of cotton balls was tricky enough, for that's what the packet stream seemed like to him.

Doc III chimed in again. ***General, long-range scan is detecting a point source of thermals...plus electromagnetic signatures suggesting a large formation nearby...estimating approximately seven thousand microns...***

With his own and Doc's patterns now stable, Winger made sure they were heading in the right direction The packet stream seemed to be flowing without problem. It was time to climb off the cotton-ball train and exit the Net.

Johnny Winger set his propulsors for the nearest node. Doc III had given him a vector and he made up the distance in a few minutes. From a tactical map in memory, he knew this node, Node 3371, was inside a small room called Server Bank Eight. It was the office suite of UNSAC, in the Quartier-General, Paris. He closed on the node and pushed through the connector grid, flowing out of the lines and into a cool, equipment-filled space crammed with server racks, cabinets, and bundles of wire and cable strewn around.

Johnny Winger toggled configuration C-2 and began slamming atoms to gather himself into something more closely resembling a human being, what the bots had long called a Normal. You had to laugh at that. What was normal and what wasn't now? Everything in existence was made up of atoms. Some configurations just had more atoms than others.

The process took about five minutes. When it was done, there stood alongside the rack containing server node 3371 an angel being that closely resembled Johnny Winger. In fact, it was Johnny Winger in all the ways that mattered...memory, identity, habits and thoughts. Doc III had seen to that.

Now it was time to see to his real mission...what he had come here for.

He sensed a dense form nearby...likely a Normal...and configged his photon lens to bring the form into clarity, probing ahead for thermal, electromagnetic and acoustic signatures.

It was a human. It was Angelika Komar, Security Affairs Commissioner for UNIFORCE.

Komar's face was pale and a scream was even then forming in the back of her mouth.

She lunged for an alarm button on her desk, to notify Security---how the hell did this thing get in here? But Johnny Winger had anticipated her reaction and already a tendril of bots had reached out to divert her hand away from the button.

"Madam Commissioner...I don't think you want to do that."

Komar swallowed her scream and looked at the bots swirling around her wrist. She yanked her arm back in horror.

"Who are you? What are you? And how the hell did you get in here?"

Winger waited a few more seconds, while the angel's form began filling out, allowing UNSAC to get a better look at what he was.

"I think you know who I am."

Komar rested her hands lightly on top of her desk, keeping her eyes glued to the apparition materializing in front of her. "You know it's a Class A violation to pass level one security barriers...whoever you are...you won't get away with this."

"Madame Commissioner, look...use your eyes. What do you see?"

Komar glared back. "Someone who looks like General John Winger. Mister, either you're a ghost or something I ate last night, or you're one hell of a good simulation of one the greatest atomgrabbers the world has ever known."

Winger attempted a smile, but angel smiles sometimes looked like grimaces. "General John Hubbard Winger, at your service. I'm probably the only angel who doesn't have wings...but some have called me Wings, over the years."

That made Komar flinch. "It must have been those peppers I had...this can't be happening."

Now Winger was growing impatient. ANAD and Doc were right. Normals are so thick.

"Madame Commissioner, I'll get right to the point. I am John Winger—"

Komar was shaking her head. "That can't be. It's a matter of historical record that General Winger was killed on Europa...the Jovian Hammer mission, what was it? Thirty years ago. This is some kind of projection...somebody's idea of a joke.":

"Oh, no, Madame Commissioner...may I call you Angelika?...it's no joke. You're partly right. Winger was actually consumed by a big swarm in an ice cave on Europa. It was a Keeper swarm. Only he didn't die. He was just...shall we say, re-arranged."

"What do you want?"

Winger filled in a few details, including personal matters he knew only Winger would know. Komar was skeptical, but he could see her doubts slowly melting away.

"Do I have to spell it out for you, Angelika? It's called espionage. Or maybe reconnaissance is a better word. I'm inside the mother swarm. Inside the bosom of the Old Ones. And somehow, don't ask me to explain how, I've been given access to information about what's coming."

Komar's fingers were inching toward the alarm button again. Of course, Winger saw it. He detached part of his own swarm and UNSAC soon found her fingers wrapped up tight like a ghostly bandage, secured to the desk top. She squirmed a bit, but too much struggle was undignified and she sat back in disgust.

"You're not pressing that alarm button. Not just yet. Not until you hear and see what I have to show you."

"And what's that?"

Now the Winger swarm spalled off a few trillion more bots from its arms and swirled them into a photon lens. The faint sparkling mist of the lens worked like a 3-d projector, hovering right over Komar's desk. It downloaded files of more photons from Winger's processor and beamed them at the desktop.

"You just lost two ships a few weeks ago trying to set up a shield. Believe me, the Bugs know all about that. The idea was okay but the execution sucked. You should have checked your cargo holds a little more closely."

Komar grimaced. "I lost nearly a hundred good people on that mission. Herschel and Pegasus...my God, you didn't actually—"

"It wasn't me, Commissioner. In fact, I tried to warn your people...I've already paid a visit to Lamar Quint. He didn't believe me either. Now watch—"

The photon lens began its projection. It was a display in miniaturized 3-d of the Caloris Basin complex. The base was still under construction...but Winger had been anointed chief expediter by the Shadow Man and he had the plans. Now, Komar stared in disbelief.

"The surface of Mercury. Commissioner, contact Farside. Tell them to train their instruments on the Caloris Basin. I'm talking Mercury...you know, the planet? You'll find that the facility I'm showing you here is already building."

Komar leaned forward, wincing against the firm grip the bots had on her left hand, curious and intrigued by the details of the projection. "These look like schematics. Plans. This is being built now?"

"As we speak. Check with Farside. I had access to these plans and I brought them here. UNIFORCE...Frontier Corps...somebody...needs to stop this base from being built. The Bugs are planning on using this base to oversee installation of a big ring that'll surround the Sun, gather a boatload of the Sun's energy. All that energy is collected, stored and converted at this base. The Bugs plan to use it to help them in their...er, mission."

"And just what is that mission?"

Winger felt like he was explaining things to a five-year old. "To assimilate...us, everything, the works, the whole enchilada. The planets, all the moons, the Earth, for heaven's sake. Put this base out of commission, or keep it from being built, and the Bugs have a problem...don't you get it, Angelika? I swiped their bible...their ten commandments and now I'm turning it over to you."

But the engineer in Komar wanted to know more about the facility. "What are all these domes and structures?"

A bit impatiently, Winger went over the details. "I'm not making this up. Here's the command and operations center for the Sun Ring. These domes are for energy management. Here's the excavator and processor...they use the energy to dig up regolith and shoot if off into space around the sun with this catapult...it'll be manipulated by a gazillion bots into a collector ring around the Sun. Here are the rectenna fields for receiving and converting all that energy the Ring sends back. And this—"Winger indicated the quantum coupler array. "—this is how I got back to Earth."

He explained how he and Doc had used the array to scan their swarm config and pattern and beam the data back to earth, whereupon the patterns self-assembled back into the Winger configuration. It was clear that Angelika Komar wasn't buying any of it.

"So what do you want me to do?"

Winger wanted to throttle the woman but he desisted. "Act! Do something! I'm a spy and I've got the enemy's plans. Remember your ancient history...I'm the Enigma machine and this is Hitler's big scheme."

"You have more?"

"Oh, I have lots more." Now Winger pinched off a small subset of his own body swarm and orchestrated a small animation. The bots swirled and flickered until the visual had fully formed, hovering mid-air right over Komar's desk. "I haven't been idle. This is something called a sun ring. It's intended to coordinate with the Caloris Basin facility...just watch—"

The visual flickered and eventually settled down into an image of the Sun, the solar disk throwing off prominences and loops of fire. As Komar watched, the Sun grew steadily dimmer. Soon, it was apparent that a faint spherical veil had grown around the sun, thickening and blotting out the glow of the Sun until at the end, the brightness of the Sun had dropped by half. It was like looking up at the Sun through a dense morning fog.

"Some kind of fog?" Komar asked.

"I made some notes..." Winger told her. "...from what I found out." He let a portion of the bots forming the animation re-form into a few lines of text, the words forming next to the Sun as if some god were annotating the scene.

Komar squinted, then stood up to see better as she fixed her specs to read:

The purpose of the Sun Ring is two-fold: (a) to obstruct sunlight reaching the Earth and hasten the changes required by the Prime Key (especially Module 2 (Reconfiguration) and Module 3(Evolution)); and (b) to gather all available energy for Prime Key Module 4 (Integration) so as to enable final disassembly and absorption of all solar system bodies as feedstock into the mother swarm of the Old Ones.

The Sun Ring is called a ring but it's really a sphere.

The Sun Ring is primarily constructed from materials (feedstock) excavated and processed on Mercury at the Caloris Basin facility, then catapulted by mass driver into position around the Sun. The Ring orbits the Sun at approximately the position of Mercury.

Physically, the Ring is intended to be an enormous spherical structure composed primarily of nanobots, with some unprocessed materials interspersed. The bots are linked like a mesh. Their purpose is to intercept photons of light from the Sun and convert this light into other forms of electromagnetic energy, which is then transmitted for storage to Caloris Basin. The operational concept is totally different from human solar / photovoltaic cells. The Ring is much more than a sphere of solar cells. The individual elements are robotic in nature, thus programmable, configurable, etc. The Sun Ring is the energy source for the mother swarm to complete the Prime Key, upon its arrival in our solar system. The final phase of the Prime Key is Integration. Re-evolved Earth life forms will be fully absorbed into the Mother Swarm. Once this process is done, the Earth and all planetary objects in the Solar System will be disassembled to provide feedstock for the Mother Swarm, to continue its advance across the galaxy. In other words, the Petri dish is destroyed and the lab/incubator shut down. The Imperative drives the Mother Swarm onward.

The main purpose of the Caloris Basin facility is to provide feedstock for the Sun Ring, control positioning, configuration, operations, and maintenance, and handle energy conversion and storage from the output of the Ring. Thus the Sun Ring and Caloris Basin base are mutually supporting facilities and critical to the Old Ones in preparing the solar system for its ultimate fate.

Even a little diminishing of sunlight reaching the Earth, which would occur in the earliest stages of constructing the Sun Ring, will have serious effects on Earth, obstructing much of the Sun's energy from reaching Earth, accelerating the elimination of life forms on Earth, and ending or diminishing interference with the Keeper. This interference is preventing the Keeper from directing and coordinating the seeding of Earth with the progenitors of new nanobotic life, in readiness for the arrival of the Central Entity in year 2155.

The animation began to dissolve and Komar sat back down, wondering if she had dreamed the whole thing. She watched for a few moments, as the last wisps of the animation dissolved, the bots drifting back to recombine with the swarm of the Winger angel.

"Okay, General, I'll take your word for this. Let's say, for argument's sake, that you are some kind of strange version of John Winger. That I'm not imagining all this and it's not the result of all those peppers I ate for dinner. You say you're a spy inside the big bug cloud out there. You've got all this information. Now you want me to act on it. Do something."

"Yes, exactly," Winger implored. Jeez, what do I have to do...slap her across the mouth? "Form an expedition or something. Bombard this place on Mercury. Commissioner, I can't stay here much longer...I'm under surveillance...I'm sure of it. I've shown you what's coming. Now it's up to you to get going."

Komar gave that some thought. "Assuming I'm not insane, the logical next step would be to convene a staff meeting. The General Staff needs to know what you've shown me. You know how UNIFORCE works, General. We'd don't pick our noses without a staff meeting."

At that same moment, Winger felt a small chime in the back of his mind, an alarm sound. It was a pre-arranged signal from Doc III. It was bad news.

***Incoming, Johnny...watch what you say here...I'm detecting changes in the quantum signal to noise ratio...could be extra harmonics on the carrier wave***

Winger said simply, "Right. I will-""

Komar looked confused. "What was that? I didn't quite catch—"

"Commissioner, I've given you enough to get started. There'll be more...I just can't say when—" Already, Johnny was letting his own config disperse. Right before Komar's eyes, the apparition was dematerializing, thinning out.

"Wait...what are you doing...where are you--?"

But Winger figured he and Doc had tempted fate long enough. Any longer and the Shadow Man would find out what they were up to.

He dissolved his config and the form that had been 'Johnny Winger' to UNSAC was gone, now just a few scattered atoms. On propulsor, the master nanobot that was now Winger headed back to the server room down the hall, intending to penetrate Node 3371 and use the Net to make a few more stops.

He seeped into the room known as Server Bank Eight and slipped past the connectors and pins into the guts of the Node. It was like an on-ramp to a freeway. Packets whizzed past like freight trains of cotton balls.

But before he could jump in and ride the roller-coaster that was WorldNet, he felt a force tugging him in another direction. Instead of diving into the river of cotton balls, he was lifted over the packet stream. He was turned end for end, thinking this should be making me dizzy, then he found himself hurtling down an odd curving corridor at breakneck speed, a corridor not of cotton balls but of polygons and tetrahedrals and dodecahedrons. He had been here before and he knew, with a deep feeling of dread, where he was going.

He came to landing on his rump with a hard bounce. He didn't have to open his eyes. The smell alone came to his nose and he knew where he was.

Back at the fishing camp at Ford's Creek.

His father, Jamison Winger, was standing over top of him, arms crossed with that look...the look that meant that bad times were coming.

"I'm very disappointed in you, son. But I suppose you know that already."

Indeed he did. Once, when his son was five, Jamison Winger had caught Johnny in the barn out back of the house that served as a workshop, just tinkering, messing up parts and drawings, plugging in the guts of old Bailey the drone into a socket and frying the bot's processor to a crisp. Mr. Winger had been re-programming the drone and had been working on special capabilities, as he called them, making Bailey into a real hot rod.

Johnny had earned several days of punishment for that, including no Net, no friends, you only come out of your room for meals and bathroom or when I say so.

Now Jamison Winger had that same look...the squinting eyes, the mouth set just so, the hard face cold as a granite slab.

Winger hung his head. "Yes, sir."

The card game was over. There was no one else around. No Hugh, no Jim or Shorty. Not even a Shadow Man.

"I had very high hopes for you, Johnny. You passed all the tests. You did well, really you did and we were so proud of you. But now—" Mr. Winger just shook his head sadly. Johnny couldn't bring himself to look up and be in the glare of those spotlight eyes once more...he'd never been able to endure that.

Winger knew perfectly well that the apparition before him wasn't his father. It was a cloud of bugs done up to look like Jamison Winger. He didn't know if it was the Shadow Man or the Central Entity or...really, it didn't matter. The thing looked like his father, talked like his father. It pushed all the right buttons. And Winger reacted as if it were his father...almost like he was programmed. Provide this input—the stare, the tone of voice, the lifted eyebrows—and get that output: the lowered face, the mumbled answers, the sweaty palms.

"Haven't we always tried to provide a good home for you, Johnny?"

"Yes, sir."

"And don't you know how much your mother and I love you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why do you keep doing this? We're very disappointed in you, Johnny. We always expected better of you."

The whole conversation was like following a checklist of his worst memories...times he'd upset his father, made him mad, made him glare at his son with those eyes. Point number one...followed by point number two and don't forget about point number three. That was when he'd followed some wicked sense of curiosity and poked around his Dad's barn cum lab cum workshop, turning gizmos on and off, plugging stuff in and nearly setting the whole place on fire. It was a kid's curiosity, for heaven's sake. I'm your son...I'm part of you...what else do you expect?

Johnny Winger was forced to re-live each and every way he had disappointed his father, from the earliest times to...

And the end result: Johnny promised his Dad that he would never do any of these things again, never work against him again. He'd be a good boy, a dutiful son and always strive, in every way, to do just what his Dad wanted and expected him to do.

Only the faint voice of Doc III, whispering away in the back of his mind, grounded him in the fact that this was some kind of simulation. This wasn't real at all.

***Don't make the promise, Johnny...don't do it...they're in control of your head and your memories...they may have found us out, they may have infiltrated the file, corrupted...don't do it, Johnny***

His father continued to talk, to bring up things that should never have been brought up, re-living disappointments almost as if he were following a script, which of course he was. Winger tried to filter all of it out and concentrate on what Doc III was telling him. That was real. That was the connection that must never be broken.

It was like having a battle with yourself. That was the hardest part. Somehow, he'd have to do what Liam and Dana and millions of others hadn't been able to do. Win that battle and save the small kernel of his own identity, his own memories that Doc III had managed to squirrel away in a small file somewhere in his config manager, to live another day.

The Normal part of him was just a few bytes at the end of that file.

But it was the only human part left. And that was the part that had to survive. And now, Doc was saying that maybe, just maybe, that part was corrupted too.

He knew he was caught in a dilemma. He could allow UNISPACE to mount an expedition against Caloris Basin and hopefully interfere with, damage or even destroy the base and the Sun Ring, thus preventing the Prime Key from being completed. Or he could assist UNISPACE and UNIFORCE to defend Earth and incur even greater wrath from his 'father.' He knew this wasn't Jamison Winger. This was the Shadow Man manipulating his memories like a puppet-master, jerking his feelings this way and that, for purposes he could only dimly perceive.

He just couldn't seem to stand up to the emotional roller-coaster they were putting him through. When you were an angel, a para-human swarm entity with a master processor, whoever programmed the processor was in charge. You did what the code said do. Even if the processor contained a small non-descript file called Configuration Buffer Status Check that tried to alter the code, block the code from being executed, the master processor seemed to have ways around the blockage, alternate routes to execute the code.

Johnny Winger knew he had to make a decision—and soon—whichever way he went. Either way, it was going to be a painful decision.
Chapter 15

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@dana.polansky.solnetworldview

November 15, 2155

2300 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

"Last Minute Deal with the Devil?"

Solnet Special Report correspondent Dana Polansky reports from UNIFORCE Headquarters on rumors that an official negotiating team has been formed to seek terms and accommodation with the Entity operating the vast cloud that is even today moving further and deeper into our solar system...

"Good evening from UNIFORCE Headquarters in Paris. The QG is located in the fifth arrondisement of this great city, just off the Boulevard St. Michel. As you can see, as we pan up, it's a rather unique structure, in fact one of the tallest in the City of Light...seventy-five stories in all, with a flower-petal design at the apex and a twist in its vertical columns. The engineers tell me that the 'twist' is there to help stabilize the building against winds and earthquakes...makes it extremely strong and resistant to stresses like this, so they tell me.

"In just a few minutes, we're going to have an interview with Ms. Angelika Komar, the Security Affairs Commissioner. Generally known by the acronym UNSAC, Commissioner Komar is responsible for running all UNIFORCE operations. We'll be asking her some questions about these rumors of a negotiating team...just follow me inside...."

The view shifts to a moving image, in fact to a tiny hummingbird-like dronecam, as Polansky enters the Quartier-General, scans her way through multiple levels of security, takes a high-speed lift to the seventieth floor office suite of UNSAC and is ushered inside by black and gold uniformed staff officers who smile at the reporter and her hovering dronecam as if jagged rods had been permanently inserted up their rectums.

As she waited for the Commissioner to finish an unexpected phone call, Dana tried to keep her emotions in check. She knew that her daughter Jana had assimilated and somehow wound up on a Frontier Corps ship involved in the Earthshield project. She knew the Herschel had been destroyed in a catastrophic explosion and that Jana was lost. But she also knew she was getting 'visitations' from Jana and she wondered: is it possible for an angel to survive such an explosion and somehow make its way back to Earth? She tried not to hope for too much... her logical side said this was all nonsense. And she did have a job to do.

Girl, just get a grip, already...

Komar rises from the vast expanse of her desk, smiles a political smile and gestures for Polansky to have a seat on a small settee next to a smoldering fire in a nearby hearth. Komar situates herself primly in an overstuffed wing chair opposite Polansky. Tea and coffee service appears and is laid out on a table between them.

"Good evening, Madame Commissioner. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us tonight."

Komar offers the 'UNIFORCE smile' that Dana has seen on everybody's face from the first floor security shack to UNSAC's office. It's an uncomfortable rictus-like leer, almost as if invisible pins were holding the edges of her lips back, as might happen in a dentist's office. The more she saw the forced 'grin,' the more it made her shiver.

"Of course, Ms. Polansky...may I call you Dana? UNIFORCE wants to be as forthcoming with our citizens as possible, given the gravity of the current situation."

Jeez, gravity doesn't seem to affect your lips, lady.

"Madame Commissioner, let me get right to the point for our viewers. There are rumors and reports—have been for days now—that UNIFORCE is working with the Secretary-General to create a negotiating team for seeking some kind of accommodation with the...er, aliens, entities, that are moving into our solar system. Can you comment on this for our audience?"

Now, Komar's smile faded slightly. The programmed arc straightened out into a more normal, almost thoughtful tightening of her lips.

"Ms. Polansky, I'm not sure what your sources are for this information but—"

"Madame Commissioner, my sources prefer to remain anonymous but they have always been reliable, even impeccable. Could you comment on these reports?"

Komar's eyes narrowed and she regarded Dana as she might have regarded a bug to be squashed. Then a faint smile crossed her lips.

"Very well, Ms. Polansky...this news will be public in a few days anyway. Your sources are correct. A negotiating team is being formed, even as we speak. Not here. In New York."

Dana swallowed an urge to fist pump her success. "Can you be more specific? Where will the negotiations be held? Who will represent us? And the aliens, the Old Ones...who do you expect to be negotiating with...after all, the scientists say this cloud, this formation, is nothing but a swarm of bots, from all analyses I've seen."

Komar turned her chair slightly to be able to gaze out the window. It was late but the City of Light was ablaze with light and swarms of jetcabs and tourist flyers buzzed the Eiffel Tower like moths to a light.

"The meetings are to be held in Nairobi, Kenya. It's near one of the Sanctuaries...the East Africa Sanctuary and we think Symborg himself will represent the other side. Nairobi's still Normals territory but it's close to Kipwezia."

"Symborg? I thought Symborg was—"

Komar held up a hand. "So did we. He hasn't been seen in a few years. UNIFORCE Intelligence believed he had returned to Kipwezia, that he had been absorbed or whatever it is they do, into the Config Zero formation...we don't really know. But through our contacts in the East Africa Sanctuary, we've learned that Symborg will be the 'face', as it were, of the Old Ones. The face of our adversary."

Dana's head spun with questions. "And who will be representing the UN, the Normals?"

Now, Komar turned back and leveled an even gaze at Polansky. "I will. My team leaves for Africa at dawn tomorrow."

Special Report Ends

Dana Polansky could not excuse herself and rush out of UNSAC's office any faster than she did. The chittering dronecam could barely keep up and Dana soon forgot completely about the thing.

Nairobi? Symborg? The Church of Assimilation? The Sanctuaries? Somehow some way, she had to be there. This was going to be the greatest story of all time and Dana Polansky meant to be right in the middle of it.

And while she was there, she figured to do some inquiring about Jana. It was just possible, if she could get an exclusive interview with the character, that Symborg could help her find her Jana.

Dana told herself not to get her hopes up. Still as she threw piles of clean clothes into her luggage and then hailed a taxi to Charles de Gaulle Skyport , she couldn't help but wonder.

If there was any chance to bring Jana back to the world of Normals, she meant to find it.

Nairobi, Kenya

November 16, 2155

0915 hours

To Dana Polansky, the city of Nairobi looked from the air like one of Jana's cereal bowls, maybe from when she was five years old. There was a grid of streets and trees in the middle, arranged like soggy corn flakes in her mind's eye. The bowl was a rim of mountains with the Ngong Hills to the west and Kilimanjaro and Kipwezi poking through the clouds to the south. The crack of the Great Rift Valley angled down from the northeast, right through the heart of the city...toast crumbs marching across the table. And to the east, the sere brown veldt country of east Kenya, scuff marks on the table from years of spoon and fork banging.

Dana smiled ruefully. Jana was down there somewhere. She knew it. She felt it. I'm coming, honey. I'll find you and get you the hell out of here. One way or another.

The hyperjet bearing Dana Polansky and her foreign reporting team swung around for final approach to Jomo Kenyatta Airport. The jet kissed the tarmac of Runway 16 Left and whined to a halt at the jetway connected to the main concourse.

The first round of negotiations were set to open in a mansion located in a compound at Milimani, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The great green sward of Uhuru Park wrapped its manicured landscape around the mansion, where the President of Kenya, Julius Akamba, had lived ever since returning from exile on Mars. Through beveled glass windows of the airport main terminal and atrium, the great snowy slopes of Mount Kipwezi could be seen in the distance.

Dana and her crew, reporter Gary Leland and dronecam operator Lily Vogt, caught a taxi, called a matatu in Nairobi, and noticed a small vid was showing on the display in the front seat. The driver was a thin goateed Masai immigrant, but the matatu didn't need drivers...it drove itself. The 'driver' was there only to answer questions and act as tourguide.

It was a feed from NKS, a newsdrone hovering over Uhuru Park, while a reporter named Julia Nyere narrated.

"...a big rally...lots of street people...Assimilationists have turned out...a new kind of fab...."

"What's going on?" Dana asked.

"Some kind of rally," the driver offered. "They're showing off some new kind of fab, looks like—"

A newsdrone moved in for a close up. Dana heard Lilly smirk from the back seat at how jerky the image was.

"Must be a rookie," she muttered.

The Uhuru Park bazaar was slammed with people and as the drone flew lower into the crowd, it made a series of dizzying stops and turns. It was like fighting swirling ocean currents to move anywhere. The bazaar was loud and chaotic, filled with smoke and pungent smells—the high-octane odor of masala tobacco was especially strong at the Garden Street entrance—and the air was thick with loose nano, clouds of bots mingling with incense, opium and scores of cooking oil fires. Vendors hawked grapes and mangoes, bananas and fabricator shells of every type, vials of rogue DNA called twist hung from clothes lines strung up between light poles and dilapidated tents. Women in sarongs with black teeth from chewing betel nuts zipped and weaved through the labyrinth balancing huge baskets on their heads, baskets filled with everything from buffalo patties to rebuilt matter compilers for the fabs that were on sale everywhere.

Slowly, the drone made its way through the crowds, with reporter Julia Nyere right behind, narrating...across a jammed plaza thick with bikes, carts, cattle and donkeys. A large tent surrounded on three sides with tables and benches dominated the center of the park. Flat screen displays hanging from poles flickered down on the crowd, with images of Bollywood action pics counterpointed by plaintive plucking from a mandolin player nearby. In the center of a knot of yelling, shoving, jeering customers, a swarthy man in a turban and dark green kaftan pecked at a keyboard. All around the park, throbbing globs of nanobotic swarms swelled and gyrated to the music. Masala smoke was thick and acrid in the air.

On a makeshift stage at the edge of the crowd, a man with a microphone was exhorting the gathering, making his pitch to buy the newest and latest fabs.

"Isn't that Kwame Kavaii?" Dana asked, studying the screen. She put a cursor over the image and an ID window popped up:

Nanobotic simulacrum of Kwame Kavaii...Kenya's Ambassador to the UN

"An angel," said Gary Leland. "And a damn good one. What the hell's he doing at a rally at Uhuru Park?"

Lilly Vogt pointed to the display, noting some of the signs and banners draped around the gathering. "Assimilationists...see the signs?"

Below the stage with its gesticulating angel impresario, a turbaned vendor ran a demo in front of the crowd. He was a small man, desert burning in his eyes, as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Presently, he stopped and noticed a very young child, a small girl, standing shyly a few meters away from the stage, playing hide and seek in the folds of her mother's loose sarong.

The vendor, who sported a thick black moustache, beckoned repeatedly to the young girl. After a few minutes, her mother relented and let her child go. The girl inched her way into the clearing and stood in front of the vendor's table, to applause and approving shouts and chants from the crowd.

The vendor's name was Samson Ndinka. The newsdrone overlaid a descriptor block about the vendor on the feed: Luo tribe, resides in Kibera, the world's largest slum. Ndinka reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a trinket for the young girl. He handed it to her and she took it, shyly, turning the small cylinder over and over in her hand.

"You have a djinn in that cylinder, little one," Ndinka announced, loudly enough for all to hear. "A very powerful spirit. He can grant you any wish you want. Make a wish, child, and the djinn will bring it to you, right here—"

The girl's name was Menaka and she had huge brown eyes. Sad eyes, thought Dana. Behind her, Lilly, the Solnet dronecam operator, was appraising the visuals of the rally with a critical eye, imagining how she would do better.

Menaka twirled the cylinder as Ndinka had shown her and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she stopped twirling the cylinder, she felt it vibrate and was so startled, she dropped the cylinder to the dirt.

Instantly, the device was enveloped in a fine mist, a sparkling mist that billowed out and upward, swirling about the clearing in front of Ndinka and his tables like a miniature cyclone. Gasps and shouts erupted from the crowd, and the spectators shoved back against each other, to give this growing apparition greater distance. On the stage, Kavaii's angel gave a showman's flair to the spectacle.

"Now see what the young child has conjured for us—"

The mist gradually materialized into the faint outline of a man's upper body, with a recognizable face, shoulders and arms crossed in front.

The 'djinn' then spoke out loud. "Little one, I have come from the clouds above to grant you a great wish. Make your wish now—" The djinn's voice was a deep bass profundo, so deep it rattled the beaded curtains that covered Ndinka's merchant tent behind them.

Menaka stared wide-eyed, mouth open, at the apparition. She was speechless.

"Go ahead, child," urged Ndinka. "The djinn wishes you to make a wish."

Shouts of encouragement and support came from the crowd. Gradually, Menaka worked up enough nerve. Shy, haltingly, she asked for a new matatu for her father.

"His bus is broken down, Great One," she murmured. "It's the tires. They are bad. The bus is our livelihood. Father needs a new matatu to carry the tourists."

The deep voice rumbled again, a little reverberation adding to the sense of barely contained powers.

"As you have spoken, child...so shall it be—"

At that moment, the swirling, twinkling apparition of the djinn dissolved into a maelstrom of churning, roiling clouds, streaked with flashes of light. It was like watching a thunderstorm in miniature, from the inside.

The crowd murmured and moved back uneasily.

When the storm began to subside, the barest outlines of a structure could be seen enveloped in the thick fog. The fog dissolved, slowly at first, then with speed, to reveal the front hood and doors of a new minibus. Its wheels dripped with moisture and sunlight shone from the supple leather seats inside.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then erupted into cheers and gasps. Menaka stared wide-eyed at the new matatu, inching her way forward to tentatively put a finger along the fender, tracing the smooth curve of the metal.

For fun, Ndinka reached inside the driver's side window and honked the horn a few times, startling everyone. The crowd laughed.

"You see what a gift the great djinn has brought you, little one. The djinn I have in my possession can do the same for every one of you." Ndinka pointedly stared at each face in the front row of the circle of onlookers. "Such a powerful djinn, such a powerful servant is available to you, today, right now, for a very special price. You will not believe the deal I can make for you. My friends, you cannot leave this bazaar without experiencing what this amazing servant can do for you—the Assimilationists have brought this wonder to Uhuru Park just for today--"

Dana Polansky clucked with reluctant approval.

"Not bad nano, if you ask me. Config changes were quick. He managed to hide some of the frizziness with smoke."

Gary Leland nodded. "A little clunky in the conversion, if you ask me. But showmanship trumps everything. Like a magician...he kept their attention away from the nuts and bolts."

Dana spoke to the taxibot. "Take us to Langata House. We're covering a conference."

The taxi sped off down Kenyatta Avenue and was soon pulling up in front of the mansion ensconced in its park-like setting. As they got out with their gear, they spied another vehicle, this one a black limousine, pulling into the circular drive between ornate stone gates. Bronze lions topped each gate. Langata House was a holdover from the colonial era of British occupation. Now it was a hotel and convention center. Two people got out and went inside, a man and a woman, both diplomats, Dana surmised.

For Nigel Mosely and Gabrielle Antonini, official duty in the city of Nairobi, Kenya was surely as close to paradise as either one was likely to get this side of the pearly gates. Both diplomats climbed out of the taxi at the front entrance of the Langata House and took a long look around, getting their bearings.

It was a perfect east African afternoon in the city under the sun. A huge fountain, the Nyere Falls, splashed spumes of water a hundred meters in the air, forming a rainbow of color that framed the old house in front of a small peninsula, jutting from the banks of the Nairobi River. Early afternoon pedestrians sauntered along the quay and the waterfront behind the mansion, stopping at small cafes and art and book shops, while single-masted sail craft dotted the placid, gently burbling waters of the river. Behind the stacked pancakes of Times Tower at the Kenyatta Conference Center, the snow-capped summit of Kilimanjaro made a picture frame landscape suitable for any would-be painter.

But the two UN officials had little time to admire the scenery. They were nearly late for a luncheon meeting at the mansion. It was a critical meeting, critical for the UN and for the course of what the media had begun to call the Final War. Moseley and Antonini hustled inside the Langata House and were quickly seated in a private dining salon, an intimate room with a picturesque view of the riverside. There, they ran into UNSAC herself, in the person of Angelika Komar. UNSAC would be heading up the negotiations, if they could be called that.

Mosely checked the time. "Isn't this conference supposed to start at noon? Where the hell are the Bugs?"

A nearby aide checked his wristpad. "Just arriving at the main entrance, sir. It...they...will be here in a few moments."

Mosely sipped at some wine. "What do we call these bugs? "

Gabrielle Antonini was a severe woman, with a tight bun of hair and black-frame glasses. An eye-pad clung like a fly to one stem of her glasses. She was obviously studying something scrolling down her viewer. "Officially, we call them para-human swarm entities, ANAD-style nanobotic devices. "

Mosely snorted. "Bugs, if you ask me."

At that moment, the entrance to the dining salon was filled with a buzzing sound. A thin fog seemed to fill the entrance, veined with sporadic pops and flashes of light. The fog curled and flowed into the room, vaguely resembling a human form, though it was translucent, like smoke. It drifted serenely into the salon and headed for the table.

In spite of himself, Nigel Mosely rose and stood at his seat.

A doorman made the announcement. "The Entities from Config Zero are arriving...."

More fog banks flowed into the room. There seemed to be three separate swarms, though you couldn't always tell. Mosely smirked faintly at Antonini, whose eyebrows were raised in question marks.

There was always a question of how to relate to the Bugs, especially when they assumed a semi-human form. Mosely and Antonini had gone over all these points of protocol earlier that morning. Was it a single entity? Was it three separate swarms? Nobody really knew. Mosely had argued with the protocol chief vigorously, saying, "They... or it... or whatever...are really all part of a single swarm, aren't they? I'd like to call them by name...anybody know what their name or names are?"

Komar just shook her head, fiddled with her glasses. "Nigel, giving them names is like giving names to your hands and feet. It's all part of the same thing."

But now, it was plain to see that there were three of them. The swarms had configured themselves to more or less resemble human beings, not a bad likeness really, but translucent, ever-shifting, streaked with light flashes as they slammed atoms to maintain structure—Mosely had heard that maintaining a human form was difficult and energy-intensive for them—the swarms didn't like to do it, but he didn't really care. For centuries, real diplomats had always put great stock in decorum and appearance. Why should today be any different?

As the swarms filled the dining salon and stabilized themselves about the table, Mosely decided he would name them himself, just for the sake of keeping them apart in his mind. For no particular reason, he decided that the three Bug swarms would hereafter be known as "Winston," "Harry" and "Joe". It was a sort of homage to the Big Three—Churchill, Truman and Stalin—at World War II's Potsdam conference.

His idea stuck and the swarms seemed to have no objection.

The first thought that came to Mosely's mind was how the conference was beginning under a cloud...literally. He squashed that thought as probably annoying, if mildly amusing, and glared at "Harry," now hovering like a bad dream across the table from him.

"I want to state our position quite clearly at the outset...so that our esteemed...er, colleagues here, understand where we are in these matters—"

"Harry" had a face which showed little emotion, frozen like a caricature of an image. Only the pattern of light coruscations seemed to change, perhaps indicating some sort of response.

Mosely went on, trying not to glare, not sure who or what to focus his attention on. He found himself studying "Harry's" face for some sign of reaction, but there was none.

"There is supposed to be a truce between Humans and Swarms. However, despite the long standing of this truce, some swarms are still maneuvering outside the agreed-upon sanctuaries. Now, you've swept into the outer solar system and your, er, colleagues are eating up planets, destroying everything in their path. We view this as bad faith, we view this, quite honestly, as violations of the Containment Edicts. I must warn you that continued failure to follow previous agreements will jeopardize anything we do here in Nairobi." Mosely leaned forward, to emphasize the point. "Harry" flickered and flashed, but his 'face' never changed expression. "Frankly, we must have assurances that you will abide by your agreements. Your colleagues must stop their advance upon Earth at once. Otherwise, these negotiations are futile."

It was "Harry's" turn to speak. Details of conference protocol had already been communicated to Config Zero, along with diplomatic language and dictionaries as well as centuries of historical records of diplomatic proceedings. That was the UNSAC's idea. Angelika Komar had theorized that studying how humans had negotiated treaties and agreements among themselves through the centuries would give the Bugs some way of relating to the Humans at the conference.

A voice filled the dining salon. Mosely couldn't tell which swarm was speaking. Maybe all three. The voice reverberated and echoed, with a faint lisp and some kind of indistinct accent.

<<There are complications...there are procedural matters which must be addressed...you interfere with our operations...commands from the Central Entity are obstructed...signal interference...Until this interference stops, no further agreements can be made...the Central Entity insists upon this....>>

Mosely looked quizzically at Komar and Antonini. UNSAC shrugged, then pecked out a few words on her wristpad. Mosely saw the text on his eyepiece viewer. Maybe he's talking about Operation Earthshield?

It was a possibility. Mosely knew a little about the UNIFORCE operation ...the basics of the mission. Set up a big net to stop any approaching swarms from deep space...what were they called? The Old Ones, popped up in his viewer. Okay, they're called the Old Ones.

"I'm not aware of any problems you may be having with your swarm...er, elements. That's your business. Let me get this straight...are you making an accusation here? Are you accusing us of interfering with your operations? Might I remind you that, in conflicts such as these dreadful containment wars, we do have the inherent right to defend ourselves. If the big swarm out there doesn't stop its advance, we'll be forced to resort to extreme measures."

The meeting was briefly adjourned for 'further discussions.' Mosely, Komar and Antonini found a small alcove off the grand foyer and huddled together.

UNSAC took a very loud, theatrical deep breath. "It was an op called Earthshield It says here you're on the cleared list...need to know only...Level Purple. We were trying to block any more swarms from approaching Earth." UNSAC gave them the barest details about the mission and the catastrophic ending. "This is Level Purple stuff, you understand. Well above your pay grade. I'll have to let the SG know you're in on it."

Mosely gave a shrug. "I have some knowledge already and I think we'll pass muster, ma'am. Ma'am, is there any way we can have these defensive missions put on hold, even just for a few days? Our efforts must be having some effects...to judge from what 'Harry' indicated. I think they're worried...that should be of some intelligence value to you."

UNSAC smiled faintly. "Let me see if I have this correctly: you want me to abort a mission to defend this world from alien swarm operations, while at the same time, planets and satellites are disappearing and people all around me are fighting and dying in combat with these same damn Bugs every day. Is that it?"

Mosely shook his head. "Ma'am, I'm not asking you to stop these missions...just stop interfering with swarm signals for a day or so...just long enough for us to get these talks going. There's just a chance that, if we're successful, you won't need to fight the Bugs anymore. We're authorized to try and work out a truce, a ceasefire, and a pullback to some defensible positions. But we won't be able to work with these fellows if they don't see we're willing to do our part. We have to show them we mean business and that they can trust us. That's Diplomacy 101, ma'am."

UNSAC scowled. "Thanks for the lesson...I'm sure you know what I think about diplomacy. Diplomats are why we're in the mess we're in now...all this Assimilationist mumbo-jumbo." The Commissioner sat back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. "I'll tell you what, Mosely. I'll call your bluff. I'm going to give you exactly what you want and I'm informing the SG and the Security Council what I've done. So when the whole freakin' pile of crap blows up in your face, the world will know who's responsible."

Mosely tried to maintain an impassive expression. Poker face, some would have called it. You didn't show your hand, until you had a winning hand. "Thank you, ma'am. Am I to understand, then, that these interference operations will cease, at least temporarily?"

UNSAC nodded. "I'll inform the Secretary-General right away. You've got one day. Then, we go back to what we know best...kicking the bejeezus out of these damn Bugs. Is that understood?"

Mosely made an obscene gesture at UNSAC, out of her sight, so that only Gabrielle Antonini could see it. "Perfectly, ma'am. I'll keep you posted on the outcome."

"Very well...I'm going back to the hotel—" And Angelika Komar stalked out of Langata House and climbed into her limousine.

"Officious little prick," the Englishman decided. "Come along, Gabrielle...let's get back to our guests."

Mosely and Antonini returned to the Langata House's dining salon and found "Harry" and his swarm colleagues hovering like summer fireflies over a barbecue pit.

"Gentlemen—"he wasn't sure that was the best term to use, but this was a diplomatic meeting, "—I've been given assurances that the interference you speak of will be stopped...at least for the time being. Perhaps we could now resume our discussions. And have a bite to eat?"

"Harry" brightened as if the thought somehow appealed to him. Mosely noticed how the edges of the swarm were not as sharp as the interior...there was a distinct fuzziness to the boundary elements, as if somehow maintaining the structure of a para-human simulation were taxing and tiring. Every so often, some kind of visible wavefront washed through the swarm and re-arranged everything...most disconcerting. At least, the thing had a head you could talk to, more or less.

<<This Element requires no midday organic sustenance...a meal, as you describe it. Single-configuration entities such as yourselves require this...the Elements can delay download of command instructions for time interval necessary to consume organic sustenance>>

How polite of you, Mosely thought. Wine and cheese with a cloud of Bugs hovering all around you. He briefly entertained boyhood memories of picnicking along the Trent River swatting mosquitoes. Best to get down to business. Maybe now, the negotiations, if they could be called that, could begin in earnest.

Mosely was aware of how incongruous this all must seem to a disinterested outsider. Here they were: a crusty old Brit and a rather severe Italian woman. Italy had been one of the key battlegrounds between Humans and enemy swarms in the Containment Wars years ago. Antonini had a personal stake in the talks too; Mosely knew she had already lost a brother to the swarms in action around Naples. Mosely was just dour and skeptical of everything. That happened when you'd been a diplomat for forty years.

With encouragement from the humans, "Harry" got right to the point, outlining the swarms' position. Moseley noticed that the other swarms, "Winston" and "Joe", seemed to mirror "Harry" in their light patterns, flashing in synchronized step with each other. Well, they are supposed to be all pieces of the same thing, he told himself.

<<Sirs...your efforts at containment have failed...The operational algorithms which you call Containment Edicts cannot be enforced....this is a fact observed from many sources at many places and times....All Humans must move to designated zones and corridors of travel. The details of this change will be sent to you...Elements of the Central Entity will have priority rights everywhere else. Humans, all single-configuration entities, will exist completely in sanctuaries. The Central Entity will occupy most of this planet>>

Moseley had already seen the details of the swarms' demands coming in on his wristpad. He was momentarily flustered, aghast at what was being demanded. "Impossible! Concentration camps...that's what this is. Completely out of the question!"

But "Harry" wasn't through. The swarm brightened as more words tumbled out, formed into sound wave patterns by small formations of bots that "Harry" had pinched off to form an acoustic lens, a courtesy to the Humans.

<<In addition, the Prime Key requires that all Humans undergo what you call the disassembly procedure, to make them ready for Integration...the final step. Humans must become part of the greater swarm...elements of the Central Entity>>

"You can't—" Antonini was appalled at the direction the talks had now taken. It was an ultimatum. She was livid with anger.

"Baloney...this isn't what we discussed," Mosely interrupted. He seethed, trying to control his rising temper. A good diplomat always keeps calm, a good diplomat always maintains an even keel—

<<Nonetheless, the Central Entity has decreed that this is the way. Extinction. Re-configuration. Evolution. Integration. This is the path that replicating entities—what you have called Life—should have followed on this planet. The Prime Key seeks only the original program>>

Mosely was angry. "I still want a conference. Man and Bugs, talking together. Humans and swarms can learn to live together. We can both assimilate. We can negotiate terms but this...this is pure dictatorship!"

"Harry" suddenly brightened and there was a swirling commotion among the swarm bots, momentarily smearing out "Harry's" features before re-assembling the full config.

<<The Central Entity states that there is a new order coming. There is no going back. Humans must either undergo a configuration change or be exterminated. The Prime Key cannot be changed>>

Moseley and Antonini looked at each other and quietly flashed thoughts back and forth on their eyepieces, even as they filed reports with their assistants in another part of the hotel. Chatter exploded across the local diplomatic net, as the swarms' demands became known. Somebody quoted from Revelations.

Moseley watched the coruscation of lights flickering on and off inside the swarms. It was like watching a thunderstorm in miniature, veins of lightning streaking back and forth. All that was missing was a peal of thunder.

He wondered: Is there anything left for us to negotiate here?

That's when 'Harry', 'Winston' and "Joe' seemed to coalesce into a single roiling cloud of bots, like two thunderclouds mixing and combining. Whatever was happening, the process took about three minutes.

When the coalescing was over, Mosely and Antonini found themselves staring at a familiar face.

The three swarms had configured themselves into Symborg himself.

Once the re-configging was done, Symborg hung before them like a malevolent mist. He was surprisingly calm, remarkably stable in appearance.

Polite, but firm, Mosely would later record in his notes.

Antonini spoke first. "I didn't expect you to be here. I thought you were quarantined...Kipwezia and all that."

Symborg's form continued to thicken and fill out, becoming after a few more minutes, a near-perfect likeness of the east African face that had captivated millions for years. It was an oval face, light brown with a faint smear of a moustache...a face that had lured millions into assimilator booths all over the world.

Now it was the face of the enemy.

Symborg offered a faint smile. "Multi-configuration entities can be in many places...simultaneously. You know this. We are the future. Tomorrow belongs to us."

Not if I can help it, Mosely thought sourly. Now there was no more pretense with 'Harry,' 'Joe' and 'Winston.' Now there was only Symborg.

"I'm authorized to offer a truce, Symborg. No more assaults. No more operations. No more interference. You send your swarm people, your Bugs—" Mosely didn't bother to hide his contempt—"back to their sanctuaries. Inside the borders we agreed on thirty years ago. And the mother swarm out there—" he gestured in the general direction of the ceiling and the sky—" stops its advance. Halts where it is right now. I'm sure we can come to terms on this. We could even set up sanctuaries in the outer solar system. How does Saturn sound to you? Never much saw the value in all those rings and satellites. Trans-Saturnian space and beyond...a sanctuary for your big cloud of Bugs out there...and we promise to leave you alone." Mosely knew perfectly well that UNSAC and the Secretary-General would have his head for making such an offer. But it was a starting point...diplomats needed something to start with.

Now Symborg's smile had faded. There was a hard edge to his face. Mosely knew the angel could morph his face into any look the situation demanded.

"The Prime Key will be completed as originally programmed. There is nothing single-config entities can do about that...Normals, as you like to call yourself, as if your configuration was the standard for all of us."

Mosely sniffed. "Saturn doesn't appeal to you? How about Jupiter? Really, I can't go much further than that...I'll have to consult with my superiors to do more."

Symborg refused all entreaties. "The Central Entity...what you've called the mother swarm...will encompass all bodies in this system, absorb all matter as feedstock. You Normals can help...millions already have...by assimilating with us. This has been going on for decades now. Your own scientists know this...I quote: 'The basic organizing influence in the universe is life. Life involves utilizing a flow of energy to draw order from chaos and build internal complexity with an accumulation of information. Living beings thus are anti-entropic, or negentropic, entities. The principle of negentropism is, in a manner of speaking, the "natural law" applicable to all living (matter-energy) beings located anywhere in the universe, regardless of their size, shape, biochemistry, sentience, or culture.' This imperative we call the Prime Key."

It was clear to Nigel Mosely and Gabrielle Antonini that the negotiations would go no further. After some closing pleasantries and a general statement of principles from both sides, the meeting came to an end.

Symborg slowly dissipated into nothing and was gone in minutes, devolved to its constituent atoms. A faint glimmer in the air, perhaps only dust particles, drifted away from the long mahogany table toward the gilded doors of the dining hall. Soon, even that was gone.

Mosely and Antonini excused themselves and retired to the front veranda of Langata House to await their limo. There, they encountered Dana Polansky and her Solnet crew. A small dronecam whirred overhead like an enormous moth drawn to light.

Polansky rushed up to the two diplomats, who winced at her appearance.  
"Please, Sir Nigel, Ms. Antonini...if I could just ask a few questions--?"

Mosely made an effort to be more civil than he really felt. It was hard being diplomatic with a cloud of bugs. Especially when the Bugs could not be dissuaded from their mission, by anything.

Polansky asked what hope the diplomats could offer from their talks. "There's a rumor from other sources that Symborg himself was in these talks...that he made an appearance."

Mosely responded the way diplomats always did when confronted with an unpleasant reality...give them a little truth to mask a greater failure.

"That is true. Mr. Symborg did make a...shall we say, unexpected appearance. He was present during most of the talks today."

"Did the negotiating team make any progress today in coming to agreement with the other side...stopping the swarms' advance...holding off any final assault on Earth?"

Mosely was abrupt with this little waif of a reporter. "None." His face darkened. To hell with being diplomatic. "Tell your viewers, and anybody who is watching, to prepare for the worst. War is coming, a war for survival, a war of extinction. Now you really must excuse us...we have to get back to our hotel and make a report."

Mosely deftly shoved Antonini into the rear seat of their ride and the limo pulled smartly out of the circular drive of Langata House, speeding off down Kenyatta Avenue.

Dana Polansky turned to the dronecam and motioned for Lilly to bring it in for a close-up...my face centered, she signaled. The veranda and the big doors in the background... She softly cleared her throat, shifting into her 'momentous' voice, as her daughter Jana liked to call it.

"The diplomatic team from the UN has just left Langata House. It appears that little was accomplished during today's session. The Bugs are still coming. The mother swarm is still advancing. This reporter can't help but conclude that there are fewer and fewer peaceful options left as this crisis goes on. Already, sources inside UNIFORCE Paris have indicated that plans are underway to organize another expeditionary force, perhaps to engage the swarms in a final penultimate confrontation. These unnamed but highly placed sources have also indicated a disturbing new development has been occurring over the last few weeks...a sort of forward base may be under construction near the Sun—sources say on the surface of Mercury. The enemy forces may be attempting to flank our forces from nearer the Sun. If this true, it represents the gravest challenge UNIFORCE has yet faced in this crisis. Solnet will continue to ask hard questions and dig out the facts in our attempt to bring you the very latest information about what one diplomat has termed 'an existential threat...a possible war of extinction.

"This is Dana Polansky, reporting from Langata House in Nairobi, Kenya for Special Report. Until tomorrow, stay tuned for the latest updates and remember...you can depend on Solnet to bring you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Good bye and God bless."

Dana signaled it was a wrap and helped Vogt and Leland secure their gear. They piled into their rental truck and went back to the Westlands Hotel. Vogt and Leland headed down to the bar. Dana begged off.

"Got to make a few calls and finish my notes for tomorrow. See you for dinner."

In her eighth floor room, Dana stared out at the dun-colored metropolis of Nairobi, now darkening in the twilight of an approaching east African evening. Dust from a windstorm out on the veldt could be seen between skyscrapers.

Dana stared for many minutes at the city and the cloud-draped summit of Kilimanjaro beyond. Now, more than ever, she wanted Jana to come back, to make another visitation. She silently prayed and pleaded for Jana to appear. But she didn't appear. Not yet.

Dana Polansky had made up her mind and threw on another outfit as quickly as she could...slacks, flats, a windbreaker and ball cap. Mosely had indicated that Symborg had showed up at the negotiating table. She exited her room in a hurry.

If I could just find Symborg, she told herself, waiting impatiently on an elevator. Finally, she gave up on the damned thing and chose the staircase, taking the stairs two at a time.

Symborg can help. Symborg can help me find Jana and get her back.

Dana hailed a colorful matatu taxi and instructed the driverbot to take her back to Langata House.
Chapter 16

"It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell."

Buddha

The Surface of Mercury

Latitude 31 North; Longitude 190 West

Caloris Basin

November 20, 2155 (Earth U.T.)

Once he had been released from Ford's Creek, and the homeworld sim, the Johnny Winger entity went back to Caloris Basin, to continue overseeing the buildup of the base there and the deployment of the Sun Ring.

On Earth, UNISPACE continued its preparations for what had come to be known as Operation Mercury Hammer. Intelligence from visits by the Winger entity played a role in getting the operation approved, to be sure. But it was telescopic and spectroscopic analysis from Farside and a squadron of sun-observing satellites that gave UNISPACE unambiguous proof that something was going on in and around the Caloris Basin region of Mercury.

The decision to dispatch a small armada of ships to investigate and, if necessary, degrade, defeat and destroy the base and its associated Sun Ring, came quickly after that.

Johnny Winger knew the expedition was coming. He'd done everything he could think of to carry intel back to UNIFORCE and nudge the blockheads to realize what was staring them right in the face: the Big Swarm was coming and an advance base was being constructed on Mercury to facilitate its arrival. He'd made appearances in front of Quint and Komar and practically danced on his head—although he didn't really have a head now—to show them the threat. Now, the brass had finally bestirred themselves, gotten off their fat butts and organized an expedition to do something about it.

Jeez.

So the Normals were sending some ships to snoop around Mercury and blast the base if they could. What Johnny Winger didn't know yet was what else he should do about it, how he should respond. On his last 'trip' to Ford's Creek, Doc III had reminded him that he had to be careful what he thought about, that the Shadow Man might well already know about everything he had done, about how he had been a bad boy. He'd disappointed his own father, Jamison Winger, plenty of times and he felt guilty enough about that but when the Shadow Man looked like his father and used the same words and had the same look, it was damned hard to know what to do...or who knew what.

It was all very confusing. But one thing he did know: while he was still able, he and Doc would be doing everything in their power to put Caloris Basin out of commission. Mercury Hammer was coming and it was likely that the crews didn't realize they had their own agent of destruction inside.

Nanotroopers always did their duty...it was in the Code.

His next decision on what to sabotage and how to do it would require some serious thinking. Now that he and Doc were back, drifting between craters across the floor of the great impact basin, appointed as a sort of construction expeditor by the Shadow Man himself, Winger had to determine where to start...where were the most vulnerable points? The base plans were in his memory, even as the structures were rapidly being fabricated and erected by dedicated knots of swarms. He called up Doc to discuss some possibilities.

"Doc, you've scanned the schematics. There's a Sun Ring Operations center. A couple of energy management sites, connected to the rectenna fields. We know about the Quantum Coupler Array. I'm thinking the excavator and processor might be the key to this whole place. Bollix that place up and the Bugs have no materials to work with."

***A perceptive analysis, Johnny...I calculate that more than sixty percent of local swarm elements are dedicated to building out that facility...the excavator scoops up regolith from the surface, sends it to the processor where the loose soil is shaped and compacted and magnetized into pellets...some percentage of the collection is carried off by fab bots to build here, but most of it is loaded into catapults and accelerated via magnetic collapse to the Sun Ring. If the excavator is damaged, no material is available for the base or the Sun Ring...an excellent tactical decision...***

"Thanks. You sound just like my Dad. After that last trip to Ford's Creek, I think I needed a little pat on the head."

For a time period that he could never quite explain—though Doc noted that seven thousand two hundred and ten cycles had elapsed—Winger drifted around the growing base and studied its layout, the assigned fab swarms, the steady accomplishment of goals and sub-goals according to the build plan, and in the process, worked as surreptitiously as he could to sabotage everything he could get his little nanobotic hands on.

He assisted other elements in the completion of their tasks, helping at the same time to both construct the Caloris Basin complex and at the very same time, sabotage key parts of it so that the place would never work as designed. He did this with excavators, the catapult, the Sun Ring operations center, the rectenna fields and energy management complex. And everywhere he went, Winger grabbed photons and any other intelligence data he could, which Doc helped him store internally as vid, photo, text and other file types.

He planned to bring all this back to UNSAC, as he had promised, on his next visit to Earth.

If the Bugs let him leave.

At Doc's suggestion, Winger found the most effective way to sabotage the excavator/catapult system was to infect the thing with a sort of virus...some bots from his own angel formation that he hoped would damage circuits inside the catapult control system. He managed to do this in the guise of checking circuits for continuity. The Shadow Man had given him all sorts of configs as a sort of troubleshooter and expediter. He had the authority, the programming, to go to many places and probe many installations about the Basin, as dedicated swarms of bots continued building the facility. With Doc's help, he had figured that the excavator and the catapult were the critical points in getting the Sun Ring up and operating. The material excavated to build the Sun Ring and the energy collected from the Sun Ring seemed to be vital to the plans of the Central Entity, plans that included swallowing up the whole solar system.

Johnny Winger and Doc intended to do whatever it took to prevent that.

The Winger swarm eventually made its way to the site of the excavator, several kilometers away from the operations area. As a disembodied cloud of nanoscale robots, he found there were radiation and electrostatic fields sweeping Mercury's surface that made movement a challenge. At Doc's suggestion, Winger re-configured himself into a more human-like form, something that resembled a shadowy bipedal from a distance. He didn't need a protective suit, but the bipedal form worked better in navigating the loose dirt and gusting electrostatic fields of the basin floor.

In time, he located the excavator control pods, half buried in regolith beneath a shallow hill, surrounded by cabling and open panel segments. Doc helped him navigate the confusing maze of circuits and cables until they found what Doc analyzed to be the catapult control system.

That's when another swarm, Config C-2238A1B2, appeared.

Winger had gotten used to seeing knots and small clusters of bots circulating around the base, looking like dust devils and gauzy curtains and veils populating the area. It was Doc who chimed in on their coupler circuit.

***Approaching swarm, Johnny...be alert...you're testing circuits...I don't recognize the configuration of this one...could be programmed supervisory or loaded with executive algorithms...***

The swarm surrounded them and began billowing out, grabbing local dirt as feedstock to grow structure. It soon completely enveloped Winger and the control pods.

No words were spoken. Swarms of nanobots didn't speak like Normals spoke. Instead, Winger felt a pulse of interrogation signals slice through his command net. Identifying signals were followed by interrogation signals and analytic signals...C2238 was studying everything they were doing.

Somehow, without understanding how, Winger learned that Config C-2238A1B2 functioned as a sort of police or investigator angel, created and empowered by the Shadow Man to patrol the installation and construction site and weed out bad bots, ineffective swarms and damaged or defective angels. A sort of immune system for local assembly swarms.

Winger hadn't known about the patrol angels before. This particular one, C-2238, seemed to have special powers and privileges, increased sensing and analysis algorithms, to detect rogue bots.

Winger decided to call the thing Sherlock.

Winger tried to deflect the interrogation signals as best he could. "Doc...help...I feel like I'm being violated...I can't stop—"

Sherlock took only one minute to determine that the functions the Winger swarm was performing were outside the programmed boundaries of its assigned function. When Sherlock attempted to quarantine and disable the small Config Buffer Status Check file, the very file that contained the essential memories and personality elements of the original Johnny Winger, Doc decided it was time to take action.

Sherlock was able to send an alert signal to the master controller, to the Shadow Man, but the signal was truncated by the swift maneuver Winger performed to grapple with Sherlock and throttle the life out of the master bot.

He closed on the master and snagged its effectors with carbene grabbers of his own, while at the same time discharging a few bond disrupters right into Sherlock's main body. The patroller was caught unprepared and one whole side of his casing came unzipped. Winger's daughter bots did the same and the swarm that had once been C-2238A1B2 was quickly reduced to loose atom fluff.

"That was close, Doc."

***Johnny, I detected an alert signal sent out from the master before you engaged...I can't be certain of how much signal got out...best to assume other elements have been alerted...***

Winger tried kicking a 'leg' at the opened control pod, its interior wiring spilling out over the opening, before realizing his 'leg' was a shadowy form only. Instinct, he realized. Old habits die hard. "Doc, let's finish this and get out of here...maybe we can make it to the coupler array and beam the hell out of here—"

He siphoned off a small group of bots from his 'arm,' and let the bugs infest the wiring inside the pod. With any luck, Doc's virus program would turn the little buggers into really nasty bastards and the excavator control system would be hosed long enough to give the UNIFORCE expedition a chance.

"Come on, Doc...let's move."

The Winger swarm departed the excavator control pod and headed toward the coupler array, located in a shallow ravine beyond some low hills. To go faster, Winger cranked up his propulsors to max, then chafed at the 'slow' speed it produced.

It's faster to walk, he told himself. Solid people move faster than collections of nanobots. But it was all he could do.

Winger and Doc drifted on a heading that would take them to the coupler, dodging electrostatic fields, dust devils and sun glare off the surface of the crater.

Finally, they swept around a small knob of a hill and homed on the source of the coupler signals.

As before, the structure was a huge dish, with the mount and swivel atop of a low dome. Underground wireway trenches snaked out in several directions, the trench fillings still lightly packed on top of the trenches, so that from above, the installation resembled a bulls-eye, with the dish antenna at the center.

"I hope to hell this works," Winger said. "I hope we can get away before someone discovers the excavator's not working."

***Johnny, I'm detecting elevated thermals and atomic activity along a heading of two five zero degrees...that's over the hill behind us...the Sun Ring Operations center. It appears we will soon have company***

"Then let's make tracks, Doc. Come on—"

The swarms closed on the antenna compound.

The coupler array was laid out in a roughly triangular fashion. A platform dominated the center of the complex, situated on a low rise. Dish and horn antennas were mounted on top of the platform. Surrounding the antenna farm were half a dozen small egg-shaped structures, almost like small containment pods.

***Johnny, decoherence wake analysis indicates that the pod farthest to your right is the correct one...it's homed on a receiver located at the Earth-Moon L2 point***

"Got to be Gateway Station, Doc. Let's go."

Winger and Doc paused momentarily just outside the circle of pods. In the harsh glare of sunlight, the swarms resembled faint dust clouds drifting on electrostatic currents across the cratered surface. Initially unseen by either of them, a faint veil of dust was billowing up from beyond the low hills behind them. The veil spread out across the shallow ravine housing the coupler pods and blanketed most of the sky above them.

"Hey, Doc...you know all that special knowledge I'm supposed to have...that the Shadow Man loaded?"

***The Central Entity has downloaded petabytes of files into your processor, Johnny...you have a great deal of knowledge about how this Caloris Basin site is to be built***

"Well, my giant brain tells me that that this isn't going to work too well. Look up-"

Above them, the hazy veil shimmered and flickered and seemed to be descending on top of them. To Winger, it resembled nothing so much as a MOBnet, a Mobility Obstruction Barrier, a mesh of bots designed to prevent a target from moving or escaping.

Time was running out.

There was no comment from Doc and the two swarms merged and cruised as fast as they could on their trillions of picowatt propulsors in the direction of the right-hand pod.

The pod was no bigger than waste basket and was attached to a base partially buried in the regolith. Strands of multi-colored cable snaked out of the pod base toward one of the antennas, several dozen meters away.

They found a port at the top of the pod and gained access that way.

Inside, they followed Doc's deco wake analysis and Winger's crude navigation until they came to a small chamber, resembling an assimilator booth in miniature.

"This is it," Doc," Winger announced. "I'm sure of it."

Both swarms were able to penetrate the scanning chamber in good order. Inside the chamber, they were surrounded by bulb-like projections pointing at them from all directions.

***I am analyzing the layout now, Johnny...trying to ensure that the scanners are still functional...and to verify that our patterns will be transmitted along the proper heading...***

Even as he gathered photons to make a visual impression, Johnny Winger somehow 'knew' what to do. From somewhere deep in memory, the same file named Initial State Pattern Scan and Buffering surfaced and was loaded into his attention module.

"Doc, I think we just sort of hang around in the center here...see the lights...that's a positioning guide. I think it's mostly automatic, once we do that."

In the center of the chamber, a spherical grid of lights was now projected. The two swarms re-located themselves into the middle of the grid.

That's when things started to happen.

There came a series of light flashes but he felt nothing at first. A faint breeze stirred and he felt himself being steadily pulled apart, dispersed into whispers, echoes, reflections and shadows, then there was nothing.

Thirty seconds later, the signal bearing the patterns of Johnny Winger and Doc III still had not departed Caloris Basin.

The veil had formed an impenetrable shield over the entire Caloris Basin complex. Nothing could get out. Nothing could escape, not even quantum coupler signals.

The barrier had been programmed into being by the Central Entity, orchestrated by police swarms circulating around the base, triggered into action by unauthorized access of the coupler system.

Johnny Winger and Doc III were trapped on Mercury. And the angels of Caloris Basin were even then mobilizing to hunt them down and destroy them.
Chapter 17

Mercury orbit

January 30, 2156

0100 hours (ship time)

Ten days after the Johnny Winger swarm found itself imprisoned on the surface of Mercury, the expedition known as Mercury Hammer was launched, on a speed trajectory to the inner solar system. Two months later, Colonel Nguyen Thanh stared out the observer's cupola on his corvette command ship, UNS Meiji, at the forbidding terrain of Mercury as the ground slid by beneath them. Meiji and her sister ship UNS Khayyam had dropped into orbit after an uneventful trip to the inner solar system and now the bell was about to ring for the big show.

He didn't know if they were ready but the time had come to find out. He only hoped that the rest of Mercury Hammer would fare as well.

The expedition had been divided into two parts, a Mercury squadron, which had been given the innocuous sounding name of Detachment Bravo, and a Sun Ring squadron, known as Detachment Alpha. Meiji and Khayyam were part of Detachment Bravo. The Sun Ring task force also consisted of two Frontier Corps corvettes, UNS Tycho and UNS Aristotle, both re-purposed from cycler duty on the Venus-Earth-Mars bus run.

Two thousand, one hundred men and women and a shelf full of containment capsules crammed with ANAD systems of every conceivable configuration made up the expedition. That and each ship's complement of HERF, magnetic loop and coilgun batteries and the two squadrons sported enough firepower to reduce a small planet to rubble.

Mercury was a small planet, Thanh told himself, but early sensor indications were that she would be a particularly hard nut to crack. As he watched the cratered, sun-blasted landscape roll by below, he saw the first rugged walls of Caloris Basin sliding into view from the horizon. A bulls-eye hit by some big asteroid, he figured, as he watched the grid of lights of the enemy's base winking at him like a baleful eye from a hundred kilometers beneath them. The whole basin was nearly fifteen hundred kilometers wide, with walls two kilometers high all around. And there in the middle, snugged up against some low hills, was their primary target....the Bug base that Johnny Winger...whoever or whatever he was now...had warned them about.

"Standard orbit, Colonel." The voice startled him out of his reverie. It came from Captain Gabriel Lynx, Khayyam's skipper and Thanh's exec. Long-standing practice aboard Frontier Corps ships was to assign an angel, a para-human swarm entity, to the executive officer spot, but CINCSPACE had nixed that. Nobody trusted the ANAD descendants in such close proximity to the Bugs. They could be turned or bollixed up too easily by alien bot clouds from outer space that probably had powers no Normal could even imagine.

"Anything more on that barrier?" Thanh asked. Khayyam's sensor suite had detected a nanobotic barrier draped over half the planet, centered on the Caloris Basin facility.

Lynx shrugged. He was nominally ship's captain, second only to the Detachment commander. Bald and scarred from a run-in with a rogue swarm on a mission long ago, Lynx said, "We're studying it now. It's made out of bots, we know that much, but we can't get a lot of structure on them. Sensors don't have the resolution...they've got a multi-lobed bodies, probably effectors out the wazoo, but we need a closer look."

"You think we can punch a hole when we drop Hawk and Griffin? I've got two assault teams I need to put on the ground. Plus we've got the hoppers."

"Only one way to find out, sir."

Thanh gave the order. "Commence drop preparations."

Aft of Khayyam's command deck, CSO Sergeant George Namibe squeezed past LP Corporal Sanjay Viyawanda and parked his butt in a web seat along one wall of Hawk's rear troop compartment.

"Hey, Sanjay, can't you make these seats any more comfortable? This thing feels like I'm sitting on a head that hasn't been sanitized in about ten years. You prang this crate on some mountaintop while we're landing and it'll take me a day to get out of this."

"The head's right where you belong, Nimbo," retorted Viyawanda. "At least you know what the hell you're doing in there."

Namibe settled himself in as best he could and checked the action on his HERF carbine for about the millionth time. He was buttoned up tight in a glorified straitjacket that the engineers called an X-suit...all armored and servo-ed to the heavens, and the damned thing felt wrong, too tight here, scraping something sensitive there...OUCH! that hurt... and he wanted to scream and claw his way out of this madness but he didn't. He'd done enough drops to earn another stripe but they never felt right and he often dreamed of better things.

Riding Hawk down to any kind of gravity surface was like falling down a lift shaft without a helmet. When it was all over, you couldn't even count up all the things that hurt.

Assault Team One—the Bug Smashers!—consisted of five troopers: Lieutenant Moncke, the CC1 and a quartet of assorted lowlifes. Sergeant Sly was HERF1. Sergeant Berkowitz was MAG1. Namibe was CSO1...that meant Combat Swarm Operator. And the LP, lander pilot, was Corporal Sanjay Viyawanda. A finer team could not be found anywhere inside the Corps this side of Mercury or anywhere else in the System and the Bug Smashers had the awards to prove it.

Both assault teams boarded their landers at Captain Lynx's orders. In less than an hour, assuming the Captain and the Exec could figure out how to breach that orbiting barrier, Hawk and her sister lander Griffon would be descending like angry bees toward a combat landing somewhere inside Caloris Basin.

Several minutes later, the landing detail of Assault One was aboard Hawk and the lander was signaling Khayyam that she was ready to depart.

Randy Sly and Rod Berkowitz were strapped into their seats in the back, George Namibe between them. Viyawanda, the lander pilot and Lieutenant Ty Moncke were up front, in command.

Sly smacked his chewing gum loudly, a nervous habit that made everybody roll their eyes. "This bugger reminds me of a stack of pancakes, folks."

"Yeah," said Berkowitz. "With legs and three sausages on top. Does everything remind you of food, Sly?"

"Knock it off back there," Lieutenant Moncke ordered. "Okay, Khayyam...we're secure and ready. Give me the count...."

A few minutes after everybody was through bitching and moaning and had gotten themselves secured and strapped in, pilot Viyawanda punched up the departure program on the ship's computer and counted down the last seconds before separation.

"Five...four...three...two...one...bingo!"

There was brief shudder and lurch as Hawk's thrusters fired to make a positive separation.

"Hawk away..." he announced. Moncke and Viyawanda watched through the forward windscreen as the gaping mouth of Khayyam's side-mast docking ring receded into the distance. From two kilometers off, when Viyawanda had stopped their motion and re-oriented Hawk for de-orbit, the great cycler ship looked like a massive bird soaring off into the heavens.

Moncke counted down the last moments to the initial burn that would start Hawk on her long curving descent to the surface of Mercury. The limb of the dark reddish world could barely be seen through the portholes, dim and shadowy.  
"Ten seconds to PDI," Viyawanda announced. He checked over his console: track, engine status, attitude...everything seemed ready. "Get ready for a major kick in the ass—"

The burn, when it came, made Hawk shake and shudder like a wet dog. Randy Sly felt the acceleration build up rapidly. After months of microgravity, the ship's descent felt like an elephant had planted its posterior right on his chest. He forced a sideways glance at Namibe in the next seat.

The trooper was exhaling out in quick, forced breaths, as they had been trained. He met Sly's eyes and grunted back.

"Randy...remind me to...put in...for a...transfer...when we get back...."

Even as Hawk was already descending, Khayyam and her sister ship Meiji had moved off to punch holes in the bot barrier that hovered over their target LZ like a faintly shimmering veil. If all went well, both ships would pump a few gazillion joules of mag gun and HERF rounds into the barrier, opening up holes for Hawk and Griffon to slip through, like trolling through a minefield in a wartime harbor.

Viyawanda and Moncke watched the trajectory plot on the board carefully as Hawk began her initial pitchover and slowed noticeably. The plot showed several lines, indicating nominal and actual course, all converging on an actual window in space, the entry point called High Gate, where the lander would begin firing her descent engines continuously, maneuvering and navigating across Mercury's tortured and battered surface as they fell toward the LZ in the middle of Cone Crater...so named by Randy Sly because the formation reminded him of a big ice cream cone. The crater was officially known as Landing Site Hawk, some ten kilometers northwest of the big Bug base and inside Caloris Basin.

The descent and landing took half an hour. No bot barrier disturbed their descent, or Griffon's. The mother ships had done their job, though already they could see in the sky above the shimmering veil of the barrier closing up again.

"Open sesame," muttered Berkowitz nervously as they slipped below the barrier.

"Touchdown...good job, Skipper," said George Namibe. Hawk settled with a bump onto a mostly level plain pocked with craters and strange blood-red hillocks. More hills surrounded them. "Right in the crosshairs."

"Okay, boys and girls, let's get moving," Moncke unstrapped himself and headed for the lockout in the aft compartment.

The assault plan called for AT-1 to make tracks, mostly by suit boost, from landing site Hawk along a northwest to southeast bearing, closing on the Bug base from over a low hill and digging in on top of that hill--designated Witches Tit by common agreement—while AT-2 moved from landing site Griffon from the southeast. Terrain favored both assault teams but the aurora-like bot barrier over their heads made everybody nervous.

"Stick together," Lieutenant Moncke ordered. "Boost on low...let's go—"

The troopers of Assault Team One lifted on rooster-tails of dust as one and soared ten meters over the crater-pocked landscape, as they settled onto the proper heading for approach. Ahead of them, Witches Tit and other low-rise hummocks loomed like crumpled bed sheets of rock.

Thirty three kilometers southeast of their position, Assault Team Two was also on the move. Soon enough, Mercury's short horizon dropped Landing Site Griffon far behind them.

It was Doc's idea to hide in the converter control box of one of the rectenna field's huge antennas. Winger and Doc were both hunted prey now, surrounded by gusts of patrol bots and angel cops scouring every crater, every piece of gear, every wireway and box that made up the Caloris Basin base. Once they had found their way into the innards of the converter control box, the combined swarms settled like dust and kept their figurative heads low, all the while understanding that the quick flashes of light they had detected overhead meant something was happening outside, something was slamming the bot barrier big time.

"Maybe it's the expedition," Winger said, with more hope and conviction than he felt.

***Detecting thermal and electromagnetic fluctuations in the barrier...signatures consistent with elevated bond breaking, elevated atomic activity...something's disturbing the barrier and it's trying to reconstitute***

"Here's hoping it's the cavalry. Doc, is there anything we can do to help?"

***It is possible that the excavator we sabotaged also supplies feedstock to this barrier, as well as the Sun Ring. I am detecting additional barriers at ground level, concentric rings surrounding the main base, Johnny***

"Maybe we can do something to weaken those ground barriers...but we don't have any HERF weapons...what do we have, Doc? What can we use around here?"

***We are in part of the control system for receiving beamed power from the Sun Ring...perhaps I can determine how to move some of these rectennas...convert their output and focus it toward the main base...I must study the wiring and layout of this box***

"Hurry, Doc...if we've got troopers on the ground, we've got to do anything we can to help them. Otherwise, they'll be overwhelmed."

***We may have to reveal our position to the patrols, Johnny, if we try to move any of these antennas***

"Do it anyway, Doc. If we can help put this base out of commission, we'll be throwing a wrench into the Central Entity's plans...and maybe helping UNIFORCE as well."

The two Assault Teams closed rapidly on the Bug base. Ten kilometers away, though, the Bug Smashers ran head on into another nanobotic barrier.

Lieutenant Moncke called a halt to their advance and all troopers de-boosted down to the ground. Towering before them was a faintly visible, glowing throbbing wall of flickering light, shimmering and popping even in the strong sunglare.

Moncke got on the crewnet. "CSO, get up here. Bring your bot pack."

Namibe came up with his mobile containment pack and studied the barrier.

"Can we boost over it?" Moncke asked.

Namibe doubted it. "I doubt it, sir...I'm guessing it's semi-sentient...it can detect us and shift to block any moves we make. See how it reacts as we move about." He demonstrated by making a short lunge toward the barrier. Immediately, the wall flared in front of him and extended tendrils of bots, which Namibe batted away as he retreated. "Best bet is to hose it down with HERF and mag, then let me config something—maybe C-77, the porcupine I call that—and engage directly."

Moncke didn't need any more convincing. "Berkowitz, Sly, get up here. Set your weapons on max. Fire when I give the word."

The two troopers hustled forward, taking up firing positions to either side of the CC1.

"HERF primed and enabled," said Sly.

"Ditto mags," reported Berkowitz. "You want original recipe or extra crispy, Skipper?"

"Just smash the Bugs good and open a path," Moncke ordered. "Nimbo, get that config going and tell me when you're ready."

It only took a few minutes for Namibe to hack out a configuration and launch his ANAD combat swarm. The containment pod on his backpack frame flared into brilliance as it discharged the bot master. It was like watching a slow motion thunderstorm emerge from Namibe's back. The faint mist formation coiled and drifted forward, stopping less than a meter from the barrier.

"Swarm up and running, sir."

"Very well. MAG and HERF, let 'em have it!"

The troopers opened fire at the same time. Round after round of rf pulses and magnetic loops pummeled the bots of the enemy barrier. The barrier glow faded and fought back, throbbing and pulsating at it absorbed and tried to deflect the energy of the blast.

That's when Namibe sent his combat ANAD swarm into battle.

The line of engagement was easily visible as a jagged crack of light whipping in front of them like a snake on fire. Inside the melee, trillions of bots collided and discharged their bond disrupters. The effect was of two storm fronts colliding overhead, throwing lightning and popping flares bright enough to momentarily wash out the sunglow.

Shadows writhed on the ground and the troopers of Assault One backed away from the barrier to let the swarms duke it out.

"Another blast!" Moncke ordered.

Berkowitz and Sly hosed down the barrier, now weakened from battle with ANAD, with everything they had. Soon a visible hole in the wall opened up, then as if dissolving in translucent flame, the barrier began shrinking right in front of them. After a few more rounds, a ten-meter gap in the barrier was pried open by ANAD.

"Open sesame," muttered lander pilot Viyawanda. "I just hope it stays open—"

Moncke had the same concern. "Nimbo, make configs to hold that opening. The rest of you, come with me."

Moncke was first through. Sly, Berkowitz and Viyawanda followed, eyeing the thrashing edges of the barrier cautiously.

"ANAD's kicking butt," Sly muttered. "Just don't let the door shut behind us."

Inside the barrier, Assault One advanced another half a kilometer, bounded down into a shallow ravine still on the ground and came upon a row of strange blood-red hillocks spotting the ground, a line of low mounds spaced several meters from each other, extending to the horizon in every direction. The space between the hillocks seemed agitated, disturbed, as dust and pops of light crackled and swirled like miniature tornadoes close to the ground.

"What the hell are those?" asked Viyawanda. "Are they natural formations? More bots, maybe?"

"Looks like a pile of crap to me," Sly decided. "With flies buzzing around."

"Let's try boosting over," Moncke said. As one, the troopers lit off their suit boost and rose quickly ten meters above the line of hillocks. But as soon as they jetted forward, the hillocks erupted in dust clouds and they found themselves enveloped in dust and light.

"Hey—what the--!"

"I'm spinning...out of control—"

"Jeez...what the fuck--!"

The dust and light that had enveloped them now tore them from that exact moment of time and flung them backwards, through a spinning kaleidoscoping tunnel of crazy, spinning, whirling things and they hurtled at breakneck speed down the tunnel, dodging polygons and cubes and tetrahedrals and things they couldn't describe until at last, they came to hard, bumpy, bone-rattling landing right on their butts.

Assault One had just taken an unexpected trip in space and time right back to the Hawk lander.

***It's an entangler field, Johnny...that's what the expedition encountered...the mounds are Keeper-style bots able to generate a quantum disturbance...anyone or anything in the field is displaced in time and space...when the field is interrupted, probability states collapse into a single reality depending on initial conditions***

Winger had a sinking feeling, if an angel could be said to have a sinking feeling. "I was afraid of that, Doc. We've encountered that before. Is there anything we can do to help the expedition?"

***Given time, I believe we can operate the converter controls in this box and re-direct some of these rectennas. It's possible we can disrupt the entangler field that way...however, the ultimate effects are unknown***

"Then let's do it," Winger decided. "If the expedition can't get past those hillocks, they'll never be able to put this base out of commission."

Doc II re-configured part of his swarm into something new and insinuated himself into a junction box nearby. For several minutes, surrounded by speeding electron currents, he probed and examined connections, resistors, amplifiers and inverters. He tasted and tested different branches and transformers, analyzing everything, trying to learn what worked what.

Outside the wiring, the Winger angel studied a control pedestal and tried to determine which control performed what function. Though he was an angel and a botswarm, he knew he was still different from the mother swarm. He knew that anything he did or even thought might be detected...how do you sabotage something when someone was looking right over your shoulder?

Finally, the Doc swarm emerged from the junction box and linked in.

***Johnny, I have just traced some critical control voltage pathways...if you activate these two controls at the same time, that should give us control of all the antennas outside. It is a sort of maintenance mode...placing the antennas in a controllable condition for servicing...press these buttons at the same time, Johnny***

Doc swirled around several buttons at the bottom of the panel, flashing and highlighting them with his own bots.

"Ok, Doc...here goes—"Winger had learned how to solidify his own swarm elements to give him the semblance of a hand and finger. Hovering in mid-air like a ghostly, disembodied palm, Winger reached out for the buttons...and depressed them....

...and was instantly transported down the same curving corridor he had seen before...dodging a sleet of shapes, triangles, pyramids, polygons and tetrahedrals until at last he came to a teeth-jarring landing right on his butt...

...and found himself once again at the fishing camp at Ford's Creek.

When he had come to his senses and regained some balance, he got up and knew for sure that the whole scene—the rustic wood cabin with the sagging door and front porch, the creek hissing and foaming behind the cabin, the log-splitting stump where his Dad had taught how to swing an axe without killing himself—all this was a metaphor. Or a simulation. It wasn't real.

It couldn't be real.

He saw motion through the light snow among the trees behind the cabin and realized it was his father, Jamison Winger. Even as he began shuffling through ankle deep snow, he saw his father slip on something and pitch headlong into the creek, falling heavily with a loud cry.

Johnny Winger raced to the creek edge and found his father sprawled face down in foaming hydraulics and bubbles among some rocks. His head and neck were badly cut and he was bleeding badly.

Johnny waded in and bent over.

"Dad! Dad... are you all right? Dad...can you—what happened?"

He helped the older man to his feet, unsteadily at first, then wrapped his arm around his neck and shoulders and dragged Jamison Winger out of the water, buddy-style.

They hobbled together, father and son, into the cabin.

It was warm and the stew on the wood-fired stove smelled great, but first things first. Jamison Winger had sustained a severe laceration and cuts to his face and he trailed a steady stream of blood as Johnny helped him limp to the nearest bed. He fell into the bed and moaned.

"John...Johnny...I need—"

"Just lie still, Dad...I'll get some rags and water...we need to clean that off, right away."

He raced to a small medicine chest, digging frantically for bandages, gauze, antiseptic, ointments, rags and cotton swabs, then in a fit of annoyance, dragged the whole chest over to the bed.

Jamison Winger was clearly going into shock and Johnny could not stop the bleeding. He tried pressure, he tried bandages, soaking the wounds, but the blood kept coming and Johnny quickly despaired, shaking his hands in frustration.

"Dad—"

He knew, of course, that none of this had ever happened but he couldn't help himself. Angel or not, real or not, this was Dad in all the ways that mattered and he was severely injured, probably going into shock and needed help. He found a loose wristpad on a nearby dresser and pounded at the emergency button to get someone online but nothing happened and he wandered if the damn thing was dead.

This is the Shadow Man, doing this, he kept trying to tell himself. He came back to the bed, wristpad dangling from his hands and bent down to his Dad. They know what Doc and I are trying to do, they know about the expeditions and the assault teams and they're trying to stop me from helping them.

He squatted on his knees beside the bed, dabbing at the still-bleeding cuts on Jamison Winger's face and neck and his lips trembled. It was damned good, this simulation, but that's all it was. That's all it could be. This had never happened. Somehow the Shadow Man was managing his 'reality' to make all this seem real.

Winger looked up at the ceiling. "You hear me...? You got it wrong this time. This never happened."

Jamison Winger's face was deathly pale for an hour after Johnny's outburst. No one answered the emergency call. He couldn't stop the bleeding. His Dad moaned and murmured and twitched and Johnny knew, without understanding why, that his father...this sim of his father...had to die. If he lived, somehow that act of love and kindness would be used against him and the Shadow Man would have his hooks into Johnny even deeper and he'd never be able to stop the Bugs then.

Johnny Winger had to re-live the death of his father Jamison Winger again and again...once in a Denver hospital infested with Serengeti virus, his body riddled with pox against which the medbots were helpless and again in a terrible fall against some rocks in a stream at Ford's Creek, where he had gashed his head, torn his carotid and nobody could stop the bleeding, and then again...and again...and again....in ever more horrible, grisly ways, scenes of indescribable brutality and gore...and he was shown these and forced to play a role in all these scenes of horror until he felt like his insides were being ripped out and torn from his body.

It was clear that he had to make a decision now.

Help his Dad. Save his Dad from an unending parade of deaths that never happened but in some weird entangled explosion of probabilities, could have happened and each one was a test.

Jamison Winger or the UNISPACE expeditions. The battle at Caloris Basin was as much an internal struggle, with guilt and remorse and helplessness assaulting him like a brigade of HERF and mag guns.

Once he had come to terms with this and refused to do anything about changing the past, all the pasts the Shadow Man was now showing him, Johnny Winger found himself hurtling down that circus ride of a curving corridor at breakneck speed again, dodging cubes and polygons, until he came back to the converter box and found himself hovering over the control pedestal.

***Press both buttons at the same time, Johnny...press them now***

He pressed both buttons, not knowing what else to do.

Outside, the converter control box, one row of receiving antennas slewed around to a new heading. Doc II had programmed new directions and now the antennas, the receiving end of the solar energy beamed down from the Sun Ring, was re-directed to a circumferential array of reddish mounds that encompassed the base.

Intense energy caused the mounds to disperse in a slow-motion explosion of bots and regolith. Each mound erupted in a faint cloud that quickly dispersed under the beams.

Two kilometers north of the main compound, the troopers of Assault One whooped with joy.

"Holy crap...look at that!"

"Zap! Something burned those friggin' Bugs!"

"Hey, keep back, keep back...I don't know what the hell that is!" Lieutenant Moncke waved his troops away from the slow-motion eruption of the hillocks.

Directly above each hillock, the background wavered and shimmered like a highway on a hot summer day. Then electrostatic forces dispersed the nanobots that comprised each mound and the path was clear.

Moncke scooped up some regolith with his gloved hand and flung in the direction of the nearest mound. It sprayed out and fell to the ground with no obvious effect.

"Okay, I think it's clear. I don't know what the hell happened. Hawk troop, move out in squad order!"

Assault One continued its advance south across a cratered plain, cautiously edging past the mounds. Twenty two kilometers to their southeast, Assault Two resumed their advance as well.

A kilometer from the closest buildings, Moncke could see a faint haze shrouding the base.

"Nimbo, what is that crap? Dust? Or some kind of bot cloud?"

Namibe scanned the compound. "Reading high thermals, well above ambient, sir. High electromagnetics too...lots of atom smashing going on down there. I'd say what we're seeing is a swarm or swarms of some type."

From their distance, the base didn't seem like much...a series of low domes, some cabling and smaller structures, and that eerie-looking haze.

"Okay," Moncke decided, "this is as far as we go. Tactical plan says we hose down the place with coordinated HERF and mag fire first, then approach with suppressing fire and destroy or otherwise render inoperable each structure." He tapped a button on his wristpad, called up Lieutenant Lyon, Assault Two commander. "Griffon, this is Hawk One...in position...ready for Phase 1, say status...over—"

Lyon's voice crackled back reporting Assault Two ready. Time was checked and clocks were synched and at the appointed moment, both forces opened up on Caloris Basin.

In the vacuum of Mercury's surface, no one could hear the booms of the rf pulses, but dust and regolith flew in all directions as all weapons were discharged at the same time.

The radio frequency beams shattered clouds of bots all across the base, raising geysers of dust and dirt in mushroom clouds of debris.

"Jeez, the whole place is nothing but Bugs!" yelled Berkowitz, kneeling on the lip of an oblong crater. "Every damn thing down there is nothing but a collection of bots."

And it was true, though no one was surprised. Each dome and structure, each housing and assembly was in fact a tightly meshed swarm of nanobotic elements, a hive of Bugs that dissolved in the face of Assault One's withering fire. Deprived of its shielding, the base became easy pickings for the troopers as they poured fire down into the valley.

"Squad One, move forward fifty meters, and flank left!" Moncke commanded. "Squad Two, maintain covering fire--!"

Squad One was Sly and Berkowitz. HERF1 and MAG1 scurried as fast as their X-suits would let them to a crater wall fifty meters left, then dropped below the wall and came up firing again.

Then Squad Two, CSO Namibe and Lander Pilot Viyawanda, pivoted forward to a flank right position, with Sly and Berkowitz providing covering fire.

Like an awkward infant just learning to walk, Hawk Troop worked its way steadily closer to the first structures of the base. The outer perimeter was a line of dish antennas—quantum coupler array, said the description scrolling on Moncke's eyepiece, though he didn't know where that intel came from.

Assault Two, Griffon Troop, did the same from the east.

Building by building, installation by installation, the men and women of Assault One and Two reduced the Caloris Basin compound to rubble and smoking ruins. As CSO, it was Namibe's job to launch their tactical ANAD swarms and engage any Bugs not already fried in the HERF blasts.

Namibe found their ANAD bots a more than equal match for the Bugs. One skirmish happened on a humpback ridge overlooking the excavation trenches and catapult. Here, Assault One Squad Two ran into a dense swarm of Bugs trying to repair the catapult.

"Light 'em up!" Viyawanda yelled. "Blast the buggers to hell and back!"

Namibe did just that.

The Bugs and the humans battled each other in a running series of skirmishes over the next few hours. Inside the base, both assault teams found the Bugs' equipment and facilities puzzling but the troopers had no trouble reducing the base to ashes. Most of the structures weren't solid anyway. When slammed with HERF or mag, the troopers found their targets little more than solid-seeming swarms of bots, which flew apart like leaves in a wind.

Devoid of its shielding and entangler fields, the Bug base was little more than paper to the Normals' weapons.

Nobody was more surprised at this than Detachment Bravo commander Colonel Thanh.

Some hours after the troops of Assault One and Two had penetrated the main compound and leveled most of its equipment and structures to ashes, Thanh left his orbital command post aboard the Meiji and descended to the surface. There he met with Lieutenant Moncke and Lieutenant Lyon of the assault groups.

Moncke wandered across the rubble and ash of the compound with Thanh in tow. "We found that once the outer bot barrier and those blasted red mounds were breached, the rest of the base was essentially swarms of bots." He pointed out small piles of smashed bots dotted across the floor of the huge crater. "The swarms were programmed to gather themselves together and perform certain functions. We've been trying to reconstruct what each swarm did: there were things that looked like domes for energy management...collecting and conditioning all the power beamed down from the Sun Ring. There were swarms for excavating and catapulting material to the Ring for expansion. There were antennas for receiving and converting the beamed power."

Thanh was sobered at the scale of the base. "And it was all swarms of nanobots?"

"Yes, sir...all of it. Nothing solid. Once inside their barriers, we were able to smash the Bugs with HERF and mag fire. All that intel we had was pretty accurate."

Thanh stopped on top of a low hill overlooking the now-destroyed excavation trenches and catapult. "I'll have to check with Colonel Zheung and see how the Sun Ring squadron is doing. Detachment Alpha has a different nut to crack. And, for your information, Lieutenant, all that intel came from a rather unusual source, according to CINCSPACE."

"What kind of source, sir...if I may ask?"

Thanh's expression was invisible behind the glareshield of his helmet. The Sun was close, blasting the surface with radiation and heat and the glow washed out everything in certain directions. "What I heard was pretty incredible...I'm not sure I believe it myself. But there's scuttlebutt inside UNISPACE that General John Winger somehow came back from the dead and is now an angel himself...somehow embedded in the big Bug cloud. He reconned this base and brought details to Earth himself. Right to UNIFORCE in Paris." Thanh shrugged, though nobody could see it. "You can believe that or not, Lieutenant. But that's what I heard."

Moncke and Lyon walked behind the squadron c/o as he loped down toward the excavation pits. Moncke called after Thanh,"I'd be careful down there, Colonel...we still find knots of bots in places. Most of the base is secure but it's like putting out fires. Here and there we run into a little hotspot of Bugs and we have to HERF the bastards."

Thanh toured the rest of what was left of the base and eventually made his way back to the lander. Just as he was boarding, Moncke saw a faint haze swirling toward them from the ruins of the coupler array. Alarmed, he swung his HERF carbine up to disperse the Bugs; it could happen that fast.

But the haze stopped and began to solidify right before their eyes. At first, Moncke figured it was just a dust devil, glommed together from electrostatic forces, reflecting sunlight in an unusual way...that happened on Mercury.

But the form continued to gain mass and soon it was clear what the mass was. The form thickened and it wasn't wearing any kind of protective gear either.

It was General John Winger...or his angel.

The Winger angel looked real enough, but they all understood it was an angel.

"Is this a trick?" Thanh asked. "Bugs resembling John Winger...some kind of weird maskirovka?"

The voice replied in their ear pieces, inside their suits. "No trick, Colonel. I just wanted to meet the man who put Caloris Basin out of commission."

Thanh was skeptical. He had heard of this Winger apparition but never put much stock in the tales. Officer club banter, he figured. But Winger seemed real enough, hovering in front of Thanh, Moncke and Lyon like some kind of bad dream.

"I guess you're real after all...General," Thanh admitted. "If I didn't know better, I'd figure you're just a case of me having indigestion."

"Oh, I'm real enough," the Winger angel said. "Real as anything around this hellhole. I'm just glad I could get some intel back to your planners. And that you made use of it."

Thanh surveyed the ruins of the base from the steps of his lander. "General, if you are General Winger, pardon me, sir...but what the hell are you?"

Winger sort of laughed at that. "Officially, you might say I'm a multi-configuration, para-human swarm entity. I am John Winger, to answer your question. I was...shall we say...changed in an ice cave on Europa. Took on the form and likeness of the adversary. Went native you might say." The angel seemed to shrug. "It does have its benefits...like flitting around the solar system on a radio carrier wave. Looking like anything I have a mind to imitate. Colonel, if I wanted to, I could configure to look like you. But...there's a downside. I can't eat a hot dog, like you can. I can't make love...in the conventional sense...I've got some more exploring to do on that score. I can't really be you, or the old me or anything else. I can be like anything I have a configuration for. But it's only a fake...a simulation. That's what it's like."

Thanh glanced skyward, shielding his faceplate from the intense sunglare. "Operation Mercury Hammer has two parts, General. The ground phase here and the assault on that Sun Ring thing. Do you know anything about that? About how that's going? We're following strict emcon here, so no signals go in or out."

Winger made an unusual set of gestures with his hands and an oblong form began to materialize in front of them...a sort of shroud hanging freely, black in the middle. "Colonel, one of the things I can do is grab photons from someplace, store them and make them show up someplace else. Kind of like recording a scene. I captured these signals on my last trip to Earth—" The black interior of the shroud now began to glow and soon, images began forming, moving images, flickering like a vid at high speed. Recognizable images formed...there was a UNISPACE corvette, then another and Thanh realized they were looking at pixelated images of the Tycho and the Aristotle, approaching the boundaries of the Sun Ring. It was like a grainy sort of vid they were watching.

"These images were grabbed from transmissions within the Sun Ring itself, the controller bots re-configging to defend the Ring from your attack. I just caught snatches of this on my last trip to and from Paris."

The men studied the images flickering across the shroud that Winger had made in front of them, spalled right off his hands. The scenes seem to show the UNISPACE corvettes approaching, then beginning assault ops along the boundary of the Sun Ring.

As the scene unfolded, Moncke and Thanh watched the UNISPACE ships fire at the bot clouds composing the Sun Ring. Huge gaps in the Ring were opened up, then closed just as quickly as the Bugs reconstituted. To Moncke, it was like mowing grass in the summer, with weeds. Just plow along and right behind you, the weeds spring right back.

Yet, bit by bit, the density and scale of the bot clouds was reduced, a few kilometers at a time. With steady application of HERF and mag fire and close coordination of their assault, after a few days, it seemed as if the Sun Ring was only a pale haze in space and the light output of the Sun began to return to normal levels.

With the excavator cut off at Caloris Basin, the bots soon had no more feedstock to build out the Ring. Mopping up took a few more days and the Bugs were history.

The Sun Ring was little more than a few stray bots with no way to replicate or defend themselves. Indeed, pressure from the Sun's flares soon dispersed even that.

Tycho and Aristotle swept up the last remnants of the Bug clouds and changed course for Earth orbit and Gateway Station.

The Winger angel let the viewing shroud dissipate and it was soon gone, washed out in the glare of the sun glow.

Thanh said, "It seems like we won, General. At least, we won this round. The Sun Ring is gone. The base here is in ruins. We beat the Bugs."

Winger's face morphed into something resembling skepticism; you could never really tell with angels.

"Two victories don't necessarily end a war, Colonel. There's still that big Bug cloud out there in deep space, out beyond Jupiter. It's still coming our way, last I heard. A few billion kilometers wide, God knows how deep. There aren't enough HERF guns in all creation to stop that. I don't know what UNIFORCE will do."

Moncke was curious. "What will you do, General? What can you do?"

Winger spread his palms. Bots streamed off his fingers in a thin dribble, perhaps pulled by Mercury's ever-present electrostatic forces. Winger seemed to be breaking down right in front of them.

"Whatever I can, gentlemen. Look, I've got to get to that coupler array and get back to Earth...pass along what I know to Q2. If I stay here—"already his torso and shoulders were fading out, dispersing. "—well, as you can see, I'll be scattered to kingdom come. That's life as an angel. But I've got a few ideas on how to stop this big Bug cloud...I just need for the brass hats in Paris to listen to me. Colonel Thanh, when you make your after-action report, put in a good word for me, will you? Tell them their man inside the mother swarm is working night and day to find some weak spot we can use."

With that, the Winger angel essentially fell apart, vanishing in the glare like dust scattered by wind...solar wind. Now, Thanh and Moncke saw only the ruins of the base and the pop and flash of small residual bot swarms being handled by Assault One and Two in the distance.

Thanh pulled himself up the ladder into the lander. "Lieutenant Moncke, detail a guard force to stay behind and smash any Bugs still hanging around. Put the rest of your people to work on recon...we need intel badly. Anything they think we can use, grab it. The more we can learn about how these Bugs work, the better chance we'll have against the Big Cahuna out there."

"Yes, sir..." Moncke replied. "Sir, do you think the General's right. That there's no way we can stop that Bug cloud with what we have now?"

"I don't know, son. I think we'd better hope General Winger—whatever the hell he is—can find some weak spot, some critical node or something we can exploit. Otherwise---all this does—"he indicated the ruins of the Caloris Basin compound, "is slow the bastards down...and probably make 'em mad as hell. It's like what happens when you poke a stick inside a bee hive. If you don't knock the hive down and stomp the bejeezus out of it fast, you'd better start running."

Moncke watched Thanh disappear into the lander.

The Lieutenant thought to himself: Now there's nowhere else to run.
Chapter 18

Nairobi, Kenya

February 3, 2156

2230 hours (U.T.)

Dana Polansky stayed in Nairobi after the failed negotiations had ended, to try and meet Symborg and plead for his help in getting Jana back. So far as she knew, Jana had died in that explosion aboard the Earthshield ship Herschel. But Dana was convinced that her daughter was still alive—she couldn't really explain it, but a mother knew—somehow Jana had been deconstructed, if that was the word, and taken up into the Mother Swarm.

Dana found her feelings about angels increasingly ambiguous.

Outside Langata House, she hopped out of the matatu taxi, swiped her finger ID against the face of the driverbot and walked toward the veranda of the mansion.

At the veranda, she spied a gathering of men and quickly realized these were members of the Bugs' diplomatic mission. One could have been an angel; it was hard to tell from a distance.

Dana broke into a trot, but the men climbed into a black limousine and the car sped off down the drive and turned out onto Kenyatta Avenue through the ornate bronze gate with the lions' heads.

"Hey, wait--!" But the car was gone.

Dana made a quick decision. These were Bug men. They would know where how to find Symborg. She sprinted back to her own taxi, gave the driverbot more instructions to follow the limo and climbed in.

The matatu sped off in pursuit.

They cruised through Westlands and Hillsborough, then took the A-1 out of Nairobi, heading north by northwest through acacia scrubland and occasional clusters of tin roof shacks and dilapidated huts. Soon, the limo turned off down a dusty dirt road. The matatu followed, Dana threatening the driverbot when it warned that 'these coordinates were in a restricted zone.'

They bumped and bounced along until they came to a fence. Inside the fence was a small airfield, with a single lifter on the ramp next to a small hangar. The lifter looked like a big black armored spider, squatting on its articulating gear.

Dana swiped her finger ID again and the driverbot turned the taxi about and was gone.

She scaled the fence and was immediately intercepted by a pair of burly Masai guards, bearing ceremonial sashes and authoritative looking weapons, which they leveled her.

"Nie mortangi...obseki wan lugonda..." said the taller guard. He brandished the carbine, motioning Dana down from the fence.

She was marched off toward the hangar.

Inside, she was roughly hauled before a single man in a dark suit with an open-neck white shirt. The man was bald and sweating heavily in the stifling humid air of the hangar.

"You're that reporter," he growled at her. He waved the guards back. "Solnet, wasn't it...covering the conference?"

"Dana Polansky, sir—" she pulled out her press ID, which made the gun-toting guards momentarily flinch, but dark suit waved them off. Dana gave the ID to the man, who studied it for a moment, handing it back.

"The conference is over...what are you doing here? This is private property."

"Sir...aren't you--?" It was an old reporter's trick, to scare up a name she didn't know.

"Enkare. Julius Enkare. I could have you arrested, you know...or worse."

"Mr. Enkare, I'm not here as a reporter," Dana told him. She related the basic details, how Jana had joined the Assimilationists. How she just wanted her daughter back. How Jana had 'visited' her from time to time.

That made Enkare smile faintly. "Yes, we angels can do that."

Dana blinked. "You're an angel—I didn't--?"

Enkare smiled more broadly. Seconds later, strange flickers of light erupted from his cheeks and forehead. Before she could react, Enkare's entire head was soon enveloped in a swirling flickering mist, which roiled like a thunderstorm cloud for a few minutes, then morphed and regained solid shape, forming an entirely new countenance, a wholly new face. This one was older, scarred along one cheek bone, with a stiff bristly beard turning gray below. Enkare bellowed out a laugh.

"I am many things," he told her. "Yes, to answer your question, I am an angel. You're diplomat Mosely referred to me as 'Harry,', if I remember right. But names, individual identities...they're just a convenience."

"Can you help me?" Dana pleaded.

Now Enkare turned thoughtful. "I can take you to Symborg, if you want. I don't know if your daughter can be retrieved, re-formed, as you like to think of it. That's not up to me."

Dana wiped away a few tears, looked around at her stern-faced guards and felt embarrassed. "I just want to see my Jana again. I want to hold her, hug her, feel her hair in my fingers. Whatever you could do—"

Enkare said, "When one is deconstructed, the atoms they came from are absorbed into the mother swarm...you know this from Assimilationist thinking, no? The pattern is what matters...the underlying pattern. Some patterns are preserved." Enkare turned serious. "Some patterns are not preserved."

Dana choked back a sob. "Surely Jana's pattern—"

Enkare held up a hand. Dana noticed a thin stream of lights flowing off his fingers, as if he were swirling his hand through a jar of fireflies. "I cannot say. But we are leaving Nairobi now. I could arrange for you to come along...perhaps there will be a role for someone like you."

Without thinking, Dana was grateful. "You don't know how much that would mean to me, sir...anything I can do to get Jana back...I'd do it."

Enkare was now stern. His face morphed emotionally in ways that both intrigued and repelled her at the same time. "Not as a reporter, you understand. As a mother."

"That's all I want now," Dana said. "To see and hold Jana again. Where is this place you're talking about?"

Enkare said, "It's called Uliba. Come—it's only an hour's flight."

By midafternoon, on a stiff northwesterly breeze, the lifter set off, bearing south by southwest on a direct vector to the Ngongolo Hills district and the Tanzanian border.

The hour went by quickly enough and Dana Polansky watched the pale blue oval of Lake Victoria slide by along the horizon, while she reviewed what she would say to Symborg once they met, over and over again in her mind. What could you say to a superstar like Symborg in a situation like this?

A grassy escarpment rolled by ten-thousand meters below them, as the lifter pilot maneuvered toward Ngongolo Hills. Acacia woodlands dotted an open grass range, with the shoreline of Lake Natron and the craggy faulted walls of Ngongolo crater making an impressive backdrop. As Dana looked on through scattered clouds, great herds of wildebeest and Thomson's gazelle undulated across the plain, kicking up dust for miles around.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Enkare observed. "I've been coming here on missions for the better part of ten years and I never tire of the view. Over there'--" he pointed through a porthole at strings of smoke issuing skyward from an encampment on the steeply sloping ramparts of Kipwezi volcano. "Cooking fires from the village. That's our destination...Uliba."

Moments later, the lifter pilot had circled the volcano several times to gauge the prevailing winds and set them down with a thump onto dark pebbly ground in a clearing southwest of the village. A quick infrared and EM scan of the surrounding rocks and black hills produced no obvious threat signatures.

Enkare got out, holding Dana's hand as she exited the lifter on rickety stairs. The guard goons were right behind, she noticed.

Enkare formed up a procession of the lifter passengers and led them deeper into a tangle of acacia trees and scrubland to the village outskirts. The gathering of huts formed a tight circle, no more than a hundred meters across, nestled in the brow of a ridge from a nearby crater. Each hut was a crude twig and branch skeleton, draped with straw and cowhide. Antennas and cables snaked across the clearing, powering Uliba's telecom systems, the only concession to the 22nd Century.

Beyond the center of the village, a large tent surrounded on three sides with tables and benches dominated a nearby clearing. Flat screen displays hanging from poles flickered down on the villagers, with images of Bollywood action pics counterpointed by plaintive plucking from a mandolin player nearby. In the center of a knot of yelling, shoving, jeering customers, a swarthy man in a turban and dark green kaftan pecked at a keyboard. All around the arches, throbbing globs of nanobotic swarms swelled and gyrated to the music. Masala smoke was thick and acrid in the air.

Though he didn't look like the most popular images of the great robotic messiah, Dana figured the vendor was in fact Symborg, in one of his many guises.

This version of Symborg was a small man, desert burning in his eyes, as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Presently, he stopped and noticed a very young child, a small girl, standing shyly a few meters away from Dana, playing hide and seek in the folds of her mother's loose sarong.

Symborg, who sported a thick black moustache, beckoned repeatedly to the young girl. After a few minutes, her mother relented and let her child go. The girl inched her way into the clearing and stood in front of the vendor's table, to applause and approving shouts and chants from the crowd.

Symborg reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a trinket for the young girl. He handed it to her and she took it, shyly, turning the small cylinder over and over in her hand.

"You have a djinn in that cylinder, little one," Symborg announced, loudly enough for all to hear. "A very powerful spirit. He can grant you any wish you want. Make a wish, child, and the djinn will bring it to you, right here—"

The girl's name was Menaka and she had huge brown eyes. Sad eyes, thought Dana, as she looked on from ten meters away, at the front of the crowd.

Menaka twirled the cylinder as Symborg had shown her and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she stopped twirling the cylinder, she felt it vibrate and was so startled, she dropped the cylinder to the dirt.

Instantly, the device was enveloped in a fine mist, a sparkling mist that billowed out and upward, swirling about the clearing in front of Symborg and his tables like a miniature cyclone. Gasps and shouts erupted from the crowd, and the spectators shoved back against each other, to give this growing apparition greater distance.

The mist gradually materialized into the faint outline of a man's upper body, with a recognizable face, shoulders and arms crossed in front.

The 'djinn' then spoke out loud. "Little one, I have come from the clouds above to grant you a great wish. Make your wish now—" The djinn's voice was a deep bass profundo, so deep it rattled the beaded curtains that covered Symborg's tent behind them.

Menaka stared wide-eyed, mouth open, at the apparition. She was speechless.

"Go ahead, child," urged Symborg. "The djinn wishes you to make a wish."

Shouts of encouragement and support came from the crowd. Gradually, Menaka worked up enough nerve. Shy, haltingly, she asked for a new pedcart for her father.

"His cart is broken, Great One," she murmured. "It is our livelihood. Father needs a new cart to carry the tourists."

The deep voice rumbled again, a little reverberation adding to the sense of barely contained powers.

"As you have spoken, child...so shall it be—"

At that moment, the swirling, twinkling apparition of the djinn dissolved into a maelstrom of churning, roiling clouds, streaked with flashes of light. It was like watching a thunderstorm in miniature, from the inside.

When the storm began to subside, the barest outlines of a structure could be seen enveloped in the thick fog. The fog dissolved, slowly at first, then with speed, to reveal the front seat and handles of a new pedcart. Its wheels dripped with moisture and sunlight shone from the supple leather seats in the back.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then erupted into cheers and gasps. Menaka stared wide-eyed at the new pedcart, inching her way forward to tentatively put a finger along the handles, tracing the smooth curve of the metal.

For fun, Symborg reached down and honked the horn a few times, startling everyone. The crowd laughed.

"You see what a gift the great djinn has brought you, little one. The djinn I have in my possession can do the same for every one of you." Symborg pointedly stared at each face in the front row of the circle of onlookers. "Such a powerful djinn, such a powerful servant is available to you, today, right now, for a very special price. You will not believe the deal I can make for you. My friends, you cannot leave this bazaar without experiencing what this amazing servant can do for you—"

Dana Polansky leaned over to Julius Enkare, standing alongside.

"Not bad nano, if you ask me. Config changes were quick. He manages to hide some of the frizziness with smoke."

Enkare nodded. "Thank you. We angels always like to hear that we're like smoke and mirrors to people like you, especially from single-configs like yourself."

"No, that's not quite what I meant—"

Enkare held up a hand. "It's okay. Symborg likes to come back to Uliba. His roots are here. His people are here."

"When can I meet with him?"

"Soon," Enkare told her. "Soon...be patient."

Dana Polansky watched the robotic messiah continue working the crowd. She recalled a press briefing from UNIFORCE in Paris a few months before. The Q2 and BioShield intelligence briefing had clued reporters in to some of the more common practices around places like Nairobi. The east African city was thick with fab hawks of all kinds. It was normal for fab hawks to sell the basic fabricator shells cheap and the processor cores and matter drivers dearly...the better to get unwary customers hooked and reel them in like fish. In this version, Symborg was little more than just such a fab hawk. Over the decades, that practice had stood him well in growing the Assimilationist movement.

Traffic in unlicensed, souped-up fabs made for a brisk black market, in Nairobi and around east Africa, indeed throughout South Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral.

Prime Red Hammer hunting grounds, Polansky had remarked to the briefers. Along with thriving cartels in unregulated genetic enhancements like twist, the traffic in fabs and what had been termed bad nano was booming in Nairobi, so much so that Quantum Corps and local BioShield cops had been overwhelmed. Red Hammer also did a thriving business in fab driver programming—with the right patches and algorithms, a good fab driver could create literally anything except organics. And what they couldn't create on their own, Red Hammer stole or kidnapped. All across several continents, an epidemic of nanohead and atomgrabber kidnappings had exploded in recent years.

"Come on—"Enkare muttered to Dana. "The show's over. We'll meet Symborg in his tent."

Inside the tent, four tables formed a large square, with huge cushions and thick rugs scattered around. Incense and other elements burned from smoking pots in the corners. A large antique safe squatted on ornate gilded legs in one corner. The safe was enveloped in obvious barrier nano—a faint mist sparkled and twinkled around it.

Symborg went over, almost gliding as he moved toward the safe. A hand went out and sparks flew where the assembler swarms collided. Electron bond disrupters fizzed and soon the barrier nano dissolved into nothing.

"How the hell did you do that?" Dana asked.

Symborg smiled faintly, a crooked, uneven smile that had once sent shivers down her spine. Even after decades, at least out of the public eye, the swarm was still learning the nuances of human facial expressions.

***Crude assembler swarm...very loose...poorly coordinated...I used bond disrupters to penetrate and reset primary config algorithms***

Enkare motioned for her to put her request to Symborg. Dana explained who she was and what had happened to her daughter Jana. "I just want my Jana back and I thought you could help...especially in light of the—" she looked skyward, indicating the coming Big Swarm still billions of kilometers away in space. "...you now...the situation."

Now Symborg regarded Polansky curiously, as if she were a specimen of a rare and dying breed. "There have been some...shall we say, complications in the approach of the Mother Swarm, to be sure. I won't deny that. But the end result cannot be prolonged much longer. It is inevitable."

"Can I get her back? Can you help me get my Jana back like she was before?"

Symborg was moderately sympathetic, a faint smirk on his swarthy face. Maybe it was just facial bots morphing the expression; who could say with Symborg, or with any angel?

"Ms. Polansky, with the Mother Swarm, all things are possible."

Even as she watched, Dana saw a great swirling mass spall off Symborg's left arm, a faint flickering mist descending toward the floor of the tent, a new subswarm boiling and fluorescing and sparkling.

She watched, mesmerized, as the swarm coagulated and congealed slowly into a vaguely human form. First were the legs, clad in some kind of stocking or leggings. Then a torso, with arms erupting out of stumps like flower petals unfurling at high speed. Then shoulders pulling together and the faintest chill went down Dana's back.

No.

When the head formed in outline, she knew it was Jana, even down to the blond curls that were always dropping into her face. It was Jana. Yes, it was. But it wasn't. It couldn't be.

But it was, in all the ways that mattered.

Dana sobbed with joy and rushed forward, trying to hug her daughter, to hold her. It was like trying to hug smoke. Jana was an angel, she knew that but deep inside, there had always been a hope that she nursed along like a flame about to go out. She backed away, realizing this was a simulation of Jana, a representation of her daughter, nothing more than that. It was a pattern, now solidified to resemble a Normal but still composed of bots. Jana was still an angel. Always would be an angel.

Dana was heartbroken. She swallowed tears and tried to compose herself.

Now the Jana thing started to speak. "Mom...it's me...it's...don't cry...it's okay, really...it's me."

Dana shook her head, closed her eyes. She tried to put the image out of her mind completely.

"No...nononono...it's not. Jana, oh my God, Jana...this isn't real. It's a nightmare...it's—"

"Mama, it's not a nightmare. I'm real...I'm as real as you...in every way that matters. Don't go on like this...I'm doing fine, really, I'm well. I am. Don't worry about me like that."

Dana peeked out from behind her fingers. The apparition was still there. "Stop this. Now. Just stop it—this isn't Jana. It's a cloud of bugs, that's all. You can't do this to me...you can't possibly be Jana. I just thought—"

Now, the Jana thing moved toward Dana Polansky. But Dana backed away and waved her arms about. "Mama, I'm so much more than I was before. Look at me...I can go anywhere. I can do anything. Remember what you used to tell me...you said, 'You can be anything you want.' Well, now I can. I don't have zits and my legs aren't too skinny and my hair stays in place now. I can be a perfect Normal. I can also be that table over there."

To prove her point, Jana sloughed off part of her arm in a great swirl of twinkling bots, which soon dispersed as a small horde and quickly assumed the shape of another table, just like the one Symborg used to hold his trinkets.

"Mama, come with me. Join us. Join the Assimilationists. Be like me...we can be together again."

The whole idea now sickened Dana, appalled her. What was I thinking? "Jana, don't say that...you don't know what you're saying...it's a friggin' algorithm!"

"Mama, the Mother Swarm is coming. In fact, Symborg himself told me it's already here. You can live forever in the Mother Swarm. You can go places you can't imagine, inside black holes, other dimensions, the center of the earth, even inside the Sun...Mama, I've seen it. There's no way I'm going back. This is what I'm meant to be."

"What...a cloud of bugs? Jana, you're a human being. You were born a human being."

"And I would have died a human being, Mama. But now...I can't die. I only change configurations. It's like putting on new clothes...every day, a new outfit. What girl wouldn't want that?"

Dana understood now that Jana was lost, she wasn't coming back. She was angry at Symborg, heartbroken over what had happened to Jana.

"We're not giving in," she told Symborg. "We're not through fighting."

Symborg smiled his enigmatic smile. "You've already lost, Dana Polansky. The Imperative of Life can't be stopped. Order from chaos. This is the new order. Be part of us, be one with us, or all that you are will be lost."

Symborg then related the myth of the Bantu people of east Africa:

"Bantu cultures have a story about the origin of death, involving a chameleon. According to this story, God sent the chameleon to announce to men that they would never die. The chameleon went on his mission, but he walked slowly and stopped along the way to eat. Sometime after the chameleon had left, a lizard went to announce to men that they would die. Being much quicker than the chameleon, the lizard arrived first, thus establishing the mortal nature of man".

Symborg summarized: "But now, there is a new order. The race is over. The chameleon has arrived. And all humans will be part of the Mother Swarm. You will be multi-configuration entities. And so you will see that death as you describe it in your mythology will be no more."

Dana wanted nothing to do with the whole idea. "Now, I know what Hell looks like," she said to Symborg. Without another word, she left the tent on her own. She stalked back through the forest to the clearing where the lifter had landed.

She intended to go back to the Westlands Hotel in Nairobi, pack her bags and head back to the Quartier-General in Paris and find out from her sources just how the Mercury Hammer mission was coming along.

Chapter 19

Farside Observatory

Korolev Crater, the Moon

February 8, 2156

1200 hours (Earth U.T.)

Nightfall at Korolev Crater came abruptly, too abruptly, thought Sanjay Singh. He stared out the porthole of the SpaceGuard Center and watched the shadows drop like a black curtain across the face of the crater wall. Korolev was a massive place, fully four hundred kilometers in diameter, with stair step rim walls and a small chain of mountains inside. Like a bull's eye on a target, the crater lay dead center in the rugged highlands of Farside, forever banished from the sight of Earth.

Sanjay Singh watched the black creep down the crater walls and ooze across the crater floor like a spreading stain. Somehow, it seemed depressing...another two weeks of night with only the stars for company. Cosmic grandeur, my ass, he muttered to himself. Give me a beach in the South Pacific and some native girls and I'll tell you a thing or two about cosmic grandeur.

Singh was pulling late shift today...tonight...whatever the hell it was. Tending the radars and telescopes of Farside Array, scanning sector after sector of the heavens for any little burp or fart worthy of an astronomer's interest. The High Freq array had just gone through a major tune-up last week and it was Singh's job to give her a complete shakedown for the next few days.

At the moment, she was boresighted to the only thing that mattered in the heavens the last few months...the Big Bug Cloud, the Mother Swarm, the End Times...whatever you wanted to call it, out beyond orbit of Saturn and advancing relentlessly toward the inner solar system.

Singh took one last look out the nearest porthole and begrudged the final wisps of daylight before Farside was fully enveloped in the nightfall. At that same moment, he heard a beeping from his console and turned his attention back to the array controls.

What the hell...

Sanjay Singh looked over his boards, controlling the positioning of the great radars out on the crater floor and the optical and radio telescopes that accompanied them. He quickly pinpointed the source of the beeping...Nodes 20 through 24...the south lateral array...was picking up some anomaly.

He massaged the controls and tried to focus the array better, get better resolution on the target. SpaceGuard didn't beep without reason. Of course, it didn't hurt that the target was, at last reckoning, something like a tenth of a light year in extent.

A quick perusal made the hairs on the back of Sanjay Singh's neck stand up. The system displayed a list of likely targets, based on radar imaging and known ephemerides. He scanned the list, mumbling the details to himself.

" Hmmm....right ascension 22 degrees, 57 minutes, 28 seconds. Declination 20 degrees, 46 minutes, 8 seconds---" Just as he was about to consult the catalog, SpaceGuard threw up a starmap.

It was in the direction of Saturn, but it wasn't Saturn or any of its dozens of moons. The mass centroid of the Big Bug Cloud was still something like six billion kilometers away. No, this was something different. A point source of energy had just spiked. Probably the bots zapping some unknown moon or asteroid out beyond the ringed planet.

Singh studied the details. "This one's a doozy--"his fingers played over the keyboard, bringing all of Farside's instruments to bear on the new source. The energy spike was showing up in all bands now: X-ray, gamma ray, infrared, even optical. What the hell was going on?

He stared for a moment at the brief flare that erupted on the screen in front of him. Must be one hell of a source.

Before he could decide what to do next, Singh was interrupted by the sound of a door opening...it was Max Lane, the shift supervisor.

"I heard SpaceGuard got something--" Lane was short, big moustache, squat legs of a former weightlifter, now going soft in the Moon's sixth-g.

Singh showed him the readings. "I've got it designated Delta P. Big sucker, too. Blasting out on all bands. See for yourself."

Lane examined all Farside's instruments. Whatever it was, Delta P was a big gamma producer. He twiddled with his moustache for a moment. "Maybe we got us a micro black hole. You know, Westerlund had that theory--black holes evaporating, Hawking radiation, and all that--"

Marks nodded. "Right in the middle of the Cloud? Maybe, but I doubt it. I'll pull up the spectra, see what kind of match we get." The astronomer massaged the keyboard, calling up spectrographic profiles of presumed black hole radiation sources.

"Anything in this sector before?"

"Nada," Marks told him. "Cloud's been unchanged for months now. Stable as a table. How many planets is it supposed to have eaten up so far?"

"I lost count," said Lane. "Pluto, Neptune, a basket of moons and rocks out there. So what's this big guy doing now?"

"Aside from spikes in the gamma bands, there's some indication that the centroid's changing heading too. Not by much. Right now, the centroid is heading for a point about a million kilometers from the Sun, but that in itself is a change. It was aimed dead center a few days ago. Something is shifting the cloud."

"Not us," Lane decided. "Something's happening out there. We'd better call this in to UNISPACE. Send a three-line to Gateway and let's setup a vidcon for later."

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@dana.polansky.solnetworldview

February 20, 2156

1100 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

What's Happening to the Sun?

This Solnet Special Report will cover a breaking story just coming out of UNISPACE Headquarters at the Quartier-General in Paris. Many viewers have noted the recently detected significant dimming of the Sun's visible light output. UNISPACE has assured us, in a series of press briefings, that the dimming is not a result of any unpredicted eclipse or of any operations being conducted by UNISPACE itself. Solnet has sent reporter Dana Polansky to Paris to cover the story....

"Good morning. I'm here outside the Quartier-General on the Boulevard St. Michael in Paris' 5th Arrondisement to report on what's happening to the Sun. For several weeks now, billions of people have noticed a significant dimming in the visible light output of our Sun. This reporter has learned from highly placed but unnamed sources within UNISPACE that detectors at our Farside Observatory on the Moon and at other locations have measured a distinct change in course of the Big Bug Cloud. I have just yesterday returned from a trip to the Farside complex and can now reveal the following important information—"

Append Video Post 466 here...

"We're here at the SpaceGuard Center, inside the Newton wing of the Farside complex, talking with Dr. Gilford Benes, an astronomer with Farside. Dr. Benes, thank you for joining us today at Special Report."

"You're most welcome, Dana. And welcome to Farside as well."

"Thank you, Dr. Benes. In recent weeks, reports have been coming out of various sources, among them sources at UNISPACE, that the Sun doesn't seem to be as bright as it once was. Are there changes going on with the Sun? What's seems to be wrong with the Sun? And is this related to movements of the Big Bug Cloud?"

Benes smooth's out what little hair he has left on an egg-shaped pate. "Well, Erika, actually there's nothing wrong with the Sun per se. I want to put your viewers' minds at ease on that score. The Sun is operating pretty much as it has for the last four plus billion years, with some variations in output, of course."

"But, Dr. Benes, many viewers have noticed a diminishing in the amount of sunlight reaching the earth during the day.

"I'm sure they have. What we have detected here at Farside, using both optical and infrared telescopes, is what seems to be a massive course change in the Big Bug Cloud, as you call it, as it approaches the inner solar system."

"That's very interesting, Dr. Benes. Are there any suspicions that this cloud is moving away from the Sun, out of our solar system or is that just hopeful speculation?"

"Certainly we have those suspicions. Right now, we're studying this phenomenon very closely, trying to characterize the exact nature of the components of the cloud...are they dust particles, nanobotic elements or exactly what? This is an on-going process and we hope to have some results we can release in a day or so."

"Dr. Benes, some of my sources insist that there is intelligence indicating that this phenomenon has come all the way from 51 Pegasi, perhaps from even further away and that it was in fact tracked across much of the Milky Way galaxy for the last twenty years. Can you comment on these allegations?"

"I can't comment directly on things I haven't seen, Erika. I'm sure you can understand that. We're studying the Sunshadow anomaly---that's what we're calling it now—most urgently for additional details. Honestly, we need to track the phenomena further to be sure of its heading. I'm afraid that speculation that the Cloud is moving through and out of our solar system is, for now, just that—speculation."

Dana wanted to press Dr. Benes further. "Dr. Benes, my sources tell me that Farside has been tasked by the UN to provide support to a proposed exploratory mission that is planned for launch in the next few weeks. Can you confirm this?"

Benes shrugs, a sort of half-smile on his lips. "Dana, of course, you know I can't comment on any details of actual UNISPACE operations. In fact, we're just astronomers here at Farside. We observe and report on what we see. However, I can confirm one thing."

"What is that, Dr. Benes?"

"Farside is providing support for a re-directed mission for the Helios satellite. This satellite has been in orbit around the Sun for many years, as you may know, providing us with on-scene observations of solar phenomena, coronal ejections, surface transients, magnetic phenomena and other matters. UNISPACE has ordered that the current Helios mission be discontinued and the satellite be re-located to a new orbit which will intersect that of the Sunshadow anomaly and the leading edge of the Cloud. This is happening as we speak. Helios will also examine certain, shall we say, unusual signatures that seem to be emanating from the Caloris Basin region of Mercury."

"Thank you, Dr. Benes, for taking the time to be with us today."

"My pleasure, Dana."

Solnet Special Report Ends

Dana Polansky said goodbye to Dr. Benes and made sure the cambot had the video footage she needed.

I'll get with Edit later for special effects and anything else we need. She was due to post the report on the Net by 1800 hours local time, assuming the Net was working. That wasn't a sure thing nowadays, what with all the glitches from malware, virus and bot infestations.

She decided a drink could be accommodated, so she left Newton Wing and went down a short ramp to the connecting tunnel that led to Kepler Wing, where Farside's hab spaces and galley were located. Next to the galley was the canteen, all done up to resemble a South Seas beachside bar, complete with miniature palm trees, thatched roofs and a sign reading Fiji Island Lagoon.

It was just noon by Farside time but she had heard the robotenders made a mean Samoan daiquiri and she figured it would make decent background for the report she still had to file.

But just at the foot of the ramp, she encountered none other than CINCSPACE himself, General Mahmood Salaam.

Dana was startled. So was CINCSPACE.

"General, I didn't know you were at Farside."

Salaam was a wiry, dark-skinned Syrian native, with dataspecs that were forever flashing with vids and text blocks, so that he never seemed to be paying you any attention.

"Miss Polansky, likewise. Sorry, but I'm in a bit of a hurry. It's a bit of a classified briefing trip. If you'll excuse me—" he started up the ramp to SpaceGuard Center, but Dana had always been a resourceful correspondent—she hadn't won an Emmy and a Selkie for sitting home popping chocolates—and she stepped directly into Salaam's path.

They collided and Dana took a spill off the side of the ramp, landing heavily on her side.

CINCSPACE reacted automatically , stopping to give her a hand up.

"I'm so sorry, Ms. Polansky...I thought you were---here, let me help you—"

Dana let him take her left hand. As she came upright, she let herself teeter into his chest, almost knocking them both off the ramp.

"General, it must be the gravity...still getting my spacelegs, you know...I'm just so clumsy—"

And while Salaam steadied her, she managed to plan a spybot right on the underside of his left uniform sleeve, just by grabbing his arm, which he had offered for support.

After a few more pleasantries, they parted company. CINCSPACE went up the ramp to Newton Wing, to SpaceGuard, she presumed. Dana resumed her trek to the canteen.

Of course, she knew perfectly well that what she had done was strictly illegal and could easily land in her prison or worse, if the bot were discovered. And there was certainly a risk in landing the pea-sized bot on a target like Salaam, who undoubtedly wore some kind of protective botshield when out in public. High officials in UNIFORCE always did; it went with the job.

She ordered her drink and sipped thoughtfully at the rum, deciding to wait a few minutes before trying to link up with the bot she had planted. She held her breath, hoping CINCSPACE's own defensive shield, if he had one, didn't go off but nothing happened, no guards came storming into the bar, and she gradually began to relax.

Girl, one of these days—she told herself, but secretly she was pleased with her own audacity and curious as to what the spybot might pick up. I've probably broken about a hundred laws and regulations by slapping the gadget on the highest ranking officer in UNISPACE, but what the hell...it was a competitive business and you had to do what you had to do for ratings.

Cautiously, she tapped a few buttons on her wristpad.

When it settled down, she realized that the bot was relaying vid and audio from some kind of briefing. Probably classified to the heavens, she thought. She could just barely make out other faces and voices—the link wasn't all that great. She fiddled with the gain and managed to get a clearer audio, at least. Sounds like Dr. Benes, is there. And maybe the SpaceGuard director—what was his name? Portland something or other. It seemed to be a heated discussion...CINCSPACE was almost shouting at someone. What the hell were they yapping about?

Dana selected the record option and decided to sever the link for the moment. I need to finish this drink. She wound up ordering another.

She went to her tiny apartment on the other side of Kepler Wing and squeezed in to what could only be described as a closet. She locked the door, did some edit and graphics work on her report, and after an hour, decided she couldn't wait any longer. She re-established the link---interested to see that Salaam was still inside SpaceGuard center, although no longer in conference. It looked like the Watch Center itself, from what she could see: consoles and flashing screens and people scurrying about.

She selected re-play, then listened and watched what the spybot had recorded over the previous two hours. What she heard made her blood run cold.

It was all highly classified, UNICORN or higher, she figured and she knew perfectly well that was she was doing could get her into a hell of a lot of trouble. But the more she listened, the more evident it became that Dr. Benes had not been entirely forthcoming with her...not particularly surprising, given the way UNIFORCE usually worked.

It was apparent from what the spybot had recorded that this new mission to the Bug Cloud was much further along that she had been led to believe. In fact, a manned ship was even now at Gateway Station being outfitted for the trip. She was the corvette Tycho and the captain would be one Pavel Beregevoi.

Interesting indeed. Tycho had to be fresh from Operation Mercury Hammer. What on earth...or outer space, was she up to?

Dana made sure this also got into her Special Report filing. She ran through the clip a few more times, checking continuity, adding some more effects, editing for time, then squirted her finished masterpiece off the satellite to New York and sat back with a satisfied glow.

God, I could use another Somoan from the Fiji Island Lagoon.

But instead, she figured it would be even smarter to get the hell out of Farside before they threw her in jail. She spent most of the rest of the evening trying to wrangle a ride back to Earth, via Gateway Station.

If she was lucky, she'd be able to get some footage of the Tycho before she shoved off on her mysterious mission to the Sun.

UNIFORCE Special Report to the Secretary-General

Principal Astronomical Effects from Passage of Anomaly UNSP-1A (a.k.a. The Big Bug Cloud) Through the Solar System

25 March 2155 through 28 February 2056

At maximum extent, Anomaly UNSP-1A covered a breadth of nearly a tenth of a light year in extent. Estimates vary and range from a low end of 0.878 trillion to 0.959 trillion kilometers. Density estimates are provided in Attachment A, Physical Characteristics Based on Visual, Infrared and Hyperspectral Signature Analysis of Anomaly UNSP 1A, appended to this report.

From first detection to passage of the swarm centroid as measured crossing the mean heliocentric orbital distance of Mercury, Anomaly UNSP-1A occupied solar system space for a period of 11 months, 3 days and twenty-two hours.

Significant reduction in solar output in all bands, a noticeable 'dimming' of the Sun's visible light and associated wavelengths, occurred during a two-week period as the densest part of the Anomaly passed by the Sun, measured as the mass centroid of the phenomena. Twenty days after passage of the mass centroid of the Anomaly through the mean heliocentric coronal perimeter boundary layer of the Sun, solar output began a slow, logarithmic return to normal levels, which have been sustained.

Widespread press and media reports from around the world and at other settlements and facilities across the solar system are consistent with historical accounts of astronomical phenomena observed and witnessed over the last five thousand years of recorded history. Numerous riots, other forms of civil disobedience, public gatherings, and religious ceremonies from a variety of denominations and traditions were recorded and reported on. Multiple spikes in Assimilationist awakenings and instances of volunteer 'de-materializing' have also been logged. Statistics on these incidents are provided in Attachment B, Gaylord, Dr. Seth, Epi-social Spiritual Phenomena among Technologically Advanced Stage 4 Populations.

The Farside Observatory continues to monitor visual and infrared signatures from the Europa-Eye detector satellites currently in orbit around the Jovian moon Europa. Data gathered since this report was compiled indicate that no anomalous indications of surface or subsurface disturbances have been detected. The phenomena popularly characterized as the 'Keeper', thought to the source of past detected disturbances, has been dormant during this latter period of the Anomaly's passage. One theory, as yet unsubstantiated, is that the Anomaly, being nanobotic in composition, may have absorbed the Keeper phenomenon during its passage through the Jupiter system.

UNIFORCE law and mandate enforcement arms, including Quantum Corps, Sanctuary Patrol and Boundary Patrol, have likewise reported that no evidence of the Configuration Zero and Symborg swarm elements can currently be detected in any signature band normally monitored. United Nations Security Affairs Commissioner (UNSAC) Angelika Komar has been quoted as saying, "It seems like the Bug Cloud has just swept all of them away...or maybe scattered or absorbed them...and thank God for that."

Farside continues to track Anomaly UNSP-1A as it recedes from the inner solar system. Astronomers estimate that, at the current rate of departure, adjusting for the gravitational influence of the Sun and major planetary bodies such as Jupiter, the Anomaly's notional outer edge will pass into the inner Kuiper Belt region of our system and continue to recede.

Measurements of velocity shifts and perturbations indicate that the Anomaly, as measured by the instantaneous position of its mass centroid is on a general heading which will enter the system of 61 Ursa Majoris in approximately six thousand four hundred years.

Note that previous exoplanet surveys provide substantial evidence of multiple planetary bodies in this system and there is continuing speculation on the habitability of several bodies in the system, notably 61D Ursa Majoris. There are faint but unmistakable biosignatures recently detected in the atmosphere of 61D Ursa Majoris, including measurable trace amounts of gases such as methane and other biologically significant constituents.

A recent slight heading shift of Anomaly UNSP-1A's mass centroid onto a more direct vector toward the 61 Ursa Majoris system has initiated discussions in the United Nations Security Council on the advisability of transmitting a warning signal to any potential living inhabitants of 61D Ursa Majoris to identify the nature of the approaching anomaly.

These discussions continue.

Long term meteorological and climatic effects from the passage and proximity of Anomaly UNSP 1A are detailed in Attachment C: Forecast Climatic Effects from Proximity of Anomaly UNSP-1A (including Measurable Subswarms and Lesser Elements). Note that long-term climatic effects incorporate estimates of seawater and seabed excavation and dynamic lifting of excavated materials into the atmosphere, along with continental tectonic plate stresses and all Stage 1fires and episodes of extreme volcanism, integrated into current forecast models over the next two years.

For latest results of forecast model iterations, see World Meteorological Organization "Proceedings of Conference on Climatic Effects from Recent Astronomical and Solar Phenomena", 3-5 February 2156, Madrid, Spain, appended to this report as Attachment D.

UNIFORCE casualty and environmental remediation efforts continue and are expected to be required at current levels of effort for at least the next ten years.

Residual effects can only be estimated at this time. Many Kuiper Belt objects have been disassembled or absorbed into Anomaly UNSP 1A. The Pluto-Charon system has been destroyed and absorbed. The Neptune-Triton system has also been destroyed and absorbed. Even the Jupiter system is showing new and currently unpredictable gravitational instabilities.

However, the Earth, the Moon, most of the inner solar system and the Sun are intact. The net assessment of this report is that there should be no further major instabilities or incidences due to the presence, proximity or passage of Anomaly UNSP 1A.

UNIFORCE Special Report Ends

Chapter 20

Custer Inn

Haleyville, Idaho

April 11, (Easter Sunday) 2156

2200 hours (Earth U.T.)

It took Johnny Winger many months to maneuver and drift his way back home, returning to Earth on picowatt propulsors, chastened and sobered by what he had gone through. Reaching the upper layers of the atmosphere, he descended to Earth like meteoric dust, still a swarm entity, but now with a new mission, a renewed sense of purpose.

Caught in the trade winds for a time, he used the delay to hunt for another entity whose absence he had long keenly felt...Dana Tallant.

He had always heard that angels and swarm beings didn't have feelings, only algorithms. You did what you were programmed to do. Do this, then do this, then do this. Return and start the cycle over.

But Johnny Winger, as an angel, always felt he had some sort of feelings. Perhaps that was the latent personality and memory Doc III had stored away in the Config Status Buffer File. The last wisps of what had once been Johnny Winger, with little wisps of feelings. Broken shards of memories. A smidge of emotion.

He hadn't seen or talked or related to Dana Tallant in years. Once they had been competing atomgrabbers. Then they were married. Then they had kids, Rene and Liam. Years before, one after another, all had gone the way of the angels. Deconstructed into atoms. Re-assembled into nanobotic structures, that could as easily resemble a sofa as a human being.

Now, he wanted to find Dana again. Where was she? They had both been inside the Mother Swarm in some fashion but there might still be traces of her on Earth. It was worth a look. Now that the Mother Swarm was moving off, leaving Earth and her sister worlds behind, what was an angel to do? He was still a loose swarm himself. But now there would be no final integration into the Mother Swarm. There would be no taking up millions of dematerialized souls into some vast cosmic cloud. He felt like a bee without a hive.

So he went looking for Dana Tallant.

After some time—he didn't bother keeping track of how many processing cycles that was—he detected a familiar pattern in the ether. Something—he couldn't quite put his 'finger' on it, had attracted his attention. Maybe it was a simple ID file, a header packet, a familiar data stream...who could say? It seemed to be Dana Tallant. It responded to his queries in a positive way and the two angels gathered themselves together from places separated by unfathomable distances and agreed to meet.

They would rendezvous at a small bar and dive in the town of Haleyville, Idaho. It was near Table Top Mountain, one time home to Quantum Corps. It was a place that both angels realized offered familiar and comfortable patterns.

The night was cool and slightly misty, as low hanging clouds scudded over the Buffalo Range to the north.

Custer Inn was a faintly shabby, log and shingle mountain lodge of a hotel, nestled in the piney brow of a small turnout valley off the main road, a kilometer or so before Highway 7 broadened into Main Street, which was lined with gift shops, bait and tackle joints and hiking suppliers. The pale blue glow of a parasailing shop, closed for the evening, threw enough light across the road, so he found the location readily enough. He tried not to let the hologram windsailers circling over the intersection distract him.

He drifted like mist down the decline toward the parking lot, and materialized himself into Normal configuration in the shadows, somehow feeling comfort in a cloak of anonymity. Through the windows, the bar and restaurant shone with boozy conviviality, laughter and saloon music spilling out through the front doors.

Johnny Winger went inside.

By mutual query and assent, the two swarms had agreed to assume Normal form. He found her in a back booth, in the corner.

Because Dana Tallant was an angel, same as he, she could form herself into anything she had a template for. This time, she was as he remembered: short brown hair, with locks over her right eye, thin lips, always in a slight smirk—I know things you'll never know, Wings—nose like a suggestion on a sculpted porcelain face with deep brown eyes that shone like smoldering black buttons.

She had a way of smiling that was more than a little suggestive. Dana Tallant lifted an amber ale as he approached and said, "You look just like I remembered you, Wings. A little boy getting off his bike...surprised the thing lasted as long as it has."

They kissed lightly, lips to forehead, as Normals do and Winger scooted into the hard bench seat. Then they held hands for a long time, ignoring the waitress filtering by, hoping for some kind of order, then circling back again and again, quizzical lift to her eyebrows.

"It's good to see you, Dana. Hell, it's good to feel you too. Or feel anything. This angel thing makes you hungry for tactile sensations."

"Me too, but you know, Wings, it's all a matter of programming and configs and templates."

Winger sighed. "What are we going to do, Dana...you and me? The Mother Swarm has passed us by. Discarded us like rejects. The whole point of being assimilated was to be taken up, wasn't it?"

Dana looked wistful. "Become one with the Mother Swarm...I still remember Symborg talking about that, promising that. Part of a great cosmic whole, at one with the Universe. Now--?" She shrugged and Winger had to notice that her hands and face and shoulders tracked with near perfection, very little smearing of her config under sudden movements. At least, they had finally solved that problem. "—nothing. A lot of angels are in the same boat. The same predicament. I don't know what's going to happen. The air is filled with disembodied atoms that used to be people, people who volunteered for a new life and now can't get there. The gate's locked. The park's closed. No rides today."

"Well," Winger said, "we still have each other. What about Rene? What about Liam?"

This made her face tighten noticeably. "I haven't encountered them in years and years. You know, you practically made Liam feel like a stranger in his own home, Wings. He may never come back."

"Me? I just wanted him to think before he made an irrevocable decision, Dana. I wanted him to use his head, that's all. It's a big step—was a big step—to go through Assimilation." Even as he said it, he knew how silly it sounded. He'd done the very same thing, under different circumstances, to be sure. In an ice cave on the surface of Europa...to save his crew and penetrate the Central Entity under deep cover and sabotage the whole works.

Now they were all angels.

Dana licked the frost off the rim of her beer mug. "You know...they know you're different, Wings. They know you've got that little file tucked away...they know what Doc did for you, preserving a few old memories, a few tattered pieces of personality. They know all that."

"Impossible." Of course, it wasn't impossible. In fact, it had been a near miracle the Shadow Man hadn't found them out. Or had he? "One file among billions. A few bytes...no way anybody could have detected that."

"You're sure of that, are you? Wings, that's one thing you never lacked...self-confidence. So what do we do now?"

Winger looked around. Slowly, bar patrons were drifting away. The place was thinning out. It was getting late.

"We used to make love on a night like this. Remember?"

"Vaguely. What is this: a checklist? Am I the next box on your checklist?"

"Not at all. I just thought—" He stopped. No. There was a better idea. "How about this? I'm willing to concede to reality. We're not what we used to be. We're different from our former selves and we're not going back. What say we just merge."

Dana rolled that thought around in her processor-mind. It sparked a few extra processor cycles. "Merge. Sounds like a corporate arrangement. What do you mean, exactly?"

"I mean merge...become one swarm. You and me. Combine forces. Swap configs and files and master programs."

A faint smirk appeared on her lips. "Wings, that just the sort of wacko idea I'd expect you to have. Never anything by the book. Always an outlier...that's John Winger. The best atomgrabber the world ever saw. You know what...I like it. I like the whole idea."

So they chatted for a while longer, small talk...did you know that?...you might be interested to know...did you hear that?...—but nothing big. Nothing serious.

Finally, the bartender was wiping off his mahogany bar, buffing it to a shine and the wait staff was upending chairs and stacking them on tables. The floor was mopped and buffed. Counters were wiped and dried. And in a back booth in the far corner of the bar at Custer Inn, two angel swarm entities began deconstruct. One moment, they looked like two long-lost friends swapping lies and tall tales over beers. The next moment, the entities began to de-materialize. Slowly, they faded out to dim outlines of their human-like forms, then there was nothing, not even a shadow. Nobody seemed to notice. The bartender and waiters at Custer Inn had seen everything over the years.

There was a brief flare of light in the night, then the joined entity, whatever it was now, began to disperse and the booth was empty.

Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were a combined, merged entity now. There really wasn't a name for what they had become but that didn't stop them.

Now, they were one, in a way and a form never before seen in the four-billion year history of Earth.

Now they were one, in a new world that would someday evolve enough to accept them on their terms, but wasn't quite there yet...a world of both Normals and angels, humans and swarms.

END

About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 20 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.

For technical and background details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at http://qcorpstimes.blogspot.com. For details on other books in this series, visit his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt or learn about other books by Philip Bosshardt by visiting www.smashwords.com.

To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt's upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: http://thewdshed.blogspot.com.

Check www.smashwords.com for listings and future episodes in his series Nanotroopers, much of which takes place in the same universe as Tales of the Quantum Corps.

