Gateways (16 page)

Beneath Cheyenne Mountain, NORAD’s massively integrated multiphase target acquisition computer, MIMTAC, barely noticed—via radar arrays and infrared eyes deployed from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan—the bright streak that was Bert slamming through the atmosphere. Myriad bits of flotsam were sucked in daily by the planet’s gravity well, but the complex algorithmic filters of MIMTAC’s expert-system modules allowed the computer to ignore such cosmic debris, as it had no bearing on NORAD’s imperatives for continental defense. Maintaining the nuclear peace of the world, not the launch of retaliatory strikes, was NORAD’s fundamental mission; and thus the computer’s role in that mission involved a highly refined ability not to respond with force to minimal threshold stimuli. Not even this one, with its faint gamma-ray emissions that no well-constructed warhead would ever leak past its jet-black polycarbon reentry cone.

Frank noticed the hole in the garage roof on Saturday, when he pulled out the mower for the first time that season. It wasn’t a large hole, but the day was sunny and the bright spot on the lovingly polished hood of his car was hard to miss. He made a mental note to go up on the roof later and check it out. It might be easy to patch, or it might be a symptom of something worse; he hadn’t been on the roof in a couple of years, and anything could be going on up there.

The front yard hardly needed cutting at all, but as always, the back had become a jungle after the first spring rains. He wasn’t exactly sure why the grass grew so much faster in the back—more sun, better drainage, or just a superior variety of sod put down by the previous owners. Sometimes he thought it must be the bugs, aerating the soil or fertilizing it; there were a lot more bugs in the back. As the mower growled its way across the lawn, they swarmed upward, ricocheting off his legs, his arms, his face, and he slapped at them with one hand while he pushed the mower with the other. Some of them seemed larger than usual, little houseflies among the midges, which made him think that the neighbor’s mutt had been in his yard again and left him a smelly gift, though he didn’t find it. A few of these flies kept settling on the mower, though there didn’t seem anything special to draw them there, except maybe the heat of the engine. As he finished the yard, he made sure he brushed them off, not wanting them to get into the house through the garage. Sliding the mower into its storage niche, he noticed a peppering of small pits in its plastic housing. He didn’t remember them from the previous year. Had he kicked up pebbles while the bugs were distracting him? Well, it was nothing important. The mower wasn’t exactly young.

Later that morning, when he had dealt with a couple of minor projects in the basement and decided to reward himself by driving down to the Mini-Mart for a six-pack, he realized there was also pitting on the hood of the car, the kind that might have been made by flying gravel. Except that he hadn’t driven through any gravel since polishing the car that morning. He hadn’t driven at all, and a shouted question to Liz resulted in the same answer from her. Had one of the kids been playing around with something like chips of crumbled alley pavement while he, Frank, was in the basement? They both denied it, though he wasn’t sure they’d confess if they had. He wondered if a blast of something, some mini-tornado dumping stones or maybe hail, had caused the hole in the roof and sprayed the car and mower. Two blasts: the second while he was in the basement, since the hole in the roof preceded the pits on the car.

It all sounded pretty unlikely. Still, he circled the car, scanning the garage floor for any small hard particles that might have bounced off it. But the cement seemed clean, as always; not even a fresh oil stain. Then he spotted something gritty behind the right front tire, went down on his hands and knees for a closer look, and found a depression in the floor the size of a silver dollar, surrounded by radiating streaks of whitish dust. Where had
that
come from? It had to have happened during the week, while the car was out of the garage. Something really heavy. There was nothing in the garage that could have done it—and again Liz and the kids pleaded innocent, even after he shouted. When he had calmed down, he was more politic about grilling his neighbors on either side, but he didn’t get any better answers.

He went up on the roof, then, to inspect the golf ball–size hole. There was no sign of the culprit, no stones, no ice, just sun-warmed shingles and a smooth-bored hole barely large enough to slide three fingers into. Of course hail would have melted and run off or evaporated by now. He plugged the hole with a good grade of patching compound, and when he came down, he decided he really needed that beer. He drove over to the Mini-Mart, and ended up with more than one six-pack and a few bags of chips, too; fortification for getting rid of those pits. He hadn’t intended to work on the car so much this weekend, but he couldn’t let corrosion get a foothold on the otherwise bright finish.

There were more flies in the garage when he came back. He found a swatter under the tool bench and swung at a few of them, several satisfying snaps proving his aim and reflexes were as good as ever. He wondered what could be attracting them. A quick search turned up nothing, not a partly eaten sandwich tossed by one of the kids, not a dead opossum—there’d
been one of those once, behind the peonies a few summers back, but not this time. He picked up the swatter again and batted at a few more flies before noticing the hole in its plastic mesh. He didn’t remember the hole, but then he hadn’t looked at it very closely. He should have checked it out before he went to the store; he could have picked up a new one, or a couple. He covered the hole with a strip of duct tape. Good enough. He hit a few more flies.

Two beers later, he was dismayed to find that most of the pits on the car went all the way through: with the hood up, he could see pinpoints of daylight, like the bright stars of outer space scattered across the dark underside. He swore loudly, which brought Liz out to see what was going on . . . and tell him to watch his language while the kids were home.

Of one thing he was certain: this was going to take longer than he had thought.

There was plenty of data to be gathered at the bottom of a gravity well, and Bert was a good little machine, with a complex array of picosystems that had no trouble gathering that data and sending it back to his creators. But getting out of that gravity well and continuing his exploration was another problem entirely. His propulsion capacities, intended for interstellar and even intergalactic travel, were wholly inadequate for that, and his picosystems offered his tiny artificial intelligence only limited options. Aside from the primary task of data gathering, he had been designed to replicate himself, as and where possible, extracting raw materials for the process from whatever resources were available in the vacuum of space, be they stony, metallic, or carbonaceous. In the gravity well, with its rich planetary surface, the only obstacle to this replication was the speed at which he could manufacture individuals that, if the local inhabitants had built them, might be considered the F1 generation of Berts. As always, the good little machine followed his Designers’ instructions. And so did the F1 generation. This would be a very thoroughly examined gravity well.

Frank was smoothing sealer over the eighth pit when something stung his bare leg. He yelped. The sudden sharp pain made him drop the can, and fast-drying sealer spattered an undamaged part of the fender and made him swear again, more softly this time, as he caught up a clean rag to wipe it away. He looked around for the bee or wasp that had gotten him, but all he saw were the flies that were treating his garage like a vacation spot. There was a dot of blood on his leg, but no stinger and no swelling, so he ignored it.

By the time Liz called him for dinner, he had finished the first six-pack. The car would be ready for paint touch-ups in the morning. He had acquired a jar of the right color paint shortly after buying the car, because you never knew when you might need to deal with a ding. Frank was a man who prided himself on his foresight.

In the morning, there were even more pits than before.

Bert was now the patriarch of a family of explorers, in continuous contact with his offspring—not exactly coordinating their activities, for there was no need to do so, but acting as the backup for all of them, in case something unexpected happened while they went about their business, such as a localized nuclear explosion. That was one of the events they had been programmed to avoid, along with supernovas, nodules of antimatter, and black holes of any substantial mass. Bert himself had never encountered any such in close proximity, but his internal library contained relevant information on each. More trivial impediments, like the flexible planiform squasher that so easily destroyed those organic creatures that vaguely resembled him in their outward conformation, were of no concern.