The Goliath Stone (2 page)

As he went in, Hencke obligingly gave him the setup for a dramatic last word: “Intercept with what?”

“Us,” he said as the doors closed.

Hencke spent the rest of the day on the phone, at least until the project director found out he was notifying people in the United States before his own boss.

I

You can’t go home again.

—THOMAS WOLFE

JUNE 2052 AD

“Dr. Glyer, they speak of you as if you might be a wizard,” Abdallah Chahine said.

Toby Glyer was running a looped view of Abdallah Chahine’s colonoscopy as performed at Memphis Central Hospital. Watching it felt like a Disney ride, up the intestine and back to start; early Disney, when they still had their sense of wonder. And humor. Walt would have loved this actual view for the ride—“Eaten by Monstro,” perhaps. That would be illegal today, of course. Whales were Soylent—politically green.

The surgeons had highlighted a constriction in Chahine’s bowel, and eleven tiny dark pores farther up.

The small, portly Egyptian had been careless with his diet for most of his fifty years of life. He was covering fear with belligerence. Toby was careful not to laugh. Not at the fear or the accent; the belligerence was courage, and the accent was … well, delicious. But— “Is this the same ‘they’ who say margarine is healthier than butter?”

Chahine’s eyes widened, and he actually smiled, a little, for a moment. “Not at all.”

“I’m not a wizard. I’m a very specialized doctor. These are diverticuli, blowouts on the colon. These dots are all that show. Underneath—”

Chahine said, “I know what diverticulosis is. How can you claim to cure it without surgery?”

Toby Glyer said distinctly, “You are going to need surgery.”

“Are you a surgeon?”

“No. The man who did these seems good at his job.” Toby froze the ride and pointed to the constriction. “You waited too long and this happened. Worse could follow. Diverticuli can do anything. This—” What word might serve? “—
noose
in your gut might close, and then you can’t eat, so you’ll die. You need a surgeon.”

Chahine waved it off. “They told me. I had hoped.”

“Hoped? You wanted to know if I would lie. Mr. Chahine, are you done testing me?”

“Give me the potion.”

Toby silently offered him a test tube with black oily stuff in the bottom, two centimeters deep. Chahine had already paid; the Swiss bank acknowledged receipt. Why was he arguing now?

“Nanotechnology,” Chahine said, careful with his pronunciation. He looked up into Toby’s eyes. The touch of relaxation was wearing off.

Toby said, “Call it wizardry. What I do isn’t legal anyway. I’m tired of repeating the lecture.”

Abdallah drank. Made a face. “It tastes like mineral oil. Not even that. There is
no
taste.”

“You still need the constriction removed,” Toby reminded him. “The rest of these little blowout patches won’t ever trouble you again. You’ve kept your appendix? That’ll never bother you either, and the, mmm, the spell lasts longer too.”

“Why, Doctor?”

“If I told you that I’d have to make you a partner. Good day, Abdallah Chahine.”

*   *   *

The file for the next patient indicated an American living in Switzerland, fifty-eight years old. Diverticulosis, of course. Toby could cure only one thing, but by using the Internet to search among ten billion people, he could find patients.

Interesting name, October Kroft. She was running partly on credit, but the first payment had come through.

He took her dose out of the safe, then showed her in.

She was six years younger than Toby, but she looked better than that: tall and still lean, wavy blond hair turning gray without hindrance. A gray business suit looked good on her. Hands off patients, he’d learned that early, but he did notice.

He turned to pick up the dose. “Some patients have questions,” he said.

“So do I,” she said.

With his back turned he knew her voice. He faced her again. “May! May Wyndham?”

“Hi, Toby.”

“You tracked me down? Is this some kind of joke?”

October Kroft didn’t hesitate. Her fists pulled her gray business suit apart, shirt up, waistband down. The scar ran vertically from her navel to … not far from her groin, at any rate. A pink worm, healing nicely, rows of dots still showing the marks of the staples.

Toby flinched. May grinned. “I don’t go to this much trouble for a joke.”

Not quite, anyway. “Okay. Sorry.” He handed her the vial.

She drank. Made a face and finished it. “You read my records. I waited too long, obviously. What will this do for me? It’s nanotechnology, isn’t it?”

“May, that’s proprietary. Hey, how did you find me?”

“You popped up in my face! I’m in real estate now. My buyer saw my scar at a swimming party after he bought the house. He steered me to you. I couldn’t figure out how you became a doctor. But you’re specialized, aren’t you?”

“Very. You know what diverticuli are? It’s like having an appendix where nobody wants one. Little blowout pockets, scarred over. If you’re constipated, you pack more fecal matter in there every time and the diverticuli get bigger until something lethal happens. I knew a guy who— Sorry, May. Glass of water?”

“Thanks.”

He poured her a paper cupful. He said, “The nanos move along your gut until they find a pocket. They go into every pocket they find. They break up the fecal matter, which can be like cement after enough years, and carry it back out. It’s all strictly mechanical. If you still have your appendix, they stay in there for a while. Longer in Europeans.”

“What? Why?”

“Europeans think that the way to eat a cherry is to swallow the pit. Surgeons find cherry pits when they do an appendectomy. A few thousand nanos need months to break down a cherry pit.”

“Toby, I had a lot of reasons for not asking, but … what keeps your nanos from … well, eating the patient?”

“May, that’s proprietary.”

“But you’ve got something.”

Toby grinned like Punch and changed the subject. “You thought I’d be different? How?”

She said, “Pudgier, I think. Blond. You looked different on TV.”

“Well, the last time was twelve years ago.” His hair was mouse-brown and receding. “You are what I pictured,” Toby said. “You’ve still got a voice like fingers walking up a spinal cord. What have you been … after Wyndham Launch changed hands … May, I never hit on a patient, but Jesus! Have dinner with me. We have some serious catching up to do.”

“We had such ambitions.”

II

The conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.

—DANIEL WEBSTER

NOVEMBER 2026 AD

“Littlemeade Operation Systems wants all six slots,” May Sherbourne Wyndham said.

“Good,” her father said. A launch with a full cargo
had
to be good. “What are they putting up?”

“Toby Glyer won’t say. They’re calling the package ‘Cornucopia.’ They don’t want us inspecting it.”

Gordon Wyndham said, “If the Crassen-Bodine Bill goes through…?”

“We’d all be pretty much out of business. Dad, Crassen-Bodine got through the Senate, but it won’t be law before summer.”

“Better call Warren Littlemeade and tell him he’s under the gun. Maybe he can speed things up.”

“I did call.” Her irritation showed. “I got Toby. I think Toby’s stalling.”

*   *   *

Wyndham Launch had joined the cheap launch sweepstakes after the Triple Crash, when Libertarians were elected to the White House and held the swing votes in Congress, and all seemed possible. Then the Old Guard double-teamed the Libertarians in the next off-year election, new laws were passed, and everything went toxic. Small businesses began to collapse. The first to go were based in space.

Wyndham Launch, operating out of Ecuador, survived but did not grow. They’d planned a versatile, dependable, air-breathing first-stage launcher and a variety of disposable second stages … and built two, and drawn up some glorious designs including a manned spaceplane.

Wyndham’s Getaway Special would lift a package into low Earth orbit, if the client could fit his package into any of the six slots in Wyndham’s Getaway Carousel. Littlemeade wanted all six slots: an entire orbiter package.

*   *   *

Through the long summer they waited.

Littlemeade Operation Systems delivered three of their six Cornucopia packages. One was a nuclear power plant, clearly labeled, attached to a fearsome stack of U.S. government agency permissions. May Wyndham recognized another package as a laser sender. Both were off-the-shelf and dirt cheap after Lockheed went into receivership. One package seemed to be just a can with a pop-open lid.

The modules sat in the Getaway Carousel in Wyndham’s warehouse, waiting. Littlemeade fell further and further behind schedule, and everyone lost money.

The Crassen-Bodine Bill passed the House and was made law. Its list of inspections and permissions would cripple most science experiments, particularly in biology and nanotechnology.

Littlemeade Operation Systems paid its penalties, collected its stored packages, and declared bankruptcy. The launch window passed to a new company, Watchstar, as part of the settlement.

Watchstar was based in Westralia, the country that had been the western half of Australia. Wyndham couldn’t find out anything more.

The following year, Watchstar turned in six packages labeled Briareus One through Six, under the same security measures, and occupying the same six slots, as Littlemeade’s Cornucopia cluster.

“Three of these look very familiar,” May said.

“We are lucky to get the business,” her father said. “As far as we’re concerned, anything named Watchstar must watch for Earth-grazing asteroids. Not even Crassen could object to that. That package, Briareus Two, that’s a telescope, isn’t it?”

“Might be. New design.”

No mention was made of nanotechnology. The Watchstar cluster was launched in November 2027.

III

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

—GEORGE SMITH PATTON

JUNE 2052 AD

“So how is it back in the States?”

May slumped and pushed away the last of her dessert. “The beggars take plastic.”

He stared, thought, and finally said, “How?”

“With their phones. There’s a slot.”

“Beggars have phones?”

“It’s a civil right. Otherwise they couldn’t vote.”

“Jesus.”

“Toby, is this stuff inside me, making more of itself?”

“They can’t.”

May said, “Because that’s what scares … well, not me, of course, but the general public. Little tiny machines that make more of themselves. That’s what you were selling fifteen years ago, and that’s why they forced you out. And now you’re putting them in human bodies?”

He was nodding. “Voters, medical patients, investors, Congress—they’re all terrified of something that goes into a vein, through the blood, into the heart and liver and brain. May, that would be immortality! But I knew I couldn’t get backing. I’m not selling that. May, it’s
hard
to make something that can make a working copy of itself. This stuff, the D-1 Cure, it goes through the gut and out. It’s just visiting. And of course I’m shading the law, even here, but if my customers keep talking, maybe someday. Someday we’ll try the Briareus Project again.”

She said, “This seems a long way from what you were doing.”

“How much of that did you work out?”

“Your project ate our launch vehicle after launch.
Ate
it. That alone told us it was nanotech. Were you already thinking
medicine
?”

He didn’t answer.

“Can you talk about it now?”

Toby thought it over first, but from the beginning he was lost. He liked to talk. “I lost track of Briareus,” he said. “We lost communications even before the money ran out and the law shut us down. But it reached the asteroid! If the rest works as well as the first phase did, one day we’ll rebuild our Shuttles and go up for the wealth of the universe.”

“What if it doesn’t? Do you ever worry about what your lost project is doing with that asteroid?”

“I used to have nightmares. Haven’t had one in years.”

In the silence that followed, he could hear the TV in the bar announcing an upcoming bulletin about technology out of control. When he turned back from glaring in that direction, May said, “What’s wrong?”

“Der Spiegel 2 getting ready to whip up a mob,” he said. “I can translate.”

She glanced that way and saw the usual cartoon gear-and-lightning-bolt symbol. “I understand ‘quant suff’ in any language. Let’s leave.”

*   *   *

Outside, he spotted a cab, raised a hand to hail it, and cracked someone on the chin. “Ow! Sorry!” He held his hand and looked her over.

“I tried to warn you,” May said.

The tall woman said, “’Sokay.” Her coloring was Indian (feathers not dots), and she looked like a teenager, but dressed older. “You’re Dr. Glyer, right?”

She didn’t act like a self-righteous worldsaver, but he still paid wary attention to her hands. “Right, have we met?”

“No, William Connors showed me your picture.”

He stopped noticing the pain in his finger. “Good grief, is he still alive?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Oh my yes. Got a message for you.”

“How did you find me?”

“Somebody tracked your phone. I was in Bern for something anyway, so here I am.”