32

Alexandria, Virginia
USA

Jon Smith wandered around the lab looking at the stainless steel tables, computers, and other machinery, but not really seeing any of it. Maple watched him with a confused, helpless expression that was more than a little worrying. When a guy who made his living marrying advanced weaponry with nuclear power got scared, the shit had officially hit the fan.

“How would you develop something like this?” Smith said, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the floor.

“With a lot of dedication, brains, and funding.”

“So, in your opinion, this is not the work of a terrorist group.”

“No way in hell, Jon. This is government money. And a lot more than we were willing to throw at it.”

Smith nodded. The field of nanotechnology was fairly theoretical and while it would get some nominal funding from the Pentagon, it was the kind of long-term, pie-in-the-sky project that didn’t tend to be a priority for the United States. He’d run into the same problem himself over the years. The Department of Defense tended to be most interested in developing ways to make existing technology tougher, faster, and more accurate. Politicians tended to be most interested in large, expensive systems that could be developed and manufactured in their districts. Nanotech fit neither bill.

“Okay, Greg. But specifically, who could have pulled this off? Who are the thinkers in the field?”

“Well, there’s Gunter Heizenburg in Germany. He’s doing interesting stuff at the University of Munich. And then you’ve got Sean Baxter at MIT. He’s focused on creating new materials with nanotubes, though. I guarantee you that neither one of those guys is anywhere near doing something like this. You know how it is, Jon. They’ve got a bunch of grad students working for them and they fight tooth and nail for every research dollar.”

“Then think harder!” Smith said, letting his frustration get the better of him. Asia was about to explode into a war that would drag in the entire world and now it seemed that someone had gotten hold of a goddamn doomsday weapon. “Sorry, Greg. It’s been a long couple of weeks.”

“Don’t worry about it. I understand exactly what you’re feeling. I can’t even believe I’m looking at this. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out it was just a nightmare. I mean, even if you could build something like this, you’d have to think long and hard about whether you should. You’re messing with the forces of nature here. This is why guys like you spend your time figuring out how to cure diseases—not cause them. Once something like this gets out of control, you don’t get that control back.”

“Okay, Greg, let’s take a step back for a second. This didn’t just come out of thin air. Unless we want to start considering aliens, we can be confident that right now there are people working on this in a very well-equipped, well-funded, and well-secured lab. Who are they?”

“We should talk to Gunter and Sean. They—”

“No. No one else hears about this.”

“Come on, Jon. I know a fair amount about nanotech, but it’s not my field. I know both those guys and I can vouch for them.”

“It’s not just a matter of secrecy, Greg. Whoever did this knows I have those samples and they sure as hell have the resources to watch the obvious people in the field.”

Maple sagged a bit and stared blankly at the diagram he’d created. “I keep coming back to the same answer.”

“What’s that?”

“Think about it. Who has the money, will, and access to talent that you’d need to get this done?”

Smith knew where this was going and shook his head. “It’s not us, Greg.”

“So you say. Look, I know you’re a hell of a scientist and you’re pretty well connected, but it’s not hard to believe that something like this could go on way above your pay grade.”

It was completely understandable and logical that Maple would head down this road, but Smith didn’t have the luxury of letting his friend get trapped in a blind alley.

“I’m going to say this just once, Greg, and then we’re going to leave it alone: there’s no such thing as above my pay grade.”

Maple looked at him skeptically but then quickly realized that Smith meant what he’d said.

“What if we cast a wider net? Maybe someone doing brilliant work in a related field?”

The engineer shrugged and shook his head.

“Okay. What about someone who worked in nanotech and died?”

Another shrug.

“Someone who worked in the field in the past but then moved on to something else?”

That seemed to get a glimmer.

“What?”

“Well,” Maple started, chewing thoughtfully on his ragged thumbnail. “There was a guy, but it was a long time ago. And by a long time ago, I mean when you and I were still using Clearasil and chasing cheerleaders. He wasn’t the theoretical father of nanotech—that was probably Richard Feynman—but he was the practical father. He was the first guy to make something actually work in the real world. But then he left his university position and started up a consulting company. As far as I know, he never worked in the field again.”

“Name?”

“Ito.”

Smith felt a jolt of adrenaline at the Asian-sounding name. “Chinese?”

“Hideki Ito,” Maple said. “Japanese.”

Smith began pacing around the lab again. “What’s Ito done since he started consulting?”

The engineer frowned. “I honestly don’t know. I mean, I assume he’s still alive because I haven’t heard otherwise but I’m not aware of any meaningful work coming out of him since the nanotech stuff early in his career.”

A Japanese scientist. A Japanese reactor. As the pieces fell into place, the picture seemed to get hazier. Smith continued to pace, stopping short less than a minute later.

“What?” Maple said. “Do you have something?”

Smith looked him directly in the eye. “First of all, I want to reiterate that this is so far beyond top secret we don’t even have a category for it. If this leaks, there would be consequences.”

“Are you threatening me, Jon?”

“Yes. Look, I’m sorry I got you involved in this, Greg. But the fact is you are involved and there’s nothing I can do about that now.”

“Are you kidding? I have honest-to-God molecular factories in my lab. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. You’ve known me for a long time, Jon. This isn’t my first rodeo. You can trust me.”

“Okay. Then here’s the rest of it. The radiation levels in Fukushima’s Reactor Four were way too high to be explained by the damage done by the tsunami. That reactor was supposed to have been defueled.”

Maple frowned. “After that buildup, I have to admit that I was hoping for something more interesting.”

“Could radiation destroy these things?”

“At high enough levels, sure.”

“So these little machines are basically just artificial viruses, right? They co-opt their host for fuel to replicate themselves. And the more there are of them, the more damage they do.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good way of thinking about it for someone with your background. They’re viruses that destroy the cellular structure of concrete, steel, and plastic.”

“Well, I’ve worked with some of the most dangerous pathogens on the planet over the years. The first thing I think about when I’m doing it is containment. In my case a whole lot of stainless steel, four-inch-thick glass, air locks, and suits with separate oxygen supplies. And if all that fails, there’s a toxic chemical shower that kills everything it touches.”

From his expression, it was clear that Maple was starting to see where he was headed. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Reactor Four wasn’t sabotaged with the nanobots. They were being developed there! The tsunami hit, containment was breached, and they flooded the lab with radiation. That’s why there’s no activity in the samples you gave me. They’re dead!”