Submerged (29 page)

“How small?” Carl asked.

“At the molecular level; even at the atomic
level,” Gleason answered. “A few years back—I think it was 1999—the
computer giant Hewlett-Packard and the University of California at
Los Angeles created the smallest computer circuits ever made. They
were on a silicon wafer just one molecule thick. It was an enormous
breakthrough in computer science. Some, like the UCLA chemist James
Heath, think that the day will come when industry will be able to
put the equivalent of one hundred computer workstations on
something as small as a grain of rice.

“Elements of such devices are so small,”
Gleason continued, “they have to be measured in nanometers.” He
must have seen the same look of confusion on Janet’s and Carl’s
faces as Perry did because he explained, “A nanometer is
one-billionth of a meter. A strand of your hair is about ten
thousand nanometers.”

“Oh,” Janet said. “What’s that got to do with
what we’ve seen and what Zeisler has told us?”

“Gleason is suggesting,” Perry explained,
“that the powder that Dr. Zeisler said covered the exterior of the
house and almost everything else wasn’t dust. It was a compilation
of billions of tiny computers and machines. If each one had the
power of one hundred computers, imagine what a million of them
could do.”

“They could change reality,” Zeisler said.
“Of course, thirty years ago we couldn’t know that. Personal
computers were just getting underway. I wish I had known then what
I know now. I wouldn’t be living in a little house in Carson
City.”

“Moletronics and nanotechnology is only a
partial answer,” Gleason said. “It’s one thing to make microscopic
machines and circuits; it’s quite another to get them all to
function in unison and to a single purpose.”

Gleason began pacing. Perry had seen him do
this before. Even at executive meetings, Perry had seen him leave
the conference table to stroll around the room, thinking.

“There’s been talk of self-building nanobots
that can replicate by constructing their clones. All the big
universities and tech companies are investigating possibilities.
Imagine nano-tubules capable of carrying medication directly to the
site of infection or a cancerous tumor. Imagine glass not made with
silicate but with aluminum. Imagine aircraft with fuselages that
change according to speed and atmospheric conditions. Imagine walls
that change color without paint, or artwork that refigures itself
to meet the desire of its owner. Imagine—”

“So these things Zeisler saw and what we’ve
seen are the result of tiny machines?” Carl asked.

“Maybe. We can’t know until we put them under
an electron microscope,” Gleason said. “Machine may not be the
right word. Their ability to bind together to form shapes, create
illusions, change colors, move, discriminate, all imply that they
possess some level of mechanical or chemical intelligence—or are
controlled by a greater intelligence. Of course, we’re dealing with
billions, maybe multiple trillions, in this place.”

“So the moon, the stars, the desert, even the
ocean Zeisler saw are all creations of this sand?” Jack asked. “The
sand we’ve been walking on?”

“Don’t think of it as sand, Jack,” Gleason
said. “That’s too large by a factor of . . . I don’t know . . .
maybe thousands. Think of the finest powder imaginable; a powder so
fine that you need the world’s most powerful microscope to see it.
I think the sand is its natural state of rest. Maybe they repair
each other by gathering in groups of a few thousand or millions.
These little clumps would appear to us as sand.”

“So everything around us is made of these
things?” Janet said.

“Probably.” Gleason paced off a few more
steps. “Don’t take all of this as fact. I have more questions than
answers.”

“Welcome to my world,” Zeisler said. “I’ve
been living with those questions for three decades. So has Perry’s
father.”

“What I want to know,” Jack asked, “is why
everything is so sedate. Zeisler told tales of deserts, jungles,
and oceans. All I’ve seen is sand and a half-finished Victorian
façade.”

“I can’t answer that,” Gleason said.

“I can,” Zeisler said with confidence. “It’s
the reason we’re here.”

“You had better explain that,” Perry
said.

“You’re here because your father is dying,
and you hope to find a way to save his life. Your dad gave those
names and that combination to his safe because he knew what was
happening. He’s probably the only other one who does.” Zeisler
looked around the room, then said, “He’s dying, because this place
is dying.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “Come again?”

“One thing Gleason hasn’t hit on yet—although
he would, given enough time—is that this place is alive. Mishmar is
intelligent.”

The words hit Perry hard. He wasn’t sure he
understood, but somehow it seemed right. “Explain yourself, Dr.
Zeisler.”

“It took a long time to put it together. We
arrived here and saw things. We saw a desert, we saw a house, and
we saw it all change. We realized that this place was somehow tied
to our thoughts. The desert we assumed came about because your
father had just read one of your school reports. Sanders and Nash
saw landscapes from their past.”

“And we saw Barrett because he’s the one I
came up here looking for?” Carl suggested.

“Very likely.” Zeisler nodded. “You see stuff
like that, and the first thing you think is that you’re part of
some kind of mass delusion. We think in terms of things: this
house, that ring, the ground beneath our feet—things. It occurred
to me that this place is more than just a place. It is alive. When
the McDermott entity came to run us off, it referred to this place
as Mishmar. Of course, I thought it was a place-name, you know,
like New York or Seattle. I imagine that
is
a large part of its meaning.”

“But you think it’s more?” Perry
prompted.

Zeisler nodded. “I do now. Mishmar is alive,
and now it’s dying. When the pseudo Barrett met us at the entrance,
what were his first words?”

“Help me,” Jack said. “I thought it was
Barrett who needed help.”

“Me, too,” Carl said. “If he’s really down
here, he would have suffered almost a week without food and
water.”

“I don’t think he’s alive,” Zeisler observed.
“I think he’s an unfortunate bystander.”

“I’m not giving up yet,” Carl said.

“What do you mean, ‘alive’?” Janet asked.
“How can a big cave be alive?”

“Maybe alive is the wrong word,” Zeisler
replied. “I mean this place is sentient. It thinks, it reasons, it
makes choices.”

“Like a huge computer?” Carl said.

“No, Deputy, not like a huge computer,”
Zeisler answered. “A computer processes information. It can be made
to make choices if programmed with certain criteria. It can analyze
situations and make choices based on best-case scenarios, but that
isn’t sentience.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Let me try,” Gleason said. “Computers are
not self-aware. You can program a computer to play chess and play
it well enough to beat a grand master like Garry Kasparov. In 1997,
and in a later rematch, IBM put up a computer called Deep Blue that
could calculate one hundred million chess positions in seconds.
Later improvements to the computer doubled that. For the first time
a machine beat a grand master. While a computer can calculate all
the possible positions and choose the best next move, it can’t sit
opposite its human opponent and say, ‘I’m going to throw him a
curve and make an unexpected move.’ In other words, true artificial
intelligence is still in the future. At least, I thought it
was.”

Perry studied Zeisler. No wonder he didn’t
want to talk about his experiences. Who would believe him? “You
think this place is dying?”

“I do. The color of the sand is different and
inconsistent. I assume that’s because some of the—for lack of a
better term—
colony
have died. The house
facade is incomplete because the system is too weak to complete its
construction. The light in the corridor is dim for the same
reason.”

“What does all this have to do with Perry’s
father?” Jack asked. It was the same question Perry was about to
pose.

Zeisler explained. “You remember that I told
you how the light column in the ring expanded until it filled the
room and how we all did our best to duck and cover. I also told you
that we were covered in dust?”

“Yes,” Perry said.

“We all must have inhaled some of it. The
little buggers have been living inside us ever since.” He paused
and focused on the floor. A minute later, he raised his head.
“Here’s my theory: When this place—Mishmar—reached a critical
stage, it called for help. It did so by expelling some of its
material into the air. My guess is that it did so by sending some
of the stuff we’ve been calling ‘sand’ up the flue in the ceiling
that is situated over the ring. Perhaps your missing Mr. Barrett
had the misfortune to be on the lake at the time. There’s no way to
know what happened to him.”

“Are you saying that it was asking for help
from the people who had been here thirty years before?” Perry
asked. “How is that possible?”

“How is any of this possible? Think, man.
This isn’t a normal situation. I think that it called for us
because we were the only humans that it had truly interacted with.
Remember, we were covered in that dust, but then that dust—or at
least some of it—pulled from our bodies and formed ghostly images
of ourselves before going back to the sand. I believe that it was
gathering information. This thing has been here a very long time.
Maybe thousands of years; maybe tens of thousands. I have no way of
knowing. Perhaps it thinks humans live as long as it does.”

“But it killed those it was calling,” Gleason
said.

Zeisler nodded. “I doubt it was intentional.
Why wait thirty-plus years to murder us? No, I’m certain that it
was reaching out to seek our help.”

“And that call for help killed Monte Grant,
Cynthia Wagner, and put my father on death’s doorstep.”

“Yes. Again, I’m guessing, but the most
likely scenario is this: Mishmar sends intelligent particles into
the air to cry for help. Somehow, maybe by an electromagnetic burst
or some other means, the signal touches the things living inside
us. They reactivate and multiply.”

“But that would be the same as murder,” Janet
said.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Zeisler fired back.
“Remember, this place is losing control. If it is having trouble
controlling what is close, imagine the difficulty in controlling
something as far away as San Diego and Seattle. The material in
Cynthia, Monte, and your dad multiplied until their host died or
was incapacitated.”

“What about Nash and Sanders?” Jack asked.
“You haven’t talked about them.”

“Sanders died in an auto accident three years
after the mission. Nash died on some secret overseas mission. I
know that because for the first few years afterward, we all used to
meet for a short reunion. That died soon enough. We all became too
busy. It’s a shame.”

Perry stepped to the ring and looked at the
sand again. He tried to imagine what it must have been like for his
father to stand in this place and watch the impossible unfold
before his eyes . . . .

My
father.
Perry wondered if he was still alive.

“Wait a sec,” Carl said. “If this stuff got
into you guys thirty years ago, what’s to keep it from getting into
us now? Am I breathing these biotronic things right now?”

“Maybe,” Zeisler said, “But I think we
inhaled them when we were covered in the dust.”

“Somehow that doesn’t comfort me,” the deputy
snapped.

“You’re the one who insisted on coming,”
Zeisler shot back.

“You could have given us a heads-up,” Janet
said.

Zeisler didn’t mince words. “If you’re
frightened, then leave.”

“Knock it off!” Perry shouted. His voice
rebounded off the round walls. “Arguing changes nothing.” He stared
at the white brown sand. A dark spot was in the center. That’s
where Perry felt he was—in the dark spot of his life. He had
traveled hundreds of miles in a desperate attempt to save his
father, and all he had to show for it was conjecture.

“Why not you, Dr. Zeisler?” Perry asked. “Why
did the others die, and you’re in good health?”

“I was thinking about that on the drive down.
I think I may have come up with something, but first—”

“I would love to hear it sometime,” a voice
said.

Perry spun at the sound of the new voice.
Standing in the doorway were three men. He knew them. He also knew
the guns they held.

“Sorry to crash the party, folks,” Finn
MacCumhail said. He wore a slight smile, but his eyes were cold. “I
thought I sent you folks home.”

“We heard this place had a great restaurant,”
Jack said. He stepped forward. “Ease up, big man. A bullet will
stop a man your size as fast as it will short stuff over there.” He
nodded at Carl.

Janet reached for her gun. The man who had
identified himself as Colonel Lloyd fired a single round. It struck
her in the chest. She backpedaled and fell.

Perry was on the move, but not toward Finn
and his men. He charged Carl, who was reaching for his 9 mm. Perry
hit him high, wrapping his arms around the deputy’s arms and
torso-driving him to the ground. He heard another shot but felt no
pain. It had missed.

“What are you doing?” Carl shouted.

“Saving your life. Stay put.” Perry crawled
on hands and knees to Janet. She lay unmoving, eyes closed. He saw
on her uniform shirt a small hole, just over her right breast. For
a moment, Perry’s heart stopped beating.

Chapter29