THE DEVIL COLONY

Bern's brows lifted ever so slightly. For the stoic man, it was the equivalent of a gasp of surprise.

Rafe turned away. Sometimes it was good to act unpredictably, to keep your subordinates on their toes. Using his cane, he crossed through the house to collect Ashanda. The library was a two-story affair, filled with leather- bound books that were likely never read, only showcased as ostentatiously as everything else in the home.

He found Ashanda seated in a plush wingback chair. The child was asleep in her arms as she gently brushed her long, impossibly strong fingers through his blond curls. She hummed tunelessly deep in her chest. It was a comforting sound to Rafe, as familiar as his mother's voice. He smiled, drawn momentarily into the past, to happy summer nights, sleeping on the balcony under the stars, warmed by the presence of Ashanda next to him in a nest of blankets. He'd often heard her hum like that, holding him as he recovered from some break in his brittle bones. It was a balm that soothed most aches, even the grief of a child.

He hated to disturb her, but they had a schedule. 'Ashanda, ma grande, we must depart.'

She bowed her head, acknowledging the command. She rose smoothly, turned, and gently placed the boy onto the warm cushion, curling him into place. Only then did Rafe notice the bruising around the boy's thin throat, the odd canting of his neck. He had not been asleep after all.

She crossed to Rafe and offered him her arm. He took it, squeezing her forearm in sympathy. She had known what must be done, known what he would have normally ordered. She had acted as much for his benefit as the child's, granting the boy a swift and painless end. He did not have the heart to tell her it wasn't necessary-at least, not this one time.

He felt bad.

Am I truly that predictable?

He would have to prepare against that, especially today. He had been informed about the volcanic eruption in the mountains, confirming what was long suspected. Things had to move fast now. He checked his watch, noting the spin of the tourbillon.

Like a whirlwind, he reminded himself.

He could waste no time. They had to flush out the birds that had escaped his grasp last night, to pick up their trail again. It had taken most of the night to puzzle out a solution, one played out in the wild every day.

To bring down a frightened bird, it often took a hawk.

7:02 A.M.

San Rafael Swell

'How many dead?' Painter asked, the satellite phone pressed against his ear.

He paced the length of the central room of the largest pueblo. Embers glowed in the fire-blackened cooking hearth, accompanied by the bitter scent of burned coffee. Kowalski sat on a pine-log sofa, his legs up on a burl- wood table, his chin resting on his chest, dead tired after the long drive.

Ronald Chin's voice was raspy over the phone. Magnetic fluctuations along with particulate debris from the erupting volcano were interfering with digital reception. 'We lost five members of the National Guard. But even that number is low only because Major Ryan was able to send out a distress call and initiate an evacuation. We're still uncertain about hikers or campers in the region. The area was already cordoned off and restricted, so hopefully we're okay there.'

Painter stared up at the beamed roof. The pueblo had been constructed in a traditional manner with pole battens, grass thatching, and a plaster made of stone fragments bound in mud. It seemed strange to be discussing the birth of new volcanoes in such a conventional setting.

Chin continued, 'The good news is that the eruption seems to be already subsiding. I swept over the area in a helicopter just before dawn. Lava has stopped flowing. So far, it remains confined within the walls of the chasm and is already hardening. The biggest danger at the moment seems to be the forest fire. Crews are hurriedly setting up firebreaks, and helicopters are dumping water. It's about fifty percent contained already.'

'Unless there's another eruption,' Painter said.

Chin had already given his assessment of the cause. He believed some process birthed by the explosion was atomizing matter and had drilled down into a shallow magma chamber that heated the geothermic region, causing it to explode.

'We may be okay there, too,' Chin said.

'Why's that?'

'I've been monitoring the lava field over the blast zone. It's been steadily growing thicker across the chasm. And I'm not seeing any evidence of renewed atomization. I think the extreme heat of the eruption burned out whatever was disassembling matter down there. Killed it permanently.'

Killed it?

Painter suspected Chin had some idea of what that might be.

'If I'm right,' Chin continued, 'we're damned lucky for that volcanic eruption.'

Painter didn't consider the loss of five National Guard soldiers to be lucky . But he understood the geologist's relief. If that process had continued unabated, it might have spread across the Rockies, eating its way across the landscape, leaving nothing but atomized dust in its wake.

So maybe Chin was right. Maybe it was lucky-but Painter didn't place much faith in luck or coincidence.

He pictured the mummified remains that had been found in the cave, buried with such a destructive cargo. 'Maybe that's why those dead Indians-or whoever they were-chose that geothermic valley to store their combustible compound. Maybe they kept it there as a fail-safe. If the stuff blew, the process would drill into the superhot geothermic strata below the ground, where the extreme heat would kill it before it could spread and consume the world.'

'A true fail-safe,' Chin said, his voice introspective. 'If you're right, maybe the compound needs to be kept steadily warm to stop it from exploding in the first place. Maybe that's why the skull exploded when it was brought out of the hot cave and into the cold mountain air.'

It was an intriguing thought.

Chin ran further with it. 'All this adds additional support to something I've been thinking about.'

'What's that?'

'You mentioned that the dagger taken from the cave was composed of Damascus steel, a type of steel whose strength and resiliency is the result of manipulation of matter at the nano-level.'

'That's what the physicist, Dr. Denton, related before he got killed. He said it was an example of an ancient form of nanotechnology.'

'Which makes me wonder... as I was watching the denaturing process occurring in the valley, it struck me as being less like a chemical reaction and more like something was actively attacking the matter and breaking it down.'

'What are you getting at?'

'One of the end goals of modern nanotechnology is the production of nanobots, molecular-sized machines that can manipulate matter at the atomic level. What if these unknown people were adept not only in ancient nanotechnology, but also in ancient nanorobotics ? What if that explosion activated trillions and trillions of dormant nanobots-birthing a nano-nest that began to eat and spread in all directions.'

It seemed far-fetched. Painter pictured microscopic robots snipping molecules apart, atom by atom.

'Director, I know it sounds mad, but labs around the world are already making breakthroughs in the production and assembly of nanomachines. Some labs have even been positing self-replicating silicon-based bots called nanites that can reproduce copies of themselves out of the raw material they consume.'

Painter again pictured the denaturing process described in that valley. 'Chin, that's a mighty big leap to make.'

'I'm not disagreeing. But already there are countless nanobots found in the natural world. Enzymes in cells act like little robot workhorses. Some of the tiniest self-replicating viruses operate on the