made it from ashes and the fat of some insect. It felt great to wash his body after crawling around for three days in the muck. But he couldn’t help noticing the dark shadows that had spread over his arms and on his lower legs. He tried to tell himself these were bruises he’d gotten from his encounter with the wasp. He felt strange, but it had to be the venom.
Danny refused a bath, afraid that the water might somehow stimulate the grubs. He sat in the chair, drinking from Rourke’s bottle of whiskey and staring at the fire.
Karen luxuriated next in the tub of hot water. It felt so incredible to get clean. She washed her clothes and hung them to dry, then wrapped herself in a robe that Rourke loaned her, and sat by the fire, feeling refreshed. Rick wore a pair of Rourke’s pants and a work shirt. The clothes were rough-hewn, but they were comfortable and clean.
Rourke, meanwhile, cooked dinner for his guests. He got a pot of water boiling, and added smoked insect meat, shreds of root vegetable, some chunks of leafy greens, and salt. The stew cooked rapidly, filling the hall with a savory smell. Rourke’s insect-and-vegetable stew really was delicious, and it brought their strength back fast. They sat in Rourke’s strange chairs near the fire. And they heard his story.
Ben Rourke had been a physicist and systems design engineer specializing in the most powerful magnetic fields. He had come across the data from the old Army experiments in Huntsville, and had decided to explore the method of shrinking matter in a tensor field. He had solved some of the seemingly impossible equations of turbulence in these fields. Vin Drake had learned of Rourke’s work, and had hired him as one of the founding engineers at Nanigen. Working with other Nanigen engineers, he had built the tensor generator out of modified but standard industrial equipment, purchased largely in Asia. Drake had raised huge amounts of capital from the Davros Consortium; Drake had a magic touch, a way of making it all seem exciting and sure to lead to enormous wealth.
Ben Rourke had volunteered himself as the first human to be passed through the tensor generator. He had suspected it would be dangerous, and felt that he should be the first to take the risk. Living organisms were complicated and fragile. Animals that had been shrunk in the generator had frequently died, usually by exsanguination-by bleeding to death. “Drake discounted the risk,” Rourke said. “He claimed there would be no problem.”
Rourke had only stayed in a shrunken size for a few hours before he was returned to normal size. As more people were shrunk in the generator, and as they remained small for longer periods of time, they began feeling ill, bruising easily, experiencing mysterious bleeding. They were quickly returned to normal size and examined. The studies showed unexplained degradation of the blood’s ability to form clots.
Meanwhile, Nanigen, swimming in investor money, raced ahead with exploration of the micro-world. The company decided to concentrate on exploring Tantalus Crater first. The crater had extremely high biodiversity, and offered riches of chemistry and biological compounds. Tantalus Base was constructed in modules. “We built each module as a scale model, at a 1:10 ratio, and the modules were then shrunk in the generator to make them the right size for micro-humans.” Stocked with supplies and equipment, the modules were placed at Tantalus Crater.
At first, the field teams were allowed to stay at Tantalus Base for no longer than thirty-six hours, after which they were returned to Nanigen and restored to normal size. Then Nanigen installed the supply stations in the Waipaka Arboretum, down in the valley, and began staffing them with people.
It was difficult to operate the digging robots and to collect samples when the teams had to be rotated in and out so quickly. Vin Drake wanted to keep people longer in the micro-world despite the risks. Drake asked Rourke if he would agree to a longer stay at Tantalus as a test-to see if the human body could adjust to the micro-world over time. “I had faith in Vin, and I had faith in my invention,” Rourke said. “Nanigen patented my design, with money for me if it succeeded. So I was willing to accept the risks of a longer stay in order to move Nanigen forward.”
Ben Rourke had offered to lead a team of volunteers who would attempt a one-week stay at Tantalus. “Since I had designed the tensor generator, I thought I should be the first person to try a longer stay. Take the risk myself.” Rourke was joined by two other Nanigen volunteers, an engineer named Fabrio Farzetti and a medical doctor named Amanda Cowells, who would monitor the other two for medical changes. And so they had been shrunk in the generator and placed at Tantalus Base.
“Things went well at first,” Rourke said. “We did experiments, we tested the equipment at the base. We stayed in regular contact with Nanigen through a special communication system-a video link with an audio frequency shifter, so that we could talk with big people.” He indicated a wooden door in the living room. The door stood open, and beyond it they could see electronic equipment and a video screen. “That’s the video link. I moved it here from Tantalus Base. Maybe someday Drake won’t be in charge of Nanigen, and then I can call home. But as long as Vin Drake is running things, I don’t use the system. Drake thinks I’m dead. It would be a fatal mistake to let Drake know I exist.”
After a few days at the base, all three volunteers began to develop symptoms of micro-bends. “We developed bruises on our arms and legs. Then Farzetti got really sick. Dr. Cowells found he had developed internal hemorrhages. So she asked for an evacuation of Farzetti.” Fabrio Farzetti needed to be hospitalized immediately or he would die.
“That was when Drake told us it wasn’t possible to evacuate Farzetti. He said the generator had broken down,” Rourke said. “He claimed he was trying to get the generator fixed.”
Ben Rourke knew more about the tensor generator than anyone else. He began directing repair efforts from the micro-world, using the video link, while teams of engineers at the Nanigen headquarters followed his instructions. But somehow, the machine couldn’t be fixed; it kept breaking down. And then Farzetti died, despite Dr. Amanda Cowells’s best efforts to save him.
“I think Drake had sabotaged the generator,” Ben Rourke said.
“Why?” Karen asked.
“We were guinea pigs,” Rourke said. “Drake wanted to have medical data on us all the way up to the point of death.”
Next, Dr. Cowells herself had fallen ill. Ben Rourke had cared for her, all the while begging for help on the video link. “I finally realized we were never going to get help. Vin Drake was determined to see his vile experiment through to the end-the death of all of us. He wanted to gain knowledge of the bends, but it was like a Nazi survival experiment. I tried to tell other Nanigen staff on the video link but nobody would believe me. I also think Drake enjoyed watching us die-the man takes pleasure in watching people suffer. It’s as if when people are shrunk to micro size, Drake forgets they’re still human. Nobody could believe that Drake would do this. People like Vincent Drake operate outside the bounds of normal morality. Their evil can become invisible to normal people, because normal people can’t believe anyone would commit such evil. A psychopath can go on for years without being recognized, as long as he’s a good actor,” Rourke said.
Karen King asked Rourke if he thought Drake was working alone. “Does he have accomplices?” she asked.
“There are people at Nanigen who suspect the truth about Drake,” Rourke said. “The Project Omicron people must know something.”
“What’s that?”
“Project Omicron? It’s the dark part of Nanigen.”
“The dark part?”
“Nanigen does classified research for the U.S. government. That’s Project Omicron.”
“What does Omicron do?”
“Omicron deals with weapons, somehow,” Rourke said. “But that’s all I know.”
“So how do you know about it?”
“Employee gossip. It’s unavoidable.” He smiled and stroked his chin, and got up and went over to the pile of candlenuts. He took a big piece and carried it over to the fire. The fire flared up.
For a hermit, the man seemed kind of lonely, Karen thought. She stared at the fire, and found herself thinking about her life back East. She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn’t have any close friends, didn’t go out on dates, didn’t even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD and become a scientist. It had been more than a year since she’d slept with a man. Men seemed afraid
