be happy.”
“Even if it means your mission might not succeed?”
“Don’t worry about that,” Corvus said softly. “That’s not your problem.”
“But it means so much to you,” Deirdre blurted.
“Not as much as you mean to me, Dee. You mean a lot more.”
NANOTECH LABORATORY
Katherine Westfall rode down the elevator to the third wheel, escorted by two of her personal assistants, both tall, well-built young men in dark tunics and slacks, hired for their physical strength and agility rather than their intelligence. They thought of themselves as hired muscle, she knew; she thought of them as boy toys.
Archer thinks he can keep this nanotech business secret from me, she was telling herself. The fool. I know everything that happens in this station. Everything, thanks to that lowly cook.
She had heard about Rodney Devlin before she ever left Earth: the so-called Red Devil was a major source of information about the goings-on of the station. Nothing happened, it seemed, without Devlin knowing about it. And Westfall was making sure that Devlin reported everything he knew to her. Not in person, of course; she didn’t want to be seen in the presence of this menial. But her staff stayed in contact with Devlin and kept her informed daily. What the Red Devil knew, Katherine Westfall soon learned.
One of her female aides had called ahead to inform the chief nanotechnician that the IAA councilwoman was coming to visit his lab. “Don’t ask permission,” Westfall had told her aide. “Simply tell him I’ll be there.”
Following the directions displayed on her pocketphone, Westfall strode two paces ahead of her strapping assistants until she reached the section of the third wheel’s main passageway where the makeshift nanotech laboratory was housed. Flashing displays on screens on both sides of the passageway’s bulkheads warned: DANGER—HIGH INTENSITY ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION. She ignored the displays and strode up to the door that bore NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY on its identification screen.
As she reached for the door’s handle it slid back before she could touch it, revealing a slightly built young man with a round, freckled face and sparkling hazel eyes.
He smiled broadly and made a courtly little bow. “Mrs. Westfall, I presume.”
Katherine Westfall nodded graciously and stepped into the lab area. Turning, she told her assistants, “Wait outside, please.”
Franklin Torre’s grin morphed into open-mouthed alarm. “Uh, Mrs. Westfall, you don’t want them to stay out there. The UV isn’t good for them, not for long exposures.”
Feeling nettled, Westfall gestured abruptly to her assistants. “Come inside, then. Stay here by the door.”
She looked around. The laboratory area was small, scarcely as large as her own sitting room, up in the top wheel.
“You don’t seem to need much space, do you?” she said to Torre.
With a good-natured shrug, Torre replied, “Nanomachines are teeny little things. About the size of viruses. We don’t need that much room.”
“I see. And you are…?”
“My name’s Franklin Torre. I’m the director of the Zimmerman Nanotechnology Lab, at Selene.”
“Ah. Dr. Torre.”
“Mr. Torre,” Franklin corrected. “I never finished my doctorate. Got too busy doing real work.”
“I understand your sister is here with you,” Westfall said.
With a bouncy nod, Torre replied, “Yes, she is. You have good sources of information.”
Westfall looked around the smallish room again and saw that no one else was present.
Torre said, “Jan-Jan’s not here at the moment.”
“So I see.”
Smiling pleasantly, Torre asked, “So what would you like to know about nanomachines?”
“Everything.”
“Okay. Here’s the fifty-dollar tour.”
Torre walked her along the workbench that ran the length of the room and began to explain each and every piece of equipment on it: the electron microscope and its display screen, the stainless steel vat in which the nanomachines were built, the double-sealed domed chamber in which the devices were tested.
“Isn’t all this dangerous?” she asked.
“Not really,” Torre replied easily. “We take all the necessary precautions.” Pointing to the gleaming vat in the middle of the workbench, “That’s the only really hazardous area. When the disassemblers are first built they’re nonspecific; they could attack a fairly wide variety of molecules. Over here in the dome we fine-tune them exclusively for particular molecules. They won’t touch anything but those molecules once we’ve specialized them.”
“I understand that you’re producing nanomachines that will destroy a particular type of virus,” she said.
“Rabies virus,” Torre answered, looking impressed at her depth of information. “We’re using blood samples from one of the scientists on the staff here. The virus seems to be different from the standard forms in the medical files. It must’ve been genetically engineered.”
“Who would deliberately alter a rabies virus?” Westfall asked rhetorically.
Torre shrugged. “Not my end of the game. It doesn’t make any difference to me who tinkered with the virus or how she got it into her bloodstream. My job is to wipe it out.”
They were at the end of the workbench, on the far side of the room. Westfall leaned a narrow hip against the edge of the bench. Her two assistants still stood by the door like statues or well-drilled soldiers, arms folded across their chests.
“I must say that your laboratory isn’t very imposing.”
Torre chuckled. “Like I told you, nanos don’t need much room. But they can accomplish tremendous things. Back at Selene we use nanomachines to build spacecraft of pure diamond. The nanobugs manufacture the diamond out of piles of soot, ordinary carbon. They turn individual atoms of carbon into sheets of structural diamond.”
“That type of nano is called an assembler, isn’t it?”
“Right!” Torre seemed delighted that she knew the term.
“But what you’re producing here is a different type of thing altogether, isn’t it?”
Nodding again, Torre said, “Yep. We’re making disassemblers. Their job isn’t to build up new molecules out of individual atoms. Their job is to take apart certain specific molecules, break ’em up into individual atoms.”
“And the molecules they attack are the rabies viruses.”
“Right again.”
“Once you’ve programmed them.”
“Programming isn’t the right term to use, really,” Torre admitted. “It’s not like programming a computer. It’s more like reshaping a machine tool. Mechanical, not electronic.”
Just then the door to the laboratory slid open and Grant Archer stepped in, nearly bumping into Westfall’s two guards.
“It’s all right,” she called to her men. “Let him through.”
Archer clearly looked flustered as he approached Westfall and Torre. But he managed to put a smile on his bearded face and said, “I hope Mr. Torre here is showing you everything you want to see, Mrs. Westfall.”
“He certainly is,” Westfall replied, making her tone sound languid, almost bored.
“We’re very lucky to have him here,” Archer said. “He’s helping Deirdre Ambrose recover from her viral infection.”
Westfall straightened up and started walking slowly along the workbench, back toward the front of the room and the two dark-suited men waiting by the door. She lingered by the chamber where the unprogrammed nanomachines were created.
Her brows knit slightly and she asked, “But aren’t nanomachines dangerous? Couldn’t these things you’re putting into Ms. Ambrose’s blood destroy more than just her rabies virus?”
