He shook my hand warmly, and hurriedly cleared some carbon-composite cartons from the chairs. His whole office was littered with intricate mechanical components, as though someone had broken open half a dozen turbines and not known how to reassemble them.
Don't get many visitors here, he said in apology.
I let my gaze return to the energetic rows of machinery beyond the glass. This is quite an operation you've got here.
I like to think so. JSKP only posted me here a couple of years ago to troubleshoot. My predecessor couldn't hack it, which the company simply couldn't afford. Cybernetics is the most important division in Eden, it has to function perfectly. I helped get it back on stream.
What do you make here?
The smart answer is everything and anything. But basically we're supposed to provide all the habitat's internal mechanical equipment; we're also licensed by the UN Civil Spaceflight Authority to provide grade-D maintenance and refurbishment on spacecraft components and the industrial stations' life-support equipment; and on top of that lot we furnish the town with all its domestic fundamentals. Anything from your jeep to the water-pumping station to the cutlery on your kitchen table. We've got detailed templates for over a million different items in our computer's memory cores. Anything you need for your home or office, you just punch it in and it'll be fabricated automatically. The system is that sophisticated. In theory there's no human intervention required, although in practice we spend sixty per cent of our time troubleshooting. It's taken eighteen months to refine, but I've finally got us up to self-replication level. Any piece of machinery you see out in that cavern can now be made here. Except for the electronics, which are put together in one of the external industrial stations.
Doesn't Eden import anything?i asked.
Only luxury items. JSKP decided it would be cheaper for us to produce all our own requirements. And that includes all the everyday consumables like fabrics, plastics, and paper. My division also includes recycling plants, which are connected to the habitat's waste tubules. Eden's organs consume all the organic chemicals, but we reclaim the rest.
What about the initial raw materials? Surely you can't make everything from recycled waste. Suppose I needed a dozen new jeeps for my officers?
No problem. Eden digests over two hundred thousand tonnes of asteroid rock each year in its maw; it is still growing, after all.his mind relayed a mental image of the southern endcap, supplied directly from the integral sensitive cells. right at the hub was the maw; a circular crater lined with tall red-raw spines resembling cilia. the largest spines were arrayed round the rim, pointing inwards and rippling in hour-long undulations, giving the impression that some giant sea anemone was clinging to the shell. the arrangement was an organic version of a lobster pot; chunks of ice and rubble, delivered from jupiter's rings by tugs, were trapped inside. they were being broken down into pebble-sized granules by the slow, unrelenting movement of the spines, and ingested through mouth pores in the polyp.
That was when the process became complex. Sandwiched between the endcap's inner and outer layers were titanic organs; first, enzyme filtration glands which distilled and separated minerals and ores into their constituent compounds. Anything dangerously toxic was vented back out into space through porous sections of the shell. Organic chemicals were fed into a second series of organs where they were combined into nutrient fluids and delivered to the mitosis layer to sustain Eden's growth. Inorganic elements were diverted into deep storage silos buried in the polyp behind the cyberfactory caverns, glittery dry powders filling the cavities like metallic grain.
We have huge surpluses of metals and a host of other minerals, wallace steinbauer said. And they're all available in their purest form. We send the metal powder out to a furnace station to get usable ingots and tubing. The minerals we shove through a small chemical-processing plant.
So you're totally self-sufficient now?i said. my admiration for penny maowkavitz had returned with a vengeance after i viewed the maw and its associated organs. that woman had ingenuity in abundance.
I like to think so. Certainly we'll be able to provide Pallas and Ararat with their own cyberfactories. That's our next big project. Right now we're just ticking over with maintenance and spares for our existing systems.
So a simple pistol is no trouble.
That's right.wallace steinbauer rifled through some boxes at the side of his desk, and pulled out the colt with a triumphant grin. No major problem in putting it together, he said. But then I never thought it would be. We could build you some weapons far more powerful than this if you asked.
I took it from him, testing the weight. It struck me as appallingly primitive; looking from the side the grip jutted almost as though it was an afterthought. There was an eagle emblem on the silicon, its wings stretched wide. Interesting point. If you could build any gun you wanted, why choose a weapon like this, why not something more modern?
I'd suggest your murderer chose it precisely because of its simplicity, wallace steinbauer said. The Colt .45 has been around since the late eighteen-hundreds. Don't let its age fool you, it's an effective weapon, especially for close-range work. And from a strictly mechanical point of view it's a very basic piece of machinery, which means it's easy to fabricate, and highly reliable, especially when made out of these materials. I'd say it was an excellent choice.
But why an exact replica?rolf asked. Surely you can come up with something better using the kind of CAD programs we have these days? My kid designs stuff more complicated than this at school, and he's only nine. In fact why bother with a revolver at all? The chimp was only ever going to be able to fire a single shot.
I can give you a one-word answer, wallace steinbauer said. Testing. The Colt is tried and tested, with two hundred years of successful operation behind it. The murderer knew the components worked. If he had designed his own gun he would need to test it to make absolutely sure it was going to fire when the chimp pulled the trigger. And you can hardly test a gun in Eden.
I handed the pistol over to Rolf. Everyone keeps talking about templates, and original components, i said. Where did they come from? I know any reference library memory core would have video images of a Colt. But where did actual templates come from? How did you make this one?
Wallace Steinbauer scratched the back of his head, looking faintly embarrassed. My division has the templates for quite a few weapons. It's the potential, you see. If the police or the Governor ever really needed heavy duty firepower, like if those Boston bastards turn violent, I could provide you with the relevant hardware within a few hours. Those stun guns and lasers you're issued with are only adequate providing you don't come up against anything more powerful.
And the Colt is one of the templates?i said wearily.
Yes, I'm afraid so. I didn't know myself until your department came to me with this request. It looks like someone back on Earth just downloaded an entire
Who else has accessed the Colt's file?
Wallace Steinbauer grimaced apologetically. There's no record of any access prior to my request. Sorry.
Has your computer been compromised?
I thought it was a secure system, but I suppose it must have been. There are only five people in the division including me who have the authority to access the weapons files anyway. So the murderer must have hacked in; if they have the skill for that, erasing access records wouldn't pose any problem.
I used singular-engagement mode to tell Rolf: We'll need alibis for Steinbauer and the other four who can access the weapons file. Also check to see if any of them ever had any contact with Maowkavitz.
Yes, sir.
What about records for machine time?i asked steinbauer. Do you know when
