The Human Blend (7 page)

Friday night was for relaxation. She and Rajeev went to a neighborhood wordwar competition and managed to finish third in Couples while suffering only minor (and speedily repaired) emotional wounding. The exhilarating and mentally energizing bout was followed by dinner at a restaurant specializing in Titanian cuisine (methane overtones thankfully excised) and then sex, which was even more rewarding than wordwar and considerably easier on their respective cognitive faculties.

She felt exceptionally fine sleeping in the following morning. Sated as she was by the indulgences of the previous night, even the anomalous fragment she had recovered from the head of Cara Gibson did not intrude on her rest. She was so relaxed that she almost decided that analyzing it would be a waste of weekend time. More out of a need to check on several other things around the office than a desire to perform the assay, she finally got dressed and took the elevator down to her office level. It was late afternoon.

While the inlab ran penetration and accumulated stats, she busied herself with the few other minor items that required her attention. Sitting at her desk, she idly called for the lab results while gazing out the broad sweep of glass at the city beyond. As soon as the lab began to explicate results in its familiar dry voice, however, she stopped what she was doing and spun around in her seat.

The three-dimensional visual accompaniment to the formal declamation was even more off-putting than the words describing it. Gengineered carbon was present in the tiny insert, of course, and customized protein, of course, and—something else. Though it did not improve her perception, she instinctively found herself leaning toward the projection, as if the forward inclination of her body would somehow foment understanding.

According to the inlab analysis the insert contained more than the predictable carbon and proteins. Much more. Initially dismissive of what the assay might find, Ingrid now found herself staring intently. High magnification had yielded something entirely unexpected. Gengineered adhesives
were present, yes. Combinant primate-avian DNA weaving, yes. Patented floridity, naturally. All anticipated, all predictable. Only one thing was present that was out of the ordinary.

The machine. It was beyond tiny, past minuscule. In structure and shape it was unlike anything Seastrom had ever seen. Under magnification it shone like the tiniest imaginable drop of molten silver. Functioning at the molecular level, its purpose was as enigmatic as its incredibly complex design. It should not have been there. It should not have been
anywhere
. And it had been removed from near the brain of Cara Jean Gibson, to all outward appearances a perfectly ordinary and classically self-conscious fifteen-year-old girl of modest circumstances and no known exceptional interests.

All of this registered on Dr. Ingrid Seastrom’s mind almost simultaneously. Which turned out to be unexpectedly important, because as she was staring at it, the object vanished.

“Bring it back.” She hardly recognized her voice as she verbalized the command. “The object just assayed. I want to see it again.”

“The object does not exist,” the no-nonsense synthesized male lab voice informed her.

Doubly bemused, she settled slowly back in her chair. “What do you mean, it does not exist? I just saw it.”

The lab obediently restored the image, together with an explanation. “What you have been seeing all along and are looking at now is a replay of the primary assay. Only preliminary results are available, because the instant the object was subjected to focused analysis it vanished.”

Ingrid strove to comprehend. “Real objects don’t ‘vanish.’ It looked like it was made of some kind of alloy. Are you saying that when subjected to study it self-destructed?”

“No. It vanished.”

“Explain yourself,” she snapped.

“I cannot. I can only offer hypotheses. From the reaction of the object to initial probing, I believe it represents an example of delayed quantum entanglement.”

“I understand the last part,” she responded. “You’re suggesting that the object itself was a perfect duplicate of an original located somewhere else, and that the act of viewing it in itself caused this one to disappear in favor of the other. But if that thesis is valid, then it should have vanished when I
removed it from the skull of the girl where it was located. What I did with my medogic similarly constitutes probing and observation.”

“I said that it was ‘delayed,’ ” the lab replied without rancor.

“There is no such thing as ‘
delayed
quantum entanglement.’ If the act of being viewed causes one copy or the other to cease to exist, then the nano-level device you just showed me should have ceased existing long ago.”

“I agree. I told you I could not explain it. I can only report what was observed.”

Seastrom sat quietly for a long moment; contemplating, digesting, trying to make sense of what the lab’s AI was telling her. As much as the physical contradictions she was mystified as to what such a finely crafted impossibility was doing in the head of an ordinary teenager. An impossibility that had, to all outward appearances, done the girl no harm. And if someone wanted such a device implanted in fifteen-year-old Cara Gibson, why had they chosen to have the work done by an apparently incompetent backstreet technician specializing in cheap cosmetic melds? None of it made any sense. Of course, if she had some idea of what the incredibly sophisticated nanoscale device was designed to
do
 …

As if that wasn’t sufficient rational overload, the lab had one more for her.

“Subsequent investigation suggests that at least part of the device was composed of metastable metallic hydrogen.”

Ingrid nodded slowly to herself. “Sure it was. And the pressure required to maintain it in that state was the nominal several million atmospheres that happen to exist at the center of the Earth—something not generally found within the cerebral epidermis of a fifteen-year-old girl.”

The inlab did not react to sarcasm. “Atomic-level analysis revealed a crystalline lattice composed solely of protons exhibiting spacing less than a Bohr radius. This is consistent with the detection and presence of MSMH. A quantum state existing within a quantum entanglement. Observation of concurrent superconductivity also suggests that …”

“All right, all right—enough.” What the lab was elucidating was more than mildly insane. Though well grounded in modern science, Ingrid was a physician, not a physicist, and the lab’s explanation was rapidly extending into realms well beyond her level of comprehension. While she was unsure
of what she was being told, she
was
sure of something less arcane but equally confounding.

An incredibly advanced nanoscale biomechanical device at least partially fashioned of a material that ought not to exist at normal temperature and pressure had been found where it ought not to have existed. Now it wasn’t there anymore, which precluded further evaluation of it. If she wished to pursue the matter any further it appeared that she could rely only on the inlab’s hastily made recordings of the no-longer extant anomaly. That would make it rather difficult to secure confirmation. Of anything.

She had a lot to do next week. She had patients. She had a life. Did she really want to get further involved with something that defied rational explanation?

Of course she did, she told herself. She was a doctor, all doctors are scientists, and what all scientists want to know more than anything else is what they don’t know.

But how to find out?

If not overtly illegal, the presence of the device in Cara Gibson’s head suggested something problematic. The fact that it had apparently caused the girl no harm was not reason enough to ignore its existence—especially given the lab’s compositional breakdown. As a doctor, Ingrid was as interested in the
why
of it as the
how
. If nothing else, an interesting paper might be derived from further research into the abnormality. Whether anyone would believe certain conclusions enough to authorize publication in a respected scientific journal was another matter entirely.

From a scientific standpoint, expounding upon what she had just seen and heard from the inlab was tantamount to a commercial pilot describing a recent encounter with a flying saucer. As to the actual lab recording, lab recordings could be falsified. A report as elaborate and detailed as this one hardly seemed worth the effort to fake, but if she went public with it that would not prevent detractors from claiming it as the source of not one but several preposterous claims.

She wondered if she should share it with Rajeev, or perhaps with other professional but less intimate associates. She could imagine the reaction.

“Hi Steve, hi LeAndra. I recently removed this delayed quantum entangled piece of nanomachinery partly built out of metastable metallic
hydrogen from the skull of a local fifteen-year-old girl, and I’d like to know what you think of it. Except since it was quantum entangled it doesn’t exist here anymore, though it did when I first studied it. But don’t let that stop you.”

Oh sure.

It was plain that before she told anyone else about it she was going to have to further research the discovery (or the hallucination) quietly, by herself. Only when she was absolutely certain of the findings and had something more concrete to back them up would she risk sharing them with others. Only when she was certain, for example, that she was not being made the subject of some elaborate, albeit scientifically impressive, practical joke on the part of unknown colleagues.

Finding herself operating in the kingdom of the incongruous, she would begin with the obvious—by inquiring of her ostensibly unaware patient as to the name, nature, and whereabouts of whoever had performed on her the deceptively straightforward cosmetic feather meld. What that might lead to she had no idea.

Possibly even to a manufacturer of infinitesimally small machines that had no rational basis in known physical reality.

“Hey, old man!”

Turning slowly as he leaned on his cane, Napun Molé squinted in the direction of the challenging voice. He was short, his white hair fraying and thinning, a squat little fireplug of a mestizo in his late fifties who looked much older.

“Sorry—what?” Raising the hand that was not gripping the head of the cane, he pointed to the right side of his head. “My ears …”

Rolling his eyes, the security guard came closer. “I started to say that this is a restricted area, old man.” He indicated the medium-size cargo ship, its sails autofurled, that lay alongside the dark dock. “What are you doing out here anyway, in the middle of the night?”

“Middle of the night?” Lapsing into introspection, Molé put shaky fingers to his lips. “Is it that late? I thought—I thought …” He looked around and blinked. “I must have wandered away from the group. We came down the funicular and …”

“You
are
lost, old man.” The oft-restored nineteenth-century funicular that still conveyed tourists and citizens alike from the top of Valparaiso’s cliffs down to the harbor lay several kilometers to the south. The guard’s
tone softened. “I bet your guide or tour attendants are going loco looking for you. Do you have any identification? An emergency number I could call so someone can come and pick you up?”

“An emergency—yes, yes.” Reaching into a pocket, Molé brought out a cheap, battered wallet, started to fumble at the contents with uncertain fingers, and dropped it. Sighing, the guard shook his head.

“I’ll get it.” Muttering under his breath, he reached down to pick it up. He therefore did not notice when the hinged tip of the old man’s left index finger flipped open. The programmed-protein spidersilk-derived aramid fiber that shot out automatically looped itself around the guard’s neck and tightened convulsively. Eyes bugged wide, the startled guard tried to shout, but the swiftly contracting strand had already interdicted the air supply to his lungs. Reaching up with both hands, he tried to grasp the tightening filament, but it was too thin and too deeply embedded in the flesh of his throat for him to slip thick fingers between strand and skin. Blood began to trickle, then to spurt from beneath the thread, which by now had buried itself invisibly deep into his neck.

Molé watched the guard’s demise evolve, until within minutes the man lay dead on the dock. His head had been half severed from his neck. A quick flick of the old man’s left hand halted the ongoing contraction and rewound the lethal loop. The strand’s gengineered hydrophobic properties kept the dead guard’s blood from adhering to it as it was reeled back into the hollow finger.

A rapid survey showed that the killing had not been observed. Reaching down, Molé picked up his wallet. Using both hands he dragged the body of the guard to the edge of the dock and eased it over the side. Landing between the hull of the freighter and the dock’s polycrete pillars, it made only the slightest of splashes.

From another, deeper pocket Molé extracted the folded dispersion suit and slipped effortlessly into the one-piece garment. Racing up the now unguarded rampway, he found himself on the open deck of the cargo craft. Many stories overhead a few lights shone from within the bridge. If someone was standing nightwatch they were not visible. Finding a gangway that led inward Molé hurriedly made his way deeper and deeper into the bowels of the ship. Except for the minimum personnel necessary to sustain a watch, most of the crew would be asleep, relaxing in their cabins, or most likely sampling the delights of downtown. While some of the old city and
particularly the commercial port area had been lost to rising sea levels, Valparaiso had been luckier than most since a good portion of the modern urban area was situated on the steep cliffs that bordered the harbor.

In the course of his fleet descent he passed several security cameras. By bending light around him the dispersion suit rendered him invisible to ordinary video pickups. It did not, however, prevent a wandering crewmember from nearly running into him. Despite the enhanced hearing afforded by his melded right ear, in the enclosed corridor Molé had not heard the man coming.