NANOTECHNOLOGY LABORATORY
It took all of her self-control for Anita Halleck to suppress the shudder of outright fear she felt. Since she’d been a child, earning a living by salvage diving through the flooded ruins of downtown Sydney, nanotechnology had been dreaded by everyone she knew.
Not that she believed the religious nonsense that nanomachines were inventions of the devil, evil in its purest form. That rot was for the brainwashed fools who substituted religious dogma for thinking. Still, nanomachines had been used to murder people, she’d been told, and the threat of nanos going wild, devouring everything in their path like a blindly hungry swarm of unstoppable mechanical ants, had given her terrifying nightmares for years.
But here on the Moon, in this underground wombat’s den called Selene, nanotech was used quite openly. And Anita Halleck was sitting face-to-face with the leading nanotech expert, in her laboratory where she produced nanomachines as routinely as chickens produce eggs.
They were sitting next to each other at a small round table in a corner of Kristine Cardenas’s nanotechnology lab. An assistant had carried in a tea tray, complete with a small platter of scones. Now, as they sipped from the thin ceramic cups, Cardenas looked quite normal, ordinary: except that she appeared decades younger than the age given for her in the bionets. Young, healthy—and teeming with virus-sized machines crawling through her body.
Again Halleck fought down the urge to shudder.
“Are you all right?” Cardenas asked her.
Halleck blinked at the woman. “Yes. Of course. Why do you ask?”
Cardenas looked concerned. “You seemed to drift out of the conversation … as if your mind was wandering.”
“Sorry,” said Halleck. “I was merely thinking about how different things are here from the way they are on Earth.”
Her expression hardening, Cardenas said, “Yes, they are, aren’t they?”
“I understand that you’re not allowed back to Earth.”
“Not unless I flush my body of the nanos in it.”
Halleck’s breath caught in her throat. “Then it’s true. You’re filled with them.”
Smiling bitterly, Cardenas replied, “You don’t have to be worried. They won’t come out and infect you.”
“I didn’t think … that is, I mean…”
“I know,” said Cardenas. “All your life you’ve been told that nanomachines are dangerous—”
“Well, aren’t they?” Halleck challenged.
“So is a rock,” Cardenas snapped. “You can use a rock to smash someone’s skull, can’t you? So is penicillin dangerous, if you put too much of it into your veins. So is water dangerous, if you fill your lungs with it.”
Halleck lowered her eyes. “I understand. It’s just … well, please give me a little time to get used to it.”
With an expression that was almost contemptuous, Cardenas said, “You’re frightened of nanomachines, yet you’re here to see if nanotechnology can help you.”
Halleck nodded.
“Isn’t that just the tiniest bit contradictory?” Cardenas asked.
Now Halleck allowed herself a minimal smile. “There’s an old legend about the great moguls of Hollywood, back when movies were still flat, two-dimensional. Every one of those studio heads is alleged to have told his assistants, ‘Never let that bastard back on this lot again—unless we need him!’”
Cardenas eased back in her chair and broke into a chuckle. “You need nanotech.”
“I believe I do.”
“Tell me about it.”
Half an hour later Cardenas didn’t seem as hostile as she’d been earlier.
“Yes,” she was saying, “we can build your mirror segments in space. The nanos are machines, they don’t need air or gravity. They’ll work perfectly well in space.”
“We’ll have to bring the raw materials up from the ground,” said Halleck.
“Get the raw materials from Selene. That’s what Uhlrich is doing, over at Farside. It’s more than twenty times cheaper launching cargo into space from here than from Earth.”
“The lower gravity, of course,” Halleck murmured.
“And the Moon’s surface is airless. We launch cargo with an electric catapult. Much cheaper than rockets.”
“Then you can do it?”
Cardenas hesitated a fraction of a heartbeat. “We’re already committed to producing mirrors for Farside.”
“Ah. Professor Uhlrich.”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t you take on my project as well? I can finance whatever expansion you’d have to make in your lab, your staff. Whatever. Within reason, of course.”
Cardenas reached for her cup of cooling tea and sipped at it, obviously thinking about what she should answer. At last she said, “It won’t take much of an expansion here, actually. I can produce the nanos for you once you get your specifications for the mirror segments to me. The rest of the project is up to you.”
It was Halleck’s turn to do some thinking. “I’d need to have a sample built and tested before we start building the actual segments in space.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“Can you start on that right away?”
“In a few weeks,” Cardenas answered.
“A few weeks?”
“Uhlrich’s in line ahead of you.”
“Oh,” said Halleck. “Of course. I see.”
Looking slightly puzzled, Cardenas said, “I got the impression that you and the professor were in competition. A race.”
“Oh, he’s in a race. I’m not. But he doesn’t believe me when I tell him so. He’s hell-bent to get imagery of New Earth before anyone else does. He’s slavering for the Nobel Prize.”
“Aren’t you?”
“The Nobel Prize?” Halleck laughed. “I’m not a scientist. I’m not eligible. I’m just a poor little girl from Sydney.”