‘That is not so unfeasible—my own etched-atom processors come under that classification,’ replied the disembodied voice of Jerusalem.
Mika nodded, then walked over to the partial VR immersion frame, which was her main tool of study. She backed into the frame and it closed about her arms and legs, gloved her hands and closed its cowl down over her face. The immersion here was partial because it did not engage all her senses, only her sight, her hearing and the touch of her hands. She would go to total immersion if she ever needed to smell Jain-tech—or have sex with it.
In VR, she suddenly occupied a vast plenum below a flat white sky. Beside her floated the multicoloured cubes, tetrahedrons, spheres and other Euclidian solids of her main controls. She reached out, touched one face of a heptahedron, and broke it into a rainbow of pyramids. Taking hold of the blue one, she said, ‘Image.’
Immediately the nanoscope view she had been earlier studying on a screen spread out before her like a mountain range. Manipulating the icon she held, then a sphere she selected out of the air, she transplanted a single large molecule and expanded it hugely before her, whilst wiping out the original view. ‘Just on the molecular level this alone will take me days of processing time to work out, and having done that I’ll only know what it can do by itself, not how it interacts with the billions of others that make up this mycelium.’
‘Yes, it’s like studying DNA.’
Mika glanced at the silver eyeless head which Jerusalem favoured as a representation of itself. She continued, ‘Worse than that. At least with DNA you know that its function remains at the molecular level — nothing smaller than that.’
Jerusalem paused before replying. ‘There are those who would disagree with you concerning DNA, but that’s moot. You did manage to ascertain the purpose of a chain of these molecules, and from them create the mycelium that kept Apis Coolant and yourself alive.’
‘Ninety-nine per cent guesstimation of its overall purpose, and in the end I got it wrong anyway.’
‘Nevertheless…’
Mika gazed up at the huge edifice: each atom was something she could take in her hand. She turned a small virtual control and revolved the giant molecule. For some people she supposed that the complexity of the task ahead would be intimidating, but despite her words she only felt excitement at the prospect. Already she had spoken to other researchers on the Jerusalem, and discovered that they felt much the same. And there were thousands of them aboard, each studying one small facet of Jain technology, one piece of the 3D jigsaw, while Jerusalem itself put it all together.
Selecting a red coin with an ouroboros on its face, Mika started a program designed by the AI, which ran a virtual analysis of the molecule. Dropping down like a net, a cubic grid of glowing lines now enclosed it. The program selected some cubes and detached the atomic structures they enclosed from the main body, and turned them in mid-air, spitting formulae and reams of data like glyph-written insect wings. Beside her, flat screens rose out of the virtual floor and began displaying the results as they came through. Selecting from an arc of coloured coins bearing Life-coven icons, she began running those results through her own programs, then back again and around. Testing scenarios and a vast range of environmental parameters, she began to plumb the theoretical function of the molecule. Sometimes her theories collapsed under virtual tests, sometimes they survived.
A wizard surrounded by visible spells and conjured jewels, she worked faster and narrowed her focus. She saw that, in an oxidizing atmosphere, part of the atomic structure—in the same manner as a pigment such as haemoglobin—collected oxygen. It then acted as a catalyst, using the oxygen to burn the molecule into any solid substance it touched. Hours later she realized that the metallic atoms in the molecule caused an ionization process in some substances, complementing the burning process. Simply put, a visible quantity of this compound would act like a potent ever-active acid. But even that wasn’t enough, it seemed. Mika started to get excited when she saw what it did to carbon: forming it into buckytubes as it ate its destructive course. This was already familiar to her from Polity nanotechnology.
‘The drilling head, and the cable layer.’ she stated abruptly.
Jerusalem, having silently disappeared from beside her, now reappeared. ‘Part of it, yes. D’nissan, Colver and James are each working on other parts.’ With that, three other greatly enlarged molecules appeared high up, like lumpish moons. ‘The molecule you are studying will not, for example, work in vacuum. D’nissan has discovered a molecule that uses nanoscopic ionization entirely, it being fed electric current from the main body of the Jain structure, whilst Colver has found a metallobuckytube that drills mechanically.’ As the AI spoke, each function it described appeared briefly in VR representation to one side, then faded; Jerusalem thus signifying that her fellows’ research results were available to her should she require them.
‘What about James?’ Mika asked distractedly, then suddenly realizing what she had said, was delighted at how naturally the question had slid from her tongue.
‘Susan James has found a molecular structure similar to yours, but which lays angstrom-width optical tubes inside larger buckytubes of doped carbon, which itself acts as a superconductor.’
‘Hell,’ said Mika, staring with fascination at the view of said molecule in action.
‘Indeed,’ Jerusalem replied. ‘Even so, due to this research, Polity science has probably advanced in just the last hour as much as it would have done in ten years without it.’
‘You know,’ said Mika, realizing she had only ascertained the function of about ten per cent of her molecule, ‘we could learn a lot more, and much quicker, if we could study this in action.’
‘That is a very dangerous course.’
‘Yes, it is, but we can isolate the technology from the media it requires to spread and, if that fails, you’ve got ships out there with imploder missiles…’
‘This has already been discussed,’ said Jerusalem.
‘And a conclusion was come to,’ Mika stated.
‘Yes.’
‘Dammit! What was the conclusion?’
Jerusalem replied, ‘That unless we learn quickly, we die quickly.’
Gravfields of four gees, the maximum the dropshaft could attain, tried to snatch them from the ladder. Crane closed his hands with enough force to crush the metal rungs, his coat sagging about him and his hat stretching low over his forehead. Skellor gripped hard as each wave swept past them, then continued to climb once it was past, treacly fibres snapping from each hand as he released it from where he had bound himself to the ladder. From below came the screams of those who—not warned through the Dracocorp network—had stepped unthinkingly into the shaft. Further below, impacted human debris accumulated.
Skellor and Crane reached the next floor and stepped out into an arboretum. The foliage of chestnuts, towering nettlelms and oaks concealed the far wall. Where they stood, the floor was slabbed granite in a semicircle, with paths of the same leading to the right and left alongside the near wall. Between this path and the trees was a strip of grass ten metres wide, nibbled, between pink and blue crocuses, by miniature beetle-mowers. In the forest, an interference field blurred scan, but Skellor picked up enough to know that Nalen’s people were bringing weapons to bear. He nodded to Crane, then, initiating his chameleonware, followed the path to his left. Moving away from him, towards the trees, Crane crossed the grass, kicking up huge clods with each loping stride and slowed only a little by the softness of the ground. A flashing in the trees: autogun. Skellor put out his own interference field, to foil any tracking of Crane. Lavender explosions stitched along the ground towards Crane, but kept going when he veered. Behind Skellor, a section of wall erupted into molten plasteel and incandescent gas. A glasshouse now ahead; the nexus—Nalen—retreating back beyond. Shots tracked manually along the wall behind as Skellor ran into a pane of chainglass, his hands issuing a decoder molecule. The glass collapsed into dust; he went through just as the screaming, and the firing of hand weapons, came from the trees.