The Devil Colony (23 page)

She crossed to Rafe and offered him her arm. He took it, squeezing her forearm in sympathy. She had known what must be done, known what he would have normally ordered. She had acted as much for his benefit as the child’s, granting the boy a swift and painless end. He did not have the heart to tell her it wasn’t necessary—at least, not this one time.

He felt bad.

Am I truly that predictable?

He would have to prepare against that, especially today. He had been informed about the volcanic eruption in the mountains, confirming what was long suspected. Things had to move fast now. He checked his watch, noting the spin of the tourbillon.

Like a whirlwind,
he reminded himself.

He could waste no time. They had to flush out the birds that had escaped his grasp last night, to pick up their trail again. It had taken most of the night to puzzle out a solution, one played out in the wild every day.

To bring down a frightened bird, it often took a hawk.

7:02
A.M.
San Rafael Swell

“How many dead?” Painter asked, the satellite phone pressed against his ear.

He paced the length of the central room of the largest pueblo. Embers glowed in the fire-blackened cooking hearth, accompanied by the bitter scent of burned coffee. Kowalski sat on a pine-log sofa, his legs up on a burl-wood table, his chin resting on his chest, dead tired after the long drive.

Ronald Chin’s voice was raspy over the phone. Magnetic fluctuations along with particulate debris from the erupting volcano were interfering with digital reception. “We lost five members of the National Guard. But even that number is low only because Major Ryan was able to send out a distress call and initiate an evacuation. We’re still uncertain about hikers or campers in the region. The area was already cordoned off and restricted, so hopefully we’re okay there.”

Painter stared up at the beamed roof. The pueblo had been constructed in a traditional manner with pole battens, grass thatching, and a plaster made of stone fragments bound in mud. It seemed strange to be discussing the birth of new volcanoes in such a conventional setting.

Chin continued, “The good news is that the eruption seems to be already subsiding. I swept over the area in a helicopter just before dawn. Lava has stopped flowing. So far, it remains confined within the walls of the chasm and is already hardening. The biggest danger at the moment seems to be the forest fire. Crews are hurriedly setting up firebreaks, and helicopters are dumping water. It’s about fifty percent contained already.”

“Unless there’s another eruption,” Painter said.

Chin had already given his assessment of the cause. He believed some process birthed by the explosion was atomizing matter and had drilled down into a shallow magma chamber that heated the geothermic region, causing it to explode.

“We may be okay there, too,” Chin said.

“Why’s that?”

“I’ve been monitoring the lava field over the blast zone. It’s been steadily growing thicker across the chasm. And I’m not seeing any evidence of renewed atomization. I think the extreme heat of the eruption burned out whatever was disassembling matter down there. Killed it permanently.”

Killed it?

Painter suspected Chin had some idea of what that might be.

“If I’m right,” Chin continued, “we’re damned lucky for that volcanic eruption.”

Painter didn’t consider the loss of five National Guard soldiers to be
lucky
. But he understood the geologist’s relief. If that process had continued unabated, it might have spread across the Rockies, eating its way across the landscape, leaving nothing but atomized dust in its wake.

So maybe Chin was right. Maybe it was lucky—but Painter didn’t place much faith in luck or coincidence.

He pictured the mummified remains that had been found in the cave, buried with such a destructive cargo. “Maybe that’s why those dead Indians—or whoever they were—chose that geothermic valley to store their combustible compound. Maybe they kept it there as a fail-safe. If the stuff blew, the process would drill into the superhot geothermic strata below the ground, where the extreme heat would kill it before it could spread and consume the world.”

“A true fail-safe,” Chin said, his voice introspective. “If you’re right, maybe the compound needs to be kept steadily
warm
to stop it from exploding in the first place. Maybe that’s why the skull exploded when it was brought out of the hot cave and into the
cold
mountain air.”

It was an intriguing thought.

Chin ran further with it. “All this adds additional support to something I’ve been thinking about.”

“What’s that?”

“You mentioned that the dagger taken from the cave was composed of Damascus steel, a type of steel whose strength and resiliency is the result of manipulation of matter at the nano-level.”

“That’s what the physicist, Dr. Denton, related before he got killed. He said it was an example of an ancient form of nanotechnology.”

“Which makes me wonder . . . as I was watching the denaturing process occurring in the valley, it struck me as being
less
like a chemical reaction and
more
like something was actively attacking the matter and breaking it down.”

“What are you getting at?”

“One of the end goals of modern nanotechnology is the production of
nanobots,
molecular-sized machines that can manipulate matter at the atomic level. What if these unknown people were adept not only in ancient
nanotechnology,
but also in ancient
nanorobotics
? What if that explosion activated trillions and trillions of dormant nanobots—birthing a
nano-nest
that began to eat and spread in all directions.”

It seemed far-fetched. Painter pictured microscopic robots snipping molecules apart, atom by atom.

“Director, I know it sounds mad, but labs around the world are already making breakthroughs in the production and assembly of nanomachines. Some labs have even been positing self-replicating silicon-based bots called
nanites
that can reproduce copies of themselves out of the raw material they consume.”

Painter again pictured the denaturing process described in that valley. “Chin, that’s a mighty big leap to make.”

“I’m not disagreeing. But already there are countless nanobots found in the
natural
world. Enzymes in cells act like little robot workhorses. Some of the tiniest self-replicating viruses operate on the nano-scale. So maybe someone in the distant past accidentally cooked up a similar nanobot, maybe a by-product of the manufacturing of Damascus steel? I don’t know. But the earlier issue of
heat
does make me wonder.”

“How so?”

“One of the hurdles in nanotechnology—especially in regard to the functionality of nanobots—is the dissipation of heat. For such a nanomachine to function, it has to be able to shed the heat it produces while working, a difficult process at the nano-level.”

Painter put it all together in his head. “So an easy way to keep nanobots dormant would be to store them somewhere hot. Like in a geothermally heated cavern, where the temperature would stay relatively uniform for centuries, if not millennia.”

“And if there’s a mishap,” Chin continued, “this nest of nanobots—spreading outward in all directions—would eventually eat their way down to the geothermal levels and inadvertently destroy themselves.”

Despite the impossibility of it at face value, the idea was frighteningly feasible. And dangerous. Such a product would be a ready-made weapon, but the bigger prize would be the technology behind its production. If
that
could be discovered, it would be invaluable.

Nanotechnology was already poised to be the next big industry of the new millennium, with the potential to become vital to all manner of science, medicine, electronics, manufacturing . . . the list was endless. Whoever took true and lasting hold of those reins could rule the world from the atomic level on up.

But all this begged one huge question.

“If we’re right about all of this, who the hell were the people mummified in that cave?” Chin asked.

Painter checked his watch. The one person who might be able to answer that question should be here within the hour. He arranged a few more details with Chin over the phone, ordering him to remain on-site and keep monitoring that valley.

As Painter hung up, Kowalski spoke from the sofa, not bothering to lift his chin. “Causing volcanoes to erupt . . .”

Painter glanced his way.

“If that’s what this stuff can do”—one eye opened and stared back at him—“maybe you’d better tell Gray to pack some asbestos underwear for his trip to Iceland.”

Chapter 18

May 31, 1:10
P.M.
Vestmannaeyjar (Westman Islands)
Iceland

Gray crossed the stern deck of the fishing trawler. Though the day was clear, a hard wind blew the sea into a stiff chop, causing the boat’s deck to jar and buck underfoot. He found Seichan and Monk at the rail, bundled in waterproof coats against the salty chill of the breeze. The midday sun reflected brightly off the sea but did little to warm the air.

“According to the captain,” Gray said, “we’ll reach Ellirey Island in about twenty minutes.”

Seichan shaded her eyes and looked to the east. “And we’re certain that’s the right island?”

“That’s our best guess.”

The three of them had landed in Reykjavik an hour ago and hopped a private plane to the chain of islands that lay seven miles south of Iceland’s coast. The Vestmannaeyjar Islands were a fierce line of emerald-capped sentinels, riding a storm-swept sea—seas as turbulent as the region’s history. The islands were named after Irish slaves, known as Westmen, who killed their captors in
AD
840 and escaped briefly to these islands, until they were eventually hunted down and slaughtered, leaving behind only their names. Today, it took a hearty soul to live out here, clustered on the largest of the islands, sharing the bits of land with seabirds and the world’s most populous colonies of arctic puffins.

Gray stared back at the picturesque harbor of Heimaey as it retreated behind them, with its brightly painted homes and shops set against a backdrop of green hills and a pair of ominous volcanic cinder cones. They’d landed at the island’s small airport and wasted no time chartering the boat to ferry them to the coordinates supplied by the Japanese physicists—but the coordinates were admittedly
rough,
according to Kat. And there were a lot of islands out here. More than a dozen uninhabited islands made up the archipelago, along with countless natural stone pillars and wind-carved sea arches.

The entire chain was geologically young, born within the last twenty thousand years from volcanic activity along a fiery seam that stretched across the seabed. That firestorm was still ongoing. In the midsixties, an undersea volcanic eruption gave fiery birth to the southernmost island of the chain, Surtsey. In the seventies, the Eldfell volcano—one of two cones on Heimaey—exploded and buried half of the colorful harbor town in lava. Gray had noted the aftermath from the air as they swept down toward the island’s airport. Street signs still stuck out of the lava fields; a few homes at the edges were being excavated from the rock, granting the town its other name: the Pompeii of the North.

“I think that’s the place,” Monk said, and pointed ahead.

Gray turned and spotted a towering black rock sticking out of the sea. This was no island of sandy beaches and sheltered harbors. Sheer black seawalls surrounded the island of Ellirey, which was little more than a broken chunk of volcanic cone protruding out of the waves. The top of the island was a scalloped stretch of emerald green—a high meadow of mosses, lichen, and sea grass, so bright in the sunlight it looked unnatural.

“How are we getting up there?” Monk asked as the boat churned steadily toward the towering rock.

“You climb, my American friends.”

The answer came from the wheelhouse of the boat. Captain Ragnar Huld stalked onto the deck in an open yellow slicker, wearing boots and a heavy woolen sweater. With his thick red beard traced with gray, and grizzled, salt-aged skin, he could have stripped to fur and leather and easily been mistaken for a marauding Viking. Only the easy amusement sparkling in his green eyes softened that impression.

“Afraid the only way up,” he explained, “is by rope. But you all look fit enough, so that should be fine. Young Egg will bring the boat alongside the east shore of the island, where the cliffs are lowest.”

Huld pointed a thumb toward the cabin, where his son, Eggert, twentysomething in age, shaven-headed with both arms sleeved in tattoos, manned the wheel.

“Don’t worry,” Huld said. “I bring hunters, even a few nature photographers, up here quite regularly. Never geologists like the lot of you. But I’ve never lost anyone yet.”

He gave Seichan a coy wink, but with her arms crossed, she did not look amused. According to their cover story, they were researchers from Cornell University, doing a study on volcanic islands. It went a long way to explain their heavy packs and inquiries about this specific island.

Huld pointed at the rock as it drew ever closer. “There’s a hunting lodge up top where you can rent a room, if need be. If you squint your eyes, you should be able to spot it.”

Gray searched for a moment, then found it. Sheltered square in the middle of the scooped greensward stood a good-size lodge with a blue slate roof.

“Don’t know if you will find much room up there, though,” the captain said. “Late yesterday, another ferry took out a tourist group. Hunters from Belgium, I heard. Or Swiss, maybe they were. They’re lodging here for a few more days. Besides the lot of them, you’ll only have a few cattle and the usual gathering of puffins for company.”

Just as well,
Gray thought. He’d prefer to keep their search for the source of the neutrino emissions as quiet as possible.