James Rollins - Excavation

Maggie glanced to Sam. “Before we panic,” he said, “let’s simply ask.” Sam waved Denal back to the pregnant women dishing stew. The boy interrupted her serving.

Denal spoke rapidly. The woman nodded, a smile growing on her face. When Denal turned to Sam, he was not sharing her smile.

“They take Norman to the temple.”

By late afternoon, Joan found herself ensconced with a young monk in one of the many laboratory cubicles deep in the heart of the Abbey. Faithful to his word, the abbot had left orders that Joan be treated as a guest. So her request to observe the Abbey’s researchers at work was grudgingly allowed – though her personal guard dog was never far away. Even now, Joan could see Carlos through the observation window. He rested one palm on his holstered pistol.

A young monk named Anthony drew back her attention. “Of course, we all have our own personal theories,” he said matter-of-factly, his English fluent. “It is not as if we let our faith cloud our experimentation. The abbot always says our faith should withstand the vigors of science.”

Joan nodded and leaned a bit closer to the man. They now stood before a bank of computers and monitors. Several technicians worked a few cubicles down, dressed the same as they were, in sterile white lab suits, but otherwise they were alone.

Anthony logged onto the computer. Near his elbow was a tray of minute samples of the Incan metal, row after row of miniscule gold teardrops embedded in plastic wells. Fresh from the freezer, a slight fog of dry ice still clung to the tray. She had learned the lab was trying to learn the nature of the metal in an attempt to accelerate their desired goal of bringing Christ back to earth. They had already developed methods to rid the metal of contaminating impurities, heightening the miraculous abilities of the substance.

Joan studied the teardrop samples. To test her own theory, she needed one of those pearls of gold. But how? The samples were so close, but with so many eyes watching, the tray might as well have been locked behind iron bars. Joan tightened her fists, determined not to fail in her mission. She needed just a moment’s distraction. Taking a deep breath, she readied herself.

“I’m almost set,” the young monk said, working at the keyboard.

And so was she.

Joan leaned her left breast more firmly against his shoulder as she peered at the tray. She had picked Anthony as her guide because of the youth’s age; clean-shaven and dark-haired, he could not be much older than twenty. But besides his impressionable age, she had selected him from all the others for another reason. When she had first entered the labs, guarded by Carlos, Joan had noticed how the young man’s eyes had widened in appreciation. She saw how his gaze had settled upon her breasts, then darted away. Back at Johns Hopkins, she had taught enough undergraduates to recognize when one seemed interested in more than just a scholarly education. Usually, she gently rebuffed any advances, but now she would exploit these feelings. Cloistered here among the monks, Joan suspected this youth could be easily unnerved by the attentions of a woman – and from the youth’s reaction now, she had been proven right.

Anthony swallowed hard, his cheeks reddening. He pulled away slightly from her touch.

Joan took the advantage. She slid onto the neighboring stool, one hand crossing to rest on the youth’s knee. “I’d be most interested in hearing your own theories, Anthony. You’ve been here a while. What do you think of el Sangre del Diablo ?” She squeezed his knee ever so slightly.

Anthony glanced back to the glass partition, toward Carlos. Her hand was hidden from view by their bodies. The young monk did not pull away this time, but his face was almost a shade of purple. He sat frozen, stiff as a statue. If Joan’s hand had wandered any higher up his leg, she expected she would have discovered exactly how stiff the young man was.

She had spent the entire afternoon brushing against him, touching him, whispering close to his ear. With gentle cajoling and urging, she had finally guided him to this last lab, where actual samples of the mysterious metal were being analyzed. Now the truly tricky part began.

Joan tilted her head, attentive to the young monk. “So tell me, what do you think the metal is, Anthony?”

He almost choked on his words, “Maybe nan… nanobots.”

Now it was Joan’s turn to startle, her hand slipping away from his knee. “Excuse me?”

Anthony nodded rapidly, relaxing slightly, now able to discourse on familiar territory. “Several of us… the younger researchers among us… think maybe the metal is actually some dense accumulation of nanobots.”

“As in nanotechnology?” Joan said. She had read a few theoretical articles that had discussed the possibility of building subcellular machines – nanobots – that could manipulate matter at the molecular or even atomic level. A recent article published in Scientific American described a crude first attempt to construct such microscopic robots by scientists at UCLA. In her mind, she remembered her own electron microscope scan of the metal: the tiny particulate matrix linked together by hooklike appendages. But nanobots? Impossible. The youth here had obviously been reading too much science fiction.

“Come see,” Anthony said, suddenly excited to be able to show off for his audience. He reached to the tray and lifted one of the pellets of metal with a pair of stainless-steel tweezers. He fed it into the machine before him. “Electron crystallography,” he explained. “It’s our own design here. It can isolate one unit of the metal’s crystalline structure and construct a three-dimensional picture. Just watch.” He tapped a monitor screen with the tweezers.

Joan leaned closer, fishing out her eyeglasses, forgetting for the moment her seduction of the young monk. When she had asked Anthony to show her the metal, she hadn’t meant such a close look. But now the scientist in Joan was intrigued.

An image appeared on the screen, in crisp detail, rotating slowly to show all surfaces. Joan recognized it. A single microscopic particle of the metal. It was octagonal in shape with six threadlike appendages: one on top, one on bottom, and four radiating out from midsection. At the end of each were four tiny clawed hooks, like sparrow’s talons.

Anthony pointed to the screen with the tip of a pen. “In overall shape and architecture, it bears a clear resemblance to a hypothesized nanobot proposed by Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation . He theorized a molecular machine in two sections: computer and constructor . The nanobot’s brain and brawn, so to speak.” He tapped at the central octagonal core. “Here’s the central processor, its programmed brain, surrounded by six nodes, or constructors, that manipulate the arms.” The young monk moved his pointer along to the thin talonlike hooks. “Here is what Drexler called its molecular positioners.”

Joan frowned. “And you think this thing can actually manipulate matter at the molecular level?”

“Why not?” Anthony said. “We have enzymes in our bodies right now that act as natural organic nanobots. Or take the mitochondria inside our cells… those organelles are no more than microscopic power stations, manipulating matter at the atomic level to produce ATP, or energy, for our cells. Even the thousands of viruses in nature are forms of molecular machines.” He glanced to her. “So you see, Mother Nature has already succeeded. Nanobots already exist.”

Joan slowly nodded, turning back to the screen. “This thing looks almost viral,” she mumbled. Joan had seen blowups of attacking viral phages. Under the electron microscope, they had appeared like lunar modules landing on cell membranes, more machine than living organism. This image reminded her of those viral assays.