Майкл Крайтон - The Andromeda Evolution

“What are those?” asked Stone. “They look like fermenting vats from a brewery.”

“Not beer. Turbines,” said Odhiambo. “As I expected, those are hydroelectric generators. The water flows under the dam and turns them, making electricity. The nearest one seems to be the source of our explosion.”

Soaring around the turbine heads, a few canaries approached two tall beige cabinets located against the wall. Their metal surfaces were studded with dials and controls.

“The control panel,” said Odhiambo. “Simple controls for simple turbines. These are small, the same kind of micro hydroelectric plants I have seen employed all across what is called the third world. From Afghanistan to Ethiopia. With twenty thousand dollars, a village of a hundred homes can have lights, refrigeration, water purification. And television, of course.”

Odhiambo added the last example with a rueful smile.

“Let’s get over there,” said Vedala. “Carefully.”

Moving together, the team approached a broad metal desk parked beside the panels. A body was slumped over it. A piece of debris had torn through the corpse, leaving the desk and cabinets beyond coated in a rusty spray of dried blood.

“Interesting,” said Vedala. “This body isn’t compromised. Looks like a simple puncture wound followed by bleeding out.”

“Check the feet,” said Peng.

The worker’s boots had clearly fused together and then sunk ankle-deep into the anomaly surface.

“It’s as if the room turned to quicksand,” said Peng, twisting to look around. Vedala put a hand on her arm.

“We need to count the bodies,” said Vedala. “See if we can identify who was here and where they came from.”

For the next few minutes, the team cataloged half a dozen bodies scattered around the room. Most had melded into the surfaces where they stood or fell, with their clothing and equipment absorbed into the skin. All of it was flinted with hexagonal scabs—like frost growing over a windowpane.

The worst were the everyday items that formed part of this deformed human landscape: pens growing from a woman’s forehead; two bodies partially absorbed into each other; swaths of fabric and human hair melted into mundane office furniture.

The room had become a graveyard of wreckage and twisted bodies, much of it unidentifiable.

All of this carnage emanated from the fourth turbine. A mound of crusted black ash surrounded a scarred metal casing that had been blown off. The detonation had vaporized a deep crater in the floor, and the path of superheated debris could be seen in a starburst pattern of streaks and gouges.

Over the hum of the remaining turbines, the team could hear the far-off roar of water under their feet.

Odhiambo began to hypothesize out loud, as was his habit. He spoke while holding a chemlight in one hand, walking and inspecting. As he gesticulated, the greenish light seemed to dance around him like swamp fire.

“Something went wrong with the dam turbine. It exploded. The detonation itself was surely lethal. But the shock wave also provided a burst of energy to the AS-3 substance this anomaly is constructed of. Triggered, it began to self-replicate using the available fuel on hand. Both inorganic material . . . and organic.”

Peng stood frozen in the middle of the room, staring blankly at the drones. The only indication she was disturbed was in the way her front teeth were digging into her lower lip. Spread out, the other scientists were not paying close attention to Peng or to each other.

Vedala added to Odhiambo’s hypothesis, her voice echoing through the empty space.

“So AS-3 is capable of pure energy conversion. Not surprising. Both known strains can self-replicate, given energy. If that nuclear fail-safe had gone off in the original Wildfire facility, it would have spawned enough Andromeda to end the world. We’re seeing a smaller version of that here.”

“On the bright side, at least it was temporary,” added Odhiambo. “If the reaction had continued, these bodies would have been swallowed up. Instead, they are only halfway . . . eaten. It appears our unfortunate crawling man had at least a minute or two to try and escape.”

Odhiambo looked back toward the room entrance.

“The tunnel leading outside,” added Odhiambo, “acted as a natural chimney, concentrating and spewing this smoke into the jungle. It infected the Machado, as well as any animals in the vicinity. For them, it was a slower death.”

“I think we’re missing the bigger picture,” said Stone. “If there are people in here, it means this isn’t some extraterrestrial fluke. It’s a building . And it was built by a human being, for a purpose.”

The room fell silent.

“Stone is right. Do we all understand what this means?” asked Vedala.

As a lifelong professor, she was accustomed to employing rhetorical questions. “Someone has figured out how to use the Andromeda Strain,” she continued, not waiting for an answer. “They’ve reverse engineered the microparticle to create this structure. And whatever this place is designed for, it needed at least a few highly skilled workers to operate it.”

“Yes,” said Odhiambo. “Most of this structure must have grown through the mitosis event we saw. But some pieces were too complicated for that. For example”—he waved his chemlight at the damaged curl of metal casing—“A turbine.”

“It’s amazing,” Vedala mused. “This entire structure probably began as a single mote of reverse-engineered Andromeda material, encoded with growth instructions and the ability to make fuel for self-replication from anything nearby. The turbines and equipment are small enough to airdrop straight into the jungle. And all of it was installed by a skeleton crew who could have been lowered in on a single helicopter.”

Leaning closer, Stone examined the burned husk. He kept his respirator tight over his nose and mouth. The explosion had vaporized a hip-deep chunk out of the floor. Inside it lay the blasted remains of the turbine—a scorched cylindrical frame the size of a refrigerator, still partially intact. From under it, he heard the rush of water.

Stone stood up and scanned the walls for cables and wires.

“One problem,” he said. “The electricity generated by these turbines is useless if it can’t be transported. And this electrical transmission equipment is small-scale. That makes sense, if all the equipment had to be airdropped in. But without larger transformers, the hydropower will attenuate before it can get anywhere.”

“Unless it doesn’t have to go very far,” added Odhiambo, waving his chemlight at the spot in the crater where a bundle of frayed and burned cables emerged from the exposed innards of the destroyed turbine. The thick braid disappeared straight into the black rock of the floor.

Across the room, Peng was holding a long sheet of paper in one hand. A banner, torn and burned. Her face was blank.

“What have you got, Peng?” asked Vedala.

Peng held up the piece of limp paper.

GLÜCKWUNSCH ZU EINER GUT—

“It’s in German,” she said, her voice dull with fear. “‘Congratulations on a job well done.’ . . . They were only construction workers. And they were celebrating.”*

Odhiambo turned to Stone, a worried look on his face.

“That means this station is complete. So where is the power going?”

“I don’t know,” said Stone. “The canary map ends here in this room. This structure is as simple as anything I’ve ever seen. Just a big mass, a tunnel cut straight through to this turbine room, and that’s it. There aren’t even doors.”

“Building doors in a growing structure would be futile,” said Odhiambo. “There is very little here that is not an organic part of the whole. But it isn’t here for no reason. The power goes somewhere. Here, my friend, lend me your compass.”