Joan Vinge - The Summer Queen

He studied the displays silently, feeling incredulity and disgust grown inside him as he located the critical error sequence in their programming. He glanced again at the systems monitors, confirming his worst case expectations with one look. “This is eating its way through the shields.” He turned back. “It’s feeding on their energy output. In about half an hour the whole system is going to crash. Congratulations, gentlemen. You’ve produced a universal solvent.”

The looks on the faces of the researchers turned critical, like the data readings behind him; and he realized that they had suspected it all along. But they had not even dared to speak its name, had been hoping against hope that he would come in here like a miracle and tell them that they were wrong—

“A universal solvent?” Irduz took a step backward, pressing an ebony hand to his jeweled breastplate, “It can’t be.” It was the ultimate demon of Old Empire technology run wild. “That absorbs everything it comes in contact with. Everything. Nothing can contain it. Nothing can stop it. It’s the end of the world… .”He looked back at the stricken researchers, his indigo eyes filled with death. “By the Holy— “

The Smith silenced him with an impatient gesture. “Tell me,” he said evenly, to the cluster of researchers, “why haven’t you stopped this?”

“We can’t—” someone protested.

“What do you mean?” the Smith said angrily. “You knew what the problem was. Anybody who knows bacteriology and its analogs could kill this thing. You have the processing power here; and you presumably possess at least the variety of chemical tools available to the average drug dealer. Don’t you—?”

“Yes, but—”

“But what, for gods’ sakes’” He caught the man and jerked him forward. “What the hell were you waiting for?”

“But—but—we can’t get in there.” The researcher gestured at the seething mass waiting beyond the transparent wall.

“You what?” the Smith whispered.

“We can’t get at it.” He wiped his sweating face. “When the emergency shields are up, there’s no way to get access to what’s contained inside them. But if we open the shielding the solvent will get out—”

The Smith laughed incredulously. “You can’t be serious.” He looked at their faces. He looked back at the shield displays. “How in the name of any god you like could you possibly set up a system with no emergency access?” Y ou miserable, stupid bastards— His hands tightened.

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” someone asked, in a voice that sounded pathetically high. “There must be something. You’re the expert—!”

“I really don’t know. You’ve done your work so well,” he said softly, twisting the knife, almost enjoying the look on their faces.

“What if you can’t?” Irduz said thickly. “What will happen to our world?”

The Smith glanced at the data on the displays beside him. “It could be worse.” He shrugged.

They looked at him. “What do you mean?” Irduz demanded.

“The term ‘universal solvent’ is really a misnomer. There are a number of different biotechnical compounds you could call ‘universal solvents.’ Their interests vary depending on their composition. A few things would actually survive if this escapes containment—”

“What kind of things?” Irduz said. “What—?”

The Smith stared at his feet, rubbing his face, wiping away any trace of sardonic smile. He looked up again, finally. “Titanium spires in some of your monuments.”

“What else?”

He shrugged again. “There are a number of things I can think of that would retain their integrity … but nothing you’d be interested in; except diamonds. Ships at the starport with titanium hulls, if their locks were completely sealed, might even get off the ground… . Carbon-based lifeforms will be the first to go, though; the replicants need carbon to make diamond, obviously. We’ll all become diamond— filigrees of diamond frost, on a pond: the human body is mostly water; they don’t need water.” He glanced at the glittering cloud of doom. “This will spread like a disease… . The solvent can’t destroy everything as fast as it will destroy human body tissue; some things will take weeks to break down. The whole planet will probably take months to transmogrify. …”

“Stop it!” Irduz said, and it took the Smith a moment to realize that he meant the solvent itself. “Stop it and you can have anything you desire—”

The Smith’s mouth twisted. “It’s not that simple,” he said. “Maybe you can bribe your gods, priest, but you can’t bribe mine.” He gestured at the disintegrating fields, let his hand fall back to his side. “I can probably stop it …”he murmured finally, in disgust, looking at their terrified faces. “Personally I’d see you all in hell first, and me on the next ship out of here. But our mutual friends want your ass sitting in the High Seat a while longer, Irduz.” He touched the pendant hanging against his shirt. “So the next time you say your prayers, you’ll know who to thank. But if I save the world for you. I want you to take these incompetent sons of bitches on a tour of your other facilities.” He jerked his head at the door to hell.

“It wasn’t our fault!” the researcher beside him said. “Fakl was in Transfer! We were in contact with the sibyl net the whole time, we followed the process exactly! There were no mistakes in our program, 1 swear it!”

The Smith spun around. “You got this data through sibyl Transfer?” he asked. “I don’t believe that. That’s impossible.”

Another man stepped forward, wearing a sibyl’s trefoil. “I was in Transfer during the entire process,” he said. “We made no mistakes at our end. We followed everything exactly. The sibyl net made the mistake. It was wrong. It was wrong. …” His voice faded. The Smith saw fear in his eyes—not fear of the Church’s retribution, or even of the end of the world, in that moment—but instead the fear of a man whose belief in something more reliable than any god had been profoundly shaken.

“That’s impossible,” Irduz said.

“No,” the Smith murmured. “It could be true.” It could be why I’m here— He shook his head, as the stupefying visions of a realtime nightmare suddenly filled his mind, filling him with incomprehensible dread. He sucked in a ragged breath. Why— ?

“Do you mean there’s something wrong with the entire sibyl net?” Irduz demanded. “How could such a thing happen?”

“Shut up,” the Smith said thickly, “and let me work, unless you really want to find out firsthand what it feels like when your flesh cracks and curls, and all the water oozes out of your crystallizing body—”

“You dare to speak to me like—”

The Smith stared at him. Irduz’s thin-lipped mouth pressed shut, and the Smith turned away again.

He began to give commands to the control system, going back over the faulty sibyl data; doing his analyses half in the machine, half in his head. The purity of analytical thought calmed him, fulfilled him, making him forget his human fears. The replicators were essentially an analog of bacteria, structured for strength. They could be stopped by the application of appropriate analog toxins. Once he understood their structure well enough, he would know what tools would destroy them. But he also needed heat—a lot of heat, to break down the carbon-carbon bonds of the diamond matrix that made the replicators almost impervious to attack. And then, somehow, he had to deliver the blow…

He crossed the lab to another bank of processors, cursing under his breath at the impossibly inadequate design of the lab itself. He transferred his results, inputting more data, his murmured commands loud in the sudden, perfect silence of the sealed room. “I need access to your toxin component inventory.” He gestured at the displays.