Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart by Steven Erikson

Author:Steven Erikson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Promontory Press Inc.
Published: 2018-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

The Director of the CIA was ushered into the conference room through another entrance. Kenneth J. Esterholm was seventy-four years old, a bookish company-man bureaucrat who had been recruited at Stanford in his graduate year of a Master’s degree in what was then known as Communications. His finest skill was in patronage. These days, the lure of retirement had become a deafening siren call, one he was ready to heed, possibly within the next hour.

Even as he slowly lowered himself into a chair, the President jabbed a finger at him and said, “What’s with these ET buildings popping up all over the world, Ken? And more to the point, why not here in the United States? What have all those foreigners got that we don’t?”

“At the moment, Mr. President,” Kenneth began as he laid out his binder and carefully opened it to reveal hand-written notes, “what they have that we don’t are those strange buildings.”

Raine Kent blinked at him. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“No sir. We’ve done an analysis, seeking commonalities among the target countries. There is none. Malawi, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Greece, Haiti, Argentina, Korea, Norway, Canada. In each instance, the constructs are rising in relatively remote areas, often on contaminated ground—”

Ben Mellyk leaned forward. “Excuse me, Ken, you said ‘contaminated ground’. Can you describe the nature of the contamination?”

The Director glanced at the President, seeking guidance, but the man’s famous television glower remained unchanged. Kenneth referred to his notes. “Post-industrial for the most part. Heavy metals, oil by-products, various leachates. Or over-fertilized farmland. Or denuded scrub-land. Basically, dead or dying ground.”

“And the construction material?” the Science Advisor asked, pulling off his glasses to wipe the lenses.

“Some form of concrete, I believe, but otherwise basic. They’re going up in recognizable fashion, or so our engineers tell us, just without the need for workers. Any additional determinations are impossible due to the forcefields.”

“Hmm,” mused Mellyk, “curious.”

“That’s it?” Kent demanded. “That’s all you got?”

“Well,” the Science Advisor began, squinting through the lenses before resuming wiping them, “self-assembly requires raw materials, one presumes. All over the world we’re witnessing the breaking down of contaminants, accelerated clean-up and rehabilitation. Even nuclear waste. There has already been a measurable decline in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as other green-house gas parts-per-million. Some of this material can indeed be broken down, but not all of it.” He paused and squinted at Kenneth Ester-holm. “If I had to guess, the contaminants are being recycled, and that concrete mix is mostly sequestered carbon dioxide.”

“They’re building these things out of thin air?” Kent demanded.

“Why yes, literally.”

“Now isn’t that exciting?” the President said in a half-snarl, and then he thumped the table top. “No. It isn’t. Who cares how they’re being built?” He pointed again at Kenneth. “What are they? Prisons? Killer Robot Assembly Plants?”

“We don’t know, Mr. President, because we can’t get inside them. All we can tell you is that they’re big, they’re full complexes, suggesting multifunctionality. They’re ergonomic in the sense of human scale—entrances and whatnot.

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