Spin by Wilson Robert Charles Charles

Author:Wilson, Robert Charles Charles
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2005-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

In the weeks leading up to the November election I saw more of Jason. His disease was becoming more active despite the escalating medication, possibly due to the stress caused by the ongoing conflict with his father. (E.D. had announced his intention to “take back” Perihelion from what he considered a cabal of upstart bureaucrats and scientists aligned with Wun Ngo Wen—an empty threat, in Jason’s opinion, but potentially disruptive and embarrassing.)

Jase kept me close in case it was necessary to dose him with antispasmodics at some critical moment, which I was willing to do, within the limits of the law and professional ethics. Keeping Jase functional in the short term was the most that medical science could do for him, and staying functional long enough to outmaneuver E. D. Lawton was, for the moment, all that mattered to Jase.

So I spent a lot of time in the V.I.P. wing at Perihelion, usually with Jason but often with Wun Ngo Wen. This made me an object of suspicion to the rest of Wun’s handlers, an assortment of government subauthorities (junior representatives from the State Department, the White House, Homeland Security, Space Command, et cetera) and academics who had been recruited to translate, study, and classify the so-called Martian archives. My access to Wun, in the eyes of these people, was irregular and unwelcome. I was a hireling. A nobody. But that was why Wun preferred my company: I had no agenda to promote or protect. And because he insisted, I was from time to time ushered by sullen toadies through the several doors that separated the Martian ambassador’s air-conditioned quarters from the Florida heat and all the wide world beyond.

On one of these occasions I found Wun Ngo Wen seated on his wicker chair—someone had brought in a matching footstool so his feet wouldn’t dangle—gazing thoughtfully at the contents of a test tube–sized glass vial. I asked him what was inside.

“Replicators,” he said.

He was dressed in a suit and tie that might have been tailored for a stocky twelve-year-old: he’d been doing show-and-tell for a congressional delegation. Although Wun’s existence had not been formally announced there had been a steady traffic of security-approved visitors both foreign and domestic over the last few weeks. The official announcement would be made by the White House shortly after the election, after which time Wun would be very busy indeed.

I looked at the glass tube from a safe vantage point across the room. Replicators. Ice-eaters. Seeds of an inorganic biology.

Wun smiled. “Are you afraid of it? Please don’t be. I assure you the contents are completely inactive. I thought Jason had explained this to you.”

He had. A little. I said, “They’re microscopic devices. Semi-organic. They reproduce in conditions of extreme cold and vacuum.”

“Yes, good, essentially correct. And did Jason explain the purpose of them?”

“To go out and populate the galaxy. To send us data.”

Wun nodded slowly, as if this answer were also essentially correct but less than satisfactory. “This is the most sophisticated technological artifact the Five Republics have produced, Tyler.

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