Small Miracles Read online

  SMALL

  MIRACLES

  Edward M. Lerner

  Copyright Statement

  Small Miracles by Edward M. Lerner. Copyright © 2009 by Edward M. Lerner. All rights reserved. This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, events or localities is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

  Tarikian, TARK Classic Fiction, Arc Manor, Arc Manor Classic Reprints, Phoenix Pick, Phoenix Science Fiction Classics, Phoenix Rider, The Stellar Guild Series, Manor Thrift and logos associated with those imprints are trademarks or registered trademarks of Arc Manor, LLC, Rockville, Maryland. All other trademarks and trademarked names are properties of their respective owners.

  This book is presented as is, without any warranties (implied or otherwise) as to the accuracy of the production, text or translation.

  PREFACE and ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Small Miracles is a novel of medical nanotechnology.

  Nanotech deals with science and engineering at a very small scale (one nanometer=one billionth of a meter), but “small” fails to do the subject justice. Traditional manufacturing, even of the tiniest microchips, manipulates matter in bulk. We are not as far removed as we might like to believe from chipping our tools out of chunks of flint. Nanotech, in contrast, involves the arrangement of matter with atom-by-atom precision. At least nanotech will do that; this is a technology very much in its infancy.

  But the baby is growing up quickly.…

  And medical nanotech? In the near future, complex machines smaller than individual biological cells—and with the potential, therefore, to access, diagnose, and treat any cell in our bodies—will revolutionize medical practice. I defer to the story for examples. And surprises.

  Doing research for this novel, I attended the conference Productive Nanosystems: Launching the Technology Roadmap. For two days I immersed myself in the theory, practice, and likely evolution of nanotech, presented by experts from academia, government laboratories, and industry. Emergent technologies often draw upon more established disciplines. Nanotech is no exception, with practitioners schooled in physics, computer science, chemistry, biology, and engineering.

  Conference participants graciously shared their time and insights before, between, and after conference sessions. My appreciation and thanks go to everyone involved in this most informative event—too many, alas, to credit individually. That said, I will single out one: Dr. K. Eric Drexler, a pioneer and leader in the field. I especially appreciate his books, which began my interest in nanotech, and his in-depth answers to my questions.

  For medical aspects of the story, I had the good fortune to consult experts in biology, biophysics, medicine, neurology, and psychology. I am grateful for their insights, knowledge, and experience, and the patience to share so much with me. Thanks to:

  Jeffrey Barth, Ph.D., University of Virginia

  Jason Cooper, M.D.

  Barbekka Hurtt, Ph.D., Rocky Vista University

  Marc Mangel, Ph.D., University of California Santa Cruz

  Diane Mayland, M.D.

  Richard Robinson, Ph.D., Columbia University

  Henry G. Stratmann, M.D.

  On the subjects of police and hospital procedure, my thanks go, respectively, to Sgt. Jeff Bowerman of the Frederick County (Virginia) Sheriff’s Office and Karen Bowerman, physician assistant at the Martinsburg (West Virginia) Veterans Administration hospital.

  Where the novel gets the details right, credit goes to the experts. Responsibility for all extrapolations, errors, simplifications, and fictional license lies with the author.

  My appreciation also goes to Bob Gleason, my editor, for encouraging me to take on a near-future nanotech novel, and to Eleanor Wood, my agent, for her support

  Last but certainly not least, I thank my first and favorite reader: my wife, Ruth. As always, she helped me keep the story’s focus on the people rather than the technology. (The characters, if they could, would thank her, too.)

  EDWARD M. LERNER

  SOWING

  thursday, july 23, 2015

  A blue-and-white squad car, number 343, idled near the garage exit at Angleton police headquarters. The driver, its lone occupant, looked pissed.

  “You could just shoot me,” Brent offered.

  “Too much paperwork. Get in the cruiser.”

  Brent reached through an open window to unlock the front passenger door. He dropped into the bucket seat, its black vinyl cracked. He shut the car door and offered his hand. “Brent Cleary, from Garner Nanotechnology. Call me Brent.”

  The cop threw the transmission into drive and all the doors locked themselves. His foot remained on the brake. “Sergeant Korn. Call me Sergeant Korn. Buckle up.”

  Brent withdrew his hand. This was his sixth ride-along, with his fourth police department. He had learned a few things. Don’t bring doughnuts. Don’t discuss TV cop shows. Don’t expect “I’m here to help” to make friends. Don’t push too hard, or too fast.

  “I said, buckle up, Cleary.”

  Brent latched his seat belt, unnecessary as that was. “Sergeant, I have a signed copy of the ride-along waiver for you.”

  Flat-panel displays covered the console between the bucket seats. Korn tapped the biggest screen and the image of a form popped up.

  Brent leaned over to where he could read the display. He recognized his own photo and the scrawled approval of the captain. The waiver text absolved the department of responsibility for anything that might happen—taken verbatim, even if the sergeant did shoot him. Not that it would matter. “You’re a step ahead of me.”

  “Yes, I am.” Korn raised the passenger-side window, then tapped his headset once. “Car 343 leaving on patrol.” With a throaty V-8 growl, the cruiser turned right onto Main Street and went past headquarters. As though an afterthought, Korn added, “Visitor onboard.”

  That was another thing Brent had learned. Except maybe on CB, no one used numeric radio codes anymore. After 9/11 first responders got serious about communicating across jurisdictions. It had been easier to switch to English than to standardize on codes. On all but one ride-along, much of the routine comm had been by wireless texting between computers.

  “So what’s the plan tonight?” Brent asked.

  “Working.”

  It was going to be a long eight hours. Brent looked around the cruiser. Big and roomy: a Crown Vic hybrid. Still, the computer-and-comm console encroached on the passenger and driver spaces. On the dash a metal cylinder reminiscent of a water glass lay on its side: a radar antenna. A second antenna sat on the shelf behind the rear bench seat. The hinged, clear divider between front and back seats was folded down. He leaned forward and to his right to peer behind the rearview mirror and found, as he had expected, a forward-looking camera. All very standard.

  Korn paid him no attention.

  The sergeant appeared to be in his late thirties. He was pinch-faced, with pale skin and thinning, sandy hair. His tan uniform was clean and pressed and a bit snug. His holstered handgun was the only weapon in sight.

  An “appearances first” department, then. There was yet another thing Brent had learned, that some departments insisted that the big guns—rifle, shotgun, tear-gas launcher—be hidden in the trunk lest they offend public sensibilities. Other PDs had a term for such sensitivity: “chicken shit.” It put cops’ lives at risk.

  Brent cleared his throat experimentally. Korn ignored it.

  Brent had sisters, the first two years older than he and the other two years younger. Growing up, Wendy and
Jeanine went through an “eew, boys” phase. He would enter a room where they were playing, and one sister would tell the other, and any friend who might be over, to ignore it. Korn’s silent treatment? Not a problem. Brent had been shunned by experts.

  The street went from working class to needy to seedy. Plastic bags and sheets of newspaper scudded before the wind. Paper cups, fast-food wrappers, and broken glass clogged the gutters. It was an integrated neighborhood, but people clustered by race, eying one another warily. Night was falling and shopkeepers extended sturdy metal fences across sad-looking storefronts.

  The cruiser AC was blasting, but outside it was brutal. The ambient temperature registered 98 on the in-dash display. Kids splashed in the water that pulsed and gurgled from open fire hydrants. Youths in baggy shorts and T-shirts or tank tops melted away as the cruiser approached. In Brent’s side-view mirror, they regrouped as quickly as they had dispersed. Rush hour was long past and traffic was light, stripped cars at the curb almost outnumbering those moving along the roadway.

  Korn muttered under his breath, something about toads. He turned left onto Jefferson, past tired, old clapboard houses whose doors stood open. Broken windows gaped like missing teeth. The last hints of twilight bled away, but most streetlights remained dark.

  From time to time one of the cruiser displays lit up. The angle from the passenger side was too oblique to let Brent read incoming messages from Dispatch, and Korn volunteered nothing. He would tap the comm screen to clear it and that would be that. Informational only, apparently.

  At Eighth they turned left again. Cars queued for the pumps at a no-brand gas station. Beside the uneven sidewalk, weeds growing through the cracks, a sandwich board listed prices. Unleaded regular was $8.57 a gallon. Ouch. Back home, the highest Brent had seen was $7.99. That was bad enough, and he drove a late-model hybrid that got seventy miles to the gallon.

  The cars waiting to gas up were huge, like the cruiser, but far older: relics of a bygone era. Many had mismatched doors or fenders: junkyard replacements. Only the poorest drove rust-bucket gas guzzlers like those. To buy something newer and more energy-efficient took money, or at least credit.

  Korn drove in silence, his intentions obvious. Wait for the civilian to plead to be returned to safety. End of unwelcome ride-along.

  Sorry, Sergeant. Not going to happen.

  Barry Rosen, the marketing VP at Garner Nanotech, had volunteered that half of cops, more or less, resented civilian ride-alongs. Asked for his sources, Barry had only smiled. Korn made it three for six, so Barry was right again. He usually was.

  But what choice did they have? Garner’s ultimate markets—the FBI, Homeland Security, the DoD—were far more receptive to new tech, much easier to deal with … right to the point of closing a deal. Then the Federal Acquisition Regulations, umpty-ump gigabytes of them, came into play, slowing the sales process to a crawl. Bureausclerosis was why Americans still bought body armor privately to send to their sons and daughters in Iraq, Iran, and the former Pakistan.

  So, receptive or not, local PDs were Garner’s market of choice, because there were so darn many of them. If only one department in twenty took interest, the people at Garner would make a fortune. Even a lowly sales-support engineer like Brent.

  Humming softly, Korn turned right on Railroad. This spur was long abandoned, the rails pulled up for scrap, and the right-of-way resold. Atop the embankment that paralleled the rippled and potholed street, a fat pipe seemed to float above tall weeds.

  Brent raised the hood of his jumpsuit and pulled the transparent visor down over his face. Viewed in night mode, the pipe—even the graffiti—looked new. From time to time as they rode, he glimpsed through the weeds one of the stanchions that supported the pipe. Probably this was one of the gasoline pipelines recently extended from the north. Canada, unlike New England, occasionally managed to build a refinery.

  Korn sneaked a peek at Brent in his hood, and snickered.

  A small comp was sewn into the left forearm of the jumpsuit. Brent fingered in a code string for color selection. The suit turned black: body and hood, boots and gloves. A second code made the visor black, but polarized so he could still see out. Brent pictured himself disappearing into the black seat.

  Korn laughed again, this time with a trace of warmth. “Camo. That I see a use for.” He pulled the cruiser into the lot of a twenty-four-hour mini-mart and tapped his headset. “Car 343. Out of service, personal.” To Brent he added, “Fluid adjustment break. If you’re planning to go inside, lose the ninja look.”

  His hood back down, and the jumpsuit reprogrammed to a denimlike blue, Brent followed Korn into the mini-mart. Unsealing and resealing the jumpsuit took time, and Korn was in the cruiser, his mini-mart coffee half-finished, when Brent rejoined him.

  “Here’s a tip about the wonder suit,” Korn said. “It needs a fly.”

  Brent’s sisters both sewed. Jeanine was especially good at it; she had even made suits for her husband. A fly in men’s pants was apparently a big deal, although it amused Jeanine when Hubby once described it that way. “Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Jeanine had said.

  The jumpsuit was not made of simple fabric. Every seam and seal required careful engineering. Not until the next iteration, a beta-test model potential customers might try, was designing in a fly worth the cost.

  “Thanks for the suggestion, Sergeant.” Never mind that it was offered sarcastically. It could be construed as an invitation to discuss the suit. “Any other impressions?”

  In an uninflected voice: “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”

  “Ah, RoboCop,” Brent said. “This jumpsuit is nothing like that.” Well, he had a microchip implanted in his arm that was a bit like RoboCop, but that detail could wait.

  “Cruiser 343, back in service.” Korn backed the cruiser onto the street. He flipped a toggle on the dashboard and the dark street scene turned green—and as bright as day—

  That was interesting. It was Brent’s first night ride-along. He hadn’t realized any cruisers had a night-vision mode. He looked down to scribble a—

  “Christ!” Korn said. He was driving left-handed, shaking his right hand as though it stung. “That’s hard.”

  Had the jumpsuit’s left arm stiffened for a moment? Perhaps. “Sergeant, did you hit me?”

  “Just testing.” Korn flexed his fingers some more. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it.”

  Brent grinned “I didn’t. That’s the point.”

  They turned onto Sixth. A dozen or more youths congregated around the block’s one working streetlight. Korn flicked his flashers and siren. They scattered. “Okay, Cleary. I guess I am interested.”

  Success. “This isn’t just any jumpsuit, Sergeant. It’s made from nanofabric. That’s why, for example, it can change colors.”

  “Like a mood ring.”

  “Only programmable.” And much more complex and precise than a mood ring. “Many properties of the fabric are controllable at the finest scales, not merely the color.”

  The comm console came on again. Korn read something, muttered once more about toads, and tapped to acknowledge. “The natives are restless tonight.” He turned onto Washington. “So what happened when I slugged your arm?”

  “Nanites—sorry, that’s geek speak for smaller-than-microscopic machines—in the fabric linked up to distribute the impact. The harder or faster the blow, the more of the fabric stiffens. An instant later, the fabric reverts to normal. I don’t feel much of anything.”

  Korn bit his lower lip, considering. “How much impact can it handle?”

  “Knife thrust. Bullet. I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said you could shoot me.”

  They pulled up to the curb. Korn reached over to pinch a fold of the jumpsuit fabric between thumb and forefinger. “Damn, that’s lightweight.”

  “Then I have your attention, Sergeant? I assume you carry body armor.”

  “Ron. Yeah, there’s a bulletproof
vest in the trunk.”

  Ron, now, is it? That was progress. “My jumpsuit weighs less than two pounds. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but that’s lighter than your vest.” The pause for any correction was pro forma. Brent knew damn well police bulletproof vests generally weighed almost five pounds. “And this jumpsuit will stop a rifle round.” Which Korn’s vest would not, not without adding heavy and uncomfortable ceramic or metal plates.

  “Damn,” Korn said respectfully. He put the cruiser back into drive and resumed the patrol. “And it protects you head to toe. And you don’t even look hot.”

  Not hot was a theme. On every ride-along, sooner or later, that always came up. Conventional body armor was hot. “Because I’m not hot, Ron. Evaporative cooling. The nanofabric wicks out any sweat.”

  The comm console lit up again. Korn tapped his headset. “Acknowledged. Be there in two minutes.” He flipped on the flashers and siren. An abrupt U-turn, then a tire-squealing left onto Railroad. “Domestic disturbance, Cleary.”

  They pulled up to a decaying high-rise housing project. In many of the apartments, the only light was the flickering of a TV. Other units were entirely dark, whether vacant or conserving electricity. None of the nearby streetlights worked. A single flickering fluorescent bulb lit the entryway. Korn took the key from the ignition and the cruiser’s windows went passive. It was dark out there. Korn flung open his door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Stay in the car.”

  “But I’ll be perfectly safe in—”

  “I said, stay put.” Korn slammed his door. All four doors locked with a click.

  Waiting in the dark gave Brent the creeps. The toggle for the cruiser’s night-vision mode did nothing without a key in the ignition. He raised and sealed his hood. The visor’s night-vision mode revealed people in several apartments, few looking his way. Hip-hop echoed into the night, raps competing, little but throbbing bass distinct. Somewhere above, a man and a woman cursed.