"Nothing. Just what I said. They agree the swarms should be kept alive. I think Ricky's going to oppose you, that's all."
I needed to talk to Mae again. I found her in the biology lab, hunched over a computer monitor, looking at images of white bacterial growth on dark red media. I said, "Mae, listen, I've talked to David and I need to-uh, Mae? Have you got a problem?" She was looking fixedly at the screen.
"I think I do," she said. "A problem with the feedstock."
"What kind of problem?"
"The latest Theta-d stocks aren't growing properly." She pointed to an image in the upper corner of the monitor, which showed bacteria growing in smooth white circles. "That's normal coliform growth," she said. "That's how it's supposed to look. But here ..." She brought up another image in the center of the screen. The round forms appeared moth-eaten, ragged and misshapen. "That's not normal growth," she said, shaking her head. "I'm afraid it's phage contamination."
"You mean a virus?" I said. A phage was a virus that attacked bacteria. "Yes," she said. "Coli are susceptible to a very large number of phages. T4 phage is of course the most common, but Theta-d was engineered to be T4-resistant. So I suspect it's a new phage that's doing this."
"A new phage? You mean it's newly evolved?"
"Yes. Probably a mutant of an existing strain, that somehow gets around the engineered resistance. But it's bad news for manufacturing. If we have infected bacterial stocks, we'll have to shut down production. Otherwise we'll just be spewing viruses out."
"Frankly," I said, "shutting down production might be a good idea."
"I'll probably have to. I'll try to isolate it, but it looks aggressive. I may not be able to get rid of it without scrubbing the kettle. Starting over with fresh stock. Ricky's not going to like it."
"Have you told him about this?"
"Not yet." She shook her head. "I don't think he needs more bad news right now. And besides ..." She stopped, as if she had thought better of what she was going to say. "Besides what?"
"Ricky has a huge stake in the success of this company." She turned to face me. "Bobby heard him on the phone the other day, talking about his stock options. And sounding worried. I think Ricky sees Xymos as his last big chance to score. He's been here five years. If this doesn't work out, he'll be too senior to start over at a new company. He's got a wife and baby; he can't gamble another five years, waiting to see if the next company clicks. So he's really trying to make this happen, really driving himself. He's up all night, working, figuring. He isn't sleeping more than three or four hours. Frankly, I worry it's affecting his judgment."
"I can imagine," I said. "The pressure must be terrible."
"He's so sleep-deprived it makes him erratic," Mae said. "I'm never sure what he'll do, or how he'll respond. Sometimes I get the feeling he doesn't want to get rid of the swarms at all. Or maybe he's scared."
"Maybe," I said.
"Anyway, he's erratic. So if I were you I'd be careful," she said, "when you go after the swarms. Because that's what you're going to do, isn't it? Go after them?"
"Yes," I said. "That's what I'm going to do."
DAY 6
1:12 P.M.
They had all gathered in the lounge, with the video games and pinball machines. Nobody was playing them now. They were watching me with anxious eyes as I explained what we had to do. The plan was simple enough-the swarm itself was dictating what we had to do, although I was skipping that uncomfortable truth.
Basically, I told them we had a runaway swarm we couldn't control. And the swarm exhibited self-organizing behavior. "Whenever you have a high SO component, it means the swarm can reassemble itself after an injury or disruption. Just as it did with me. So this swarm has to be totally, physically destroyed. That means subjecting the particles to heat, cold, acid, or high magnetic fields. And from what I've seen of its behavior, I'd say our best chance to destroy it is at night when the swarm loses energy and sinks to the ground."
Ricky whined, "But we already told you, Jack, we can't find it at night-"
"That's right, you can't," I said. "Because you didn't tag it. Look, it's a big desert out there. If you want to trace it back to its hiding place, you've got to tag it with something so strong you can follow its trail wherever it goes."
"Tag it with what?"
"That's my next question," I said. "What kind of tagging agents have we got around here?" I was greeted with blank looks. "Come on, guys. This is an industrial facility. You must have something that will coat the particles and leave a trail we can follow. I'm talking about a substance that fluoresces intensely, or a pheromone with a characteristic chemical signature, or something radioactive ... No?"
More blank looks. Shaking their heads.
"Well," Mae said, "of course, we have radioisotopes."
"All right, fine." Now we were getting somewhere.
"We use them to check for leaks in the system. The helicopter brings them out once a week."
"What isotopes do you have?"
"Selenium-72 and Rhenium-186. Sometimes Xenon-133 as well. I'm not sure what we've got on hand right now."
"What kind of half-lives are we talking about?" Certain isotopes lost radioactivity very rapidly, in a matter of hours or minutes. If so, they wouldn't be useful to me. "Half-life averages about a week," Mae said. "Selenium's eight days. Rhenium's four days. Xenon-133 is five days. Five and a quarter."