Read Online Plague Year by Jeff Carlson - Free Book Online

burn a portion of a locust for fuel while using the rest to build more ANN like itself, and this design had been the early front-runner until the president’s council grew understandably desperate.
    There was one big problem with all three concepts.
    In creating more of themselves, locusts pulled both carbon and some iron from the tissue of their hosts; and as a substance, each locust was hardly distinguishable from any other life-form.
    One very big problem. ANN designed to target locusts in mass would also attack human and animal cells.
    “Show them your figures again,” Ruth said. “If LaSalle’s bug lumps together every speck of organic carbon in the world, everything else that’s happened so far is going to seem like a roller disco in comparison.”
    “Roller—?”
    “We’ll all be dead, everywhere.”
    Her earpiece thumped once more and she wondered if James was smiling, pacing, shaking his head. She wished she could see his face. His voice, like always, conveyed only quiet strength. “The council has a way to protect us from any ANN,” he said, “in case something goes wrong. Incorporating the hypobaric fuse into every design is mandatory now, even if that sets everyone back.”
    “A fuse won’t stop LaSalle’s bug from affecting plants or insects or whatever else is left below 10,000 feet. Any environmental balance the planet still has will be shot! We need an ANN that can discriminate.”
    “Actually the other good news is somewhat related.”
    “What? Then what are you getting me worked up for?” Ruth’s grin was real but she forced a laugh for his benefit. “Zap me the file, this is perfect!”
    They had the beginnings of a brain. Another member of their group had proposed targeting the hypobaric fuse itself rather than locusts in general, using this unique structure as a marker. Unfortunately, so far their best-developed program was less than 30 percent effective in a pressurized capsule where decoys and debris outnumbered hibernating locusts only two to one.
    “It’s better than that,” James said. “The FBI got a team into Denver. They think they have a new lead.”
    Ruth flexed her arms and legs, an involuntary surge of excitement. She struck the wall with one knee and set herself rotating, and jammed her palm against her headset to keep it from pulling off. “When? How?”
    “They just cleared enough highway to start flying again—”
    She nearly interrupted. How much highway? The shuttle required more than twice the landing strip of most airplanes.
    “—took a group into town and pulled more computers from the field office there, the public library. They think they have full records on manufacturers’ sales now.”
    Before the plague there had been forty-six university nanotech labs nationwide, seven private groups, and five more working for the government. That number had not included Ruth, or at least two other covert federal operations she was aware of—nor had it included perhaps a dozen independently funded labs who were also keeping their heads down, mining the public data but not sharing their own advances.
    Only thirteen companies had manufactured microscopy and nano-fabrication equipment, however, and such big-ticket items hardly sold like the stock shares of those companies.
    Even before the locust burst through the quarantine lines around northern California, FBI data crunchers had unearthed two private groups in the region. Agents swept through those labs and the six more operating publicly in the area, confiscating everything, even the few lab techs who could still be found.
    Too bad only some of those people reached safe altitude.
    Evidence everywhere had been lost or destroyed. No one was even certain that the locust had been built in the Bay Area. It could have gotten loose in transit or during a buy. No one ever came forward to explain. That wasn’t a surprise—anyone claiming responsibility would have been lynched—but not a single alarm had been raised even