James P. Hogan - Bug Park

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Bug Park
by James P. Hogan
PROLOGUE
Low, black, and menacing, its angular metallic surfaces bristling with sensors and protuberances, the robot resembled, if
anything, a walking warship.
It moved on six multiply-articulated legs projecting outward and downward from its underside in pairs, like sprung
arches. Its front consisted of a blunt, turret-like head, flanked by a pair of rotary-jointed grasping appendages terminating
in four-point, independently movable claws.
Emerging soundlessly from a steep-sided valley of depths lost in blackness, it climbed a hill of regularly spaced ridges
alternating with darker furrows. A fibrous growth, like coarse, springy grass, covered the surface, which yielded slightly
under the robot’s weight. It reached the top of the rise and paused to survey a landscape of peculiarly rounded mounds and
folds, picked out bloodred in the gloom by the glow of a distant light. The red “moon” illuminating the nocturnal landscape
formed the numerals
3:17:04.
The device was no bigger than a cockroach. It stood atop the highest of a chain of wrinkles formed where the bedspread
was pulled around the figure lying asleep. After checking its direction, the mechanical insect resumed moving, following an
ascending fold onto the slowly breathing form, higher to the shoulder, and from there onto the smoother expanse of sheet.
At the edge of the sheet, inches from the sleeping man’s ear, the device halted again to identify its target, gauging angles
and distances.
Then it moved fast for the area beneath the ear lobe, where even in an autopsy a small puncture would easily be
overlooked. The claws had anchored to the epidermis and the tiny needle discharged before the alarm message registered
in the sluggishly responding brain.
The figure stirred, turning its head. “Uh . . . Huh? . . .” An arm freed itself and slapped.
“Wassat?”
But the tiny assailant
had already disengaged and jumped two feet back down the bed.
The man lay puzzled in the darkness, rubbing his neck as his faculties returned. For a moment he was restored fully to
wakefulness; and then a heavy, muggy feeling came over him. He sat up, fumbled for the light-switch in the red glow cast
by the hotel room’s clock, but couldn’t coordinate sufficiently to find it. He swung his legs out and grabbed for the phone,
but crashed instead into the bedside unit, upsetting the tray with the coffee pot and chinaware from his room-service meal.
He put a hand to his head. “Oh Christ . . .”
His legs buckled, and he slumped down onto the edge of the bed again. For a few seconds he tried futilely to resist
whatever was happening to him; then he slid down and crumpled to a sitting position on the floor. His body went limp and
keeled over.
At the foot of the bed, the tiny robot dropped to the floor. It crossed to the protruding corner formed by the bathroom,
from there to the small vestibule area, and exited to the corridor via the gap beneath the door.
The eyes staring sightlessly upward slowly glazed over in the dim red glow from the clock, obliviously counting away the
seconds.
CHAPTER ONE
Kevin Heber had never really believed in love at first sight. It was something that he had always taken on faith about the
world of adulthood, like the work ethic, the appeal of unsweetened black coffee, or the notion that Wagner’s music might
really be better than it sounds. Not that he had devoted a great amount of contemplation to the subject. Being an active
and healthily curious fifteen-year-old with rapidly expanding horizons on how much there was to do in life, he was more
preoccupied with trying to fit a constellation of interests that was constantly growing, into a residue of twenty-four hours
which, after deductions for even minimal eating, sleeping, and necessary chores, seemed to be all-the-time shrinking.
Well, it probably wasn’t really love, he told himself—not if the things that adults liked to tell smugly about life’s
complications always getting worse, never better, were to be believed; or the words of the songs that they got sentimental
over, that dated from somewhere in that vague span of time between the appearance of personal computers and the last ice
age. But any reaction that could make him turn his head away from the screen not once but a second time, and fixedly, just
when he and Taki had found the error that had been hanging up the tactile-array interrupt routine, had to be somewhere
on the same emotional continent.
He watched as she stepped out of the white Buick that had just parked in one of the visitor slots downstairs, opposite the
company’s main entrance. A stocky Oriental was straightening up from the passenger side. “Wow!” Kevin murmured.
“Look who just showed up with your uncle.”
Taki, hunched on the stool next to him, glanced away from the sheet of printout and down through the lab window. He
was second generation Japanese-American, the same age as Kevin, almost as smart—when he wasn’t thinking up bad
jokes—and the only other person able to see the world the way it really was, i.e. the way Kevin saw it. “Her name’s Michelle
Lang,” Taki said, looking back at the printout. “She’s his business lawyer.”
Kevin blinked.
“She
. . . is a lawyer? . . .”
“Yes, I forgot—he said he was bringing her here today to meet your dad and see the mecs for herself. She’s from a law
firm somewhere in the city.” Taki indicated a block of code with his pen. “What if we moved those lines outside the loop?”
It was an instantly captivating, indefinable quality that combined looks, dress, and poise that did it, Kevin thought to
himself, propping an elbow on the worktop and cupping his chin in a hand. “Style” would be the word, he supposed. She
was tall and slim for her size, with long, off-blond hair tied back in a ponytail from a tapering, high-boned face that was
eye-catching in an angular kind of way, though not really the Hollywood or fashion-model concept of beautiful. She was
wearing a tan two-piece with a contoured skirt that enhanced her ample proportion of leg, and carried a brown leather
purse on a shoulder strap. No briefcase. That appealed to Kevin straight away—a lawyer who didn’t have to be in uniform
all the time. And there was something about the unhurried way she turned after closing the car door and stood for a
moment surveying the Neurodyne building curiously that set her apart from the typical visitors who hurried inside as if
intimidated by the thought of being watched from a score of anonymous office windows. With the touch of haughtiness in
the way she tossed her head, she could have come to buy the place.
Ohira, by contrast, black hair cropped short, crumpled suit draped awkwardly on his broad figure, looked more as if he
might have come to deliver something to it, were it not for the giveaway flashes glittering from his fingers. He took a last
draw from his cigarette, crushed out the butt with his shoe, and joined the lawyer behind the car. They walked together
toward the main entrance to the building and disappeared beneath the forecourt canopy.
“It would speed things up a lot,” Taki said.
Kevin pulled himself back from thoughts of lithesome goddesses and fair-skinned mountain maids. “What?”
“If we moved those lines of code outside the inner loop. It would speed up the scan sequencing.”
“Move which lines?”
“These. The ones I’m pointing at.”
“Oh, sure. I was wondering how much longer it would take you to spot that.”
“Yeah, right.” Taki moved the keyboard closer and began entering the changes.
Kevin looked around at the laser heads, control consoles, and other equipment filling the partitioned space of the Micro-
Machining Area. Patti Jukes, one of the technicians, was at the bench on the far side, manipulating something under a
binocular microscope. Larry Stromer, the supervisor, stood nearby, cleaning a batch of substrates. It was quiet for early
afternoon, which was why Kevin and Taki were able to use one of the computer stations. There was definitely something to
be said for having an easygoing scientist for a father, who just happened to own the company, Kevin couldn’t deny.
Then he looked back out the window at the Buick—sleek lined, a creamy off-white with black side-stripe and trim,
looking sexy, gleaming, and racy. And there were times when it seemed that the fascination with technology that he had
grown up with could result in existence becoming too restricted and narrow.
Life continually pressed its confusion of opposites, such as the conflicting advice that young people were assailed with.
On the one hand, they were urged to make the effort to broaden their outlook; and then, at other times, to concentrate on
what they were good at and not waste the best years pursuing futility—and usually by the same people. The easiest thing
was to agree with everything and not take too much notice of either line. After all, wasn’t it another of the standard
dictums that nothing teaches like experience?
He sighed, turned to the other screen that they were using, and called down a simulation routine to test the patch.
Eric Heber’s office was on the top floor of the building, oriented to frame Mount Rainier’s snowy, thirty-mile-distant
peak in the window to one side of the desk. According to Ohira, he had moved here out of Seattle when he set up his own
company three years previously.
Michelle could see the attraction of being located a half mile off the Interstate, here at the south end of Tacoma: a
guaranteed stress-reliever after the urban congestion, easy to get to from any direction, and handy for Seatac International
Airport. Also, it was less than half an hour by car from Heber’s home, which Ohira said was somewhere just west of
Olympia, the state capital. It seemed an ideal situation—close to town and his work, yet in easy reach of the Olympic
Peninsula with its mountains and forest, and the Pacific Coast beyond; and the big city was always there in the other
direction when he needed it. Michelle guessed him as somebody who knew himself and lived for his own values without
too much concern for others’ expectations.
His office seemed to corroborate the image. It looked more the office of someone at heart the maverick scientist that
Ohira had described, than the successful company president that Heber had ostensibly become. The modular walnut desk
and credenza, glass-fronted bookcase, and coffee-style conference table, along with the tubular chairs and other
accessories were all appropriately matched and imposing—but that was just background scenery that his secretary or a
hired designer could have taken care of. The testimonials to the daily routine enacted center stage spoke differently: Files,
papers, microelectronics parts, and gadgetry littered the desk; the rolled-gold twin pen set and digital clock-calendar had
been moved to the top of the file cabinet to make room for a high-power magnifier; and charts tabling the physical and
chemical properties of materials, an industry guide to chip manufacturers, and a whiteboard filled with scrawled math
expressions, phone numbers, and reminders had found places between the marquetry designs and chrome-framed art
prints adorning the walls.
Eric Heber himself was around forty, wiry, with crinkly yellow hair, fair skin, a thin nose, and gray eyes that peered
keenly behind gold-rimmed spectacles. Ohira had mentioned that he was German born. He had taken off the lab coat that
his two visitors had found him in, and sat looking relaxed and casual in a sky-blue shirt and tan slacks as he regarded them
over his desk. Ohira sat with his hands planted on his knees, his rugged Oriental face expressionless. Michelle’s law firm
had represented his family’s various business interests for six years. He still put her in mind of a godfather—or whatever
the equivalent was—of the Japanese
yakuza.
She leaned forward in her chair, using tweezers to hold a device no larger than a match head in the light from the desk
lamp, and examined it through a magnifying glass in her other hand. It was vaguely humanoid in form, silver and black,
with two legs and a pair of jointed arms—though there were additional attachments and interchangeable auxiliary parts on
the outside. Its head, she observed, was more of a dome than head-shaped.
“That’s a general-purpose tool-operator that goes back about half a year,” Heber said, watching her. “We’ve come down a
bit further in size with some experimental models since then. The idea was to implement full tooling and fabrication
capabilities on a series of intermediate levels down to true nanotech. It’s like the fleas with the littler fleas. Once you’re
equipped at a certain scale, you can use that to construct a next-smaller scale, and so on.” Although a soft accent was
discernible, his English was flawless. Michelle guessed that he had migrated at a fairly early age. “In the early days, people
thought it would be possible to do everything using the etching techniques developed in the chip industry. That worked
well enough for making simple rotors and other things with only a few moving parts. But as things became more
complicated we found that you have to have precision manipulation. God might be able to put things together with pure
willpower, but we humans need a little help.”
Michelle already had the feeling that she could enjoy working with Heber. He was not pompous like some scientists she
had met, and he kept things simple without losing a touch of humor. She thought that was important. Humorlessness, she
had found, was usually a sign of people who took themselves too seriously, which invariably meant they would never admit
to being wrong—nor even, in extreme cases, to the possibility that they
could
be. An attitude like that made insufferable
clients—as well as bad scientists.
“This is amazing,” she said, turning the micromec over beneath the glass. “I’ve read about these and seen them in
documentaries. But it really doesn’t come home to you until you hold one in your hand, does it?”
“It’s nothing compared to feeling it in your head,” Ohira grunted. “You wait. You’ll see.”
Michelle moved the tiny figure against a white-paper background to see the details more clearly. The dome of a head
suggested a picture she had seen somewhere of a deep-sea diving suit—an impression reinforced by the stockiness of the
proportions. “Walking tank” would be a better metaphor than “robot,” she decided.
Heber seemed to read her thoughts. “The only reason they’re fat like that is the things we have to fit inside. For the
strength they need at that scale, they could be quite slender.”
“Surely there still can’t be the kind of complexity in this that we’re used to seeing every day,” Michelle said. “If I opened
this guy up, I can’t believe that I’d find all the cogs and springs and other kinds of gizmos that there are . . . well, in my car,
for example.”
Heber smiled and shook his head. “The physics changes, which means it’s often better to do things in different ways.
Simply trying to reproduce what we do at the everyday level doesn’t always work too well—electromagnetics is a good case
in point. For motors and actuators at the microscale, we make far more use of electrostatics. Another technique that works
well at smaller scales is what’s called peristaltics, which means moving things by means of an induced wave motion. For
example, some crystals expand and contract when you apply an electrical voltage across them. So, you can walk one piece
past another.” Heber made a bridge on the desk with the thumb and little finger of one hand, then advanced it by sliding
the thumb closer, anchoring it, extending the little finger away, and repeating the motion. “Kind of a solid-state muscle. It
harnesses molecular forces, which are very strong. So you can amplify the range through linkages in the limbs and get a
finely controllable movement. Clean and simple, really. Not at all like your car.”
All Michelle could bring to mind to ask just at that moment was, “Does it ever need an oil change?”
She meant it as a joke, but Heber nodded approvingly. Evidently not such a dumb question. “Friction works completely
differently at this scale. Some surfaces just don’t seem to stick or wear at all. In other cases, a tiny electric current works
better than any lubricant. It’s a whole new science that we’re learning about.”
Michelle replaced the mec in its cell in the plastic box that Heber had taken it from, containing examples of several
models. Heber closed the lid and returned the box to his desk drawer. “Anyway, those are just dummies to show what they
look like.” He rose, closing the drawer. “Let’s go downstairs now and see the real thing.”
CHAPTER TWO
They descended two floors and came to a set of double doors part way along a corridor. Heber led them through into a
brightly lit open area where perhaps a dozen people were busy at desks, screens, and white-topped benches. Gray and blue
equipment cabinets lined the walls and formed improvised partitions around some of the work spaces. Heber led the way
to the far side of the room, lined by windows, where a half dozen or so padded chairs with armrests were grouped near
more cubicles and screens. Two men were seated in the chairs, each wearing an open-frame headset studded with
terminals buried in multicolored wires; also, each had a kind of collar attachment resting on foam shoulder pads. The head
frames and collars connected to electronics mounted behind the seat-backs, which in turn sprouted tangles of leads going
off to the surrounding equipment. One of the men’s eyes was closed; the other’s were open but showed no indication of
seeing anything. They were engaged in a dialogue that made no sense.
“Hold it over a bit more—more to the left.”
“Any good?”
“Nah, it’s slipping again.”
“Maybe I can wedge it. . . . How’s that?”
“Better. . . . Okay, keep it right there.”
Michelle gave Heber a mystified look. He enjoyed her befuddlement for a moment, then waved her over to the bench
standing alongside. On top was a maze of wires and meaningless apparatus arranged around a number of tray-like
constructions, about the size of shoe boxes but shallower. They had glass tops and were lit internally to reveal what
appeared to be mechanisms of some kind. But the contents looked strange and were organized peculiarly. Instead of the
kinds of components that would be found, say, behind an automobile instrument panel or filling a radio, everything was
delicately fabricated and spread out across the floor, as if something incredibly intricate had been disassembled and its
parts laid out on display. The first thing to suggest itself to Michelle was a scale model of an exhibition hall for machines;
then she wondered if it could be some kind of extended mechanical computer. Moving along the bench, she saw that while
the different boxes all had the same general theme, none were identical. She gave up and looked at Heber inquiringly.
He turned his head toward the two men seated in the chairs. “Hello, Dean. Where are you?”
The one with his eyes open answered. “Is that Eric?” Apart from his jaw he didn’t move, and his faraway expression
didn’t alter.
“Yes,” Heber said.
“We’re in three—aligning the rotary grinder.”
“How’s it going?”
“Oh, we’re getting there.”
Heber directed Michelle’s attention to one of the boxes on the bench. A red
3
was stenciled outside on the end. Michelle
peered down, but still she was unable to make any sense of what she was looking at. Heber swung a large, rectangular
magnifying lens toward her—one of several mounted on hinged pivot arms attached to the bench. “Try looking with this,”
he suggested.
She did, and suddenly a portion of the scene leaped out and took form. It was, indeed, as she had at first conjectured: an
incredibly detailed model of a factory floor or some kind of machine shop . . . except that this wasn’t a model. Michelle
didn’t know too much about machines, but she recognized the general form of a lathe from ones she had seen in pictures
and museums; and a pillar drill would be difficult to mistake. There were handles and clamps, tool holders riding on
screws. Everything was there in impossibly realized miniature. . . .
And then she spotted the two figures hunched over one of the machines, both silver and black like the one she had seen
in Heber’s office. She blinked disbelievingly. Even with Ohira having given her some idea what to expect, it was still hard to
swallow. “Oh my God!” she whispered.
“Ahah, yes, I think you’ve got it,” Heber said. He raised his voice a fraction. “We have two visitors here, Dean. Ohira
knows us already, but it’s Michelle’s first time. Can you show us which one you are?”
One of the micromecs centered in the magnifier stood back and waved an arm. It lifted its head to look up. “Hey,
Grandma, what a big eye you’ve got!” one of the men in the chairs said. Then the mec turned away again and resumed what
it had been doing.
“These are experimental machining setups,” Heber said, waving at the boxes on the bench top. “We’re making a
production facility next door. Our factory is a room at the back of the corporate offices—a lot better than needing acres of
real estate and having to handle materials by the ton, eh?”
Michelle shook her head, awed. Ohira, who had been watching phlegmatically, nodded his head at the figures in the
chairs. “You see, it’s the way I told you. No ordinary VR helmets here. This connects straight into your head.”
“DNC: Direct Neural Coupling,” Heber said to Michelle. “That’s what makes Neurodyne different.”
She nodded. “I have read a little about it.”
“Would you like to try it?” Heber invited.
Michelle moved her gaze to the empty chairs but looked apprehensive. “I’m not sure. I wouldn’t want to get one of your
little guys shredded or caught up in a wringer.”
Heber laughed. “You’re right. But I didn’t mean right here. We have a nursery for getting people started.” Without
waiting for a reply, he addressed the man in the chair again. “We’re moving on, Dean. I’ll probably not be back today. We’ll
talk tomorrow.”
“See you, Eric,” Dean acknowledged. They left him talking arcanely again with his companion.
“It needs practice,” Heber explained as they made their way between benches and cubicles to another part of the lab
area. “The physics is strange at reduced size. Your weight gets smaller at a much faster rate than you do. Gravity becomes
insignificant. Surface forces have more to do with how things move—or won’t, as the case may be.”
They came to a partitioned space where a man and a woman were in two more similar chairs. Michelle guessed them
both to be in their late twenties. Another chair stood empty. The man was frowning, seemingly concentrating on
something. The woman, who had yellow curls and was a little on the chubby side, laughed delightedly. Another man, dark
haired, bearded, wearing a plain navy shirt and jeans, stood by the equipment behind them, surrounded by screens,
checking readouts and adjusting settings on the chair panels. He looked up as Heber and the others approached.
“This is Doug Corfe, our chief technician,” Heber said. “Doug—Michelle Lang, from the firm that takes care of Ohira’s
business legalities and other things that I don’t understand. Doug’s an associate of mine from the old days.”
Michelle extended a hand, and Corfe shook it. He had clear dark eyes and a lean, sallow face that didn’t immediately
smile too much. Corfe nodded at Ohira, who grunted an acknowledgement. “Eric’s here with a couple of visitors,” Corfe
informed the two people in the chairs.
Heber indicated a large table. On it was a system of wooden terraces at various levels, connected by ramps and steps.
Michelle thought it looked like a model of an ancient pyramid construction site. Tiny mechanical assemblies and other
objects that Michelle had difficulty making out were scattered about on it. There were more magnifiers on pivot arms along
the table’s edge. Curious, she moved one of them to look through it at a white, squarish shape standing atop several broad
steps. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered.
“Why not? What’s the best way of learning how to work with objects?” Heber said. “Build things!”
It was the shell of a miniature frame house, partly constructed. There were stacks of sheet and strip, piles of white
“bricks” that must have been smaller than salt grains, even ladders and working platforms. Michelle picked out more mecs,
standing motionless . . . and then, up on one of the raised platforms, one that was doing something. It seemed to be trying
to fit a sliver of some material several times its own length into the unfinished structure overhead. From behind Michelle
came the voice of the girl who had been laughing.
“This is weird. I didn’t think I’d be able to pick it up, it looked too huge. But it’s like nothing. You keep
overcompensating—anticipating forces that you think ought to be there, but aren’t.”
Heber positioned another lens to watch. “You think it’s easy to understand when someone tells you, but it’s a different
thing when you actually experience it.”
“So I’m finding out.” No sooner had the woman spoken when something happened suddenly, causing the mec that
Michelle was watching to shoot off the platform and go skidding across the floor.
“Eeek!”
the woman in the chair screamed.
“But materials still retain their springiness, so you have to be careful,” Heber commented, smiling.
The mec went through a few contortions and managed to right itself. “At least you don’t break anything,” the woman
muttered.
“That’s one of the benefits of losing most of your weight, Bel,” Corfe said to her.
Bel sighed from her chair. “If only it were that easy.”
Heber spoke to the man in the other chair. “John, how are you doing? Should we be able to see you somewhere?”
“Okay, I think.”
“John’s in the pipe maze.” Corfe pointed to another part of the layout, at what looked like a patch of fuzz made up of
hairs. On repositioning the magnifier, Michelle saw that it was a tangle of microscopic plumbing. There was another mec
there, but with no movement discernible. “It’s an assembly exercise,” Corfe said. “A good way to teach motor skills.”
“The monitor shows you what John’s seeing,” Heber said. Michelle looked up and followed his gaze to a screen that was
showing something. It was a view of two multi-clawed hands, one maneuvering a part into place and then holding it while
the other turned something against the joint. Michelle shook her head and looked away. Somehow, just trying to imagine
the scale of what was going on down there was painful. Another screen showed arms hauling their way up a ladder.
Presumably that was what Bel was seeing as she climbed back to her platform.
Heber looked back at Michelle. “Well, your turn. Want to have a try?”
“Sure, see what you can,” Ohira said. “It’ll prepare you better for what we’ve got later.”
Of course Michelle wanted to try it. “You don’t think you’re going to get me out of here until I do, do you?” she told them.
Heber nodded. “Can you set us up, Doug?” he said to Corfe. “Is the other coupler ready?” Corfe nodded over his
shoulder. Heber looked at Michelle and pointed to the unoccupied chair. She went over to it and sat down. Her first
impulse was to make some joke about being electrocuted but she desisted, figuring they probably heard it from everyone.
Corfe finished what he was doing and brought another collar over from a rack by the wall. It was hinged at the front,
opening into two halves like the ends of tongs.
“It’s cold!” Michelle exclaimed as she felt the lines of metal pickups closing against the back of her neck. Ohira sat down
on a regular chair, patted his jacket pockets mechanically for his cigarettes, then thought better of it.
“The collar does two things,” Heber explained while Corfe made adjustments. “First, it intercepts the motor signals going
down your spinal cord. So instead of driving your muscles, they go out to the mec that you’re linked to. Second, it injects
feedback from the mec in the opposite direction, which your brain interprets as coming from your own body. It’s a bit
crude at present, but enough to give some feel for reaction forces, pressures in major joints, and things like that. The main
problem is getting a sense of balance. There isn’t enough mass to make an inertial system like the ones in our ears. You’ll
feel as if you’re drunk until you adapt to it. After a while you learn to use vision to compensate.”
“Comfortable, Michelle?” Corfe checked. She nodded as much as she was able. He turned away to get a headpiece for her.
“The feedback system also injects a signal to inhibit the voluntary motor system—a kind of electronic spinal block,”
Heber said. “Your brain does the same thing when you dream. So when you feel yourself moving it’s really the mec, not
you.”
Corfe positioned the headpiece and made connections. Suddenly the scene inside the lab vanished and was replaced by a
test pattern, something like a screen saver. “Does that look okay?” Corfe’s voice asked.
Okay? It was outstanding—in a different league from any VR presentation that Michelle had ever experienced. There was
no peripheral distortion, and the depth perception was perfect. The resolution of detail increased unerringly wherever she
shifted her focus. She was
in
a world of moving colors and shapes. It was totally real. She tried turning her head; the
pattern flowed sideways, then reversed when she looked back the other way. It worked the same vertically. The illusion was
total. “It’s uncanny,” she said. “Are you telling me my head isn’t really moving?”
Heber’s voice answered. “You saw the others. The signals from your brain drive the display instead of your neck. Ditto
for eye movement. No need for any optical tracking. . . . Okay, Doug, connect her through.”
And Michelle found herself standing on what looked like a rectangular plain about the size of a football field, lit by a
blaze of white light from above and seemingly standing in the sky like a mesa in a Western movie. Chasms separated it
from other, similar, square-built massifs, giving the scene the appearance of a strange Grand Canyonscape composed from
straight lines and right angles. On the top of the block opposite stood the partly-built shell house that she had looked down
at through the lens.
“Now, maybe, you’re starting to understand better what I’ve been talking about,” Ohira’s voice said from somewhere.
Michelle turned her head and saw a wall with wide steps leading to a higher level. Assorted objects lay scattered on the
terraces: wheels, blocks, and other geometric forms; sets of bars and ladders resembling gymnastics equipment; pieces of
mechanical assemblies. A larger form caught her eye at the edge of her vision. She began turning, felt instantly light-
headed, and completed the movement in a slow, wary shuffle. It was strange. She knew that she was sitting still, yet she
could feel her feet moving. She
was
moving . . . and found herself staring at a mechanical humanoid standing just several
yards away.
At least, it seemed just yards away. It had no recognizable face or features—just a mushroomlike, multi-faceted turret
studded with lens openings and sensor attachments, and a thicket of antennas above. It looked like a walking tool rack
with accessories and appendages girdling its hips, and limbs more intricate than had been evident on the model she’d
examined earlier. The mec remained motionless. It wasn’t linked to anybody. But the surprise of seeing it so close had left
her feeling jittery. She wasn’t really
here,
she had to remind herself.
She looked down, and although she was prepared, she couldn’t suppress a reaction of mild revulsion at the sight of the
lobsterlike form that she had been turned into.
“A bit of a shock the first time, isn’t it,” Heber’s voice remarked. Of course—they could follow what she was seeing, on the
monitor.
Well, this wasn’t getting her very far, she decided. She concentrated her attention, took a step . . . and reeled
uncontrollably, promptly falling over. Somebody laughed.
A huge shadow blocked out the light, and a pair of long silver jaws came down from the sky to close around her and set
her back on her feet. “It takes a little while to get the knack,” Heber’s voice said. “We do have multi-legged models that stay
upright automatically, but I thought you’d prefer something a little more familiar. Let’s start again. This time we’ll guide
you through it. It’s not as hard as you’re probably thinking right now.”
CHAPTER THREE
Eric called Kevin from the Training Lab to say that Ms. Lang was ready to leave, and they would all meet in a few
minutes in the lobby.
Her face was softer, tapering to a chin that was more rounded than it had appeared from a distance through the window.
And her mouth was wider and more full-lipped closer up, with an upturn at the corners that gave her a homier look. Her
eyes, too, were bright and alert, silently interrogating, alive to every response. Face to face, she was altogether less aloof
and daunting.
“This is Kevin,” Eric said, introducing them. “And his partner in crime. . . . I guess you and Taki know each other?”
“Oh yes, Michelle and Taki are old friends already,” Ohira put in, nodding.
“Kevin and Taki are kind of unofficial staff here at Neurodyne,” Eric said. “That’s another advantage of having your own
company.” He gestured. “Kevin, this is Michelle Lang, who takes care of Ohira’s legal matters businesswise.”
She smiled and took in his lean, wiry frame, tall for his age, clad in a pale blue shirt and jeans; narrow features with
sharp, mobile eyes; mop of fair hair, tousled and shaggy. “Hello, Kevin. I’m pleased to meet you at last.”
“Hi,” Kevin responded. He would have liked to elaborate further with something witty and erudite the way people in
movies always seemed to be able to, but nothing of that description suggested itself. But then, people in movies had
scriptwriters to spend hours thinking it up for them.
“That was quite an experience,” Michelle said. “Now that I’ve had my reality expanded, I don’t think the world will ever
seem quite the same again. I suppose you must be used to it.”
“It takes practice,” Kevin said.
“You did just great once you got the hang of it,” Eric said. “I think she’s going to be a natural,” he told Kevin.
Now that Michelle had seen the mecs, the plan was for them to drive to the house so that Kevin and Taki could introduce
her to their “Bug Park,” which was what Ohira had really brought her to see. Eric looked around the group. There were
three adults and the two boys. “Okay, I guess I’ll take Kevin back.” He looked at Ohira and Michelle. “Whose car did you
two come in?”
“Mine,” Michelle said.
Eric nodded. “Taki, do you want to ride with us or go with your uncle and Michelle?”
“Oh, I’ll stick with Kev.”
“Of course he does,” Ohira said. “What boy wants to listen to us talking about money and business?”
They began moving. “Do I need directions?” Michelle asked Heber as he held open one of the plate glass doors leading
out of the building.
“Just follow me. Mind you don’t fall down a hole in our local lunarscape outside the gate.”
The road along from Neurodyne was being torn up by backhoes cutting trenches; bulldozers were leveling the adjacent
lot.
“We saw it on the way in,” Michelle said. “What’s happening?”
“Oh, they’re expanding the office park—they call it a ‘corporate campus.’ We were one of the first companies here. It’s to
be expected, I suppose.”
“What’s the place next door going to be?” Kevin asked.
“Some kind of management training facility, I think.” Eric waved a hand vaguely as they crossed the parking area. “That’s
another of the advantages of microengineering for you. With us, a factory floor is the size of a regular office. Nobody who’s
into any conventional kind of manufacturing would get a lease anywhere near this place.”
“I still can’t get over how nice it is to have my own legs back again,” Michelle said.
With Eric’s maroon Jaguar leading, they followed Interstate 5 west for a little over fifteen miles, exiting north when they
had passed Olympia. The road became single track, and soon they were descending across thickly wooded slopes toward
water, with occasional homes tucked among firs and pines. Kevin could see Michelle’s white Buick in the passenger-side
wing mirror, following them about a hundred yards back.
Cars were another subject of extreme significance for him right now. He was at the age where his visions of the
unbounded freedoms that would come with a driver’s license had grown to be matched only by the unendurability of
having to wait another year to get one. Most unfair was the thought that he could probably handle a car as well as most
adults that he knew—at least, he would if he could only get traffic experience.
Eric had been taking him out to unused lots and other deserted places since Kevin was ten. It was part of the way in
which Eric had tried to compensate and keep life as full as possible after Kevin’s mother died. The way he allowed Kevin
and Taki to come into Neurodyne and use the equipment there was another instance. All the same, Kevin was conscious of
an increasing distance between them since the times when they had built model airplanes together and gone out to the
flats to fly them, or set up a telescope out on the deck at the house on a frosty night to marvel at Saturn’s rings or the color
bands of Jupiter. He told himself that with Eric running his own company now, and everything else that was going on, that
was only to be expected. And Kevin himself was getting older. Perhaps he was being allowed to learn that the world was
not his alone; that others lived in it too and needed to do things for their own reasons. If so, it seemed a good thing to be
made aware of.
“Did you two get that driver routine sorted out—the one that was hanging up?” Eric asked as he drove.
“Yes, finally,” Taki answered from the back. “There were a couple of glitches.”
Kevin added, “We cleaned it up so it’ll run faster, too.
Maybe we can check it out later, after Michelle leaves.”
“What’s all this about
we
cleaned it up so that it would run faster?” Taki challenged. “
I
was the one who spotted it. You
were too busy watching Michelle get out of the car.”
“Ah, the truth tumbles out,” Eric murmured, grinning.
“I just said she was something different to be showing up with Ohira,” Kevin insisted defensively. “Besides, you only
shortened the loop. Who was it who saw that we could replace the whole thing with a conditional sub?”
“And then attached the wrong interrupt. . . .”
“Only because you didn’t update the device table.”
“It was there, penciled in.”
“Well, it would have helped if you’d
said
so.”
“I did, but you weren’t listening. You were too busy looking out the window.”
A silence fell while the car negotiated a bridge over a creek. Kevin decided that he was getting the worst of things and
changed the subject. Ohira ran a corporation called Theme Worlds Inc., which operated public amusement centers, theme-
parks, and similar attractions. He was always looking for new ideas. As far as Kevin could make out, his aim in bringing
Michelle along was to show her what Kevin and Taki had been doing, and let her judge the potential for herself.
“Is Ohira really serious about thinking that this could have real commercial prospects?” Kevin asked his father.
Eric nodded. “Oh yes, very serious. He’s been trying to sell her on the idea, and now he wants her to see for herself what
it’s all about. No doubt he’s hoping she’ll get as fired up about it as he is.” Eric was not exaggerating. Ohira’s performance
earlier had shown him about as fired up, externally, as he ever got about anything.
Kevin turned his head to look back from the passenger seat. “Did you hear that, Taki? They’re getting serious about it.”
“My uncle is always serious when money’s involved,” Taki said.
“So does that mean we could be onto a good thing here if we play our cards right, do you think?”
“I guess . . . if he meant what he said.” Shameless in recruiting allies wherever they were to be found, Ohira had indicated
that as far as he was concerned, since it was the boys who had originated the concept, they should receive an appropriate
share of the proceeds if the project ever became a reality.
“You two might have taken your first step to becoming millionaires,” Eric told them. They reached the cluster of
mailboxes mounted on a log shelf where narrow trails diverging off among the trees led to the surrounding houses, and
turned along the one with the sign saying HEBER.
Michelle’s first impression of the house as she got out of her car after drawing up behind the Jaguar was of comfortably
contained confusion—like Heber’s office. It had begun as an original two-level structure, since sprouting an aggregation of
decks and extensions that seemed to have lost their way in the surrounding greenery. To the right of the house and at the
rear, the ground descended toward the edge of the water that they had been approaching. Michelle estimated it to be about
a half mile across to the low hills forming the opposite shore.
One door of the double garage was open, revealing a gray Dodge van. A clutter of cabinets, stripped-down electronics
frames, and assorted pieces of machinery took up the rest of the space. To the side of the garage was an extension,
probably some kind of workshop, with a go-kart and a partly dismantled motorcycle under a carport roof. A blue Jeep was
parked in front of the garage, and a brown Ford around at the side. Heber had said that his wife, Vanessa, would be home.
Michelle guessed that he had used her car that day for some reason. Although they had not yet met, the image that
Michelle had formed of her went with the Jaguar, somehow; the Jeep was definitely more “Eric.”
Michelle and Ohira moved forward to where Heber and the two boys were waiting. “Most people expect something vast
and imposing,” Heber said, tossing out an arm as they began walking to the house. “Everyone seems to think that all
corporation presidents live in something like the Taj Mahal behind security walls with electric gates. I suppose we’re not
really what you’d call very formal.”
“I’d call it casual,” Michelle told him. “Don’t try to change it. It suits you.”
“It gets more casual round back,” Kevin commented dryly.
“The tidiest places I can think of are museums,” Heber said. “But not very much gets done in them. Would you or Taki
really want to live in one? I can’t imagine either of you surviving half a day.”
“Is that a lake at the back?” Michelle asked.
Heber shook his head. “Not quite. It eventually connects to the Sound, but through a maze of inlets. You’d need to know
them to find the way out.”
“I think it’s wonderful—the sort of change I could stand for a while.”
摘要：

BugParkbyJamesP.HoganPROLOGUELow,black,andmenacing,itsangularmetallicsurfacesbristlingwithsensorsandprotuberances,therobotresembled,ifanything,awalkingwarship.Itmovedonsixmultiply-articulatedlegsprojectingoutwardanddownwardfromitsundersideinpairs,likesprungarches.Itsfrontconsistedofablunt,turret-lik...

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