Micro

“Of course.” Danny opened his mouth with a frightened look, but Rourke added, “ When is the only question. If you don’t want to die right now, that arm has to come off.” He drew out the long scalpel and handed Danny the bottle of Jack Daniels. “Anesthetic. Start drinking while I boil the tools.”

“No.”

“If you don’t get that arm off, those grubs could migrate.”

“To where?”

“Your brain.” Rourke held up the bone saw and touched its teeth.

Danny leaped out of the chair and stepped backward, holding the bottle in front of him like a club. “Stay away from me!”

“Don’t spill that whiskey. I don’t have much left.”

“You’re not a doctor!” He took a glug from the bottle. “I want a real doctor!” He wiped his mouth, and coughed.

“You’re not going anywhere right now, Mr. Minot,” Rourke said, replacing his instruments in the chest. “Night is coming. At night, the wise stay underground.”

Chapter 40

Rourke’s Redoubt 31 October, 7:00 p.m.

Ben Rourke loaded more chunks of candlenuts on the fire, and swung a metal cauldron over it. The cauldron was suspended on a hook and a hinged iron bar rooted in the floor-pieces of metal he’d scavenged from Tantalus Base. The water, a few teaspoons’ worth, came to a boil almost instantly. Rourke dropped a smaller bucket into the cauldron, and carried a portion of the hot water over to a wooden tub, which sat in a niche in the wall.

It was a bathtub in a private space. He added some cold water to the hot water, taking it from a gravity-fed water tank.

Rick soaked in the water. The venom was still in his system, making him feel stiff, his limbs unresponsive, and he felt a little dizzy, too. There was a lump of soap, crude and soft. It was medieval soap: Rourke had likely made it from ashes and the fat of some insect. It felt great to wash his body after crawling around for three days in the muck. But he couldn’t help noticing the dark shadows that had spread over his arms and on his lower legs. He tried to tell himself these were bruises he’d gotten from his encounter with the wasp. He felt strange, but it had to be the venom.

Danny refused a bath, afraid that the water might somehow stimulate the grubs. He sat in the chair, drinking from Rourke’s bottle of whiskey and staring at the fire.

Karen luxuriated next in the tub of hot water. It felt so incredible to get clean. She washed her clothes and hung them to dry, then wrapped herself in a robe that Rourke loaned her, and sat by the fire, feeling refreshed. Rick wore a pair of Rourke’s pants and a work shirt. The clothes were rough-hewn, but they were comfortable and clean.

Rourke, meanwhile, cooked dinner for his guests. He got a pot of water boiling, and added smoked insect meat, shreds of root vegetable, some chunks of leafy greens, and salt. The stew cooked rapidly, filling the hall with a savory smell. Rourke’s insect-and-vegetable stew really was delicious, and it brought their strength back fast. They sat in Rourke’s strange chairs near the fire. And they heard his story.

Ben Rourke had been a physicist and systems design engineer specializing in the most powerful magnetic fields. He had come across the data from the old Army experiments in Huntsville, and had decided to explore the method of shrinking matter in a tensor field. He had solved some of the seemingly impossible equations of turbulence in these fields. Vin Drake had learned of Rourke’s work, and had hired him as one of the founding engineers at Nanigen. Working with other Nanigen engineers, he had built the tensor generator out of modified but standard industrial equipment, purchased largely in Asia. Drake had raised huge amounts of capital from the Davros Consortium; Drake had a magic touch, a way of making it all seem exciting and sure to lead to enormous wealth.

Ben Rourke had volunteered himself as the first human to be passed through the tensor generator. He had suspected it would be dangerous, and felt that he should be the first to take the risk. Living organisms were complicated and fragile. Animals that had been shrunk in the generator had frequently died, usually by exsanguination-by bleeding to death. “Drake discounted the risk,” Rourke said. “He claimed there would be no problem.”

Rourke had only stayed in a shrunken size for a few hours before he was returned to normal size. As more people were shrunk in the generator, and as they remained small for longer periods of time, they began feeling ill, bruising easily, experiencing mysterious bleeding. They were quickly returned to normal size and examined. The studies showed unexplained degradation of the blood’s ability to form clots.