Von Neumann’s War полностью

“Harmed, uh, nyet. Pissed to hell, da!” She was sitting down on the edge of the driveway fiddling with her jeans. The zipper and snaps had been torn away and the pants were basically ripped open at the crotch.

“Where are they?”

“Gone. Gone as quick as dey came. Goddamn tings took every pot and pan in de goddamn cabin. Even de sonovabitch bedsprings are gone. Look, my best goddamned jeans are ruined. Dey ate de televeesion, de forks and spoons, de couch springs, and even de goddamn truck. Dey ripped it to fuckin’ bits.” Helena sat shaking her head. “Tought you said no goddamn worries for long time?”

“Yeah, I don’t understand that part. It doesn’t make sense to me. What did they look like?” Richard could tell Helena was shaken up. Not from her colorful use of the English language — that was her nature and Richard had long since gotten used to that — but the drained look on her face. She was pale and looked like she had spent every bit of energy in her body the way a marathoner looks at the end of the race. Or the way a soldier looks after a battle — afraid, exhausted, and just glad to still be alive.

Richard sat down beside her looking at the pieces of the truck — so much useless plastic, vinyl, and rubber. Even the rubber insulating coatings of the sparkplug and other wires were left behind, but the metal wires themselves had been pulled right out.

“Dey look like dat goddamned ting dere if you can put it back togedder. I tought you’d vant one so I beats the last one to fucking pieces with a stick of stove wood. Oh, dey took de goddamned stove too.” Helena pointed at what appeared to be a metal boomerang about a meter across. Then she pointed at the hole in the roof and wall where the wood-burning stove had been yanked out. “Dat’s gonna leak like hell.”

“But you’re not hurt? You certain?” Richard put his hand on her shoulder and glanced back and forth between her, the truck remains, the hole in the cabin, and the smashed bot. There was a trickle of blood on her right earlobe where an earring had once been. The lobe wasn’t torn through but the hole had been treated roughly.

“I’m okay.” She rubbed at her ears and looked at the blood on her thumb and forefinger. “Shit. Go look at de damned ting.” Helena pulled her hair back behind her head and tied it into a ponytail. Then she patted the stick of stove wood that she had used as a battle club, “I’m gonna keep you, da.”

Richard had to look at the bot — he had to. It was smashed to hell and gone — Helena had made certain of that. After a bit of inspection, Richard was fairly certain that the alien thing had once been a metal boomerang about a meter or so from tip to tip. It had been about ten to twenty centimeters thick and all of the surfaces were smooth and rounded and seamless. But now it was bent up and dented and had a couple of pieces busted off of it. On its underside was a smaller similar boomerang about a third the size. The smaller boomerang appeared to be molded seamlessly directly to the larger one. There was a large crack through both of them and there were several peripheral pieces scattered about it. Nothing about it, other than the fact that it was an alien Von Neumann probe, seemed to be unearthly — at least not from a quick visual inspection. But Richard had every intent of taking a closer look, a much closer look.

“This looks like common metals.” Richard kicked at it.

“Da. Like a beer can. Oh, dey took dat too. And de refrigerator.” Helena stood wielding her stove wood battle club, and carefully stepped beside Richard and the bot.

“You said they were eating anything metal, right?”

“Da. Dey even pulled de laptop right out of my hands. Not much metal dere?” she asked.

“Oh, plenty. The battery is most likely tasty to them if they eat metal.” Richard kicked a broken piece of the alien probe over closer to the rest of it.

“I see. Den dey takes de faucets and the goddamned television, and de power wires from de walls all gone too.”

“Then why didn’t they eat it too?” Richard pointed at the bashed probe.

“Oh, dey had already gone. Dis one seemed fat or slow or something.”

“Hmm… or pregnant,” he said. Richard knelt down and rolled the probe back over and looked at the twinning pieces. “If that’s what you want to call it.”

“Well, I don’t know what you would call it, but that performs like the womb, birthing canal, and whatever else these things need to replicate all in one.” Alice pointed out to Roger, Alan, and Tom who had all crowded around her computer in her lab. This lab actually looked like a laboratory fit for a science fiction movie. Major Gries would have been more satisfied with the various computer monitors, instrument panels with flashing multicolored lights, and digital readouts. Of course, there were plenty of wires running around as well. In fact, the same metal octopus convention that had taken place in Roger’s lab must have annexed part of Alice’s laboratory as well.

“Do they actually have sexes?” Alan asked.