Free Heaven's War by David S. Goyer, Michael Cassutt Page A

those crowded, hot vehicles reminded him of the vesicle….)
     
    The other bit of luck was that his specialty at Sathyamba was mechanical and production engineering rather than telecommunications or computing.
     
    What struck his parents and sibs as an unproductive career detour turned out to be a direct route to study in the United States at Cornell, where he was first exposed to computational synthesis and advanced 3-D printing—processes that promised to revolutionize manufacturing. He had taken part in the development of so-called gray goo…material designed to serve as the building blocks of any substance or structure, mechanical or biological. They called this stuff
plasm
,
p
reliminary
l
ithographic
as
sembly
m
aterial.
     
    It was Jaidev Mahabala the plasm specialist who was able to work briefly for the U.S. space program, then his country’s.
     
    Right up to the week of the
Brahma
mission.
     
    For the last readiness meeting in advance of the launch, thirty members of the Bangalore team flew to Rio de Janeiro.
     
    Jaidev had done his work at the Brazilian Space Agency well; his team had been responsible for crew equipment and consumables. All of the final reports were accepted.
     
    Leaving them all free to play. Leaving Jaidev, alas, free to get drunk in a gay bar on the Avenue Viera Santo near Ipanema Beach.
     
    And to be arrested with a male prostitute.
     
    Jaidev had embraced his homosexuality once out of his family’shome, making full use of the Internet to find other friends in Chennai, and especially visitors to the tech zone.
     
    It had been fun—and continued to be fun during his time in the United States. He kept hoping to find someone special, someone he could commit to…and had decided to make that his number one personal goal at the conclusion of the
Brahma
mission.
     
    The arrest had destroyed that plan. Rather, he was free to pursue personal goals, because the day the Object struck, he had been called into Vikram Nayar’s office and informed that he was being “transferred” away from the control center to an ISRO office in Ladakh, or someplace equally remote.
     
    He’d been fired.
     
    Word of the scuffle must have reached the new “leaders,” since a group of them came running to Lake Ganges. Most of them were Americans: people such as Gabriel Jones, Shane Weldon, and even Zack Stewart, all known to Jaidev from
Brahma
.
    Stewart, Weldon, and Jones saw that there were no Houston types in the group and drifted off to consider the uses of the water supply.
     
    Nayar was left to chastise the rest, all of them quieter. Even Daksha’s temper had cooled and he was now subdued, possibly shamed. It didn’t stop Nayar. “Look at you! Have you forgotten where you came from? Everything you learned? Two days and you’ve become beasts!”
     
    “We need food,” one of the men said.
     
    “You’ll get whatever any of us gets,” Nayar said. “Try to act as though you deserve it. Better yet—be proactive and start searching. Do something useful instead of lying around like this!”
     
    “Vikram!” It was Shane Weldon calling from across the lake. “We need to get back!”
     
    Nayar had turned away from the Bangalores in disgust, finding himself directly in front of Jaidev.
     
    The
Brahma
mission director was surprised. “I didn’t know you’d been taken, too.”
     
    “Bad luck,” he said. “If only you’d fired me an hour earlier.”
     
    Nayar grunted; he was not noted for having any sense of humor. Buthis criticism had suggested something to Jaidev, who had been hearing stories of Keanu’s changing environment, of Revenants, of mysterious “goo” or soil that seemed to have the ability to transform itself. “Sir—”
     
    “What do you want?”
     
    “The materials in this place seem to be a very advanced form of plasm—nanotech assembly material,” he added, seeing that Nayar, like many his age, was unfamiliar with the term. “I’ve got some hands-on