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Save Point: Heavy Metals

Somewhere In The Lower Arctic

"What the hell is quap?"

"Quap, or qwab, is this substance that washes up on remote beaches in certain parts of South America occasionally. Like every few centuries, as a consequence of which it's gone mostly unnoticed by modern science. The science-fiction writer H. G. Wells described it as 'the most ridiculously radioactive substance imaginable'. There was a short-lived scrap over the last known deposit shortly before he became famous as an author. Some guy got shot when a high-technology con-artist was light-fingering the lot onto a private barge for distribution and general sale to the laboratories of the world."

"Wait, how did they know it was radioactive?"

"It killed any plants, animals or fish that got trapped too close to it for too long. The very word 'quap' means poisonous, offensive - basically it's a rarely used expletive which persists among the indigenous tribes in those areas because every few generations, a piece or two of the stuff washes up and reminds everyone of the expression."

"So why do we care about this nasty, naturally occurring radioactive?"

"It's not natural. There were a number of analyses done on the last existing batch, before they reprocessed it, and it consisted of a very specific mixture of clays and light oils mixed with a number of identifiable radioactive elements, as well as some they didn't really know about yet or couldn't interpret properly with the chemistry of the day. When I stumbled across some references to the stuff, it seemed familiar for some reason so I spent a while running searches of my memories from the age of Azatlan. Turns out 'quap' is the reactor lining material for an Azatlani heavy corsair. They stopped making them before either of us was even born, after it became official policy to deny any potentially reproducible advanced technology to any of the surrounding nations."

"So that's why. You're still on that thing about us having an obligation to clean up any Azatlani leftovers that might be lying around."

"Well someone has to, we can't just leave that stuff lying around - wait, we've had this argument before. But the point is, I was looking into those particular references because I wasn't the only one interested. One of the main reasons scholars and scientific researchers ignore all the stray evidence lying around of a previous technological civilization is that important signifiers are missing. There's none of the atmospheric radiation that should have been produced by a limited exchange, no obvious signs of mining of rare earth elements or industrial quantities of metals, that sort of thing. What they don't realize is that after the quantum field effect device was deployed at Kalikshutra, anything that wasn't anchored by enough live observers got rewritten. Well, at least mostly, the effect was a bit patchy, which is why there are random bits and pieces lying around. It was a stupidly overkill weapon."

"So who exactly is interested in the stray radioactives? Besides, you know, everyone."

"Well, Soviet scientists had this rep for being willing to look into almost anything, no matter how crazy it was, if they could do it cheaply and the rewards might be significant. So you have catastrophists in the style of Vellikovsky, for instance, looking to overturn accepted geological history and get famous by pushing the anthropocene back an extra ten thousand years or so. Now that they're back to being Russian again, they still have the rep and nothing better to do, and so they're still at it. One of their guys had the bright idea to look for radioactive materials that don't occur in nature as proof of a previous technological civilization, which is of course completely crazy, but his idea caught the attention of various powers that be because of its potential misapplications. If there happened to be, say, exotic materials lying around from a meteorite or something bizarre like that, it might be worth trying to find them, or if someone was to try and construct a nuclear weapon using non-standard and unusual components, it might be possible to detect them. And of course if it all went wrong, well then this guy was just a bit of a kook, so sorry officers, dos verdanya! They could send him anywhere and rely on him to talk up the mad conspiracy theories and ancient civilizations bit."

"I take it he actually found something?"

"Well, of course he did. Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, all sorts of places that had been first-striked, complete with layers of trinity glass. But nothing weaponizable and no-one would listen. So then he broadened his search a little, much as the authorities had quietly hoped, and started looking into wider sources. He liked to read science-fiction 'for the ideas' and so he'd gotten a complete collection of H. G. Wells in Russian. I'd never bothered to read his early works before he got into science-fiction, I was bored one day and so I did, and then I panicked just slightly because 'quap' actually existed and seemed kind of familiar. It turned out he'd been checking out papers on the stuff just ahead of me, but luckily he wasn't hurrying and what little material there was, was mostly in English or various South American languages, so he had to wait for it to be translated. He didn't think anyone else knew about what he'd discovered."

"Would this be why you were engaging in heroics with handguns and roast chicken?"

"Yeah. I'd gone to the meteorological and climate department to try and back-track exactly where, if the stuff was washing up on the beaches mentioned, it had come from. Normally you couldn't get that accurate across such a wide reach of ocean, but the 'quap' has peculiar properties that make it behave differently to normal oceanic debris. It sort of adheres to itself in a clump unless chemically treated or mechanically torn, and it's a lot denser and heavier than anything else because of the radioactives, so it sticks to the sea floor. It turned out that the stuff was making its way from a specific location under the Antarctic ice cap, which is where the corsair must have sunk back before either of us was ever around. I have a very badly compression-damaged memory of a news program in which they noted that only three had ever been lost, and two of them had been winched back up from the sea bed due to the amount of radioactive material and weapons on board."

"How does this involve the roast chicken?"

"It turns out my conspiratorial friend had a government minder keeping an eye on him just in case her ever did find something, and it was my room-mate. Somehow I caught his attention with my suspicious activities when I started making friends with the climate guys. He found out what models and data I was accessing, he knew about the 'quap' research, and he put two and two together and got 'enemy operative' or something out of it. I think they promoted him for spotting me, which would explain the fancy roast chicken and ceramic gun in the suitcase - he was celebrating his success. But it tipped me off that he'd found out and so here we are, discussing a substance named after an expletive. It's completely ruined my sabbatical, you know."

"And so now we have to track down this thing and deal with it before someone else does. That's just great. We need to take up more normal sorts of hobbies, really we do."

"I take it from that last 'we' that you're coming with me?"

"Of course I'm coming with you. I can't have annoying Soviet minders chasing around after you, it would completely cramp my style. Besides, I have to do my bit to help keep the Pacific nuclear-free, someone should. We have a bad track record with nuclear weapons and it would be nice to safely dispose of one for once."

"No more dodgy snack-tray wings from here on out. I wouldn't put it past them to try and poison my favourite kitty contact, or hire someone to do it. It's lucky you're death-proof."

"One hundred percent agreement right there. That thing was nasty."