Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (121 page)

[ Did you
resolve the military problem? I imagine that would be by far the
hardest part of the whole process. I imagine a lot of TAR One's
circuitry would have been taken up with military programming. ]

*Most of the
stuff was deactivated long ago. Only a minuscule amount was kept
for show. TAR One wasn't programmed to attack the Krofpth, really,
only to threaten them with attack to keep power. That was one of
the dilemmas it faced when we appeared. It no longer had the
ability to attack us with anything remotely likely to succeed. It
had the logic to know those weapons were far too dangerous to have
around so got rid of them centuries ago. Its fear, if you can call
it that, was that we would possibly attack the Krofpth while it was
defenseless.*

"I still don't
understand why it gave up so easily," Z protested. "THAT fact
doesn't seem reasonable to me!"

*It's a totally
logical machine. It had no chance of defeating us from the start.
Our very existence was proof it had been improperly input. We were
obviously not militaristic as evidenced from our coming in openly
announcing ourselves. It then learns we have a truly invincible
weapon and the rest of its data offworld was also incorrect. It
calculated all the possibilities and came to the conclusion it was
in a hopeless situation should it fight and we were more than fifty
percent unlikely to be hostile, reinforced by the evidence. It's a
very useful machine and is now linked with the empire. They'll be
associate members for awhile, then will probably join. This is a
strong race and a good one. I'll enjoy seeing them around the
galaxy. TAR One has almost as much capacity as I do, you know. I've
learned a great deal from it while it learned from me. We have
company.*

Happ soon came
into the dome where Thing was rolled up in Z's lap and Z was laying
back in the pilot's chair.

"May I ask you
to take a vote on something?" Happ asked. "I will understand if you
vote no. I know it will be something that is intrusive into the way
you have done things for a long time."

[ You wish to
travel with us? ]

"For awhile,"
he said. "Just to learn something of this new empire. I also like
all of you and am comfortable around you."

*And want those
damned wires taken out of your skull! I'll vote yes.*

"Fine with me,"
Z said.

[ Welcome
aboard, Happ. ]

*We'll leave in
about an hour so bring what you wish to take along and say your
good fortunes. There're going to be traders before you know it
here. There're going to be rapid changes out here on the dome!*

"That's what
makes all of this stupid confusion worthwhile," Z replied.
"Sometimes, just sometimes, we're able to make a positive change
somewhere!"

That could well
go down in history as the understatement of the century!

A Few
Places

"Do you think
it's a good idea to leave these people right now, Maita?" Z asked,
as they left atmosphere.

*I think it's
the smartest thing we can do. They have a lot to do and they have
to do it themselves. They've had enough of their lives being run
for them and I'm not interested in taking over the job.*

[ They have
some adjusting to do if only in direction. They've traded one kind
of machine for another. They now have more than ten thousand
generations behind them who lived under a rigid regime that's
suddenly changed. That's traumatic, to understate it. We could do
some good in some ways and some damage in others. In balance it's
far better we go. ]

"My people are
excited and free," Happ added. "We must be allowed to make a few
mistakes.

"I know that
sounds strange to you, but there was no mistake made in memory.
Even the ones in history were so far removed they were unreal.
Believe me, my dearest friends, you can't begin to comprehend the
feeling of freedom that allows you to say 'you scranged that up but
good, you fogbrained idiot!' Perfection is the hell you speak of,
Z. There is no worse place. No more deadly boring place can
exist."

*TAR One was
programmed to protect and guide. It did, as you have said, a
perfect job. Life without risk of any kind. Such a life wouldn't be
worth living, I think, to any but an insect society. The Freenz
have proved even that doesn't always hold true.*

"Tell me of
these Freenz!?" Happ requested.

Thing told of the wandering lost ship and of how the first
insect society joined the empire (Book eleven,
Happy
Birthday!
).
Z listened closely to the tale he was part of, as he always learned
a great deal from Thing's narrations. The two friends viewed events
from totally different perspectives.

"Now, will
Maita please explain about TAR One to me?" Happ requested. "How
could my ancestors have built such a machine? How were you so
easily able to change it? Could we have changed it ourselves many
centuries ago?"

*TAR One is and
always has been a truly magnificent machine in every sense of the
word. It was built with the ability to make repairs on itself and
to totally control industry and farming, education and research and
about anything else imaginable. It was then given its instructions.
Four very different people input the instructions, each with a
specialty, but each also with influence in all spheres of influence
added to the machine. TAR One is absolutely the most logical of
machines – which makes it a very good thing it was programmed to
protect the Krofpth race above all things. Had that not been a
prime directive it would have probably eliminated the race
altogether from the first. It was forced into an impossible
situation when it was told the Krofpth must atone for what one
programmer thought was the sin of the race. The very logical
machine immediately saw that the past isn't alterable. It then had
to face the fact one being can't atone for the actions of another.
The beings who supposedly committed these horrendous crimes against
the galaxy were long dead and could never more atone for anything.
That one programmer had so infiltrated his ideas on the total
programming the machine was forced to consider the race itself to
be guilty. That wasn't logical – yet it was programmed as truth.
The answer, as the guilt was in the past and couldn't be assuaged,
was to punish the entire remaining race – but the programming
forbade any such action. Stalemate. The only logical avenue of
action was no action – but TAR One must protect the Krofpth race
above all else. You see the problem.*

[ TAR One was
forced to the only possible conclusion it could come to. It was
programmed to consider all problems to be solvable through logic,
therefore, it could solve this problem if given enough time.
Meanwhile, the race must be protected and nurtured. Any advancement
may move the problem further from solution so there must be no
advance. The result was complete stassification of the race. Things
remained as they were. The universe of the Krofpth race came to a
dead halt. ]

"Stassification?" Z cried. "Oh, great colliding galaxies! Next
you'll be saying we handled the destassificationalizationing of the
race!"

*That would be
correct. The machine, much against what we in our lack of
understanding of its logic thought, was first to protect the
Krofpth race. Our fear it may attack them to prevent their
contaminating our empire was as foreign to its programming as
possibly could be. It COULD NOT attack them in any way. It MUST
protect them!*

[ Logically, it
must then as much as turn itself off when we arrived. The fact we
existed at all disproved the basic theorem of its existence – that
the Krofpth had destroyed the chances of anything ever developing
and advancing in this galaxy. Through a couple of thousand years
the Krofpth had met no other race that was capable of leading such
an empire – that they knew of. The Julpittians could have done it,
but would go to great extremes to avoid the responsibility. The
programmers didn't take into consideration the vastness of the
galaxy. The sheer numbers of possibilities should have told them
there were others. Probably many of them. They refused to see there
was nothing wrong with the Krofpth Empire. You were in the process
of outgrowing your militarism, which meant there was deep racial
moral turmoil. It's a time of introspection in any race and a time
when the race will find reasons to call itself evil. Most races
must go through an extended period of transition, but yours went
through the period rather quickly so there was no spreading out of
the guilt. The result was retreat and TAR One. ]

"You're saying
all they had to do was to walk in there and turn TAR One off?!" Z
exclaimed. "It couldn't have stopped them. It was programmed to
protect them?"

*If a great
number went at once to do that they would have been successful. It
could stop a few individuals without breaking its programming about
protecting the race. Harm to a very large number would harm the
race. Remember! They didn't know it could never use the arms they
thought it had against them.*

[ Yes. It had
only a few of the empty casings for those weapons. It had destroyed
all of the weapons themselves. It 'knew' there was no danger
whatever of anyone outside coming to harm the Krofpth because it
was programmed to believe the fall of the Krofpth Empire was the
fall of all advanced life. The only other use would be against the
Krofpth themselves. It must protect the Krofpth above all else. The
only logical path was to quickly get rid of those dangerous
weapons! ]

"This is
amazing!" Happ cried. "If we only had checked those weapons we
would have known! We were so conditioned to TAR One that we
wouldn't dare to check!"

*TAR One would
have told you it had hidden the weapons where you couldn't get to
them. You would have known only by attacking it in force. You knew
for a fact the weapons HAD been left for TAR One's use so you were
then presented with your own logical dilemma. Had you decided to
attack TAR One and it still HAD the weapons it was the end of the
race. Your race survival instinct is diminished, but still strong.
There was little danger you would do so.*

"The universe
is a strange place," Z said. "The machine that was designed to be
your best friend a quarter million years ago finally is! That's
what we call poetic justice. It doesn't always work out like
that."

"My people must
learn to trust TAR One," Happ cautioned. "That may be difficult. It
will take time."

[ They're
trusting Emperor Maita through TAR One. It will take less than two
generations, which is no time at all to the Krofpth race. ]

"Two?" Z said.
"Why not just one?"

*Some in this
one will preach to the young that they must not trust TAR One, but
they will live their entire lives knowing only benefits from it so
the third generation won't have the same things preached at them.
We're approaching the planet Nichtale. There's radio out and
holovid close so they'll have travel inside their system at the
minimum. We can contact them.*

[ What does
Library say about them? ]

*Nothing. They
were just beginning to evolve intelligence when last studied.
Another thing the Krofpth Empire did right was to not interfere
with emerging worlds. That's one thing any truly intelligent race
will decide.*

They went down
to the pilot's dome, Thing riding on Happ's shoulder. The world was
M-2, and was more than half water. There were several very large
satellites in orbit and two moons of small but visible size from
the planet.

*I'll spend
some time out of sight here in orbit while I learn their language.
This is what their holovid pictures show them to be like.*

Scenes from
what were, apparently, dramas filled the screen for a few minutes.
The people were amphibious in appearance, looking something like
the Swaz, but with more armored skins. They lacked the Swaz crest
and the fin down the back. The gills were very slightly more
prominent and what must be hearing organs were on short stalks that
folded down to rest against the side of the neck, but could be
extended and turned.

They spent as
much time in the water as they did on the land if the dramas were
typical of their real actions.

"Maita?" Happ
asked. "Wouldn't it be easier to simply put one of them on the
probe to extract the language?"

*Yes, but we
only put people on the probe who volunteer. When I have enough of
the language to make myself understood we'll go aground to request
a volunteer. The probe is the ultimate invasion of privacy, going
directly into the mind of the subject.*

"Each thing I
learn about the Maitan Empire puts me more at ease about it," Happ
replied. "How are you able to decipher a language? I would think it
would be an almost infinitely variable equation."

*There are
hundreds of holovid channels I can watch and hear at once. I can
consider each situation and the way words are used. There are
commercial channels here which make it much easier because of the
tendency of advertisers to wish to reach people on many levels –
visually, in both written words and a product's pictures and in
spoken words. Those words are often read as a message unfolds
across the screen. There are also educational channels for the
young. At this moment there are several of them showing pictures of
what I assume are farm animals, there are written single-word names
of those animals as well as someone repeating the phonetic sounds
of that written word. I've learned hundreds of names of things,
such as various flowers on one station where the same process is
being used. This also tells me the people here have a strong sense
of beauty. It also tells me Z will very much enjoy parts of this
world and Thing will enjoy others. I'll demonstrate.*