Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (158 page)

"They came here
because it was a great adventure. There's real danger in about the
same ratio as the danger a Pad would respond to them or as in
starting an empire. They're a young race and are only testing the
limits. They don't want these things, they only want to know how
far is too far. Kilk and maybe a few more are serious about it, but
the rest of them are already tired of the idea. They wanted to know
if they could get away with building the disruptors and if their
intrigues would be found out. They have the weapon and've managed
to get away with it for fifteen years. Now they simply want to
colonize the world. Maybe the seduction bit was enough of a new
thrill that some will actually try to complete it. Maybe both races
will benefit. It'll certainly be different.

"I think Z will
want us to leave most of the Jornians alone. I know I'll vote to
allow those here at the moment to stay – with those obvious
exceptions. I think the few rotten redpeels in the bin should be
taken to Jorn and judged by their own kind."

[ A hell of a
lot hinges on you being right, but I'm willing to try it. I think
Tab should go to the mines aboard T Six and you should be the
empire spokesman at the camp. You'll have us to bail you out if it
goes wrong. ]

"I think we'll
get some huff and bluff, but we can handle it," Kit said. "We won't
know until we try!"

*You and Tab go
to the shop and I'll change you back into a Kheth and a Swaz. I
think Kilk will be the only one who's going to be hard to handle.
He may deliberately try to force the issue so let's have a plan
before we act. He'll probably try to kill Z so be ready to respond
to that. Fast.*

"Have a floater
go right to him and stay on him like water on an ocean," Tab said.
"Have another go to that door to let Z out."

[ No. Have one
in there to let Z out if we have to, but let's give those people
the chance to do it first. ]

*I agree. I'll
have the one watching the camp locate Kilk and move to watch him
exclusively as soon as we're ready to move in. I'll have another
ready to go to that door, but stay high and not too close. Maybe it
can appear we don't know which room Z is in. Let's get
started!*

*

Z reattached
the lamp cord and dropped it behind the table where it would be out
of sight. Five transmissions of the message should be enough to
guarantee TR would hear it even if the robots didn't. Nothing to do
then but wait and think. He laid back on the mattress and relaxed.
These people didn't want any silly empire. They were playacting a
fantasy. They could be allowed to stay here to form a new colony
world with certain restrictions. They would always get along well
enough with the Pads and wouldn't do them any harm. They would
quickly establish their own farms and generators and would be
careful not to infringe on the Pads' territory. The problem there
would be in convincing Maita, who often made inflexible rules.

Well, they
always ended up breaking those rules – or bending them far out of
shape! There was no reason not to do it again. There was nothing to
lose and really quite a lot to gain. It could well be best for the
Shar and the Jornians, too. If Tab and Kit allowed those silly fool
women to seduce them Z hoped they would have the sense to make it a
neutral sort of experience for the Jornians and not some fantastic
thing that would make Jornians spend the future chasing after Pads.
He also hoped they wouldn't make it a painful or unpleasant thing
that would make them stop trying. It was one thing they shouldn't
do anything to change. Z suspected the Pads were more intelligent
than was known and they knew what the women were doing. From what
he'd heard, sex was a pleasure response in them just as in the
Jornians so it wasn't impossible the races would work out some
mutual code of behavior there. Z also suspected Tab wouldn't lose
the opportunity to work on his own personal inhibitions if he got
the chance.

He grinned to
himself. He didn't have any conception as to how he would handle
that. He would have to return the intimacies to remain in character
at all.

The next – and
obvious – problem was how he was going to get out of that room! TR
couldn't send a floater without giving far too much away. It could
have been a bad mistake to have sent that message because TR could
well call Maita in – and that would end his chances of talking the
rest of them into getting a few of the bad apples off the world and
leaving the rest alone.

Damn it!
Jornians and Shars could share this world to mutual benefit!

How odd! Kilk
might come storming in here at any moment and blast him to vapors
and he was worried about Maita and the rules of the empire!

He lost track
of time, dozing off now and then and using the meantimes to try to
think of a way to convince Maita to leave most of this alone.

At one time
Kilk came with a woman, they gave him food while Kilk kept a heat
laser pointed directly at his midsection, then left again. He was
finally awakened when the heavy bar across the door was dropped and
the door was thrown wide open. There was a very noisy crowd outside
so this must be it! Kilk had somehow worked them into a frenzy and
Steve Zutec was about to become history.

Would TR have a
floater there to save him?

This was hardly
the way he had planned to die. He hadn't even gotten a tenth of
those orchids planted on Ec!

*

Thing waited in
room two while Maita changed the robots back into their "regular"
forms. Kit was probably right. He thought most like Z and Z was a
mammal, not unlike the Jornians. The danger was that it only took
one person to kill Z and they knew perfectly well Kilk was such a
person. Thing wasn't sure it would want to continue without Z there
to share those things the empathy talent had developed for them.
Their need for one another was now a symbiotic thing. They both
loved Maita and Tab and TR and Kit and T6, but those were all
machines. The empathic need wasn't completely filled by them. It
demanded an organic mind – an irrationally emotional mind.

Maita would do
all it could to protect Z and so would TR and T6 so there probably
was little real danger, but the longer the group lived the stronger
the interactions among them. It would never lessen.

How odd. They
were so unlike – and yet so much the same. The lack of logic in Z
and the total logic of Thing each influenced the other in such a
way the individual traits remained as strong as ever they were
while the modified traits were ever increasing in strength at the
same time. It wasn't only odd, it was very complicated and things
were seldom too complicated for Thing. It could fully understand
even the impossible abstractions of the TTH14 plane. The machines
could use most of it, but only Thing understood it.

Tangental
thought lessened the worry. Tab came from the shop Maita had built
into room five, which was originally a temporary holding cell for
prisoners of the Pweetoos. He was again in the form of a Swaz.
Thing climbed to his shoulder where they used the internal circuit
to silently communicate. He then went to T6 and prepared to head
for the mines. Kit came out as a Kheth. Everything was ready.

T6 left with
Tab and Maita rose from the lake to go to the Jornian camp. Thing
climbed to Kit's shoulder, they went to the cargo hold, Thing's
floater came to hover a meter above their heads.

*Okay. We are
landed. These people have heard enough about this ship to know it's
the emperor's personal craft. The floaters are in place and Kilk is
covered. I won't allow him to go anywhere near that door. It's up
to you, Kit. Good luck!*

The port opened
for Kit to walk out onto the ramp. He stared at the people who came
to stand around the base. Kilk came with a drawn laser.

"Put that thing
away, Kilk," Kit ordered. "I'm called Kit. I'm a Kheth, as you can
see, and am a personal friend and member of the emperor's crew. We
can see you've completed the disruptor, but we know you haven't
finished the reactor to run it. You were very successful and it
might even have worked to some extent except that your operatives
under the one you called Lugac were found out. It was inevitable
they would be discovered when this silly plot was started.

"The Jornians
are a good race. There are few like Kilk. I'm sure most of the
people here will wish to remain as colonists – the best way for the
Jornians to establish their place in the scheme of things. You've
invaded this world, but Emperor Maita has seen in our few days here
that you have most studiously avoided doing any damage to the
natives. That is a good trait in you. You in fact mesh well with
those natives. It'll do no harm for a colony to be established so
long as certain rules are followed. Those rules are the same as the
ones you're now operating under so there'll be no change. It's for
the people here to decide.

"There are a
few who may not stay because they're to be held responsible for the
attempted militarization of this world. Kilk is one of those. We'll
return those people to Jorn where they'll be dealt with by their
own kind in the manner Jorn finds most fitting. As no harm has been
done,we won't seek punishment of any kind. It's for your own
government to decide.

"I repeat it
yet again, it's not an empire matter."

T6 came in to
settle quietly on the far side of TR. The port opened and the nine
Jornians came out followed by Tab, who was supporting one of his
passengers. Kit recognized the person with his foot in a cast and
grinned.

"You've learned
to live with the Pads, as you call the native people," Kit
continued. "You don't realize how very far along the intelligence
scale they are. They know what you are and what you're doing and
think you're both wonderful and stupid at the same time. Wonderful
because you've become friends with them and even have accepted them
as equals, though you don't know that yet. Stupid because you spend
so very much of your efforts to build a weapon you aren't capable
of using.

"Wonderful
because the reason you wouldn't use the disruptor is because the
backwash would maim or kill thousands of them. You've seen they're
always playing. You've seen they won't take your orders. Have you
seen they would no more give orders than follow them?

"The time is
here for a choice! Any of you who so wish may leave this world and
return to Jorn. Where you go from that point is your own affair.
Those who wish to stay may make this your home and the home of your
progeny. It'll be a shared home with the Pads. They'll have
anything they want in the waters and shores and you'll have
anything you want in these mountains or on the millions of square
kilometers of fertile plains and you'll share the borders. If you
so choose you may share all of it. I know the Pads will choose that
option. There will be very few ships to and from Sharstedt. It'll
be a very restricted world so it may evolve in its own way. You may
make the choice as you see fit."

Tab brought the
Jornian with the cast on his foot to the ramp with another Jornian
aiding. Kit knew, of course, that these were Sech and Yeld. Sech
came up the ramp first and turned to the crowd. "Ain't no way I'm
a'leavin this here world alive!" he shouted. "I done made my mind
up ter stay 'n Emperor Maita ner no one else's gonna ever change
ut! Es fer tha Pads, I'll let Yeld tell yer what's what!"

Yeld winced and
grinned, then said, "A Pad done saved muh leg 'n probably muh life
jist yesterdy. I was makin a stupid damned fool out'n muhself ...
well, I was playin with 'im. Yuh knows how thet is. What I done was
t'ketch muh foot in thet rail es yuh go inter tha 'finery cave'n
tha cart with uh full load rolled back'n was jist about ta cut this
here leg off'n run me over when tha Pad runned in'n jist pushed it
out'n tha way!

"Now, y'all
knows we can't git no Pads ta do our work fer us, but thet'n
sure're'n hell saved muh life! Yuh can't tell me he didn't know
what I was tryin' ta get 'im ta do! They jist thinks ut's stupid ta
push loads'a rocks from one place t'thother. Ask me, they's right!
Ut's stupid! If'n done spent haf's much time'n growin' food'n doin'
somethin' what counts we'd have uh plenty time ta play! Tha same's
they do.

"I'm with Sech!
Maita wants me off'n this here world he gotta kill me ta git me
off! I'm gonna build me a house'n Ameth'n tha kids'n I're gonna
live in ut'n farm a liddle'n play a lot! Any Pad wants ta come in
any time he's full welcome! Anythin' I got's joint property'ith
ever Pad on this here planet! We kin go ahead'n build generators
fer cannons'n use 'em fer power fer all'n us! We kin salvage parts
from cannons fer t'other things.

"Jist personly,
I don't care if everone what wants ta go goes! I don't care iff'n
we never sees another ship so long es I live!"

There were
assents among the crowd. Kit looked to see Kilk making his way
toward the cave.

"Kilk!" he
shouted. "You can just turn around right now and go aboard the ship
that brought the people from the mine! There's an empire criminal
who came aboard that ship! (He pointed to TR) That one will be
brought here immediately!"

Kilk looked
confused, then turned the laser on himself. It was too fast for
Tab, who had moved close to him, to stop. Some of the crowd turned
to the caves to bring the "criminal" to the empire ship.

*

Tab left the
injured Jornian with his friend at the ramp base and sidled toward
Kilk, who still held the laser in his hand, though it was pointing
at the ground. Sech and Yeld made their speeches and Tab knew Kit
had won. The only problem was that Z was in far more danger now
than a few moments before. Kilk wasn't entirely sane and could
probably have Z dead before they could do anything. They had no
real idea who else was as involved as Kilk.