Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (159 page)

Kit saw what
was happening! He declared Z an outlaw, making him not in the
protection of the empire so, as a hostage, he was useless while at
the same time he was on the same side as Kilk so there was no
reason for revenge against him. He didn't expect Kilk to commit
suicide, though. It was clear enough he would be exiled to Jorn at
worst.

Then the crowd
was surging toward the caves to deliver the criminal so Tab moved
in the forefront to be sure they didn't do him any harm. He was
sure they wouldn't. They would still have to find anyone else who
was a part of the military thing and was still pushing it and would
have to get them off the world and back to Jorn.

He was standing
to one side when the people dropped the bar from across the door
and threw it open. He could see Z standing there looking trapped.
He probably thought this was to be his death.

Suddenly – and
irrationally – Tab wished he were still in the guise of a Pad so he
could rush ahead and go through a rather extended and personal
identification ritual in front of all these people!

Tab giggled to
himself at the thought.

Game
Over!

Z looked at the
crowd and at the looks on their faces. It was more curiosity than
enmity and they didn't sound angry, then he saw Tab grinning at him
like an idiot. He felt like dancing a jig!

"I place you
under arrest, Grot of Jorn, late of Grlaq!" Tab snapped in a very
official sort of tone. "You are hereby advised to make no statement
as your words WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU! As agent of the Maitan
Empire I suggest you do not speak in any manner at this time!"

What was going
on? Obviously he was to keep his mouth shut and was to act like a
prisoner. That suited him.

Tab took his
arm and led him out and into T6, then into orbit quickly. Tab
explained the ruse that was started to keep Kilk from killing him
and then how they had felt it would be smarter to keep the ruse
going. Kit would bring TR, they would change Z back to his normal
form and return to Sharstedt on TR changed to its natural
configuration. While they were gone Thing and Maita would work on
finding who the other leaders of the military thing were and would
determine if they had changed their patterns of thinking enough
that they would be allowed to stay. Then T6 explained they had
decided that as this was already at the point of longterm contact
the best thing for all concerned would probably be to allow the
Jornians to colonize.

"I should've
known you guys would think pretty much like I did," Z said. "I was
worried Maita would stick to its rules on restricted worlds
here."

"When did Maita
ever stick to any of its rules?" Tab asked. "T Six put one of the
Shar on the probe, you know."

"They're about
three times as intelligent as we were giving them credit for
being?" Z asked.

"About that,"
T6 agreed.

They discussed
possibilities and Tab said he wished he had been given the chance
to meet Z when he was a Pad and Z was a Jornian. Z admitted he
suspected as much and really didn't know how he would have
reacted.

T6 waited until
TR was there and had removed its disguise, then Z went aboard it
with Tab while Kit transferred back to T6. Kit was going to Grlaq
to meet the ship the Jornians sent there, then was going to go to
Kiguarn where the second ship was hiding. He would give the crews
the choice of returning to Sharstedt as colonists or of going to
Jorn. The smaller ship would return with as many as wanted to
return – with the exception of three, who would go to Jorn under
guard. The fourth was in the encampment and the fifth was in the
domes at the fumaroles. No one else wanted to leave the new
world.

They were soon
back on Sharstedt where Thing was directing the changeover of the
generators while Maita used its servos to dismantle the disruptor
cannon to make farming tools. There was one small shuttlecraft that
could go to and from the fumarole mines. The colonists wanted to
remain self-sufficient on Sharstedt and would mine the asteroids
with their one ship a few centuries in the future if they thought
it was advisable to do so then.

Tab sat on the
rock by the stream and looked wistful a lot of the time. He said he
was deeply affected by the Pads and wasn't sure they didn't have
the best of all possible lifestyles. Thing would sit with him
sometimes and Z would sit with him sometimes. They were both with
him when six of the Pads suddenly came up the little fall, playing
just as Tab and Kit had only a few days ago. The Jornians saw the
natives and came in a large group to greet them, but the Shar were
most curious about Tab, Thing and Z on that rock. Tab thoroughly
enjoyed Z's discomfort when the identification ritual started. It
was much better than if it was him! There were all six of them to
pass Z around, but Z fell into the spirit of it and found it a
pleasant thing.

Tab and Thing
went into the cold stream to play with the Pads, but Z and the
Jornians couldn't stand quite that cold a water temperature. Only Z
and Thing understood why Tab suddenly burst into laughter, but they
saw those same two women start trying to seduce the Pads. This time
they had decided to carry through to the end, apparently.

Z wished them
luck. He caught the eye of one of the Pads and grinned, shaking his
head. The Pad winked at him! So they were deliberately refusing to
perform sexually for the women!

Perhaps that
wouldn't last too long. Maybe before this long summer was over
those women would find what it was like to be bedded by a Pad.

There were a
few of the Pads around the camp for a few days, then a few more and
soon twenty or more were there. They seemed curious about what the
Jornians were doing and didn't get in the way. Thing had a large
dark area made in the center of the growing village where the sun
would be on it all day. The Pads knew it was for them and spent a
lot of time on it. They also soon caught on to what the Jornians
were doing at the food growing area and would actually help
there.

*That's because
growing food makes sense to them and refining rocks doesn't.
They're perfectly willing to do whatever makes sense, but they will
NOT do things that seem downright stupid to them.*

[ I think I
have an idea that will help them to all get along, not that they
need help. Some of these things are really pretty simple if you
take the time to think them out a bit. ]

Thing took its
floater out to talk with the woman who was in charge of the
plantings. She nodded and sent two young Jornians off to gather
some young wood of the types of plants the Pads had shown a
fondness for.

"We'll make
cuttings and plant that whole section over there in it," she said.
"We know it'll form roots from the new year's growth in a few
days."

Sech and Yeld
were working on the refinery to make hoes and rakes and other
farming implements. They would go to every new Pad who came around
immediately for the identification ritual.

"I'm lookin'
fer tha one what saved muh life," Yeld explained to Z. "He's easy
ta spot. He's got this here yeller hex'gun right in tha middle'a
his chest. They's all got differnt color patterns we use fer
tellin' 'em 'part. I think they tells us 'part buh tha subtle
differnces'n skin texture er liddle scars er sich things."

"The emperor
has watched them a lot with the spy floaters," Z said. "Some of
them stay in one area for long periods and others travel all around
the lake. That could take months!"

"Yuh!" Sech
agreed. "Ut's a big lake, ta rights! Sixty eight kilometers tha
long way 'n near forty t'other! Ther Pads goes ter thuther lakes
sos ut could be years."

"Mebbe they'll
come back through," Yeld said. "I see some'a tha same uns ever
year'n some new uns. I owes thet'n muh life."

Just ten days
later the soft cuttings had good enough roots to be planted out.
The Pads watched awhile, came to ask instructions, then several
went off to return with cutting wood from a variety of plants.
Eemin, the woman in charge, showed them how to make cuttings and
put them in a semishade bed until they formed roots. It seemed she
had worked out a fair sign language with them. She then pointed out
there was no ground prepared for the cuttings if they would take
root. Several Jornians and several Pads cleared and cleaned a place
to grow it all. Eemin got across that some cuttings would take a
long time to form roots, some would, like the first ones, take very
little time at all and some would never form roots. The Pads
accepted that.

While Eemin and
Thing worked with the food plants Z worked with the crew making
backup generators. The hydroelectric setup tended to fail when the
stream froze over and heat was derived from burning things, which
they wanted to avoid. This world was NOT going to become polluted
if they could prevent it! The chromium/rhodium factor generator
would handle that. It should be ready before the winter came.

One of Z's
problems was to get the Pads to understand that electricity was
dangerous and couldn't be used in the water. He was able to make a
heavy current line and demonstrate the danger. The Pads were wary
of the thing then and he had to show it was safe if used
properly.

Kit returned
and soon the ship came in with the rest of the colonists, who were
absorbed quickly and given jobs. No one was without work and Z
remembered the big flap about employment at the time he was
abducted from Earth. That wouldn't be much of a problem for
centuries here – besides, the Jornians would undoubtably learn the
fun lifestyle from the Pads, who definitely weren't interested in
learning labor!

Kit began a
project of holding and purifying water while Maita used servos to
make a machine to spin housing from fiberglass. The housing unit
was made in one piece and the doors and windows cut into it. There
was ample insulation built-in for the climate of Sharstedt.

The Pads
wouldn't go into caves, but felt free to wander around the houses.
They were welcomed everywhere.

Z wasn't sure
he could ever get used to the Pads wandering around anytime. He was
used to privacy and had a psychological need of it and there would
never be any such thing here.

He wouldn't
have to live here so it didn't matter.

When the time
came to leave it was hard on the entire crew. Even Maita and the
other ships hated to go. The Pads had taken to wandering around
inside the ships at times so they were hardly noticed by most of
the crew. The ships knew everything on board themselves at all
times, of course.

All things must
end, as the trite old saying goes, and they gathered for one
meeting before they left. Everyone made speeches and everyone got a
little drunk on the beer the Jornians were making. The Pads
wouldn't touch the stuff, but they didn't need artificial
stimulation to enjoy life. Before they left Maita made a solemn
promise to come back from time to time.

The three ships
rose above the atmosphere and headed back to EC.

5 Years Later

Maita settled
again into the routines of running a huge empire. There were quite
literally millions of items demanding its attention, but most of it
had already been handled by the servos.

The trip to see
how the Shar were doing five years after they started the project
was finished a few hours ago. The Shar included the Pads and the
Jornians. They were closer than ever now, sharing food production
and other vital functions. There was no such thing as privacy of
one race from another, but the Jornians had privacy one from the
other when they required it. It was a very strange society. If a
Jornian man was with his wife in bed and another Jornian came into
the room the three would all be embarrassed, but if a Pad came in
or even climbed into the bed with them it wasn't in the least
embarrassing.

How odd! Maita
would never be able to figure any set of rules of behavior that fit
all organics. It was time to give up the attempt – which it would
never do.

Sharstedt was
going to be a strange world for the foreseeable future. That's the
sort of thing that kept even a machine from becoming bored!

*

Tab was on TR
on the way to Perfect 3 where Kit was to meet him. The detective
agency was ever more and more interesting but since the experience
with the Pads five years ago there was an empty place somewhere in
his psyche. This trip had intensified that loss, but he was glad
they had gone. Those peoples were both doing as well as they had
hoped. Better.

This was a bad
time to be leaving EC, too. This was a time when he should be among
those he loved and those who loved him. To have Thing wrapped
around him was a great comfort even though he was immune to the
empathy.

One must carry
on.

How odd! A
machine thinking about love and knowing what was meant by that term
– but he did. He had the love for TR that one shared with a part of
oneself, the love of Kit and T6 was the kind of love one shared
with ones closest friend. The love for Maita was a closer kind of
thing than mere friendship and the love for Thing and Z was, too.
This was a family. That was the kind of love meant by all of
this.

How odd, too,
that same machine had actually "gone native" on that world. The
playing in that stream with Kit had by that time become no more an
act, but a deep feeling of belonging. This was the strangest part
of his personal evolution. He now knew fully what it felt like to
be an organic being. He knew loss and emotional pain and a longing
that could never be filled.

Well, one must
go on!

*

Thing climbed
on the floater to go to Z's patio. Things were as it wanted them to
be under the sea. The lifeforms taken from the fumaroles on
Sharstedt were doing well, as were those people on that crazy
world. It was a crazy universe in a lot of ways. People and
machines could say they knew that the omniverse must add up to
zero, but perhaps no other being in it really understood the
concept. When one studied it properly, one had to accept that none
of it was real.