Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (22 page)

"We'll simply
be clever. I'll be some bumbling old fool in bad health who's
stumbled onto the place – something no enemy would ever be!"

"I see. I'll
modify you to fit the appearance. That thing may've been that
observant back at Stormlee.

"Would you like
for me to remove one other little item?"

"What?"

"That radium on
your ear. It sort of makes the rest of your disguise look silly if
you're going to advertise with the brain's own ID feature."

I pay a lot of
attention to hidden details, but I still sometimes miss the
obvious.

Old
Man of the Sea

I stepped out
into the cave and closed the plug behind me. I was an old man who
walked hunched over and with a bit of a limp. More of a shuffle
than a walk really, though I could instantly revert to my regular
ways. I would stay in character with this so I could use most of my
circuits to do what I had to do.

I was mostly
going to observe. TR was going to start to do more interesting
things with the gravity floater to increase the brain's insecurity.
There would now be a slowly growing problem with the plutonium. It
was going to start producing heat as well as sporadic increases in
radiation.

"The brain's
started to become a little nervous about those fissionables," TR
reported. "It has more than enough math to know too much
instability's unacceptable to safety. It sent servos to check all
around under the ship, but I moved the floater until they were
gone. I can hide it very close, it seems. I gave enough of a little
extra punch to the heat process so the readings would stay high
when the sensors were under the ship. It'll actually get even
higher for awhile.

"It's a good
thing I'm using the staggered remote relays for the transmissions
inside of the cavern. It's tried interceptor servos all around, but
I can place the relays in configurations that preclude direct
contact. The brain doesn't really believe there's any outside
influence, so we're still in a pretty good position.

"I think you
should go out there to observe where they move the plutonium. I'm
sure I can convince that thing it wouldn't be very smart to keep it
aboard. Not if it's going to get more and more unstable and
erratic!"

I moved along
the tunnel to the entrance to the cavern where the brain's ship was
sitting, then avoided the sweep sensors as I moved to one side.
There wouldn't be any logical reason to check outside of the caves
yet.

I adjusted the
relay unit on the com floater for direct communication with TR.

"There seems to
be a bit of movement to the side of the ship," I reported. "Servos
are coming in from the outside with something pretty heavy in
carts, and they're melting it down and casting it. There isn't a
lot of heat, so it isn't iron or anything like that."

"It's lead and
gold being cast into hollow containers. I'd say they're going to
move the plutonium and want to shield it from outside sensors. I
may have inadvertently caused the brain to wonder if maybe the
radiation from that stuff would be detectable from a long way off,
so it'll cut the detectables down enough to where they can't get
out of the mountain.

"I'm going to
hurry them up just a bit. I don't want to bring any larger floaters
into any area where they can be seen by any of that thing's
sensors, so use a little augmentation to your telescopic sight. See
what's happening to the ionic grids and to the difusion drive.
Something should be visible by now."

I lifted the
recording binoculars from the floater sitting beside me and checked
the grids, then the drive tubes. It could be done with internals,
but I didn't want to use more data space than necessary.

"The grids are
in sad shape, but I don't think the brain even knows about it," I
reported. "Maybe it doesn't do regular checks. There are stains in
the tubes, but I can't see what they indicate from this angle.
That's another thing it doesn't check regularly, either, I'd
say.

"Pretty
sloppy."

"Don't kid
yourself!" TR snapped back (Damn it! HOW?). "It'll check them on
some kind of schedule. It checks everything.

"So much time
after they worked successfully ... it probably did a scan of them
as soon as everything was cooled down and will do another every ten
days or so. That would mean in three more days, though we have no
idea what the schedule might be.

"I had the
servo floater put a little moisture with a trace of manganese in it
in a place where it'll be checked if the brain's looking for
anything. I'm also feeding tiny traces of it into the oceans where
the brain may want to take samples to see if it's a natural
phenomenon.

"It is, but not
at the concentrations we need.

"I'll want to
see what it does when it discovers the damage."

There was
suddenly a flurry of activity around the door to the ship and I
watched the gravity floater dodge up to sit almost directly on the
top of it over the hatch door. Four servos came out to inspect
under the ship and four others fanned out to check the cavern.

I climbed down
into the narrow space between some boulders and shielded any sensor
evidence. One servo came within four meters of me, but was only
scanning for heat, sound, or moved objects. I was out of detector
range.

I waited more
than two hours, then again looked out.

The servos were
bringing out the slugs of plutonium and were dropping them into the
tubes of gold and lead, placing the covers on them, then piling
them on the carts in neat rows. They placed a small tag on each
tube.

"I got a little
heat started in the stuff, gave it a bit of a jolt so the heat
increasion would sustain itself for awhile, then hid the floater,"
TR reported. "The brain's getting very nervous about it and has
begun offloading it."

"It can't have
that much plutonium! What in the world would it want with all of
that? It's taken off more than any one whole planet would have any
use for. It takes a lot of time and resources to produce it!

"What in hell
is that thing thinking?"

"It's only
taken off about a third of it. It has plenty more."

"But what in
the hell is it for? That's enough to sterilize this planet twice
over already! Why produce so much?"

"The military
mind at work. There's no logic to how it thinks. The fact a
weapon's overproduced a mere eight times isn't enough. It has to
have sixteen times as much as it could possibly hope to ever use,
then thirty two times as much. The very existence of the stuff
makes the brain feel it's in power."

"But it doesn't
make any sense! It could be using the time and effort to produce
something useful!"

"When did the
military mind ever make any sense? Besides, it's always to the
enemy's advantage when such stupid overproduction is a part of the
plans of these things.

"Like you said,
it's time and energy that COULD be used to ITS advantage instead of
to ours. It simply squanders its resources for some system of
numbers that any scientist or mathematician would laugh to
death.

"Let's hope it
doesn't change!"

"You got that
one right! We'll have to see where it stores the stuff and we'll
have to know when it's all off of the ship."

"I'll have the
floaters watching that, and it won't offload all of it, but it'll
offload enough so only an area around here close will be damaged if
it sets it off. It'll feel naked if it doesn't have a lot of
weapons directly on board. A typical Military way of thinking.

"You still have
the problem of finding a way to get to the brain. I'd like to
prevent even the release of what it'll keep aboard. My aim is zero
contamination.

"Sounds
idealistic as hell, don't it?"

"Doesn't. I
share the sentiment, but don't need the dramatics.

"I have
something of an idea starting. I'll come back as soon as I think
it's safe. That thing'll have visuals on all of the caves, I'm
sure."

"It's servos
are limited, so it'll have to withdraw that sort of thing when it
begins moving the plutonium into its storage points. I don't think
it'll leave it around that cavern. Maybe it'll put it in the lead
mines for extra shielding of natural radiations."

It was more
worried than it was letting me know if it didn't make a snappy
comeback to my pickiness over language.

It was nearly
six hours later when the servos began taking the carts filled with
cylinders of plutonium outside. I saw a sensor servo move from out
of my line of sight toward the entrance where it would surely be
needed. If I had gone out earlier I would've almost walked into the
thing. It was obviously placed while I was hiding under the
boulders.

I made my way
back to TR, went aboard and to the shop area where I took a good
crossbow, some shafts, and a knife in a sheath. I strapped the
knife onto my waist, slung the bow over a shoulder, then put a
number of things on a floater, which I disguised as a large wicker
basket.

"TR, make me
one of those one-man skiffs these people use," I said. "An old man
is going to come here from the next island to find something or
other.

"What would
they be looking for here?"

"This time of
year?" TR replied. "Maybe bird or lizard eggs in all these caves
and holes. Shellfish in the water's edge. Crabs, but they can get
all they want of them where they are.

"They look for
certain jewels around the volcanoes. I can give you some poor
emeralds and maybe a sapphire or two.

"How about
peridot? There are quite a few around. Zircons on the other side of
the island in a sand spit."

"A bit of all
of it, but not much of any one thing. I'll need a reason to explore
a bit."

"You'll also
need a reason for them to not simply kill you to eliminate their
problem!" TR replied cynically (I won't say it). "What about
that?"

"I think the
brain'll have to see what I'm up to, so I'll be a representative
hunter for a tribe on the next island. They expect me back in two
days or so, then they'll send a war party to see why I'm not on
schedule. If the war party isn't back on time the women will
contact the people on the other islands, who'll contact the people
on the mainland."

"These people
don't have any such thing as a representative and wouldn't give a
damn if an old man returned or not!" TR spat. "What a stupid
idea!

"What's with
the war party crap? They don't have war parties!"

"Ahh! You know
that and I know that and all the people here know that, but the
machine DOES NOT know that! It simply can't understand how organics
think.

"I can be as
sneaky as it can.

"I think it'll
take great care not to draw any attention to this place and will
watch, but not interfere."

I grinned and
went out to wait until TR made an authentic boat for me. It would
be totally synthetic, of course, but wouldn't be detectable as such
by the brain.

I wished I felt
as confident as I was acting, but one can't have everything!

When the boat
was ready I went aboard and began moving around the shore of the
island near the cliff base. I felt a scanner beam touch me, move
away a bit, and come back. I ignored it and went ashore, looked
around the area, scraped the rocks with my knife, "discovered" a
small garnet, returned to the boat, and moved along.

Scanners
followed my every move now. There would be frantic activity around
the brain at this point. It must produce a robot of a Killit if it
didn't have one, though it could probably do that in short order by
placing a servo brain into a body produced to formula.

I found a
lizard eggbed between some rocks and put half the eggs in a basket
and back on the boat. The Killit people have more sense than to
take all of anything. Unlike many cultures at their stage of
development, they have reasoned some of the eggs have to hatch and
grow or there will soon be no more eggs.

I managed to
take about four hours to reach the little spit near the cavern
entrance where I would "find" the brain's ship or where I would be
prevented from finding it. I pulled the little boat up onto the
pumice, carefully tied the sail down, tied the oars into place, and
took the wicker basket out along with a large cloth.

I put the cloth
across the prepared poles, brought out some driftwood and started a
small fire, took some of the lizard eggs, wrapped them in seaweed,
and placed them into a clay pot which I put against the fire.

I took an iron
kettle and hung it over the fire, dropped in some roots and herbs,
some fresh water, and then scrubbed some shellfish carefully and
dropped them in as soon as the water was boiling.

I took a small
cask of wine from the boat and drank a little sparingly, then
waited for my meal to get done.

There was a
visual miniservo perched on a nearby rock watching my every move
very carefully. It was joined after a time by a servo with
scanners, which told the brain I was a normal elderly Killit with
some moderately serious though not immediately fatal health
problems.

I would have to
give the thing time to make the robot and to test it so, as it was
late enough in the afternoon, I made it obvious this was to be my
camp for the night.

I went to an
isolated spot I used as a toilet, then went into the water and
bathed (The Killit are a clean people), rinsed with a bit of the
fresh water in my jar, then lay in a beam of rapidly fading
sunlight to dry. I then laid out all my "treasures" of the day's
hunting and separated them into piles.

I took a large
piece of prepared skin and carefully marked a rough map on it, then
put marks where I'd "found" each of the things in the piles. I
rolled the map as soon as the ink was dry, then placed it back in
the wicker basket.