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

It may seem
strange a robot would want to relax, but it's a relaxation from
mental tensions, not physical ones. It was nice to lay around doing
nothing.

I should have
known it was too good to be true. TR called on the internals to say
we had a case. It received the fastcom and took all the details
that were available.

We had to go to
Eachera in two days.

The delay was
due to the fact only Maita and TR have TTH14, and Eachera is a long
way off. Normal speeds would take that long. It would give me time
to visit with the crew, so I took advantage of the time. We caught
up on our stories and had some fun playing our jokes and insult
games.

TR would wait
until I was aboard to brief me on the case, and Maita, Thing, and Z
would go to Inkta. Rimalt was expected to die at any moment and
they would want to be there. I did too, but we all have our
duties.

I imagine T6
will come back with them to EC and will become a sort of partner
with TR and me in the detective job. Perhaps it'll have Maita make
it a second half and we'll have another team like TR and
myself.

We all left EC
at about the same time, heading in different directions. I told TR
to catch me up on things en route.

"It's something
odd going on on a planet called Flimt," TR reported. "The Eacherons
are reptilians on the order of the Kheth, but with tails. They have
that conglomeration of worlds out by the 'W' beacon that've all
gotten along well for a long time now. You know about all of that.
Maita went to all the planets there with Thing and Z.

"Well, there
seem to be some kind of systematic assassinations going on, and
Flimt's involved somehow. It's a new world in the group with a nice
enough bunch of people – semi-mammalian.

"I can modify
you from the description Maita has of them. Sort of between the
Cheeth and the Bentans.

"They called
Maita for help. Flimt did. They said they have nothing to do with
any assassinations and are trying to establish themselves as
productive members of the empire. Maita believes them, because only
a society of idiots would call on the empire to investigate if they
were guilty of anything at all.

"It's not the
kind of thing that would accomplish much anyhow. It doesn't make a
whole lot of sense, but we don't have nearly all the facts yet.

"I think
Maita's afraid it's more Immins. It's the kind of thing they'd
do."

"There aren't
any Immins in that area, and probably none are anywhere anymore," I
said. "We're going to have to start from nothing here, aren't
we?"

"It sure looks
that way! We're at Flimt. Do we go in as empire agents?

"I can put up a
disguise and you can go in the shop or we can act like we know what
we're doing and go in to find out what's happening before we fly
off on one of our famous tangents."

"Yes. We can go
to disguises later if we have to. We'll let them know the empire
responds very quickly to requests of this sort." I didn't get the
response I expected from that pious statement, so I immediately
knew TR was worried. You learn to notice reactions of a being with
whom you share a part of your mind.

"It's not
Immins, TR. You and I and Rollo were one of the groups who scoured
this area for them. They aren't here. Period. Let's get the facts
first, then we can decide whether we have any reason for
worry."

We've all had
more than too much of Immins. I can certainly understand why Maita
and TR would worry about finding any of them here, but I was
certain it couldn't be Immins. The Eacherons and all others in this
group knew what they had been and would've screamed to the empire
if there was any hint whatever they might have survived out here. I
couldn't think of anyone in the entire galaxy who wouldn't scream
to Maita if any were found.

"I'm not the
least worried about Immins," TR replied. "I'm worried about
something else entirely. There was something else out here Maita
thought was defeated once before and found that it wasn't.

"It's the
mathematics. It's just that it's happening now and not ten years
ago."

"Tlesson?"

"And Old Home.
That was two hundred seventeen years ago and is one hundred ninety
three plazsis (MGS light years) from here. Those robots didn't have
TTH drive, but they did have very efficient STL drives. This is
about right for that. Time means nothing to them. We had a problem
with one or two of those things since."

"But that was a
berserker machine! It wouldn't be carrying out a lot of individual
assassinations! It's designed to do massive destruction, not this
sort of thing – if I understand what you've said.

"Assassinations?"

"If any part of
that machine did survive it's had nearly two hundred years to
learn, and it didn't bring too much with it. It had developed a
weird sort of basic intelligence, so it could theorize and change
its methods."

"I don't think
it could be that! What do you base it on, other than the timing and
closeness?"

"The
randomness. If one of these worlds were planning something it would
be to exactly that – a plan. These peoples know each other. They've
gotten along for three or four hundred years. None of us believes
it's the Flimts doing any of this stuff.

"That
eliminates all likely suspects.

"It's also a
feeling. This sort of thing doesn't happen among the advanced
worlds."

"Has is built
robots to do these things? How could it even communicate? How would
it know who or where or anything?"

"It learned
Maitan long ago from the time of the robot wars," TR pointed out.
"These people out here are Maitan Empire citizens and use Maitan in
trade. It's a language ships in transit for two hundred years could
have learned through any number of methods.

"You can think
better than that!

"This scares
me, Boss! I think you can figure the implications if that thing
programmed something and it's now here!"

"I don't
believe it. We'll have to get some facts here and work from them.
These kinds of wild speculations lead nowhere."

I went to the
spaceport offices. TR landed us on diplomatic ID, so there was an
official greeting party. I went with them to a comfortable office
where we discussed the problems.

There had been
more than fifteen assassinations over the past halfyear of people
from twelve different worlds. All the killings occurred on Flimt or
on the planets and stations in the system, and all were important
trader diplomats. None, of course, were Flimts.

"Are there many
who oppose trade with other worlds?" I asked.

"No!" Gorg, the
lead speaker for the Flimts cried. "We've actively sought trade
with other peoples. That's why we can't understand this. It
wouldn't make any sense for us to do anything like this!"

"We are a very
curious and dynamic race of people," Hedda, another spokesperson,
explained. "We want to travel the whole of the empire, and we want
others to come here. We can't understand who is doing this to us or
why. It can cause people NOT to come here!"

"I know of the
mind probe the empire has, and that Emperor Maita declared it may
not be used, except with consent of the subject," Gorg suggested.
"I, and I think everyone else in this room, invite its use on me!
Right now!"

"The probe may
tell us something about all of this you aren't aware you know, but
I know you're innocent," I agreed. "No guilty person's ever asked
that the probe be used. That would have to be the greatest
stupidity conceivable."

"We have a sort
of basic theory about it. We truly hope we're making up
scarytales!" Gorg demanded. "Use it on me to find if there is
anything that may be of help."

Hedda insisted,
"Anything I can do to resolve this situation, anything at all, I
will do, without hesitation. We cannot afford this kind of thing at
this time. People do not yet know us well. We must have trust!"

I called TR on
the com device there in the room, though I'd already told it to
send the probe on a floater. If it suddenly showed up things would
appear suspicious to these people.

They all used
the probe and the floater left. "Only the empire machines in my
ship will ever read those probes," I promised – truthfully. I'm a
machine in the ship. "It'll edit out anything pertinent and erase
everything else. I assure you, your privacy will in no way be
violated.

"I further
assure you the empire will do everything possible to resolve the
situation and find who's behind it. We don't condone such tactics
under any circumstances. I'll try to keep you informed of anything
as quickly as I can. There may be some areas where we'll require
your direct help in conducting the investigation. I won't pause
before asking your cooperation.

"If any of you
discover anything, no matter how small, please inform me at once.
Most of my cases are solved by some really stupid little fact or
mistake made by the instigator. A little seemingly forgettable
incident can have enormous implications."

They thanked me
and I went back to TR.

"Nothing," it
informed me. "They haven’t any idea whatever about what's going on.
They meant it when they said their whole race wants trade and
contact. They don't know of anyone who's opposed. They've based
their entire economy on it. They aren't aware of anyone not in the
guild having been here, and they're keeping careful watch for
Immins, because the empire asked them to do so.

"You were right
about one thing! We have to start from hardly more than
nothing!"

"Have you
accessed all of their police reports of the assassinations?"

"Yeah, sure,
Boss. They gave orders everything and anything we request is to be
supplied, no questions asked. They don't have much in the way of
police, because they aren't very much of a criminal people, but
they've got pretty sophisticated detection systems. They had gifted
students study all of it from the empire because they knew they'd
be subjected to certain types of criminal things as members of the
traders guilds.

"They even
studied about us!"

I could tell TR
wasn't worried anymore from that last little bit. I was supposed to
get all pompous about what wonderful things we'd done. TR was
baiting me.

"About us?" I
asked. "Whatever for? I could understand if they studied about ME,
but US?

"No, that
doesn't make any sense!"

"Ah, stick it!"
TR snapped sarcastically (How does a machine DO that?). "If YOU
don't deliver here I'll let YOU explain it's YOU who does all the
work!"

I grinned at
TR's console and sat back in the pilot's chair to think. TR input
everything about the killings to me at the same time, but I was
getting a sinking feeling it was a lot of data that wouldn't have a
lot of meaning. I set up circuits to look at the data from as many
angles as possible.

There had been
eleven deaths on Flimt, two on its larger moon, two on the next
planet outward, and one on the relay station. All were shot with
pencil lasers of some sort. There didn't seem to be any connection
among the victims. It was almost random.

"I assume
you've done all the locator rundowns?"

"Are we still
snipping at each other?" TR asked. "I can say no correlations, or I
can be sarcastic."

"I think we're
in for a pretty mean one here. We can save the fun and games until
I'm happily proven wrong.

"We have to
discover a motive for any of this or we can't get far. All I can
find is that all of them saw or heard something at various times.
If they somehow...."

"Boss?"

"Yo?"

"I was right
about the robots?"

I shook my
head, then nodded, then said, "It's looking like a very strong
possibility at the moment. I think we'd better make a listing of
everything we might need to know, access it from the memory banks,
and call Maita if there's anything we can't find.

"I don't want
to call Maita now. Not with Rimalt dying and T Six about to undergo
that emotional trauma. This is a bad time for a lot of reasons. We
both know Maita would come right out. That thing almost destroyed
it on more than one occasion. It was thought to be destroyed once
before and showed up again. We know its prime directive is
self-protection and it's what Z called a berserker machine. It was
built to make war and to destroy and it got away from its makers.
The programming was deadly dangerous, and what might happen
did.

"I know damned
well Maita gets called if we run up against anything that even
looks slightly like we may not be able to handle it and have
everything we do or think recorded on our files at Perfect Three
and leave a message to look there if we fail to report in
regularly."

"It's a
machine, Boss. It can handle all the things they did to it before –
except the antimatter, and I can't go after that with all these
innocent people around. I'm already putting everything direct to
the agency as we do it, and Maita would automatically look in those
files even if I hadn't already left an alert based on missing a
regular report."

"It will, in
fact, have perfect defenses against anything and everything they
did before. I want to know everything that was done for the simple
reason we CAN'T do any of it. We'd be putting ourselves firmly in a
trap if we did.

"It will most
certainly expect more of the same. It's programming is probably to
look for things to happen in a repeating series.

"First, let's
try to stop these assassinations."

"There's a
little something from the old records that might prove important.
It used tight light beams to communicate with its servos. It'll
certainly be using servos to do all of this. It built robots before
that mimicked the people around them. Thing spotted them with its
empathic power.