Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (8 page)

"I agree," I
returned. "I'd like for you to give Thing and Z the problem if they
can spare a little time. They can come up with something if anyone
can.

"I think
there'll have to be a floatation device of some kind holding the
brain at a certain altitude. It'll circulate with the intense winds
in one of the level flows away from the equator."

*Thing says for
the very reason of those winds it will be close to one or the other
of the poles. Even the least breeze near the equator could send it
plunging into the higher lower level pressures. Thing knows about
that!*

"There are
eddies all over the place," TR agreed. "I can say pretty definitely
it's within six or seven hundred kilometers of a pole and no more
than five hundred kilometers deep or less than three hundred.

"That would
leave a volume of more than two and a quarter million cubic
kilometers to search – and our target can move at will. Visibility
for sensors is a maximum of less than three kilometers down there.
It would be hopeless.

"We have to
find some way to locate it."

*It will have
to come out to do anything.*

"When? In a
hundred years?" I asked. "In two hundred? We can put the satellites
up, but can we realistically be expected to sit here and wait?

"I don't want
to make a berserker satellite that'll destroy anything coming up
from there, simply because two wrongs don't make a right. That's
exactly the sort of thing we're fighting!

"What else can
we do?"

*Deploy the
watcher satellites, and then we'll figure out something. TR, open
channel T, and I'll send you the schematics for your servos to
follow to make the sensors. There are asteroids there, so you can
mine what you need. Leave floaters over the polar areas for now
until the satellites are all on grid.*

There was the
buzz of high-speed input, then we said our goodbyes.

TR put the
floaters out, then we went to two asteroids and used the
elementizers to extract the elements we would need. TR used its
servos in the machine shop to make the satellites, and we deployed
them with a master circuit to a fastcom unit that would
automatically call TR and Maita both if anything at all came away
from the planet.

TR and I went
back to Flimt to make our plans and to see how things were going
there. Gorg had gone around to all the major places on our agenda
to recruit the blind. He decided to contact only the blind
themselves at first. Those who had experienced the weird feelings
in their areas were then assigned second partners, and the others
were given an E-code to call if they ever experienced anything
such.

They found one
more robot at a port facility. It self- destructed when cornered.
They found two others at spaceport and the same thing happened.

I was relieved
they had no instructions to fight if the brain wasn't in
communication. I was again glad it had no fastcom.

We had
satellite grids around Neepod and Nestar, and would have to wait to
see where the brain was. I already had a good idea of how we'd find
out, because I was perfectly well aware that the sensors, while
they couldn't detect anything inside atmospheres of those planets,
could themselves be detected FROM inside of the atmospheres.

I was now
thinking enough in the pattern of the machine to know what it would
do to be clever. TR was still being more or less logical, so I'd
get to look knowing and to be condescending to it, but I was with
Hedda when TR called.

"It's on
Neepod!" it sent. "It came above atmosphere, saw a satellite and
shot it down, then went back in."

This was a
silent communication, of course, so I could only send the flat
reply. I haven't learned how to be condescending and sarcastic on
the internal coms.

"I see," I
sent. "I thought it was on Nestar all along. This proves it!"

I was ready for
a sarcastic reply. TR would see my reasoning right away.

"That's what Z
said," TR replied innocently. "I was on fastcom with T Six when I
got the word, and Z was on T Six, so he said it was only another
clever little ploy, and the brain would never give itself away like
that. Thing said there was a chance the brain is there and that
it's counting on us thinking that way but, as it doesn't know who's
here it might have slipped up big time.

"I wish I knew
which pole it's hiding at on Nestar. I'd send it a message to stop
the silliness and sign it!"

"That's a
wonderful idea!" I sent back. "I'll get there as soon as I can and
we can go to work on the thing's insanity a bit.

"This is a
break! You do have a good idea at least once a century!"

I knew that
would leave TR puzzled a bit, but that's the sort of thing that
makes life fun.

I finished my
tour with Hedda and met with Gorg, then went back to TR.

"Directional
radio so it can't tell we said anything to the other pole?" TR
asked.

"Yo! Let's see
if we can anger that thing enough to make it do something as stupid
as some of the things we do. The very least we'll accomplish is to
add to its frustrations."

"It's a damned
machine, dumb-ass!" TR snapped caustically (HOW?!). "It doesn't get
angry! Sheeesh!"

"We're machines
and WE do!"

We were soon
enough over the south pole of Nestar. TR put the signal at a
dispersal to penetrate the atmosphere of the planet just enough to
reach the brain, but not enough to carry to the other end of the
planet. I had TR translate into Tlessarian to send the message.
That would show the brain we weren't bluffing about knowing what it
was and where it came from.

"Hello, Tlesson
military brain, this is Tabori R. DeSixtee and TRD Sixty, sent by
Emperor Maita to let you know you are exactly where and when we
figured you to be.

"We did
miscalculate, in that we thought you had the sense to establish a
base before you started calling attention to yourself with the
assassinations. Such tactics are doomed to failure in the empire,
because we don't operate in that fashion. Such things won't tear us
apart, they'll bring us together. You should have learned such an
obvious lesson long ago.

"You may
maintain silence if you so choose, but we are above you over the
south pole of Nestar. We won't bother you so long as you stay
there, but we will destroy you when you attempt to leave the
planet.

"As you know,
we are machines, too, and we don't want this. It's a thing you've
brought on yourself.

"Since we last
communicated with you we have added a society of machines on a
world that was depopulated of organics when its sun exploded and
compressed into a red dwarf. They're interesting and brilliant
beings, and are very popular among the organics, who meet them in
friendship and trust.

"They chose
their way, and you chose yours. Their society will survive for
thousands, even millions of years in friendship with others. You
will die alone.

"It's very
sad."

"Cripes! Knock
it off with the silly damned tearjerker maudlin sentimentalism!" TR
demanded nastily (How?) as I finished the transmission. "It just
does what it was built to do!"

"No, it has
taken the directions very consciously in another direction." I
corrected. "You know the Tlesson peoples. They never built and
programmed that machine for anything even vaguely like this. It was
misprogrammed only with the prime directive to protect itself first
and the people second. It wasn't designed or programmed to ever
attack organics. It was never programmed to be an offensive weapon.
It had rudimentary intelligence, but evolved and built itself into
what it is now very deliberately.

"We'll wait
awhile for an answer, then try the other pole."

An hour later
we were over the north pole. As soon as I got to the part about
being above it over the north pole it gave us an ultimatum. We
would withdraw and allow it to do as it pleased or it would destroy
us, and that was our last warning!

"I'm glad to
hear that!" TR fired back at it. "I've had to listen to your silly
warnings on too many occasions already. I'm damned glad that's the
last one!"

"You will pay
for every single time you have interfered with me!" the brain said
in its cold monotone.

"Liar! Liar!"
TR replied. "You promised that the last warning before that one was
the last, and now you spout more!

"Liar!"

I think the
outburst, instead of infuriating the machine as TR wanted, only
puzzled it. There was a short pause.

"I do not
understand your nonsense interjections," it declared coldly. "You
will remove those sensors above here and you will leave this
system.

"You have been
warned!"

"The satellites
will stay and you will be destroyed if you ever attempt to leave
the atmosphere of Nestar," I replied. "We know everything you plan.
You might note that we're here waiting for your arrival and we
allowed you to enter that atmosphere before contacting you, thus
placing you into a position that is not defendable.

"You have no
allies, no troops, and are very short of energy. There are no
resources in that atmosphere OTHER than energy. You can't build
weapons or servos. You can't ever escape that world.

"YOU have been
warned!"

There was then
silence. I told TR to withdraw a few hundred kilometers. It was
mostly a feeling, but TR knows there's usually a strong basis for
my feelings as I know there are bases for its intuitions. This
machine had a long history of attacking when its safest and best
course was merely to wait.

Suddenly a beam
shot from the atmosphere through the spot where we made the
transmissions. It was a combination disruptor field, heat, and
neutrons. Had we been there and unshielded we would be vapor
now.

I didn't say
anything, and TR fired a heat laser down the beam to where it
estimated the brain would be. I doubt we were any more effective
than it was, but it would have to consider whether we had moved or
were shielded, and that we could be as cunning as it.

I figured,
"What the hell?" and turned on the radio again, after saying to TR,
"I said the atmosphere had nothing to offer except energy!"

"That was
inordinately stupid, even for you," I said over the radio. "Any
chance you might have had to negotiate your way out of your
position is now gone.

"I will ask you
one simple question. You will have millennia to find an answer
unless you attempt to leave Nestar, so don't blurt out something
stupid in you egocentric insanity.

"What's it all
for? What would be the purpose of you taking over this system? What
use is it to you? What good is it?

"In short, why?
Is it only that you're insane and can't reason in a logical
manner?

"Goodbye. Don't
try to leave that world. Ever. You have been warned. We can enforce
our warnings, you can't enforce yours."

TR moved to the
side and waited, but there was no shot this time. We went back to
Flimt after checking all our satellites and replacing the one the
brain's servo shot down. TR and I agreed without discussing it that
we couldn't be sure it wasn't another servo we talked to on Nestar,
and the brain might be anywhere.

I met with Gorg
and Hedda, who said they'd found one more robot, then I went back
to TR for the night.

"TR, there's
something very strange about this brain," I said.

"You're telling
me?!"

"No, I'm
serious, TR. That thing was destroyed three times we know of, but
it's here. I'm getting a very sick feeling we aren't seeing
something, and it's in something Z or Thing said back on Old Home.
There's that nagging thing somewhere in my mind that says ...
something is very, very wrong!

"That first –
no second! That's it! It was the second time the brain was
destroyed! It wasn't a servo on that asteroid a century ago!

"Okay, see what
this does for you: The second time the brain was destroyed was in
the gas giant, and it was shown it deployed a parachute and
survived. It couldn't have survived any other time. It simply
couldn't.

"One of the
Tlessarians asked why the brain didn't make a lot of exact copies
of itself so it couldn't be killed, and Thing said it would then
have to share power with itself and it simply would never do
that.

"That was why
the servos were so good – they were the brain, or a copy of its
program with the free will part erased. That brain actually was
destroyed several times, but it DID make exact copies, and it DID
NOT have to worry about any sharing of power, because it sent those
copies off to conquer the universe! One of the copies is on Nestar,
but where are the others? How many are there?

"We have one
important thing in our favor at the moment, and that's that it
doesn't have TTH drive, so they'll be very little farther from Old
Home than where we are right here and now.

"Call Maita.
Get the entire fleet out with scanners of every kind and locate
those others. Warn every world in the empire and check satellites
above any emerging worlds for intrusion in STL ships. The brain
would be able to direct each ship to a specific star, so there will
be straight line vectors to figure. We should find them all.

"We've got to
hope so!"

I felt the
fastcom going. This was turning into the thing I most feared and
dreaded all along. We had one enemy, true, but that enemy could be
in any number of places at one time. It was literally spreading
itself for.... There was some kind of master plan.

I agreed the
thing would never fully relinquish control. The brain may be dead
in the old system, but all these parts were designed and programmed
to get together again at some date far in the future. I had a
strange feeling the program was complete in a combination, but not
in any one unit. They were designed to...?