Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (92 page)

Of course, when
they were on one of the spaceships they didn't go for so much rough
and tumble physical play, but concentrated on the insults and
one-upmanship word play – though Z and Thing would run all over the
ships playing tricks on one another. They didn't take chances on
doing any damage to each other. Tab or his partner robot in the
detective business, Kit, were indestructible so far as this sort of
thing was concerned. They must be careful they didn't damage the
Terran, Z, or Thing, the little tentacled Mentan.

Maita was a
very large ship so there was plenty of room (And rooms) for them to
run around in, but Tab's ship, TRD-60, and Kit's ship, T6, weren't
so large. At first Tab hadn't been able to understand these games,
which were truly children's amusement, but he learned to feel the
real deep affection they shared and developed the sense of fun they
also shared. The games kept them mentally as well as physically
sharp. The hardest part for others was to understand why Thing,
with an intelligence too high to measure, would go for this
slapstick form of play and humor. It was also the hardest part for
the crew to get anywhere ahead of Thing in the games.

Z and Kit came
along the path and stopped to laugh at Tab sitting there in the
dirt. Thing dropped out of a tree onto Kit's head, then sprang
across to sit on Z's shoulder.

[ Tab seems to
have a lot in common with a wallowbeast. It's disgraceful the way
he rolls around in the dirt! You'd think his upbringing would put
him above such animalistic antics! ]

Tab suddenly
sprang up to grab Thing and wallow it around in the dust.

"See how
enjoyable it is?" he asked. "Now you know why I do it! It's
fun!"

Lars, a Parf
artist, came down the path to stop, staring with its large owl-like
eyes at the robot and Mentan rolling around in the dirt.

"What a
picture!" he declared. "Not one any respectable artist would care
to paint, but a picture.

"Emperor Maita
has a message on the com on your terrace, Z."

He turned to
stroll on down the path on his four legs as Tab stood with Thing
hanging onto his shoulder. The Parf are four-legged, two-armed
beings with feathers and vestigial wings. They are among the finest
natural artists in the galaxy. They have truly amazing skills with
lines and perspectives and see in a much wider spectrum than most
other races so can get shadings and hues much closer to reality
than most.

The group went
back to the com unit where Z asked Maita what it wanted.

*You and Thing
can come along on a little trip if you're not doing anything and
want a bit of excitement. I want to start the exploration on the
galactic bubble.*

"What about
us?" Kit asked.

"I've got a
case," TR replied. It used the same speakers as did Thing, Maita
and T6. "Leilanta wants us to go out the arm to Plamaita. There's
some colony or research station or something out there that's
having strange troubles."

"What kind of
trouble?" Tab asked.

"I'm not sure,"
TR replied. "We'll have to see when we get there."

"Well, we'll
set things up here and come with you, Maita," Z said. "At least I
will. I don't think you'll want this filthy example of Mentanhood
along! It's disgusting!"

Thing sprang
onto his shoulder and gripped him around the neck and head.

[ Doan hit me
no mo, massuh! I'se'll takes a bath! Honess I will! Doan hit me no
mo! ]

Z stepped into
the transmat so Tab shrugged and followed them while Kit came last.
They were all instantly in the large cave that was used as a hangar
for Maita and the two robots' ships. Z would arrange for the Tendd
and Joe's People to take care of his gardens. The crew often went
off exploring on the spur of the moment.

Tab and Kit
went directly aboard their ships to head for Plamaita. None of the
group were much for goodbyes.

They arrived at
Plamaita only a few minutes apart and met in close orbit, then went
aground to meet with Syntar and Leilanta, who were Z's grandson and
granddaughter, though Z didn't know that.

"You'll have
trouble with this one, I'm sure," Syntar said. "We have some
contact with several races farther out the galactic arm, most of
whom are the standard types. There's one, however, who are of the
rarest types of high intelligence in the galaxy, insectoids. There
are quite a large number of inhabited planets out here, most of
which have never been explored."

"We called you
and were intentionally vague about this because we know how Maita
reacts to this sort of thing and we believe you can handle it,"
Leilanta continued. "Our grandfather was with Maita for many years
before you were built, but this problem was there millennia before
even Maita was constructed."

The Maitans
knew about all the robots and about Maita. Z's son and his son's
children knew who their grandfather was, but it was kept from Z for
psychological reasons they all understood. Only the Zulians knew
more about things than the Maitans, but that's another story.

Tab remembered
then that these people had never met Kit or T6 so he introduced
them, being totally honest about their being machines. They
discussed the accidental route of becoming independently
intelligent for a few minutes before T6 finally exploded: "All
right!" it cried. "I know this is some kind of psychological
warfare against Kit and me! I want to say right here and now that
it's worked perfectly!"

"WHAT are you
talking about?" Tab asked.

"Syntar said
this was some kind of thing he wanted to keep from Maita," T6
replied. “Aren't you just a tiny bit curious? Older than
Maita?"

Syntar laughed
and Leilanta giggled.

"I’m afraid we
got so interested in you and Kit we forgot," Leilanta said. "The
Rrnslth, the insectoids, are being militarized. That's a normal
thing in some ways, but they haven't bred warriors for almost a
century except for a police force and for psychological feelings of
safety they get from having the warriors around. They've learned
not to war on one another and there are few of what they call
'bent' members of their society. We used the word 'crooked' or, as
grandfather says, 'warped,' instead of 'bent,' but the meaning is
that they refer to psychologically disturbed criminality."

The Maitans
understood the basic psychological implications of most criminal
behavior, but often stated that understanding a behavior pattern
isn't excusing it. There was no affliction of those sorts of the
mind where all those who suffered from it became criminals, which
proved absolutely there was choice by the individual involved to
make so a criminal was a criminal. It was by choice so wasn't
excused on some stupid pretext. There always remained that line
past which a person was insane and therefore was NOT in control of
his own actions, but that was seldom the case. Far more than ninety
five percent of criminals are criminals by choice. The Maitans
treated them as such.

"What we fear
is outside influence," Syntar explained. "From the way this is
happening, the insidious methods that are being used and the timing
we have calculated with an eighty three percent likelihood that
what we have here is Immins."

Tab actually
staggered as though he had been delivered a hard physical blow.
"But ... I mean ... that's impossible!" he cried. "The Immins are
extinct! They were quarantined on Orta! They've destroyed
themselves in worldwide nuclear war!"

Kit was fully
programmed with the history of the Immins, but his construction
hadn't been dreamed of when the disease on the galaxy that had been
the Immin race had supposedly ended.

"It seems
rather unlikely to me, too," he agreed. "What do you mean, timing?
How would it be possible?"

"Tab was here,
part of the group when this colony was rediscovered," Leilanta
said. "He knows of the methods used by ourselves and by Searcher to
ensure our survival. It's one hundred seven years since the Immins
were removed from this part of space. The computations involved the
psychology of that race, though we also worked backwards from the
facts we hold. It was the computers who figured them into the
equations. They're the only ones who fit. There's plenty of energy
available out here to make it work."

"They would've
set their timers for an even hundred years so they've had seven
years to begin their schemes again," Tab said. "You felt Maita
shouldn't know?"

"You know Maita
even better than we do," Syntar answered. "YOU tell ME what it
would do!"

"It would bring
the fleet out here and we would search every planet, asteroid and
anything else on the entire arm," TR said. "At any sign of an Immin
that world would become a seething lava globule in space!"

"We think they
should be extremely limited in their numbers," Leilanta said. "You
can take care of the problem and hand Maita a fait accompli."

"You sound like
Z," TR said dryly. "Give us some coordinates and we'll see what we
can find. Swaz and Kheth won't be good disguises around Immins. Tab
was one of the principal reasons for their downfall and the Kheth
bitterly hated the Immins."

"There are
Bentans everywhere out here and they are known to have a high
number of self-motivated criminal types among them," Syntar
suggested. "Bentans worked with Immins in many of their schemes or
were easy to use in any case. They are a somewhat immature race and
retain a number of personal greeds that allows criminality."

"Bentans it
is!" T6 interjected. "Give us the coordinates and you two get into
the shops for modification. We'll see what we can do. I'm running
every encounter any of our little group ever had with Immins and
can see quite a number of ways to handle things under quite a
number of situations. Their personal greed – which seems to be the
pervading quality of the race's males – is easy to use against
them.

"Great
colliding galaxies! The damned males are greed-motivated and the
females delusional power-motivated! They're downright primitive
socially! They were exposed to mature races for more than sixty
eight thousand years and didn't mature in any way! What a
race!"

"I'd say the
insectoids would be easy for the Immins to fool because the female
is dominant in insectoids as well as among Immins," Leilanta said.
"TR, T Six, N oh thirty four and oh N fifty eight seven sixty two
is where you'll find Glrvcch and the insectoids."

They said their
goodbyes and Tab and Kit went into their ships for modification
while TR and T6 used TTH4 to travel to Glrvcch. They landed in
separate parts of the world as Bentan traders. Tab would be selling
luxury items of all types with a hint that they weren't necessarily
honestly come by while Kit would be selling heavy equipment in
general. He would say he could get anything, with a stress on any.
He would hint he could even get weapons. The big empire-restricted
kinds of weapons. If there was one thing Immins could be counted on
to want it was big weapons.

And the
trappings of primitive luxury.

* *

Kit went along
the titchroplat alloy pad toward the offices. He wasn't used to
meeting insectoids and his input showed they would either be very
easy or very hard to deal with. There wouldn't be any middle
ground. There were certainly plenty of military types around. Even
to him it seemed an unbalanced thing for so many of them to be on a
supposedly peaceful planet – one with virtually no crime and
definitely no war.

He went into
the office to find three slightly different kinds of the Rrnslth
behind the desks. They all looked at him in what he could only
describe as an expectant way. They had no hint of expression and
the faceted eyes told him nothing. He read the signs in front of
each, knowing they would be bred and trained in specific
capacities. He selected the one marked "information" and approached
it. There was a microphone which rose from the desk toward him.

"I am a free
trader and am seeking information about accommodations and about
who to contact to sell my wares," he requested.

There was a
buzzing, humming, scraping, clicking series of sounds coming from a
speaker as he spoke. The desk clerk made much the same types of
sounds as the speakers translated into Maitan Galactic
Standard.

"You appear to
me to be of the race we call Bentans so I will suggest hotels B
three and C five," it said. "There is a chamber of commerce
building at F seven. A car is waiting. It is fully automatic so you
may simply push buttons with corresponding letters and numbers for
your chosen destination. There is a grid city chart in Maitan there
on the wall and a listing of places of special interest. We would
recommend that you familiarize yourself with it to an extent so you
may move freely about.

"There are not
translating devices in all places. We cannot hear the frequency
ranges of your speech as you cannot hear the ranges of ours.

"We wish you a
pleasant stay. Please feel free to move about as you wish and to
call on this or any office if you feel we may serve you."

That was
friendly enough!

Kit thanked the
clerk and went to the chart. He was programmed in the language and
couldn't only hear it, he could speak it. As no Bentan could
possibly do so he mustn't let it be known. It may be very important
that he could understand them. They would feel no inhibition to say
anything at all in his presence as they couldn't know he would
understand.

The chart was a
circular gridmap with letters from A in the center to Q on the
outer rim. The numbers were radians spreading from the center. All
radians were odd numbers and were equally spaced until G, where the
even numbers were added between the odd. By knowing any number and
letter you would be able to go directly to that intersection. B3
was such an intersection, but the hotel was on a corner and
wouldn't be missed. Its actual listed address was B3B1, which meant
the intersection of B and 3, the next letter, if it were A, was
straight ahead to the right, B meant to turn right and the address
was on your left, C meant turn right and the address would be on
your right, etc. 1 meant it was the first door you would come to on
B3B. Facing away from the center of the city, the addresses on your
left were read from the radian to your left or from center city
outward on the radians. To his left would be A3B12, when B3B1 was
to his right.