by James Gunn
Milk and water were the only drinks served with the meal. Kirk commented on the rich flavor of the milk. “Where do you get milk in this desert of ice?” he asked.
“That’s wampus milk,” Linda said.
“The wampus is a mammal?”
“Like Earth’s whale,” Johannsen said.
“But how do you get milk from a wampus?” Kirk asked, his forehead furrowed with the effort of imagining the process.
Johannsen laughed. “We don’t get milk from a wampus,” he said. “They have to give it to us.”
“And how do they do that?” Kirk asked.
“It helps if you understand that a wampus calf drinks a dozen gallons of milk at a meal, and the mother wampus produces twice that much in case of twins. Often there is more than the calf can drink, and of course when calves are weaned at the age of two, production of milk continues for a bit.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you get it,” Kirk said.
“The mother wampus can turn off its production or cut back on it through a mental exercise that none of us understands, but even with the wampus mastery of its physiology the process takes a few days. In that period it gives the milk to us, along with whatever milk the calf doesn’t drink.”
“How?”
“The female comes close to shore, rolls over on its back, and we attach pumps,” Johanssen said. “It’s quite a sight.”
“I can imagine,” Kirk said. But he couldn’t. The picture of a wampus rolling over on its back to make its offering of nurturing liquid to alien humans simply wouldn’t take shape in his mind.
“We wouldn’t have been able to survive in these conditions without the help of the wampus,” Linda [127] said. “Its milk is a perfect food, rich in almost everything the human body needs for survival.”
“How could the wampus know what the human body needs?” Kirk asked skeptically. “That’s not something that would provide any evolutionary advantage.”
“But physiological control would,” Johannsen said, “and the wampus has developed an amazing ability to adjust its bodily functions to the environment. At first we were unable to stomach wampus milk. It made most of us vomit, and those that could keep it down developed severe diarrhea. That made sense, of course. Alien proteins are indigestible at best, poisonous at worst.”
“But the wampus was able to produce milk compatible with human physiology?”
Johannsen smiled. “Difficult to believe, isn’t it? We gave them samples of tissue and human fluids. They analyzed them internally and produced milk that not only is delicious but filled with all the necessary nutrients.”
“That makes them the most marvelous biological factory the human species has yet encountered,” Kirk said.
“More than that,” Johannsen said. “They’re intelligent, probably more intelligent than we are.”
“Because of their biology?” Kirk asked.
“Because of their brains,” Johanssen said, “which not only are far larger than humans’ but more convoluted and complex. And, I might add, far better integrated with their bodies. Unlike humans’, their bodies never have irrational desires. Wampuses don’t make war. They don’t fight among themselves. They don’t rape. They shelter the young and the weak. I’ve seen a mother wampus share its milk with an old wampus unable to feed itself any longer.”
“Anything else about this wonderful creature?” Kirk asked.
“It thinks great thoughts,” Johannsen said. “It has [128] access to racial memories, and those memories go back to the days when it lived on land before it chose to return to the more benign environment of the sea. It has not yet lost its vestigial legs that no longer could support its great weight on land but serve as guidance for the propulsion of its massive tail. And it thinks about those things as it goes about the daily processes of its existence that demand so little of its mental capacities. It thinks about the place of life in the universe and the ways in which life might develop in other environments, and the ways in which those environments might change, and the meaning of everything.”
An amazing truth was beginning to force itself into Kirk’s awareness. “If you know all this—” he began.
Johannsen nodded. “That is one of our secret weapons. We have been able to communicate with the wampus.”
It was an astonishing breakthrough, comparable to the development of the Universal Translator, and it would be a devastating loss to galactic civilization if the accomplishment, and the viewpoints and accumulated wisdom of the wampuses, should never reach the outside world. Kirk resolved once more to find a way, somewhere short of violence, to combat the threat represented by the Joy Machine, the threat not just to humanity and maybe to the other alien civilizations in the galaxy, but to the basic goal of all intelligence: understanding the universe.
“How do you propose to use the wampus as a weapon?” Kirk asked.
“I didn’t mean they were that kind of weapon,” Johannsen said. “Rather that our ability to communicate with the wampuses is something the Joy Machine doesn’t know about and we might be able to use for our defense. Wampuses don’t understand the meaning of ‘weapon,’ and they offer us no solutions about how to combat or destroy the Joy Machine. They [129] don’t even understand the meaning of joy or happiness, or sadness either, for that matter.”
“What do they understand?” Kirk asked.
“The processes of life,” Johannsen said. “The integration of the mind into the body, of the self into the group, and of the group into the environment. They are the universe’s great philosophers.”
“What kind of philosophy is it that doesn’t involve happiness or sadness?” Kirk asked.
“You have to understand,” Johannsen said, “that we are inferring a great deal. At the present we are dealing only with verbs and proper nouns, insofar as the wampuses can conceive of objects acting on other objects or objects distinct from their environment. But the process of translation, though difficult, is proceeding rapidly.”
“How did it come about?” Kirk asked. Their meal over, they had returned to the chairs by the stove.
“Through the wampuses mostly,” Johannsen said. “They have always hung about human settlements as if curious about us, or protective, or wanting to communicate. But they didn’t have the highly evolved human speech apparatus to shape sounds. We kept analyzing their sighs, hoping to differentiate one from another, echoing them back, getting nowhere. Finally we began to analyze the ultrasound waves that they used to echo range when they dived deep, and we realized that this was their medium of communication as well. Very sophisticated, very flexible.”
Kirk shook his head in astonishment. “Truly fantastic,” he said. “But what do you hope to do for them—except get them killed?”
“We would never do that!” Linda said.
“We’ll die first,” Johannsen said. “Wampuses are mentally and ethically superior to humans. We don’t belong on the same planet with them, but they don’t agree.” His voice filled with surprise. “They like us.”
“If they’re so mentally advanced,” Kirk said, “what do they suggest we do about the Joy Machine?”
[130] “They have a difficult time understanding machines,” Johannsen said, “much less a machine that we put hi charge of us and one that we depend on for what we consider our ultimate good.”
“So?”
“What they offer is philosophy,” Johannsen said. “They say there is no such thing as happiness or sadness, joy or grief, there is only what is—the movement and temperature of the water, the presence or absence of food, the sun, the weather, birth and life and death, and the existence and interdependence of all things, including the planets and the stars and the empty spaces between.”
“I can see where that would be a lot of help,” Kirk said ironically.
“If we could only learn to think like a wampus,” Johannsen said sadly, “we would have no problem with ephemeral matters. But we can only try to be more like them.”
“M
aybe we should just get the hell off this world,” Kirk said roughly, “and leave it to the Joy Machine and the wampuses. They seem to have nothing in common. Maybe they’d leave each other in peace.”
“If it were only possible,” Johannsen said. “But the existence of any independent intelligence is a threat to the Joy Machine, and eventually it will find a way to bring wampuses under its benign control. It will find a way to deliver something to them that they consider irresistible, or it will find a way to eliminate them—indirectly, of course, through a means intended for their own good, as the Joy Machine sees it.”
Kirk settled back in his chair. “So, the wampuses offer only the consolations of philosophy.”
“They will do what they can,” Johannsen said. “They recognize our anxiety even though they do not understand it. They believe us when we tell them there is good and bad, even though the concepts are [131] totally alien to them. They will help if we can tell them how.”
“Perhaps they could gather in the ocean west of Timshel City,” Kirk suggested, smiling to show he wasn’t serious, “and focus their ultrasound on the foundations of the city. Maybe, like Jericho, the walls would come tumbling down.”
“We’ve thought of that,” Johannsen said, “but our physicists tell us that the coast, though unstable and susceptible to temblors, would suffer at best a small quake. And if the wampuses were identified as the source, it might put all of them in peril.”
“You said you had a final plan,” Kirk said.
“A frontal attack to destroy the Joy Machine,” Johannsen said. “Oh, I know what Marouk believes, that the Machine has distributed its functions so broadly that the original machine is only a symbol. But symbols are important, and even a brief interruption in payday might bring people to their senses. And if there are secondary Joy Machine centers, the destruction of the original machine might expose the location of the others so that they, too, could be attacked, if not by us, then by our successors, whoever they may be.”
Kirk shook his head. “You wouldn’t stand a chance against people like Stallone Wolff and his security forces, or the various defensive systems the Joy Machine could throw against you.”
“We would,” Johannsen said, “if we had a diversion from the Enterprise. Phasers. Photon torpedoes. Even a landing party. Anything that might pull away the defenses long enough for us to reach the World Government building.”
“I’ve told you before,” Kirk said, “that’s impossible. The Prime Directive—”
“The hell with the Prime Directive!” Linda said.
Kirk looked at her in astonishment, but admired her passion.
“Linda’s right,” Johannsen said. “Timshel is part [132] of the Federation, and the Prime Directive simply isn’t operative here.”
“Nevertheless,” Kirk said, “I cannot agree to the use of the Enterprise as a weapon. Force is a feeble weapon against ideas. The only thing that can combat ideas is better ideas.”
“That’s all very well,” Johannsen said wearily, leaning forward in his chair to emphasize his point, “and the wampuses might agree with you. But De Kreef’s idea is the most powerful one around, and the Joy Machine is likely to implement it in such a way that every other idea will crumble before it.”
“I can’t believe that,” Kirk said. “Freedom, independence, variety, responsibility, evolution—all these are more powerful ideas than happiness.”
“Noble sentiments,” Johanssen said, “but just words. They are words and sentiments I agree with, but we can’t see them or feel them. They are abstractions. The Joy Machine is a reality, and it offers real, verifiable happiness—or, more accurately, pure pleasure. You can feel it, touch it, experience it. Who is going to trade paradise for something as insubstantial as freedom or independence?” He looked around the room at the small band of people, dwindled to only a few eating at the second shift as the others had gone about their duties. “Only a handful.”
“Do you think Adam and Eve would have left the Garden of Eden if they had had a choice?” Linda asked.
“They had a choice,” Kirk said, “and they chose to know good and evil.”
“But even then, they had to be driven out,” Linda said, “and kept from returning by a flaming sword.”
“That’s what we’re asking,” Johannsen said. “A flaming sword. That’s what we’ve pinned our hopes on. And only the Enterprise can supply it.”
“Then you’ll have to find another way,” Kirk said.
“It seems as if, by your scruples, you are [133] condemning us and our friends and relatives, indeed all Timshel, to the rule of the Joy Machine.”
“Principles, perhaps; a bit more than scruples.” Kirk held up his left arm. “And, as you can see, my friends and I are just as much a part of Timshel as you are.”
Johannsen spread his hands out with the palms up as if they were holding something precious, a heap of coins or jewels, or a baby. “Well, soon you won’t be the only Federation crew in that situation. The Joy Machine is preparing to share its blessings with the rest of the galaxy.”
“Is that true, or simply another ploy in your attempt to convince me to use the Enterprise?” Kirk asked.
Linda shook her head.
“How would you know something like that?” Kirk continued.
“Marouk has told us,” Johannsen said, “and his information has been confirmed by the few informants we have left within Timshel City.”
“How can you have informants within Timshel City?” Kirk asked skeptically. “Everybody but the Marouks are wearing bracelets.”
“A few people can wear bracelets, get their payday, and still retain an element of independence,” Linda said.
Kirk thought back to his own experience touring Timshel City. De Kreef had been beyond reach; Kirk could draw Dannie out enough to talk to her; and Wolff had seemed relatively unaffected. Perhaps susceptibility to payday varied according to assigned task, body type, brain chemistry, or perhaps even that indefinable quality called character.
“Still, how would they know?” Kirk asked.
“Marouk has said that the Joy Machine has been asking questions about other worlds and how they operate, and if they, too, have Joy Machines. [134] Moreover, the factories are producing bracelets by the billions, and payday projectors by the millions—far more than Timshel could ever use. They’re being stored in warehouses near the spaceport.”
“That could simply be make-work.”
“If that were the case, why store them?” Johannsen asked. “The Joy Machine could simply dismantle them—or have a group of workers assigned to dismantle them—and have them put back together the next day.”
“Besides,” Linda said, “people who work in the warehouses believe there are far more boxes of bracelets and projectors than the Timshel City factories have produced. They believe the automated factories on the moons and asteroids also are assembling them, not just manufacturing components.”
“Still,” Kirk said, “exporting the Joy Machine’s system would be difficult and slow. As soon as the galaxy learned what it was up against, it could stop its spread.” Kirk realized that he was speaking about the Joy Machine as if it were some deadly disease. Perhaps it was.
“We’ve thought about it,” Linda said. “It could clone versions of itself and send them off to other planets. They could infiltrate themselves into the economies of unsuspecting worlds and then slowly take over. But that’s not the worst scenario.”
“And what is that?”
“We’ve talked about computer viruses,” Linda said. “In a way the Joy Machine’s program is a virus, and it could pass it along to any computer within its range, and that computer could pass it along to the next, and so on. The virus could spread geometrically, and the Joy Machine could take over the galaxy within days.”
It all made sense. Kirk remembered commenting on the overproduction of bracelets. And the Joy Machine’s mission to spread happiness would be difficult to limit. As soon as it learned about the
[135] existence of other worlds from the records available to it and the attempts by the outside world to communicate and the arrival of ships that were turned away, it would realize that it had a vast galaxy to which it could now carry its message of paradise. And it would learn about the countless billions of people on those other worlds who lived lives of quiet desperation, to whom it could bring comfort and pleasure—and the death of everything else. And then there were the alien races. Would they be immune? Would they take over human worlds and star systems once humans withdrew inside their own self-contained universes? Or would the Joy Machine find a way to analyze the aliens and provide them their own versions of ultimate happiness?
Kirk thought about the Joy Machine extending its tentacles throughout the Federation, throughout the galaxy, and shuddered. It could mean the end of everything.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” Johannsen repeated.
Kirk nodded. “How do we get in touch with the Enterprise? I lost communication when Marouk destroyed my transmitter. I would have expected Scotty, our chief engineer, to have beamed us up by now, but be must have difficulty getting a fix as Marouk suggested, or something else has gone wrong. After we prepare a detailed plan and timetable, the next step is to beam me aboard.”
“We have subspace radio,” Johannsen said.
“Can’t the Joy Machine trace the source?”
“The Nautilus has placed relay stations in remote islands across the ocean. So far, at least, our location has remained a secret.”
“I’ll have to reveal the location in order to beam aboard,” Kirk said.
“We’ll take that chance,” Johannsen said. “We’ll time it so that we will be on the way to our rendezvous before the Joy Machine can strike.”
[136] Kirk paused. “There’s only one problem.”
“Yes?” Linda asked.
“The Enterprise is executing a maneuver that brings it into normal space only for a second or two every few hours.”
“Then we’ll broadcast from the relay stations until we reach the Enterprise. When it is set to beam you aboard, we’ll broadcast your location at the last moment,” Johannsen said.
