Perhaps his sample group of experimental subjects over the centuries was too small. He might need to vivisect and dissect tens of thousands more before he could draw meaningful conclusions. A monumental task, but as a machine Erasmus had no limitations on energy, or patience.
With one of his personal probes, he touched the cheek of the larger of the two girls and sensed her steady pulse. Every droplet of blood seemed to withhold secrets from him, as if the entire race was participating in a massive conspiracy against him. Would Erasmus be considered the ultimate fool of all time? The fibrous probe glided back into access channels in his composite skin, but not before he intentionally, petulantly, scratched her skin.
When the independent robot had taken these identical twins from the worker pens, their mother had cursed at him and called him a monster. Humans could be so parochial, failing to see the importance of what he was doing, the larger picture.
With a self-cauterizing scalpel-beam, he cut into the cerebellum of the smaller girl (who was 1.09 centimeters shorter and 0.7 kilograms lighter—therefore, not “identical” at all), and watched the brain activity of her drugged sister go wild—a sympathetic reaction. Fascinating. But the girls were not physically connected to each other, not through body contact nor by machine. Could they sense one another’s pain?
He chided himself for his lack of foresight and planning. I should have put the mother on the same table.
His thoughts were interrupted by Omnius, who spoke from the nearest wallscreen. “Your new female slave has arrived, a last gift from the Titan Barbarossa. She awaits you in the sitting room.”
Erasmus raised his bloody metal hands. He had looked forward to receiving the woman captured from Giedi Prime, supposedly the daughter of the League Viceroy. Her familial ties suggested genetic superiority, and he had many questions to ask her about the government of the feral humans.
“Will you vivisect her as well?”
“I prefer to keep my options open.”
Erasmus looked down at the twin girls, one already dead from the interrupted exposure of her brain tissue. A wasted opportunity.
“Analyzing docile slaves gives you irrelevant results, Erasmus. All thoughts of revolt have been bred out of them. Therefore, any information you derive is of questionable applicability for military purposes.” The evermind’s voice boomed from the wallscreen.
Erasmus soaked his organic-plastic hands in solvent to eliminate the drying blood. He had access to thousands of years of human-compiled psychological studies, but even with so much data it was not possible to create a clear answer. Many self-proclaimed “experts” offered wildly disparate answers.
On the table, the surviving twin continued to mewl her pain and fear. “I disagree, Omnius. The human creature is innately rebellious. The trait is inherent in their species. Slaves will never be entirely loyal to us, no matter how many generations they have served. Trustees, workers, it makes no difference.”
“You overestimate the strength of their will.” The evermind sounded smugly confident.
“And I challenge your flawed assumptions.” His curiosity piqued, sure of his private understanding, Erasmus stood before the swirling screen. “Given time and adequate provocation, I could turn any completely loyal worker against us, even the most privileged trustee.”
With a long litany of data from his storehouse of information, Omnius disputed this. The evermind was confident that his slaves would remain dependable, though perhaps he had been overly complacent, overly lenient. He wanted the universe to run smoothly and efficiently, and did not like the surprises and unpredictability of League humans.
Omnius and Erasmus debated with growing intensity until the independent robot finally put a stop to it. “Both of us are making conjectures based upon preconceived notions. Therefore, I propose an experiment to determine the correct answer. You select a random group of individuals who appear to be loyal, and I will demonstrate that I can turn them against the thinking machines.”
“What will that accomplish?”
Erasmus replied, “It will prove that even our most reliable humans can never be fully trusted. It is a fundamental flaw in their biological programming. Would that not be useful information?”
“Yes. And if your assertion is correct, Erasmus, then I can never again trust my own slaves. Such a result would call for a preemptive extermination of the entire human race.”
Erasmus felt uneasy, that he might have trapped himself by his own logic. “That…may not be the only reasonable conclusion.” He’d wanted to know the answer to a rhetorical question, but also feared it. For the inquisitive robot, this was much more than a mere wager with his superior; it was an investigation into the deepest motivations and decision-making processes of human beings.
But the consequences of discovering the answers could be terrible. He needed to win the argument, but in such a manner that Omnius did not shut down his experiments.
“Let me ponder the mechanics of implementation,” Erasmus suggested, then gladly emerged from the laboratory to go meet his new female house slave, Serena Butler.
The universe is a playground of improvisation—it follows no external pattern.
—COGITOR RETICULUS,
Observations from a Height of a Thousand Years
Numbers and concepts danced in her dreams, but every time Norma Cenva tried to manipulate them, they slipped away like snowflakes melting on her fingers. Staggering into her laboratory, haggard, she stared at equations for hours until they became blurred lines before her eyes. She erased part of a proof with an angry swipe across the magnetic board, then began again.
Now that she worked under the auspices of the legendary Holtzman, Norma no longer felt like a failure, a misshapen disappointment to her mother. With telepathic powers, a Sorceress had struck successfully against the thinking machines on Giedi Prime. But Norma’s field-portable scramblers had also been a part of the victory, though Savant Holtzman had not emphasized her role in the generation of the idea.
Norma cared nothing for fame or credit. More important was her contribution to the war effort. If she could only derive some meaning from these wandering, infinitely promising theories….
From the high blufftop labs, Norma could daydream while staring at the Isana River. Sometimes she missed Aurelius Venport, who always treated her with such care and kindness. Mostly, though, she pondered wild ideas, the more unusual the better. On Rossak, her mother had never encouraged her to consider impractical possibilities, but here Tio Holtzman welcomed them.
Even though self-aware computers were forbidden on the League Worlds, and most especially on bucolic Poritrin, Norma still spent much of her time attempting to learn nuances of how those complex gelcircuits worked. In order to destroy, one must first understand the target.
She and Holtzman occasionally had dinner together, chatting over ideas as they sipped imported wines and savored exotic dishes. Barely tasting the food, Norma spoke with intensity, moving her small hands, wishing she had a stylus and a marking pad at the dining table so she could sketch out concepts. She finished her meals quickly and wanted to hurry back to her rooms, while the great inventor would sit back over a rich dessert and listen to music. “Recharging my mind,” he called it.
Holtzman liked to engage her with tangential subjects, talking about his previous successes and accolades, reading proclamations and awards that Lord Bludd had given him. Unfortunately, none of those conversations had led to engineering breakthroughs, as far as Norma could determine.
Now she stood with lights glimmering all around her. She looked at a suspended crystal slate the size of a large window. It was coated with a thin film of flowing translucence that retained every stroke as she scribed her thoughts and notations. An old-fashioned device, but Norma considered it the best way to record her wandering ideas.
She stared at the equation she had written, skipping steps and making intuitive leaps until she arrived at a quantum anomaly that seemed to allow an object to be in
two places at once. One was merely an image of the other, yet through no calculational proof could an observer determine which one was real.
Though uncertain how this unorthodox concept might be used as a weapon, Norma remembered her mentor’s admonishment to follow every path to its logical conclusion. Armed with equations and ready for a full simulation, she hurried down the glowstrip-illuminated laboratory corridors, until she reached the room full of surviving solvers.
Slave technicians hunched over their tables and used calculation devices, even at this late hour. Many seats remained empty, fully a third of the solvers having succumbed to the deadly fever. Holtzman had acquired a new group of Zenshiite workers from Poritrin’s “Human Resources” quarter, but those replacements were not yet sufficiently trained for higher-order mathematics.
After handing her new problem to the lead solver, Norma explained patiently what she wanted the slaves to do, how she had already done some of the setup for them. She encouraged the hard-working solvers in the direction she wanted them to take, emphasizing the importance of her theory—until she looked up to see Holtzman himself in the doorway.
Frowning, he drew Norma down the hall. “You are wasting time trying to befriend them. Remember, the solver-slaves are just organic equipment, processors providing a result. They are replaceable, so don’t give them personalities or temperaments. Only the solutions matter to us. An equation has no personality.”
Norma chose not to argue, but went back to her rooms to continue her efforts alone. It seemed to her that the more esoteric orders of mathematics did indeed have personalities, that certain theorems and integrals required finesse and considerations that simple arithmetic never demanded.
Pacing, she wandered around to the back of the crystal slate, where she peered at the reverse of her equations. The backward symbols looked like nonsense, yet she forced herself to stare at the question from a different perspective. Earlier, the solvers had finished the previous set of tedious calculations, and while she had checked their work, the result still perplexed her.
Knowing in her heart what the answer must be, she disregarded the slaves’ result and returned to the front of the erasable crystal, where she scribbled so furiously that silvery numbers and symbols soon flowed across the hanging plate. Afterward she went frontside to back, trying to discover an exit from her quandary.
Tio Holtzman jarred Norma out of a theoretical universe. He looked at her in surprise. “You were in a trance.”
“I was thinking,” she said.
Holtzman chuckled. “On the wrong side of the slate?”
“It opened new possibilities for me.”
He rubbed his chin, where gray beard stubble protruded. “I’ve never seen anyone concentrate as hard as you do.”
In her mind she circled the solution she had developed, but could not put it into words. “I know what the result should be, but I cannot reproduce it for you. The solvers keep coming up with a different answer than I expect.”
“Did they make an error?” He looked angry.
“Not that I can determine. Their work seems to be correct. Nonetheless, I feel that it is…wrong.”
The scientist frowned. “Mathematics doesn’t exist to fulfill wishes, Norma. You must go through the steps and abide by the laws of the universe.”
“You mean the known laws of the universe, Savant. I simply wish to extend our thinking, stretch it and fold it back in on itself. I’m certain there are ways around the problem. Intuitive loopholes.”
His expression seemed patronizing, perplexed but disbelieving. “The mathematical theories we work with are often esoteric and difficult to grasp, but they always follow certain rules.”
She turned, frustrated that he continued to doubt her. “Blind adherence to rules allowed the creation of the thinking machines in the first place. Following the rules may prevent us from defeating out enemies. You said it yourself, Savant. We must look for alternatives.”
Seizing a subject that interested him at last, he clasped his hands together, long sleeves draped over his knuckles. “Indeed, Norma! I have completed my design work on the alloy-resonance generator, and the prototype is next.”
Too preoccupied to be tactful with him, she shook her head. “Your alloy-resonance generator won’t work. I have studied your early designs exhaustively. I think it is fundamentally flawed.”
Holtzman looked as if she had reached up and slapped him. “I beg your pardon? I have been through all the work. The solvers have checked every step.”
Distracted by her equation-filled crystal slate, she shrugged. “Nevertheless, Savant, it is my opinion that your concept is not viable. Correct calculations are not always correct—if based on faulty principles or invalid assumptions.” Furrows formed on her brow as she finally noticed his crestfallen reaction. “Why are you upset? You told me the purpose of science is to try ideas and dismiss them when they don’t work.”
“Your objection has yet to be proven,” he said, his voice brittle. “Show me in my designs where I have made an error, please.”
“It’s not so much an error as…” She shook her head. “It’s an intuition.”
“I don’t trust intuition,” he said.
Disappointed by his attitude, she drew a deep breath. Zufa Cenva had never adhered to any graceful social skills, and Norma had developed few of her own. She had grown up isolated on Rossak and been dismissed by most of those who knew her—with the exception of Aurelius Venport.
Holtzman seemed to have an agenda beyond what he preached. But he was a scientist, after all, and she felt they had been brought together for an important purpose. It was her duty to point out when she felt he was making an error. He would have done the same for her. “I still think you shouldn’t devote any further time or resources to the resonance-generator project.”
“Since the resources are mine to distribute as I see fit,” Holtzman said in a huff, “I will continue, and hope to prove you wrong.” He left her chamber, grumbling.
She called after him in an attempt to ease the situation. “Believe me, Savant, I hope you prove me wrong.”
There is a certain malevolence about the formation of social orders, a profound struggle, with despotism on one end and slavery on the other.
—TLALOC,
Weaknesses of the Empire
Poritrin’s river delta was not at all like Harmonthep’s gentle rivulets and marshes. More than anything, the slave boy Ishmael wanted to go home…but Ishmael didn’t know how far away that was. At night, he often awoke screaming in the compound, battling nightmares. Few of the other slaves bothered to comfort him; they carried their own heavy burdens.
His village had been burned back on Harmonthep, most of the people captured or killed. The boy remembered seeing his grandfather stand up to the slavers, quoting Buddislamic sutras to convince them of the wrongness of their actions. In response, the vile men had ridiculed old Weyop, making him look insignificant and ineffectual. They might as well have killed him.
A long time after the slavers had stunned Ishmael, he’d awakened inside a coffin of plasteel and transparent plates, a stasis chamber that had kept him immobile but alive. None of the new slaves could cause trouble as the Tlulaxa ship traveled across space to this strange world. All the captives had been awakened for unloading…and sale in the Starda market district.
Some of the Harmonthep prisoners had tried to escape without any idea of where to run. The slavers stunned some of them just to quiet their wailing and thrashing. Ishmael had wanted to fight back, but sensed he could accomplish more by watching and learning, until he found a better way to resist. He needed to understand Poritrin first; then he could consider how best to fight. It was what his sagacious grandfather would have counseled him to do.
Weyop had quoted sutras that told of imminent evil from outside, of soulless invaders who would steal them from their way of life. Because of those prophesies, the Zensunnis had left the company of other men. In the decaying Old Empire, people had
forgotten God and then suffered when the thinking machines took over. Ishmael’s people believed it was their fate, the great Kralizec, or typhoon struggle at the end of the universe, that had been foretold for millennia. Those who followed the Buddislamic creed had escaped, already knowing the outcome of that hopeless battle.
Yet that struggle had not ended according to the prophesy. Part of the human race had survived the machine demons, and now those people had turned against the “cowardly” Buddislamic refugees with revenge in their hearts.
Ishmael did not believe that the old teachings could have been wrong. So many sutras, so many prophesies. His grandfather had seemed certain when he spoke of the legends…yet still their peaceful Harmonthep village had been overrun, the strongest and healthiest taken as slaves. And now Ishmael and his fellows were on a far-off world, their bodies for sale.
Weyop had said that non-Buddislamic outsiders were condemned to eternal damnation…yet the Tlulaxa flesh merchants and the new masters on Poritrin controlled their food and their lives. The boy and his companions had no choice but to do as they were told.
Since Ishmael was the youngest captive, the owners expected little of him. They ordered his work group to watch over the boy, to make certain he completed his tasks…or if he failed, to pick up the slack.
Despite his aching muscles and blistering skin, Ishmael worked as hard as the others. He watched his despairing fellows waste time with complaints, an attitude that angered the owners and led to unnecessary punishments. Ishmael kept his misery to himself.
He spent weeks up to his knees in the slimy mudflats where ropes and stakes marked out fertile shellfish beds. He ran back and forth to basins that contained clam seedlings, scooped up handfuls of the tiny bivalves and rushed them out into the wet fields. If he cupped his hands too tightly, he crushed the delicate shells—such carelessness had already earned him a thrashing with a sonic whip when an agricultural supervisor saw what he had done. Like icy fire, the whip had made his skin bubble and spasm. The discipline left no mark, caused no physical damage, yet that single whip stroke burned a permanent scar in his brain, and Ishmael knew to avoid that forever.
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