by Jack Thorlin
At that point, the long game for him was clear. First, become the new favorite of Eldridge’s supporters, who wanted more services and a peaceful approach to the Ushah. Redfeather’s position as Safety Minister gave him credibility to present conciliatory Ushah policies without looking naive.
It had taken only a few months of aggressive media outreach to consolidate a leadership position in the Eldridgite Party. He had appeared on the Nightly Show, The Week Day, and a smattering of other programs, always bringing the same message: the Arcani were sufficient to keep the world appraised of Ushah intentions, and the Charlies would only bring on more bloodshed by presenting a credible threat to the Ushah.
The plan had worked well. For the most part, no one cared about the loss of land in Africa, but they were alarmed by the lurid accounts of battles in the jungle that left dozens of Ushah dead. It had been a very long time since human society had dealt with headlines about battlefield death, and Redfeather’s polling showed clearly that the average Terran just wanted the Ushah out of the news. They wanted to return to how the world had been, and Redfeather’s policies held out the promise of that return to normality.
The next step in the plan would be forcing Flower out of office. Redfeather had expected to accomplish that by quietly spreading rumors about the First Representative’s increasing alcoholism and erratic behavior. That process had already begun, but now events had accelerated the plan considerably.
Surveillance satellites had immediately detected the Charlie move to take Colony 4, and the Safety Ministry had access to the communications channel that the Charlies had used to deliver their ultimatum. Redfeather’s first act upon hearing the news was to order an aide to call Global News Network and leak the story. The leak ensured that the whole world knew of the rebellion less than 15 minutes after the robot known as Spartacus had made his transmission.
Redfeather had publicly distanced himself from the Charlie program in a way that Flower never could. When the public recovered from the shock of the news that Flower’s killer robots had gone berserk, she’d be swept from office faster than you could say “Terminator.”
Seven representatives had already defected to the Eldridgite Party, and more defections were expected. Soon, the Eldridgites would pass a vote of no confidence in Flower, and it would be time for a new First Representative.
Of course, Redfeather knew there were also several dangers in the rebellion of the Charlies. The most obvious danger was that he would be he would bear some responsibility for any failure to bring the Charlies to heel. He had been Safety Minister and would be First Representative, his opponents would point out. For once, there would be no one else to blame if he failed.
Only his closest advisors knew the other danger. To address that danger, he had convened a meeting of his most trusted deputies, many of whom would be moving with him to the First Representative’s office.
After one of his aides briefed those present on what had happened, Redfeather added simply, “The question before us is what to do. We’ll have a pass from the electorate for at least a few months—it takes time to clean up a mess this big—but then we’ll have to actually figure out what to do. But we don’t know what data the robots might find if they get to spend months in Colony 4.” Everyone understood what that meant. After all, they had been the ones who sent the emissaries with secret peace offers to the Ushah.
“The Charlies’ proposal that we transfer Ushah policy to Project Charlie is unacceptable,” Vanessa Chung, Special Assistant for Policy, said. “Project Charlie and its leadership have no democratic legitimacy. No one voted for them, and our oversight agencies have been ordered not to inspect them. Unsafe working conditions, sexual harassment, building code violations —who knows what they’ve got going on in Houston.”
Redfeather liked that line of argument, one he hadn’t used previously in interviews, but which would appeal to his kind of people. “I agree,” he said. “We clearly can’t turn over such an important policy portfolio to an unaccountable organization with so many potential problems.”
With that decision made by unspoken acclamation, Redfeather continued, “So, the Charlies will no longer take actions against the Ushah. But we can’t just let them sit in Colony 4, can we?” she asked with a brittle smile.
“For now, I think there’s no other option. There apparently isn’t any way to remotely shut down the Charlies, groused Francois Russell, Deputy Minister for Apprehensions. “Takagawa misled us about that.”
Even now, Redfeather noted to himself, Russell’s too canny to outright call Takagawa a liar, an accusation he wouldn’t be able to back down from if it were ever made public.
Russell continued, “We have to get rid of them. They are gathering all these rumors of human prisoners, and if the Ushah have records that the Charlies can find...”
Redfeather and the others knew what that would mean. Scandal wouldn’t begin to cover it. Critics would say that the peace overtures had encouraged the Ushah to take more land. Flower would say that Redfeather had been undermining her policies all along, and Redfeather would be forced to resign in disgrace. That outcome would, of course, drag down the careers of all the others at the meeting as well.
Clearing his throat, Russell said, “We have to assume the Charlies can kill people, since all we have is Takagawa’s assurance that they can’t target humans. But I think there would be substantial difficulties in defeating the robots in a conventional conflict. Not even the Ushah could manage that.”
The analysis was met with murmurs of agreement. Everyone present had seen videos of the Charlies in action, and no one had any doubt that the Arcani were no match for the vicious machines.
Russell’s analysis was not itself helpful, but his phrasing provoked an idea in Redfeather’s mind, and the audacity of it took his breath away.
* * *
It took 14 hours to set up the details, but around 9:58 in the morning the next day, Redfeather sat with Chung and Russell in an ornate conference room on the top floor of the Safety Ministry building. A speakerphone sat before them and a massive flat-screen television stood on the wall at the end of the table. All present watched the seconds tick down until 10 AM, glancing anxiously at the blank videoconference screen.
“What if they don’t call?” Chung asked nervously.
Russell said, “They’ll answer us. They haven’t ignored a request to talk in years.”
Sure enough, as the golden minute hand stood vertically in the clock, the speakerphone and television came to life.
On the screen, they could see a stout Ushah sitting on a dark wooden chair with intricate carvings. She wore no oxygen mask because she was within a domed city in Madagascar. Her face was lined with wrinkles, apparently an indicator of age in Ushah just as it was in humans. She wore simple yet elegant robes, and her nose and ears were decorated with rings of exotic and colorful metals. To her left and right stood a dozen advisors wearing the distinctive markings of their caste. Most were diplomat/leaders, but several wore the brown/green ornaments of the soldier caste.
An aide standing directly next to the seated elderly Ushah spoke in a voice closely imitating an aristocratic human. “Hello, this is Phalash, High Scribe of her highness the Enshath. As you can see, the Enshath is present and is ready to listen to your request.”
The Ushah linguist had clearly studied the customary human greetings and protocol, Redfeather thought. That was a good sign—the better the Enshath understood human intentions, the more likely a deal could be reached.
“I am Safety Minister Peter Redfeather. Within the week, I will be First Representative of the Terran Alliance, the most powerful human on Earth.” He felt the need to make his importance clear to this alien potentate.
Redfeather began the conversation. “As your highness knows, a contingent of our Charlie robots has seized control of one of your colonies on the mainland of Africa.”
On the video screen, he saw the Enshath’s features change colors slightly. He remembered from a briefing
that Ushah emotions are most often expressed with color changes in addition to facial contortions. Good, he thought.
The Enshath said something heatedly, and the linguist translated. “We have received your envoys over the past several years. They have repeatedly spoken of your peaceful intentions, how you would offer only superficial protest when we continued our expansion, how you would make those agreements official when you became First Representative. We have kept those contacts secret, as you requested. We have lied to our own people, told them the envoys were prisoners. And now you have violated the terms of our agreement.”
Redfeather said apologetically, “This attack was carried out in direct violation of our orders. We fear that we have lost control of the robots.”
The color that had been building in the Enshath’s face drained so suddenly that Redfeather wondered if she might be having the Ushah-equivalent of a stroke.
He decided against asking whether the Enshath was alright, fearing that it might be perceived as an insult. “The robots continue to occupy your colony. We have negotiated for the release of the Ushah who were taken prisoner by the robots, but we do not know what they will ultimately do. The robots threaten our safety as much as your own.”
A rumbling sound emitted from the Enshath, then she spoke in the quick, rasping lilt of her native tongue to Phalash, her translator, who relayed her words. “What then is your request of the Ushah?”
Now for the tricky part. “We propose a trade. You destroy the robots, and we will grant you sufficient living space for your people—forever.”
The Ushah advisors stirred, and one whispered sharply in the Enshath’s ear. She, in turn, spoke aloud. The translator said, “Please explain in greater detail.”
Redfeather took a deep breath. “Africa is the second largest continent on Earth, over a fifth of the land on the planet, with a wide variety of biomes and resources. We will evacuate it entirely and allow you to make it your permanent home.”
The Enshath’s face betrayed no response. “And how are we to destroy your robots?”
“We know that your mothership has weapons that can destroy the colony and the robots within,” Redfeather said neutrally.
This was a slight exaggeration. Takagawa had surmised that the Ushah had such a capability, and that the Ushah had refrained from using its full power because it did not want to provoke a full-out war with the Terran Alliance. Redfeather had no reason to think the Japanese roboticist was wrong.
The Safety Minister continued. “On this single occasion, we will permit the use of any weapons you choose to employ to destroy every last robot in Colony 4, so long as the weapons you use would not have any effect outside of Africa.”
The Enshath whispered quickly with one of her military advisors. Then she asked, “And what if our weapons would have some effect outside of Africa?”
Redfeather was surprised. What sort of weapon’s effects would be felt thousands of miles away? He knew that not even a nuclear weapon built by humanity in the 20th century had been remotely powerful enough to have significant effects on other continents. At least, not a single such weapon.
When pressed, he fell back on his political training, temporizing to the best of his abilities. “Our acceptance of such a deal would depend on what exactly the effects would be.”
Silence. A full minute passed without anyone making the slightest sound. Redfeather waited, tense with the knowledge that his plans for the First Representative chair depended on the deal with the Enshath.
Finally, the Enshath said, “Safety Minister Redfeather, I must speak with you alone. Please ask your advisors to leave the room. I will do the same with mine.”
The request took Redfeather aback. He was not the sort of politician who depended entirely on underlings, but he was reminded again of the stakes of the conversation. The fate of the world would rest solely on him.
Redfeather looked around the room. “Please leave us. I will open the door when you can rejoin the conversation.”
His advisors filed out, and he saw on the videoscreen that the Enshath’s advisors did the same. Suddenly, he was alone with the videoscreen, which depicted the leader of an entire species leaning in toward the camera with just a translator by her side.
The Enshath spoke slowly, and Redfeather sensed a weariness in her words.
“I am 95 Earth years old, aged in the traditional fashion without artificial stimulus,” the Enshath said through her translator. “I was born on the home world Shah over 15,000 years ago. When I close my eyes, I can remember the smell of the Great Jungle, see the falshah doing their mating dance. But all that was lost to the Great Destroyer.”
Redfeather remembered the term from the intelligence reports that had been generated after one of the robots had planted a data collection device on an Ushah computer network a few weeks ago. The Enshath continued her story.
“The threat of the Great Destroyer led my forebear, Enshath Sharaph, Twenty-Sixth of His Name, to commence a crash project to build a ship that could travel to distant stars. That ship, the Narazh, is now in orbit around this planet.”
The translator’s voice showed only the slightest strain as he heard this story for the first time from his leader. “I was an adolescent when the Narazh launched. The Narazh had been intended to seed a new planet like ours far enough away that the Great Destroyer couldn’t find it.”
Redfeather might have found the story interesting under other circumstances, but his political life was at stake, so he couldn’t resist prodding the Enshath along, “I don’t see what this has to do with the proposal.”
When his words were translated, the Enshath replied with annoyance, “You will. The Great Destroyer was our own creation. It began as a model of our economy, written by the most brilliant of our engineer caste. They wanted to predict trends to minimize waste. Instead of a static model, however, they wanted this program to adjust to new products, new information. Our scientists gave a mind to this software, a desire to learn so that it could fulfill its mission to maximize Ushah productivity.”
“The Great Destroyer took in all available information, growing steadily in size. Its physical form was dozens of buildings filled with mainframe computers, with several backup sites throughout our world. Within a few years, it determined that Ushah productivity was best maximized through automation—if the Great Destroyer built the right robotic complements, it could operate the planet at maximum efficiency.”
The Enshath’s voice hissed more noticeably. “Of course, the Great Destroyer had internal controls forbidding it from directly harming an Ushah. Its economic decisions would inevitably lead to some deaths, however, so we had to permit it to discount deaths against eventual gain. The Great Destroyer determined that it could kill any Ushah who resisted and simply tranquilize and imprison the rest until we all died from natural causes without running afoul of the programming.”
She paused, and Redfeather could see her shoulders shake with the effort to show as little emotion as possible. “Over the course of a decade, the Great Destroyer infected most other computer systems on our planet. Then, one day, it triggered its plans, destroying our military capability in one bloody day. It began rounding up and tranquilizing survivors. Only the very core of our leadership survived the day.”
A sound like a cough rattled out of the Enshath. “There was no time to create an effective plan of resistance. The only option identified by Enshath Sharaph was to use all available resources to save the species as a whole. And so the research vessel Narazh was cobbled together from the various research stations we had established on nearby moons and planets, as well as the hundreds of spacecraft available to us.”
Redfeather interrupted the narration. “Why didn’t the Great Destroyer disrupt your spacecraft?”
“The Great Destroyer’s objective was to maximize productivity on our home planet, not the rest of our solar system,” the Enshath said acidly. “That lapse allowed Enshath Sharaph to send thousands of frozen embryos up to th
e Narazh, to be carried on a voyage to a new home without fear of pursuit by the Great Destroyer. He also sent his favorite daughter, the one citizen living on the planet who would be saved: me.”
The video was clear enough to see the Enshath’s eyes glimmer with tears, another example of convergent evolution, as she remembered the last days of Shah. “As the Great Destroyer’s minions overran the last of our strongholds, my father told me on a video call, ‘Build our people a new home.’”
Now, Redfeather understood the Enshath’s reaction to news of the Charlie mutiny. “You think our robots could be new Great Destroyers.”
“Yes, I do,” the Enshath said gravely through his interpreter. “Artificial beings are the greatest threat to civilization. Our scientists say they are the filter that destroys almost all intelligent species. They are the reason you have not met human-like species besides us, and the Great Destroyer very nearly wiped us out. And now that your robots are acting on their own volition, we must destroy them. We have weapons powerful enough to accomplish that task, but the effects could reach beyond Africa,” the Enshath said vaguely.
