The Solarians

by Norman Spinrad

  Palmer felt as if he were a molecule of water caught up in a highly complicated system of piping. Whatever was operating the “pumping system” was controlling their passage through it simply by closing the proper valves. It mattered not at all that the contents of this piping system happened to be sentient human beings, for they had no control over their movements whatever.

  As they shot past the various intersections, Palmer was able to catch tantalizing glimpses of sections of the building before the panels slid shut. One passageway opened into a large hall filled with machinery where dozens of Duglaari scurried about at unguessable tasks. Another emptied into what seemed to be a storeroom. He caught glimpses of what might’ve been computer panels; of a commissary; of things completely beyond his experience.

  Finally, the moving strip deposited them in what was patently some kind of waiting room or cell: a small, empty cubicle, containing only a flat, hard bench and a speaker grill set high on one smooth wall.

  The panel slid shut behind them, and the speaker came on with an audible click.

  “Vermin. You will remain here until the Kor sees fit to interview you. Do not attempt to leave.”

  Then the speaker clicked off, and they were completely isolated, imprisoned somewhere in the vast bowels of the Hall of Wisdom.

  Numbly, Palmer sat down on the bench.

  “It…it’s not like a building at all,” he muttered. “It’s like being inside of some gigantic machine.”

  Lingo grinned sardonically and sat down beside him. “Jay,” he said, “you don’t know the half of it. Not ten percent of the truth. It is a machine. A computer.”

  “The whole building? One computer? But I thought this was the Hall of Wisdom, the Kor’s palace and the meeting place of the Council of Wisdom.”

  “Oh, it’s that too, in a way,” said Ortega. “But it is a computer.”

  “How can the whole building be a computer and be….?”

  Lingo laughed hollowly. “Not just the building,” he said. “The whole city. And in a sense, the entire Duglaari Empire.”

  “What?”

  “There are things the Confederation doesn’t know about the Duglaari Empire,” Lingo said, rising to his feet and pacing up and down the small cubicle. “Things it has been much better off not knowing. MacDay found some of them out—in the beginning, you know, every battle was fought to the death, and we did take an occasional Doog prisoner. Some of these things…well, they were one more good reason for isolating Sol from the Confederation. For if the Confederation should ever learn them….” Lingo shrugged bitterly. “The Confederation now despairs knowing only a small part of the truth—if they knew it all, they’d no longer have the will to continue fighting.”

  Lingo stopped and stared down at Palmer, his great green eyes heavy with the weight of some terrible burden.

  “Jay has a right to know the truth,” Robin said. “It’s his life that’s at stake as well as ours.”

  “You’re right, Robin,” said Lingo, with a little sigh. “We owe him that much. Jay, what do you know of the history of the Duglaari Empire? The Doogs are creatures of perfect logic; hasn’t it ever occurred to you to wonder what made them that way?”

  “Wasn’t it just an accident of evolution?” Palmer said, knowing at once from the look on Lingo’s face that he was wrong.

  “No,” said Lingo. “Life does not evolve along logical lines. Not unless it takes evolution into its own hands. Which is what happened to the Duglaari at least a millenium ago. We don’t know the whole story; what we do know was collected piecemeal from less than a dozen Doog prisoners, and there are great gaps in our knowledge. Apparently, the Duglaari had a great leader, perhaps a millenium ago, perhaps even longer. This Doog made himself the first Kor of all the Duglaari—at that time, it would seem that the office was simply that of absolute dictator. This first Kor was a genius. Unfortunately, he was also quite insane, at least by our standards.”

  Lingo stood up again, and resumed his nervous pacing, bouncing his voice off the walls as if speaking to no one in particular.

  “It’s so hard for a human being to comprehend what happened,” he said. “Even then, the Duglaari were very different from us, with much less individual consciousness, and more of a sense of collective identity. They were alien, and to really understand, you’d have to be able to think like a Doog madman, a paranoiac. This first Kor, like all sentient beings, knew he was mortal and doomed to die. But in his madness, he would not accept it. He was insanely determined that even after death, he would continue to rule the Duglaari Empire forever.

  “So he built the Council of Wisdom.”

  “Built it? But the Council is….”

  “No it isn’t!” Lingo snapped savagely. “MacDay thought it wiser to conceal the Council’s true nature, once he learned it. For the Council of Wisdom is not some Duglaari legislature, as the Confederation has been led to believe. It is…this city. But it is not a city—it is one immense computer. The first Kor built the computer and gave it total power over the entire Duglaari Empire. We think that there are duplicates of the Council scattered throughout the Empire, deactivated, but ready in case this one should be destroyed, but of course, their locations are the Doogs’ most closely kept secret.

  “But at any rate, we do know that the Empire has no government, as we think of governments. The computer is the government. But it is more than that—remember, the Council of Wisdom is not a complex of computers as you have on Olympia IV, it is not merely a machine for deciding policy. It is one huge, integrated computer, and its output circuits do not feed into data boards—it does not advise, for every military move, every economic move, everything, down to the design of hand-weapons, down to the personal lives of every single Duglaari is dictated by the Council of Wisdom.

  “No, the computer does not advise—it commands!“

  Palmer was completely staggered. “You mean…you mean the Kor is just a figurehead for the Council of Wisdom? The Duglaari Empire is ruled by…by a machine?“

  Lingo laughed darkly, and his face twisted into an ironic grin. “Nothing as simple as that,” he said. “It would be impossible—a computer, after all, is only a logic machine. It can only determine the most efficient means to a given end. But a living being must set those ends. The selection of goals is not a matter of logic. And logic must be founded upon premises. No system of logic can set its own premises; therefore, no computer can set its own goals. They must be set by intelligence, arbitrarily.”

  “In other words,” said Palmer, “a computer must be programmed. It must be given goals, or it will not act.”

  “Exactly!” said Lingo. “The function of the Kor is to program the computer. He tells the Council of Wisdom what the goals of the Empire are to be, and the computer runs the Empire accordingly.”

  “But then the Kor really does rule. The Council of Wisdom just takes care of the details.”

  “Ah, but that’s where the madness comes in!” said Lingo, slamming his hand down on the bench. “You see it is the computer which chooses the new Kor when the old one dies. The Council of Wisdom selects its own programmer! And remember, its control over the Empire is absolute. It determines everything. Including breeding. That was the madness and the genius of the first Kor. He gave the Council of Wisdom power over everything, total, absolute, complete power. It was the computer which made the Duglaari into a completely logical race—by a millenium of training, indoctrination and selective breeding. In a very real sense, all Duglaari have identical personalities—the personality of the Council of Wisdom itself!“

  “But why? What kind of monster would make his people over in the image of a machine?”

  “A most special monster,” said Lingo. “A monster craving immortality. Remember, the original computer could do nothing until it was given goals, until it was programmed. And it was the first Kor who set the original premises of the computer. He created its ‘personality’ and he used his own mind for the blueprint!”

  �
��I don’t….”

  “Think, man, think!” cried Lingo. “He made the computer into an image of himself! An image with the same madness, the same paranoiac goals and fears, but with the resources of an entire race to accomplish them! And infallible logic, one hundred percent efficiency, to boot. And to complete the circle, the Council chooses its own programmer. It chooses a Kor on the basis of how close his personality is to that of the original Kor—and for a thousand years, it has been breeding the Duglaari so that they are all as close to the original Kor as possible. Then it just chooses the most perfect duplicate available. Yes, Jay, the Duglaari Empire is made in the image of a machine, but that machine is the image of a being dead for over a millenium.”

  Palmer sat woodenly on the bench, scarcely daring to think. This, then was the true nature of the enemy! Not a government, not even a race, but in a very real sense one integrated immortal organism! No wonder the Computation Center on Olympia IV was hopelessly outclassed. It computed strategy for the General Staff, but the Council of Wisdom was the Duglaari Empire. The Empire was ruled by…by…?

  “But then what does rule the Duglaari Empire?”

  Lingo laughed sharply and shrugged. “You pays your money and you takes your choice,” he said. “In a sense, the first Kor actually succeeded in achieving the mad goal of immortality. The computer rules the Empire. The Kor directs the computer. But the computer chooses and molds to its image, the Kor. And the Council was molded in the image of the first Kor. Is the the Duglaaaari Empire ruled by the Kor? By the Council of Wisdom? Or by the ghost of a Doog dead a thousand years? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”

  “And this is what you think you can outwit? Six Solarians against an organism that is an entire empire?”

  Lingo stopped pacing. He stared directly at Palmer, and there was a fire in his eyes that instantly made Palmer believe, though in what he could not tell.

  “Yes,” Lingo said, in a whisper that was a shout, “we will fight the computer, the Kor and the whole bloody Empire. We will fight, and we will win! Because we must. The Duglaari Empire is a thing insane. A malignant cancer that threatens the death of an entire Galaxy. It must be destroyed, for the sake of all sentient beings everywhere! By the memory of MacDay, by the words of The Promise, a promise that was meant, Jay. We will destroy it! We must. We….”

  Suddenly, the panel slid open.

  “Vermin,” droned the wall speaker. “Enter the input channel at once. The Kor awaits you.”

  The input channel emptied into a cavernous rectangular chamber at least fifty yards in width, a hundred yards long and full three stories high. The moving strip continued on down the length of the great chamber, through a living corridor of immobile and fully armed Duglaari soldiers, hundreds of them, shoulder to shoulder down the entire length of the chamber.

  The entire rear wall of the chamber—fifty yards wide and three stories high—was the face of a gigantic computer; hundreds of square yards of controls, punchboards, data panels, tended by an army of Duglaari technicians, clambering over its face on many-leveled catwalks.

  Directly in front of this huge complex, haloed by the ever-changing light patterns, was a plain throne-like affair, elevated about three feet off the floor. A ring of small data panels formed a semi-circle around its base.

  Seated on the throne, and peering downward at the data panels was one lone and ancient Doog, his brown fur grizzled with gray, a microphone held loosely in one hand like a sceptre—the most powerful single individual being in the known Galaxy—the Kor of all the Duglaari!

  As the moving strip carried them inexorably towards the throne, Palmer could sense a terrible aura of power emanating from the being on the throne. This was the will, the might, the mind of an entire race channeled into one individual through the face of the giant computer at his back. It shone through all racial barriers, all inscrutability of alien features. Palmer’s heart sunk, and he felt like a fool in his comic-opera uniform.

  For this was Power.

  But a glance around him at the Solarians showed him something far more terrible. In the midst of hundreds of Duglaari soldiers, in the face of the Kor, of power personified, Ortega, Max, Robin and Fran rode the moving strip as if it were a special chbnience erected for them out of deference—and a rather inferior one at that. In their ominous black uniforms, with thin smiles of amused contempt on their faces, they looked every inch the representatives of the mystical legend that Confederation propaganda had made of Fortress Sol. They walked as if they owned the universe, and the illusion was so complete, that Palmer found himself believing it too.

  But if the other Solarians carried themselves like royalty, Lingo was a god. His blazing green eyes raked the faces of the Duglaari soldiers like the muzzles of twin lasecannon; such was the power in his stare that as he passed, each Doog was forced to avert his eyes—dogs stared down by their master. Lingo held his hands loosely at his hips, his mouth twisted in a grin that was light-years beyond contempt, a scorn that transcended defiance.

  Even though a part of him knew that there was nothing to back up the facade, Palmer’s soul was vitally stirred by the pretense itself. Their glacial pride might be nothing but a facade, but there was truth in its bravery. And that truth made him deeply proud of his humanity, and prouder still that these magnetic beings from Man’s home system had accepted him as a part of their Group. Somehow, the importance of the fact that he was likely to never leave this chamber alive receded into a far distance, leaving him filled only with the glory of the moment. They would face the Kor, the Council of Wisdom and the whole Duglaari Empire with every ounce of pride the human race could muster, and somehow, that in itself was a kind of terrible victory.

  The moving strip deposited them at the foot of the throne.

  “All will bow in deference to the will of all-knowing Duglaar,” droned the grizzled Kor.

  Hundreds of Duglaari soldiers dipped to one knee as a single organism. Lingo hand-signaled to Palmer to follow suit, and, reluctantly and awkwardly, Palmer obeyed.

  But the five Solarians, alone in the great chamber, remained standing.

  “Kneel, vermin, to the power of Duglaar,” droned the Kor, his leathery ears flapping like monstrous bats. “Know that I am Kor of all the Duglaari. Know that by the Microphone of State in my hand and by the Data Panels of Truth at my feet, I am in direct circuit with the Council of Wisdom itself, the will of the entire immortal Duglaari Empire. We are Duglaar. Know and kneel.”

  Lingo slouched negligently and in a cold voice, filled with infinitely easy arrogance said: “Animals kneel to Solarians, and never the reverse.”

  The nearest guards sprang to their feet, energy rifles at the ready. But the Kor stopped them with one wave of his hand and motioned the rest of the soldiers to their feet.

  “We are not illogical human vermin,” he droned. “I have been informed that you are here to surrender. That data has been coded into the Council of Wisdom, and the Council has issued the following directive: The surrender is to be accepted. The Council of Wisdom has computed the following terms of surrender: all human forces are to immediately cease hostilities against ces of the Duglaari Empire. All solar systems now controlled by human vermin, including the home system known as Fortress Sol, are to be immediately occupied by the forces of Duglaari Empire. All vermin in those systems are hereby deprived of any and all rights as sentient beings. All vermin are forbidden to continue breeding. All vermin are forbidden to possess arms or any other form of personal property. All vermin are hereby declared property of the Duglaari Empire. These are the rules of surrender.”

  Lingo laughed, long, loud and contemptuously, his voice echoing and filling the otherwise silent chamber. He pursed his lips and spat in a lazy, high arc at the foot of the throne.

  Instantly, the guards trained their rifles at him; their fingers squeezing the triggers a hair’s breath away from the firing point.

  But at that instant, their bodies were frozen to living stone. Only their
frantically rolling eyes betrayed their intent. Max Bergstrom stared blankly at them, his gaze deceptively remote and placid. But Palmer knew well what that calm, brown stare meant—the guards no longer controlled their own bodies.

  “I fear you are mistaken,” Lingo said, in a preternaturally hollow voice that made the words a toll of doom.

  “The Council of Wisdom does not make mistakes,” the Kor droned with a furious snap of his ears. “The Council of Wisdom is perfectly logical. Its nature does not permit incorrect calculations.”

  Lingo laughed again, this time with the tolerance of a teacher for a not-very-bright child. “Well, then just let’s say that the Council of Wisdom has been supplied with incomplete data.”

  “If you wish to supply additional data,” the Kor said, “do so. This chamber is circuited directly into the Council of Wisdom. Every word you say will be coded directly into an input channel of the Council.”

  “Excellent,” smiled Lingo. “I compliment you on your service. I will now supply the missing data—our terms. You see before you an Ambassador from the Human Confederation,” Lingo said, pointing to Palmer as to a mess on a rug. “Amusing creatures, perhaps, to some tastes, but no longer of concern to us. We have transcended them as our remote ancestors transcended the primates from which they sprang. These primitive humans of the Confederation are yours to do with as you like. They are no longer under the protection of Fortress Sol.”

  It took long moments for the meaning of Lingo’s words to impress themselves on Palmer’s stunned mind. It…it was all a phony! Everything the Solarians claimed to stand for! The friendship…the…. It was all a monstrous lie! They were nothing but traitors, cowards, miserable, inhuman….

  With a savage and wordless growl, Palmer sprang at Lingo, his hand clutching at the Solarian’s throat.