by Hogan, James
or set the value of their labor too cheaply. Anyone who desires economic
prosperity has to work for it, just as we had to work for it back on Earth.
There aren't any free rides."
Seltzman nipped a switch to direct his words into another audio channel, which
was wire-connected through to the electronics box on the table in front of him.
"Sorry," he said. "You still misunderstand. Earthmen do not wish to exploit
Taloid labor. Titan must work for prosperity, just as Earth had to work for
prosperity."
A couple of seconds went by while the control microprocessor inside the box
conferred with a larger computer located in the communications center at Genoa
Base One. Then the display on the screen in front of Seltzman changed to read:
NO MATCH FOR "EXPLOIT TALOID LABOR." EQUIVALENT PHRASE?
Seltzman thought for a second. "Benefit from Taloid work that is not paid for,"
he said.
"PROSPERITY = WEALTH in this context?" the machine inquired.
"Wealth for all Taloids," Seltzman replied.
The display changed:
SORRY. YOU STILL MISUNDERSTAND. EARTHMEN DO NOT WISH TO BENEFIT FROM TALOID WORK
THAT IS NOT PAID FOR. TITAN MUST WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS JUST AS EARTH
HAD TO WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS.
Seltzman sighed. "Delete last word. Insert Earthmen." The machine complied.
"Okay," he pronounced.
The "transmogrifier" that Dave Crookes, Leon Keyhoe, and some of the other
signals engineers and pattern-recognition specialists had assembled and were
still improving did not so much translate languages as enable the two parties in
a dialogue—whose native languages were not only mutually unintelligible but also
completely inaudible—to tell the machine, in effect, to note what was said and
remember its meaning. It did this by matching recognizable sequences of human
voice patterns against a collection of Taloid pulse-code profiles stored in a
computerized library that was continually being enlarged. Upon finding a Taloid
equivalent to an identified piece of speech input, it synthesized the
corresponding ultrasonic Taloid pulse-stream, thus performing both the
band-shift and time-compression needed to transfer information from one domain
of intelligibility to the other. Also it performed the complete inverse process.
The matches were determined not by sophisticated rules of grammar or elaborate
programing, but simply by mutual agreement through trial and error between the
parties involved. The system was thus very much an evolutionary one, and had
developed from extremely crude beginnings.
"Bad-sad," the talking vegetable said. "Lumians no want good from buzz-buzz
clug-zzzzzipp robeing slave for free. Bakka-bakka Robia workum hard get plenty
finegood thing for robeings wheeee chirrrp like Lumia workum hard get plenty
finegood thing for chikka-walla-chug-chug-chog Lumians."
Thirg frowned as he concentrated. "Methinks they have misunderstood," he said.
"They believe that we fear they have come here to enslave us."
"It seems their vegetable exaggerates our concern," Kleippur commented. "My
objective is not that they would make us slaves, for clearly it is within their
power to have accomplished that end already if such was their desire, but their
implication that our people's lives are my property to sell or barter as I
would, instead of their own to direct as they choose freely."
"What are these 'good things' which they would have us work to acquire in our
world as they have in theirs?" Lofbayel asked.
"Presumably the weapons and other devices of destruction which they have
emphasized at such great expenditure of time and zealous-ness," Dornvald
replied.
Kleippur shook his head. "The protection of Carthogia is important to me, 'tis
true, but these merchants of havoc would credit my mind with no aspiration
higher than an obsession for conquest and a hunger to possess the whole of
Robia. Indeed these are Lumians of a disturbingly different breed from the
Wearer and his companions." He looked at Thirg. "Advise the Lumians that the
sharing of their lifemaking arts would be of far greater value to us, for with
such knowledge we could divide our industriousness among protecting our people,
providing for them, and educating them, in proportions of our own deciding. If
the Lumians wish to enlist our help in taming the forests to expand their
lifemaking abilities further, are we not justified in asking their help in turn
to expand our comprehension of that which they would have us tame?"
Thirg reached out and touched the button that opened the talking vegetable's
ears. The small light that showed when the vegetable was listening came on.
"Knowledge of the lifemaking arts of the Lumians would be more valuable than
quantities of weapons beyond those needed to ensure Carthogia's protection," he
said. "If the Lumians wish robeings to help them tame the forests, robeings wish
Lumians to help them comprehend the forests."
The transmogrifier turned the pulse-stream into numbers and flashed them to the
base computer, which broke the numbers into groups and compared them to stored
samples at the rate of a million per second. Where possible alternative matches
were indicated, a decision-tree operating on selected, weighted attributes kept
track of the best-fit score. An instant later the computer transmitted to the
transmogrifier.
"Unclear buzz-buzz gubba-gubba what-mean 'lifemaking arts,' " the vegetable
squawked. "Want-say wheeeephooomalteraa.twe."
Thirg thought for a while, but couldn't bring one to mind. "Obtain new word," he
said. The vegetable had learned that this was his instruction for it to get the
Lumians' own term for something from the Lumians. Inside the transmogrifier's
control processor, the pulse-sequence triggered a branch to a library-update
routine.
EQUIVALENT ENGLISH WORD-FORM BEING REQUESTED, the screen before Seltzman
reported.
"Okay," Seltzman acknowledged.
"Pray describe," the vegetable invited Thirg.
"Knowledge, art, skill, power," Thirg told it. "Creating, inventing— making of
machines. Comprehension of how machines operate. Understanding origin of first
machine. How could a first machine be possible?"
The screen responded:
FUNCTION SUBJECT ADDITIONAL DATA
Knowledge Machines First Machine
Ingenuity Operation/Operating —source of?
Expertise Principles? Machine origins?
Understanding (Domination?) Design/Manufacture Impossible?
Seltzman studied the display for a few seconds and replied, "Science and
technology." He wasn't going to go into the metaphysics of the second part, he
decided.
"Buzz-wheee Lumian word wowumpokkapokka get-good," the vegetable advised Thirg.
"Need simplify other better whoosh wow."
Thirg thought back to what he had said, and replied, "Knowledge of lifemaking
skills is worth more to Carthogians than too many weapons is worth."
"Now try maybe-read buzz-buzz bakka-bakka speak," the vegetable advised.
Seltzman read on the screen:
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY KNOW-HOW BETTER DEAL FOR GENOESE THAN WEAPONS TOO
MAN
Y/TOO MUCH/OVERKILL(?). IF TERRANS WANT TALOID AID FOR MANAGE MACHINE
COMPLEX, THEN TALOIDS WANT TERRAN AID FOR KNOW-HOW MACHINE COMPLEX.
"We're back to the same stalemate," Lang said. "I don't think we're going to get
much further for now. At least the translations are starting to make more sense,
so it's not as if we had nothing to show for it. I vote we call it a day."
"Me too," another voice said on the circuit. "Let's get back to base and out of
these things. I'm about ready for dinner."
Giraud sighed. "Okay, we'll wrap the session up there," he agreed. "Tell them we
understand their position, but it involves a lot of complications that we'll
have to go away and think about. And they have a lot of things to think over
too—without adequate defense there won't be any Genoa, so they have to get their
priorities right. Finish up with the usual thanks and courtesies."
When the laborious exchange was completed and the Taloids had added their
closing respects, everyone rose and exchanged hand-touch-ings in the manner that
had been adopted as combining aspects of both Terran and Taloid forms of
customary goodwill salutation. As the party left, technicians collected the
electronics equipment and switched off the lamps until the next session, and the
French paratroopers who had been stationed outside the conference room formed up
with an honorary complement of Arthur's guards to escort the Terrans and their
Taloid hosts back to the vehicles. After a final round of parting formalities
the Terrans departed for their base.
"The only way to exert pressure on the population as a whole is through its
leaders," Giraud said, gratefully free of his helmet inside the cabin of the
personnel carrier as the party drove back through the outskirts of Genoa. "But
how do you do it when the leader thinks he can step into the twenty-first
century overnight and become civilized instantly? I mean, their culture is still
barbaric—centuries away, at least, from being able to grasp technology. But how
can you make them understand that and persuade them they have to be patient
without jeopardizing everything you stand to gain? It's a problem, Caspar."
"It's all a result of delusions of grandeur that they developed through talking
to Zambendorf and his crazies," Caspar Lang said sourly. "We should never have
let him near them at all."
"I agree, but it can't be undone," Giraud replied. "At least he's out of it all
now. I hope you're keeping him busy until we need him—enough to prevent his
getting into any more mischief."
"All taken care of," Lang said. "Osmond Periera and that wacky Canadian
psychologist have got him tied up full-time. It's a wonder he gets a minute to
eat and sleep."
"There's no chance of his interfering in our business with Arthur, then?" Giraud
asked, just to be sure.
"No chance. Even if he had the time, how could he do anything? If he found a way
of getting down from the ship, he'd never be let through the base."
"Well I'm glad to hear that, at least, Caspar," Giraud said. "The situation's
difficult enough as it is."
"Don't worry about it," Lang said confidently.
At Kleippur's residence, Kleippur and the others returned to the Council Chamber
and took from its place of concealment inside a cabinet the seeing vegetable
that the Wearer had left as a gift before returning to the large dragon beyond
the sky. Dornvald relit the violet Lumian lantern that enabled the vegetable to
see, and Thirg pressed the button that would open another eye within the dragon.
All in the room waited, their eyes fixed expectantly on the magic window.
In a cabin up in the Orion, Osmond Periera and Malcom Wade sat surrounded by
notes and papers, concentrating intently on the sentences appearing on the
computer screen in front of them and making occasional responses via keyboard.
The screen was showing the attempts of Zambendorf, who was elsewhere in a sealed
room with no means of communication to the outside apart from a nonswitchable,
hard-wired terminal, to divine the contents of closed envelopes selected blind
by Periera, guess random sequences of numbers and ESP cards, and describe
drawings made on the spur of the moment by both the testers. The use of only a
narrow set of predefined mnemonic codes to communicate, would, Periera and Wade
had agreed, effectively eliminate the possibility of their giving hints and
clues unwittingly.
Actually it made no difference because Joe Fellburg had bugged their cabin,
which they hadn't thought to check, and they both talked too much. They also
hadn't thought to check whether the sealed room had been unsealed and occupied
by someone pretending to be Zambendorf . . . such as Thelma and Clarissa taking
turns to operate the terminal while the other stayed around for company. Any
question of cheating was, after all, unthinkable; why would Zambendorf need to
cheat if he was genuine?
Although progress had been painfully slow, the results that Periera and Wade had
been getting were tantalizingly encouraging—enough, in fact, to have kept them
shut away for the best part of several days. But that, of course, was the whole
idea.
In the team's day suite, Zambendorf was pacing restlessly back and forth while
Otto Abaquaan and Joe Fellburg pored over the latest Terran-Taloid transcripts
from the duplicate transmogrifier concealed in Arthur's meeting room. The device
Zambendorf had donated to the Taloids before returning to the Orion was a joint
effort—constructed by Joe Fellburg with the aid of assembly diagrams and
programs donated by Leon Keyhoe, parts supplied by Dave Crookes, and a terminal
assembly stolen by Abaquaan from the Orion's electronics stores. It not only
provided printouts of the screens that had been presented to Giraud's linguists,
but also a complete audio record of the comments exchanged between the Terran
politicians by radio.
"The main problem with today's high-technology society is that we allow
politicians to run it instead of people equipped with the wherewithal to
understand it," Zambendorf muttered irritably. "Their mentalities are still in
the nineteenth century. How can they hope to manage complex economies when
they're not competent to run a yard-sale. What can they do that requires even a
smattering of knowledge or intellect?"
Drew West shrugged from a comer. "People let them get away with it," he said.
"If people are gonna elect turkeys to tell them what to do, then the people are
gonna have problems. You can't blame the turkeys. The Constitution never
guaranteed smart government; it guaranteed representative government. And it
works—that's what we've got."
"The trouble with the damn system is that it selects for the skills needed to
get elected, and nothing else . . . which requires only an ability to fool a
sufficient number of people for just long enough to get the votes," Zambendorf
grumbled. "Unfortunately the personal qualities necessary for attaining office
are practically the opposite of those demanded by the office itself. A test that
you can only pass by cheating can't possibly select honest people, can it? You'd
think tha
t would be obvious enough, Drew, and yet—"
"Call coming in from Camelot now," Abaquaan said over his shoulder as Fellburg
reached out to the touchpanel of the communications terminal beside them.
"It's Galileo, with Arthur and a few of the others," Fellburg said. Zambendorf
stopped speaking and moved forward to see, while behind him West stood and
crossed the room.
Thirg had become accustomed to the sight of Lumians without their outer casings
by now. How they stayed together at all and kept their shape was mystery enough,
never mind how they managed to move around. Apparently they contained a second,
"internal casing" of some kind, though how a casing could be inside that which
it encased, Thirg had no idea. Perhaps it was like the strengthening bars that
builders and other artisans fashioned into their organic creations.
Dark-Headed-One was looking into the magic eye, with the Wearer and
Smooth-Faced-One visible a short distance behind. After a short exchange of
greetings, Thirg began the tedious process of communicating the questions and
concerns that the latest meeting with the Merchant-Lumians had prompted.
Zambendorf's mood became somber while he listened to Abaquaan's commentary as
the message slowly emerged. "They did as we told them and didn't make any
concessions," Abaquaan announced. "It's looking very much the way we
figured—Giraud and his people are trying to talk them into getting lots of
organized production going down there for Earth's benefit. They're trying to set
up a colony, Karl. GSEC and the government must be in on it too. Galileo says
Arthur's asking for a confirmation that he's doing the right thing and that
we'll make sure everything turns out okay."
"They're saying they still think we're straight, but I guess they need
reassuring," Fellburg said.
Zambendorf stared at the outlandish metal faces peering back at him from inside
an ice vault thousands of miles away. Was it just his imagination, or could he
read the trust and the pleading not to be let down that was written across those
strange, immobile countenances? For some reason his determination not to let
them down was stronger than had ever been evoked by people. He sensed too that
the others in the team felt the same way. Though none of them had mentioned it
