Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  As I rounded a bunch of scrub I found myself face-to-face with another robot that had its finger pointed right at me from less than five meters away!

  Almost without thinking at all I sent the one two pulse at all related frequencies, causing the robot to freeze. The override came just as I brought the laser up and fired directly into the golem's "eyes". The head fairly exploded.

  It's a good thing I have protector circuits that are fast and independent of the general memory I use consciously. I'm sure I would've remembered the "off" signal within one or two seconds, but I would've been damaged or destroyed in milliseconds had that secondary response not been built in.

  I'm a machine and am very fast, but so is the brain. It's only the speed of radio waves that saved me there. I can assure you, I was much more careful on my way back to the road and then to the gate.

  Dawn light was beginning to pale the blackness of the sky to the east as Gorta and her group came to the gate. She said she guessed they wouldn't storm the house, seeing as I was outside waiting for her.

  There were two robots watching the gate now, but I managed to stay behind the stone wall to the side so they wouldn't fire at me and hurt anyone. I had no doubt I was prime directive number one most imperative to be destroyed at all costs. I had already disposed of a hell of a lot of what that thing had to challenge these people with. I could only hope there weren't any more robots out here waiting to attack from the rear when and if we attacked that house.

  "We done found two more golems up thar," Gorta told me. "Done smashed their heads in 'fore they c'ud move! Hit 'em uth iron spikes from both sides ut once'n their heads blows up!"

  "How'd you know which 'us golems?" I asked.

  "Went an' stuck everbody with pins from up behind when they wasn't 'spectin' nothin," Gorta said proudly. "Most'uns yelled, 'un a coupla us got smacked, but 'twas worth ut!

  "Golems got no feelin' 'n their butts! People got lots!"

  I grinned and said she'd done a good job, then said I had a good way to tell which were golems myself.

  They could all go into Stormlee and take little cups of salty water and make everybody take one swallow. Golems weren't made to drink liquids and the salty water would make the wires melt.

  She grinned in reply and yelled for everybody to come with her except for eight people who were to watch the house and were to blow the horns if anybody at all tried to get off the grounds.

  I saluted her and went along the wall toward the ocean as the bulk of the group headed into Stormlee.

  It was possible if not so likely as I'd thought before we had the whole bunch of robots and the brain virtually trapped inside that house and grounds now. The floater would see to it no one left the sea side and the people would see that no one left on the other two passable sides.

  I went to the cliff edge and signaled the floater to place energy detectors on both sides of the walls and to immediately locate any radio sources. It was to find a way to report those sources to me.

  The floater came up to me without orders and extended a direct hookup. I plugged it in and got a report from TR saying it had deployed hundreds of radio receiver scan sensors around and would detect any attempt at communication in or out. It had also placed detectors around the wall to detect light beam transmissions. I was given a small set, which I was to plug into immediately.

  "This is on a frequency range the brain can't possibly detect at this time," TR assured me. "We have to find some way to get to that brain directly.

  "Do you have any ideas?"

  "I was thinking about burning in from the place where the tube comes through the cliff. The problem is we couldn't do it fast enough through four meters of solid rock and we'd find ourselves in an energy beam war with that damned thing. It could probably attack Stormlee and do more damage than we'd believe. I'm sure it's figured out we won't do anything to endanger the people here, so it'll keep us in a hostage-type situation.

  "It's dead right about a lot of it. We can't take chances with these people.

  "Be ready to come in with everything you have if it does try to attack them. I'd rather live with the cultural damage from something like that than to let the brain kill off a whole city."

  "Yo! We know something of the shielding that thing has. It could do a lot more than attack the one city before we could stop it. It's going to be mainly up to you to find a way to get to it.

  "This transmitter works on matched wavelength movements, so we can't use it much, but we can use it some. The brain will note the energy use and try to decode and interfere."

  "Okay. We'll use it to report, say, every two hours?"

  "Good enough. Good luck."

  I sat on the cliff edge to think as the floater went back near the water's edge and swung the cutter beam across the cliff face. It stopped for a second at the tube's location, then continued.

  I checked the information the floater had given to see that the wire came out every so often to be sure the beam was still there. From a military standpoint, that was good. Keep as much of our equipment tied up as possible. What was being focused on the cliff face wouldn't be available to use elsewhere.

  We were lucky to have all the floaters we could want, each of which had programmable features so advanced beyond what the brain had in those robots that comparison was difficult – we HAVE all of that, but we can't USE much of it around an evolving culture. My problem was still, first, to find a way to get directly to the brain and, second, to find a way to shut it off once I found the way in.

  There had to be a way. It had those robots in there to protect it and to detect me if I came in, but there were enough of them I should be able to use them against each other, somehow.

  But how?

  TR reported in a very short burst that the brain tried to move on the moon where we left it and had been destroyed by a ship of the fleet.

  Careful Steps

  My easier contact with TR made me feel better, even though I couldn't see how it would directly help in other ways. It was still a matter of finding some way to get directly to the brain without blasting a hole in the mountain – or blowing the house itself into a crater.

  What if, instead of me going into the cavern, I could make the brain come out?

  I didn't see how. We could use the tube to flush salt water into the cavern but, even supposing there wasn't a drain, that little tube wouldn't take enough of a volume to do any good, and the robot would simply plug it.

  The Hydrofluoric acid thing wouldn't work because, even if the tube itself didn't absorb all the acid, the rocks would.

  I did have one idea about the tube, but wasn't sure the brain wouldn't detect what I was doing.

  It was worth a try. I called the floater and had it use its elementizer on some water. It then leaked the oxygen into the tube for awhile. Later I had it shoot in the hydrogen at high pressure, then to fire a heat laser down the tube. There was a lot of radio communication for a few minutes, then the robot in there sealed off the tube.

  Overlook House was mostly stone and cement, so it wouldn't burn very well. It would do us no good to burn the roof off – and that might make the brain retaliate against the people.

  I decided to do a lot of smaller things such as the oxygen/hydrogen through the tube. I hadn't doubted the brain could put out that little fire, but I caused it to seal the tube. I would now seal it from this end so it couldn't be used when we were away without disturbing a little detector I put there.

  This meant as much as nothing to me, but the brain, from a military standpoint, would feel defeat because I had the beam floater to use elsewhere now. It was aware the beam was capable of doing a lot of damage to the robots, so would have to take care.

  I went up to the top of the cliff with the floater trailing behind. I wanted to weaken the brain a bit more without causing a strike against the general area, so I instructed the floater to get rid of two of the robots out front, then to retreat when the brain defensed. It would then accept that it could bri
ng us to a standoff, which would give it time to build something better to fight me. It didn't want to do anything to the people anymore than I wanted to cause it to harm them if from very different positions of logic.

  I was here to save these people and it needed them to build a force. I mustn't disturb that balance. If the brain felt it could hold me off some other way it wouldn't attack. If I went too far I was precipitating the very thing I wished to avoid happening at all costs.

  It would only accept attrition for a short time, then would try to do something about it, so I'd have to seem to suffer some losses myself.

  I called the floater back to give it more instructions. I'd have to do something I didn't want to do, but I was to the point of choosing the lesser of two evils.

  So went my thought processes.

  The floater went above and toward the front of the grounds where it slagged one robot. Others came out of the house firing lasers at it and it shot another, damaging it, and then another, destroying it. It then began to zigzag erratically, shot off some sparks, and seemed to crash outside of the wall toward the south. There was a fireball and black smoke, then nothing.

  I reasoned this would get rid of two robots while making the brain think it could fight us. The robots would be kept out of direct sight and I would have the floater come back later and again be "destroyed" without doing any damage except to one small select spot.

  I was starting to make plans again. I had been a bit blocked at first, but was now combining some seeming cleverness with a plan.

  I needed to build some confidence within the brain – to work on its programmed psychology. It must be made to believe itself to be invulnerable. The master brain that programmed it was a megalomaniac, believing itself to be totally superior to anything else in existence, so this thing would have the same basic defect in psychology.

  I went back a ways toward Stormlee to use the new transmitter.

  "TR, do you have any suggestions?" I asked as I finished my reports and explanations.

  We were using our own digital code so, even if the thing could receive the transmissions it couldn't make sense of them.

  "Just don't fall into the trap of being what you think that brain is," TR responded. "You may be outsmarting it or it may be letting you outsmart yourself. It's done that a lot! All of them have, as well as the ones who built them. Those things are deadly and fast. Never forget that."

  "I've decided to assume the brain is way ahead of me all the time and it's letting me build my own trap at my own pace. It means building several scenarios for every move.

  "One, I'm doing what it wants, so how do I get out of the trap it set? Where does it lead?

  "Two, what I do isn't what it expected, but it's prepared a defense for any such eventuality.

  "Three, it had a broad plan that includes such an action and, no better than fourth, I've done what I planned to do and have actually...."

  "You just thought of something," TR accused. "That was a VERY sudden stop!"

  "I faked the crashing of the damned floater. Great spinning galaxies! How many times have these things faked being damaged and used it against us? How could I be so stupid as to think something like that would work?

  "Have I set that thing up to where it now HAS to attack these people?"

  "I don't think so. It sees such things as part of any operation. I'll send a fake floater, all burned out, to the spot where that one seemed to crash. It'll find a way to check, so will find wreckage. It won't convince it, but it'll be a small point in your favor."

  We ceased transmitting a moment later. No sense in pushing our luck too far.

  I didn't like the idea of all these technological fireworks in front of these people, but it couldn't be helped. I still had to get inside that house somehow to see what the brain was building.

  I went back and waited not far from the gate. TR sent a few milliseconds' burst of information, directing me to look at the wall in a certain spot.

  There was a very small metal box crossing over. I couldn't have seen it without my telescopic vision. It was going to check the wreckage of the floater.

  Good!

  Of course, it would have detectors that were useful for other things too. That machine wasn't going to waste time and effort on a single-purpose mission of this sort.

  I wanted to confine it to the grounds, so would have to get rid of the little sensor device after awhile, but for the moment it could only help.

  I used the telescopic sight around all the wall I could see. Nothing further seemed to be happening. I could detect a large amount of energy being expended in the cavern, so the brain was building something.

  Then it struck me. It was something that should have occurred right from the first when I saw the brain through the fiberoptic lens in the tube.

  "TR?" I said over the new transmitter.

  "Yo?"

  "Does something smack you solidly in the circuits about this? Have we seen something that tells us a lot about the brain? Have we been playing exactly the game that thing wants us to play?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Did you see the dimensions of the brain in my report? How long it was? How big around?"

  "It was ... Yurgh! ... oh, DAMN! It was ten times the size of any opening into that cavern. That was a mock-up. It was a phony and we fell for it like mass into a black hole!"

  "It's a servo. Where's the real brain? We didn't detect anything else on this planet."

  "I'll find it. It's out-clevered itself again. These things only work if they aren't anticipated, you know. That thing's directly connected to the brain."

  "So it hid under deep water so its energy emanations would be dispersed and grounded. It's damned close to Overlook. That servo's building something important."

  "And it's designed very well to let us outsmart the brain," TR replied dryly (HOW does it DO that?). "It won't attack the people here. That wouldn't work.

  "I'm going to send floaters in there to get rid of the robots and servos, then you can go in to confront the mockup servo. Make it think you believe it's really the brain."

  "I'm thinking exactly like you are. Let's get this over with. The brain wants us to think we've won, so we'll let it think that we think that it thinks that we think...."

  "Oh, shut up!" TR snapped. "I get the point! It's what happens with clever when you're found out."

  I was glad there weren't many people watching the house as ten or twelve floaters came in suddenly. The robots began firing at them, but were themselves soon slag. The floater went inside the house, and soon TR sent a radio message (On a frequency the brain could detect. We could be fairly sure it couldn't detect our new transmitter at all, as the receiver would have to be installed in the servo long before we arrived. The brain planned on the chance it would be discovered, but it hadn't planned for it to be the Maitan Empire who found it) to go in because the brain was now defenseless and a floater watched it.

  On the other transmitter it warned me to be sure I was fully shielded, because that servo might have a surprise or two. It had the energy resources, so it must plan to use them for something.

  I didn't think it would try anything too likely to work. That would be self-defeating. The whole plan would be ruined if I were seriously damaged.

  The people watching were mumbling and showing a bit of fear, so I sat and chuckled. When the fireworks started inside of the house I broke out in loud laughter.

  These people knew me as Liht, who exposed the golems in the first place, so one asked me what was so funny – and did I know what was happening?

  "Know?" I said through my laughter, "Sure I know! I started it!

  "Thet starker in there made golems ta try ta make slaves out'n all uh us, so I done went ta tha island in a boat. Rocky Island, you know. Out there.

  "I done tol' Gorta thet I seen a starker run out'n northcoast. Didn't tell 'er where thet starker'd done gone!

  "See, the one up there made golems, too. Bird golems. Thet's how I knew '
bout golems ut all. I done tol' 'im thet there were a starker et Overlook House what made golems, too, 'n thet 'e said 'e was more strong then thet un.

  "Started a fight, I did! Ain't no starker gonna let some other starker get a top-up on 'em, 'n Ain't no starker smarter'n Liht! Ain't no ten starkers smarter'n Liht! No sir!"

  "You means those air things is bird golems?" another asked. "Don't look like no birds!"

  "I don't know 'bout thet. All I knows uz thet they's bird golems. Go look et tha one what got burnt up over there. All wires'n metal. You'll see! A bird golem, ut were!" I pointed to where the floater had "crashed." "Watch yer step tho," I added. "Ain't no tellin' what other kinds there is of 'em. If ya kin make a bird golem, ya kin make a snake golem er a rodent golem!"

  That would handle the sensor probe the brain sent to check the floater crash.

  I went boldly in the through gate and to the house, down the hall, into the room with the staircase, and looked over the rail.

  I had seen four robots in melted lumps on the way and saw two more at the base of the stairs. There were two floaters waiting by the passage entrance.

  I went along the passage and into the cavern where another floater was hovering over the robot that had been with the brain since the stairs caved in with it. It had been repaired in the meantime, but the floaters had burned the legs and hands off of it to allow the rest to be used as a communications set with the brain. Now I had to convince the brain I thought this servo was really the master. As clever as the thing considered itself to be, that shouldn't be a problem.

  "Well!" I said brightly. "Now it's just us two, so we can be honest with each other.

  "I'm sure you've discovered I'm a machine sent by Tlesson and New Home to find and destroy all the clones of the master brain that was once in our home system.

  "Considering you were launched while the original machine was still in existence, you probably didn't know it was destroyed until I appeared here.