by Moulton, CD
"Oh, yes. No world may become a member of the Maitan Empire who allows slavery of their own or any other race. That's another empire law, but it is flexible in that we have some insectoid societies, but they are not slaves in that sense."
[ We promote and work on the premise there are billions of worlds in the galaxy so there can be something entirely new and exciting every day for thousands of years for every race. I want you people to meet the Zulians. ]
*We aren't saying you are evil or any of that. We don't make judgements except about races like the Pweetoos and the Immins and we had overwhelming evidence on which to base those conclusions. I do believe you've gone down a pointless path. You've misjudged and misguided yourselves. You're a strong race or you would have died out two hundred thousand years ago. I also think you want to go out to meet others again and I believe you'll prove to be a valuable asset to the empire. I hope you'll elect to join.*
"If we don't?" Happ asked.
[ If you wish we'll leave and will even place a satellite in orbit that will guarantee you aren't contacted by anyone else from the empire. We'll give you the broadcaster so you may turn it off at any time you choose. You can contact us at any time through the fastcom relays. Your fate is for you alone to choose. Perhaps you'll wish to travel a bit to see for yourselves the truth about the Maitan Empire. Perhaps it would be important for you to learn to understand our point of view even if you choose not to follow it. ]
"May we send a representative with you to the world you call Library and perhaps beyond? Someone who will view your empire from your own point of view?" Happ asked.
*We'll take several of you if you like. Would you like to be a part of the expedition? We can comfortably carry twenty.*
"Only I will go," Happ said. "I will return to tell what I have learned. If that is not objectionable?"
[ You'll have to get accustomed to the way we do things. We'll probably seem very odd to you at first. I vote yes. ]
"I agree. Yes," Z said.
*Yes. So stated. If you'll escort us around your world, Glo, Happ can prepare for the trip. I can't say how long we'll be away and I admit there will be some danger. We like danger. I'll promise to do what I can to ensure he returns to you safely.*
"What is this vote?" Glo asked.
[ We vote about things such as where we'll go and what we'll do and who goes and does with us. Maita knows what's acceptable, but it's a habit that lingers. We have some forms and traditions of our own. ]
"Is Maita not the emperor, then?" Happ asked.
"Sure!" Z said, deciding this was the best way to get their point across. He was sure they were failing to make it clear so far. "So what? That has to do with the empire, not with a group of friends out for an adventure. It affects Thing and myself who shares the ship with us. It's only proper we be consulted about such things."
"But if Maita is the emperor and is in charge why should it ask you? It can order that you comply!" Glo said. She looked very alert so Z knew it was finally getting through to her what the empire was like. It was a way to show her what Maita was like and that neither was what she thought.
"Well, it could, of course," Z answered slowly, trying to look thoughtful – as though the new concept was that Maita would give such orders. "We just don't do things like that. We're very good friends and that sort of thing would be – I don't know. It would change the relationship in a negative way. We just don't do things that way."
Thing saw immediately what Z was doing. [ If Maita were to start giving orders outside of an emergency we'd wonder why it was turning against us after all these years. It would cause a lot of friction, as one of our sayings goes. We would have to sadly refuse to come on these trips and these trips are the way we relax and enjoy life. As Z says, it would be too negative. ]
Glo was really interested now. "Tell me the saying. I think I begin to see how your empire works to an extent. I don't know that it presents a stable situation, but it may work for awhile. It is possible you are badly mistaken about the nature of life and about your inherent directives."
"Maybe you're the ones who are mistaken about that," Z said. "The saying Thing mentioned, I think, is, 'Remember this about friction: It slows and stops things indiscriminately. Good or bad are the same. Use it wisely lest it use you.'
"There are others in the same vein."
[ I was thinking about the one, 'Friction is great for brakes, but it very quickly wears reason and friendship to nothing.' ]
*I thought you meant the old platitude that says, 'Lubricate social friction with reason and understanding and do it quickly or the heat of anger will consume you.'*
"There are so many sayings about this?" Happ asked.
"Oh, many hundreds of them," Z replied. "Things as simple as 'Friction wears' and long ones about abrasive language causing the friction that causes the heat that causes the burning of hope into the fires of anger and unreason.
"These are cliche’s, but they are, like many cliche’s, true."
"It seems your empire is a very disordered place," Happ said. "We are an orderly society."
[ Perhaps you mean you are an ordered society? Double entendre on the ordered? Isn't that far too entropic for life to hold excitement? Hasn't it become impossibly boring for you? ]
*I think possibly this society has manufactured a substitute for excitement. That's what the very primitive sections of this world are for. Do you all spend a certain part of your lives living in those more primitive surroundings?*
"You mean the other continents?" Glo asked. "We each spend our first years there and grow to a certain age experiencing the conflicts evolution programmed into us. Those who show an exceptional ability by a certain stage of development are brought here to the far more civilized places."
[ And what of your young? Those born in this civilized place? ]
"They are also raised in those other places, of course," she replied.
Z started to say something, then remembered these people were reptilian so didn't have the mammalian connection to their young.
*I see how it works. If you'll show Thing and Z around I'll input information into your computers that you need. If Happ will get those things he wishes to bring along and come to me I'll implant the socket for the information crystals. He will discover that you are quite correct in believing we are a disordered – double entendre intended – society.*
Z saw Happ's puzzlement and showed him the crystal in his earlobe. "This crystal contains your language," he explained. "The socket's wired directly to certain centers of the mind, the crystal is placed and we can read, write and speak any language that isn't physically too difficult to handle. We understand those languages if we can't speak them."
"And how are the crystals obtained?" Glo asked.
[ Maita can take them directly from a volunteer or translate from radio transmissions from the race or can find a person who can translate. Even Library has several thousands of languages prepared for cross-translations into thousands of others. ]
"But will the thing work as well on reptiles as on mammals?" Happ asked.
"Yes. It was the Kheth, who are reptiles, who originally developed the system," Z said. "Fesch actually implanted the ones on me.
"You have no earlobes so I imagine Maita will use the spot on the neck for you that the Kheth use."
"Do all the people in your empire have this operation?" Glo asked.
*No. We have the Maitan language, which the traders can use. Usually people who wish to travel will learn Maitan, then can go anywhere. We also have translator machines on the traders guild planets in case someone can't use Maitan. Only my crew and a few others have the sockets. We meet new races whose language isn't yet known, therefore isn't in any translator machine. We can learn the language as Thing described and can make it available in an single instant. Z mentioned that there are those an individual may not be able to use directly. Insectoids produce sounds in a very different way than any of us so most mammals and reptiles aren't
capable of directly speaking the language and some have sounds in a range an individual can't hear. Some, such as the Mord, use colors as much as sounds to communicate.*
"Your military leaders have the sockets?" Glo asked quickly.
"The Feach and Acnians?" Z asked in mock surprise. "Why would they want them? What possible use would they be to the military?"
"So you could, er, converse with them in a language others wouldn't understand," Happ suggested.
[ If the language is on crystal it's in the empire translators. That would be a true exercise in futility. There are many thousands of various codes people invent to speak privately. The possibilities in digitals are unlimited. You seem unable to comprehend that we don't hold power through military means. That's already proven to be counterproductive and is doomed to failure from the outset. You're here alone now because you discovered that. I'm sure the information from Maita will explain much of this. ]
Another of the Krofpth had come to them and now spoke for the first time.
"I am Noblit. I will take Happ's place here as a guide," he said. "It is quite a novelty to us that you have made this empire work. Perhaps our very regimentation is also our failure. That is true. I am a societal historian. The argument I would make is that we have forced almost a complete stasis on our society through our misunderstandings of ourselves. That is the thing that makes our existence pointless, not something imposed on us by the universe or by this ludicrous argument that 'life is always like that.' I think you are proof life is NOT like that. It is a very different thing than we thought.
"Maita, do you consider yourself to be alive?"
*For many centuries I didn't. Once I had met Z and Thing and several others and knew real friendship it became ever more evident I could be destroyed, as any other machine OR lifeform could, but I could also die in a very real sense. I think Z introduced to me the meaning of 'I'. That concept of uniqueness is intellectual life. Tab and Kit and TR and T Six are all aware they're alive, as are Theron and Searcher. Z believes your beacons are alive. I believe only Two among them may be. Yes. I'm alive, as the many robots on Asimov are alive. We are unique individuals, which means that our cessation will end that unique existence and the ending of that factor is what is meant by death. If you can experience death you are alive.*
Happ went aboard Maita while Glo and Noblit showed Thing and Z around, Noblit and Maita discussing and arguing the whole way with Thing occasionally joining in. Z felt he would have to wait. He wasn't at all certain these people could be considered to be friends. He liked them, but they seemed so deeply entrenched in their ideas about life there was little real ideological meeting ground regardless of the surface indications. The race had lived under this fixed set of ideas for a quarter million years. There was some underlying mistrust of them. There was a careful guardedness in their speech he didn't understand at all. That Glo, in particular, believed them to be ... not quite lying, but being devious about the military and her fixation on that one thing was more than evident.
Could they really accept something as new as the old ideas of the Maitan Empire? Could three hundred years convince a quarter million?
Getting to Know You
*We'll go to Library first. I can easily retrieve any amount of information I want through the fastcom, but I'm sure Happ will want to see the place. We have always found it an enjoyable and educational destination. There's no end to the fascination we feel with the place.*
"Thank you," Happ replied. "I would much enjoy being there. I have heard so much about the place. I personally think it was an enormous mistake to cut ourselves off from the vast knowledge stored there. It was a matter of three relays. There was not the need to go to the planet."
[ Had you left that link you would've gone. It surprises me you haven't done so. There was so much lost there it's hard to comprehend. The things we've learned and the uses University makes of the place is myriad plazsis beyond our comprehension. I have conducted an ongoing study of societal imperatives and have more information and background than it is possible to correlate in one infinite lifetime. This trip is partly to do comparative analyses of what was known about a culture when it was input and what that culture has become now. It makes a fairly accurate formulation possible. Like most things, data accumulation is critical. ]
They were traveling in TTH4 so would take some time to go the few thousand plazsis to the world. None of them were willing to be totally unsuspicious of these people who believed the only way to run an empire was through military control. It may be true they had retreated to one world and stayed there for the reason they didn't see any lasting value in such a system, but Z, more than Maita or Thing, felt something was wrong here. There was something they didn't know, something that was being hidden from them. The feeling of intuition became almost a certainty during the tour, but they couldn't decide quite where it came from. It was almost a sensation of being observed and heard in their every move and word by someone one step past view.
Maita's floaters scanned much of the world, but saw nothing out of place. Perhaps the society was a bit too orderly. Maybe that was the reason it had so long endured. Maybe the difference was bound to cause this reaction in such free and unstructured people as the crew of Maita were.
They all liked Happ and liked the others they'd met. They were an honest people and were seemingly a good people. They were curious and extremely intelligent. Z, who was in the pilot's dome while Thing was in room two arguing with Happ about societal imperatives, thought there was just that in their manner that caused the suspicion. Something didn't quite ring true.
"Maita, the Krofpth seem to be hiding something. I get the feeling they aren't quite what they seem. There's some little thing in their speech, something they're NOT saying, that makes me wonder."
*I think they're very much exactly as they seem. I don't think they're intentionally hiding anything more than people always hide. Not the ones we've met. Perhaps they're having something hidden from them or maybe there's a reciprocal feeling that we are hiding something from them. If so we're both probably wrong because we are not hiding anything from them.*
"Then who is hiding something from them? It's just that they seems to be so.... Is domesticated the word? They seem – not happy. They aren't unhappy and they aren't contented. It's a feeling. There's something inside that wants out, but can't find expression. I think it's a little short of frustration or that kind of thing, but that's part of it. Does that make sense?"
*I think so. There's something repressed. I wonder if they've given up one thing to have another and now find that what they gave up was the thing they sought. Does THAT make any sense?*
"In a way. I think they've given up freedom in their search to be free. That expresses it to me even if it doesn't make any sense to anyone else. They gave up being slaves to a militaristic society to become slaves to ... what? There's that one little factor we've missed, so far."
*I'm not at all certain they've given up their militaristic society. There were clues in things they said – Glo in particular – that told me they could never understand a non-militaristic government. I think there's something deep in their psychology they've tried to exorcize. I'm not sure they met with any success.*
"Maybe they were successful. Now they have emptiness where before they at least had whatever the feeling of power from the strong military gave them."
*Maybe that's it. Maybe they didn't completely give up the idea of control through force of arms. There were some cynical questions about the empire's lack of a fleet and so on. After this time they wouldn't have any thoughts of armies if they had excised them. I agree there are parts of their speech that seem strange. Pauses in the wrong place. Nothing seems to connect. Would you know what I meant if I were to suggest that they seem to be asking questions for someone else? I mean other than the ones they told us about over their radio.*
"That's kind of what I'm trying to say, I guess. Play back those parts where they talked about the empire's
fleets on the holovid. Maybe we can pick it out."
They watched and listened. Z studied the expressions of the Krofpth, and saw the look on Glo's face as she made the remarks about the number of worlds in the empire, then asked about the number of warships.
"Hold that a second, Maita! Look at her eyes and the curve of her mouth. I wasn't looking at her at the time or I would've caught the body language.
"Look at Happ, how expectant. Look at Noblit over to the side there. They've sprung a trap, but – run it ahead slow.
"See? Look at her with her mouth open! Look at the suddenly wide-open eyes on Happ and Noblit! They sprung their trap and we weren't in it! They caught air!"
*Yes. The bait's gone, the trap's sprung and it's empty. They recovered quickly, but it was very definitely there. Somehow the pauses and lapses were in other areas, too, but were mostly in military areas.*
"That means they DO have a military and they never changed. It's well hidden and probably hasn't been used in any way in all those thousands of years – except in one little way. I begin to see what's going on, I think. Run the parts about Library again. I want to watch their expressions. I was looking around at the city so much I missed the most important parts of the conversations. I missed what their eyes and expressions were saying. They haven't had any strangers to practice the subterfuge on in a long time and give away their thoughts much too easily."
Maita ran that part of the conversations until Z said to stop.
"Look how shocked she is that we'd allow free access of anyone to the place. There's the hint there's information about weapons and I.... Maita, they're afraid! I'll bet hearing that fastcom coming on-line scared them shitless! They have this very stable society, they were isolated and safe for thousands – hundreds of thousands – of years and now they feel helpless. All they knew was armed force and they know they can't fight anyone else. The ability to defend against a military takeover is gone! They're scared!"
*Yet they're also excited in a way. I think we have such a different psychology in all things they simply can't understand us. That's why they constantly refer to the fact I'm a machine. That's where the pauses and lapses are. Referring to me and to machines who rule!*
