The Caterpillars Question - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  "We've got something like that on Earth," Jack said.

  "Press the orange strip on the side after you've written on the screen," it said, "and it will voice what you've written. Press the green strip, and what is written on one will appear on the screen of the other. Press the yellow strip on the edge of the bottom, and the writing will be cleared. Activating the green strip will allow you to dictate to it and see your words in printed form. This tiny projection here, when pressed once, lets you scroll down. Pressed twice, it scrolls up."

  The AI showed him the rest of the controls.

  Jack guided Tappy's hand to a square and a stylus. She had heard the AI and did not need instruction.

  "Thanks," he said to the AI. "You can go now."

  It walked into the hallway. Jack said, "Okay, Tappy, let's go. I've asked you a lot of questions. From your responses, I've learned that the Gaol alphabet doesn't have an equivalent letter for each letter in the English alphabet. Like, for instance, the English letter 'a' can stand for several different sounds. So can a number of other letters, like 's' stands for the initial 's' in surprise and also for the 'z' sound in the second 's.' And so on.

  "But the characters in Gaol writing stand for one sound only. Some of the Gaol pronunciations don't exactly correspond to our English way of sounding them, not American English, anyway. But the letters for them cover both pronunciations. There are some sounds in Gaol we don't have in English, but they probably won't give too much trouble. Anyway, you're going to write in English with the Gaol letters. After I learn the equivalents, right?"

  She nodded. He pressed the orange strip on her recorder. He began slowly dictating sentences in English. They would include all the sounds in English speech. At least, he hoped they would.

  He was no linguist. But if he found that he had overlooked some, he could supply them later.

  Her printing appeared on the screen of his recorder as she made them on hers. When she was done, he said, "The Gaol alphabet is longer than ours, but I expected that."

  He sat for a while studying the Gaol letters and their English equivalents. Apparently, the Gaol had no 'p' or 'd' in their language. He told Tappy to double the Gaol 'b' and 't' to indicate these sounds.

  "Now I'll ask you questions. You'll write the answers in English using the Gaol letters. More than one way to skin a cat. Whoever installed those mental blocks wasn't smart enough to make them foolproof."

  Tappy's smile was so wide it reminded him of the Cheshire cat's grin.

  His smile was not as big. Even if he could converse with her in this roundabout fashion, he had not found the way to make her mature seven years in three days. But it was a step forward. That is, it was unless another obstacle was revealed.

  "First question, one of many, Tappy, maybe."

  And the most important, he told himself, though I don't expect an answer.

  "Do you know how to compress seven years of aging into three days?"

  Tappy looked startled. She wrote with the stylus two letters which appeared on his recorder. He had to scroll down the section with the Gaol-English equivalents to check his memory. The letters spelled out NO. There went his idea, derived from The Little Prince, that she could teach him how to mature her. However, maybe she could do that but did not know it as yet.

  He said, "Do you have now or have you ever had any awareness of the Imago within you? Anything that might be the Imago making itself manifest?"

  No.

  He sighed. If only... Forget about ifs. No time to fantasize.

  "Until we came to the honkers' planet, then, nobody had ever said anything to you about the Imago? Or hinted at its existence?"

  No.

  "Can you remember anything before the plane crash in which your father died?"

  No.

  "No?" Jack said. "Then how can you remember the Gaol writing? You must have learned it before you came to Earth."

  She printed: I don't know. I just do.

  "Then your mind isn't completely blocked off," Jack said. "Maybe we could pry it open wider. But we don't have time to try even if we had the psychological tools."

  He paused, then said, "You don't remember anything before the plane crash. But you can somehow use Gaol writing. Maybe there are other things you could use."

  How to find what these were, if there were any?

  He wished he could go back to Earth and locate the Daws, the last people to have known Tappy. They could tell him much— maybe.

  Had the Daws or other people before them imposed this hyp-node memory-block? If they had, they could also cancel it.

  Then there were the honkers, the beings who he, when he first saw them, had assumed were sapient but not very bright. One of them had implanted that tiny bead or egg in between her breasts and thus kept her from being subject to Malva's will. That showed that they were no dummies. It also showed that they must know much. If he and Tappy could get back to the honkers' planet, they might find out more or perhaps all about this mystery.

  And if only Tappy were six years older and thus close enough to maturity that...

  There you go again, he told himself. If, if, if.

  IF!

  That word suddenly glowed in his mind like a Times Square of revelation. Its light generated what might be a great idea.

  Maybe it would work. But he'd have to ask the AI if they could do such a thing.

  He sent out a mental message.

  "Get your half-metal asses down here."

  Chapter 8

  They, consisting of one female AI, met Jack by the fountain. Before he proposed his plan, Jack asked it about something that had occurred to him while he was waiting for the AI to show up. It had little to do with the previous idea except that it involved Tappy's mind. Also, it might be important later on.

  "Could you get through the block that keeps her from remembering her first six years?" he said.

  "My data indicates that it would be extremely difficult and would take a long time," the AI said. "We don't have time for that. Also, it's tricky even with the instruments we have. Using them could drive her mad or even completely destroy the memory now inhibited."

  Jack said, "I thought I'd ask for future reference."

  He explained what he had in mind for her immediately and asked the AI if his plan was workable. Within the deadline, that is.

  The AI took about ten seconds to consider. Jack drought that it must be linked to a data bank because it surely did not have the required information in its brain. There was no use asking it about a linkage just to satisfy his curiosity. It did not matter enough for him to waste time over it.

  "It's possible that we can do what you have proposed," the AI said. "Of course, we can't give her a complete false memory covering seven years. That would mean imposing trillions and trillions of data of different kinds, sensory, iconic, verbal, oneiromantic..."

  "I get the idea," Jack said. "No use to list them all."

  "Thus, the impressions would have to be relatively few. But they would be vivid; they would seem to be real. As I've been informed, you humans have great gaps in your memory."

  "Some don't," Jack said. "A few gifted people have photographic memories."

  "We know that," the AI said. "In the woman's case, it doesn't matter. She can't remember back before she was six years old, and any seeming gaps of memory after her treatment could be accounted for by the traumas she's endured. However, since she would supposedly be twenty years old, how would we fool her? Wouldn't she wonder why she, a twenty-year-old, still looks thirteen?"

  "She'd just think that she looks very young for her age," Jack said. "She's one of those people who probably will look younger than their age. I suggest that you insert a few memories of people telling her how young she looks."

  "Noted. It'll be done. But... we have doubts that the memory insertion will deceive the Imago."

  "I don't know if it will be fooled or it won't be," Jack said. "It makes no difference. We have to try. And we'd better get cracking very
soon."

  He started to say something more on the subject, but no sound came from his mouth. His lips were open, and his jaw hung down. Then he snapped it shut and frowned.

  The AI waited patiently for him to speak.

  "All of a sudden," Jack murmured, "all of a sudden..."

  "What?" the AI said.

  "It struck me that I've got an ethical problem! I haven't asked Tappy if it's okay if we mess around with her mind! It's a terrible thing to do that and not even ask her if we can! Yet, the situation is such that we can't ask her if she'll cooperate! To do that would negate the plan from the start!"

  "The larger ethical issue overrides the smaller," the AI said. "Our data makes that clear."

  "You have no intuition about ethics," Jack said. "You rely on data. We humans do, too, but we also have feelings. Mine tell me that we are sinning against Tappy."

  "We know the definition of 'sin'," the AI said. "It's a philosophical and theological concept which has no relation to reality— except as it governs the behavior of Homo sapiens... and some other sentients."

  "How about the Imago's concept of sin, its ethical standards?"

  "I have no direct knowledge of that. But it always works for the general good of sentient groups who are also ethical."

  Jack thought that no group, or individual, for that matter, believed that it was doing evil. Did Hitler or Stalin or Mao believe that he was evil? No. What they did was for the good of the group they ruled. Or so they believed. Apparently, though, the Imago could perceive what and who was truly good.

  "Go away," Jack said. "Let me think."

  "The larger does not always outweigh the smaller," the AI said. "But, in this case, it does."

  It turned and walked out of the tent and around the doorway.

  Jack paced back and forth. Presently, he heard the tinkling of the little bell which he had gotten from the AI and then placed on the table near Tappy's bed. She could not call out to him if she wanted him, but the bell could be heard throughout the tent and some distance away from it. He went to the bedroom, where she was now sitting on a pile of pillows near the bed.

  "What do you want?" he said.

  She held up her recorder. He went to her and read what she had printed on it. By now, he was becoming fairly proficient in reading the Gaol alphabet. He only had to refer to his equivalence list twice.

  She had written: What is happening?

  "I've been busy with the AI," he said. He hesitated, then said, lying, "We're going to put you under hypnosis and try to break through your memory barrier. Maybe, if we're lucky, we can find out what happened before the plane crash."

  Suddenly, he had known what he must do to her. It was making him lie to her because the most important thing, the only really important thing, was to develop that entity inside her to the Imago phase.

  God help her! God help him! They were, from the cosmic viewpoint, only agents. In some respects, their fate was no more important than the AI's. But it mattered greatly to Tappy and him. They were not unfeeling robotic AI.

  Tappy looked anything but happy. In fact, her left hand was gripping her right hand tightly, and she was biting her lip.

  "What's the matter?" he said.

  She shook her head.

  He said, "You are troubled. Don't deny it. I have to know what it is."

  He picked up the recorder from the little table and nudged her shoulder with it. After she had taken it, he handed her the stylus.

  "Tell me," he said.

  She wrote: I reely dont know but I get paniky, sick at my stomik, feel cold as ice, when I think of being hipnutizd.

  She added: Please dont make me do it.

  She was terrified. Why? Because, he was sure, whoever had installed that block had also put in a command to make her resist fiercely any attempt to remove it. Since he did not intend to have her hypnotized, he found it easy to reassure her.

  He said, "Don't be afraid. We won't do it. You're safe from that. I swear."

  She relaxed at once and smiled, though shakily.

  Now, though, she would fight against anything she could interpret as an attempt to probe her mind. The only thing to do was to sedate her while she was asleep and then have the AI insert the false memories. He hated the idea. Nevertheless, it had to be done.

  He pulled her up from the chair and held her tightly. She was still trembling and did not quit until several minutes passed. He spoke soothingly and told her that, somehow, things would work out well. Though she probably did not believe him, she may have found some comfort in his words. Perhaps, she was interpreting his embrace and his concern as an expression of his love for her.

  That made him feel even more traitorous.

  What a Judas he was!

  Finally, he released her. It was evident that she did not want him to do that, but he held her at arm's length, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

  "I have to talk to the AI," he said. "I'll be back. First, though, is there anything I can get them to get for you? They can probably provide anything you'll want."

  Except safety and peace of mind and my love, he thought.

  She wrote: Id love a big reel big mug of hot coco with a marshmello.

  The child's spelling caused him to be engulfed with tenderness. She was a child, and she had been terribly wronged. And now he was wronging her.

  "I'll do that," he said. "Be back shortly."

  He started to withdraw his hand. She grabbed it and held on. Then she made signs with one hand that she wanted to go with him. "I'm very sorry," he said. "I just can't do that."

  He gently pulled his hand away and walked out of the room. By the time he got to the fountain, an AI, a female, was waiting for him.

  He told it about Tappy's request for cocoa.

  "It'll be ready for you when you go back," the AI said.

  "Put a sedative in it," Jack said. "She needs to sleep a long time while we're planning what kind of memories to give her. And when we're ready to insert them, she'll need something to make her unconscious before she's put wherever you plan to put her during the operation."

  "It will be done. She must be very disturbed. We received impressions of great fear from her."

  "Do you blame her?" Jack said.

  "We don't blame or praise," the AI said.

  "You just do the job you were made for, right? Give me the cocoa. I'll take it to her and stay with her until she falls asleep."

  He was startled, though he should have been prepared for something like it, when the waves appeared behind the AI. They suddenly cleared to reveal another AI, a male. It held on a tray a mug with at least a quart of steaming cocoa and a huge marshmallow floating on it. He took it. About six minutes later, he returned. The male was gone.

  "It didn't take long," he said. "She fell asleep before she'd drunk a quarter of the cocoa."

  He had thought that he would be taken to the city-ship for the conference. But the female AI, Candy, was the only one he saw, and they stayed in the entrance room. He sat down on a pile of huge pillows and made notes on the recorder while they talked. Candy stood in one place and moved only its lips. Its lack of the gestures and twitchings and slight shiftings of the bodies all humans make while talking bothered Jack. It also lessened his feeling that the AI were human. Though he had known they were androids, he had clothed them with humanity, with real life. Now they were naked of these. They were just machines. So, what was he doing talking with machines?

  It was, he acknowledged, better than having no one to talk to. After they had covered various possibilities, Jack said, "Okay, here's how it'll go, if you agree it can be done. You'll make and then insert about seven major memories per year over a seven-year period. Forty-nine very strong incidents. That is, memories of incidents which have been powerful in maturing her.

  "Then you'll insert a number of lesser incidents. Things that might not be significant to other people but Tappy will remember... seem to remember, anyway... because they're important to her. Things m
ostly pleasurable, I'd say. She might as well have some happiness in her past even though they're false memories."

  "Seven years is a long time for a human," Candy said. "And, as I understand it, time seems to go more slowly for a youth than for an adult. The older you get, the faster time seems to go. Is that correct?"

  "That's what older people say," Jack said. "I know that my childhood seemed to stretch out for a much longer time than when I was a teenager."

  "Then, logically, shouldn't she have more memories in the earlier years of her pseudomemories than she has in the later years? The first four of her seven years should contain more memories than the last three?"