Year's Best Scifi 5 Part 34

"There's a basic conflict between Miniruta's conduct and the message of the EruLabi creeds.

Miniruta can't act the way she's been acting without arousing some hostility in the rest of the EruLabi community."

"And you're hoping she'll alter her behavior when she finds the EruLabi are turning against her. Since she is a personality whose 'drive for affiliation' scores in the 99th percentile."

"The EruLabi are not proselytizers," Morgan said in Tych. "Their world-view tends to attract people who avoid controversy and public notice. Many EruLabi are already uncomfortable. If you'll examine Table Six, you'll see the reactions of the EruLabi community already generate an overall minus twenty in their att.i.tude toward Miniruta. Table Seven shows you how much that will increase if they see her actually engaging in some form of active resistance."

"I'm still fully prepared to transmit a message without waiting for authorization, Morgan. I'm willing to try this. But the other option is still open."

"I understand that," Morgan said.

The biggest exploration machines on the planet were high-wheeled "tractors" that were about the size of the fabrication unit that sat in a corner of Morgan's apartment and transformed rocks and waste matter into food and other useful items. Ari started-correctly, in Morgan's opinion-by landing six machines that were only a third that size. Ari's little group of sand sifters and electronic probing devices started to spread out after their landing and three tractors detached themselves from Miniruta's team and tried to block them. Ari's nimble little machines dodged through the openings between the tractors, more of Miniruta's machines entered the action, and the tractors started colliding with Ari's machines and knocking off wheels and sensors.

Morgan stayed out of the rhetorical duel that erupted as soon as Ari circulated his recording of the robotic fracas. Instead, he focused his attention on the reactions of the EruLabi. Miniruta was defending herself by claiming she was upholding her right to pursue an alternate research pattern. It was a weak line of argument, in Morgan's opinion, and the EruLabi seemed to agree with him. The support she was attracting came from people who had opposed Ari's original request to send a message to the solar system. Morgan's search programs couldn't find a single comment-negative or positive-from anyonewho could be identified as an EruLabi.

Morgan's content a.n.a.lysis programs had been collecting every commentary and attempt at humor that mentioned Miniruta. Over the next few hours he found five items that played on the discrepancy between Miniruta's EruLabi professions and her militant behavior. The one he liked best was a forty second video that showed a woman with a BR-V73 body type reclining in an ornate bath. The woman was bellowing EruLabi slogans at the top of her lungs and manipulating toy war machines while she jabbered about love, sensual pleasure, and the comforts of art and music. A broken tea cup jiggled on the floor beside the tub every time one of her toys fired a laser or launched a missile.

It was a crude effort that had been posted anonymously, with no attempt to circulate it. As far as Morgan could tell, only a couple of hundred people had actually seen it. He shortened it by eighteen seconds, transformed the cackles into deepthroated chuckles, and retouched some of the other details.

Of the other four items, two were genuinely witty, one was clumsy, and one was just badtempered and insulting. He modified all of them in the same way he had modified the video. He slipped them into the message stream at points where he could be confident they would be noticed by key members of the EruLabi communion.

Fifteen hours after Miniruta had started obstructing Ari's efforts, Savela Insdotter circulated the official EruLabi response. Miniruta Coboloji has been an inspiration to everyone who truly understands the EruLabi creeds, Savela began. Unfortunately, she seems to have let her enthusiasm for our Way lead her into a dangerous course of action. We reached an agreement and Ari Sun-Dalt abided by it, in spite of all his feelings to the contrary.

We have a civilized, rational system for resolving differences. We don't have to tolerate people who refuse to respect our procedures. We still control the communication system. We can still sever Miniruta's communication links with Athene and her manufacturing facilities on the moon, if we register our will as a community. Isn't it time we got this situation under control?

Miniruta's answer appeared on the screens of every EruLabi on the s.h.i.+p. Morgan wasn't included on her distribution list but an EruLabi pa.s.sed it on to him. Every word she spoke validated the a.n.a.lysis his program had made all those decades earlier. The tilt of her chin and the tension in her mouth could have been delineated by a simulator working with the program's conclusions.

Morgan watched the statement once, to see what she had said, and never looked at it again. He had watched Miniruta abandon two groups: the original Eight and Ari's most dedicated followers. No group had ever abandoned her.

Savela's proposal required a 90 percent vote-the minimum it took to override the controls built into the information system. Anyone who had watched the s.h.i.+p's political system at work could have predicted Savela was going to collect every yes she needed. The proposal had been attracting votes from the moment people started discussing it-and no one had voted against it.

Morgan believed he was offering Miniruta the best opportunity he could give her. The EruLabi were not a vindictive people. A few wits had circulated clever barbs, but there was no evidence they were committed to a state of permanent rancor. Most of them would quickly forget her "excessive ardor" once she "manifested a better understanding of our ideals."

Miniruta would re-establish her bonds with the EruLabi communion within a year, two years at the most, Morgan estimated. He would once again recline beside her as they sampled teas and wines together. He would look down on her face as she responded to the long movements of his body.

Miniruta was a good EruLabi. It suited her.

He knew he had failed when the vote reached the 55 percent mark and Miniruta started denouncing the EruLabi who had refused to support her crusade to rid the universe of "cosmic totalitarianism." The tally had just topped 65 percent when Ari advised him Miniruta's robots were vandalizing the sites she had occupied.

Fossils were being chipped and defaced. Rocks that might contain fossils were being splintered into slivers and scattered across the landscape. Five of the best sites were being systematically destroyed.

The carnage would end as soon as they cut Miniruta's communications link to the planet. But in the meantime she would destroy evidence that had survived two billion years.

Ari already had machines of his own at two of the sites Miniruta was razing. He had transmitted new orders to the entire group and they had immediately started ramming and blocking Miniruta's machines.

The rest of his machines were scattered over the planet.

They had only built three vehicles that could pick up a group of exploration machines and haul it to another point on the planet. Most of the machines on the planet had been planted on their work sites when they had made their initial trip from the moon.

Morgan ran the situation through a wargame template and considered the results. As usual, the tactical situation could be reduced to a problem in the allocation of resources. They could scatter their forces among all five sites or they could concentrate on three. Scattering was the best option if they thought the struggle would only last a few hours. Concentration was the best option if they thought it might last longer.

"Give me some priorities," Morgan said. "Which sites are most important?"

"They're all important," Ari said. "Who knows what's there? She could be destroying something critical at every site she's spoiling."

Morgan gave his system an order and the three transport vehicles initiated a lifting program that would place defensive forces on all five sites. The vote on Savela's proposal had already reached the 70 percent mark. How long could it be before it hit ninety and Miniruta lost control of her equipment?

Most of the exploration machines were weak devices. They removed dirt by the spoonful. They cataloged the position of every pebble they disturbed. If the vote reached cutoff within two or three hours, Morgan's scattered defensive forces could save over 85 percent of all five sites.

Short range laser beams burned out sensors. Mechanical arms pounded sensitive arrays. Vehicles wheeled and charged through a thin, low-gravity fog of dust. Morgan found himself reliving emotions he hadn't felt since his postnatal development program had given him simple mechanical toys during the first years of his childhood.

For the first ninety minutes it was almost fun. Then he realized the vote had been stuck at 78 percent for at least fifteen minutes. A moment later it dropped back to seventy-six.

He switched his attention to his political a.n.a.lysis program and realized Miniruta had made an important s.h.i.+ft while he had been playing general. She had stopped fighting a crusade against her philosophical rivals. Now she was defending Madame Dawne "and all the other elders who will have to live with the consequences of Ari's headstrong recklessness if the Green Voyager changes course."

"Apparently she's decided Madame Dawne offers her a more popular cause," Ari said.

Ten minutes after Miniruta issued her speech, Morgan sent five of his machines in pursuit of two of hers. He was watching his little war party drive in for the kill-confident he had her outmaneuvered-when he suddenly discovered it had been encircled by an overwhelming force. Five minutes later, the program advised him he was facing a general disaster. The "exchange rate" at all five sites was now running almost two to one in Miniruta's favor. Every time he destroyed five of her machines, she destroyed nine of his.

Ari saw the implications as soon as the numbers appeared on the screen. "She's started feeding herself enhancers," Ari said. "She's abandoning her EruLabi principles."

Morgan turned away from his screens. Memories of music floated across his mind.

He switched to Tych, in the hope its hard, orderly sentences would help him control his feelings.

"Miniruta has switched allegiances," he said. "We were incorrect when we a.s.sumed her last statement was a tactical move. She has acquired a new allegiance."

"Just like that? Just like she left us?"

"It would be more correct to say she feels the EruLabi left her.""That isn't what you told me she'd do, Morgan."

"The programs indicated there was a 90 percent probability Miniruta would protect her ties with the EruLabi community."

"And now you're faced with one of the options in the 10 percent list instead."

A blank look settled over Ari's face. He tipped back his head and focused his attention on his internal electronics.

"Let me see if I understand the situation," Ari said in Tych. "The struggle can continue almost indefinitely if Miniruta maintains the current exchange rate. She is receiving new machines from her production units on the moon almost as fast as you're destroying them. She can continue damaging all five sites, therefore, until they are all totally demolished."

"We still have options," Morgan said. "My pharmaceuticals include enhancers I still haven't used.

Miniruta outmatches me intellectually but she has a weakness. She isn't used to thinking about conflict situations. Miniruta spent the last seven decades advancing through the EruLabi protocols. She has devoted 25 percent of her total lifespan to her attempts to master the protocols."

"As for the political situation," Ari droned, "according to your best estimates, approximately 80 percent of the s.h.i.+p's population feel we should send a message to the solar system if we find conclusive evidence intelligent life evolved on Athene. They may not agree I should send a message now, but they do agree it should be sent if I uncover evidence that can be considered conclusive. Most of the people in the other 20 percent have been willing to submit to the will of the majority, even though they aren't happy with the idea. Now Miniruta is offering the 20 percent a tempting opportunity. They can let her destroy the evidence and avoid a decision indefinitely. They don't even have to vote. They can just abstain and hold the count on the current balloting below 90 percent. Miniruta will maintain control of her machines and the sites will be excised from the scientific record."

Ari lowered his head. "It's my opinion I should initiate one of my alternate options. Miniruta can only operate her machines as long as her apartment is connected to the s.h.i.+p's power supply. We will have to sever three alternate power lines to cut her link with the power system, but I believe it can be done."

Morgan stared at the screen that displayed Ari's face. He started to respond in Tych and discovered he couldn't. Ari had triggered an emotional flood that was so powerful Morgan's brain had automatically s.h.i.+fted to VA13.

Ari raised his hand. "I recognize that the action I'm suggesting has serious implications," he said. "I realize it could trigger off long term changes in our communal relations.h.i.+ps. I believe Miniruta is committing a crime that ranks with the worst atrocities in history. She is destroying a message that has been waiting for us for over two billion years."

"You're talking about something that could make every pa.s.senger on this s.h.i.+p feel they had to arm themselves," Morgan said. "This is the first time I've heard anyone even suggest one pa.s.senger should attack another pa.s.senger's power connection. What kind of a life could we have here if people felt somebody could cut their power connection every time we had a conflict?"

"We are discussing an extreme situation. Miniruta could be pulverizing the only fossils on the planet that could prove Athene generated intelligent life."

Morgan stood up. "It's always an extreme situation. This time it's your extreme situation. Fifty years from now it will be somebody else's. And what do we end up with? A s.h.i.+p full of people forming gangs and alliances so they can protect themselves?"

"Is that all that matters to you, Morgan? Maintaining order in one little rock? Worrying about three thousand people hiding in their own personal caves?"

Morgan knew he was losing control of his impulses. He was behaving exactly the way his personality profile predicted he would behave. But he couldn't help himself. He was staring at someone who was unshakably convinced they were right and he was wrong. Ari could have withstood every technique of persuasion stored in the s.h.i.+p's databanks. What difference did it make what he said?

"It's the rock I live in! It's the rock you live in!"

Ari switched to VA13-a language he rarely used. The musical pattern he adapted colored his words with a flare of trumpets."I live in the galaxy," Ari said. "My primary responsibility is the intellectual evolution of my species."

Miniruta-Ari is going to cut the power lines to your apartment. This is not a ruse. It's not a threat. I'm warning you because I think he's doing something that could have a disastrous effect on the long range welfare of the s.h.i.+p's community-a precedent that could make the s.h.i.+p unlivable. You've still got time if you move now. Put on your emergency suit. Get in your escape tunnel and go all the way to the surface before he puts a guard on the surface hatch. If you start now, you could make it all the way to the communications module while he's still getting organized.

Morgan's forces attacked Miniruta's production facilities on the moon two hours after she received his warning. Her security system put up a fight, but it was overwhelmed within an hour. Every fabrication unit in her factories was brought to a halt. The rail launcher that propelled her machines toward Athene was dismantled at three different points.

Morgan had selected the most powerful intellectual enhancer his physiology could absorb. He would be disoriented for almost five daycycles after he stopped using it. He was still intellectually inferior to Miniruta, but he had just proved he had been right when he had claimed she wasn't used to thinking about conflict situations. He had taken her by surprise because she hadn't realized he had reprogrammed his lunar fabrication units and created a force that could break through her defenses.

This was the first time he had used this enhancer while he was struggling with a real-time, real-world challenge. He turned his attention to the action on the surface of Athene as if he was training a ma.s.sive weapon on a target.

Miniruta's forces were still destroying his machines faster than he was destroying hers. She had spent a full hour working her way across the surface of the s.h.i.+p to the communications module and she had managed to maintain the exchange rate all the time she had been doing it. On the site closest to Athene's equator, she had taken complete control of the situation. Morgan's machines had been backed against a cliff and most of Miniruta's machines were churning up the ground and lasering potential fossil beds without resistance.

Morgan had eliminated Miniruta's source of reinforcements when he had destroyed her facilities on the moon. His own fabrication units were still turning out a steady stream of reinforcements and launching them at the planet. Sooner or later Miniruta's machines would be wiped out. Sooner or later he would be replacing his machines faster than she destroyed them. But the trip from the moon to Athene took over twenty hours. It would be almost forty hours, the charts on his screens claimed, before he destroyed Miniruta's last machine.

His brain skimmed through the plans for the vehicles that ferried equipment between the moon and the planet. Numbers and equations danced across his consciousness: payloads, production times, the weight of the reaction ma.s.s a transport vehicle forced through its engines when it braked to a landing on Athene. His fabrication units on the moon received a new set of orders and started producing transport vehicles that would make the trip in nine hours. The vehicles would carry 50 percent more reaction ma.s.s, so they could kill the extra velocity. Payload would be reduced by 30 percent.

"Somebody told her we were going to attack her power lines. She climbed out her surface escape hatch minutes before we put a guard on it. We didn't even know she'd left until she started controlling her machines from the communications module."

Ari had been speaking VA13 when he had deposited the message in Morgan's files. He had obviously wanted to make sure Morgan understood his feelings.

"There's only one person on this s.h.i.+p who could have warned her in time, Morgan. No one in my communion would have done such a thing. Now she's sitting in the communications module, wrecking and smas.h.i.+ng some of the most precious information the human race has ever uncovered. And we're battering our skulls into pulp trying to break through all the weapons her friend Madame Dawne deployed around the communications module."Morgan put his machines into a defensive posture on all five sites and held them on the defensive while he waited for reinforcements. Every now and then, when he saw an opportunity, he launched a hit-and-run attack and tried to catch one of her machines by surprise.

Ari was right, of course. The destruction Morgan was watching on his screens was one of the great criminal acts of history. Most of the fossils that had filled in the story of human evolution had come from a small area of Earth. The sites Miniruta was destroying had been selected because they met all the parameters entered into the search program. Would there be important, unfillable gaps in the record when they had explored the entire planet? Would her spree of destruction leave them with questions that could never be answered?

Morgan switched to the offensive as soon as the first reinforcement arrived from the moon. He picked the site where Miniruta was weakest and eliminated every machine she controlled within two hours. Then he picked her second weakest site and began working on it.

He could feel the full power of Miniruta's mind every step of the way. He was making maximum use of all the help his wargaming programs could give him but he couldn't reduce the exchange ratio by a single percentage point. He was only going to defeat her because she was manipulating a finite force and he could draw on an infinite supply of reinforcements. Whatever he did, she still destroyed nine of his machines every time he destroyed five of hers.

At any given moment, furthermore, only about half her machines were actually fighting his. The rest of them were busily maximizing the destruction she was causing.

"We've lost at least 30 percent of the information we could have pulled from each site," Ari said. "On site four, we probably lost over 60 percent."

Morgan was lying on a couch, with a screen propped on his stomach. The recording of Ari's face seemed to be s.h.i.+mmering at the end of a long tunnel. The medical system had advised him it might be most of a tenday before he recovered from the combined effects of sleeplessness, emotional stress, and ultra-enhancement.

"I could have cut off her power within three or four hours if you hadn't interfered," Ari said. "It took you eleven hours to destroy her vehicles-eleven hours-even after you started getting extra reinforcements from the moon."

For the third time in less than a daycycle, Morgan was being given a rare chance to hear Ari speak VA13. This time Ari was applying the full force of a module that communicated graduated degrees of revulsion.

Morgan had made no recordings of his private moments with Miniruta. The EruLabi didn't do that.

Pleasure should be experienced only in memory or in the reality of the present, the EruLabi mentors had proclaimed. There was a long period-it lasted over two years-when Morgan spent several hours of every daycycle watching recordings of Miniruta's public appearances.

Savela could have helped him. He could imagine circ.u.mstances in which Savela would have offered him a temporary bonding that would have freed him from an emotion that seemed to blunt all his other feelings. Savela was no longer friendly, however. Savela might be an EruLabi but she shared Ari's opinion of his behavior.

Morgan believed he had averted the complete political breakdown of the s.h.i.+p's community. But how could you prove you had avoided something that never happened? People didn't see the big disaster that hadn't taken place. They only saw the small disaster you had created when you were trying to avert the big disaster. Out of the three thousand people on the s.h.i.+p, at least a thousand had decided they would be happier without his company.

Once, just to see if it would have any effect on his feelings, Morgan struck up a relations.h.i.+p with a woman with a BR-V73 body type. The woman was even an EruLabi. She had never advanced beyond the second protocol but that should have been a minor matter. Her body felt like Miniruta's when he touched it. The same expressions crossed her face when they practiced the EruLabi s.e.xual rituals. Therewas no way he could have noticed any significant difference when he wrapped himself around her in the darkness.

Ari's s.e.xual enhancement was another possibility. Morgan thought about it many times during the next two decades. He rejected it, each time, because there was no guarantee it would give him what he needed. The enhancement only affected the most basic aspect of s.e.xual desire-the drive for simple physical release. It didn't erase memories that included all the hours that had preceded-and followed-the actual moments when their bodies had been joined.

He had made eight attempts to contact Miniruta during the three years that had followed their miniature war. His programs still monitored the information system for any indication she was communicating with anyone. A style a.n.a.lysis program occasionally detected a message Miniruta could have created under a pseudonym. Every example it found had been traced to a specific, identifiable source. None of the authors had been Miniruta.

He had sent two queries to Madame Dawne. The second time, she had appeared on his screen with hair that was so short and so red she looked like someone had daubed her skull with paint. The language she had used had been obsolete when the Island of Adventure had left the solar system.

"Please do not think I am indifferent to your concern," Madame Dawne had said. "I believe I can inform you-with no likelihood of exaggeration or inaccuracy-that Miniruta finds your anxieties heartwarming. Please accept my unqualified a.s.surance that you can turn your attention to other matters.

Miniruta is a happy woman. We are both happy women."

Morgan had deleted the recording from his files two tendays after he received it. He had given his profiling program a description of Miniruta's latest transformation. Miniruta had changed her allegiance three times in the last one hundred and fifteen years. There was a possibility her affiliations were episodes in an endless cycle of unions and ruptures, driven by a need that could never be permanently satisfied.

The program couldn't calculate a probability. But it was a common pattern.