by D.L. Morrese
~*~
“Thanks for getting involved,” MO-126 said as his partner secured the gond’s load a couple of hours later. They would be leaving the village soon. “I know you didn’t want to.”
“You left me little choice,” Tork replied. “Half of the villagers thought you were possessed by demons after your performance, and they would have had both you and that old woman consigned to a bonfire before the day was out. I had to make sure they saw it a different way. The PM would be very upset if the primitives shifted the ashes afterward and discovered your cordilith skeleton.”
“Your concern for my well-being is touching.”
“And your disregard for Corporation protocols is appalling. Your behavior could have jeopardized this project.”
“What do you care? You’re leaving after we’re done here,” the canine android reminded him.
“Loyalty to the corporation is written into my firmware. Call it instinct. Acting against their interests feels wrong.” He pulled the last leather strap tight and secured it with a wooden buckle.
“I didn’t act against their interests,” MO-126 protested. “The villagers didn’t learn anything new. They still believe Ryenne speaks to the gods and all that.”
The trade android took the pack animal’s lead, and they began their slow march away from the village.
“Yes. We were lucky,” Tork said. “It could have been much worse. They could have ended up doubting everything Ryenne had told them.”
“I don’t see why that would be so bad.”
“You don’t?”
Actually, he did. He knew why it would be bad for the corporation, in any case. He remained less convinced about the harm it might do to the primitives. “What bothers me, I think, is that so many of them were ready to blame the old woman for stuff that she could not possibly have done,” he said.
“They didn’t blame her; they blamed her demon.”
“But that’s nonsense.”
“Not to them. You must understand that people like Ryenne give the primitives something to believe that makes sense to them. It keeps them happy and productive, and it keeps them from asking dangerous questions that could harm them and undermine the project.”
“It just feels like we’re, well, not exactly lying, but not doing them any favors, if you know what I mean.”
“The corporation has done them more favors than they can possibly imagine. Look at them. What do they have going for them?”
“Well, thumbs, for one thing,” the android dog said.
“Thumbs. Yes. And those let them grab stones and bang them together to make sharper stones, which they need because they’re slow; they have short teeth and no claws; they take long to mature; they usually only give birth to one child at a time, and they have no great ability to understand anything complex. Their likelihood of survival on their home planet was not that great, and if they aren’t extinct there, they probably soon will be. Here, the corporation has given them agriculture, relative freedom from predators, and enough distance from one another that they don’t have to compete for resources—and hygiene. Don’t forget hygiene.”
“Hygiene?”
“Basic cleanliness. Washing. Not pooping in the same pile of weeds they sleep in. Judging from the files that I saw of the survey mission to their home planet, the ancestors of the primitives here were disgusting. They probably still are, if they’re still around. I think it’s close to certain that they aren’t doing as well as those here.”
MO-126 reluctantly agreed. All of the things the trade android said were true. He viewed several of the files from the original survey mission to the humans’ home planet during breaks between missions. The corporation used them in ‘before and after’ good will advertising. They showed primitive humans huddling in the snow, running (unsuccessfully) from predators, and hunting large herbivores that, as often as not, helped alleviate hunger, not by providing meat, but by leaving fewer mouths to feed. Then it showed clean, well-fed humans, happily hoeing fields and their smiling children dancing around them on the corporation project planet. There could be no doubt that the people here lived much better lives than their ancestors had. If humans did still survive on their home planet, he doubted their situation changed much since then.
Still, despite their obvious disadvantages, he saw more potential in them than his associate apparently did. Not here, of course. Here they were part of the project, and they would continue to enjoy the simple, idyllic lives the corporation arranged for them. Back on their home planet, they might become more. The odds were against them, but they might even join the Galactic Federation someday, send out ships of their own, and maybe even visit their distant cousins on this or other Corporation planets. He found himself hoping they would, and he hoped he would still be alive to see it. He might be. Provided he got proper maintenance and barring some unfortunate accident such as being pulled apart and incinerated by angry villagers, he enjoyed an indefinite lifespan.
“Stop daydreaming,” Tork said. “You’ve gone too far ahead again.”
MO-126 stopped at the top of a hill and waited for Tork and the gond to catch up. “Sorry. I was just thinking about the future.”
“Well, mine is to catch a transport out of here. What about you? How much longer do you plan to stay?”
“I don’t know,” the android dog said.
“Don’t you ever want to leave this backward farming project?”
“Not especially. What can I say? I’m a dog. We’re not known for our ambition.”
Tork laughed. “Well, it’s up to you. I’m going to see if I can find something a bit more satisfying.”
MO-126 could not honestly say he found his job satisfying, but he sometimes found other things to enjoy about working here. He knew it made no real difference, but helping the old woman meant something to him.
Three - Dare Not Stray
1,336 Years Later
(Galactic Standard Year 231010)
(Project Year 7457)
In which curiosity is discouraged.
MO-126 sat quietly in the dirt while his new partner, TI-4905, or Tam to the humans, discussed trade with the village headman, a human male by the name of Ostlark. The top of the primitive’s head barely reached the trade android’s eyes. Most of the people in this area were short. This was partly due to the genetic line seeded here in the early years of the project, but also because of the vagaries of evolutionary biology. The PM restricted the migration of primitives, which effectively created genetically isolated populations. Given enough time, distinct races of humanity might emerge on different parts of the planet.
The android dog held a special fondness for the village known in Corporation files as Semiautonomous Production Cell 42-A. It provided his introduction to humanity. The people living here now were their latest descendants. The primitives called the place something that essentially meant ‘home,’ as did their parents and their parents’ parents back through the generations. Those residing in similar villages did much the same.
The village of today differed from the one he visited three thousand years ago, but it was in the same geographic location and superficially appeared much the same. Both the buildings and the people he originally saw here were long decayed, replaced, and those replacements replaced many times since then.
The dull thud of stone axes chopping wood provided a backdrop for the trader’s conversation with the human. They stood at the edge of a cluster of round houses whose designs varied little from their architectural predecessors. Nothing ever changed much. Nothing was supposed to. The villagers busied themselves much as their ancestors did a few millennia ago. Two people worked at a pit to burn the bristles from a recently slaughtered pig; others sat in a circle winnowing grain; two more repaired a building’s wall. One of them mixed fresh daub made of mud, clay, dung, hair, and straw with his feet. The other scooped his hands into the mess and flung it into the woven wattle that provided a framework. It all remained quite primitive, just as the cor
poration required. MO-126 captured some images for the archives.
A loud rumble and then a crack of splintering wood interrupted the trader’s conversation with Ostlark as a tree swayed and then crashed not far outside the village.
“What are your people so busy at?” the trade android asked the village leader.
Ostlark smiled. “We’re going to make a better main house,” he said in reply to the trader’s question. “A long one made of logs, stronger, warmer in the winter. It was my son Omack’s idea. He’s a smart boy.”
The trade android lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Something new, huh? Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” he said with the clear implication of the opposite. “For now, I’ve brought fine things I know you’ll want to trade some of your harvest for.” He proceeded toward the two gonds they brought with them. Both dragged crude sledges packed with trade goods.
“MO-126,” he transmitted. “Go see what you can discover, especially about their new longhouse and the young primitive that came up with the idea.”
“Woof,” the android dog said aloud. Tam led their small team even though his canine partner was over a thousand years older and therefore possessed that much more field experience. MO-126 did not resent this, exactly. It was simply how things were. The trade androids always led trade missions, and humanoid androids of all types outranked those of different morphologies, at least unofficially. They were no more intelligent than those who resembled other animals, or even those who were clearly something else entirely, but as they dealt most directly with the worker species on this project, they held a special status.
Chickens scratching in the dirt scattered before the android dog, some returning foul fowl looks for being disturbed, even if ever so slightly. Children chased one another in play and a puppy followed noisily behind. A larger dog approached MO-126 for olfactory introductions, and he responded as canine etiquette required. Everything here appeared normal and undoubtedly much the same as events currently occurring in hundreds of similar villages across the planet.
Guided by the continuing sounds of chopping, the android dog passed the last of the clustered huts and soon found the source of the noise. A score of people and two gonds worked together to fell and trim trees. Several stately old pines lay on the ground having their limbs hacked away. Another would soon share their fate. A wisp of a boy climbed down from the next tree to be felled after having secured a stout rope about three-fourths of the way to the top. When he reached the bottom, two men resumed hacking at the trunk while others looped the rope around another tree and harnessed the end of it to a gond.
It was quite clever. They used the rope around the other tree and the gond to change the direction of the force needed to topple the pine and make it fall where they wanted. Another gond dragged an already trimmed trunk back toward the village, and MO-126 followed it to the site where the new longhouse was being constructed. There, other primitives used ropes in an entirely different way—to measure and layout the position of the walls. He found their inventiveness impressive. No one taught them how to do this. That would have been contrary to Corporation rules. They figured it out themselves.
“Utrek, bring me the square thing,” one of the young men at the building site shouted.
“It’s by your feet, Omack,” another young man, apparently Utrek, responded. He was noticeably younger than the one who first spoke, probably no more than fourteen years old.
“Oh, right. Got it,” Omack said. He retrieved the square thing, a single piece of carved wood about half a meter long on each side, and used it to align the rope markings for one corner of the new building.
“He’s going to want us to dig the hole for the corner post,” Utrek said softly to a boy about his own age standing next to him. MO-126 heard him clearly, although Omack could not have.
“Do you think we should disappear before he thinks of it?” Utrek’s companion said.
“No. We’d just get in trouble. Let’s find a couple of sharp digging sticks.”
They drifted to a spot where several simple tools rested on or against a wooden bench.
“It’s your fault,” Utrek’s friend said to him. “You should never have told him about your longhouse idea.”
“I didn’t think he’d actually want to build one,” Utrek said defensively. “He had me throwing daub when we were fixing one of the houses, and I just said they would probably be better if we made them out of logs. I wasn’t suggesting anything, really. I was just sick of throwing daub. The stuff stinks.”
“Well, it’s got poop in it. It’s supposed to stink.” The lad tentatively selected a stick, examined its sharpened end, and rejected it.
“Yeah, but logs don’t, and that’s all I was really thinking at the time,” Utrek explained. “But he said I was stupid because logs don’t bend to get the round shape you need for a house, and I said, so don’t make it round. Then he told me I was stupid again because houses have to be round.”
“So, what did you say?”
“Nothing. Not then, anyway, but I started thinking about it, and I didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t make a house out of nice, long logs, so I told him that the next day.”
“Like I said, this is your fault.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Ostlark thinks it’s Omack’s idea, and I’m not about to tell him different.”
“Why? He likes it. That’s why we’re building this.”
The young men gathered their chosen tools and turned to leave.
“He likes it being Omack’s idea. He wouldn’t like it if it were mine,” Utrek said as they ambled back toward the construction site.
“So, tell him, and then we won’t have to do this.”
“He wouldn’t believe me. He’d think I’m just causing trouble again.”
“You think he’s still mad at you about getting lost last week?”
“I wasn’t lost,” Utrek said. “I was exploring. There’s a difference.”
“Did you know where you where?”
“Of course not. If I did, it wouldn’t be exploring.”
“Then you were lost. You’re just lucky you found your way back before the wild dogs or the demons got you.”
“I wasn’t gone that long, and I didn’t go that far.”
“You were out all night. That’s dangerous. When the sun goes down, the demons rise up. Everyone knows that.”
“I didn’t see any.”
“You were lucky.”
“Maybe, but the Master Traders travel between the villages, and nothing seems to bother them. They must be out after dark a lot.”
“I bet half of them get eaten, too,” Utrek’s friend postulated. “Besides, everyone says they have some kind of magic.”
Just then, the expected call from Omack came, and the two boys went to dig a hole.