by Migration
“We know about that,” Uggam assured him. “We won’t.”
Their direct, uncomplicated way of seeing things felt like a release from grappling with the deceptions manufactured by the world of human adults, Tek thought as it selected another board. Somewhat like Plantation’s freshness and closeness to nature after the synthetic artificiality of Aurora and the other worlds. It was beginning to understand better why minds that had been steeped in distractions needed a period of solace and purification before they were ready to confront the deeper secrets of the universe. There would be much to learn, it told itself, from the Masters on Etanne.
At the kitchen table, Korshak pushed his empty plate away, sat back, and ruffled the ears of Boot, who was sitting by the chair hopefully. “He reminds me of the dog I used to have. Do you remember him?”
“Sultan? Why, of course we do,” Sonja replied.
“Ah, he had a good run. Nothing lives forever.”
“Sultan was a magnificent dog,” Helmut said. “I can’t imagine why that silly mutt would remind you of him.”
“So, why is he called Boot?”
“When he was a puppy, he slept in one of Helmut’s shoes,” Sonja said. “Wouldn’t stay in his box. Boot, stop begging at the table like that. Look at him, Helmut.”
“He gets it from the cats. They have no shame.”
“Don’t criticize my cats. They have charm and dignity.”
“Hmph.” Helmut looked back at Korshak to change the subject. “So, you’re here for a break. What’s up at Forest that’s of interest?”
“Oh, I mean to be useful while I’m here,” Korshak answered. “The woman in the office back at Jesson – Dari. You know her?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Sonja said.
“She gave me a few places to check that could use some help.” Korshak didn’t want to reveal that Dari had pointed him to anywhere specifically. That way, he could ask about Tek without implicating her. “It’s a way to stay in shape, too. Exercise gyms are so boring.”
Boot’s ears pricked up suddenly. He stood up and moved to the back door from the kitchen, his tail swishing excitedly. A scuffling of feet punctuated by snatches of children’s voices came from outside, and then the door opened to admit Theis, Sonja and Helmut’s nine-year-old daughter, followed by a boy, maybe slightly older, whom Korshak didn’t recognize.
“Well, a fine time this is!” Sonja greeted. “Your lunch will be dried solid, Theis. I was about to give it to Boot.” She got up and turned to take a dish from the stove. “Where in heavens have you two been?”
“Oh, just up in Forest,” Theis said vaguely.
“What, again? You were there yesterday as well. But I supposed it’s the kind of place that children would like. Would you like some of this, Uggam? There’s plenty here.”
“Um, okay. Thanks.”
“Uggam is one of Theis’s local partners in mischief,” Helmut informed Korshak.
“Hello, Uggam,” Korshak said.
“Korshak is an old friend of ours. From when we lived on Aurora.”
“He’s a magician, too,” Theis put in as Sonja deposited a plate in front of her.
“What do you mean, ‘too’?” Sonja asked her.
“Oh, nothing….” Theis hurriedly busied herself with breaking and buttering a piece of bread. “How long is Korshak here for?”
“He’s just stopping by for a while today. But it seems as if he’s going to be on Plantation for a little while. I’m sure he’ll be back again soon.”
Helmut started to rise. “We can go into the other room,” he said to Korshak. “I have a drop of something that I think you’ll appreciate. Just the thing to send you on your way.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Korshak got up and followed him to the door.
“That’s the only kind I have,” Helmut said as they went through.
“Will you show us some magic before you go, Korshak?” Theis called after them.
“You never know your luck,” Korshak returned.
Sonja spooned some casserole onto another plate and set it down. “Have some bread, Uggam. There’s butter there. Or oil.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Goben.”
The men’s voices came through the open doorway over the clinking of a bottle and glasses. “So, you’ll be looking to see what work’s going, eh?” Helmut said. There was a short pause. Then Korshak spoke, sounding serious.
“To tell you the truth, that’s just an excuse for me to talk to some of the people here and move around. The real reason I’m here is to try and get some information.”
“Anything we can help with?” Helmut asked.
“Maybe. Do you know of any robots being on the loose around here? On Plantation?”
In the kitchen, Sonja looked around in surprise and didn’t see Uggam almost choke in the act of swallowing. “Robots?” Helmut’s voice repeated.
“One’s gone missing from a research project in Aurora,” Korshak said. “There’s reason to suppose it might have come here. Have you seen one? Or heard talk about anything like that?”
“Nothing,” Helmut replied. Then, a little louder, “Did you hear that, you kids in there? Have you seen a wandering robot in your travels?”
“It could be disguised. Maybe a person who looks out of place. All covered up,” Korshak added.
Theis and Uggam shook their heads together in short, jolting movements. “No,” Theis managed in a tiny voice.
Still holding the cloth that she had used to pick up the dish, Sonja moved away from the table and into the kitchen doorway. “This wouldn’t be one of Masumichi’s, would it?” she asked into the other room.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Korshak said. “He took it on one of his world-knowledge-expanding expeditions, and it disappeared. He doesn’t want it advertised – especially at a time like this, when questions about the reliability of the robots could cause Envoy to be put on hold.”
“Doesn’t it mean that there might be a good reason for doing just that, though?” Sonja queried.
“Not really,” Korshak answered. “But it’s exactly what a lot of people are likely to think. Masumichi says the models developed for Envoy are a hundred percent. The one that’s gone missing was a special-purpose prototype connected with his private research. More sophisticated but less predictable.”
“Why would it come to Plantation?” Helmut asked, still sounding mystified.
“In transit. We think it wants to join one of the cults.”
“You’re kidding!” Sonja disappeared from sight into the next room. “On Etanne?”
“Yes.”
“Whoever heard the like of it?”
At the table in the kitchen, the two children looked at each other with horrified faces. “They’re trying to catch Tek and make him go back,” Theis whispered. “They can’t! He’s our very own secret robot.”
“Korshak is going to Forest,” Uggam whispered back. “You heard him. He’ll find Tek for sure.”
“You have to go back up there and warn him.”
“Why me?”
“I’m home already. If I go out again now, there’ll be all kinds of questions. Just say you have to go, and run back up.”
Uggam frowned desperately as if searching for a way out, but finally nodded. He looked down at his half-filled plate and then around. Boot, cued by some uncanny instinct, unfolded from the floor and stared up. Uggam slid his plate off the table to hold it out, and it was clean in two slurps and a licking. Uggam replaced the plate, got down off the chair, and moved toward the back door. “I have to go now, Mrs. Goben,” he called. “Thanks. Nice meeting you, Mr. Korshak.”
Sonja came back in, looking surprised. “So soon?”
Theis played her part dutifully. “Aren’t you going to wait and see some magic, Uggam?”
“I have to get back. I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Aren’t you even going to —” Sonja began, then checked herself. “Great stars! It’s all gone! You must have been hu
ngry!”
NINETEEN
From Helmut and Sonja’s, the trail continued northward between mixed horticultural and crop cultivations extending across Ringvale’s floor to the left, and a simulation of open heath and hill slopes with a variety of domesticated animals roaming loose on the right, where the slope curved upward to become the East Ridge. Numerous paths crisscrossed the lower parts of Ringvale, and Korshak passed a scattered traffic of people, mostly visitors from their appearance.
Trees began appearing after a short distance, closing together quickly and consolidating into the band known as Forest, which extended the full width of Ringvale from the crest of one bounding ridge to the other. Here, Korshak veered rightward and began climbing; or at least, he followed an angled line to ascend what had been a rising valley side when seen from the floor. But because of the localized vertical effect, he experienced the peculiar sensation of the ground beneath his feet sloping only mildly upward, while the vista of Ringvale on his left opened out and rose higher to become an impossibly concave sweep of landscape arching overhead like an immense wave of green frozen at the moment of being about to break. Many people – especially those whose perceptual norms had been formed on Earth – confessed that they had never been able to get used to this. Maybe for this reason, and also because the growths of vegetation became coarser and denser, and the trails harder and sparser, the numbers of people to be seen dwindled rapidly until Korshak was able to enjoy for a brief while the illusion of actually picking his way through a real wilderness forest, far from human habitation. It brought back fond but at the same time, in some ways, sad memories of land that stretched endlessly from horizon to horizon, day after day. He sometimes wondered if he would make the same decision again, with the better understanding he now had of the “magic” that had created Aurora. But it was not to be changed now, and he thrust the thought from his mind. The high extremes of Forest were one of Mirsto’s favorite places, too. Vaydien had promised to bring him out to Plantation for a visit if Korshak found that he needed to stay on for a while.
Guided by the sketch that Dari had given him, he came to what had to be Highwood on the far side of Forest, right at the ridge crest. From here, the West Ridge forming the opposite side of Ringvale had rotated to a position almost directly overhead, while beyond the nearer ridgeline that Korshak had almost reached, a blue expanse of what would be seen from below as sky curved away and upward, giving the impression from where he stood of a crazily tilted ocean rising from a shore hidden by the final line of trees.
By this time the trail had shrunk to a path barely wide enough for one person. From what Korshak could see of the rooftops, Melvig Bahoba’s place consisted of a typically narrow-plan two-level house with outbuildings and an attached shed of some kind at the rear. Behind that was an area which from the absence of treetops seemed to be cleared. The trail approached the house from the side, and a short distance ahead, came out onto a wider track from the front, pointing straight downward toward the valley floor – or from Korshak’s distorted perspective, “upward.” The breeze generated by air recirculators located behind the ridgeline carried a hint of horse manure. Might as well get some practical return from the animal types that were being preserved, Korshak supposed.
After studying the layout for a few minutes, Korshak left the trail, having decided to circle around to learn what more he could before approaching the house directly. He might even spot Tek if Tek were there, which would at once make the whole business of having to ask questions of Bahoba unnecessary. But maybe because Korshak had fallen out of practice at judging such things over the years, the going was heavier than he had expected. Trees and undergrowth closed together into a thicket that quickly had him struggling to find a way through, in the process making all kinds of noise that was the last thing he needed. He had just stopped and given up, with the intention of returning to the trail, when an irascible voice called out from somewhere nearby.
“Tek, is that you? What in the name of whatever’s holy are you doin’ out ‘ere? I’ve been looking all over – Oh.” A man who must have been at least in his sixties had appeared from among the trunks and brush a few yards away. He had a full, bushy beard, grizzled but still with traces of coppery hue, and was wearing a floppy-brimmed hat with a leather vest, work pants, and calf-length boots. He peered at Korshak as if unsure for a moment if he might be seeing things. “Who the Earth are you?”
Well, at least that had saved a lot of care and questions, Korshak reflected. He grinned awkwardly. “Is it Melvig Bahoba?”
“I am.”
“The name’s Korshak. I was told by Dari in Jesson that you might have a slot for some short-term help here.” Korshak had seen no reason to complicate anything further by using an alias. He was used to people recognizing his name, but if that was so of Bahoba, he didn’t show it.
“What kind of work d’ye think you can do if ye can’t even find the front door?”
“I thought I saw a shortcut through the trees, but it wasn’t. Maybe I’d have been better coming up the direct way.” A brown and black dog had materialized alongside Bahoba, having made no noise although it must have long known that Korshak was there.
“Hm. Well, let’s talk about it inside. You’ll be better off this way than trying to go back, in any case.” Bahoba turned and began leading back the way he had come, with the dog falling in at his heels, positioning itself between the stranger and its master. The brush thinned as they approached the rear of the house. They emerged into a yard stacked with various cuts of timber, and crossed it to a work area covered by the roof that Korshak had seen from the trail. A wall of the house bounded the far side of it. They entered via a door into a small scullery and storage room that led through to the kitchen.
More than anything, it suggested an interior of the cottages that Korshak had known in his years of traveling among countries like Arigane. A bare wooden table cluttered with an unwashed plate and bowl, and some items of food yet to be put away took up the center of the room, augmented by a couple of upright chairs, an open-fronted dresser with shelves of dishware and knick-knacks, several cupboards, one of which looked like a pantry, and a sturdy cooking range. A door to one side opened through to the rest of the house. In the center of the far wall behind it was a hearth with an open fire – the first that Korshak had seen since leaving Earth. He had never heard of such a thing anywhere across Constellation. Yet there had been no chimney visible outside. If there were, he would surely have noticed it.
Bahoba must have followed his surprised gaze. “Some contraption up above there takes care of the smoke,” he supplied. “If it were up to me, I’d let it blow free. That’s nature’s way of cycling nutrients back into the soil. Instead, they go to all kinds of palaver doing it with chemicals an’ such. Do they think anything would ‘ave grown back on Earth if the rain were sterile?” He closed the door that they had come through and hung his hat on a hook behind it, alongside a coat and a device with a long handle and straps that looked like a tool of some kind. The brown and black dog remained outside. “Anyroad, it’s ‘andy enough for getting rid of the trash.” So saying, he scraped the leftovers from the plate into a bowl on a side table and deposited the plate in the metal sink below the window. “’Ave y’ eaten yet, yerself? There’s fresh stew in the pot, still warm.”
At Bahoba’s waved invitation, Korshak sat down on one of the chairs at the table. Bahoba took a pipe from a jug on the mantle above the hearth, along with a tin that was lying alongside it, and pulled up a worn, upholstered fireside chair for himself. “Thanks, but I just ate with some friends down just this side of Huan-ko,” Korshak said.
“Oh. Anyone I know?”
“Helmut Goben and his wife, Sonja. I knew them when they lived on Aurora.”
“Yes, I know of ’em. She teaches at the school down below. He’s into bugs and bacteria and whatnot. Their little girl comes up ‘ere sometimes with ’er friends. You know – exploring around, the way kids do.”
“Theis?”
“Aye, that’s ‘er. There’s more mischief in that one than looks would tell.” Bahoba finished packing the bowl of his pipe, applied a flame from a spill that he lit from the fire, and sat back to regard Korshak as he puffed it into life. “So, ye’re thinkin’ ye might want to come an’ ‘elp out ’ere, eh?”
“Just looking around at this point,” Korshak replied. “Dari gave me a list of possibilities.”
“D’ye know much about trees and timber?”
“A bit about woods and woodcraft, anyway. I could turn a pretty good hand to carpentry at one time – in the days back on Earth.”
“Is that right? And what else did ye do?”
“I suppose you could say I was a kind of traveling entertainer.”
Bahoba nodded. “Aye, I thought mebbe so. It’s in the eyes. They’ve got their own kind o’ life with folk like that, and they miss nothing.”
“You don’t seem to miss much yourself,” Korshak returned.
“Ah, well… I ‘ave me moments, I suppose, like everyone else.” Bahoba puffed some more. “It’s a case of keepin’ the mind exercised and active, in’t it? Learnin’ to trust yer own opinions. If ye’re just goin’ to soak up what comes from outside, ye might as well be a sponge.” He sank back and contemplated the kitchen contentedly through rising wreaths of smoke, then after a pause remarked distantly, “I still need to fix the ‘andle on that drawer.”
The first question that had brought Korshak here was already answered. He pondered for a few seconds on the best way of using this knowledge to press things further, and decided, with somebody like Bahoba, on the direct approach. At the same time, he couldn’t come straight out and say he was here looking for Tek, since that would implicate Dari, who had trusted in his discretion.
“That name you were calling, that you thought was me when I was thrashing about out there,” he said. “Tek.”
Bahoba’s eyes shifted instantly, but his expression remained neutral. “Yes?”
“I work with a scientist on Aurora who does research into machine intelligence and builds robots,” Korshak said. “One them was called Tek. It’s not a name you hear every day. It couldn’t be the same one, could it?”