Tappy merely looked at him, her tears flowing. "I love you, Jack."
"And I love you!" he cried without thinking. "That's why they must not put you away!"
She approached the bars and put her hands on them. They did not shock her. She put her face close to his and kissed him when he matched her on the other side. "These past five years with you have been so wonderful, Jack. They will serve for a lifetime's memories. Go with Candy; I don't mind what form she takes so long as you are well treated." She kissed him again and withdrew.
"I am ready."
Jack knew it would be useless to protest further. Tappy did love him and would not do anything to hurt him. And that was why Malva had talked to him: to develop that leverage on Tappy.
They were taking no chances at all with the confinement of the Imago.
Candy brought out what did indeed look like a coffin, except that it was surrounded by equipment that surely was designed to preserve the life of the person within. Tappy climbed in and lay down. The nightgown did not seem to matter. Candy swung the lid down. It was not a simple thing; it was spiked inside like an iron maiden.
"She'll suffocate!" Jack cried, but even as he spoke he knew she would not. There would be air piped in and nourishment, and her bodily wastes would be piped out. The seeming iron maiden was not a torture box but a mechanical maintenance device.
Candy folded down clasps on the coffin and locked them in place. Now it was impossible for Tappy to fight her way out even if she regained consciousness-and of course she would be drugged throughout.
Then metallic walls formed around the coffin. The plants in that vicinity disappeared. "What's that?" Jack asked, sure that he would not like the answer, but unable to stop himself.
"That is the formation of a spaceship," the Malva image answered. "The AI city station has been moved to a remote star and will be destroyed, leaving only the isolation ship. A Gaol unit will keep it under continuous surveillance for the lifetime of the host, which should be about a century, since she is young. The Gaol empire will be preserved."
A detail filtered through. "This city will be destroyed? But then what of me?"
"You will die with it, of course."
"But you told Tappy-"
"I lied. Now the Imago is secure, and you are surplus. There remains only the separation of the ship from the city and the destruction of the city with all its equipment."
"All by remote control?" Jack asked, the numbness of the finality of defeat sinking in. The Gaol certainly were thorough!
"No. The confinement of the Imago is too important to be done remotely. A Gaol will handle the concluding details."
"No, it won't!" Jack said, grasping what trifling fragment of victory he could. "Because if it comes here, it will be contaminated by the Imago, and you can't risk that."
"True. Therefore the Gaol individual, too, will be destroyed."
"But one of the conquerors wouldn't sacrifice himself!"
She shrugged. "Believe what you will. The Gaol is now boarding the city and will perform the necessary chores. Now I bid you oblivion, Jack, as my role here is terminated."
"Bitch"' Jack screamed as she faded out.
Candy walked across the chamber. "Where are you going, android?" he demanded.
She did not pause. "To the portal to admit the Gaol."
"Bring it back here and introduce us!" he called sarcastically.
When she was gone, he turned to stare at the coffin. He took hold of a bar to shake it, but it shocked him again. His arm was numbed; he could not get close to Tappy.
What was he to do? He couldn't just give up, yet there seemed to be no alternative.
THEN he saw something. It was small, green, and looked like a thick-legged spider. No, it was more like a tiny octopus. It was crossing the floor toward him.
The hatchling! He had forgotten it! Ordinarily such a creature would have revolted him, but this thing had been with Tappy, and was formed manly of her flesh. He couldn't d'sl'ke that, even if it was some honker joke. Also, he did feel empathy for it, and for life in general. Malva had been right about that much.
He squatted. "Come here, you little thing. I won't hurt you.
I'm about to die anyway. What's your business?"
The thing approached his hand. It extended a tiny tentacle and touched his finger.
Jack felt a warmth. It wasn't physical, though; it was emotional.
He felt an increasing awareness of the linkage of all things. He was attuning to the exotic plants in the vicinity, and felt their discomfort: the Gaol had established a field which suppressed their natural ambience. And he felt Tappy, her consciousness fading as the drug slowly penetrated her system; she was being forced into sleep, but there were no dreams there. The Gaol did not trust the Imago even to dream safely.
He looked at the hatchling. He picked it up. The thing assumed flesh color and disappeared against his palm. "You're doing it!"
he exclaimed. "The empathy-you're magnifying it! Are you the Imago?"
But as he considered the question, he knew the answer. The Imago remained with Tappy. It would not leave her while she lived. The hatchling was merely another agent of the Imago, of a different kind. It was alive, and it was mobile.
That trick of blending with his hand-was that a signal of something more? It had been green when it first manifested, and green when it had come to him. Jack moved to a green plant and set his hand against it, letting the hatchling slide onto the leaf.
The hatchling turned green again, matching the plant so perfactly that it disappeared. Quickly Jack reached for it, and found it where the leaf seemed to thicken; it was solid, but able to change its color and shape instantly He set it back on the floor, which was metal gray in this section.
The hatchling became a perfectly matching gray as it flattened out.
It was a charneleon! It had disappeared the first time, when Candy pursued it, not entirely by hiding behind a plant, but by blending with it.
So now he knew two things about it: it magnified the empathy, and it was very good at hiding. But what good was either ability, when Tappy was locked away and the rest of the city was about to be destroyed? If the honker who had planted this creature on Tappy had intended to help her, how had it expected her to overcome something like this? Because it was now apparent that the nullification of the Gaol's volition block had been the work of that egg, as was Tappy's disappearance from the Gaol's tracking devices. The egg had hatched, and the hatchling had at least two other properties. Something else was needed-and perhaps the honker had anticipated this situation also, and the hatchling had what would be required.
Jack reached down to pick up the hatchling, but could not find it; its camouflage was too good. "Where are you, little friend?" he asked.
The hatchling turned green again, manifesting as it had before.
Jack picked it up. "But how come you showed yourself to me before?" he asked it. "I never would have seen you, otherwise."
Then he realized that that was why: it had wanted him to see it.
"But why now, when it's too late? Sure, we can be friends, but soon we're going to be dead. Do you have some way to rescue Tappy""
There was no answer, just that overwhelming empathy. The hatchling did not seem to be intelligent or to have any telepathic communication. Apparently it had responded to him because of the empathy: it knew what he wanted, just as he now knew what the surrounding plants wanted. It knew he wanted to help Tappy.
Yet he hadn't wanted to see it when it came to him. He hadn't known its nature, and had forgotten about it after seeing it the first time. The hatchling had introduced itself to him by approaching and turning green. Didn't that indicate some separate understanding and decision on its part?
He reviewed the circumstance of that introduction. It was just after Candy had left, so he was alone. That made sense; she had wanted to destroy it, so it had waited until she was gone.
But if it wasn't intelligent, how had it had the wi
t to do that? To distinguish between her and him? He had part of the answer: Candy was not alive, and Jack was, so it could indeed distinguish them, and probably avoided any moving thing that was not responsive to its power. But the timing-how had it managed that? Well, maybe it was programmed to hide as long as there was any hostile thing nearby, whether living or dead. So it could approach Jack only when he was alone.
But the color change-it must have taken some of it to do that for him. It could have come up to him unseen, and worked 'its magic on him, and he might never have realized that it was responsible for his suddenly broadening empathy. It had made itself deliberately clear to him.
He went over the situation again. Candy walking out, himself calling sarcastically after her: "Bring it back here and introduce us!" Then she was gone, and the hatchling The hatchling had introduced itself. It had responded to his desire for an introduction, though his desire had been facet' ious.
The hatchling was not smart enough to distinguish the pretense from the reality.
"Mystery solved," Jack said. "Much good may it do me. I think that the honker just didn't realize how bad a situation we would be in. It thought that maybe we'd be in Malva's hands, and you would touch her and make her have empathy for us, and help us escape. Instead we're with an AI who is now AG: Agent of the Gaol, and can't be corrupted. And we're going to be blown to smithereens by a real live Gaol-"
Then it dawned on him. "The Gaol! Can you make it empathize?" And knew it could. Because the Gaol feared the Imago, and the hatchling was helping the Imago.
Jack heard footsteps. Candy was returning. "Stay cool, hatchling," he whispered to the imitation palm of his hand, which mirrored even the lines and creases and slight variations of color. This thing was good!
Candy entered. Behind her rolled a weird machine. It was blue, with three wheels and three triangular handles, like a huge trash collector. S'x little lenses circled it above the handles. The top was a rounded dome.
"There is the container for the host of the Imago," Candy said, indicating the enclosure around the coffin. "There is the human companion of the Imago." She indicated Jack. "There is one other creature, which hatched from an egg planted on the host.
It disappeared among the plants."
The machine rolled to a stop before the coffin-enclosure. The dome stretched upward, becoming a column, then turned at right angles. Something shiny appeared at its end: a large lens. It surveyed the enclosure.
Jack realized with a shock that this was the Gaol. A seeming blend of machine and flesh, a natural cyborg. That wasn't just a lens-it was an eye on a stalk, the kind a snail had. The six little lenses must be primitive eyes, for general sensing in all directions, while the big one handled the detail work.
"time remaining until destruction fifty-five minutes, Earth time," Candy said.
"You bitch!" Jack shouted. "You mean you've already set the bomb? That's what took you the time just now?"
She did not answer. She was no longer responsive to him, only to the Gaol. He couldn't insult her any more than he had been able to insult the image of Malva.
Then one of the triangular handles on the Gaol unfolded. The knob at its apex was actually a joint. One leg of the triangle was the upper arm, and the other was the forearm, with a claylike mass on its end. The clay sprouted fingers or tentacles and touched a panel on the enclosure.
The enclosure opened, revealing the coffin inside. The arm touched a fastening, and it unfastened. Soon all the clasps were opened, and a second arm unfolded to aid in lifting the lid. The huge stalked eye peered inside.
"Yeah, she's in there," Jack called, outrage substituting for sense. "And now you're contaminated and will have to be destroyed. How do you like that, slugface?"
The Gaol lowered the lid and refastened the clasps. Evidently it couldn't be baited, assuming it could even hear or understand him. But surely it could hear, because Candy had spoken to it in English. That language had been programmed here, because it was what Tappy understood, and the Gaol had not bothered to reprogram the AI. Why should they, when the AI and all their works were about to be destroyed?
Now the Gaol rolled over to inspect Jack, followed by Candy.
Its eye oriented on him.
"Yeah, I'm the freak from Earth," Jack said. He suffered a wild inspiration. "I have something for you." He extended his arm carefully through the space between the charged bars. The hatchling was now a green ball.
The Gaol took the ball. It oriented its eye on it. The ball changed color, matching the hue of the Gaol. It disappeared against the puttylike blue flesh.
Would this work? Would the hatchling succeed 'in bringing empathy to the Gaol captor? Or would the Gaol simply destroy it?
,That's the hatchling!" Candy exclaimed. "The thing from the egg. It may be dangerous."
The Gaol ignored her. It retracted its stalk-eye and stood on its wheels, thinking its own thoughts.
"time remaining until destruction fifty minutes, Earth time Candy said, exactly as before.
She was on a countdown! They had set the time bomb, and she was now its readout.
The Gaol remained immobile. Was it simply waiting for the countdown to be completed, or was it responding to the hatchling?
The fate of the galaxy might depend on the answer. Minutes passed with no action.
"time remaining until destruction forty-five minutes, Earth time."
The Gaol extended its eye stalk. It oriented on Candy. There was a whistling sound. It seemed to emanate from the creature's knobby elbow. Well, sounds did not have to come from a mouth; the Gaol did not seem to have a mouth. If the elbow contained vibratory apparatus so that it could whistle, why not? Maybe it could whistle from all three elbows, keeping in tune with itself.
Maybe that was how it got its jollies.
Jack realized that he was not making that up. He was feeling empathy for the Gaol, too! He was coming to understand it, to a degree.
Candy turned to Jack. "The Gaol wishes to converse with you.
I will translate for it."
So that elbow whistle was its way of communicating! He would have found that considerably more interesting if his situation wasn't so desperate.
"Great," Jack said. "We can get to be friends while the clock winds down. Then we can all be destroyed together."
The Gaol whistled. "I am coming to understand your distress," Candy said. "I wish to make you more comfortable."
The empathy was working! "I cannot be comfortable until Tappy-the Imago-is free."
Again the whistle. "The Imago will separate from this unit at thirty minutes before destruction. The Imago will not be destroyed."
"But that's not freedom"' Jack protested. "That's the worst captivity, for the rest of her life!"
"If that separation is not effected, the host of the Imago will be destroyed with the rest. That is not permitted."
"I don't want the host destroyed either!" Jack exclaimed. "I want Tappy free!"
"It is not possible to defuse the bomb," Candy said for the Gaol.
"It will detonate on schedule."
Jack realized how thorough this trap was. Even if the hatchling converted the Gaol, they would all be destroyed. Possibly the AI could have found a way out, because this was their city and they had centuries of experience. But they now served the Gaol.
Unless "There has to be a way," he said desperately. "You, Candyyou used to serve the Imago. Can the Gaol revert you, so that you serve the Imago again?"
The Gaol whistled. "I have now reverted," Candy said.
Just like that! Jack wasn't sure he could believe it.
"I will save the Imago by destroying the host," she continued.
"No!" Jack cried, becoming a believer. He had forgotten this aspect.
She paused at the Gaol's whistle. "There is no other escape for the Imago, Jack. Death will free it."
"Then don't be in such a rush about it," he said. "Since this city is going to blow up anyway in half an hour-"
"Forty-one minutes."
"Then you don't need to kill her. Just bring her out here with us, and she'll die when we do."
"This is true." She would have seemed surprised had she been human. She walked to the enclosure and paused. "Gaol, may I open the ship and release the host?"
The Gaol whistled.
"Why do you need to ask?" Jack demanded, afraid that the Gaol would change its mind. "Haven't you reverted to AI?"
"I have, Jack," she replied as she worked on the enclosure. "But the Gaol retains authority and can cancel my reversion at any time.
It is better to verify."
So it was a spot nullification of the Gaol program, not a revocation of the whole. The Gaol might be becoming sympathetic to the Imago, but was not a fool. A truly reverted AI might have turned immediately on the Gaol and tried to kill it.
"So I guess we'd better talk," Jack said to the Gaol. He was privately amazed at what he was taking for granted, but realized that the empathy could account for this. "What's your name?"
"The Gaol lack names," Candy said as she swung the panels of the enclosure aside. "It is a concept confined to primitives."
"Well, I'm primitive, so I prefer names," Jack said. "Will you answer to Garth Gaol?" He was being humorous again, though he realized that humor was wasted on the others. At least it helped him retain some semblance of sanity.
"What does such a designation signify?" Candy asked. The coffin was now exposed again.
"That you I are masculine and understanding of human foibles," Jack said with a smile. "And that when I say 'Garth' I am addressing you or referring to you, and no other entity. It is a convenience for dialogue when more than two creatures are present."
"I wall answer to Garth," Candy agreed for the Gaol. She lifted the lid of the coffin.
"Garth, what are your present feelings?"
"I wish to enable you and the Imago to achieve satisfaction."
"Why?" Because Jack remained wary of dangerous confusion.
Empathy was fine, but an alien definition of satisfaction could be treacherous. Just as Candy's idea of saving the Imago had been to kill Tappy. If the creature could state a convincing rationale, maybe he could trust it.
THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION Page 18