“What else have you programmed for?” Wilson asked. Linda told them.
“Wake up.” Cara shook Linda.
“What?”
“Two messages,” Cara whispered in her ear. “They’re coming for us, and Hernandez and his clones are free.”
Linda was barely out of bed when the door opened, showing Hernandez. He looked at Linda and said, “Come with me.” Wilson and Cara made a move to follow, but Hernandez said, “Her only.”
***
Arthur found a small board and a marking pen similar to the one Ghorxal Bud used to communicate with John. They planned, writing in English, and covering the writing so that no cameras would see it,.
“They know we are conspiring,” Arthur wrote.
John just shrugged. They might have found a way to communicate in secret without revealing that they were communicating, but that would take time. As it was, John found it frustrating and began to understand the mouthless Plicts’ need for sign language.
Although it was easy to decide what they wanted, they had trouble deciding what to do. They wanted to return to Earth with Linda, Cara, and Wilson. They wanted to be left alone on Earth, but knew they wouldn’t be. John didn’t relish the spotlight, although he realized Arthur was used to a mild version of it. But Arthur was known and respected for his scientific ability, not for having been abducted by aliens. It wouldn’t be a pleasant change, and Arthur briefly commented on that.
John worried he had a more serious problem. In America, he was an illegal alien, and more alien than most illegal aliens. He had fraudulently obtained a driver’s license, a passport, and even, according to Arthur, voted. Any prosecutor could easily convict him of enough charges to put him in jail for a very long time. His heroism with regards to the school bombing would help, but his ex-wife’s participation in the bombing might wipe all of that goodwill away. His saner self felt these wouldn’t be significant problems, but with little to do, he couldn’t help wondering.
In spite of those problems, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life living in a base of rebels who would lose if they wiped out their opponents.
Although they mapped much of the upper floor of the rebel base, their uncertainty about their goals made them cautious. John followed Vigintees news, after Arthur arranged for it to be automatically downloaded and transferred to the computer John used. It was announced that Wilson, Linda, and Cara had violated their trust and were imprisoned. No details were forthcoming. The news claimed that the frequent blackouts were a product of the tampering of the three from Earth, and that a reboot would solve their problems.
“Would it?” John asked Arthur.
“Not if I know Linda.”
“Is she that good with computers? I know she’s majoring in computer science, but that doesn’t make her an expert.”
Arthur leaned back and gave the smile that John learned foreshadowed his telling him something he once knew. “Linda was very angry when Natalie disappeared. When you came, you helped a great deal, but you told me she needed to do something that was challenging and gave her a feeling of control. I found someone to teach her computers and he was very good. He told me she was his most brilliant student. She thought of it as recreation, but changed her major in college from math to computer science in her freshman year. She hacked for fun. It was a challenge controlling her.”
John could see Arthur’s tremendous pride in Linda. He wondered if Linda knew about it. “How did you control her?”
“Me? I couldn’t control her. She resented Mary. I had very little influence.”
“Let me guess. I controlled her. How?” John sometimes was a bit annoyed at Arthur’s pleasure in telling him about his lost past.
“You and Takeuti. He wasn’t only a computer expert; he was extremely ethical. Neither of you tried to control her computer activity, just teach her ethics. It worked, and her lapses were minor.”
“Or well hidden?” John suggested.
“Perhaps.” John felt Arthur’s acceptance of that possibility was more to avoid an argument than agreement, because he immediately went on. “I arranged an internship for her with an anti-terrorist group trying to hack foreign computers and she learned a lot from them too. They tried to persuade her to quit college and work for them permanently. She went back every summer, which was good for her.”
“Did this man, Takeuti, continue to teach her?” John’s fluency with the name suggested he’d heard it before.
“Sporadically. Actually, he threw problems her way. Only they weren’t invented problems, but real problems. She knew it, and they both benefited.”
John wondered if Linda had any time for a social life. Arthur may have said he couldn’t control her, but he seemed to do a good job through intermediaries.
Arthur spent his time on the computer, doing some unspecified research into Plict society. When John once chided him for his seeming indifference to his daughter’s situation, Arthur characteristically said, “Why dwell on it? I can’t change anything and you give me updates.” He pulled out the tablet and wrote, “What I’m doing now may help.”
“How?”
Arthur explained that food for the Vigintees was grown in special areas on isolated islands to minimize the possibility that the crops would escape into the ecosystem. Without animals to eat them, the food would be in danger of taking over from the native plants. The food was processed on these islands.
“I can’t tell when it started, but someone siphoned off some human food a few years ago. It stopped after about four years.”
“It’s a miniscule amount,” wrote John. “A small percentage of the whole, making it possible it’s just an error.”
Arthur shook his head.
John helped Arthur with the search, not feeling anything would be accomplished. After a frustrating day of looking at invoices and ships’ manifests, they worked out where the food went. It was in an isolated community called Aipot. John researched how to get there. It was coastal, but mountain ranges made it basically inaccessible except by sea or air. It appeared to be partly a retirement community for Plict who liked isolation. There was some fishing and agriculture, but all the products were sold locally. There was no tourism and the inhospitable coast and tiny dock would make it hard to sneak into.
“They don’t export anything, but they import food and various products. Where do they get their money?” John wrote. Arthur shrugged, not bothering to speculate.
The world had an equivalent of Google Earth and John was looking for a way to come in overland. Arthur looked over his shoulder and pointed to a spot.
Forgetting secrecy, John said, “That’s well inside the boundaries.”
“Zoom in,” Arthur said.
When John complied, he said to Arthur, “It doesn’t look right.”
“It’s green.” The vegetation on the Plict world was purple.
They spent the afternoon arguing, writing on the tablet. John wanted to try to escape, but Arthur wanted to take his findings to the Buds. “They won’t be grateful,” John wrote.
“We have to do it by cooperating with them,” Arthur said, not bothering to write the words.
“Why?”
“Because you won’t do it any other way. If a Plict, mouthed or mouthless, gives you an order, you will obey it.”
“I’ve been planning an escape,” John protested.
“Escape is easy. We take a couple of pieces of pipe and bang the heads of the Plict who guard each entrance. We might kill them, but I have no moral problem killing anyone holding me prisoner. You wouldn’t be able to do it by yourself and I won’t do it.”
John tried to imagine doing it, and the very thought appalled him. He could no more kill a Plict than he could kill a baby. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
“It makes perfect sense. All Vigintees are genetically manipulated to worship Plict. In your case, they modified your genes to give you immunities to allow you to work on Earth, but they didn’t quite anticipate what you would
be like. They wanted you to be the perfect agent, loyal to them and intelligent enough to understand all of human society. When they realized they gave you too much of a social conscience and it wasn’t limited to Plict, they created Hernandez. He seemed to be the perfect agent, since he didn’t have an overly active conscience. They cloned him before they realized what he was like.”
Later, John asked, “Why did they kidnap Natalie? I didn’t think telepathy would be that valuable.”
“Telepathy is very valuable if you don’t talk. They thought if they understood telepathy, the Buds might not need sign language.”
John couldn’t find anything useful to do. He was a psychiatrist with no patients. He certainly didn’t understand Plict psychiatry. He wondered why he hadn’t studied it.
Arthur’s words came back to him. He was loyal to the Plict and loyal servants don’t pry. Even now, it seemed to be an intrusion to map the hallways of their prison.
He should learn more about the Plict, and it would ease his conscience if he did it by helping them. Cleaning was pointless, since there was a small machine that cleaned. The Buds didn’t eat, so he couldn’t help them with meals. They seemed to be doing something with computers, but he didn’t know what. He had Arthur send him web pages listing services for Buds. He found one he thought he could do: massages. After studying it thoroughly, he decided he could do some of the simpler massages.
He waited until Ghorxal Bud finished a session with the computer and offered his services. Ghorxal Bud was skeptical at first, but John said he was used to working and wanted to serve. He brought a slate with a pen for Ghorxal Bud to use during the massage, since it was difficult for the Plict to use sign language while lying on the table. It allowed John to be guided into doing what was pleasing. “More to the left,” and “a little harder here,” didn’t add to John’s knowledge of Plict psychology, but it made the massage more pleasant for the recipient.
That’s what I’m trying to do, thought John. No, he realized that wasn’t what he was trying to do. There was a psychiatric patient he could help: himself. “Physician, heal thyself,” was a saying that went through his mind. Two other phrases suggested what he could do to help himself. The first was “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and the second was “No man is a hero to his valet.”
John realized he had to stop worshiping the Plict before he could escape. His attitude toward the Plict made him useless in helping Arthur escape, worse than useless, because he might sabotage an escape. How could he rescue Cara if he didn’t escape? Why was Cara so important to him? Without his memory, he just met her. But the daydream of rescuing her was very pleasing.
He had a goal, although his mind rebelled against it: he must cure himself of his genetic predisposition to worship the Plict. It wasn’t as if people didn’t overcome genetic programming. It was one of the things that made them human. There were people who were chaste, out of religious beliefs, in spite of the genetic program to have sex and multiply. Although obesity was common, the desire to eat as much as possible when food was plentiful was partially overcome by most people and completely overcome by many. He could lick this.
His massages became in demand and he did as many of them as his own body could take. He rested for ten minutes between the fifteen-minute massages, but that allowed him to talk. Often, other Plict watched what he was doing, talking while they watched.
“What have U learned,” Arthur wrote a few days later.
John reached for the board and erased it and wrote, “They know what I know.” He continued by speaking. “They’re working on computer software to read sign language. The problem isn’t in the reading the sign language, because that’s much easier than what the mouthed Plict use. It’s that the sign language isn’t very standardized.”
“Officially, they only have about six hundred words,” Arthur said.
John explained the problem to Arthur. The six hundred words were taught to mouthed Plicts, insuring Buds knew it, but more words were needed, even if not officially sanctioned. The Buds did most menial tasks in society, but every task has its vocabulary. The trash collector needs a word for recycle, and the miner needs to know about methane and black damp. The words were allowed, but not standardized. The computer program was sold to Buds who helped standardize the language. The money supported this operation, which was built inside a depleted silver mine. The island was turned into a wildlife sanctuary, because there was an endangered species of bird that lived there. They took trips to meet with Buds in all sorts of occupations to find what signs they used. Some was done over the Internet, but a few Buds would only meet in private.
“The animal in the sanctuary is not exactly a bird,” Arthur said. He turned to the computer and pulled up some video of a magnificent flying animal with a four-foot wingspan. “I already knew about the wildlife sanctuary part.” Arthur picked up the slate and wrote under cover, “Linda knows where we are.”
“U R communicating?” John wrote.
“I can only send tweets,” Arthur wrote.
John learned many of the reasons for the Buds’ complaints. He asked them to tell him why they were acting as they did, and they told him. They were taxed the same as mouthed Plict, but didn’t receive many of the benefits. There was a massive program of free education, but it was only available to mouthed Plict. Buds could pay for education, but it was taxed and not subsidized at all. Buds couldn’t vote, and it wasn’t illegal to discriminate against them.
When Buds used computers, they were required to input by writing, which was relatively slow. Keyboards were illegal, and the computers were programmed only to read a cumbersome form of printing. There was a shorthand, which was used for communication, but it was forbidden to program computers to accept the shorthand.
When he wasn’t giving massages, John researched the layout of the underground facility. John asked one of the Buds if there was a stairway he could use for exercise. He was given permission to use the stairway, which was two flights, but told not to leave it except for at the top level. He ran up and down the stairway twice a day until they were used to seeing him on the stairs. When he met a Bud on the stairs, he asked him if he wanted a massage. One Bud assented and led him to his room on the middle floor, where there were rooms for about twenty-five Buds. There were also work areas and meeting rooms. Some of them came and went, selling their software in secret to other Buds.
John and Arthur studied everything on the Internet on Aipot, finding more information about the inhabitants. It appeared to be a one-industry town, with a lab doing some kind of research into job safety. The lab patented a commercially successful safety device for fishing boats and software that turned household robots into firefighters.
Housing prices in Aipot were ridiculously high. The only “help wanted” jobs advertised were for jobs that wouldn’t pay enough for someone to live there. There were no commercial flights into the city and landing fees were high. A few years back there was a news article about Aipot, which Arthur sent John. The gist of the article was that you had to be crazy to move there.
While John was reading more about this, Arthur chuckled and said, “We’re telling the Buds about Aipot.”
John frowned and pointed to the tablet. Arthur waved it aside and said, “There are no Buds in Aipot.”
“What makes you say that?” signed Ghorxal Bud XIV. “The records show an unusually small number, but you are claiming none. That seems unlikely.”
Arthur explained. “Buds comprise about seventy percent of the Plict population, but Aipot claims to have about five percent Buds.”
“That’s quite low, but there are no dangerous or demeaning jobs there,” Ghorxal Bud XIV signed.
“There are always demeaning jobs. But look at the age of the Buds.” The average age of Buds listed was forty. Buds rarely lived past forty-two, and usually couldn’t work if they did.
“Look in the directory for Buds,” Arthur said. One Bud listed was Ghorxal Bud XIV.
“But I feigned my
death! We staged a very realistic crash. We even had a few bodies discovered. Of course, our people did the autopsies and overlooked the fact that the bodies had been dead for weeks. We freed twenty-three Buds that way.”
“Contact your progenitor,” suggested John.
They arranged an untraceable email and scanned in Ghorxal Bud XIV’s handwritten message, which John dictated.
“Ghorxal-parent, I hope the payments are coming in properly. I haven’t been in touch lately and hope you are well.” His signature was simply XIV.
John recently learned progenitors sent Buds out to work, usually receiving a quarter of their income. The Buds resented this and were constantly complaining about it. They told him stories about how payment was demanded even if the Bud became sick.
A few hours later, the brief email response was: “Payments are great. I hope you enjoy your job. I’m surprised you were able to get such a well-paying job in a grocery store. I’m going to be budding number XXIII in a few days.”
“I’ve never worked in a grocery store,” Ghorxal Bud XIV signed.
None of the remaining twenty-two Buds were listed as living in Aipot, but John could see Ghorxal Bud XIV was stunned. He exchanged a brief glance with Arthur, who wryly said, “He thought he ran the only conspiracy.”
Co-conspirators were notified and they discovered eight Buds that were probably deceased who were “living” in Aipot. Only one was in the rebel group, but the others were Buds who were lost in accidents and “found.”
Later, when Arthur and John were alone, John said, “I’m surprised there aren’t more Buds.” “I was too, when I first found out about it. Apparently, you can’t bud without a permit, and permits are sold. Typically permits go for about two years’ income for an average Bud.”
“Are they worried about unemployment?” John asked Arthur.
“No, because this society has developed a number of jobs that are rather dangerous. They pay well, but there is no real incentive to put in safety features we take for granted. It is assumed that Buds have the same personality as their progenitors, but they really don’t. The first few months, they are very loyal and risk takers. That probably is related to how they evolved.”
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