“Yes, which meant that some of that meaningless information could have been written into the first machine by the chemical intelligence that made it. And maybe—just maybe, for some reason—there might be something in there that could give Scientist a clue of how to make the right molecule."
They were approaching the end of the tunnel now. Taya could see that it ended at a large white door. She glanced curiously up at Kort, but the robot carried on walking slowly and continued. “So Scientist concentrated on trying to decode the information that had been handed down from the earliest times. And eventually, after many more years, he found what he was sure was the secret he'd been searching for. Some of the oldest code contained arrays consisting of millions of numbers. If those numbers were read in a certain way, they looked just like instructions for building precisely arranged sets of gigantic molecules. So Scientist assembled the sets just as the instructions said, and then began supplying them with chemicals to see if the chemicals would grow into anything."
They had stopped outside the white door. Taya stared up at Kort, her features taut with suspense. The robot gazed down in silence for a few seconds, inviting her to complete the obvious for herself. But she hadn't made the connection. “What happened?” she asked with bated breath. “Did they grow into something?"
Kort shook his head slowly. “Not at first. There were many things that Scientist still didn't know. Some of them did grow into strange, unfamiliar forms, but they soon stopped. Scientist had nothing to tell him what chemicals to supply, or how they should be given.” The robot's black, ovoid eyes seemed to shine as they bore down on the tiny, upturned face, now deathly pale suddenly. “He had to learn that they would only grow if they were kept warm; that they had to be always bathed in air; that the air had to be kept slightly moist.... We had to learn how to make the special food that they needed; to provide light that was right for their delicate liquid eyes; to keep them covered to protect their fragile skin.” Taya's eyes had widened into almost full circles. Her mouth fell open but no sound would come out. That was the first time Kort had said “we.” He nodded. “Yes, Taya, there was much to learn. There were many failures."
Taya could only stand paralyzed, staring up at the metal colossus as the truth at last burst into her mind. Kort's voice swelled to echo the pride he could no longer conceal. “But in the end we succeeded! We produced a speck that grew and acquired shape until it could move of its own accord. We nurtured it and tended it, and slowly it transformed into something the like of which we had never glimpsed in the entire cosmos.” Kort was trying to make her share his jubilation, but even as he spoke he could see her beginning to tremble uncontrollably. At the same time, alarm signals poured into his circuits from all over Merkon.
He stooped down and lifted Taya level with his eyes. “Don't you see what this means, Taya? Long, long ago, before there were any machines, there was another kind of life. They made the place that has become Merkon. They built the machines that the machines of Merkon evolved from. They were incredible scientists, Taya! They understood all the things that we have been trying for so long to learn. They gave us the secret that enabled them to grow out of simple, unstructured matter that drifts between the stars. Without that secret, all our efforts would have come to nothing. Our greatest achievement, the culmination of all our work, was just a fragment of the wisdom with which they began.
“And now, Taya, we know what they were. They were like you! You will grow, and you will become again what they were. You asked if you could ever learn enough to understand machines. Of course you can ... and far more than that. It was your kind that created the machines! You will teach us! You will know more than all the minds of Merkon put together could even think to ask. You will bring to Merkon the wisdom and the knowledge that once existed in another world, in another time."
The robot peered into Taya's face, searching for a sign of the joy that he felt. But when at last she could speak, her voice was just a whisper. “There were once other Tayas ... like me?"
“Yes, just like you."
“What...” Taya had to stop to swallow the lump forming at the back of her throat. “What happened to them, Kort? Where did they ... go?"
Kort could feel tremors in her body, and his eyes saw that her skin had gone cold. An unfamiliar feeling came over him as he realized that for once, he had misjudged. His voice fell. “We have no way of telling. It was very long ago. Before Merkon changed, there were places that were built to contain air. We can only assume that your kind of life once inhabited whatever Merkon was built to be. We don't know what became of them.” He could see the tears flooding into her eyes now. Gently, in the way that she found comforting, he moved her onto his arm.
“Other Tayas lived here, long ago?” There was a hollowness and an emptiness in her voice that Kort had never heard before. She clutched at his neck, and his skin sensors detected warm salty water rolling down across the joints. “There isn't anyone anywhere like me. I don't belong here, do I, Kort? I don't want to be in this world. I want to be in the world where there were other Tayas."
“That world doesn't exist any more,” Kort replied somberly. “Of course you belong in this one. And we're changing it all the time, so it will become even more like yours."
“But I'll always be ... alone. I've never felt alone before, but I do now. I'll always feel alone now, for years and years and years. How long will it go on? What will happen to me, Kort?...” Taya pressed her face against the side of the robot's head and wept freely.
Kort waited for a while, stroking her head with a steel finger of his free hand, but the tears didn't stop. “You won't be alone,” he murmured at last. “I'll always be here. And besides, you haven't let me finish the story yet."
“I don't want to hear any more. It's a horrible story."
Kort's arm tightened reassuringly. “Then I'll have to show you the rest of it,” he said.
Taya felt Kort move forward, then stop, and she became aware of a warm yellow glow around them. She raised her head and saw that the white door was open and they had passed through it. She sensed that Kort was waiting, and lifted her head higher to look. And she looked...
And looked...
And then she gasped aloud, all her fretting swept away in that instant. Kort set her down on her feet, facing the room. For a while she just stood there and stared. Then, very slowly, as if fearing she was in a dream that might evaporate if she moved too suddenly, she began walking forward.
They were standing in rows a few feet apart—dozens of them. Boxes, low and flat like a bed, but smaller than Taya's. Each was enclosed by a rounded glass cover stretching from end to end, and there were tubes and wires connecting them to machines lining the walls. And through the glass covers she could see ... She didn't have a word for lots of little people like Taya. There had only ever been one Taya.
Taya looked back at Kort, but the robot made no move. She turned back again and approached the box closest to her—almost reverently, as if the slightest sound or sudden movement might cause the sleeping figure inside to vanish. It had eyes and a nose and a pink mouth ... and it was “bendy” everywhere, just like her. It wasn't as big as she was—in fact it was a lot smaller—but it was ... the same.
She moved slowly around the box to peer in from the other side. The Taya wasn't quite the same, she realized. It had darker hair, almost black, and a nose that wasn't the same shape as hers. She turned to look in the box behind her and saw that the Taya in that one had hardly any hair at all, and there was a pink patch on its arm that she didn't have—and at the top of its legs its body was curiously different. She looked across at the box in the next row, and at the one next to that. All the Tayas were different ... the same as her, but all different.
Kort moved forward to stand alongside her. Taya looked up at him, but she was unable to form any question because her mouth just hung open and wouldn't close. “Scientist had no way of knowing how long he would be able to keep his tiny chemical thing growing,”
he said. “If it stopped the way the others had, he'd have to start all over again. So, when he had managed to keep one growing properly for one year, he picked another fifty groups of numbers to make fifty more different sets of giant molecules, and he started them all growing in the same way that he'd managed to make the first one grow. So now he had fifty-one chemical things, but one of them was a year older than the rest."
Taya was listening rapturously, but she couldn't keep her eyes off the figures in the glass-covered boxes. They were all about the same size—bigger than Rassie, but much smaller than Taya. Their chests were moving the way hers did—not as much as hers, and more quickly ... but they were moving. Kort's chest never moved like that because he didn't need air. They were really like her. Some of them were darker than she was, a sort of brown instead of pink, and a few almost black. And some were yellowy, and some more red. Taya wondered why there weren't any blue ones or green ones or purple ones, too.
She moved through the room between the boxes, stopping and gazing through every one of the glass covers to marvel at how delicately a nose was formed here, or to stare at a miniature hand there, or a brown foot that was pink underneath. This one had hardly any eyebrows, while that one had thick black ones; this one had hair that was almost red, and another had tiny ears, not much bigger than Rassie's.
Kort resumed, “By that time all of the minds were saying how clever Scientist was. But then Skeptic reminded them that nothing Scientist had done so far proved anything about chemical intelligence. All he'd proved was that a set of molecules could cause a chemical structure to grow. And he had a point, because even the one that was a year older had never actually done anything that could be called intelligent. All it had done was kick, squirm about, and eat the food that the machines gave it. So the machines settled down to watch and wait for it to do something intelligent."
Scientist must have been very clever to make these, Taya thought to herself, never mind what the other minds said. When she had reached the end of the room and looked inside every one of the glass covers, she turned. She was happy now, Kort could see, and the laughter in her eyes was echoed by the relieved currents flowing into his mind from the entire network of Merkon. But there was something else in her eyes, too. The expression on her face contained more than just the simple happiness that he saw when she watched the stars or created a picture that she especially liked. There was a light of awareness there now, which added to the happiness to produce an effect that was new to him—as if in the last few minutes she had suddenly become older and changed more than she had in all of the previous nine years.
He continued. “The minds waited for almost another year, but no sign of intelligence appeared. Then Mystic started saying it was because Supermind was angry at the machines for trying to create intelligence. Only Supermind was supposed to create intelligence. If the machines didn't stop trying to do something that machines were never meant to do, Supermind would scrap all of them, and Merkon as well. This worried the minds, and they argued about whether they should allow Scientist to keep his creations."
They came to the end of the room. Taya stood looking around, while Kort went on, “By this time a new mind had formed out of parts of Scientist, Evolutionist, Biologist, and Thinker. Its name was Kort.” Taya stopped and looked up. “Kort had spent a lot of time studying the strange chemical things and watching them grow. He had become fond of them and didn't want Mystic to take them away. He suggested that maybe the machines were mistaken in assuming that all kinds of intelligence had to be like them just because that was the only kind they knew. A machine was fully working as soon as it was finished and switched on. But maybe a chemical system was different. Perhaps its intelligence needed time to grow, just as its body did.
“But the other minds were still afraid of making Supermind angry and being scrapped. So Kort suggested carrying on the experiment with just one of the chemical things instead of with all of them—to put the other fifty to sleep in a special way that would stop them growing, and just see what happened with the one that was a year older. Then, if Supermind did get angry, it would only have reason to get a little bit angry. And only Kort would have anything to do with the one that would be allowed to carry on growing. Then Supermind would only have reason to scrap Kort, and not any of the others."
Taya found her voice at last. “And that was what they did, wasn't it?” She took Kort's hand as they began moving again, back toward the door. “So was that when you made your body?"
Kort nodded. “One of the things he'd learned was that the little chemical things needed lots of looking after, and he'd been thinking of making a special looking-after machine to do it. That made him wonder what had looked after them long ago, before there had been any machines. He asked Thinker what he thought, and the only thing Thinker could think of was that the small chemical things must have been looked after by the ones that had already grown bigger. Kort figured that the bigger ones would have had the same shape as the small ones, and maybe that would be a good shape for a looking-after machine to have if it was supposed to do the same job. So that was the shape he chose to build it."
“I thought it was that shape for mending things,” Taya said.
“It's a very useful body,” Kort replied. “With a few simple tools I can make these hands do almost anything. There are some things that I can do faster and more easily with this body than the machines can. But there was something else, a lot more important than that."
“What?"
“If something is going to become intelligent, it has to be able to learn things. But it can only learn if you can talk to it to teach it. Scientist had known for a long time that the chemical things couldn't hear the waves that machines talk to each other with. But they could make pressure waves in the air that they had to be in all the time. They were always making pressure waves. So Kort decided to make his looking-after machine capable of sending out pressure waves, too. Then maybe he could find a way of using them to talk with instead. The chemical thing grew, and as it grew, Kort taught her to talk."
“You haven't given her a name yet,” Taya said. “You said everyone in a story ought to have a name."
“She was called Taya, of course."
Taya laughed. “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.
“Taya grew bigger, and Kort began teaching her things. All the minds in Merkon waited to see what would happen.... But as time went by, they were disappointed.” Taya looked dismayed, but Kort went on, heedless. “She just wasn't any good at even the simplest things that a new machine would do perfectly. She forgot things almost as quickly as he tried to teach her new things. She was hopeless at even the easiest of sums. Her ears were so weak that she could only hear him when he was in the same room, and her eyes could never see more than a few of even the nearest stars, and then only a part of what they really look like. Mystic asked how anyone could possibly call her intelligent, and said it was a final warning from Supermind for her to be scrapped."
“Me?” Taya clapped a hand to her mouth, horrified. “Mystic wanted to scrap me?"
“At one time, yes. But Kort argued with the rest of the minds and demanded that they keep to the agreement they had made. But while all this arguing was going on, Taya started to change in a strange way. The machines knew they could see lots of things that she couldn't. But then they found out to their astonishment that she could see other things that they couldn't see. She could see things in shapes and colors that made her smile. She could think of questions that none of the minds in Merkon had ever thought of asking. She could imagine things that weren't there, and create her own world inside her mind whenever she wanted. She could see things that made her laugh, and sometimes things that made her cry. The machines found that they liked it when she laughed, and it made them want to laugh, too; and they felt bad when things made her cry, and they tried to make those things go away. Soon all the other minds found what Kort had already found: that they liked their world better with Taya in it. They rememb
ered how it had been before Scientist made her, and it seemed empty and cold, like the emptiness between the stars. She was like a tiny star, brightening the inside of Merkon."
“All the minds?” Taya queried. “Even Mystic?"
“Yes, even Mystic. But now Mystic was saying that the things Taya could see proved what even Scientist had been unable to prove: that there really was another universe that couldn't be seen with all of Scientist's instruments. Supermind had allowed Scientist to create Taya to prove that Supermind existed. And one day she would be able to uncover secrets that the machines would never even have guessed might exist."
“And was the Merkon in the story always moving toward a star like this Merkon is?” Taya asked thoughtfully.
“Oh yes. It was just like this Merkon."
“Did it ever get there?"
“You know, it's funny you should mention that. I've just heard from Rassie. She says that Vaxis is getting bigger. Scientist says that Merkon will arrive there just over ten years from now."
“Ten years!” Taya gaped up at the robot. “That's longer than since I started growing—and that's longer than I can even remember. I can't wait ten years to—” Her voice broke off as a new thought struck her. “Did Rassie really just tell you that, Kort?"
“Why?"
“She didn't! Rassie doesn't really talk. You've known about it for a long time. You have, haven't you?"
“Yes,” Kort admitted.
“So, why didn't you tell me before?"
“Because I know how impatient you are, little Seer-of-Invisible-Universes. You think ten years is a long time, but it isn't. There will be lots to do in that time."
They were back at the door. Kort stopped while Taya turned to look back at the rows of glass-topped boxes. “So what happened to the fifty others?” she asked.
“The minds asked Scientist to wake them up and let them carry on growing from where he had stopped them,” Kort said.
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