Code Of The Lifemaker

by Hogan, James

  Price could only return a helpless shrug. "It's strange," Massey said to

  Zambendorf. He paused and tilted his head curiously to one side. "For once I get

  the feeling that you're telling the truth. Either you're the most accomplished

  liar I've ever met—and I've met more than a few—or there's something very screwy

  going on. I'd like to believe what you just told us."

  Zambendorf tired suddenly of the feeling of being scrutinized under a

  microscope. "Well, why won't you believe it, then?" he demanded loudly, turning

  away and sounding annoyed. "What reason would I have to lie about something like

  this? If you must know, I was offered such a deal only recently. I turned it

  down. There, does that satisfy you?"

  "You turned it down," Massey repeated, not quite able to prevent a trace of

  mockery from creeping into his voice.

  Zambendorf wheeled back again. "I turned it down." He forced the words out

  slowly and deliberately, thrusting out his beard to within an inch of Massey's

  face.

  "Very likely the best offer you've ever had in your life, and maybe the best

  you'll ever get," Price drawled sarcastically from behind them. "With everything

  going for it, and all the right people lined up on your side . . . and you

  turned it down. Now, why would you want to do a thing like that?"

  "My reasons are my reasons," Zambendorf said. "What damn business is it of

  either of you?"

  "When you're helping people who are trying to condemn a whole race to

  second-class status to further their own interests and claiming that they're

  acting in my name, it is my business," Massey retorted.

  Zambendorf colored visibly. "For God's sake, I haven't done anything to help

  them!" he shouted. "I turned their offer down. How many times do I have to say

  it? What's the matter with the pair of you?"

  "Why would you turn it down?" Massey asked again.

  "What is this? I refuse to be cross-examined in this fashion."

  "Bah! . - . just as I thought," Massey snorted.

  "He's copping out," Price murmured. "He has to. He's in with them up to his

  neck."

  "Doesn't it occur to you that you may not have a monopoly on all this touching

  humanitarian concern for your brother beings?" Zambendorf raged. "If you must

  know, I turned it down for the simple reason that I care what happens to the

  Taloids just as much as you do ... even more, possibly. Do you understand that?

  Is it plain enough to get through your thick skulls?" He glowered at Massey

  defiantly, then shifted his gaze to Price for a moment. When he resumed

  speaking, his voice quivered with emotion. "I probably know them better than any

  other person on this mission. Wasn't it I who exchanged the first meaningful

  information with them? Didn't they continue to come to me for confirmation even

  after they'd been told repeatedly that Giraud and those walking procedure

  manuals that he calls aides were the mission's official spokesmen? . . . Don't

  ask me how, but I can sense the Taloid world that lies behind the words we see

  on screens, and those unmoving metal faces."

  Zambendorf's manner calmed a little. "There is a world there, you know—not a

  world that we are able to experience directly, or even one that we're capable of

  conceiving, maybe . . . but it's there—as warm, and as rich, and as colorful

  when perceived through Taloid senses as Earth is to us. I can feel it when I

  talk to them." The other two listened silently as he went on, now in a distant

  voice, "The Taloids know I can too. That's why they trust me. They trust me to

  teach them about the worlds that exist beyond their sky, and the new worlds of

  mind that exist beyond the clouds obscuring their present horizons of knowledge.

  They trust me to show them the ways of discovery that will enable them to

  explore all those worlds. That's more than all those fools back on Earth ever

  asked for, or understood that I could have done for them." His expression became

  contemptuous. "And you think I would have traded that for anything a bunch of

  deadhead executives and bureaucrats might have to offer—people who've never in

  their lives had an inspired thought or a vision of what could be?" Zambendorf

  focused his gaze back on Massey and Price, and shook his head. "No, don't you go

  preaching at me about the meaning of the word human, the insignificance of

  accidental differences in biological hardware, or any of that crap. Because I

  could give both of you a whole lesson on it."

  The cabin remained very quiet for what seemed a long time. Massey drank the last

  of his coffee, then looked across at Price with his eyebrows raised

  questioningly. Price looked uncomfortable and said nothing. "I, er . . . I guess

  we owe you an apology," Massey murmured.

  Zambendorf nodded curtly and left it at that. He looked at Massey curiously.

  "You still haven't explained what made you think I'd accepted a deal," he said.

  Massey looked over at Price again. Price made a face and shrugged. "I guess he's

  got a right to know," he said. Zambendorf frowned uncomprehendingly.

  Massey drew a long breath, held it for a second or two, then exhaled abruptly

  and nodded his agreement. "Set it up, Vernon." Massey turned to Zambendorf.

  "Obviously what you're about to see is not intended to become public knowledge.

  I don't know if you're aware that the news from Earth is censored before it's

  broadcast around the Orion. In particular, a lot of what goes out across the

  Earth newsgrid is omitted from what's shown here. However, that was anticipated

  before we left Earth and arrangements were made for me to have a private channel

  direct into NASO."

  Zambendorf watched as Price unlocked a storage locker in the wall and took out a

  small metal strongbox which in turn yielded a collection of video cartridges.

  Price selected one of the cartridges and walked over to the cabin's terminal to

  insert it, at the same time switching the terminal to off-line local mode.

  Whatever was stored in the cartridges evidently was too sensitive to be

  entrusted to the ship's databank. Zambendorf gave Massey a puzzled look. "If you

  were told we were going to Mars too, why would anyone give you a private

  information line?" he asked. "Why would you be supposed to need one?"

  Massey smiled faintly. "I didn't know I had one until a timelocked message from

  the databank told me about it after we'd left Earth. I guess you weren't the

  only one who didn't find out what he was really here for until a while after

  you'd signed up."

  "You mean you weren't sent to monitor the ESP experiments on Mars?" Zambendorf

  said, surprised.

  "No more than you were sent to conduct them."

  "So . . . what were you sent for?"

  "I very much suspect that we're just beginning to find out."

  The terminal screen came to life to show a man with a red, gnomish face topped

  by a mat of white, close-cropped hair saying something that was inaudible since

  the sound was still turned down. Zambendorf stared hard for a moment, then said,

  "Isn't that Conlon from NASO?"

  Massey raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You know him?"

  "I know his face."

  "How come?"

  "I make it my business to know
lots of things."

  The view on the screen changed to a picture of Saturn with the words TITAN

  MISSION superposed in large letters along with the GCN logo; then followed a

  shot of the Orion in orbit against a background of part of Titan's disk.

  Evidently the footage was a replay of a routine newscast from Earth. A woman's

  voice faded in as Price turned up the sound, and the picture changed again, this

  time to a view of an area of cluttered machinery and scrap piled just outside

  Genoa Base.

  ". . . said that there might be a possibility of salvaging something useful from

  the remnants of the defunct alien civilization discovered on Titan, but most of

  it must be considered a total write-off. In any case, the cost of attempting a

  full-scale cleanup operation from Earth would more than offset any benefits that

  could conceivably be obtained." A good-looking, aubum-haired, smartly dressed

  woman, probably in her midforties appeared, sitting at a desk facing the camera.

  She smiled out at the viewers as she turned a sheet of paper in front of her. "A

  disappointment, I'm afraid, for those people who have been hoping for a new

  Industrial Revolution that would change the lives of all of us here on Earth.

  But it's still the biggest junkpile in the known universe, I'm told. So who

  knows—it could turn out to be good news yet for all you scrap-metal dealers.

  Better start submitting your bids. You'll probably have to add a reserve tank to

  your pickup though."

  Zambendorf turned a stunned face toward Massey and shook his head

  disbelievingly. Massey nodded for him to keep watching.

  The newscaster looked down and scanned quickly over the next sheet. "More news

  about the Taloids—the man-size, walking maintenance robots that have been

  catching a lot of people's imagination. They see a composite image made up of

  electronically intensified optical wavelengths—in other words ordinary visible

  light highly amplified— and infrared wavelengths, or heat, according to an MIT

  professor who has been studying reports from the Orion. The pitviper and boid

  families of terrestrial snakes employ a similar system, apparently, but nothing

  as sensitive as the Taloid version. We'll be talking to Professor Morton

  Glassner to hear more about that in just a few minutes. . . .

  "Another question that a lot of people have been asking is, Can the Taloids

  think?" The woman's face vanished and was replaced by a shot of two U.S.

  soldiers in EV suits facing a Taloid. Although the shot was from Genoa Base,

  nothing of the city was visible in the background; only a jumble of derelict

  machines was visible. The view gave the impression that the Taloid had just

  emerged from some habitat in a kind of jungle. One of the soldiers was offering

  something, then pulling it away as the Taloid reached for it—as if teasing a big

  metal bear—while the second soldier could be seen grinning through his

  faceplate. Zambendorf wondered how many hours of recordings this particular

  sequence had been selected from.

  "Well, there's no getting away from the fact that they are extraordinary

  machines," the voiceover continued. "But then, wouldn't we expect to find at

  least a few cute tricks in machines left behind by an alien civilization that

  most of our scientists are convinced must have achieved interstellar travel? It

  all depends what you mean by think, says well-known philosopher and social

  scientist, Johnathan Goodmay, in an article in this month's issue of Plato. If

  you mean the ability to accept and process information, and manufacture

  self-improving rules for problem-solving based on that information, then the

  answer is yes, the Taloids can do that—but so can any of the so-called smart

  machine tools in a modem automobile factory, an editor-transcriber computer, or

  any reasonably proficient chess-playing program that learns. The difference is

  merely one of degree, according to Dr. Goodmay, and not anything fundamental.

  But if by think you mean the ability to imagine, create, aspire to greater

  things, see the world through emotion-tinted glasses, and all the other things

  we take for granted when we apply the word to people, then the answer is no way.

  People can externalize aspects of their own thinking and project them into

  Taloids in much the same way as children can convince themselves that the

  computers they talk to at home are really alive and understand what the kids are

  saying."

  Before Zambendorf could recover from the shock of what he was hearing, the

  picture changed to show himself with Osmond Periera, walking along a corridor

  inside the Orion and disappearing through a doorway. He couldn't remember when

  the shot had been taken—it could have been from any time in the voyage. The

  commentary resumed, "Another person who's spending a lot of time looking for

  answers to the same question is Karl Zambendorf, seen here with Dr. Osmond

  Periera, the Orion's principal investigator of the parapsychological sciences."

  Zambendorf choked over the mouthful of coffee he had been about to swallow; the

  screen showed him apparently discussing experimental procedures and nodding at

  Periera, who was holding a clipboard in front of panels of flashing lights and a

  computer console. The voice went on, "After the encouraging results of the

  experiments performed during the voyage and after arrival at Titan to assess the

  effectiveness of extrasensory communications away from the terrestrial

  environment, the Austrian psychic and other experts with the mission have been

  examining the possibility of probing whatever emergent Taloid psyche might exist

  by means of what are called psychodynamic sympathetic resonances, or what

  amounts to the same thing, mind reading." Now Zambendorf was being shown with a

  set of wires and electrodes taped around his forehead and temples, staring, with

  an expression of deep concentration, at a wall of equipment racks. That was an

  old shot from the early part of the voyage. It was a stunt he had pulled to

  demonstrate how he could alter the readings of a mass spectrometer by changing

  its magnetic field profile through mind power; in fact Thelma had simply kicked

  the leg of the table supporting the chart recorder and produced an abnormal

  trace at a moment when everybody's attention had been on Zambendorf. The view

  switched to one of a Taloid surrounded by electronics equipment and recorders,

  which Zambendorf recognized as part of Dave Crookes' setup for capturing Taloid

  speech and facial patterns at the first meeting in the desert. The two shots had

  been taken months apart, but the continuity of the TV presentation suggested

  they were closely connected parts of a single process.

  "This is insane!" Zambendorf protested. "I don't know anything about this. I've

  never tried any mind reading of Taloids."

  The commentary went on: "Preliminary results were negative, however. Zambendorf

  was unable to detect any trace of the energy patterns that characterize

  intelligent mental activity, a certain degree of which, he says, he has no

  trouble picking up even from higher animals such as primates, whales, and some

  species of monkeys, dogs, and cats."

  "Lies! Lies! Lies!" Zambendorf shouted. "I said
no such thing. They're more

  intelligent than that stupid woman!"

  "But the scientists out at Titan are not about to give up yet. According to Dr.

  Periera, a whole new technique might have to be developed for tuning into

  holoptronic minds. In any case, even if everything does turn out to be the way

  it looks at present and there aren't any minds on Titan to tune into,

  nevertheless, Zambendorf thinks it might be possible to link human minds into

  Taloid sensory systems and use them as free-moving vehicles for remote

  perception." The newscaster lowered the sheet and concluded with another smile

  from the screen, "There, wouldn't that be great—send your own Taloid wherever

  you'd like to go, and see the world through its eyes. Maybe one day that will

  turn out to be the regular way of exploring the surface of Titan—without any

  need for a spacesuit . . . and maybe other places too. Who knows? Whatever

  happens, I'm sure we're in for more exciting developments."

  She laid the paper aside. "And now, returning from Titan, we move to Sydney,

  Australia, where a young man by the name of Clive Drummond is planning to—"

  Price stopped the recording.

  "There's more," Massey said. "But I think you get the gist of it."

  Zambendorf was nonplussed as he stared at the blank screen. "How long has this

  kind of thing been happening?" he whispered.

  "About three weeks," Massey told him. "Before that, the media hadn't started

  systematically developing any particular thematic image of the Taloids."

  "So there's no question it's deliberate?"

  "None."

  "What about that man Conlon back at NASO, and whoever else he's working with?"

  Zambendorf asked. "If you've got a direct line, they must know that what the

  public are being told is garbage. You must have told them. . . . Can't they do

  anything?"

  "They're trying," Massey said. He shrugged. "But you know how it is."

  Zambendorf shook his head. "Leaherney, Lang, all of them . . . they knew. Even

  while they were talking about oners, they knew these distortions were being

  made. And even though there was no question that I'd have to find out sooner or

  later."

  "Perhaps they were certain they'd be able to swing you round if they simply

  cranked their oner high enough," Price said. "That is pretty much the way they

  operate."