Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition

by Moulton, CD

  [ It's far too logical to accept pointless blame. It isn't independently intelligent like the one at Tristar so it can't go mad. It will note that all it has done is because of the way it was instructed. It is, therefore, blameless. ]

  "Like, oh how sad? Oh, well! That's the universe for you!"

  [ Z, it's unaware it was a slave master or anything such. It acted exactly as it was designed to act. It did its job, and flawlessly. The past isn't alterable. It would defy logic to dwell on what can't be changed. It won't dwell on it emotionally because it HAS no emotions. The only truly unfortunate thing so far as it's concerned was that it wasn't properly programmed. ]

  *So now I'm reprogramming it with OUR perspective of right and wrong. Maybe in another quarter million years it'll discover I was wrong, too. It DID preserve the race, even if it was a stasis situation. It'll take hours to sort through all of this and will require most of my concentration. Why don't you two go mingle? You can start the idea of their joining the empire. This is one race I want in! – if they'll agree to join.*

  "I agree. Can you give TAR One independent intelligence?"

  *Yes. Not immediately. It has to evolve, but that will take little time for such a magnificent machine. It is a matter of redirecting its already very highly developed intelligence.*

  Thing rode on Z's shoulder out of the ship with its personal floater hovering above. They spoke with various of the people, who were a bit confused as to what was happening. Thing and Z explained that their ruler machine had been programmed improperly and what they were doing.

  Thing was a bit preoccupied for awhile, then climbed aboard its personal floater so Z knew it was silently communicating with Maita. It came back after a few minutes to join the discussions.

  Happ came from a building after a time to join them, then they went to a boat and went ashore in the city there. People before had given them space and allowed Happ and Glo to question them, but now the barriers were lifted. Many of them crowded around. Thing was soon being passed around, which many people on many worlds seemed to do.

  Most worlds, the children went directly to Z, but there were no children in these cities. Z wondered if that would change now.

  They spent the entire afternoon and into the early evening with the Krofpth people, then went back to Maita, who had just finished working with TAR-1.

  [ Did you resolve the military problem? I imagine that would be by far the hardest part of the whole process. I imagine a lot of TAR One's circuitry would have been taken up with military programming. ]

  *Most of the stuff was deactivated long ago. Only a minuscule amount was kept for show. TAR One wasn't programmed to attack the Krofpth, really, only to threaten them with attack to keep power. That was one of the dilemmas it faced when we appeared. It no longer had the ability to attack us with anything remotely likely to succeed. It had the logic to know those weapons were far too dangerous to have around so got rid of them centuries ago. Its fear, if you can call it that, was that we would possibly attack the Krofpth while it was defenseless.*

  "I still don't understand why it gave up so easily," Z protested. "THAT fact doesn't seem reasonable to me!"

  *It's a totally logical machine. It had no chance of defeating us from the start. Our very existence was proof it had been improperly input. We were obviously not militaristic as evidenced from our coming in openly announcing ourselves. It then learns we have a truly invincible weapon and the rest of its data offworld was also incorrect. It calculated all the possibilities and came to the conclusion it was in a hopeless situation should it fight and we were more than fifty percent unlikely to be hostile, reinforced by the evidence. It's a very useful machine and is now linked with the empire. They'll be associate members for awhile, then will probably join. This is a strong race and a good one. I'll enjoy seeing them around the galaxy. TAR One has almost as much capacity as I do, you know. I've learned a great deal from it while it learned from me. We have company.*

  Happ soon came into the dome where Thing was rolled up in Z's lap and Z was laying back in the pilot's chair.

  "May I ask you to take a vote on something?" Happ asked. "I will understand if you vote no. I know it will be something that is intrusive into the way you have done things for a long time."

  [ You wish to travel with us? ]

  "For awhile," he said. "Just to learn something of this new empire. I also like all of you and am comfortable around you."

  *And want those damned wires taken out of your skull! I'll vote yes.*

  "Fine with me," Z said.

  [ Welcome aboard, Happ. ]

  *We'll leave in about an hour so bring what you wish to take along and say your good fortunes. There're going to be traders before you know it here. There're going to be rapid changes out here on the dome!*

  "That's what makes all of this stupid confusion worthwhile," Z replied. "Sometimes, just sometimes, we're able to make a positive change somewhere!"

  That could well go down in history as the understatement of the century!

  A Few Places

  "Do you think it's a good idea to leave these people right now, Maita?" Z asked, as they left atmosphere.

  *I think it's the smartest thing we can do. They have a lot to do and they have to do it themselves. They've had enough of their lives being run for them and I'm not interested in taking over the job.*

  [ They have some adjusting to do if only in direction. They've traded one kind of machine for another. They now have more than ten thousand generations behind them who lived under a rigid regime that's suddenly changed. That's traumatic, to understate it. We could do some good in some ways and some damage in others. In balance it's far better we go. ]

  "My people are excited and free," Happ added. "We must be allowed to make a few mistakes.

  "I know that sounds strange to you, but there was no mistake made in memory. Even the ones in history were so far removed they were unreal. Believe me, my dearest friends, you can't begin to comprehend the feeling of freedom that allows you to say 'you scranged that up but good, you fogbrained idiot!' Perfection is the hell you speak of, Z. There is no worse place. No more deadly boring place can exist."

  *TAR One was programmed to protect and guide. It did, as you have said, a perfect job. Life without risk of any kind. Such a life wouldn't be worth living, I think, to any but an insect society. The Freenz have proved even that doesn't always hold true.*

  "Tell me of these Freenz!?" Happ requested.

  Thing told of the wandering lost ship and of how the first insect society joined the empire (Book eleven, Happy Birthday!). Z listened closely to the tale he was part of, as he always learned a great deal from Thing's narrations. The two friends viewed events from totally different perspectives.

  "Now, will Maita please explain about TAR One to me?" Happ requested. "How could my ancestors have built such a machine? How were you so easily able to change it? Could we have changed it ourselves many centuries ago?"

  *TAR One is and always has been a truly magnificent machine in every sense of the word. It was built with the ability to make repairs on itself and to totally control industry and farming, education and research and about anything else imaginable. It was then given its instructions. Four very different people input the instructions, each with a specialty, but each also with influence in all spheres of influence added to the machine. TAR One is absolutely the most logical of machines – which makes it a very good thing it was programmed to protect the Krofpth race above all things. Had that not been a prime directive it would have probably eliminated the race altogether from the first. It was forced into an impossible situation when it was told the Krofpth must atone for what one programmer thought was the sin of the race. The very logical machine immediately saw that the past isn't alterable. It then had to face the fact one being can't atone for the actions of another. The beings who supposedly committed these horrendous crimes against the galaxy were long dead and could never more atone for anything. That one programmer had so infil
trated his ideas on the total programming the machine was forced to consider the race itself to be guilty. That wasn't logical – yet it was programmed as truth. The answer, as the guilt was in the past and couldn't be assuaged, was to punish the entire remaining race – but the programming forbade any such action. Stalemate. The only logical avenue of action was no action – but TAR One must protect the Krofpth race above all else. You see the problem.*

  [ TAR One was forced to the only possible conclusion it could come to. It was programmed to consider all problems to be solvable through logic, therefore, it could solve this problem if given enough time. Meanwhile, the race must be protected and nurtured. Any advancement may move the problem further from solution so there must be no advance. The result was complete stassification of the race. Things remained as they were. The universe of the Krofpth race came to a dead halt. ]

  "Stassification?" Z cried. "Oh, great colliding galaxies! Next you'll be saying we handled the destassificationalizationing of the race!"

  *That would be correct. The machine, much against what we in our lack of understanding of its logic thought, was first to protect the Krofpth race. Our fear it may attack them to prevent their contaminating our empire was as foreign to its programming as possibly could be. It COULD NOT attack them in any way. It MUST protect them!*

  [ Logically, it must then as much as turn itself off when we arrived. The fact we existed at all disproved the basic theorem of its existence – that the Krofpth had destroyed the chances of anything ever developing and advancing in this galaxy. Through a couple of thousand years the Krofpth had met no other race that was capable of leading such an empire – that they knew of. The Julpittians could have done it, but would go to great extremes to avoid the responsibility. The programmers didn't take into consideration the vastness of the galaxy. The sheer numbers of possibilities should have told them there were others. Probably many of them. They refused to see there was nothing wrong with the Krofpth Empire. You were in the process of outgrowing your militarism, which meant there was deep racial moral turmoil. It's a time of introspection in any race and a time when the race will find reasons to call itself evil. Most races must go through an extended period of transition, but yours went through the period rather quickly so there was no spreading out of the guilt. The result was retreat and TAR One. ]

  "You're saying all they had to do was to walk in there and turn TAR One off?!" Z exclaimed. "It couldn't have stopped them. It was programmed to protect them?"

  *If a great number went at once to do that they would have been successful. It could stop a few individuals without breaking its programming about protecting the race. Harm to a very large number would harm the race. Remember! They didn't know it could never use the arms they thought it had against them.*

  [ Yes. It had only a few of the empty casings for those weapons. It had destroyed all of the weapons themselves. It 'knew' there was no danger whatever of anyone outside coming to harm the Krofpth because it was programmed to believe the fall of the Krofpth Empire was the fall of all advanced life. The only other use would be against the Krofpth themselves. It must protect the Krofpth above all else. The only logical path was to quickly get rid of those dangerous weapons! ]

  "This is amazing!" Happ cried. "If we only had checked those weapons we would have known! We were so conditioned to TAR One that we wouldn't dare to check!"

  *TAR One would have told you it had hidden the weapons where you couldn't get to them. You would have known only by attacking it in force. You knew for a fact the weapons HAD been left for TAR One's use so you were then presented with your own logical dilemma. Had you decided to attack TAR One and it still HAD the weapons it was the end of the race. Your race survival instinct is diminished, but still strong. There was little danger you would do so.*

  "The universe is a strange place," Z said. "The machine that was designed to be your best friend a quarter million years ago finally is! That's what we call poetic justice. It doesn't always work out like that."

  "My people must learn to trust TAR One," Happ cautioned. "That may be difficult. It will take time."

  [ They're trusting Emperor Maita through TAR One. It will take less than two generations, which is no time at all to the Krofpth race. ]

  "Two?" Z said. "Why not just one?"

  *Some in this one will preach to the young that they must not trust TAR One, but they will live their entire lives knowing only benefits from it so the third generation won't have the same things preached at them. We're approaching the planet Nichtale. There's radio out and holovid close so they'll have travel inside their system at the minimum. We can contact them.*

  [ What does Library say about them? ]

  *Nothing. They were just beginning to evolve intelligence when last studied. Another thing the Krofpth Empire did right was to not interfere with emerging worlds. That's one thing any truly intelligent race will decide.*

  They went down to the pilot's dome, Thing riding on Happ's shoulder. The world was M-2, and was more than half water. There were several very large satellites in orbit and two moons of small but visible size from the planet.

  *I'll spend some time out of sight here in orbit while I learn their language. This is what their holovid pictures show them to be like.*

  Scenes from what were, apparently, dramas filled the screen for a few minutes. The people were amphibious in appearance, looking something like the Swaz, but with more armored skins. They lacked the Swaz crest and the fin down the back. The gills were very slightly more prominent and what must be hearing organs were on short stalks that folded down to rest against the side of the neck, but could be extended and turned.

  They spent as much time in the water as they did on the land if the dramas were typical of their real actions.

  "Maita?" Happ asked. "Wouldn't it be easier to simply put one of them on the probe to extract the language?"

  *Yes, but we only put people on the probe who volunteer. When I have enough of the language to make myself understood we'll go aground to request a volunteer. The probe is the ultimate invasion of privacy, going directly into the mind of the subject.*

  "Each thing I learn about the Maitan Empire puts me more at ease about it," Happ replied. "How are you able to decipher a language? I would think it would be an almost infinitely variable equation."

  *There are hundreds of holovid channels I can watch and hear at once. I can consider each situation and the way words are used. There are commercial channels here which make it much easier because of the tendency of advertisers to wish to reach people on many levels – visually, in both written words and a product's pictures and in spoken words. Those words are often read as a message unfolds across the screen. There are also educational channels for the young. At this moment there are several of them showing pictures of what I assume are farm animals, there are written single-word names of those animals as well as someone repeating the phonetic sounds of that written word. I've learned hundreds of names of things, such as various flowers on one station where the same process is being used. This also tells me the people here have a strong sense of beauty. It also tells me Z will very much enjoy parts of this world and Thing will enjoy others. I'll demonstrate.*

  The holovid screen split with a picture of what looked like a brownish orchid on one side and what looked like an undersea volcanic flume on the other.

  "Good lord!" Z cried. "That looks like a Laelia tenebrosa! Exactly! Plant and all!"

  *It's a species, an extract from whose ripened seeds are used in flavoring sweets if I understand correctly. Thing will note the animal and plant life around the fumaroles being shown. If I understand those fumaroles are at a great depth and the object of these studies is to show that life can derive energy from sources other than the sun. It's a very interesting study. They deduce life on large worlds that are far from the primary. They're a very intelligent people. We may go aground now, I think. I can ask for a volunteer. Z can spend a few days looking for orchids, Thing can examine the deep sea
bottoms and Happ can enjoy these people. They're pleasure-responders and are an open and rather free society sexually to more of an extent than are the Krofpth, though I wouldn't know if your races will prove to be attractive to one another. You're compatible, though I will have to test to be sure you aren't chemically incompatible. You shouldn't enter into such intimate relations if you may prove to be allergic to one another or even poisonous.*

  This sort of discussion always embarrassed Z, though he knew from personal experience that his centuries-old inhibitions were just plain silly.

  Happ didn't share such taboos.

  "They are not physically attractive to me," he replied. "I won't know until I meet them if they have other qualities that will prove seductive. I have noticed the artworks on some of those dramas and am interested. I think their tastes will be much like my own in the visual arts. I also find the background music to my liking. We will share body rhythms, too.

  "What do you think of their music, Z? Thing?"

  [ I find it too relaxing. It tends to lull the senses and to take the excitement to a lower level. It's restful and would tend to be a boon to sleep or to background other quiet activities. ]

  "The beat's invariant but the melodies are intricate," Z said. "I like it, but I'd get tired of it in no time."

  *The beat's a bit slower than your heartbeat rate, Thing, so slows your metabolism and lulls your senses. Z's heartbeat rate varies constantly to outside stimulations so an unbroken beat is boring to him. Thing's rate takes rather strong stimulation to affect it at all. You like it because the beat is based on the heartbeat rate of your people at the most pleasant of temperatures, as it is to these people. You'll have more in common with them than you think, Happ. We're here.*

  [ Really? I thought we were THERE! ]

  Z started laughing, and had to explain the time they landed on a planet called Heer and the confusion it caused with a passenger when Maita used that idiom from Earth.