by Moulton, CD
They were soon back on Sharstedt where Thing was directing the changeover of the generators while Maita used its servos to dismantle the disruptor cannon to make farming tools. There was one small shuttlecraft that could go to and from the fumarole mines. The colonists wanted to remain self-sufficient on Sharstedt and would mine the asteroids with their one ship a few centuries in the future if they thought it was advisable to do so then.
Tab sat on the rock by the stream and looked wistful a lot of the time. He said he was deeply affected by the Pads and wasn't sure they didn't have the best of all possible lifestyles. Thing would sit with him sometimes and Z would sit with him sometimes. They were both with him when six of the Pads suddenly came up the little fall, playing just as Tab and Kit had only a few days ago. The Jornians saw the natives and came in a large group to greet them, but the Shar were most curious about Tab, Thing and Z on that rock. Tab thoroughly enjoyed Z's discomfort when the identification ritual started. It was much better than if it was him! There were all six of them to pass Z around, but Z fell into the spirit of it and found it a pleasant thing.
Tab and Thing went into the cold stream to play with the Pads, but Z and the Jornians couldn't stand quite that cold a water temperature. Only Z and Thing understood why Tab suddenly burst into laughter, but they saw those same two women start trying to seduce the Pads. This time they had decided to carry through to the end, apparently.
Z wished them luck. He caught the eye of one of the Pads and grinned, shaking his head. The Pad winked at him! So they were deliberately refusing to perform sexually for the women!
Perhaps that wouldn't last too long. Maybe before this long summer was over those women would find what it was like to be bedded by a Pad.
There were a few of the Pads around the camp for a few days, then a few more and soon twenty or more were there. They seemed curious about what the Jornians were doing and didn't get in the way. Thing had a large dark area made in the center of the growing village where the sun would be on it all day. The Pads knew it was for them and spent a lot of time on it. They also soon caught on to what the Jornians were doing at the food growing area and would actually help there.
*That's because growing food makes sense to them and refining rocks doesn't. They're perfectly willing to do whatever makes sense, but they will NOT do things that seem downright stupid to them.*
[ I think I have an idea that will help them to all get along, not that they need help. Some of these things are really pretty simple if you take the time to think them out a bit. ]
Thing took its floater out to talk with the woman who was in charge of the plantings. She nodded and sent two young Jornians off to gather some young wood of the types of plants the Pads had shown a fondness for.
"We'll make cuttings and plant that whole section over there in it," she said. "We know it'll form roots from the new year's growth in a few days."
Sech and Yeld were working on the refinery to make hoes and rakes and other farming implements. They would go to every new Pad who came around immediately for the identification ritual.
"I'm lookin' fer tha one what saved muh life," Yeld explained to Z. "He's easy ta spot. He's got this here yeller hex'gun right in tha middle'a his chest. They's all got differnt color patterns we use fer tellin' 'em 'part. I think they tells us 'part buh tha subtle differnces'n skin texture er liddle scars er sich things."
"The emperor has watched them a lot with the spy floaters," Z said. "Some of them stay in one area for long periods and others travel all around the lake. That could take months!"
"Yuh!" Sech agreed. "Ut's a big lake, ta rights! Sixty eight kilometers tha long way 'n near forty t'other! Ther Pads goes ter thuther lakes sos ut could be years."
"Mebbe they'll come back through," Yeld said. "I see some'a tha same uns ever year'n some new uns. I owes thet'n muh life."
Just ten days later the soft cuttings had good enough roots to be planted out. The Pads watched awhile, came to ask instructions, then several went off to return with cutting wood from a variety of plants. Eemin, the woman in charge, showed them how to make cuttings and put them in a semishade bed until they formed roots. It seemed she had worked out a fair sign language with them. She then pointed out there was no ground prepared for the cuttings if they would take root. Several Jornians and several Pads cleared and cleaned a place to grow it all. Eemin got across that some cuttings would take a long time to form roots, some would, like the first ones, take very little time at all and some would never form roots. The Pads accepted that.
While Eemin and Thing worked with the food plants Z worked with the crew making backup generators. The hydroelectric setup tended to fail when the stream froze over and heat was derived from burning things, which they wanted to avoid. This world was NOT going to become polluted if they could prevent it! The chromium/rhodium factor generator would handle that. It should be ready before the winter came.
One of Z's problems was to get the Pads to understand that electricity was dangerous and couldn't be used in the water. He was able to make a heavy current line and demonstrate the danger. The Pads were wary of the thing then and he had to show it was safe if used properly.
Kit returned and soon the ship came in with the rest of the colonists, who were absorbed quickly and given jobs. No one was without work and Z remembered the big flap about employment at the time he was abducted from Earth. That wouldn't be much of a problem for centuries here – besides, the Jornians would undoubtably learn the fun lifestyle from the Pads, who definitely weren't interested in learning labor!
Kit began a project of holding and purifying water while Maita used servos to make a machine to spin housing from fiberglass. The housing unit was made in one piece and the doors and windows cut into it. There was ample insulation built-in for the climate of Sharstedt.
The Pads wouldn't go into caves, but felt free to wander around the houses. They were welcomed everywhere.
Z wasn't sure he could ever get used to the Pads wandering around anytime. He was used to privacy and had a psychological need of it and there would never be any such thing here.
He wouldn't have to live here so it didn't matter.
When the time came to leave it was hard on the entire crew. Even Maita and the other ships hated to go. The Pads had taken to wandering around inside the ships at times so they were hardly noticed by most of the crew. The ships knew everything on board themselves at all times, of course.
All things must end, as the trite old saying goes, and they gathered for one meeting before they left. Everyone made speeches and everyone got a little drunk on the beer the Jornians were making. The Pads wouldn't touch the stuff, but they didn't need artificial stimulation to enjoy life. Before they left Maita made a solemn promise to come back from time to time.
The three ships rose above the atmosphere and headed back to EC.
5 Years Later
Maita settled again into the routines of running a huge empire. There were quite literally millions of items demanding its attention, but most of it had already been handled by the servos.
The trip to see how the Shar were doing five years after they started the project was finished a few hours ago. The Shar included the Pads and the Jornians. They were closer than ever now, sharing food production and other vital functions. There was no such thing as privacy of one race from another, but the Jornians had privacy one from the other when they required it. It was a very strange society. If a Jornian man was with his wife in bed and another Jornian came into the room the three would all be embarrassed, but if a Pad came in or even climbed into the bed with them it wasn't in the least embarrassing.
How odd! Maita would never be able to figure any set of rules of behavior that fit all organics. It was time to give up the attempt – which it would never do.
Sharstedt was going to be a strange world for the foreseeable future. That's the sort of thing that kept even a machine from becoming bored!
*
Tab was on TR on the way to
Perfect 3 where Kit was to meet him. The detective agency was ever more and more interesting but since the experience with the Pads five years ago there was an empty place somewhere in his psyche. This trip had intensified that loss, but he was glad they had gone. Those peoples were both doing as well as they had hoped. Better.
This was a bad time to be leaving EC, too. This was a time when he should be among those he loved and those who loved him. To have Thing wrapped around him was a great comfort even though he was immune to the empathy.
One must carry on.
How odd! A machine thinking about love and knowing what was meant by that term – but he did. He had the love for TR that one shared with a part of oneself, the love of Kit and T6 was the kind of love one shared with ones closest friend. The love for Maita was a closer kind of thing than mere friendship and the love for Thing and Z was, too. This was a family. That was the kind of love meant by all of this.
How odd, too, that same machine had actually "gone native" on that world. The playing in that stream with Kit had by that time become no more an act, but a deep feeling of belonging. This was the strangest part of his personal evolution. He now knew fully what it felt like to be an organic being. He knew loss and emotional pain and a longing that could never be filled.
Well, one must go on!
*
Thing climbed on the floater to go to Z's patio. Things were as it wanted them to be under the sea. The lifeforms taken from the fumaroles on Sharstedt were doing well, as were those people on that crazy world. It was a crazy universe in a lot of ways. People and machines could say they knew that the omniverse must add up to zero, but perhaps no other being in it really understood the concept. When one studied it properly, one had to accept that none of it was real.
How odd! To sit here and say, "I am not real and can prove it absolutely beyond possibility of refutation!" was something the normal mind couldn't cope with beyond the words.
There was so much to understand and, though it was true that Thing, the Mentan, understood things no other being did, Thing, the Mentan, knew nothing. The simpler things were, the harder they were to understand. That is a fact and that is also why so many socalled "scientists" sought more complication as an escape. They couldn't cope with the fact they couldn't understand a small, simple, demonstrable, clear fact. The result was use of a language of their own, designed to be un-understandable.
The Pads understood it in their simple way. For them it all fit. For them there was nothing to question. For them life was a loud, vulgar, tasteless, impractical joke so why not enjoy it?
Maybe they were right!
*
Kit would soon meet with Tab on Perfect 3 to get the detective agency going again. Kit liked the agency and liked the detective work. It was a challenge to him. Tab was going to be a bit of a problem again. He had been acting strangely since the original trip to Sharstedt and would now revert back to that. Tab was deeply affected by the Pads.
To tell the truth so was he. He really liked them, but there was a place for everything.
He was a far different machine than was Tab in many important ways. Different priorities.
How odd that he and Tab were built and programmed by the same machine for the same basic purpose, yet were so very different. Maybe machines actually evolved in some ways. Tab was much less of the machine than Kit was – but he was learning. He had jumped to save Yeld's leg and had actually felt a pride and even a kinship with the man for a moment. He also had truly enjoyed the play in the stream with Tab. The truth be known he had enjoyed the interactions with the Pads, too. He had felt a love and kinship with Z and Thing from the beginning and had felt much the same about T6, Tab, TR and Maita, but that was love of family. That was a love that wasn't programmed in. He knew that. It had come from knowing them and had grown because of the freedom he had with them.
He was growing and changing. There was much to look forward to. He was a very new robot!
*
Z swung by the rope to a lower crotch and caught to the rough bark of the huge spreading oak-like tree, took what looked very much like Bulbophyllum medusae from the waiting floater and secured it carefully with the special ties he had developed. He moved around the tree to place some Brassavola glauca that didn't just look like an orchid from Earth, but were part of the big one by his patio he had taken a piece from, brought from Earth a hundred years ago. It would be another year before he had all the plants in the stasis chamber planted.
Life was such a strange thing. His greatest fear, that he would become bored after living so long, had never materialized. He was anything but bored! Even if he were to be somehow trapped here on EC the plants, the Tendd, Joe's People, Maita and Thing would keep him from becoming bored for centuries.
How odd! He felt more love for five machines than he did for any organic beings in the entire universe except for Thing.
He was a little worried about one of those machines. Tab had gone native on Sharstedt and this latest trip had brought it all back.
Well, there was no need to worry. Tab would handle it. He had the whole family behind him and he had a very active mind. Such things had a fascination only for so long as they remained unattainable. Maita agreed and would suggest after a time that Tab take a vacation on Sharstedt in the guise of a Pad. Live among them for awhile. Thing calculated he would tire of the lack of doing anything but pawing all over each other in no more than a hundred days. Z figured less than that. Too much of anything was enough! Even love, which the Pads truly felt and shared, but they were evolved to it. Tab was evolved to action. He would soon look again at the night sky and wonder and wish.
The difference in Tab and billions of other beings was that Tab could go out there and could experience all of it. So could any of the members in this strange family of machines and wildly differing peoples.
It was a very big galaxy! Steven Parker "Z" Zutec hadn't even started good yet!
Flight of the Maita
Book 25
Vacations Don't Always Work Out
(Return To Tlorg)
© 1988 by C. D. Moulton
A vacation on Tlorg results in the discovery of a scheme that could destroy the universe? Kurk joins the crew.
Critic comment
I was told to honestly say what I think.
I don’t care for fantasy, and this skirts very close and even crosses the line now and again.
I like the adventure and action and the premise. The story is quite well-told. CD manages to describe a lovable monster in Kurk, something I generally don’t like, and the golems are a scream.
I would not buy the book because of the fantasy part, but would recommend it to those who like a little fantasy sprinkled into their SciFi.
Worth somewhat more than the price
*** P. R. L.
Contents
Tlorg - Land of Coincidences
Castle Teeme
Report of Trouble
Boss Rides Again!
Magic Show
Crazy Invasion
Omniverse in Peril!
Unreal Realities
Relaxing Captivity
Show Time!
Confusion
The Answer
Cross Your Fingers
New Home for Kurk
Return To Tlorg
Tlorg - Land of Coincidences
Steven Parker Zutec, better known simply as Z, was born on, raised on and abducted from the planet, Terra, some three hundred seventy eight MGS (Maitan Galactic Standard) years before, sat on his terrace patio on Empire Center, a planet situated at the center of gravity of three differently colored stars. Empire Center, or EC, as they called it, was exactly what the name implied. It was several thousand plazsis (MGS lightyears) from the place of his birth. He and his friends now resided there.
Z was reading a CD Grimes detective novel written about the time he was abducted back on Earth. The red sun was just coming up as the green one was sliding down behind the mountain behind h
im. The fragrances of the Maxillaria tenuifolia orchids, the odor of hot coconut cake, wafted from the cascade of the plant next to the waterfall to his left. Behind him the spicy scent of the brassos, another orchid, but a hybrid with large yellow blooms, mingled.
He had a tall glass of juice with a flavor somewhat like pineapple juice with a touch of cloves to which he had added a shot of a rum-like liquor. There was a plate of amaranth muffins to nibble on (It wasn't really amaranth, but one could hardly discern the difference). He was deeply absorbed in the overly-complicated plot of the book, called Murder, He Guessed. He had watched a TV show called Murder, She Wrote before he was abducted by the Pweetoos, an insectoid race, so he understood the connection.
The temperature was exactly right – as was everything else on this paradise world. He was surrounded by unbelievable beauty at every turn. The trees, beds, rocks and every available spot on the island, which was his personal property, were covered with orchids and orchid-like plants he had collected on hundreds of worlds. There were also bromeliads, bromeliad-like plants, rhipsalis (Ditto), ferns (Ditto), anthuriums (ditto), camellias (Ditto), caladiums (Ditto), etc, (Ditto) all around.
The mountain started at the sea edge, extended three kilometers under the sea (Where his closest organic friend planted its own gardens) and extended more than three kilometers in height so he had all the climates necessary for any of the types of plants he liked. The small waterfall earlier mentioned, containing fantastic fishes, eels, snails, clams and so forth (As well as many of the lifeforms that closely resembled fishes etc.) fell into the pool toward the side of the terrace. The inset scene along the mountainside and extending underfoot, inlaid by the famous Parf artist, Tous, two centuries ago, was an extension of the beauty surrounding him.