Again Tuezuzim waited a long time. Then, slowly rotating his crippled left chela at Juan Kydd’s face, he said, “The word is limousinoid.”
“There’s no such word! What in hell does it mean?”
“What does it mean? ‘Like a limousine, in the form of or resembling a limousine.’ It can be used, probably has been used, in some piece of technical prose.”
“Referee!” Kydd yelled. “Let’s have a ruling. Do you have limousinoid in your dictionary?”
“Whether or not it’s in the dictionary, Computer,” Tuezuzim countered, “it has to be acceptable. If dirigibloid can exist, so can limousinoid. If limousinoid exists, Kydd’s challenge is invalid and he gets the t of Ghost—and loses. If limousinoid doesn’t exist, neither does dirigibloid, and so Kydd would have lost that earlier round and would therefore now be up to the t of Ghost. Either way, he has to lose.”
Now it was the Malcolm Movis that took its time. Five full minutes it considered. As it testified later, it need not have done so; its conclusion was reached in microseconds. “But,” it noted in its testimony at the inquest, “an interesting principle was involved here that required the use of this unnecessary time. Justice, it is said, not only must be done, but must seem to be done. Only the appearance of lengthy, careful consideration would make justice seem to be done in this case.”
Five minutes—and then, at last, the Malcolm Movis gave its verdict.
“There is no valid equation here between dirigibloid and limousinoid. Since dirigible is a word derived from the so-called classic languages, it may add the Greek suffix -oid. Limousine, on the other hand, derives from French, a Romance language. It comes from Limousin, an old province of France. The suffix -oid cannot therefore be used properly with it—Romance French and classical Greek may not be mixed.”
The Malcolm Movis paused now for three or four musical beats before going on. Juan Kydd and Tuezuzim stared at it, the human’s mouth moving silently, the crustacean’s antennae beginning to vibrate in frantic disagreement.
“Tuezuzim has incurred t, the last letter of Ghost,” the computer announced. “He has lost.”
“I protest!” Tuezuzim screamed. “Bias! Bias! If no limousinoid, then no dirigibl—”
“Protest disallowed.” And the blast of the Hametz Drive tore through the lobstermorph. “Your meals, Mr. Kydd,” the computer said courteously.
—
The inquest, on Karpis VIII of Sector N-42B5, was a swift affair. The backup tapes of the Malcolm Movis were examined; Juan Kydd was merely asked if he had anything to add (he did not).
But the verdict surprised almost everyone, especially Kydd. He was ordered held for trial. The charge? Aggravated cannibalism in deep space.
Of course, our present definition of interspecies cannibalism derives from this case:
The act of cannibalism is not to be construed as limited to the eating of members of one’s own species. In modern terms of widespread travel through deep space, it may be said to occur whenever one highly intelligent individual kills and consumes another highly intelligent individual. Intelligence has always been extremely difficult to define precisely, but it will be here and henceforth understood to involve the capacity to understand and play the terrestrial game of Ghost. It is not to be understood as solely limited to this capacity, but if an individual, of whatever biological construction, possesses such capacity, the killing, consuming, and assimilating of that individual shall be perceived as an act of cannibalism and is to be punished in terms of whatever statutes relate to cannibalism in that time and that place.
—The Galaxy v. Kidd, Karpis VIII, C17603
Now, Karpis VIII was pretty much a rough-and-ready frontier planet. It was still a rather wide-open place with a fairly tolerant attitude toward most violent crime. As a result, Juan Kydd was assessed a moderate fine, which he was able to pay after two months of working at his new job in computer programming.
The Malcolm Movis computer did not fare nearly as well.
First, it was held as a crucial party to the crime and an accessory before the fact. It was treated as a responsible and intelligent individual, since it had unquestionably demonstrated the capacity to understand and play the terrestrial game of Ghost. Its plea of nonbiological construction (and therefore noninvolvement in legal proceedings pertaining to living creatures) was disallowed on the ground that the silicon-based Cascassians who had built the ship and lifeboat were now also subject to this definition of cannibalism. If silicon-chemistry intelligence could be considered biological, the court ruled, so inevitably must silicon electronics.
Furthermore, and perhaps most damaging, the computer was held to have lied in a critical situation—or, at least, to have withheld information by not telling the whole truth. When Tuezuzim had accused it of anti-lobstermorph bias, it had pointed to the fact that the Malcolm Movis omicron beta had been designed by a lobstermorph and that anti-lobstermorph bias was therefore highly unlikely. The whole truth, however, was that the designer, Dr. Hodgodya, was living in self-imposed exile at the time because he hated his entire species and, in fact, had expressed this hatred in numerous satirical essays and one long narrative poem. In other words, anti-lobstermorph bias had been built in and the computer knew it.
To this the computer protested that it was, after all, only a computer. As such, it had to answer questions as simply and directly as possible. It was the questioner’s job to formulate and ask the right questions.
“Not in this case,” the court held. “The Malcolm Movis omicron beta was not functioning as a simple question-and-answer machine but as a judge and umpire. Its obligations included total honesty and full information. The possibility of anti-lobstermorph bias had to be openly considered and admitted.”
The Malcolm Movis did not give up. “But you had two top-notch programmers in Kydd and Tuezuzim. Could it not be taken for granted that they would already know a good deal about the design history of a computer in such general use? Surely for such knowledgeable individuals not every i has to be dotted, not every t has to be crossed.”
“Software people!” the court responded. “What do they know about fancy hardware?”
The computer was eventually found guilty of being an accessory to the crime of cannibalism and was ordered to pay a fine. Though this was a much smaller fine than the one incurred by Juan Kydd, the Malcolm Movis, unlike Kydd, had no financial resources and no way of acquiring any.
That made for a touchy situation. On a freewheeling planet such as Karpis VIII, judges and statutes might wink a bit at killers and even cannibals. But never at out-and-out deadbeats. The court ruled that if the computer could not pay its fine, it still could not evade appropriate punishment. “Let justice be done!”
The court ordered that the Malcolm Movis omicron beta be wired in perpetuity into the checkout counter of a local supermarket. The computer requested that instead it be disassembled forthwith and its parts scattered. The request was denied.
So.
You decide. Was justice done?
Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System
GEOFFREY MALONEY
Geoffrey Maloney (1956– ) is an award-winning Australian writer of speculative short fiction who lives in Brisbane with his wife and three children. Through much of the 1980s, Maloney backpacked around India, Nepal, and Africa, and studied Indian history at Sydney University. Maloney’s first story, “5 Cigarettes and 2 Snakes,” was published in 1990 in Aurealis, Australia’s premier speculative fiction magazine. Since then more of his stories have appeared in Aurealis, as well as in magazines and anthologies such as Eidolon, Nova SF, Harbinger, Redsine, Abaddon, The Devil in Brisbane, Albedo One, New Writings in the Fantastic, and Antipodean SF—some collected in Tales from the Crypto-System (2003), which was nominated for a Ditmar Award. Along with Maxine McArthur and others, he helped set up the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild in 1999. This resulted in the anthology Nor of Human…An Anthology of Fantastic Creatures with Maloney as the editor.
/> In 1997, Maloney’s “The Embargo Traders” was nominated for the Aurealis Award for best science fiction short story, and he has received multiple nominations for that award since. In 2001 he won the Aurealis Award for best fantasy short story for “The World According to Kipling (A Plain Tale from the Hills).” The story was subsequently included in Wonder Years: The Ten Best Australian Stories of a Decade Past (2003). He has also appeared more than once in The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy.
“Remnants of the Virago Crypto-System,” first published in Ann VanderMeer’s surrealist/avant-garde magazine the Silver Web in 1995, is a story about what happens after the aliens leave, among other things. It is a powerful, haunted, and enigmatic post–New Wave science fiction story.
REMNANTS OF THE VIRAGO CRYPTO-SYSTEM
Geoffrey Maloney
We leave the city in the early morning, taking the highway to the northwest, going up the country to the places where the aliens used to live. At one point during the journey it becomes apparent that the trip is not what I understood it to be, a holiday jaunt into the countryside to visit the deserted alien houses. She reveals that she is meeting a friend of hers, a woman, an alien who still lives here on Earth, deep in the countryside, isolated from human civilization. This has been slipped in, folded into our lives, pushed in between the bits and pieces of what appeared to be a casual conversation. Our relationship changes after that. I believe this alien woman is an ex-lover that she once spoke of. I grow bewildered, confused, jealous, angry, and useless. And she becomes all thrusty glances that at first warn, then accuse, glances which say: You never understand, then later, You fool, then later still, You are trying to interfere in my life. A silence intervenes, the journey continues. The world has been very quiet of late, since most of the aliens left. It is a terrifying, insecure quietness, a dread.
—
Arrival is at an old stone house in the country. Nearby is an old stone church. It has some beautiful stained glass windows which seem to depict the death of the Christian revival. A motorbike leans up against the wall of the church. She inspects it, checking it over like an animal, reassuring it and herself that everything is as it should be, that it will get her further up-country. I sulk from a distance, watching, then she nods, everything is okay—the alien woman has arranged this—but now communication is poor. There is nothing we can say to each other.
Inside the house are some other people, strangers unknown and irrelevant and unconcerned about our arrival. They are here to do other things. We are of no interest, they none to us. The interior of the house is self-functioning, built according to the alien Crypto-System. A set of Y-shaped escalators moves between floors. The levels are confusing, known yet still strange, as always in alien houses. Upstairs, the house’s treasure, its heart, the Virago Machine, is still intact, still useable. It has escaped ransacking. At first appearance it looks like a typewriter and a cupboard. The typewriter, quite large, sits on a desk and backs against the cupboard, but this is only an interpretation. It is really a complete unit, a communication system capable of transporting messages across the lost years of space. It is arguable whether it carries them across the lost years of time as well. I have opened the doors of the cupboard and gazed at the rolls of yellow paper, all printed with fading, gray type. There are messages here, much to be deciphered, but later, later….
Later another woman arrives. I know her by name. She and I are friends sometimes, both putting up with the whims of her. She is not the ex-lover. The ex-lover, the alien, is still far away, up-country, another two weeks’ trip there and back. I suspect my chances of accompanying her now are slim….
—
Several hours of arguments, more accusations, more references, obscure, to my ignorance, my lack of understanding of anything outside myself. The other woman who has arrived feels sorry for me, but she will say nothing. So it becomes, as it always becomes: it is I who have done this to myself, and unless I ask forgiveness, lose the anger, stop the sulking, then there will be no forgiveness, no reconciliation, and the trip up-country will proceed without me. And at some point it does not matter anymore, for it would seem that she only meant for me to come this far, to this alien house in this silent country.
—
Sometime later they are gone. I do not see, nor hear, them go. I was inside and such are the mysteries of the Crypto-System that the outside world is blocked out, destroyed: the house has its own reason, its own rhythm.
—
I ride the Y-shaped escalators, careful to switch sides at the ascent, so as to be not carried downstairs again—a tricky business, but like so many tricky things there is a knack to it, and once learned it is simple. The other people in the house are drinking wine. They too are ignorant—so she said—but they do not mind. I sense that they have come here to enjoy that ignorance, a convenient caravanserai on a long journey. I stand before the Virago Machine, my fingers resting on the keys, but I type nothing. I do not open the doors again, even though I sense that important communications or fragments of them are here. Perhaps there are messages from her ex-lover, perhaps there are communications which explain the quiet dread that has invaded our lives, but I am too scared to find out just yet.
—
During the days that follow I drink wine and display my ignorance with the other travellers. I fancy that I am beginning to enjoy myself, but it is the enjoyment of ignorance, the pretense that there is nothing else going on, and that this current pastime is the be-all and end-all of life. Sometimes, during drunken euphoric stupors, I mount the escalators, my feet infected by the cheap wine, slipping on its steps, but each time the knack remains and the ascent to the upper storey is successful. There I search through the paper memories of the Virago, looking for the communications of one woman to another, but I find little. I suspect that the Virago is in bad need of repair: only fragments appear in its rolls and rolls of paper, bits and pieces that it has grabbed from the localised slipstream of the Crypto-System. Here and there among the faded type-print, among the yellow rolls of paper, women’s names appear, sometimes complete sentences, scraps of messages they once sent to each other, some messages from this house to another further up-country, others that were returned. Occasional flashes of deeper import appear, mortality statistics and references to war atrocities, but there is nothing among these remnants to confirm and complete my half-held images of her infatuation with the alien woman. The communications remain incomprehensible to me, and I suspect that I have missed something important.
—
My days continue, and then they are back. So, two weeks have gone—inside the house barely five days have passed—such is the nature of the alien system. It is difficult to readjust. Here she is now. I am pleased, but some anger burns within me still. Why did she have to go? What need did she have? But she will not speak to me, or glance in my direction. A coldness sits between us like a long-lost friend. I ask many questions, jealous questions, finally drawing accusing glances upon myself. At least now she will look at me, but she does nothing to alleviate the pain, and displays her determination of being right, absolutely right, because she has chosen to do this. No other reason is required by her. As usual I feel more alone now. I am drawn towards her and away from the wine-drinking travellers, but I become lost somewhere in between, a territory so familiar to me that I begin to feel secure in my isolation.
—
Preparations for the journey down-country begin. I make one more visit to the Virago. Perhaps a last communication has passed between them and the nature of this journey, the nature of their relationship will be revealed on the yellow pages in the cupboard. But the Virago gives me nothing, only more communications with the intent of glances. It forces me away in the end and like a child I kick its cupboard, a further injury which will add to its demise. I ride the escalators downstairs one last time and salvage some joy from this by deftly changing tracks mid-flight, descending, rising, descending, until I tire of the game, my new tr
ick, and allow myself to be carried to the lower storey.
—
We return to the city, a loathsome silent journey. If I ask questions there will be no answers. I do not ask. I like answers too much. Somewhere we stop to eat. The woman behind the counter looks familiar. I will talk to her, a chance for small revenge, but when I draw close I know this woman is a stranger. I do not know her, there is nothing I can say. At the counter, her friend—my friend I think—whispers to me. There is a communication in her bag, you should read it, do not let her see you. Perhaps you will be ashamed of your actions.
—
At home we still do not speak. She leaves her bag in the lounge and goes to the bathroom. I find the brown envelope, break it open, and feel the yellow Virago paper between my fingertips. In faded print like that of a cheap portable typewriter with a poor ribbon the message of the alien woman, her work, her art, her mission, is written. The communication consists of names, places, figures, some of which are vaguely familiar, others which I feel I should know but do not. I can only decipher some of it: Vietnam, some statistics, some figures; Ethiopia, more statistics, more figures; this obscure country, that obscure country, printed number after printed number, child mortality throughout this war and that, the usual cryptic use of the English language. No statement of reasons, no conclusions, just fact after fact, figure after figure, numbers hammering at you until the conclusion becomes self-evident. I look at the communication again and realise something important is happening. This is the way they think. This is the way the Crypto-System works: a whole bunch of data forming a question. And this one became simple, in the end deciphering it was easy. The message rendered into humble human English: why do they kill children?
And her friend, my friend, had been right. I felt petty and ashamed. Simple jealousy had dominated me, and yet something more important had been happening. They, the alien women, had come here, studied us, and here the final communication, perhaps from the last alien on Earth, shakes in my hand. I mumble to myself, did this sum us up in their eyes, was this their final cryptic conclusion? Why had they left? Confused and distraught, the human lounge-room becomes a foreboding place. Had they studied us, tried us, and convicted us? Was that what it was all about? I imagined a fleet of alien ships channelling towards Earth to pronounce the final verdict and sentence. She was in the bathroom. Why had she been gone so long? A question on yellow paper. So, there was a question, there could be an answer. The bathroom door is locked. I knock hard, there is no answer. The door lock breaks, swings open. She is blue on the floor. No breath. The lips are already cold. Peach blossom and bitter almond hang in the air. There is a scrap of yellow paper in her hand. It unfolds in the warmth of my touch.
The Big Book of Science Fiction Page 199