The Caterpillars Question - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  "But I'm with the Imago!" Jack said. "And Candy, and you. We've all been exposed."

  "You have been exposed, true. The android is of course immune, being without living tissue. That is why the Agents of the Imago are able to kill its host, if left to their own initiative. They serve the Imago in part by being unaffected by it. I have not been exposed."

  "Sure you have! You're standing right here. Unless its range is pretty limited— and from what you say, it isn't. You probably have to be a mile away to be clear of it. And you aren't."

  "Gaol policy is to allow no other creatures within the stellar system of the host of the Imago, though probably a light-hour's distance is sufficient. I am five light-hours distant."

  "Like fun you are!" Jack strode toward her. "She did not move. She merely watched him with a condescending smile. He reached her and grabbed her arm— and his hand passed through it without resistance.

  Amazed, he grabbed for her with both arms, finding nothing but air. She simply wasn't there.

  "You are addressing my hologram," Malva said after a moment. At the moment her face was right next to his, and his arms were lost in the image of her body. Her voice seemed to come from her mouth. "Your culture is too backward to be familiar with such things. It is a projection in three dimensions, with sound. It is a convenience of communication when direct personal contact is not desired, as in this case."

  Jack had to accept the fact that she was not where she seemed to be. He swept one hand through her apparent midsection, one finger extended in a final gesture of contempt and backed off. "But the light-speed limit— how can you be five light-hours away?"

  "To primitives, the speed of light is an absolute limitation. The Gaol are not primitive. Thus when the AI city traveled fifty thousand light-years instantly, the Gaol's pursuit was limited by the speed of the search pattern, not the speed of light. Our present dialogue is similarly unlimited."

  Jack realized that she had no reason to lie to him. But still he hoped for some way out. Could he provoke her into providing it? "Why are you wasting time talking to me?" he demanded. "If you have such power over us, why don't you just put me out the airlock and seal up Tappy?"

  "No!" Tappy exclaimed. Candy had finished bandaging her, and now she walked across to join him.

  "We have no intention of mistreating you in any way, Jack," Malva said. "It is true that we shall confine the host of the Imago, but you will be allowed to remain near her for your lifetime. We shall if you wish conform the android to Tappy's likeness so that you will have suitable company, and you will have all your material and intellectual needs met."

  "But you're going to put Tappy in a coffin!"

  "This is necessary, yes. The Imago must not be allowed the freedom of even the ship. But you are harmless."

  "If a ship will confine me, why won't it confine her? If it has to be, why not confine us together?"

  "Because in past millennia the Imago has proved to be remarkably adept at escaping confinement," Malva replied. "We have not ascertained exactly how it manages it, but have verified that complete immobility of the host in isolation is sufficient to confine it for the duration."

  "Well, I'm not going to cooperate in the incarceration of Tappy! I'll tear apart your ship, piece by piece, until I free her."

  Malva shrugged. "I think not."

  Suddenly there were bars in front of him. Jack turned, and discovered that he was caged. The chamber had been halved by a palisade of bars from ceiling to floor. He was walled off from Malva's image and from Tappy and Candy.

  He grabbed the nearest bar— and received a formidable shock. They were electrified!

  But he still had his voice. "Don't let them put you in their coffin, Tappy!" he cried.

  Tappy looked at him. "I will try to resist. They don't want to hurt me, because that might shorten my life span. But the android is very strong."

  Jack had discovered that. "Maybe that's the key! Tell them you'll hurt yourself if they try to put you away. You can do that, before—"

  "Tappy," Malva said, "if you resist, we will torture and kill Jack."

  Tappy looked at Jack. Then she spread her hands. "I will not resist."

  "But you must resist!" Jack cried. "You can't let them salt the Imago away for a lifetime!"

  Tappy merely looked at him, her tears flowing. "I love you, Jack."

  "And I love you!" he cried without thinking. "That's why they must not put you away!"

  She approached the bars and put her hands on them. They did not shock her. She put her face close to his and kissed him when he matched her on the other side. "These past five years with you have been so wonderful, Jack. They will serve for a lifetime's memories. Go with Candy; I don't mind what form she takes so long as you are well treated." She kissed him again and withdrew. "I am ready."

  Jack knew it would be useless to protest further. Tappy did love him and would not do anything to hurt him. And that was why Malva had talked to him: to develop that leverage on Tappy. They were taking no chances at all with the confinement of the Imago.

  Candy brought out what did indeed look like a coffin, except that it was surrounded by equipment that surely was designed to preserve the life of the person within. Tappy climbed in and lay down. The nightgown did not seem to matter. Candy swung the lid down. It was not a simple thing; it was spiked inside like an iron maiden.

  "She'll suffocate!" Jack cried, but even as he spoke he knew she would not. There would be air piped in and nourishment, and her bodily wastes would be piped out. The seeming iron maiden was not a torture box but a mechanical maintenance device.

  Candy folded down clasps on the coffin and locked them in place. Now it was impossible for Tappy to fight her way out even if she regained consciousness— and of course she would be drugged throughout.

  Then metallic walls formed around the coffin. The plants in that vicinity disappeared. "What's that?" Jack asked, sure that he would not like the answer, but unable to stop himself.

  "That is the formation of a spaceship," the Malva image answered. "The AI city station has been moved to a remote star and will be destroyed, leaving only the isolation ship. A Gaol unit will keep it under continuous surveillance for the lifetime of the host, which should be about a century, since she is young. The Gaol empire will be preserved."

  A detail filtered through. "This city will be destroyed? But then what of me?"

  "You will die with it, of course."

  "But you told Tappy—"

  "I lied. Now the Imago is secure, and you are surplus. There remains only the separation of the ship from the city and the destruction of the city with all its equipment."

  "All by remote control?" Jack asked, the numbness of the finality of defeat sinking in. The Gaol certainly were thorough!

  "No. The confinement of the Imago is too important to be done remotely. A Gaol will handle the concluding details."

  "No, it won't!" Jack said, grasping what trifling fragment of victory he could. "Because if it comes here, it will be contaminated by the Imago, and you can't risk that."

  "True. Therefore the Gaol individual, too, will be destroyed."

  "But one of the conquerors wouldn't sacrifice himself!"

  She shrugged. "Believe what you will. The Gaol is now boarding the city and will perform the necessary chores. Now I bid you oblivion, Jack, as my role here is terminated."

  "Bitch!" Jack screamed as she faded out.

  Candy walked across the chamber. "Where are you going, android?" he demanded.

  She did not pause. "To the portal to admit the Gaol."

  "Bring it back here and introduce us!" he called sarcastically.

  When she was gone, he turned to stare at the coffin. He took hold of a bar to shake it, but it shocked him again. His arm was numbed; he could not get close to Tappy.

  What was he to do? He couldn't just give up, yet there seemed to be no alternative.

  Chapter 10

  Then he saw something. It was small, green, and look
ed like a thick-legged spider. No, it was more like a tiny octopus. It was crossing the floor toward him.

  The hatchling! He had forgotten it! Ordinarily such a creature would have revolted him, but this thing had been with Tappy, and was formed mainly of her flesh. He couldn't dislike that, even if it was some honker joke. Also, he did feel empathy for it, and for life in general. Malva had been right about that much.

  He squatted. "Come here, you little thing. I won't hurt you. I'm about to die anyway. What's your business?"

  The thing approached his hand. It extended a tiny tentacle and touched his finger.

  Jack felt a warmth. It wasn't physical, though; it was emotional. He felt an increasing awareness of the linkage of all things. He was attuning to the exotic plants in the vicinity, and felt their discomfort: the Gaol had established a field which suppressed their natural ambience. And he felt Tappy, her consciousness fading as the drug slowly penetrated her system; she was being forced into sleep, but there were no dreams there. The Gaol did not trust the Imago even to dream safely.

  He looked at the hatchling. He picked it up. The thing assumed flesh color and disappeared against his palm. "You're doing it!" he exclaimed. "The empathy— you're magnifying it! Are you the Imago?"

  But as he considered the question, he knew the answer. The Imago remained with Tappy. It would not leave her while she lived. The hatchling was merely another agent of the Imago, of a different kind. It was alive, and it was mobile.

  That trick of blending with his hand— was that a signal of something more? It had been green when it first manifested, and green when it had come to him. Jack moved to a green plant and set his hand against it, letting the hatchling slide onto the leaf.

  The hatchling turned green again, matching the plant so perfectly that it disappeared. Quickly Jack reached for it, and found it where the leaf seemed to thicken; it was solid, but able to change its color and shape instantly.

  He set it back on the floor, which was metal gray in this section. The hatchling became a perfectly matching gray as it flattened out. It was a chameleon! It had disappeared the first time, when Candy pursued it, not entirely by hiding behind a plant, but by blending with it

  So now he knew two things about it: it magnified the empathy, and it was very good at hiding. But what good was either ability, when Tappy was locked away and the rest of the city was about to be destroyed? If the honker who had planted this creature on Tappy had intended to help her, how had it expected her to overcome something like this? Because it was now apparent that the nullification of the Gaol's volition block had been the work of that egg, as was Tappy's disappearance from the Gaol's tracking devices. The egg had hatched, and the hatchling had at least two other properties. Something else was needed— and perhaps the honker had anticipated this situation also, and the hatchling had what would be required.

  Jack reached down to pick up the hatchling, but could not find it; its camouflage was too good. "Where are you, little friend?" he asked.

  The hatchling turned green again, manifesting as it had before. Jack picked it up. "But how come you showed yourself to me before?" he asked it. "I never would have seen you, otherwise." Then he realized that that was why: it had wanted him to see it.

  "But why now, when it's too late? Sure, we can be friends, but soon we're going to be dead. Do you have some way to rescue Tappy?"

  There was no answer, just that overwhelming empathy. The hatchling did not seem to be intelligent or to have any telepathic communication. Apparently it had responded to him because of the empathy: it knew what he wanted, just as he now knew what the surrounding plants wanted. It knew he wanted to help Tappy.

  Yet he hadn't wanted to see it when it came to him. He hadn't known its nature, and had forgotten about it after seeing it the first time. The hatchling had introduced itself to him by approaching and turning green. Didn't that indicate some separate understanding and decision on its part?

  He reviewed the circumstance of that introduction. It was just after Candy had left, so he was alone. That made sense; she had wanted to destroy it, so it had waited until she was gone.

  But if it wasn't intelligent, how had it had the wit to do that? To distinguish between her and him? He had part of the answer: Candy was not alive, and Jack was, so it could indeed distinguish them, and probably avoided any moving thing that was not responsive to its power. But the timing— how had it managed that? Well, maybe it was programmed to hide as long as there was any hostile thing nearby, whether living or dead. So it could approach Jack only when he was alone.

  But the color change— it must have taken some wit to do that for him. It could have come up to him unseen, and worked its magic on him, and he might never have realized that it was responsible for his suddenly broadening empathy. It had made itself deliberately clear to him.

  He went over the situation again. Candy walking out, himself calling sarcastically after her: "Bring it back here and introduce us!" Then she was gone, and the hatchling—

  The hatchling had introduced itself. It had responded to his desire for an introduction, though his desire had been facetious. The hatchling was not smart enough to distinguish the pretense from the reality.

  "Mystery solved," Jack said. "Much good may it do me. I think that the honker just didn't realize how bad a situation we would be in. It thought that maybe we'd be in Malva's hands, and you would touch her and make her have empathy for us, and help us escape. Instead we're with an AI who is now AG: Agent of the Gaol, and can't be corrupted. And we're going to be blown to smithereens by a real live Gaol—"

  Then it dawned on him. "The Gaol! Can you make it empathize?" And knew it could. Because the Gaol feared the Imago, and the hatchling was helping the Imago.

  Jack heard footsteps. Candy was returning. "Stay cool, hatchling," he whispered to the imitation palm of his hand, which mirrored even the lines and creases and slight variations of color. This thing was good!

  Candy entered. Behind her rolled a weird machine. It was blue, with three wheels and three triangular handles, like a huge trash collector. Six little lenses circled it above the handles. The top was a rounded dome.

  "There is the container for the host of the Imago," Candy said, indicating the enclosure around the coffin. "There is the human companion of the Imago." She indicated Jack. "There is one other creature, which hatched from an egg planted on the host. It disappeared among the plants."

  The machine rolled to a stop before the coffin-enclosure. The dome stretched upward, becoming a column, then turned at right angles. Something shiny appeared at its end: a large lens. It surveyed the enclosure.

  Jack realized with a shock that this was the Gaol. A seeming blend of machine and flesh, a natural cyborg. That wasn't just a lens— it was an eye on a stalk, the kind a snail had. The six little lenses must be primitive eyes, for general sensing in all directions, while the big one handled the detail work.

  "Time remaining until destruction fifty-five minutes, Earth time," Candy said.

  "You bitch!" Jack shouted. "You mean you've already set the bomb? That's what took you the time just now?"

  She did not answer. She was no longer responsive to him, only to the Gaol. He couldn't insult her any more than he had been able to insult the image of Malva.

  Then one of the triangular handles on the Gaol unfolded. The knob at its apex was actually a joint. One leg of the triangle was the upper arm, and the other was the forearm, with a claylike mass on its end. The clay sprouted fingers or tentacles and touched a panel on the enclosure.

  The enclosure opened, revealing the coffin inside. The arm touched a fastening, and it unfastened. Soon all the clasps were opened, and a second arm unfolded to aid in lifting the lid. The huge stalked eye peered inside.

  "Yeah, she's in there," Jack called, outrage substituting for sense. "And now you're contaminated and will have to be destroyed. How do you like that, slugface?"

  The Gaol lowered the lid and refastened the clasps. Evidently it couldn't be
baited, assuming it could even hear or understand him. But surely it could hear, because Candy had spoken to it in English. That language had been programmed here, because it was what Tappy understood, and the Gaol had not bothered to reprogram the AI. Why should they, when the AI and all their worries were about to be destroyed?

  Now the Gaol rolled over to inspect Jack, followed by Candy. Its eye oriented on him.

  "Yeah, I'm the freak from Earth," Jack said. He suffered a wild inspiration. "I have something for you." He extended his arm carefully through the space between the charged bars. The hatchling was now a green ball.

  The Gaol took the ball. It oriented its eye on it. The ball changed color, matching the hue of the Gaol. It disappeared against the puttylike blue flesh.

  Would this work? Would the hatchling succeed in bringing empathy to the Gaol captor? Or would the Gaol simply destroy it?