Ostlark greeted them with a big smile. “Master Trader Tam, it is good to see you again so soon, but I’m afraid we have little more to trade with you yet.”
“It is good to see you, too, Ostlark, but trade is not what brings me here today. This is Aunt Nettie,” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “She’s a storyteller, and a fair hand at midwifery and a few other things. When I told her about your new longhouse, she said it sounded like it would make a great place for telling stories on cold winter days.”
“Well, those will be coming soon enough.” He eyed Aunt Nettie appraisingly. “A storyteller, you say? We haven’t had a good storyteller here since I was a boy.”
“What a shame,” she said. “How do you keep your young people entertained?”
“Apparently we don’t,” Ostlark said. “A couple of the boys ran off not long ago.”
“Oh, no!” she said with believable concern. “Are they all right?”
Ostlark laughed. “They got chased home by wild dogs and they swear they heard demons, but I think it taught them a lesson. They won’t be away from the village after dark again anytime soon, I’d wager.”
“Well I’d be happy to stay for a while and try to make sure they’re not bored at least, if that would be all right with you,” she said.
“Do you really want to?” MO-126 asked in a private transmission to her.
“I like working with humans, but then I was designed to. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I know they’re just primitives, but I think they really want to understand things. Sometimes I wonder if we’re doing the right thing by discouraging their curiosity.”
“You sound like a NASH,” she said with good humor embedded in her transmission’s metadata. “You’ve grown fond of them, haven’t you? You see their potential. And you’re right. Humans are not a stupid species, and they can be quite civilized under the right conditions, but they can be cruel, too. That’s also a part of them.”
“I’ve seen that,” he said, remembering another time in another village and a woman tied to a pole. “But I think they can get over that.”
“Maybe. Who knows? I doubt it would be easy for them. The first Corporation survey mission to their home planet noted their tendencies toward irrational and even aggressive behavior. It assessed a high probability of extinction because of these. The humans on Corporation planets might be the only ones left. If that’s the case, it’s especially important not to take risks with them. If you want my advice, don’t concern yourself with this. It may seem like we’re stifling them, but we really are just ensuring their safety. It’s probably for the best. We can do nothing to change things, in any case.”
“Of course you may stay,” Ostlark said. He remained unaware, and likely unable to even imagine the silent conversation between the old woman and the dog, which lasted only a couple seconds. “I’m looking forward to some new stories.”
“I’m sure I have a few you haven’t heard,” Aunt Nettie said.
MO-126 was sure she did, and all of them would be entertaining and ensured to discourage any dangerous ideas.
Four - Split Plea
1,220 Years Later
(Galactic Standard Year 232230)
(Project Year 8677)
In which MO-126 realizes that sometimes people just can’t get along with each other.
They were on their way back to Hub Terminal Twelve after a routine mission to one of the smaller hill villages when they got a call from Field Operations. The NASH android posted to another village nearby reported an issue and requested mitigation. Her report remained vague about the reason and related no specific problems that would normally warrant corporate intervention. The project manager wanted a second opinion, and as MO-126 and his partner were already in the area, they were tasked to investigate. The android dog welcomed the change of routine. He did not feel bored, exactly, but after doing the same job for over four thousand years, the promise of a new experience enticed him.
“What do you think the problem is?” he asked Tam, secretly hoping to be able to spin this minor deviation into a tale of adventure, at least for a while. It could be an interesting mystery until they found out it wasn’t. After all, an admittedly remote but not impossible chance of alien incursion existed. The species known as Bug Farms, or at least known as Bug Farms by those who we not Bug Farms, were suspected of raiding Corporation projects from time to time. It was also possible that a competing corporation planted spies. Corporate espionage was not uncommon, but a remote project like this in the outskirts of one of the galactic spiral arms would unlikely warrant much attention. Then again, the primitives themselves might have done something unexpected. MO-126 could not imagine what they might do that would pose much of a problem. They couldn’t unionize and go on strike against the corporation. They did not know they worked for it—or even that it existed. He expected that whatever the issue turned out to be, it would be something incredibly mundane, but until they knew for certain, possibilities far more interesting and exciting existed.
Tam did not seem to want to share in wild speculation, however. He shrugged, not bothering to override the human gesture of indifference triggered by his firmware. “You heard the same report I did. It didn’t say much. When the village was visited earlier this year, the trade android said the headman was ill. Perhaps it has something to do with that.”
They were only recently assigned to this region. The android dog’s last tour in this geographic area was a few centuries past. His files included updated data collected by others since then, but he visited only a few of the nearby villages with Tam so far. Standard protocols required that field androids be reassigned every five to ten years. This avoided the need to alter them cosmetically to simulate aging, and it helped them avoid becoming overly attached to any particular humans. Sometimes this happened, especially with nursery androids whose core programming made them feel caring and even protective of their charges.
The love songs of insects announced the approaching night. The two androids and their pack animal angled off to a depression between two low hills, and Tam called for a flitter to collect their gond and trade goods. An hour after dark, it arrived silently, settling to the ground in a spot shadowed from the pale light of the larger of the planet’s two moons by a copse of tall trees. Not even the crickets chirping happily in the grass seemed to take note of it.
Tam led the gond up the loading ramp. The pack animal’s wide, flat feet made soft padding sounds on the pebbled surface. It stepped lightly for such a massive beast.
The trader surrendered the large, dimwitted creature to the android flitter pilot by handing him the leather strap he used to lead it. Tam retained a worn, gond leather pack holding a few small trade goods, which he could use as good will offerings, if needed.
They started out as soon as the flitter lifted. Without the gond, nighttime travel would prove no problem. Gonds tended to go where they were led, except occasionally when feeling reproductive, but they preferred to be able to see where that was and tended to balk when led in darkness.
A day and a half later, MO-126 and his partner approached Semiautonomous Production Cell 168-D and signaled the resident NASH who sent the request to Field Ops. They met her at the edge of the settlement just beyond the outer ring of wattle and daub huts. She was a basic maternal model who went by the name of Granny Greenflower. Her assignment to the village began six years ago, ostensibly as a healer.
Surprisingly few people were about. One person hung clothes on a line. A few others whispered together near one of the buildings, but no one was out plowing or planting, and no children played together in the fresh breeze of this beautiful early spring afternoon. MO-126 refrained from eavesdropping on the few people he did see, expecting the resident NASH android to provide a full briefing on what they needed to know.
“What’s wrong,” he asked her. “Is there a plague?”
She proffered a kindly smile and responded silently. “No, nothing like that. We did have a nasty bacteri
al thing going around a few months ago, but I dropped some antibiotics in the well and cleared it up before it could really take hold. The people here are healthy enough, but like I told the administrative android in Field Operations, we need to bud this village.”
“What’s the current population?” Tam asked.
“About eight hundred.”
“It hasn’t reached the budding threshold yet,” he replied.
Currently about three thousand villages existed on the planet with a total population of around two million. Standard procedures for this project recommended splitting a primitive settlement after it exceeded a population of one thousand. This helped prevent a number of problems, not least of which included the emergence of a division of labor, which would allow different villagers to specialize in different tasks, which in turn could lead to an increase in technology-development faults.
Budding a village normally proved easy enough. It seldom took more than the promise to guide settlers safely to a place the traders just happened to know of where a fine new village could be established. They happened to know this because field androids prepared settlement sites well in advance. They selected places with fresh water nearby, seeded the soil with appropriate terrestrial microbes, planted wild berries, fruit trees, and other vegetation humans would need or expect to see. As time went on, these introduced species seemed to be outcompeting the native flora, but this did not concern the corporation. The native species held no commercial value.
Exceptions were sometimes made, but Field Ops calculated that the ideal number to break from a village to be between one hundred and two hundred individuals. Fewer than this could create problems with gene diversity without more corporate involvement than usual, and more could cause too much disruption to the village they left. Occasionally, the primitives resisted the idea. In those cases, the PM might need to postpone the operation for a generation or two, but soon there would be a headman and enough people receptive to the idea.
“It’s plenty big enough,” Granny Greenflower said, “and if we don’t bud it, I’m afraid it’s going to get smaller.”
“Why?” Tam asked. “You said they were healthy.”
“They are. Well, most of them. Dunwood, the old headman, died. He couldn’t have been more than sixty years old. Sometimes they seem like fragile little butterflies, living such a short time and thinking that it’s forever.” Wistful inflections embedded in her transmission’s metadata left no doubt about the sincerity of her feelings.
“Well, they are just primitives. You can’t expect them to see much beyond themselves, Tam said. The undertones in his reply cautioned that one should remember how limited the humans were and maintain a greater emotional detachment from the project’s worker species.
“Oh, I don’t know. They might someday,” she countered.
“I still don’t understand,” MO-126 said. “Why would the headman’s death make you think it’s necessary to bud the village?”
“There is violent disagreement over who should replace him,” she said.
“You mean they’re fighting one another?” the artificial dog asked. The primitives often fought among themselves, but it usually occurred between mates, siblings, or friends because of an argument about some trivial matter. It was normally, one on one. He got the impression she thought the village teetered on the brink of a small civil war.
“Mostly it’s just loud arguing, but a hut burned down last week, and I’m sure it was intentional.”
“Obviously, some of your butterflies have fangs,” Tam commented.
“So it would appear,” she said sadly.
“Was anyone hurt?” MO-126 asked.
Her eyes widened with surprise at his question, but the corners of her mouth arced upwards, making him suspect she felt pleased that he thought to ask it.
“No, fortunately. It happened during the day when most people were out working in the fresh air, but I’m afraid it will get worse. Dunwood has no sons, so there is no clear successor. Movey and Ranex, the two men vying for the position, each have about half of the villagers supporting them. The logical solution is to have one of the contenders take over as headman here, and the other can establish a new village with his supporters.”
“The project manager will need to approve that,” Tam said. “It deviates from standard protocols.” He shook his head, obviously reluctant to support a position outside the norm.
She tapped her foot, a customary human means of expressing impatience. “I know that, but we can’t wait for the PM to ponder all of the ramifications. This has to happen soon.”
The project manager, a fairly standard Amalgamated Transgalactic Technology Corporation sentient, integrated, autonomous, self-monitoring and self-correcting, semi-omnipotent, locally omnipresent, and virtually omniscient, adaptive process management device—Mark Seven, did not operate with the geological slowness she implied. It could assess vast amounts of data, make decisions, and take action quickly. It could also decide not to take action just as quickly, and it took an extremely long view in determining what warranted intervention and what did not. To it, a century seemed like an instant. With this perspective, anything that did not directly threaten the long-term profitably of the project was, at worst, a minor annoyance, which would work itself out soon without need for corporate intervention, with ‘soon’ meaning sometime in the next few centuries.
MO-126 expected this to be such a case. It was not that the PM did not care about the primitives. It just did not see them as individuals. As long as they remained simple and productive, they were fine. One village squabbling about who their next leader would be should not be significant enough to warrant its attention.
A cry sounded from the village. A girl about twelve years old, a crude linen tunic slapping her bare and dirty knees, ran toward them.
“Granny Greenflower! Come quick. Steffin has been hurt.”
“Calm down, sweetheart, and tell me what happened,” the nursery android said, taking the girl by the hand. “Did he fall and hurt himself again?”
The girl tugged to hurry them along. “No. Well, yes, but not on his own this time. Evan pushed him.”
“Why would he do that?” the old healer said.
“It was stupid. They were arguing. Steffin said Ranex would make a better village leader than Movey, and Evan knocked him down.”
Granny Greenflower quickened her pace. “Oh dear, I was afraid something like this might happen.”
The girl led them to a small round hut near the far edge of the village. A few young men gathered outside spoke softly among themselves. They fell silent and dispersed when the girl, leading her contingent of Corporation androids, approached.
They entered the single, windowless room, a dim, round space holding some baskets, a round, wooden stool, a table littered with hand tools, and a pallet bed with a straw mattress, upon which lay a young man being tended to by an old woman. The caregiver glanced in their direction, keeping one hand holding a damp piece of linen on the reclining man’s head.
“Ah, Granny Greenflower,” she said. “I’m glad Lissa found you so quickly.”
“What’s Steffin’s condition?” the grandmotherly android asked, moving to the bed.
“I’m fine,” mumbled the man from his supine position. “I just bumped my head.”
“He’s conscious,” the woman holding the rag said unnecessarily. “It looks worse than I think it is. He cut his scalp and there was a lot of blood.”
“I’m fine, really,” the man said.
“Shhh, Steffin. I’ll just take a look, Okay?”
Granny Greenflower lifted the crude bandage and examined the wound by the light of a fat lamp while Tam and his canine partner waited quietly by the door. Two of the injured man’s legs were shorter than they should be relative to his upper body, and his feet were turned inward.
“Congenital deformity,” the resident android responded silently to MO-126’s unasked question.
Two polished sticks that
he undoubtedly used as canes to help him walk leaned against the wall near the bed. The android dog felt sorry for the man. Being handicapped as he was must be difficult, especially in a society like this that concentrated on farming and required physical labor from all of its members. The technology to correct his deformity or to fit him with prostheses indistinguishable from natural legs existed, but neither of these actions would be permitted. He would remain crippled for the rest of his life.
It took some effort for MO-126 to accept that this was for the best. When looked at objectively, the welfare of one crippled man paled in comparison to achieving profitability thresholds, which they must for the corporation to maintain its presence here. The corporation ensured that this unfortunate man’s entire species could continue to live in a relatively peaceful and comfortable environment. Sometimes, the android dog found it difficult to look at things from such a broad perspective, but he was only a MO android. He accepted that his limited viewpoint did not provide the grand oversight held by the project manager. It made sense to defer to the PM on such things.
“You have a very nasty gash on your head,” Granny Greenflower said to Steffin. “What did you hit?”
“The ground, eventually,” he said, attempting a smile. “But I think the water barrel outside tried to break my fall on the way down.”
“I’m sure it was just trying to help,” she said with a smile of her own. “It’s a very ragged cut, but it’s not deep, and you didn’t fracture that hard head of yours. Maybelle did you a good turn by cleaning it up, but I need to make sure it doesn’t fester.”
She turned to her visitors. “Tam, can you fetch me some things from my hut? Lissa can show you where it is.”
The healer told them what she needed, and the girl who led them here led them away.
“I don’t see many people out and about,” Tam said as they walked rapidly between crude buildings and cruder animal pens. Most of the residents of both remained behind their walls.
“Everyone is protecting their homes,” the girl said. “They’re afraid if they don’t, someone will burn them. It happened once already.”
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