Tears welled in her eyes, and MO-126 found himself walking over to her. He licked her hand in response to some deep instinct rather than because of a rational decision, but it seemed appropriate. She responded with a weak smile and a scratch behind his ear.
“She stifled a sob and continued. “The people here don’t understand me and I don’t know what they’re saying when they talk to me. When the soreness goes, I should leave. I can walk along the river. It can’t be that far. I can do it. The river can lead me home.”
“You know that’s not safe,” Tam told her. “But it’s not something you need to think about just now. Emrie tells me you can’t take more than a few steps without pain. You are in no condition to go anywhere.”
She nodded. “I will be fine soon, and then—”
“And then we’ll see,” Tam said.
“What did she say?” Grannit asked him after they left. “I couldn’t understand a word of it.”
“Her name is Tallie, and she said she’s lost,” the trade android told him. “That’s really all there is to it. She’ll be fine.”
“Why can’t she talk properly?”
“That’s just how they talk where she’s from. Don’t worry about it.”
“Where is she from?” Thinker asked.
“Just some other village. You don’t need to worry about that either.”
“Can we help her get home?”
“Why would you—? No. There’s no need anyway. Like I said, she’s fine. She just needs time to recover.”
“What do you plan to do?” MO-126 asked his partner as they exited the hut.
“About the woman from Semiautonomous Production Cell 46-C? Nothing, right now. She can’t go anywhere.”
“We could bring her home once she’s feeling better,” the android dog suggested.
“Move a primitive between villages? You know we can’t do that without approval.”
“But we’d just be taking her back to her own village. That’s where she’s supposed to be.”
“Yeah, but she’s already seen this one, and she knows she can get here by following the river. That complicates things.”
“What if she tries to go by herself? She might, you know.”
Tam paused to consider this. “You’re right. Maybe I should come back tomorrow and remind her about the dangers—the demons, wild animals, and river monsters.”
“River monsters? There aren’t any river monsters,” MO-126 said. Actually, there weren’t any demons either, and the most danger she was likely to experience from wild animals would be if she tripped on one.
“What about bardusaurs?” Tam said.
“Bardusaurs? They’re swamp creatures, for the most part. There aren’t any this far north, and besides, they don’t eat humans, or anything else from their home planet. Different biochemistry.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
The android dog could not contest the point. The primitives knew nothing about the world outside their own villages. Their mental maps stopped a few kilometers from the edges of their settlements. Everything outside those boundaries would be labeled ‘here be monsters,’ metaphorically, anyway. The primitives did not draw maps or create labels. The corporation discouraged writing. It could be even more damaging to the project than wheels.
“We should file a report with Field Ops,” the android dog said.
“Do so,” Tam told him. “Mark it preliminary, and tell them we’re still investigating.”
The trade android spoke with Grannit and Thinker as they made their way toward Thinker’s hut. He promised to show Tam some of the things he invented. MO-126 opened a communication with the Field Operations Center and provided a summary of their observations here so far. He got a routine acknowledgment that they received his situation report, but they provided no immediate instructions.
~*~
Thinker’s hut provided him both home and workshop. The stone walls of the structure were much older than the villager who lived there, but the slate roof looked to be newer and was supported by thick timbers of differing ages. From these hung baskets and clay jars on ropes, drying herbs, smoked meats, and the balding man’s laundry. The clothing smelled of smoke and exhibited small burns and scorch marks along with more common wear and tear.
He led them to a far corner of the relatively large, single room dwelling, which contained a small fireplace with a chimney. Both appeared to be recent additions. MO-126 added them to the growing list of this village’s anomalies.
“This is where I do most of my tinkering,” Thinker said. “I have several different kinds of round things.” He pointed to wheels of various sizes, some solid, others with holes, some grooved, and one with notches suspiciously like gear teeth. “And I have long things.” He indicated shafts, poles carved in various ways, and some clay pipes. “If you connect two round things with a solid, straight, long thing, you can make a box easier to move.” He ambled over to a table that held smaller items of wood, stone, cloth, and clay. “And here are some other things. I really should come up with better names for all of them, I suppose, but I just never seem to get around to it.”
“What are you working on over here by the fire?” Tam asked.
MO-126 looked to where his partner pointed and immediately noticed what caught his interest. A hammer stone rested on a flat rock by the fireplace. Several irregularly shaped nuggets of native copper lay next to it.
“Oh, yes. I just started looking into this.” He picked up one of the copper nuggets. “I’ve discovered that this kind of rock has some special properties. You can shape it, even bang it flat. It’s kind of brittle after you do, but I’ve found that if you heat it first, it works better. You have to get it quite hot, though, and I’m still having some trouble with that, but I’m sure I’ll work out something.”
Metallurgy, MO-126 thought. This guy is going to invent metallurgy. The same thought obviously occurred to Tam because his expression changed, just for a moment, to something not unlike panic. He recovered quickly, but he must have been wondering what Field Ops and the PM would make of his report and whether they would somehow find him responsible. This many technology-development and scientific-discovery faults had never been found in one place at one time before.
“I’ve been thinking that a thin sheet of this around the inside of the center of a round thing would make them roll even better, don’t you?” Thinker asked. He reached into a box and withdrew a piece of pounded copper, which he held out for Tam to examine.
The trader recoiled, refusing to touch the metal. “Aren’t you afraid of offending your guardian spirits with these new things? Don’t you think it’s being disrespectful?”
The primitive human eyed him quizzically. “Why?”
“Well, because these things are not part of your traditions. If your ancestors wanted you to have rolling boxes or to use strange rocks, they would have passed these things down to you.”
“You know, I never considered that,” Thinker said.
“I think you should,” Tam said. He glanced to his canine companion and presented a quick, self-satisfied smirk. It just as quickly dissolved into something else.
“No,” Thinker said.
“No, what?” said the trade android.
“I don’t think our ancestors’ spirits have a problem with it. If they did, they wouldn’t allow me to get these ideas.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps the storm was their warning.”
The balding villager cocked an appropriately skeptical eyebrow. “No. It must have been a big storm since it also hit Tallie’s village, wherever that is. If it was a warning to me or our village, it wouldn’t have affected others.”
“Nice try,” MO-126 said to his partner, “but he’s got you there. What else you got?”
The trader glanced at his dog with a look that suggested he wished he had a choke chain. “If you’re not going to be helpful—”
“You want help? Give up. There’s nothing you can do. It’s not your fault
that this guy is clever. The PM isn’t going to blame you for what he’s done.”
“But it will blame me if I don’t do everything I can to minimize the damage to the project.”
“You’ve tried all the standard stuff, and you can’t kill him,” MO-126 reminded Tam. He could sense his partner’s growing frustration. He probably would not go rogue, but it was possible. Any sentient being under enough stress could become irrational. The android dog was prepared to try to stop him if he tried anything physical, but at a third of his mass, his chance of success was about as good as his chance of preventing night from falling.
“Of course not,” Tam said, much to the android dog’s relief. “That’s against Corporation policy. I’d be dismantled for something like that, or I’d have to work an extra thousand years to pay off the fine. These are primitives. Fear of the unknown should work.”
“Perhaps,” Tam said to Thinker. “Maybe they did something to anger their ancestors, too.”
Thinker shook his head. “No. It was just a storm. They happen. It’s got nothing to do with any of this.” He waved his arm to take in the contents of the hut.
“Yet,” Tam said ominously. “I’d be careful, if I were you. A few toys, a bit of art, and maybe some trinkets might be safe, but if you defy tradition, there can be consequences. I have seen things you would not believe.”
His last statement was true enough, but it lent no legitimate support to the point he was attempting to make despite his implication.
“Toys and little things are a good way to test ideas,” Thinker said, “but what I really want to do is make things that are useful. You know. Things that can make a difference, that help people.”
“Why would you want to trouble yourself with stuff like that? We can provide all the tools and other useful things you might ever want.”
“And we appreciate what you bring us in fair trade, but it may be possible to make things ourselves that are even better.”
“I still think you’re tempting fate,” Tam said.
“You worry too much, Trader Tam. There is no harm in any of this. These are good things. Are you worried that we won’t trade with you if we make our own tools?”
“No. That’s not it at all. I’m worried about what things like these can lead to.”
That was another true and intentionally misleading statement.
~*~
MO-126 contacted Field Ops to provide an update including their discoveries in Thinker’s hut. The duty android wanted to review his previous report first.
“You initial report says that the primitives there are using wheels. Is that correct?” she said.
No. I was just jerking your chain to see if anyone there would blow a circuit, he thought. The humorless administrative androids tended to annoy him. They weren’t much smarter than robots, as far as he could tell, and they all seemed to have the same type of personality—none at all. What he transmitted was, “Yes. That is correct.”
“What kind of applications?” she said. He got the impression she was going down a checklist.
“I saw a wheelbarrow, more like a small handcart, really, a potter’s wheel, and a pulley.”
“Are you sure? The last routine report about that cell indicated nothing anomalous.”
Am I sure they were wheels? No. They could have been some kind or round alien life forms the people here have been secretly breeding. “The observation is confirmed. My partner saw many of the same things,” he said.
“Any sign of axels?”
“Crude ones, but yes,” MO-126 said.
“And your report says you saw a log boat.”
“A dugout canoe. Yes. The humans from a different village made it, but the people here have it now, and they’re learning from it.”
“Yes. I see that here. We’re still awaiting confirmation from the team sent to Semiautonomous Production Cell 46-C. Is there anything more you need to add?”
“Let me think. There was something...” He thought delaying might annoy her, or at least provoke some emotional response. After half a minute of no reaction, he gave up. “They are experimenting with raw copper.”
“Copper?”
“Yes. You know. It’s a fairly common metal.”
A few moments of silence followed. The Field Ops android was probably trying to find ‘copper’ on her checklist.
“Any sign of,” she paused a moment, “annealing?”
“Just preliminary, so far.” MO-126 felt fairly sure that Thinker would perfect his copper heating methods soon, but the Field Ops android did not ask for his opinions, so he did not offer any.
“What applications?”
“None that I saw,” he said. He expected that in a few years they’d be making copper tools if they could find enough raw materials, but Field Ops could make their own speculations. He did not need to share his.
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Yes. I request approval to return the woman known as Tallie to her home village.”
“What is your rationale for this action?”
Because she’s frightened and she wants to go home, but this reason would hold no weight with Field Ops, so he did not mention it. “She will eventually learn to communicate with the people here, and she will tell them about her people. This will make them curious and encourage them to try to find them.”
“That is not a preapproved reason for your recommended mitigation action, but I will forward it with your report for consideration. The faults you have discovered so far justify assigning it a high priority. I expect we will be contacting you later today with instructions.”
“Understood.” The android dog closed the link with Field Ops.
“I sent the update,” he said to his partner. “They said they’d have instructions for us later today.”
Tam was talking with Grannit outside the workshop, trying to convince him of the dangers of Thinker’s new things. The headman did not appear to be buying it.
“Good. I’d like to be done with this and out of here. I don’t envy the team normally assigned to this village. It’s going to take some close watching,” Tam said.
~*~
They made their way toward the river to examine Tallie’s boat, leaving Grannit free to continue coordinating the repairs to the village caused by the storm. Tam finally gave up trying to sway him to a more conservative position regarding new inventions. The headman obviously liked Thinker and his ideas. According to Tam, that made them both idiots, and he shared that opinion along with what he thought of their entire species with his partner. It probably made him feel better, so MO-126 obliged by listening.
“What is it about these creatures?” He asked rhetorically. “Why do they have to keep thinking about things? They’re certainly not suited for it, and they keep coming up with crazy ideas for changing things. Why can’t they be more like the mayboes.”
Mayboes were another primitive sentient species that the corporation had discovered and introduced to work projects on other planets. They were also mammalian primates, or as close as made no difference morphologically. But the mayboes possessed a trait humans seemed to lack. They were naturally happy. Put a bunch of mayboes on a bit of land close to a stream and they’d live there contentedly growing food, playing simple games, and appreciating each new day and whatever it brought. The only thing they seemed instinctively inclined to change were sexual partners, which they joyfully did several times a day, and the only new things they made were more mayboes. From the corporation’s standpoint, they were close to ideal. Their only real drawback was that they slept most of each day, which limited their productivity. Some anthropologists claimed they might not actually be sleeping. They recorded peculiar brain wave patterns when the mayboes rested and hypothesized that they were, in fact, placing themselves into a deep, meditative state. When asked about this, the mayboes would simply smile and tell the researchers they were not yet ready to know.
“Why can’t they just be content?” Tam continued. “The cor
poration provides them with a good life here. What more could a primitive want?”
“They probably don’t see themselves as primitives,” MO-126 hazarded. “They have nothing to compare themselves to.”
“Exactly! They don’t see much of anything. That’s what makes them primitives. They’ve got no idea how backward they are, so what can they possibly be trying to achieve? They shouldn’t even think anything else is possible. They’re all insane.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” the android dog said. “They might be naturally dissatisfied—genetically, I mean. They may not be able to be happy for long, at least not collectively. Think about it. You’ve been working with them for centuries. When is the last time you’ve seen a village where everyone seemed content with the way things were?”
“Some usually seem to be,” Tam said hesitantly.
“Yes, some, but not all. It may not make much sense, but there are always some who simply can’t leave things alone, no matter how good they are, and it’s not because they’re stupid or crazy. Sometimes these chronically dissatisfied types appear to be the sanest and smartest people in the village.”
“Not being able to be content hardly seems sane to me, but I know what you mean. I’ve seen that type. If they eat the same thing every day, they’ll complain about the lack of variety. If they have something new every day, they’ll complain about not getting their favorite. If everything is peaceful, they’ll complain about the lack of excitement, and if things are exciting, they’ll want them to be peaceful. They really are a miserable bunch.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think most of them just kind of feel restless unless they have challenges.”
“Most sentient creatures would feel extremely pleased not to have challenges. I’m telling you, humans are crazy. I wonder if other projects are having as much trouble with them as we are.”
This, of course, they could not know. They knew other Corporation projects with humans serving as workers existed, but details about their inner workings were not publicly divulged, especially if there were problems. This type of information could adversely affect stock prices. Neither Tam nor his partner held management positions high enough to have access to such proprietary data.
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