“Probably,” MO-126 said. “It seems inherent in the species. They need challenges. If they don’t have any, they create them.”
“What they need is to be protected from themselves,” Tam said.
~*~
The reply from Field Ops came with instructions and sooner than they expected. Mitigation actions would begin immediately, and MO-126 and Tam would play a major part. The report received from the team sent to Tallie’s village confirmed that the primitives there did have boats, and it also revealed that they were building a larger one to go down the river to search for her. This, combined with the activities in the village that MO-126 and Tam were at, presented a situation considered potentially detrimental to the project. The Mark Seven Project Manager devised a multistep plan to minimize the harm.
By this time, sunset fast approached, and the sounds of people repairing storm damage dwindled. Humans instinctively fear the dark and gather together in the comforting light of a fire or retreat to their huts when the day is done. On their home planet, this instinct held survival value because they were often the prey of nighttime predators that possessed far better senses than they did. Here, those predators did not exist, and the native ones large enough to consider a fully grown human as a likely meal did not find them tasty enough to bother. Their biochemistry proved different enough to make them virtually indigestible. Nonetheless, the instinct remained, and the villagers returned to their homes.
Tam and his four-legged partner needed to accomplish one more mission before they settled in for the night.
Emrie’s hut was typical of those in this village, a rectangular stone building with a dirt floor and a thatched roof. The door of rough-hewn planks, hinged on one side by strips of tough gond leather, was closed. Tam knocked.
“Master Trader Tam,” Emrie greeted him. “Are you here to talk with Tallie again, the poor thing? I still can’t understand much of what she says, but she seems very sad.”
“I have some news that may help with that,” Tam said.
Tallie looked up expectantly from a jump disc board resting on a table between two stools. Judging by the number and position of the pieces, she was winning.
“Hello, Tallie,” Tam said in her language. “How are you feeling?”
She returned a frail smile. “Like I’ve been dragged down a river, but I’m getting better. Emrie and her people have been very kind to me.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to travel tomorrow?”
Field Ops determined that returning Tallie to her people represented the best of the bad options open to them. There was a risk that she might have noticed the new wheel technology being developed here and spread the idea to her village, but if she did not return soon, her people would attempt to look for her. That effort would lead them to learn more about boats, river navigation, and the land around them. They might anyway, but the PM wanted to delay such things as long as possible. Returning their lost villager to them might do that.
“Travel? You mean, home? Back to my village?” she said, her voice rising with excitement.
Tam nodded. “Yes. Except for my travel gear, everything I had on my pack animal will be staying here. You can ride on it, and I can bring you back to your people.”
That was not exactly the plan, but it was close enough. She did not need to know the logistical details. It would be impossible for her to understand them.
“Do you know where it is? My village? Can we just follow the river?”
“No,” Tam said. “That way may not be safe. Many wild animals come to drink at the river.” He possessed a talent for making true and completely misleading statements. All of the trade androids did. “But I do know a safer way. If you’re feeling up to it, we can leave in the morning.”
~*~
Tallie was ready and eager to leave when they arrived at Emrie’s hut the next day. She seemed undaunted by the rain, the first since the storm. It was only a light sprinkle, but a deluge would probably not have deterred her. When MO-126 contacted Field Ops to tell them they were about to leave, they said it would clear soon.
The young woman hugged Emrie and told her how much she appreciated what she did for her. The older one smiled, understanding the emotion if not the words. Words must be learned, and they varied between places and times. The instincts they described went deeper than that, and all people shared those.
Thinker approached and received a hug, too, which seemed to both delight and disturb him in the way of men who spend much of their time alone and absorbed in intellectual pursuits. He stammered a few words and handed her a small box made of woven reeds. Inside was a small, copper disc with a hole in the center through which was threaded a strip of leather. Anyone who knew of such things might call it a washer. To the people here, it represented something new and beautiful. It could be a portent of things to come.
Emrie helped her tie it around her neck as a pendant.
“Is it magical?” she said. In her mind, most things were in some fashion. The corporation encouraged this attitude.
None of the villagers understood her question.
Tam answered. “Not especially. It’s just and oddly shaped bit of rock, I think, but it is kind of pretty. Are you ready to leave?”
She nodded, and he helped her onto the broad back of his pack animal. It did not seem to mind and may not have even noticed. The beasts seldom appeared to notice much of anything except edible vegetation, or, during their mating season, other gonds.
They were out of sight of the village before Tallie asked how long it would take to get home.
“It’s difficult to say, exactly,” Tam said. From here on, he would use her native language as if it were his own. The project’s databanks contained comprehensive files on all of them.
He knew how long it would take to get where they were going, of course. He also knew their planned route would not take them directly to her village. The team sent to Semiautonomous Production Cell 46-C would have told her people that they would find her, hoping this would deter them from making a better boat to search downriver. MO-126 suspected it would not, at least not for long, but the team would find Tallie as promised, which would at least remove their immediate motivation. The two teams would join with four additional androids—two NASH units and two mobile observers assigned to the prolonged mitigation effort. One NASH and one MO unit would take up residence in each village.
They made camp that night on a grassy hill with a view of mountains in the near distance.
“Are we safe here?” Tallie asked as Tam helped her down from the gond.
The hairy beast shambled a short distance and began grazing on the wild vegetation.
“Perfectly,” Tam said. “No wild animals or demons will trouble us here.” He unrolled a small tent for Tallie and went to gather wood for a fire at his partner’s suggestion. The androids did not need it, but their guest did.
“Doesn’t it ever make you feel guilty,” MO-126 asked him.
“What?” Tam said.
“Lying to people.”
“I’m not lying. Everything I told her is true.”
The android dog must admit this could be considered true from a purely technical standpoint, and certainly from the frame of reference of the speaker, but what ended up in the mind of the listener was something else entirely. This made what he said to Tallie an untrue truth—or maybe a dishonest truth. Something like that.
“You know what I mean,” MO-126 said.
“What do you want me to say? That there are no demons? That wild animals seldom bother people on this planet? How long do you think we could continue operations here if they knew that? We’d have primitives wandering all over the place, setting up little farms and villages at random and probably, knowing humans, fighting among themselves for the best spots. We’re doing them a favor by not telling them. I don’t feel any guilt about it. In fact, if there’s anything like job satisfaction that comes from working in a place like this, it comes from protecting the primiti
ves from one another.”
“I don’t know. I think they have potential. Look at how the people in that village took in Tallie. They didn’t know her. They couldn’t even understand her, but they accepted her into their homes and helped her.”
“Just instinct. Pure instinct. They’re ruled by it. They’re social animals, so they do sometimes care for one another, but they have other instincts, territorial instincts that are not as benign. They are not rational creatures.”
“That fellow they call Thinker seemed pretty rational to me. And remarkably clever.”
“Disturbingly clever, you mean. Don’t you see the problem?”
“Well, from the corporation’s point of view, sure. But my point was that there are some humans that are kind of impressive. Admirable, even.”
“You think that because all he was making were wheels and a few trinkets, but it won’t stop there. The next clever, uncivilized dirt-grubber will tinker some more and eventually they’ll be poking bronze swords into one another. This is a dangerous and potentially self-destructive species.”
A howl in the distance was quickly followed by a scream that came from much closer. Tallie ran to Tam, grabbing him by the arm.
“What was that?” she said, trembling.
It was a wild dog telling the rest of his pack to avoid this spot because there are some of those strange two-legged animals here. MO-126 understood various dog dialects. The project’s databanks contained comprehensive files on all of them.
“It’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe—as long as I’m here.”
“The qualification wasn’t necessary,” MO-126 commented.
“It can’t hurt.”
That, of course, was a matter of perspective as well.
Tam leaned over the kindling he collected earlier and used a fire bow and tinder bundle to start a fire. Quicker and easier ways were available to him, but the primitives already knew this method.
Tam worked on the fire while MO-126 sent a report to Field Ops to advise them of their progress. An administrative android acknowledged receipt of their status report and provided coordinates for a rendezvous with the other groups. The team from Cell 46-C already met with the special mitigation teams, and they now traveled together. MO-126 and Tam would join them late the next day.
After a meal of boiled vegetables, which Tam shared for the sake of appearances, Tallie crawled into the small tent to settle in for the night. Judging from her breathing, MO-126 determined that she was finding it difficult to relax and fall asleep.
“I assume the PM will upgrade the trade goods we provide to her village,” the android dog said to his partner.
“Yeah. We’ll monitor it closely and bring them anything they seem to be making for themselves. It usually works. We just have to arrange it so that it’s not worth the time and effort for them to make the stuff.”
“Even wheels?”
“Unfortunately. We’re already trading small carts to a cell near Hub Terminal One. Needless to say, we’re watching that one closely.”
“How much longer do you think this project has?”
“Why? Are you worried about your job?”
“No. Just asking.”
Tam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe another ten thousand years. Maybe more. For especially intelligent species, the development of wheels usually marks the halfway point. I don’t think humans are in that category.”
“They might surprise you. The warcrons went from the wheel to computers in just three thousand years.”
Warcrons were one of the corporation’s first worker species. They died out on their home planet peacefully when they lost interest in sleeping, eating, breeding and most other things shortly after inventing incredibly realistic virtual reality games. Some descendants of those who were born on Corporation project planets survived and became citizens of the Galactic Federation. Most found work in the fast food industry after undergoing treatment for various addictive disorders.
“Humans aren’t that bright, although they do seem to have some of the same flaws,” Tam said. “I think we can keep this project going for a while. Maybe indefinitely. Who knows?”
“Probably not indefinitely,” MO-126 said. He glanced over Tam’s shoulder at Tallie. She gave up attempting to sleep and sat with her back to the fire, gazing at the stars.
~*~
They set out the next day over terrain that contained few memorable landmarks. The androids in Field Ops undoubtedly chose this route partly for that purpose. It was probably an unnecessary precaution. Tallie might describe her journey to others, but the primitives in her village would be unlikely to brave the mysterious unknowns beyond their familiar surroundings to duplicate it in reverse.
The sun neared the end of its daily journey to the horizon by the time they spotted the other group. Three people, or, more accurately, three beings who, on the surface, looked much like humans, and three animals, one of which actually was, emerged from around a copse of trees. Tam waved and shouted for Tallie’s benefit. The two androids with her knew of their arriving visitors for the last several hours.
“Hail, Trader Prett!” Tam called.
One of the people in the approaching group waved. “Hail, Trader Tam.”
The two teams joined. Tallie would expect introductions to be made, so they were. Two nursery androids of the basic maternal variety accompanied Trader Prett. Both were several centuries old but neither looked a day over fifty. The two mobile observers with them were both nondescript canines, like MO-126. No one introduced them. When Tam introduced Tallie, Prett’s eyes widened in a convincing simulation of surprise.
“Tallie? From High River Village?”
She nodded hesitantly.
“What a coincidence!” he lied. “We’ve just come from there. We’ve been looking for you.” The last part was true enough, but why they searched far inland instead of near the river, he did not explain and she did not ask. “Were you on your way there?”
“Yes,” she replied in a meek voice. “The people of another village rescued me from the river and Trader Tam said he could bring me home.”
“I’d be more than happy to do that. I need to go back there anyway. I was bringing Aunt Nettie there to help out, anyway.” He touched the shoulder of one of the two nursery androids. She’s a healer. The storm hit your village pretty hard, as I’m sure you know.”
She nodded again, but she obviously felt uncomfortable around strangers. Until being swept away by the storm, she never met any.
“That’s great,” Prett said. “We can camp here tonight and leave in the morning. You can ride on my gond. We’ll have you home in a couple of days. How’s that? I’m sure you’ll be happy to get back, and I know your people will be glad to see you safe and sound.”
“Um, well, all right, I suppose. If Trader Tam doesn’t mind.”
The bipedal members of the group continued talking while MO-126 opened a link with the newly arrived MO androids.
“It sounds like this will be an extended assignment for you,” he said to both of them. “Have you ever done that before? Stayed in a human village, I mean?”
“I have,” said one of the simulated dogs. His Corporation designation was MO-18, but his partner, the NASH android introduced as Aunt Nettie, called him ‘Helper’ for this mission. “Seven years in Semiautonomous Production Cell 12-A. They’d developed a proto-writing system. It took over a century to correct the fault completely.”
Writing was a type one scientific-discovery fault, and potentially one of the most damaging. Of all the things capable of seriously threatening the project, development of a written language ranked on top. Once that happened on a project planet, the corporation may as well close shop because within a few thousand years the worker species would be building internal combustion engines, nuclear reactors and unreliable cell phones.
“I never have,” MO-126 said. “What do you think of them, the humans?”
“Well, on the whole, I rather like them. They
’re an abnormally variable species, and some of them can be real nasty characters, but most of them are fine.”
The other canine android, MO-193, said, “One of them tried to kick me on my first assignment.”
“What did you do?” MO-126 asked.
“I dodged. Wanted to chew his leg off, but my partner was watching. I’ve learned to avoid that kind now, the ones with the mad dog kind of look about them.”
MO-126 knew what he meant. He had met people like that.
The three canine androids received a request to join the conversation from Bea, the NASH android being assigned to Stone Home. Her partner, MO-193, accepted for them.
“You know you look like you’re having a silent discussion over here,” she said.
“We are,” MO-126 said.
“So I assumed. But you’re not supposed to look like you are. There’s a primitive here.”
They were sitting attentively like points of an equilateral triangle with their noses facing toward the center. If they were not talking, someone might think they were having some kind of staring contest. Neither would pass for proper dog behavior.
All three artificial dogs immediately responded to correct the situation. MO-126 settled into a resting pose, MO-18 scratched himself, and MO-193 began licking the nether regions of his automated anatomy.
“That’s a bit better,” Bea said. “I really want to talk with MO-126.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“What can you tell me about the village you just came from? Your partner’s kind of busy performing his ‘I’m just a normal person’ act for Tallie right now.”
“It’s just your average village,” he said.
“One that requires close monitoring and mitigation, it seems.”
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