An Android Dog's Tale (11 page)

“
He’s waiting for an answer, Tam,
”
MO-126 teased his partner. “
I’m curious as to what you’re going
to tell him, too.
”

“Please,” the young man continued. “I’m not
afraid, and I learn quickly. I can be useful to you.”

“No, you can’t come with us,” Tam finally
told him. “This is simply the way things are. Why do you want to
leave here anyway? This is a good life for, um, people like you.
Villagers, I mean. Villagers should stay in their villages, with
their families and friends as they are meant to.”

“But I want to see new places, visit
different villages. I want to see how other people live and learn
what they know.”

The trade android shook his head. “They’re
all pretty much the same. You’re not missing anything.”

“I still want to see them.”

“That’s simply not possible. You can’t come
with us.”

The boy’s eyes narrowed with determination.
“Then I’ll go by myself.”

The young primitive’s attitude could present
a problem. He might be injured through some accident or even be
attacked by wild dogs, although such cases were extremely rare.
Those would not be problems from the PM’s perspective. The boy’s
quick demise would actually prevent the real problem. Fortunately
for him, Galactic Federation law prohibited the corporation from
taking active steps to achieve this result. A more likely outcome
would be that the lad would survive and eventually come across
another human settlement where he might exchange information and,
worse, encourage some people there to explore and find even more
villages. The PM could not allow the primitives to wander all over
the planet trading goods and information. They were already
difficult enough to manage.

“That would be a serious mistake,” Tam
warned him. “You don’t know what’s out there.”

“That’s why I need to go!” the boy
insisted.

“
Humans,
” Tam said silently. “
I
don’t think I’ll ever understand them. They are such a peculiar
species. I think they look for problems.
”

“
I think you may be right,
” his
partner replied, but unlike his companion, he no longer considered
this a negative trait.

The trader focused a cold, serious gaze on
the boy before him. “The ways are dangerous. There are great
distances between villages. You will have no shelter at night. No
friends to help you. Your home spirits and ancestors cannot protect
you if you leave them behind. You will be alone.”

“If you can do it, I can do it,” the boy
said.

“Are you sure?” the trader asked
suggestively.

“I don’t see why not. I can bring food and a
blanket, and I even know how to make fire if I have to. What else
do I need?”

“You won’t know until you need it, will you?
And then it will be too late.”

“You’re just trying to scare me. Some people
say the Master Traders have protective magic, but I don’t think so.
I think they just know stuff we don’t.”

“
He’s got you pegged, there,
” MO-126
said.

“
You’re not helping,
” the trade
android transmitted.

“
You want help? Here’s help. The boy’s
name is Utrek. Impress him with your magic.
”

The trader grinned. “Magic? What could
possibly make anyone think we have magic…, Utrek?”

The boy’s eyes widened. “How do you know my
name?”

“I’m sure I must have heard it somewhere. It
certainly isn’t magic.”

“
Clever,
” MO-126 said. “
And you
didn’t even lie to him.
” Androids found outright lying
difficult. They could do it, but it made them uncomfortable. Being
intentionally incorrect upset their inherent need for accuracy and
made them feel like they were about to develop an imagination or
suffer some other malfunction. They could, however, bend truths
into knots no primitive logician could find the ends to.

“
Thank you. I thought it was pretty good,
too.
”

Tam continued to stare at Utrek as if the
two were having a contest, which the trader eventually won when the
boy turned and walked away.

“
That should do for now,
” the trade
android signaled as he took the leads of the pack animals, “
but
I think we should call for special surveillance just to be on the
safe side.
”

“
I’ll do it,
” MO-126 said. He
switched frequencies and sent a message to Field Operations.
“
Surveillance Drones requested to monitor Semiautonomous
Production Cell 42-A. Adolescent male primitive known as Utrek
poses an unsupervised migration risk. Mitigation actions may be
required.
”

They left the village, plodding slowly over
trackless terrain. In a way, he regretted the necessity of
restricting the humans’ freedom of movement, but he understood that
it really was for their own good. Allowing them to run free would
be poor stewardship. Not only would it harm the corporation’s
interests, it would harm the humans as well. If left unmanaged,
their territorial instincts could surface and they might even harm
one another.

~*~

Two weeks later, MO-126 lay on a table in
the maintenance bay of Hub Terminal Eleven undergoing a routine
checkup. Lights blinked green, yellow, red, and blue on panels
nearby, and musical pings and beeps sounded as the table ran
diagnostics on his various subsystems. So far, he seemed in
reasonably good shape, but then he was only a little over three
thousand years old. With proper care, and a bit of luck, he could
go ten times that without requiring any major repair.

A signal not associated with the maintenance
scans notified him of a message from Field Ops. He opened the file
to find an update on the surveillance he requested. Utrek had left
the village.

MO-126 jumped from the maintenance table and
contacted Field Operations to get additional details. Utrek and
another primitive left the village the day before with improvised
camping gear and failed to return by nightfall. A surveillance
drone in the form of a large owl followed and continued to track
them. The mitigation team being organized would be deployed
shortly. The android dog sent a request to join it. This type of
duty never interested him before, but this time felt different. He
felt personally involved, and he wanted to see how the situation
played out.

Three hours later, their team assembled near
a wooded area about thirty kilometers southeast of the village. The
lusterless black flitter that brought them here lifted silently
into the night from its landing site in an open field of grass
partially obscured by trees and a low hill. They would be walking
back.

Their team leader, a trade interface android
who, for this mission, went by the designation ‘Indigo One,’ got
the primitives’ position from the surveillance drone. MO-126
carried the label ‘Indigo Eight.’ The renaming resulted from some
obscure tradition dating back to a time when the predecessors of
the civilizations comprising the Galactic Federation physically
fought one another over resources and ideology. It was a simpler
time then. Now, Federation members achieved their ends and resolved
their conflicts through financial finagling, legal manipulation,
political influence, and, in rare instances, even rational
discussion. They couldn’t just beat their opponents over the head
with a heavy object and take what they wanted. They must get them
to provide it voluntarily. Some hard-line conservative members of
especially aggressive species regarded this as less efficient
because one often needed to give something in return. In the long
run, it proved less costly than building weapons and war machines,
not to mention rebuilding afterward—if they still possessed the
ability, so the practice caught on with only a few carryovers from
the old days, such as stylishly tailored jackets with epaulets and
adopting silly names for mitigation teams.

Most of the team consisted of canine mobile
observer androids like MO-126. They would do most of the actual
mitigating, with Indigo One coordinating their actions.

“
Mitigation Team Indigo,
” the team
leader broadcast, “
the wayward primitives are camped by the
stream about three hundred meters south of us. Indigo Four through
Seven, circle around south of them. Indigo Eight through Eleven,
block them from the east. Stop one hundred meters from the target.
Indigo Two and Three are with me.
” The latter were the other
humanoid team members.
“Notify me when you are in
position.
”

MO-126 scanned the area in infrared but did
not see any humans. He requested a position update from the drone,
which quickly responded with relative coordinates. It could do
little else. Unlike the androids, the simulated owl possessed much
less intelligence than the animal it resembled.

The four artificial dogs comprising MO-126’s
unit quietly made their way to where Indigo One said they should
stop. The reason the android dog did not see the primitives before
was because they were lying in a shallow depression sound asleep.
He notified the team leader of their status and received updated
instructions.

They spread out into a line and began to
howl. The noise should wake the two primitives without immediately
sending them into a panic. That would come later.

One of the humans woke and shook the other.
It appeared to be Utrek. MO-126 could not be sure in the low light.
His infrared vision blurred too many details. He assumed the other
human was the boy he saw him talking with at the construction site.
Somehow, Utrek must have convinced him to join him on his
explorations.

Now that the two boys were obviously awake,
the second act of the show could begin.

The three humanoid androids began a mournful
wailing, which sounded, intentionally, like, “Who dares? Whooooooo
darrrrrrrrrrres?”

The boys stood and peered nervously into the
night. With their limited night vision, they were unlikely to
directly observe any of the members of the mitigation team. If the
boys proved uncooperative, they would be allowed to see what they
should take for a wild dog pack stalking them. If they did as the
androids hoped, the boys would never catch more than a brief
glimpse of them.

They began howling louder, adding barks and
growls as they slowly approached.

One of the boys turned and ran roughly in
the direction of their village. The other, paused just long enough
to grab a blanket and some other belongings before following him.
They did not scream or even yell at one another, which MO-126
considered quite brave. They did run for all they were worth,
occasionally casting nervous glances behind them.

The androids hounded them through the night,
not allowing them more than a moment of rest, guiding them from a
distance with howls and barks and moans. Their own fears and
imaginations are what truly drove them. By the time the first light
of dawn dusted the horizon, they were within sight of their
village.

The sun peeked over the horizon. The two
fleeing boys could not know this resulted from the planet turning.
The myths of their village said the land rested on the back of a
giant turtle and the sun rose due to the efforts of the Great
Cosmic Gond. Some of the villagers even took this seriously.
Everyplace MO-126 visited told stories like these, and although all
gravely lacked anything resembling technical accuracy, they were
amazing for their creative inventiveness. The primitives did not
need to know how the sun rose, but they wanted to, and knowing no
way to find out, they created stories that made sense to them to
explain the phenomenon. At first, he thought the myths were
something like scientific hypotheses, but they weren’t. Most of
them were cleverly contrived to be unverifiable. They put their
gods where they could not find them. The stories could not be
tested, which made them solid beliefs that could endure. They
certainly supported the health and longevity of the project because
they effectively stopped further questioning without providing
dangerous answers. In some ways, he found this ingenious, but he
could not help feeling that being cleverly wrong simply was not
right. The PM encouraged its field operatives to support such
beliefs, and he understood why. Whether he liked it or not made no
difference. The policy made sense.

“
That was fun!
” one of the other
canine androids said as they stood just inside a tree line watching
their retreating quarry. Some of the others agreed. MO-126 did not.
He understood that humans could not be allowed to roam freely.
There were good reasons for preventing it, and he knew he
successfully performed his duty to the corporation. He simply did
not enjoy it.

They continued to look on from a distance to
make sure the boys returned home. Then the mitigation team left.
The surveillance drone would remain until the next step could be
implemented.

~*~

MO-126 and his humanoid partner returned to
the village ten days later. This time, a surrogate human nursery
android accompanied them. Aunt Nettie, a short, plump, NASH,
appeared to be at least sixty years old. Her actual age was closer
to four thousand. Sometimes, when the project manager considered a
village might be a bit too innovative or harbor progressive ideas,
a NASH unit would be assigned to gently encourage a respect for
tradition, remind the primitives of what a fine life they had, and
otherwise discourage curiosity and change. Traders normally
introduced them as healers, teachers, minstrels, or, as in this
case, as storytellers, and the villagers always invited them to
stay. The nursery androids’ inherent congenial nature provided part
of the reason why. The rest was the implied promise of better trade
deals.