An Android Dog's Tale (12 page)

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.

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.

T
hey 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 bacterial
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.