An Android Dog's Tale (19 page)

“
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.