Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (47 page)

"I've learned a
lot in the past few hundred years. I say that any woman – or man –
who wishes to be paid for sexual favors has every right to offer
themselves. There are maybe half or a bit more of the races where
sex is the kind of thing anyone would purchase. I have no argument
with that, but it must be because they choose that field freely. It
must never be because some low sleazebag has some little thing they
use to coerce – some meaningless thing that can be used to
blackmail.

"It's true
they'll fight among themselves in gang wars and power grabs or what
have you, but there are almost always a lot of innocent people
caught in the crossfire. I'm not fighting this thing because of
some ridiculous argument against gambling or sex or use of
recreational drugs – with the exception of those that are addicting
– or any of the rest of what are called moral arguments. Moral
arguments are the stupidest reason for ever acting against another
person. Morals are very subjective and very indefinable things. I'm
striking out because there are victims when people like these do
the things they do. I strike out because of one and only one thing
here. It's more or less what I've always fought. It makes no
difference if it's a religion or these gangsters or whether it's
politics or tyranny. These people are taking away the rights of
individuals to make their own choices as to how they'll live their
lives.

"Earth's
history has been nothing else, to be truthful. You were the ship
Rimalt took that soldier to Mars in and were there and on Tau Ceti
four and Goombridge. Surely you can understand how I feel about
it!"

"Yes, Z, I
understand. We work well together. I wanted to know exactly how you
viewed this. I wanted to know your motivation.

"You're mostly
trying to live down the history of your ancestors. You're saying
you can see the mistakes they made and you desire to see those
kinds of things eliminated from the affairs of other intelligent
beings everywhere.

"It'll never
happen, Z. There are always new races growing up. Those mistakes
are a part of that growing up.

"Also, I agree
with you.

"Wordt's
aground and there's another ship there. Shall we go calling?"

*That's as long
a morality speech as you've ever made, Z. You tend to take on
guilts and recriminations to a degree that's best described as ...
as.... Perhaps the word I'm searching for is more....*

"Remarkable?" Z
asked, "Maybe laudable, or even commendable? Maybe something along
that order?"

*Maybe stupid
describes it best! It looks like a few centuries and you'd forget
some of the worst of those idiotic traits. You can't begin to know
how moronic this conversation seems to me!*

"I was thinking
of something along those lines, myself," T6 threw in. "Z was so
serious and absorbed. He sounded like those politicians from the
old records when you went to Earth. 'I'm soooo guilty! I throw
myself on the mercy of my fellow beings and ask for understanding,
though I know I don't for one tiny moment deserve your forgiveness!
It was really all something everybody ELSE did, but I have to bear
the guilt because I wasn't there to stop it before it started!' I'm
sure glad I don't have all those racial guilts!"

[ You three are
fascinating! Now get this job done so we can go home. I've had
about enough of this area to last a lifetime already. ]

Dropping In

The problem
with a world that's virtually unpopulated over a large area such as
this one is that anything coming in is very easy to detect. There's
no background traffic to be lost in.

"Why not go sit
right on top of him and get it over with?" Z asked.

He knew the
answer, of course. He was trying to get T6 into another
argument.

"Okay!" T6
said. "Hang on!"

"Hey!" Z cried.
"Don't just go in there!"

"Why not? You
said to! I think I see how to handle you now. Just call your
bluff."

"Only when I'm
bluffing. Can we come in under water? He won't have time to get
sensors in yet."

"He's about a
hundred eighty kilometers from the ocean or even from water that's
deep enough to hide in. Here's the setup as I see it."

The holovid
screen lighted up to show a large flat plain with a "J"-shaped line
of hills about three quarters of the way from a mountain range
toward the east, which was where the closest ocean was. There were
a few ponds on the plain and a few small shallow streams here and
there.

"That plain is
really flat!" T6 said. "He's in the center of the hills inside the
end of the curve. I can't see any possible way to get in there
without being spotted."

"I'll have to
go in among the hills. Are they really so smoothly domed?"

"They've been
open to the winds for a few million years. They tend to wear round.
You can wind around them, but they're pretty low. You'll have to go
slow. If they have a scanning detector on one of the three peaks
here (Flashing dots) I can't get any closer than here (Another
dot). That's one hundred sixty one kilometers, in a straight line.
You'll have to stay low and slow and will be constantly curving
around. I can program the floater to not move into any area where
it can be spotted from this peak out where they are. It's about the
highest point until way back here. You won't be able to make more
than fifty kilometers per hour and your route will take you over
nearly three hundred kilometers to go less than half of that.

"Still want to
try it?"

"Two things.
You keep saying ‘they’ and what other choice is there?"

"There's
another ship already there. I said that. We can go in blasting, but
that could cost us finding out who the really big boss is if
someone down there knows."

"Could the
bigshot be the one who's there?"

"As good a
chance as not. I take it you're going in? I'll use the time you're
gone to get everything I can from Maita and Thing. We had a bit
with TR earlier. It's tracing the last of the brains into a cave or
something.

"Maita has some
big surprise going and wants us to finish this as fast as we can –
like we're screwing around?"

"You sure are
feeling chatty. I guess I'd better ... I know who it'll be
here!"

"Who?"

"Bast, I think
was the name. He and Wordt are the last of the Sentah six. They're
the last who might know who the big boss is. He was the only one
who got away offworld. This is their hideout. This is the place
they set up a long time ago in case things got too hot to handle.
It'll have a lot of things built-in, unless they got too confident.
This tells us the power play was Wordt and Bast and possibly Eed
against the others. Wordt and Bast will know who the big boss
is.

"T Six,
we
have
to get
those files decoded! Get both Maita and Thing on it whether they
like it or not. This is important!"

"I'll do what I
can. I've made a little progress in calculated separations of
numericals, but I'm a long way from finding the real base for those
randoms."

"Hmm. They used
the date as a randomizer before. Both Maitan Galactic Standard and
the date on the planet ... you'd have to do a lot of research, but
it would come, eventually. If you find one you can work
backward."

"One will base
the key. I have one other idea. It came to me when I was talking
with TR. It was updating me on the various brains."

"Well, I'll be
heading out, I guess. Put plenty of everything on the floater. I
wish I had a couple of books to read or something."

"There's a box
of stuff Rimalt picked up on Mars. There're a lot of antique books
in them. He liked to collect that sort of thing. Said it gave
perspective to the history."

Z looked
through the book collection and picked out "The Martian Chronicles"
by Arthur C. Clarke. He had read some of Clarke's work before he
was abducted. There was a copy of "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov. He
had definitely heard of that one! The problem was, the old books
were falling apart.

"Put them on
the console scanner. I'll make a crystal of them and you can read
them on the holoscreen. I can preserve the originals that way. I'd,
er, sort of like to keep them."

Mementos of
Rimalt. Z understood, and knew how hard it must have been for T6 to
even offer them.

Z went into the
hold, climbed aboard the floater, checked the food and water and
waved goodbye. He would have immediate full emergency
communications, but would use none unless it truly were an
emergency. Light beam would be impractical among the hills,
gravitic and radio were too easily detected.

It was getting
pretty late, but darkness meant nothing to the floater. Z could put
up the small energy shield. He could read the screen without being
seen from outside. The floater would keep all the sensors and
antennae outside of the field. It could detect scanners and other
beams.

Z was fortunate
in that he could become engrossed in a good book and didn't notice
time or how boring things were. The book could stimulate its own
excitement and interest. He was also fortunate that both of his
selections were excellent works. After his experiences, the Clarke
book was almost like some kind of history. The robot book, with
friends like Tab, was much like some kind of chronicle of actual
events. The Laws of Robotics or whatever seemed almost quaint,
though. A robot did what it was designed to do if it wasn't
independently intelligent and such laws weren't needed. The very
definition of independent intelligence made them unworkable, in
actuality. The one about not harming or allowing any human etc. was
downright silly, considering how many intelligences there were who
were definitely NOT human!

Maita had
directives as to who it was to take orders from in a computer
section, but that module had been programmed by the Pweetoos. The
Pweetoos never knew Maita WAS intelligent. That old command module
had been erased through a ruse.

Of course, Z
knew the nature of his race and knew they would probably actually
try to program such laws into their robots, not to protect anyone,
but because that would ensure their keeping absolute power over
another being. The human race was slowly outgrowing that racially
juvenile evolutionary directive. Finally, humankind was learning
that to accept power necessitated accepting responsibility – not
only in words, but in true fact. Power is a useless end to seek if
only because it's a self-defeating thing. Power can be seized and
taken, but respect and liking must be earned. So many lived a life
of frustration on Earth because they could never understand it was
the power that was respected, not the person. The holder of power
is almost always despised.

Strange musings
to have while riding a floater on some world I never heard of
before a couple of hours ago, Z thought. Meanwhile, I'm trying to
catch a couple old-fashioned bad guys! Gangsters! Interstellar
crooks! I wonder what Ike and Art would have given to be able
actually to DO some of the things they wrote about?

He shut the
screen off and dropped the shield. Except that it was dark he could
almost see what must look exactly like the same hills he saw as the
floater left T6.

Z deeply liked
and respected T6. He knew the emotions were returned. T6 was
sentimental, machine or not. To offer to allow Z to go through
those mementos of Rimalt proved that.

Z was also sure
he knew what Maita was making and what the surprise would be. After
three hundred years he knew pretty much what Maita was thinking,
most of the time.

TRD-60 had Tab.
Neither was ever really alone because they shared the same brain.
They were literally part of one another. T6 was alone now that
Rimalt was dead or would be when one of the crew weren't with
it.

Maita was
building a partner for T6. That was the surprise. It was finished,
or very nearly so, so Maita would be as excited as a little kid. It
would be hyper until it could install the new partner/robot and
connect the brains permanently.

Another perfect
schizophrenic, as he called TR/Tab. They each had their distinct
personality, and were truly individuals, but were also different
parts of one whole.

It would work,
too! Maita had built Tab and TR at the same time, to be a unit, but
it would have learned everything it might need to know about the
processes. It knew T6's mind intimately.

Would it be
another Swaz?

It didn't seem
likely, in one way, but seemed pretty well what it must be in
another. There was always the shop where Tab or the new robot could
be modified.

Z giggled. He
had completely forgotten he was identical to the furry Kappins at
that very moment! The giggle caught the attention of the floater,
which asked him if he needed anything. He said he was going to
sleep awhile. He laid back in the seat, which adjusted to allow him
to lay flat.

The floater
wasn't intelligent and had no feelings, but Z always treated the
servo machines as though they did. It was hard for him to believe
they felt absolutely nothing and that all their responses and moves
were simply programmed in, though he knew full well such was the
case.

He dozed, then
drifted into restful sleep. He awoke to find it was still dark.

"How far are we
out?" he asked.

The shield
dropped to show bright morning sunlight. "We should arrive in one
hour, twenty two minutes and a few seconds," the floater answered.
"We are to stop for one half hour before we arrive so you may eat,
stretch and do whatever it is you do. There is a stop scheduled at
a small stream. We will arrive there in seventeen minutes, though I
will stop at any time you tell me."

"The things I
do are take a crap and maybe a bath in that stream, then eat some
high energy food."