Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (52 page)

"Then some
lower echelon hood seemed to want to move up in the ranks. He
seemed to have just a bit too much information. He was dangerous.
He couldn't get that information except from someone on the
board.

"The board were
suspicious and afraid. They began going a bit too far to alienate
the people they must work with. Those people in turn reacted
against those below themselves. They even struck out at some of the
customers.

"I'm sorry
about ... that any such thing ever happened. The man never intended
for that to happen, but he was unaware anyone could actually be so
depraved they would do those things. He was still naive.

"This was
allowed to slowly simmer with only a slight increase in heat, now
and then. Nervous and scared people make mistakes. The mistakes
were allowed to grow, both in scope and frequency. The directors
could not trust one another, now! – Except E and F, who stayed
close through all of it. They were different personality types and
had formed some strange bond in their criminality.

"Something must
be done – or should it? Why not allow them to settle most of the
problems, let the waves circulate around the vacation worlds, then
let them begin to believe they had won some kind of battle – and
set them against one another?

"The man waited
and watched and stirred and planned until it all came around. He
was feeling pleased with himself because he could do all of this
without involving anyone else. He was a fool. He will probably
always be one.

"Now E and F
were going to kill off A through D!

"The man didn't
want bloodshed, but knew there had already been a lot of it and
much worse. His dilemma was that it could spread and innocent
people would be hurt. This must be handled in a way to keep it
confined to a certain strata of society, but how to do it?

"Then the great
good luck of this man came again to the front. There was a planet
experiencing difficulties with senseless assassinations. It was a
new world directly in the sights of the emperor, himself! Everyone
knows Maita will brook no interference in these things. He would,
by all the talents in figuring chance the man had, send a team of
investigators there. By all the odds he would go himself with Z and
Thing or he would send Tabori R. DeSixtee. Maybe both! – the
important thing being a direct line to the ear of the emperor be
opened. The emperor personally fought to free these vacation worlds
from pirates and he damned well wouldn't let another form of
pirates take them away from him!

"The man needed
an anomaly. Something that would appear to be incongruous to the
investigator, so he would check. The person he checked must have a
firsthand story of the syndicate operating on the vacation worlds.
There was a problem on Sentah where the board of directors were
staying. That had to be in the focus of the problem.

"I
understand the dear friend of this man who went to that world under
attack was contacted for a far different reason than was originally
planned, but that has proved to have no merit at all. He
was
contacted! It had
worked!

"You see, this
man started to build a dream, the dream turned into a nightmare.
Now the dream is back. The response to all of this is very exactly
what the man planned. The emperor became personally involved and
sent his investigators, who were able to break up the whole
criminal operation from the top down. It can't possibly hold
together now! Only Thing, here, has the ability to do the same
thing again, but now the empire or the VWPA can move to prevent
it.

"I know Chief
Inspector Neels on Sentah is in the employ of the board of
directors. None of it could have happened after the first casino
was purchased without his wholehearted and greedy cooperation. The
man would like for the empire to know that.

"There is no
more board of directors, but the man knows how the system works and
he knows all the contacts. Neel's greed, like was once the case of
the man we have been discussing, knows no bounds. He must be
stopped. The man now knows he had the real treasure at the first
step onto this world. He had friends, some criminal in some ways,
but all true friends.

"Now we can
discuss the possibilities of prosecution of that man if you
like."

[ There is no
way we could prosecute the man at this point, because the last who
could have implicated him on the probe are dead. ]

"You couldn't
prosecute that man if they had lived to take the probe," Dlort
argued. "He didn't do a thing that was deliberately criminal."

"Then that man
would take the probe?" Kit asked.

"That man would
not!" Moodad said, sharply. "That man has found friends, almost
lifelong friends, who it is stated are criminals – or were
criminals. That man must consider those friends."

"You could take
the probe," Z suggested. "We could give you a list of questions
which you would answer. Only the machines would ever know any of
it. We could first remove the recorder unit. The machine would
indicate only if you were being truthful or lying on those specific
questions asked."

"If I could
trust you I would do it," Moodad replied. "This whole thing came
about because I trusted."

[ I, Thing,
Mentan, citizen of the Maitan Empire and of Empire Center, personal
representative of the Emperor Maita, do swear that only machines
will ever know of any testimony you offer to give to the probe and
that only those questions given to you on a list before the session
will be asked. I do swear the recording device will be removed from
that machine and the machine will make no record whatever of any of
your testimony. These things I swear in the name of Emperor Maita.
Is that good enough an oath? ]

Moodad
stared at the pile of feathers that was Thing, smiled, and said,
"If you will personally ask those questions and will swear that no
one but yourself and machines will know the questions
or
answers it will do
nicely."

[ So sworn.
Kit, call the floater to bring a probe unit here. Moodad will
supply the place for this session, as he will know better than
anyone which place has real privacy here. He may call in his own
technician to guarantee the recorder is removed from the probe.
]

"You can remove
the recorder," Moodad said. "If there's one thing certain in this
galaxy it's that no one would swear an oath in the name of Maita
and dare to break it!"

"Maita
does have a vicious temper in those cases," Z agreed. "That's
precisely why there
are
no such
cases in the past three hundred years. Come on, Kit, let's you and
Dlort and I go look at the view from up here."

Maita
would monitor the probe, of course, even if it was all on fastcom.
Maita might be halfway across the galaxy on the plague
investigation, but Thing had told the exact truth. Only machines
would ever know the answers unless there was a direct lie and that
machine would record nothing. Maita was a machine, but it
wasn't
that
machine!

Two hours
later, Thing, Z, and Kit climbed aboard T6 right there in the
courtyard. Dlort and Moodad bid them good fortune and went back
inside. The story had apparently been true in all details – and Z
had been right from the first. It had been a problem on Sentah, all
along.

Lahlee leaned
against Z's shoulder as the ship pulled away from the dock. Moodad
and Dlort walked back along the dock to the street to get into the
car and to be driven back to the house where Z stayed the past four
days with Lahlee. He was amazed at the variety of people who came
and went in that house. Everyone knew Moodad and Dlort and brought
all their problems and triumphs to be shared with them.

Like some corny
old movie, Moodad had come full circle back to the time when he
first discovered life was no good unless shared. Z tended to feel
like that when he found special relationships on his own. He very
seldom felt this kind of closeness. That was one of the things one
gives up whenever he accepts the virtual immortality Maita gave to
its crew. His closeness was generally shared with the machines and
with Thing. Their deep love and sharing was a real thing, but he
could never really understand any of them and they couldn't
understand him.

Well, Lahlee
couldn't either, but.... He had come a long way. Now he could see
the immortality was truly a curse, yet he had given up so very much
for it. More and more he knew that.

He had gained
much, too. What he had was so much more than any Earthman had ever
known before. The question was whether or not it was worth it.

He supposed it
was. Not living as long as he chose. That part wasn't really all he
thought it was going to be. It was a little bite of time here and
there that held the meaning.

Etel, now
Lahlee. The Maitan girl who had stayed with him for four years on
EC and then had gone back to Plamaita. Now Lahlee would spend the
remainder of her vacation as Z's guest on EC. She would ride to EC
and later come back here to Frim on the emperor's own ship. That
huge, platinum-plated ship! Her excitement was beautiful to see,
but she would tire of him very quickly.

That wasn't
cynicism, just truth. They were new and different to each other and
could enjoy that difference. They had a certain respect and a
caring for one another, but it wasn't love. Not by a long shot.

Kit and T6 had
gone to Perfect 3 to wait for Tab and TR, who would be back there
in a few hours. They had solved the problem of the Tlessarian brain
ships, it seemed.

Z was no longer
ashamed to say he worried about his mechanical friends. He had
grown up. He could tell a machine he loved it and could mean those
words. He could say those words to Thing without embarrassment.

Why was it so
much harder to hear them say the same words to him?

Maita wanted Z
and Thing to go on the exploration trip in fifteen days or so. They
were both anxious to be going. Kit was as delightful a friend as T6
had proved to be. It was going to work very well for everyone.

Z had known the
loss of his old friends, such as Ape and Joe and ET. He knew how T6
felt when Rimalt died and, yes, a machine, T6, felt sorrow and
grief as much as any organic.

Thing was on
Menta, visiting its family.

Z hadn't
thought about Thing as having a family before and was confused
about the family unit when there were four sexes. Thing said
families knew each other and met once in awhile, but it was no big
deal.

Kit said the
Mentan's famous mental abilities were needed in such a society – to
know what relation each of the family were, what with quarter
brothers and quarter sisters and worse!

Sisstuh had
first said it, if Z remembered correctly, but Tous and the Zulians
and so many others said the same thing.

The
magnificence of a person can be measured in the scope of his
dreams.

Moodad could
get back to his dream. The vacation worlds now had strong
safeguards to catch gangsters and criminal syndicates before they
ever got started. The VWPA had a new safeguard to stop another Neel
from ever getting into the position where he could aid any such
organization. There was that to be gained even in such a sordid
thing as a crime syndicate. Another small patch on the fabric of
the empire. It was holding together very well, and was getting
stronger in many ways.

Maita was
agonizing about the probe, but that was an endless debate. That was
one of those things where the rules had to be bent constantly and
where decisions were needed on individual cases. It was back to the
point of stopping harm to many people being more important than the
rights of one individual.

Z had started
believing there was no place where there was any excuse for using
the probe except by permission, but had come around to believing to
act in that manner sacrificed the rights of everyone to be safe and
secure to the right of one person to privacy. He still believed a
person had the right to privacy, but now felt the right to privacy
wasn't invaded if the reading were done by a machine. If guilt was
shown, then that guilt in certain very specific types of crime
should be known. Only that one crime, not all the petty little
shameful details that are a part of almost everyone's life, but
which are silly to others. The probe was much more likely to prove
innocence than to prove guilt, in most cases.

It was a
strange galaxy. It always would be a strange galaxy.

Soon Maita, a
platinum plated spaceship, Thing, a squarish rubbery ball with
tentacles (And an intelligence much too high to measure) and Z, an
Earthman, would go out to explore on the outer rim of the galactic
central sphere while Tab and Kit, two robots, would go with their
own intelligent ships to solve detective riddles and other
mysteries.

These beings
shared their lives.

The empire was
a huge sharing thing. It was just a matter of growing up and
learning those things you get from your greed have no meaning. What
you give is what counts. There is no purpose to personal
accumulation, whether that hoarding is money or anything else. The
motive assesses the value or becomes the primary agent of
devaluation. The universe owes nothing to anyone. Life isn't made
up of debits and credits. That's a false doctrine leading to only
emptiness.

Z knew a great
emptiness. He had been searching for three hundred years for
something to fill that void. At the same time he knew he had more
than most beings ever could know. There was also the fullness of
his friendships and the knowledge he had proven his worthiness to
exist if any ever had. For many years he thought the emptiness was
the longing for Earth, but he went to Earth to discover the
homesickness was superficial and he didn't much care if he never
went back.