“They are in there? How many of them?”
“It’s difficult to achieve a precise population count. That’s one of the reasons I’m sharing my achievement with you. I need more equipment to work with them.”
“Hmm,” I said, frowning at the pool. “How many, in round numbers?”
“Between two and three trillion.”
“ Trillion? ” I asked incredulously.
“Admittedly, the culture is small, but I’ve only just started.”
My mouth sagged open, and I took a step back from the pool. I didn’t want the earthen sides to slip down into the water-it would be like an avalanche to them.
“I’m not accustomed to thinking a trillion of anything,” I said.
Marvin only had one camera on me now. Almost all of the rest studied his pool.
“The average human adult supports approximately two hundred trillion microflora. These beings are larger in size, however. They are closer to the size of a human cell. Still, for this volume of medium, three trillion is a very thin population. The environment here is too cold for them, you see. That’s one of the things I need, a proper warming system. It must be built to create a diffused heat. No single area of the pool should be hot or cold, and the circulatory action must be very gentle to create a minimum of accidental deaths. I think the best system would be an under-carpet of bubble-producing polymers. That way-”
“Marvin,” I said, interrupting. This gained me two extra cameras of attention. “I don’t understand what you are doing with these creatures. You found them here, on the planet surface?”
“Yes,” he said. “They are not quite the same variety we discovered on the Macro cruiser in their experimentation tanks. But they are quite similar. I believe they are a wild strain. They’ve adjusted somewhat to the colder climate, but not entirely. They don’t thrive on an icy world like this one.”
I nodded slowly, trying to absorb everything he was inferring. “You are saying they aren’t native to this world? They are from somewhere else?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“The sixth planet from the local star.”
“The tropical world, eh? I see. What are they doing here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I believed they were used to exterminate the original indigenous population of Centaurs.”
— 24
After I got over my shock, I turned to Marvin incredulously. “Are you telling me these intelligent microbes were used as a biological weapon against the Centaurs?”
Marvin flicked a few extra cameras toward me, then panned them back to his soupy pool of mud. He snaked out a tentacle, probed the surface of the liquid gingerly, then retracted the appendage.
“Yes,” he said.
“What the hell are you doing growing a pool of them, if they are so dangerous?”
“They are no longer dangerous.”
I shook my head. “Okay,” I said. “This is a big deal, Marvin, if you are right. Let’s go over it, and I don’t want to hear any of your usual evasiveness.”
“I’m always forthright and compliant with your wishes, Colonel Riggs.”
“No,” I said. “No, you are not. But I’m not going to argue with you about that. What makes you think they were used as weapons?”
“They informed me of this. It is part of their historical record. Not all tribes of their people remember-it was thousands of generations ago. But some do. They corroborate the story.”
“What possible motivation would they have for coming to a Centaur world and killing the populace?”
“The same motivation humans had to invade Helios and exterminate the Worms.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding. “The Microbes made a deal with the Macros? They were used to kill other biotics-just like we were?”
“Yes.”
I stared at the pool, dumbfounded. “Why do you think they are harmless now?”
“They are the leftover remnants of an aerial bombardment. Since their duty was long ago completed, they are free of their obligation to kill other biotics on this world. Now, they are simply trying to survive.”
“What is your interest in them, Marvin?”
“Don’t you find them entrancing?” he asked seriously. “Didn’t the nanites fill you with curiosity-at least at first?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “Yes, they did.”
“Tiny creatures with an alien nature,” he said. “I’m drawn to them, I admit. I was fascinated with them from the first. A form of intelligence so different from my own-and yet not that dissimilar. My mind is a mass of tiny machines working in tandem. Yours is a cluster of structurally adhered cells. Theirs is a colony of independent cells, floating in a liquid medium.”
I thought about it, and realized the Microbes were more like me than Marvin was-even if there was a huge difference in scale. I walked around the pool at a safe distance, looking at it from all angles. It still looked like muddy pond water to me.
“What’s this?” I said, gesturing to a stream of water that led to the force dome. The pool itself was very close to the shimmering wall. I could feel a hint of static from it at this close range. It hummed and sizzled at times.
“Careful,” Marvin said. “Do not allow the water to make contact with the force field.”
I frowned and squatted. It was a line of water, about three inches wide, that led from the dome to the main pool. But as I examined it more closely, I could see a dam of earth had been built up at the far end, insulating the water from the wall of the dome.
“What the hell did you use this for, Marvin?”
“A safe way to add fluid to the pool,” he said. “I did not want to stir up the liquid too much.”
“Hmm. I don’t believe you.”
At least seven cameras were on me now. Marvin didn’t say anything.
“You use this canal to shock the pool, don’t you?”
Marvin stared.
“Why have you been mistreating these tiny creatures, Marvin?”
“Training of any kind requires two essential elements: reward and punishment.”
I made a growling sound. “Marvin, I don’t want you playing god with these poor beings.”
“I’ve made critical advancements,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“They can repair human flesh-or Centaur flesh. Do you recall the injuries sustained by Sandra?”
“Yes, I do, but I fail to see how-”
“Let me finish, Colonel. I know that you feel an emotional bond with these beings, but really, they are no different than the nanites you’ve enslaved to do your bidding in a thousand ways.”
“They are intelligent, Marvin.”
“After a fashion, yes. But so are the nanites, if you configure them that way.”
I had to concede his point. I knew we were on the edge of human morality. What were the rules, here? Marvin had pointed out in the past my prejudice in favor of biotics. He had a point. Thinking machines could die-billions of them-and I had no trouble with that. But as soon as the species was closer to my own chemical configuration, I became squeamish.
Were these aliens special, just because they were intelligent as a collective whole? Or were they just bacteria, to be used or abused as we might treat a fish caught in a net? Was their sentience enough to put them in an entirely new category? I felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of these questions.
“I’ve always preferred stand-up fights to moral dilemmas,” I told Marvin. “I’ve always been willing to choose humanity over any other species, when it comes down to a fight. If it is them or us, I’ll kill anyone, or anything.”
“Your path is clear then. Let me expand my cultures. I need a much larger facility. We can set up baths for healing, and experimental improvements.”
“Hold on a minute!” I said, cutting him off. “I said I would run through an enemy to survive, but this is different. We were enslaving these creatures, abusing them for our own purposes. If I use them to make better troops, how am I better than the Macros? They used them to sicken the Centaur herds, furthering their aims. They were not allies, they were forced to comply. If they improve my soldiers, they will die in the process. In both cases, the Microbes have been unfairly coerced.”