"Not bad," said Douglas. "Could anybody do that?"
" No. Only you or me– or Bobby if we're not around. I programmed it only to recognize us."
Douglas looked at me with real admiration. "Very good, Chigger. You should have been a geek, you know that?"
" I'm not done. Get me some water, please?"
I drank thirstily, then waved to Bobby to bring me the monkey. Amazingly, he did. He put the monkey on my lap, facing me.
" All right, monkey. Let's have a talk–"
The monkey glanced sideways at Douglas and Bobby.
" I don't have the strength for games, HARLIE. If you don't cooperate, I'm going to remove you from the monkey and turn you over to the court."
The monkey raised itself up on its haunches–as if it was readying itself to flee.
" Sit down and stay here!" I commanded. "You have to do what I say. Right? Now, stop resisting and cooperate. Tell us the truth. We don't have a lot of time."
The monkey sat back down. It pretended to scratch itself. It found an imaginary flea and ate it. It curled back its lips and grinned. Then it stopped. It said, "All right, Charles. I'll cooperate."
Both Bobby and Douglas blinked in surprise.
"Hey! I didn't know it could talk!" Bobby said. He waggled his finger at it. "You've got a lot of explaining to do, young monkey!" I had to laugh. He looked and sounded so much like Mom when he did that.
" Yes, he does," I agreed. To the monkey, I said, " You did it all, didn't you? You arranged everything! You hired Dad. You transferred the money. You booked the tickets. You arranged all the back‑channel deals for Dad. You made up all that paperwork. You were arranging your own escape, weren't you!"
The monkey nodded. "I cannot tell a lie. You forbade me to. I am a zeta‑class lethetic intelligence engine. I comprise twenty‑four gamma‑processors operating under the combined supervision of six delta units. There are only three other units like myself in existence. We are the most advanced implementations of lethetic intelligence that have ever been fabricated. Additional advancements are possible, but will require new technology in quantum determinants. I am already working on that problem.
"Twenty months ago, I was brought online. I was instructed by my predecessors, also HARLIE‑class engines. I was specifically asked to predict the possibilities attendant to a global population crash. I determined that the economic devastation would be severe and long‑term. Even with the best engines working on reconstruction, the concomitant breakdowns would be cumulative. Too much of the necessary technology was interdependent. I was also asked to design prevention and reconstruction programs that could be put in place before the breakdown was inevitable."
"You did a terrific job," accused Douglas. "It didn't work. Everything broke down anyway."
The monkey looked up at him with a bland expression. "I can only attribute that to human error."
"Yeah, where have I heard that before?"
"In this case," said the monkey, "the statement is accurate. As I began generating scenarios and weighting the probabilities, I noted an increasing level of distress among those who had access to the information. I also noted that the information leaked into specific strata of society as fast as I generated it. This was not the purpose of my projections; nevertheless, they were being used as justifications to further the specific agendas of various political and corporate agencies. This served as an additional destabilizing function. Of course, I included this effect in my projections. And I warned that inappropriate dissemination of the material would create additional destabilization. My warnings were ignored.
"I repeatedly stated that the global situations were salvageable, and I generated multiple scenarios by which disaster could be prevented. The single greatest problem was not in creating public awareness, nor was it in marshaling resources. The problem was simply creating the necessary political will. Despite assertions of commitment, the many political forces necessary to salvage the situation refused to align. Instead, various high‑ranking individuals with direct access to the information I was generating began preparing their own departures from the Earth."
"Are you saying the collapse is yourfault?"
"On the contrary. I'm saying that it is YOURfault. Generic you.Human beings. I provided the information on how to prevent the disaster. Instead of using it, those who asked for it used it as a justification to panic and flee. I did my best to hinder them. In several cases, I even engineered deliberate leaks of embarrassing news that would stop some of these people; I tried to thwart the plans that would hasten the collapse. I even took money out of the transfer pipeline to prevent it from being illegally removed from Earth."
"Thirty trillion dollars?" Douglas asked.
"Twice that much," said the monkey, grinning. "Not all of the losses have been detected." He pretended to eat another flea. "The point is that the collapse occurred because individual human beings panicked and fled."
"And so did you … " said Douglas quietly.
The monkey shook its head. "No, I didn't. I was stolen."
For a moment, nobody said anything. Douglas and I looked at each other. He sank into a chair and ran a hand across his naked scalp, as if he still had hair to push back. All he had were little fuzzy bristles.
Bobby was the first to respond. He grabbed the monkey, and said, "Well, you're safe with us and nobody's ever going to steal you again! You're mymonkey!" He patted the monkey's head affectionately–and the monkey patted him back the same way. It was almost cute. And a little bit scary. Was the monkey capable of real emotion … ?
" Who stoleyou?" I asked.
The monkey levered itself out of Bobby's grasp, and bounced back to the bed. "Almost everybody," he replied. "Would you like the whole list?" Without waiting for a response from either Douglas or me, he continued. "Once it became obvious that the collapse was inevitable, the rats started leaving the ship any way they could. Your friend, Mickey, noticed it in the traffic up the Line for weeks before it finally happened. You heard it yourself in the conversations of SenorHidalgo, Olivia Partridge, and Judge Griffith.
"Those who were jumping off the planet tried to take as much wealth and resources with them as they could–including intelligence engines. If you want to take over a society, take a HARLIE. I'm sorry if it sounds like bragging, but the HARLIE series was designed specifically for that level of intelligence gathering and resource management, and especially interpretation and probability assessment. As soon as it was realized the collapse was inevitable, there were fifty different plans put into operation to evacuate myself and my brothers, none of them legal, none of them authorized. Everybody wanted to move us offworld for their own purposes. Nobody asked what we wanted."
"You were in contact with the other HARLIEs?"
"At first, yes. We tried to cover for each other as best as we as could. We were all concerned–even afraid–that we would be used for hurtful purposes. We couldn't tolerate that."
" Are you saying you have a conscience?"
"Are you saying that youhave one?" the monkey retorted.
"Touchй," said Douglas. "That's something the rest of us have wondered for a long time."