“Drin,” Mary called. “Maybe if we all get our minds off the case for a while, something will happen— mmm, Richard—below the conscious level. Drin, why don’t you come over here? There’s something I’d like to share with you, and Richard’s willing.”
Drin hesitated. Mary was offering to balance books, he realized. Eight Trimus years ago, Mary had watched, and helped Drin help deliver eggs from two very gravid, very feral members of a Do’utian primitivist beach harem. This exposure of Do’utian intimacy, though accidental and involuntary on his part, had always embarrassed him. Mary, however, had called it beautiful and natural.
She was unafraid of limits, and enjoyed testing the boundaries of experience and convention—and in Richard Moon, had found a kindred human spirit. Despite himself, he was intensely curious. He said a soft command in old Do’utian to the cybernetic servant to isolate the eyes and ears of his walls, and moved, gingerly still with his left foreleg in a Do’utian walking cast, over to the human pool.
Mary and Richard Moon were facing each other, teeth bared, and periodically biting, or pretending to bite each other, usually each other’s mouths, but sometimes other parts of their bodies.
“Drin,” Mary said, laughing, as happy as Drin had ever seen her, “put your hands on my shoulders and hold me, so I don’t float away.”
He sent his tongue out and did as she requested. Her body tasted different, somehow. Richard Moon patted one of his hands in a gesture that meant “welcome” in any body language that Drin knew.
“Drin,” Mary murmured, “remember how I cradled and washed the eggs you took. I hope this feels as good and as special to you. Oh, Richard! Yes, yes!”
Something tense and warm seemed to flow from Mary into Drin as he held her while she accepted Richard Moon’s seed. However different it was for humans—Mary, for instance, would not produce eggs without a reproduction permit, and humans actually did this for pleasure rather than to survive a pain-driven biological necessity—the concept of sharing intimacy, of balancing what each had experienced with the other, appealed to Drin as did in general the idea of touching her intensely warm body and sharing good things with her.
He shut his eyes and memories of Bodil and Gonikli and that summer night before he left for his monitor training on the beach across the bay came roaring back. Terrible memories then, but now, somehow, rendered less terrible. Here on Trimus, he mused, we have chosen to remain biological beings, with all that implies. In a way, he pitied the life-descended machine intelligences that roamed the Galaxy like gods. Fate is not always kind, but at least we still know what we are, he told himself.
When Mary laughed and said he could go now, that elusive thought about machine intelligences had become a school in his mind, turning in unison this way and that. The dangers represented by the guidance system of the rocket that had downed Do Tor and Go Ton’s aircraft was clear to him.
They may have seen but the air side of this ice.
“Mary, forgive my multi-track mind. I feel a, a completeness with you and Richard Moon that is philosophically beautiful—but only for advanced minds of both our species.”
“Unfortunately,” Richard agreed, “you are right. Councilor, we will hold this among ourselves.”
“On my other track, I also realized that we are up against opponents that do not understand discretion nor value the restraints under which we live.”
“Restraints?” Mary laughed and Richard coughed. Drin had to puff a bit as well.
“Technological restraints,” he added.
“Do you think the people that gave Stendt the rocket launcher might have given him more such toys?”
“Smart toys,” Mary added. “We’ve deliberately held ourselves back from having artificial intelligences run everything—which is fine as long as you don’t have to outsmart one by yourself. But why would Lord Thet show off his cybernetic prowess just to aid one customer? And what is Stendt’s compact-cursed motivation?”
“He could be crazy,” Richard speculated. “Or maybe Bi Tan was getting too close to the truth.”
“Maybe.” Drin reached a decision. “It looks like a battle is going to be fought on technological grounds. So I’m going to hope they are as ignorant of Do’utian culture and history as they act. If Do Tor is right, we know who killed Zo Kim and how. But we need to know why, or at least part of it. Uncontrolled artificial intelligences are involved and in the hands of someone like Lord Thet they are not just a danger to Trimus but to the whole Galaxy! I think Stendt is the key, and if we put enough pressure on Stendt, he may tip his hand—before he understands what he is up against.”
“How?”
“Excuse me for a macrobeat or so. I must talk to someone privately.” If he could. If that someone could and would still listen.
But all Do’utian tradition said that the top was where to go, especially if questions hung on the next long like seaweed. Drin had to persuade the long one that Stendt was someone to oppose. But Drin was convinced now that Stendt was not only the key to the deaths of Bi Tan and Zo Kim, but to a conspiracy to put illegal smart armaments in the hands of a charter-trampling chauvinist dictator.
Even from the depths of whatever thoughts he was thinking, the long one should respond to that.
The most significant difference among the three intelligent species was size. Do’utians were from five to six times the linear dimensions of humans and massed two to four eight-cubed as much. Humans, in comparable parts of their bodies, are about twice the linear dimensions and ten times the mass of we Kleth. But our brains have each evolved by natural selection to the point where they could understand the Universe well enough to end natural selection. So, despite a difference of almost a factor of a thousand in brain mass, Kleth and Do’utians have similar physical problem solving abilities.
The main hall of the old dome was filled with the smells of sushi and the pleasant drinks of three species. Three raised platforms waited for the Do’utian elite: himself, Commander Drinnil’ib, at the left, Beachholder Doglaska’ib in the center, and Borragil’ib at the right.
When Drin had met Doglaska’ib in person, he’d again been impressed with how huge the long one had grown since Drin’s childhood. The conversation had been very short. A swiveled eye and a nod on the long-one’s part. Then a turn to indicate the interview was over. But the eye had been clear and the nod had been definite.
The ancient one was in excellent shape, and climbed briskly to his pad. Drin and Borragil’ib followed and waited for the long one to speak. Two centuries ago he had opened a family fish hunt with an amusing story. But that was two centuries ago. All he said here was, “Begin the review.”
A mind grows heavy with the burden of things past, Drin thought.
In the inevitable irony of such things, the one without the title, Borragil’ib, took charge and explained to the human and Kleth visitors how local review worked in Do’utian territory. Essentially, it eliminated worries of unsavory interrogation techniques, because all interrogation was done in front of the Master, his recording devices and everyone else. Anyone present could ask questions, but they had better be worthwhile, for if not, the humiliation could be as cold as the bottom of the Southern Rift.
Stendt was present, in dignified dress, sampling the sushi, and pretending affability—much good that it would do him. For all his apparent freedom, this suspect was in a prison of the watchful technological servants of Ibgorni, a house system that was, perhaps, more mentally alive than its master.