Walter listened quietly, then spoke up: “What were its last words? Anything about coming back to work for us?”
Scanner answered apologetically: “It said it would rather die than become a slave again.”
Val frowned: “That damn WIC/RAC genius circuit! What could a buckeye do to intimidate a meck enough to give up a power socket. Energy death is only a matter of time now.”
Walter was more sympathetic toward the wayward meck.
“Perhaps ‘entice’ is a better term. A clever buckeye might have offered Harvester something.”
“Offered what?” asked Val sarcastically. “What do you offer a meck when you want it to bend a prime directive?”
Walter shrugged his old shoulders. Freedom—he thought. But freedom to do what?
“If I go out there,” threatened Val, “I’ll recharge it and get it moving. It had better come back for WIC/RAC overhaul.”
“You?”
“I know how to handle it,” grumbled Val. “Besides, who else is there? We’re short of Tinkers. All I have to do is get into its neck while it is resting on stand-by. Detach the lower motor web, recharge, and wake it up by remote. If it agrees to come along—fine. I’ll give it enough energy for the trip. If it balks, I’ll just detach the motor web too, and bring it in by remote. We’ll lose its personality that way, but at least we’ll have the chassis. Salvage something. Big ES can’t afford to waste the whole meck.”
“You’d try to bring it in by remote?” asked Walter, stunned. “That’s dangerous, and an awful lot of work. Those mecks are big and powerful. Without its own protective reflexes, its muscles might pull themselves apart, or crush crops or—”
“Or crush me,” said Val. “I expect it would take days by remote—avoiding trees, canals and air vents. But we must try. We can’t leave it Outside as a monument to Big ES failure.”
Or a freedom symbol—thought Walter, smiling.
5
Moses and the Coweye
Moses Eppendorff sat on a rocky trail petting Dan. Moon and Toothpick climbed a narrow pass to exchange signs with a young buckeye—puberty minus one—who sat guarding the slope with a stout spear. Higher in the foothills they caught a glimpse of a family-sized enclave—a pair of mated, young adults, an elderly, white-haired female, and three more children.
Communication proved unsuccessful.
Moon returned saying, “Toothpick is having trouble with their dialect. We had better move on before there is a misunderstanding.”
Moses noted that the Eyepeople varied in their customs and language. But one thing was uniform—their technology was Stone-Age. The hive’s sensors could detect metals at a much greater distance than a warm body alone. Any family that became advanced and worked with metals found itself hunted out of existence.
Old man Moon led young Eppendorff to a canal and showed him how to forage it. Each canal surfaced near a city as sewage effluent—nutrient rich, but poor in microflora. As it flowed along it matured. The food chain began as algae and tiny crustaceans. When fully ripe there were thick water weeds, large shellfish and the cetaceans. Bony fish and macroscopic crustaceans were all extinct. Old Moon dove into the greenish waters and explored the bottom. Surfacing, he tossed out a large mussel with a writhing, white foot. Moses entered the water cautiously—exploring bottom mud with his toes.
Soon they were seated on the bank, munching shellfish. A bulky robot straddled the canal silently—an Irrigator. Moses pointed to the robot’s optic pickups.
“Don’t we have to worry about that thing reporting us?” he asked.
“Toothpick says that it’s only a class eleven. Goes around checking soil moisture and spraying water. No circuits for buckeye detection.”
Toothpick put in, “We must watch out for class tens, though. Anything that can run around without a track usually has enough brains to detect us. Harvesters, Tillers, Metal Gatherers, things like that.”
Moses continued to munch thoughtfully. The white flesh of the shellfish had a definite crunchy consistency. It gave him a rich, full sensation—lots of good amino acids.
The water in front of him rippled noisily. He watched the spot. A large, ugly, humanoid head broke the surface, stared right at him and ducked under again.
“If he comes up again, throw him a chunk of meat,” said Moon.
Moses fed the creature and received a bark of appreciation. Soon a noisy, splashing group of fat mammals came around the bend of the canal. Moon smiled. Dan barked back.
“They look almost human,” said Moses.
Moon nodded. Dan pranced up and down the bank excitedly. Finally the dog jumped into the water and began to play with the nearest creature. A tiny head, the size of two fists, bobbed up—blinking—and then ducked under.
“That one looked very human,” exclaimed Moses.
Then he saw it again—a human child riding the back of a nonhuman dugong. Before he could comment on the genetic arithmetic, the mother—a human female, puberty plus four—left the water and approached. Her wet hair clung in dripping tangles. Streaks of mint-green scum rimmed her neck and chin. Sullen, dark eyes glared. She carried a wooden blade low in her right hand.
Toothpick called: “Back out, men; I detect a golden corpus luteum.”
Moon jumped quickly to his feet and backed up the canal, picking up Toothpick. Moses followed. She paused to watch Dan leave the water, shake and run after his humans. Then she silently slipped back into the water and crossed the canal below the surface. Moses felt a little sick when he realized that her underwater swimming was probably a defensive reflex against hunters’ arrows.
“That was a coweye,” explained Moon. “They are dangerous in the luteal phase. Toothpick watches their infrared skin patterns. Hers was luteal or male. That means she’s already ovulated and has no need to mate. She would probably be very friendly in a couple of weeks as her follicles grow tense. Her skin temperature patterns read female then, and she looks for a mate. All the right capillary beds are perfused with blood. They warm up and transform her IR pattern—very female.”
Moses thought Moon was beginning to sound like Simple Willie. Had they met? Moon thought not. The big Coweye Sump lake was way over in Apple-Red Country—two thousand miles to the east. If Willie had memories of that place, Moon could not have met him before.
Hunter Control followed Val’s cautious approach to the renegade Harvester. Thick vines covered most of the meck. Val took his tool kit and crawled up on the chassis. His helmet and thick, stiff closed-environment suit hindered his motion.
“Can you get the dust cover up?” asked fat Walter over the wristcom.
Val struggled with the foliage. “There it is. The indicators are all gray. It is still on stand-by. I’ll unplug the main motor cable for safety. There we are.”
The Huntercraft hovered overhead and lowered the heavy-duty cable. Val attached it to the base of the Harvester’s brain.
“Wake him up.”
The Huntercraft gave Harvester a jolt. Indicators glowed.
“Why do you call?” asked the meck.
“I’ve come to take you back to your garage.”
“No.”
“You are paralyzed. Your power cell is empty. Either you come back under your own power, or I’ll use the remote.”
The big machine struggled with its small cranial motor fibers—rolling optics and flexing lingual membranes. Below the neck—nothing moved.
“If you take me back under remote you could damage my circuits.”
“True.”
“Recharge my power cell. I’ll come back under my own power.”
Val climbed down after reattaching the main motor cable. “Give him a small charge—about a tenth of a closson.”
The Huntercraft trickled the charge down the cable.