The little robot made one more try at generating a conclusion from its data and then gave up. Icannot. Stand by for download of raw data.
Basalom cleared several of his unused memory banks, redirected his I/0 to fast storage, and opened his multiplex comm channel. Ready. A nanosecond later, a torrent of raw data flooded into Basalom’s mind. As fast as he could, he sorted, collated, and organized the data. Pushing it through his pattern-recognition algorithm, he tried to isolate and identify the most important points.
One by one, the points swam into clear focus. They quickly formed a structure, a simple pattern that teased comparative memories out of his long-term data storage.
Oh no.His stress register started clicking like a geiger counter, and the pattern took on an ever-more-familiar shape. It can’t be. His First Law sense began to itch like mad as the Second Law potential tried to find a route to ground. One word got out through the First Law filter: “Madam?”
Dr. Anastasi paused in the tube and looked over her shoulder at Basalom. “Yes?”
Power flowed through Basalom’ s cognitive circuits like strong wine. Thoughts spun and danced; potentials crashed and exploded like thunderclouds on a hot summer night.
“Madam, there-” The First Law choked him off again.
A concerned look crossed Dr. Anastasi’s face. “Well?”
In Basalom’s mind, the First and Second Law collided head on, drew apart, and collided again. Neither was the clear winner; he sought desperately to reroute data to his speech centers.
“Ma-”
Dr. Anastasi grew impatient. “Come on, Basalom. Spit it out. ”
His limbs froze; his major joints locked up. He blinked sixty-four times in rapid succession, and then through sheer force of will dumped his speech buffer through his voice synthesizer.
“ There is a Robot City on this planet. ”
Chapter 7. Maverick
The spur of rock jutted straight out from the side of the mountain forming a natural balcony. Maverick sat on the edge of the spur, drinking in the clean pine smell of the forested valley below and watching the moons’ light glitter and dance on the river in the distance. Smallface was now near its zenith, and it cast a cool, white light with almost no shadow. Largeface, just barely above the horizon, was a dull orange globe the color and shape of a vingfruit with a bite taken out of it.
Somehow, the sight of the two moons together in the sky stirred something deep and primal in Maverick’s soul. As if the two were directly linked, his excitement grew as Largeface rose. He paced nervously around the rock spur. A half-dozen times he yelped sharply when he thought he heard something. His excitement only grew stronger when the sounds turned out to be false alarms.
Then the sound he’d been waiting for came wafting gently on the wind, and it was raw, beautiful, and absolutely unmistakable.
At first, it was very soft and distant. Arooo. Just one voice at first, lonely, plaintive, and far away. The sound sent chills up and down Maverick’s spine and set his hackles standing on end.
Then another voice joined in, a little closer. Arooooo! The first voice responded, and the forests and mountains threw back the echo of the ancient, wordless cry.
No, those weren’t echoes, those were yet more voices, joining in the chorus of a song that was as old as his race. Voices joined, and picked up, and repeated. AROOO! The call carried for miles across the hills and valleys. Not just miles; hundreds of miles, as the voices followed the rising moon west across the land. As it had on certain nights for thousands of years, the song chased the twin moons clear across the world, from the eastern shores to the western sea.
When he judged the time to be right, Maverick threw his head back, flattened his ears, and joined in. AROOOO! I am Maverick! I am here, my brothers! I join you! AROOOOOO!
Other intelligible words began rising out of the joyous, incoherent howl of BeastTongue. I am ChippedFang.
I am DoesNotFollow.
I am RaggedEar.
I am SmellsBad. I join you!
The Howl Network had just come on line.
The Howl Network reached from sea to sea, and from the land of AlwaysSnow to the Uncrossable Desert. It covered the land, but it was not terribly efficient. Maverick had plenty of time to think while listening to the threads of news that twisted through the air.
This time, though, he thought silently. How strange, lad. The pack-kin insult and despise the outcasts. If they catch you in their territory-and outnumber you by at least three to one-they’ll attack you, and even try to kill you.
Yet if it weren’t for the outcasts, not a one of them would ever know what was happening just fifty trots outside his pack’s territory.
Oops. A message that he found interesting echoed through the night. Maverick picked it up, repeated it, and added a few comments of his own. Then he went back to thinking.
Hmm. I add comments, and ChippedFang adds comments, and DoesNotFollow adds comments… Might be interesting sometime to get the originator and the final receiver of the message together, to see how much the message changes along the line.
More messages wafted through the damp spring air. Weather reports from out west; looked like heavy rain this year. Further accounts of renewed fighting between two feuding packs in the southeast; oh, those two had been fighting for years without resolution. A hunting report on the grazer migration in the north; it seemed the calves were fat and slow this year, and the sharpfangs few in number. Maverick dutifully picked up and repeated each message without comment, then went back to his first line of thought.
Yes, the pack-kin hate loners. They attack you; they warn their pups that they’ II turn out like you if they aren’t good. They call you pups o/the FirstBeast, and blame you/or everything that’s wrong with their cozy little world.
Maverick thought of the last pack he’d encountered, less than a week before. The freshly healed scar on his leg gave him another sharp twinge, but he smiled anyway, and for a moment lost himself in a memory of soft young fur and a certain long pink tongue.
Yes, the pack-kin hate you. But on warm spring evenings when the mood is in the air, their virgin daughters seekyou out.
And when their huntleaders are all dead or driven off by internal fighting, who do they ask to be their new leaders?
Maverick stood up on all fours a moment, yawned as wide as his jaw would allow, and indulged in a long stretch that ran from his haunches clear out to the toes of his forepaws. Then he treated himself to one more smile.
“Face it, kid. They’re just plain jealous. ”
Oops! A new message was coming through the night, and he’d almost missed it. Maverick quickly sat down, cocked his ears, and listened attentively to the voice-he thought it was RaggedEar-that relayed the story.
“-report from the eastern lakes country. The kin of PackHome are seeing GodBeings again.
“PackHome was the scene of last year’s so-called ‘Hill of Stars’ incident, in which an enormous, shining sanddigger’s nest reportedly appeared in the midst of isolated hunting territory.
“The sudden appearance of the Hill of Stars was accompanied by an invasion of ‘WalkingStones. ’ These creatures, which walked on their hind legs at all times and had no smell, killed several kin by throwing lightning from their fingertips.