“Then I shall so tabulate it in a catalog of emotions which I shall now begin to prepare, hoping that by defining them I can come to know and recognize them as the first step in learning to control them. “
“A worthy project which could quite likely drive 'u nuts,” Wolruf said.
“Nuts?”
“Forget it. It iss not an emotion. But I'll tell 'u an emotion I am feeling: joy. It's been a year or more since I've seen Ariel and felt the simple joy of being with 'errr.”
With that Wolruf dashed down the ramp, for the lorry had pulled up beside the pile of Derec's luggage and equipment.
Ariel stepped down from the near side of the lorry as Wolruf extended herself to her full height and wrapped her arms around Ariel.
Neither said anything, but both had tears in their eyes as they separated and stood looking at one another.
SilverSide put tears down as a possible external sign of emotion, unintentionally beginning a catalog of associated symptoms that later-as her knowledge increased-she would identify by the term body language.
“'u're a blessed experience after a dreary period,” Wolruf said.
“And you're a sight for sore eyes,” said Ariel. “Where's Derec?”
“We had to leave 'im behind on the wolf planet,” Wolruf said.
The look of consternation that immediately came to Ariel's face also went into SilverSide's catalog, but she could only tag it with the word lie that she knew to be not an emotion, but rather a lack of truth-telling by Wolruf. Still, she had nothing else to tag it with for the time being.
And then Ariel's look changed to joy as Derec appeared on the ramp beside SilverSide.
“You scamp,” Ariel said, grinning at Wolruf.
Wolruf gargled phlegm, a sound symptom SilverSide had long since associated with Wolruf and her strange affinity for what Derec called humor.
Ariel and Derec met in the middle of the ramp and hugged one another and pressed lips.
The look of joy had to be catalogued adjacent to the emotion of joy, for Wolruf had already defined what it was they were feeling when they met once again after so long a time. The same must be true of Ariel. But joy still had no personal connection with SilverSide, and so was only a word and a symptom in a file, and incomplete without SilverSide's own positronic potential pattern.
Worry she now understood. Joy she did not.
And yet-it suddenly came to her-she, too, had met beings she was very close to after a period of separation, as she had when Derec, Wolruf, Mandelbrot, and she had gone on the outing in the forest, and she had gone looking for LifeCrier and the rest of the pack and had brought them back to meet Wolruf.
Seeing LifeCrier after all that time had disturbed her, and it was a disturbance that she welcomed and would seek to experience again. Her memory brought forth that old positronic potential pattern, and she knew then that she could put it in her catalog alongside the word and the body language for the emotion joy.
But those were minor things in the confusion of her thinking. It was the inexplicable nature of the biological sexes-and not in their function of reproduction-that was disturbing her most acutely that afternoon. And to a lesser extent, she was still disturbed by a lingering doubt as to who was the more intelligent, and so, the more human-Derec or Wolruf.
Small though it was, doubt still remained, but only because of the importance of the judgment that could affect the life and death of the two if she were required to choose between them in a life-threatening situation.
Did she consider herself to be more male than female because Derec had proved more intelligent in that first basic contest, the one that pitted the female KeenEye against the male Derec? Did she lean toward the male gender for that reason? After that contest she had certainly been more comfortable under the Derec imprint. He had opened a whole other world to her, he and his library files.
So that confusion with the nature of the biological sexes, and with her discomfort under a female imprint, disturbed her-and yes, that disturbance was the emotion Wolruf had called worry. She was worrying about her imprint on Wolruf because she was disturbed by a desire to return to the Derec imprint, the male form- uncomfortableWolruf would have described it-so she put that emotion down in her catalog, together with its positronic potential pattern.
She was becoming more and more convinced that she should go back to the Derec imprint strictly from the standpoint of comfort. That was a notion she catalogued as a strong future possibility, but for now she would retain the Wolruf imprint for whatever help that femininity would provide in her analysis of Ariel and the strange effect she had on Derec.
SilverSide rose and walked through the hatch, following Ariel and Derec who had just walked up the ramp and into the ship.
Chapter 16. The Agaobiologist
“So what's the crisis here?” Derec asked. “And that screwy message of yours, that bit about my internal engineering'! What's that all about?”
They were standing in the control room of the Xerborodezees, where they had gone to get away from the others.
SilverSide walked in, sat down in one of the deep-cushioned passenger seats behind the pilot's upholstered bucket, and listened to Ariel and Derec.
“Some engineering I figured out, quite without your help,” Ariel said. “In fact I've brought this planet pretty much under control without your wisdom and guidance. All I need from you now is your muscle, that part between your ears.”
“You didn't answer my question.”
“Your internal monitor link with the robot cities: I'll bet you didn't know that that modulates hyperwave.”
“Au contraire,my dear,” Derec said. “That is a form of communication that depends on a special understanding of spacetime physics developed by my ever-so-eccentric father, the good Dr. Avery.”
“And au contraire right back at you, smarty. That is what the aliens on this planet, the Ceremyons, refer to as continuous modulation of hyperwave. Ask Avernus and Keymo, and Jacob, too. He even understands it. It's the communication version of Key teleportation, just like conventional discrete modulation of hyperwave is the communication version of hyperjump technology. I'll bet you didn't even recognize that!”
They had been together again for all of ten minutes, and already they were going at it hammer and tongs. Is this what love is all about? Derec asked himself.
“I'll have to think about that,” he said. Was it possible she was right? He changed the subject.
“Now what about the crisis? The reason for me being here.”
“There is no crisis. Except I had to get you here promptly to avoid one.”
She told him then how the robot city had disturbed the weather, how the Myostrians had capped and controlled the disturbance with the dome, how they were ready to close it completely until she came up with her plan of a planetwide farm, abandoning the idea of a planetwide city.
“So you see,” she concluded, “your task is straightforward and reasonably simple: just reprogram the Averies into farmers.”
“I presume that this is another example of your style of engineering?” Derec said.
“Not bad, huh? Social engineering, Derec. Something you wouldn't understand.”
“There is just one minor problem.”
He paused. Ariel said, “And that is?”
“In order to program the Averies to pursue a particular technology, one must know something about that technology. I know all about cities. I don't know the first thing about farms, and I suspect you don't either.”
Wolruf came into the compartment in time to hear Derec's last sentence. She took the passenger seat next to SilverSide.
Ariel looked stunned. That seems to be a piece of engineering she doesn't have covered, Derec thought. Perhaps there's more to engineering than meets her eye.