“We agree, then,” he said. “It pains me, Miss Ariel Welsh, but your proposal cannot be accepted. In our short acquaintance, I have come to admire and respect you -your forthrightness and courage and unfailing good humor. May all those attributes stand you in good stead as you take this painful decision back to your people.”
He was finished as the leader of the Cerebrons unless he could get this decision reversed in caucus-and in a caucus truncated to nine members with the nine votes of Axonius weighing in against him.
Chapter 11. S.O.S.
Immediately after the meeting, Ariel and Jacob returned to the apartment. Jacob started toward his storage niche, but Ariel forestalled him.
“Fix a large garden salad, Jacob,” she said, “with thousand island and a couple of glasses of milk. Set the table for two. And then join me. It won't hurt you to. act human for a change, like you're enjoying my company. That's an order.”
“That is an order not difficult to comply with,” Jacob said.
“Do you like thousand island dressing?” Ariel asked.
“Whatever pleases you, Miss Ariel. Lacking true taste buds, I really have no preference.”
“What a shame. You're missing half the pleasure of life.”
“Experiencing the pleasure of taste has never been my privilege. But of course,” he added swiftly, so as to preclude generating displeasure for Ariel, “neither have I missed it.”
“Did you have any reaction to the meeting this morning, then? Pleasure, displeasure?”
“My positronic potentials registered a sharp disturbance when it was apparent that the aliens were not going to endorse your proposal. I was reacting, however, not to a subjective or objective analysis, but to the knowledge that you were going to be intensely disappointed and in a quandary as to how to proceed.”
“You have certainly analyzed my reaction correctly. Quandary is the operative word. I've held off calling Derec until now because I wanted to be able to tell him what he had to do rather than have him tell me what I had to do.”
Jacob keyed the food processor and received a head of lettuce, two tomatoes, a cucumber, a handful of mushrooms, a block of cheddar cheese, a block of ham, a package of bacon bits, and a package of croutons. Derec had done a great deal to improve food processor technology while he was on Robot City.
“I really had a darn good chance of being in the driver's seat,” Ariel continued. “When that farm inspiration came to me, I really thought it was the answer. I really thought old Synapo would buy it.”
She didn't say anything more then. The vision of green Auroran truck farms and golden wheat fields had come to mind. She could see the robots moving down the green, weedless rows, harvesting lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, the very things Jacob was taking from the food processor.
Those same farms would flourish equally well right here on Oyster World. This world could be the breadbasket for this part of the developing galaxy. And without interfering with the aliens at all. There would be no need for expensive and energy-wasting food processors in this part of the galaxy if all one wanted was a simple green garden salad.
She had failed to create the same image in Synapo's mind. But how could she have succeeded? How was he to understand something that was as alien to him as his government was to her? She had been expecting too much.
Yet was his government so strange? She herself had seen many instances on Aurora-city governments with their bureaus and committees and councils-which Petero's Principle fit perfectly: all positions filled with incompetents, almost without exception.
“I guess it's not so strange that the aliens didn't buy my proposal,” she said. “They are aliens and can't possibly think like we do. Yet their government makes sense, odd sense, mind you, as you might expect coming from aliens. Nothing a bunch of humans would ever come up with. It makes too much sense.
“And I guess it's just wishful thinking to expect Synapo to change his mind. So when you think about it, I guess I'm not really in a quandary, am I, Jacob?”
“So it would appear, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied.
In a process that was too fast for the human eye to follow, he had torn the lettuce into bits, sliced the tomatoes, and had diced everything else except the bacon bits and croutons. Now he was tossing, in a large bowl, everything but the ham, cheese, bacon bits, and croutons.
“They'll close the dome tomorrow,” Ariel said, “and we'll be camping out.”
“That seems to be the only logical deduction.”
“So I've got to call Derec for help, right?”
“Quite so,” Jacob agreed.
“How do I do that?”
“I do not have personal knowledge of that function. I will check with Wohler-9 using the comlink.”
At the same time, he keyed the food processor for milk and thousand island dressing.
Ariel said nothing, and then, while he set the table, Jacob reported from the comlink.
“Avernus-8 supervises Mr. Avery's special monitor link.”
“Tie in to him,” Ariel said.
“I now have Avernus-8,” Jacob said.
“Tell him to transmit the following message to Derec.”
Ariel hesitated, thinking, while Jacob finished putting everything on the table. He had topped two bowls of salad with diced ham and cheese, ladled out a generous dollop of thousand island dressing onto each, and then sprinkled on the bacon bits and croutons.
Then she said, “No. Ask him first what's special about Derec's link, how does it work?”
She sat down at the table and motioned for Jacob to do likewise, and they both began to eat.
“Avernus-8 says that the connection with Derec's internal monitor is not made over hyperwave,” Jacob said. “It is a special system Dr. Avery developed. The equipment is mounted on the mobile platform supporting the computer mainframe and on the mainframe's backup platform, but is accessible by all seven supervisor robots.”
“And who has detailed technical knowledge of the system?” Ariel asked. “User's manual, wiring diagrams, maintenance manual?”
“Avernus-8 and the technician on each of the two computer platforms.”
“I'll bet a pewter button that Derec's special link does use hyperwave, but unlike it's ever been used before. It's not common, ordinary discrete modulation.
“Dr. Avery has beat us to it, dam it. He's already invented the aliens' continuous modulation.
“Jacob, hook Keymo into your comlink connection, and tell Avernus to describe Derec's monitor system to him. See if the two of them don't agree that it's continuous modulation of hyperwave as Keymo would define it. “
That connection and analysis took a little longer than quick, but still consumed less than two minutes.
“Avernus-8 replies in the affirmative,” Jacob said. “To communicate with all robot cities, Master Derec's internal monitor metabolically manipulates hyperwave in a manner similar to what Keymo describes as continuous modulation.”
“Bingo,” Ariel said. “Derec does it and doesn't even know how he does it. And I don't need to know anything about engineering to do engineering. Tell Avernus to ring up Derec and give him this message:
“CRISIS HERE ON OYSTER WORLD. YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY REPROGRAM AVERY ROBOTS. I ALSO HAVE A BIT OF IMPORTANT ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY TO TEACH YOU, DUM-DUM. IN FACT, YOUR OWN INTERNAL ENGINEERING, SO COME AT ONCE.
“Sign it: LOVE, ARIEL, and ask for confirmation.”
For ten minutes Jacob said nothing while Ariel forked salad into her mouth and mooned over Derec. With that wild imagination one has when extrapolating hope, she visualized Synapo meeting with her before Derec arrived, telling her the aliens had changed their minds and would accept her proposal. She would then be the aliens' kind of Leader.