VI
There are times when being a machine intelligence is of great value. This was one of them. While the deadly barrels crept around to point at us we had plenty of time to analyze the problem, consider alternatives and—oh, in as many as 210 or 225 milliseconds, perhaps even a few more—decide what to do about it.
It wasn't just the two of us discussing the matter. The Kugel showed himself, in his crazy-quilt melange of features, almost at once—just about the time Harry had yelped, "Get us the hell away from here!"
Whether the Kugel heard what Harry said or not I don't know. He certainly didn't respond to it. What he said, almost shaking with some emotion I could not recognize, was, "It is an obscenity! This place was thoroughly sterilized! We are greatly displeased that it is populated once more!"
I did a double take, struck by the queerness of the fact that that travesty of a person was actually displaying feelings. Then enlightenment dawned.
"This is it, isn't it?" I cried. "This is why you wanted to come here, because somehow or other you found out there was someone alive on the planet?"
I thought for a moment he was actually going to answer that, because there was a perceptible hesitation before the image of the Kugels slowly broke up into a shimmer of dots of light and was gone. That didn't matter. I knew I was right, and so did Harry.
It worried him, too. "What's he talking about, Markie?" he demanded. "You don't think he's planning to do some more sterilizing on those guys, do you?"
"I hope not," I said. "Maybe he can't. When the Kugels were killing everybody off, it took the whole bunch of them, not just a little clump like we've got here."
Harry pondered over that. "So how did they do it, when they were doing it?"
Well, now, that was a good question. It might even have been the question we'd been sent here to answer. "Let's ask," I said, and said to the air, "Kugel? Can you tell us how your people sterilized this planet?"
I didn't think he was going to answer at first. Then slowly the figure coalesced. "We were displeased by chemical creatures which seemed to show intelligent behavior, so we took action," he said.
"Right, Kugel," I said, trying to be patient. "What was that action, exactly?"
"We caused their chemical functions to terminate," he said. As though that meant anything. "We deactivated every matter-based creature that was larger than—" he hesitated—"your pedal extremity."
"And how did you do that, exactly?" Harry put in.
Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe the Kugels would have answered the question if I had been the one to ask it. I hadn't, though. He didn't disappear, he just froze. By which I mean froze, without any motion at all.
Harry tried waving a hand in front of the creature's face, without response. "Shit," he said in disgust. "They're just goddam rude, don't you think?"
"I do think that, Harry," I said. "But perhaps we should consider our present situation." Because nearly a hundred of our milliseconds had gone by, and those ugly weapon snouts were getting closer and closer to our line of fire.
Recalled to the realities of the case, Harry swallowed. "Maybe we should go," he said nervously.
"Maybe," I agreed, "but first I want to see what there is here." What I was looking for was the human beings that occupied the castle. I was using infrared to pick up body heat, if any....
And then, for a moment, I thought I had found them. In a little meadow next to the pond some scruffy people were disconsolately feeding from a clump of berry bushes.
I said "people." That's an exaggeration. They were biped, yes. Maybe they were even primate. But people they were not. At magnification they turned out to be hairier and nakeder and a lot more stupid-looking than any organic human in my experience had ever been. Whatever they were, they were definitely not the builders of this castle.
Harry looked at the scene; looked at me, looked at the Kugel. He got no clue from the Kugel, who stood still in a sense never applicable to any organic being: still was still for the Kugels simulation, with no motion at all of any kind. Harry retreated to me. "Maybe we should get closer," he volunteered.
I pointed out the flaw in his argument. "They'll blow us up."
"Oh," he said, squinting down at the weapons that still were tracking toward us. He then had an alternate suggestion. "Let's get the hell out of here, okay?"
I wasn't quite ready to do that, especially since we had a number of milliseconds before the weapons' tracking could complete. Harry and I debated a variety of possibilities. For example, ducking back into stellar orbit and calling home for guidance. Or landing somewhere out of sight of the castle and, somehow, sneaking up on it on the surface. Or even calling the whole thing off and heading back to the Wheel.
Actually, though, it was Kugel who made the best suggestion. He had been frozen silent and motionless while Harry and I talked, but then the components of face, limb and body rearranged themselves in slightly different configurations. "You are aware," he said in that hollow, unpleasant voice, "that the organics are mostly underground?"
"Underground?" I said, and he shifted position to gaze into my eyes with his own empty ones.
"In tunnels," he said. "Left by the Heechee, perhaps." Well, I hadn't been aware of that, but as soon as he said it it sounded plausible. I didn't comment, though, and so then he asked a question.
"Are these technologies familiar to you?" he asked. "That is, are they largely electromagnetic in nature?"
I assumed he was talking about the weapons, since that was all the technology I could see. "Pretty much, I guess. Why do you ask?"
"We have two alternate proposals for your consideration. Number One: If you wish we will volatilize these weapons, thus rendering them harmless."
I blinked at him. "Volatilize? How would you do that?"
"It would merely require opening a femtowidth slit in our containment for a femtosecond period of time, thus directing some of our components at the weapons. We calculate the drain on our mass would be negligible? no more than some seventeenths-to-the-eleventh power of our constituents. Of course," it added, "it would be necessary to devote some of the beam to opening a channel through the wall of the ship itself, with consequent cosmetic damage and loss of volatiles."
I had had no idea the Kugel could do anything of the sort. Neither had Harry, whose jaw had dropped. "Hell with the volatiles!' he began, but I had already made a decision on that.
"No, Kugel. We don't want to do them any physical damage unless we have to. There are organics down there—" knowing perfectly well that he wouldn't see that as an objection to the plan, in fact more likely the opposite. But I hoped he would take my veto as binding, and he did.
"Number Two: Since the nature of your own technology is electromagnetic as well, might this structure's systems not be compatible enough for you to penetrate them?"
He seemed to think that that was all he needed to say. It wasn't. "So what should we do?" I asked.
His odd assemblage of features didn't really deserve to be called a face, but it managed to express a little disappointment at my slowness. "First, pour yourselves into a thin data store. Second, transmit yourselves to their systems. Third, complete your reconnaissance. Fourth, return here for consideration of next step."
"Oh," said Harry, bobbing his head. "Hey, Markie, that might work, right? Worth a try, don't you think?"
"What I think," I said, glancing down at the surface scan, "is that that first weapons barrel is about one arc-second from alignment on us, and the other one is close behind. What's going to happen to our ship while we're fooling around down there?"