IT WAS LIKE BEING IN A TOMB, CASPAR LANG THOUGHT TO HIMSELF, or an ice cave inside a glacier that was too deep for light to penetrate.
With more room available on Giraud’s diplomatic delegation now that Zambendorf and his team had been restricted to the ship, and with activities in and around Genoa becoming more organized, Lang had taken the opportunity to come down to the surface and involve himself more directly in the proceedings. He had seen the incredible tangles of cluttered machinery and derelict structures that surrounded the base and stretched away beyond the searchlight beams playing from the sentry posts around the perimeter; the ghostly shapes of the city’s peculiar, cultivated houses and larger buildings of ice along the route to Arthur’s residence—which had been named Camelot, of course; and the strange, clothed, bipedal robots and other machines that gathered to watch from the shadows at the fringes of the vehicles’ headlamp beams. Now he was sitting awkwardly in a large ice chamber inside Camelot, which even had a sizeable table, although not a round one. Looking like gigantic upright insects in the weak circle of light from the two low-power lamps that the NASO engineers had installed, Arthur and several other Taloids were sitting opposite, while to the sides Giraud, Seltzman, and the remaining Terrans looked just as eerie and grotesque in their jointed, smooth-surfaced, machinelike garb. Most of the furnishings were of odd, Taloid pseudovegetable shapes, and the walls, indistinct and shadowy in the background, were covered by thick woven-wire hangings and weird designs worked in plastic and metal. The talks had been going on for some hours.
“Tell them they’ve got it wrong, Konrad,” Giraud’s voice said in Lang’s helmet, coming through on local frequency. “We are not planning to exploit their people or set the value of their labor too cheaply. Anyone who desires economic prosperity has to work for it, just as we had to work for it back on Earth. There aren’t any free rides.”
Seltzman nipped a switch to direct his words into another audio channel, which was wire-connected through to the electronics box on the table in front of him. “Sorry,” he said. “You still misunderstand. Earthmen do not wish to exploit Taloid labor. Titan must work for prosperity, just as Earth had to work for prosperity.”
A couple of seconds went by while the control microprocessor inside the box conferred with a larger computer located in the communications center at Genoa Base One. Then the display on the screen in front of Seltzman changed to read:
NO MATCH FOR “EXPLOIT TALOID LABOR.” EQUIVALENT PHRASE?
Seltzman thought for a second. “Benefit from Taloid work that is not paid for,” he said.
“PROSPERITY = WEALTH in this context?” the machine inquired.
“Wealth for all Taloids,” Seltzman replied.
The display changed:
SORRY. YOU STILL MISUNDERSTAND. EARTHMEN DO NOT WISH TO BENEFIT FROM TALOID WORK THAT IS NOT PAID FOR. TITAN MUST WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS JUST AS EARTH HAD TO WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS.
Seltzman sighed. “Delete last word. Insert Earthmen.” The machine complied. “Okay,” he pronounced.
The “transmogrifier” that Dave Crookes, Leon Keyhoe, and some of the other signals engineers and pattern-recognition specialists had assembled and were still improving did not so much translate languages as enable the two parties in a dialogue—whose native languages were not only mutually unintelligible but also completely inaudible—to tell the machine, in effect, to note what was said and remember its meaning. It did this by matching recognizable sequences of human voice patterns against a collection of Taloid pulse-code profiles stored in a computerized library that was continually being enlarged. Upon finding a Taloid equivalent to an identified piece of speech input, it synthesized the corresponding ultrasonic Taloid pulse-stream, thus performing both the band-shift and time-compression needed to transfer information from one domain of intelligibility to the other. Also it performed the complete inverse process. The matches were determined not by sophisticated rules of grammar or elaborate programing, but simply by mutual agreement through trial and error between the parties involved. The system was thus very much an evolutionary one, and had developed from extremely crude beginnings.
“Bad-sad,” the talking vegetable said. “Lumians no want good from buzz-buzz clug-zzzzzipp robeing slave for free. Bakka-bakka Robia workum hard get plenty finegood thing for robeings wheeee chirrrp like Lumia workum hard get plenty finegood thing for chikka-walla-chug-chug-chog Lumians.”
Thirg frowned as he concentrated. “Methinks they have misunderstood,” he said. “They believe that we fear they have come here to enslave us.”
“It seems their vegetable exaggerates our concern,” Kleippur commented. “My objective is not that they would make us slaves, for clearly it is within their power to have accomplished that end already if such was their desire, but their implication that our people’s lives are my property to sell or barter as I would, instead of their own to direct as they choose freely.”
“What are these ‘good things’ which they would have us work to acquire in our world as they have in theirs?” Lofbayel asked.
“Presumably the weapons and other devices of destruction which they have emphasized at such great expenditure of time and zealous-ness,” Dornvald replied.
Kleippur shook his head. “The protection of Carthogia is important to me, ‘tis true, but these merchants of havoc would credit my mind with no aspiration higher than an obsession for conquest and a hunger to possess the whole of Robia. Indeed these are Lumians of a disturbingly different breed from the Wearer and his companions.” He looked at Thirg. “Advise the Lumians that the sharing of their lifemaking arts would be of far greater value to us, for with such knowledge we could divide our industriousness among protecting our people, providing for them, and educating them, in proportions of our own deciding. If the Lumians wish to enlist our help in taming the forests to expand their lifemaking abilities further, are we not justified in asking their help in turn to expand our comprehension of that which they would have us tame?”
Thirg reached out and touched the button that opened the talking vegetable’s ears. The small light that showed when the vegetable was listening came on. “Knowledge of the lifemaking arts of the Lumians would be more valuable than quantities of weapons beyond those needed to ensure Carthogia’s protection,” he said. “If the Lumians wish robeings to help them tame the forests, robeings wish Lumians to help them comprehend the forests.”
The transmogrifier turned the pulse-stream into numbers and flashed them to the base computer, which broke the numbers into groups and compared them to stored samples at the rate of a million per second. Where possible alternative matches were indicated, a decision-tree operating on selected, weighted attributes kept track of the best-fit score. An instant later the computer transmitted to the transmogrifier.
“Unclear buzz-buzz gubba-gubba what-mean ‘lifemaking arts,’ “ the vegetable squawked. “Want-say wheeeephooomalteraa.twe.”
Thirg thought for a while, but couldn’t bring one to mind. “Obtain new word,” he said. The vegetable had learned that this was his instruction for it to get the Lumians’ own term for something from the Lumians. Inside the transmogrifier’s control processor, the pulse-sequence triggered a branch to a library-update routine.
EQUIVALENT ENGLISH WORD-FORM BEING REQUESTED, the screen before Seltzman reported.
“Okay,” Seltzman acknowledged.
“Pray describe,” the vegetable invited Thirg.
“Knowledge, art, skill, power,” Thirg told it. “Creating, inventing—making of machines. Comprehension of how machines operate. Understanding origin of first machine. How could a first machine be possible?”
The screen responded:
FUNCTION SUBJECT ADDITIONAL DATA
Knowledge Machines First Machine
Ingenuity Operation/Operating—source of?
Expertise Principles? Machine origins?
Understanding (Domination?) Design/Manufacture Impossible?
Seltzman studied the display for a few seconds and replied, “Science and technology.” He wasn’t going to go into the metaphysics of the second part, he decided.
“Buzz-wheee Lumian word wowumpokkapokka get-good,” the vegetable advised Thirg. “Need simplify other better whoosh wow.”
Thirg thought back to what he had said, and replied, “Knowledge of lifemaking skills is worth more to Carthogians than too many weapons is worth.”
“Now try maybe-read buzz-buzz bakka-bakka speak,” the vegetable advised.
Seltzman read on the screen:
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY KNOW-HOW BETTER DEAL FOR GENOESE THAN WEAPONS TOO MANY/TOO MUCH/OVERKILL(?). IF TERRANS WANT TALOID AID FOR MANAGE MACHINE COMPLEX, THEN TALOIDS WANT TERRAN AID FOR KNOW-HOW MACHINE COMPLEX.
“We’re back to the same stalemate,” Lang said. “I don’t think we’re going to get much further for now. At least the translations are starting to make more sense, so it’s not as if we had nothing to show for it. I vote we call it a day.”
“Me too,” another voice said on the circuit. “Let’s get back to base and out of these things. I’m about ready for dinner.”
Giraud sighed. “Okay, we’ll wrap the session up there,” he agreed. “Tell them we understand their position, but it involves a lot of complications that we’ll have to go away and think about. And they have a lot of things to think over too—without adequate defense there won’t be any Genoa, so they have to get their priorities right. Finish up with the usual thanks and courtesies.”
When the laborious exchange was completed and the Taloids had added their closing respects, everyone rose and exchanged hand-touch-ings in the manner that had been adopted as combining aspects of both Terran and Taloid forms of customary goodwill salutation. As the party left, technicians collected the electronics equipment and switched off the lamps until the next session, and the French paratroopers who had been stationed outside the conference room formed up with an honorary complement of Arthur’s guards to escort the Terrans and their Taloid hosts back to the vehicles. After a final round of parting formalities the Terrans departed for their base.
“The only way to exert pressure on the population as a whole is through its leaders,” Giraud said, gratefully free of his helmet inside the cabin of the personnel carrier as the party drove back through the outskirts of Genoa. “But how do you do it when the leader thinks he can step into the twenty-first century overnight and become civilized instantly? I mean, their culture is still barbaric—centuries away, at least, from being able to grasp technology. But how can you make them understand that and persuade them they have to be patient without jeopardizing everything you stand to gain? It’s a problem, Caspar.”
“It’s all a result of delusions of grandeur that they developed through talking to Zambendorf and his crazies,” Caspar Lang said sourly. “We should never have let him near them at all.”
“I agree, but it can’t be undone,” Giraud replied. “At least he’s out of it all now. I hope you’re keeping him busy until we need him—enough to prevent his getting into any more mischief.”
“All taken care of,” Lang said. “Osmond Periera and that wacky Canadian psychologist have got him tied up full-time. It’s a wonder he gets a minute to eat and sleep.”
“There’s no chance of his interfering in our business with Arthur, then?” Giraud asked, just to be sure.
“No chance. Even if he had the time, how could he do anything? If he found a way of getting down from the ship, he’d never be let through the base.”
“Well I’m glad to hear that, at least, Caspar,” Giraud said. “The situation’s difficult enough as it is.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lang said confidently.
At Kleippur’s residence, Kleippur and the others returned to the Council Chamber and took from its place of concealment inside a cabinet the seeing vegetable that the Wearer had left as a gift before returning to the large dragon beyond the sky. Dornvald relit the violet Lumian lantern that enabled the vegetable to see, and Thirg pressed the button that would open another eye within the dragon. All in the room waited, their eyes fixed expectantly on the magic window.
In a cabin up in the Orion, Osmond Periera and Malcom Wade sat surrounded by notes and papers, concentrating intently on the sentences appearing on the computer screen in front of them and making occasional responses via keyboard. The screen was showing the attempts of Zambendorf, who was elsewhere in a sealed room with no means of communication to the outside apart from a nonswitchable, hard-wired terminal, to divine the contents of closed envelopes selected blind by Periera, guess random sequences of numbers and ESP cards, and describe drawings made on the spur of the moment by both the testers. The use of only a narrow set of predefined mnemonic codes to communicate, would, Periera and Wade had agreed, effectively eliminate the possibility of their giving hints and clues unwittingly.
Actually it made no difference because Joe Fellburg had bugged their cabin, which they hadn’t thought to check, and they both talked too much. They also hadn’t thought to check whether the sealed room had been unsealed and occupied by someone pretending to be Zambendorf...such as Thelma and Clarissa taking turns to operate the terminal while the other stayed around for company. Any question of cheating was, after all, unthinkable; why would Zambendorf need to cheat if he was genuine?
Although progress had been painfully slow, the results that Periera and Wade had been getting were tantalizingly encouraging—enough, in fact, to have kept them shut away for the best part of several days. But that, of course, was the whole idea.
In the team’s day suite, Zambendorf was pacing restlessly back and forth while Otto Abaquaan and Joe Fellburg pored over the latest Terran-Taloid transcripts from the duplicate transmogrifier concealed in Arthur’s meeting room. The device Zambendorf had donated to the Taloids before returning to the Orion was a joint effort—constructed by Joe Fellburg with the aid of assembly diagrams and programs donated by Leon Keyhoe, parts supplied by Dave Crookes, and a terminal assembly stolen by Abaquaan from the Orion’s electronics stores. It not only provided printouts of the screens that had been presented to Giraud’s linguists, but also a complete audio record of the comments exchanged between the Terran politicians by radio.
“The main problem with today’s high-technology society is that we allow politicians to run it instead of people equipped with the wherewithal to understand it,” Zambendorf muttered irritably. “Their mentalities are still in the nineteenth century. How can they hope to manage complex economies when they’re not competent to run a yard-sale. What can they do that requires even a smattering of knowledge or intellect?”
Drew West shrugged from a corner. “People let them get away with it,” he said. “If people are gonna elect turkeys to tell them what to do, then the people are gonna have problems. You can’t blame the turkeys. The Constitution never guaranteed smart government; it guaranteed representative government. And it works—that’s what we’ve got.”
“The trouble with the damn system is that it selects for the skills needed to get elected, and nothing else...which requires only an ability to fool a sufficient number of people for just long enough to get the votes,” Zambendorf grumbled. “Unfortunately the personal qualities necessary for attaining office are practically the opposite of those demanded by the office itself. A test that you can only pass by cheating can’t possibly select honest people, can it? You’d think that would be obvious enough, Drew, and yet—“
“Call coming in from Camelot now,” Abaquaan said over his shoulder as Fellburg reached out to the touchpanel of the communications terminal beside them.
“It’s Galileo, with Arthur and a few of the others,” Fellburg said. Zambendorf stopped speaking and moved forward to see, while behind him West stood and crossed the room.
Thirg had become accustomed to the sight of Lumians without their outer casings by now. How they stayed together at all and kept their shape was mystery enough, never mind how they managed to move around. Apparently they contained a second, “internal casing” of some kind, though how a casing could be inside that which it encased, Thirg had no idea. Perhaps it was like the strengthening bars that builders and other artisans fashioned into their organic creations. Dark-Headed-One was looking into the magic eye, with the Wearer and Smooth-Faced-One visible a short distance behind. After a short exchange of greetings, Thirg began the tedious process of communicating the questions and concerns that the latest meeting with the Merchant-Lumians had prompted.
Zambendorf’s mood became somber while he listened to Abaquaan’s commentary as the message slowly emerged. “They did as we told them and didn’t make any concessions,” Abaquaan announced. “It’s looking very much the way we figured—Giraud and his people are trying to talk them into getting lots of organized production going down there for Earth’s benefit. They’re trying to set up a colony, Karl. GSEC and the government must be in on it too. Galileo says Arthur’s asking for a confirmation that he’s doing the right thing and that we’ll make sure everything turns out okay.”
“They’re saying they still think we’re straight, but I guess they need reassuring,” Fellburg said.
Zambendorf stared at the outlandish metal faces peering back at him from inside an ice vault thousands of miles away. Was it just his imagination, or could he read the trust and the pleading not to be let down that was written across those strange, immobile countenances? For some reason his determination not to let them down was stronger than had ever been evoked by people. He sensed too that the others in the team felt the same way. Though none of them had mentioned it directly because there was no need to, they all sensed it. Whatever it was that had brought such an odd assortment of individuals together had responded as a common chord in all of them.
“All I can say for now is to tell them to have faith and believe in us,” Zambendorf said. “The time is not ripe yet for us to do anything.” Exactly what he could do, he had no idea; for once in his life he was at a loss to come up with anything more constructive.
Fellburg talked to the terminal and juggled with the screen for a while. “Galileo thinks you sound too much like a priest,” Abaquaan told Zambendorf.
Zambendorf smiled faintly. If the Taloids could crack jokes, they’d be okay. “Tell them they are not second-class citizens, Joe,” he said. “They should be proud of what they are, believe in themselves, and trade with Terrans only as equal partners.”
“Galileo’s asking who’s kidding who,” Fellburg said, looking at the screen. “They want to know how they’re supposed to come across as the equals of guys who can work miracles.”
“We are not gods. They must have confidence that they can learn,” Zambendorf told him.
“We can teach them to work miracles too?” Fellburg interpreted as the screen delivered the reply.
“There isn’t any such thing as a miracle,” Zambendorf said. “When you know how to work a miracle, it ceases to be one. Miracles exist only in the minds of those who believe in them.”
“Galileo wants to know how the hell you know.”
“Oh,” Zambendorf said. “You can assure him that I’m an expert on miracles.”