~*~
The trailing members of the group were still in sight of the village when Tam appeared over a low hill ahead of them. Another humanoid android accompanied him.
“Master Trader Tam, it’s good to see you,” Ranex greeted him in all sincerity and with obvious relief.
“We were in the area when we heard you. It’s quite a large group you have.”
“Yeah, I guess we’re not exactly easy to miss, are we?”
“No, but it was my friend here who heard you first.”
Tam introduced his companion, who was shorter, stouter, and older in appearance, with long gray hair and a full, bushy beard. It was a common look for second-generation paternal nursery androids. This one currently went by the name of Grandpa Fables.
“So, where are you headed?” Tam asked.
Ranex told him. Tam, of course, already knew. MO-126 sent in his report within hours of the headman’s speech, and, based on this new data, the Mark Seven PM reconsidered its decision.
“What a coincidence,” Tam said to the headman. “There is a spot I know of not much more than two week’s travel from here that would make a perfect place for a new settlement. I can guide you there, if you wish.”
“That would be most appreciated, Master Trader.”
“It’s no trouble at all.”
“It’s good that the PM kept you in the village,” Tam sent to his canine partner. “Who would have thought the primitives would risk an unsupervised large migration attempt. That report you filed gave us enough warning to mitigate the problem.”
“They can be surprising,” MO-126 said.
“That they can,” said the nursery android who accompanied Tam. “It’s one of the things I like about them.”
“You like them being unpredictable?” Tam said.
“Of course. There’s never a dull moment with humans. They are such individuals. So varied and adaptable.”
“Hah! Some of them are dangerously insane,” Tam said.
“You’re thinking of Movey, right?” MO-126 said, thinking of the way that particular individual resolved an argument over a puppy.
“Movey? No. Actually, I was thinking of the madman leading this group, Ranex. He couldn’t have known we’d be coming to guide him. He took half of his village away from everything they knew on nothing but hope.”
The nursery android smiled and nodded. “Remarkable, isn’t it? Such curious and imaginative creatures.”
The trade android shook his head. “Curious and troublesome, you mean. This premature migration will lower the output of production unit 168-D for a generation, and it will be another generation before the new one, 168-E, is projected to make up the difference. We couldn’t prevent it, though, so I volunteered to be their guide. We can’t have primitives roaming around the countryside unsupervised.”
They could, MO-126 thought. It might be interesting if they did. The humans might discover things, but the PM would never permit it. It would jeopardize the project.
The migrating humans followed their chosen leader, guided, reluctantly, by a loyal Corporation trade android. The trailing edge of the large group crested a hill. These people would never again see their old village.
Five - Wheels of Discontent
3,825 Years Later
(Galactic Standard Year 236055)
(Project Year 12502)
In which discoveries are made and a person is lost.
The Mark Seven Project Manager exercised some control over the weather, or at least of the climate at a macro level, but it could not prevent severe storms from occurring. A particularly intense one swept over the central region of the continent the week before, bringing a full day of heavy spring rain and high winds. Traces of its passing remained. The river still flowed high and fast. The soggy, grass-covered ground squished into shallow puddles where their gond stepped, and they passed more than a few large, overturned trees since they left the mountain entrance of Hub Terminal Ten three days ago. But the sky was now a cloudless blue, and new trees would soon occupy the sunny spots vacated by their unfortunate elders—or pines, or oaks, or whatever. Unfortunately, several primitive villages lay near the flooded river, and MO-126 and Tam made their way to one of them to assess the impact.
They were one of four teams that formed part of the current relief mission, which parted company soon after leaving to proceed on to their individual assignments. Each team consisted of one trade android and one mobile observer, and each led a gond laden with blankets, tools, and pottery. They also carried ointments and potions to treat minor injuries, but these were limited to natural remedies and concoctions that the primitives could produce themselves.
MO-126 knew they had a problem as soon as they approached the village, but it had nothing to do with the storm. A midden pile lay not far outside the village. What caught his attention were the marks in the ground nearby.
“Skids?” Tam asked his four-legged partner.
The android dog examined the tracks closely and shook his head. “No. Definitely wheels.”
“But there have been no reports of the primitives here inventing the wheel.”
“I guess we’ll have to file one, then,” MO-126 said.
A few other villages had also invented the wheel. Some used it only for toys, games, or folk art. Some attached mystical properties to it. A few applied the idea more pragmatically. Field Ops monitored these closely and took special efforts to limit their population growth and migration. They did not want the idea to spread. So far, they had been successful.
The two androids and their pack animal entered the village, which was still busy recovering from the massive storm. People labored like ants repairing the thatched roofs of their stone huts, sorting through their damaged possessions, and clearing debris. Three young men, piling old thatch and broken rafters into a two-wheeled barrow, nodded to the trader as they approached.
Tam eyed the wheelbarrow. “That’s new,” he commented to his companion.
“The source of the tracks,” MO-126 said. “The spacing matches.”
The wheelbarrow consisted of a crude wooden box placed over a shaft connecting two solid disks cut from a tree trunk and held in place by pegs. Each wheel was about as wide as a person’s palm and about half a meter in diameter.
The trader shook his head. “Clever,” he said with disapproval. He shifted his attention to the three villagers. “Good morning. Where might I find your headman?”
They paused from their labors to consider the question. The shortest of the men scratched his beard as he gave it some thought. All of them were shorter and stouter than Tam. They all also sported enough facial hair to nest chickens in. The tallest of the trio may have tried. The man certainly could have been more fastidious about his grooming after his last meal, unless he was saving the remaining bits of egg for later. Sometimes MO-126 wondered what he saw that impressed him about humans.
“Well,” the short beard-scratcher said in their local guttural language.
Tam waited for elaboration. As none seemed to be forthcoming, he said, “Well, what?”
The villager pointed one dirty finger toward the center of the village. “He was at the well last time I saw him.”
“Oh. Right. Thanks,” Tam said. He turned to leave, took one step, and then turned back.
“That’s an interesting, um, thing you have there,” he said, pointing to the crude wheelbarrow.
“It’s just a box for rubbish,” the short, hairy villager said. One of the others returned to work. The last and tallest, relatively speaking, stood quietly contemplating something stuck to his finger as if waiting for a thought to arrive that might explain it. By all appearances, it might take a while.
“No, I mean the things under it,” Tam clarified.
“Those are just some of Thinkers round things. They make the box easier to move.”
“Thinker?”
“Yeah. He makes round things.”
“And other things,” the tallest of the thr
ee amended, wiping his finger on his sleeve.
“Yeah. And other things,” agreed the first.
“What kind of things?” the trader said.
The villager shrugged. “Different things.”
“What kind of different things?”
“Round things, mostly, but other things, too. Like I said, different things. He’ll show you, if you want. He might be with Grannit at the well.”
“Thanks.”
MO-126 watched for other anomalies as they made their way toward the center of the village. Unlike lower lying villages, hill villages near the mountains, like this one, used stone for most of their buildings. This ancient and natural building material provided no cause for concern. The ‘round thing’ innovation, however, was another matter, and the villagers here apparently applied in a variety of ways.
As they made their way through the village, they saw one child pulling a small wooden toy carved to resemble a goat with wheels attached to its legs. An old woman sitting outside one of the stone huts worked clay on a slow potter’s wheel. A rope tied to a bucket hung over a grooved wooden pulley in the small, circular well house near the center of the village. These guys were really into round.
Two men near the well interrupted their conversation as the trader approached, still leading the gond.
“Master Trader?” said the older of the two. His beard showed patches of stony gray. The other man sported a shorter beard, black, and a prematurely balding head.
“Tam,” Tam said, introducing himself. He did not bother to introduce his canine companion who had answered to several different names over the years. If asked, Tam would pick one, but adult villagers normally ignored the trader’s dog. Younger ones seemed content to call him their language’s equivalent of ‘doggy.’
“Grannit,” the villager said. “Headman of Stone Home. I am pleased to see you, but why have you come? We have nothing to trade today, I’m afraid.”
“I’ve come because of the storm,” Tam said. “We wanted to see how you fared and to offer assistance.”
The village headman glanced at the loaded gond before replying. “Thanks. It could have been worse. We lost a few roofs and more than a few chickens, but our terraces weathered the storm well. We should have close to a normal crop of potatoes this harvest season. Our grapevines may have suffered a bit. I expect their yield will be low this year.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Tam said. “We’ll offer you generous trades on whatever you have to spare. We just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“We will be. I don’t think the gods were aiming at us.” He offered a weak smile, which Tam returned.
“I’ve brought blankets, tools, rope, and some other things that you may be able to use,” the trade android said, pointing to the gond.
Grannit nodded. “Thanks. We’ll pay you back at harvest season.”
“No need. It’s a gift.”
“Then we will offer you a gift when we can. It is only fair.”
If the headman knew the markup the corporation charged its customers for the things he and his people grew, he would not be so concerned about repaying the trader’s gift. The profit from the annual output of this one village amounted to enough to pay for the construction of both of the android’s visiting him.
“Come. Let’s go to the common house. At least we can offer you a meal and some nicely aged grape juice as thanks while we unpack your animal.” He turned to the other villager, the one with the high forehead. “Thinker, take the trader’s gond and see to its unloading.”
“Thinker,” Tam said to the man as he handed him the gond’s lead. “You must be the fellow who made the round things I saw earlier.”
“Must I?” the man said with a puzzled expression.
“Yes. Three men working on a hut had a box with round things under it, and one of them said you made them.”
“Oh. I see. I might have. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“But he said they were Thinker’s round things. That’s what he called them. And he said you made other things.”
“Oh, I do. I make many things. New and different things. But I don’t make all of them. Just the first ones, usually. Other people make the rest.”
“But the round things were your idea, right?”
“Yes. At least, I think so. It kind of just came to me, so it could have been the gods or something, not that they said. I did make the first one. It’s an amazing shape, round. Kind of symbolic. No start and no end, you know. Useful, too.”
“What else have you made?” the trader said.
“Other round things, like the one here for the water bucket,” he said pointing to the pulley over the well. “It makes it easier to pull up the bucket. Other things, too. Clay, wood, special rocks—pretty much anything can be shaped into something more useful. It really is amazing.”
Grannit led the way toward the village’s common house, and the rest followed. “Thinker can show you some of his things later,” he said.
“I’d be happy to,” Thinker agreed.
~*~
The long, stone common house was one of the few with a slate roof. It appeared to have weathered the storm without harm, and it provided the center of the activity for the villagers’ efforts to repair the things damaged by the storm. The sound of pounding hammers and chopping wood echoed in the background, sometimes punctuated by an occasional scream or swear word, which inevitably accompanies the use of badly balanced stone tools after a while. People pushed crude wheelbarrows, carried bundles, and bustled from one place to another, obviously on missions, or less obviously, attempting to avoid one. Others stood talking in small groups around the building or otherwise taking a break from their labors. Two old, bearded men sat outside at a small table playing a board game while a small group of children watched and whispered to one another about their moves. Thinker called to the youngsters to help him unload the trader’s gond.
“MO-126,” Tam signaled. “Stay with Thinker. See what you can find about what he’s been doing.”
“Can do,” the android dog replied.
Tam and Grannit entered the common house. The solid wooden door stood open on leather hinges to allow fresh spring air to enter. The greasy, smoky smell of meat cooked on an open fire exited from it along with the sounds of people talking. MO-126 remained outside with Thinker and followed him to a lean-to at the far side of the common house. With the help of his drafted assistants, he unpacked the gond and sorted the contents on tables under the roof of the open structure.
“It was very nice of the Master Traders to bring us all this great stuff,” one boy said, thumbing through a pile of woven wool blankets.
“Yes,” Thinker replied distractedly as he examined one of the clay pots he just unpacked.
“Where do you suppose they get it all?” another boy asked.
“No one really knows,” Thinker said. “They won’t say. I suspect they make it. There must be Trader villages somewhere.”
“Some people say they live high up in the mountains, maybe even in caves or something,” the only girl in the group said. “That’s why they need to trade for food, because they can’t grow enough for themselves.” She turned to MO-126. “Is that where you come from, doggy?”
The android dog could not tell her, not that she would have expected him to. Like his biological cousins, speaking was not one his talents. Even if he could talk, the answer to that particular question would be forbidden. The existence of the corporation must remain a secret. The discovery of a hub terminal by a primitive could have unfortunate consequences for everyone.
She patted his head, and he wagged his tail, and that was about as far as he could communicate with her.
“High in the mountains,” Thinker said softly. “I wonder…”
Whatever he may have been wondering, MO-126 would have to wait to find out because just then, Tam and Grannit appeared.
The headman examined the unloaded items and thanked Tam again for his generosity
. “These are most welcome, Master Trader. We are in your debt.”
Thinker whispered something to Grannit. MO-126 increased the sensitivity of his audio receptors but only caught the last few words—“We should ask him.”
Grannit nodded and turned to Tam. “Master Trader Tam,” he said. “Thinker has suggested that you may be able to help us with a…, well, not a problem, exactly, but something of mystery.”
“Oh?” Tam said.
“Yes. After the storm, we rescued a young woman from a log caught in the river.”
“I’d be happy to see what I can do for her, but I’m not a healer,” Tam said.
“That’s not the problem. She seemed fine after we gave her some food and let her sleep—except for a lot of bruises, that is, but those should heal with time.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“We don’t know who she is.”
“Someone must know her,” Tam said. In a village of less than a thousand people, there were no strangers.
The village leader shook his head. “No one does.”
“Have you talked to her? What did she say?”
“That’s just it. We have, but she speaks, well, oddly. We don’t understand her, and we’re not sure she understands us. Thinker says you might be able to talk to her. She might be, well, one of your people.”
“She’s very scared,” Thinker said. “I don’t think she knows where she is.”
“Oh-oh,” MO-126 said to his partner.
“She can’t be one of us,” Tam replied.
“I know that,” MO-126 said. “But if she’s from the next village upstream, this could get complicated.”
“More complicated. This village is already a problem,” the trader said.
“Maybe it has something to do with the water.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Yes I am. You just have no sense of humor.”
“I don’t think she’s one of our people,” Tam said to Grannit. He did not say why, but the way he said ‘our’ could be taken to imply that Trader folk never required rescuing.
“Still, you may be able to understand her. The Master Traders visit other villages, don’t they? She might be from one of them.”
The primitives knew other villages existed. Most, by this time, originated as offshoots from the original production cells seeded on the planet for the project, but the trade androids were supposed to avoid discussing such things as much as possible. It only encouraged people to be curious about their imagined neighbors.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Tam said. “Where is she?”
“Old Emrie took her in. Her hut is near the river. I’ll take you there as soon as I get someone to see to distributing the things you brought.”
“I can do that,” Thinker said.
“No. I’d like you to come with us, Thinker. She seems to be most comfortable around you and Emrie. I saw Walderf and Staddler playing jump disc outside the common house. Ask them to come here. They can handle it.”
After Grannit gave the two old men their instructions about the distribution of the trader’s gift, Grannit, Tam, and Thinker left to see the woman pulled from the river. MO-126 unobtrusively tagged along.
“You said she was clinging to a log?” Tam said to Grannit as they walked.
“Yes. But she was more in it than on it. It has a kind of scoop carved out on the top. Anyway, the river was still fast and high, but the log she was in got hung up on a snag of broken trees and brush. We could tell it wasn’t going to hold her long, but it was too dangerous to swim in to get her. Thinker tied one of his smaller round things to a rope, and threw it out to her. It took a few tries, but she eventually grabbed it and wrapped it around a board in her log. Then we pulled her into shore.”
“I see.”
Tam sent silent instructions to his partner. “Go to the river and see if that log is still there. It sounds like we may have another problem.”
“It sounds like a boat, to me,” MO-126 said.
“Yeah. That’s the problem.”
The android dog ambled off toward the river, trying to appear not to have any particular destination in mind. When he got there, their suspicions were confirmed. A dugout canoe, about a meter wide and two meters long, rested on the shore well above the high water mark. The issue proved worse than Tam suspected. Another log lay beside it, and three young men chipped and chiseled in an attempt to duplicate the design.
“Found it,” he sent to his partner.
“Is it a boat?”
“Yes. Not a bad one either. The villagers here are already trying to copy it.”
“The situation here just keeps deteriorating, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Things could be worse.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Well, it doesn’t have a fusion engine.”
“You’re not funny.”
“I think I am, and as long as one of us is amused, it’s not a complete loss. Have you spoken with the visitor yet?”
“We just arrived at the hut. Come on back.”
MO-126 homed in on his partner’s signal and found the hut. The door stood open, so he walked inside. No one seemed to have noticed his arrival, or maybe they assumed he came in just behind them. The only light inside the stone structure entered through the open doorway but it sufficed. The place was not large. Tam sat on a stool facing a young woman with dark hair, and Thinker sat next to her on a sleeping pallet. Scrapes and bruises showed on her arms, legs, and forehead. Wherever she came from, she did not have a comfortable ride getting here.
“She says her name is Tallie,” Tam said to his partner. “She’s from one of the mountain villages upstream. I recognize the dialect. That’s about as far as we’ve gotten so far.”
MO-126 sat near the wall and listened.
“How did you come to be in the river during a storm,” Tam said to her. He spoke in the language of her village, which differed sufficiently from the one here to be unintelligible to the locals.
“The river was rising, so I was trying to pull our boat further up the bank so it wouldn’t be lost,” she said. “I lost my footing and was swept in. I managed to get in the boat, but I didn’t have a paddle and couldn’t do anything but go where the river brought me. Where am I? What is this place?”
“The people here call it Stone Home. They will take care of you. You are safe with them.”
“It’s strange here. I want to go home. I want to be with my family. I…I…I have to milk the goats.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and MO-126 found himself walking over to her. He licked her hand in response to some deep instinct rather than because of a rational decision, but it seemed appropriate. She responded with a weak smile and a scratch behind his ear.
“She stifled a sob and continued. “The people here don’t understand me and I don’t know what they’re saying when they talk to me. When the soreness goes, I should leave. I can walk along the river. It can’t be that far. I can do it. The river can lead me home.”
“You know that’s not safe,” Tam told her. “But it’s not something you need to think about just now. Emrie tells me you can’t take more than a few steps without pain. You are in no condition to go anywhere.”
She nodded. “I will be fine soon, and then—”
“And then we’ll see,” Tam said.
“What did she say?” Grannit asked him after they left. “I couldn’t understand a word of it.”
“Her name is Tallie, and she said she’s lost,” the trade android told him. “That’s really all there is to it. She’ll be fine.”
“Why can’t she talk properly?”
“That’s just how they talk where she’s from. Don’t worry about it.”
“Where is she from?” Thinker asked.
“Just some other village. You don’t need to worry about that either.”
“Can we help her get home?”
“Why would you—? No. There’s no need anyway. Like I said,
she’s fine. She just needs time to recover.”
“What do you plan to do?” MO-126 asked his partner as they exited the hut.
“About the woman from Semiautonomous Production Cell 46-C? Nothing, right now. She can’t go anywhere.”
“We could bring her home once she’s feeling better,” the android dog suggested.
“Move a primitive between villages? You know we can’t do that without approval.”
“But we’d just be taking her back to her own village. That’s where she’s supposed to be.”
“Yeah, but she’s already seen this one, and she knows she can get here by following the river. That complicates things.”
“What if she tries to go by herself? She might, you know.”
Tam paused to consider this. “You’re right. Maybe I should come back tomorrow and remind her about the dangers—the demons, wild animals, and river monsters.”
“River monsters? There aren’t any river monsters,” MO-126 said. Actually, there weren’t any demons either, and the most danger she was likely to experience from wild animals would be if she tripped on one.
“What about bardusaurs?” Tam said.
“Bardusaurs? They’re swamp creatures, for the most part. There aren’t any this far north, and besides, they don’t eat humans, or anything else from their home planet. Different biochemistry.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
The android dog could not contest the point. The primitives knew nothing about the world outside their own villages. Their mental maps stopped a few kilometers from the edges of their settlements. Everything outside those boundaries would be labeled ‘here be monsters,’ metaphorically, anyway. The primitives did not draw maps or create labels. The corporation discouraged writing. It could be even more damaging to the project than wheels.
“We should file a report with Field Ops,” the android dog said.
“Do so,” Tam told him. “Mark it preliminary, and tell them we’re still investigating.”
The trade android spoke with Grannit and Thinker as they made their way toward Thinker’s hut. He promised to show Tam some of the things he invented. MO-126 opened a communication with the Field Operations Center and provided a summary of their observations here so far. He got a routine acknowledgment that they received his situation report, but they provided no immediate instructions.