~*~
They set out the next day over terrain that contained few memorable landmarks. The androids in Field Ops undoubtedly chose this route partly for that purpose. It was probably an unnecessary precaution. Tallie might describe her journey to others, but the primitives in her village would be unlikely to brave the mysterious unknowns beyond their familiar surroundings to duplicate it in reverse.
The sun neared the end of its daily journey to the horizon by the time they spotted the other group. Three people, or, more accurately, three beings who, on the surface, looked much like humans, and three animals, one of which actually was, emerged from around a copse of trees. Tam waved and shouted for Tallie’s benefit. The two androids with her knew of their arriving visitors for the last several hours.
“Hail, Trader Prett!” Tam called.
One of the people in the approaching group waved. “Hail, Trader Tam.”
The two teams joined. Tallie would expect introductions to be made, so they were. Two nursery androids of the basic maternal variety accompanied Trader Prett. Both were several centuries old but neither looked a day over fifty. The two mobile observers with them were both nondescript canines, like MO-126. No one introduced them. When Tam introduced Tallie, Prett’s eyes widened in a convincing simulation of surprise.
“Tallie? From High River Village?”
She nodded hesitantly.
“What a coincidence!” he lied. “We’ve just come from there. We’ve been looking for you.” The last part was true enough, but why they searched far inland instead of near the river, he did not explain and she did not ask. “Were you on your way there?”
“Yes,” she replied in a meek voice. “The people of another village rescued me from the river and Trader Tam said he could bring me home.”
“I’d be more than happy to do that. I need to go back there anyway. I was bringing Aunt Nettie there to help out, anyway.” He touched the shoulder of one of the two nursery androids. She’s a healer. The storm hit your village pretty hard, as I’m sure you know.”
She nodded again, but she obviously felt uncomfortable around strangers. Until being swept away by the storm, she never met any.
“That’s great,” Prett said. “We can camp here tonight and leave in the morning. You can ride on my gond. We’ll have you home in a couple of days. How’s that? I’m sure you’ll be happy to get back, and I know your people will be glad to see you safe and sound.”
“Um, well, all right, I suppose. If Trader Tam doesn’t mind.”
The bipedal members of the group continued talking while MO-126 opened a link with the newly arrived MO androids.
“It sounds like this will be an extended assignment for you,” he said to both of them. “Have you ever done that before? Stayed in a human village, I mean?”
“I have,” said one of the simulated dogs. His Corporation designation was MO-18, but his partner, the NASH android introduced as Aunt Nettie, called him ‘Helper’ for this mission. “Seven years in Semiautonomous Production Cell 12-A. They’d developed a proto-writing system. It took over a century to correct the fault completely.”
Writing was a type one scientific-discovery fault, and potentially one of the most damaging. Of all the things capable of seriously threatening the project, development of a written language ranked on top. Once that happened on a project planet, the corporation may as well close shop because within a few thousand years the worker species would be building internal combustion engines, nuclear reactors and unreliable cell phones.
“I never have,” MO-126 said. “What do you think of them, the humans?”
“Well, on the whole, I rather like them. They’re an abnormally variable species, and some of them can be real nasty characters, but most of them are fine.”
The other canine android, MO-193, said, “One of them tried to kick me on my first assignment.”
“What did you do?” MO-126 asked.
“I dodged. Wanted to chew his leg off, but my partner was watching. I’ve learned to avoid that kind now, the ones with the mad dog kind of look about them.”
MO-126 knew what he meant. He had met people like that.
The three canine androids received a request to join the conversation from Bea, the NASH android being assigned to Stone Home. Her partner, MO-193, accepted for them.
“You know you look like you’re having a silent discussion over here,” she said.
“We are,” MO-126 said.
“So I assumed. But you’re not supposed to look like you are. There’s a primitive here.”
They were sitting attentively like points of an equilateral triangle with their noses facing toward the center. If they were not talking, someone might think they were having some kind of staring contest. Neither would pass for proper dog behavior.
All three artificial dogs immediately responded to correct the situation. MO-126 settled into a resting pose, MO-18 scratched himself, and MO-193 began licking the nether regions of his automated anatomy.
“That’s a bit better,” Bea said. “I really want to talk with MO-126.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“What can you tell me about the village you just came from? Your partner’s kind of busy performing his ‘I’m just a normal person’ act for Tallie right now.”
“It’s just your average village,” he said.
“One that requires close monitoring and mitigation, it seems.”
“Well, yeah. Field Ops is concerned because the people in Tallie’s village are building boats, and the one I just came from is using wheels and starting to experiment with copper.”
“That’s in the report. What can you tell me that’s not?”
He paused a moment, recollecting and analyzing what he noticed there. “They seem to be good people. I think the headman is well liked and he was doing a good job coordinating things after the storm. Everyone seemed to be working well together to get things repaired.” What else might be of official interest? “There might be some reduction in the grape harvest next year, but the potato crop should be fine.”
“Where did the idea for wheels and copper come from?” Bea asked.
“Mostly from a villager they call Thinker. I’m pretty sure he came up with them himself. He’s seems exceptionally intelligent—and curious.”
“Thinker, huh?”
“That’s what they all call him.”
“Probably got tagged with the name when still a child, then. Let me guess. He’s fairly young, I suspect, since this is the first report we’ve received about innovations in that village. I expect he looks older, is not imposing physically, lives alone, and is a bit awkward socially?”
“You’ve met him?”
“No, but I’ve met the type. What do you think of him?”
“I kind of liked him. He was nice to Tallie, and he thinks about everything. He really seems to want to understand it all. I guess that’s how he got the name.”
“He likes the challenge, I imagine.”
“What’s he challenging?”
“Ignorance, I suppose. Humans need challenges. I’ve talked about this with some of the other NASH androids, and we suspect it’s genetic. Humans don’t seem to be happy unless they have something to be dissatisfied with. They seem to like to complain, in any case.”
“Sounds insane to me,” the MO android temporarily going by the name of Helper said.
“Me, too,” MO-193 said, still making distracting slurping noises as he pretended to groom himself.
MO-126 admitted that it seemed odd, but he saw the survival benefit an instinct like that might provide. It could help prevent a species from stagnating, make them more adaptable. It could also make it difficult for the corporation to control them.
“What do you think about this situation?” he asked Bea. “It’s not quite as serious as writing, I suppose, but it’s significant.”
“It is, but we’ll do our best to mitigate the problem.”
“How?”
&
nbsp; “In a few different ways. Both villages will be monitored closely, of course, and the trade goods we provide will be upgraded. My part is to, well, I guess you can say it’s mainly to distract them. Give them less dangerous things to occupy themselves.”
“Like what?”
“Team games often work. You would be amazed how much attention humans can devote to competitive sports. There are also various hobbies, fads—pretty much anything that can provide meaningless diversions to satiate the need for challenge and accomplishment.”
MO-126 considered these. They might work for most people. They would help satisfy the human need to compete, and people would obtain satisfaction in the striving and a sense of accomplishment with success. But not all. Some would not see such things as meaningful. They would still want to accomplish something useful in their short lives. They would want to leave behind something that might make a difference.
“That might not work on people like Thinker. I don’t think he’s easily distracted.”
“True. Some people require more cerebral diversions. We use those, too. We think of them as ‘what if’ stories for thinkers, coincidently. The point is that we, well, imply that they might have some truth in them.”
“You mean like religion or philosophy, right?”
“Kind of. It gives them things to think about, but we have to be careful. Stories like these really can lead to new ideas that could undermine the project. Humans can surprise you. We might plant an idea about a god of rivers or lightning or something, thinking it’s totally harmless, and an especially clever human will run with it and come up with a plan for waterwheels or a theory of electricity.”
“Impressive.”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” She turned and smiled at him.
“So, how much longer?” he said.
“A while yet, I think, but project termination is inevitable. Humans just can’t seem to be content with things the way they are for long.”