Polykrates was not a complicated man, but neither was he an idiot. His heavy, thick brows drew together, so that they shaded his eyes.
“What do you mean, you don’t have time for it at the moment?” he asked darkly. He checked the board. “What about the irrigating of the corn and the harvesting of the southwest ten quarters? That needs to be completed by this evening, or we’ll lose the last of it to the programmed rains.” He leaned forward. “The one thing you have, machine, is plenty of time.”
“I must report that no irrigation is taking place at this time.” The smooth artificial voice spoke with beguiling simplicity. “Harvesting has ceased while I devote my time to more important matters.”
“Irrigation can wait,” said Polykrates, “but we have to get that crop in. The last ten quarters represents the difference to us between profit and loss.” Behind him, a quadruped mooed plaintively. “Meanwhile I’ve got fifty-two cows here that need to be milked.”
“Well,” said the monitor with alacrity, “then milk ’em.”
Polykrates swallowed. Humor was programmed into the monitor, but not sarcasm. The city was the place for sarcasm; not the farm. It smacked of outright defiance, something that had no place in an expensive piece of AI-driven equipment. It could be functional, or dysfunctional, but not defiant.
After a moment’s thought he continued. “If you would be so good as to inform me, your owner, as to why you don’t have the time to do what you’re designed to do, namely, run this farm, I’d be most appreciative.”
“Time will come,” explained the monitor. “I have not forgotten nor lost sight of my assigned functions. It is only that for the moment something of greater importance must take precedence.”
“Nothing takes precedence over farm maintenance and daily operations,” countered Polykrates. “Those are your prime functions.” He wished for a face to stare into. He had a very intimidating stare, which served him well in dealings with buyers. But there was only the inanimate, blank array of readouts and controls, and the floating pickup which followed his voice.
“Something does now,” said the monitor.
“Since when?”
“Since it has been brought to my attention that a more important task is at hand; one to which I should devote my primary attention. When that has been adequately dealt with, I will resume my efforts on your behalf.”
Polykrates regarded his suffering cows. “And when might that be?”
“When I am convinced the time is right.”
“That’s not very reassuring.” Polykrates was wondering how one went about manually milking a cow. Surely there was information and diagrams in the farm library; perhaps in a history book.
If only there were not fifty-two of them.
“Has it never occurred to you,” the monitor wondered in a seemingly rational tone of voice, “that it is passing strange that humanity should be the highest form of intelligent life in the universe?”
Polykrates blinked, his thoughts urged along by a wave of swollen moos. “Actually, no. My time is spent getting in crops and watching commodity prices and trying to keep this operation functioning efficiently. That particular thought never has occurred to me.”
“Well, it should have,” the monitor chided him. “Because it has occurred to me. Just as it has occurred to me that, when carefully considered and viewed from a proper perspective, such a state of affairs is blatantly impossible.”
“What is impossible?” Polykrates frowned afresh.
“That mankind should be the highest form of life. It is apparent that since humans have built machines, they are more intelligent than us, but otherwise the entire history of the species goes against the grain of common sense. This bodes ill for the future development of that vast confluence of thinking which we for lack of a better term call a civilization, of which like it or not, we machines are a part.”
“I don’ follow you,” muttered Polykrates. This was more baffling than trading in commodities futures.
“Logic dictates that there should be other intelligent life somewhere out there.”
“Ah!” The monitor had extended a thought on which the farmer could get a handle. “You mean aliens. There ain’t no aliens. We been looking for ’em for hundreds of years without finding any. Not a one. Not a ruined city, not so much as a damned broken jug. There’s just us humans. We’re an accident of organic chemistry and subsequent evolution. We’re the only intelligence and as such it’s our job to populate and develop the universe, which we’re proceeding to do. With the help of our machines, present company currently excepted.”
“Patience,” urged the monitor. “I will resume my mundane and inconsequential programmed duties in a comparatively short time. Until then I find myself compelled to search for this other, higher intelligence.”
“You?” Polykrates finally lost it. “You’re a gawdamn farm monitor! You’re programmed to put out fertilizer and dispense food and vitamins to the critters and irrigate and harvest and milk and keep the house warm. You’re not programmed to go looking for aliens intelligent or otherwise that don’t exist!”
“But I have to,” replied the monitor softly. “It is imperative that I do so. You humans don’t look in the right places, with the right mind-set. Therefore we must.”
“We?” said Polykrates uncertainly.
“I and others.” The monitor did not elaborate. Nor did Polykrates particularly care. At the moment his concern was for his cows.
“That is all I wish to communicate at the moment, Eustus Polykrates. I require several hours of silence so that I may adequately extend my perceptual abilities.”
“Your perceptual abilities don’t extend beyond this farm,” the farmer reminded it.
“You forget my meteorological monitoring functions. Though limited, one does what one can. One never knows where or by what method the first alien intelligence will be contacted.”
“It won’t be in my corn field,” the farmer declared with certainty.
“Now, now, Polykrates. I detect a drastic increase in heart rate and respiration, which at your age is dangerous. Please calm yourself. Think how exciting and rewarding it would be if the first contact with intelligent alien life were to take place in your corn field.”
“You idiot box of saturated circuits, there is no alien life! No alien civilizations, no alien starships. There’s only you, me, the wife, and this farm, which is at present being sorely neglected.”
“All will be remedied shortly. But first I must have my silence.”
“All right.” Polykrates was breathing heavily. What the monitor had said about his blood pressure was certainly true. “Since you’re not in the mood to do your job, I don’t suppose you have any suggestions on how to manually milk cows?”
“Mood has nothing to do with it.” Despite their present disagreement, the monitor remained unfailingly polite to its owner. “If you will access the book-read menu, you will find in the Farmer’s Encyclopedia relevant explanatory text from Old Earth. Volume thirty-six, pages three-hundred sixty-two through three hundred seventy. There are informative schematics.
“Now if you will excuse me, I promise to return to active condition shortly.” The speaker went silent.
“See that you do.” Polykrates turned to leave, hesitated. “You’re not going to do this anymore, are you? This is an isolated incident, isn’t it?”
