“And your Autothor’s not at risk?” Shimoda indicated the blue ellipse, which bobbed placidly near a tentacle tip.
“The instrumentation on board this vessel is far more sophisticated than that which is the subject of this mechanical visitation. Furthermore, only a portion of your own devices appears to be susceptible.”
“Those in search of ‘higher intelligence.’” Iranaputra regarded his friends. “That is what the Ksaru told me it was originally searching for when it stumbled on the shaft that led to this ship.”
“What d’you think’ll happen to the machines these new aliens are making off with?” Hawkins wondered.
Shimoda sighed contemplatively. “The kitchen robot spoke of a call for enlightenment. Perhaps they will be enlightened.”
“Disassembled is more like it.” Hawkins grunted. “You can’t enlighten a toaster, no matter how intelligent the model.”
“How do you know, Wal?” Iranaputra smiled challengingly. “Have you ever tried?”
“Well, now, you tell me, Vic. Can a toaster achieve Nirvana?”
Iranaputra looked thoughtful. “I do not know. There has never before been a reason to consider the question. But I promise you, I intend to ask the first AI-controlled toaster I next meet.”
Hands clasped behind his back. Heath stood gazing through the observation port at the monstrous roiling storm which presently dominated the surface of Jupiter. “We’d better, don’t you know. This mechanical civilization’s liable to keep paying ours expensive visits. If we’re going to hang on to our own machines, we’re going to have to learn how to talk to all of them and come to a mutual accommodation. Or else develop some kind of cybernetic prophylaxis.”
“You have said that you are relieved these ships do not represent your ancient enemy,” Iranaputra told the Drex. “What are you going to do now? Go back to sleep?”
“One million years is rest enough,” the Drex boomed. “I do not know if my species has survived. The ship has been searching all this time and there is no evidence of their communications.” There was a pause and the massive command chair turned slowly toward them. “I can but continue the search.”
“We could help,” avowed Ashili suddenly. “There’s only one of you and an awful lot of us. If this Enemy’s half as bad as you make it out to be, you should be grateful for any allies. Even small ones.”
“That’s right.” Gelmann nodded vigorously. “And in the meanwhile, maybe we can find something to occupy your days. To keep you from being bored. Something useful.”
“Mina!” Iranaputra hissed warningly.
She ignored him. “Leave it to me. If we’re going to help you, it’s only fair that you help us in return, nu?”
“It is a notion.” A tentacle waved absently. “It would be wasteful and futile for me to personally monitor the automatic scanners all the time.”
“There, you see?” She looked smug.
XXII
Mina Gelmann sat on the porch and gazed with equanimity at the glistening, quicksilver surface of the fully restored Lake Woneapenigong. It had been stimulating, but she’d had more than enough excitement to last her for a year, at least.
Nearby, Heath and Iranaputra played checkers with the same intensity as before, though now Heath was not so condescending and Iranaputra less belligerently assertive. They still referred to Heath as the Colonel, appropriate ever since the Victoria League, wishing to recognize the exploits of one of their retired citizens aboard the artifact, had granted him that honorary title.
Kahei Shimoda lay on a towel on the grass just inside the split-rail fence that enclosed this part of the Village, soaking up the summer sun, his vast body viscous with UV block. Hawkins chatted with kitchen serving robot eleven, which had just delivered the cold lemonade he’d ordered. It was properly deferential and volunteered no cybermetaphysical nonsense about higher intelligences or the state of the universe.
Something made Gelmann straighten slightly in her chair. Upon concluding its duty, had the serving robot punctuated its departure with a sly wink? She relaxed. Impossible. Robots were not equipped with eyelids. It had been an effect of the sun striking motile plastic lenses and nothing more.
It was good to be back at Lake Woneapenigong, to have access to her apartment and things, to familiar food and friends. She glanced to her left. A striking, dark young woman was showing a group of visitors around the Village. She paused at the lakeshore to gesture toward the porch. Gelmann smiled and waved. It was strange to be famous. To the multitude of tourist attractions on Earth had been added another: the five seniors of the artifact. Village management had insisted gawkers and hawkers be kept at a respectable distance, to preserve the privacy of the simply retired as well as that of the suddenly acclaimed.
“Funny,” Hawkins had commented to them when informed of the state of affairs, “none of you look like a tourist attraction.”
Forbidden from approaching any closer, the tour group paused to snap images of the esteemed. Hawkins stood it as long as he could, then saluted with his lemonade, turned, and with great deliberation dropped his pants. Murmurs rose from the pilgrims.
Gelmann shook her head. Some people handled celebrity with more grace than others.
She didn’t understand it, this unsought fame. It wasn’t as if they’d saved humankind from ravening alien hordes, or even one ravening alien. Oh sure, they’d made a tenuous ally of one, and probably helped prevent a commercial war between the FFF and the Keiretsu and the other leagues, but it wasn’t as if they’d set out to do those things. Iranaputra insisted it was karma, but Gelmann knew better.
They’d just gone for a walk.
One of the tourists, a young man, picked his moment and tried to dash forward to make personal contact with the heroes of the Artifact Encounter. The tour guide stopped him with a lightning leg thrust, spun him onto his back, and whispered something to him while holding one hand close to his neck. When he rose to rejoin the group, his face was ashen.
Zabela Ashili turned to smile and wave one more time, murmured something to Hawkins, who responded with a rude gesture, and began to shepherd her flock along the lakeshore. Gelmann sipped iced tea and reflected on the perversity of life, and how the unforeseen so often alters the direction of one’s profession.
Not only had Ashili found satisfaction as a Village tour guide, she was being paid to retrain the entire security staff as well.
Willard Whiskin leaned over the back of the boat and gazed at the receding river. The itinerary called for them to spend one more day on this tributary of the Orinoco before lifting on air suspension and crossing through the jungle to the Rio Negro and thence on down to Manaus.
He wiped perspiration from his brow and applied the last of the anti-sweat from the spray can, glanced around, and tossed the empty over the side. It bobbed toylike in the cruise ship’s wake. His wife looked up from where she was attempting to control the two little Whiskins.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have done that. Will. After all, this is a rainforest sanctuary.”
He shrugged indifferently. “The whole planet’s a sanctuary of one sort or another. It’s hot and I’m tired.” He gestured astern. “What’s the big deal? It’s gone already.”
A cloud blocked the tropical sun, but it was the stentorian thrumming that caused them and everyone else on the boat to stop whatever they happened to be doing at the moment and look upward. People poured out of their cabins, out of the lounge, and onto the decks. On shore even the raucous squawking of the scarlet macaws and Amazonian green parrots was stilled. A hush fell over the intimidated jungle.
Hovering overhead and filling the sky from horizon to horizon was a gigantic silvery construction: the Drex artifact. A tiny port opened in its underside and something came blasting out, heading directly for the cruise ship. A few people screamed and rushed for the dubious safety of the vessel’s interior, but most were too fascinated to move.
The object which had descended circled briefly above the boat, then shot astern. It returned a moment later and halted in midair. An empty sweat-off can landed on deck at Willard Whiskin’s feet with an accusatory clang.
A refractive, chromed arm, one of four, waved accusingly at Whiskin while the two little Whiskins stood close to their mother, goggle-eyed at the confrontation. A trembling Willard gaped at the device, which strangely enough appeared to be based on a simple serving robot design, and felt a warm trickle down his left leg as his bladder let go.
The gleaming apparatus spoke with the voice of Authority, and a slight Newyork Province accent.
“This is a rainforest preserve. Littering is strictly prohibited.”
From the depths of the awesome apparition hovering overhead a voice thundered, “Further violation will result in immediate termination! You have been warned!”
The mobile device drifted forward until it was less than a meter from the panicky tourist. Four articulated hands reached out to grab him by his expensive tropical shirt and pull him close to reflective plastic lenses.
“Get it?”
“Ah … awk … uh …”
Ms. Whiskin hazarded an interruption. “He’s usually more talkative than this.”
The robot let the man go. Somehow Whiskin kept his feet. As others aboard oohed and aahed, the device rose on a pillar of blue fire and vanished back into the belly of the famous artifact, which rose solemnly into the equatorial sky and moved off northward in search of other violators.
Ms. Whiskin and both little Whiskins crowded around Willard.
“Are you all right, luv?”
