Supermen, p.59
Supermen, page 59
Ari’s elongated head could make him look slightly comical when he became overexcited. This time it was a visual reminder of the commitment behind his outbursts.
“If you really want to get this situation calmed down, Morgan—I suggest you remind her I still have more supporters than she has. They can all look at what she’s been doing at the first site. They can all see her machines are carefully avoiding all the best locations and deliberately moving at the slowest pace they can maintain without stalling. You can tell her she has two choices. She can get her machines out of all three sites, or she can put them under my control. And after she’s done that—I’ll send her a list of all the other sites I expect her to stay away from.”
Miniruta was standing in the doorway of her ritual chamber. Behind her, Morgan could glimpse the glow of the brass sculpture that dominated the far end. Miniruta had just finished one of the EruLabi rituals that punctuated her daily schedule. She was still wearing the thin, belted robe she wore during most of the rituals.
Only the night before, in this very room, they had huddled together in the most primitive fashion. They had stretched out on the sleeping platform just a few steps to Morgan’s left and he had spent the entire night with his arms wrapped around her body while they slept.
“I’ve discussed the situation with Ari,” Morgan said in Tych. “He has indicated he feels your actions have given him the right to transmit a message without authorization. He believes his supporters will approve such an action.”
“And he sent you here to relay something that is essentially another threat.”
“It is my belief that was his intention.”
“You should tell him he’ll be making a serious error. You should tell him it’s obvious he thinks no one will resist him.”
“I believe it would be accurate to say he believes no one will offer him any high-level resistance.”
“Then you should tell him his assumptions need to be revised. Madame Dawne has already armed herself. I obviously can’t tell you more than that. But I can tell you she will fight if Ari tries to take control of the communications module. She is already emotionally committed to fighting.”
Miniruta smiled. “Is that an informative response? Will that give Ari some evidence he should modify his assumptions?”
Morgan returned to his apartment and had his fabrication unit manufacture two sets of unarmed probes. The probes were large, cumbersome devices, about the size of a standard water goblet, but he wasn’t interested in secrecy. He deployed both sets by hand, from a maintenance hatch, and monitored them on his notescreen while they tractored across the surface area that surrounded the communications module.
His notescreen accepted a call from Miniruta two minutes after the probes had made their fourth find.
“Please do not interfere, Morgan. Madame Dawne has no quarrel with you.”
“I’ve detected four weapons so far. None of them look to me like items Madame Dawne would have deployed on her own.”
“Don’t underestimate her, Morgan. She believes Ari is threatening her ability to survive.”
“I thought Madame Dawne was a dangerous person when we were coping with the course-change controversy. But that was over ten decades ago. She’s only been seen twice in the last eight years. The last time her responses were so stereotyped half the people she talked to thought they were dealing with a simulation. I don’t know how much personality she has left at this point—but I don’t think she could surround the communications module with a defense like this unassisted.”
“Ari is threatening the fabric of our community. We made an agreement as a community—a consensus that took every individual’s needs into account. Madame Dawne is defending the community against a personality who thinks he can impose his own decisions on it.”
Morgan fed the information from his probes into a wargame template and let the program run for over thirteen minutes. It went through four thousand simulations altogether—two thousand games in which Madame Dawne was willing to risk the total annihilation of the ship’s community, followed by two thousand possibilities in which she limited herself to ambushes and low-level delaying tactics. Seventy percent of the time, Madame Dawne could keep Ari away from the communications module for periods that ranged from twenty-one daycycles to two hundred daycycles. She couldn’t win, but she could force Ari into a sustained struggle.
And that was all she needed to do, according to Morgan’s political estimates. Miniruta would gain some extra support if Ari broke the agreement unilaterally. But neither one of them would have a commanding majority when the fighting began. They would start out with a sixty-forty split in Ari’s favor, and a drawn-out battle would have the worst possible effect: it would intensify feelings and move the split closer to fifty-fifty.
Morgan thought he could understand why people like Ari and Miniruta adapted belief systems. But why did they feel they had to annihilate other belief systems? His profiling programs could provide him with precise numerical descriptions of the emotions that drove the people he modeled. No program could make him feel the emotions himself.
Still, for all his relentless obsession with the Doctrine of the Cosmic Enterprise, Ari was always willing to listen when Morgan showed him the charts and graphs he had generated with his programs. Ari was interested in anything that involved intellectual effort.
“I think we can assume Miniruta isn’t going to budge,” Morgan reported. “But I have a suggestion you may want to consider.”
“I’d be astonished if you didn’t,” Ari said.
“I think you should send your own machines to the sites she’s occupying and have them attempt to carry out your plans. My profiling program indicates there’s a high probability she’ll attempt to interfere with you. As you can see by the numbers on Chart Three, the public reaction will probably place you in a much stronger political position if she does.”
Ari turned his attention to the chart displayed on the bottom half of his screen and spent a full third of a minute studying it—a time span that indicated he was checking the logic that connected the figures.
“The numbers are convincing,” Ari said in Tych. “But I would appreciate it if you would tell me what your ultimate objective is.”
“There’s a basic conflict between Miniruta’s conduct and the message of the EruLabi creeds. Miniruta can’t act the way she’s been acting without arousing some hostility in the rest of the EruLabi community.”
“And you’re hoping she’ll alter her behavior when she finds the EruLabi are turning against her. Since she is a personality whose ‘drive for affiliation’ scores in the ninety-ninth percentile.”
“The EruLabi are not proselytizers,” Morgan said in Tych. “Their worldview tends to attract people who avoid controversy and public notice. Many EruLabi are already uncomfortable. If you’ll examine Table Six, you’ll see the reactions of the EruLabi community already generate an overall minus twenty in their attitude toward Miniruta. Table Seven shows you how much that will increase if they see her actually engaging in some form of active resistance.”
“I’m still fully prepared to transmit a message without waiting for authorization, Morgan. I’m willing to try this. But the other option is still open.”
“I understand that,” Morgan said.
The biggest exploration machines on the planet were high-wheeled “tractors” that were about the size of the fabrication unit that sat in a corner of Morgan’s apartment and transformed rocks and waste matter into food and other useful items. Ari started—correctly, in Morgan’s opinion—by landing six machines that were only a third that size. Ari’s little group of sand sifters and electronic probing devices started to spread out after their landing and three tractors detached themselves from Miniruta’s team and tried to block them. Ari’s nimble little machines dodged through the openings between the tractors, more of Miniruta’s machines entered the action, and the tractors started colliding with Ari’s machines and knocking off wheels and sensors.
Morgan stayed out of the rhetorical duel that erupted as soon as Ari circulated his recording of the robotic fracas. Instead, he focused his attention on the reactions of the EruLabi. Miniruta was defending herself by claiming she was upholding her right to pursue an alternate research pattern. It was a weak line of argument, in Morgan’s opinion, and the EruLabi seemed to agree with him. The support she was attracting came from people who had opposed Ari’s original request to send a message to the solar system. Morgan’s search programs couldn’t find a single comment—negative or positive—from anyone who could be identified as an EruLabi.
Morgan’s content-analysis programs had been collecting every commentary and attempt at humor that mentioned Miniruta. Over the next few hours he found five items that played on the discrepancy between Miniruta’s EruLabi professions and her militant behavior. The one he liked best was a fortysecond video that showed a woman with a BR-V73 body type reclining in an ornate bath. The woman was bellowing EruLabi slogans at the top of her lungs and manipulating toy war machines while she jabbered about love, sensual pleasure, and the comforts of art and music. A broken teacup jiggled on the floor beside the tub every time one of her toys fired a laser or launched a missile.
It was a crude effort that had been posted anonymously, with no attempt to circulate it. As far as Morgan could tell, only a couple of hundred people had actually seen it. He shortened it by eighteen seconds, transformed the cackles into deep-throated chuckles, and retouched some of the other details.
Of the other four items, two were genuinely witty, one was clumsy, and one was just bad-tempered and insulting. He modified all of them in the same way he had modified the video. He slipped them into the message stream at points where he could be confident they would be noticed by key members of the EruLabi communion.
Fifteen hours after Miniruta had started obstructing Ari’s efforts, Savela Insdotter circulated the official EruLabi response. Miniruta Coboloji has been an inspiration to everyone who truly understands the EruLabi creeds, Savela began. Unfortunately, she seems to have let her enthusiasm for our Way lead her into a dangerous course of action. We reached an agreement and Ari Sun-Dalt abided by it, in spite of all his feelings to the contrary.
We have a civilized, rational system for resolving differences. We don’t have to tolerate people who refuse to respect our procedures. We still control the communication system. We can still sever Miniruta’s communication links with Athene and her manufacturing facilities on the moon, if we register our will as a community. Isn’t it time we got this situation under control?
Miniruta’s answer appeared on the screens of every EruLabi on the ship. Morgan wasn’t included on her distribution list but an EruLabi passed it on to him. Every word she spoke validated the analysis his program had made all those decades earlier. The tilt of her chin and the tension in her mouth could have been delineated by a simulator working with the program’s conclusions.
Morgan watched the statement once, to see what she had said, and never looked at it again. He had watched Miniruta abandon two groups: the original Eight and Ari’s most dedicated followers. No group had ever abandoned her.
Savela’s proposal required a ninety-percent vote—the minimum it took to override the controls built into the information system. Anyone who had watched the ship’s political system at work could have predicted Savela was going to collect every yes she needed. The proposal had been attracting votes from the moment people started discussing it—and no one had voted against it.
Morgan believed he was offering Miniruta the best opportunity he could give her. The EruLabi were not a vindictive people. A few wits had circulated clever barbs, but there was no evidence they were committed to a state of permanent rancor. Most of them would quickly forget her “excessive ardor” once she “manifested a better understanding of our ideals.”
Miniruta would reestablish her bonds with the EruLabi communion within a year, two years at the most, Morgan estimated. He would once again recline beside her as they sampled teas and wines together. He would look down on her face as she responded to the long movements of his body. Miniruta was a good EruLabi. It suited her.
He knew he had failed when the vote reached the fifty-five-percent mark and Miniruta started denouncing the EruLabi who had refused to support her crusade to rid the universe of “cosmic totalitarianism.” The tally had just topped sixty-five percent when Ari advised him Miniruta’s robots were vandalizing the sites she had occupied.
Fossils were being chipped and defaced. Rocks that might contain fossils were being splintered into slivers and scattered across the landscape. Five of the best sites were being systematically destroyed.
The carnage would end as soon as they cut Miniruta’s communications link to the planet. But in the meantime, she would destroy evidence that had survived two billion years.
Ari already had machines of his own at two of the sites Miniruta was razing. He had transmitted new orders to the entire group and they had immediately started ramming and blocking Miniruta’s machines. The rest of his machines were scattered over the planet.
They had only built three vehicles that could pick up a group of exploration machines and haul it to another point on the planet. Most of the machines on the planet had been planted on their work sites when they had made their initial trip from the moon.
Morgan ran the situation through a wargame template and considered the results. As usual, the tactical situation could be reduced to a problem in the allocation of resources. They could scatter their forces among all five sites or they could concentrate on three. Scattering was the best option if they thought the struggle would only last a few hours. Concentration was the best option if they thought it might last longer.
“Give me some priorities,” Morgan said. “Which sites are most important?”
“They’re all important,” Ari said. “Who knows what’s there? She could be destroying something critical at every site she’s spoiling.”
Morgan gave his system an order and the three transport vehicles initiated a lifting program that would place defensive forces on all five sites. The vote on Savela’s proposal had already reached the seventy-percent mark. How long could it be before it hit ninety and Miniruta lost control of her equipment?
Most of the exploration machines were weak devices. They removed dirt by the spoonful. They cataloged the position of every pebble they disturbed. If the vote reached cutoff within two or three hours, Morgan’s scattered defensive forces could save over eighty-five percent of all five sites.
Short-range laser beams burned out sensors. Mechanical arms pounded sensitive arrays. Vehicles wheeled and charged through a thin, low-gravity fog of dust. Morgan found himself reliving emotions he hadn’t felt since his postnatal development program had given him simple mechanical toys during the first years of his childhood.
For the first ninety minutes, it was almost fun. Then he realized the vote had been stuck at seventy-eight percent for at least fifteen minutes. A moment later, it dropped back to seventy-six.
He switched his attention to his political-analysis program and realized Miniruta had made an important shift while he had been playing general. She had stopped fighting a crusade against her philosophical rivals. Now she was defending Madame Dawne “and all the other elders who will have to live with the consequences of Ari’s headstrong recklessness if the Green Voyager changes course.”
“Apparently she’s decided Madame Dawne offers her a more popular cause,” Ari said.
Ten minutes after Miniruta issued her speech, Morgan sent five of his machines in pursuit of two of hers. He was watching his little war party drive in for the kill—confident he had her outmaneuvered—when he suddenly discovered it had been encircled by an overwhelming force. Five minutes later, the program advised him he was facing a general disaster. The “exchange rate” at all five sites was now running almost two to one in Miniruta’s favor. Every time he destroyed five of her machines, she destroyed nine of his.
Ari saw the implications as soon as the numbers appeared on the screen. “She’s started feeding herself enhancers,” Ari said. “She’s abandoning her EruLabi principles.”
Morgan turned away from his screens. Memories of music floated across his mind.
He switched to Tych, in the hope its hard, orderly sentences would help him control his feelings. “Miniruta has switched allegiances,” he said. “We were incorrect when we assumed her last statement was a tactical move. She has acquired a new allegiance.”
“Just like that? Just like she left us?”
“It would be more correct to say she feels the EruLabi left her.”
“That isn’t what you told me she’d do, Morgan.”
“The programs indicated there was a ninety-percent probability Miniruta would protect her ties with the EruLabi community.”
“And now you’re faced with one of the options in the ten-percent list instead.”
A blank look settled over Ari’s face. He tipped back his head and focused his attention on his internal electronics.
“Let me see if I understand the situation,” Ari said in Tych. “The struggle can continue almost indefinitely if Miniruta maintains the current exchange rate. She is receiving new machines from her production units on the moon almost as fast as you’re destroying them. She can continue damaging all five sites, therefore, until they are all totally demolished.”
“We still have options,” Morgan said. “My pharmaceuticals include enhancers I still haven’t used. Miniruta outmatches me intellectually but she has a weakness. She isn’t used to thinking about conflict situations. Miniruta spent the last seven decades advancing through the EruLabi protocols. She has devoted twenty-five percent of her total lifespan to her attempts to master the protocols.”
