He neglected the oldest and simplest way of bringing in living creatures. There was no shame in that, though—so had everyone else in the colony. The Bolos could be forgiven for not thinking of it—they did not reproduce themselves.
“How long must we wait?” Kaxiax hissed. “Is all our life to be spent in hiding and waiting, like our sires before us?”
“You are young,” the lieutenant answered. “I have seen both sire and grandsire die, and we must not shame their memories.”
“Let their ghosts fend for themselves!” Kaxiax hissed. “I did not volunteer to end my days on this ancestor-forsaken hole!”
“The worth of your life is in your accomplishments for the species of Xiala,” the lieutenant intoned. “If we were to give over and flee, our sires’ lives would have been spent to no purpose. But if you, or your offspring, or your offspring’s offspring, should smite the Soft Ones and their machines, your ancestors’ lives as well as your own would have been filled with purpose, and they would live in glory in the Afterworld.”
“If there is an Afterworld.” Kaxiax’s head swivelled around at a slight sigh of displaced sand. He struck, so fast that he would have been a blur to human eyes. The lizard slid down his craw in a single swallow.
The lieutenant ignored the blasphemy; he remembered when he had said much the same, in the impatience of youth. “Go disassemble and oil your weapon,” he said. “We must not forget the rituals, or the gods will withdraw their strength from us. Then go coil with your mate, and gain what comfort you may from this life.”
“And raise up more Xiala to waste their lives in waiting, belike,” Kaxiax grumbled—but he went.
The lieutenant watched him slither away along the ditch. When he was out of sight, the lieutenant laid his head down on the sand and let himself indulge in a moment’s despair. Would the command to attack never come?
Chono relaxed, leaning back in his canvas chair, drink in hand, and watched the sunset. “You seem to be adjusting pretty well, Arlan.”
“Thanks,” Arlan said. He sipped his own drink, then added, “I’m still a little nervous, though.”
“To be expected.” Chono nodded. “Bolos can be mighty intimidating working partners—and a full shift on a plow can be kind of lonely. We try to make up for it during lunchtime and dinnertime, though.”
“Oh, you succeed admirably!” For a moment, Arlan had a vivid image of last night’s party. He was looking forward to singing and dancing again tonight—Rita wasn’t the only pretty girl in the camp. Far from it, in fact.
“So the nerves are only about the Bolos, huh?”
“Yeah.” Arlan jolted back to the day he’d just finished. “Chono . . .”
Chono waited, then prodded gently. “Yeah?”
“The Bolos . . . they’re so old! Are you sure there isn’t any chance that one of them will have a circuit breakdown, and run amok?”
“I wish I could tell you a definite ‘no’ to that,” Chono said grimly. “All I can really say, though, is that it’s a low probability. The Bolos were built to last—built for the ages, you might say. We actually did an analysis of probability of systems failure, and it turned out that the chances of a Bolo running amok, are much less than the chances of one of us humans going psychotic.”
Arlan just stared at the orange sky for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I suppose we are made out of less durable materials.”
“And most of us don’t take care of ourselves too well,” Chono agreed. “If we’re feeling just a little bit out of sorts, we go to work anyway.”
Arlan looked up, amused. “Does that mean that the only ones who are really well, are the hypochondriacs?”
“They would be, if they’d go out and get some ~exercise. I suppose maybe a hypochondriac health-and-fitness nut would be in good shape, but I don’t know any who manage to combine the two—except maybe Bolos.”
“The Bolos are hypochondriacs?”
“Well, let’s say they have excellent auto-diagnostic programs, and they’re much more objective than we are. Besides which, our technicians check over each machine once a month. We maintain them very well.”
Arlan nodded. He had found out just how well, when he had met Jodie, and stopped to chat with her in her smithy. The term wasn’t all that accurate, of course—most “smithies” didn’t include blast furnaces and computer-controlled machine tools. If Jodie said she was a smith, though, he wasn’t about to argue—not when he saw how the iron flattened under her hammer. Not when he saw her in profile, either.
“That’s an awful lot of labor for one spare part,” he said as he watched her watch the automatic lathe.
Jodie nodded. “But even when you add in the cost of my labor, it’s still cheaper than importing it. Space cargo rates are very, very high—and the Bolo factory back on Terra charges a liver and ten square inches of skin, for an antique spare like this.”
Arlan frowned. “Why so high?”
“Because they have to make them by hand, too. ~After all, they’ve been out of production for two hundred years.” Jodie braked the lathe and began to loosen the clamps. “So we just machine them ourselves, and save all around.”
Watching her strong, slender fingers, Arlan wondered if the machinists on Terra could be any better than she was—or even as good. “I can’t help thinking that it would be cheaper and quicker to import modern tractors—or even to manufacture your own.”
Jodie nodded. “Every volunteer wonders about that at first. I know I did.” She laid the finished part under the magnifying glass and began to inspect it. “There’s more to it than economics, though, Arlan. This colony owes its existence to the Bolos. It’s a debt. We maintain them out of honor. It may be expensive, but if we forget their past and stop doing it, we’ll be welching on a debt—and we’ll be less than ourselves.”
Arlan watched her work, thinking that over. Traditions and honor seemed to be very expensive. He wondered if Milagso could afford them.
The next day, he dared to sit on Miles’s tread as he waited for the truck to pick him up for lunch. He congratulated himself on beginning to trust the huge machine—but he was also aware that his whole body was taut, ready to leap off to the side at the slightest sign that the Bolo was starting to move. “Isn’t it hot for you to wait out here in the sun, Miles?”
“Not at all, Arlan. I was built to tolerate temperatures up to fifteen hundred degrees Kelvin, so a variation of twenty degrees Fahrenheit scarcely registers on my thermosensors.”
“Must be handy. But you stay parked by this field all through lunchtime. Don’t you get bored?”
“I was first activated a thousand years ago, Arlan. A few hours is scarcely noticeable.”
Suddenly, the sunlight seemed to be very cold, and the tread beneath his thighs seemed to prickle. “A . . . thousand years? But . . . I thought your model was only produced three hundred years ago, Miles.”
“My body was, Arlan. My computer core, though, goes back considerably farther.” Then, completely matter-of-factly, the Bolo told him, “I am Resartus.”
All things considered, Arlan was very glad that the truck came along just then.
Chono frowned. “He actually said he was Resartus? You’re sure?”
“Clear as I’m telling you now!” Arlan fought to keep a lid on the panic boiling inside him. “Who exactly was Resartus, anyway?”
“Who? More a ‘what’ than a ‘who.’ The Resartus was the initial fully-automated Bolo model, the first one that could fight itself. It was a long way from ~being self-aware, but when push came to shove, it didn’t really need a human being aboard.”
That gave Arlan a chill. “If you think I’m going back to work with a machine that’s gone delusional . . .”
“Peace, peace!” Chono held up a hand, but he was frowning off across the fields. “We’re not going to ask that until we’re sure Miles is well—but even if he has started thinking he’s the original Resartus, he’s perfectly safe.”
“Perfectly safe!”
Chono nodded. “No matter what identity the computer has accepted, it still has its safeguards. It won’t attack a human on its own side, no matter what—and out here, all humans are on its side.” Chono rose. “But I think we’ll leave that field untilled for now. I have a few friends who are going to want to talk to Miles—and spend a little time with the library, too.”
The library was accessed through computer, of course, but Miles was accessed in person. Chono’s friends were a half-dozen experts in Bolo systems and artificial intelligence. They insisted Arlan come along to double-check what they heard.
“Yes,” the Bolo said, “I am Miles—but I am also Resartus.”