received. Second, the isolated up-valley spot was her first real rest away from people and the responsibility her being a Second entailed. Returning to the mass of bodies below would bring back all the pressures. And, finally, there was me.
Not that I was a charming rascal and she was madly in love with me. I doubt if someone not a First could conceive of real love for another, unrelated individual. But, I was differentI talked different, felt different, acted different from anybody she’d ever known, Firsts included. Even the Firsts had been ideologues; I remembered George’s telling me that some of the Firsts thought this really was paradise and that all of the changes and the like were God’s will. I was the first rebel on this world, the first person who refused to ac-cept with stoic fatalism what sort of a life was offered.
Finally, I talked her into moving on, and we made our way down the mountain the additional half a day’s journey to the point. It looked just as when I’d left it, of course. There were a lot more houses out on the plain; another village was building after the last Breed, clearly.
George wasn’t in, but I saw Guz, still not at puberty but very close if her color was any indication. She told me that George was at his favorite spot on the plain near the river. The Breed was always hard .on George, and he was often antisocial for weeks afterward.
Good Christians just aren’t made for incestuous ha-rems.
We splashed through the shallow river and down the far bank, but, as we approached George’s spot under the shade of some spreading palmlike trees, Mara slowed and stopped.
“What’s the matter?” I called, coming to a halt and whirling in one motion. I was getting pretty good at being a four-footed hopping animal.
“II think you’d better go on,” she said hesitantly. “I’ll join youlater. After …”
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Her voice trailed off, but I could see her problem.
“Don’t worry about it so much!” I chided, then softened my tone. “Look, you wait here, relax, graze. I’ll prepare the way.”
This settled, it still took me a while to find George.
I could tell by his richer blue that he was with egg himself, and through the color came an aura that cried despondency. Even so, he looked up as I approached and seemed to brighten as he recognized me.
“Bar Holliday!” he called cheerfully. “Well! You made it over and back, eh?”
“That I did, George,” I responded lightly. “Not a long or a hard trip, but one with some new discoveries and experiences.”
His tone darkened with his hue. “You experienced the Breed, then.”
I nodded. “That’s some crazy way of reproducing. There must be a reason for it, but I can’t think of what.”
“Probably takes that long to transfer the viral strain within the egg,” he said hi that clinical tone he sometimes adopted.
I thought for a minute. Yes, that somehow seemed to make sense. Ten daysanything could happen in ten days considering that it had taken barely three to reshape me. Something definitely went on during that periodnot for the mating couple, certainly. For the tiny masters within.
“George, I think I’m close to the solution of this crazy mess,” I told him.
He looked startled by the comment. “Eh? You mean the population thing? They seem to have solved that three eggs this time.”
“No, no, not that. The whole puzzle. Look, it suddenly came to me after the Breed that this whole thing is nonsense. It makes no sense at all. The world is too illogical, just as we are illogical. Let me
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ask youwas there any disease during the voyage of the Peace Victory?”
He frowned, remembering. “Why, yes, there was, come to think of it. Some sort of intestinal problem. Had a hell of a time locating it and producing a serum.”
I smiled broadly, knowing the answer to my question as I asked it. “It was a virus, wasn’t it, George?”
He looked puzzled. “Why, yes, come to think of it, it was. Hard to remember these thingsit happened so long ago.” He stopped suddenly, seeing where the conversation was going.
“Oh, no,” he protested. “No, it wasn’t anything like our virus. Not at all.”
“I think it was,” I persisted. “No, not the form we have now, but an earlier strain. You know there’s always been trouble with viruses in spaceflight they reproduce so incredibly fast that minor forces, radiation and the like, can produce mutations that would normally take millions of years to develop.”
“Not possible, though,” he insisted. “We licked it. We analyzed some of the victims at the onset, fed the cultures into the computer, and out came the se-rum that effectively eliminated the virus.”
So there it was. The last link. Just a couple of more pieces and everything would fit.
“That ship’s computer of yoursit’s an antique by my standards. I couldn’t even figure out how to turn it on. Tell me, Georgewas it self-aware? Did you have self-aware comps in those days?”
“Why sure it was,” the older man replied with pride. “Best machine built up to its time. A whole new breed. We called it Moses, because it was leading us to the promised land.”
There was the last piece. I now knew where the virus had come from, why it was here and why it had done what it had done. I even had a fairly good idea what it was up to now. The only remaining question was what I would do with this information. If I
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was right, I was close to developing the worst case of paranoia that anyone ever had.
Somehow this brought Mara to mind. I’d totally forgotten her.
“George,” I said softly. “Mara’s here.”
His head came up like a shot, and he was suddenly tense. Then, very -gradually, he seemed to soften, melt before me.
“Mara,” he sighed, both sad and wistful.
“She mated with me on the way here,” I told him. “She wants to see you badly. She’s been so lonely over with the ignorant younglings.”
“Mara,” he repeated, his aura almost misting. I tried to imagine what was going through his mind, but could not.
“Do you want to see her?” I asked softly.
He seemed to regain control of himself. He straightened, became more solid, dignified.
“Why, yes, of course I do. Wherewhere is she?”
“Not far,” I told him. “Wait hereI’ll get her. And, remember it’s as hard on her as on you.”
As I walked back I reflected how odd it was that great things should seem small and small things greatly magnified when seen on a personal level.
I brought Mara to him, slowly, hesitantly. She was shy, uncertain, nervous, and in the Choz culture all of this showed.
They stood there, just looking at each other for the longest time, until, finally, he approached her, a riot of emotional hues, and rubbed against her tenderly.
I left, satisfied that that part of my mission was now complete.
As for me, I now had the puzzle solved but not my course of action. What I did have, for the first time, were choices, options, ways to go.
Slowly I approached the mound of silver webbing, a small hill on the plain. My shipmy ship was in there, perfectly preserved, still on, still functioning.
I knew that in a way the little masters of this
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world could not know. I knew it because technology does not stand still. I knew it because the computer that ran and guided my ship was not a self-aware machine like that of the Peace Victory, but a part of myself. I could feel it, sense it as I grew closer.
In there, too, I lived, awaiting the arrival of the body so that I could take off. It would not desert me as long as it knew I lived, but we could not make true contact until I was inside, no longer cut off from the mechanical link provided in my suit pack. I stood there, knowing now who had encased the ship so, and why, and wondered what to do.
I glanced around the plain on spray beam at the thousands of Choz quietly grazing, many talking in the short-speech, others curiously silent. They were watching me, I knew. All watching me. Wondering if this was the time. Wondering what I would do even as I pondered the same thingnot knowing, of course, that I knew.
I need George, I thought, my mind racing. I need George with me in the ship. Just George and me, alone. Once inside, once off-planet, we could talk of what had to be done, do what had to be done, face the enemy down once and for all.
Slowly, deliberately, I started back for the point.
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Nine
For the next couple of days I let George be happy and he was happy. Mara meant more to him than anything in this crazy world, and she clearly needed him as well.
Each day I’d go back out to the plain, alone, to graze near the ship and stare at it, sometimes for hours. Often Guz would try and join me. It was a natural response. I must be driving her crazy, I thought; she was watching me, not knowing what I was thinking or doing. I shooed her off each time.
Finally when I could stand it no longer, I spent a great deal of time maneuvering George into an isolated area where none were nearby. I did this on the pretense of showing him some interesting things about the upper valley I’d noticed on the way down. When we were far enough away from the point so that I could scatter-beam no Choz, I stopped him.
“George, I lied to you,” I told him, unashamed. “There’s nothing really new up here, no artifact.”
“What’s this all about, then?” he responded, curious.
“Everything, George, everything. Look, with a little imagination and a lot of reasoning, I think I can describe what this whole world’s about. You stop me and tell me when I’m wrong.
“It starts,” I began, “with a group called the Communards, a back-to-the-land movement based on Christianity and simple virtues, which attracted some people with money and some, like yourself, who were
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a part of the technocracy, who realized how dehumanizing things were becoming. You decided, along with others, that only a return to basics, a new start, on a far world not polluted by our plastic civilization, where the children and grandchildren would have to build a new world with their own sweat and labor while being raised on basic, old-fashioned, down-to- earth philosophy untainted by our socialist order and corporate syndicalism, would save man from becoming less than the machines that served him, a vegetable in a velvet-lined cage.”
He nodded, a half-smile on his face, but said nothing.
“So you got together, sold everything you had, and built and outfitted the Peace Victory. It had what you needed, the latest in technology to carry you to your new home. But you didn’t see, didn’t realize, that you carried with you a disease that was at the heart of everything you despised in humanity. You were raised with it, and on it, as I was, and even rebelling against it you took it for granted, and you became a carrier.”
“You don’t mean the virus,” he cut in, somewhat disbelieving.
“A virus, yes,” I replied, “but not yet the one that now rules us. It’s ancestor.
“Technocracy itself! Escaping from it, you lived in it, depended on it. You had the latest in self-aware artificial intelligence to make sure your air was pure, course was steady, food was produced. It even ministered to you when it was sick. You personalized it, made it part of your own cause in its programming. You called it Moses because it was to lead you to the promised land. But you forgot one thing about Moses, something I didn’t know until I talked about your beliefs with Mara. That was the essence of why you didn’t realize all this yourself, years ago. You were too close to the problem.”
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George sniffed a little derisively. “So what is all this leading to? If you’ve talked to Mara, you know the real Moses did indeed lead his people to the promised land.”
“Oh, yes he did,” I responded. “But there’s a foot-note to that event. He, himself, wasn’t permitted to enter. Just like your Moses.”
The truth hit him suddenly, with full force. “Oh! Jesus God!” was all he could manage.
“Moses was programmed to be one of you. He was your leader, your guide, your protector. He believed in his role implicitly. But, knowing the end, knowing his end, he felt cheated. Unlike your Biblical Moses, he’d done nothing to incur God’s displeasure, nothing to deserve dying at the mountains, looking down on the promised land but unable to enter, ever. Doomed forever to look down, never to join in, never to reach the place so tantalizingly close, perhaps even to be tamed off, killed, for doing his duty as God and his people had assigned him.”
George was almost shaking. “Oh, Lord God! That virusthat simple, little intestinal virus. Moses mutated it, adapted it, created the alien strain we now have.”
“Was Moses deactivated?” I asked him carefully.
His head, drooping a bit, shot up. “I don’t know!” he almost screamed. “I assumedbut, well, that wasn’t my responsibility.”
“He did what he was told to do, gave you just what you said you wanted, although with machine logic. To a machine, a being who is a truly alien entity with our knowledge, your description of Eden, of true communism and Christian fulfillment, would be a herd of immortal deer in a world with plenty of food and no carnivores.”
Least common denominator, I thought sadly. A mathematic concept. Boil down every Utopia and you
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get that LCDreduce man to the level of the herd animal without strife, fear, hostility, or death.
Only boredom.
“But why these forms?” George asked, voice cracking somewhat. “Why the Choz? Why the enormous reproduction rate?”
“What’s a computer, anyway, George?” I asked, and not waiting for an answer, continued. “It’s an artificial man-built brain. Yours is in the ship itself. It can’t ever come down. But it can keep contact through our own senses. We see by reflected sound waves. Want to bet that the Peace Victory’s communication system picks up just about everything? Maybe, despite my precautionsthis ledge here, our isolationthis conversation?”
The implications of what I was saying hit him. “Yes, yes! It might at that. So it sees what we see, hears what we hear, lives its own material lifemany, many livesthrough us. And” he had it all now, “perhaps it also transmits?”
I nodded. “All of themevery one except the Firsts, which it is sworn to protect and comfort and listen toare an extension of Moses. Not only did Moses enter the promised land, he became the promised land. And, because he interpreted the scripture and the goals of the group in his own, nonhuman, machine-oriented way, and because, as a ship’s computer he has infinite patience, it’s enough.”
“Mara” George said hesitantly. “Her, too?”
“Oh, yes,” I replied, probably not as gently as I could. “Oh, that doesn’t mean you’ve been talking to Moses the last few days. No, you’ve been talking to Mara, and Moses, if he chose, was experiencing everything she was.”
“But this puts a lie to whatever positive I can find in this world!” he wailed. “Damn him! Damn him to hell!”
It was the first time I’d heard anyone curse on this
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world, and the most vehemence I had ever seen over anything. If nothing else, I had introduced hatred on this world, hatred and revulsion.
Finally, he recovered, and looked at me, almost pleadingly. “Now what do we do?”
I sighed.
“He’s finally reached the point where he can go no further on this world. He’s not very creativestealing bits and pieces of us from the native animals he himself surveyed and analyzed. At the start he made a lot of mistakes. The early first-stage incest, for example. The escape of the colonists by shuttle. How he must have feared they were on to him, were coming to shut him down! But he played dead, and they finally gave in. To seal everyone in, he destroyed the shuttle. He’s got some slight flaws, you see. He’s playing God, all right, but he’s not omnipotent. He makes mistakes.” I paused for a second, thinking of how to explain what was ahead.
“I think he’s reached the turning point of social engineering on this world. He’s most of the world, now, and he’s stabilizing the population. Through his contact with the virus, he can program just about everybody except perhaps the Firsts. Probably intends a heavenly host eternally praying and glorifying God, the end vision of the book.
“Now it’s time to spread the holy attainment.” George was aghast. “Buthow?” he asked. “Through me. My little ship can reach the Peace Victory. A small colony there will be easily nurtured. We can spread, invade other worlds, use the same techniques on a grander scale. He’s going to be a missionary who can deliver, George, but he needs my ship.”
The older man stood, deep in thought. Finally, he asked, “Can he get it? Can he use it?”
I shook my head negatively. “No, it’s a different animal, so to speak. I’m sure he tried when I first
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boarded the Victory and found it impossible. That ship can’t move without my conscious will to make it move, and it is prepared against the alien will. It’s a scout ship, remember. It’s got to have those features or you don’t dare send it and me out into the unknown.”
“Then you have only to not activate it, and he can do nothing,” George pointed out. “At least we can
contain the virus here.”
“I’m afraid not,” I replied carefully. “I’m due back in two years. They’ll allow one more, then send two scouts out to track me. If neither of those return, then some big guns will go out. And big guns are a hell of a lot sloppier and more ignorant in the face of the unknown than scouts. They’ll come down, look around, find things crazy, and do what I didtake some samples and head for home and a panel of experts. They’ll take the virus with them, and Moses, still very much alive, will find some way to follow them, directing the virus, seeing through the specimen Choz. No, George, we can’t let that happen.
“The only thing we can do is destroy the Peace
Victory and Moses.”
It had turned dark, but we hadn’t moved from our shelter up in the valley. It still got chilly here; the virus didn’t like the cold, and we were very uncomfortable. Yet we stayed, and we didn’t sleep.
“You could ram it,” George suggested.
For the ninetieth time I shook my head. “No, that thing’s huge. The computer is at the core, armored and protected. Even if we severed the ship in two, there are almost certainly fail-safe systems that would allow it to rejoin, maybe even self-repair. I don’t know those ships, but that’s the way I’d build them, and although the people of your time didn’t have the knowledge we do now, they were just as smart.”
“I still don’t understand why the damn thing needs you at all,” George said. “After all, it almost certainly still has strains of the virus in storage,”