“Wealth for all Taloids,” Seltzman replied.
The display changed:
SORRY. YOU STILL MISUNDERSTAND. EARTHMEN DO NOT WISH TO BENEFIT FROM TALOID WORK
THAT IS NOT PAID FOR. TITAN MUST WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS JUST AS EARTH
HAD TO WORK FOR WEALTH FOR ALL TALOIDS.
Seltzman sighed. “Delete last word. Insert Earthmen.” The machine complied.
“Okay,” he pronounced.
The “transmogrifier” that Dave Crookes, Leon Keyhoe, and some of the other
signals engineers and pattern-recognition specialists had assembled and were
still improving did not so much translate languages as enable the two parties in
a dialogue—whose native languages were not only mutually unintelligible but also
completely inaudible—to tell the machine, in effect, to note what was said and
remember its meaning. It did this by matching recognizable sequences of human
voice patterns against a collection of Taloid pulse-code profiles stored in a
computerized library that was continually being enlarged. Upon finding a Taloid
equivalent to an identified piece of speech input, it synthesized the
corresponding ultrasonic Taloid pulse-stream, thus performing both the
band-shift and time-compression needed to transfer information from one domain
of intelligibility to the other. Also it performed the complete inverse process.
The matches were determined not by sophisticated rules of grammar or elaborate
programing, but simply by mutual agreement through trial and error between the
parties involved. The system was thus very much an evolutionary one, and had
developed from extremely crude beginnings.
“Bad-sad,” the talking vegetable said. “Lumians no want good from buzz-buzz
clug-zzzzzipp robeing slave for free. Bakka-bakka Robia workum hard get plenty
finegood thing for robeings wheeee chirrrp like Lumia workum hard get plenty
finegood thing for chikka-walla-chug-chug-chog Lumians.”
Thirg frowned as he concentrated. “Methinks they have misunderstood,” he said.
“They believe that we fear they have come here to enslave us.”
“It seems their vegetable exaggerates our concern,” Kleippur commented. “My
objective is not that they would make us slaves, for clearly it is within their
power to have accomplished that end already if such was their desire, but their
implication that our people’s lives are my property to sell or barter as I
would, instead of their own to direct as they choose freely.”
“What are these ‘good things’ which they would have us work to acquire in our
world as they have in theirs?” Lofbayel asked.
“Presumably the weapons and other devices of destruction which they have
emphasized at such great expenditure of time and zealous-ness,” Dornvald
replied.
Kleippur shook his head. “The protection of Carthogia is important to me, ’tis
true, but these merchants of havoc would credit my mind with no aspiration
higher than an obsession for conquest and a hunger to possess the whole of
Robia. Indeed these are Lumians of a disturbingly different breed from the
Wearer and his companions.” He looked at Thirg. “Advise the Lumians that the
sharing of their lifemaking arts would be of far greater value to us, for with
such knowledge we could divide our industriousness among protecting our people,
providing for them, and educating them, in proportions of our own deciding. If
the Lumians wish to enlist our help in taming the forests to expand their
lifemaking abilities further, are we not justified in asking their help in turn
to expand our comprehension of that which they would have us tame?”
Thirg reached out and touched the button that opened the talking vegetable’s
ears. The small light that showed when the vegetable was listening came on.
“Knowledge of the lifemaking arts of the Lumians would be more valuable than
quantities of weapons beyond those needed to ensure Carthogia’s protection,” he
said. “If the Lumians wish robeings to help them tame the forests, robeings wish
Lumians to help them comprehend the forests.”
The transmogrifier turned the pulse-stream into numbers and flashed them to the
base computer, which broke the numbers into groups and compared them to stored
samples at the rate of a million per second. Where possible alternative matches
were indicated, a decision-tree operating on selected, weighted attributes kept
track of the best-fit score. An instant later the computer transmitted to the
transmogrifier.
“Unclear buzz-buzz gubba-gubba what-mean ‘lifemaking arts,’ ” the vegetable
squawked. “Want-say wheeeephooomalteraa.twe.”
Thirg thought for a while, but couldn’t bring one to mind. “Obtain new word,” he