“Well, you’re going to have to give up these executions. We can’t replace the rats or the soft-cyber units you’re . . . using up.” She had managed not to say “wasting.”
“Discipline must be maintained!” snapped Cartup-Kreutzler. “We’ve got to set an example or the rats will be far worse.”
She looked dispassionately at the two. No wonder humans were in such trouble. “If I might suggest . . . Simply remove the troublemakers and repost them elsewhere. Tell the rats that remain that the troublemakers have been executed. From what you’ve told me, they’re in no position to know any different. Tell the reposted ones they’ve been reprieved. It would give us breathing space here at the cloning labs. And we’ll experiment with a different language download on the bats.”
The two generals looked at each other. “I suppose that might work,” said Cartup-Kreutzler reluctantly. “We can send them to areas the Korozhet advisors say are imminent attack zones.”
Blutin looked suspiciously at her. “What has language got to do with it? I don’t see why they’re required to speak anyway.”
“Language shapes the way you are able to think. For example, Zulu has no distinct word for the color blue as opposed to green. This makes describing the difference between hydrous and anhydrous copper sulphate difficult,” she said dryly.
The two generals looked blankly at her. She decided to continue anyway. “The microprocessor in the soft-cyber unit ‘learns’ how to translate thought patterns into words existing within the vocabulary download. This is naturally a little imprecise. The software in the cybernetic unit selects the nearest possible word with impeccable logic. Unfortunately, English isn’t terribly logical. It does mean that you can’t think of a complex matter which you do not have words for, however.”
A dim light dawned at the end of Cartup-Kreutzler tunnel. “Could you arrange it so that they don’t know the meaning of fear?”
“Unlikely,” said the scientist dryly. “It’s a core word in the human vocabulary. And without the concept you would be even shorter of soldiers. Gentlemen, I’ve heard your requests.” She emphasized that word. “I’ve told you what can be done. Now, if you’d excuse me, I shall see about implementation.”
Without asking their permission, she got up and left. It would be better if she could depart this overplush office, and this chateau with its fake military grandeur, without explaining that the bats would be getting downloads of Irish nationalist folk music and old Wobbly songs.
Devi Sanjay had joined the New Fabians back on Earth as a young idealist, with many others, planning a utopia. She’d seen the ideals of her compatriots wither as they became part of the entrenched privileged class. She wasn’t young anymore. But she, personally, had not quite lost all her idealism. When she’d left Earth, humans had been the intelligent species of the universe. Alone. Special. Now she knew that intelligent life was not rare. There were the alien enemy—the Magh’, the alien allies—the spiny beach ball Korozhet, and, according to the Korozhet, hundreds of others in this part of the galaxy alone. Evil ones such as the Jampad and Magh’, friends like Korozhet. She’d fostered two new intelligent species herself. The army still regarded them as trained animals. Biomechanical weapons. Things.
Devi Sanjay knew they were wrong. Things stopped being things when they reasoned. And, like the aliens, they would not see the world from a human perspective. Devi had never explained just why she had chosen the species she had, or the language downloads that she had. Her reasons were subtle, and her plans and vision deep. Some of them had very little to do with the war.
Humans had let the genie out of the Vat. Of one thing she was certain: it wouldn’t be that easy to put the two new intelligent species back. She’d given the rats some of the most intense and skilled portrayal of human drama and history. Now she was about to do the same, with emotional and revolutionary content instead, to a species that could indeed kill Magh’—among other things.
Whatever came out of the meeting of these three . . . humans, rats and bats, all endowed with a shaping human heritage, when the hurly-burly was done . . . would not be in the smug plans of the aging New Fabian Shareholders.