Aleka stiffened her will. “All right,” she said, “I admit I’ve kept the sympathies I acquired then. To a degree, anyhow. I don’t personally believe we can turn history backward. Nor that we should.” It had indeed been a desperate cause: Keep humanity in charge. Do not permit the making of fully conscious artificial intelligence. Stop before it is too late, and then consider how much mechanization and automation is really desirable. “Too late,” she repeated her thought.
“But I live with what the system is doing to my people.”
“So you told the lady Lilisaire.”
She bewitched it out of me, Aleka almost replied. She had never confided like that in anyone else, feelings too deep to have clear form until she uttered them. Not Father nor Mother nor sisters nor Yuri had worked thus upon her. She did not yet know just how the Selenarch had.
She curbed her words. A silent half minute went by.
“Shall we proceed to the matter?” asked the machine.
‘”Olu’olu!” burst forth. Aleka caught her breath. “For favor.”
The calm tone helped steady hen “You have an uncommon knowledge of peculiar byways in these parts, as well as of the global datanet.”
“I, I’m no … spy, or any such thing.”
“Would you care to describe your experiences? Again, I know of them from the Wardress, but hearing you in person gives depth to the information,” the machine said.
And it had to judge whether or not she actually was what Lilisaire required. Responding in a half-organized fashion stabilized Aleka further. “Details, anecdotes, they’d take the rest of this week. But—oh, in my student days I was exposed to a wide variety of places and folk around Earth, besides getting a technical education. You see, the Lahui need people like that, and the elders thought I had the talent, so they encouraged and supported me to knock around. Since then I’ve served as a liaison, with the Keiki Moana on the one hand and the outside world on the other hand. I’ve come to the mainland quite a lot on that account, because—bueno, metamorphs don’t like to use telepresence, especially for important business. Among other things, they’re afraid of eavesdroppers.” Not without grounds, she thought. The authorities would want to keep an eye on them. They were a chaotic element, which might by sheer chance disrupt carefully laid social plans.
“Your Keiki Moana seek cooperation with other Terrestrial metamorphs?” It was more a statement than a question.
“The core, the—I hate to say ‘civilized’ Keiki, yes, they do.” And therefore Aleka did, on their beloved behalf. “Nothing criminal, nothing revolutionary. But … we’d like to quietly establish communication, find our common interests, work toward an organization that can promote and defend them.”
Lunarians were metamorphs too.
“Nothing criminal, nothing revolutionary,” the machine echoed. “Yet to Lilisaire you hinted at underground activity.”
“Self-protective secrecy.” Not absolutely true. ‘Tve been let into a little of it—“ partly because that was expedient, partly because she had pressed herself on the leaders, being interested and eager. Adventures into strangeness.
“Those connections could prove valuable. As for your access to databases and communication lines—”
“That’s straightforward,” she interrupted, for impatience was rising in her. “I am an officer of a recognized community, who has to deal with government officials. Sometimes that’s best done under administrative confidentiality. You know, so the discussion can be frank and undistracted. Accordingly, I’ve learned my way around in the datanet. But I don’t have unlimited access.”
Supposing she theoretically did, how could she tell what was being kept hidden from her, or what was engineered to delude her?
“Muy bien,” said the machine. “Let us get to the point.” At last, at last! “The lady Lilisaire has found clues indicating there is a secret … “ It went on.
Aleka sat mute fora while before she whispered, out of her amazement, “I’d no idea. I don’t know what to say. Or what to do.”
“The hope is that you can discover the truth, and that it will give back to Luna some power over its future.”
She shook her head. “Impossible, if they—“ they “—want to keep it from us.”
“Necessarily? You will have what help we can provide, beginning with a confederate highly knowledgeable about space.”