Thirg and Brongyd agreed, and the three of them departed after Thirg and Brongyd had taken a long sleep in a couple of the house's service and overhaul closets.

24.

Eskenderom, Kroaxia's exiled former king, stood glowering irascibly at the edge of a forest clearing hidden in the hills of Serethgin, which bordered Kroaxia to the south. A short distance in front of him, Frennelech, the deposed high priest, gave parting exhortations to the two priests who were about to leave for Carthogia with the Lumian flying dragon. Behind, the equerries and other attendants who had accompanied them to the meeting place waited with the mounts. The priests would be going to join ten others whom the Lumians had taken back to Carthogia in the course of the last eight brights. The Lumian artisans who created artificial machines that could talk and fly needed Kroaxians to help them produce improved language-translating vegetables adapted to the Kroaxian dialect.

"Go you forth, then, and apply thy minds diligently to the tasks that the Lumian sages shall set you,"Frennelech said. "Remember always that the Lifemaker works in devious ways, but it is His work that you shall be doing."

"Praise be to the Lifemaker," the first of the priests responded.

"May He protect thee and the king," the other said.

They turned and, following the gestures of the Lumian soldiers in their ungainly, removable dome-headed casings, ascended the sloping ramp to a compartment at the rear of the dragon with its doors left open to the outside-robeings could not have entered the closed gas furnaces in which Lumians dwelt. The cordon of Lumians who had guarded the dragon entered through a forward door that closed behind them, cutting off the glow of violet heat-light from inside. As Frennelech came back to stand beside Eskenderom, fierce blasts of dragon-light burst from the beast's underside. Then, roaring its defiance of the force that drew all things to the ground, it rose up, turning its nose northward.

"Explain to me, now, the machinations of these strange aliens, who even now, after two twelve-brights, leave my mind confounded," Eskenderom said. "With their approval we arm and incite the very Avengers whose provocations work against the same Carthogia that the Lumians endorse. Yet the Avengers whom they would have us encourage, their dragon soldiers hara.s.s. Is it my mind that ails with the onset of time, or is there some obscure logic that would surely challenge the perspicacity of the Lifemaker Himself?"

"They seek to create an illusion that peril threatens the Lumians left here on Robia," Frennelech replied. "And this purpose do the Avengers serve." He watched the sky dragon disappear over the hilltops. "In response to his subjects' plea for aid, the great Lumian king will send his army to restore thy throne."

"What kind of great king is this who can act only at his subjects' will?" Eskenderom answered darkly. "Is it king or pretender with whom we treat? If the great king would have us tame the forests of Robia, then why does he not send fleets of dragons bearing his command? If, unwittingly, we are abetting the designs of another, then what dire retribution awaits at the hand of he who does command?"

"Like Robia, Lumia's house is divided," Frennelech said. "Think of it not as treachery by one who would usurp but rather as a contest among equal kings."

"Equal? Then why do we meet here like thieves, in the forest, while the Lumian dragons make their lair in Carthogia?" Eskenderom demanded.

"Small Lumian dragons," Frennelech pointed out. "The masters of the Great-Dragon-That-Brings-Armies are pledged to thee."

"The great dragon that sleeps still in the sky above Lumia," Eskenderom said. "Another two brights yet, we are told, before it will awake. Then eleven brights for its flight to Robia. Can our effort be thus long sustained?"

"We are praying for the Lifemaker to strengthen the Avengers' resolve and faith," Frennelech a.s.sured him.

"Hmph." Eskenderom scowled as he thought about the reports he'd heard of the clashes between the Redeeming Avengers and Lumian dragon soldiers. "It might be an idea to pray for Him to strengthen their casings, too, while He's at it."

Aboard the military flyer that had just lifted off from the meeting place in the hills of the nation known as Venice, Werner Weinerbaum removed the gauntlets of his suit and placed them in the stowage rack below his helmet. These talks always had to be conducted outside because Terran cabin conditions would have been unbearable to the t.i.tan-conditioned Taloids.

Taloid help had proved necessary before his research could progress further. He hadn't used Arthur's Taloids from Genoa because Zambendorf was too well known there-accepted as an official consultant on setting up the state administration, for heaven's sake! Weinerbaum didn't want that preposterous "psychic" meddling in his business. But his move to oppose GSEC's directive and actually plead Zambendorf's case for remaining at Genoa Base to NASO had been something of a masterstroke, Weinerbaum thought, even if he did say so himself.

First, of course, it had cemented his relationship with NASO, and keeping NASO in control was his best insurance for being left to carry on his work without hindrance. Second, the show of magnanimity could only enhance his own image among the scientific staff, many of whom seemed to welcome Zambendorf's antics as entertainment and a relief from the routine of the base. Well, Weinerbaum had shown that he could appreciate a joke, too. In fact, that was what he had meant when he had said that Zambendorf provided "a valuable contribution to the scientific enterprise"-the wretched Eidstadt woman had quoted him out of context. And in exercising such tolerance, he had dispelled any absurd notion that some might have been harboring that he considered Zambendorf a threat to his image. Finally, it had to be admitted that Zambendorf did command an extraordinary rapport with the Taloids. Here was an a.s.set that Weinerbaum might, conceivably, put to good use some day. A wise administrator allowed for future unknowns. This way, he not only was conserving a potential resource but had enhanced its value by earning Zambendorf's goodwill in the bargain.

In a seat sideways to Weinerbaum, facing a console, Captain Mason of the U.S. Special Forces looked away from a screen he had been using to check on the two Taloids in the open rear section of the craft. "From the way they're sitting and clutching those handrails, I'd say they're terrified," he said.

"But they're belted in securely and look okay."

"Fine," Weinerbaum acknowledged with a faint nod.

"Two more for the language department, eh?" Mason said. "What's the score with these guys that you're bringing back? Somebody told me it was to make better translator boxes. Is that it?"

"Yes."

"So what's wrong with using the Ts at Genoa that we've already got?"

"The linguists can get a better feel of the structure with access to a range of dialects," Weinerbaum told him. "There are some important differences in grammar and usage between Paduan and Genoan."

"Okay." Mason wasn't sure he believed that. If it were so, why were they picking up Paduans out in Venice, from the has-been king, Henry, instead of simply getting some from Padua? But Weinerbaum had specifically requested a "low-key" approach, without the visibility that public trafficking into Padua would have entailed. Now, why would a scientist be worried about something like that? Mason wondered. But it suited Mason fine. It meant that he could schedule the pickups to be made during the secret meetings with Henry, without having to lay on extra trips.

And to top it all, Weinerbaum thought to himself, he still enjoyed the cooperation of the military.

Since they were acting as fronts for GSEC in preparing Henry to be reinstated, they might have been expected to respond to his pro-NASO gesture with some hostility. No doubt respect for his scientist's impartiality had prevailed.

He experienced a satisfying feeling of having achieved a delicate balance of compromises with finesse. There really wasn't that much to politics when one broke it down, he told himself. It was essentially a commonsense art, over-rated to impress the credulous. Just a question of considering a few elementary factors and evaluating the lowest multiple that would accommodate all of them. Of course, a trained intellect and an ability to a.s.similate other points of view did help, he supposed. Not that the so-called professionals seemed particularly well endowed, judging by the habitual messes they made of the world's affairs. Maybe, when he got back to Earth, he'd move into statesmanship.

Zambendorf's way of going about things was very often the one that n.o.body else thought of: the simplest. What would be the simplest way to find out what the scientists were up to? he asked himself.

Go and see. How easiest to go and see? Ask.

Sergeant Harvey spread his hands helplessly as he sat on the far side of one of the long tables in the general mess. It was midmorning by the twenty-four-hour local time cycle, which was synchronized to GMT, and the place was quiet. A few mechanics were taking a coffee break at the far end, and the NASO chefs were setting out dishes in preparation for the lunchtime crowd."Joe, you know I would if I could, but I can't help ya."

Joe Fellburg's huge, broad-featured face puckered into a frown. "Hey, Bill, what is this? We were on the same team, man. I need to break outta this place or I'll get cabin fever. I've always wanted to see one of the a.s.sembly places where those machines come together, and there's one on the south side, about ten miles outside the city. You guys are always running trucks and flyers out there. I figured you could fix me a trip." He rubbed his chin pointedly. "I could maybe throw in a bottle of something. There's ways. Come on, it's just like hitching a ride outta Travis, back home. What's the problem?"

Harvey shook his head. "You don't understand, Joe. One of the experimental stations is located there." Fellburg did understand-his main reason for being interested was that ES3was located there.

Harvey went on. "Weinerbaum's had a high-security wrap put around the whole place. Level Five scientists and cleared personnel only. Even I couldn't just walk inside there."

Fellburg looked puzzled. "So what in h.e.l.l are they doing there?"

"You know they don't tell me things like that, Joe. All I know is they've got lots of trucks and cabins set up out there. They use a lot of computers. Weinerbaum and usually a couple of his guys fly out there most mornings. And there's a section of one of the huts that's kept open to the outside, too, so I guess they've got Ts working with them."

"Taloids? What for?"

"How do I know? Maybe they're doing aStar Wars remake on ice."

Fellburg leaned back against the wall behind the bench and thought for a moment. It was clear that he wasn't going to get anywhere, but that in itself said a lot. He asked himself what other information might be the best pointer to uncovering whatever was afoot. "Could you do something else for me, then, Bill?" he asked finally.

"Like what?"

"These guys who go out there with Weinerbaum. Could you let me know from the gate logs who they are?"

"Why do you want to know something like that?"

"Oh, just curious."

Harvey's voice dropped to little more than a murmur. "You'll get my a.s.s nailed, Joe. We've been told to cool it with you guys. You know, back off a little. Not to be so up-front."

"Us? You mean Karl and the team?"

"Uh huh."

"Why?"

Harvey shrugged and shook his head. "Who knows what goes on?"

Fellburg snorted. "So screw 'em. Come on, we were both in the same league. I'm only asking for a few names."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n . . . Okay, you've got it."

"And how about the days and the times they were checked in and out? Huh?" Fellburg drummed his fingertips on the table and winked conspiratorially. "The bottle of whatever still stands."

Harvey emitted a long sigh. "Oh, s.h.i.t . . . I'll see what I can do," he promised.

All the senior scientists who were cleared for Experimental Station 3 turned out to be from Weinerbaum's coterie of insiders. Dave Crookes identified the most regular visitors as either computer scientists, specializing in complex dynamic code structures, or linguists-practically the same group, in fact, that had sought to establish communication with the Taloids before Zambendorf had muscled in and ruined their act.

Thinking about the names reminded Crookes that he had come across the terms "redundant DNA"

and "Cyril" several times in references to their work and had heard the same terms mentioned in unguarded moments of conversation. Fellburg and Thelma tried breaking into the local data files and alsotapping into the Earthlink to see what they could dredge up from NASO HQ, only to find that the encryption was impregnable to the methods Zambendorf's team had at its disposal (even psychic powers!). But even the fact that Weinerbaum had resorted to such sophisticated protection told them something. It meant that he and his directors were anxious to prevent other concerns back on Earth from finding out what he was up to, which could only mean GSEC and its political supporters in Washington.

That would explain Weinerbaum's seeming aberration in defending Zambendorf against GSEC's directive to have him removed: Opposing GSEC would help keep NASO in control on t.i.tan and thus preserve Weinerbaum's independence.

But from the log entries that Fellburg obtained, it seemed that Weinerbaum was being palsy with the military as well, jaunting off with them to places like Venice and prompting them to keep Zambendorf at a distance. Why Venice? Zambendorf wondered. Colonel Short got his orders from offices of the Pentagon that were sympathetic to the political faction backing GSEC, which wanted Henry back in power. And Venice was where Henry had fled after his expulsion from Padua. So, was Weinerbaum getting mixed up in some underhanded political move to bring Henry back?

Zambendorf wondered if Weinerbaum fully appreciated the dangers of the double game he was playing. Scientists were only human. While deservedly acclaimed and accredited within their own specialized fields of experience, they could be as easily misled as anyone else when they ventured outside it. And-as Zambendorf saw and took advantage of all the time in his own line of work-the very fact of their proven ability in other areas could result in a p.r.o.neness to mislead themselves. "IfI can't see the trick, then there can't be a trick," the reasoning seemed to run, which left the proponent of the logic painted into a corner and forced to accept the only other explanation possible, namely, that whatever he was witnessing had to be genuine.

One afternoon, Zambendorf and the others, except Drew West, who was fetching some figures from one of the labs, were crammed into the cabin that Zambendorf shared with Abaquaan. Dave Crookes was with them, going over what they had managed to learn so far. If Henry and the Paduans were involved somehow, then one way for finding out more would be to tackle it from the Padua end, through Arthur's excellent intelligence service. That would take time, however, since communications back from Padua would be slow. In any case, they could do little to further the idea until Zambendorf's next meeting with Arthur.

Crookes sat back against the wall at the foot of Abaquaan's bunk and cast an eye once more over the collection of names, places, lists, and notes on everything else they had been able to glean. Thelma pa.s.sed around coffees and sodas while Clarissa ran something on the terminal in a corner.

"Do you know what the whole pattern looks like to me?" Crookes said at last. "From the people who are involved, I think they've discovered some new form of intelligence out there. Why else is ES3 set up at one of the final a.s.sembly stations? And they're determined to keep you people out of it-maybe because of the way they lost out on prestige last time, and they still haven't gotten over it."

"You think so?" Thelma said. She looked amazed. "All this fuss and security stuff just over who did what first? I mean, we are talking about grown-up, adult people, right?"

"These are just the kind of people who get funny about things like that," Crookes said.

"Prima donnas," Clarissa threw over her shoulder. "That's why guys like you and Graham get shut out, too. You don't play the game, Dave. That's your problem."

"The part about redundant DNA and Cyril sounds like it could be a life-form, all right," Fellburg agreed, rubbing his chin.

"You see?" Crookes looked at the others while Clarissa carried on tapping at the terminal. "It all fits."

Zambendorf considered the suggestion and shook his head. "More likely they just think that you and Graham talk too easily," he said. "No, this doesn't necessarily say anything about a new intelligence.

Cyril could be a code name for anything. And redundant DNA? A metaphor for anything that serves no obvious purpose. I use it myself all the time."They debated for some time, finally accepting that there really was nothing conclusive one way or another. Then the door opened, and Drew West appeared. He was holding the papers he had gone to fetch, but his manner said that he didn't attach too much importance to them right now. He looked quickly around the company and closed the door carefully behind him.

"Guess what I just overheard," he invited. n.o.body asked. "I came out through the electrical repair shop. That French computer woman, Annette Claurier, was in there, getting something down from a shelf in a closet. She couldn't see me because she had the door open, but do you know what she said?

She said, 'Olaf-' That's the name of the Norwegian she works with, right? '-Olaf,' she said, 'do you know which star I think Cyril might be from . . .' And then she closed the door, saw that it was me, and marched out looking real shaken up." The others all stared mutely. West directed a look of forced nonchalance at each of them in turn, all around the cabin. Clarissa's tapping in the corner had stopped.

"Interesting, do you think?" West asked.

"Star?" Zambendorf repeated the word dazedly. "Cyril is from another star?"

Crookes and Fellburg remained speechless. Thelma realized that the cup in her hand was getting hot and put it down hastily.

Abaquaan stared at Zambendorf, for once in his life looking truly astounded. "Code experts and linguists?" he whispered. "Ancient DNA? In the computers? Could it be one of them, Karl? The guys we've been talking about?"

n.o.body needed to be told what he meant. Had Weinerbaum's people found one of the aliens from long ago, the aliens who had built the long-lost civilization that the machine biosphere of t.i.tan had originated from a million years before?

Surely it couldn't be.

25.

Everything was wrong. Sarvik should have reawakened to find himself inhabiting a sleek, new, multiply versatile body with extended senses, an undreamed-of capacity for new experiences, and an infinitely promising future. Around him there should have been the flourishing supportive environment that robots were supposed to have prepared before he was conscious of anything. Instead, he was a prisoner, apparently, inside a machine.

He didn't feel as if he were in a machine, although exactly what that was supposed to feel like, he wasn't sure. But as the focal center of the few senses he possessed, he identified his location with that of a peculiar, unfamiliar kind of artificial being that bore not the slightest resemblance to the advanced bodies he and the designers from Universal Robocon had labored and argued so long to perfect. It was of crude, bipedal, two-armed construction, equipped with basic vision. Totally lacking was any vestige of the reconfigurable fractal architecture they had devised for superdexterity and maneuverability. But that didn't matter very much for now, for he was unable to control anything and had no mobility at all.

He could see in one fixed direction that presented him with the view of a screen, and he could communicate-somewhat clumsily but getting better-by voice. That was it. The being he had the illusion of occupying-the one that the eyes, ears, and vocal system belonged to-was functioning purely in the role of a limited communications interface. He had no access to its motor system and could not move it about or even turn its head. He "himself"-the ent.i.ty that perceived what the eyes saw and formed the decisions expressed by the words the voice said-existed as patterns of code inside a system of computerlike devices to which the being was coupled electronically. The being, he had learned, was called a "Taloid" and belonged to "t.i.tan," a strange world of cold and darkness that was apparently a major satellite of a planet in the system of a star called "Sol," which could have been anywhere.

The screen and its audio communicated with an enclosed s.p.a.ce nearby that was evidently a primitive computer laboratory and housed the completely different beings who were responsible forSarvik's reactivation. These were "humans," real flesh and blood this time, though not avian but an intelligent mammalian form that to Sarvik carried the comic suggestion of hairless, upright, overgrown elgiloits wearing clothes. As was evidenced by their having to remain in their enclosed, artificial environment, the humans were no more native to t.i.tan than a Borijan was. In fact, they were from "Earth," the third planet of whatever star Sol was.

t.i.tan was a chaotic world of living, evolving machines that the humans had stumbled on in the course of exploring their planetary system. Their conclusion was that they had found the result of some automated alien manufacturing program from the distant past that had gone drastically wrong somewhere -which Sarvik, in consternation, had already recognized as being precisely the case. According to "Weinerbaum," who seemed to be in charge of the human scientists and who had done most of the talking with Sarvik so far, a.n.a.lysis of materials from the deepest layers of foundations and debris indicated that machines had been on t.i.tan for about one million years. Sarvik had no idea yet how long a Terran year was. But a million of them still had to be a long time.

Experimental Station 3 consisted of two main cabins jammed with work s.p.a.ces and equipment, along with an ancillary hut for resting and sleeping quarters, and several trucks containing special instrumentation and generating gear. There was an additional trailer for the Special Forces security team, and a second with kitchen and sanitary facilities, which they shared with the scientists. An adjoining open structure housed the Taloids from Padua essential to the work.

Wearing a white lab coat over shirtsleeves, Werner Weinerbaum sat at a cramped console in the main lab area, scanning over the scrolling transcript of the current dialogue. He had already come to the conclusion that it didn't take much for a competent scientist to get the hang of politics. But what politician could have achieved this? Identifying, isolating, and then reactivating the code groups had surely been a remarkable feat in itself. But then hitting on the idea of using Taloids to communicate with them-that had to be a stroke of pure genius.

Even after they had recognized the complex configurations as encodings of living ent.i.ties, the Terran scientists still had had no idea what they were doing in control processors out in t.i.tan's mechanical jungle. The patterns were contained in immense blocks of code that appeared to have been pa.s.sed on through generations of machines without being expressed physically in any detectable way. Then somebody had noticed that parts of the subsidiary groupings resembled the input-output driver coding that linked internal brain processes to sensors, limbs, and other external functions in many of t.i.tan's machine animals. This suggested that the encryptions the scientists had discovered were supposed to have been expressed in machine forms that had never been built. And, even more intriguingly, the complexity of the patterns hinted that the unexpressed ent.i.ties might have been intelligent. But how could they ever be expressed now, with the blueprints for the required machines apparently lost?

Then Weinerbaum had pointed out that there already existed intelligences expressed as machine forms: the Taloids. And the I/O codes that connected the Taloids' mental processes to their bodies and sensory mechanisms were remarkably similar in structure to those found embedded in the alien intelligences, which was how the scientists had been able to recognize them for what they were in the first place. It seemed that the Taloids, in common with the rest of t.i.tan's machines, had preserved a common heritage of engineering concepts and standards from their distant ancestry. In that case, Weinerbaum had reasoned, there was a good chance that the encrypted alien intelligences would show a high degree of compatibility with the same system. If so, then perhaps the alien intelligences, instead of linking to the outside world through their own I/O code-which was unusable because the machines for which the I/O code was written for didn't exist-could be linked instead to the closely related Taloid I/O code. And the Taloid I/O code operated senses in Taloid bodies, which did exist.

Accordingly, the scientists had devised a way of temporarily "anesthetizing" a Taloid brain while the subprocessors that handled its sensory traffic were rerouted from its own higher-processing centers to the external system containing the alien code.

The result was that the alien could see Weinerbaum and his surroundings-the reverse was nottrue, because there was nothing tangible of the alien to see-and the two species could talk to each other. Since "Cyril," as the scientists had christened him, was using a Taloid subsystem, his internalizings expressed themselves in Taloid ultrasonic speech-Weinerbaum's people still hadn't figured out the intricacies of the conversions involved, but it worked. Hence, an improved Taloid-Terran translator that the linguists had been developing formed the final stage in the bizarre process.