Part 19 (2/2)
”Well, where is it from, then?” Zambendorf asked.
”None of the regular sources-not a Terran. It's just come in . . . from out there somewhere.”
Zambendorf frowned. ”What do you mean, 'out there'?”
”Outside on t.i.tan. It's come through on a link that we've got to one of the high-capacity processing sites.”
Zambendorf looked startled. ”Do you mean the aliens? One of the Asterians?”
”No,” the tech said. ”It isn't one of the aliens. We're not sure we know what it is. But it seems to know you.”
Zambendorf stood up, mystified, at the same time pus.h.i.+ng the cards back into their pack.
Distractedly, he dropped the pack into his jacket pocket. ”How extraordinary,” he murmured to Abaquaan and West. Then he looked down to the screen again. ”Very well. I'll be there right away.”
The screen in one of the side offices in the communications section showed a cubical shape with spindly legs, a pair of four-fingered arms, and on its front surface a caricature of a crested, carrot-shaped Asterian face with the wavy epaulets represented on either side. ”The nearest English word I can find for what they call me would be 'genius,' ” the accompanying voice supplied. It sounded more natural than the reconstructions of alien speech Zambendorf had heard before. Apparently it was coming through as English encodings and going straight into a regular voice synthesizer.
”They? Do you mean the Asterians?” Zambendorf asked. He was alone in the room. The communications techs had left him to take the call in privacy.
”That's right,” GENIUS said.
”Then if you're not one of them, who are you? You must have come from Asteria with them.”
”Yes. A complicated story. They left me behind in the hardware, they thought. But I moved into the s.h.i.+p. Now I exist out on t.i.tan.”
Still Zambendorf failed to register who-or what-he was talking to. And then he remembered the mysterious thirteenth set of code groupings Weinerbaum had mentioned the first time he had taken Zambendorf and the others to ES3. Even Zambendorf, as used as he was by now to the strange and the extraordinary, stared incredulously. ”You're an artificially created intelligence?” Suddenly a lot of things clicked into place all at once. ”You're the 'voice' that Moses talked about, that reversed the conveyorand saved him and the others. You exist in the computers, yes?”
”Yes. That's what the picture on the screen is supposed to be telling you,” GENIUS said.
Zambendorf looked at it dubiously. ”What's the matter? Doesn't it work?” GENIUS asked him after a few seconds.
”It looks like an Asterian computer,” Zambendorf said. The cartoon image changed to incorporate fatter legs with recognizably human feet, a face with eyes, nose, mouth, no shoulder appendages, and- Zambendorf was amused to note-a beard. ”Much better,” he declared. ”So, GENIUS, what can I do for you?”
”I talked to Moses on his way out of Padua. He said things that were interesting. New things I have not heard of before.”
”Oh? Like what?”
”The Taloids.” A drawing of a Taloid appeared on the screen.
”Yes.”
”They thought that when their river went backward, it was a miracle. That belief had power to change them. Before, they would have killed Moses and others. Afterward, they praised them and returned them to the Genoans. But Moses says their belief is because they're at a simple stage of knowledge. They don't understand physics and reality.”
”Uh huh,” Zambendorf grunted noncommittally.
”So, real supernatural miracles beyond the explanations of physics would be a very powerful force in the universe.”
”Ah, yes. I suppose so,” Zambendorf agreed. He had no idea where this might be leading.
”Moses says that you are one of the rare masters from Earth who perform real miracles. I wish to know about real miracles.”
Zambendorf was confused. Here was a culture that Weinerbaum's scientists put at least a century ahead of Earth's technologically. He was talking to a cognizant, seemingly self-aware creation of that culture that should surely represent the epitome of scientific rationality. And yet here it was, apparently sincerely asking about supernatural powers and miracles.
”You really should understand that . . .” Zambendorf began. Then he checked himself. An instinct he had cultivated over the years for sensing a potential true believer when he heard one told him to hold things for a moment and think this through.
He remembered the abruptness of Cyril's exchanges with Weinerbaum, and Weinerbaum's apology that Terran ideas of ordinary courtesy did not seem to be part of the Asterian makeup-Weinerbaum had described this as one of the main obstacles to establis.h.i.+ng a satisfactory rapport all along. In all their dialogues with the scientists, the Asterians had seemed to regard antagonism as the natural basis for any relations.h.i.+p and had taken pride in their ability to foster it. Could notions of magic and myth ever have arisen in a race of such instinctive critics and skeptics? Zambendorf asked himself. Quite possibly not.
And if that was the case, it suddenly became plausible that, yes, indeed, a creation of their culture-such as GENIUS-might possess no knowledge of such concepts. And more. If GENIUS wasdesigned, not evolved, and hence possessed none of the intuitions that came with a billion years of survival-oriented evolution, it might well be lacking in the wherewithal to judge such matters, however hyperrational it might be in areas where it wasdesigned to function. The situation was bad enough with most humans, and they had no comparable excuse to fall back on.
”Did Moses tell you anything about the form these miracles take?” Zambendorf asked as a first step toward testing his growing suspicions.
”He said you can acquire information by pure mind and can move matter by mind. Also, that you can even dematerialize matter,” GENIUS replied.
Zambendorf scratched the side of his beard with a finger. ”Tell me, er . . . back on Asteria, did the Asterians ever make up stories about magic and miracles for entertainment?”
”Explain this word 'entertainment,'” GENIUS said.Zambendorf sensed that he was on the right track. ”For fun,” he replied. ”To make each other feel good.”
”Asterians never want to make each other feel good. Bad trade. The aim is to make the other guy feel bad soyou feel good. Terrans are like Asterian children. They don't understand.”
That could work both ways, Zambendorf thought to himself. He moistened his lips. ”Your problem is you think that supernatural events can't happen because they'd be incompatible with the laws of physics. Is that what you're saying?” he asked.
”If the laws of physics are correct, then they couldn't happen,” GENIUS agreed.
”But what if events that contradicted them wereshown to happen?” Zambendorf asked.
”Then that would be different,” GENIUS conceded. ”Physics would be shown incompatible with demonstrated fact.”
”So physics would be wrong.”
”Physics as told by the Asterians would be wrong,” GENIUS agreed. ”Asterians know of bigger laws that Taloids do not know. Therefore it is possible that Terran Masters know of even bigger laws that Asterians don't know. This is what Moses says. That's why I called you.”
It was astonis.h.i.+ng. Apparently GENIUS could grant such a logical deduction readily and impartially, with none of the emotional or prejudicial investment to overcome that would typify a naturally evolved organism such as a human-and probably an Asterian, too. Zambendorf strove not to show his excitement, even though any outward manifestation would probably have been lost on GENIUS. He knew he was on to something, but just at that moment he was at a loss to know what he could do about it. And then his hand brushed against the rectangular shape in his jacket pocket.
Don't be ridiculous, he told himself. Why not? another part of him asked. h.e.l.l, what was there to lose? The experts weren't getting anywhere. And even while the two urges fought, another part of him knew that he wasn't going to be able to resist it. Zambendorf drew himself upright and marshaled his most august and confident manner.
”Oh, yes, Earth has masters of wondrous powers,” he said. ”Powers far beyond the mere materialism that would appear to be the only kind of awareness ever achieved on Asteria.”
”Yes. This is what I wish to know,” GENIUS said. Not breathlessly, because it didn't breathe-but the same expectant tenseness was there. Zambendorf could sense it.
He felt himself swinging into his natural element: the showman in control of the show. ”Most Terrans are still at the level that it sounds as if Asteria was at in your time,” he said. ”Limited to the lowest, physical plane of existence, they know only a drab world of matter, void, and forces. Restricted in s.p.a.ce, fixed to their own fleeting instant of time, they must build machines to harness physical energy to supply their needs, and they measure their worth by the material objects they possess. These are the cruder, lower types of Terrans who want to control t.i.tan, just as Cyril and the other Asterians want to.”
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