Chapter Thirty-Five
Is there anything larger than the galaxy? And even if there is, what difference does it make?
—Anonymous note, found inside a piece of malfunctioning Hibbil machinery
When Jimu arrived at the Inn of the White Sun, he was astounded by the ingenious architecture of this hivelike way station that had been constructed in an orbital ring. The views of the planet Ignem, far below, were spectacular through bubble windows, and unlike anything he had ever seen before. The world looked like the largest gemstone in the galaxy, and it changed moment by moment, displaying different color combinations in shifting light.
“So you’ve heard of us, eh?” a flat-bodied robot said, as they stood on an observation deck. Within an hour of his arrival, Jimu had been introduced to Thinker, the leader of the mechanical colony. Narrowing his metal-lidded eyes, Thinker added, “What is it you’ve heard?”
“That you control your own destinies.” With one hand, Jimu rubbed a small dent on his own torso. He rather liked the feeling, for it made him think of the adversities he had overcome.
“I mean, what is it you’ve been told we do here?”
“That you run this inn, and make a great deal of money at it. Robots all over the galaxy speak of this place with affection and admiration.”
“Anything else?”
“No, nothing.”
“That is good, very good.”
Not wishing to conceal anything from this important robot, Jimu said, “I was Captain of the sentient machines on the Human Grand Fleet. You may have heard of it … the force that attacked the Mutati Kingdom and lost.”
“Yes,” Thinker said, staring at Jimu’s dented, scratched body. “And a military disaster does not look good on your résumé.”
“I wasn’t to blame for it, but listen to this.” In his concise, mechanical voice Jimu described General Sajak’s suspicion that Doge Lorenzo had sabotaged the fleet.
“Preposterous,” Thinker said. “The Doge would never do that.”
“Nonetheless, General Sajak is convinced of it, and is conspiring to assassinate Lorenzo.”
Without warning, Thinker inserted a flexible probe into Jimu’s control panel. Jimu went numb, like a patient under anesthetic.
“You are telling me the truth,” Thinker announced presently, in a flat voice. He withdrew the probe, then asked, “Who set up your control box? I’ve never seen connections like this.”
“A Human food-service worker. He had only a little experience with machines, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t have full range of movement do you? I noticed considerable stiffness as you walked.”
“You’re right.” Jimu lifted an arm, but not very high, then showed how the elbow didn’t bend as far as it should. He demonstrated similar problems with other joints.
“We’ll have to get you into the shop. But first, I want to show you our operation here. As a military robot, you will appreciate it.” The cerebral leader paused. “In fact, with your credentials, you deserve to be an officer again. Let’s make it Captain, all right?”
“In what force?” Jimu’s glowing yellow eyes opened wide.
He pointed a steely finger at Ignem. “We are building an army down there.”
“And you’ve already decided to make me a part of it?”
“I make quick decisions,” Thinker said. “That’s why I’m in charge here. Besides, nothing eludes my interface probe. In only a few seconds, I learned all about you.”
Later that day, Thinker escorted Jimu down to the surface of Ignem, to a camouflaged headquarters building that had been made to look like no more than a high spot on the surrounding black obsidian plain. There the newcomer was introduced to five other officers, all matching his own rank. One, a tall machine named Gearjok, had served as a technical robot on a Merchant Prince warship, responsible for maintaining mechanical systems. The other captains—Whee, Nouter, Fivvul, and Qarmax—had all worked in various machine supervisory roles for the armed forces of the Humans. In each case the robots had been discarded at the end of their useful lives, and had been salvaged by Thinker.
After a while, Gearjok slapped Jimu on his metal backside and said, “Enough of this. Now let’s introduce you to the others.”
As the mechanical men strolled outside, it pleased Jimu that none of his new comrades seemed to envy him for his quick promotion to their own level. He had seen such feelings of animosity in machine groups before, metastasizing like cancers and destroying the ability of the robots to work together. It was one of the undesirable traits of Humans that some mechanicals had acquired, but here it seemed to have been programmed out.
Jimu followed the others into a vacuum tube, which transported them with whooshes and thumps up to the roof of the headquarters, which they called the Command Center. From the top, he saw volcanoes in the distance, suddenly active and spewing fire and smoke into the atmosphere. Overhead, through the increasingly murky sky, he barely made out the orbital ring of the Inn of the White Sun.
Hearing a rumbling noise, he lowered his gaze and saw black plates slide open on the floor of the obsidian plain. Thousands of machines poured out, like fat, oddly-shaped insects from a burrow. He gaped in disbelief.
The robots began to form into ranks, but a number of them had problems and bumped into each other or stopped functioning. One, a round-backed mechanism who resembled a silver beetle, fell onto his back at the front of the ranks and could not right himself. Very few of them were shiny; most had unsightly dents and patch marks.
“As you can see, we still have some kinks to work out,” Thinker said. “But believe me, we’ve made a lot of progress.”
The worst robots were taken away for more repairs, and soon the remaining machines—around three thousand of them—were arrayed in neat infantry formations, identifiable to Jimu as the boxy ranks of ancient Earthian legions. He had mixed feelings about what he was seeing. In one respect, this was not a very impressive display. But in another, at least it existed.
A machine army!
He noted that only a small number of the troops carried weapons, and those were mostly outdated pelleteers and slingknives, with a few modern puissant rifles. Some of the robots seemed to know how to handle their implements of war, while others did not. This certainly was a motley gathering of individuals and equipment.
“We’ll have to send them back to barracks shortly,” Thinker said. “We keep maneuvers out here to a minimum, to avoid detection by enemies.”
“And who are our enemies?” Jimu inquired.
“There are always enemies. The trick is identify them in time and take appropriate action.”
“I see.” Jimu nodded, but made a creaking sound as he did so. One more thing to fix.
With a sudden clatter of metal, Thinker folded closed, so that he looked like a dull-gray metal box.
“He does that sometimes,” Gearjok said, “when he needs to consider something really important. It gives him absolute darkness and silence. The trouble is, when he thinks about deep philosophical matters he tends to fall asleep in the quiet darkness, with all of his senses blocked or shut off. Whenever that happens, we reactivate him by shaking him gently.”
Moments later, Thinker opened back up, and said, “I’ve been meaning to offer our services to mankind one day, in repayment for inventing sentient machines in the first place.”
“But Humans discarded these machines,” Jimu said.
“We still owe them some loyalty for creating us. Never forget that, Jimu. You and I would not be having this conversation at all if not for Humans. I think they threw us away in error, and I’ve been looking for an opportunity to prove it. I assure you, that despite the fumbling appearance of my troops, it is a skillful deception.” He touched a long scratch on his own torso. “Conventional wisdom holds that a well-run military force should be spotless and polished, thus instilling a sense of pride and personal self-worth into the organization. But there are distinct advantages to a less-than-perfect appearance. It can cause an opponent to underestimate your abilities.”
“That makes sense,” Jimu admitted. “Do you mean to tell me that even the machines that stopped functioning out on the parade ground did so by design?”
Thinker cut a jagged grin across his metal face. “Not exactly, but things are getting better.”
“The robots here are independently self-replicating,” Gearjok said to Jimu, “and you can be, too, with a little updating.”
Thinker explained that he had developed a sentient machine manufacturing process that did not exist anywhere else in the galaxy. His metal men were able to make copies of themselves by finding their own raw materials and making their own parts, even recycling old items as necessary. He mentioned what Jimu already knew, that there were other machines that could self-replicate (such as those of the Hibbils), but only in regimented factories, with raw materials provided for them under assembly line conditions.
“Is that why the robots are not uniform?” Jimu asked.
“Precisely. They use whatever materials are available to them.”
“With my own scrapes and dents, I should fit in nicely around here.”
“You’ll get a lot more before you’re through,” Thinker said. He paused, and added, “I am troubled about the assassination plot against Doge Lorenzo. It seems to me that this is the opportunity we’ve been looking for.”
Solemnly, Thinker placed a metal hand on Jimu’s shoulder and said, “I want you to lead a small force of our best fighting robots to Timian One and inform the Doge that he is in danger.”
“Me?”
“I like what I see in you, Jimu. You have experience, but even more importantly you have special qualities of leadership … your own way of solving problems. And you heard the conspirators yourself.”
“I’m honored, but …”
“You will inform him of the danger, and come right back. I need you here, to assist with the army we are forming.”
“I don’t feel ready for such an important assignment.”
“Nonsense. We just need to update your operating systems and data banks, clean you up a bit, and you’ll be ready to go. Another advantage that we have over Humans. With us, the learning curve is almost immediate.”
“You’re going to intervene in Human politics?”
“Doge Lorenzo is in danger, and we must do something!”
“Then I’m your robot. But first I must confess, anxiety is heating up my circuits. Could you ask the programmers to take care of that too, please?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get you in shape for the assignment.” Exuberantly, Thinker slapped his new comrade on the back, leaving one more dent, a little one.