The call for help came from Waterfall; desperate, late, powerful.
Too
powerful, it crashed through the delicate cobweb lace of false
aether at
ten times overload. We scrambled, leaving behind the outraged
howls of
the Ten Planets' repairmen. No sympathy - if you will set up your
economy to depend on tendril-thin spacetime distortion that a
gnat could
break, these things will happen. A little disaster's good for the
place.
There's too much of a bad thing, though. Ask Waterfall. We stood
off in
far orbit, well away from the prickle of satellite junk that
coats any
young tech civilization like stubble on an adolescent's chin. If
the
message was right, we should've been looking at a dead planet.
Didn't
seem that way to us, or to the monitors. They saw flyswarms of
electromagnetic gossip, messages from low frequency to lightwave.
We
humans sure are noisy.
Only it wasn't us. A lot of it was encrypted, of course, but if
it doesn't
bother my computer, it doesn't bother me. We were at nightside,
trying
to find some manned air traffic, when the report came out. As far
as the
computer could tell, the communications intercepted were entirely
Without Direct Human Intervention. Widhi. Whoopie.
We checked some of the intercepts that flagged ambiguous. No joy
-
automatic boats talking to satellites, satellites talking to
traffic control,
traffic talking to news, news talking to corporates saying their
shipment
of yoodle fruit was going to be late. The whole planet ticked
along, a
textbook example of a stable widhi economy. Even the broadcast
channels
looked normal, except the only live programmes were off-system
relays.
The lights were on, but there was no-one at home.
"Perhaps they got bored" said Leafy, my companion.
"They don't. If they do, they leave. Like we did,
remember?"
"Mmmm... getting anywhere with the news archives?"
"No. By this lot, if they were going to die of boredom
they'd have done
it years ago."
I meant it. Around the age of twelve, I knew that if I was going
to stay
on my home planet, it would have to be in a small room with lots
of
drugs and no tv. It was the same on any widhi planet, I found; no
trouble and a long life does something strange to hom. sap. It's
almost as
if we become children again, reverting to those long summers
filled with
eternity and clean sheets. I like being grown up, and hurting a
little, but
there aren't that many of us.
Around here, however, we were definitely in the majority. The
news tapes
ran until two days ago - the big story planetwide was a mutated
bean
that had extremely specific effects on the digestive system. I
played
Leafy one of the last shows. The presenter periodically threw a
handful
of beans into the audience, while a man in a white coat - that
symbol's
older than the pilot's skullcap, believe it or not - stood in a
3d graphic
and drew lines with his forefingers. Then it cut to a picture of
Waterfall
from space, a voiceover saying with some pride that if they grew
so
many tonnes of beans - and they could - and every man, woman and
child ate so many kilos per week - and they could - then in six
months
time there would be an appreciable change in the climate. And how
about
*that* for a laugh!
I was about to turn it off, but Leafy shook her head. I don't
know what
he was expecting; I can't say I was surprised when we went back
to the
studio to find the presenter wandering around with a mutated gas
sampling device. Leafy finally had enough when people started
getting
prizes. He hit the switch.
"That was about it" I said, in the silence. "This
was going on all over the
planet, close enough to hysteria. I don't think there was any
work being
done, not that it mattered."
"So they gassed themselves to death? What's the lethal
concentration of,
er..."
"There are lots of things in a human fart," I said,
"lots of them noxious,
but none of them that bad. Anyway, local conditions would vary...
you
couldn't lose everyone at once."
I'd once had a stint as an atmosphere scrubbing systems engineer,
and
knew a lot about the subject. Wonderful thing, science.
"Poisoning? They're bound to have run the bean through the
nutrition
machines before eating it, though..." Leafy looked gloomy.
She had come
to the same conclusion as I had.
"Still the best bet. If we can't find out from the
machinery, though, you
know what we'll have to do."
"I'll check the hospital records. You send out the
atmospheric probes -
you can't have working widhi which doesn't notice when *everyone*
gets sick at once..."
Apparently, you could. The computer told us that there was a
standard
procedure for this - it's astounding how many scenarios the
planners back
at base have simulated - and that it had already despatched the
probes
and instituted a search for anomalous data in the planetary
records. As
yet, it was unable to report anything significant. It was working
on it.
Please wait.
"One of us..." I said
" ...will have to go down." Leafy finished.
We could have asked the computer, but there are traditions. I
tore up
two strips of paper, one long, one short, and gave them to Leafy.
She
covered them in one hand, and offered me the stubs.
I pulled one out, slowly.
"Sorry," I said. "I'll do the dishes for a
week."
By the time she'd suited up and checked the lander, the computer
was
getting about as agitated as we'd let it, which was not very. One
day,
when we were on a medium hazardous trip, I'd turned on all the
verbal
and inflective cueing that it had, just out of curiosity. When
you've
tried to share a cabin with a paranoid manic depressive of
incredible
vocal range and power, and a vocabulary of expletives that, after
six
horrifying hours, had still not been fully explored, you soon
discover the
reason most computers are quiet, dispassionate machines. Still,
I'm given
to understand that some people have requested enhancements to
what the
psychs call motivational enhancers - they *like* being locked in
a room
with a violently nervous obscene opera singer. Somehow, I feel
more at
home with people like that than I do with the widhi.
Having said that, both me and the computer would have really
appreciated
meeting even the most sedentary of the species. I'm not sure that
Leafy
felt the same way; she doesn't talk much when she's worried. The
computer wasn't helping - it complained constantly that there
were
discrepancies in the planet's database, that readings weren't
explicable; in
short, that what it found when it went looking inside the widhi
machinery didn't match what we saw going on.
This cheered Leafy up. Not only were the humans missing, but the
rest of
the place was probably insane. We asked the computer for a good
landing
site, and an itinere; it churned out a hundred options and
refused to
make a choice. So we had to.
"The last place we know was manned was the false aether
transmitter
site" said Leafy, "and that's going to be somewhere
fairly remote. Why
not try there?"
The computer didn't object, so down she went. I wondered briefly
about
calling in some more people from base, but they were busy helping
sort
out the mess from the signal that'd started it all. Not that they
could've
done anything; a few more planetary analysis craft would've
helped, but a
man on the ground's worth a lot of remotes.
"I'm down. Looks OK - I'm going out."
I was sitting at external mission support, watching and listening
through
his suit sensors. The lander science confirmed what we knew from
the
probes - nothing wrong, no detectable strange pathogens, air
good.
Normally, she'd have opened her helmet at this stage.
"If you're waiting for me to crack the plate, don't hold
your breath", she
said.
"I'm not the one that should be doing that. Look around -
any bodies?"
"No. I'm on the bare rock landing site next to the falth
transmitter
building. There are a couple of flivvers here, parked
normally..."
"Yes, I see them. And I saw some bird movement in the woods
beyond.
Nice day."
"Mm. I'm going into the building."
She went in, and the computer told me that we'd lost direct
contact with
her suit. No problem - the lander would relay the local signals.
Direct
contact was just a backup, anyway.
"It's not locked" - not that this told us anything. Not
many people stole
stuff when they had widhi - "and there's no obstruction.
Whoo. Someone's
modded the transmitter in a hurry. No wonder it was so dirty...
Hold on,
I hear something"
"Me too. Nothing behind you... looks like it came from your
right hand
side, about ten feet in front of you". The computer was
analyzing the
sound, working out where the echos came from and how long they'd
taken.
"Can't see anything. There's an equipment rack in the way...
air
conditioning, or some sort of scrubber. Wonder why that's here,
out in
the sticks."
Now that was a daft thing to say. People liked their creature
comforts.
"If they were all stuffed full of those beans, Leafy,"
I said, "then I'm
not surprised they wanted the place smelling nice..."
"I'm still not taking the helmet off. Hey - there's that
sound again.
Definitely from the aircon."
This time, the computer had it. I swore, not as well as the
machine but
plenty good enough.
"It's some form of high energy vapouriser. Get the hell out
of there!"
"You betcha..."
There was a brief >crack<, and I lost signal. Immediately,
the ship went
into dodge and flicker - the computer thought we were under
attack.
Which we were; I didn't know about Leafy, but something was after
us
out here.
That's the worst thing about this job. When things get hot, the
machines
take over. It makes sense -- it's usually them that cause the
trouble, and
us humans haven't got the speed to match. It never feels that way
at the
time, though. All you can do is sit and close your eyes. Widhi.
It didn't take long, anyway. A place like Waterfall could only
have comms
lasers for orbital defence, and the computer wasted no time
sorting those
out. Then we stabilised, and I tried to find Leafy. We'd lost
contact when
the laser fired, and couldn't tell what had happened on the
surface.
There was a chime, and we had the lander back in contact. It was
getting the hell out. Which meant...
"You OK up there?" asked the console.
"Oh, a little bother from the laser satellites, but that's
sorted. What
happened? You find the people?"
"In a way. Get the planet machines offline, and tell base.
We've got a
very sick system down here..."
They didn't believe us, at first, but once we'd dug the remaining
population out of their holes and attics and got them to tell the
story it
didn't take long.
There are rules you stick to when you design a place to run
widhi. You
assume the people aren't going to be too interested in keeping a
close
eye on the shop, and you assume that if something goes wrong too
quickly the machines have to fix it first and tell their masters
second.
Through all that, you protect your people first and foremost.
Part of the trouble was in the climatic controls. They were
designed to
cope with people being stupid by persuading them, gently, to
change their
ways. It gets quite subtle - abused machinery doesn't get fixed
quite as
fast as it should, fuel supplies get erratic, all while
alternatives are made
as tempting as possible. Classical psychology, and half the time
the
people never spot it happening.
There's another part to it, designed to stomp on real disasters
when
self-replicants get out of hand. Genetic engineering's not so
popular these
days - nobody really needs it - but every so often someone digs
out a
how-to book from the university and gives it a whirl. If you care
to
look, there are some frightening history lessons from when we had
genetics and spaceflight but no controls. You'll find a lot of
smart bug
guns around the place, 'cos when you need them, you need them
everywhere. There's probably one in your screen.
So widhi could cope with machines screwing up the place - it
takes your
toys away, gently - and it could deal with real live nasties.
Those dopes
on Waterfall started to spew out the poisons themselves, farting
litres of
methane, hydrogen sulphide and other crud, and that was too much
for
the all-seeing, all-smelling machines. Somewhere, the two control
mechanisms fought each other and the overseeing process stepped
in and
synthesised a fix. As it was designed to do, in a full-scale
emergency,
when you don't get time to check your results. Do it first, tell
them
about it later. Widhi.
It left the toys alone, and swatted the people as quickly as it
could.
Efficiently, neatly, with minimum environmental impact. Then it
went
back to life as normal, all the time keeping a watchful eye open
in case
anything untoward had survived. It took a crack at Leafy, but we
make
good suits.
And nothing's changed. The designers found the loopholes, and
fixed
them. Can't happen again. They've checked. You're safe to fart as
much
as you like, and all that'll happen is your beans will go away.
Leafy and me like beans. We're staying up here. Someone might
need us.
(c) rg