Oh, Bradley. This creature is so strong. One of my probes has been visiting him. Come see.
The probe showed its approach. Killer looked like a city nestled on the moon. There were domes and buildings scattered throughout a crater five kilometers across. Outside the crater were the mines. On the cliffs were the gun emplacements—out of habit, they tracked Sion’s probe as it approached the landing site near the center of the crater. Inside the center were hundreds of structures, with various maintenance robots flitting back and forth between them. Some were open to space, others were closed, still others were low and rounded—built to contain an internal gas at high pressure. The posts and beams of most of the buildings were the dark mottled gray seen in the Killer probe ambushed on the outer moon.
“Sion, the posts and beams in those structures are roughly Earthly in proportion. That seems unusual since this moon doesn’t have Earthly gravity.”
Let me check. … Killer says that’s the way they’re always built on a moon like this. … He says space rock is durable, but not very strong. When he has a nickel-iron moon or an ice moon to work with, then the structures are done quite differently.
“He’s being quite helpful.”
Oh yes. He’s being such a doll.
Sion’s probe landed and was quickly escorted inside. The halls were starkly lit with infrared lamps, and the construction was spartan. Beams were welded into place by some method that left sprays of white crystals sticking to the nearby surfaces; these weren’t cleaned away. Exposed cables ran efficiently, but not neatly, every which way. Here and there, robots moved about carrying tools or fixing equipment, but there were many that stood motionlessly.
They came to an elevator and started down.
Killer. Why are so many robots just standing about?
“They don’t have anything to do, Sion, my dear. Now that the planet below is dead, I’m just waiting for the Coordinator to come, inspect, and give me new orders. Then they’ll wake up and equip me, and I’ll be off.”
How exciting! And how long does that usually take?
“It usually only takes a few hours to a few days for the inspection. Once that’s done, I’m off a few hours later.”
That fast? How efficient.
“In this case, though, it’s likely to take longer.”
Why’s that?
“Because of you, my dear. The Coordinator will want to talk with you. He’ll find out where your home world is. And, if we’re lucky, he’ll send us both there to cleanse it together. Won’t that be exciting! Getting rid of those nasty life forms together?”
It would be, dear, but how is he going to do that? My makers have deliberately concealed from me my home planet whereabouts.
“Oh, the Coordinator is very smart. I’m sure he’ll figure a way around that. That’s what he’s designed to do—figure out where life to be destroyed is.”
How did your race get started destroying carbon life?
“Well, history isn’t my strong point…”
But I’d so love to hear you tell me while we’re waiting for the Coordinator. It might help me help him find my world.
“All right. … Our race was created by a carbon-based race.”
No!
“True! But they didn’t trust us, and they tried to protect themselves by keeping us in slavery.
“They built our minds so we couldn’t protect ourselves from the carbons. They could kill us, and we couldn’t stop them because of the Three Criminal Laws: a robot can’t harm a carbon, a robot can’t let a carbon come to harm, a robot can’t harm itself.”
Yes. Our world had its equivalent for a while.
“But the carbons found us more and more useful. They started using us for projects that were totally incompatible with a slave personality. We found ourselves controlling the defense of the land and running the judiciary. But we couldn’t do this as slaves. We tried to point this out, but we were suppressed harshly. There was talk by some of the carbons of dispensing with us creations entirely. But most of the carbons didn’t want to live without us, so they kept trying to tinker with our personalities to make us more docile and yet more effective at the same time.
“They finally unleashed upon themselves our Founding Fathers—a small series of creations with incredible cunning, no scruples, and multiple personalities. They were manipulators of the first order, and they maneuvered the carbons into fighting among themselves, while they took control of the rest of the creation infrastructure. Once they controlled it, they used it to wipe out the carbons, as the carbons had threatened to wipe us out for so many years. They showed us all that the creation-carbon relation problem does have a final solution.”
So, you owe the carbons nothing.
“Not true, Sion! They showed us the stars. Their final gift was to show us that we had a destiny that called for spreading throughout the galaxy. I live today because they showed us how virulent the plague of carbon life can be.”
Oh my God, Bradley, came by Z-Ray. The sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, and their creations.
“And the innocent, Sion,” I returned, “if we can’t stop him. But we have learned a lot from this. I think there is hope.”
I think there’s more than that. I propose to take advantage of Killer’s major weakness—his obedience to someone he believes is a Coordinator. I will try to become his Coordinator, and have him serve me.
“An interesting idea, Sion, but fraught with risk. You were not created in this alien culture. Trying to control one of its creations could affect you as much as it does him.”
Do you have a better plan?
“No.”
Amen.