Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

ship.

The door to the cubicle he generally called his lab opened for him and then hissed closed with a strange finality. The entire module was attached to the picket ship, but was internally controlled by its own computer. Everything was independent of the ship if need be—power, air, and air-filtration systems, it even had its own food synthesizer. The door was, of necessity, also an airlock; the place was essentially a container with a universal interlock, carried in a space freighter and then eased into its niche in the picket ship by a small tug. Since the module did not have its own propulsion system, it was definitely stuck there until its securing seals were released and it could be backed out by a tug.

The controlling computer recognized only him, and would be resistant to any entry attempt by another—and lethal should the intruder succeed. The trouble was, he knew, the computer had been specially programmed for this mission by the Security Police, and not all that programming was directed toward his safety, survival, and comfort.

“You were not gone very long this time,” the computer remarked through speakers in the wall. It sounded surprised.

“There wasn’t much to do,” he told it, sounding tired. “And even less I could do.”

“You made a call to one of the space stations in the Warden Diamond,” it noted, “on a scrambler circuit. Why? And who did you call?”

“I’m not answerable to you—you’re a machine!” he snapped, then got hold of himself a bit. “That is why the two of us, and not you alone, are on this mission.”

“Why didn’t you use me for the call? It would have been simple.”

“And on the record,” he noted. “Let us face it, my cold companion, you do not work for me but for Security.”

“But so do you,” the computer noted. “We both have the same job to do.”

He nodded absently. “I agree. And you probably have never comprehended why I’m needed at all. But I’ll tell you why, my synthetic friend. They don’t trust you any more than they trust me, for one thing. They fear thinking machines, which is why we never developed the type of organic robot the aliens use. Or, rather, we did once—and lived to regret it.”

“They would be superior,” the computer responded thoughtfully. “But be that as it may, as long as they control my programming and restrict my self-programming, I’m not a threat to them.”

“No, but that’s not really why I’m here. Left to your own devices—pardon the pun—you would simply carry out the mission literally, with no regard for consequences or politics or psychology. You would deliver information even if doing so meant the loss of billions of lives. I, on the other hand, can subjectively filter those findings and weigh more factors than the bare mission outline. And that’s why they trust me more than you—even though they hardly trust me, which is why you are here. We guard and check one another. We’re not partners, you know—we are actually antagonists.”

“Not so,” the computer responded. “You and I both have the same mission from the same source. It is not our job to evaluate the information subjectively, only to report the truth. The evaluation will be made by others—many others, better equipped to do so. You are assuming a godlike egocentric personality that is neither warranted nor justified. Now—who did you call?”

“Yatek Morah,” he responded.

“Why?”

“I wanted him to know that I knew. I wanted his masters to know that as well. I find war inevitable. However, I also find that his side loses everything, while we lose a great deal but hardly all. It was my decision to face him with that fact and to give the ball to him, as it were. Either he and his masters come up with a solution, or war is inevitable.”

“This is a questionable tactic, but it is done. How did he take it?”

“That’s just the trouble. He took it. It didn’t seem to worry him or bother him. That’s what I had to know. He is, I believe, sincerely interested in avoiding war for his own purposes, but he is not worried about it from the viewpoint of those who employ him. It was the one thing I could not get from the field reports—a direct sense of how the aliens view the war threat.”

“It was only a viewing scanner on a single individual,” the computer noted. “He could be bluffing. All things considered, how else could he react?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side. “No. Call it gut instinct, call it hunch or intuition, or whatever you wish—but also call it, too, experience. Reading the length of pauses, the slight tone of Voice, the subtle shifts in the body to bad news and flawless reasoning. There is still something missing in our information. He as much as said it himself.”

“That is interesting, however. He confirmed the basics?”

He nodded. “We’re right—dead on. That was the other reason for the call. Still, I feel no joy in it—for if we’re completely right, then what factor has been overlooked? To have all one’s deductions and inferences confirmed is gratifying. But to discover that, being right on the wildest stretches of logic, you have missed a factor that they consider decisive—that is frustrating.”

“I believe I understand. This is what made you return, was it not? You fear the Confederacy and me as much as the aliens—perhaps more. Yet you came back. Such conviction, when faced with your brilliant deductions, carries weight. All right. We are missing a factor. What is it?”

“There’s no way to know. Morah came out and told me that I’d not carried my deductions to their logical conclusions.” He sighed and drummed his fingers against a desk top. “It must have to do with the nature of the aliens. He called them incomprehensible, basically, yet he said he understood what they were doing. That means it is a question not of deed but motivation.” The fist slammed down hard on the desk. “But we know their motivation, dammit! It has to be!” Again he struggled to get hold of himself.

“We are still handicapped in one way,” the computer noted. “We have not yet met the aliens, not yet seen them. We still know nothing about them other than the inference that they breathe an atmosphere similar to human norm, and are comfortable within normal temperature ranges.”

He nodded. “That’s the problem. And that I’m not likely to get from Medusa, either, unless there’s some miracle. A psychotic killer who sees them thinks of them as evil. A psychotic Lord thinks of them as funny-looking but hardly evil, just self-interested. And intellects like Kreegan and Morah see them as a positive force. And that’s all we really know, isn’t it? After all this …”

“No race lasts long enough to reach the stars and do all that this one has done unless it first acts in its own self-interest,” the computer noted. “We can probably dismiss the evil concept of the criminal on one of dozens of bases, the most probable being that these aliens are subjectively terrifying to look at, or smell putrid, or something of that sort. It is hardly likely that their evolution, even given some of the same basics as humankind, is anything like that of humans.”

He nodded. “I keep thinking of Morah’s inhuman eyes. He claims he is not a robot and that he is the same Yatek Morah sentenced to the Diamond more than forty years ago. We need not believe him, and should not, but let’s for a moment take his statements at face value. If he is who and what he claims to be—then why those eyes?”

“A Warden modification, possibly self-induced for effect. He could do it easily on Charon.”

“Perhaps. But, perhaps, too, those eyes mean something more. What does he see with them? And how? A broader spectrum, perhaps? I don’t think they are totally for effect. For protection, maybe? I wonder …”

“Still, the bottom line remains your report,” the computer noted. “I will admit that I, too, am somewhat curious, even though I have the basics.”

“Medusa first. Let’s complete the set. Maybe my missing piece will be found there. Or, maybe, what I experience will jog my mind to see those missing implications. It can’t hurt.”

“But Talant Ypsir lives. The mission is incomplete there.”

“We are beyond caring about the Lords of the Diamond now, I think, except, perhaps, in some sort of solution if one is possible. I need information. Medusa will have the most direct contacts with the aliens. Let me get the information I need.”

“But whether or not it is there, you will still make your report after that?”