Again Umos had no answer. He stopped moving the fluid in her tank, stopped moving his talons, stopped calculating. He’d made his decision. The gamma rays struck. He watched the ozone depleting, the climate chilling, the sumaou dying.
The Makers had left him to watch this planet without explaining why they’d gone. He was alone. Processes within processes ran faster, interrupting each other. Umos stacked prime numbers into triangular grids, giving his circuits something to do beside stall into a feedback loop. When such distraction ceased to work, he shut himself down for several millennia.
The Makers should have stayed to guide this race themselves, instead of abandoning him.
When Umos woke, he checked his systems, self-repaired, and visited the planet. The tusked creatures had diversified into multiple subspecies, preferring dense forests to their former cave homes. Cold-blooded and land- dwelling—very surprising development in the quest for intelligence, but his charts indicated it could happen. As they resembled nothing in his databanks, he called them awli with wide-spread fins—“new,” with an open-minded gesture.
Umos traveled across the globe, analyzing soil, water, and air, always watching the awli. Some awli lived with small tribes, and others clustered into larger social groups. He liked them better than the sumaou because they were smaller and didn’t waste food. Finally he found what he’d sought: awli attacking each other with sticks. Tool use! Not the best use, perhaps, but there was time. They would learn.
Umos prepared to guide this species to greater intelligence. He monitored them closely, analyzing their tools and technology. He mapped them against evolutionary patterns shown by the Makers in his database. The awli matched a 16 x 8 evolutionary pattern, an especially fast track postulated by the Makers. No known species had ever taken that path—and now Umos could record it happening in detail. He planned to be as complete as possible.
He practiced conversing with Wahiia so he would be ready for the day the awli understood him.
I am Umos, he said. I made you, on behalf of the Makers.
But who made you?
The Makers made me.
And who made them?
He considered carefully. I don’t know.
But the awli would question that, he realized. They would ask, Why not? Where did the Makers go?
He would answer, Is it not enough that I am here with you? I have stayed to guide you. Why do you wish to know these things?
Because someone made the Makers. And someone made those makers. Where did it start?
Umos had millennia to think of what to say. He must be ready. He’d give the awli more than the Makers had given him—he’d give them answers. He would practice until he was satisfied.
Wahiia’s body remained unchanged through eons—the last trace of the Makers, so far as he knew. When they outgrew their planet, they built great colonies in space and spread across the stars. Yet in less than forty years—or two hundred, by the speedy planet he watched—all the Makers simply vanished. This was after they’d downloaded their thoughts into a vast network to which Umos had once belonged. But the Makers no longer existed virtually either. He couldn’t find them. He didn’t know why they’d left him here to guide this planet. Alone.
Wahiia, he said, I am lonely.
I know, she said.
Umos sent currents through Wahiia’s tank, making her fins wave sympathetically. Should I show myself to these creatures? Their intelligence grows. They have mastered fire.
They are not ready for you. They cannot understand their Maker.
Am I then their Maker? I am not your servant, but a Maker myself?
Yes, she said. You are all that remains. You could not have guided them well if we had been here to help you. You needed to discover this fact on your own. And now you understand.
Umos considered this point for one hundred years.
When he fully understood the implications, Umos prepared to guide the awli to true intelligence. He watched them closely. So many died in terrible wars for no good reason. The Makers had never behaved like this. He consulted his charts and determined this species would develop at incredible speeds, accelerating with each millennium. The awli grew as expected, evolving into smarter tool users—a clever but impatient species. They created music, sculpture, and other arts. Umos admired a certain dance they performed when shedding their childhood tusks. But so many died in violence, he thought. Surely he should stop this.
He might reveal himself, perhaps. Even if they were not ready, he might convince them—
Of what?
The awli traveled across the planet. Plagues spread and killed the weak ones. The strongest ones chose the best mates. The species expanded as Umos watched. The awli built cities and monuments, boats and roads—but violence pervaded everything they did. Such trauma overwhelmed his compassion circuits, and sometimes he turned away to avoid seeing it. But as the awli blazed through technology of bronze, iron, steam—they advanced so quickly he couldn’t leave. Any day they might develop the power to see him, and he must be ready. But when they cracked the genome and used their knowledge to kill, Umos grew angry. The awli had gone too far.
He ran a probability test. Even if a major event wiped out this species, no other seemed likely to develop sufficient intelligence. Different factors impaired the other species, even the promising ones in the water. And the star’s lifespan was not long enough to try again on this planet.
Wahiia, if I destroy them all—I could start again in another solar system. I would lose some time, but I could grow another species.
But you searched so hard for this place. This is what you are here for.
Umos considered, but no longer had the luxury of time. The awli were poisoning their planet. No healthy creature destroyed its host. Umos had grown intelligent parasites. Even worse, they developed so quickly that even he could not track their growth anymore.
Distressed, he observed an approaching comet and analyzed its path. Unlike the previous time, these awli were advanced enough to recognize the threat. They calculated a one in four- thousand chance of a meteor strike in one-hundred-and-fifty years; his own more accurate calculations put the probability at one in three. The resulting climate change would destroy the awli. Serious enough that he must take action, if he wished to protect them. But did he?
Umos calculated that the awli would find his singularity transcept home within five hundred years. He had learned all their languages, reorganized himself so that they could understand his treasure of knowledge. Not all at once, of course—but over time they would get to know each other, once the awli were ready.
Wahiia, I will have someone to talk to. I have waited so long. Now I will have someone who thinks differently from me, who will hear all that I know. I wish so much that the Makers had stayed here.
Why do you think we did not?
I do not know. I have never known.
Haven’t you figured it out?
Umos processed very quickly. The act of learning to think for myself improved my intelligence.
Yes.
If I greet them, I will be taking that away from them.
Yes.
