meaningless sound. “No? Well, not much Anglic would survive their processing, especially a term without referent. So I’ll use 'golem’ to mean thinking machine. If your technology were just fifty years more advanced, you would think you knew exactly what I mean. … As it is, I am constrained to the vocabulary of superstition. Perhaps that’s for the best. A word like 'golem’ will never give you the false sense of understanding you might have if… The golems I refer to are much more like magic than any science you can imagine. Even you, Marget. Until you have training, I suggest you accept the magical connotation. Then you won’t be fooled by false analogies with the thinking machines that you are capable of inventing…”
Jolle had little accent, and he ordered his words properly. Nevertheless his speech was strange. He spoke rapidly, running one sentence into another. If a sentence were especially long, his voice would drop and he would mumble the ending, as if the words were a redundant, painful ritual. His hands never stopped moving. The overall effect was impressive. Svir could imagine how the provincials had been overwhelmed by a man who spewed forth ideas faster than he could speak them.
Sometimes Tatja sounded like this, though she was perfectly capable of slow, natural exposition—after all, she had grown up here. Was Jolle’s manner an affectation, or was he unable to slow down? It had never occurred to Svir that it might be difficult to act stupid.
Jolle continued, “Though they are necessary to the function of society, golems are expensive to construct. There is, however, a cheap—and highly immoral—way of improvising golems. That method is to, hmm, destroy the souls of lesser creatures and so reduce them to golems. Profe—Profirio—is in the employ of an … organization that has spent two thousand years preparing this planet as a cheap golem-production plant. First they chose a resource-poor planet far from civilization. Then they seeded it with your ancestors, Minister Hedrigs, people they kidnapped from the backwaters of civilization. They wrecked your minds and bodies, dumped you here, and waited. My type lives a long time and can afford to be patient. Every so often, the organization sent a scout vehicle—crewed by the likes of Profirio—to analyze your population, technology.”
“Yes,” broke in Tatja. “Even without me, people would soon guess parts of this.”
“Really?”
“We observed one of your vehicles enter our system last year,” said Svir.
“You saw our drive stutter. You’re further along than they planned. But that was one of the reasons for these scouting missions. They want the planet’s population to reach a billion before they start harvesting; but just as important, they want you planet-bound—even an interplanetary flight technology would mean a drastic increase in the cost of operations. In one sense, their motivation is quite understandable: they want the maximum gain for the least effort.”
“What would then happen,” asked Cor, “if Profirio were successful?”
“Once he tells his superiors that you are ready for … harvest, they will set up a slaughterhouse on Thriy— Seraph you call it. One percent of your population will be spirited away every year. There is no escape from such abductions. It will all seem quite supernatural. Technological progress will stop; inventions will disappear, experiments explode. Other than that the organization will have no interest in what you do. As long as your population growth rate remains constant, the operation will show a profit.” He spread his hands in a gesture that seemed to put the prediction in the subjunctive.
“Their plans have come perilously close to success. But no matter how expensive artificial golems, and no matter how necessary golems are to our activities, only a small fraction of my kind are warped enough to buy ones produced by the slaughter of innocents. My friends and I have known for nearly a thousand years that Profirio’s organization was planning something like this, but we didn’t know where they were operating. I have spent four hundred years ingratiating myself to these criminals. Finally my efforts were rewarded. I was hired to accompany Profirio on the present survey of your world.
“Things went well at first. We left our … scoutboat in orbit about six hundred thousand miles out. Any closer and if you had good telescopes—as it turns out you do—you would spot the thing immediately. We landed in the outback of Sfierranyi Province. I won’t go into the gruesome details, but I botched things and Profirio caught on to me. We had quite a fight out there in the hills last spring. I’m a little surprised the pyrotechnics were not observed—but a typhoon was moving inland at the time and I guess everybody was too busy to notice. Our battle destroyed almost all the equipment we had brought down for our survey.
“Our scoutboat is still out there, and the man who communicates with it will be victorious. I have one instrument left—it’s similar to your signalers. But to use it, I must know the exact position of the boat. I need a large telescope to accomplish that. We’ve continued the struggle with local resources.
“We both needed armies. We are persuasive individuals—but the natives need some excuse to provoke them to war. Profirio chose to revolt against your central government. I did the logical thing and led the local militia on a campaign against the Rebels. It is blind luck that it worked out this way; that your forces and mine met as allies. But I apologize for using your army this afternoon to trick Profirio’s art’ry into revealing itself.
“Unless you people are hiding something, there are only two large observatories in this part of the world. That’s why we had the battle at Kotta-svo-Picchiu. Profirio got there first and was hoping to hold out until dark. I had to destroy the scope to keep him from using it. With that gone, we are forced to go after the High Eye.”
“Excuse me,” spoke Svir, “but why did you bother with armies? On a good skoat you could have made it to O’rmouth in just a few days. Then you could have applied your powers of persuasion directly to the astronomers.”
Tatja answered that one. “Jolle and Profirio view armies as you might a shirt of armor. If one of them took off alone, the other could grab an army and use it to destroy a single unarmed opponent. It’s a question of balancing the speed with the risk.”
“That’s right,” said Jolle. “Eventually, Profirio may be reduced to personal action, but it will be a sign of desperation. He’ll have to persuade the Doomsdaymen to cooperate with him rather than us, and his identity will be clearly …” Jolle took a deep breath, interrupting his own rushing flow of speech. “One of us will control the High Eye—and the future of this planet will be determined.”
Eighteen
The call to dismount brought Svir back to the present. It was late morning, and they had been on the road five hours. It was time to water the skoats. The place was right, too: Here the road swung close to the Picchiu River. There was a three-hundred-yard stretch where it was easy to bring the animals down to the water.
He and Cor scrambled off their skoats and waited for further directions. Water call was conducted with more precision and ceremony than most supply functions. He had read somewhere that the efficiency of a mounted command could be measured by observing water call. He had to admit that watering a battle group was not simple; they could be here all day if things got out of hand.
Finally it came time for them to go to the river. The art’ry skoats were released from their gun carriages, and animals and men moved over the rocky ground to the river. Behind them, gun crews loaded their weapons and received fire control directions. Then came the concussive
The Picchiu River was one hundred feet wide here. The water foamed and showered as it moved through a rapids; only a canoe could have navigated the torrent. Quartermasters had assembled several hundred watering troughs, since water directly from the river was much too cold for the animals. The skoats had to be urged to the troughs, but when they began drinking, it was with characteristic greediness. Svir examined the animals critically. It was amazing how much they had changed. They were no longer sleek and furry. Now their bodies were covered with superficial cuts and gashes. Though they were fed four times a day, tendons and bones showed clearly through their skin. He commented on this to Cor.
“Yes, I know,” she responded in a subdued voice. “On the fastboats I thought the collars seemed small for the animals. Now I understand. This march burns the flesh from them. Most of the collars are now too big for the
