The dish his brainbox floated upon spun around and all the cameras came up to look at us. Two focused on Sandra and two on me. He dropped the cable and snaked his probing arm back into his brainbox with surprising speed. It definitely reminded me of a guilty start. I was sure we’d caught him red-handed at something, but I simply didn’t have time to waste finding out what it was.
“Marvin,” I said. “We require your help.”
“What assistance do you require?”
“Come with us to the bridge, Marvin,” I ordered. “Now.”
One of Marvin’s camera eyes drifted first to my sidearm, then to Sandra’s. The second and third cameras stared at our faces simultaneously. The fourth camera squirmed around behind him now, looking at the tubes he’d been cutting into. He hesitated and seemed reluctant to leave his work.
“I require another half-hour to complete my current project.”
I was burning to inquire as to the nature of his project, and to give him a sharp order to follow me or else, but I’d learned what worked best with Marvin: cold logic.
“If you do not come immediately, this ship and all of us aboard her face destruction. A new enemy has moved against us. We have very little time.”
This got him moving. His self-preservation circuits were in prime condition. His flying dish tilted and he levitated out of the room. We followed him as he made his way toward the bridge. As we went, three of the four cameras watched us, looking over his shoulder in effect. Only one looked ahead to guide him on his path.
“What is required of me?” Marvin said in a voice that should have had a whiny cadence to it, but I guess he wasn’t programmed for that.
“I need you to translate for me. You can talk to the biotic beings we call the Worms. They are the beings who built the ships approaching us now. We must talk to them, and stop them from attacking this vessel.”
“Few determined enemies can be argued out of their aggression. I would suggest you destroy them instead.”
“There are too many. Your translations must be precise or your continued existence is in jeopardy.”
His manner changed after that. I noticed his extra cameras now studied airlocks, hatches and exits as we passed them. Was he considering bolting on us? I wouldn’t put it past him. I glanced toward Sandra and she nodded back. I could tell she had noticed the same thing. He was clearly storing details of his environment, mapping the ship for purposes of escape.
“Sandra here will accompany you everywhere you go, Marvin,” I said.
A camera swung back to study me, then Sandra. “This is the female I modified,” he said.
“About that, robot,” Sandra began.
I lifted a hand. “Later,” I said. “Let’s talk to the Worms and survive the next few hours first.”
Sandra looked pissed, but fell silent. I could tell by the look of smoldering anger and determination in her eyes, she was going to keep Marvin on a tight leash. That was exactly what I wanted. I only hoped she could keep from tearing him apart if she got him alone.
On the bridge, people eyed this newest incarnation of Marvin doubtfully.
“Hook him up to the sensor input,” I told Major Sarin. She did it, but she didn’t seem happy about it. No one really trusted Marvin now. If I didn’t need him so much I would have switched him off and put him in a storage container until I reached Earth.
Marvin accepted a silvery, hair-thin nanite wire. He touched it to his brainbox, and it adhered as if it had been soldered there. So strange, this living, smart metal we used without a thought now. I supposed new tech was always like that. Strange at first, then natural and indispensable once you were familiar with it.
“Marvin, can you transmit a hailing call to the Worm ships?”
“Yes, but it is not necessary,” he said.
“Why not?” I barked.
“Because they are already transmitting one to us.”
45
I’d talked to a number of different aliens by now, but the Worms were a strange lot even by galactic standards. They didn’t use words. They used images. Transmitted symbols, which Marvin didn’t know how to break into English phrases. All he could do was give us the image they were sending and send one back that he deemed appropriate. I felt like I was drawing pictographic notes to an ancient Egyptian pen pal-but I had little idea what the pictures really meant.
As I studied the language, I recalled the strange chamber we’d found back on Helios, the one with various sculptures made out of resins. I had always suspected the sculptures were formed by Worm excretions. I’d originally guessed the chamber to be an art gallery of sorts. I now believed the chamber was a library, school, or some other repository of knowledge. For a digging species, the Worms were highly visual-or maybe they felt the images with tactile sensory input, rather than looked at them. Whichever was the case, they definitely communicated with images and three-dimensional shapes. In a way, I was impressed. A lot of information could be stored in a three-dimensional structure. Our language was purely symbolic, and thus it took a lot of words to describe a concept.
What was the old adage? That a picture was worth a thousand words… Well, the Worms had gone one further with that. They communicated essentially in little statues of captured thought. A sculpture to them told a story. It was stored data in a physical form, rather than using standard symbols drawn or computer- generated.
I didn’t have the time to get excited about this cultural meeting, and in any case all our xenologists had died by this point of the expedition. Once Marvin had explained the communications system to me, we got down to business.
“All right then,” I said, “they talk with shapes and images. But how are we going to transmit them? We don’t have time to make clay models, here.”
“They have a reduced symbol set for low-tech communications,” Marvin said. “It uses a standard group of symbols, arranged in a series. The exact meaning is up to interpretation, however.”
“Great,” I said. “What are they sending now?”
“They are repeating three symbols,” Marvin said. “The first symbol is an image of a raging Worm warrior.”
“Okay, we’ve got that. Go on.”
“The second is that of a razor-backed fluke-a common, much-hated parasite that lives inside Worms of lower caste. The last one resembles a meteor falling. It is the symbol for destruction.”
My bridge crew looked at one another unhappily. No one had to do much guessing about these symbols.
“So,” Gorski said, “We’re hateful parasites and they are coming to rightfully destroy us.”
I nodded. “It sounds like it. Nice of them to transmit this vengeful message-how many times?”
“Somewhat over seventy thousand repeats have been noted according to signal logs,” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s great. Thousands of repeated threats. Let’s try to talk. Suggestions?”
Everyone hesitated. I couldn’t blame them. Who wanted to be the first to talk to an enraged enemy? I had less concerns than most. I figured if they already hated us, we had little to lose.
“Maybe we should send the same thing back at them,” Gorski said. “Didn’t you do that with the Macros to get them talking? So that they knew we understood and wished to talk?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. But the Macros were making demands, not screaming threats. You think we should start off by shouting screw you too back at our enraged attackers, eh? I’m not sure how that will defuse the situation.”
No one else had any hot ideas, so I told Marvin to send a new message. “Let’s try a symbol for peace and harmony,” I said.
“I’m not aware of such a symbol. There is one for love-but that is more in tune with erotic interest. Another indicates submission to a superior.”
