“Well, sometimes home is a person.”
I’m sorry about your house - your wife… your… house-wife.
Once we know Joe is well established, we’ll import a few more esmen and get him some assistance in the form of other pseudos. Eventually females will be sent down, and uncontrolled males, to be educated by the puppets. A new generation will be born normally—Well, anyhow, the ultimate aim is a small civilization of Jovians. There will be hunters, miners, artisans, farmers, housewives, the works. They will support a few key members, a kind of priesthood. And that priesthood will be espcontrolled, as Joe is. It will exist solely to make instruments, take readings, perform experiments, and tell us what we want to know.
It was on the third day of August that Joe came off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine came into town, and that afternoon I saved civilization. That’s what I figure, anyhow. Laurine is a blonde that I was crazy about once- and crazy is the word- and Joe is a logic that I have stored away down in the cellar right now.
Joe Tillman stood in the middle of the great open hall of the edifice, alone in a crowd. He wondered to himself what the hell he was doing there.
“I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.”
“Now I’m lost in some distant part of the Universe, on a ship - a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Now, listen please. Is there anybody out there that can hear me?”
“Can you hear me?” the voice asked. “You can, can’t you?”
That did it. “Yes, I can hear you,” Anders said, still in a high good humor. “Don’t tell me you’re my guilty subconscious, attacking me for a childhood trauma I never bothered to resolve. I suppose you want me to join a monastery.”
“I went to the library seeking information on what might bring hearing back, but now I wonder if there’s a way to make it go away again. I can’t see why our ancestors thought hearing was such a great thing, why they mourned its loss so much. It’s jarring and distracting, making it impossible to focus on anything else.”
Listen! Do you smell something?
“You’re a detective with hyperactive senses. You’re a monster, man. A human crime lab with organic sensory equipment. What more do you want?”
“Control.”
This was the day of complete control. Garomma, the Servant of All, the Worlds Drudge, the Slavey of Civilization, placed delicately scented finger-tips to his face, closed his eyes and allowed himself to luxuriate in the sensation of ultimate power, absolute power, power such as no human being had ever dared to dream of before this day.
Knowledge is power. Power to do evil…or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.
But what if it was? Their Recon Drones would still see her squadron soon enough for them to break off, so why was her battered, aching mind insisting that their approach profile was so important? It didn’t make—
And then it hit her.
“They don’t know we’re here,” she said softly.
The secret of success in battle lies often not so much in the use of one’s own strength but in the exploitation of the other side’s weaknesses.
Futura by your naming, Mentor, and by that name I’ll conquer you.
“As to you children, doubtful now and hesitant as is only natural, you may believe implicitly what I now tell you is the truth, that even though we Arisians are no longer here, all shall be well; with us, with you, and with all Civilization.”
The deeply resonant psuedo-voice ceased; the Kinnisons knew that Mentor, the last of the Arisians, was gone.
Most of what I say is complete truth. My edit button is broken.
After hastily recalling all crew and leaving Spacedock 7 thirty hours ago, there had been nothing but problems. Breakdowns in the sensors and telemetry, system failures of a wide variety and finally – the Last Straw: a coupling seal in the stardrive engine failed. Fortunately the cut-out worked, or the whole of engineering would’ve disappeared in a flaming ball of anti-matter.
“Tester,” a nasally voice said over the enunciator, “spare us this day from your Tests.”
*"Please, Tester, don’t let any of the airlocks blow out. Let the environmental system, old as it is, shudder though another day of labor. Please, Tester, let the water recyclers make it through a few more days, even though Engineering says they’re just about shot. Tester, please see fit to keep Fusion Two from terminally overloading and blowing us all into Your arms; we love you but we want to see our families again some day.
“Please, Tester, if you could maybe see clear to keeping the compensator on-line? If we don’t have the compensator, we can’t make our acceleration back home, and we’ll drift in space, a derelict, until the systems begin to fail and the power runs out and the air gets foul and we all start eating each other . . .”*