NINE HAD DIED IN THE FIGHT, NINE GOOD FRIENDS
AND family members. From her haven in the small hollow escape pod
attached to the great tree, she stared out into the rain, but she
could see little more than water and mist. The tears began to flow
as a dark shape seemed to move in the grayness outside. She raised
the pistol but did not fire; the shape paused a moment, then moved
on past the tree.
She knew that it had somehow still missed her, but it was
heading for the nearby compound where twenty more would be taken by
surprise as her party had been—and possibly slaughtered for
not telling the thing what they did not know.
Its pause between her escape and its pursuit certainly meant
that it had beamed a full account of the progress to date to its
master module, in orbit somewhere above. Its programmers would make
certain she never left this cursed world, and if she destroyed it
they’d send another Val, and another, until they got
her—no matter what the cost.
How many lives, both human and Sakanian, was she worth? How many
would be massacred for her? And for what? Sooner or later they
would get her, and even if she could elude them indefinitely in
this mess of a world she could do no more useful work.
With a sigh, she crawled out of the pod and into the rain. The
thing had not gone far and was easy to track, and she was amazed at
her sudden calmness. Sensing it was being followed, it stopped and
waited, a large, hulking, obsidianlike humanoid that was plastic
enough to become whatever it needed, and now needed to be nothing
more than itself.
She stepped into the clearing and faced the Val from a distance
of five meters or so, her pistol still pointed at it.
“I have been waiting for you, Ngoriki,” the Val said
in a voice that sounded somewhat like her own, but full of stoic
self-confidence.
“I know. I can’t let you kill any more innocent
people.”
“Yes. Inside me is a record of you, you know. I fully
understood what the action would do to you. I very much regret
having to do it, but there seemed no other way. I had tried the
traditional approaches and nothing else seemed sure.”
She felt suddenly furious, and her grip on the pistol tightened.
“You regret! How dare you! How can you regret? You
are a machine, a soulless monstrosity! You don’t
feel. You don’t know what that did to me!
You’re nothing but a machine carrying out your programming,
no matter what the cost!”
“You are both right and wrong,” the machine said.
“It is true that I am a construct, carrying out my master
programming instructions—but so are you. I am made of
different stuff, in a different way, than you, and, unlike you, I
know my creator and my engineers. Human beings are programmed by
their biochemistry more than you would like to believe. I
think—and that makes me an individual. I am not free, but
neither is humanity.”
“Yes. That’s what you’ll do to me, isn’t
it? Reprogram me. Perhaps that is what sets us apart, then. I have
a yearning to be free, and you see that yearning as only a flaw in
my own genetics.”
“No,” the Val responded. “We have a
disagreement, that is all. This is not a good, let alone perfect,
system we have, I grant that. It is merely a better system than the
alternatives. It saved the race of humankind and many other races
from inevitable self-extinction. Having saved them from their
demise at their own hands, it now saves them from extinction at the
hands of others. Survival outweighs all other considerations. If
one survives, one has opportunity and hope at some point for
changes for the better. If one does not survive, nothing else
matters.”
“Damn it!” she screamed at him. “You have
everything I was inside you! Everything! You know
I am innocent of what I was charged!”
The Val almost seemed to sigh. “Yes. I know. That more
than anything has made this so difficult for me. We hate to get the
rare innocent to track, yet we must. Do you know why we are called
Vals? After a character in ancient Earth literature, one Jean
Valjean. He stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family and
received life at slave labor as his punishment. He escaped, became
great, and did only great things for others, yet he was hunted
relentlessly and brought down all the same. The name is that of the
victim, not the pursuer. The greater good for the greater number
requires that the system work. An individual injustice here and
there is inevitable, but so long as the trial is fair and the
conviction proper, the system must be served, for otherwise there
is chaos and disorder, and the masses will suffer. Better one than
the many, as painful as that may be.”
“You bastard! Where does justice and mercy fit into all
this?”
“Is it mercy to spare one so that a thousand be killed?
The system ensures survival. Without survival, justice and mercy
are irrelevant, as well. Therefore, they are irrelevant
here.”
The pistol dipped down, and she felt the tears returning.
“But—without justice and mercy, why survive at
all?” she asked.
She suddenly raised the pistol, ready to fire, but the Val had
anticipated her and was quicker. A snakelike tentacle suddenly shot
from its midsection and struck her once, hard, on the side of her
head. She cried out, then crumpled. It retracted the tentacle, then
went over to her and gave her a quick examination. She was out
cold.
“We are different,” the Val said aloud.
“I have often wished, in circumstances such as this, that I,
too, could cry.”
It lifted her gently in its huge arms and carefully made its way
back to the compound and, eventually, the ship.
Absolution was a destruction of memory that left a Val in some
way impaired, missing a part of itself. Rarely did a Val crave
Absolution—but this one did. The girl had been so beautiful,
so innocent, yet the Val had been forced by the logic of its system
to destroy her. Reprogramming a human brain was not death, of
course; the system demanded some mercy. Still, she would cease to
exist as a separate entity who had been born, raised, and molded by
the world of her birth. She would become someone entirely
different, someone totally artificial, and she would never even
suspect that she had changed. She would be a character in Master
System’s grand play, no more a true and natural sentient
creature than, well, than the Val itself.
Absolution would erase all knowledge and memory of her, of the
hunt for her, along with the traces of guilt and doubt that such
operations always induced. In a personal sense, the Val would
welcome the relief, but in another sense it would not. By now those
memories that were hers existed only in its own data banks; when
they were gone, she would be truly dead.
How many others had been like her? How many of the thousands it
had chased and brought to justice—or destroyed, when that had
been the only alternative—had been in fact not the
system’s enemies but its victims? It would never know, but
that very thought was treason and disturbing down to its core;
Absolution was a necessity, and must be done as soon as
possible.
Vals had at their constant disposal a reading of all the
memories, all the personality factors, of their object. To catch
someone, the hunter had to know the quarry more intimately than the
quarry knew itself. Even such people as murderers and traitors
might be viewed with sympathy if all that they were was seen with
detachment.
No, that was getting even worse. Perhaps this Val was defective.
Perhaps this time there would be no awakening from Absolution.
The Val went to its cubicle and plugged in its receptors. The
complete data was first read out into Master System’s files;
there, at least, the information and the personality files would
always reside. Then all data in the auxiliary banks and the core
was erased, so that the Val was as virginal and ignorant—and
as nonfunctional—as when it was built.
Master System then reprogrammed the core as a new unit updated
with all the newest findings, the newest technology, and the newest
tricks of the trade. The Val did not feel, did not wonder, did not
doubt. It was merely a machine.
But it was a machine with the capacity for all those
things, for if it were not it could never comprehend its quarry,
never second-guess them and trap them. Without Absolution, the Vals
were in serious danger of becoming somewhat human.
Now came the assignment.
Master System was the greatest computer ever built. All data
ever on a computer network was inside it from the start; it knew
all there was to know, the sum total of human knowledge and
experience. Designed as a last link in a massive defense against
impending nuclear war, its sole purposes were the preservation of
the human race and its knowledge, and the quest for new
knowledge.
It had done its job; and having prevented holocaust, it had set
about to carry out its dictates that would prevent even the
remotest possibility of such a horror ever happening again. It
seized command of the world, all weapons and powers, and tied all
computer systems into a master system of its own design. It
selected examples in doubting and resisting countries, and certain
cities along with their teeming populations ceased to
exist—and so did resistance to Master System.
But its basic programming still reigned: The human race must
never be permitted to die out. So robotic scouts were sent out
to find worlds for humanity. And such worlds were found. Colonists
specially tailored for survival on those not-quite-Earthlike worlds
were brought to their new homes by great universe ships. Earth was
left not with billions, but a mere five hundred thousand, who could
be reprogrammed and resettled.
The great cities were leveled and traces of modern civilization
were all but wiped out. The survivors were confined to isolated
reservations whose cultures were modeled after more primitive
periods of history. Humanity became its own living museum, not with
great accuracy but with great effect.
Only a few human beings knew the facts. These were the elite,
the brightest from each of the indigenous people, the chosen
administrators who kept their own people in primitive darkness as
the price of their own luxury and privilege.
Giving knowledge to those who ran humanity was not without price
to Master System. Putting the best and brightest together and
allowing them access to tools and history resulted in the
development of a hidden subculture that had discovered how to beat
the system. They had learned to edit their own memories,
eliminating any forbidden knowledge that might be detected in the
periodic recordings made of their minds. They did their own
research and played their own power games beyond the reach of
Master System. The great computer tolerated a certain measure of
such activities, but was eternally vigilant to any that threatened
the system itself or its own near-total control. Those who
overstepped the bounds had the Vals sent after them—and the
Vals rarely failed.
Now a Val was being informed of a new element, one that might be
the greatest threat of all times to Master System. For the great
computer was vulnerable. It had taken all the measures it thought
it could to hide that fact, but the vulnerability remained, having
been built into it by its creators: An overriding command could
suspend all existing programming imperatives of Master System and
make it subject to new compulsive orders. It was also compelled to
allow anyone actually attempting this to do so. For the attempt to
succeed, however, the cancellation codes had to be read into Master
System’s core memory. The codes were hidden on tiny
microchips disguised as five individually designed elaborate and
ornate golden rings. Anyone inserting all five into their
corresponding interface slots in the correct order would in effect
be the master of Master System. The rings themselves, Master
System’s programming demanded, had to be at all times in the
possession of humans with authority. If a ring were lost or
destroyed, another must be fashioned to replace it. Altering any
such imperatives in its programming would destroy Master
System.
So it had scattered the rings, leaving one on Earth and sending
the other four into the trackless void of the involuntary
interstellar colonists. It had wiped out all references it could
find to the rings, their function and their use—and even to
the very location where the rings had to be used.
But somewhere, somehow, possibly in ancient archives uncovered
by Center archaeologists, some record of the rings, and all they
implied, survived the centuries. After nine hundred years of static
life in darkness, there were humans who knew. Already a few
technological underground cells had discovered how to command and
reprogram Master System’s computer-piloted spaceships. Some
such groups as the freebooters, who were occasionally useful, were
even allowed to exist as a sort of Center in space, so long as they
remained selfish and did not threaten the system.
But now a small group of renegades had all the information it
needed to start out. They knew of the rings. They knew how to
command the ships. They did not know where the rings were, nor
where to use them, but there was a strong possibility that they
could discover these things in time. They were on the loose, and
they were dedicated—with nothing to lose.
Although the group seemed insignificant, and its chances of
doing anything more than providing a minor nuisance were billions
to one against them, Master System was tremendously concerned. It
claimed it was fighting a bitter and stalemated war—although
even its own Vals were not told whom it was fighting, or where, or
why—and that if Master System were to be in any way disabled,
defeat would be inevitable, with consequences horrible for all. The
mere fact that information on the rings had survived and gotten out
beyond Earth was unsettling to it. It felt so threatened it was
actually considering a new mass reprogramming of humanity, the
destruction of all the Centers, and the imposing of a new limit
where even the concept of agriculture or of a language capable of
expressing complex and abstract ideas would be forbidden by
computers that would be worshipped and obeyed as tangible gods. But
it would take a very long time to do this.
The capture of the rebel band was given overriding priority to
the Vals. There were ten individuals to find, but there were
recordings for only a small number of those. What information they
did have was provided by Doctor Isaac Clayben of Melchior, the
penal colony in the asteroids from which all the renegades had
escaped.
The Val absorbed the available information, then was fed the
mindprint of the band’s leader, Hawks. The historian was a
fascinating individual, a man of some brilliance and accomplishment
literally torn between his tribal and Center worlds. Though he was
not a rebel or an adventurer, nor a man of action in spite of some
romantic fantasies, it was clear that once Hawks had the documents
in his possession he would have felt compelled to read them out of
sheer curiosity and a hunger to know—and that he no doubt
understood them and their implications.
Recent events not included in the mindprint showed that he was
capable of much adaptation, capable of killing if need be, and
capable of living in and out of the wild as well. The Val was
convinced that in a hopeless position Hawks would kill himself
rather than surrender. He would not, however, desert his own
people, particularly the women, unless forced to do so by
circumstances or necessity. As a result, if Hawks could be located,
so might most or all of the rest. They will go after the rings, the Val noted.
Although it is unlikely, we cannot assume they do not already
know their location. Vals must cover all four rings. Agreed, Master System responded. But you will not
be posted there. They will need ships other than what they have.
They will need contacts among the freebooters and others. The Koll
Val is working on this end. You will assist. If any are sighted,
trace them. So long as they do not possess all five rings, it is
imperative that they be taken alive, so that we may find how many
others share the forbidden knowledge. However, once they possess
all five rings, if they ever do, then no limitations will be
imposed. But surely there is no danger of them ever obtaining all
five! They must run our gauntlet in each case! It is always possible. I see a hidden hand in this, one who
has selected most of these for just this purpose. It is this hidden
hand I want most of all. It is possible our great enemy is behind
this. If so, then they are dangerous indeed. We can take no
chances. Also, time is not necessarily on our side. If they do not
succeed, but escape, we might well face their grandchildren. Go.
You are programmed and assigned.
The Val disconnected. The entire process, from Absolution
through reprogramming, had taken just a few seconds. The Val, who
thought often in computer time but functioned in human time, could
not help but note this fact alone.
How could they possibly win?
NINE HAD DIED IN THE FIGHT, NINE GOOD FRIENDS
AND family members. From her haven in the small hollow escape pod
attached to the great tree, she stared out into the rain, but she
could see little more than water and mist. The tears began to flow
as a dark shape seemed to move in the grayness outside. She raised
the pistol but did not fire; the shape paused a moment, then moved
on past the tree.
She knew that it had somehow still missed her, but it was
heading for the nearby compound where twenty more would be taken by
surprise as her party had been—and possibly slaughtered for
not telling the thing what they did not know.
Its pause between her escape and its pursuit certainly meant
that it had beamed a full account of the progress to date to its
master module, in orbit somewhere above. Its programmers would make
certain she never left this cursed world, and if she destroyed it
they’d send another Val, and another, until they got
her—no matter what the cost.
How many lives, both human and Sakanian, was she worth? How many
would be massacred for her? And for what? Sooner or later they
would get her, and even if she could elude them indefinitely in
this mess of a world she could do no more useful work.
With a sigh, she crawled out of the pod and into the rain. The
thing had not gone far and was easy to track, and she was amazed at
her sudden calmness. Sensing it was being followed, it stopped and
waited, a large, hulking, obsidianlike humanoid that was plastic
enough to become whatever it needed, and now needed to be nothing
more than itself.
She stepped into the clearing and faced the Val from a distance
of five meters or so, her pistol still pointed at it.
“I have been waiting for you, Ngoriki,” the Val said
in a voice that sounded somewhat like her own, but full of stoic
self-confidence.
“I know. I can’t let you kill any more innocent
people.”
“Yes. Inside me is a record of you, you know. I fully
understood what the action would do to you. I very much regret
having to do it, but there seemed no other way. I had tried the
traditional approaches and nothing else seemed sure.”
She felt suddenly furious, and her grip on the pistol tightened.
“You regret! How dare you! How can you regret? You
are a machine, a soulless monstrosity! You don’t
feel. You don’t know what that did to me!
You’re nothing but a machine carrying out your programming,
no matter what the cost!”
“You are both right and wrong,” the machine said.
“It is true that I am a construct, carrying out my master
programming instructions—but so are you. I am made of
different stuff, in a different way, than you, and, unlike you, I
know my creator and my engineers. Human beings are programmed by
their biochemistry more than you would like to believe. I
think—and that makes me an individual. I am not free, but
neither is humanity.”
“Yes. That’s what you’ll do to me, isn’t
it? Reprogram me. Perhaps that is what sets us apart, then. I have
a yearning to be free, and you see that yearning as only a flaw in
my own genetics.”
“No,” the Val responded. “We have a
disagreement, that is all. This is not a good, let alone perfect,
system we have, I grant that. It is merely a better system than the
alternatives. It saved the race of humankind and many other races
from inevitable self-extinction. Having saved them from their
demise at their own hands, it now saves them from extinction at the
hands of others. Survival outweighs all other considerations. If
one survives, one has opportunity and hope at some point for
changes for the better. If one does not survive, nothing else
matters.”
“Damn it!” she screamed at him. “You have
everything I was inside you! Everything! You know
I am innocent of what I was charged!”
The Val almost seemed to sigh. “Yes. I know. That more
than anything has made this so difficult for me. We hate to get the
rare innocent to track, yet we must. Do you know why we are called
Vals? After a character in ancient Earth literature, one Jean
Valjean. He stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family and
received life at slave labor as his punishment. He escaped, became
great, and did only great things for others, yet he was hunted
relentlessly and brought down all the same. The name is that of the
victim, not the pursuer. The greater good for the greater number
requires that the system work. An individual injustice here and
there is inevitable, but so long as the trial is fair and the
conviction proper, the system must be served, for otherwise there
is chaos and disorder, and the masses will suffer. Better one than
the many, as painful as that may be.”
“You bastard! Where does justice and mercy fit into all
this?”
“Is it mercy to spare one so that a thousand be killed?
The system ensures survival. Without survival, justice and mercy
are irrelevant, as well. Therefore, they are irrelevant
here.”
The pistol dipped down, and she felt the tears returning.
“But—without justice and mercy, why survive at
all?” she asked.
She suddenly raised the pistol, ready to fire, but the Val had
anticipated her and was quicker. A snakelike tentacle suddenly shot
from its midsection and struck her once, hard, on the side of her
head. She cried out, then crumpled. It retracted the tentacle, then
went over to her and gave her a quick examination. She was out
cold.
“We are different,” the Val said aloud.
“I have often wished, in circumstances such as this, that I,
too, could cry.”
It lifted her gently in its huge arms and carefully made its way
back to the compound and, eventually, the ship.
Absolution was a destruction of memory that left a Val in some
way impaired, missing a part of itself. Rarely did a Val crave
Absolution—but this one did. The girl had been so beautiful,
so innocent, yet the Val had been forced by the logic of its system
to destroy her. Reprogramming a human brain was not death, of
course; the system demanded some mercy. Still, she would cease to
exist as a separate entity who had been born, raised, and molded by
the world of her birth. She would become someone entirely
different, someone totally artificial, and she would never even
suspect that she had changed. She would be a character in Master
System’s grand play, no more a true and natural sentient
creature than, well, than the Val itself.
Absolution would erase all knowledge and memory of her, of the
hunt for her, along with the traces of guilt and doubt that such
operations always induced. In a personal sense, the Val would
welcome the relief, but in another sense it would not. By now those
memories that were hers existed only in its own data banks; when
they were gone, she would be truly dead.
How many others had been like her? How many of the thousands it
had chased and brought to justice—or destroyed, when that had
been the only alternative—had been in fact not the
system’s enemies but its victims? It would never know, but
that very thought was treason and disturbing down to its core;
Absolution was a necessity, and must be done as soon as
possible.
Vals had at their constant disposal a reading of all the
memories, all the personality factors, of their object. To catch
someone, the hunter had to know the quarry more intimately than the
quarry knew itself. Even such people as murderers and traitors
might be viewed with sympathy if all that they were was seen with
detachment.
No, that was getting even worse. Perhaps this Val was defective.
Perhaps this time there would be no awakening from Absolution.
The Val went to its cubicle and plugged in its receptors. The
complete data was first read out into Master System’s files;
there, at least, the information and the personality files would
always reside. Then all data in the auxiliary banks and the core
was erased, so that the Val was as virginal and ignorant—and
as nonfunctional—as when it was built.
Master System then reprogrammed the core as a new unit updated
with all the newest findings, the newest technology, and the newest
tricks of the trade. The Val did not feel, did not wonder, did not
doubt. It was merely a machine.
But it was a machine with the capacity for all those
things, for if it were not it could never comprehend its quarry,
never second-guess them and trap them. Without Absolution, the Vals
were in serious danger of becoming somewhat human.
Now came the assignment.
Master System was the greatest computer ever built. All data
ever on a computer network was inside it from the start; it knew
all there was to know, the sum total of human knowledge and
experience. Designed as a last link in a massive defense against
impending nuclear war, its sole purposes were the preservation of
the human race and its knowledge, and the quest for new
knowledge.
It had done its job; and having prevented holocaust, it had set
about to carry out its dictates that would prevent even the
remotest possibility of such a horror ever happening again. It
seized command of the world, all weapons and powers, and tied all
computer systems into a master system of its own design. It
selected examples in doubting and resisting countries, and certain
cities along with their teeming populations ceased to
exist—and so did resistance to Master System.
But its basic programming still reigned: The human race must
never be permitted to die out. So robotic scouts were sent out
to find worlds for humanity. And such worlds were found. Colonists
specially tailored for survival on those not-quite-Earthlike worlds
were brought to their new homes by great universe ships. Earth was
left not with billions, but a mere five hundred thousand, who could
be reprogrammed and resettled.
The great cities were leveled and traces of modern civilization
were all but wiped out. The survivors were confined to isolated
reservations whose cultures were modeled after more primitive
periods of history. Humanity became its own living museum, not with
great accuracy but with great effect.
Only a few human beings knew the facts. These were the elite,
the brightest from each of the indigenous people, the chosen
administrators who kept their own people in primitive darkness as
the price of their own luxury and privilege.
Giving knowledge to those who ran humanity was not without price
to Master System. Putting the best and brightest together and
allowing them access to tools and history resulted in the
development of a hidden subculture that had discovered how to beat
the system. They had learned to edit their own memories,
eliminating any forbidden knowledge that might be detected in the
periodic recordings made of their minds. They did their own
research and played their own power games beyond the reach of
Master System. The great computer tolerated a certain measure of
such activities, but was eternally vigilant to any that threatened
the system itself or its own near-total control. Those who
overstepped the bounds had the Vals sent after them—and the
Vals rarely failed.
Now a Val was being informed of a new element, one that might be
the greatest threat of all times to Master System. For the great
computer was vulnerable. It had taken all the measures it thought
it could to hide that fact, but the vulnerability remained, having
been built into it by its creators: An overriding command could
suspend all existing programming imperatives of Master System and
make it subject to new compulsive orders. It was also compelled to
allow anyone actually attempting this to do so. For the attempt to
succeed, however, the cancellation codes had to be read into Master
System’s core memory. The codes were hidden on tiny
microchips disguised as five individually designed elaborate and
ornate golden rings. Anyone inserting all five into their
corresponding interface slots in the correct order would in effect
be the master of Master System. The rings themselves, Master
System’s programming demanded, had to be at all times in the
possession of humans with authority. If a ring were lost or
destroyed, another must be fashioned to replace it. Altering any
such imperatives in its programming would destroy Master
System.
So it had scattered the rings, leaving one on Earth and sending
the other four into the trackless void of the involuntary
interstellar colonists. It had wiped out all references it could
find to the rings, their function and their use—and even to
the very location where the rings had to be used.
But somewhere, somehow, possibly in ancient archives uncovered
by Center archaeologists, some record of the rings, and all they
implied, survived the centuries. After nine hundred years of static
life in darkness, there were humans who knew. Already a few
technological underground cells had discovered how to command and
reprogram Master System’s computer-piloted spaceships. Some
such groups as the freebooters, who were occasionally useful, were
even allowed to exist as a sort of Center in space, so long as they
remained selfish and did not threaten the system.
But now a small group of renegades had all the information it
needed to start out. They knew of the rings. They knew how to
command the ships. They did not know where the rings were, nor
where to use them, but there was a strong possibility that they
could discover these things in time. They were on the loose, and
they were dedicated—with nothing to lose.
Although the group seemed insignificant, and its chances of
doing anything more than providing a minor nuisance were billions
to one against them, Master System was tremendously concerned. It
claimed it was fighting a bitter and stalemated war—although
even its own Vals were not told whom it was fighting, or where, or
why—and that if Master System were to be in any way disabled,
defeat would be inevitable, with consequences horrible for all. The
mere fact that information on the rings had survived and gotten out
beyond Earth was unsettling to it. It felt so threatened it was
actually considering a new mass reprogramming of humanity, the
destruction of all the Centers, and the imposing of a new limit
where even the concept of agriculture or of a language capable of
expressing complex and abstract ideas would be forbidden by
computers that would be worshipped and obeyed as tangible gods. But
it would take a very long time to do this.
The capture of the rebel band was given overriding priority to
the Vals. There were ten individuals to find, but there were
recordings for only a small number of those. What information they
did have was provided by Doctor Isaac Clayben of Melchior, the
penal colony in the asteroids from which all the renegades had
escaped.
The Val absorbed the available information, then was fed the
mindprint of the band’s leader, Hawks. The historian was a
fascinating individual, a man of some brilliance and accomplishment
literally torn between his tribal and Center worlds. Though he was
not a rebel or an adventurer, nor a man of action in spite of some
romantic fantasies, it was clear that once Hawks had the documents
in his possession he would have felt compelled to read them out of
sheer curiosity and a hunger to know—and that he no doubt
understood them and their implications.
Recent events not included in the mindprint showed that he was
capable of much adaptation, capable of killing if need be, and
capable of living in and out of the wild as well. The Val was
convinced that in a hopeless position Hawks would kill himself
rather than surrender. He would not, however, desert his own
people, particularly the women, unless forced to do so by
circumstances or necessity. As a result, if Hawks could be located,
so might most or all of the rest. They will go after the rings, the Val noted.
Although it is unlikely, we cannot assume they do not already
know their location. Vals must cover all four rings. Agreed, Master System responded. But you will not
be posted there. They will need ships other than what they have.
They will need contacts among the freebooters and others. The Koll
Val is working on this end. You will assist. If any are sighted,
trace them. So long as they do not possess all five rings, it is
imperative that they be taken alive, so that we may find how many
others share the forbidden knowledge. However, once they possess
all five rings, if they ever do, then no limitations will be
imposed. But surely there is no danger of them ever obtaining all
five! They must run our gauntlet in each case! It is always possible. I see a hidden hand in this, one who
has selected most of these for just this purpose. It is this hidden
hand I want most of all. It is possible our great enemy is behind
this. If so, then they are dangerous indeed. We can take no
chances. Also, time is not necessarily on our side. If they do not
succeed, but escape, we might well face their grandchildren. Go.
You are programmed and assigned.
The Val disconnected. The entire process, from Absolution
through reprogramming, had taken just a few seconds. The Val, who
thought often in computer time but functioned in human time, could
not help but note this fact alone.
How could they possibly win?