We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (20 page)

Valter wouldn’t have noticed my hesitation at the human timescale. “Yes, I’m familiar with it from the historical records, sir. Is it still in existence?”

“It is, sir, unlike I would imagine, most of the other vaults around the planet. We did not get rocks and nuclear weapons dropped on us.”

“So…” I was pretty sure there was a punch line coming.

“So, the utility is obvious for colonists. We have it, you need it. Unless you can find one of the other vaults. Think on that, Mr. Riker. Assume any implied threat you care to. We will discuss this further in a few days upcoming.”

And with that, Mr. Valter nodded to me, reached forward out of frame, and ended the connection.

Well, that was one fine pickle. I looked at the remaining calls still on hold. I couldn’t see any that needed immediate handling, so I instructed Guppy to take a message from each and to promise that I would phone them back. Guppy made an excellent secretary slash receptionist. His appearance was off-putting enough so that people didn’t stay online long, and he was absolutely unfazed by bullying, threats, bribery, or insults. Great poker face, too.

I sent out a connection request to Colonel Butterworth. This was going to be one of those good news, bad news things.

1. Homer – September 2158 – Sol
   

My God, what a putz. Of course Riker was having problems with the enclaves. The man was a humorless, rigid martinet, with a pole up his butt. Every time he opened his mouth, he offended someone.

Original Bob had always made a point of mocking people who took themselves too seriously. It amazed me that Riker wasn’t able to make the connection. It was obvious that I was more like original Bob than he was.

And now, the Spits had delivered an ultimatum. Okay, that was a real problem, and I couldn’t blame Mister Poo for getting bent out of shape about it. But there had to be a better tactic than frontal assault.

I paced around my VR, hands behind my back, for a few milliseconds.
Bet Riker does this.
The thought made me shudder. I popped up a Nerf basketball and a hoop, and began taking shots while I pondered. I noted idly that the trajectory of the basketball wasn’t realistic.
Yeah, the VR needs work. Who has time?

Valter demanded a place for his people on the first ships. But did he really need to be on the
first
ships? Or did he just want to be out early? What would be acceptably early? I pulled up the manufacturing schedule and gazed at it.
Y’know, ship three isn’t that far behind one and two. And with some adjustments…

The thought had possibilities. But Riker would just dismiss the idea out of hand if I brought it up. Did he even realize what an arrogant ass he had turned into?

He listened to Colonel Butterworth, though.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Smiling to myself, I made a call…

1. Bob – July 2165 – Delta Eridani
   

“The Deltans are under attack!”

I looked up at the call from Marvin. I’d been checking in with the autofactory to make sure everything was on track. Quickly, I suspended the autofactory link and brought up all Deltan feeds to the foreground.

A group of what looked sort of like the natives was attacking one of the tribal hearths. Most of the males were off hunting, and the few that had been left to guard were having a hard time of it.

The attackers were similar to the Deltans the same way a gorilla is similar to a human, both in size and strength. They didn’t employ weapons at all—just teeth, claws, and overwhelming aggression. I watched in horror as one of the attackers ripped open the throat of a defender with its teeth.

The gorilloids concentrated on taking down individuals. They didn’t seem to be trying to take over the encampment or steal anything. As a Deltan was taken down, several gorilloids would drag the body away, fighting over it. I started to have a really bad feeling.

The attack was over in a couple of minutes. One gorilloid had been killed when enough Deltans managed to get pointed sticks into it. But six Deltans were gone. In a war of attrition, the gorilloids would win.

I ordered one of the drones to follow the gorilloids. They headed into the dense forest and split up, each group dragging a Deltan body. There didn’t seem to be any organization. In fact, the longer I watched them, the more certain I was that there was nothing more than animal intelligence there.

When the drone caught up with one of the groups, I found them tearing the body of the Deltan apart and eating it. I hadn’t felt that ill since I died.

I looked around in my VR. The other Bobs had been following the whole thing. I noticed that Marvin looked especially upset, and I raised my eyebrows at him.

He looked around at the rest of us and shrugged. “This kind of explains what I’ve found while I’ve been looking around. I’ve discovered a number of abandoned Deltan camps, and the farther they are from the current camp, the longer it’s been since they were abandoned. I think the gorilloids have been hunting the Deltans for a long time, and the gorilloids are winning.”

Luke piped up, “Bender and I have been venturing farther afield, and we haven’t found any other large tribes of Deltans. We’ve run into occasional small family groups, but they’re nomadic and inhabiting marginal territory.”

“So they’re being hunted to extinction,” I said.

There were several seconds of silence, before Bender spoke up, probably trying to be funny. “Remember the Prime Directive.”

Luke looked at him in disgust. “Right. When people show up in a hundred years, and we have to explain to them that they missed meeting the only other sentient race we’ve ever found by less than a century, I’m sure they’ll be mollified by the knowledge that we didn’t break a fictional law from a TV show.” Bender turned away, upset, and Luke seemed surprised at his outburst. “Sorry.”

Marvin looked over at me. “It’s a fair question, though. How much, exactly, are we going to interfere? Prime Directives notwithstanding, there are real examples from Earth history of cultural contamination and outright extinguishment.”

“I consider it a given that we’re not going to let them die out,” I answered, looking down at my hands. For some reason, I couldn’t keep them still. Anxiety? “I don’t have an answer beyond that, Marvin.”

“What are we going to do, though? Set up armed drones around the perimeter? Become some kind of sky god that protects them?” Marvin looked from one person to the next, waiting for an answer.

Luke spoke up before I could respond. “This is the type of environmental pressure that forces swift evolution. In fact, they may be becoming intelligent specifically because of the gorilloids. Maybe we have to let nature take its course.”

I turned to Guppy, who as usual was standing at parade rest over to the side. I think I caught him by surprise, and I was positive that I had detected active interest in his expression and posture before he quickly went into fishy poker face.

“Guppy, what’s the total population of Deltans at the campfire sites?”

[412, allowing for today’s deaths]

I turned back to the group. “That’s down below estimates of the low point for humanity back in Africa. I don’t think we have any leeway to just let things go.”

“So we’re back to guarding them with drones,” Bender said. “They’re at the rock-and-pointy-stick stage. That’s not good enough to hold off the gorilloids.”

“Not all of them,” I countered. “You’ve seen Archimedes. That kid is
smart.
”

Marvin pulled up a map. “Speaking of which—sort of—I found the flint source. One of the old villages. And interestingly, there’s some worked flint there and in a couple of villages nearby. I think at least some of the Deltans have known what to do with it, so Archimedes isn’t unique.” Marvin looked around at us to make sure we would get his next comment. “I think there’s a recessive gene for increased intelligence that’s spreading through the population. It just needs the opportunity to be expressed, in every sense of the word.”

I nodded. “Let’s give them that chance. Take a couple of drones, pick up some flint, and we’ll drop it in the area where Archimedes normally hangs out. Let’s see what happens.”

***

There was a lot of wailing and growling when the hunting parties came back to camp that evening. The Deltans obviously understood death. We didn’t know yet how they handled their dead, since the gorilloids had taken the bodies. One of the hunters seemed especially broken up, and was curled up on the ground, shaking. I checked the records, and yep, he spent a lot of his down-time with one of the Deltans that had been killed.

Mm, yeah, I’m definitely getting personally involved. Sue me.

I decided right there and then that I didn’t like the gorilloids.

“I’ve got something for you,” Marvin said, interrupting my thoughts. I looked up at the schematic floating in my holotank. It showed plans for an observation drone that had been reinforced internally and given twenty-pound steel caps at each end—a sort of personnel-buster. Even with the modest acceleration capabilities of the drones, they could probably deliver a punch equivalent to a cannonball. Whether the drone would survive was an unknown.

“I guess rail guns weren’t an option?” I asked.

“No, even ignoring the complexity of the loading system, the SURGE drive in the drones just can’t support enough acceleration to make a small-caliber missile dangerous.”

I sighed and, for the umpteenth time, wondered if I should reconsider my policy on explosives. And for the umpteenth time, I decided not to.

“I can produce a dozen of these in a few days if we bump all the other stuff,” Marvin added. “It’s not an ideal solution, but it is a quick one to implement.”

As senior Bob, decisions about manufacturing priorities were up to me. I thought about it for a few milliseconds, then nodded my head. We weren’t on a schedule for launching HEAVEN vessels, so screw it. I wasn’t going to let even one more Deltan get killed by the gorilloids if I could help it.

***

It took Archimedes a couple of days to find the flint. We had dropped the nodules where we figured he’d happen upon them, but it’s not as if he had a regular route. He wandered like any normal kid and was just as likely to walk in circles or sit on a rock for half a day, playing with something.

As soon as Archimedes saw the nodules, he jumped forward and picked them up. He then put them down, did a little jig, and searched the immediate area for any more. When he was satisfied that he had found all there were to find, he came back, grabbed them, and headed back toward his camp.

He got maybe fifty feet, then stopped and looked down at his load. Marvin and I glanced at each other, perplexed. After a few moments, Archimedes headed off at an angle toward an outcropping that was one of his favorite hangouts. Once there, he hid all of the nodules except one in a crevice, then covered it with dead branches.

“Eden, you said?” I laughed. “Looks like we’ve invented greed.”

Marvin grinned. “Or caution. I bet flint is valuable. He might be worried about being mugged.”

Taking a single flint nodule, Archimedes walked back to camp, and took a circuitous route to get to his mother. When he arrived, he set up with a couple of rocks to try to split the flint. We chuckled at the deliberate, studied casualness that he was trying to affect. It was so overdone that he might as well have been wearing a hat with a flashing red light. Before he’d even struck the first blow, several adult Deltans had come over. There was a loud exchange, and one of the adults tried to grab the nodule. Archimedes’ mother jumped in, and the discussion got heated. Within seconds, a dozen or so Deltans were involved. At least half of them were yelling at any time, and pointy sticks were being waved. However, the floor seemed to be about evenly divided between those who wanted to take the nodule and those who suggested it would be over someone’s dead body. Archimedes huddled at his mother’s feet, while she showed her teeth to anyone who got too close.

Finally, things calmed down. Deltans stood around eyeing each other while another individual was fetched. I could see that he was older—it looked like age was age, whatever planet you lived on. His fur was going gray, and he was stooped. His muscle tone was poor, so he moved slowly.

Another point for these people. They care for their elderly.

The elder unwrapped some tools from a leather skin, sat with Archimedes, and patiently showed him how to split the flint. Now
that
was interesting. There was existing flint technology that hadn’t been lost. This contraction of Deltan populations had to have been quick and recent.

Many of the Deltans who had been involved in the yelling match went running off. They soon came back with items such as extra pointy sticks, dead animals and chunks of meat, something that looked like some kind of tuber, and other less identifiable things. With a start, I realized they were prepared to
trade
for the flint. I put both hands to my face and started to laugh. We’d just made Archimedes rich.

***

The trading frenzy was over, and people had left with flints of various sizes. Archimedes’ mother was going over the spoils. She had an expression involving wide eyes and erect ears that I tentatively identified as a smile-analogue.
Looks like they’ll be eating well for a few days.

Archimedes had a haul of his own. He’d gotten several pointy sticks, a flint knife that had lost its edge, and all the flint flakes that were too small to be usable. Most importantly, the elder had shown him how to knap the flint.

I watched him examine his treasures, and I could just
hear
the gears turning.

Archimedes spent most of the rest of the day trying to put a new edge on the flint knife he’d received in trade. From the look of it, he didn’t do a half-bad job. The kid was a quick learner, for sure. He took his prize to the elder, who I decided to name Moses for no good reason that I could think of. Moses looked at the result and nodded in approval. Okay, he actually did kind of a circle thing with his head, but it had the same meaning. He spent an hour showing Archimedes how to get the last bits sharpened.

The next day, Archimedes snuck out to his stash and pulled out one of the other flint nodules. He had the knapping tools that the elder had given him. He turned the nodule over and examined it for almost a half hour without actually doing anything with it. It was pretty obvious that he had something in mind and didn’t want to screw it up. I watched with great interest, and I sensed Marvin watching over my shoulder, VR-wise.

Finally, Archimedes got to work. It took maybe ten minutes before we could see what he was trying for. He had split the nodule left of center, then right of center on the bigger half. He was trying to extract the biggest flake he could. I decided he was probably going for a hand-axe.

Over the next several hours, Archimedes slowly and deliberately converted the large core into a quite workable hand axe. He then cleaned up his area, carefully hiding all the useful flint pieces in his stash, and headed off with his new tool.

It turned out the point of the axe was to cut more saplings for pointy sticks. It made sense, once I thought about it. Green wood, or whatever this stuff was, wouldn’t be easy to cut without something hard and sharp. It was beginning to look like the loss of their flint source had been a major blow for the Deltans, perhaps one they hadn’t thought about at the time, or they would have protected that site more aggressively.

While cutting the third sapling, Archimedes had a misfire and attempted to chop the tree with his hand instead of the axe. The hopping around and verbalizations were really very human-looking, and to my shame I laughed a little. Afterward, Archimedes kicked the tree and said something monosyllabic. I marked that as an F-Bomb-analogue, and I don’t mean maybe.

Archimedes finished cutting down the third sapling, but I could see that his heart wasn’t in it. His swings were tentative, and he hesitated on each one. As soon as he had it down, he took the three saplings back to his work area, set them down, and went back to camp.

The next day, he was back in his work area. He had brought some of his twine with him. I watched in fascination and mounting excitement as he proceeded to split one of the saplings and tie the hand-axe into it. Once he was done, he tried it out on a nearby tree.