Vulcan
The man sat in front of a large bank of monitors. He watched one for a few moments, then moved to the next. He never seemed to stop, never rested.
The little red farmhouse sat far to the north of VEHEMENT central. Nothing about it was distinctive. No visible technology, no radio broadcasts, nothing to indicate this was anything other than the home of some elderly recluse.
Except for an occasional scatter of maser radiation. I grinned as I watched him work. A maser passing through fifty kilometers of atmosphere was not quite undetectable, if you were sufficiently motivated. A small bit of radiation scattering, a slight warming of the air…
Passive detection meant he didn’t know I’d picked up his signal. It meant he didn’t know I was listening in on his conversations. Encrypted SCUT communications meant he couldn’t detect my drones.
Well, well, well. Time for payback. But first, I wanted him to know…
41. Casualties
Bob
July 2182
Delta Eridani
[Alert! Activity outside normal parameters!]
I looked up, eyes wide. Guppy had standing orders to alert me if anything unusual occurred in or around the village. Of course Guppy, being Guppy, was short on details.
I activated the village VR, and found myself in the middle of a full-scale battle. At first I thought it was a gorilloid attack, but quickly realized that no gorilloids were in evidence anywhere. Instead, Deltans battled Deltans with spears, clubs, and axes. I could see a dozen or more bodies, either unconscious or dead.
Archimedes!
I ordered the VR to zoom in on Archimedes and his family. To my relief, I found that their tent was just outside the edge of the riot. Archimedes and Buster stood with bows in hand and arrows nocked. Belinda and Diana stood to either side, holding spears. That sight, as much as anything else, unnerved me. Neither female had ever shown interest in anything weapon-related.
I knew that father and son enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as expert shots, though. In fact, the edge of the battle seemed to particularly avoid the area immediately around his tent. Just as well. Fallout or not, if someone threatened Archimedes, they’d earn a visit from a personnel buster.
Marvin popped in. “What the hell? What caused this?”
“No idea, Marv. I was working on something else when Guppy alerted me. I’ll review the surveillance when I have time, but right now I just need to keep Archimedes safe.”
Marvin nodded, and took over control of a couple of busters just in case.
We waited, tense. Archimedes and Buster drew back on their bows and took aim a couple of times, but in every case, whatever Deltans had attracted their attention thought better of it and moved off.
Eventually the action died down. Deltans began backing away from the melee, still brandishing weapons. And now we had a chance to see the carnage. Property damage in the area of the riot was total, of course. Hopefully the owners had managed to flee the scene, but they’d be rebuilding from scratch. I counted seventeen bodies lying motionless on the ground. More than twice that number were bleeding and calling for help.
I wanted to throw up. What could possibly justify this? What could have set it off?
Marvin and I exchange glances and, without a word, I shut down the VR.
“I hope the medicine people can handle the number of patients,” Marvin said.
“They’ll have to, Marv. I couldn’t do anything with drones, even if I could take the chance on exposing myself.”
Marvin sighed. “I guess I understand why you’re always going on about Bill’s androids. It’d be great to have one available right now.”
“Yeah, I know, but he’s just not to that point yet. I keep bugging him, though.”
We sat down and I called up the video recordings for the last couple of hours. Marvin and I spent several full seconds reviewing them.
Finally, we sat back and Marvin shook his head. “Remember when we thought the Deltans were smart?”
“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “The stupid. It burns.”
The whole thing—the riot, the injuries, the deaths—had been started by an argument over how to divvy up a small prey animal. Unbelievable.
We stared into space for a few more moments, getting over the shock. Finally, I found my voice. “I’m going to go with the idea of population pressure as a trigger, unless something better presents itself. And I’m going to have a talk with Archimedes.”
*
The drone sat on the ground in front of Archimedes, looking very much like a rock. Archimedes slowly turned a flint core over in his hands, pretending to examine it. Anyone observing him would assume he was working on his flint.
“I think you’re right, bawbe,” Archimedes said in a low voice. “Things seem to be the most tense when everyone is home. When hunters are out, it’s more peaceful.”
“Not a surprise, Archimedes. We’ve known for a long time that animals can be more stressed when things get crowded—even animals that like to live in groups.”
“So what do we do? Kick a bunch of people out of the village?”
I laughed. “Archimedes, let me introduce you to something called marketing. You don’t tell them they have to do it; you convince them that they want to do it, and that you don’t want them to. Works especially well with teenagers.”
Archimedes looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then smiled back. “I think I see where you’re going. So how do we do this?”
I thought for a moment. “Okay, here’s what we need to do…”
“Reverse psychology,” I said. The translation routine rendered that as “backwards trickery,” and Archimedes looked confused.
I sighed and tried again. “Okay, here’s a story from my home. A great leader wanted to introduce potatoes to his people, because they were a good thing to grow. He made announcements, he visited villages, but no one was interested or wanted to change. So he grew some himself and passed a law that potatoes were just for leaders, and villagers weren’t allowed to eat them. Within a couple of hands of days, all his potatoes had been stolen and people were growing them.” I watched Archimedes, trying to guess if he’d got the point.
Archimedes frowned. “Wait, they grew the tubers? Like, told the plants where to grow? Why not just go out and pick them?”
I sighed—a very human expression, but one that Archimedes had grown to understand. He grinned at my frustration.
“We’ve talked about farming, Archimedes. You can grow a lot of something in a small space if you’re organized about it. But the point…” I glared at him, but of course he couldn’t see that. “…is that he got people to do something by telling them that they couldn’t. Maybe your people aren’t stubborn that way—”
Archimedes interrupted me with a laugh. “Yeah, we are. Do you remember Buster when he was young?”
We shared a chuckle over the memories. Headstrong didn’t begin to cover it.